Recommendation to review a report on Racial Equity and Reconciliation Initiative and provide input and policy direction.  (Citywide)
Thank you very much, Greg. Okay, with that, we're going to go and move to item 14. But before I turn this over to the two staff, I'm going to ask Councilman Richardson if he would like to open it up discussion for us. Absolutely. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I have some comments, a little bit of the introduced as they are under 5 minutes, Mr. Vice Mayor. So first, I want to acknowledge that earlier this summer we heard the voices of thousands of our residents in our streets declaring that Black Lives Matter and demanding change, changes like reprioritizing our budget to invest in our community. In June, the Long Beach City Council adopted the Framework for reconciliation. That opened up a dialog and how we can acknowledge, listen, convene and ultimately catalyze a plan to create a more equitable, resilient city. You know, thanks to our Cosigners Vice Mayor Andrews, Councilman Austin, Councilmember Pierce, I think every resident and stakeholder participated. They shared their vision for a more inclusive city. I also want to thank the community members that participated in this process and the staff that organized this, the steps of the framework, and the third party facilitators who was who assisted like Theresa Chandler, Wynn Manning, Katie Balderas, Kelly Colby and Tom Modica. Third party facilitators like Carl Kemp, Chris Wilson, Dr. Amber Johnson and Dr. Joanie Riggs. Oh, and so. So how did we get here? So we're facing a crisis on three fronts that really exacerbates disparities. So we we have a COVID 19 pandemic. We have severe hospitalizations and deaths for black residents and brown residents. And people of color are disproportionately impacted. We're facing an economic crisis that has significant job losses, and we're at war two Great Depression levels and significant barriers to capital and opportunity for for our businesses. And, you know, with the murder of George Floyd and the countless list of individuals who've been killed at the hands of law enforcement as well as vigilantes, we've seen civil unrest in cities all around the world, in places including Long Beach. And so this these patterns of disparity that have happened by accident, I think there was all the systems and systems are laced with values based on race and gender values of policymakers and influencers. And this moment demands that we take a critical look at the persistent health and economic disparities within our city and understand how public institutions perpetuate inequities so that we can lead meaningful systems change. The Long Beach City Council initiated this process by declaring racism a public health crisis. And this plan is an appropriate response to that crisis. So the new model for a modern and resilient city is one that prioritizes public health and it prioritizes public health and invests in inclusive economy and embraces racial equity as a superior growth model for our city. This comprehensive strategy will make sure Long Beach is stronger as we recover from the COVID 19 pandemic and place a racial equity lens on our government systems and ensure we focus on intentionally updating our policies, closing gaps, restoring public trust in our our local government , including our local police department. And to be clear, this is not the end of the process, but rather the beginning of a transformation. In addition to that, we have you know, we're at a place where we have to really look at this as a pivot, a pivoting point, sort of inflection point for our city, a moment where we can truly focus on a new model of a more resilient city that really embraces racial equity as a superior growth model. And this comprehensive strategy here will make Long Beach stronger and stronger as we recover. So as I close, I want to mention that I'm going I'm planning to come back and I'm hopeful. I'm hoping that through this, we can adequately, adequately address structural inequities that are black and brown residents experience. And that Long Beach can meet this moment by embracing racial equity as a core philosophy. I have some amendments I'll add after the staff report to ensure greater inclusion of our Latino and AAPI communities and some elements that that are not included here. And I just want to close with the words of John Lewis in his final essay that was published. That was publicized. It was published in The New York Times. And this this quote says, When you see something is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act. And each generation must do its part to help build what we call the what we call the beloved community, a nation, the world society with peace within itself. And with that, I want to acknowledge this is a very significant moment, and I want to hand it over at this point to city staff to present the Racial Equity and Reconciliation Initiative. Yeah. Mr. Vice Mayor, are you ready for the staff report? I am. Okay. So, Mayor and City Council, we're here in front of you tonight to present to you the Racial Equity and Reconciliation Initiative initial report. This is going to be a fairly lengthy presentation to really go through what the team has been working on incredibly intensely for the last two months. Today is a really big day for us. We feel this is the biggest step forward in racial equity work in generations, and we're very proud to present what we heard. The process that we went through and then the recommendations that we have to bring forward tonight. It's important to note that this is an important step, but there's going to be many steps beyond this. Each of these items that you'll see is going to go through additional review and and implementation and plans and you'll be seeing this as we go forward, provided the Council gives us direction to move forward tonight. And so we'll have a two part presentation given by Teresa Chandler, our deputy city manager who's been leading this work, and Kelly Collopy, our director of Health and Human Services, Teresa. Thank you, Tom. Good evening, honorable vice mayor and council members. This report was a collaborative effort in partnership with the city manager's office, the health department, many other departments who make up the citywide equity team and community partners and stakeholders. Before jumping into the report, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on how we got here into a moment, into a movement beyond anything many of us have ever experienced. In just 8 minutes and 46 seconds. George Floyd, a 46 year old black father, brother and grandfather, was killed at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. His death added to the collective pain our country feels over the tragic death of Breonna Taylor. Ammad Aubry and too many others who have lost their lives due to police violence against black people. Across the nation, including here in Long Beach, people took to the streets, to the streets to condemn racial injustice. Now more than ever, it is vital for our city to take this unprecedented moment to acknowledge and understand the persistent and exploitive effects that still exist within the government, economic and social systems designed to exclude black people and people of color within our history. Though progress has certainly been made. We can now take bold action to ensure racial equity is woven into the city fabric going forward. Racism is more than just a hateful slur or act of violence from one person to another. Systemic racism is embedded as normal practice within our society and organizations, leading to disparate outcomes for people of color in every aspect of our lives, from housing to health care. The criminal justice system. Education and politics. The facts are there have been racist policies and laws that date back to the birth of our country, starting with the colonization of indigenous land and the kidnaping and enslavement of Africans. Moving forward, racist policies have been upheld through the Jim Crow era Japanese internment camps, redlining, school segregation. The war on drugs. Anti-immigrant policies and mass incarceration. And that history has gotten us to this moment. On June 9th, the City Council engaged in an earnest conversation about racism as a public health crisis and the and the need to restore public trust in city government, including law enforcement unanimously. Council called upon staff to prepare a report that would put the city in a position to enact culture and system change through the framework for reconciliation. This framework includes four key steps to address systemic racism, and I will go into more detail about each step throughout the presentation. Acknowledging the existence and longstanding impacts of systemic racism in Long Beach and the country. Listening to accounts and experiences of racial injustice. Inequity of harm or harm to community members. Convening stakeholders to analyze feedback from the listening sessions and racial disparity data to recommend initiatives that shape policy, budgetary, charter, and programmatic reform. And finally, catalyzing action that includes immediate, short term, medium term and long term recommendation for the City Council's consideration. I don't want to overlook the significance of this moment for us as a city to be able to name racism as a public health crisis. To be able to pull together a team of equity champions from across departments. To embrace this initiative and move it forward. And to fully take on this huge charge with urgency so that we can work hand in hand with the community to change the system as we know it. Yet I don't want to sugarcoat or minimize how difficult this process was. There was deep pain, rawness and vulnerability in many of these community conversations and our efforts to move urgently through this process. We made mistakes along the way. We're not always trauma informed and in turn elicited more trauma and pain for many people. I want to acknowledge and apologize for these actions. Talking about racism in this country has never been easy, and I'm grateful for each person, community member and city staff who are speaking up and leaning into this process, even when it's not comfortable and often very painful to do so. We recognize this is only a starting place, acknowledging there is so much work to be done and committing to dismantling anti-black racism and achieving racial equity equity by way of this reconciliation process. Long Beach may not be able to directly fix the systemic problems across this nation, but we can set an example for what the United States should be and we should stand for. Excuse me. And we should stand for four. Given our diversity and willingness to take a stand for what we believe in, our vision is, is to create a united Long Beach, where race and ethnicity alone do not determine our social and economic outcomes. We see the framework as a starting place that opens the opportunity for all to follow. As mentioned, we started on June 9th and literally hit the ground running, learning and shifting along the way. This process would typically take no less than six months, but we rallied as a city team and aligned this with our city budget process . Bringing it to you in two months. This slide outlines the framework process from the beginning and launches us into the next phase. We will walk through these steps in the next few slides. But first I want to share that we had to we we wanted to remain focused. And so it was essential that we had a clear vision, mission and core values to uphold the process. So I mentioned our vision a moment ago, but I want to reiterate how important it is that we get to a place where race and ethnicity alone do not determine our life outcomes, how safe we are, what kind of job we have, where we live, how well we do in school, and how successful we are overall at this time. Race and ethnicity often determines our life outcomes. All seven of the core values are listed above. But I'm just going to discuss a few with you now. We are committed to making sure that we center and uplift the history, wisdom and experiences of this community, particularly black people and people of color. We recognize the need for the city to offer great compassion, empathy and humility as part of the reconciliation process. We recognize that intersectionality exists between anti-black racism and systemic racism against Latinxs, Cambodian and other communities of color, and that solutions to systemic racism can be inclusive and supportive for all groups. We also center race in our equity efforts because all other dimensions of identity from income to gender, sexuality, education, ability, age and citizenship have an equities based on race. Knowing this allows for a more intersectional approach, while always naming the role that race plays in people's experiences and outcomes. So now I'm going to dove a bit deeper into the four areas of focus highlighted in the framework. We started with acknowledging as a public health professional. I'm certainly proud that our city council called out racism as a public health crisis. In acknowledging this, we thought that no voice could speak with more expertize than our own city health officer, Dr. Anissa Davis. Our report our our report opens with a letter in which she states public health is defined in several ways, but at its heart is the condition by which a population can be physically, spiritually and mentally healthy and well. I challenge anyone to explain to me how black people could possibly obtain optimal public health when someone is telling them where they can and can't live, what jobs they can and can't have, and what schools they can go to in light of the multiple public health crises we are in. Now is the time for us to look at what the data is telling us, listen to what the community is asking from us, and embrace that this is different from how we have ever done business before and move forward with intention to impact change. Kelly will now share public health data and what the city has been doing over the last several years to lay the foundation for this reconciliation process. In public health, we utilize data to understand the root causes of the issues we seek to address. It are used to identify differences in outcomes across the city. To understand why and to design appropriate interventions to reduce the disparities. They are also used to evaluate program impact, to monitor progress, to determine barriers to care, and to influence public policy in Long Beach, similar to other cities across the country. Data show that more often than not, black people and people of color have the poorest health and social outcomes. This is due to systemic racism. Here in Long Beach, black residents are hospitalized for asthma 9.4 times, more often than white residents. 