Recommendation to approve the City’s Draft Blueprint for Economic Development to guide the City’s overall economic development work plan for the next ten years.  (Citywide)
Thank you. There's a motion on the second. See no public comment. Please cast your votes. Motion case consent count and the consent calendar and all the pulled out ins have been approved. We're going to go ahead and do a couple of items out of order. The first one will be on the agenda will be item 23. Item 23 Report from Economic and Property Development. Recommendation to approve the series Draft Blueprint for Economic Development to guide the city's overall economic development plan for the next ten years. City I thank you, but I making some opening comments because I think this is a really important discussion and item. And then I'm going to turn this over to to staff. So I just want to remind the council that when when this current council formed, this city did not have a economic development department. And as we probably remember, one of the first actions this council actually took in that very first budget was bringing back the economic development department that had been cut years ago in the city budget. And so I want to again just thank the council. That kind of investment that was made now about two years ago when that budget cycle restarted, the economic development department, which is now, as we all know, have been completely staff led by our director, that department, Mr. Jon Keisler. And in addition to that, the other thing that we did, again, thanks to the support of the Council, is we brought back and filled the Economic Development Commission. The commission had been completely vacant and and unfilled for many, many years. Clearly, in doing economic development work, you have to have business leaders and community members and workers and folks at the table doing this work. And so we approved a really great group of community leaders and commissioners to serve on this body. Their main task, informing the informing this commission and the main task that I had asked them to be involved with was the development of the blueprint that you see in front of you today. Now, just as a note, the blueprint is still in draft form. And so what you're seeing today, well, we printed out a few copies just for the council and us internally. This is not a final document. And so this is what you are seeing tonight is a is the draft of the essential completion of their work and and staff is looking forward to hearing from council tonight about your thoughts about this final draft before it goes into a final, final phase. Let me also just say that they've been working on this blueprint probably for about a year. There has been approximately 25 community meetings. There has been intense conversations and discussions with every single bed across the city. All of the leaders have been involved. There have been deep conversations with Cal State, Long Beach, Long Beach, City College, Long Beach, Unified School District, community groups of all types have been involved, whether it's on whether it's been groups like Building Healthy Communities or business groups that are like Virgin Galactic and others, all have been asked to provide input into the document that you have in front of you. I want to also think, because I think it's important to acknowledge there has been an incredible amount of work that these commissioners have been involved with, and I want to just personally thank them. And that has been Randall Hernandez, who's been the chair. Becky Blair, who will be saying some words tonight. Who is the vice chair? Cyrus Parker. Janette, who is one of the commissioners, also the dean of the College of the Arctic Council at Long Beach. We have Blair Cohn, who we all know, Bobby Oliviera, Frank Colonna, Kristi Allen, Lincoln Bower, Michelle Molina, Ralph Olguin and Walter Larkins. They have been a incredible group of commissioners and have put a lot of work into this. If you have had a chance to to watch them in any of their meetings on this topic, they have they have gone really, really deep and gone into the community and held meetings across the city to put what we have in front of us. And so I know that they are anxious to hear your thoughts on what they've put together. I know staff wants to hear from the council tonight what really stands out and what you really like about this document. And if you think there's anything that can improve this document, I think now is the time to please give those thoughts as well so that we can end up with a really strong final product. Let me also say that this this document is meant to do two things. The first is to really guide our economic development efforts for the next decade. It's going to be a great guide for staff to use as they do their work as a new department moving forward. And it's going to be an opportunity for the Commission to now begin working with the Council, in particular the Economic Development and Finance Committee, on how some of this work is implemented. What's the work plan look like? How do we begin to achieve some of the goals and recommendations that are in the the report? And so all of that I think is in the future, of course. But I wanted to thank the commission for. For their incredible work on this on this project, everything from the developing of the vision to the goals, to the to the to the plan itself. And the last thing I'll say is what Tim and I had a chance to to view this just a week or two ago when it was completed. And I what struck me about the document that I thought was really impressive is to me, at the core of this document are people and you guys really focused on people, on the entrepreneur, on on the worker, on the the business person, on the small business owner. And I think that was really impressive and is very different from from economic