Recommendation to conduct a Budget Hearing to receive and discuss an Overview of the Proposed Fiscal Year 2015 Budget for Parks, Recreation and Marine, Library Services, and Code Enforcement.
Item one Report from the City Manager Recommendation to conduct a budget hearing to receive and discuss an overview of of the proposed fiscal year 2015 budget for Parks, Recreation and Marine Library Services and Code Enforcement. Thank you. I want to introduce Mr. West. Mr. Mayor, council members, thank you very, very much. This is the next in a series of budget hearings that we're having to review the fiscal year 15 budget. Tonight, we're going to see a snapshot of the Parks and Recreation, Marine budget, library budget and the code enforcement budget. I just want to point out that while 70% of our entire budget goes to police and fire, showing the importance of public safety in this community, police and fire get a lot of assistance to the rest of some very, very critical functions in the city. We call it the public safety continuum. So these entities assist public safety fire PD throughout the entire community. These are things like neighborhood services, just keeping a good infrastructure up. The city prosecutor in all the great work he does, workforce development and the jobs that they provide for our youth, our homeless plan and other health services. Affordable housing, of course. And then again tonight, you'll see Parks Rec and Marine Library and Code Enforcement. And next week, you'll see the hard core of our public safety continuum, health, human services, combined with police and fire. So I'm going to turn it over first for our Parks Recreation Marine Director George Champion to provide that review. Thank you, George. Thank you, Mr. West, honorable mayor and members of the City Council. It's my pleasure to present to you the Department of Parks Recreation, Marine Fiscal Year 2015 Budget Fiscal Year 2014 has been incredibly successful and productive year for us and we look forward to what fiscal year 2015 holds. The 15 proposed budget provides the resources that not only help our city to be recognized as a national leader in parks and recreation services, but even more importantly, it provides us the opportunity to have a positive daily impact in the lives of the entire Long Beach community. As you know, the Department of Parks, Recreation, Marine is a large, dynamic operation, providing not only the more traditional parks, maintenance and recreation programing activities, but we are also responsible for our public marinas, six miles of beaches and our waterways and animal care services. The core services presented on the slide reflect the diversity of services offered to our Long Beach residents and visitors to provide for quality maintenance of parks, facilities, open spaces, beaches and marinas continue the implementation of the city's open space plan. Provide recreational opportunities to meet the diverse needs of the community, ensure the marinas are fiscally sound and meet the boat owners and community needs, and provide the public safety. Provide for public safety and the humane treatment of our animal population. As I previously mentioned, this fiscal year has been one of incredible achievement for our department. Earlier this fiscal year, we were once again recognized as a national leader in Parks and Recreation Management. The Gold Medal Award honors excellence in long range planning, environmental stewardship, quality staff, beautiful parks and innovative recreation programs. This is quite an accomplishment for the entire city team and could not have been done without the hard work and dedication of the department staff. Our Parks and Recreation Commission support from the city manager and support from the mayor and the City Council. We're also extremely proud of the recent investments that we've been able to make through the use of one time funds after many years of not having the resources to invest in our park amenities. This has been a welcome addition to our budget over the last few years and we can't thank the Council enough for your support. We don't have the time. We don't have enough time to go over all the projects as there were literally dozens in each council district. So we've listed just a few locations where these important investments have occurred. We reopen should it feel the spring, offering that community new athletic fields and a walking track in which to recreate. This past weekend, we opened the doors of the Park Community Center, which is a 3000 square foot, energy efficient building designed to accommodate afterschool programs, community meetings and events, and a digital training academy providing valuable technology job skills for our youth. This follows on the heels of major expansion and renovation at or Zarb a park. We've undertaken numerous improvements and a master planning effort, effort at Bixby Park. And I should point out that we're rolling out a new Park Patrol program at Bixby and Shattuck Field. There's the addition of a fitness zone at 14th Street Park, which gets tremendous use by the community and a new tot lot at Loma Vista Park. We have new dog parks at Coolidge Park and El Dorado Regional Park, bringing our total citywide to eight. The residents around Coolidge Park also benefit from a new basketball court and playground equipment, funded through a partnership with the Los Angeles Clippers. We've completed a number of projects at College Park, at State Park, including roof repairs and other amenity updates. There was roof repair and sports court recently resurfacing, and so Silverado Park building and fencing upgrades at Bixby Hills Park, completion of Basin five and the Alamo Bay Marina. And we're completing some critical upgrades to our park and street media and irrigation systems. Obviously, this is an extremely important project for us as we are working very hard to efficiently and effectively manage our water resources. I'll talk more about this later in the presentation. Our Animal Care Services operation has continued its success. It has continued its successes by reaching a 25 year low in Animal Pounds, resulting in our highest level library lease rates ever. And we want to leave you with one last accomplishment, which we believe tells an important story about the quality of our services. The demand for park programing is soaring. Visits to our senior centers are expected to surpass 400,000 this year, up from 300,000 just a few years ago. After school and summer programing, participation is booming at a number of our parks. In fact, Whaley Park's summer day camp is so popular that parents actually camp out to get their kids registered. This popularity is mirrored at other locations, including Water Park and at our Aquatics Day camps. We're having another successful summer with our Be Safe program, expecting over 50,000 participants in our ten week extended hours program. This is up from 40,000 last year. We're expecting close to a quarter of a million participants in our department's youth and adult sports programs. This is on top of the 10,000 participant participants in Long Beach has organized athletic leagues to call our fields home. 30,000 people are taking advantage of our contract class offerings, partaking in such lifelong learning activities as learning a new language or musical instrument, photography and arts and crafts provided by private instructors. This is an extension of the services that we offer, which serves not only as an economic driver for the small business community, but also an important revenue stream for us. And well over 100,000 people have experienced a municipal bank concert or movie in the park this summer. I should point out that our first movie premiered at Wellesley Park early this summer and had approximately 1800 people singing along with the characters in the Disney movie Frozen. These are truly staggering numbers, and they say a lot about the quality of programing that we offer our community. Often overlooked, however, is that many of our programs hire youth from our community. These programs serve as an important first job for many of our local kids. We take this employment responsibility very seriously and are proud to be the first stop on what is hopefully a long and successful career for these kids. We're able to provide these services with the annual budget that you prove each year for fiscal year 15. Our proposed budget totals just over 54 million across all funds, with 30 million coming from the general fund, while the majority of operations are supported by the general fund. We also have a large, very large tidelands maintenance and programing operation, and these include our three municipal marinas, six miles of beaches and waterways and other maintenance efforts in the Rainbow Harbor. I'd also like to point out that the department is working hard to identify other outside funding streams to help sustain our park system. In fact, since 2000, the Department has received well over 80 million in grant funds to improve our services throughout the city. These are outside dollars coming into Long Beach and helping to employ Long Beach residents. The 515 budget provides for just under 450 full time equivalent positions, which, during our busy summer months grows to over 800 part time staff who help run the POPPEA programs we offer. Again, these part time staff are mostly young Long Beach residents. The department is extremely pleased with the continued investment identified in the proposed budget. There's 2.4 or 5 million identified for replacing the irrigation system at Hartwell Park. At two, there's 2.5 million. Identify 2 million of that is for the irrigation system. 