Adopt resolution directing the Director of Development Services to submit a request to the California Coastal Commission to certify an amendment to the Certified Local Coastal Program.  (Citywide)
Those were the ones that were requested to move up. So those will be first and then we will go on with the regular agenda. Next up is hearing item number number three. Hearing item number two. Number two, correct. We did it. We did three. I'm sorry. First hearing item number two is a report from Development Services recommendation to receive supporting documentation into the record, conclude the public hearing and adopt negative declaration and zero four Dash 17 Declare Ordinance amending various sections of Title 21 of the Lumbee. Tomorrow's more code relating to the regulation of tattoo parlors. Read the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting. Adobe Resolution directing the Director of Development Services to submit a request to the California Coastal Commission to certify an amendment to the Certified Local Coastal Program City. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and begin by hearing the staff report, Mr. MODICA. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We'll have a staff report again from Kari Tai, our current planning officer. Thank you. Good evening again, Mayor Garcia. Members of the city council to know that before you tonight is an update to the city's zoning ordinance with regard to the regulation of tattoo parlors. Just a bit of background. In 2010, the U.S., the ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that tattooing is protected under the First Amendment. And then fast forward to March of 2017, where the city was involved in a lawsuit. And the court ruled, or at least had preliminary findings, that the existing zoning code unreasonably restricted the permitted locations of tattoo parlors in the city. And so therefore, in order to comply with the preliminary findings of the city attorney's office and city staff is proposing this update to the zoning code. Just to go through some existing regulations today, our zoning only permits new tattoo parlors with the with a conditional use permit in the following zones, just the H W zone and then also the downtown plan and the midtown specific plan areas. That's it for all the entire city. And so in addition to that, there are buffers, there's a separation requirement of 1000 feet from adult entertainment uses as well as tattoo parlors and bars. And there's also hours of operation regulations in terms of one of the reasons that the existing tattoo regulations seem to be pretty restrictive is that there there has been through time a sort of a negative stigma with regard to tattoo parlors. You know, and however that and basically today there are nine licensed tattoo parlors in the entire city of 50 square miles. Times have changed a bit. And not only that, but the with the court's new finding, there was the need to update the zoning code. The zoning code. So one of the first things that we did was study some of the more cutting edge tattoo ordinances throughout the state of California, many some of which like Oceanside and Hermosa Beach, also resulting from court challenges. So the proposed zoning code amendment would allow tattoo parlors by right, which means no conditional use permit that allows for certainty to be built in the process whereby an applicant can open up the zoning code, open up a zoning map, and determine for themselves in a clear and concise fashion whether a tattoo parlor would be allowed in a specific location. So tattoo parlors would be allowed by, right, as proposed in all of the commercial zones, with the exception of the sea ice zone. That's the one that's specifically reserved for self-storage and commercial storage facilities. But the rest of them would be a sizable for a tattoo parlor. Also, we would propose to allow tattoos in commercial zones in the in the plan development districts such as the downtown plan, such as the Midtown Plan, such as a PD one, which is the southeast area, up soon to be secret plan. And then we would also propose to retain a locational buffer, which is 500 feet away from existing tattoo parlors, as well as 500 feet away from schools in your pocket. We did include a map that looks like the one on the screen that details where tattoo parlors would be allowed based on those proposed criteria. And as you can see on the map, there's a peach color and that's generally throughout the city where tattoo parlors would be permitted and they run along the commercial corridors. The proposed zoning code amendment also has proposed performance standards. The reason is that these performance standards take the place of conditions of approval. Thereby, when the city permits a tattoo parlor, the up the the business owner or the applicant would have to agree to operate that tattoo parlor in accordance with these performance standards for the life of the business. And that includes hours of operation between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m.. Prohibition of service of alcohol and the like. And this is I would like to mention, in addition to existing health department requirements and other requirements that are outside of the zoning code. So so this would be in addition to the other requirements. The Planning Commission conducted a public hearing on this item on February 1st and forwarded a recommendation to the City Council for approval. The in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act, the proposed zoning code amendment was evaluated through an initial study and found to have