Recommendation to receive and file a status update on the implementation of the Language Access Policy; and adopt resolution amending and restating the Language Access Policy.  (Citywide)
Okay. Next item. Report from Development Services recommendation. To receive and file a status update on the implementation of the language access policy and adopt resolution amending and restating the language access policy city wide. There's a motion in the second. Mr. Senate Majority Manager. Mayor Councilmembers. This is a regular update that we're providing you on language access. It'll be provided by Development Services Deputy Director Angela Reynolds and also Tracy Calandra. Good evening. Mayor and council members. I'm about to introduce Tracy Kalinga, who actually does all the heavy lifting on the language access policy. We've in the last six months and the last year and a half about we've been working diligently to institutionalize multiple languages, called out in this language access program policy into this diverse community. It's as I've said to you in the past, there's it's somewhat complex. There's very many moving parts. And any time you start a new policy, there are some ups and downs. However, since we've been funded by the City Council, we've been able to do a lot of things. And Tracy will tell you all about them. Honor Roll. Mayor and members of the City Council on August 13th is when City Council actually adopted the language access policy, just to give you some historical points. And so as part of the policy, we come back every six months, as Angela mentioned, to provide an update to Council Fiscal Year 2015, council allocated about 250,000 to implement the lap. And since then, we've had a number of initiatives that have been successful in the implementation of the policy. First off, we've developed a directory of all the staff receiving bilingual skill pay in the lap languages that is now available on the city's intranet for easy accessibility. We do update that directory every six months. Also, Development Services has selected vendors to provide court certified translation and interpretation services to implement LAP. Thanks to the Technology and Innovation Department. The Google Translate feature is now available on every Web page. And moving forward, we're encouraging all departments to upload the previously translated documents onto their respective department web pages. In addition, oral interpretation and document translation continue to be available upon request for City Council and Charter Commission meetings. You can see that noted on agendas and minutes. The Technology and Innovation Department has also recorded outgoing messages in the lap languages for the most frequently used phone lines in our city departments, as well as the designated city staff who receive those phone calls. They do have access to the language line for interpretation services, and we're proud to say that language line is now available citywide . Development Services worked with the water department to notify our city residents about the language access policy. We sent out 150,000 newsletters to the households in coordination with the water department to notify about the lap the lap policy, and that was provided in all four LEP languages. In addition, staff receiving bilingual skills pay have received training on appropriate techniques and ethics with respect to interpretation and translation. And lastly, staff worked with the City Attorney's Office and the Public Safety Departments, and we crafted the attached resolution updating the lap to address the use of children as interpreters. That concludes my report. Thank you. Let me do any public comment first on this item. Thanks again, Mr. Mayor. Gary Shelton speaking. I have a I believe it's a one page handout going across you. The one thing that I'm going to continue to come down here speaking about is the value of Google Translate as a usable and reliable and humanistic failure. It involves consistent errors in gender and number agreement. That means in Spanish anyway, they have masculine and feminine nouns and they have singular and plural. It makes mistakes in making those agree. It has errors in syntax, which is sentence structure. So you understand what's being said. It has errors in vocabulary words that are used incorrectly without the proper meaning. It has errors in accuracy, so you simply cannot tell what's being said. What I've handed out to you is very plain. It's a, it's a screenshot from today. And there's two of them. There's, there's one at the top and one at the bottom. The vertical pink bars are because I was running out of ink. I was going to say it. So you can tell that it's not actually on your computer screen, but it's on a piece of paper. But mine doesn't have the vertical bars. But I want to draw your attention to where it says select language. I think I circled that in the upper right hand corner, more or less. And I want to draw your attention to the word right below that where it says jobs. This is on page one. This is the entry page of the city's website. And where it says jobs and if you opt for Combi, which is what the Bannerman is. Notice what it says for the translation of jobs. It says Steve Jobs. That's how insulting Google Translate is. I didn't bother with a screencap on the Spanish language of the same page, but when you switch notice right next to where jobs is in the top row, it's a department that has all the various city departments, including development services. And when you switched to Spanish, that had completely disappeared. It's not available. