Recommendation to conduct a Budget Hearing to receive and discuss an overview of the Proposed Fiscal Year 2019 Budget for the following Departments: Public Works, Parks, Recreation and Marine, Development Services, Library Services, and Health and Human Services.
Think I'm going to pick up on that? Okay. We're going to transition to our first hearing. Which is our budget hearing that we're going to have similar to last week. And as a reminder tonight, we will be discussing public works, the Parks Department, Development Services, the Library Department and our Health and Human Services Department. So all of those are up for for discussion as part of the budget hearing today. And so with that, I'm going to go ahead and have the clerk read the item. Hearing. Item one is a report from financial management, a recommendation to conduct a budget hearing to receive and discuss an overview of the proposed fiscal year 2019 budget for Public Works, Parks, Recreation, Marine Development Services, Library Services, and Health and Human Services Budget. Oh, that's it. And thank you. Let me turn this over to Mr. Modica. Thank you, Mayor, and members of the council. So we're happy to be here tonight to talk a little bit about the work of a number of our departments. You heard last week, as the mayor said, from our public safety departments and the departments are going to hear to from tonight are really part of what we call our public safety continuum. So public safety is really the number one thing that a city does, but they don't do it alone. It's not police and fire by themselves. They're supported by so many other people throughout the organization. And so you'll be hearing from a number of those departments. So we'd like you to just keep that in mind is when you see public works, when you see Parks and Rec, when you see development services, they're all working on that same mission to try to keep us all safe and make this an amazing community. And with that, we'll start with public works and turn it over to our director, Craig Beck. Thank you, Tom. Good evening, mayors, city council and community members. My name is Craig Beck and I'm the director of Public Works. I have the opportunity this evening to provide a brief overview of the department's fiscal year 19 budget. Of course, services for public works include the maintenance, rehabilitation of the cities, rights of way infrastructure, including streets, sidewalks and urban forest. The department also provides services supporting a healthy and sustainable city environment, including waste diversion, stormwater management and enhancing livability. And finally, we provide for the safe and efficient design, construction and maintenance of our public facilities. For fiscal year 18, I wanted to highlight a few accomplishments, which we've had a very busy year with significant efforts to further the city's sustainability goals, including the collection of 190,000 tons of trash and 25,000 tons of recycling that was diverted from the waste stream. This equals about 19.5 million trash bags. That's a lot of work by our dedicated crews. The clean team responded to 85,000 requests. 15,000 of those came from the Golden Beach app. They collected 22,000 illegally dumped items and 17,000 mattresses. Yes. 17,000 mattresses. They address 300 homeless encampments and supported 195 neighborhood cleanups. And I want to personally thank all the volunteers who clean their communities. It makes a big difference and a positive impact. Citywide, the city continues with its conversion of our street lights to LEDs. This year, the focus will be on completing the 3000 historic style post top lights and the remaining lights in our city parks. This effort is saving enough electricity to power 350 homes and reducing the city's electrical cost by $330,000 annually. Investment in infrastructure continues as staff delivers the many measure funded projects. Some key areas that enhance livability in Long Beach include a new Bellflower Boulevard Protected Bike Lane, the new Sixth Street Bike Boulevard. Also, construction is underway for the new Daisy Bike Boulevard, connecting uptown to downtown. The city's bike share has reduced traffic by 70,000 vehicle trips as people take an easier and healthier option. Riding 200,000 miles this year on our blue bikes, keep it up. The Public Works Street Team received over 33,000 requests for service. This number of requests sometimes overwhelms resources, but crews worked overtime to deliver, filling 28,000 potholes, trimming 20,000 trees, removing 1.2 million square feet of graffiti, installing 4300 street signs, and supporting 100 road closures for special events. Last week, there was a lot of discussion about the city's capital improvement program, but it did want to re-emphasize the significant progress being made in updating city streets, completing 43 lane miles this year and 49% over the first two years of our overall plan. There are roughly 500 hardworking men and women who support making Long Beach a great city. This will continue. They will continue these efforts in fiscal year 19, implementing priorities, supporting supported by the $199 million budget. Notable changes in the Department for 2019 include the clean team as as the clean team grows as the city experiences an increase in illegal dumping. To assist with managing the tens of thousands of request of clean team support, I am proposing to add a new supervisor position to the operation. This individual will provide improved communication and coordination with partner departments as well as better engagement with our residents. The department is also working to reorganize operations, creating a team to focus on project management. This change will provide for more efficient delivery of capital projects for parks and public facilities. This budget also includes a proposal to transition construction management activities to city employees. Adding city inspectors is more cost effective, will streamline processes, help retain institutional knowledge, and to develop individuals with the skills necessary to oversee all aspects of projects in the city's public right of way. Both public and private projects. The ordinance banning use of expanded polystyrene was adopted by this Council on June 3rd, 2018. As a reminder, phase one will go into effect on September 3rd, 2018, and includes all city facilities and operations, including our leased facilities and city special events. Staff has initiated the I Choose to Reuse campaign educating the community about the impacts of polystyrene and available green options. Hopefully we've all had a chance to look at the bag that was left for you tonight. The city operates under a municipal national pollutant discharge elimination system. That's a mouthful. We just call it PDFs, which is still a mouthful, but that really regulates stormwater that enters into our storm drain systems. Under this permit, the city is now required to inspect industrial and commercial facilities that are significant sources of pollutants in stormwater staff as well. Staff has estimated that there are over 2000 facilities that must be inspected twice during a five year permit cycle. And a new position is needed to conduct this work. Challenges and opportunities. Take one look in downtown and you will notice a significant amount of construction activity. While this is good for the economy, it is also creating challenges for delivery of city projects. Because of the high demand for qualified contractors, bid pricing is exceeding available project budgets, requiring a change in scope or identifying additional funding. Most recently, tariffs are also having an impact driving up costs on imported materials. In this competitive environment, the city's traditional purchasing processes are hampering staff's ability to bid, negotiate, finalize and deliver needed projects. New strategies are required to meet new demands, and the team is working to review procedures to see where efficiencies can be added. I hope to provide council with some recommendations in the coming year. The competitive job market is also creating challenges with retention and recruitment of qualified staff. Public works and civil service are working together on new opportunities to streamline the testing process. Hopefully, this will help attract a new generation of workers. The department continues to find new ways to engage our residents and communicate using technology and social media. Our various public works social media outlets have over 11,000 followers and have become a go to channel for the community to express their questions and comments about projects. We are also beginning to utilize Facebook Live and other similar video streaming sites as a way to share project updates, educate residents on existing services and introduce new ones. Updating our online presence and improving the current Go Long Beach application is also necessary to meet the demands of increased workload. We strive to improve how public works, communicates with our residents and plan to make social media and communication in general a key goal for 2019. Lastly, I want to highlight new funding from this SB one state gas tax. The city is expecting an additional $8 million each year to help deliver much needed street and sidewalk projects, with a backlog of over 500 million a need. This funding is crucially important. In fiscal year 19, 11th Street projects are planned because of SB one. That concludes my presentation and I'm available for questions. Thank you. I think what we're going to do is we're going to break this up. And so we were here. We're going to go out and hear public works and parks and then development services and maybe do questions for those. And that way, with then all of the questions are at once. If there's any objection to that, we're okay. All right. Well, then let's go ahead and move on to public parks. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We will hear from our director, Harold Mowat, for Parks, Rec and Marine. Thank you. Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the City Council. It is my pleasure to present to you the Department of Parks Recreation and Marine 2019 proposed budget. My name is Hit Out of the mind and I'm your new prime director. I have been your new director for just a bit over two months, and I'm motivated to provide people with the opportunity to have fun and experience delight at our parks, recreation facilities and beaches. That is why, as you just saw at the All-City Beach Day just last Thursday was a great example where 2400 youth from all parts of our city came together and had a fun, fantastic fun at the beach. We provide PR and provides the community the opportunity to have fun, stay healthy and fit and enjoy each other's company in a respectful way. These are wonderful summer memories we just gave this last Thursday to so many youth memories that strengthen a sense of unity in the community. Our aspiration is to continue to be a system of excellence that serves all of Long Beach. Our core services have yielded award winning programs for the community. Parks, beaches and humane treatment of animals is our focus. And the investments that are included in the fiscal 19 budget will help our city continue to be recognized as part of the top park and recreation systems nationally. I feel fortunate to join a team that has accomplished so much this past year. Measure a clever grant writing and other funding strategies have funded great progress. New playgrounds at Jackson Inlet, Cerritos Parks, various community center improvements, a new dog park at Bixby Park and three synthetic fields are great reasons to celebrate. This year alone, we have had we have added close to 61 new acres with the addition of the red car greenbelt, the forest wetlands, Drake Chavez Greenbelt and the Willow Springs Wetlands Restoration. The exciting and long awaited Alamitos Bay Marina Rebuild project was also completed this year. This $105 million project, funded by revenue bonds, included the renovation of 1600 boat slips with state of the art concrete floats. It is great to join a team of excellent Park Recreation and Marine employees in running the 21st Best Park System in the country. This includes the largest municipally run marina system in the nation. We have amazing facilities and waterways that bring joy to everyone who visits. We maintain and restore our natural habitats because they add beauty and health to the community. We were recently recognized by the American Planning Association for our efforts related to the development of the Uptown Open Space Vision Plan and for the urban design of Combined Park. The department continues to hit the mark with youth and family programs, concerts in the park, youth sports in swing programs. We are very appreciative of our partnerships that help us keep doing this wonderful work. Some of our partners are Signal Hill Petroleum, Port of Long Beach, the Los Angeles Dodgers, our RBI Foundation, the Los Angeles Kings hockey team, the Los Angeles Clippers, the the Long Beach Unified School District, and many more. Equally important is our partnership efforts to help promote responsible pet ownership and the humane treatment of animals. We are thrilled to report that Animal Care Services has seen another significant reduction in the number of animals being impounded, with 18% fewer dogs and cats coming to the shelter in fiscal year 18 compared to fiscal year 17. Also, we continue to support spay and neuter efforts which have resulted in contributing reductions in the unwanted pet population. For fiscal year 19 are proposed budget totals over $64.5 million across all funds, with $37.7 million in the general fund. The department also has substantial tidelands funds budgeted to support our operations in the marinas, beaches and waterways. We bring in $38.4 million in revenue. The department contributes 12.3 million in revenue to the general fund, revenue from permits for facility reservations, contract classes and golf operations just to name a few. The Thailand funds brings over 24 million, most of which comes from marina slip fees. We also have close to $1.6 million in grants, primarily for youth services in the proposed budget. Over the last two years, we have been successful in obtaining almost $5.6 million in grants to support park projects. The budget provides for 438 full time equivalent positions during our busy summer months. Our staffing grows to close to 1000 people. We are proud of our role as a local workforce development engine. There are many notable positive changes in this budget, including a new a new set of measure, a funded projects to provide for more of our infrastructure needs in fiscal year 19, proposed park projects for fiscal year for fiscal year 19 were covered last week in the CIP budget presentation. So I won't go over them here, but they are included in this slide. The availability of these funds is greatly appreciated. In the ongoing quest to innovate and find new ways to understand and meet the needs of the community. The department is proposing to reorganize, to reorganize existing staff, to add a community engagement and partnership bureau. And we are so excited by the additional investments in our park maintenance activities as well. The proposed budget of $1.2 million in one time resources will allow us to to purchase the water necessary to better address our parks, medians and those in open space needs. The proposed budget provides additional facility maintenance staffing, which will enhance our ability to proactively address facility needs before they become more costly projects. Also, the budget provides the additional staff resources to allow for the nightly securing of the freestanding restrooms in our parks to prevent issues of misuse and vandalism. The proposed budget continues the investment in the Be Safe program at 11 park sites next year, helping to keep youth and families engaged in positive and safe activities on weeknights during the longer daylight hours of summer. We are thrilled to announce that almost 30,000 program visits were provided by this valuable community public safety program. The proposed budget also includes one time resources to support animal care services, adoption efforts aimed at improving upon the library release rate increases achieved in recent years. The proposed budget also includes close to $1,000,000 in one time funding for new in-water storm debris equipment, which will build upon the current boom infrastructure and utilize new technology to proactively remove debris from the water before it lands on the beaches. As we face the coming year, there will continue to be challenges to be confronted. But challenges creatively approached are often opportunities to advanced improve services. We will continue to explore a long term solution to right size the department's budget for water to irrigate our urban forest and grounds landscape. We look forward to be sure to be creative in the advancement in the improvement of our aging park facilities and collaborate in in a collaborative way with our city partners. We are and we further understand that we can better meet the social, recreational and enrichment needs of the community through partnerships in our parks. Lastly, something that is of particular interest of mine is we're looking to update our 15 year old departmental strategic plan. We are excited about the prospects of an open, transparent and collaborative process to help chart a course for the department's delivery of programs and services that are accessible, enriching and reflects the community needs. A prime core value is to make sure creative programing are respectfully responsive to the needs of the community wherever a resident lives. With 170 parks, six miles of beaches, 27 community centers, dozens of athletic fields and playgrounds, 67 tennis courts, five municipal golf courses, city, three city pools, and over 3300 marina slips. Our opportunity to impact the residents of Long Beach, both two and four legged, is tremendous. Through all of these facilities in our award winning programs, we have made millions of positive contacts this year, and we look forward to working with the community to continue our efforts to be a park systems for all our dedicated prime prime employees . And I thank you for your support. This concludes my presentation. Thank you. Next up, I would like to have the Development Services Department. And then we're going to stop for questions for these three departments, development services. Thank you. We will have Linda Tatum, our director, give an overview of the budget. Good evening, Mayor Garcia, Vice Mayor Andrews and members of the City Council. I'm pleased to present an overview of the proposed budget for the Department of Development Services. We'll start with our core services, which are to prepare and implement long range plans for the city's physical development. And we strive to create sustainable, attractive and livable community. We implement plans through assisting residents, developers, property owners and business owners with permits and development approvals. We also staff six boards and commissions, including the Planning Commission and the Cultural Heritage Commission. We improve the quality of life through comprehensive code enforcement activities, the production and preservation of affordable housing, as well as neighborhood improvement services. And lastly, we are still in the process of winding down the activities of the city's former redevelopment agency. I'd like to briefly highlight some of the accomplishment accomplishments of the department's bureaus. In the Planning Bureau. We completed a series of zoning code updates, including the Accessory Dwelling Unit Ordinance, the unattended donation bean ordinance, as well as adult use cannabis. We also obtained City Council approval for updated zoning in the southeast Long Beach area, which was resulted in a specific plan for the former sea dip area. We also completed entitlement for a project that will restore the historic low cerritos wetlands while consolidating oil operations onto a non environmentally sensitive area of the of the city. After much discussion and community engagement, we shepherded the City Council approval of the land use and height maps for the updated general plan land use element. Other accomplishments in the area of historic preservation. Our staff facilitated a Mills Act contracts to rehabilitate 20 historic landmark properties in the city. We also completed design guidelines for seven of the city's 18 historic districts. And Building Safety Bureau. We've far outpaced the activity of last year because of the unprecedented level of development in the city. We completed about 5000 planned check reviews last year and this year we're on pace to complete nearly 6000 planned check reviews. The permit center has has served more than 58,000 customers and responded to more than 38,000 phone calls. In addition, residential and commercial inspections have skyrocketed, increasing by more than 40%. Nearly 50,000 55,000 residential and commercial inspections will be completed during the current fiscal year. In the area of code enforcement. During this current fiscal year, staff investigated approximately 13,000 more than 13,000 code enforcement cases. They inspected. 132. Properties for possible illegal garage conversions, and they also inspected 30 illegal medical marijuana facilities. In addition, 612 properties were listed on the city's foreclosure registry, and those properties are continually monitored to ensure that they are continually maintained. We also launched the Vacant Lot Registry Program in 2018. And. Also completed more than 12,000 proactive rental inspections. In the area of neighborhood services, our team held more than 12 tree planting events, which included planting over 700 street trees. And they also organized 100 neighborhood cleanups. In addition, this bureau trained 32 graduates in the city's Neighborhood Leadership Program to be more effective community leaders within their own within their neighborhoods. And I'm very happy that we received a grant from Cal Fire for $1.26 million to plant more than 4000 trees, including over 400 fruit trees. Also, accomplishments in our Neighborhood Services Bureau. We assisted 100 business owners through our business startup grant and Commercial Improvement Rebate Program. This group also assistant 100 homeowners in making exterior improvements to their homes through the Home Improvement Rebate Program. And in our housing bureau, our services have included nearly 800 affordable housing units that are currently in the pipe in the development pipeline. Of those units, 235 are for homeless individuals, and those are within five different development projects. We're extremely proud to be recognized by Habitat for Humanity, Los Angeles, as a foundation partner for the ongoing work in providing affordable housing. That is being work that's being done here in the city of Long Beach. Habitat, L.A. has 14 units currently in the pipeline with the city with city assistance through the Long Beach Community Investment Company. And also, they have an additional 38 units that they are processing in the city without city financial assistance. In brief and looking at our proposed budget, our budget totals nearly 150 million, with just over 212 staff members. The majority of the Development Services Department activities are funded by fees fee for service and but there are a portion of our budget is also from grants federal grants like community development block grant and Home Grant as well as former tax increment from the redevelopment agency. The General Fund of the city contributes a very small amount to the department's overall budget. It's just shy of 5% or 5.5. $2 million. And these funds are used primarily for code enforcement activities. I'd like to talk about a few of the notable changes in the department to focus on community engagement. We're adding to two staff persons in the Planning Bureau. We'd like to increase our level of community engagement, and in order to enhance our expertize in high rise development, we're adding one planning staff and one senior structural engineer in the Building Safety Department in order to improve turnaround times. For our plan track reviews, we're adding a permit technician at our counter and as an also an electrical plant checker and also to maintain our current turnaround time on providing building inspections, we're adding two new two new building inspectors. Those would be combination building inspectors. And in terms of the challenges and opportunities we face. I'll just briefly go over some of those. We we've have been having some challenges in getting our with the number of vacancies in the department. But we are continuing our efforts to maintain qualified staff in both the Planning Bureau, the engineering and among our engineering staff and our building inspectors. We also will be continuing our efforts to expand and improve our technology capabilities, primarily as a way for us to enhance the efficiency of the service delivery to our primary customers. We also will be working to expand our community engagement and also to expand the transparency of our planning initiatives as well as our development processes. We will continue to work to preserve and to increase the the housing stock of affordable housing in the community. We'll also be working to reduce the turnaround times for our standard code enforcement backlogs. We'll also be working to improve the the inspection cycle for the proactive rental housing inspection program. And we're extremely. Fortunate in this. Year's budget that we now for the first time have a dedicated city prosecutor that will work exclusively on enhancing the code enforcement cases. This is truly a game changer for our department, and it will substantially enhance the effectiveness of our code enforcement efforts. So with that, I'd like to conclude the Development Services Department presentation. I'm available to answer questions along with our budget team. Lisa Falls and Mary Hebert are here to assist as well. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. We're going to do now is to counsel questions and comment and comments on these three departments. And then we will do the other departments more questions and then we'll do the public comment for the hearing as well. Okay. So let me start off with Councilman Mongo. I'll go in reverse order since Development Services just concluded. First, congratulations, Lynda, on a great first partial year. And I know it's been tough. There's a lot of recruitment of our staff from our offices throughout the region, and I know that keeping staff is difficult, but they're doing an exceptional job. And I've really enjoyed getting to know more of the development services planning staff and permits staff and staff throughout the year. And so I'm really pleased by that. And I do have two quick questions. I when I read the budget book every year, I try to find opportunities for efficiencies. And one of the things that I see there's kind of a duplication of now is both in development services and in economic development. We're doing business facade improvements. And I was wondering if there have been any discussions related to a consolidation under one department instead of having two groups of people doing similar efforts? What I would say is that we coordinate we coordinate with that department, but we have not talked about actually formally combining those efforts. But that certainly is something that we could take a look at. I'd also encourage the discussion to include neighborhood services in that kind of kind of discussion. I've enjoyed working with them this year. We did plant 90 trees in the fifth District and likewise last year the group of individuals that work in that division are dedicated. They're there on Saturdays. They're talking one on one with residents and convincing them to put a tree in where they haven't had one for quite some time. Many know that we when we were elected to the city council, the odd number of districts, there were people in the city who hadn't had their tree stump removed and they'd been waiting for 17 years. 17 years. My staff member got a standing ovation after she removed the first 17 year old tree stump. And the reason that that was such an important expenditure and really championed by Councilmember Super now once he was elected to the Council is because you can't put another tree in when there's a stump in the spot. And so I know that Public Works does this. On my own. You ask for the money and you got it. I know that removing stumps is not sexy, but we can't have a Tree City if we don't remove them. And it's easy to just cut costs and say, well, remove the tree that's dead and dying, but leave the stump. And so that that policy has changed. I think our backlog is down to 36 months, which is phenomenal. And so development services, planting the trees through the neighborhood services, it's kind of not with any of the other potential synergies. So just something to think about, whether it's a public works or how that all fits together, it almost kind of folds into the public works component side of our clean team and other things like that. So just those efficiencies. Thank you for that. Want to praise Mr. Beck. I know I'm really tough on you because the fifth District has a lot of needs and improvements, but you guys are doing a phenomenal job and I'm very supportive of all your proposed changes. And finally, our new Parks and Rec director. This is just an opportunity for me to say publicly what I know we've talked about already. Some things were discussed with your predecessor, so I'll bring those out now at prior council, budget Oversight Committee, Parks and Rec meetings. Over the last three years, we've talked about animal licenses becoming a three year license. And I'll state that now that I have adopted a foster dog and I'm a failed foster, what I've recognized is three months ago I paid a license and then I received a bill today for a different dog. And then I will receive another bill in about three months for the third dog. And there has to be some efficiencies where we could combine my address, save on postage, save on the return envelopes and all those kinds of things. And then to be able to get people on a three year license, rabies vaccinations are every three years. And so I'm renewing your license every three years. The only thing I would ask us to take a look at before we move in that direction is when we renew our license, we have the opportunity to donate to the health fund. And if the health fund donations come in on an annual basis and we turn to a three year license, we might be losing out on those donations. So just something to think about if we're moving in that direction. I really, really appreciate the addition of the bathroom locking the staff member on a nightly basis. This has been something that my office has really championed, and many of you know that every time we don't lock a bathroom, there's vandalism and the such. And many of you have seen one of my staff members out there refilling soap dispensers, putting toilet seats back on the toilets, going to Lowe's and buying toilet seats and putting them back on. And so locking these bathrooms at night is a huge, huge accomplishment. But I do want to look at as we refurbish bathrooms. And since public works is here, we should really be moving towards the automated locks system. So there's motion sensors that are inside the bathroom at a certain time of night, 9 p.m. let's say the doors automatically lock. They would, of course, allow you to exit. And if motion was detected inside the facility, it would alert someone to come and let the person know they cannot stay overnight in our bathrooms, but that they would then unlock themselves through an automated system in the morning. And that's similar to what I have at my house, which is if you accidentally leave your garage door open and it's ATM, I gradually your clothes itself because I have a little device that just says don't leave your garage open. So those kind of technologies are out there and we really should be deploying them in our park in ways that we can monitor and ensure that they're not going to be vandalized because we do want to make an investment, a $200 lock that someone comes and breaks and breaks. And then the last thing that I'll say is, I really appreciate your advocacy, even though you've been here for such a short time, to revise the Strategic Plan of Parks and Rec. That document is old. The time has come. We've talked about it for a long time. I know that you guys are going through a study and I will only repeat this for financial management. This will be the fifth year I've asked for a the fees scheduled to come with the subvention rates. And so I hope that that will be coming forward. But as we talked about when I was first elected to the council, in many of our programs, we may charge a dollar for swimming and we don't know what the true cost of that swimming is. So I chair I applaud Parks and Rec for doing a free study on what their true costs are and then what their rates should be and can be, and where we should be providing intervention. Do I agree that we should let kids learn how to swim for a vented cost? Absolutely. But I think we as a council need to know what areas are we 17 and what areas are we not 17? And I think that's an important discussion. So even if we're not able to get it for this budget cycle before mid-year fee schedules come out, I think that the time has come and that we as a council should by mid-year stop approving anything until we've seen those subvention rates. So that would be my recommendation. Otherwise, I'm really proud of the work that all of your groups have done. Congratulations and thank you so much. Thank you, Councilman Mongo, Councilmember Yolanda. It's on the motion. My apologies. So, Councilwoman Pryce. Oh, okay. Okay. So thank you very much, everyone, for your presentations. Really impressive work. The list of accomplishments from FY 18 is is just amazing across all departments. And tonight's presentations are no exception. I wanted to go, so I'll go and order of the presentations that were made. So we'll start with public works. One of the proposed changes for FY 19 is to add an inspector to work on right of way improvement inspections. Can you explain a little bit more what that is? Mr. Beck. Certainly. Councilman Price Council, the Department of Public Works currently manages a number of different type of projects, both right of way and