development documents. I think that have happened in the past in the city is there's a real strong focus on on people. And I thought that was that was something that really stood out to me. And so thank you to them. And I want to thank everyone for being so supportive of this process. It's one that I'm really proud of to to have been a part of. So with that, I'm going to turn this over to Mr. Chrysler, who's going to walk the council through some of the data and and some of the report. Honorable Mayor and members. Of the City Council, I would like to introduce Eric Romero, who has been our staff lead on this project to give you the staff report. Good evening, Mayor, and members of the City Council. My name is Eric Romero. I am a development project manager in the Economic and Property Development Department. Today I'll be presenting to you a short presentation on the draft blueprint for economic development. And we'll start with a brief economic snapshot. I'm going to start at the top and move to the right so that you can follow along. So we can see in the first chart that unemployment rate has dropped significantly between 2010 and 2016, which is good news on the chart to the right. We can also take a look at the top industries in terms of the number of jobs and how that compares to the state of California. We can also see on the chart furthest to the right that the economic status of our residents differs depending on race and ethnicity. And then going down to the to the first chart on the left, we can also see that wages differ by industry, with the top wages being in the transportation and warehouse industry. The next chart shows that total private employment has surpassed pre-recession levels, which is good news as well. And then the final chart there, the pie chart shows that the majority of our labor force commutes outside of the city for work. Mr. O'Mara, before you move on, can you're speeding through some of the stuff here, which is but I think it's really important to go back to that because this is what also is was was surprising to me. Can you go back to the charts? Sure. I'm going to I'm going to go ahead. So going back to these charts, I just wanted to just say point two things out. The first is the the real historic drop in unemployment that the city has seen is outpacing, by the way, in talking to mayors across the country and seeing what's going on, we are outpacing most cities across the country of our size or larger. So we are doing very well when it comes to job growth and the amount of jobs available to our community. That's something to be very proud of. And to me, it's one of the most important data points that a city should be looking at. When you're looking at economic activity is what the unemployment rate is, and that's something we should be very proud of. The and the other point that I wanted to make, which I think is really interesting, is if you look at the growth of of populations within the city and and the household income, this to me has been impressive. When you look at the five year growth of our populations, when you broke down, our populations are in a black, Asian, white, Hispanic. And you look at the five year growth for our for residents in Long Beach workers compared to the county. That's a striking difference. And look, if you look at, for example, just the Asian population, Asian-Americans in Long Beach had a 15.7% growth in household income versus 3.3% in L.A. County. You look at the the African-American population in the city of Long Beach and the five year growth ahead of 4.2% growth in household income. And unfortunately, there's been a negative point 2% decline in household income across the county. And the same can be said for the white population. You see the growth, the five year growth of 5.9 versus 3.9 across the county and within the Hispanic population of 7.8 to 2.4. So I just I point that out just because of the other, I think data point in the snapshot that I think is is important to note is that when you look at where the city is going and you look just take a look back on the last five years of every worker and every subgroup while certainly there are differences and those I think some some of those are addressed in here. Our growth is outpacing the county currently for everyone. And that's another thing that we should be very proud of. And so I just wanted to point that out and make sure the council saw that as well. So, Mr. Romero, sorry to interrupt you. Those were excellent points and thank you for for building on that. So I'll I'll jump into some background on the blueprint. So in 2015, the Mayor and the City Council tasked the Economic Development Commission with developing a vision and recommendations for how to grow our economy over the next ten years. The Mayor and the City Council really wanted the commission to drive this effort and for the recommendations to capture the essence of the steps that we could take as a city to grow our economy. The Commission consists of 11 members from various different sectors. For example, we have the Dean of the College of Arts at Cal State Long Beach, a director of a business improvement district, commercial brokers, entrepreneurs and more. And we feel that the draft blueprint really captures all of their diverse perspectives. And I have to personally commend the commission for their hard work. This commission was meeting every week at one point and biweekly at other points, which is not come in for most commissions. So I really applaud them for for their dedication to this process. The blueprint is a policy document that outlines goals, objectives and recommendations for how to grow our economy in the next ten years, and also will serve as a catalyst for economic activity across the city. The deliverables are a high level policy document, which is the draft blueprint, a work plan for