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Honorable Mayor and City Council. My name is Maribel Cruz and I'm a resident of the fourth District. I am here today on behalf of the Long Beach Language Access Coalition and the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition, because this issue deeply affects people in my community. The city is now entering its third year of implementing the Language Access Policy, which was adopted back in 2013 and is now going on its second year of implementation. While our coalition recognizes the great strides that have taken place since this policy's initiation, we also recognize more work needs to be done to ensure the successful implementation of this policy. The Language Access Coalition has identified the following areas of focus. First, the city needs to improve its direct contact with limited English proficient residents. This includes public displays and signage in AP languages, which are Spanish, Combi and Tagalog. I have provided an example used by the offices of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, which indicates how one can request translation services. The city needs to complete translated for lines and voicemails, use language lines for walk ins and callers of all languages. Make the city's single phone line accessible in all AP languages and have adequate front desk staffing. Second, the city should train all staff regarding how to work with sleep residents and interpreting should include the new restrictions on the use of children, family members and friends as interpreters. Third, in the future and ensure all departments fund language access as a line item in their budget. And finally, complete translation of vital documents in key city web. Translation Not just Google Translate. There was a time as a young child, I was my parents interpreter. I saw them struggle. And to this day, I see my neighbors and friends struggle to find adequate interpreters. This is why our vision is of a city that is both fully language accessible and welcoming to historically disenfranchized community members so that they can both receive necessary services and participate in their government. Thank you. Good evening, city council members. My name is John Victor and I am with the Long Beach Language Access Coalition. Tonight I'm reading a testimony by a Filipino community member I work with in West Long Beach. So I'm going to say another name. So that's not me, but this is him. My name is Julius Clark. Son and I reside in the seventh. District to begin. Not many people know how to access the city's resources. In addition, Long Beach has a huge population of people who possess English as a second language. Both of these reasons, but many people of color are at a disadvantage in participating in key decision making processes in Long Beach. This is why I highly support the continued implementation and need for language and access to be available through all city departments, not just City Hall. Thank you. So Julia shares the importance of language access for many limited English proficiency speakers not only accessing services in city hall, but across city services, from libraries to parks and recreation. And so many. More. With almost over 44% of the city's population speaking a. Language other than English, it is important to begin to delve into where there. Are gaps. In language access into city services. As the Long Beach Language Access Coalition, we are here tonight. Because. We hope that the city not only looks. To ensuring. The sustainability of language access. In City Hall, but across all city departments. I'd like to share a story. From my own experience as an immigrant Filipino. I moved to the Philippines. I moved to Long Beach from the. Philippines in. 1997. And one of the things that in reflecting. In this whole process of even language access they remember is. I never understood a lot of the signs. I would look up at the streets. I would look up. This was the first year when I came to the U.S.. And I didn't know what they meant. I just saw letters and. I would say to my Tagalog accent and didn't make sense. And now I'm here and you can speak fluently, but I know that there are many other residents. That don't have the ability or have had the privilege to come at a young age and learn the language. And when they come to a door, when they come to the street, they are unsure of what the sign is. They're not sure when they're at a park, when they're at city hall, when they're at the library. And and that's unfair. And as the Long Beach Language Access Coalition, we hope that that experience. Doesn't happen to other residents. And we hope that the city. Can support residents that come from all walks of life, from all. Backgrounds, so that they can access not just the source. Services. But also the resources that people deserve to have. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Thank you all for coming out. Take this back behind the rail now so we can go through the council comments. Councilwoman Price. Thank you. Thank you very much to staff for that excellent report and thanks to the members of the public who came out to express some concerns. It's my understanding that staff continues to try to find ways to enhance and and meet the spirit of the the policy and all the different things that we've asked. Councilman, I'm sorry I made a mistake. I need to go to the maker of the motion to speak first. Who hasn't? And then I'll go to you. So I'll sentence Alvin to remember where I was. We'll come. Right back. To, you know, he's. He reminded me. So I'm going to go to Councilman Richardson. I make the motion and then I'll go. Go, go. Thanks. Thanks. And I know it's going late, so I want to you know, and we know this routine because we do it every six months. So we're just going to kind of bang through some of these. First of all, I know that our staff does a does a great job. They're doing a lot. I mean, from this My Brother's Keeper, violence prevention. But all of it's really important. And it gets us to a space where we have a more accessible, more equitable city. So I just want to start by just