facility projects, park projects, many of those that we covered in this VIP presentation last week. From a staffing perspective, we utilize contract services through different consulting firms to do construction management for us. And in typical approach that's a little bit more efficient is to have city inspectors manage the construction process. So if, in fact, the contractor is not meeting the standards of whatever the work they might be doing, you can address it right then and there, as opposed to waiting to come back when an inspector sees that something is wrong. So we're really looking at efficiencies. We're looking at the money that we spend on contract services, and we can deliver those in-house more cheaply. Plus, we think it's very valuable to grow that knowledge within our own workforce. And you're starting to create a capable team that can manage a number of different type of projects, which we currently don't have that expertize in-house. And I see while there's $107,000 price tag on this new construction inspector, looking through the document, it seems to me there's a whole host of efficiencies found in consultation services that we're picking up in-house as opposed to providing working with an outside contractor. And I did notice that. So I think that's a good thing and I just wanted some clarification on that. You talked a little bit in your presentation about the gas fund, and I notice that we're going to be reallocating the pothole truck with the four person crew at the price tag of $441,000, roughly. And I'm wondering, looking ahead to future years, are there other opportunities that we have to transfer our costs from the general fund to that gas tax fund or anticipated revenue so that we can open up some some space in our general fund for additional add on type projects? Yeah, certainly that's a balance for us. We know we have a number of needs that we need to address in repairing streets. We know we still have a backlog of some very poor performing streets. I think in previous presentations we've talked about street pavement condition indexes and those streets that are poor or worse have a tendency to experience larger and more potholes. And so we do have quite a backlog of potholes. We're trying to address that by adding this crew and then also shifting some current general fund cost to the gas tax. It's it's simply a balance. The more you use to fill potholes, the less money you have to repair streets. So on that note, with the potholes and I know you're up to speed on this, but I cannot stress enough how much I hope we're using best practices in our pothole maintenance because especially with our newly paved or slurry streets, the worst thing is to have a repair that's done that isn't done well or isn't matching in terms of the color of the the patchwork that makes it look like a blemish on the street. And we're spending so much money and and energy and, you know, inconvenience to residents when we do construction that I really hope we're using best practices whatever that may be in our pothole efforts. And I know that we are I know we've tried some different things. I think Councilwoman Mungo had a project where there was some interesting science being used. So is that going to be incorporated into what this additional crew will be looking at or implementing? Yeah, I think there's a two part answer to your question. Certainly the city has adopted a moratorium, so any new street project that is in place, there's a five year moratorium for any work to happen in that street if if there is a need to do some work. For example, we recently paved Bellflower and then there was an Edison outage and Edison had to trench in our new street. They have to repave that street to that original standard. So we're very cautious and protective of that street investment. I think your question regarding pothole repair, there's two ways to do pothole repair. There's a real quick called a hot patch and we can go down a street and do a number and then there's a I'll call it a more permanent patch where they actually come in and think of it as a hot iron, where they actually put it over the pothole and kind of heat up the asphalt and seal it in that process. There's different cost factors associated with both the the quick patches is much cheaper to do. And so again, it's about. Balance of resources. Some patches make more sense to do kind of that more permanent patching style and others. It's quicker to go and hit the oil patch right away. When you in looking at some of the proposed changes, I didn't see a specific call out to traffic safety. That has been an area where I think your team has. First of all, you run a huge operation. I don't know how many people you have under you, but in looking at your accomplishments, it spans so many different areas of what we all deal with. So thank you for that. One area that I think we don't talk about enough in terms of highlighting the work they do is traffic engineering and traffic safety. They do amazing work. I'm not sure how many people you have dedicated to that task. In my opinion, we could use a lot more. There's just a lot of work there for them. Is there anything in the proposed FY19 budget that addresses traffic safety or traffic engineering that that can help us in terms of getting assessments done of areas where there might be a need for speed, calming or determination of right of way and things like that. Yeah. Thank you very much for the support of our traffic team. I do agree with you. They do a lot of work and there's a lot of requests out there. I think we've been very aggressive in in seeking grant opportunities. And most recently, we we have a pedestrian safety grant where we're going to be installing rapid flashing beacons. You're yourself and District three have been very supportive of many of those efforts. I don't have a proposal right now to add more staff, but I think with the reorganization to focus a project development team will allow us to deliver not only our traditional facility projects, but also help deliver some of our traffic calming projects as well. That's great. Thank you. Thank you for keeping that as a focus for your department and your leadership. I appreciate it. I want to move on now to our Parks Department and I want to welcome our new director as well. Thank you very much. We look. All of us are looking forward to working with you. We're all independently, very excited and collectively very hopeful. So thank you. I noticed as as part of the presentation, you you kind of outline our marinas and it looks like our slip occupancy is going back up into in FY 19 to 93% as opposed to 85% in FY17. And I think this is huge because I think this is one of the projects that this is a major attraction and asset for the city of Long Beach. This improvement project was funded entirely free from taxpayer dollars, and I don't think that's something we highlight enough those improvements to the marina that make it such a desirable place for boat owners to have to rent space was funded entirely independent of taxpayer dollars. And so I want to thank you and your team and of course, John GROSS and his team, Alveda, of course, and our city treasurer for that. On that note and kind of related to a question I had later down, but I'll address it now. I know that you're going to be establishing a community engagement and partnership bureau, which I think is fantastic, and I think that is a great citywide asset. A portion of that is going to come from the Marina Fund and a portion of that is going to come from the Tidelands Fund. And I want to make sure that if we're using money from those two specific resource bases, that there is dedicated, directed staff attention to developing those partnerships in those areas. So if we're going to have 30% come from Tidelands and 30% come from Marina or whatever the case may be, that combined effort should include outreach to those specific areas where those funds are coming from. I know that's your intention, but I wanted to talk to you a little bit further about that, because when we think about the marina in terms of partnerships, there's a lot of different you know, we may not have an established group already there, so we may need to cultivate and develop that. And so I want to make sure that we're on the same page about that. Is that your understanding as well? Yes. Okay. Because those are you know, those are coming from especially the marina funds are coming directly from marina boat owners and those who rent the slip. So I want to make sure that they're getting a return on their investment, of course. You talked on as part of the proposed changes for FY 19, a dedication and investment into supporting deferred maintenance at park facilities. Have we developed a list of what facilities we're prioritizing in terms of deferred maintenance? I think. Yes, we have. And is that list available in our materials on. We can make them available. I'm not I don't believe it is available. I don't know if it's part of the budget. Yeah, it's not part of the presentation, but we can make it available. That would be. Great. Thank you. You talk a little bit. About one of the additions is going to be a $140,000 investment into safety systems at parks. Can you just tell us a little bit what those safety systems might include and if we have a list of. The parks. Where those safety systems will be implemented? I'm sorry. Emergency lighting. And where are the other example? Exit doors. Such as those changes. Lighting. Exit doors. Those. Okay. That's what I imagine. I think that's great. I think additional lighting and parks is really a fantastic addition wherever we can add those. I'd love to see if there's going to be additional lighting put in a parks in any of our districts, if you can make us aware of that, so that we can make the residents aware of that. If it's not going to be in our districts, then it's obviously it's moot. But if it is going to be in our districts, I know lighting is something we get asked about a lot and I know we are using some some tidelands dollars to put lights into one of the parks that qualifies for Tidelands funds in the third district. You talk. A little bit about. A reduction in maintenance costs related to Sims Pond. I'm a little bit concerned about that because there's also a reference to eliminating perimeter and game court fencing. I don't know what that means, but I cannot imagine a scenario where we're going to have reduced maintenance at Sims Pond. Do you have some, Steve, if you can help me out with this one. You. Mayor, member of members of the city council. Councilwoman Price What this is contemplating is it's essentially really. Focusing the existing scope and kind of scaling back what is currently provided as we take a look at the services that are contracted to be provided there. There are things that can be done less frequently or on an as needed basis. And so what this is. Doing is really kind of addressing that. So really focusing on first and foremost those core services and responsibilities being trash removal, debris removal and non-native vegetation cleanup and removal. Okay. So and I appreciate that. And I obviously defer to the expertize of our Parks Department in determining what's what's best for that particular area. However, this is a particular area that has had a great deal of community engagement, and this is the first time hearing about any changes to our maintenance there. So I think perhaps prior to the adoption of the budget, we should sit down with the neighborhood association and talk about what the proposed changes are going to be, because otherwise I think one of the major issues has been maintenance in terms of removal of dead trees and things like that. We're really trying to work and collaborate with the community organization there to move forward in a positive way. So perhaps we can and I can talk offline with the director and his team regarding how we can communicate what changes we're proposing there. That would be great. And one of the things. We that. Is discussed here is a participatory budgeting process in the amount of $200,000 for youth well-being. Can you tell me a little bit about that project? Anybody. Yeah. Sorry about that. I don't believe it's really a PRM process. It's I think it's engaging the wider community with regards to those funds with, I believe, youth nonprofit organizations. And so I'll jump in here as well. This is something that we heard during our community outreach that we heard that there's a desire to really try to focus some funds on youth. We do a lot already for youth, but this was to kind of fill some of those gaps and do a participatory budgeting type process to engage in the community. Haven't quite figured out exactly how to do that. This is something new for us. So if the council wants to move forward, you know, this 200,000 would help us would create a process and involve the council and anyone who wants to be involved in that. How to target those dollars. Is this the. Same as this youth fund? Yes. Oh, it's the same thing. Okay, great. So I'm assuming and I know this is to be true, but I just want to ask I know it's early process. We're just setting aside the money that that is going to be a city wide endeavor where we're going to have meetings throughout the city and engage the youth throughout the city. Yes, it is citywide. Okay, great. You talk about an additional $80,000 to support a new landscape contract to to maintain landscape services across the city's 170 parks. Will any of that landscape contract go towards maintenance and support of medians? And if not, where is that highlighted? Is it a proposed change for FY 19 or are we expecting status quo for medians? Mayor Members of the City Council, Catwoman. Price So what you're referring to is an increase in one of the funding sources that funds our grounds landscape contract, the contract that was approved last week by the City Council. All told, it's close to $1,000,000 that is included in this budget to cover those costs. And, yes, the the scope of those services includes. Not only the parks and open spaces, but also maintenance of the medians. As well. Okay. One of the things we do not highlight enough as a city and this is I'm just as much to blame as anyone else is medians. When you drive around cities, you see a lot. You can tell a lot more about the city based on the condition of their medians than the condition of their parks. Because, yes, residents will go to the park, still enjoy the parks depending on the age of their children. Those things people see. But what we don't what we underestimate is the condition of the median. So if we've got dead trees, dying plants or barren medians, I think for people that don't park their cars and go into the park, they may not ever know how beautiful our parks are. They may be making a judgment based on driving through the city. So I really want to highlight the importance of having medians that really, I think, say a lot about the city. If we're going to do something there, if we're not going to do something there, then that's fine. But if we're going to plant something there, then I think we should really make an effort to keep those plants alive and make it look good. Otherwise, maybe we think about some hard escaping for the median so that we don't have to have upkeep over the long run. But when you drive in various cities, you see there's been a lot of attention paid to medians because a lot of times people don't stop and actually go to the park, they're just driving through the town and they make a lot of judgments about the town based on the medians. So I think that's very important. And and Councilmember, if I can add to that, we agree with you, medians are incredibly important and we have been challenged with medians because of some of the state drought restrictions that have been put in place that we are working on how to transition away from grass. But one of the efficiencies that we are looking at is right now we have median maintenance as part of Parks and Rec. It's just been there forever. We're actually looking at transitioning that over to public works. Right now, public works is maintaining the street, but they don't do the medians. And so we think it makes sense to have the eyes that are on the street to also be on the medians. And it's really managing that contract, the exact same contract, but through a different lens. So that is something that we're exploring in how to implement. That's great. And I think if the if the landscaping and maintenance turns out to be too expensive, maybe we do consider hard scoping because it's expensive to put in, but long term it looks good and it doesn't have to be maintained as regularly. And then finally, we have in here some money. And I think it's really it's this is out of my district, but it's something I'm curious about. And that's the repair costs of Marina Marina Green Park following special events. What are special events? Fees not include restoration of a city owned parcel of land. Post Special Event Councilwoman Price. Yes, the city is reimbursed by organizers for any break in fix items. What this is really speaking to is that ongoing wear and tear where, you know, the landscaping needs to be refreshed a little bit more frequently because of the the constant use and the type of use of that area. So this is more for kind of the ongoing maintenance, not specific to what situations where something is broken or damaged. You know, I think we might want to think about folding that into the costs down the road, but the wear and tear, because it really wouldn't get that kind of wear and tear. But for the special events, it would be, you know, so just something to think about. But thank you very much. And then for development services, just real quick, I wanted to thank you very much. You know, I have with me tonight as my staff member for this meeting, Lisa West, who's our business liaison. And I know both Lisa and I wish to thank you profusely because this proposed budget in Fy19 highlights a number of additions that are actually streamlined, business friendly initiatives that are going to help people get through the process. As a business owner who's going through the permitting process right now, through the city of Long Beach with my husband. I can tell you all of these improved. Rents are going to be much appreciated by the residents and business owners who are going through the process. And it just really helps to have a focus on moving people through quickly. And I can see just by looking at your budget that that's a priority for you. So Director Tatum is also fairly new. This is her first budget as director. So welcome to your first budget. Kudos. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Durango. Thank you, Mayor. And I also have some questions here. But, you know, I realize that I met with the director, met earlier today, and I asked him how long has he been here? He said two months. So I'm going to give you a break. I'm not going to be asking a whole lot of questions because some of that I had, I had to cross out anyway. Because you were you were grilled right now with a with Councilmember Price and a lot of good questions, a lot of good feedback. And I understand, you know, where you stand right now. And I'm hoping. And let me rephrase it. I expect that you will be fully informed by this time next year to make this presentation. So kudos to you and congratulations and welcome to our beach. We were saying that I was going to ask about was earlier this year we had a a special resolution to talk about having additional funds distributed to address our drought in the parts because a lot of our park lands were looking brown and looking ugly and and just a little bit of water probably would help restore some of those some of those facilities as well as parks. So I'm glad to see that in your budget here you have a supplemental increase of 1.24 million to address citywide park irrigation. And perhaps it would be also helpful to look at that transition for the medians to go to parks to excuse me, public works so that they can address it as well. And I had not park to take the full hit on having to water some of the the green spaces that we have and keep them alive. So that's the only thing I had for parts. The other question I have right now for it's public works. You mentioned earlier that you're going to be that you collected 22,000 illegally dumped items and 17,000 mattresses. Earlier last year, we passed a resolution regarding illegal dumping in the city. Has that the work? And I know that you're saying that you're going to add a staff person for the cleaning the clean team is will illegal dumping be a focus of this new staff member? What's the focus that we're going to be putting on making sure that we have less items picked up that are that are illegally dumped? Councilmember Arango, thank you for the question. Yeah, certainly illegal dumping is something that the Clean Team deals with on a daily basis, and we receive a number of requests from the community members to address those dumped items. The city is working through the Bloomberg initiative to work with students from Harvard to really analyze what is the phenomenon behind illegal dumping. There's a report that's being provided to us next week that a graduate student has worked with us to study that, and we're also working with the innovation team to review that as well. We think we have some good data that we're really interested in sharing with this council, so that'll be coming in in the next few months. Additionally, I think Council District two brought forward an item about a pilot locked bin program. So that's something that we've also been exploring and are working on. And we we've been able to identify that already half of the bins in the target area are locked and we're working to get the rest of them locked as well. So we are very encouraged with some of the progress we're making and some of the data we're collecting. And ultimately, I think as you're pointing out, the goal is to change that behavior and help the community be more aware that illegal dumping is not a way to keep Long Beach, the great city that it is . Is there a plan or a strategy that will be that will incorporate some kind of a fee or a a ticket citation or some kind of if someone is actually and it's going to be hard to catch somebody, they usually these types of activities usually take place, you know, very early in the morning or late at night where, you know, they're under the cover of darkness. But if there is a clear violation that anyone that somebody sees or that an inspector actually can relate back to a to an apartment owner where they know that there's a vacancy and the people that moved out are just basically throwing out their mattresses and their TVs or whatever they don't want to take with them into an alley or near a dumpster. It's really a strategy for sighting these individuals if if, in fact, we are able to identify who these violators are. Yes, I think we have a couple of tools in the toolbox. First off, we do have a few supervisors that drive around in when we find instances especially common in some of our multifamily units in the city where the trash receptacles or bins available to the folks that live in that building aren't sufficient to support the amount of trash that is being generated. We can require that that property to add either additional dumpsters or more frequent collection. So we work closely with those apartment owners to do that. If they don't, we do have the ability to find them. I think I've mentioned before to this council that we are working on developing an administrative citation process for our public works inspectors. And with that tool in hand, if they were able to see somebody illegally disposing of of debris in our public right of way, they would have that at their disposal to address it right away. I do agree that we do have a level of illegal activity, illegal dumping excuse me, that happens during the night hours. And people aren't really witnessing that. But we're also seeing that we're seeing residents in the city just putting things out in the alleyways and on the curbs. And we really believe it's important to have a keep Long Beach Beautiful campaign and and make sure that people are taking personal responsibility for their waste. Well, thank you for that, because I believe in strong communication. The more we're able to communicate with our residents that the dumping is illegal and that there are methods to dispose of unwanted property safely and without the making a nuisance of our of our dumped items in the streets or in the alleys, I think would be beneficial . So I'm looking forward to the continuing education program that we need to do for for our communities. Thank you for your responses. Lastly, we have development services for this portion of the program. And one of the things that stood out to me was a vacant lot registry, which I think is great. It's very greatly needed. We need to know how many vacant lots we have out there and especially identifying who owns these vacant lots, because some of those lots become blight. They're not taking care of the weeds growing all over the place. It's been a week when we talk about that a little later, but right now we're talking about vacant lots that basically create blight in our neighborhoods and in our especially in our transportation, those empty lots around our transportation corridors. So just to. Get a quick feel as to what this registry will be used for. Is there a can I get a brief description as to what it will do and what's the expected outcome of having this registry? Yes, Councilmember Your Honor. That was a program that the city council adopted, I want to say, early this year, maybe late last year, when they adopted this program. And it essentially requires the owner of the vacant lot to register the property and paying a small fee. And that fee is actually used for to support the staff that actually goes out, monitors that property once it's registered to ensure that it is maintained. We provide communication to the owner on a at minimum on an annual basis just to ensure that they are keeping the property maintained free of weeds secured. And just to do exactly what you were saying is to prevent it from becoming a blight in the community. Thank you. And my final question would be, why not collect more like a comment? The program continues. I'd like to see that it is continued. And the turnaround cycle what's the turnaround cycle now and what what are you working towards in terms of making improvements on the turnaround cycle for inspections? Basically. Under the current cycle that we have now with the current staffing, the turnaround is between five and six years based upon the number of inspections that occur annually. We have received in the mayor's recommendation is a comment to have staff take a look at that. And if we get further direction, we will. We have started to take a look at some of those numbers and looking at what it would take to speed up that turnaround cycle in terms of the costs of adding additional staff and what that would mean in terms of greater efficiencies as this program moves forward. So if directed, we would be coming back to you at a later date with some of some proposals to address the and a. An enhanced turnaround time. Okay. Thank you. I want to thank all three of you for your comments tonight and for your orientation. Thank you very much, Councilmember. Councilmember Pierce. Thank you. Excuse me. I will start with. Well, first of all, everybody, fantastic job. This budget, I think, really demonstrates the leadership and the vision and the inclusion of the community voices we've heard throughout the last year. It's really exciting. All of these departments are near and dear to my heart. So let's start with development services and I definitely want to say congratulations. I know that this is your first year as director, and when I look through this budget and I see things like community engagement, it's very important to me. And I know through the process of the last couple of years, we've kind of thought about community engagement in different ways online surveys, etc.. Can you explain your vision for community engagement for the department? Yes. I think when we think about community engagement, the the recent experience we have with the land use element really opened our eyes to the fact that there were segments of the community that felt like the department and some of the bureaus in the department. Were. Undergoing major initiatives that just had not done as good a job as we could have done in terms of outreaching and engaging with those communities. So one of the things that we're looking at with the additional staff is to establish something. I don't call it engagement as much as relationship building with the community members. And it is we already have a draft outline of that that we're working through with the city, the city manager's office, to take a look at some way to provide additional engagement with the community, in addition to providing additional information about ongoing information about the activities that are occurring in the Planning Bureau, the kinds of projects that are coming through the process. What kind of activities are occurring in the building department? So again, just general information about what the what kinds of activities are occurring in the bureau. I would also say about the services that we provide. There are a range of services that we provide in our Neighborhood Services Bureau that many members of the community just are unaware of. So I would say it's an overall outreach effort to do a couple of things to let them know what we're doing as a department, to let them know the services that we provide to them and to let them, I think, most importantly, know that what they think matters to us. We'd like to hear from them and we'd like to engage them as we determine what our work program looks like and just to get their feedback overall, it's great. Thank you for that. As a lifelong community organizer, Acme Engagement, definitely. You do the work on the front end, then we can make sure that the process is much smoother. So I completely support that. The fact that you have eight new staff, that you've added some of them for high rises, which would help us in downtown, but just to get people through the process. I want to thank you for this. I know that we had lots of conversations a couple of months ago when we talked about legalizing adult use and the fact that we knew that there was a backlog with some of the medicinal marijuana dispensaries. And knowing that when we bring on a whole new industry as a city, we really have to make sure we're aware how we stop that. So can you speak just really quickly about how you feel like these eight new staff will help not only our high rises, but the rest of the entire city and some of our small businesses coming online. The the eight news staff are in different, different bureaus, but primarily they. Are in the. Planning bill, which will be the focus of the outreach and the community engagement effort. And that would be on a couple of fronts. It's not only interacting directly in the community with the community, but the other component of that is actually through enhanced digital communication, meaning posting a lot of information on the website so that residents can take advantage of some services online. So that's another component. The other ones, though, are really focused on community or customer service to enhance, for example, the building inspectors. We want to be able to make sure that when projects come in to the planning process to try to stabilize our review process, when we get particularly busy, sometimes the wait times to get a planned check through the process increases to, I want to say sometimes as high as 16 weeks. We'd like to end when it's not so busy, it can go down to six weeks. So we'd like to try to get that a little bit more stabilized. That's the goal of the additional staff to try to stabilize that turnaround time so that we can be a little bit more predictive. And when applications come in, we can at least tell them upfront what the turnaround time is. So the focus of all of the additional staff really is enhancing customer service, providing greater information to the public through enhanced digital communications and just inspection, turnaround times, all of them to our core service of providing customer service and providing it as efficiently as possible. Awesome. Thank you so very much, Linda. Now I'm going to ask you a couple questions around the housing stuff, because I know we met this week. To echo Councilmember Rebecca, your comments around pile up. I know when we spoke it was either you or Oscar that mentioned we were sometimes up to seven year turnaround. So whether it's between five or seven years, turn around for something that the council has said as a priority. I definitely would support adding staff to make sure we can address that, particularly in the fact that we've had four years of conversations around affordable housing and protecting our housing stock. And so this being one of those I know that we also talked about technology and how we're using technology to, you know, use that process quicker. Can and I, I understand that we are working to try to update the system as much as possible so it will expedite the process. How long do you think the department would need to test out trying out this system versus implementing a new system that some other cities have used? Because I know we're trying to work with technology right now to do that. That's something, Councilmember Pearce, that we are actually just now starting to look at. But I would tell you, the most encouraging thing that's changed in terms of how we look at our department is the fact that we now have a new technology and innovation department director who myself and our deputy director have already had a chance to have a very positive or productive conversation with around the very specific issue that you mentioned of us being able to actually enhance the system that we currently have to make it a lot more user friendly and to really be more of a workhorse in terms of just tracking the data that we do and being able to pull out really critical data about the performance and the metrics of the work that we do. So that when we get questions from the council about, you know, how we're doing in a particular area, we can actually access it. Right now, the system is not as robust as it it could be. So we even though we don't