450,000 of that is for our water budget, which we haven't been able to keep up with over the years. We've seen a 40% increase in water rates over the past seven years. So this will help us at least come back to that level. These and these investments will help us address two of the most critical needs in our park irrigation system. Hartwell Park is home to our largest remaining manually operated irrigation system. What this means is that staff has to first go out and physically install an irrigation head where they want to water, then manually turn on the water and return 10 minutes later to move the irrigation it to the next area that needs to be watered. Using this antiquated system, it takes a full week. Monday through Friday from 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. to manually water the entire length of Hartwell Park, which measures well over one mile long. This investment will allow us to modernize our infrastructure by moving to an electronically controlled irrigation system, which will allow us to remotely manage the system and therefore will significantly reduce staff time expended. It will enable us more efficient application of our limited water resource, which could result in over 3 million gallons of water saved annually and allow us to better meet the watering restrictions, time frame and irrigation irrigate during times that the park is not in use. Once again, these are critical needs for us. In another investment that will help reduce millions of gallons of water in the future. There is 1.369 million identified for the completion of a synthetic turf field at Admiral Kip Park. The installation costs for synthetic fields have come back higher than expected. So this investment will get us a third field, including those at Seaside Park and Eldorado Park. Additionally, it's our hope that by working with partners like the Metropolitan Water District and local sports leagues, we can get a fourth field completed. The migration to synthetic turf fields will not only reduce our water consumption, but will also help address the growing demand for use of our fields. The proposed budget also includes 287,000 for ongoing maintenance and operation costs for medians, parkways and parks. It's important to note that this is not for new parks, but rather to fund the maintenance needs, such as custodial supplies and ground maintenance at parks that have been added or upgraded over the past few years. Examples of these parks include Chick Baker or Zebra and Crescent Parks, just to name a few. And lastly, we're reorganizing the Animal Care Services Bureau to provide for improved management and service delivery. This will help to address supervision in a bureau which has grown significantly over the last five years, while also providing a better ladder for staff making a career with us. This reorganization is both budget and fee neutral. One of the ongoing challenges is meeting the community's expectations for safe, quality athletic fields in fiscal year 15. We'll continue to work with industry professionals and our user groups to identify a more sustainable maintenance model for these fields. We've had great success partnering with a number of athletic leagues, and we'll look to further develop those relationships with budgets as tight as ever. Department continues to identify new opportunities to provide our services as efficiently and effectively as possible. One such opportunity is through investment in technology from our new cloud based contract, class registration and facility reservation systems to offering free public Wi-Fi in 18 parks to an upgraded maintenance work order management system to our Animal Care Services mobile app. We see how technology can help us reduce costs, improve service, and better connect with the community we serve. And with that said, we'll continue to explore any and all future opportunities to invest in technology. In fact, we just recently opened another Go Long Beach app where people can actually call us whenever they see a sprinkler running or broken head so that we can get out there and fix quickly. Mr. Mayor, member of the City Council, we have a large park system with over 160 parks, 3000 acres, 26 community centers, dozens of athletic fields, three public marinas, 67 tennis courts, five municipal golf courses, 54 playgrounds, three pools and an animal shelter. Our opportunities are many. Your continued investment in these community assets has been essential to our ability to meet the needs of the community. We thank you for your continued support, and that concludes my presentation. Thank you. We're going to go thinking, Mr. Chapman. We're going to actually do a library services, then code enforcement and open it up for questions from council and comment. So we've got the library services. Glenda Williams, our library director. You have. Good afternoon, Honorable Mayor Garcia and members of City Council. Thank you for this opportunity to speak to the 515 proposed budget for the Department of Library Services. Founded in 1896, our Department continues to provide our community with resources to meet their information needs and improve the quality of life. We partner with other city departments as part of the public safety continuum. According to our police department, public safety has three prongs prevention, intervention and suppression. The library assists with prevention. Many studies have shown that there is a correlation between literacy and crime. 85% of youth in juvenile hall cannot read above a third grade level. And here's another sobering statistic. Two thirds of the children that can't read by the fourth grade will either go to jail or be on welfare. This results in a definite impact on our cities and our communities resources. But the good news is that there is a correlation between literacy, the availability of books and reading aloud to children. According to the RAND Corporation, children who are read to and visit the library have significantly higher reading and math scores in school. The statistics for adults are also sobering. Studies show that 60% of inmates are illiterate. That's 60% once they have served their time and are released. There is a 70% chance they will return to prison if they remain illiterate and the cycle continues. But that percentage drops to 16% if they become illiterate. A small investment in literacy through library resources can yield huge results and help keep our city safe. Okay. So now on to our core services. The library has print media and online resources on a huge variety of topics. We have something for everybody, and since we're a public library, everybody is welcome. We have 12 libraries located throughout the city for convenient access to resources. There is no charge to attend. Library programs are used for resources. It's free. We provide lifelong learning, reading and enrichment, top of opportunities for our community, for our little ones. It's very important that they are ready for kindergarten. We have resources and programs for children to increase their vocabulary and get them off to a good start. The programs also provide in an environment where young children learn to interact with each other. The family learning centers at our libraries also support learning. They provide drop in one on one homework assistance with books and reliable online resources for our children. It's hard for some people to believe this, but not everything on the Internet is true. In addition, we have our summer reading club every year for all ages. Families enjoy the free programs, including magic shows, petting zoos and performances by groups like Musical Theater West and building Lego models and so on. And they earn prizes as they read. While this is a lot of fun, it also serves an important role to keep children reading in the summer and prevent the summer slide. The result is that they will be ready to learn when school begins again and some students will even advance their reading skills. And to borrow from our own police chief, McDonnell. I hope he doesn't mind. Reading and reading comprehension is a force multiplier for success in school, which leads to success in advanced education, whether college or vocational, which also leads to better paying jobs. And in our rapidly changing world, a college degree is equated to a high school diploma these days. So whether you want to know about local Long Beach history, gardening in small spaces, starting a business and not learning another language or refresh your computer skills, you'll find it at the Long Beach Public Library. We're perfectly positioned to support our community with lifelong learning opportunities and help them meet their goals. And of course, we strive to provide library services in an efficient manner by using library technology to select, organize and deliver information to our residents. We have automated many of our manual tasks and processes to save the time of library use and those with maximum benefit. For our accomplishments for FY 14, almost 80,000 e-books and audiobooks have been downloaded to smartphones, tablets, computers or e-readers. From our website at npr.org. And a few months ago, we also added online interactive magazines. Popular titles include Arbonne, Car and Driver, Esquire House, Beautiful, Macworld and the Nation. It's just like the print magazine, except that many people can read the same magazine at the same time but go. Long Beach Public Library Mobile app allows people to manage their library accounts, request materials and stay up to date on newest books at the library from the device of their choice. Usage has increased about 38,000 searches a month. Our 12 libraries are heavily use with more than one 2 million visits for FY14. That equals about 5000 people a day walking into our facilities. We're estimating that more than 6.8 million resources will be used in access for this fiscal year. The breakdown is from items checked out, items used on site, online database searches, computer sessions and website usage. For example, we had more than 1.3 million items checked out for this past fiscal