acknowledging staff on their hard work every six months on this. So. So I wanted to I got the handout and I just shared it with staff because I just want to talk through some of these, you know, and I marked up some of them as Met as well. And I want to talk through these, see where we are, see if there are any changes that might need to be made that I can incorporate into this motion. And then I want to hear from the council if there's any, you know, anything else that they might want to incorporate. So I want to start from the bottom of this list. It asks for completion of vital document translation in key city web pages, not just Google Translate. And I remember I remember in the budget we did fund, I think it was like the top 25 pages of our new website. So can we get just have an update to just address the top 25 pages? We're going to have like a real translation, but not and everything else would have Google translate as I remember it. How, how how's that coming. Councilman Richardson? What we did not include in our report, which I would like to actually add right now, is we had about a $70,000 carryover from last year. We had we incurred budget savings that we were very happy about. And so with that and the $80,000 that was appropriated to language access policy for FY 16, we are going to continue to translate documents, utilize language line more throughout the city program, the remaining 16 frequently called phone lines. And that is a very expensive proposition and it's very time consuming as well. Make interpretation services available for public meetings. Conduct annual staff trainings on best practices for translating post notices about lap around the city and about lip services in the public areas of city facilities. I think that's on their list, including evacuation routes. And yes, I think you're correct. We talked about translating top access Web pages and it can be as many as, you know, we will will begin doing that and see how far the budget takes us with that. So those are all the things that we are planning to do and FY16 with the budget that we do have. Fantastic. So everything you listed, I would just assume that the timelines f y 16. Correct. Great. I'm satisfied with that. Next. So you mentioned that you are conducting training. I see a number of these items that the coalition is asking for reference training to, in particular one about how to how staff are training on how staff works with interpreters. And I know that that is a skill to develop. So I and so based on your response, we do have that. We are doing that. Yes. We've been working with a vendor to prepare a video that can train staff at their desk about that. And we will be rolling that out very soon. Perfect. And then the training on use of on it was a win when we got the chow interpreter restriction in there. Is that a part of that video as well. No, not at this particular moment, but it is incorporated into the policy. Okay. So I know it's in the past. How do we what I. Will say is, in order to develop that language, we met with all the public safety folks. Fire, police, who else? City attorney, city prosecutor, people that come in contact with the public a lot. So that's how we did that. I'm thinking you're asking about accountability for that. We can we can actually add that or do it as a separate piece of the video. I think we definitely. That would be good if we just made sure we check the box. So the what we do is in alignment with the policy and then under sort of making sure that all points of contact have access to it. I know that we just mentioned exits, entrance, entryways. This was just shared with us. This thing that says, hey, just point to the language. So you want to just elaborate on what we're doing in terms of our sign program. Councilman Richardson, what we've done is we we've averaged that we have about 180 public counters within the city. That includes all the floors in city hall, but also our parks and recreation sites, libraries, etc.. And so what we'd like to do is develop a quick and easy, almost like they do at Kaiser Permanente, where you have the four languages, English, Spanish, combined, Tagalog. And it explains that we have assistance in those particular languages, point to the language, and we'll find either a bilingual staff member who can assist you or another alternative, like we mentioned earlier in terms of language line. Great. And then in terms of the the fall, I know that in this recent budget and this might be a question for Mr. Mayor, the in the recent budget, we talked about going and having one phone number for the whole city. Are we are we going to make sure that that has the four languages accessibility as well? You know, that project is very, very early, so I'm not even sure where that project is, but I'm sure that this is as part of our policy. I'm sure that every kind of communication is somehow we're trying to incorporate language access when possible. Right. Based on these responses, everything on this list and with the exception of number four, which which I don't know that that's you know, I want to talk about this right now, but everything else on this item has been responded to. So my motion is to accept it, you know, accept this update and just to include the one provision about updating the video with the child and interpreters. So thank you so much, everyone, for this. And and that's my motion. Councilman Andrews. Yes, thank you, Mayor. You know, first of all, I'd like to thank, you know, our deputy director and that's Angela Reynolds and her staff, Tracy Calandra, for their hard work on this policy because at last, you know, our council meeting, I have to see more emphasis on the implementation of these items within the next four or five months, and you got to meet that goal. So when I wrote the assignment back in 211, I knew that it would take, you know, a little