have any new positions or any additional funding in this year's budget to address that, I think this year will probably spend time, more time focusing on assessing the capabilities of the current system and making some determinations as to whether or not we truly can improve it, enhance it to to be more more robust in terms of getting data out of it and tracking and really being a better tool for us to manage our workflow. And we will probably be coming back to the Council on once we do a more thorough assessment of whether or not we can fix or really enhance the current system or if it's appropriate for us to take a look at other systems. Okay. Thank you for that. Yes. I also, too, am very excited about our our new director and the department and have high hopes. So I fully support trying to make sure that that technology is there fully support you all coming back with a recommendation on how to increase the turnaround time for Prep. And one other question that we talked about, which is around when there's a critical issue after a inspection, say water leakage, missing floor. We have the 24 hour model. That says that it should be addressed within 24 hours. Is that written into the muni code? Is that something that we adhere to all the time, something we adhere to some of the time? I'm not sure that it's actually in the code, but it continues and will always be a core component of our our departmental policy in terms of whenever there is a life safety issue on a project that will automatically always be at the very get the very top a priority on those we try to we strive for a 24 hour turnaround. Do other cities have it written into code that it's a 24 hour turnaround? I'm not sure that's something I can check into and get back with you on. I'm just being clear. That would be helpful. Lynda really fantastic job with the budget, really, really positive things for businesses and residents and I'm hopeful for the next step. So that's all I have for you. Sorry, that took a little long. So let's see. Public works things up. Their next public works cut back. You're awesome. Thank you for all the hard work that you guys have done in putting up with me and my team. I know that often you tell me, cut it out. Enough projects, slow down. So on top of the budget that you have presented to the entire city, I just really want to applaud you for the work that you've done in the district. I know it's taken us two years to get a light, but it is halfway up on a bed spo and it is looking beautiful and that's not your fault . I understand that. That was not an stab. I want to thank you for all the work that we've done on Fourth Street, the Broadway project. I cannot say enough how great the residents have worked with your department and any parking challenges or anything like that. I imagine it was going to be a complete nightmare and I know we're only halfway there, but just want to applaud you and everybody on your team for all of that work. So I do have a couple of questions. Knowing that we all work really hard, all of our districts have our different ideas. Can you walk through just briefly for us how you prioritize all the projects that are sn9 councilmembers and the mayor spring up and the grant funded projects that you get. So how you prioritize all that work, it's a tough question. I have a big wheel in my office and I spin it. That's kind of how I felt. I didn't want to say. No, certainly. You know, it's really exciting to have an opportunity to work on all the great projects that we have funding to do. Measure A IS has really helped us move that needle tremendously and we talked about that in our CFP presentation, but I really do strive to try to deliver projects in a balanced approach, not only in and across the city, but also different type of projects, not just mobility or not just facility projects. Park projects are important. So we really do work collectively as a team. Sometimes we stress ourselves to our limits, but that's what the weekends are for, to recharge and get ready and come back. So you have. A weekend to me. One enough. I should give you more, which my team certainly. Does, but I appreciate this for this council and we'll continue to deliver projects as best we can. Great. Okay. I wanted to ask in your budget, it says Tidelands Operations Funds that says oversight of critical citywide projects. Can you walk through for me if it's a tidelands funds, how that's being used citywide? So I think last year we worked to transition Tidelands project components to public works and we're really trying to integrate that team with our overall project management delivery. We view Tidelands as a funding source and not a whole separate activity, and I think it's important to kind of think of it that way. I know we do spend a lot of time talking about Tidelands projects specifically, but it is just a different source of money. We certainly have different challenges with certain grants that we receive and how we can deliver projects, and Tidelands has certain restrictions in how you can utilize those dollars. So we may have a little bit of money for the administration, but really the Tidelands money in our department is primarily targeted for project delivery. That's why I felt like you guys do a lot of Tidelands projects. Last tough question and then I'll give you 2 hours at the end. Can you talk about the increased budget in relation to surf? It's under your feels like you're. Stumping me on that so surface in. That would be guessing where department is where Cerf is located. So if there's a specific question, you can ask it tonight and we can follow up in writing. Okay, so on here it says Increase budget for updated user department charge. I apologize. It's okay. You have a lot of ideas. So in in Long Beach, all of the waste that we collect is taken to the Southeast Resource Recovery Facility or surf, where that waste is converted into energy that supports many of our homes in the city. And we pay a disposal fee at that facility. And that fee is increasing a little bit, but it is still cheaper to deliver the waste to surf as compared to driving it to some offsite landfill. Okay. And I would want to point out that we do have two different rates. We have rates for people who are outside of the city who pay at surf, and their rate is higher than Long Beach residents. So Long Beach registrants do get a benefit from disposing at Surf Creek. In the last two things is I want to echo Councilmember Price's comments. When I look through this budget for the first time and I saw how many new positions we were creating it just the more that we can create good jobs here at the city that are lasting jobs instead of contracting those jobs out, I think we do well by our residents. So I want to thank you for that. Parks Rec online. I will try to go fast, guys. Sorry. Sometimes I feel like I go really fast and sometimes I'm long winded. You're just going to have to sit with me tonight, guys. So congratulations again. Two months in and presenting a massive budget with all of our great ideas. I really want to appreciate that. One thing you did not mention that we saw and we were really excited about was water, storm, debris. We love that. And I wanted to understand, is there an operating costs with that? Maybe that's a public works question. I'm told, is existing resources. Okay. So we don't have any ongoing operational costs associated. Great. So that's my if I may, I do want to expound a little on that, because you're right. This is a fabulous project. So exciting. Yeah. We've been dealing with trash debris for a long time coming down the L.A. River. It's been getting less and less every year as we put in capture devices upstream. But right now, we still capture the majority of the trash when we wait for it to come onto the beach. And that is much more expensive to do it when it's already on the beach because it's loaded with sand. The dump costs are more expensive and we're also losing sand. And so the idea here as well, we've tried several other booms that certainly with with various success, we would actually use capital dollars to create a booming system out in the water when the storms are coming. So we can capture it all efficiently, move it around with equipment, using existing staff, but using new equipment, putting it on a conveyor belt and getting it out of the river before it even touches the beach. So we're really excited about this and we thank you for the support. I would love to see a video of this one because it's just so nerdy and cool. The community engagement partnership we talked today absolutely love it. As much as we can help connect you with constituents and residents that might not already be connected to our Parks Department, please let us know how we can help. I applaud you for the efforts and trying to adjust some of our bathrooms. I know that we've talked about Bixby Park and all the challenges that we've had there and your creative thinking, what you bring to the table. We appreciate that. Wanted to go on record around the partners for Parks. I'm going to ask you this question that I talked to you about earlier. A lot of us have friends of organizations in our parks that raise money. They want to invest in our parks, how we work with them and what that process looks like down the road. I would like to see us have some kind of agreement, more use of that before we invest in a project that our community partners come to us with, that we do it eyes wide open with transparency so we know how much money they are bringing to the table, who their board members are in the long term vision. So I just wanted to ask you for your commitment to continue to work on that, moving forward with the partners of Parks since we have earmarked some funds in here. Absolutely. Thank you so very much. And then the youth campaign, the funds that are here, I understand that it's here for seed kind of a seed money to talk about where we could go with our youth programing. And really, I know our community partners have asked for 500 instead of 200, and I know that this has come up really quickly. So I hope in between now and the time that the budget comes back, that we can have some conversations with the folks that brought this idea and the mayor's office and really understanding what we're trying to create, because in my mind, it's not a participatory budgeting. Let's go build another slide. It's they're asking for programs to make sure that our youth do not get incarcerated, that our youth are not dropping out of schools, that we're investing in them academically and programs that we might not already offer at our parks, and that those might need to be offered by other nonprofits. So I just before we approved the final number, I hope that we can really have an understanding about the impacts of, what, 203 hundred and what our vision is for that. I love this. I definitely support it. And that I believe, ladies and gentlemen, is all my questions. You guys have done a fantastic job. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Would you say. Thank you, vice mayor. So, first of all, I wanted to just say this is a good budget, not many cuts. And so this is an opportunity for us to really just check in once a year. We get a chance to check in on the budget. So we get to think about some of the operations and programs that are important to us and our council districts. So let's start with we'll start with you, Craig. So first of all, Craig, just want to give kudos to you and your team. We set out to do something and you figure out how to get it done in Highland Park Community Center, the work that we're doing there. I know it was complex to identify different funding sources, you know, switch architects at the last minute and make things happen. And I know that you ran into some problems once you dug up the 100 year old park and took a look. There were things now in there that weren't mapped out. So good work. I know that we have a number a bigger a larger focus we've placed on traffic traffic safety. And we talked a little bit about it today. But so what are the what are some of the projects that we have related to parks, to traffic signals in the next year that we can look forward to? Yes. Councilmember Richardson. Thank you for that. Similar to what we're doing right now on Fourth Street, we will be adding new traffic, single signals up in District nine. In fact, I think we have a celebration coming up next week for a traffic signal at 64th and Downey. This is on the heels of one or two others that were placed in in the district last couple of years. And we have some planned in connection with some new developments. So not only are new traffic signals going in, but you've really championed the pedestrian safety crossings. And through our pedestrian safety grant, we will be placing a couple of those in District nine and throughout the city. And I think you funded an additional one in your district as well. So with those traffic calming measures, those traffic safety devices, that's one element. But we're also looking at corridor improvements. And Atlantic and Artesia are both important corridors that we're focusing on in fiscal year 19. And as those projects come forward and and we really look at where are the the important safety crossings for both bicyclists and for pedestrians, those will all be going into the district. So overall, it's a holistic approach to not only vehicle movement, but also the safety of folks in the in the district. Thank you. I think it makes sense to look at it holistically. Atlantic in Artesia, for example, is consistently been one of the most dangerous intersections in our city, at least the last eight, nine years. We've we've worked there. It's always ranked top three and it's no you know, it's adjacent to a freeway, adjacent to a high school and not much infrastructure. But we've seen a transformation and we see more with the new developments that's come in. And the comments Public Works has made to the developers are consistent with the conversations we've had around making the community a lot safer. So thank you for that. But along the same those same lines, two things that I have to bring up and I'm pretty sure you you know, I'm going to bring it up bike share. What are the challenges, you know, publicly? What are the challenges with bringing bike share and some opportunities to bring bike share to North Long Beach? So the city does have a bikeshare program. I think I mentioned it in my presentation. We're very pleased to see that the use of our bike share 200,000 miles ridden on our bike share bikes. Currently we have about 71 bike share hubs throughout the city and about 400 bikes deployed. We're working with our bike share provider who has gone to a kind of a corporate restructuring. They were recently bought by Uber and did a rebranding to jump. And so we're we're placing an order, but those bicycles are manufactured overseas. And I think as a company, they're going through some distribution issues with the tariffs, etc.. And there is a timeline to deliver those North Lime beaches on our kind of next phase list. It's a it's an important component. We're investing in a bicycle boulevard, again, connecting uptown to downtown. And we think bike share is an important part of that. We we are working to figure out how we can engage new technologies like E-Scooters and vendors that provide those new technologies. And there may be an opportunity to mirror what we're doing with E-Scooters and with e-bikes. Good. And with those and I understand this, the challenges with the tariffs. We've talked about how it's beginning to impact the project delivery timeline and costs on a number of things. And I think that's a separate conversation we should have specifically at our Fed Ledge Committee. But in addition to that sort of along that same line of pedestrian safety, we've done beach for a while now. It's a great program. We've done it twice in the Uptown community, but we also done smaller activations like we did activate Uptown where we took a smaller chunk of the street from Atlantic to Orange and engaged with the businesses and had a deeper conversation about mobility. And it was a lot less expensive than the beach streets. And in comparing the fact that we've hosted both types of events in our district, my small businesses for the most part don't say they haven't said, yeah, it was bring beach streets back, but they've said let's bring the smaller thing back. Because literally, like Robert Earl's for example, it was their most successful day ever had because it was smaller. It was a lot more focus on that individual neighborhood, which we don't get a lot outside of, you know, a downtown type area. We don't get that kind of citywide attention focused on a really much smaller area. So I say that to say maybe it's time that we look at diversifying beach streets a bit instead of one or two per year and all the focus is on one area. We look at smaller engagements, maybe like half or a third of the size of beach streets and really invest there. And I think, you know, those types of things are easier to leverage and received grant funds. If you look at more of a social reduction committee and SAG and others, we look at they're they're more willing to fund these smaller engagements in our businesses and our residents. We can have a more intimate experience with them. So I know that we have a beach House budget at this time, but I want you to think about how we can accomplish these mini activations like First Fridays, for example, how we can do that moving forward. I want you to think on that. Thank you. I'll do all. Right. And thank you for for your time. So let's move to planning. So another window. We're going to be working a lot closer together this year because of a plan. So I know that, you know, the vacant lot registry was mentioned. That's great. I know that we've had success with the foreclosure registry and it generated a lot of, you know, a lot of revenue and things like that. But the vacant lot registry, I would figure if the customer is absentee landlord, they're not going to be as responsive as a bank would with foreclosure with a forever thousand dollar a day. Fine. So how's the how's the response been with the vacant lots? Well, it's just actually it's just getting started. It was adopted by council earlier this year. And we're only now, I'm going to say within the last 30 days, just starting to roll it out. Okay. So we don't really have a database of experience yet, but I think with my announcement earlier that we now have a city prosecutor that would be dedicated to code enforcement. I would say that to the extent that we have a homeowner who is unresponsive, it certainly would transition at that point to a violation, a code violation, in which case we could ultimately send it over to the city. PROSECUTOR And I agree with you, the prosecutor concept, that's that's a game changer. We didn't have that on the on the verge of foreclosure, a dedicated prosecutor on the foreclosure piece. But if we think about the idea that we have a dedicated prosecutor, I would like to, you know, focus them as much as possible on nuisance nuisance businesses as a priority. I know that occasionally we do receive code enforcement violations on neighbors. I think we just need to be very cognizant of that, you know, before we, you know, let loose a prosecutor that we really go for their due process. But I believe that the corridor adjacent nuisance businesses, I mean, those are the ones that are we're getting a lot of calls from particularly, you know, along Long Beach Boulevard and some of those and in the McKinley neighborhood along Paramount Boulevard. If we can sort of deploy our prosecution efforts there, I think that would make a big difference. And also, I'll also say, you know, there was a conversation about aligning the facade work. I think that there's a lot of conversation there that makes sense. But the biggest challenge we've seen with the facade work has been the fact that it still requires a signature. If a property owner needs to request additional funding or requires an actual wet signature and outside of I don't know, in my district in particular, if there's a vacant lot or a business that's, you know, or a facade that is in disrepair a lot of times because it's an absentee property owner and it's difficult to actually track down that absentee property owner. So we need tools. So are there legal challenges or circumstances that or technology issues that that that are hindering us from allowing the use of an electronic signature as well, as opposed to a wet signature to ensure that these these facades are being deployed. I haven't actually looked into that. But based on your your comment that it's an issue, I think that's certainly something I can start to take a look at. And we can work with our city attorney's office to see if there is some viable alternative to that that the city can implement. I just don't know the response to that. But we can certainly explore alternatives to the wet signature. Okay. I mean, that's been the the largest issue in North Long Beach with with respect to facades, it's getting a hold of the landlord or the property owner. And so if we can figure that out, I think there'd be a lot a lot more support and excitement, excitement for the program. We would invest the money, but it's hard to see the difference because if you get one property owner and then the next one is the next block over, you barely see it. So I think we can if we deliver these a little bit better by addressing that issue, and I think it'll go a long way. But thank you so much for your hard work. And I think you know this. I think you have a fantastic team. Moving on to parks and recreations. So first of all, I just want to acknowledge your accomplishments that the Uptown Open Space Plan focused on open space expansion in District nine has gone on to win not one but two American Planning Association awards. And so we'll be sending the team down to San Diego with you in support of that. So we're really proud of that work. I just have a couple of questions for you. So the title on Community Engagement Partnership Bureau, it sounds great. I'm still very unclear on the purpose, the purpose of this new bureau. What is this you're going to do and how is it is it going to have anything to do with the partner development operations, grant writing operations? What is it going to do this new bureau? Yes, it will, Councilwoman Richardson. It will focus intensely on the grant development for projects. But in addition, it will have an enhance opportunity for for planning, for projects and community engagement. And and in particular, the other part of the name is, is enhanced partnerships working with partners of parks and working with our program just to increase our ability to leverage more resources and do more projects. So kind of all of the above as you just the things that you just mentioned, so will the park development officer position be shifting there or is there still going to be a park development officer separately from this bureau? The role will still be there with regards to that function. So it's just going to have an increased capacity with regards to what you're familiar with. But just it's just a recognition that we need to have a greater focus, greater resources in in that very important function. So this is the same position as the Parks Development officer, or is there an additional. I'm unclear. Are we is this is this additional staff? There is going to be a a manager overseeing the bureau a bureau manager. So this would be an increased enhanced managerial position. And the current park development officer will report to this person in that position, rather, will report to this new position. And now I think I think the plan is that it's going to be that person with regards to that role. Well, I would just say, if I can add here as well, what we're doing here is both trying to enhance that community partnership aspect in Parks and Rec, but we're also trying to streamline project development. So right now we have portioned portions of project development that are in Parks and Rec and then it transfers over to public works. We're trying to make that a little bit more seamless, that we're going to do more of the actual project management in public works. And that park development officer position is going to convert and become this bureau manager focusing on strategic partnerships, but also then providing the liaison and the design work up front. So we really see Pak's role moving forward is helping to identify park needs and then public works would build and construct and deliver the project so that we're providing kind of consistency in the development of that project. That makes sense. And thank you, Councilwoman Price. I was I actually didn't catch the fact that 60% of the position as we use land in the harbor and title lands area. Yes. So most of our parks and rec programs share their time because they do both tidelands and marinas as well as General Fund. And so we do split out their time. They also then make sure that they're spending their time in those areas as well, because we're charging those funds. So if we're charging that fund, we need to be spending time in that area. I understand they'll be able to work throughout the entire city. Understood. So 40% of this position will positions. Time will be dedicated to park development and partnerships citywide and 60% into the Titan's area. Correct. And it's budgeting as well. If for some reason in that year we don't have any projects there, we'll look at adjusting that and shifting things around. So is the current park development officer position the same way 60% there or is it general fund funded? If I recall that one charge is directly to projects or part of it as general fund and part of it charges to projects. A man, a member of. The city council, Councilmember Richardson. That is correct. It is a. Position that is funded. Through both general fund and charging directly to projects. That's how it's funded today going forward. It will be general fund in addition to some of those other Tidelands funding sources, because this position in this bureau will be in support of all of our operations, be they in the uplands or the parks areas or the Tidelands. So I just want to say I don't think that's acceptable that to limit its time only to 40% of that that position, it's a really important position. It's incredibly important. All nine districts and not a slight against any particular area. I think it's great if Tidelands gets that level of quality and that level of attention. I just think to say 40% of that position in a new bureau is separate across the rest of the city. I don't think that's acceptable. And so I would ask that we continue. Tom, whoever else needs to talk about this, I think we need to think about either funding it with a bit more of the project project costs. We need to look at that or figuring out a different way to make that opposition a bit more balanced. Because if you think about a lot of the conversations around partnerships. Just last year when we consolidated afterschool programs, the concept was that we were going to replace a lot of these programs with partnerships in our parks. For example, we're working right now on, you know, was it Campfire USA and Conservation Corps of the Forest Park that requires a lot of time and logistics to work out. So I just personally think that's something that we need to we need to resolve before addressing this budget. And thank you, Councilwoman Price, for bringing that. I didn't have no idea. I think that's good at that point came out. All right. So next I know that you are, Mr. Director. I know we've you've done a lot of interesting things. We've had conversations about what you've done in Santa Ana. What are you doing around innovative ideas, around teen teen programing? Because I know that as you look at our strategic plan, which I'm excited about, I think the reality is, you know, our team centers, the concept of teen center hasn't been modernized in a long time either in how we address teens or, you know, what experience or can you offer in that regard? Well, Santa Ana had a different kind of structure for Parks and Recreation. I also oversaw the library, but I was able to leverage grants from that. That had to do with literacy and library and digital dividing the digital divide as well as workforce resources and using web money. So I was able to do these teen space satellites in the different rec centers and added components. It wasn't just recreation and sports, but also had this workforce development as well as programs that added to core increasing the teens resiliency to some of the some of the negative forces in in the neighborhoods that they lived. So it was pretty comprehensive. But that again, that was the nature of the structure of the funding in Sandtown. And but I'm hoping that I'm going to be able to use some of those ideas and certainly for sure, and I'll let you off the hook on that. So so I think moving forward, I think that's actually a great opportunity for us while you're looking at the strategic plan. So number one, I mean, the role of libraries has changed that they serve more of a community center. I think we need to look at our teen centers and modernizing those to make sure we're looking at looking holistically at how to support youth. I'll even say, you know, with all the activity that's happening at Jordan High School out in Park and the North facility and North Health Facility, they're all in one complex, a health facility , a park. And I think we should think about while we're in the process of building the building, the community center, we should think about how to integrate those services a little bit more, particularly as we relate to responding to teens. But that said, thank you so much. I know a lot of my conversations veered away from budget, but this is I use this as an opportunity to just have a general check in on a lot of the issues that, you know, the public has brought up to me. My district is brought to me and then I've sort of seen over, you know, over time. Thank you all for your service. Yes. In 1/2. And Councilman Richardson, Councilwoman Mongeau had come before she like to help you with. So I was beginning. We kind of talked about this and I can't remember, quite frankly, whether it was at a block meeting or at another budget meeting before. I think you missed one meeting earlier this year, but we kind of talked about workforce investment and the opportunity of the teen centers. The new Parks and Rec director kind of outlined some of those opportunities. And so within the we our A program, Mr. Harris had talked about that some of those funds would be available to kind of combine if we were to go that direction. So I know that that's a more kind. Brands of memo that will probably be getting back that I. Probably could. Tell you a little about. Sure. So we should we should have a good. Yep. Yeah. Good talk on that. Thanks. Thank you both. Thank you. Vice Mayor Andrews. Yes. Thank you very much. First of all, I'd like to deal with public works. I, Mr. Baca, I heard a color she gave you, which is well and the due for that because you have done a great job, but you have a lot on your plate. I know that. And I want to thank you for everything you've done in our six district. And please keep working with this. First of all, I like the idea that we had three pothole trucks. You know, can you please share how these trucks get assigned to the areas that they respond to? Councilmember Andrews Yes, we respond to potholes based on complaint. And what we do is we we look at areas of the city that, that we can kind of group those complaints and pothole repair request together and we'll send a crew out and kind of work one area. So those three crews are now able to address different areas of the city in in fixing potholes. I know this is a concern of you. You brought up in one of our briefings and we don't have a CD six pothole track yet, but we're working on it. Thank you. And yeah, that that definitely would help, you know, if we could get, you know, the heat map, you know, the areas that, you know, where the most potholes report come from. That would be great. I think it'd be a great idea there. And now that I'm, you know, asking about the heat map, can we also get a map of graffiti and illegal dumping and item and that report that we'd like to, you know, get something on that also, if that would be possible? I'll look into that. I'm not sure if we have it available on GRC, but if we do, we can certainly get you a map. Thank you very much. And the next item is also on. I understand that the ADA access ramps were selected by report by one ADA coordinator, you know, upon complaints of people with accessible issues. And we are aiming to serve 200 additional ramps. Can we have a conversation on how we can be more inclusive and in approach, in approving and denying of, you know, resurfacing these ramps? Yes. Thanks for bringing that up. I think you're you're familiar with the city settlement for creating more accessibility. And one of the priorities in that settlement is to look at any missing curb ramps. This year, we anticipate completing roughly 720 to 750 brand new curb ramps. We anticipate achieving a similar number next year. The city is in the process of doing a self-assessment and really what that means is that we're looking at all of our sidewalks, all of our missing curb ramps and any existing curb ramps that may be built and that are not compliant with standards. So that report should be done January of 19, and we'll be bringing that to council. And from that report, we will be able to share kind of your idea, which is a heat map showing where those concentrated areas of the worst sidewalk concerns exist. Oh, thank you very much. You know, in reading something very interesting in the report, performance measures that I think we should really highlight as a city, the goal for each residents not to just, you know, dispose of more than £7.6 of trash per day is amazing. You know, we can work on, you know, a campaign to help our landfill. It would be great. So I show that, especially when we're picking up 17,000 mattresses. Thank you. Thank you again. You know, I'm really glad to see that. And the some of the changes that we are, you know, postponing to replace, you know, the council can I we call it constructive service with actual staff. And I appreciate when we keep our work in-house because the people we have working for us actually knows our city and may, you know, live in it. And therefore, I think we have a better outcome. And I think that's a great idea because I love the idea when people who work here get a chance and the people who live here get a chance to work here. And I think that's a great idea. So thank you guys very much for looking into that. And I do have one more question for the Environmental Service people about how many phone calls that the refuge hotline received in a day. I I'm sure right now I don't want you to tell me I. Don't have the daily figures. But we do know we received about 85,000 requests this year and roughly 15,000 of those came over Golden Beach. So roughly 70,000 calls requested annually. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Also for the public service so we can finish. You know, replacing the lighting at the neck of the park, you know, to lay it, it would really be a great idea. So would you please look into that? And yes, MacArthur Park is on the list of the parks remaining for LED conversion, and that should happen in 19. Thank you very much. And next, I'd like to go to Parks. You know, Mr. Toronto, I think I thank you for you are considering the nature of employees, you know, which I think everyone is kind of, you know, consider about that because most of our free standing restrooms in the six requires extra eyes at night time as they do time as they do in park parks, like the longest one we call it tot lot and a park and Chick fil A would really benefit from an employee's that these you know managing these fields urgent that the restrooms everyone is speaking about the night restrooms and I'm sure everyone in this day says if they have the denied restrooms, they are having a problem with them. So having that extra person and monitoring it, I think would be a great idea and it really help our parks. And also, you know, and I'm hoping this new bill for partnership and community engagement, you know, works on reaching out to everyone in the city, including residents. Those who primarily in with the primary language may not be in English. And that works on bring in, you know, pride in year because we are a city that with many people to work to work, to want to work with it. So, you know, and I have one more question about the BSA program funding. And this is going directly to the Parks Department, or is this for a nonprofit organization to run the BSA program or out of the park? Directly to the Parks Recreation Marine Department. Thank you. And one last thing if we can bring back I know this is one of my staff's ideas and I thought it's a good idea, too, because everyone loves to work out and because when we call it bring back the track in youth sports, that would be great because because really it's a showcase esthetic field. You know, the new feel I have over them, I don't think many of the individuals had a chance to go and see that wonderful $11 million feel. You know, and I know sometimes you said, oh, boy, you know, we don't have all weather turf there, but it's really good for the kids because for soccer, it is fantastic . The track is fantastic. We have lights, you know, almost up to 12:00 at night. So you really want to stay in shape, go to Celtic field because it will be fantastic for everyone. And with that, I'd like to move over to development services. And the first question I have is, under the 18 accomplishments for this department, I am very proud to see many of the projects in this next district highlighted. And we have Habitat for Humanity, the L.A. Housing, Clifford Deer, among other accomplishments. You know, I want to ask about 80% rate of the closing code enforcement, you know, cases that is published are these cases that are actually closed because there has been, you know, corrective action or are they considered closed because an inspector went out? They're actually considered clothes and that's 80% that are close within that that 120 day time period. So, yes, that is actually closed and meaning that the issue is resolved. Thank you. And then there's also in this budget, I do not you know, I do not see any recommendations to upgrade. And it'll be called system system. You know, at least half of the time that my staff wants to report something on this website, the site is either is run. It runs into some sort of glitch. And this is the system we really need to upgrade our or is sometimes, you know, that we can, you know, work towards addressing it. So that's something I really wish you guys to take the time to look at. You know that if you had a chance to. And another thing, I really would be pleased to get somewhat some sort of breakdown of the number of, you know, property inspectors under the program in each district. And if you guys had a chance, I'd like to be able to get that if it's possible. You know, I'm trying to keep my remarks brief across this department, but I really hope that with all of these new employees, we're going to be adding to decrease waiting time. We also take a look at how many time applicants can come back to this revision Army. If we can work towards the consolidation of these processes and applications. I know a lot of the individuals who go out and looking for applications and going out looking for jobs. The process seems very, very long and I wish we would get to kind of be a little more user friendly, you know, with these jobs to go after people looking for applications. So I want to thank both of you, all three of you, these individuals for the service, if you work with me and please continue to work with all of us. Thank you guys again for the great job you're doing. Thank you, Vice Mayor Councilmember Cipriano. Thank you. You know, with the number of questions we've heard tonight, you would think that we never speak. But actually we have our my office has monthly briefings, so I exchange emails with Linda today. We met yesterday for our briefing. Craig Beck and I met last Monday and Ronaldo and I had a ribbon cutting last week. So our discussions tend to be rather micro in nature when we do have our briefing. So I'll keep everything macro tonight. And my first question is for Craig back, because the department has evolved so much just since you've taken over. We have more funding. We're doing more studies. Has anything philosophically changed? And I apologize for blindsiding you with this, but I don't think I've ever asked you this before. In your approach to selection of streets for paving and that type of thing, is it more of a challenge because you have a greater volume of work to do ? No, I. Councilmember Super. Thank you for the question. I think it really goes back to strategic planning efforts, and I think this council has been very supportive of going in that direction. A good example of that is our pavement management plan. So we come to this council, we present our pavement manager plan, and within that plan it makes recommendations of where to invest the dollars that you have in your streets. And I think our approach initially was to focus on those streets that were in good condition and put slurry out to ensure that they stayed in good condition . So I heard an interesting analogy the other day, which is if you if you were in the delivery business and you had ten vehicles and three needed brand new engines and seven only needed oil changes, you would spend the money on doing oil changes before you would repair those engines. And so we're taking a similar investment strategy where we're stretching our dollars and impacting as many streets as we can before we have to invest significant, significant amounts to actually repair streets, meaning we have to dig them up down to the base and repair the base and then build them back up. So we are now starting to pick those up and 18 and we have some more of those on the books in 19 and you're going to start seeing that shift a little bit. But we really do rely on our payment management plan and other strategic plans to help us make those kind of decisions. Okay, I know you've said this a lot, but it seems like someone there's always someone who doesn't get the message that this is a scientific approach and it's the most efficient way to pay for our slurry streets. All right. Thank you. The other thing I wanted to mention to that I have mentioned to you before is that tree trimming. We have a lot of palm trees in our district and they're on major transportation corridors. So our council offices has offered to come up with the funding so we can do that. I think palm trees are just not in the same cycle as as other trees. So if we can do that this year, we would like to do that again before the rainy season starts. Let's hope we have a rainy season, I guess. And to for development services to Linda Tatum I think the strength. If your department really lies in flexibility or adaptability or a can do attitude, I think that is really key. So thank you for your efforts in that area. And I just have one example here. I won't mention it specifically, but it's in the presentation and that's a business on the Anaheim corridor. And that was dead on arrival when that was first mentioned to my office. And to see the complete 180 where it appears as something you're proud of in this presentation, just really speaks to that ability to adapt and see what the investor or property owner wants to do. And so thank you for the efforts there. And to Director Mallette, I think all three of the partners here deal with ADA issues. And first of all, you've done a lot in your first few months, but for my office you did a lot in your first two weeks and you brought that project to fruition. We mentioned it in our newsletter last week, so thank you for that. And I think it has somewhat to do with your background. So if you could tell us about your very background at ADA issues also. I was fortunate that I was the city of sending its first ADA coordinator back in 1990 when the Act was passed the Civil Rights Act. Well, thank you. I hope we can go to the well once in a while to get your expertize on these things, because I think just that that background and philosophy can help a lot. I think that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Got to remember. Let me go to Councilwoman Gonzalez and then I'll make some comment and then we'll go back to some folks that they want to go against. Let me let me go to Councilman Gonzalez first. So first and foremost, thank you so much to all of our department heads for presenting. I think this is a really amazing project. First, I'll go to Trace Back in Public Park. I first want to say thank you, Craig, and your team Environmental Services. You took on the expanded polystyrene ordinance and I appreciate the inclusion as an administrative and I at the ordinance you implemented the choose to be campaign very quickly and it just showed a commitment to sustainability. Just wanted to thank you for that very much. Quick question for you in regards to streets of England, Long Beach, I know we had the 18 optimization study for BP and now we have the FAA 19 supervisor of reef operations proposed. How do you see the two budget elements functioning together for better efficiency? And they had issues of the beach and believe in straight people. So how do you see them sort of making our our efficiency better? Councilmember Gonzales, hello. Yes, I think the mentioning the street sweeping optimization study is important. We really have worked to reduce our street sweeping times and we focused initially in our most parking impacted communities, shifting when we when our start and ending times were. And we look to continue that as we move forward. We still do have some streets where there's conflict of trash collection days on street sweeping days. And we certainly appreciate that. That is an inefficient way to do business and we're working to eliminate all those conflicts. When you look at the oversight of that operation, it is street sweeping and it is also the clean team. So there's a lot of work that's generated there. And adding a supervisor position will not only help us be more efficient on our clean time operation, but will also help us manage some of our street sweeping challenges as well. So I do see this as a as a valuable position, and I think it'll help in both ways. Great. Thank you very much. And then the last question for you, Craig, was you just mentioned it briefly. I know that there is an increased workload for public works, and we completely understand that, you know, tons of development in downtown, which is great. But you mentioned, you know, increased cost, but that's sort of out of the market issue. Are there are are we seeing a specific, you know, a large increase in cost that would now be a hindrance to projects or delay in projects? Well, I think if you look at the presentation and you look at some of the bid pricing we're getting, what what seems to be happening is that the subcontractors have a lot of demand and they're able to to correspondingly charge higher prices. And our general contractors who are bidding on many of our projects are sometimes having challenges, having are their subcontractors who bid with them, hold their price for an extended amount of time. And so I think one of the goals internally that we're going to be working on is how do we shorten the time frame from bid opening to council approval and notice to proceed? And if we can do that, I think it will certainly help some of those challenges that we're seeing in our bid process. But additionally, just right now, construction pricing is at a premium. And so we're having to, as I mentioned, either having to reduce scope or identify additional funds to address the initial scope to be able to deliver the project. Thank you so much. And I just appreciate you providing that context because, you know, we do get out a lot about delays. And so we appreciate that. But thank you very much for that. Both which goes to art and also. Okay? Yes. So I just want to say thank you to our party in both Iraq and in part because the interim director for some time and their commitment to private equity, which is a huge initiative of our office, but really is for the betterment of the city. And we can definitely see a difference in programing and activity with are currently seeing and we look forward to the budget proposal that will appreciate that the community engagement partnership we I absolutely love that. I think relative to the discussion that many of my colleagues were talking about with the with opportunity funds from and how that would work together, do you envision that community partnership engagement person running point on that? If we are if we were to approve the $200,000 for the youth fund, that person being the one out that would do that. How would you envision that happening? No, I think I believe that that still needs to be determined. The process. I'm not envisioning the the new bureau manager having lead point. I think there needs to be further discussion on exactly the approach. Okay. Got it. And so I would just say, you know, as much as I mentioned, I think other cities have invested quite a bit more than $200,000 was definitely a start. And I think, you know, relative to what we talked about with Park Equity and just a lot of the programs that are need in Parks and Recreation , I think that is a wonderful initiative to improve. So just wanted to leave that comment. But switching gears, I know there's been a large focus on being of programing. Are we looking at more programing? I mean, we have done some pilot programs in the past, and I don't know if this would be made with a new language helping the aging center, how that little worked out. I'm just curious as to what that would look like. Let me call on staff that might have more knowledge about the scene. I think the question is about the the continuation of the senior meal program. Yes. Yeah. So I'm I'm calling on our Community Recreation Bureau manager to help me with this question. Thank you. Guardian Council. Currently, we have two providers that support our senior meal program. We partner with HCA that has our meal program at our a few of our sites, and then a recent partnership with the women empowering arm to provide meals at Cesar Chavez as well as Silverado Park. And we both continue with that because what I was going to be, I was under the impression that if those programs were pilot, so I would just continue with the proposed financing budget. I mean, as this program is planned to continue throughout the new fiscal year. Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. Wonderful. Well, I just want to say thank you to our park staff. And again, you and new director head up. I think he's made incredible progress just in the short time you've been here at the ski resort. Thank you very much for your words. And then I will switch gears to development services, Linda. I just want to say thank you for the prosecutor option. I think this is truly a huge, intangible, historic neighborhoods and blighted unit, especially in downtown neighborhoods, without even looking and calling for their service is wonderful. But what type of major issues currently do you project that this prosecutor will be handling? As we talked about earlier, I think probably that the nuisance cases would be the one of the first priorities. I I'm not envisioning that we would use them for the health and safety cases just because those we expect a pretty quick turnaround. So I would say that the nuisance cases and probably or likely some of the the prep cases as well, but we will try to assess kind of the effectiveness and just look at kind of where where he's most needed. Okay. And I would just say that and you know, we had our budget meeting last night in the first District and I remember and had mentioned that ten years ago, you know, we had asked for a, you know, may or may not need, but it possibly could is that we have a link in our Building Services website sort of buried in the website, but it has the ability to share. A few of the property owners in our city have been over 120 days. And I think as we're adding more resources for port enforcement, especially with proper cut off material and opportunity that we look at, perhaps highlighting that link a little bit more if it should marry with the square. And that's something we think that could be done. Yes, I think we can take a look at that. Okay, great. Because I think that would be very beneficial for us. Just the whole comprehensive discussion about bettering our neighbor, helping and mitigating blight. I think you and then add a couple more questions relative to the phasing accomplishment you mentioned over 13,000 cases have been eradicated within 180% of them have been eradicated. And we have more details on how some of the grant has some haven't been closed earlier than 120 days. And do we know how many of them have been critical, like quality, quality of life issues? Unfortunately, that's one of the issues I was speaking to earlier in terms of the the lack of the ability of our current database to really get a really good handle on the the types of complaints. So that's something that we're going to be exploring further so that we can get more robust reporting out of the out of our data system in terms of the types of projects that we are, that the types of citations so that we can report out on those and know where we need to really focus our energies and efforts. So in terms of your question specifically about the whether or not there are some close within less than the 120 days ? Yes, there are some. That is just the outside. And we're pointing out that that 80% closure is within that time period. But some may be as quick as a week and some may be up to the full 120 days. Okay. And I know we talked about the technology and is it the Hanson software? I remember that it was a year ago or two years ago, we talked about updating the software. Is this for the Hanson software? Yes. I think it's now been rebranded and it's called in four, but in four enhance and they're one in the same. And apparently we are in the process of taking a look at getting the newer version of that system. Okay. Great. Wonderful. I'm looking forward to seeing those improvements and I hope that I can hear that earlier. But thank you very much. And I just thank all three of your your department for all of the continued work that you've been doing to make our city better. So thank you all very much. Thank you, Councilwoman. Just a couple just comments on the presentations in the departments. I want to just start by congratulating all three departments I think have done a great job with with the staff putting the budget together just for for public works. I want to just thank you. You know, Mr. Beck, you and your team, especially in light of measure, have just done just a great job of ensuring that our infrastructure plan and our five year infrastructure plan for public buildings and streets and roads is moving forward. And we're now through a little over a full year of implementation of that plan, and we're on track. Projects are being completed on time, and I just really appreciate you and your team for doing that. And so I absolutely support the additional resources to manage the additional infrastructure work. And I just want to echo I know you've heard me say this to you privately many times, but Councilwoman Pryce mentioned the issues around streets and the way that we will repair the street and oftentimes not ensure that it is left in the condition that it was found. This continues to be an issue. And so we just really need to tighten that process up so that our streets are left in the in as good or better condition when the work happens. I want to again congratulate the team on almost completing the LED light process, which is almost done, which I think is really, really fantastic . And and I think overall, I think all the work that's happening over there is really great to just the Parks Department, the two areas that I want to lift up as well. One is obviously very supportive and I've been working with partners of Parks and the team there to ensure that there's funding for there to be some support for leadership there for the next few years and to ensure a smooth process. I'm really happy that that is implemented in the budget and I want to thank the Parks Department for partnering with that great group of folks there, including all the wonderful volunteers that do that work in in parks. I wanted to also just point out two things. The first is there was some conversation about the the youth fund and the dollars there. I mentioned before, it was intentionally we didn't put a lot of detail as far as how it would be spent or the process, because we thought that the staff, along with the council and the community would have an opportunity to have that discussion. And so the resources are there. But as far as where they're spent and how they're spent, I think is really a conversation that is going to happen. And so there is no intention, I don't think right now as to how we do that or even where it lives . I think that it was an idea that was important to councilmembers as well as the community. And so we put some seed dollars there. And as far as how that's spent and the process, we put participatory budgeting just as a nod to a community process. But it really can be whatever the council wants it to be. And so I think that's I wanted to just to clarify that and then I wanted to also note that I do think an area in retrospect or and I'm not sure if it's possible in this year's budget, I know that Councilman Mongo and Councilwoman Pricer have discussed this as well, but we do need to find some opportunities to increase the senior programing that we have. And I think already there's some great work happening there. But I know that I think some council officers are funding some senior programs, which I think is great, but really that needs to be memorialized within the budget, I think, and within the Parks Department long term. And so I'd like to that burden should come off of the council offices and that should be funded through the Parks Department. And so I just want to if it's if we're able in this year's budget to find some resources to put some funding for these senior programs, I'd be supportive of that and I'm sure the PSC will look at that as well. And then I wanted to mention, let's see, on the parks works now, I think I think that's all those are. Just might just some general comment. I think the team is doing a really good job with these with these presentations. Councilman Price. Do I, I had actually cued up because I forgot to talk about senior programing and I agree. I think we definitely need to find a way to incorporate senior programing. I know Councilman Austin and I tried to initiate some senior programing in our Porter facility, which is the land bowling center. And it just it was a great idea, but we just needed a little bit more help and some resources. And we did use some divide by nine money to try to get it started. But I think that's a population that really is underserved. And, you know, our program was called the Mindful Aging Series. So we wanted to try to encourage folks to be active and. And have community and fellowship. And so if we can identify some funds and I know we'll really work on that. I think that's a great population for us to try to assist. I wanted to echo what Councilman Super and said, Linda, to to you. I don't think there's ever been a time where I've suggested something or asked a question of anyone on your team and they've said no, or even implied that the answer was going to be in the negative and not that we always want to hear what we want to hear. But they always start with, let me see what I can do. Let me look into it. Let me get back to you. And so I know Oscar and Chris and Kerry are here and your entire team is just you know, they always have a can do attitude. And if they really can't do it, you get to the point where you totally trust them because the you know, they've tried every which way. And if they really can't do it, you they have a lot of credibility. So that's something that I that councilman super now pointed out that I wanted to highlight. And to our PRM director, I, I really hope you didn't think that was a grilling on my part. That was what we call in my industry a very smooth, direct examination. It was not a cross-examination. So I know. Gathering wrongness that I. Grilled you, but that was like a friendly. But the question that I had and I just really want to echo what my colleague, Councilman Richardson, said. I think the Community Engagement and Partnership Program is a really great program. I do. And I would like us to try as a city to find ways to find ways to fund it citywide, because I share the same concern, and that's why I brought it up. You know, we're legally restricted on where we can spend money that's allocated to a particular geographic area. And and frankly, I although we would appreciate having those additional resources in the second and third district, I think Councilman Council person council member Pierson I, I and I won't speak for her, but I can say that I think there's a lot of other areas where we could really see that Tidelands operating money use, such as in areas of beach maintenance. We've asked for more trash cans there, so perhaps purchasing more trash cans so that the Tidelands operation budget can help empty those trash cans. You know, maybe that's an area where we can put some of that money because we don't have as many partnerships and community groups along the very limited area south of Ocean Boulevard to participate and engage in community partnerships. And those partners that we have south of Ocean Boulevard in large part are already established partnerships. We don't need to be giving them any money to engage with us. Aquatics, capital, for example. They're very engaged. Friends of Colorado Lagoon. They're very engaged. These are areas that fall within Tidelands that we would be looking to partner with where they don't need a funding source. So rather than trying to create the position by piecing together money from different departments where we have restrictions on how that money can be spent, I'd rather try to find a way to fund the program because I applaud it and I think it's great. And I it's very innovative. I think we should, as the city, try to find ways to fund it wholly and not from a limited use fund. So with that, thank you very much. Again. Thank you very much, Councilwoman Mongo. Thank you. I wanted to make some clarifying questions to development services after hearing some of the comments of my colleagues. One of the things that I think we talked about a few weeks ago was some of our our 99 are bad landlords. And I know that one of the comments made was that inspections are only done on a currently every five year basis. But it's my understanding that all apartment owners are paying the fee on an annual basis. Is that accurate? That's correct. Okay. And then that the cycle of inspection, if there are violator, are they moved up the list so that they would be inspected more frequently than the five? If they are and if they are currently violating, yes, they would be moved up the list. So I think that that's what we talked about with the council because I don't want the community to think that bad landlords only get inspected every five years. It's the good landlords that have passed inspections. They get inspected every five years and that don't have complaints. Though if a complaint came in, they of course would be moved up the list, but that our bad landlords are on a more often rotation and the number of bad landlords as they become good landlords or sell their properties, which we've seen a lot of as well that they. Really consume the majority share of the resources of the program, because the goal really is to get to a place where everyone is living in a healthy and happy environment. So I really appreciate that. And then I also wanted to make a further comment about our Be Safe program and our our senior programs. I know that it's a great program. There's not a lot of talk about it this year because the funding was folded in. And I think that it takes some attention to remind ourselves what a solid program it is and how great it's been for the community, but also that our senior programs are crucial and that we don't currently have our own area agency on aging department, but that the C one funds, the C two funds, the activity funds, the case management funds that come down from the state really aren't being funneled into our department. And I know that I'm pretty sure this is the third year in a row that I've mentioned that we really need to work on drawing down those funds from the county better so that we are getting a larger share of it to fund some of these programs, including senior fitness and other things. But in the meantime, we are going to have to find some general fund money because a lot of our our council offices have been either directly providing the services or funding it through one times, which has been pieced together. So thank you very much. I think all of you are doing a great job. Many of you know, you're my my three go to departments because we have so many public works needs and 70% of the parks in the district. So we really appreciate all that. All three of you do. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilmember Pierce. Yes. I just wanted to take a moment to echo the sentiments of Councilmember Price. I think having the resources citywide would be great. I know we already had a Tidelands meeting today where we talked about how much we want to see those improvements. I fully support the idea, you know, how much I'm in love with big belly trash cans, whatever option it is, and we can put some branding in the little windows on them about our polystyrene ban and creative ways and our new branding that public works just came out with. So wherever we can see some money used for, that would be awesome. Thank you. And I do want to point out that we are already taking we're not waiting for the budget cycle. We're looking at putting those out, both pig belly or the the other equivalent as well, and as well as trash cans and others along the beach. So we are actively putting those out because we are seeing additional, you know, more people coming to the beach, which is a great thing. And unfortunately, they're not cleaning up after themselves. So both are putting out more opportunities to dispose and then also having our maintenance staff go by and make sure that those are clean. Thank you. And I just had a remembering from our polystyrene conversation. I recall there was some conversations around a P3 with maybe Dart or somebody like that and that we were looking at trying to use some some funds from some nonprofits, not nonprofits from some of those corporations to be able to fund more of these trash cans . So maybe we could look back at those minutes and notes and see what we can come back with. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Well, that concludes questions for the first three parts of this first hearing. So now we go to the second half of the budget hearing, which is going to be library services and the health department. And then we will do questions and then we have the public comment for the hearing. For just for the budget hearing. It's going to be a late night tonight, if you like, Nathan. Walter, you are not here. I can go back to dinner. That's true, too. Okay. Let me see if we can, Mr. America, if we can go on to the next part of the budget presentation. Yes. Well, we have two more departments to hear from. One is library services and the other is Health and Human Services. So we will start with library services and our director, Glenda Williams. Good evening, Honorable Mayor Garcia and members of City Council. Thank you for the opportunity to present to you the proposed FBI 19 budget for the Department of Library Services. We are proud to partner with our family city departments as part of the public safety continuing. And what is our role? Well, according to our police department, there are three sites for public safety prevention, intervention and suppression. So the library is prevention. You've heard that there is a correlation between literacy and crime, but it bears repeating. Again, many studies have shown that 85% of youth in juvenile hall cannot read above a third grade level. 