further assessment and strategy. The development will take into consideration how we begin to operationalize some of these policy recommendations and consider our budget and staff resources and sequencing of the different programs and initiatives over time. And we're also looking to develop an online dashboard to track key performance indicators that will help us gauge how our economy is performing at a particular point in time. Some indicators that we're looking at is the total number of jobs, the total number of businesses, per capita income, median household income, educational attainment, and many more. And this will be a public facing dashboard that will be available to all to help gauge how our economy's performing. The Commission went through an extensive research process as a part of developing the recommendations for the blueprint. The city commissioned Beacon Economics for developing an economic analysis which was made up of two different parts. Part one provided essential background information on the city's economy, its workforce and its residents. Part two was a deeper dove into the different key industry clusters in the city, such as health care, logistics and business services, to name a few. And it helped us to get a baseline understanding of how these clusters are performing and how we can better serve them. Moving forward, the Commission also did a great job at organizing various different study sessions that focus on different topics and the organized panels with developers to understand how we can improve the real estate and property development process. We had a panel on workforce development, a panel with city staff, so that they can better understand the business licensing process, the permitting and inspection process, and the planning process as well, and a number of other study sessions that were organized. We also looked at other plans from across the country to inform this planning process and to identify best practices. For example, we looked at the Seattle Economic Development Plan, the Santa Ana Economic Development Plan, and also looked at the L.A. County Strategic Plan for Economic Development and others as well. And we organized a number of different listening sessions or interviews with the commissioners themselves, department heads and other institutional partners to get some insights as to some of the challenges that we're facing and also opportunities to grow our economy. Once the Commission developed some initial recommendations, we organized focus groups in the community to get some initial feedback on the policy recommendations. And we also looked at other key reports to identify best practices, for example, for how to best support small businesses or how to help grow a creative and innovation economy locally and regionally. So with all of this work, the commission did put together their draft recommendations for the Economic Development Blueprint. And the vision for the draft blueprint is that Long Beach is a city of opportunity for workers, investors and entrepreneurs. And the commission really felt that the blueprint should serve as a catalyst for action, so that it should create a vision for different institutional partners across the city to come together behind one vision to grow our economy, that it should create higher wage job opportunities, spur investment throughout all of the city. So investment in the north side, west side, central, Long Beach and everywhere else that it should build an ecosystem that supports entrepreneurs to confidently grow and to start and grow businesses in the city of Long Beach and to provide opportunity for our residents to live healthy, productive and prosperous lives and to positively impact where they live. The blueprint has seven focus areas. The first is engines of growth. And this has to do with making sure that we grow and support our key industry clusters and emerging sectors. The second one is economic inclusion, which has to do with advancing economic equity, particularly for low income communities across the city. The third is jobs and workforce development, which has to do with making sure that we have a prepared workforce so that our residents can get good jobs and also so that we can attract higher wage job opportunities to the city. The fourth is business assistance, which has to do with putting the support systems in place again so entrepreneurs can confidently start and grow their business here. Number five is the development environment, which has to do with ways to make to improve the real estate and property development process, making it more cost effective and streamlining it as well . Number six is quality of life and this takes into consideration the wellbeing of our residents across all of our unique neighborhoods and it considers many questions relating to public safety. The social services some people would need particularly vulnerable populations to lead production productive lives. Also questions about walkability and likability as well. And number seven is economic leadership and cooperation, which has to do with advancing an integrated approach to local and local and regional economic development, and to really have long to be a leader out there advocating for our city and our region to help grow jobs, businesses and opportunity for our residents. If approved, the following implementation process would be recommended for the blueprint. The first would be to work with our city partners and also institutional partners across the city to encourage alignment with economic development goals and objectives. Sorry about that. Number two would be to work with city staff and partners to develop a blueprint work plan to operationalize these policy recommendations and see how we would sequence the initiatives and programs that come out of this plan. Number three is to develop an online platform for