time to implement. And I really, really excited to see the new additions to this. So I am also seeing the positive changes and I see the communications. It has instilled a new confidence in our community and I'm very, very grateful to be able to reach out to more of our sixth district, you know, a diverse community. And thank you again. Thank you very much. Now back to Councilman Pryce. Thank you. I'm not sure where I was, but thank you to staff and I'm glad we're moving forward. I'm just curious, maybe I would offer this as a friendly to Councilman Councilmember Richardson. The staff has done a nice job of updating us. Would you be open to having their council updates occur on an annual basis with maybe a written update to be provided to Council members and Language Access Coalition at the six month interval so that they are not making the presentation at council? I think it's a I think it's a fair ask what I would say, you know, if there was a big work plan initially and it looks like it's starting to become more narrow, it's fair. What I would say is I'd like to just I see a number of people queued up. I want to hear sort of some consensus so that the motion that we put out is, you know, a supported motion. So let's hear what the rest of the council wants to say on that topic. Councilman Durango. Thank you, Mayor. Good point, Gary. Know, Mr. Sheldon brought up a point that I was going to actually address, and that is the overuse of overreliance on Google translation. It's horrible. I've used to before. I've had people come to me and say, you know, this is this is a great product to use. And what I used it and I saw it, it was just totally in disarray. So I'm hoping that staff monitors that in a way that it doesn't get the message isn't lost in the translation. It certainly can happen. And and an overreliance on such a program would would do more harm than good in the community. And in regard to that, I heard a good thing I heard Mr. Reynolds say that they're looking towards the institutionalization of this program. And I think Councilmember Richardson I think that addresses item number four in that there's going to be institutionalization, there's going to be some funding behind it. And I would hope that every department would. Implement a program that goes towards that in the sense that. What was that? Okay. Okay. Stacy, that. As we go towards institutionalizing this program that departments will, in fact set aside some funds so that it can happen eventually. I think that's what you might have met maybe with some clarification on that. But I think we should we should have we should include it in there. I think. So. Just to respond, um, I know that a while back they did articulate like, you know, what is the total amount we spend across the city on, on language access. They had to break down on all of our. All of our. You know, what was it? Was it the skill pays and all that stuff? So if I'm okay with seeing it broken down by my department, like what people do, I just don't know what it requires in terms of staff time. So I'm okay putting that into my motion to evaluate it. So next time we hear back, we see if that's if that's possible. Yeah, I think it's important that mainly because it takes staff, it takes recruiting, it takes job announcements and testing to ensure that the people that we are hiring to provide these services do in fact possess those skills. And having been an English teacher back in the day and having been an assessor of Spanish and English language skills , I know that it is a skill. And you mentioned it. It is a skill. It is important skill. And unless you really know what you're doing, it's like I again, the the the message gets lost in the translation and we want to ensure that that does not happen to. Thank you. Vice President Joe. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I wanted to thank the staff for the presentation and Councilmember Richardson for his comments and support. I wanted to also share that I would be in support of having the written report and then a formal presentation annually. And as you said, unless there is a large item that needs to come forward, that that would be that would be something that I would be amenable to as well. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. I think that we've made great progress. I'm glad you're still interested in the single phone number of access. I think that as we talk about seniors and aging and a third of our seniors not speaking English, that that's really a key thing that I look forward to a report on. I'm also in support of Councilmember Price's idea behind moving this to a written report that I think has a lot of of value to the community. Thank you. Councilwoman Price. So I just want to follow up with Councilman Richardson. I mean, I think certainly if there's issues or ideas brought to the table, we can agenda visit and ask staff to come back. But since this is something that we we think about in terms of funding on an annual basis, I think it would make sense to do so. I want to I want to recognize and thank you for the tone and how you how we came to this. And I see that there is clear support for this. I think there I think we need to make sure that, you know, we have we had a larger work plan. It has narrowed. You know, I think we can maintain this focus. I think we're asking for a reasonable semiannual. Every six months we get an update. One of them is in writing. One of them's in at the city council. I think that's fair given the workload on staff. So I'm okay with that. Thank you. Okay. So the friendly is that the language access report would come once a year to the council in a in a public format. And then of course, six months would be a two from four from the from the city manager. There's a motion in a second on the floor, please. Member please go and cast your votes. Motion carries.