85% are functionally illiterate. And here's another stat. It is estimated that two thirds of the children that cannot read by the fourth grade will either go to jail or be on welfare. And when I've talked to kids about their dreams or what they want to do when they grow up, not one child has said, I want to go to jail. Well, I can't wait to get on welfare. And I'm hopeful that you haven't heard this either. But the good news is that children and access to books perform better in school and have improved math scores. It's true. Kids who read succeed. Studies also show that 60% of inmates are illiterate once they are released. 70% will return to prison if they do not become literate. So you see, stats show that a small investment in literacy through library resources can a huge result yield huge results and help keep our city safe. Okay, good. This slide reflects our core services. The Long Beach Public Library is committed to meeting the learning and information needs of our culturally diverse and dynamic population. From babies and children to adults and seniors, we offer a wide selection of resources and materials representing all points of view. We also provide free computers, free Internet and free Wi-Fi access, but help address the digital divide in our city. More than ever, people need to be connected just to complete a simple task as a normal part of their daily lives. Additionally, additionally, the library also utilizes specialized technology to provide information to individuals and families with special needs. We have 12 public libraries conveniently located throughout the city to serve our community. For some accomplishments the Veterans Resource Center launched this summer at Maine Library. This public space is equipped with a dedicated computer for veteran resources, private study rooms and a collection of materials to assist veterans and their families, including information on veterans benefits. Did you know that a high school dropout costs about $300,000 over their lifetime, and most of that is borne at the local level. Our accredited career online high school launched in 2016, and to date, 34 people have graduated with their high school diploma. Not a GED and a career certificate. There's free services made possible by the California State Library and the Library Foundation. So we're all about literacy. And two new programs highlight this passion. Fantasy Cantos is a bilingual storytime event held monthly at main library and at different library branches. Families with children ages 2 to 5 are invited to explore books, songs and finger plays in English and Spanish. This teaches English speaking families a basic introduction to the Spanish language and to other cultures. While Spanish speakers get to socialize and interact with peers in their native language while practicing early literacy skills, we launched an early literacy initiative this year. Dove into reading. It provides incentives and challenges parents to read 1000 books with their child before kindergarten to get them ready for school and ready to learn. Reading together helps children develop those crucial early literacy skills. Some technology changes that will improve our Wi-Fi include updated access points and network equipment that will provide more reliable service. You may also have noticed that you no longer need your library card to access our wi fi. Just agree to the terms of use and your online. Last but not least, we're really excited about a new platform for our digital archive, which is Long Beach history. It's easier to use and you can clearly see which collection you are reviewing. All the photo, yearbook and city directory collections are available in one place with a single search box for the entire archive. Suggested subject headings are readily available with the number of relevant results. Check it out at LPL dot org. Long Beach Public Library is heavily used. We have about 4300 daily visits for all 12 libraries each year. More than half of our population is a card carrying member, and it has used about 5 million resources. Wi-Fi usage averages about 14,000 a month. E-book and audiobook downloads are almost 12,000 monthly. Just about 70,000 searches a month are made on the popular Go BPL mobile app. We have 15,000 social media followers and we've answered almost 300 requests for information. The proposed library budget is about 14.8 million, 94% of which is from the general fund and includes 428 full time equivalents, which is about 177 employees for 12 library sites and grant funds, representing about 5% are provided mainly by the Long Beach Public Library Foundation, which funds all of our family learning centers. The studio at the main library and Michelle Obama library are mobile studio and other initiatives. We would not be able to provide these critical services without their support and assistance. Our most notable proposed change includes a restructuring not expanding, not enhancing, not reducing the current library schedule. So right now, our libraries operate five days a week, Tuesday through Saturday. And four sites are open half a day on Sundays with one time funds. All libraries are closed on Mondays. In response to public demand, the library proposes moving half the libraries to a Sunday through Thursday schedule, retaining the other six libraries on the current Tuesday through Saturday schedule. So a library will be open, accessible every day of the week. This proposed schedule, as indicated on the slide, was developed using a number of metrics, including accessibility, library materials, checked out, attendance, computer usage events, programs, classes, rentals of meeting rooms by community groups. Geography was taken into account, and council districts with two libraries were placed on opposing schedules. Next, regarding technology enhancements. I'm really excited to share that the new library website is anticipated to go live by the end of this calendar year. It will be robust feature to an intuitive interface and a refreshed looks. Look, plans are also moving forward to connect the last library branch directly to main library with fiber, which will improve internet reliability. Lastly, during the last year, quite a few measure eight facility improvements have been completed and include restrooms. And this is extremely important. Lighting, painting and parking lot repaving. Current projects include hearing loops and circulation. Desk and roof repairs are anticipated. As for challenges, we have aging facilities. The average age of nine libraries is 61 years old. And while our facilities and public works staff are extremely responsive, the aging libraries require require a lot of attention in order to remain safe facilities for the public and staff. Again, thankfully, Measure eight has made it possible to find much of the required facility improvements. Another library challenge has been ensuring the public's and staff safety. Unfortunately, we've seen a steady increase in the number of verbal and physical incidents and assaults occurring in the libraries during this past year. We've worked closely with the Police Disaster Preparedness and Health and Human Services departments who I want to publicly thank for connecting staff to resources , being responsive and training staff on a number of safety related topics so staff can handle these incidents as they occur. Now on to better things library opportunities. We are gearing up for a big move to the new main library anticipated to open next summer. Yes, you can clap. We couldn't be more excited about this. It will be a world class library, not only for downtown residents, but for the entire city. In addition, the long awaited point of sale multi-phase project will finally start. Being implemented in fiscal year 2019, allowing patrons to pay library fees and fines. Also, thanks to library services and technology at Grant from the California State Library, which is before you tonight for approval, the Mark Twain Library will provide enhanced access to its adult and children's book collection by making titles searchable with the combined script and the library's online catalog. This project increases access to library resources for the city's large Cambodian community and helps us to better align with the city's language access policy. Last but not least, there is an opportunity to increase our one gig internet bandwidth to ten gigs through assistance from the California State Library. And this will really come in handy once we open our new main library next year. As with the Michelle Obama library, we expect usage to skyrocket once the new building opens. In closing, it is a pleasure to work with the women and men of the Long Beach Public Library to improve the quality of life for our residents . Their dedication, passion and support allow us to assist our community in meeting their personal and educational goals, and we are honored to have this important role in our community. This concludes the presentation. I'm available for your questions. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is the Health and Human Services presentation. Yes, we will hear a presentation from Kelly Collopy, our director of Health and Human Services. Good evening, Honorable Mayor and City Council Members. Thank you for this opportunity to share the Department of Health and Human Services budget presentation. First, I'd like to give a big shout out to the Health and Human Services team. There are many who are here tonight. They're really a smart, passionate and fabulous group, and I am lucky every single day to get to spend time with them. I also want to thank our city departments and community partners as well as our community members, because I know without you we would not be able to do the work that we do. The Health and Human Services Department has been growing and expanding its services. We work every day to improve the health and safety of people across our Long Beach communities. Our stand is that everyone in the city can reach their highest level of health and potential for successful life, regardless of their background and identity. All of our work focuses on this goal. We now offer 44 yes, 44 different programs, which is up from 30 just five years ago. And these are funded by over 100 grants supporting the health and wellness from pre-birth through end of life. We are a very diverse organization. I was told I only have 10 minutes. If I went through our 44 hour, we'd be here all night, so I'll spare you. However, I would like to highlight the role of the Health Department in the public safety continuum. The Department of Health and Human Services is a core public safety in our city, but often remains in the background. First, the Public Health Emergency Management Team often takes the lead with the Federal Department of Homeland Security and FBI, as well as state agencies and our city's public safety departments for planning to ensure we are prepared for large scale emergency events. The Health Department also participates in the unified command at large scale events such as Grand Prix and Pride festivities. The team is co-located in its mobile command center with the other public safety departments behind the scenes. In cases of large scale emergencies, Public Health Emergency Management coordinated. The opening of the shelter with Parks, Recreation and Marine. Environmental Health ensures the site is ready for habitation. Public health nurses and our EPI team assess all who are displaced and help address any medical needs. Our social workers provide mental health supports to ease the impacts of the trauma and homeless services helps find temporary housing. This work makes it possible to stand up emergency shelter and provide services before the Red Cross can arrive. And then we work with Red Cross once they can arrive. The Environmental Health Bureau coordinates the city's response to hazardous waste threats. The quality of life and heart teams in a very important piece of the homeless response. And I truly appreciate their new funding. But it is also important to recognize, as their successors rely on the homeless services division, strength in coordinating services and creating access to housing opportunities. We made the safe language partnerships and other violence prevention efforts and participate on high level county steering committees for mental health and alternatives to incarceration for both youth and adults. Environmental Health conducts over 7000 restaurant and water inspections each year to ensure our residents and visitors are safe in our restaurants and in our waters. We really are a public safety. Each year we provide over 350,000 free and very low cost health opportunities. These include clinical visits, health insurance enrollment, healthy, active, Long Beach events, work, public health, nursing, environmental health and much more. We really are everywhere. This year, we promoted social equity by by working closely with our city agencies and community members to develop policies such as Cannabis Equity, Long Beach Values Act, Economic Inclusion Group Blueprint. And we're working very closely with the parks to support Park Equity. In addition, we trained nearly 40 staff from seven departments and Authentic Community Engagement and trained 700 staff and stakeholders on health and racial equity. The Language Access Program saw a 22% increase in document translation and a 78% increase in oral interpretation requests for community meetings. They also trained 800 staff across the city on the language access kits and 600 on bilingual policy. We launched the first and became Youth Leadership Program and to strengthen families, we've had father friendly initiatives and improved family relationships for 360 families and our family preservation programs. Through initial health department efforts. We now have a behavioral health urgent crisis center in Long Beach that opened in the past month and allows for 2724 by seven access to mental health services in the city. In addition, through our partnerships with the county, we're bringing county supports through our attorneys to incarceration efforts currently underway at the jail . Public Health Emergency Management launched a veterinary disease reporting system designed and led the Academy to train members of the Health Department team in every response and implemented a 24 hour public health duty line for hospitals and emergency services teams. The AP Academy was highlighted as a best practice at a recent national health conference. We implemented the My Sister's Keeper View program to address human trafficking, hate crimes and community police relations. We vaccinated 800 high risk individuals twice to prevent the outbreak. We had zero cases. While other surrounding jurisdictions jurisdictions experienced outbreaks. We cleaned up 388 hazardous waste and wastewater spills. And finally, we officially launched two new focus areas, the one with the Long Beach Healthy Aging Center and the Early Childhood Strategic Plan. The Healthy Aging Center is currently seen as a model for how public health departments engage in a focus on senior services, although they are not funded to do so. The plan, developed with the feedback from nearly 20 focus groups and in partnership with our Early Childhood Education Committee, will be launched and presented to you in the next month or so. We also launched two new campaigns No More for HIV and STDs and Green Light lobby for unbiased cannabis education. The November campaign was in partnership with the Pasadena Design School. You've heard a lot about the efforts lately regarding homeless services. The city is doing so much. The Health Department is leading the way in homeless services for the city, both in accessing funding, leading inter-departmental coordination and providing services. We continue to bring in nearly $14 million in grants for prevention, outreach, social services, emergency shelter, rapid rehousing, bridge and permanent housing. In addition, Long Beach will receive over 9 million in state funding that goes only to continuum of care as part of the state funds. Without the Long Beach continuum of care, these funds would have gone directly to L.A. County. When we count the housing authority vouchers specifically for homelessness, the health department generates nearly $33 million in outside resources to address homelessness within the city of Long Beach. We have 688 people, which is a 42% increase over last year, including 198 veterans, which is 151% increase over last year. We also provided 13,000 linkages to needed services, and to date we've made 13 185 outreach contacts in our streets, in our parks, and under our bridges. Through the Housing Authority, we provided $60 million in rental assistance, 800 vouchers for veterans. This is an increase of 100 VASH vouchers this year for the Housing Authority. The Housing Authority also implemented the hip, otherwise known as the Homeless Incentive Program, to increase landlord willingness to rent to people experiencing homelessness by paying deposits, fees and damage claims. The Health Department is also leading in facilitating the mayor's everyone home loan beach task force. Our core strength and opportunity is the highly effective and coordinated services with our city departments, the dinner departmental team and with our partners in the community. The interdepartmental team is a national model for coordination. The members talk almost daily. We truly appreciate each what each partner brings to the table. The increases in funding through measure age in the state, homeless emergency aid program funds of 12.3 million will allow us the opportunity to open a year round shelter as well as provide some other essential services. Through an RFP process, we were awarded $3.4 million to provide tenant improvements to a building once it is purchased for the year round shelter. L.A. County will cover the operations through Measure H. Currently, the Everyone Home Line Beach Task Force is meeting and we look forward to the recommendations, including those focused on the interplay of low income housing and homeless prevention. Our budget is over $133 million with 414 FTE is this. We receive approximately 2% from the general fund and 87% from grants and outside sources. Last year you provided us an approximately $600,000 in one time and new funds we generated 1.2 million a new program resources. Just from those funds, we doubled your investment in our city's health last year. This year, we will receive 134,000 to move the Office of Equity from a grant funded program to a general fund structural position 255,001 time funding for the proactive homeless response and 80,001 time funding the Language Access Program. Our measure each allocation is increasing to $3.4 million this year, and our HIV funding will increase by $724,000 to support early intervention services. The 370,000 comes from three for trauma, comes from three different grant resources, and will allow us to move forward with our trauma informed efforts. And my Nan, My Sister's Keeper program received 306,000 to address human trafficking. Overall, our challenges stem from increasing needs in the community that are not covered by existing funding, such as our growing older adult population. You've already talked about additional resources for older adults. We'd like to ensure that we're having a conversation across all efforts here and increasing STD and HIV rates. In addition, marijuana facility inspections in responding to unsafe and unsanctioned sites will place pressure on an environmental health team. As mentioned earlier, there's been a significant increase in the demand for language access services. We continue to be primarily grant funded, which makes it difficult to maintain and strengthen our operational infrastructure. In addition, there are changing priorities at the federal level and we are finding that grants at all levels are more competitive and it is more difficult to access. Although we continue to bring additional resources for homeless services, they are specifically earmarked and won't cover many of the types of services are being requested and that those are the kinds of things such as prevention 24/7, 24 by seven, outreach and services. Much of the funding we get from HUD maintains current levels of occupied units, not expansions of capacity. So the need remains. Low income and homeless housing access, as well as access to behavioral health services, continue to be a challenge. And finally, we are experiencing a much higher expectation for rapid response in services that are difficult to meet with current resources and staffing. On average, we get about 140 calls a month or 33 per week for the homeless hotline, in addition to requests for response from other sources. But while the challenges exist, we continue to live in a space of opportunity and hope, and we're very excited about what's coming up for the department. These include major upgrades to our main health and north facilities. Our north facility is actually being closed down for the next year. While this is happening, we're shifting services to the Miller Family Health Education Center. These improvements to the north facility will create greater opportunity to bring services to North Lambic and opportunity. We see an opportunity to develop a sustainable funding source for vector control activities, particularly in the face of increased vector borne illness. Our ongoing work to strengthen the public health emergency response capabilities is bringing in training and resources to help support our preparedness. We are planning to implement one degree as our department information and referral system. Any community member will be able to look for services available in Long Beach. This is in partnership with L.A. County. A healthy aging center will provide opportunities for increased coordination and access of older adult services across the city. We continue to seek funding to expand the center early childhood strategic plan, focus at our city and our partners on the needs of the early child, and provides many opportunities for strengthening our focus on this important population. We continue to work more closely with our community members to learn from them and to work with them to design solutions for their communities. And finally, the opening of the Behavioral Health Urgent Crisis Center and other alternatives to incarceration will bring some much needed relief to members of our community and law enforcement as we have greater access to mental health services within our city. Thank you for the opportunity to share with you tonight. This concludes my report and I'm open questions. Thank you very much for that presentation. And again, both departments. Thank you. We do have all our council members here. It's time for our questions. So let me begin with Councilwoman Mongo. Thank you. I want to first start out by saying that the work that both of you ladies do with the very restricted resources is always impressive. I really appreciate having gotten to work a little bit more closely with the health department this year. Director Copley came out to community meetings and our community with over 75 standing water locations and the district is always very interested in vector and the risks. I think that one of the most reposted quotes from the director was related to how, even though a mosquito may have laid its larva and you empty out the water, when the water comes back, it dehydrates and can and cause a revitalization of that mosquito larva. And we've had quite an active group of individuals talking about that, neighbors who've really stepped up and started taking a greater ownership of the standing water and brushing it down to the next location. As many of you know, through public works to remove a standing water location costs thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to regrade the streets. And so Director Copley's outreach and information has been vital to those 75 locations and ensuring that we don't have those kinds of issues. So I'm thank you for that. The work that you're doing with seniors is always impressive and the 44 programs you have are quite impressive. And I just want to also give a special thanks to Allison in your head program. She's phenomenal and easy to work with and has really helped break down some barriers of misinformation that's been out in the community related to Section eight programs that came up during our process and some misinformation and confusion that was out in the community. So I appreciate all of you for all of that. I was hoping to ask a couple of quick questions about library. I am very excited for the restructuring, the schedule of the library. But while I've always been in favor of having libraries open seven days a week, I've really not been to out there at the front trying to push it too quickly. Because what I've also known about librarians is similar to our police officers, which is they're very hard to recruit positions and that we're competing in a market in L.A. County where multiple agencies all have shortages. So a couple of my questions are related to I'm looking at the list on slide 38 related to which libraries were chosen for Sunday through Thursday, which libraries were chosen for Tuesday through Saturday. Was there any consideration of any variance to those two schedules so that. And what input was brought together through either the community or the staff. I know that I haven't heard as much from the staff on this as I heard about Sunday library hours in their input into the process and how this was developed. Yes, Councilwoman Mango. So the schedule that was before you tonight, it was very important to for whatever schedule is chosen to have at least one weekend day, the staff can have off with their family and friends. So this was the only combination that we had landed on that would allow that, you know, work life balance is extremely important. I just wanted to make sure staff had at least that one day again with their family and friends. As far as staff input, you're correct. We are competing with other locations for library staff. That's absolutely true. But people that work in Long Beach really love Long Beach and they really love this community. So we've never had a shortage of staff attracting coming to Long Beach. It's just librarians. Do we have any programs where we are encouraging current library staff to gain additional education that allows them to qualify for the higher level positions in the library service? I know that I've seen some of those programs coming out for some of our competing agencies, and I know that we have limited resources when it comes to the education fund. So I was interested in those kind of opportunities for our stuff. That's an excellent question, Councilwoman Mongo. So there are training opportunities that come across from the state of California. We make it our business to make sure that staff are aware of those training opportunities for webinars, online courses and things like that. As far as funding, you're right, the city does not have the funds to support that. But we do have a couple of small scholarships that are being provided by our staff association that kind of help staff with some of those fees. Do we have any roving librarians that would be able to cover if an alternative schedule was made where a particular librarian, maybe lower in seniority, would cover multiple locations on a certain day so that certain libraries that, say are very, very popular. Maybe like a beach library and or one of the other high traffic libraries would be able to be open on both Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately, this budget does not support that. And so currently in the staff, all librarians are assigned to a specific location. That is correct. And if we wanted to go in that direction, we would take, oh, I lost my what? My budget book. But I'll look at Suzy's for a quick second. A full librarian's, fully loaded cost to add one additional position. And if you did have a position at that level added to your budget in the search process, would it be something that you think you'd be able to recruit in in the first year? Or is that a how long do you think it would take to staff up something like that? We would need to go through a recruitment process. I believe we do have a current eligible list for general librarians, so that's something we can potentially recruit from that list. If not, we can do another recruitment because of the process itself. It can move somewhat quickly. So that's something that we could definitely look into. But okay, we will keep that in mind and in our discussions. APAC next week when we go into more detail, I'm looking to page 340, but if I can work with Grace to find out what those numbers are, but for next week, I know that this is something we've all been really passionate about and figuring out how and when to be able to open some of these, even if not until next summer, but by next summer. For those more visited libraries, I know that the Michelle Obama Library, the Eldorado Library and the Bayshore Library and Main Downtown Library are some of those that are the four primaries that really hit those numbers. So thank you. I think you're doing an excellent job. I was listening to a book today on my library app because I digitally download constantly and I love how it automatically takes the book back on the day that it's due and you can read, check it out . I think I'm on a waitlist for like six books right now and I tell everyone, save $20 a month, cancel your audible subscription, use your library card in Long Beach and or the L.A. County Library. Because the Long Beach library card, if you're if a book is not available on Long Beach, I can just log right into the L.A. County Library and pull the book at the same time. So it's really an amazing thing. And then I will only go one step further to say that occasionally I have the opportunity to meet with city staff members on a one on one mentoring type of opportunity when they ask about educational and learning opportunities. And one of the things that I'm a big proponent of is logging into the library and using the free lobby app. I'm sorry, not letting the go. Linda app to take classes on Excel Word How to create a website, how to hang a shelf. I mean, there's literally a multitude of certified classes on the library website, and I'm a huge proponent of everything that's on there. I know I don't spend as much time in the library as though I was there with some of our park advocates last weekend checking out the cooling center. And it's just so great to see everyone at work. I don't usually say hi to the staff, I just watch from a distance. But you guys are all just such phenomenal people and I watch the care and love you have when you talk to the the youth and the seniors about their concerns and help them through the process. It's been amazing to see you guys work. So thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Price. Thank you. I echo a lot of the comments of Councilwoman Mongeau, so but I do have a couple of questions and comments. So for Glenda, for the libraries, you know, I'm a huge fan of the libraries and I will say I'm a little bit too. I like that we're restructuring it and making sundaes open throughout the city. And I know I heard you when you said it's not a rejection, but it sure feels like a rejection, because what happened is we started with five days at Bay Shore and then we use Divide by nine money to add a Sunday and now we're going back to five days. And Bayshore Library is located across the street from the beach. About eight weeks of that time, we closed down Bayshore so that people are riding their bikes and walking literally across the street from the beach. It's the most opportune time for people to walk across the street and at least experience the library. And I feel like closing a library on a Saturday that's still directly across from a beach that's welcoming thousands of youth and adults of all ages is a missed opportunity on behalf of the city. So I'm going to continue to talk with city management about that. I will tell you, when this restructuring plan was initially laid out, to me, it was not it was it was laid out as the it's a it's a very, you know, kind of general idea. We're going to talk about the details and how the details come into play later. This is just a proposal, and I feel like the details are kind of being laid out. And yet some of the major stakeholders, like the council members who have spent divide by nine money to invest in additional time, haven't been consulted on the days. If we really have to go down to five days, I'd want to look at the numbers and see if it makes sense to be open on a Saturday and a Sunday and close two days during the week, although I'd hate to do that. So I really want to continue to have that conversation and I hope we can continue to have it, because I think that's a very busy library. And I'll tell you what, I think it's most busy with an I don't know if the data supports this, but every time I go in there, the computers are fully utilized and there's there's often a waiting list. So I think there's a lot of residents who don't have Internet access at home, and they're going to go enjoy the beach. They're going to go across the street and use the library. I just think it's a missed opportunity for the city to close the doors of a public facility on the beach. When we live in a city that was just designated as having the most nice days of any other city in the. atIon to close a public facility directly across from the beach in a city like this, just to me doesn't make a whole lot of sense on a weekend. So I really want to talk about that and I want it to feel I know it's not technically a reduction, but I want it to feel less like a reduction , so I want to feel less rejected. So I'm hoping that we can have that conversation. But I want to thank you. Absolutely. All the librarians. I just I love going to the library. It's just really office. I feel like we need to do more to encourage people to come in to the libraries and invite people into the libraries. And I've talked with Director Beck about this. You know, to the extent that we can enhance the outside of our library facilities to make them welcoming and not so outdated, to make it enjoyable to go. And I love what we've done with Michelle Obama. I know I'm going to love what we've done with Maine. I support those investments are on as a city. I think if we can do that throughout the city, whether it's adding more windows or making the doors more, you know, enjoyable to walk into, whatever the case may be, I think we need to make our libraries more inviting, you know, pops of color, things like that, that make it enjoyable for people to actually want to walk into as opposed to an outdated facility. That's an area where I feel like we're a