year. We also have very successful community partnerships with the Long Beach Unified School District. Teachers bring the students to their local library to see what programs and resources the library has available to offer and also help with homework and reading assignments. And as I mentioned earlier, our annual summer reading club is very successful. During the last seven weeks, libraries hosted more than 70 presenters with a wide variety of programs. We had record participation this year. 5000 people signed up and read more than 15,000 books, which is another record for us. Beach Animals Reading with Kids. Our Bark is a great program to rotate through most of our branches and is a big hit with the kids. The dogs are great listeners. They're non-judgmental. They don't frown or make a noise if a word is misread. It really helps the kid increase in their confidence. And attendance is very high. All bark programs, capital improvements for our branches include repair of roofs. Dana and bark libraries have resurfaced. Parking lots, bathrooms have been upgraded, and community rooms are in the process of a process of being painted and recrafted. We're also receiving new chairs and tables. We received the California Reads Grant to explore important topics through books that invite community conversation, and this year's programs will focus on veterans returning home from war. So stay tuned for that. Our Early Learning and Families grant provided research based training for librarians along with tools, tools and supplies to enhance programs in all 12 of our locations. The grant also provided an enhancement to our children's areas. Lastly, we opened a makerspace called the studio in April at the main library and a makerspace is a place where people have access to resources and technology to learn, create and collaborate and a shared space. Available equipment includes a 3D printer, computers with video and editing software, tablets and so on. Our monthly monthly programing includes 3D printing, the basics of Photoshop, and how to download e-books and audible audiobooks on device of your choice. And then there's origami. One on one. We also have special programs last month with a scratch coding class for girls. And this month we will feature Music Technology Workshop. Again, workshops are all free to the public, but you must RV RSVP for limited spacing and more information is available on our website. And in addition, we have digital cameras, a greenscreen lighting and editing equipment available through a partnership with the Long Beach Public Access Digital Network at the main library. For our proposed budget for this year. The General Fund and supplies 95 sorry 96% of funding for library operations. And that's about $12.2 million. 3% is funded by general grants, which is mainly funding that comes from the Library Foundation for their family learning centers. And the remaining 150,000 is funding for the staff at this resource desk and City Hall. Proposed changes for FY 15 budget includes strategic investments for two important projects. We're really excited to see the new North Library moving forward. 2.1 million is needed to complete the funding for the library, which will be more than 24,000 square feet, includes three community meeting rooms and resources and programs for all ages. The current North Library is just under 7000 square feet and was built in 1951 to serve a population of 25,000. I'd say the community has quadrupled since that time to more than 100,000 people. The next item is to upgrade the communication infrastructure by obtaining VoIP phones. That's voice over Internet protocol, like the ones in City Hall. Current phones are more than 20 years old, and technology services is a challenge to even find replacement parts as they continually need repairs at the ten locations. There is a continued demand from Long Beach residents for access to computers and the Internet in the library and even beyond this basic need. People want to access the most recent operating systems and computer updates so they can maximize their computing experience. Using computers and technology is now a way of life for most people. We're excited to partner with our Technology Services Department to pilot virtualized public computers. What this means is that the software and applications for many computers can be run from one device. For example, one computer would be the server of the brain for 40 workstations. This would save staff staff time because updates can be deployed just on the server and would update on all the 40 workstations without having to touch and configure each one. As a result, equipment and maintenance costs would be reduced. Energy usage would decrease by 40%, since bulky public computers would no longer be needed and e-waste will be reduced as a result. As a result as well. We look forward to the pilot for a 515 for this efficient solution to meet the demand for computing services at the library. I thank you for your time. That concludes my report. Thank you so much. And finally, we have code enforcement. Making this presentation will be Lee Rocha, our code enforcement officer, as well as Angela Reynolds, our deputy director for developing services. Mr. Mayor, members of the city council, thank you very much. I'm going to let Angela and Lee take over. Code enforcement is an integral part of the Development Services Department, and it is only appropriate to have Leon Angela do this presentation. They are the experts in this topic. So I'm going to hand it over to Angela. Thank you. Thank you, Amy. And good evening, mayor and council members. We're going to talk about code enforcement this evening for 515 and we'll start with core services. We were good. Okay. Here we go. We code enforcement response to referrals to ensure compliance with the Long Beach Municipal Code, which is particularly Title 21. So we deal with zoning infractions. Title 18 that's the building code for the most part, and title nine for nuisance type properties. And we meet monthly to collaborate with fire police business licensed city attorney, city prosecutor and nuisance abatement to solve problematic and nuisance activities. So as I said, we do that monthly if we need to meet more often, we certainly do. But those are standing meetings where staff from all of those departments come together and we call them quad meetings, even though there's only three of them now. And we talk about some of the top priority nuisance or problem properties throughout the city and try to target those properties and put together kind of a roadmap where all our services come together to get some compliance there. And at Council's recommendation last year, we implemented a foreclosure registry due to the high rates of foreclosures throughout the city and neighborhood problems that may have resulted from them. And we also staff the Board of Examiners Appeals and Condemnations Board, and that is a board that here is primarily code enforcement and building bureau issues. And since 2008, code enforcement issued started to issue administrative citations for code violations. And we do that. We we work with folks and try to get them into compliance. But if they're just lingering and they are not coming into compliance, we can actually issue an administrative citation of $100. Kidding. Okay. So as I said, we instituted that administrative citation in 2008. And prior to that, we really had no effective I don't want to say Hammer, but we had no effective way to actually get people to come into compliance. And so we were carrying about a 7000 case back load backlog for the year and just continue to roll over for these folks that didn't come into compliance. So that administrative citation has been very, very helpful. As you can see from the first bullet code now handles about 10,000 code enforcement cases a year, of which 91% are closed within 180 days of initiation. So there is very little backlog. Sorry. Hundred and 20 days. Also, code enforcement inspected 80 properties for possible illegal garage conversions to dwelling units and issued approximately 44 citations. And that is just in the last fiscal year, we started to do that as in 2007, because of the Avila family tragedy that you may have heard about. These illegal units that people are occupying are certainly a roof over their head. But it's it's a dangerous one. So there's health and safety issues. Typically, there are aren't adequate exits, the wiring is faulty and so forth. So we're very that's a very high priority for the last council, and I hope it will be for this one as well. And we processed 956 registrations of residential properties in the foreclosure process, as I alluded to earlier, and collected $170,000 in registration fees. Those fees are $160 every time a lender files a notice of determination. So that's a first step in the foreclosure process. And what we do with that is we send a code enforcement officer out to that property to assess if there are any code violations. And if there are, we work with the either the lender or the owner to bring them into compliance. So they're not a blight on the neighborhood. We have three funding sources currently for code enforcement, community development block grant funding, which is federal funding, is a little bit over $1,000,000 development services money of 1.8, and that is from the multifamily habitability proactive inspection program that we just absorbed in 2014. And then three and a half million dollars in general fund. So some of our actual opportunities are that we're hoping to realize in FY15 are all about the mobile handheld devices. That's like an iPad type of device that all of our inspectors will be able to take out into the field with them. And it remote's back into our land management system. So it helps with efficiencies for mapping inspection routes so we don't go out of our way when we're going out