Recommendation to proceed with the restoration of Paramedic Rescue 12 and the reinstatement of Police Academy operations effective March 1, 2017, pursuant to the City Manager's proposal for additional restorations using Measure A.
Moving on to item number 19. Item 19 is a communication from Vice Mayor Richardson. Councilwoman Gonzalez. Councilwoman Mango and Council Member. Your Urunga recommendation to proceed with the restorations. A paramedic rescue 12 and the reinstatement of police academy operations pursuant to the City Manager's proposal for additional restoration. Using Measure A Thank you. I turn this over to Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you, Mayor Garcia. Public safety is a core responsibility of our city. Without a safe city, our families, communities and neighborhoods cannot thrive, expand and prosper. As a Lumbee City Council member, I am committed to our city's public safety needs. Our entire city council has demonstrated that and will always seek ways to improve our service delivery to our residents. I was honored to support restorations in East Long Beach and with Engine eight and reestablish the South Division. But today is particularly special for me because of the history and significance of what today's recommendation means not only the North Long Beach, but the entire city. It's not a new conversation. It's been almost seven, seven year campaign. It was the first budget that my predecessor, Councilman Steve Neal, worked on in 2010 when Rescue 12 was eliminated due to dire budget circumstances. I was there as chief of staff and we were forced to have a very uncomfortable conversation with our community expanding, explaining that we were losing a very important asset and that response times would certainly be affected. Since then, we faced increased response times across the city and the safety of our residents has been has been significantly compromised . For example, we know that in 2005, our average response time for all emergency services was 5 minutes and 29 seconds. But in 2015, the average spot's time was 6 minutes and 16 seconds. In 2015, after the county, Los Angeles, eliminated the Rapid Medic Deployment Model Pilot Program, we lost the R&D Basic Life Support Rescue in District nine , and our office launched the Save Our Services campaign with the community to talk about restoring that paramedic service. We came back to City Council and asked staff to find answers to restore the service utility utilizing GMT funding. And first response was a first responder fee and it was determined then that the resources were not yet in place to restore paramedic service to District nine. Then on November 22nd, 2016, after the voters adopted Measure A and a number of additional revenue measures, I made a motion asking staff to create a plan to restore Rescue 12 and additional services in the first quarter of 2017. Once we saw a complete revenue picture and in processing of the results of the November election on February 1st, City Manager West responded to the Council by submitting a fiscal, fiscally prudent and responsible plan to restore Paramedic Rescue 12, as well as the reinstatement of police academy operations allowing for faster response times and the capacity to more effectively train new police recruits. I want to take a moment to thank city manager Pat West, financial management director John Growth GROSS, both Fire Chief De Re and Police Chief Luna. The rank and file police officers and firefighters who struggle year after year to achieve the paradox of doing more with more with less. So today it's with great anticipation that I move that we accept staff's recommendation to proceed with the restoration of paramedic paramedic rescue 12 and the reinstatement of the police academy operations effective March 1st, 2017, pursuant to the city manager's proposal for additional restorations using Measure eight. With these restorations, we have a lower paramedic response time across the entire city. A paramedic stationed at Fire at Fire Station 12 to serve North Long Beach and a fully capable, fully capable advanced life support services. I want to also thank Mayor Garcia, Budget Oversight Committee Chair Stacy Mongeau and the members of the City Council for your support. We've been discussing this for years and have always made public safety a top priority. And now we have a fiscally and structurally sound plan to restore service that we can count on and that our residents deserve. And that's my motion. Okay. There's a motion by Vice Mayor Richardson. Is there a second? That's my. Second about. Councilman Mongo. Councilman Mongo. I think it's great that we're able to restore this. I think that Councilmember Vice Mayor Richardson has been a leader in this. And I also know that this has also been a big priority for Councilmember Austin. I know the east side is going to be able to benefit as well, because when one fire paramedic station is put back or resources put back into circulation, the entire system works more efficiently and effectively. So this is a win for all of Long Beach. Councilman, your anger. Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank Vice Mayor Richardson for allowing me to participate in this this motion. As a former recruitment officer for the city of Long Beach, I'm very pleased to see that we're going to be reactivating the academy. It's a very important aspect of recruiting and getting more officers into into our department. So I'm very glad to see that we're going to be reinstating the academy with full time personnel to continue our recruitment of excellent personnel for our city. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Pearce. I yes. I just wanted to say congratulations to everybody that's worked really hard on this. I know that it's really bringing us up into the 21st century and so excited about the new academy, excited about PD and excited about fire. So good job, everyone. Thank you. Councilman Pierce. I'm sorry. Councilman Price. Thank you. I want to echo the sentiments of my colleagues. I want to thank Vice Mayor Richardson and Councilman Austin. I know they've both felt very strongly about restoring services in North Long Beach. And I agree with Councilman Mungo that that relieves pressure for the whole city. I'm also very happy that we were able to look at our measure funds and reallocate some funds and defer some of our street projects as the item referenced in 2017 to allow for this to happen. I've said that, you know, we're going to have to take a look at our measure spending to make sure that we're in proportion in terms of public safety expenditures, as well as infrastructure expenditures, so that there are some balance there in light of the public safety needs of the city. So I was happy to see that in the item that my colleagues filed that that language appeared in there. So that was great. Thank you very much to the city team for the great work that they did. And I look forward to more restorations as as in the coming years. Thanks. Thank you. Let me let me just also add and say that I want to thank staff for working. I know hard on this. The Chiefs, the entire council, obviously, Vice Mayor Richardson and Councilman Austin's been advocating for this as well as a bunch of other folks. And I'll repeat that. I think thanks to the support of the citizens and the voters, these restorations are possible. And so because of Measure A, we restore to engineer in Beaumont Shaw, we restore South Division in downtown because of Measure eight. Tonight, we're restoring the rescue in North Long Beach and we're restoring the Police Academy unit to ensure that training is the best possible in the city of Long Beach. And so this is exactly what what the measure was about. I remind people Measure eight started on January 1st of this year. That was 45 days or so ago. So we're just getting started and we're excited about the progress. So with that, as any public comment. Seeing none again. The machine still not working. So all those in favor say I. Any. Any oppose. Okay. Motion carries. Thank you. Why don't I do? I do have. Thank you. Thank you. And for the community. I know it's a I know it's a big deal. We're going to do item 25 and then we've got three three members of the public under public comment. So let's do item 25.