little bit behind the curve right now. So I know Director Beck is doing his best to identify funds for those facility improvements, but access to hours goes, you know, hand in glove to that. So thank you very much for everything. So for Director Collopy, thank you very much for your presentation. You. I echo what Councilmember Mango said. You do a tremendous amount of work with, you know, almost 100% grant funds and that should not go unnoticed. You really do do a lot with the very little general fund resources that you do have. And I thank you for that. I want to just start by saying and we value every member of your team, but my staff and I absolutely love with a capital L. Nelson Kerr, we love the man. He is an amazing individual. We have a lot of health and safety issues that come up in our district. Our residents are very engaged in identifying smells and sounds that are of concern to them. And and so we reach out to Nelson on a regular basis. And I am not exaggerating when I say the man responds, regardless of what time of day it is within minutes. I've never seen anything like it. And so I want to say thank you to him because frankly, I'm. Very. Impressed and jealous of the fact that he's able to do that. I think it's fantastic. So I just wanted to give him a shout out to him and his team. His entire team is really great, too. So, yes, thank you. Thank you. On the emergency aid program that you identified as the $12.3 million of one time funds that we're getting, could those you know, we received at the Bossy tonight, we did receive a memo from Councilman Richardson and one of the items that he had on there as potentially being funded, which I think is a great item . But I'm just wondering about the source is possible $50,000 and creating a local revenue option for affordable housing and improved prevention and response to homelessness in Long Beach. Could that $12.3 million, could that 50,000 come out of the 12.3 million? Or has that 12.3 million already been identified to the last penny in terms of how we want to use it? So that's going to be item 21 on our agenda tonight. We'll get a little bit into that about where the $50,000 potentially came from. Talk a little bit about the 12.3. The 12.3 has funding restrictions on it. It can be for service provision. It can't really be for planning. So it would depend on whether that's a planning effort, which it likely is to get additional funding sources so we can look at it as part of the 12.3, but it's probably planning money. So then that would be we are prohibited from using that money for planning. Okay. So you're aware of the $50,000. Yes. That will be part of what staff will talk about at item 21. Okay. So just so you know, we were just made aware of it a few minutes before we started the meeting, so I did not know that and I look forward to hearing that and where that money could come from for the Office of Equity, since we are going to be using general funds instead of grant dollars for that , is there first of all, is there a mission statement for the Office of Equity? And two, is there a plan of how that position is going to help the city through citywide efforts? Yeah, so the mission of the Office of Equity is to educate and support city staff and elected officials to advance equity and ensure that all Long Beach residents have what they need to thrive. And the way they're looking to accomplish that is to build and strengthen partnerships with other city departments and community advocates to advance policy and systems change across the city to make injustice visible through the use of data, storytelling, critical research and supporting internal reform across the city with the focus of building capacity to advance racial equity and social justice in all the programs, policies and services in the city. Okay. So how is it that. This office is going to be working through the diverse communities in the city to identify how to meet that mission statement in each of the diverse communities that we have? Because as you're talking, you know, making injustice visible, you know, for example, we had a, you know, a hate speech forum where we had a lot of speakers come and talk about that. And really, that would have been an awesome project to partner with the Office of Equity on. So are those kinds of things that you're anticipating or. But I think there are a number of different opportunities. So first of all, we are currently doing one what we're calling one Long Beach outreach. So we have reached out to each of your council districts to see where, you know, whether it's part of holding a special community meeting or are there community meetings already being held? And to be able to listen and engage with people about what are the key, sort of the key things and the key ways that you would describe what it looks like to thrive in Long Beach. From that, we will take those those indicators and then gather the data across the city to determine where those those data are being met and where we need to do some more work to be able to to sort of help people be at the same space. So I think what we're seeing now is there really are there's an incredible disparity in the outcomes across our city. And so where we see those disparities, how do we start to increase opportunity and access to allow for all people to thrive in the city? And I imagine that in addition to having community, because sometimes you'll have great showings at community meetings, other times you may not. I'm imagining that you're probably pulling data in terms of what stressors may be in individual communities and stressors that prevent people from succeeding. Yes. And so will that be is that part of the plan for the Office of Equity? So, you know, what are the things that are causing people to use drugs? What are the things that are causing them to not do well in school? And let's let's say if we're talking about youth, for example. Is that all part of the mission? And will that be will there be some sort of a plan once the outreach is done in terms of programmatic aspects of this position? Yeah. So that we don't feel that this that this position runs a lot of programs. I mean, the focus really is on policy and really sort of like looking at the policies that we are engaging in in our programs that are already existing or that people are planning across the city to determine where they're having the impact. You know, like a lot of the times we do, you know, when we're planning for things where we're thinking about what is our greatest positive impact. Sometimes we forget where things may not have a positive impact. And so it's really starting to identify as we're designing our policies, what are the ways to move people forward? And if it if that policy may cause harm unintentionally to to to somebody, then we would then look at how do we mitigate that to strengthen the policy for everybody. So I think it's an overall conversation. So I don't see it as a set of programs aside from training and other things, but more as as our capacity to move our city in an equity land as we design the work that we do. Okay, great. I mean, if there's any additional information that that can be provided in terms of the structure of what the position or the department would look like as we move forward, I think that would mean a lot. Yeah. Right now that right now what it is, it's it's the it's the de it's the, the manager for the position, the Language Access Program and the Human Human Relations Commission. And then we have a 40% time. It's the divided between the violence prevention program and equity to help support those efforts. That is the group that is currently the Office of Equity. That's currently that. Is that is currently in end of the additional resources become available start to expand and determine. So through various grants and other opportunities, we'll be looking to expand that capacity. Right now we do not have additional capacity. I get it. So but if in Fy19, if this were to be funded, it would be completely funded. It would be completely fund out. Of the general fund. It would we wouldn't be pulling from different grants now. Okay. Got it. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. You. Thank you. Council member Ringo. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank my colleagues and their comments regarding the library and the Human Health and Human Services. Let's start with the library and end up with the department that most I'm very familiar with later. Obviously, you're doing a great job with the library and we're just like you are. We are very excited about the great movie that we're going to be making into the very new library that's going to be built the next year. State of the art is going to be built next year. It's in the process, going to be finished next year to do a great ribbon cutting ceremony, has worried. That's what we're looking forward to. And I'm glad to see that there are things that I'm as you might recall, in 2015 and again in 2016, I put forward a amnesty program for four books, and it resulted in the first year in 4000 people participating that returned approximately 3200 items. And then the next year, in 2016, we had approximately 6000 participants and returned right around the same amount of books and coming to a savings of about the $500,000 of recovered libraries and fines. We didn't do anything in 2017. We thought that maybe that would have been enough to recover what the what the library had lost. Is there an update on that in terms of where are we now with the last items were a need to recover books that we need to put back into circulation. Certainly books that were lost or believed to be lost that can be recovered without having the wall, for lack of a better term. Perpetuity purpose. Taking these books and not returning them back is how we do it. And would that would it be something that we could look at again for 2018? I mean, 2019 excuse me. Councilmember Urunga. That is something that we can look at in the future. I don't have the stats for you tonight as far as what's outstanding with our system. That's something we can get back to you. And, you know, other than that, I have nothing really, but kudos to you and your staff in regards to the services that you provide, and especially for the expansion of the program that you're doing with the Internet and the hours of of availability for patrons to take advantage of the library services that are there. Moving over to Health and Human Services, as I mentioned earlier, I'm very familiar with this department having served there for a number of years. And I can say that it's been quite, quite a turnaround for the department. You are now the the go to department when it comes down to Human Services. Back in the day when I was there with the elimination of the video, which was the vehicle vehicle license, driver's fee, we lost tons of of money. The department was challenged in maintaining staff. I know, because I handled a lot of what you might call pink slips to staff because a lot of the programing was being eliminated . For example, the HIV program was cut back tremendously, almost eliminated. And I'm glad to see that it's making a revival and it's making it back in the Environmental Health Services. I know you guys are closer now, but you also were being challenged with with with your budget, especially when it came to vector control. And I know you had to cut back a lot of staff in that area and in fact, practically eliminate that whole division. But I see that it's still there. And I want to give you kudos as well for the work that you're doing with especially every year that you do with the West now. And the identification of of mosquitoes and especially the last one was it two years ago, we were challenged with a Zika virus that was well, everybody was was very actually, you know, fearful that it might make it this far north to to Long Beach. And you've been your staff has been very much aware of that and has been proactive in going on certain areas. And certainly, Susie brought up the excuse me, Councilmember Price brought up the issue of standing water. And that continues to be a challenge, especially when the when it comes to our public works department in terms of some alleys and and driveways that constantly have an issue with withstanding water, especially when it comes to when we have a. Fire hoses. Excuse me. Water hoses and sprinklers out in yards. And they keep them for for a while. And then it creates standing water and it creates an issue about an opportunity for mosquitoes to to either thrive or reawaken, as it was stated earlier. So I want to thank you for your work in that area. And if there's any one thing that I can that can say about the health department is that, you know, sometimes we have to make unpopular decisions. Sometimes we have to make decisions that are not politically or politically incorrect. But at the greatest part of it is that we try to do what's right. And I think that the opening and the support that the city got with the CHC last year made it appropriate that we would be able to open a facility that is not only regional but a great service to the community, especially for those at that who have mental health issues. And here's a center that they can go to to receive those services. So I want to thank Kelly and her staff for the support in making that happen. We're looking forward to being able to address a lot of what takes place out there in the in the homeless community especially. But it's a service that is open to everybody. And I don't think that that's being pushed forward enough that this center is not only for homeless or for for for to provide a service to public safety, fire police, but also for the public in general. If if someone is experiencing a major mental breakdown, here's a facility that they can go to and get an immediate service in terms of being able to address whatever that that issue is and get some guidance for any future needs in terms of that. So I want to thank you for for making that happen. And it was a great ribbon cutting that we had a few weeks ago for that. So I know that you continue the great work and I know that you have a great staff, especially when it comes down to great writing and your staff is very proactive and looking for those grant opportunities to submit grants and bring more funding to the to the health department. And I know a great portion. In fact, more than 70, more than 70%, if not more of your budget is grant funded and based on performance and so on. And obviously the success of the department is the fact that when you apply for these grants, you are successful and you get more. So keep up the good work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember Pierce. Yes. How are you guys doing hanging in there? Yeah. What about you guys? Pretty good. All right, I'll try to be quick. I love both of the departments. You guys are fantastic. Let's start with the library. I love our new library. I stare at it all the time. I have a tour coming up with Craig back, which I cannot wait for. I think a million visitors to our libraries is a great milestone and I know that we are constantly talking about how we use our library space to exchange information not only books, education with our youth. It was a place that I adored growing up as a kid. And so I have a couple of questions and then just a few. I love that you guys have tried to be creative with restructuring the libraries. And remind me currently right now, our main library does not have Monday or Sunday hours, correct? That is correct, Councilwoman. Monday or Sunday hours, we do not have. So I definitely support trying to find a way to do that. And I know that I expected that there was going to be some challenges in other districts and recognizing that each library is very different and service is a different community. But I think it's a great goal for a city of half a million people to have. Councilmember I do want to point out, just to be clear, the proposal to go to seven days for our branch library so our main libraries are most expensive one. It's something like, you know, three or four times the cost of it for one library. So that would stay on the five day schedule. But anywhere else around it and there are neighborhood ones that are close to it, would go to the seven day schedule. And when we talked last budget, we talked about when the new library would be open, that it was going to be our goal to have that be seven days. So we can certainly provide that number on what it would take to get up to that seven day number. So that can be. Something that we very strongly remember that from last year's budget. So I'm a hold on to that. Got it. The one piece, something exciting that I saw that I think New York is doing. I'm not sure if I sent this over to you, but they're doing a checkout system for ties and briefcase because they have so many people that come in to the library to do resume work and everything. And that there's this other layer about what does it take to get a job. And so I think something like that would be really exciting to maybe partner with a nonprofit or something that doesn't have to be part of this budget. But moving forward, I'm not sure. Have you guys explored a program like this yet and that that one in particular? No, isn't it? Sounds fun. Now, this phone interview. Yes, it sounds interesting. Yes. We owe for workforce of. Oh, workforce investment. Pay for it. Okay. So we're going to be next week, we're going to get workforce investment. We're going to make this happen. Maybe we can get enough so we can have a full pilot program on that. That would be great. I know that you mentioned in here challenges and opportunities, safety and mental health services. I know your staff are depending on the library is often our front line when dealing with some challenging conversations. And I know that Kelly is going to be talking a little bit when I ask her about some of the trauma informed peace. Have you guys worked together to have our library staff trained on trauma informed outreach counsel, woman peers? Yes, we did have the training by the health department. Oh, trauma. Yes. Great. That's awesome. And then on could you elaborate for us just the status of where we are in the timeline for the fundraising for the main library? Or is that just the friends of that works on that? So the Long Beach Public Library is the one that's working on the fundraising for the library. They have started their capital campaign right now, I believe is still in the silent phase and will be going into public phase on next year. And they can I think we have members here tonight that could provide some more information, if you like. Well, I definitely met with staff working on that and so very supportive, looking forward to identifying a part of my work at my previous nonprofit. For a decade we did a women's luncheon and several thousand people once a year and it was mainly focused on women authors. So we would have books, we would have writers for TV, for movies. And so I'm definitely looking forward to partnering and helping to raise some funds for our main library using some of those networks. So those of you guys that are doing that work, I look forward to working with you. Thank you. So just thank you very much for all the efforts. Fully support that and for our health departments. Give me a second. Let me make sure I got my right notes. And finally, Kelly, I don't think enough can be said about how much your team has taken on. And I think going what did you say, 30 to 44 programs is a phenomenal change and know that you can do it without your great staff. And I also want to recognize I know we have some health commissioners here and they last year and this year divided up and sat down with, I think, all the council members to talk about fully funding the health department as much as possible. So I don't know any other department or team that has a commission that really feels that involved enough and connected to their staff and their council. So just congratulations on how you're working with your commission, because I know that takes it's another part of the work that you do. Thank you. Absolutely. You put in your budget the trauma informed peace. Everyone knows how important that is to me. So if you could talk a little bit about what that outreach looks like, and I know that we have talked about at a minimum, what would trauma informed look like for the city to have a similar training like you provided for the library? Whether that's in my office, one of our challenges is sometimes we get lots of folks that call our office. We also have people at the field office and we come in interaction with people that have experienced trauma. And how is my team prepared to engage with those constituents is really important to me. So if you could just highlight maybe for the legislative team what that would look like, maybe what that would look like for h.r. And a minimum barebones first step. Yeah. So we've had previous funding that allowed for a one hour trauma informed training to 80 different groups. So a lot of people were trained through that work. In addition, there were some four hour trainings that were provided. The Health Department, the entire team was trained, as was Parks, Recreation and Marine. I don't know if your full team was trained. So the so we had done a lot of that training this next round of funding that we're receiving. So it's from the California Endowment and first five L.A. And what we're really looking to do is move forward on a trauma informed approach across the city, meaning that where anyone interacts with a city member overall, that that person won't understand what trauma looks like, how it presents, and how they could respond maybe differently in that work. And so there's a lot of work to be done there. So. The training is very helpful and it sort of it helps bring awareness for what we're really looking to do is to shift the system to a trauma informed system so that everyone within that organization understands trauma and addresses differently, but also that we're supporting people within our own departments who may be experiencing trauma. I know for the Health Department we have a lot of folks with life experience who are also service providers, and a lot of people walk in the door. Almost everybody who walks in our door has had some level of trauma. So we are working one within the health department, but we're working with other agencies and we would love to work with H.R. and Civil Service as well to think about what that could look like. Great. And then the budget that you've presented to us, is there enough funds there to make that happen or are you looking for additional funds to make that training accessible? Well, the training will be being developed along the way, moving forward and through other partnerships. So during that time, we would be able to provide to provide some training to expand beyond that into a to a broader conversation. Would we may need to look at additional resources, but we have to see how this process plays out. First grade so we can have that conversation down the road. I really appreciate that. I know Philadelphia is a trauma informed city, and I think that Long Beach already values that. And so to have that as part of our cultural shift is really critical. You have done great work on the HIV work. Where did my notes go? What? You mentioned that you all are. The funding will run out this year and that you're looking for additional funds to ensure that that continues. Right. So are some of the HIV work we're actually receiving additional funding. So the HIV specific work actually will be at approximately one point, probably about $1.7 million moving forward, plus an additional $600,000 for STD prevention that just came through the county. But we don't have funding for STDs. So when you're looking and they do, though, there's a lot so there's a lot of resource and focus still nationally around HIV. The funding has been cut significantly for us. It is so we currently have approximately $120,000 for STDs. Two of those funding sources will be gone by next by next summer, which will leave us with $47,000 for the remainder of the year to do any STD work. Which to funding sources are no longer coming through. It's state funding that will be coming through. But we definitely I mean, you guys have done a great job and we don't want to see our rolled back some of the efforts that you guys have made. So anything that we can do and start to identify those funds, I would definitely be extremely supportive of. I know that part of it is providing the services and part of it is also the outreach and communication. And so if we're going to spend time and money doing that outreach and education, I would hate for us not to have the resources there. So you have my full support in trying to identify those funds. Thank you. On language access, I think it's you know, I was part of the community coalition before I ever had a twinkle in my eye to run for council that supported the language access way back when. And I have in front of me a breakdown of a budget. I'm not sure if this has been run through you all. I know there's been lots of meetings. One of the items on here is around $9,000 for signage for city buildings. And I was curious if that was a number that you had as well. Actually, I haven't seen that number. Okay. Well, I have a list in front of me. I'm not going to spring it all on you, but I know that it's got some numbers, like 9000 for city buildings, and I know that that comes through public works and making sure that we've got translation there, that we have interpretation for all of our city meetings and translation of vital documents, community outreach and translation of our web pages, which are yet to be translated as well as the program coordinator. And so I know that this has been a topic that's been difficult each budget cycle. And I think as we, especially with the development of our civic center, everything that we're doing, it makes a lot of sense for us to support this as much as possible. My bigger question rather than each dollar amount, which I do support funding as much to were able, is the way that it comes through in our budget . So with I.T., with with technology services, right. If I need them to come out to my budget meeting and they're going to do set up PowerPoint and audio, there's a bucket of money in my budget, right? So then we have like an IMU and then it comes out of my budget for $100 for this community meeting. Now it goes there. Where are we with language access and structuring the budget that way so that if I need to use translation more than, say, Stacey's districts, then that can be adjusted in our budget appropriately. Currently the way it's funded is there's $80,000 is a bucket of money that is available for any request and that's how it's currently utilized. We have not looked at a different structure for that. When those resources are gone, then individual departments then follow up and provide their own services. And only add to that. So the way we did language access was basically to prevent the system that you that you talked about. That's how we fund most systems is departments need to come up with the money to do something different. So if they need a computer, they need to find that money in their budget. So with language access, we didn't want to put that burden on departments. We wanted to make sure that there was a pot of money that they could draw from in order to do language access. So it was a way to proactively provide some funding for language access. Departments always have the ability or anybody does to go beyond that and use their own funding if they had some available to do that. It's the the $80,000 that we've been setting aside for several years. And in this budget, with the mayor's recommendations that were doubled to 160, so would provide us a larger pot for us all to draw from so that it wouldn't come out of existing programing. I really like us and I understand the beginning of the pilot program. We've been trying to figure out is it is it staying in each budget cycle? We kind of have a debate over how much is it worth? And I definitely want to support having a full time structural person to staff that full time. Structurally, I think we need to have that as a city of our size and with our diversity, but too is not having this debate every every budget cycle. If we are going to be a diverse city that that embraces our entire community, that I want to challenge us to think about the budget differently, because I know that public works translates materials and that it just seems like it would keep us from having to revisit this conversation every budget. We would never do this with it, you know, we would never have this conversation around. There's our budget for for community programs. So I, I think we're at that point after all of these years that whatever we need to do to make it structural and we can stop having the conversation after we make it structural just is that's what I have right now. I had a post now where I prioritized all my talking points and I have so many I can't find it now, but you guys are doing great work. I think that making some of the structural changes is really important. I do want to make one more comment on the Office of Equity. I do love the fact that it's around shifting the conversation. And I think the more I know that we've had the conversation with city staff a lot around what does equity mean? And one of the things and I don't know if in adopting the equity conversation, we've had this with the council, I'm sure we have. But what I loved about equity when I first started learning about governing for racial equity was up in Seattle when there was a shooting that happened. And the mayor went out to that to where the shooting happened, and it was all dark. And he said with everybody, why, why are all the street lights out? And they said, well, the people in the community are really terrified of calling the city, you know. And so they took that understanding and they said, well, how do we implement a policy that city wide that can help us change the way that we we do our lights? And so then it put it on a cycle where it was every three years they would go out and they would change their lights. So equity to me is yes, it's about all the racial equity and things that that we talk about. But it also is governing for those that have the least often is something that will help everybody on every single piece of our city, from the third District to the fifth District to the ninth District. And so those are some of the strategies that I love, having a full time person that can look at our systems with public works and everyone and say, how can we make sure we're governing for everyone? And that it's not divided up between the cities, but that we're looking at our systems as a city. And one of those things around governing for equity is something like the language access and putting it across the budget and making sure that it's not a pot of money that we're fighting over, but that it's something that just we're creating equity across the entire city and that it's there. It's part of that culture. So that's my $0.02 on that. I love the work that you guys have done and I'm really looking forward to continuing the conversations. Guys, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a couple of things. Glenda Mr. Williams, I got to tell you, there's you know, I'm very happy with the service, with our new library. We didn't have a library before, and now we do. I'm pretty happy with it. So keep up the good work. You know, in terms of the shifting of the schedule was it wasn't informed by my data or usage data. It was definitely informed by usage data. Data driven. Okay. And and if on Sunday and Monday Michelle Obama is not open, is the next nearest branch in Bixby. No. Is open at that time. The next nearest branch, I believe to you would be Ruth Brock Library. Data Library is also Tuesday through Saturday. I would think. Maybe we think about in Uptown Heaven since there's two libraries in Uptown, the days that one is closed, the other is open. So at least we don't have to drive too far. So when we looked at so for District seven, it has Bret Hart Library and Dana Library. So we have Hart being open on the Sunday through Thursday schedule. So we put up the Dana Library opposing Tuesday through Saturday. So that's one of the things we did. Where is Hart? Heart is also in District seven. Yeah, you know. It's on Santa Fe and Willow. So that's the well, that's on the west. Side of the city. Uptown is still closed today, right? That is correct. Yes, that's correct. North Long Beach and Bixby Knolls will both be closed. I think we should just think about maybe switching somewhere so we at least are open in every part of town. If that was the intent to make sure we have seven days, then have it necessarily be yours. But I mean, if the intent is open seven days and every part of town, you know, just North Long Beach is a fifth of the city. If you take it down to the four or five, you know, that's that's a quarter of the city, right? Two days off. So that's something we should think about, right? Yes. All right. Thank you. And then Kelly, just got to tell you, you know, since I worked as a chief of staff, I've gotten to work on a lot of budgets. And I remember when, you know, we would be asked, do you want a health health department briefing and and health department come around, say yes, ask for health department briefing. So the city city council can be informed of what's going on. And I think it really says a lot I mean, says a lot about sort of the priority that the council has beginning to give the health department. Because your program offerings are expanded. You're making good on the challenges that we issue to you. And initially, a lot of those challenges were unfunded. Last year we offered you we you know, we we provided additional funding for HIV outreach. And this year you were able to come give us real numbers and real evidence of the work and the problem that we have around STDs and HIV. And so that for that, I think you're one of the best investments we can make. What was the return on investment this year for the additional funding? 