electronically, document violations and conditions, which means we can create a case in the field real time, take pictures and notes in the field and have them recorded directly into that land management system I was referring to. And we can research the properties, history and verify whether work is properly permitted. So the efficiency there is that this happens out in the field one time. Currently we have to write it all down in the field. And then we then our our staff comes back into the office and has to record it in the land management system. So this is a one time real time efficiency for us and one of our significant issues continues to be that of safety. A few years ago, one of our code enforcement principal building inspectors was actually shot and permanently wounded. He's back to work, thankfully, but he was it was very problematic for everyone. So currently going forward, what we do is we work very, very closely with the police department to accompany us on these significant compliance case types. And so the last slide is one that just tells you all the opportunities that folks have to see what we're doing in code enforcement. So there's multiple ways to contact code enforcement. The first and most popular one is to just call five seven no code, which is 26335702633. And it's important to note that all referrals are anonymous and we take that very seriously and they remain anonymous. Another way to do it online is do a simple Google search of Long Beach code enforcement, and if you do that, it'll all nine council districts will pop up and you can go by council district, click on that and find out what all the open cases are and what the violations are on that particular property. And then we have the dynamic portal, which is at WW W Law DOT will be code.org. This allows the public to actually give us. Referrals. Online and it also tracks all code enforcement activity that has happened on that particular property, at least for the last ten years. So that's opened and closed cases. And that concludes my my report. AQ And with that, unless there's anything else. Mr. West We're done. Okay, thank you and thank you all for the great presentation. Three very good presentations. I'm going to turn this back to the City Council for some questions or comments and then open it up to the public. Katzenberg O'Donnell. Yes. Thank you. Just a couple questions. Three great presentations by three great departments working hard with regard to the Parks and Rec. You guys do a wonderful job. I always say about Parks and Rec, some people have a job, some people have a career, they have a vocation. They truly care about what they do. And I see it, you know, in my own family, with my own kids attending the parks and some of the summer activities. So I think you guys are wonderful. You get nothing but support from me. And I should take this moment to encourage the other council members annually, perhaps this year as well. We'll see. Money comes up that we label infrastructure money and typically we put it into. Streets and sidewalks. We have some. Available for parks. Too, or you have a choice to put it in the parks, and you should really look to put it in as some of the park facilities too, because those matter. You know, the fourth district, we've just finished a major rehabilitation of Whaley Park. We're not done. There's more to do, but it's looking good out there. It's top notch. Hadn't been touched probably 40 years. Stearns as well. And now we're on to the nature center. But, you know, don't just think this is you know, when we talk infrastructure. It's only streets and sidewalks. You know, you talk about we talked about force multiplier earlier that, you know, the same thing is true with our, you know, our infrastructure in our parks. And you might not always get the biggest awards for it and you might not get, you know, the greatest accolades because, yeah, it's, you know, it's, you know, a good distance away from your neighborhood. And maybe it is isn't always the people in your district that use that park. But it is important to our city. It is important to keep our kids busy during those Gordon Golden hours. So please look at that. With regard to Mr. Chaplin, just a couple of questions with regard. You talked about some upgrades for the irrigation system and we have some money set aside as at one time money for that. We had about 1.1 million set aside from last year. Okay, great. So what I would ask you to do is. Reach out to the water department and ask them to participate in that, because certainly there is a nexus between the water department and the expenditures that would go into the system. And they should you know, I would think they'd want to participate because this helps them as well. So I wouldn't want this burden all to fall on the city. We have precedents for this when we're talking about some of the replacement of the soccer fields with some of the synthetic turf. And if you want to comment on that tour, Councilman, we do have a relationship with the water department. We've used some controllers, electronic controllers that they've given us haven't quite matched our system. They're a little bit difficult to work with, but we have used them. Some of the rebates that they've offered don't really apply to some of the like, sprinkler heads. We don't use the kind of sprinkler heads that they they're giving rebates on. So but we are looking for opportunities with them. They are helping us with the MWD grant for the artificial fields. I think there's a three $53.50 cent rebate on each square foot of artificial fields. So we should be able to get some money from the Metropolitan Water District for their help. Great. And I'm not just asking for the Metropolitan Water District money. I think that's great. But I'm asking that department to participate as well. If you could maybe give me some feedback as to the specifics with regard to the sprinkler head issue that that should be, I would think, easily fixable so we can move forward together. It shouldn't be just on us, nor should it be on them, but it should be a partnership to save water and make us more efficient . So let me be a partner with you and making sure that they respond to this issue, because I think it's a big deal. It's absolutely a big deal. We don't want them just to be a pass through the MWD. I think that's great that MWD is doing that. Vice Mayor But I mean, the water department in of itself should be waking up to the fact that they need to be a partner. The port is a partner with the city. The water department should be a partner with the city as well. So thank you. Thank you. And I think we should also look to developing some. Policy with regard to new parks so that we can. Make them the capital improvements. They're more along the lines of the landscaping as efficient, water wise as possible and maintenance, because it's not just water, it's also maintenance. You know, we shouldn't be having you know, right now, I don't know that we have the money to open parks with lots of grass because that takes dollars, certainly to maintain the grass cut. It might, you know, keep it alive. But on the with the fertilizer but also the water side. So I don't know if we need to develop. Some policy with that because I know every new councilmember. Wants a new park. I was one was yeah, I was there. I get it. But you know, the fact of the matter is, as we keep adding on your department duties and we keep, you know, we and your budget, quite frankly, is shrunken on a per capita basis. And so, you know, I don't know if we need to look at policy with regard to that. So we kind of rain some thoughts in here, but maybe we should do that. I don't want to rain anyone's parade, but at the same time, we you know, new parks are great. But remember, every time you add a new park and you're not paying, you know, you know, you don't have an adequate dodge. The parks you have you have to look at what you're doing. And and also when we you know, we talk about fields, whatever we can do to support the sports fields, that's baseball fields. Soccer fields in particular. You know, I'm big on that. I'm going to be talking to these two beside me about what we do because we have some issues on the east side, actually across the city with regards to our sports fields. We need to do we need to do something different there on how we maintain them and how we keep them user friendly because the parents are concerned. My own kids play on those fields, so I bring my own experience and it's not easy. I get it. It's not easy because our numbers of users are only growing. Yeah. And they're used all the time. So we need to look at some, you know, I talked about over in North Eldorado Park, some type of permanent maybe some permanent opportunity. And we'll be talking about that. And how do we fund that? I don't know. And I don't want to just want to throw stuff on that we can't fund. But again, that would have to be synthetic, minimal costs, etc.. So with that, I just thank you and thank the library as well. And I turn it back to you. Mr.. Thank you, Councilmember. Mongo. I first want to thank the department heads who did an excellent job in pre briefing and then going through the details of ensuring that we knew every single item of this agenda during this time of drought. It is just of the utmost importance that we continue to invest in opportunities. The. Hartwell Park Project, from what I understand, could save up to 3.9 million gallons of water a year. And that's striking. It's both good for our ongoing budget. It's important for us to maintain these fields, for us to find better times, to water them so there's more opportunity for kids to play, especially during the summer. So thank you very much for putting that forth. And I want to continue to encourage investment in one time expenditures that save us ongoing revenue. So thank you. With the libraries, I'm