no significant impacts to the environment. Therefore, a negative declaration was prepared. Public notices for this city council hearing were sent out. Staff received four phone calls of support and no comments in writing. And with that, the Planning Commission is forwarding a recommendation to the City Council to adopt the negative declaration and adopt the tattoo parlor ordinance as well as forward. This to the California Coastal Commission for a local Coastal Program amendment pertaining to areas in the coastal zone. That concludes staff's presentation and we can answer any questions you have. Thank you. Thank you. There that was. We're going to go ahead in the next part of the hearing and do public comment. So is your public comment on this hearing. Now would be the time to come forward? Seeing no public. Please come forward. I'm Eric Garcia, counsel. Well, my name is Joe Kasher, and I've been a tattoo artist for 27 years. I own Ace of Hearts Tattoo on Pine between seventh and eighth. And I have specific knowledge of this type of deal because I was helpful and instrumental in the legalization of tattooing in 1997 in New York. I was actually on the board that recommended that tattooing be legalized in New York and actually in that because of that. New York became a disaster as far as tattoo shops go. And by that, I mean the regulation that you guys are bringing down won't help tattooing. I'm not 100% against opening other zones of the city to tattooing, but this kind of 0 to 60 mentality that I feel is happening right now is very scary to me as a tattooer. And as far as keeping the tattooing, the quality of tattooing in Long Beach, which has that many shops, I guess eight or nine. We all know each other. We all kind of police each other. All of them are owned by tattoo artists. Opening the city up like this will have a negative effect in countless ways, but one of the main ways is people will see Long Beach, which is a great city and has a rich tattoo history as a cash cow. Non tattoo artists will open because there are no regulations saying a non tattoo artist can open a tattoo shop and they'll come in, drop their minimums down to negative. So there will be that part of it, which will be the financial for the other tattoo shops. There won't be any regulation on infection control because I've dealt with the health department very closely and Glen Fong and I worked very hard together to get everything and I went through a lot of jump through a lot of hoops, let's say, to make sure that everything was perfect in my shop. I just feel that it's very detrimental to the tattoo face of Long Beach to just immediately open up what seems to be so much more of the city to anybody who wants to open a tattoo shop. And I understand it's because of the lawsuit. And when I talked to people, the lawsuit was very instrumental in what happened. It's not good for tattooing and the industry in Long Beach, and I think Long Beach has had it's really the way it is right now is fantastic. And like I said, I'm not against opening up other zoning areas slowly, maybe letting a couple of other tattoo shops open every once in a while or every year or so. But just opening up the whole city, I think is a huge mistake. There will be if you go down, up and down Hollywood Boulevard and you see the way those tattoo shops are, there's no regulation. People get infections. There's a huge amount of people getting infection because no one's policing them. And health department, I don't think has the manpower to police every one of the tattoo shops, of which immediately there will be, you know, as many as you could possibly imagine. Thank you so much. Okay. Next week, replace him. Those of us who are of the intelligent design mindset that we have a creator, we are approaching an hour where we will be remembering, as Jesus asked us to, not his birth, but his death. Remember my death. I live every time I hear the statement. Original intent. I love those pretexts of statements. What was the original intent? Whether it is tattooing or same sex lovers or whether not medical or. We'd what we whatever we're going to call it the Orient, the original intention of God for a man and for a woman and the bodies that he put our spirits in. And if you're atheist or agnostic, this is not for you tonight. Council people. I want to make sure that we're sticking to the hearing. It's just to be here. Well, Mr.. Sorry, we have to speak on the tattoo parlor. You're going right. There. Thank you. I am going right there. We were all born with a body. And we get that body came out as God intended it to be. He made no mistakes for it. We have eyelashes and. Here where we need it curves where we need it. Now we're at an hour where we're saying, I want pain on me now. I want to write on me. And then the argument is not whether or not it should be authorized. I'm saying for those who have ears to hear, you're representing the city council. But God put you in your position. What's the original intention? People with no laws cast off restraint and they do anything. Your eight year old, your four year old? Well, they're going to be looking. How soon can I get my mark? And it's all leading to somewhere that mark. It's leading to somewhere. Tattoos now. Okay. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Stephen Morrison, CEO, Second District. With regards to the proposed ordinance and the specific part of it that outlines as part restrictions on marijuana distribution to that Section 5.9 of the Long Beach Municipal Code already prohibits that. So I don't know why that should be included in this particular ordinance. Additionally, if the purpose of this ordinance is to try to make it so that you're not going to have this being challenged in court, I don't see any particular reason why you have the buffer zone for near K-through-12 schools, unlike, say, comparable comparably to another sensitive use like marijuana, where there is an existing federal law that requires a certain buffer zone for that. There are no such prohibitions for tattoo parlors. I mean, a sense they should be regulated for marijuana use perspective. Now, I guess to say a barbershop and with regards to the again, to the specific of what was being outlined in that proposed ordinance, I think the other speaker spoke to it really to articulate as well, despite the fact that we have land, that we have health and safety powers, there were no specific outline health requirements as part of the on that proposed ordinance from a you know, the you're dealing with the injection of subcutaneous inks. I think that, you know, basically an autoclave, for example, would be required for that or certain capital investments in order to make sure that a tattoo parlor is safe and regulated as part of the rest of the community. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and close public comment and move on to the council accounts and reports. Thank you. I want to thank staff for the presentation. I know this is something that you guys have been working on since I got into office nearly 19 months ago. And so I did have a couple of questions. I know that right now we have four parlors that have conditional use permits, and I know that we have in here proposed performance standards and that it includes operations, appearance and health and public safety. When we we're referring to the state and city health regulations to be enforced, are those regulations particular to parlors? Yes. Those are specific for any tattoo parlor that opens and that would apply both to any proposed new parlors as well as existing parlors. They are subject to the state regulations as well as the local city of Long Beach Health Department regulations which require training in how to handle Bloodborne. Let's see what it's called here. Bloodborne Pathogens. They generally just make sure that the the facilities and the equipment are safe and that the employees that are employed in the tattoo parlor have been trained appropriately. Okay. So in addition so we passed this today, will new parlors come in, be subject to a new conditional use permit or just by these guidelines? Only these guidelines. The whole point of this was to based upon the the lawsuit, it the basis of it was that the city was making it too restrictive for the type of use. So the whole intent in working with the city attorney was to craft language that allowed an appropriate amount of permissiveness and that did not discriminate against the use based upon any specific type of characteristics of the use. So no new tattoo parlors would require a conditional use permit. Okay. And then let me ask for the locational buffer requirements. We have 500 feet from an existing tattoo parlor and public or private schools. What was that number based off of? Was that the state recommendation or did we come up with that in-house? Okay. Thank you for your question. So staff. Studied. Of. Several. Aspects with regard to buffers. Number one, the the most recently adopted tattoo ordinance from the city of Oceanside was was an example, but also using existing buffers for other land uses. There are several other land uses that also use the 500 foot buffer from schools and namely alcohol as well as alcohol, beverage manufacturing. And so with the existing buffer being 1000, we wanted to make it less restrictive. And so we took the cues from Oceanside as well as other land use buffers. Okay. Thanks for answering those questions. I want to say, you know, I know that tattooing has come a long way as a form of art. My mother had slaves. I might have one or two. And I know that Long Beach is a city that embraces the arts. We have some folks in the Arts Council here today as well. And recognizing that the staff report includes kind of the pass view of the tattoo artists, which was. An interesting perspective. But I want to say, as a councilmember in the second District, I wholly support new artists coming in, making sure that we are doing this in a responsible way, that we're protecting the health and safety of our residents, and that we recognize this as an art form. I think we have a new parlor opening up in the second district. I believe his name is Carlos, who is well known in Los Angeles and really is going to bring some more attention to the city about being a world class art city. And I hope that, you know, I know we used to have on the Queen Mary, we had a big event around tattoos and trying to make sure that we're celebrating that, but doing that in a respectful way. And so I support the staff's items. I know you guys worked hard on this, and I appreciate all of that. I ask my colleagues to also support this. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Gonzalez. I just want to say that I'm appreciative of staff as well. And thank you to the owner of Ace of Hearts for being here. You're in my district and I really love the quality of your work. When I pass by there, you're open really late and we like North Pine to be open in a time where it looks active. And we really appreciate you being here. I, too, have a question, though, just related to the the 500 feet. I know we are trying to be less restrictive. I see other cities may push to 700. Would that be any would that be a big issue for us? I just I know in the downtown we're already dense, you know, so it just 500 is pretty narrow. That is certainly a reasonable request. And if we are so directed, staff would certainly go back and take a look at that and bring something back to council. That's not my understanding because it was not originally proposed that we could change on the floor tonight, but we could certainly bring it back if that is the direction of council. Yes, that would be great. I appreciate that. Thank you very much for your work. Thank you, Councilman Austin. Thank you. And I want to thank staff for their work as well, understanding that this was brought on as a result of a lawsuit. But in my opinion, we probably should have been ahead of this a long time ago. I did have just a follow up question regarding the the health and safety standards for the proposed tattoo shops. What is in place now? It says the ordinance reads that the applicant shall comply with all applicable state, county and city health human services regulations, including but not limited to the State Safe Body Art Act. I'm not really familiar with the State State Body Art Act, but I am curious to know what sort of local enforcements will we have and provisions do we have in place right now? I'll go into them very briefly because we didn't go into it in great detail here because it wasn't so much a land use issue. But in short, let me just quote from the staff report here. Any body art practitioners are required to annually register with the city. They have to obtain annual bloodborne pathogen training. They have to provide documentation of hepatitis B vaccine status. They have to obtain specific health information from their clients, including an informed consent for anyone who they perform body art on. So that's just a really brief summary of them. We can certainly, if you'd like more detail, we can get more detail and bring that back to you. But that's just a sampling of the kind of procedures that our health department requires for anyone who's actually performing body art. So they must be licensed. They must be trained, and they must take appropriate precautions. All right. Thank you very much. I think that's a very important element here and possibly something we need to look at further. Thank you, Councilmember Pearce. Yeah, I had one other question. Just to be clear for everybody. Those that are already. Open and have a conditional use permit, if we change the number of feet that another parlor can be, are they still grandfathered in? They are correct. They would be considered as legal nonconforming users. Great. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to say a comment in return of the city attorney. Just as a reminder, I think some people spoke to is that the impetus for this conversation, one has really been about this this case coming to federal court, and we were in federal court on this issue. And so it's important that we react and respond to the findings of a of the court as well as what's going on with case law across the country on this particular issue. The second thing is, I think it's pretty clear, regardless of the federal court issue, the stigma around tattoos and body art is at a completely different place than it was 20, 30 years ago. And the the businesses that opened today, the the art that's happening, the kind of commitment to quality operations, I think is really important. I also want to thank the gentleman that spoke today, and I just also want to be clear to those watching that regardless of whether we open up additional tattoo parlors, which are illegal conforming use, they have to follow very strict state and local health regulations. And so we would never allow one to open that didn't meet the highest standard of health and safety codes, of which are which are both local and state level law. And so those would have to be met regardless of changes to this to this ordinance that we have in front of us today. So I just wanted to clarify that. Mr. Park and Jeff, anything else? Thank you, Mayor. Yes. As mentioned by Councilmember Gonzales, I think what the council will be voting on tonight is to make the change to the buffer from 500 feet to 750 feet. We would need to take that back, make that and then bring it back to council for approval of the ordinance. So this evening, if I understand the amendment to the main motion would be not we can't approve it tonight, but we would update the ordinance to the buffer and then it would come back at a later date. Is that the. Yes, that's correct. And I said 700, but if seven. 5700, I thought it was seven. Okay. 7.7. Oh, sure. Okay. All right. There is a motion and a second, please. Members, go and cast your votes. We would need a date. Certain. So know. Date certain. Okay. Mr. said he tried to do a negotiation on that because I think we could if. We could select a date certain we would eliminate the need to re notice it. If we just take it back this evening and come back, we would have to re notice the hearing. To which we do have a recommendation on a date certain. 30. 45 days. After my first. My first. My first. Okay. We're okay with that because of the motion. Okay. So May 1st will be the date certain. So we have motion on the floor. Members, please go and cast your votes. Councilwoman Mango. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you very much. That concludes the three hearings. We're going to go on to the regular agenda. Can I just get a motion in a second quickly on the consent calendar before we go to the items, is a comment on consent calendar saying that please cast your votes.