tracking and reporting performance. This is the online dashboard that I referred to earlier. Number four is to produce a communications and marketing plan to to market this to the world, to let everyone know what we're doing here in Long Beach, to grow our economy and to also let people know why they should be considering investing in the city. We would, of course, provide regular updates to the City Council, the Economic Development and Finance Committee, and to the Economic Development Commission. And we would organize an annual conference that highlights progress on the blueprint to keep it relevant and to keep people excited about this partnership to grow our city's economy. That concludes my my staff report, and we're happy to answer any questions. Thank you. And I think everyone has the blueprint in front of them as well. So let me turn this over to the before I turn over to the council, I believe actually someone from the commission was going to say a few comments. Is that correct? Ms.. Romero. Yes, yes. I apologize. I would like to invite Vice Chair Becky Blair to add a few additional remarks if she would like to step up to the podium. Thank you. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor and the city council. It's a pleasure to be here tonight to celebrate what we have accomplished through the recommendations for the blueprint. And it is important to show that Mayor Garcia and some of the city council members to whom we've spoken to are all a part of that. It is something that they're looking at for the first time. It's something that they've helped us in participating. They've reached out to the business community and they've asked the business community to help them run the city with development and small business in the best manner possible, more efficiently and more effectively. And when reaching out to the business community like this, the business comments that I have coming back from others are that the city is working on our side now. The city is working collaboratively. The door is open and it's business not as usual, but it's new business. And we appreciate that. I think that I respect and am happy to have worked with each and every one of the commissioners. They come from varied backgrounds and careers, and they have brought such a new sense of where Long Beach is growing and a security for the future for all the areas and economic equality for each and every neighborhood. So I also appreciate two of the commissioners that are here that have done a fine job throughout. Michelle Merlino And also Cyrus. Janette Parker. Thank you very much and thank you very much, Mayor, for bringing this forward. Thank you. Thank you very much to our vice chair, Blair, and, of course, to the commissioners that are here for the work. I'm going to turn this back over to the council. Councilwoman Mongo. I want to thank all the members of the commission. Excellent work on more than 25 meetings went into this process. I also want to thank the members of the community who were at these meetings and were constantly involved. I appreciate the many members of the commission who met with me regularly throughout the process to keep me as Chair of Eddie and F apprized of the situation and where we were moving and what it looked like, and also to the city staff of economic development who gave us regular briefings. And for those of you who were able to attend earlier tonight, the Eddie and F committee asked that we move and recommend adopting some form of this tonight with any inclusions of our colleagues, but also that we potentially pulled together a committee of three or four members of the commission. The three members of the Eddie and F City Council to help develop the specific, measurable outcomes that we want to measure over time. We also named a couple of other entities we thought might want to be at the table, including having in the audience when we convene this meeting and then the chair or executive director of our Workforce Investment Board and our city partners in any organizations that have been a part of the process to get us to this part so far. So I want to thank everyone for their work. I've literally handed over two versions of a printout of this in advance, written on and included by input and working with the chair directly . And I'm very proud of the work that our committee has done. I think that it's an exceptional and thoughtful effort in this way. We did not keep track of any of these things before and what gets measured gets done. And so if you have a moment to reflect on what we did earlier tonight, in reviewing the statistics of many of our measurable goals that the EDI and F keep track of, I think that in partnering those together, I think we're going to have something really magical here. So I look forward to hearing from my colleagues and the community on this exciting day. Thank you. Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to take a moment to say thank you to the commissioners for their very hard work. When the commission step up and develop a work plan, it's valuable service to your city because we work very hard to implement this work plan, and it was obviously done in a very cooperative way. You know, when I see friends or allies or colleagues, they all are referencing this blueprint. They're all hands on deck on this blueprint. I want to say it to staff I, John and your team. You know, sometimes I can be a bit cynical when it comes to another plan, right? Another plan. But, you know, I believe in this one. And it's very clear that you're very sincere about inclusion and things like, you know, I see things like vision here, cooperation, an implementation strategy, a work plan. Those are words that that get me excited because it's something to actually get my hands on and work on. So we've already talked about a few ideas for implementation in North Long Beach. I'm really excited about that. And so I would just say, finally, I think, you know, some of our other commissions could benefit from having very targeted direction. As to, you know, looking at developing blueprints, prints or strategies for their specific, you know, expertize, subject matter expertize, particularly. You know, I think that, you know, we're doing some work relooking at the youth commission and I think coming up with a youth playbook would be good. We just had a lot of conversations around veterans. I think veterans could put together something comprehensive like that that puts a playbook together, a blueprint for veterans. So this is a great model and I hope that other commissioners follow suit. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Pierson. Thank you. I want to thank everybody that's worked really hard on this process over the past several months. And I really want to recognize the staff effort that has gone into this and also recognize Eric Romero, who was my intern for a great year plus when I worked at Laine. And so thank you for the great presentation today. I think that this does a really great job of talking about some of the core things that we as a city want to do. And I think an economic blueprint is the right direction that we as a city, we are at a critical point in our time right now where the market's kind of exciting. We've got new developments happening everywhere. We've as a council, prioritized things like 1% for the arts. And so having a blueprint that really says, where are we going and what's our vision, I think is really important. It's important in times like this also to recognize the impacts of economic development and really make sure that as we have these conversations, we're doing it in a way that is not too quick, that doesn't exclude people in the population that might feel excluded in the past. And so I want to just highlight a couple of comments that were brought to me by members in our community. I want to thank the the downtown. Well, now I have to call it the downtown Long Beach Alliance for their letter that they've shared with us. And this letter pretty much, I think, does a great job about asking us to include some recommendations. They've listed out a nine recommendations to be included in the blueprint, which include things like housing. That includes not just, you know, market rate housing by using the White House Development Toolkit to put together a policy that's really thoughtful and robust in how we address housing for a growing population. As we seen and as our mayor noted, we do have demographic changes in our city. And how are we thinking long term for that? Making sure that we have online accessibility, not just with our permits and with C P process, but including that overall. So I'd like for us to I'll share the letter with you guys, and I would like us to to try to include this as much as we can in the comments of if some of it has been left out. I also want to recognize some of the community meetings that you guys had with building healthy communities that I think tapped into some of those things around, making sure that we're using empty space, making sure that those that have felt it's been difficult to access housing, that that is included and ensuring as as we talk about the demographics, that we have equity changes in our city, we've got leadership in our city that are addressing issues of equity and that as much as we can include that in our economic blueprint, the city overall, no matter if you're a business owner or if you're a renter, is going to be better off for it. And also just want to, you know, do one more recognition to the fact that whenever we have a city that does three things and I want to recognize the commission for doing this work, making sure that our city is business friendly while looking at those residents that are most impacted. We can do those side by side. And so making sure we've got a uniform licensing and permitting process, making sure that we have predictability no matter if you're a new business owner or someone that's opening up your third business, that we have high levels of customer service and that I think that our city is on the right path to those things. The last thing I'll say is the one thing that I feel like is missing out of here is a little bit on our arts and entertainment. And so I talked a little bit this morning with staff. I would like to see the possibility of reforming the permitting process for live performances in downtown. That's something that we're going to be working on in my office, and I would like to see that are reflected in this plan as well. So thank you. Thank you, Councilman Price. Well, that's really got to count somebody a Ranka and then I'll go to Councilman Price. Councilman. Sorry. Thank you for the report. I saw the presentation earlier at our economic committee meeting, so I want to thank staff again. One of the issues that I raised earlier today that I wanted to highlight again is this is a really great report and I'm impressed by the involvement of the various stakeholders, and I think we have some good data that we've obtained, but I think it's very important moving forward that we have realistic performance measures and that we are held accountable to those performance measures. And if. We need to break that up into phases because I know we have a lot of objectives outlined in the blueprint, but if we need to break it up into phases so that thank you so that we can have some realistic performance objectives to judge ourselves and our progress on, I think that would be really great and I understand that is part of the plan. So thank you. Thank you. Council member Sri Lanka. Thank you, Mayor. I, too, was a recipient of the report earlier with the Aden Africa Committee that we met. And they raised some some points that I thought