ecstatic about the partnerships that you've made with nonprofit organizations to extend the resources you have. Congratulations and great work and we look forward to more of that and code enforcement. Thank you for keeping our communities clean and safe. Thank you. Katzenberg. Richardson. Thank you. Let's see, we've got parks up here, so I'll. I'll comment on Parks. So I think we've. You nailed it. We've done some amazing things these last few years with the one time infrastructure funds. I'm really excited to keep that going. But I want to I want to chime in quickly about the the maintenance. I know we switched maintenance contractors and then switched back and now we have an appropriation of 287 K of an increase to for our median maintenance. So can you just walk us through where we are since since the last time we had that debacle with the last contractor and now we have as taking are we keeping pace with the maintenance of our medians and our parks? Councilmember I believe we are keeping pace. The current contractors are much better than than the the work that was done by the previous contractor. The 275,000 is really unrelated to that. These are four fields of electric field is two new fields that were added that we didn't have money for. So this helps to help maintain those additional fields. A lot of that goes to check because Trillick is four fields total, whereas before we weren't maintaining it at the level that we need to maintain it. Right now, we want to make sure that we can keep that green and usable for the community, which also means not playing in all the fields, rotating more, more aerating, more watering there, just so that it doesn't end up being a dust bowl again. Thank you. And and maybe you can just chime in on the the Force Wetlands Project. I know it should be breaking ground in this next fiscal year, and I'm not quite sure if the project's going to be completed in the next fiscal year, if we should talk about the maintenance associated with that. But can you just chime in briefly about the the forced wetlands restoration? Well, I believe we should be going out the bit soon. We're working with public works to go out to bid soon. So when that is done, it's a lot of natural vegetation. It should be low maintenance. So it's not like a typical park where you have fields to maintain. It'll be in natural vegetation, so it would be low maintenance. So of course we'll still have to go through there, still do cleanups, that sort of thing. But that's in the contract. We should be able to do it. Great. And lastly, congratulations on your success with the Be Safe program. It's it's been great at Highland Park. I know it's in a number of districts here, but I'd like to ask if there's a plan in this budget to continue that going in the next fiscal year? Councilmember These are one time funds. They're really we're really dependent on more one time funds in the future. It's not part of our structural budget. We just couldn't increase our structural budget at this point. So we love the program. It's great. It serves a lot of kids, keeps kids off the street, keeps them out of trouble. It's a wonderful program, as you all know, but it's just not part of the structural budget. And just just to be clear, this is a I truly support the program, but this is really something, you know, council member Austin Aneel initially tried to champion and I'd just like to see that because I'm not sure that we have flexibility in the upcoming one times to support these sorts of programs, should council members want to support them. So I'd like to entertain that conversation when we get back to the capital budget on limiting some on limiting some of the flexibility on the street and sidewalk money or perhaps carving out additional funds to support programs like this. Because this is the second year we've done the Be Safe program. The results have been outstanding. It's you know, we see thousands of kids in the park. The lights are on, it's productive. And it really brings a positive synergy to the park that I really don't want to lose. So that's what that's what I had for, for Parks and Rec. I just wanted to chat with code enforcement, with neighborhood services briefly. Thank you. So I'm pretty sure you guys know what I'm going to ask about instead of that foreclosure registry program. I was delighted to see that you tracked what the progress was, how much it generated, because that was my first question, how much that it generated this year. I believe it was 100 and 770,000 and registration fees this year. So the first question I have is, have we I know that we haven't had the need to actually fine a bank for not maintaining a property. Last we checked, has that changed? Have we assessed that $1,000 a day fine yet to a bank? No. Well, Councilman LaRocca, the expert, says, no, we haven't had to do that. They've come into compliance. Great. That's great news. The fact that by registering, keeping track of these of these foreclosed, vacant, foreclosed properties, we can sort of we haven't had to actually find a single bank for its maintenance. I think that's outstanding. The next question I have is how does this 170,000 registration fees? How does that compare to last year and the year before? Because we began collecting fees about two years ago, I believe. Well, I can't give you the exact statistics, Councilman, other than to say it's going down. So the foreclosures, we know by tracking them that they're actually going down in the city of Long Beach. Great. And has have these additional. So it's going down, I would imagine, because the foreclosure rate is going down. We started right at the peak. We can get you that information over the I think it's been in effect for at least three years and I can provide that information. Good. Yeah, that'd be interesting to find out. And then I'd like to just chime in on the facade, the CDBG facade program. I'm not sure if it would be appropriate here under code enforcement or wind development services comes. It's really not a code enforcement issue. Okay. Great. Well, thank you. It's a lot of. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilman Gonzalez. Thank you. Thank you for the presentations. I'll start with code enforcement. Just have a few questions. How many inspectors do we currently have? I just want to make sure I'm getting a good frame of reference. We have boots on the ground. Inspectors about 28. 28. Okay. And has there any I know in the past there may have been discussion for code enforcement on the weekends. Has there been anything? I know it's not in the proposal, but. Yes, we are actually looking at what the city of Los Angeles is doing in a little bit of a different capacity. They are offering building inspection services on one Saturday a month. We are going to be contemplating whether we have the ability to provide code enforcement activities on weekends or through a hotline. That's something that we'll be working on in this fiscal year to see if that's something that we can accomplish. We understand that there is a need. We do see that there are a lot of code enforcement violations that tend to occur on weekends, particularly within our historic districts and in the downtown. So we're aware of that need. Great. Thank you. And then just moving over to library services. Thank you. Just had a quick question on library services. I think it's great digitizing the books. It's wonderful we don't have a library in the first District. So access in that capacity is wonderful. But what is the the focus on veterans exactly. Can you just brief on that a little bit? Yes. I have Darla Wagner coming up here for main labor. And she's been working with the veterans services on how to answer. Hello. We received a California reads grant from Cal Humanities for a program called War Comes Home. And it has a focus on a on reaching out to our community veterans, as well as the community itself to help with educating and informing about how to transition our veterans back into our communities. So we will be looking at having different types of programing, including a film festival where we focus on documentaries and feature films about that process, as well as having a panel come and talk to the community about that, what they went through when they came home from either Afghanistan or some other war experience. We are trying to get maybe an author to come in. We weren't lucky enough to get the author that they're focusing on, but he will be nearby and we will be asking people to read his book and and learn a bit. He wrote a book called What It's Like to Go to War. And his name is Karl Marlantes. So we'll be looking at a lot of different other programs and working with our local veterans collaborative here in Long Beach with Patty Laplace and and another number of other organizations here to to do a full program that we can feature our veterans as well as learn about our veterans. Thank you, darling. You're welcome. And then just moving on quickly. I know for sake of time to parks, I'm really glad to hear about the park maintenance specifically with Seaside Chavez, Drake Park. We tend to have issues constantly with safety, of course, and then also maintenance. So upkeep with cleaning, trash, landscaping and also bathrooms is certainly key for us. But question about the update and technology, I know that there had been issues in the past with revenue collection. Is that incorporated in that update for technology or councilwoman? Yes, absolutely it is. It is. Okay, great. And then what is the Long Beach up? I know you had it's an enhanced application for parks now, which is great. So in addition to sprinklers or anything else, what else does it include? Well, this is new for us. Sprinklers. Any any time you see runoff water or things in the park that catches your eye. If the sprinklers broke in or there's a main break, call it. You just take a photo of it and it sends us the notice right away and we'll get staff out there to shut that off and fix it right away. So it really helps us in our water management system. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember. Thank you. And I want to have Parks Rec and Marine. I just want to start with you and express my appreciation to the department staff, the commitment of everybody in the department, to making sure that our parks are well programed in the top quality. Councilmember Richardson mentioned maintenance issues that we have, particularly in North Long Beach parks, oh, last year. I want to commend the department for the rebound in the contractor. Things are looking a lot better in all of our parks up there, particularly in my district. To Councilmember O'Donnell's point. I do think I am one of those newer council members. And yes, I do want to get more green space in my district because it's park poor. Actually, we have opportunity to do that and we're going to take advantage of it. But in planning with the community, we're going to be very mindful of our responsibility to be good environmental citizens and conservation, conserve as much as possible. And to that end, I do like the idea of us moving toward artificial turf, particularly in athletic fields. We plan to do that, particularly, hopefully at Davenport Park, where we'll be having a community planning process on August 16th. I wanted to make that little plug in there. The BCA program, I do think it merits our attention as a city council to discuss, you know, two years to summer straight of success with that program. It was a little controversial and there was some of the readiness of this. But behind the rail here to move forward with one time plans to do that. But I think it has paid huge dividends for for our community. You know, I think we talked about investing in our youth and investing in quality neighborhoods. I think it certainly has made a big difference over the last couple of years. And so I certainly Councilmember Richardson would entertain ongoing discussion as we move forward in the budget process to carve out monies to ensure that we can at least continue to do that. If it's a one time ongoing, one with the one time ongoing, however we want to call it, we need to fund and invest in our youth. I guess my my question for for Parks Rec and Marine regarding the the the ongoing maintenance cost, you know, I think you he broke broke it down. I think it's up over $200,000 for new new expenditures for for new medians and parks. How much of that is actually going to the parks? I'm sorry, Councilman. For maintenance. All of it all of all of it is needed for the park upgrades and some of the newer parks that were built. Can you tell us like what type of maintenance needs are we going to be paying for? Well, you know, Baker, many Park, Chaddock and some of the other newer parks, we've had to absorb maintenance from our own budget, which meant taking away from things like gopher control and some of the other important field maintenance items. So this will help offset those those costs that we've actually shifted from other parts of our budget to help us maintain these parks. But again, the majority of it is traffic field and it is a specialized field that needs to again stay green and playable because of the soil conditions over there. It's a catch basin or detention basin. So we need to make sure the soil is in proper condition. We need to aerate more often than we do in normal fields and probably seed a little bit more often. So those are the type of things that that are involved in the maintenance. So looking back in, you know, I was involved in the planning aquatic field, but I mean, what would have what would it whatever that whatever what would it have cost us to make that a turf field? Probably each field would have been an additional $500,000. So 2 million more maybe. But we looked at that option and it really wasn't a viable option because of the fact that it's a catch basin, flood basin. The material would have lifted right off it. The investment would have been it would have been a bad investment from the beginning. So we looked at that. We really did want to make that a synthetic turf field throughout the entire complex there, but we just couldn't do it. Okay. Thank you very much. I did have a question for for Glenda. Just a quick one. Library services. Hello there. Well. Thank you. And I want to just just commend you and your department. And you guys have done a great, great job. I do agree with the definition of this budget presentation of public safety continuum, because our parks certainly provide safe haven for people to risk to recreation, as well as our libraries. And libraries are a cool place right now in the hot summer. So and obviously the services are fantastic. I did want to just just go on record to find out exactly when we expect to break ground on the new North Library. Tough question. That is an excellent question. I did not have an exact date for late September. Okay. So we're looking at late, late September. Okay. And then the second piece is, when do we expect to to to open the doors after we break ground? 18 months. 18 months. Okay. So that would be an FBI. 17, 16. 16. Okay. And I know the last couple of budget cycles we've actually appropriated what we need to appropriate to openness. This new North library and one times as well as a midyear adjustment is the $2.1 million going to get us what we need and finally put the put that the rest. Yeah. Yes. Okay. And I guess for the benefit of the public, what are what are we looking to to purchase with the $2.1 million in one time resources that we are expanding this time? Counselor, I'll answer that. The $2.1 million will do all of the infrastructure work around the library, parking lot, utility work. Take care of the. A cell phone tower that's on the building that was on the building. So basically it just wraps everything around the library. We have the library bid that was a that will be awarded shortly by the city council that came in under budget. But we still have some infrastructure work around the library, utility work, cell phone tower, things like that. So that that those resources won't go to buying purchasing books and equipment and put furniture inside the library. No, last year in last year's budget, this year's budget actually includes one time dollars that the city council approved and appropriated last year that will take care of fixtures and equipment and books. And we do still have our library foundation who will also be working with us to assist, correct? Absolutely. They're wonderful every year. They provide X amount of dollars for books and other improvements. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. Got some more? Yes, thank you. I mean, thank you, Mayor. Things are moving fast when you be a long time. What I'd really like to say, I want to hurry up because I know you individuals are trying to get home and go to get to dinner. But what I'm just wanting to just say is that all three departments, you know, Parks and Rec and Public Safety and Library, I just like to just send out kudos because the fact that you guys have done such a great job, and especially in my district, I think any of you individuals who have not had a chance to come over and see Cherry Field, you will see the management of how things have been done, come up and take a look at who used to be Hamilton Bowl. The Dust Bowl now is chilling. Feel Taj Mahal just come up and take a look. So I want to thank all you individuals, you department heads. Thank you for everything. Now you guys can go home and get something to eat. And thank you, Councilmember Vice Mayor Lowenthal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I just had a couple of questions for Parks, Recreation and Marine Park. And as they're getting back to their seats, I wanted to just thank the departments that came here for their presentation as well as all the discussion we've had. Mr. City Manager As you know, a couple of us have received a request from neighborhood leaders in the second and third district. Councilmember Price and I have to reestablish a citywide Parks Ranger Park Ranger program. And you're aware of this. This is for our parks, and I truly appreciate the dynamics behind the request and believe it's worthy of council discussion, especially since the request is for a citywide reinstitution of this program. But I think it'd be beneficial for this Council, as we are today, to receive background information on the Ranger program before entertaining a position on that matter. Some of us have context from a certain time period and some of us have context from another time period. I think it would be a good point in time to have the full context of that program and what it would cost. So I would like to request the following information to be reported back to the Council and the Budget Oversight Committee at its first August 19th meeting. One would be the loaded costs, certainly, which for members of the public would include recruitment, training, equipment, salary and benefits. The full cost, not just the hourly cost of a ranger. I don't think that gives us an idea of what it would cost. And this would be for the Citywide Park Ranger program at full strength and a program whereby a city wide ranger program would only cover maybe the hotspots. We should have some options to look at. Certainly, if this is something that we would entertain what it would cost for a citywide program or what it used to cost before each of us in our districts have hotspots. I certainly know which are the ones in the Second District, other council members, we all have them. No matter where the district is in which part of the city it is, we have them. So perhaps what Parks Rec and Marine can do is use the data such as calls for service and make their recommendations or