Recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing, and adopt resolution approving the Communities of Excellence in Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity Prevention (CX3) Pedestrian Plan as a technical appendix to the Mobility Element of the Long Beach General Plan; and Accept Categorical Exemption No. CE-16-268. (Citywide)
Okay, that concludes the items that were requested to be moved up. So now we're going back to the beginning of the agenda and we have two hearings, believe it or not, and important ones, actually. So I'm going to start with hearing number one, Madam Clerk. Report from Development Services and Health and Human Services recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing and adopt resolution approving the six three pedestrian plan as a technical appendix to the mobility element of the Long Beach General Plan and accept category or categorical exemption. Number c-6-268 citywide. Okay. Mr.. West or Morocco. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Members of the Council. The staff report would be given by Amy Burdick and her team. Thank you. Mr. Mayor. Members of the City Council. Part of my team tonight includes Kelly Collopy, the director of Health and Human Services, and then Laura Turnbull, who is the program coordinator for the Healthy Active Long Beach program. We are pleased to present this to you tonight. This is a public hearing because this will be a technical appendices to the mobility element, and therefore that's why we needed the public hearing portion of it. So for those of you who might not know what six three is, it is the communities of excellence in nutrition, physical activity and obesity prevention. And the Health Department has been working for quite a number of years on the healthy, active language program. And then that has evolved into the the Sea X Initiative. So what this plan represents is focusing on ten specific neighborhoods that met certain criteria and focusing on opportunities for change to improve those areas, both from a food desert perspective and then also from a safety walkability and livability perspective. Clearly improving walkability is important for us as we move towards being a more mobile city and then clearly access to healthy foods fall into those two program components. These are the ten neighborhoods that we're focused upon as part of this effort. The ones that are in the dark shaded area, you will see the top graphic is a graphic of the city. And then the six three neighborhoods are made up of ten neighborhoods in west and central Long Beach. We recently brought to you a pedestrian plan for the metro areas around the metro blue line stations. So those areas were exempted out of this plan. But but you can see between the lower left hand corner, the mob and the pink, those are the areas where we now have certified pedestrian plans. That will be a technical appendices to the mobility element. Here are the guiding principles that we're focused on in these ten neighborhoods. Clearly, our streets and sidewalks need to be safe and accessible and the environment needs to be livable. And it needs to be a an environment that is reducing pollution, is reusing rainwater through bio swales and then focuses on recycling. We do want to support the economic development of these neighborhoods, the social life of the neighborhoods, provide recreation and health opportunities, and then also enhance the esthetics and beauty of these neighborhoods as well. And so part of the plan format was that there was an assessment of existing conditions in these neighborhoods, and then there were neighborhood snapshots that include demographic analysis and then then survey intercepts, focus groups and then walk audits in some of these neighborhoods as well. That helped us prioritize what those pedestrian priorities should be for these neighborhoods. So I'm going to give you a number of examples for two of the areas of what the plan involves. But it it resulted in 76 concrete recommendations in the plan that would them, as I said, become part of the mobility element. So, for example, in the Washington neighborhood, we did focus quite a bit on what the snapshot of health looked like, the number of schools, the number of physical assets that were either publicly owned or owned by other institutional stakeholders, and then focused on the accessibility to healthy stores and recreations, recreation opportunities to see what sort of improvements we could make to either improve access to healthy foods or improve access to recreation opportunities. And so that resulted in some suggestions for priorities on how to enhance the 14th Street greenbelt, focusing on getting the folks in the neighborhood to utilize the park to an even greater extent, particularly where the the park is not being used because there are a couple of blocks on the park that are heavily used, but others that are underutilized potentially focusing on ways to increase circulation and safety for those neighborhoods as well for the Lafayette neighborhoods. Similarly, this we went through this exercise for all ten neighborhoods focused on the healthy snapshot, the numbers of stores, those sorts of things as well. And then potential improvements that we could make in the Lafayette neighborhood that would enhance public safety, enhance the pedestrian safety, and then also add add amenities to those neighborhoods as well. So the Planning Commission approved this back in late 2016. We are asking for your recommendation and then if you do approve this, we would then seek implementation grants and incorporate planning efforts into future infrastructure projects. If you have any specific questions about the six three program, since it has been going on for quite a while, I would turn those over to health to Kelly and Laura. Otherwise, we're here to answer any questions you might have. Any public comment on that item? Evening, Mayor. Hello. City Council. How you guys doing? Am I? My name is Steve Gerhart. I'm with Long Beach. We are your pedestrian safety and walkable communities advocate, and I'm also a proud board member of City Fabric. First, may I say what a great night this is for active transportation and democracy, as he pointed out, what you have before you in the six three plan is absolutely a labor of love. I want to thank Laura Turnbull and her healthy, active Long Beach team and Neil Chesky and the Cityfibre team for all their efforts. They really set a high bar with this plan, both in terms of process and in terms of content. This pedestrian plan was prepared with substantial and meaningful engagement. And it was not just one of those efforts that was one and done. There were repeated consultations, the outreach with the community, and the plan was evolved and continued to be developed. The plan reflects this extensive input and provides a viable and detailed plan for the city to move forward on pedestrian. Work. Long Beach wholeheartedly supports the plan's adoption and its incorporation into the mobility element. While we're talking about pedestrian planning, let me mention. A few other things that are important. The first, of