were important for for me and for the West Side, especially when talking about as we look at economic development and growth and business growth, that we do it responsibly, that we do it with the awareness of the environment, that we keep our air clean, that we that we keep transportation and mobility at the at the forefront of what we do here. Because a lot of what we what we do have has unintended consequences. And a lot of those unintended consequences might be the affect that they have on the quality of life of our residents. And so I want to also include the fact that when we're looking at economic development, we also look at training and the training that's essential to and to ensure that we have the workforce available to take many of these new jobs that we're looking at creating and business opportunities. But with business, you get jobs. And with jobs you get people who are going to be able to buy homes and have a good quality of life. And I want to ensure that that that the the living Long Beach working Long Beach to have fun and Long Beach. The last thing I want to say is that we always keep keep in mind keep open the possibility of having training programs that that come into Long Beach, opening new schools. I know we have great educational institutions here. We have Chelsea, Long Beach. We have limited college and a great school district. But we also have other programs that are out there that provide training opportunities, such as apprenticeships in areas other than high tech or any other business that we might be looking at. Because we still need plumbers, we still need carpenters, we still need service providers. Told us in the report that where, you know, we have a great hospitality business here in LA, which is one of the highest, but yet their salaries are depressed and not reflective of the great opportunities that we had here, Long Beach in the service industry. So we need to also look at how we can increase wages in those areas as well and to create opportunities for people who want to come to Long Beach and work in a service industry that they're going to get the jobs and the wages that are that are living wages for them as well. So keep that in mind. Just a little food for thought for all of you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzalez. Yes, I would like to thank the commissioners as well for being here and all those that are not here as well as the department. I think this is a fantastic blueprint. It's very it's got a lot of great ideas, I think. And there's specifically, you know, streamlining the tracking of the key performance indicators, which I know will be, you know, hearing more about as time goes on, the value of business improvement districts, mapping out areas of our city, lacking key economic opportunities. You know, I think like Councilmember Duran, I think about the West Side that doesn't have a bank or a pharmacy and it addresses, you know, being able to prioritize those areas to add economic opportunities there and then incentivizing innovation. When I think about that, I also would like to see possibly and I've talked about this before, but working with our U.S. Patent Patent Office, I know I've worked I've talked to John Kessler about this in the past on how we can look at ways to encourage patents and innovation in that way. I know some cities quantify how many patents they have as part of their you know, this is City of Long Beach. We have, you know, this many patents in in the city. And I think that's a really key area. We can look into a couple other things. Also to training and retraining. I think just it has been addressed kind of on a bigger level. But as tech knowledge advances and as automation becomes more and more clear, it's kind of looking at ways to retrain people to be either accustomed to new technology or retraining in a different sector that would be more beneficial for them. And then recently, I know myself and my colleagues, we put together an item that will be coming back soon, but it looks at doing business with the city as local businesses. How do we offer preferential procurement opportunities for local businesses? So I think that also should be looked into as well. And then lastly, I know we've talked about the unemployment rate and I'm very glad that our overall unemployment rate is very low. But we do have pockets in the city that are still upwards of 16%. And so looking at that and kind of prioritizing in those pockets as to what we can do for those communities would be essential as well. And then the last thing I think I'll also chime on to what Councilmember Pearce said about music and entertainment. We do have a lot of events that occur in our city and how are we maybe providing more ways to look for economic opportunities there? So in our special events and filming music events, artistic events, I mean, it's really ramping up in those areas. So looking at that and then I think that's it. Sorry. And one other thing. Oh, I'm sorry. The global business imports and exports. So since we are next to the port, I know this probably has been addressed, but if there are any ways we can work, even with the U.S. Embassy on my travels abroad, I had worked with the U.S. Embassy, and they create a matchmaking service for U.S. businesses that want to invest in foreign countries but also have a mainstay here. So maybe creating synergy with the U.S. embassy to be able to do that. But I think this is fantastic. Great job to all of the commissioners and everybody involved. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Ashton. Thanks. And I agree with everything that has been stated. I want to congratulate, salute the commissioners for excellent work staff for the dedication. I know there was a number of public meetings. And so to anybody in the public who participated and gave public comment to to add to this this blueprint, and we salute you as well. I think this provides us some great economic statistics. That snapshot is extremely interesting. It provides us with some good, valuable data, data that we can we can come back a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, and measure our our, our, our, our, our, our deliverables and improvement and how we have implemented this plan. I'd like to put a greater emphasis on and it's just, you know, you'll hear me talk about this week after week after week, but the greater emphasis on creating and maintaining quality jobs in this city. And with that in mind, I mean, we always talk about economic development. I would like to see employment kind of mirrored or married to that that term economic and employment development, because it's I think it's really what we're doing but we can't under if. Besides the importance of creating quality jobs in the city, especially when you look at only 77% of the folks in the city are leaving the city to work. That's, I think, very, very important. It would be. And I got to tell you, it is for those who get a chance to to live and work in Long Beach. You you have a you are very fortunate. You're very fortunate. And so so to come off the island, I got to tell you, it's rough out there on an in traffic and on those Southern California freeways to be able to create a greater number of quality jobs in the city. Is that that's something that I'd like to see us truly, truly work on. I know this blueprint will help us get there. But again, I'm in terms of framing economic development, I think in the future we need to to look at marry in that term with employment because it's so, so important as well. And again, congratulations and great work. Thank you. Councilmember Supernanny. Thank you. I'd like to acknowledge the hard work of staff and our council colleagues on the committee, and especially to the commission. I believe that this was the only project you had that would be impressive. But having served on a commission for seven years, I know your plate is full with other items too. So thank you and for all your hard work on that. I also just want to give a shout out to the fourth District, of course. I noticed on the list of top 25 sales tax generators, ten of them either have a location, the fourth, or are entirely located in the fourth, as in the case of Serco, Porsche and Audi. So go forth. Thank you. Any public comment on this? Please come forward. Good evening again, Robert Fox. Great report. Very much supportive of it. I have a comment to make about disseminating this information. It's nice that we all have it here. We're very involved in this stuff, but we need to get it out to the community so that they understand what we what we're planning. My concern is a very pragmatic one. I am now executive director of the Council of Neighborhood Organizations, went to the Neighborhood Resource Center and tried to find out where is the database for all of the neighborhood associations. We have 132 and we have the Council of Business Organizations and all the business associations are listed there. Also, 40% of the data is not correct. It's just gone. People moved. Somebody died. But all the emails are not working, you know. Like 40% of them not working. And the telephone numbers are not correct. The people are not correct. Maybe some of these things. Went belly up. We don't know. So I went to Margaret Madden, who's a good friend of mine. I've known her since she was 16. And I said. Margaret, you know, we kind of get this database together. Here, you know. And I wasn't really satisfied, to be honest with with the response. This is such an important report. I've been a business leader most of my life, and I really, really want to get this out there to the community. So rather than waiting for nine months to get the data together at the Neighborhood Resource Center, I would urge you to maybe put another person there or dedicate somebody specifically to make sure that we have at least the communication link that to all business associations in the city and neighborhood associations in the city so that this great news can get out there. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. It's Hansen. Please come down. I just want to. Congratulate all of you and the. Whole city. Who? Oh, my gosh. You accomplished. So much. And. And then I met with Superintendent Steinhauser today. Oh, my gosh. The things the wonderful things that are going on in our school district. Are just unparalleled. With I don't know how anybody else could measure up. But anyway, it just there was one thing that I always have thought that would really help Long Beach, and that would be if we had that must be a reason it hasn't happened. But we are Long Beach. That's what we're known for. From the very beginning, I mean, that's our greatest resource is that ocean out there. And maybe someday we could have something that's like like they have on Venice Beach with all those little shops and things and people going up and down. And I think it could really. Be. Something that could be enchanting and so much fun for everyone. And, you know, and it's what you know, Venice Beach. Is known all over the world. When people come to California, they want to go there. So anyway, just think about that. And the Obama library. Michelle Obama library. I've been there since. You know, fathers with their kids, you know, studying and doing homework. I mean, it's just so wonderful. It's like something that. We have always. Dreamed of having. You guys are making. Really good. Dreams come true. Thank you. And then there's other public. We're all trying to do good deeds. And I'm just in the mood to celebrate when I go to the Michelle Obama library and talk, you know, see all these good things happening. Thank you. Thank you, Senator. Next speaker, please. Hello. Good evening, Mayor. City