Recommendation to request City Manager and the Executive Director of the Civil Service Department and Human Resources Director to collaborate in gathering data on existing workforce demographics and hiring pools in the City of Long Beach and draft a detailed report open to the public within 120 days. This report should include, but not be limited to, the following for both Classified and Unclassified employees: a) Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) statistics for each City department of both Classified and Unclassified Employees, b) Data should include gender, ethnicity, age, disability, and veteran status, and each grouping should include salary averages and EEO category and job cluster breakdowns (i.e., officials and administrators, professionals, technicians, protective service workers, administrative support, skilled craft workers, and service and maintenance). c) Track employment practices, including available labor market demographics and applicant and hiring diversity for both Classified and Unclassified Employees. d) Comparisons
So we're going to do those items first. And so let me begin. To these to look at these items. The first item we're going to hear is item 15. Communication from council member Yarrawonga Councilwoman Price, Vice Mayor Richardson recommendation to request the city manager, the executive director of the Civil Service Department and Human Resources Director to collaborate in gathering data on existing workforce demographics and hiring pools in the city of Long Beach and draft a detailed report open to the public within 120 days. Okay, thank you. Going to turn this over to Councilmember Ranga. Thank you, Mayor. First of all, I want to thank my colleagues who joined me in signing for this item. I also want to thank Garcia for his leadership and being a strong proponent for increased diversity here in Long Beach. I appreciate all your leadership. I want to thank both the civil service department and the Human Resources Department for working with us as we prepared to sign them and for the work you do each and every day to ensure that we hire the best employees possible here in the city of Long Beach. It goes without saying that the city of Long Beach is one of the most diverse urban cities in America, and we should be striving to ensure that our workforce matches the diversity of our city. Diversity is a key driver of innovation and is a critical component of being successful in a large scale. Many Fortune 500 companies look inward and adapt inclusion and diversity strategies. And I'm excited to take this first step towards developing such a strategy in our workforce in the city of Long Beach. As many of you may know, I worked for the city of Long Beach in a civil service department as a recruitment officer for the city . In that role, I worked to ensure the city's employees and fire, police and other departments reflected the diversity of the city. And I are proud to say that I've had I had some successes, such as the current chief of police, Robert, who was a recruit and other senior management battalion chiefs, fire engine engineers and captains in the fire department as well were recruits that I had an impact on. So I want to continue this kind of success. And I hope that we can work together with the Civil Service and Human Resources Department to look at where we're at. And where we need to go to ensure that our city. Family reflects that of the city's diversity. So I want to urge my colleagues to please join me in supporting this motion. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you. I'm happy to sign on. Thank you so much, Councilmember Ranga, for this recommendation tonight. I think it's important that we use data in tracking and analysis to make sure that we are being intentional in terms of being diverse in our workforce and making sure that we as public employees reflect the community, that we community that we serve. And that's a challenge at times given, you know, there are, you know, laws we have to follow, process we have to follow, but we can always do data and reporting and those things are important to do. So we should always have a good read on, you know, on a good gut check on where we are in terms of our diversity. Does our city, you know, does our workforce look like the crowd or does it look like our city council? Well, we don't know and we'll find out. So thank you so much for doing that. And I'm glad to support you. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and let the city attorney has some comments and then I'm going to go to the rec down the rest of the. Those are plugged in. Thank you, mayor. Members of the council councilmember during the. The motion includes under item B additional language regarding disability and veteran status. And there's ADA issues with recording and submitting those. So we will assume that your motion will say collect all of this data as applicable or in compliance with state law. Thank you for that. Excellent. Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce. Thank you. I want to also thank my colleague, Councilman Turanga, for bringing this item forward. Absolutely. Trying to have a workforce that represents the constituency and the demographic makeup of the city is very important. And I think our city should be committed to that. I agree with Councilman Turanga that first and foremost, our recruitment commitment should be to finding the best candidate for the job regardless of their background. We certainly want to make sure that we have qualified candidates working in the city. But to the extent where we have the opportunity to allow for greater diversity in our workforce, we should definitely make that a priority. So thank you for this item, and thank you for including me. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzales. Yes. I, too, want to thank Councilmember Suranga for bringing this forward and the supporters of this item. I think it's great that we are looking at this a little deeper and that we can include we can look at diversity in so many different levels. I do want to ask if we are able to and I must I believe it's in here and the intent of the item. But if we if I can offer a friendly amendment to add the LGBTQ community, I know when it says data should include gender, ethnicity, age, disability and veteran status. I'd like to see if we can include our LGBT community as in that as well. Mr. City, attorney. Mayor, members of the council that maybe fall into another category where we don't record that or ask that at the time of the hiring. So we would want to be you and I, as I mentioned earlier, we would take the motion, be as forward as we can in compliance with state and federal law. Councilmember, you really want to respond also. Although it's an excellent suggestion, I think that falls under voluntary information such as male or female ethnic background and that that type of work that would be difficult to gather. Okay. Certainly understood. That's correct. We would get all the information that we're legally entitled to accumulate and assimilate and then report back to you. Okay. And I guess I was reading this a little bit differently because it's it's just in the practice of hiring, is that correct? So it's not after the fact as we are. Is that correct? I would have thought it would also be just our demographic after hiring. But maybe I'm getting it. Incorrect, I think. Mr. City Attorney. I think what the councilman is asking for is, is are we doing data collection post hiring as well so that, you know, we track that on any sort of dashboard. Is that something that's possible? If it is, maybe you can come back and let us know if we can if we can track information or voluntary, of course, on LGBT representation. Yes, we'll certainly report that back. Okay. Okay. That's perfect. I'm sorry Councilman Durango wasn't done and I cut him off. So it comes from your anger. Then Councilmember Pearce. You know. One of the additional items I want to add to this and I didn't see it in the report, is I would like to have this institutionalized in respect to every year. I would like to have an update as to where we are in our hiring practices, the number of recruitments that we conducted or our hires , and what the results of those recruitments were in hires on a yearly basis. That included a yearly report. Thank you, Councilmember Pearce. Thank you. And I want to thank my colleagues for bringing this forward. I think when we're drafting policy and talking about things that we're doing in the city. Overall, it's important to know if we're being reflective of our values. And so I thank you for that. So just clarity, if we're going to be doing this report yearly, this would be something that we would be able to look at our current staffing. I think that Councilmember Gonzalez just asked that question. But city attorney, I wanted to just double confirm that we would be able to look at current higher staffing as well as ongoing. That's correct. And then I had another question, because it talks about building an online portal for this. Is it something that we can already include in the open lbe data? This is already included in that. I think the intention would be that it would be part of our open data portal. Great. Thank you so much. Okay. Let me before we go to a vote and go to public comment, I just want to add that I'm a very, very supportive counselor here, and I want to thank you for moving this forward. I do want to also just recognize, I think, Mr. West, I think if you look at today, the the diversity of the management and the department heads, there has been great progress made just in the last few years. And, of course, it's not just folks that are that are reflective of the city, but incredibly qualified leaders in their field. And so that has been, I think, some important progress. And I think to have a open dashboard that is open to the public and accessible to the public so that anyone can go in and view departments by departments and see hiring trends, whether it's gender equity issues or whether it's issues around diversity, I think is pretty exciting. And all data that can be transparent and open I think is a really good thing. So I strongly support this thanks to the council members that are moving this forward. And is there any public comment on this item? Please come forward. Very good new Coke as he addressed. I've always thought the best standard to use is the same standard you'd use if you rushed your kid to the hospital. In critical condition. You could give a rodents rear end. What color? Gender. Orientation the person is. You want the best that there is. And that's the only standard that should be used. Anything else? Invites disaster. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Any other public comment? Please come forward. I'll just. My name is Anna Christensen. I feel compelled to speak. After this last speaker and point out that not everybody who rushed their child to the hospital was allowed in the hospital. We have a long history of discrimination in this country. Thank you so much for moving to change that. Thank you. Thank you. We have a motion in a second seeing no other public comment. Members, please go ahead and cast your vote on council or your rearranges motion. Councilwoman Margo. Motion carries nine zero. Okay. Thank you. Congratulations, Councilmember. And and just so you guys know, Councilman Rank has been working on these issues. This. This was one of your leading issues when you were on the College Board. And I remember because you would always, always bring it up on the board. And so thank you for for doing that. Let me move on now to our presentation on. We have a couple of items have all been moved up. And so just so we know the order so folks can can know what we're doing next. We're going to have the presentation on the county homelessness initiative. And then right after that, we will have the presentation. Councilman Gonzalez's presentation on the Senate on the Senate bills moving forward. And then after that, we will have the conversation around 19, which is around the turfs and the turf field project.