200%. We definitely double the investment. I think the Council just recognize that we double every dollar we invest. They've got a proven track record. No other department can meet that. So I'm a fan of the health department. I think that's that's pretty clear here on a couple of things. So we have the north facility. We'll talk about that. But we launched the father friendly initiatives and I thought it was a really cool event that we had out in Park. And what was even more cause that was the family friendly, father friendly principles that we established as a council. And a part of that was making sure that we ensure that there are changing tables in the male restrooms as far as well as the female restrooms and the gender neutral restrooms. You know, we want to make sure that we do that. I didn't see anything in the budget this time you to request something in the budget or something that we can recommend to the EEOC to look at. Because I know it wasn't a lot of money. There were about $400 per change in table. And to do a pilot would cost probably five, $10,000. That's something we requested. It was not something that we requested in the budget. That would be something that would likely go through public works. Okay. All right. Well, I submitted in my memo to the BRC and I'll I'll, you know, make some requests. The public works and and others. I just think that something simple acknowledgment doesn't cost a lot of money to acknowledge our father friendly efforts in the city also want to acknowledge and thank you for advocating for the place in the budget, the special projects officer full time officer equity. And you know, this is something that we've been engaged in pretty heavily over the last four years. And particularly I remember the community meetings that we hosted, we brought down Oakland and Seattle and started a conversation about starting. I mean, we literally led the conversation about starting the Office of Equity. And the point wasn't about programs. The point was you've already got a number of sort of initiatives that were that were happening in the city. You had sort of violence prevention and My Sister's Keeper and Language Access and My Brother's Keeper and all these things , CPC, all these other sort of social justice related issues that were spread out across departments. And the first thing we once acknowledged was the communities need or desire for us to be more proactive about acknowledging equity, acknowledging it, and acknowledging the fact that our city is changing and we have to be forward thinking in the way that's changing. I mean, data shows us that in 1980 Census, Long Beach was only 30% people of color, 2010 census, Long Beach was 70% people of color. And over the course of, you know, just a 30 year span, the demographics changed. 40% of our population is demographics. Change is massive. And how can we continue to be work? Our city is a city that prides ourselves on our progress, our economic development. When this whole new population of people has a different set of issues from economic issues, language barriers, health and health issues, inequities, and how can we even address that in the city and measure ourselves unless we have a lens that we place on all of our decision making? So in my opinion, I think the conversation of equity in this equity position is one of the smartest investments that our city can make. And in addition to that, an example of placed in this lens is what we're doing around economic inclusion. We are essentially taking the equity lens and applying it to how we deal with economic development. It's not necessarily about how we develop buildings, about how we development communities and people, and if those people thrive, then that's the measure of our community as having a thriving community. So that's essentially why I fully support this, and I'm proud to see that we've gone from a, you know, one time budget position and grant funded position to acknowledging that it is perfect and is in the interest of all of our residents and the interest of all our residents by making it structurally, structurally fund itself. So thank you for that. We do need to do a better job in engaging each of our communities to make sure that that we continue to educate and have the conversation about how this is this improves everyone's community and how need exists everywhere, not just in North Lombard, Central, Lombard, Islamic. It's it's all contextual to a standard. And so need exists everywhere. So I just wanted to take a moment and just say thank you and offer my support there. Just two more things for you. So a few weeks ago, we had a youth budget committee meeting. Investing youth budget hearing at my field office. And this was a number of youth based organizations, and they brought up this concept of the youth fund. And I know that they've engaged a number of the council members around this. I know Councilwoman Gonzales have engaged around this. And I thank the mayor for bringing, you know, for introducing the $200,000 into that conversation now. And I was holding off not bringing this up during parts because I want to bring it up here at the Investing Youth Coalition meeting at my field office. It became very clear that they what they what they've expressed is that they appreciate the participatory budgeting concept conversation. But what they really want to do is use this as an acknowledgment of establishing a, you know, a youth sort of fund and a youth strategic plan, use that 200 K to sort of go through a process engaging all nine districts around a youth development strategic plan. And they want to offer the equity engaged in that work. Nothing against Parks and Recreation, but they want they want it to be a little broader, more broad than, you know, recreation programs, but rather something broader about the whole. So the whole child, the whole young person. So that's something I want to just offer to you that that was, you know, good in terms of it was a good conversation we had in my office. And then the last thing I'll mention is that, you know, I'm pleased with that, that, you know, the one time funding has doubled this fiscal year for the language access plan. I appreciate that. I think we do need to acknowledge that the language access coordinator is still a 50% position. And so I think we should take steps and I don't know how we get there, but how we make that if we either utilize one time funds to make that a full time position so that you can have one person that engages in this full time, or if we look at making that fully structural and if that has to happen next fiscal year, whenever, but that's something else I want to offer. So I know that's a lot, but I wanted to sort of just, you know, jump in and tell you my thoughts kind of on my own, my own over here on this side. But I'm paying attention to what you guys are saying. I support the work that you're doing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilmember Supernova. Thank you. And thank you for the presentations tonight. And it's been very enlightening. In fact, with the health department, I learned tonight why I can never get a hold of Nelson CR, evidently talking to the third district all day long. I'm just kidding, Nelson. In fact, I emailed you this morning eight time this week. Just get back to me that be frank. I'm just kidding. I just want to follow up on the item that Rex Richardson brought up regarding the geography. You know, I'm all about the fourth District, but I'll speak regionally at this point. So you have Bay Shore Alamitos and brew it now all on the same schedule. So that would be Alamitos, I think. Is it Cherry and Third Bayshore is that Bay, Shore and Ocean and Bruin is roughly Termino and Anaheim. So if you live at Seventh and Redondo, you're out of luck. Kind of like our council and Richardson was saying about North Town. So I think this has to be rethought if if the closures are going to go that way. Secondly, I mentioned about. The other group that we have monthly briefings and we do not have monthly briefings with the library, the health department. And so I learned about these changes, and I would characterize them as wholesale changes in in the hours today, during the noon hour. That's the first time I saw any of this. So to react today and to analyze it is pretty much impossible. Our office has tried to be very supportive of the libraries. We have the good fortune having two libraries in our district, Los Altos and brew it up. I try not to grandstand on those issues, but I think I've communicated to you how much the libraries mean to our office. And I was even at it on Sunday photographing some issues we had there. I just think that should be a two way street. And we're going to make major changes like this that might you might want to share this with the council office. I don't know how these decisions were arrived at, but I don't think it was done by survey cards at the desk in the library. And I think the patrons should have some say in this, whether they want to convert to Sunday hours or not. There is a way we support the libraries is every Friday. In my e-newsletter we list the activities for our libraries. And what strikes me so much is everything at Broad happens on Friday and Saturday. Mayor Garcia has visited the Pruitt library on a Saturday. Now they will not be open Fridays and Saturdays. So that's just a lot of changes that would be hard to reconcile. As I said, just seeing this in the noon hour today. I think that's probably I guess I should ask this question. And that is, I think for our two libraries, we have a total of four full time employees. I'm not sure. And would someone working Sunday hours, would that be would an employee volunteer for that? Or how would you assign Sunday hours in the old system? So in the old system Sunday well, currently Sunday hours are funded with a one time funds and it's on a volunteer basis. So with this new schedule that's being proposed, half of that availability from staff will no longer be there. So with the new proposed schedule, people will be scheduled. Their normal workweek would be Sunday through Thursday. So what we've done to try to work with staff on this, we sent out a staff survey to see what staff preferences are for their preferred work schedule, and it's very unlikely that we will be able to accommodate everyone, but we're going to try to accommodate as many people as possible to the new work schedule. So there will potentially be some shifting of staff and there are some staff that are static about having every Friday and Saturday off and then others are not as ecstatic. So we'll be working with staff as we move forward with this particular proposal. Okay. So staff has weighed in on this. I guess you're suggesting that you wouldn't be able to accomplish this with volunteers to work Sundays, but what about the patrons? What was their data gathered from the people who use the libraries. Or Councilman Slipper? Now what we looked at was the idea of some different metrics to decide which libraries would go to the different schedule. And looking at Brentwood and Los Altos, looking at the programs, looking at the usage, looking at the classes from the data, it showed us that Los Altos would be a better fit Tuesday, Tuesday through Saturday, and that the Prewitt library would move to the Sunday through Thursday hours. Again, just based on the data and then usage. Okay. So if it was data driven, then we didn't have any survey card. We didn't ask anybody, when would you like your library hours? Yes. So that is correct. And Councilmember, if I can if I can jump in here a little bit, part of this was we wanted to start this discussion. We realized this is going to be a different a change. And that's part of what the budget is for, is to propose some of those ideas. We wanted to get that out. So the council had that ability so that the community has the ability. We had not gone through meet and confer, so we didn't have a chance to sit down with all of our employees. We still need to do that. So this is a concept. It's being put out there. It's a way kind of innovatively to look at how do we get a seven day library system for the same amount of money that we have today? If we want to add money to the resources in order to have additional hours, if we want to stay the same that we are, that's really what this budget discussion is, though. It's I know it's a little bit of cart before the horse, we didn't get a chance to talk to everyone. This was kind of using data, looking at some other systems and wanted to put that out there for discussion. Okay. I understand that, you know, it's a rollout that now is public and you have a lot of people on defense right now that that's what I would like to avoid. We've had so many experiences that way. And it would just be a lot more user friendly, in my view, if we could have some committee input on this other than the data that they're using. Also, we do a lot of things with Measure a route library has been the beneficiary of that and I just think library hours and whatnot, there might be not a great public perception of what's being done here, but it looks like when you're cutting out Saturday and Sunday, Fridays and Saturdays that you're cutting back. And I just have challenges with putting that out there that way. I think I probably want to leave there other than to say. What would be the next step then in this and how do we determine which way we're going with this moving forward? So really, the next step is here. So we wanted to get this out. We are absolutely interested in input. We expect to hear about this in the community budget meetings. We expect to hear about it tonight. I want to hear about it from the council. I think you raise some good points where you're saying in certain areas below seven, for example, everyone has the same schedule. Really, our intent was that you are able to get to a library, you know, the next available library. And so if there are tweaks need to be made, if there is, you know, ones that didn't quite make sense for the community, we're open to that. Again, we have to go through meeting, confer as well. So we don't at least I don't envision that this starts October one because we still have a process to go through . So if we need to go a little bit slower on this to to vet out this concept, to take additional input, we encourage the community to get involved and let us know what you think. Do the community surveys through calling us, calling your councilmember? We definitely are interested in community input. Okay. Thank you. I agree with that. And I think sooner rather than later, let's get the patrons views. Let's ask the exact question at hand here. You know, I, I did first of all, I did the homeless count. We did an orientation where we went out. And one of the questions we weren't allowed to ask is, are you homeless? And people were kind of taken aback by that. And I just think the first question we have here is what hours would you like your what days would you like your library open? I'm sorry. Maybe I'm too simplistic, but that's all I have for now. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Mongo. Thank you. Since I queued up, most of my other questions have been asked and execute as vice mayor, who I don't see either. So. Thank you. Let me just on a couple of small items here as well, and I want to I know that. Councilman Gonzalez, are you there? Yes, I'm here. Okay. I know she also had some questions, so why don't I let Councilman Gonzalez go first and then I will follow her. Okay. Great. Thank you. I want to also reiterate, you know, council members Cooper and I, our discussion about the library, I think all of the council members here in the main library, and I know that it comes out a day and it was a discussion last year that was very relevant. But unlike many of my colleagues, I represent a first in the majority of downtown, and we have zero library. We have library heavily on the main library. And I know we've said this before, that essentially almost 50,000 residents in my district utilize this library and we're going to have an influx of even more with so much development happening. So I see a true investment in us not being in as being open exchange for seven days a week, especially as we're ramping up for the state of the art library. So are we able to get May? And perhaps this is the last year and I can't remember, but I'm able to get a coupon for that will give us the cost on a six or seven day program for the main library. Absolutely. Yes. Okay. That would be great, just so we could have the option. But I understand it's expensive. I get that. But just so the council can can you know that I think that would be great because we are getting hit up quite a bit with with our constituents about that issue. And I think it's very important for all of our council districts and we want to make sure we're being as a bare as possible. Um, right now, I mean, library is not open Sundays and Mondays and know, but I'll leave it at that. The next thing I wanted to ask Glenda and thank you so much, Glenda, for your work. I know it had been mentioned about some programs. Are you looking to ramp up them program in the A319 budget? I know we're certainly doing some work, but are we looking at do more at a more mobile program included in that ? Councilwoman Gonzalez We're going to continue providing the same programs throughout the city at the different libraries and also in the parks to be safe. And I think we also have a partnership with dramatic results in providing STEM programing there. So we will continue to provide STEM program as much as we can within our funding capability. Okay, great. And I just want to thank you as being part of our digital inclusion roundtable and discussion, because it's very important that we have computer access like AI capabilities are getting better. And so I just appreciate your work in that. So thank you very much for that, Kelly. And I just basically want to reiterate what my colleagues said about language access. I think, you know, $160,000 is great. It is just a drop in the bucket of what we need to do long term for this issue, which has been edge and so much more. So are we also able to get a second thought about what we what the potential options are for structurally including this in our budget? Because I think that they both they cut the number of tests that every year we come to the table. And as you know, we're keeping this issue, but it's not going away. So maybe it's a question of the time, can we have that option that it was structurally funding, that. Yes, we can put together a cost for what it would cost for a coordinator to be there for structural funding. We already have one that is part time hours, but to have an enhanced version of that. And then there is the the cost that you would need for materials. So we can definitely provide those two numbers. Okay, great. Thank you very much. And the Office of Equity, glad to see that that's structurally funded and that, you know, we're doing this work. I think every council meeting we're talking about equity. So I think it's absolutely important that we're we're looking at this both on the research side and thought leadership, both in guidance for our policy work. And then lastly, Kelly, for the HIV AIDS and SCD work, I'm glad to see the uptick in this work, let's say, of ideas that we've been with work within the HIV realm. Actually, I know equity funding has gone down, HIV funding has gone up, but is there any different sort of initiatives that we're looking to fund? Well, so we have we just launched the the No More Campaign for HIV and STDs. So that is out right now. We have data on 16 bus stops and 300 busses were in schools were in all different places, doing a lot of training and working very closely with our partners at the center, bars and restaurants down in now in Long Beach and other things. So that's a starting point. We are really looking for increased opportunity for true detective partner services and data to care. So really understanding what we do is we work with with folks who come in for testing and if they test positive, we ask them to help identify. That we can reach out to for testing and treatment so that we start to slow the start to slow the spread. We are doing prep within the department which we shared last week. So we're excited that we have those opportunities and just really continue to keep people engaged in services. Our HIV planning group is currently in the middle of a strategic planning process. They've broken into a number of groups and we're working on that as well. So we're bringing in additional information in the future. And are we looking at all the with that other cities and they've been bulk sampling kit or home kit for this, and it's dramatically reduced their HIV rate. Is that something we might be looking into with that type of funding at all? Our current funding doesn't allow for that. So that's not so. The funding is very much around testing and connection and treatment. So we don't we wouldn't have the access to be able to to do this sort of kitchen, those kind of things. But it would be something to look into if we could find additional revenues. Okay. I just wanted to put it out there, but thank you both for your work. Appreciate it. Janet Reno you through? Yes, I'm done. Thank you. Fine, thank you. Yes. Now, you guys, once, once. I just want to let you know, it's really hard for an individual like me who has a wife, is a vegetarian. I'm trying to sneak and go eat pizza. It's just tough. So I've gotten that taken care of. I'm going to let you guys hope and get out of here because I want to thank councilwoman, you know, Price for appears for being able to go to the equity situation with me and the Liberians. Are you going to you do know that you guys are doing such a great work? And I always try to let everyone know that a kid that lives in the district in which I do a lot of the individuals don't get a chance to, like I say, take trips and everything. So I was let them know that if you go to the library, you can take yourself around the world right there in a library. So it's just a wonderful thing and and the work you guys are doing together. And Gary, I just want to let you know that you're helping our community so much because now I'm having so many health, you know, programs is going on in my district and with assistance that you've given us. I really want to thank both of you guys. Great job. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Couple of comments, then I'll turn over to Councilman Mongo. Just wanted to obviously our amazing work that's being done at the libraries. Congratulations and to all of our librarians. I want to also I know you guys are working also on a project with the with digitizing library card so they can be a digital card as well. And I want to make sure that that project is is moving forward. I know that's been important for office and I just think it's just to have put it up on your phone I think would be great. And so but of course, always keeping our traditional cards as well on the Sun Library issue. Just to clarify, you know, and I may have also when I when I first got the briefing on this may have misunderstood, but I was under the impression that some libraries would be open Saturday or Sunday, even though they still might remain, you know, five days, but that the libraries that were open both Saturday and Sunday would be eligible to still be open Saturday, Sunday, but it would be those days and then three other days during the week. And so I only I only just mentioned that because I do think that for the for the for libraries, is it for libraries are currently open on Sunday? That's correct. So just for the four libraries that are currently open on Sunday, I know that getting us to that Sunday opening for those libraries was a big deal that I think this council was very supportive of. And so I know what you are, what you're trying to do, and I think it's fantastic. Some very supportive of this change and transition that I know is difficult also for the department. And so I do a really appreciate that and I understand that. But I would be interested to just further that conversation if possible, you know, around those for libraries. But also just the idea that I think there's an expectation that libraries should be open on the weekend. I think for for for us. And so we have to get to the point where our libraries will ideally, obviously are open daily. But I think to have on those weekends when families are out of school, I think it's just so critical to have libraries open. And I just would hate for those for libraries to lose, even though everyone is gaining. I would hate to see those libraries lose one of the weekend days, so I'm not sure. Mr. Modica I just think there's enough interest on the council that we should try to find a solution there if, if possible. So we heard a lot of input today obviously on libraries and we're listening to all that. So we can definitely go back and think of some other ideas. We do want to try to get that balance between people enjoying them on the weekends. We also have a lot of schools that use them during the week and so we're trying to accommodate that as well. And school kids that are coming and people that are coming after work and of course, our patrons and also our library staff. So let us take a lot of the input we heard today and we'll put our thinking caps on and gives you some more information. And I know and I think that's very fair, so I appreciate that. I just wanted to confirm that. So let me and let me have Councilman Manga who will wrap up this part of the presentation. I just want to remind everyone that both the mayor and the budget staff and the BRC have been very creative. We were facing a deficit six months ago. And so I just I know it's so great that we all want to talk about we need more of this and more of this and more of this and more of this. But with every single thing that you come to the dais and ask us for, it's also just as important to say, and you can cut it from page 320 or 460 or wherever, because there isn't any new money that hasn't been programed in this book yet. And so I think that one of the things that's really important is all of the things that have been mentioned today, whether one council member mentioned it or another council member mentioned it, it doesn't necessarily mean there's consensus and it doesn't necessarily mean there's new money for it. But we all have to kind of come together and figure out where can we push and pull within those things. So the one other thing I'll challenge everyone to do, and this is something that I talked about with the previous Library Foundation director and only recently with the new Library Foundation director is we need to look at new revenue sources. And as we grow and expand any type of service, we need to find dedicated revenues to come in in the future and support them. And the Mayor and I were very vocal online against some individuals who are posting that we need to close libraries and use Barnes and Noble. And we're like, No, that's the exact opposite thing you should be doing. Libraries are the core of reading and afterschool help and online homework help and all the things that are good and wholesome in a community that can help kids stay busy as a vice mayor, Andrews likes to say. But it doesn't mean that we wouldn't be open to, hey, maybe renting out a coffee cart with a dedicated revenue to that library or a coffee cart or a I see some of the revenue numbers. And while I can't disclose specific revenue numbers of of individual coffee shops, I mean, 500 people a day visit a tiny coffee shop in my in my district, 500 people a day. And if that means five more people went to a library that never went to a library before, and that that 25 cent cup of coffee that you paid $4 for of $3.75 can fund more books and more sundaes and more everything else. I'm all for it. I'm looking for a way to as Barnes and Nobles close across the country, libraries grow and expand and continue to fill that space that's so needed. And so thank you for all the ideas. I appreciate that everyone has a number of ways to spend the money we don't have leftover. But if you come to us with revenue sources as well, it makes the discussions so much easier. And I know that you'll see that in one of our next items about the park as we close budget discussions. So thank you for everyone that's been here. And I know that as the mayor opens up public comment, while public comment is valid and we like to listen to everything you say just as easily, you can email our offices and put it on the record and email the city clerk's office to put your notes and comments about the budget into the record by submitting online comments as well. Because I know that some people had to leave because it's already 952 and we're only on the first agenda item of the night. So if you left early and you're still watching at home, please send an E comment. If you're planning to stand up and speak and you're considering that you're also here for another item later in the night and you'll you'll shorten your comments, feel free to give us the full, verbose version via any comment. Thank you very much. I will now take public comment on this hearing, which is the budget hearing. So as a reminder, these comments are only to the budget and only to the budget presentation. And so please line up and begin. I am Chris. Robson. I live in the second district. And I'm here tonight is speaking to you as the. Chair of the Board. Of Health and Human Services. It's a commission, but we're. Called a board. Just want to read a letter into the into the record if it's. Permissible to hand this to you and have it. Done that way. You all have gotten copies of this letter for the public comment. If we can get that posted and appreciate that and we'll take any more time. Thank you very much. I think I want to say. Thank you, Mr. Robson, and then we'll have the clerk pass those letters out. Next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is Donald Mathews. I'm from the ninth District, but I am Commissioner on Veterans for the. 64th Assembly. District under Mike Gibson. Our concern is homelessness and our concern is parks. Our concern with homelessness is new funding. We want to do a partnership. We would like to do something. And Assembly. Member Price's district and the Long Beach. Veterans Hospital Center, it's got. A. Campus with buildings that are abandoned at this point. If we could get a partnership with Habitat for Humanity. The city manager, the city of Long Beach. And with Calvert, we would be willing to. Do something to. Renovate that area and in fact use veterans. The second item had to do with parks. You guys are doing. A fantastic job on absolutely everything here. My concern is the diversity of the. Parks that are being renovated and the people that are working on those projects and the public safety in the. Parks. I think that. Councilmember. Pearce mentioned something about gunfire. Well, yeah, there was there was at Panamerican Park. And we're really concerned and we are. On board with whatever the city is doing to provide better security, because that's one of the most beautiful parks in the city. And many residents. From out of our city come there to utilize it. Anything we can do to make it safer, we would be. More than. Happy. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Very good, Hugh. My comments go to Parks, Recreation and Marine and I'll have a conversation with the new director. Relative to my major concern or major issues, relative to and imparting some updated information relative to the Long Beach Marine Stadium in the state within the next year should. Begin the process of replacing the Davis Bridge. It'll be state funded. It'll be a single span. No bounce in the water. In addition to that, what is an. FBI that will be at the end of the day, we will find that will be the venue. For the rolling events of the next Olympics. We Los Angeles area will hold. Whether or not those Olympics are going to be in 2028 or. 2032, which will be the 100th anniversary, will be largely dependent upon whether. Or not the MTA can get their act together and address. Those. Problems that they now. Have. But the Marine. Stadium is a it's a venue. Unlike any in the world. Travel. Up to the North Pole. Below the Southern Cross, and largely in one portion. Obviously, we're open 365 days a year that that will become the venue for the rowing events as a as was the original plan four years ago when I came to this council. They sent their people here to take a look at what they wanted. And at first they were concerned, but then they when they realized that was all because of the construction that was going on relative to the rain rate. Marina. Marina, rebuild. They. Decided on that up, and that's what it will be, but I want people to understand that and so forth. RG The Open Channel project will begin certainly within the next year, which will give continual title flushing connect up with. The Colorado. Lagoon. As I said, the I haven't had a chance and it is new, but I will sit down and go over that with the new Parks and Recreation Director of Parks, Recreation or Marine. The last thing I would suggest. I'll do that later. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Good. Your next speaker, please. Yes, my name. Is Susan Redfield. I'm with the seventh. District and I'm currently the president of the board of directors of the Long Beach Public Library Foundation. I wanted to thank Glenda Williams for her excellent presentation, much of which I was going to reiterate, but I won't. However, I also want to thank her for acknowledging the foundation, which, beginning in 1996, has raised to over $20 million toward the libraries in our city. I am thrilled that Councilwoman Pierce is interested in the capital campaign, which will be publicly announced early next year. And we are in what is called in the capital campaign business the quiet phase, which is probably not quite anymore, but up. So we would like to talk with you more about that. I'm thrilled that Councilwoman Mongo has indicated new ideas of ways to raise funds, and we would really like to meet with you in that regard. Personally, I'm a huge coffee cart snacks person. I think that even small amounts of money in that way would be helpful. In addition, the Library Foundation is asking that the City Council consider earmarking a portion of the 2019 fiscal year's budget on allocated funds to keep the new main library open seven days a week. Much of what I was going to say has already been stated by each of the council members tonight regarding this plan to restructure the opening of the libraries. But it's my understanding that the amount for 3 to 4 months of operation would cost approximately $212,000, according to the library. Now, I can be corrected as the research comes in, but that was the number I was given. Opening seven days a week will obviously help New Man to better manage the expected sharp increase in attendance. I The only other thing I wanted to say is that we received a letter literally yesterday and I was able to share it with Councilwoman Gonzalez because it's from a first District graduate student named Brant. I won't give his full name right now. And he writes, I am a graduate student, by the grace of God. But I remember when I started using the library, Mark Twain, several years ago, and especially the study rooms and the computer labs. I'm grateful that this place exists in my community because I've used the computer lab to do entire classes and tests online in a decent environment. It's worth the funding. And as my online master's program is online, I plan to use it through my master's school and beyond. I'm pleased that it exists and it's a blessing. Please make sure it's always here so I can use it. And this is the quality of people that are using our libraries. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening. Honorable members here, council members and city management staff. My name is Whitney Leathers. I'm the executive director for the Long Beach Day Nursery and the chair for the Long Beach Early Childhood Education Committee. The Long Beach Day Nursery represents 106 years of service to working families in our community. And the Long Beach Committee is a collaboration of 30 plus organizations serving thousands of our most vulnerable children each year. Our mission is to ensure that every young child in Long Beach grows up healthy, safe and educated. As such, our work includes much more than the educational aspect of early childhood education. Our work includes supporting the whole child, the family, the early childhood workforce, and the environments in which children live, play and learn. Investments can include much of what you've heard here tonight trauma informed care, kindergarten readiness initiatives, parks, space, recreational opportunities, health and nutrition programing, early childhood education and resources for families. All of these pieces work together so that when our young children enter kindergarten. They're healthy and. Ready to learn. Tonight, I'd like to thank you for your investment in early childhood education at the Health Department. It has been a pleasure. Working with Director Collopy and the Early Childhood Program Staff, as well as the rest of the department on matters impacting the health and well-being of young children and families in our community. We've learned we can do so much more when we work together, and your investments have made that possible. They're going. Collaboration between the city and the early childhood movement in our community is inspiring. It's a true partnership. It's inclusive of the city private education programs, non-profits, health and mental health providers, school district and groups like the committee. The Health Department has been a catalyst to this work in collaboration. Our collective work is innovative as well as supportive of ongoing efforts. Our commitment is to continued collaboration, and the priorities of health, safety and education is evident in the forthcoming Long Beach Strategic Plan. Every one of us has a role to play in helping young children and families reach their fullest potential. We work forward we look forward to working with many of the departments that were represented here tonight to support a safe, healthy and educated Long Beach. I encourage the city to continue to invest in early childhood education and more broadly invest in young children and families, particularly around the goals and objectives that will be released and the upcoming early childhood strategic plan. Thank you for your time, especially tonight, your service and your consideration. Thank you. And I just want to just that just to add, I know that this gets overlooked sometimes in the budget, but the the modest investments that that the city's making and in early childhood ed to to support the staff to do all this work. It's really, really important. And I know that that's something that the city lost during the recession and prior to that. And I think one of the great one of the great and best things that I think that we did in our partnership and the Council supported, that partnership is to bring back and establish those positions within the city to help manage that work. And along with the work the Mayor's Fund is doing and so many others. I'm really, really proud of you guys. I'm just oh, I'm impressed with the early childhood community is amazing. And I look forward to joining you guys at the kickoff for that for the strategic plan. So we can't wait. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, council members. My name is Cyndi Dela Cruz Brown, and I'm a resident of the seventh District and a community organizer at Long Beach Forward. I am also a member of the Long Beach Language Access Coalition and the Invest in Youth Campaign, which has helped put together the People's Budget proposal. This proposal includes endorsements from various individuals, coalitions and campaigns local to the city. At this point, you should have all received a copy of our proposal and we've probably either met with you already or are in the process of doing so. These issues in the proposal on prioritizing the people's budget include immigrant rights, language, justice, safe housing and youth opportunities. As a community organizer, these issues matter to me because the people in the community should be able to see their lives improve in the budget and be part of the process. So we can build collaborative solutions with the people who live, work and play here to engage. We need very good communication, though, especially when it comes to language. My day to day focus lives on building healthy building, community led efforts with parents who have children in Long Beach Unified School District. Specifically, the parents I work with are monolingual Spanish and can speak in parents or grandparents. These parents take their participation in their children's education very serious and it is important and it is as important that we do the same by supporting the ways that parents and youth can engage with the city and in good schools. How we how can we how can a parent evaluate a situation without fully understanding what they are reading, whether it be an educational plan for the children or a city bill? As a resident, all these items actually matter matter to me personally. They touched my family in very different ways. As a child of an immigrant mother who worked in factories with minimal benefits and a father who served as a police officer for over 35 years, family members who were incarcerated within my family while having limited options like afterschool programs or being displaced because of the cost of living and housing being unaffordable. These areas are all very personal to me. I have to say that part because even during jury duty, when I was doing Jury did in L.A. court, a judge actually pulled me aside and said, Are you being serious that you have, you know, a father is a police officer and someone incarcerated in your family ? And that does exist. And I represent that viewpoint. So I wanted to bring that up as well. It's very personal to me at this point. Some of us have met with your with your office around our proposal, and we're happy to see that there some sort of interest or that you've provided some level of feedback that we're definitely taking back and working with one another to take serious what your feedback has been and continue the conversation in dialog. So we hope we can continue this conversation with you and collaborative approach to supporting these individual and identified community priorities and that you to take a stance to endorse the people's budget. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Hello. My name is Suzanne Brown. I'm a senior attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. And just like Cindy, the last speaker, I'm here with my partners from the People's Budget Campaign. And as she has said, we have met with many of you and we look forward to meeting with every council office as a result of the comments and feedback that we have received thus far from our legislative meetings. We've revised our language access budget request. We have removed our request for funds for multilingual staffing. This remains very important to us and the community residents that we work with, but we acknowledge that it will not be resolved in this year's budget process and we want to move forward collectively. Therefore, this brings our language access budget request down to just $370,000. This is a small price to pay for language justice in a city of our size. We appreciate that the mayor has proposed to dedicate 160,000 towards language access, doubling the budget from years past with the mayors $160,000. We are only asking for an additional $210,000 to make language access more of a reality for our city. This 210,000 additional is desperately needed to attain consistent implementation across city departments for language access in working with residents daily, we know that they are still struggling to access city services meetings and vital documents in their primary language. As you can see from the hand out that we have shared with you, the funds that we are asking for would be spent on critical components of language access implementation, including multilingual signage. To address Councilmember Pearce's question, these numbers came from the language access policy themselves. There's little footnotes on the handout, if you can read them, that show you where all the numbers come from. Secondly, interpretation at city meetings. And as you heard from Kelly's presentation, there's been a 78% increase in requests for interpretation translation of vital documents. Kelly also said that there's been a 22% increase in the demand for translated documents community outreach, which is needed so that more folks know about their rights under the policy translation of more web pages as we move forward with digital achievements in the city. And finally, a full time structural language access coordinator in the Office of Equity to ensure we have a dedicated staff person to make sure that the funds are spent right. I want to quickly acknowledge the comments from Councilmember Pearce and Councilmember Gonzalez about moving to structural funding with language access. That would be an absolute dream for us. That would mean that language access is part of the cost of doing business in the city and every department would include it in their budgets and we look forward to that being structural so that you won't have to hear from us next year. Thank you very much for your consideration of our comments. Q Very much. Next speaker, please. Hello. Good evening. My name is Gabby Hernandez and I'm a resident of the second District. I'm also a community organizer for the Long Beach Immigrates Coalition. And I'm here to talk about the budget, the people's budget, specifically the deportation defense fund. I think we all know that the principles of due process and a fair DynCorp are central to America's vision of justice. But there's no constitutional guarantee to legal representation in immigration court. That's a deportation defense fund here in the city. It would move us closer to the vision that all people, no matter their background, to have a fair day in court. Universal representation is not about deciding who will stay or who will be deported. It's about bringing some some type of fairness to the complex immigration proceedings that is tearing families apart. The fairest and most efficient way to bring order to this complex proceedings is to ensure that legal representation is offered to community members. We know that legal representation helps protect the rights of all residents, keep their families together, and maintain a safe and strong community. That is why I'm here asking City Council to endorse the people's budget and ensure that the $250,000 needed to start a the petition defense fund is allocated. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, counsel. My name is Juan Rosas. I was a resident of the west. Side of Long Beach. With my family from 2003. Up until recently, when my family could no longer afford to live in. Long Beach. I am a graduate of Garfield Elementary Hughes Middle School, and I went to both Cabrillo and Poly High School. Councilmembers Well, Richardson's not here, but Mary Garcia. I am. Also an alum of leadership. Long Beach, and I'm. Currently a master's student at Cal State Long Beach, pursuing a degree in linguistic. Anthropology. I'm here to advocate for the importance of language, access. And allocating the full. $370,460 for language. Access policy earmarked by the People's Budget. As a linguistic anthropologist, to put it quite simply. What I study. Is language and culture. I my research touches on. Issues of race, identity, language and language justice. Through my studies. And my research. I understand. That language access is vital forum for a more just and equitable Long. Beach and ignoring the serious need for a more thorough language access policy. Essentially bars vulnerable populations. Access to city services. Long Beach prides itself on. Being an. International city, a diverse city, and we are. Ethnically, racially, culturally and linguistically diverse. So I implore the Council to recognize that, especially against the backdrop. Of Trump's America, where immigrants, especially immigrants of color, are treated as second class citizens. Council members, again, I implore you to allocate the funds to the language access. Policy. As earmarked. In the people's. Budget. Thank you and good evening. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, honorable mayor and city council members. My name is Christopher Covington. I am a product of Long Beach. I've been living in the sixth District for 26 years and 27 and so proud of that. I'm here as a community organizer with a Gender and Sexuality Alliance network. We're a national nonprofit supporting trans and queer youth coming together for racial and gender justice here in the city of Long Beach. We support over 100 young people throughout our amazing school district and more depending on the year. And those youth are actually working on many different initiatives to prepare themselves for college career or for their future, making sure that they're safe, make sure they're having resources and support as the Gender and Sexuality Alliance that work. We are partners of the People's Budget as well as the Invest in Youth Campaign. The Investing Youth Campaign has met with each of your officers and will continue to show up at your community hearings to share the need and the ask of young people within your districts and what the what youth needs in the city. As I mentioned, I'm a product of Long Beach. I'm a product of youth positive, healthy youth development. I was an intern and an employee with Vice Mayor de Andrews, and I'm able to pass on the same type of support and resources to youth throughout this city, and I'm proud to do that. That's the same type of support we're looking for with the investment in the Youth and Children Fund. I'm currently through the support of the mayor and the council members advocating for the youth fund. The mayor has proposed a $200,000 investment, and we know through the presentations that we've been hearing, there's $500,000 unallocated funds that are up for putting into different parts. So our task is to give $500,000 to this fund with the proposal of the participatory process. That is one option. However, many of our youth are asking for our strategic plan and how we can invest the money for a purpose that is long term versus short term. We don't want to see a sign within our city. We don't want to see a a building or like something that is one time. We want to see an investment for a long term strategy of how the city is going to invest in youth. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you. For those of you who are still in this council chamber and listening. And I appreciate to see you more throughout this process. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Hi. My name is Dawn Tidwell. I'm here with the Democratic Socialists of America. Word on the street is you all got a copy of this. How many of you read it? Can I get a show of hands? One? Well, it's. Oh, it's the people's budget. He read it, too. So, two out of five. Three out of five. All right. So first, I'll talk about the first two immigrant rights and language justice. There seem to be a lot of concern about funding its $670,000, which is 2% of the $45 million that the police are allocated total . And it's one point. It's 1.4% of that 45 million. And it's 2% of the $30 million that they're allocated from the general fund. So maybe, you know, personally, I think maybe others believe, too, that Chief Luna could spare some change for the people of Long Beach. And also the other two things, safe housing and youth opportunities. If we were to address those, I believe it would address crime in the city as well. So you wouldn't have to spend as much money on the police. Let's see what else that I have you. Someone was talking about how well the Health Department was doing. I was wondering where they make their profits from. If anyone could answer that for me. Continue your comments and I'll touch on that. Fair enough. Okay. Let's see. Gonzales asked about STEM, and I was considering what programs we have for humanities, because if we only focus on STEM, we'll have more cyborgs like Elon Musk running the city. Also to fund other things we could legalize and tax all drugs, open up safe injection sites and provide direction to rehabilitation. That's one option. Thank you. Thank you very much. Just briefly, so the health department make any profits per se. So it's, you know, government next speaker. Hello. My name is Tiffany Hooten. I'm here to speak in support of the people's budget proposal drafted by a number upon which community coalitions. This proposal is to assure that money in the city budget will be allocated in accordance to the material needs of the residents in order to create greater equity in our city and to support equity for all Long Beach communities. These include increased funding to establish an immigrant's defense fund, full implementation of multilingual language access programs, funding for housing code enforcement which protects tenants. And lastly, youth programs which disrupt the school to prison pipeline phenomenon as well as help all populations in the city to prosper. I urge the Council to consider the concerns of the people of Long Beach as a priority in place of the already bloated police budget. There's no greater investment than one in the people. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening. Man City council members. My name is Gloria Rivera with Libra. We are a member of the People's Budget Campaign. We are a member of the Language Access Coalition. We're a member of the Sanctuary Long Beach Coalition, which is why we're here to advocate for the people's budget. As housing advocates, we're here mainly to speak on on code enforcement and the need to improve our code enforcement department. I remember when we when we were here talking about pirate or prep, whatever we're calling it now, proactive rental housing inspection program. And at that time, we were very ambitious and we were talking about trying to cover all of our our buildings within a year's time. That has now been extended to 5 to 7 years. So obviously that there's to me, there's some staffing issues. But in the having and having very robust in discussions with the code enforcement department and with other code enforcement departments and officers across the state, also the systems and the data tracking systems and the efficiency of those systems have a lot to do with how well we can get out and get into rental housing units so that we can inspect them and properly. We're here, but we're a part of this campaign because everything intersects for us. The language access is is something that that intersects with code enforcement, because we get we have a lot of folks that come here and they're requesting reports of the code enforcement patrolling in English. Right. Or we have some code enforcement officers that don't necessarily speak the language that that of the folks that they're actually visiting. And so then we have those issues where they're requesting children to interpret this very technical language that that the parents or the residents don't even know themselves, let alone the children. And so language access permeates over into into code enforcement. And then there's the immigration issues, especially with the current political climate. As you can imagine, people are really fearful of opening doors to folks that they don't know, especially if they're wearing some sort of official t shirt or badge and things of that sort. And so, you know, it's spilled over into immigration issues as well. So and these are these are code officers. And as far as I know, the way people talk about code inspectors is that they have them up there in categories of police officers, because these are the folks that are enforcing our health and safety codes that are actually ensuring that our folks are living in health and safe conditions, that they're not going to fall through a floor, that they that that the ceiling is not going to cave in on them. These are life life safety issues as the way the way our inspectors and code enforcement department talk about them, life safety issues. Right. And so when I look at the budget and how we're allocating the budget to answer Mrs. Monga Longo's question, why don't we divert a small portion of that police funding to our code inspectors? Because they're doing the same type of work. They're keeping our communities health and safe. So we're not we're not redirecting funds. We're just shifting them so that we have a little bit of balance. We need a department that's working for us and it's not currently working. And so we're requesting more funding in that department. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. And I know Mr. Murdoch. I know that it was not called out. The it is not part of the fee schedule. I do know that there's been a request in the budget that we reduce the five, the current 5 to 6 year don't down to four, isn't that right? Yes. One of the recommendations that the mayor put on top of the budget was for a to challenge staff to look at how do we reduce that amount and bring that down from a 5 to 6 year schedule to something else that we would upon passage. Look at that and see what it would take to do that and what the different models could be. And one of the you know, not to get too into it, but one of the models out there is there are there are progressive fee schedule models out in other cities that I've looked at that that essentially there's different fees depending on whether it's amount of units owned that have worked in other and other locations. And so we're looking at that next speaker. Which is memories the most members to learn to steer this community much as personal settlement isn't going to make them and but that as well as police us and immigrants who continue to under the discrimination exploitation. But Lesley, we've because this administration in a constant state in accessing unless we live in fear is to put us in the familiar. Good evening. My name is Medium of William and yes, the witness. I stand before you as one of many people who is currently directly impacted by the anti-immigrant policies that continue. That continue to be perpetuated and perpetuating discrimination, exploitation, linguistic obstacles, dehumanization in the constant threat and having our family separated. My preschooler and two stories replicate concerns. You develop an anti-immigrant alley while at the near because of portrayal of LA yellow stress confinement, a companion length was this year. The question to on community commonly is a cover in culture leather either Potala. I stand before you replete of exhaustion in witnessing anti-immigrant propaganda as well as having to bear the pain and distress that usually accompanies the anguish I feel when my community is unjustly attacked, incarcerated and deported. Nobel. Pacifica and Impacto. Director. Going off a million quid. I sent the message for you to list every matter. Cinematical Blessed one. Yep. Remo King has a lot of momentum. It's a little illogical. Kirby Stone. I cannot testify the direct impact that a family may feel outside of the support that I have already offered them. However. It is there and affirm that caging humans is the utmost illogical action. I have witnessed. Gomorrah, Santorum. There's been a lack of monitoring documentaries to play and to not coauthor the immigration aparthotel and trauma care support most. April seven. I left that opinion, though. Get up in there, see if people. Get up in. A special place, though, if we. Or again settle for less. Coalition with Housing Disability Coalition Invest in Youth Campaign Long Beach Language Access Coalition Sanctuary Long Beach Campaign in Long Beach Forward. It is three. We'd love this interesting quantum in the original established formula the universal but along with identity mockumentaries get parliament this in Quentin and Professor Potassium as a result of the disadvantages that the undocumented community suffers. In immigration, quite apart from any of the trauma that precedes what we have to endure in defending ourselves, I ask you to adopt the city budget proposal that was organized by the Coalition's Housing, Livability and Housing Mobility Coalition, Invest in Youth Campaign, Long Beach Language Access Coalition Sanctuary. Long Beach Campaign and Long Beach Forward. An allocated $250,000 of the original fund and establish Universal Legal Defense Fund. Two undocumented residents that are currently in deportation proceedings. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Dave Shukla. On file. Just came here. Kind of get lost in the shuffle. Kind of an allocation error. But I just came here to speak very narrowly on the libraries. I am a big fan of our libraries. They are places to read, to study, to learn. And those are the primary activities. You try and corporatized them. The coffee shop. You can end up with an empty building with bad AC and crappy coffee. Every city in human history has judged itself by its ability to maintain its source and stock of knowledge. That's what a library is for. That's what we pay for them for. These are things that we can pay for. Especially if the money comes out of the general fund. I mean, it's all in the foil. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker two And declaring the speaker's list. We have our three last speakers and then the speaker's list will be closed. Anna Christiansen The these people that came tonight, I want to thank them for waiting all this time and having all this concern that each one of them have it. And I think they're the youngest group of people here. So when we talk about including and engaging young people, I think we should pay particular attention to their concerns. And driving to L.A. today, we heard another report again on the immigrant children who are still in custody, still in cages, and everything else seems to pale after that. And I think I think we should listen to them and follow these recommendations for the budget and take care of the health of our all the people who live here. If we do a census now, apparently they're going to want us to say whether you're a citizen or not. So we know how much money language is going to lose on that. Right. This is a way of depressing the way certain people vote. And now I'm completely away from the budget. But anyway, I just I just feel like we need to think about health. And I really appreciate health and human services commitment to outreach to the community. And I want to say something in respect to what the city is doing and moving forward with some policies, whether it's the $100 million pool or which I think is basically a competitive facility, or whether it's the so-called restoration project in the wetlands, I think we need to look at impacts that go beyond those projects which seem so glamorous and so wonderful on the surface. But basically when we want to talk about health, let's talk about community pools. It's fine to have a new soccer field. Even if it is plastic grass, it's fine to rebuild a rec center and have programs for seniors. But seniors can swim and they can exercise in water. Community pools are for everybody, I'm sure somewhere in a budget in the future we could find, you know, money to build a pool in the ninth district. I truly believe that that it will benefit people's health. And as far as the wetlands go, at the at the Coastal Commission meeting, a number of different tribal leaders. And in reviewing the paperwork, the majority of California Indians who have ties to this area oppose further destruction in their area of the budget. Spiritual health is connected to nature. And I appreciate Parks and Rec and everyone who's trying to, whether it's the de forest wetlands or whatever, to create a balance between nature and commerce. And on I that's all I guess I want to say for this round, but thank you very much and thank you for this long night. It's a long night. We're all still here, but thank you. Next speaker, please. I am Cory Sharpe from the fifth District. And I want to take a little moment to take a shout out to the tireless workers at our shelters. I don't know that they were mentioned tonight. And as they miss Mongo, some councilman. Woman Mongo. I'm a failed foster parent as well. Three times over and I don't think I could ever do their job. So I think they deserve not a little shout out to, unfortunately, still, at this point, countless defenseless animals continue to be put to death in our shelter. They aren't being put to sleep. They aren't being put down. They're being they're dying. And I urge the council to find even a one time fund from the unfunded of course, we've heard that talked about tonight. But I'm asking you to just find a time to put in enough money for an additional animal investor who'll be responsible for coordinating whether there's shelters that are already no kill, shelter status, foster homes or other rehoming agencies to bring language to what it should be, which is a no kill shelter. The communities around us are no cure shelters. We need to become that and we can become that. You could become the legacy of this. In the first council in the history of Long Beach to have a no kill shelter. Please be the voice for the voiceless and the defenseless. Add the funding for at least just one. One, one time ambassador. To help our animals have a little more time and a little more energy to find the final home that they need. Thank you. Thank you. Ms.. Sharpe, there's actually the budget actually does include the addition of one full time new staff member to focus only on adoptions. And so that is in this budget and that's in addition to what we've had before. So that that and other additions in the animal care budget are in the budget. So thank you. Maybe we could have another. Sure. I'm sure it's in the issue. I know. We always. We always were almost. Midnight and the machine is broken. We're hungry. We always want more. Absolutely. Next speaker. Get him a snack cart. Maybe we could get some funding. Hi, my name is Ramon. I'm from the fifth District. I'd like to honor the. Mayor for this budget that's been presented. I think it's good. I like the Parks and Recreation. That's really my primary interest. I'd like to say it like four years ago I was doing everything I could to try to get sustainability in the parks, sustainability for just keeping the park alive. Everything was dying. A lot of people were calling the dead trees, mangoes. And I don't mean that to be I don't mean. That to be. Critical. I'm sorry for saying that. One of the one of the things that confuses me is that I see the budget. And I like what it is because now we got sustainability. But I know that we have $117 million needed in. Re re piping our our parks and all of the all of the the piping has outlived. Its its livelihood. I have access to a report. And it shows that we have when Marie. Knight started her, um, you know, her tenure. There was about $550. Million that we needed just to upgrade the. The facilities at the parks. And now it is $770 million as of now. That's what this report says. And I'm saying, like. This is phenomenally high. I'm wondering this is correct. This is eye popping numbers, three quarters of $1,000,000,000. And I'm wondering. What happened to this? How come nobody's addressing any of this. Stuff in the budget. In the. In the budgetary stuff? Is there a. Plan to bridge this gap? Is this is I don't know if. I'm I mean, this these are the numbers that I'm seeing. And I'm just kind of curious that why we're missing things like this. When I was working with Marie Knight, I also gave her a plan to which she was working on to try to. Help get the permit fees, feed it back into the parks. And I don't know where. The where the parks director is, but I'd like to work with him and show him how the plan works. She was beginning to work on it, and it it kind of went by the wayside. So there's a variety of other things that I'd like to do. But I'm going to take. Councilwoman Longo's advice and maybe I'll just send something in writing. And anyways, I just like to have those issues addressed, the the piping that needs to be replaced and also the additional work that needs to be done to bridge the. Gap for the the work to maintain. The facilities, just to bring them up to normal in the parks. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I want to thank everyone for being here for the budget hearing. We have a motion and a second to receive and file the budget hearing and will be continued to the next meeting. So, Members, please go ahead and cast your votes. I mean, I. Think motion carries a. Thank you. And now we've gone through the first item on the agenda and only 26 more. So let me I'm going to take first the items that we're request to take to take early. And so that is the round up item. The outdoor smoking item in the housing item were all I had requests on those. So let me do all those first. Did you really take the emergency budget item? We were asking if we could do the. Yeah, let me do it.