council members, city staff. Keeping with the positive comments tonight, I'm here on behalf of the Chamber and our leadership and our members to fully endorse and support this draft blueprint for economic development as presented tonight. Over the last year, we've attended and provided input at multiple Economic Development Commission meetings and study sessions. We're grateful for allowing us to have such input through this process as it relates to the blueprint. And while the blueprint covers seven focus areas, we are particularly excited about two areas the business assistance and the economic leadership and cooperation areas. Ensuring our businesses, our business community has continued to access to technical, financial and regulatory assistance is paramount to sustaining our current businesses while attracting new. At the same time, we appreciate the recommendation of a small business concierge program as we've begun a similar concept for our members and welcome further dialog around this area and how we can assist all businesses in Long Beach under the Economic Leadership and Cooperation Focus Area. We welcome the discussion on a partnership between the city and the Council Business Associations, commonly referred to as COBA. Any time you have multiple partners in this case the Chamber Business Improvement districts, other business associations are at the table discussing customer service, regulatory process and any proposed new audiences that will ultimately impact business. We view this as a good start to a wonderful strategy. The chamber stands ready to work with these various partners who dedicate a significant amount of time to this endeavor and also resources that went into this document. Lastly, as outlined in the blueprint, we look forward to further engagement directed by all of you and also the city manager's office. We appreciate our inclusion to the sterile process to date. Applaud all the work by the Economic Development Commission and staff. Specifically, we'd like to publicly thank EDC chair Randall Hernandez, Vice Chair Becky Blair, all of the commissioners, and especially John Keisler and his wonderful staff and his former staff at the Long Beach Innovation Team. So job well done by all. Thank you for tonight. Thank you. SPEAKER. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Members of the City Council. Craig Cogen with the downtown Long Beach Associates. On behalf of our board, our economic development committee, as well as the staff, we want to commend the mayor for initiating this vision and this process that's led to Long Beach being open for business for so many years. As the mayor mentioned earlier, the commission did not exist and the department was not functioning at its at its regular level of personnel. This is really a welcome relief for not only downtown, but certainly the city. And with your vision, this has really helped us propel Long Beach into the very dynamic and certainly competitive market that we exist in. I'd also like to thank the commissioners commissioners. The Economic Development Commissioners did a wonderful job expressing and exercising due diligence on all of the aspects that are covered in this plan. And I also appreciate the work that COBRA, as Jeremy mentioned, the Council of Business Associations did. All the business improvement districts, including the Chamber and the CVB, have been working together to really bring to the forefront the needs of business and recommending and certainly agreeing with Councilmember Pierce's comments earlier that business can coexist with its residents in the neighboring area. So we look forward to working with with our citywide partners. And certainly the jobs recommendations that we've presented to you have already been presented to city staff. They're aware of this. We want to be able to continue working towards these towards these objectives and helping you with the tasks as well as the as well as the work that's necessary to get this done. And this is really an awesome starts. We look forward to working with our continued work that we have already started and with the collaboration that we have with the citywide partners as well as the newly found commission, as well as the city staff. So thanks very much. Thank you very much, Craig. Next speaker, please. Hello, everybody. I'm Sylvia Contreras, and I just wanted to say thank you to the commission that created this blueprint. I took note, Vice Mayor Richardson, that hopefully the veterans commission will take this as a model. I'm here also as commissioner of Veterans Admission or Veterans Affairs Commission. I liked it right away. So I second to your motion and I'll bring it to Gina's attention and everybody else's. And that's all. Thank you. Thank you. So with that, we have we have a motion on a second to approve the draft and staff will read it the final and of course, synthesize everything they've heard today as well as the comments that have been submitted. Members, please go ahead and cast your vote. Motion carries. Thank you very much. Congratulations. Let's give everyone a round of applause for their hard work on that. And you know, one thing one thing I didn't say just briefly that I think it's important to thank the innovation team because, you know, this is one of the things that they worked on early on as an initial project. Then it got transitioned over to the department and that's I think what the innovation team is all about is starting something with the commission and then it got transitioned to the full department. And so the innovation team members worked really, really hard on that, particularly the early days of this of this report. And I want to thank them as well. So congratulations. We're going to go ahead. And the next item that I had a request to be moved up was of the item 2021. I'm sorry. Nope. Item 20. He was only 20.