25% of very low birth weight babies are born to black mothers, although although they only account for 13% of the population among all full time workers, white men are nearly two times as much as a Latino woman. White families are two times more likely to own their own homes compared to black families. And we know the rate for Cambodian home ownership is even lower. The data shows that in 2019, 27.4% of individuals stopped by police were black, although they make up just 12 and a half percent of our population. These factors and many other factors such as trauma, poverty and air quality affect how long we live. If you drive from one side of Long Beach to the other, there's about a 17.5 year life expectancy difference between our neighborhoods. Over the last five years, our city's Department of Health and Human Services has been sharing these data, showing health inequities that span across the zip codes. Digging into root causes and building a foundation to advance racial equity within the city structure, the department led three citywide cohorts through the Government Alliance on Race and Equity. Yearlong training housed the first Municipal Office of Equity in Southern California. Started implementing equity one on one trainings for city staff and developed the equity toolkit for city leaders and staff. Through these efforts, the city has over 40 trained equity champions across departments and created a foundation to analyze existing policies and practices. As well as you guys decide to walk for another two miles. Hey, Stacy. Stacy, can you me your phone, please? Wow. Through these efforts, the city has over as over 40 trained equity champions across departments and created a foundation to analyze existing policies and practices as well as guide the formulation of our future work. In addition, the city is focusing on diversity and recruitment and hiring to ensure our government reflects our community and is also focused on economic and digital inclusion. Though we still have a long way to go, we are confident the foundation created by the Office of Equity over the last few years will allow us to move this plan forward in a real, transparent and urgent way as the community is asking us to do. We've shared. Why? Why? Racism is a public health crisis using data. But unless we name our history as the root cause, the solutions will always be focused on individual change. Yet we know that the real change needs to happen at a systemic level because of the way that history has shaped the role of race in our country and in Long Beach. A key piece of the framework is to acknowledge the existence and longstanding impacts of systemic racism in America and in Long Beach. We've done this through the development of a historical timeline of racial inequities in Long Beach, which allows us to understand the root causes of inequities, learn from our past and together build a more equitable community. The resolution declaring racism as a public health crisis. Naming things like life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality. High blood pressure, diabetes. And how all of these things are symptoms of racism that are experienced at higher rates by black people and people of color. The update to the city's historic context statement, which will incorporate topics on race and suburbanization to guide future planning and land use decisions and allow those decisions to be rooted in a deeper understanding of the city's history and evolution, including the communities of color that have helped shape it. After these steps of acknowledging systemic racism, we moved into listening. Once we received the counsel requests on the ninth to prepare the report, four days later, we scheduled our first series of listening sessions. During this process, city leadership, including Tom Modica, Linda Tatum, Kevin Jackson, Kelly Colby, myself, members of the equity team and other city leadership listened to community members, accounts and experiences of inequity and harm caused by racial injustice. These sessions were hard on all of us, city staff and community members alike, as most people who spoke shared personal encounters and stories of violence, mistrust and frustration across a spectrum of personal encounters with the systems at large. We were listening clearly throughout the process and made adjustments along the way. After the first session, we started working with third party facilitators who are not city employees to facilitate the sessions. Because of the COVID 19 pandemic, we conducted the listening sessions virtually via Zoom in a matter of two and a half weeks. We conducted four town hall meetings, 13 listening sessions hosted by the city. Two listening sessions hosted by community partner Ronnie's house. Two listening sessions for city employees, and collected information from a community survey and a staff survey. We had more than 30 hours of listening with at least 560 individuals across the community lists, listening sessions and town halls. Many people participated in multiple sessions, which led to almost 1600 voices across the sessions. When adding attendance to all sessions together, additionally, 412 community members participated in an open ended survey to provide written input. We also engaged city staff in the process through two listening sessions and a survey engaging a total of 503 staff. Community outreach to underrepresented voices is a challenge in normal circumstances and even harder in a pandemic where physical connection is prohibited, and even more so given our short time frame. We tried to get creative in reaching out beyond the city's normal social media and website reach. We blasted out information through the Neighborhood Resource Center listserv, through local churches and through the housing authorities email list. We also had the Housing Authority inspectors distribute fliers at barbershops and beauty supply stores when they were open, and our health team distributed fliers at COVID testing sites. You can find the demographic breakdown for our engagement efforts and listing processes seized in the report. Although we had a fairly diverse group of participants, we acknowledged that due to both the rush to get these started and the limitations of in-person outreach efforts, we missed robust participation of important voices, including black men, youth, people from Central and West Long Beach, including Latin X and Cambodian folks. We also struggled to ensure complete demographic data collection for every session, so we had many who do not specify their identity. Data was collected throughout the entire listing process. We received a lot of written information from both community and staff to help us analyze what we heard. We partnered with Dr. Amber Johnson from Cal State, Long Beach and a team of her students to help conduct the qualitative data analysis on the audio transcripts, chat transcripts and notes. I'd like to thank Dr. thank Dr. Johnson and her team for their partnership through this and her willingness to work fluidly with us along the way. Dr. Johnson's team took hundreds of pages of transcripts, coded them for themes and categories, and distilled the data into a summary narrative that you'll find in the appendix of the report. From this rich information, key themes emerged, including divests from police and invest in community police and government, accountability and transparency, support youth and education opportunities. Affordable housing and housing protections. Economic Opportunity. Health Equity. Equity and environmental justice. After the listening sessions and data analysis, nearly 50 community members and subject matter experts were invited to participate in the stakeholder convenings. These stakeholders were selected based on factors such as residency and Long Beach, participation in the listening sessions, and ensuring representation from organizations that support and provide services for black people and people of color in Long Beach. Stakeholders were asked to review the data and summaries and provide feedback to ensure the community's voice was clearly articulated and represented in the analysis of this report. It was during the stakeholder process that we encountered one of the most challenging aspects of the reconciliation process. Throughout our listening sessions, we clearly heard the need to center black voices. However, we also heard from non-black community members that they felt the process was not inclusive of their experience of racism and inequity. During some of the drafts, we moved away from the term black to communities of color in an effort to be inclusive as possible. This resulted in backlash and hurt from the stakeholders for what they perceive was erasing the black experience from the report, which was certainly not our goal or intent. The stakeholders ultimately requested that we include the terminology black people and people of color and were pretty union unanimous on that, which included both Latino and Cambodian stakeholders who were standing in solidarity through the process. As a public as public health professionals, we let health data drive our efforts and the data show us that black health outcomes are often the worst among people of color due to generations of systemic racism, as described in the beginning of this presentation. We believe that if we create a community where we focus on eliminating black health disparities, we will create the systems, systems and supports to eliminate disparities in our next Cambodian, Filipino and Pacific Islander communities, which will ultimately get us to a healthier Long Beach for all residents. As in many outreach efforts, there are some stakeholders who disagree with the city staff recommendations. To respect this input, we agreed to include their direct feedback to the city's report so that you, the City Council, have their input available for consideration. We made this promise to a subset of the larger stakeholder group and it can be found in Section five of the report. Please note that the work of the smaller work group may or may not reflect opinions of the larger stakeholder group to the degree the city felt, those requests could be feasibly achieved. Their suggestions were incorporated into the city goals and strategies. Moving from a stakeholder phase. The initial report was created moving us into phase four, which is catalyzing into action. As we await your review, feedback and suggestions, we are starting to think about the work plan for each goal and will ultimately move us into ongoing action. Kelly is now going to walk you through the goals and strategies and I'll briefly touch on the potential actions and budget. The report highlights four main goals that emerged in the community stakeholder meetings and surveys. Under each goal, there's anywhere from 3 to 8 strategies 21 total strategies in the report, and over 100 potential actions to support these strategies. Our next steps will be to turn the potential actions into work plans, including what can be accomplished in the short term and what will take longer to complete. Plans will also include metrics to ensure accountability to the work. Go one and systemic racism, a long beach and all local government and partner agencies through internal transformation. Go one is really about getting our own house in order. Acknowledging that government has been long been the creator and perpetrator of racist policies and practices. It's our role and responsibility to proactively to dismantle the systemic racism. As you will see in the report, the potential actions are outlined under the strategies listed here. The first strategy acknowledge the history and current role of racism in Long Beach. Specific actions focus on researching and documenting the role of racism in our history as a city and incorporating this in public facing documents as well as reviewing and updating city policies that are outdated or have disproportionate impacts on black people and people of color. The second strategy Create measurement tools to understand depth and scale of racism to inform and evaluate change. This requires deeper analysis of our city's social, economic, health, safety, and other data to understand the impacts of structural racism. To identify wellness indicators. And to create measurement tools. To be utilized. To evaluate response and demonstrate progress. The third strategy is to center voices most impacted by systemic racism in policies, practices and programs. A core principle of equity is ensuring the voices of those most impacted are centered in policy practices and program design and implementation. The focus here is engaging voices that are not otherwise been engaged, utilizing innovative engagement tools and creating opportunities for authentic dialogs. Four Strategies Build Organizational Capacity to support anti-racist reform with removing the Office of Equity and Language Access Program to the city manager's office to highlight the importance of their work and further support its capacity to retraining , engagement and utilization of the equity tool kit, as well as building a cohort of equity champions across city departments to ensure equity is embedded across the city. The first strategy is to ensure all levels of the leadership and staff fully reflect the diversity of Long Beach. There are nine actions outlined in the report focusing on reducing systemic barriers to city employment, including mentorship, leadership and growth opportunities, and building strategies to ensure implicit bias does not exist in hiring practices. Six Strategies to Use in Equity Run through Evaluate Policies, Processes and regulations to eliminate racism. This includes utilizing equity, toolkit, data and community input to evaluate past and current policies and practices to adjust to adjust based on impact on black people and communities of color and ensuring that all city staff reports include racial and economic impacts on various groups. The seven strategies is ensuring equity is in our budget. Contracting and procurement is a key to utilizing an equity runs and budgeting and resources, expanding community voices in decision making for budgets, and ensuring that decisions are made openly and transparently. Is also focused on creating and implementing policies to ensure city contractors, vendors and consultants reflect the city's diversity. The final strategy under the school is to engage and collaborate with local and private sector partners to implement transformation across systems. This includes working closely with educational transit and other governmental anchor institutions to address racial equity and utilizing joint use agreements to expand access to facilities citywide for important programmatic opportunities. This also includes collaborating with private sector partners in projects and investments based on community needs and priorities. Second goal is to design and invest in community safety and violence prevention across the nation. Violence is considered a public health issue that has strong and evident negative impacts on individual and community health and wellness. A fundamental public health approach moves from reacting to violence to a focus on changing the social, behavioral and environmental factors that cause violence. The actions outlined in this goal provide an opportunity to systemically look at the social and economic barriers which perpetuate violence in communities and begin to address them. While the City of Long Beach has a long history of engaging in community based violence prevention, including weed and seed in the safe Long Beach violence prevention plan, these efforts have been funded primarily through grant opportunities and end when grant funding sunsets. Its first strategy here is strengthening community based violence prevention and intervention systems, focusing on de-escalation and trauma informed communities, and strengthening funding. The second strategy focuses on investing in a broader continuum of public safety, including community based violence prevention and safe civilian addiction services. And the third focuses on increasing reentry networks, which includes exploring creation of a one stop shop and increasing access to much needed services. As you had heard before, there has not been a lot of investment in violence prevention efforts. And so the focus here is to identify and redirect general fund and other funding sources into non-law enforcement programs for violence prevention, redefining public safety to include more social infrastructure support so that more programs are eligible for public safety specific revenues. And reviewing our violence prevention programs to improve what's not working and investing what we know works but needs to be scaled. Our third goal is redesigning the police approach to community safety. Following the tragic killing of George Floyd, the Long Beach community called for reimagining police practices and assurances that none would disproportionately and negatively impact the black community and communities of color. An example of reimagining police practices includes identifying calls for service that could better be addressed by mental health professionals or homeless outreach workers rather than police, and also strengthening police officer training, accountability and hiring practices. The goals outlined here align with those requests. The first strategy is to explore non-police alternatives to law enforcement. Emergency response. This includes creating non-police civilian response teams to respond to nonviolent calls. Creating an alternative dispatch system for nonviolence calls to engage mental health professionals in trauma informed crisis response and engaging more mental health and medical personnel in homeless response. The second strategy focuses on redesigning police oversight and accountability through improved, improved complaint and discipline practices. The actions here focus on CPC reforms. The third strategy redesigns police tactics, training, retention and accountability as focuses on ensuring our police team reflects the diversity of our city. That recruiting standards include higher levels of education or experience as additional training on implicit bias, trauma informed responses and much more, and mechanisms to improve transparency and accountability for the department. The final strategy is pursuing advocacy with agencies to enhance police oversight and accountability. These focus on state and federal policy reforms to improve reporting and transparency around police misconduct and to improve public trust. Our fourth goal is to improve health and wellness in the city by eliminating social and economic disparities and communities most impacted by racism. We know that medical care, genetics and an individual behavior only account for about 30% of health outcomes. 