course, is Vision Zero. On May 24th last year, the city council took the critical first step. To begin the hard work of comprehensively assessing our roadway network and to figure out where the collisions. And remember, we call them don't call them accidents. We call them collisions because they're predictable where collisions occur for all modes of travel. More and more cities are moving ahead with Vision Zero, and we need to keep the momentum moving forward on this effort here in Long Beach. The second item is expanding the content from the fabulous six three plan and the downtown interior master plan. Pedestrian masterplan into a citywide pedestrian masterplan. Not unlike the bicycle master plan we'll be discussing soon. We stand ready to partner with the city to reach out into the community and bring this back to life. Six plan has a robust tool kit, which, by the way, has been translated into both Spanish and Combi. And interestingly, Appendix A of the Bicycle Master Plan in the Next Agenda item provides best practices for design guidelines for bicycle facilities. I would like to remind everyone that the very first implementation in the mobility element. Is to develop a street design manual. This is a vital step for creating streets that we want consistently and in. All parts of town. Ensuring consistent engineering design practices. Improving safety and economic vitality and reducing air emissions from mobility. It's the everyday decisions that we make that will build the city that we say we all want. Our third goal policy priority this year is to get the city to start working on a comprehensive street assignment. After tonight, we will have two major chapters completed for the design manual and can look forward to seeing the Complete Street Design Manual with a full range of complete streets, complete streets design policies and detailed guidance about how we rebuild our future. Thank you very. Much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Any other public comment? You know, the public comment were going back then to council and council comments. Councilor Mungo. I just wanted to ask a quick question related to implementation of the program and the care that it took. I know that sometimes I've read some of the comments related to the emails we've received and the questions that some in some community members have put forward. And I just wanted to ask Amy to take a moment to talk a little bit about the best practices. There were some comments about council members dreaming up ideas that they think are fun pet projects versus I know you mentioned the safety, but if you could just give a little look into the professionalism and credentials of the staff that are gathering this information and data. Certainly, we do look at all of the best practices that exist both at the state level and the nation at national level. And those are really coming into play. We do focus on, you know, the I forget the acronym for Eric's group, the APA. The active transportation group that is a huge proponent of a lot of these efforts that we're doing. We are embarking on a huge mobility effort, and this falls under those mobility efforts which this city council adopted in 2013. So we do have professionals both on staff and our consultants are professionals who work in these fields for their at their daily jobs, who provide us advice and guidance as we go forward on these plans. I'm glad you mentioned the consultants, one of the public comments sent in. Actually, I looked at their online post because it didn't fit all in the public comment section of the post and they specifically talked about the consultants. But we go through a bid process for that. There's no handing out bids to people who are going to do it the council's way. It's done through a professional standard without much influence from the council at all. Is that accurate? That is correct. We do go have to go through a purchasing process and there are purchasing guidelines that the city, the CFO of the city establishes and that we are all obligated to follow as departments. And in this case, the consultants were selected through that process, as well as the Mobility Element Consultants and that the development services and public works, if better systems come in play over the years, we can always modify these plans. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Okay. There's a in a second. I just wanted to say yes. Thank you to our staff here. Um, and I just wanted to briefly mention that I remember almost, you know, five or six years ago when I had walked with Laura Turnbull's team and did an assessment in the, I think it was the Edison Drake Park area. And now to see this these items actually come to fruition visually is is wonderful. So I just want to thank you for your work. And I know Brian's work as well and I see so me here. And so it's it's just incredible to see that we're putting this into a plan. And it's also nice because as we sit on many boards like Skog and state and federal legislative committees and we have to go and pitch these plans for money, it really helps us to do that a little bit better. So thank you. Okay. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to chime in and say this is really creative. It's good work and we're paying attention. And, you know, L.A. just went through a process with the Prevention Institute and looking at the social determinants of health and how they can use that as a lens for land use. And we're already wrapping up something like that. And that says a lot about the fact that we're forward thinking and sort of connecting health and planning. So I like seeing these two people together. Our health director and our planning director. And so I would my question for you would be, how can we take what we've learned from this and integrate it into our general plan across the city? And I think it's great that you were able to target and go in depth in some of those neighborhoods. And so that's that's my first question. How can we sort of take what we've learned and spread it or put it into future planning efforts? This approach that was taken. That's actually one of the long range efforts under the land use element is to create a more livable, walkable city. But specifically, these two are related to the mobility element, which specifically calls for the idea of a pedestrian master plan for the entire city. So that's on our work list. It's on our dream list as well, because that's that's critically important for everything that we've been doing. You probably do remember that these two departments collaborated a number of years ago to come up with the healthy, active living policies. We put those in place early on with a grant from the county health department. And those really led to these efforts as well. So those sorts of coordination efforts have been, you know, growing routes over the last few years. And these documents really establish that. And to Councilmember Gonzalez, at this point, it does put us in a position to seek grant funding. So these planning efforts are critically important for that purpose. Okay. Great. Motion in a second. Please cast your votes.