70% of what predicts health comes from social determinants of health. These include the neighborhood where you can afford to live, the condition of your housing, your parents educational levels and stress load, your family's income. Whether we have safe places to play outside the quality of our food, education and environment. These are called social determinants of health. We know that to improve overall wellness, we must invest early in people's lives to create opportunities for success. Focus on economic opportunity, housing and environment. This goal acknowledges and recommends strategies and actions to build opportunities across these areas. The first is to advance health equity. This includes many actions focusing on increasing investments, programing and access to public health services, mental health, food security, libraries and park spaces. It includes exploring the opening of an Office of Youth Development to include mentorship opportunities, youth, job skills and community based youth programing. It also focuses on exploring a community health center for black people and people of color, given the disparities in healthy birth outcomes, diabetes, asthma and heart disease among others. The second strategy focuses on advancing economic equity, which includes many actions focused on increasing access to employment opportunities and jobs. Strengthening small business opportunities and digital inclusion. Establishing geographically based economic empowerment zones. Enhancing the role of the jobs coordinator for plays. And strengthening education opportunities. Job skills and financial literacy for young black people and people of color. Our third strategy is advancing safe, healthy and affordable housing. This includes identifying mechanisms to increase development of affordable housing, expanding proactive rental inspections, investments into previously red line housing to ensure safe housing stock, and addressing the overrepresentation of black people experiencing homelessness and ensuring strong implementation of the inclusionary housing policy and tenant protections. It also focuses programs to increase homeownership for black people and people of color and investment in alternative forms of land and property ownership. The first strategy is advancing environmental and climate justice. This includes equitably increasing access to green spaces in the city and green jobs, decreasing air pollution, particularly in black communities and communities of color. Identifying funding for the cities, Climate Action and Adaptation Plan. And exploring investments in renewable energy resources. The first strategy is, is identify new investment in health, environment, youth and economic equity. There are many plans addressing these issues outlined under go for yet few are funded. The strategy focused on identifying new and sustainable funding to support recommendations in this new city plans to promote a more racially equitable city. It also seeks to explore funding for the African-American Cultural Center. And the strategy is cannabis equity, focusing on increasing opportunities for cannabis entrepreneurship, strengthening the cannabis equity program and utilization of measure. M.A. Cannabis Revenue to invest in youth development, reentry programing, public health, violence prevention and economic equity to support communities most impacted in the war on drugs . This is a robust racial equity and reconciliation plan, focusing clearly on addressing the impact of systemic racism in our city and working to mitigate those impacts through focused policies, programs and investments in the city. Strategies include short term, medium term and long term efforts. So how do we start in year one? First of all, the city manager recommended funding, specific strategies and actions in his budget presentation last week. His proposal and his proposal included 3.3 million in funds to invest in this effort. 2.5 million in structural funds and approximately 782,001 time funds. These include 1.5 million to the Health and Human Services Department for Youth Development, Violence Prevention and trauma informed responses. Redesigning the heart team from firefighters to public health, nurse and social worker response. Locating social workers and libraries to support connection to services and funding. Be safe at 11 sites. Public safety funding includes a new Office of Constitutional Policing, support for reforms and innovations in the PCC and Fire Diversity Recruitment Program and civilian ization of 34 sworn positions to 28.7 civilian positions. The budget proposal also includes institutionalizing equity in our city. Reasonable share more about this plan. An immediate action. In order to move this work, there will be an expansion of the equity infrastructure within the city. As you can see here, there are several ways in which equity practices will be infused into the work across all departments by way of using the equity toolkit for decision making, incorporating the equity impact assessment into all staff reports. Increasing the quality and use of data to inform decision making. Implementing staff trainings to build capacity on racial equity. And identifying equity champions in each department to help move this work forward. Starting October 1st, the equity office will be realigned from the health department to the city manager's office. The equity team will be aligned under me as the new deputy city manager overseeing this work. The current structure of the equity office will be expanding to include another 1.5 full time employees. And, as mentioned, equity champions will be identified across departments. Language access is included in this realignment as well. As discussed in the Health and Human Services budget presentation earlier this evening, funding will also allow the Department to open a new Office of Youth Development, strengthening existing violence prevention efforts and out of focus on reentry and continue the department's equity efforts focusing specifically on health and housing equity. I will be focused on on including new staff as well as investing in our community and different programs around violence prevention, health equity and youth programing. We also redesigned the heart to model, as previously discussed from firefighters to nurses and social workers, build social work program at libraries. So that will be a partnership between the Health Department and Library Services to place social workers at three libraries to help connect people to the services they need. It will be supported through trauma informed and homeless grant funds. This builds off a successful pilot last year. Library services will realign library hours across libraries to allow its three flagship libraries to be open seven days a week. And one time funding will be utilized to enhance senior program at the Expo Center and the Be Safe program, which will operate 11 park sites across the city. Well, the Office of Constitutional Policing was not a direct outcome from the listening sessions. The police department has heard the call for rethinking traditional policing in a manner that will help implement equity, justice and constitutional public safety in our entire community. This office will support the Department's goals of policing within the parameters set by the US and California State Constitution while protecting the rights of all people. The office will be responsible for ensuring the Department is up to date with best practices in policing, legal mandates and community expectations, guiding the expansion of data analytics for accountability and transparency . Engaging with key stakeholders and other city departments for inclusivity and equity. Additionally, $150,000 will support a study of CPC to see to identify ways to improve oversight and accountability. The Fair Diversity Recruiting Program will continue with one time funds to support diversity and community outreach in the fire department, and 34 sworn positions will be converted to 28.7 civilian positions. This will transfer task currently assigned to sworn officers such as managing public safety equipment or responding to nonviolent 911 911 calls which include property crimes in which the caller simply needs a written report and instead be handled by nuns for employees. In terms of economic equity. In Year one, the Office of Economic Development will be working to open an Office of Economic and Digital Inclusion, which will be a partnership with technology and innovation. This will coordinate and implement everyone in digital inclusion, a road map and reconciliation report goals and provide ongoing oversight for the economic equity study outlined or sorry cover with CARES Act funding also provide funding for the Center for Economic Inclusion for Home Ownership Assistance. Economic Empowerment Zones in North Long Beach, Higher Learning Center. The Inclusive Business Center program will coordinate diverse small business diversity councils, small business navigation and inclusive small business procurement program. And finally, the Teen Center Workforce Training Program will partner with Parks, Rec, Recreation and Civic Gateway to deliver job training in high need neighborhood teen centers. So we've shared a lot about our process and the road ahead, which is where the real work will happen and the potential for transformation lies. Our immediate next steps include taking the Mayor and City Council's input, conducting legal reviews and assessing feasibility, feasibility of implementation, and developing detailed implementation plans that include actions, funding sources, lead department and staff and timelines for completion. We call this an initial report because this is just a starting point. We commit to remaining responsive to community engagement and our current context, whatever that looks like moving forward, expecting that key initiatives will evolve and be refined over time within the framework and goals adopted by City Council. We will also develop processes for ongoing assessment and feedback and provide routine status updates and engagement opportunities with community members. This could include, but not limited, limited to monthly updates at the Human Relations Commission meetings and ongoing communication with the broader stakeholder network to share updates on progress and opportunities for input and collaboration. We can't undo the damage racism has done during the last 400 years, during a two month process or over the course of one fiscal year. This work takes leadership with a long term vision and commitment. We thank you for your time and willingness to take a bold stand to end systemic racism within the city of Long Beach . Your support shows a true commitment to this work, and that is remarkable in itself. I can't end this presentation without giving another big thank you to the incredible equity team who brought all of this work together to the city managers, team department leadership and city staff who also jumped into this process. And a huge thank you to the community members and stakeholders who did not hold back their two hearts in order to push through to the next level. For all of you, I'm grateful and look forward to moving this work forward together. And that concludes our report. And we are now available for questions. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Kelly Company. First, I'm going to turn it back over to Councilman Richardson before I go to public comment. Thank you. Vice Mayor, I just want to acknowledge before we go to public comment, support letters that we received by elected officials and community based organizations. I'll be quick here. Congressman Alan Lowenthal, Congresswoman Nanette Barragan. We received a letter from the California Legislative Black Caucus representing all ten members of the CBC, Senator Lena Gonzalez. Board member Juan Benitez and Felton Williams. NBCC Trustee Joe. Joe. And took we received a coalition letter by 29 black nonprofit and community leaders. We also received individual letters from Black Lives Matter, Long Beach, Californians for Justice, My Girls in Action, Long Beach, Forward Investing Youth. Long Beach. African-American Heritage is the Heritage Society of Long Beach. Long Beach Community Action Partnership. Long Beach Public Library Foundation. YMCA of Greater Long Beach Community Development. The Children's Clinic. The Nonprofit Partnership. The Justice Collaborative. The Long Beach Center for Economic Inclusion. Long Beach Branch of the NAACP. Ronnie's South. Success and Challenges. United Way of Greater Los Angeles. Love Beyond Limits. Dr. Wade Martin, Long Beach Ministers Alliance Safe Passages African-American Cultural Center of Long Beach, 100 Black Men, Abby Street and more. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Okay. Thank you very much. Contribution. Could you please call for public comment? Our first speakers, Dawn Watkins. Your time starts now. Hi. So this process was formed as a result of police violence. The mayor, city manager, city staff reconciled, acknowledging harm sustained, but yet no reconciliation by those committing that direct horror in the hands of the state. The police, they were allowed to disrupt and change this process. Removing, defund LAPD, the most documented words from the process. And in the listening sessions and added things like constitutional policing and more money for training which were not found in the CSB summary. You know, we appreciate these efforts. But while we condemn the murders of George Floyd and Amad Arbery, we need to condemn their own killers like Daniel Martinez and John Fagan. Who? Tyler Wood. Fernando Archuleta. Salvadoran military. Jason Cardone. Sanchez. Matthew Hernandez. Jonathan Cole. These are officers in our department who have killed people who have excessive force records, who have multiple items in their records of violence that have cost our city hundreds of millions of dollars. Bradley Lewincamp. Nicholas Farah. Christopher Brammer. Victor Ortiz. Lorenzo Rebeck. Mandatory. There's about 100 officers that I know who have killed and used excessive force. They have shot and luckily have not died. This is harm that has to get reconciled by and by our police department. You can't condemn what's happening across the country. And then here allow a department. Thank you. Our next speakers, Caravan for Justice. Your time starts now. The Hart team is not this is not the solution for trauma, de-escalation. Cahoots is a 31 year old program based out of Eugene, Oregon, whose was initiated because the state was trying to create a more citizen evolved, accommodating community. This was their way of reimagining public success. Over 31 years ago, with success, the cahoots models create calls including conflict resolution, de-escalation, harm reduction, substance abuse, suicide threat and specializes in trauma and force de-escalation a training that our police department in the Hart program does not possess. Also, for cities trying to implement the model, the youth program will offer development and training, material, operation manuals, policy development, classroom training, consultation during the process, assistance with hiring and technical advisory during the whole process. Section two of Bill SB 2054, the crisis that has already confirmed the complexities of emergency issues surrounding crisis and mental health, intimate partner violence, community bar, the substance abuse and natural disasters cannot be addressed more safely with greater impact and more cost effectively and efficiently with community organizations. Not only does Law Beach realize it needs radical change. Our state has made it definitive that there is a severe problem that must be rectified. The numbers have already been crushed. Long Beach, if they implement cahoots in Long Beach, can save over $60 million every year of their budget. Other cities that share a similar crime and mental health demographics like New York, San Francisco and. Indianapolis. Have already begun establishing cahoots base programs in their cities. Thank you. Next, speakers will need a diploma. Your time starts now. Yes. Thank you and good evening, honorable mayor, vice mayor and fellow members of City Council. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight. Again, my name is Dr. Moore. I'm a proud resident of North Long Beach, a Mother Nature commissioner. And I also participated in several of the discussions regarding the reconciliation program to address the racial inequalities that have been brought to light by the recent pandemic. The social and racial injustice. And the reconciliation initiative. The desired outcomes that I would like to see for the youth are more afterschool and summer programs as it relates to STEM science, technology, engineering and math. Exposure to these programs in these areas help to prepare our youth for for the careers of tomorrow. Tutoring and resources. Such programs that would be of assistance with helping with a proficiency requirement that lead to college preparedness, readiness and completion rates. These programs foster a college growing culture that is that is sustainable for all members of our community, most importantly, for those in underserved communities. Internship programs and trade programs such as workforce development and service programs. These programs provide job, career and readiness exploration. I know that my concern for you, as well as other members outlined in the Reconciliation Racial Inequality Reference Reconciliation initiative as well as I ask that you take great care at. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kevin, Georgia. Your time starts now. Hi. My name is Kevin Yeager, District four resident The recommendations from the Framework for Reconciliation are great, but they do not go nearly far enough. And that's because our city's true priorities are shown not by the number of different things we can say we did, but where we put our resources in the budget. These 3 million and investments only amount to about 1% of LAPD's budget. And again, we're here right now having this conversation in response to decades of police violence. LAPD continues to receive 44% of the general fund, 240 million, only 4 million less than last year's 244 million. Cutting APD 1.7% relative to last year is not nearly enough. The message from these conversations was to divest from police, invest in black communities. We can solve our entire budget shortfall and invest in critical new programs. By cutting LAPD's 240 million and cutting LAPD doesn't mean cutting public safety. When thousands of renters are evicted in the coming months, LV PD won't keep us safe. LAPD officers can't keep us safe from COVID. They can't even wear their masks consistently. There won't be federal when federal agents show up trying to deport our community members. LAPD will not be there to keep us safe. Please invest in real public safety by funding housing, immigration, defense, health, language access in accordance with the people's budget. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kimathi. Your time starts now. The city created a reconciliation process without community stakeholders, mainly to fit into the city's budget structure and process. This alone is a practice of white supremacy because it perpetuates centering of the dominant cultural practices. Nevertheless, there were listening sessions and town halls with over 1500 participants from our community. The mayor and a few council members have publicly admitted that, yes, racism is a public health crisis in Long Beach and black folks have been harmed for generations. However, the police, who are the main predators of harm to the black community aside from COVID, have never apologized for any harm throughout this reconciliation process. Teresa mentioned the painstaking stakeholders meeting that we had for 3 hours, trying to convince the staff and Tom Modica specifically that it wasn't ethical to alter the data that was collected during a reconciliation process that admitted harm done to black people in the city. Yet black people were erased and the voice of the community demanded it be put back in. Hence the document you see today. It was really disappointing to see one of the council members post on social media that the word black is all over the document. Let me say that was both rude and hurtful to see him belittle the work of the community who helped put the word black back into the document. That was an example of white supremacy practices from that council member. Erasure of black people in documentation are physically driving them out of your neighborhoods or city is white supremacy. This process is not to point fingers at individuals. Thank you. Our next speakers maniac be. Your time starts now. I'm going to finish what Don said. You can't condemn racism and police violence across the country, but not do it once in the report. No police violence has been condemned tonight. And that is a problem because that is not reflective of the community. The question is, what is reconciliation? It is a victim driven process. This is not victim driven. This is institutionalized racism right in the face of the people that you're claiming to be reconciling with. The fact that time you claim that you are data driven. That's what you said to me. And in the same conversation admitted that words were removed. Defined was nowhere in the report. Black was taken out eight times with the data is where those things came from. So you're a liar if you claim to be data driven, but you allowed that process to be changed. And only by us having hoopla and and anger and frustration did you change it. But this process, civilization, what is that? This is all just a crock because it's only going to be 1%. Racism is systematic and structural. This report and this budget does not reflect a structural and systematic method of combating racism for black people at all. And there's no discussion of defunding and reinvesting police budget in a significant way. Then this is just a farce and it's not victim driven. And the people that are guilty of perpetuating racism are trying to co-opt this process and make it sound nice with beautiful pictures on documents and nice, flowery words and reports. But no significant changes are being made if only 1% is coming out of the police budget. Thank you. Our next speaker is Pastor Leon Wood. Your time starts now. Thank you very much. I want to thank you, the mayor, for having me on the program. I would like to say that Long Beach has a lot of high and lows. Over the years, I've been coming here as a little boy for years, and I remember that it's always had some racial issues. And I want to thank Councilman Rex Richardson for his leadership in giving me an opportunity to speak about them and having others speak about this as a longtime member of the black community and faith communities. I know the history here in Long Beach. I know the obstacles young black men face, and I know the needs of our communities. You can look and see that if a community has a really high education system, full employment, and people are treated well, you have less crime and you have less, less violence. Obviously, we don't have those things because we have high crime and high violence are structural. Change will address the inequities black and brown households are burdened with. And we want to see the recommendations in this report to come to life that actually go in and make structural change. And every home that's suffering in the Long Beach community. I've been looking and success and challenges this summer. We had the Freedom School and we were able to to work with young schools virtually. And we really saw that what takes place when you really give some love and care for young people and try to help them move forward. You also see how the parents react when someone cares about. Thank you. Our next speaker is Patrick Swimmer. Your time starts now. Thank you. My name is Patrick Swimmer and I'm here on behalf of the Long Beach Young Democrats. On June 10th, our organization took emergency action to support this framework and other policies to address the racial injustices within our city, such as defunding the police at least $40 million to 2017 levels. So we appreciate that the council felt the urgency to act in time for the budget. However, something this crucial for the health and safety of the black community and our other communities of color requires a more thorough process and should not have been rushed to completion in less than two months, especially at the expense of the integrity of the data you collected. The participants of the study were not representative of the communities for whom this framework was developed. Even still, among the community members who did participate, an overwhelming amount said that their number one priority was to defund LV PD. But according to attachment and the executive summary of the budget, the police department moved only from $264 million last year to 260 million doubt this year. Rather than listening to the participants of this study and the countless community based organizations who have called for the same the police to remain essentially fully funded and only 3.2 million is allocated for the implementation of this reconciliation process. We support the purpose and goals of the reconciliation, but the implementation of this plan must be done in concert with the greater structural changes called for by the community, specifically defunding APD and reinvesting in our communities to a meaningful degree Black Lives Matter. And that should be reflected in our city budget and operations. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Max Norse. Your time starts. Now. Hey, folks, good evening again. I just wanted to chime in and make sure that you know that we need more affordable housing in Long Beach if we're going to ensure to keep what black community we have left here in Long Beach. We need to implement the housing division where tenants can go and handle false accusations from landlords rather than face eviction and court fees there and having the record at Jeopardy! Which affects their ability to rent a new home or even stay in Long Beach. We must continue to listen to black community voices and defund the police and fund the need. Black community voices and defund the police and fund the needs of the community in order to make sure we invest in the most marginalized. Imagine if we created affordable housing units in District three and five people in those units would have longer life expectancies defined. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Rebecca Rose. Your time starts now. It is insulting to see the city council vote to talk about talking about racism, reconciliation. We need answers yesterday. It feels like you guys think we're stupid. We aren't stupid. We're watching. We are busy. Like you are busy. We are overwhelmed. Like you are overwhelmed. But the people of Long Beach actually care about those most affected by police brutality and institutional racism and all the other intersections that cause struggle and suffering within the capitalist system. If you aren't radical, then you aren't left. So stop pretending. We we all know the Long Beach City Council are Republicans pretending to be liberal. You give the appearance of caring while you while we hold the burdens of your inaction. So come that. Come the outcome of the reconciliation guidelines is to divest from the police and invest in the community in terms of public health and education, especially in bipoc communities. This means a lot of police officers will likely lose their job, but if they are in the business of helping people, they can find work to help the community without the use of force. You can remove a uniform. You cannot remove your ethnicity. The jobs created from investing in the community. You will employ the people with an honest desire to protect and serve a kind that doesn't put others lives at risk. We need you, the City Council, to expand your imagination beyond the current structures. Based on the current distribution of funding, it is clear that you take punishment more seriously than prevention because Opiates PD received about 44% of the general fund, while other departments that directly serve serve the community. Thank you. Next speakers, Ryan Ballard. Your time starts now. Good evening and thank you so. Much for this opportunity. I first want to say in this public forum that my family extends our sincerest condolences to our mayor and his family. But is with that same spirit in mind that I express. My thoughts on tonight. That is the spirit of humanity. I hope that our elected officials will view this as an opportunity to right an historical wrong. Clearly, the community is hurt. Those who spoke before me spoke with such eloquence, and if I could, I would echo every one of their sentiments. We realize that this is not an endpoint, but. This is merely a start. But many in our community included, are wondering what's different now. We hope that we will really see tangible change, because for many of us, this is this is all too normal. The death of George Floyd and many, many others is typical. So what changed in this time? So we're hoping. That you will vote fully support what this initiative is intending to do, what we hope that it is intending to do, and that is to really abolish the racism that many of us have suffered, not only abroad, but here in the beautiful city of Long Beach. So I would hope that you would vote not only. Thank you. Our next speaker, Sharon Senegal. Your time starts now. Hi, my name is Shereen Sinegal and I'm the executive director of Ronnie House. I lift all the concerns and pain of my black brothers and sisters. I lost my husband to gun violence, the pain that drives my purpose. I'm not alone in this nonprofit. Leaders across the city work from a place of loss and life experiences that has positioned them to be the best equipped to lead the execution of the recommendations on the reconciliation plan. With that said, I urge the Health Department, Economic Development and other departments to invest in community organizations that work from that place and support and collaborate, allow them to lead the way. Thank you to city staff for your hard work in the reconciliation. You will find purpose in your pain and to Councilman Rex Richardson for your bold leadership and to other council members. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Tiffany Davey. Your time starts now. I want to thank everyone who's spoken, especially all the stakeholders. And those. Who supported. On city. Staff for their time. I think what we're hearing. Is. Really. We want to understand where we are reconciling. And with whom and to really address. The harms. We must go. Further. It was my recommendation. That we create a Truth and Reconciliation. Commission, something to truly institutionalize equity going forward. These voices that you're hearing on the phone have. More to say and have said have given. Ours. And I look forward. To hearing from them. More and then leading the way as well. I want to thank all those who stood in. Solidarity. With the Black Lives Matter movement here, specifically. In Long Beach, and our efforts to highlight and gain. Justice prefer to cast. Victim of white supremacy within our own city. Our recommendations were sent to the city. Clerk. In full. Defund the police. It's simple the creation of neighborhood justice centers. We need true movement towards addressing centuries old issues. While this is not an impact that I. Thank you. Thank you. Our last speaker is Dave Shukla. Your time starts now. Hello. Well, first of all, if I could correct suggestions, the impetus for bringing this item forward and through the chamber for a very amazing and heartfelt presentation, the better than expected. My name is Dave Shukla. I am the eldest grandson of Bashir on the group of five Shukla, whose name I do not invoke lightly. To do so is to claim one of the oldest familial traditions on this planet. Things like the transatlantic campaign, 400 years of racialized capitalism in America. These are relatively small things in the time, history and perspective of my people and my family. There's a lot with this reconciliation initiative that is a good starting point. Obviously, we've heard a lot about how it needs to be expanded. One Direction. We need a decade old program. We need to revisit this every two years by the anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. We do this in person in two years. We need to start thinking about zero budgeting within two years and fiscal year 2322. We need to think a lot about our budget, obviously, but specifically for having the public safety budget come on the 18th. I've been working 18 hour days for two, three months. We have a much more important item for the city coming up the day of the action plan. Thank you. And that concludes public comment for this item. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now we got a lot to come to mind and then councilman's comments and we'll have Councilman Richardson to speak and then we'll go through the glasses. Thanks, Vice Mayor. Just a few amendments that I have more comments I'll to back up. If I if I run out of time. So first, I want to acknowledge all of the comments from the public. I want to let people know this is not the city declaring that we have achieved reconciliation. This is the city acknowledging that we need to take steps with the goal of achieving reconciliation. It will not happen overnight. I'm not confused about that. I hope that you are not confused about that. This will that will require hard work, dedication and continuing to build and shape our city. Now, a few points here that I want to lift up. There have been a lot of issues tonight with interpretation. I want to start by just acknowledging that we need to correct the interpretation process, particularly if we're doing using remote process here. So I want to see that. I want to see a two from four and I'll put that in my motion, a two from four on how we can think about ways to improve the interpretation process. Secondly, I want to acknowledge the fact that racial equity acknowledges barriers across race. There's a lot of focus here on the black community. The community has demanded that we center this experience on the black community. But I also acknowledge that there are significant barriers facing our Latino population and our combined population. And so I want it reflected in this motion for staff to go and engage directly with the Latino community and the Cambodian community and find out what process they'd like to do to make sure that this reconciliation process moving forward includes them more intentionally and specifically. I also would like to include as a as a as an amendment here that I'd like to see. I'd like to see some tangible change in in order to do that. We have to track, track and measure progress. And so I'd like to see benchmarks and reports on a six month basis. And I'd like to see see it recorded in disaggregated data by race and ethnicity. I want this reflected in my motion. I think that there needs to be some ongoing oversight to some of this process. One of the recommendations within the framework talks about reimagining Human Relations Commission. I think now is the time for us to engage directly with a Human Relations Commission, to create an equity commission that can work hand-in-hand with the Office of Equity. And so begin that I want that reflected in this in this motion to begin the process of shifting the Human Relations Commission to an end and rethinking its scope to work hand in hand with the Office of Equity and and provide some public engagement and civilian oversight to this process. There are a number of other things here that I want to jump into. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to work through it. If I run out of time, I'll come back up. So on goal number three, as it relates to KPCC and investigations, I want to ask a question of staff. I see that we have a of resources in this budget and within the plan to bring on a consultant and begin the process of changing our charter to update the PCC. My goal, I think what's important, what I've heard from the community is that we don't want to see small adjustments but rather an overhaul. So sort of like get rid of the PCC and build a modern oversight commission which will take some, some time, but we want to do it on the next general election. And so I want to understand from staff, one is that the plan here and to more specifically with respect to evaluating other accountability processes, with respect to investigate and other things, are those included within the scope of of this this contract or this consulting that you're bringing on to help work with work on this? That's my first question. So we have included $150,000 in the proposed budget to address the PCC. The our vision is that we would bring on an outside expert who could help us independently review how our structure works, compare it to other structures, and give us best practices. Give us ideas on how a commission could be changed or reformed or improved. We're also looking for short term improvements that the election would not be allowed to be on the ballot until 2022 per state law. So we would have two years under the current system if the council wanted to change it in the future. And so we see it as a comprehensive review that would be year one. And then going forward there would be $150,000 to help implement. So we believe that there are some changes that can be made that would help the current commission do its job a little bit more efficiently. And. Better. And then we could look at all the other best practices as well. Thank you so much. You have one minute, sir. Okay. Thank you. So in that so I'll just stay on this topic and read to four for another. And so in terms of goal to I want to be clear that we're beginning the process of C.P.S. within the scope of that. We also want to look at just the investigations process and the new commission should have some independence. It should have is restore public confidence that you have some some some authority to conduct some investigations. I don't understand what can be done before the election in 2022 and and what the process looks like in the march between now and 2022. So that can come back in two from four. I think on the issue will then go to on youth development, violence prevention. I want to I want to understand it further. And this is questions that the capacity or building on violence prevention, is this a mechanism to bring in more community based intervention workers and things like that to help us achieve violence prevention? How are you thinking about this? That's for Kevin. Yeah. So in terms of the violence prevention structure would be to we would hire one additional person as part of the city's violence prevention team to help manage and coordinate that program. At this time, we only have one full time equivalent supporting all the violence prevention efforts within the city. So we'd bring one new person on and then through that work with community efforts around coordination of efforts, but also providing funding and resources to community based organizations to to engage in violence prevention work that that they are known for. Councilman. I'm out of time, so I have to back up. Thank you. And Vice Mayor. Mayor, if I can ask a question. So I think we're going to hear from the council a number of ideas and comments and things that they would like to see. For staff, it would be really helpful if we had that in the form of a motion so that we can track what is it that the full council supports. So I believe I heard Councilmember Richardson start in saying he was making a motion. I just want to confirm that's the case. And there were six items that we had. If we could follow a process where we have a motion and substitute motions and others that would help us get clear direction. Yeah, we have video of a motion by Councilman Richardson. Yes. Okay, fine. We'll come back you. We'll get that done in that order. Okay. Consequences in the hands. So I just want to say a big, big thank you to Councilmember Richardson for having the courage and the brilliant ness of putting something together like this in, especially as we are facing in this very difficult time. I also want to give thanks to staff. I for this presentation that they gave. That was really great. I know that this work involved a lot of facilitating and reaching out and being creative and and it was long, hard and very emotional for all parties. And I think that, you know, to be able to do this and in such a quick, you know, time was also very incredibly difficult. So I commend you for your efforts into putting this all together. I'm also incredibly grateful to all of the residents and community members that have been involved in this process by engaging in this very painful but necessary and and absolutely overdue work. This report puts in black and white. What would people of color in Long Beach have been have known for for many years? So I'm grateful that we're acknowledging the significance of having these truths come out and and and supported by our city leadership. We should continue to keep in mind that this comes only after decades and decades of our city being unresponsive to experiences of people of color and their activism in the face of systemic racism and white supremacy. We need to really keep that in mind going forward. It's important for us to keep that in our mind and know how critical it has been to be able to listen and actually discuss all of the things that have come out in this report. I'm heartened by some of the policy changes provided in this report, and I think that we have an excellent starting point. Again, I will say an excellent starting point in beginning to address some of these issues. I am particularly excited to see some immediate and short term movement on expanding our language access programs to better include our residents, including immigrants. On very excited about the amendments made to this motion to have something separate for the Latino and the Cambodian community. I, I think that these kinds of structural changes, especially when attached to increasing funding for staff and all the responsibilities are are a good way to create an equitable outcome for us. I also think that it's critically important that we. That that we have space to have these conversations. And in our actions as counsel for, you know, we as counsel have the responsibility to listen to our constituents and hear them out and see really listen to what some of the solutions would be. Majority of participants in the reconciliation process so far have unequivocally voiced support for reinvesting resources and in other departments like youth and programs. One of the things said that I want to see is also investing funds in in prevention of violence. I think that that's very important. So with that being said, I just want to say thank you, Councilmember Richardson, for bringing this forward and really listening to our to our residents. So with that, I just want to say that I fully support the motion and I'm happy to second this motion. Very much come to me. Oh, sorry. Did you take the wrong time, sir? Yes. Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. Just one point of clarification, Vice Mayor, when you say council members have 5 minutes each time by the council members themselves. Because sometimes when we ask a question, it takes another two or 3 minutes for an answer. I just want to get a clarification on that. Or is it just 5 minutes of total conversation to the council member and staff? You know, the rules say the question and the answer. Okay. Yes. Want to get clarification on that? Yes, sir. Okay. Because it can be a little bit can be a little frustrating. Yes. First of all, I want to thank. Thank you. First of all, I want to thank Ms.. Chandler for taking the leadership in this and and her honesty. She was very straightforward in saying that there were some mistakes made and acknowledge those and that and and address those. And that's is going to make everything better. That's where we're at right now. I mean, let's face it, there have been mistakes all over all over the place, especially in the treatment of people, the treatment of our LGBT community. Keeping the women. And, you know, when it comes right down to it, I see it as a perfect storm. And I will say I said it before, I'll say it again. This started because the atmosphere in our country began with a racist. It began with Charlottesville. It began with his in the willingness to accept the the the decision of a Mexican-American judge who was making a judgment, an adjudication on his. Trump University. It started there Alachua and then a Lach was let George Floyd unfortunately that rest his soul lost his life because of racism. Because of the atmosphere that was created in this country by. And then we have a pandemic. And what did the pandemic do? It raised to the to the surface the fact that there are a lot of inequities and injustices out there in the community when it comes to public health, when it comes to health care in general, that, you know, people can't afford it. And people are having a difficult time getting access to the proper medical care that they need. And then on top of that, we have a down on economic downturn that raised even more issues about wages and disparities in wages and disparities in jobs. And, you know, men making white men making two, three, four times more that than Latino women, African-American women and women in general. And so what we have here is, is the perfect storm. And I'm glad that this came forward because it's putting it to the through the the discussion is putting that on the table and the very painful discussion that we have to have with one another. And it's and it's time and we're we're in a we're in a in a in a in a in a current time right now where we can have this discussion, where we can put it all out there and just put it on the table and, you know, let's clear the air. And I know it's painful. Miss Chandler experienced that pain and we continue to feel that pain and we're working through it. And we will we will we will survive this. We will work this through. And I want to thank Councilmember Richardson for bringing this forward as the idea. And I want to know that that we know we were present. I hope that this document will be a living document. That will be a document that we can go back to, that it will not be shelved, that it will be a document that we will always revisit and make better because we're going to continue this discussion and it's going to grow. Council Member ten there has said it perfectly. You know, we we still need further, more discussions to be held in the Latino community and in the Cambodian as well as to the Filipino community. And we need more input from our LGBT community and women. But I see this document as being alive and being able to add to it to make it all that much stronger. And I'm looking forward to I know Councilmember Richardson has that finished on his amendments that he has for his motion. And I'm looking forward to some of those supporting that. But as a whole, I certainly support support this framework. And I think it's a very positive step moving forward. And I'm very proud of Long Beach. I mean, the people came out, they spoke their piece, and they're adding their voices to this document as well. It's typical is a typical conversation, but it's one that's necessary. We have to have. Thank you. Mayor Raymond Miranda, councilman. Yes. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I really want to take a moment first to recognize our council members that really worked hard to bring this forward. Councilmember Richardson has been leading a lot of the conversation, as he's known to to like to get out there and roll his sleeves up on everything. But we really have to thank the fact that we've got Councilmember Austin and Councilmember Dee Andrews who have been leading this and having their own conversations in their own networks and really facing some of the historical racism that has existed in the city of Long Beach for a really long time. And I say that because when I got on council as a bright eyed, bushy tailed progressive that ran on police reform, when I tried to talk about some of the racial inequities, it was really uncomfortable. And I think that we're having this conversation as an entire city, and it's really uncomfortable, and that's okay. And I know that our staff, like Teresa, who got thrown into a new position and then thrown into it and thrown into this leadership, have found themselves in difficult moments. And I remind everybody that if we didn't have these emotional moments, if we didn't have tension, if we didn't have difficult conversations and accountability. We wouldn't be doing the right thing. And that's how we know that while this process might not be perfect for everybody, it's a process that the city really, really needs to have. I look and I see that we've had council members that have been on this council for a long time stepping up and leading on these difficult conversations. And it it makes me feel really hopeful. I also see young black women that are leading and speaking up on almost every council meeting that I've never spoken at a council meeting before. And the fact that we have people like Don and Shereen, but also Theresa and others that are sharing their stories and trying to facilitate a conversation while also experiencing this difficult moment is really hard. And so I feel very humbled to be a part of this conversation. And I never in my 13 years of doing community organizing work in Long Beach thought that we would have such an open conversation. And so I know it's been tough for people like Tom, and I want to applaud Tom for for being present, but being in the middle of every single stakeholder that has something to say about this work. And I know that that's not easy, but I also know that this conversation was started because Black Lives Matter and they didn't feel like they mattered. And until somebody says, I, I am a black woman or a black man, and I can tell you that I feel respected, that I feel like people in my community see me as someone who contributes and matters, and we haven't done our job yet. And so reading this really in what the speaker said is this is about reconciliation for the entire city, but it's about police, us in particular. And Black Lives Matter have have spoken up community members have signed letters. All the organizations that spoke that Councilmember Richardson listed earlier signed a letter asking for 12% of the police budget to be cut. And I know that when the budget came out, we were really you know, we felt like we were in a really good place. We were at 5% that it was higher than L.A. But then it came back that maybe the numbers weren't exactly what we needed. This is the very first sign that we need to have a transparent budget next week whenever the budget comes back from PD. Our new budget book. I understand we've been in a difficult situation with COVID, but our residents need to see exactly what is in our police budget. I, as a councilwoman need to understand what is in our police budget so that we can match those priorities. I think it's very important that we recognize. That this is really hard for our or our police officers. Nobody can question. You have one minute. Okay. I'll make motions when I come back up. But I couldn't have this vote tonight without grounding us in this. I have always been outspoken about reforming PD, but I also know a lot of police officers and I'm talking directly to our police officers right now. I do not believe. At every single one of our police officers. Is inherently racist. I believe that our police department has lacked accountability and transparency. Is positioned in a military way that allows it to operate without the council having full oversight and without the voters, the constituents, all of the residents live here, whether their voters are not to have a say. And that is what this process has to be about. This process has to be about transparency and accountability and making sure that people's tax dollars are going to make every single person feel safe in the city, not just some. And so I wanted to ground the rest of my conversations and not that I recognize that. And I recognize this is a hard moment, but we cannot let this moment pass this by without making real reform in this direction tonight that we give stop is where we start. So I'll come back up. Thank you. Vice Mayor. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councilman Austin. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor, can you hear me? Hello? Hello. Okay. I. So, first of all, let me just just say, I would really like to express my deep and sincere appreciation to everyone who has been involved in the preparation of this framework document. Now, I salute our city manager for for taking it on, Teresa Chandler, for leading this charge. Dr. Davis, your introduction was, you know, heartfelt, truly felt that reading it. And I want to thank our Health Department Mobile's policy and the many community stakeholders who weighed in and provide hours of testimony over the dozen or so more listening sessions. Those sessions were not easy. Weren't easy to listen to. And conversations about race are never easy or comfortable. And I think it should be noted, and it has been that this is a monumental document that demonstrates our city's commitment to being more inclusive and equitable from the inside out. This document represents a clear denunciation of racism. And it's a beginning and an earnest attempt to repair a broken system. I think it goes much further than addressing police violence and accountability. You know, as the city council member representing the eighth District, I'm reminded of the abhorrent redlining practices that existed in my neighborhood just a few decades ago. I would not have been able to own or live in the home that I live in. You know, 40, 50 years ago. The first black family integrated Bixby Knolls in 1958, Dr. Charles Cherry bought a beautiful home on Cerritos Avenue in Bixby Knolls, and that family was met with vitriolic acts of racism and rejection by their neighbors, who say they did not receive a warm welcome. And being the first being the first black in the first minority is never, ever easy either. Today we vote against racism. We vote against anti-Blackness. If this vote tonight honors the lives of Medgar Evers. Trayvon Martin. George Floyd and many, many others. This vote tonight is when I take this vote is on behalf of my three black sons, my future grandchildren, to live in a more equitable society. As for our youth, our black and Latino youth, and for my youth to be able to live in a city that extends opportunities and supports their dreams. You know, I like to also pay some recognition tonight also to some of the great works that actually preceded this framework document. And I think we'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge Dr. Lydia Holly and the Reading Sea Program and that grant. I know Traci Colombo is still with the city and she worked very hard on that. Dr. Alex Norman in the state of Black Long Beach. I think it's also, again, important to recognize that this is a beginning. It's a start. And I'm encouraged that Councilmember Richardson has made some amendments to extend this this opportunity to really, really dig in deep and talk about our our racial differences, our cultural needs as a city and include, you know, our Latino and my brothers and sisters, because it's important for us to continue this conversation. You know, I said the conversation about race is never and systematic oppression is not meant to be comfortable. But we should get comfortable in having these conversations because I feel like we're going to have to have this conversation for many years to come. You know, I'm impressed with this document. I think it's comprehensive. And if we are able to implement half of what is being recommended here, we are going to be a better city for it. And so I'll just just add to my before I know my time is short. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. The CBC reform package to reform our civilian oversight to provide more accountability. I'm glad to see that that in here and the commitment in our budget to do that. I do believe I brought an item a few weeks ago that actually calls for everything that that that that that Councilmember Richard Simmons is asking for in his amendment . So I'm not sure if that's really necessary. I also want to see greater emphasis on reentry support. I'm glad that we're doing that. I think that is critical, particularly of today with the release of thousands of inmates from CDCR and other institutions. We're going to have to have a plan to support these these these people that will come at home to our city. Cannabis Equity. I want greater emphasis on on ownership and business opportunities. And and I'm glad. To ask you, time is up, so. I'll reach you. But I'm glad to see that the equity will be under the city manager's office because that shows a real commitment to equity in our city. So with that, I'll pick you up later. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councilman Austin, Councilwoman Price. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to say a few, share a few thoughts on the topic. Obviously, we all agree every single member of this council in our city team, that racism is a serious issue and that it's important that we as a city take it seriously. And I love the approach of starting internally. I was very pleased to see the number of city staff members that participated in the listening session. I know that some of my own staff participated in the listening session and some of the ideas that were shared regarding training and hiring practices and promotional opportunities and some of the things that were raised are topics that have been close to my heart for a long time. In terms of gender equity, of course, being that that's an issue that I've personally experienced. So that's been a priority for us to see that being expanded throughout the city and every department in terms of opportunities and access was very, very good for me to hear and for me to get a recap on what those listening sessions were like with the staff. I think the time and energy that's been committed to this topic from both staff and the residents speaks to the importance of this topic. And I want to thank everyone who took time to be a part of that conversation. I know that we had about 8% of the 500 participants, 500 individual residents participated in these listening sessions. And of those, about 8% of them were third district residents. And I know that we've hosted a number of town halls and produced some interviews on this topic to further engage our residents at one of our town halls, we had over 200 participants. And so I want to thank all the residents who have participated on this issue, on on on all sides of the issue. We've had a lot of residents express an interest in rerouting police dollars. We've also had a lot of residents reach out and express a lot of support for continuing police funding. And so we've we've heard from every resident and we welcome that inclusive attitude as far as our office, because we want to hear the diversity on the topic. I look forward to the continuing engagement on this as we continue to work to make this city the best that it can be. I want to thank my colleagues on the Public Safety Committee. Councilman Austin and Councilman Super. We are going through a process on the public safety committee that is a little bit of a slower process. That's a multi-phased approach where we're first and foremost finding out what it is that our police department actually does in regards to some of these topics. And then hearing from them what some of the best practices that are taking place around the nation are, and hopefully working with the stakeholders to develop recommendations similar to what we'll talk about in the upcoming agenda items tonight in regards to recommendations to the full Council for changes. And we'll be doing that consistently between now through October and as we develop some new policies and practices in the full Council, we'll certainly incorporate those and the public safety discussions as well. The document that we have before us today provides a lot of information to build upon and to work from, and I look forward to having more in-depth discussions with the council and city staff as each of these proposals and ideas is researched and evaluated to see what is feasible, what can be implemented, and what works for the city of Long Beach. Recognizing that we can't take any sort of cookie cutter approach. We have a very unique city. We have a unique police department with an amazing police chief who is leading his team and is very open to progress and creativity and inclusivity. And I look forward to having him be our partner in this process. So thank you very much. All right. Thank you very much, Councilwoman Price, Councilman Richardson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So I'm going to keep working through calls on goal number two. I was talking about youth development and violence prevention, community partnerships. So I know that we're developing this office. But my expectation, my hope and my understanding in talking with the health department is we want to sort of go back to working hand in glove with community as it relates to intervention workers and youth support. I know that the City Council's moved forward a measure for four November that would apply additional resources should it should it be adopted to develop and strengthen some of these partnerships. I want to I want to go back to the health department. Did you speak a little bit more about how sort of is this approach that we're going to just hire a bunch of staff that's going to do the work? Are we going to or are we going to develop, you know, go back to developing community partnerships and do those things? Um. Councilmember So the, the intent would be to hire two staff for the Office of Youth Development. Um, one would be sort of a program manager level support as well as a program coordinator to, to really engage with our community members and then to start to really invest in peer navigators and other, and then with other community youth serving organizations in the community. So the focus right now, based on feedback that we've received, would be to invest in to community based organizations, to focus on peer navigation and the ability to link and youth to different services for mental health services, as well as skill development to youth for managing difficult situations and also mentoring opportunities . There's also a lot of focus on the ability and the ability. So job skills and training, the ability, academic supports and all of those. So the intent would be to, um, to invest in community based organizations now and that and as future funding of it becomes available, the same would be in place for the violence prevention program . As I indicated before, we have sort of one FTE dedicated to violence prevention in the city right now. Now, we would hire one more person for that space to join that, to better coordinate and work within communities. And in that space, we would, um, we would invest in our community based organizations focusing on violence prevention and intervention efforts in the city, and really focusing on reducing community level trauma and gun violence. Um. Moving forward. Thank you. And the reason I ask that question, I think it's important to me and it's important to understand the vision here. I think the vision should be building a capacity within our communities that, you know, people who, you know, many based organizations that are here, people who live within the communities because it's 24 and they you know, they know it's a part of when, you know, I do that on my staff. We hired people that are within the district. They you know, they are it's a different commitment and it's 24 seven and they're really, you know, care about what you know, the transformation. And that's just called community empowerment model. And so that that's really what I'm what I'm looking for here. I want to go three. I want to talk a little bit and asking questions about officer constitutional policing. I know that this wasn't referenced in in the process of the framework. It came in towards the end. I'm just not clear on what it is. I know we'll have a more careful conversation when we get to the budget, but I think that any examination of public safety reform, it certainly has to have buy in from from the department. But we also need to make sure that it maintains the whole point is to build public trust. So I'd like to know and understand, you know, could could you be prepared to talk either next week at the budget meeting or whatever, about efforts that we can do to make sure that there is public trust in that process , public participation in that process, and also an understanding of what the one year work plan looks like from office constitutional policing, because, you know, the health department's put forward a one year work plan. We saw what the Economic Development Department is doing in terms of one year work plan of the equity is putting forward a one year work plan. So I'd like to know what office constitutional policing plan to take on within the first year. So that's a question for Mr. Moore. Okay. And Councilman Wilson, you have one more minute. So I that's my question I'm waiting for. So, yes, we can certainly get into that. The chief is eager to talk a little bit about the efforts and all the things that they're doing that really hasn't been the focus of this effort in the last two months. It's been more of the listening and getting to some of the high level recommendations, but the police department certainly has a lot to share. I'm proud of the efforts that they're working on and that they're thinking of how they can do things differently and look at best practices. And that's part of the Office of Constitutional Policing and it's focus. So I would suggest we get into that next week when the Chief has a chance to present his budget and really talk in his own words, him and while inhibits who's kind of leading that effort to talk about the constitutional policing effort and what that would entail. Okay. I'll give you back the amount of time. Thank you. Consulate Councilwoman Pierce. Thank you. I'm sorry, I. I will pick up now on the emotions that I wanted to talk about. I totally support the moves that Councilmember Richard Richardson mentioned. And I to agree there's a constitutional policing understanding that more and understanding where the oversight is. You know, I think that the question that I brought up before was how do we get to transparency? How do we get to accountability? I support completely overhauling the PCC. There's a lot of great work that's been done nationally about the best models to do that, and I think we as a city have already demonstrated that we know how to put together a commissions that are civilian oversight commissions and we need to do that. But we also need to make sure there are changes put in right away. Something that I would like to include as a motion, as to include a report on the cahoots model. And honestly, I read this and I've never heard anybody say it, even though I've read it through some of the reports. So I hope I'm saying it the right way. But it was mentioned several times throughout the reconciliation process. I have it in a couple of emails and letters from my constituents. I think a report on that would bring us to a place where we could decide what might be the next best step for things like the hunting. I would also like to understand a little bit more about the police hiring. One of the things that's happened in the last several years was we did an H.R. audit. We talked about some of the outdated regulations as it pertains to cannabis, and we made changes for most of our departments, but we did not make any changes that I can recall, as it were, in regards to police officers being tested for cannabis use or for being able to be hired if they had smoked cannabis or use cannabis. Given the state law right now, given the fact that so many of our black community members have been incarcerated for a job that is illegal now, I think we need to make sure that we're aligning our police department. And I know that when we brought this up with H.R. during that study, it was told to us, well, there's different standards for police. Well, I look at this the same way that I would look at a glass of wine or a beverage. We don't need officers. We don't need anybody on our city staff or on taxpayer dollars coming in under the influence of any drugs at all or alcohol. And so I would expect the same thing for cannabis. I'd like to have a report on what the standards are for that, and perhaps that is something that's keeping some of the diversity challenges at bay a little bit, not you spend as much time. So to be clear, so far, I would like to add into a motion a report on the Cahoots Model. I report my support for the PCC and also a review of police hiring. The next thing that has been brought to my attention through this process and also talking to my constituents is the process that happens whenever our police officers. Well, let me back up. The process that happens whenever residents might have their cars impounded. So I know that there are people that have had their cars impounded whenever they've been brought into the police station. I hear tales and this is why I would like a report on this, that they once they're released, even if they weren't found necessary to stay in jail or found guilty, they're still responsible for paying their income fees, which can be 100 bucks to somebody like myself or somebody that's without a job. Can can mean a lot. And I know one of my constituents had her car in impound for several months and likely didn't even get it back. And so I want us to look at some of those policies that exasperate some of the poverty and some of the challenges our residents might face whenever they come into contact with the city. Not just PD, but like I said, telling. Councilwoman Pierce, you have one minute. I will go ahead and take a break. At this point, my next I'll just I'm not sure if anybody's queued up after me, but I think we have some questions, so I'll go ahead and queue up one more time. Thank you. Goodbye. And thank you, Councilman Supernova. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I'd also like to thank everyone who participated in this effort, because it has been a huge, huge task and it's not gone unnoticed. I also want to thank Councilman Price for for referencing the Public Safety Committee. I think there's a lot of valuable information coming out of those meetings that we're holding monthly, and it'd be great to find a way to get that integrated into this system here. Also, Councilman Richardson mentioned division and I think we can get there with. Clearly articulating what the vision is. My greater concern is with the execution of many of the ideas. And I think Kelly Collopy has multiple initiatives to execute, and I guess it wouldn't be fair to ask her. But the city manager, is there going to be a process where as we we get feedback from Kelly policy on how these things are going that those those items would come back to council or we can provide assistance or reshape these initiatives. Absolutely. So what you're approving tonight is really just some general direction. It's a concept, it's a framework. There is high level recommendations. You're approving kind of staff to keep moving in this direction and be working on these items, at which point we would be bringing them back. You'll notice in the report some are saying ongoing and immediate. Some are short term, long term, medium term. And we put timelines to those so similar to the Everyone Home Initiative to Affordable Housing Plan, we would be working on those and bringing those back. So they all need to still go through legal review, through financial review, through implementation, feasibility and then ultimately council policy approval. It great that that would work. Implementation, feasibility. Also, I just want to complete the thought with my conversation with our fire chief because I did reference this agenda item one when I spoke to him. And that is I just think we have to be very cautious on proposals of balancing a budget by cutting core fire services. These are just essential services to the black community and communities of color with sworn personnel that cannot be, you know, so that was my point here, that we want to be very cautious on just even the consideration of cutting off services. That's it. Thank you all. Thank you. Councilman Chippenham. Councilman Arango. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And, you know, this is getting very frustrating for me. Richardson has some motions he wants to make. Yeah, he had to keep recovery queueing. I concede my attempt to Councilmember Ritchie let him finish what he can. I think I think the proper thing to do. Thank you. That was made during I think the appropriate thing to do, Mr. Vice Mayor, would be to suspend the rule of suspend the rule or extend the rule. I think we're getting out of the discussion and more into the specifics. So. So if you're okay, I would request that we just suspend the rule for the rest of this discussion when we're done with public comment. We're really in the meat and potatoes now, if that's okay with you and I'm hearing you exactly. But you're the last ones cued up, so I just want you guys. This is not your mayor. Mr. Vice Mayor, I've been cute for a while and haven't been. Well, you can, but I haven't seen you up here, so I'm just like Mr. Richardson. Okay? I'm not asking you to go ahead. I just didn't. Get the last one queued. I think that. Yes, it is. Okay, so queue up and we'll put you there. Okay. All right. So if you want. Okay, great. Okay, so I'm going through. So I was on goal three. We talked a little bit, our constitutional policing. We got the response that we're going to hear more at the next step. So that's good. Thank you. I know that the topic of demilitarization came up but wasn't included in the recommendations. I've been looking at what you know, what modern cities do. The idea here is to just make sure that any purchases of things that are not within the normal scope of use of a you know, of police officer has some additional level of scrutiny by the city council before publicly, you know, purchases are made. So it's not sort of a consent calendar or buried within a consent calendar, but a little bit more sunshine. And so I'd like for staff to look at some of these models and I see them all over the place now. They add 60 days, 90 days. Notice the city council when you're buying things like, you know, you know, automatic weapons or or tanks or whatever it is, I mean, I think we need to understand these purchases a bit more and city council needs to and needs to have the time to dove in. So I want to include in my motion for staff to look at some options for the city council to consider that help address demilitarization. So I want to make sure that that's included in here, you know, as we move forward so that I want that reflected in in this motion on goal. There's maybe some other stuff I may come back to, but but on go for about health and wellness and economics. I want to make sure that I know that we saw what the what the one year plan is for economic development. I want to make sure that if I heard Kelly mention the job coordinator on the project labor agreement, she said PR instead of play, I knew what she was saying. I want to be clear with the public. I think that the play is up for negotiation now and I think it should be reflected in the economic developed economic equity piece of this, the very specific goals aligned with the independent jobs coordinator targeting whatever it is we're going to do. I think that should be very clearly set out in the CFF or however this is going to come back in terms of the strategy around the first year on economic development. So I want to see that part come out. I also know that there was in the slide, it's called out a number of things, economic empowerment zones in procurement, all these other things. I want to say that some of the dynamics may change in November in terms of Proposition 15, if it passes, which is the restoration of a front of affirmative action. If that happens, we need to be positioned to we need to understand how that may open up the playbook a little bit in terms of procurement and the things we can do to really make a meaningful difference for local, local businesses of color, minority owned businesses, black owned businesses, Latino businesses, women on business and so forth. So I want to make sure that we are in this next year's work. Clay On Economics, we are paying attention to that because I want to respond to that. Should that be adopted in November and go into effect in January additionally? So so are these two items added into the motion or are these are these more comments now? These are these are in the motion. Okay. I want to see. So you're already we already have the economic equity sort of one year plan in the presentation. I want I want to understand those two parts of this. So the local jobs coordinator and how we can connect procurement to whatever new opportunities come out of the proposition. I think that proposition is maybe about 50, whatever the proposition do. Okay. Five, Thank you. Okay. So next related to the housing and so there's been a lot of discussion in the budget, in the people's budget and over the years about aligning sort of our work around housing and this we can't talk racial equity. I'll talk about housing. 80% of black households in Long Beach are rental households. 70% of Latino households in Long Beach are rental households. I certainly I grew up a renter, but I certainly support homeownership and we need to make commitments to that and we have to work toward that. But but what I what I think what what the community is asking for is for us to be more specific, more strategic about ultimately aligning and creating a division sort of dedicated to this. And what this looks like to me is you have a proposal for a housing and homelessness equity coordinator. Already you have I see in development services you've already made some changes. You have Christopher Coombs focused on housing. Now you have a housing authority to focus on, on, on renters, in subsidies. You have resources that we've begun, begun to deploy around rental assistance. And, you know, should additional resources come out, that's something we want to do. We've been engaged over the last 18 months and moratoriums and renter tenant protections and all of these. Issues, but it's not centralized within our system. And so we can that effectively creates a barrier. And so I want to I want to, within this first year, have this housing equity person focus on beginning to align this to create a front door on this issue. So this is so this isn't adding an additional like budgetary action. What I'm saying is, like within what we have, let's align it and see how we can put a front door. Does that make sense? Tommy Kelly on with what I'm asking here. Yes. Okay, great. So I want to make sure that that this rental housing operation, the vision, however, is going to land. I want to make sure that this is reflected in the into the recommendation. Do that. And we've covered the majority of things that I have here. I'm going to pause and just keep listening to my colleagues if they have anything else but that. That concludes my comments at this point. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mango. Thank you. Just as a quick question. Councilmember Richardson, did you say automatic weapons or semi-automatic weapons? I want you know, I want to be clear, I'm not an expert on the weapons that police department carry. So I want to be clear. What I'm asking is for staff to bring some options to us around demilitarization. The things I'll be looking for is giving counsel additional notification, oversight, oversight. So as things come, we're aware of it. You know, I don't want to make I just militarization get out. Militarization shouldn't be an automatic thing. That's the point. It should be we should be heading in a different direction. And you already have city council in place. Going to have to bring me some bring me bring us some options to think about. And I am supportive of that idea. But I also. Just want to be clear with our constituents that the consent calendar to date, as I as I've been on the council, has never included the purchase of a tank or an automatic weapon or any of those things. I understand the general concept you were going for, but I just wanted to be clear about that because I. Quickly received a text from a family member and just wanted to ask me that question. And I thought I would be public about the fact that. Mr. Chief Lulu, do we have any tanks or any of those things? Chief Looney or Chief Hébert, if you could respond to that. A vice mayor and members of the city council. No, we do not have tanks and we don't have any military equipment. I know that's part of the national narrative, but at one point I can't wait to actually talk about the things that this police department does and what we have so we can get away from all these . Things that people are thinking that we have. Especially because in chief. Linda, please feel free to correct me. But offices across the country are trained in how to occasionally and very few officers, by the way, are trained in how to take apart and ensure that an automatic weapon that's been. Taken. From a resident who should not have one because they are illegal. Even the police need special training to be able to do that because it is so dangerous and you. Don't want to. Put people or officers in harm's way or innocent bystanders. Okay. So now that. That's clear, I want to thank the city. Staff. I want to thank Theresa Chandler and Tom Modica and all the other city staff and community members who participated in all of. The feedback and listening sessions especially. I know that so many of our. Religious leaders have been a. Big part of this. And I just want to thank them. That they've been doing this work for a generation. And today, as they stand up for and. Continue to push forward just. It just the amount of respect and praise and appreciation for them and their. Their fortitude and. Their leadership. I want to say that I see one major thing missing from this reconciliation. I mean, I've heard from the public on a lot of things, but this particular. Thing hasn't been mentioned in a long time. And as budget chair two years ago, it was one of the most important things I heard. From minority communities and communities of color was that there wasn't investment in the infrastructure, in the communities that need that. So if we talk about health, we need to talk about sidewalks. And I'm not saying take all the sidewalk money as it's distributed today and move it. I'm saying we need to add $10. Million of additional sidewalk. Repairs. I worked. With Councilmember Odinga on. Making sure we had funding for a park that was in his community, that had a. Group of community. Seniors that walked every day. And that walking path was of. Extreme importance to him and that. Community. I worked with Councilmember Andrews on a business corridor improvement that is still almost to completion, but these walking paths and corridors are critical to minority owned businesses and our communities of color and the health and wellness of our city and our residents. And so I'd like to find. A way to. Add additional. Funding for alleys. Sidewalks and business corridors. Alleys need to be repaired. They need to be paved and they need to be well-lit. We need to talk about the. Things in public works that also contribute. To the safety and. Well-Being of our community. So I appreciate everyone who's spoken. Tonight, and I appreciate. That this dialog will continue, but I hope that these things that have been brought up before. Yes, we've made significant investment in these things in the last six years. But it's not enough. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman. Mongo. Councilwoman. Yes. Thank you. I support all of the items that Councilmember Richardson mentioned. I think they're all things that our community members have spoken on. And I guess I do have a question for our city manager. Obviously, PD has been a target of a lot of this conversation. Well, PD be responding to this. Well, we have another opportunity. I know that. I mean, I think he's right. Like, I, I feel like we have asked time and time again for a full report from PD on everything from hiring to training, and that that has been really difficult to get agendas in my four years on council . It seems like the prime time to be able to do that and I know we've got them on the Budget Committee or budget presentation next week, but I don't know if that's the appropriate time for us to dove in all the way to all the PD stuff. So. Would you inform us of when that might be? Yes. So that's actually one of the recommendations that's in front of you tonight. We added that it is a recommendation to come back in a study session to have the discussion with the council. The police chief is absolutely right. There has not been in the last two months that kind of, I think, appetite or desire to really dove in and talk about what is PD do currently. And so during the listening sessions we heard loud and clear they did not want to be part of the listening sessions, and we respected that when it came to, you know, creating all of the recommendations, we had all of our departments review those recommendations and be able to provide input into what you've seen tonight. But the police department has not had a chance to come in and really fully and publicly explain the training that they do. What they have for equipment, how they put things into practice, and to have that dialog with the community and the council. They are eager to do that and that is one of our recommendations. I do suggest that you take some time for that and for us to, you know, prepare that larger presentation because there is a lot that they do that this community and city can be very proud of. And and I think the council member mentioned it, Richardson is they also have a workplan of what they want to continue to improve and to look at. And so we we recommend scheduling that. I will work on when we've been able to do that and that work is is starting to happen right now in the Public Safety Committee, as Councilmember Price mentioned. And we can bring more of that to the full council as well. Thank you. And I think as part of this recommendation, not only having it one time, but that needs to be, you know, on a regular basis every year before the budget process starts. We need to be able to fully understand what's happening in our police department. And so I don't know if I need to make that as a part of the motion, but I would hope that annually we have a full review of police practices and any of the work that comes out of this reconciliation process over the next year. I would hope that we have that coming back to us and a full report. I know Councilmember Richardson had in his motion every six months for a full report on the on the framework that we're talking about. But P3 being, you know, the size of the budget and just feel like we haven't had access. I think that that needs to be included in there. So. I'll move on to my next my next topic, which should be my my last topic. So it's mentioned under health. There's a bunch of things that are put underneath health. And I think that the beginning of this report does a great job. Not only I mean, Dr. Davis, like just, wow, I want to say how much I appreciate your voice right now. We know that that this I do not think if this conversation was being had four years ago, that your voice would be so present and so center in this work. And while some people might not love that that I gave thanks to Tom, I do give that to Tom and his leadership, because that hasn't been the city that we've had for the last ten years. So grounding it in health, we then put in a whole bunch of other things. The climate work is really, really important because I think I've said many times over the last several months, the Environmental Committee and the Sustainability Committee, our commission have met a couple of times. They did make a recommendation, a letter of support. I hope that that letter is reflected in the comments and maintained in this report for the long term, but also to the comment around the the jobs coordinator and some of the jobs pieces. I also want to make sure that in this report it's reflected that people have been talking about a resilient recovery. And essentially, if we could make sure that we're talking about what jobs could, as we're closing the climate gap, that climate gap, it's getting late. Sorry for our black community members and our communities of color. We want to make sure we include a review of how our Climate Adaptation Action Plan could provide jobs pipeline for those front line communities, communities of color and our black community members. So that is my last addition. Hopefully that made it as a motion and I am done speaking. Thank you. And you of my time. Thank you very much, Councilman Richardson. Thank you. So I think I'll go ahead and wrap this thing up. So I want to acknowledge Councilman Mango's discussion on infrastructure. I do know that you've been talking, which is excuse me for you wrap this up. I like to speak. So when you finish. Absolutely. Go. Go for it. I was going to acknowledge that the friend had to go for it. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. You know, and I want to thank every single individual took part in this conversation to come up with this report. You know, as the elder councilman both in office and in age, you know, I can tell you stories about Long Beach in this city. I was not allowed to buy a home in the big city, not because of the color of my skin. So I went to buy me a very expensive car. Then it was brought to this, you know, to the car. And they told me, I have a school district. So that's not the image of a teacher. That kind, you know, car is not the image of a teacher. So I remember when I and other black individuals could not go past almeida's hill and other streets without risk of getting beat by police. I remember when my mother used to earn clothes as a net as a maid in the Wrigley District, which is the big city. Being here for so long, though, I have also seen the inequities to other communities of color, like the Latinos and bodies and Filipinos. Racial equity goals in this report are great but cannot confidently say that I like how we went about this process. Cobra did not help our public outreach process. They are members of our community and still feel left out or a sentiment that this process divided racist. And that's it. Because the beginning that all of us on this does is continue to do the work in our districts. And I'm hoping that our community based organizations truly come together and work for the benefit of our community. I don't want to go under the five minute situation because everyone knows I am going to stop here and that everyone will participate in. And I want to thank you for all the print, Glenn, the Adams. Thank you very much. Now you can finish introducing you Vice Mayor. So I just want to acknowledge. So on the infrastructure conversation, it is reflected in terms of infrastructure. And there's a proposal for economic equity zones in special districts in areas like north central west Long Beach to explore infrastructure and things like that. And John can speak a little bit more about that. Also, the questions about investing in the budget. The mayor made a made a proposal at the end of this fiscal year to begin visioning in a but zero based budget like process. I support that it's already in work, so I didn't lift that up in the motion. But that would be an opportunity to look at things like infrastructure, investment and all that. So I think it's included in Councilmember. If you want to meet a place in the motion, I don't know that it's needed, but I will if it is important to you. And then. And then you want to respond to that? Sure. I felt, though, that there wasn't any specificity to it. So I talked with Ms.. Chandler and Mr. Modica last week about how I'm looking to hear and outcomes and more specifics. In the weeks ahead. And so I'm comfortable with it not being as a. Part of the motion. Okay. We can. Okay. And I'll be looking for that as well. And I think your city staff has heard you. I want to just thank the entire city council. I have to say this. You know, I deal with 191 cities in SCAD region, and this is a step further than any city in Southern California is taking to racial equity. You know, I'm not qualified to say it is one of the most bold steps in the United States on racial equity. But I'll tell you, having been engaged in the National League of Cities, the Governance Alliance of Racial Equity, we're building on the things that we've learned, and we're responding to the moment when other cities haven't even begun to learn how to have these conversation. These conversations haven't been pretty. I've seen I've heard peers on both sides of the conference calls, but I've also seen so many tears as a result of racial injustice in America. And this is a pivotal point. This is the time for us to have these conversations, Leon, and really make a meaningful difference and hopefully put our city on a better course where it's not okay for race or zip code to determine your outcome, but rather our city is not successful. And until almost all of us are successful. So so I want to offer my sincere thanks to the to the city council for this conversation as a zero thanks to city staff, a sincere thanks to all the community members. And, you know, I know that there's this is a big commitment we're making. I know folks want to see us go further. And this does not preclude us from continue to do that. But this is a meaningful step, a beginning of an important conversation in our city. And I look forward to continuing this work. And the city council looks forward to continue this work as we move forward. So that said, I thank you, Vice Mayor, and I yield my time. Thank you very much, Councilman Richardson. No. Can we have we have a motion with Councilman Richardson and the second man councilwoman sending us. Could you please call for the vote? District one I talked to District three I, District four. I. District by. District six. I strict seven. District eight. District nine. All right. Ocean cares. Thank you very much. Right now, we're going to move going to move on to our first round of public comment related to none agenda items group. We have anyone signed up.