even connect with councilmembers and have them refer what they're known. Hotspots are based on constituent responses and that should come back to us. I know you don't have that ready today, but certainly if it could come back to us prior to the August 19th Budget Oversight Committee meeting for and make that available to the full council. I also wonder, Mr. Chapman, if you would be able to take a moment today to share information about the Park Patrol program, which you mentioned earlier, and I know several of us have discussed it. It's being developed by you and your team. And certainly I know what that is, what the description of the program is. But I think if we could have an understanding of what your goals are and intention is and how that may help cover these hotspots and other areas. Councilman, thank you for asking. And I'm sorry I didn't go deeper into it in the presentation, but we just implemented the Park Patrol program. We have about 10 to 12 staff members who were trained by the police department, same type of training that the the LBA ambassadors get. So they're going to be trained or they are trained now to look for incidences where police would have to be called in and they will call things like drug use, you know, loitering, you know, some of the activities that aren't conducive to users of the park, but they also will engage with all of the park patrons. They're going to be talking to the park patrons. If there's an issue or instance where they can intervene and ask them to stop, they will do that. If they can't, they'll call the police department. We have some really dynamic staff that have been assigned to this program and they are not shy as the Bixby Park community folks met them last night and they can attest to that. Our hope is that they're going to take ownership of these parks. This is these are their parks and they're going to call in problems. They're going to identify problems. And I think, you know, in just a few months, we'll see a dramatic improvement in the park system because they're out there. They're the eyes and ears of the department, but they're also the eyes and ears of the police department and the neighborhood. So I think will make a tremendous improvement in the park system with the park patrol program. What's the number of staff members you have that you envision for this? Well, right now it's for Bixby Park and we're also using it for critic. So we have 12 in the hours right now. The hours at Bixby and Shattuck are evening hours Monday through Friday from four to about 8:00, 830 weekends. It's 8 hours a day, Saturday and Sunday. They're out there 8 hours a day. So they're a team of two walking together, working together. Those are the hours. Okay. Thank you. And going back to the request for information, do you think you'd be able to have that ready by the August? Absolutely. Get it ready. I appreciate that. The second part of my question or comments and question for Parks Recreation Marine has to do with the irrigation. Councilmember O'Donnell brought this up and the rebates and more of what Long Beach water can do to participate on the sprinkler head issue. We have a very aging system. And so what what metropolitan rebates, we will not rebate on aging systems because their interest is to get us to update our system so that we can be more water efficient. So I don't want to leave us with the impression that we're not qualified for those rebates. We are if our systems are up to date, our systems are not. And so I want to be sure that. And is that accurate, Mr. Chapman? Yes, ma'am. That's accurate. And I think we're working on updating, like, as you said, these one times really will help to build in calcium sensors, electronic sensors. So at some point, we'll probably qualify more for rebates from the water department. And one of the things I wanted to share with my council colleagues is that about four, maybe five years ago, Mr. City Manager will remember with our previous department head, Parks Rec and Marine, we went to Metropolitan Water District with a proposal to do a facilities master plan, a facilities update, master plan for irrigation systems. We still have areas in the city, many areas, unfortunately, where it requires a staff person to go and turn on the sprinkler system, requires a staff person to go and turn it off. When you mentioned earlier that if there is a leak, you're notified of it and you go out there and you address it. But daily on a daily basis, we are literally firefighters out there with our irrigation system, which is a huge waste of staff resources. So at that time, several years ago, we did have funding commitment from Metropolitan Water District to update to at least conduct a study on what it would require to update our irrigation system so that it would be on a master command control type of an operation. That is the direction that we need to move as opposed to making these incremental fixes. And so what I've asked the water department to do is to dust off that report that was done by Mr. Tom Shippy back in the day. I thought it was a good report at the time. Certainly your staff can update that, but that's the direction we need to go. Otherwise we will constantly be fighting these fires and spending really good money after bad as opposed to doing an overhaul. And Mr. City Manager, I know that I've discussed this with you. That's something that I we made a decision at the time, meaning city staff did not to pursue it. I don't remember exactly what the argument was then. And it's a regret that I have on on our collective part that we did not pursue that because the timing would have been right at that time and we would be well underway to having a facilities update. So that's something that I would like you, Mr. Champion, to talk with Kevin Wade here at the Long Beach Water Department and get briefed on where we were with that. I know there's interest on the water department to pursue that again as a long range plan. It's not going to fix anything right now, but I'm on a long term going forward basis. We need to do that. Just Vice Mayor, I should let you know that we we did receive a $95,000 grant from with the help of the water department through the Metropolitan Water District to do an audit of 20 of our parks, 20 of our large parks. So we do have an audit that's somewhat very lengthy. It's about two, 300 pages, and it addresses each park and there's about 20, 30 pages for each park in terms of the type of fixes. So we've started that process and we'll continue it and we'll do the rest of the parts as well. So just to let council know, we have started it and we've been working with the Technology Services Department over the past six months to upgrade the technologies. And in about a month, many of those systems will be updated to the Cal sensors. So we have started that and we do have a big audit and we're moving ahead with those fixes. I appreciate that. I think in addition to that, we do need to automate our systems so we don't have human beings going out there to do that, which it's great to have even beings out on the park, but maybe to do other things, not to turn on sprinkler systems. The other piece I would like to address also is when I have asked the city manager for this, but also for the budget oversight committees consideration, if you could provide a list of the irrigation system needs and separate them between potable systems and recycle water systems because there is a difference in in priority. Certainly if we still have parks that are on potable systems, we most likely would need to address those first and balance those needs. But it's good for us to know and good for us to see which systems we're talking about and where the needs are. And finally, on Long Beach Water Department's participation, one thing I will share, which I think all of us know, is that we do have a $10 million transfer from Long Beach Water Department through the pipeline fee. We don't call it a transfer, but it is a pipeline fee that brings $10 million into our system. So they do contribute very heavily to supporting City of Long Beach efforts. And I know the mayor and I have chatted about this in the years past, and so I want to be sure everyone knows that the water department is doing its part in assisting the city to the tune of $10 million. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Price. Thank you. Thank you. To the department heads who gave us presentations tonight. I share. Councilmember Lowenthal, please. Questions and interest in finding out more about the park ranger program. And I want to commend you on your staff in implementing the Park Patrol program. I understand that the the initiation of that program was successful and well-received. So I want to thank you for that. I think it's very important that we as city leaders take every measure to make sure that the parks are safe and take the attitude of if our own kids aren't okay to play in that park, then why should other kids? So I think that's the attitude with which I will be looking at the information that you provide for us. I did have a question for library services, if that's okay. Well, first of all, as a mom of two elementary school age boys, thank you for giving them the outlets that they need to hopefully be literate and maybe go to college. But the question that I, I have for you is that's our hope. That's what we're working towards. But the question I have for you is, what is the status of library hours on Sundays and what would be involved for us to be able to allow our libraries to either be open additional hours on Sundays or if we were able to move some of the scheduling around to allow some more access on Sundays so that working parents could have opportunities on additional opportunities on the weekends to take their kids to the library. Mm hmm. Councilmember Price, those are some great questions. Currently, we are not open on any Sundays. Right now, we're a five day operation to maximize the staffing that we have are open Tuesday through Saturday. To be open on Sundays, we would need additional funds that have to get back to you as far as what that would cost in the way of staffing. So I have to get back to you on that. Okay. Would it be possible to move some of the days around at various libraries to accommodate more openings on on Sundays and other days? That's something we can look at. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. And our final number is concern for your anger that will to public comment. Boy, did I learn something today. You want to be in the queue? Get early and good. Yeah, I'll be late. And really, a lot of the stuff that I had had already been answered. So what? I just closed my book and let's go to night out. Actually, I do have different spin on some things, but I'm not going to play musical chairs. I hope I don't, but I think I will. I'm going to talk. My question is mostly related to Parks and Recreation. So one more time, last time. Then you can rest. Look, it's a good exercise opportunity. It's been pretty much pretty well discussed in terms of what's going on with our programs for artificial turf, as well as the replacing outdated and irrigation systems, not only at this part but at others. And Suja touched a button with me in terms that I was going to talk about, and that's about reclaiming the water and just wanting to know if there is any that that you might have that says how many of our parks are on reclaimed water and maybe how many projects you have out there that would convert some of these irrigation systems into reclaimed water? Since we are we know very well that we are in a drought and we have to look at creative ways of being able to keep our parks. GREEN. And do you have any any of the plans out there in terms of converting some of our irrigation systems or to reclaiming water ? Councilman, we do have a list of parks. We have about 24 parks that are on the reclaim system. You know, they differ from Cherry Park, Colorado Lagoon, Eldorado. Most of the East Side parks are on the recycled system and the West Side parks from potable in. Those are projects that in terms of converting, converting the other parks to recycled water is something that the water department would do because they have to lay the foundation and the infrastructure. So really right now kind of at their mercy in terms of converting those parks that are on potable water to recycled. So it's just a matter of them laying the infrastructure for recycled. Well, maybe that would be something that we want to investigate and study. Perhaps we could convert more of those. And the only reason I say that, although while it might be a noble effort to convert many of these fields into artificial turf, to me it's the more you do it, the more we turn into a cardboard jungle , concrete jungle, if you will, where there's nothing alive, nothing thriving, nothing adding to the atmosphere. So if we can, I'd like to see an increase in the parks with recyclable water, and that would include some of the medians and parkways to convert some of those where we don't need to use of the water better to go into somebody's hydration than dehydration. The other point I want to talk about that you have here an item regarding the reorganization of animal care services. And in it you say that there is no budget or it's a neutral budget and FTE neutral. But are there are there are there are ideas for revenue generation. I mean, it's also you do raise the revenues in animal control. Are you having any plans for raising revenue, raising fees that would provide a better opportunity for the city to get some revenue in to help animal care services provide better services? Councilman, we're always looking at our fees and what we want to make sure is we balance our fees with the needs of the community. Even things like dog licenses. You know, we've got areas that people have a hard time affording the dog license. So we've got to be able to maintain it at a level where people can at least come in and pay for the license for the dogs, because we want to get as many license dogs as possible. And even, you know, the the spay and neuter, we try to keep those low. We have spay neuter clinics where we provide it for free. There's a large community out there that is going to need some of these services at a low level. But we are looking at it. We always look at revenue potential revenue sources. We've got fundraisers for animal care. We have the friends of the Long Beach Animal Shelter who are always doing fundraising. They've helped us with a new clinic, a separate trailer this year that costs, I think, $100,000. The city council kicked in 50,000 and they raised the other 50,000 to provide some extra space down there. So we're always looking at that. We're also looking at other cities contracting with other cities and can we raise revenue from other cities? So we have we've talked to another city recently and we're looking at a potential potential contract that could at least help us bring in more money to serve all the cities that we serve. Well, you touched all the right buttons. Thank you. And I thank you for the orientation you gave me this afternoon. It was a very informative. Thank you very much. Okay. Well, thank you. At this time of the budget hearing, I'm going to open it up to members of the public. So please come on down and form a line here for public comment on the budget, come forward and as before any comes up, I just want to just take. A quick sec and thank also all of the budget officers and all the people over here that I see that have worked so hard and all these budget. So thank you all for the hard work as well as the department heads and all the presentations tonight. So thank you. Please. Hi, my name is Annie Greenfeld. Thank you very much for this budget presentation. I'm going to give you just a little tiny bit of background. Better balance for Long Beach has been kind of overseeing 14th Street Park at the request of Washington Neighborhood Association, and we're really pleased with the improvements that have been done. I'd like to thank the First District Council Office and Mayor Garcia for putting in the fitness zone in that area. There's just one little hiccup and that's no fence. This is a median strip park, as some of you may know. And the mommas go out there with their kids and they try to work out on the fitness equipment, but they have to keep one hand on the kid because they're afraid they're going to run out into the street. And I'm hoping that somewhere you'll find a little bit of money to put in that fence so that the children can be safe. That's the first request. And that actually came from Linda Palacios at Washington Neighborhood Association. My second little issue is and it's not really an issue, I'd really like you to study the artificial turf. In the soccer field at Seaside Park. That soccer field has been a problem from day one. And because of the transient neighborhood, I think it's really going to be a problem having the artificial turf. So I'd just like you to take a second look at it. Also, the park patrol. I have to thank Vice Mayor Lowenthal for. And if she's not here right now, but, you know, for for bringing the community in on what's going on. The problem has been at 14th Street Park, there are drug dealers, there are kids and people smoking pot. And I'm just not sure why. 14th Street Park is not one of the pilot programs on that park patrol. And I'd like you to really consider that because there are so many homeless issues down there. And I just really think that Washington neighborhood area deserves to be safe. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Thank you. Very good. Clark has the adjustment to item, and I'll be brief. First of all, in terms of water, obviously we face a crisis in this state and in the city. I think part of our solution is to return to having the city of Long Beach. Not contract out. It's landscaping. The landscape contractor could care less about the city of Long Beach, not sell with its employees. I've worked with when the when they were there in those services. They took a great deal of pride and care and interest. In keeping the sprinkler systems operating properly and efficiently. And I think we need to get inside of that. And return to having the city of Long Beach employees take care of that. And secondly, and before going to the second point, I appreciate the fact that this has been a data dump, as are by necessity. You have to process an awful lot of information both tonight and in future nights. But if there's one piece of information you leave here tonight with. Let it be this. That there exist no conditions. Under which any existing structure. Within the Marine Stadium. De facto or de jury as defined. By the original organic documents will ever be raised. Unless. Unless at the same time. There is a permit for a replacement with funding for that building. And the reason for that is brought into sharp focus by what so many of you had mentioned this evening relative to the explosion over years of the population of the city. That applies to our waterfront dynamics. The ability to serve is directly related to how well we can serve them and the structures that we have down there to support that activity. Much of these. We have a number of buildings there. Some are already repurposed. Some will be repurposed in the future. Those are needed for storage to support the dynamics on the waterfront. We can't build anything more in the Marine Stadium because of the houses. That's understood. You wouldn't want to buy a house and then have something built up two days later. So understand that. Never again will a building come down unless a replacement has been approved and is in place and the existing structures we have will stand. Thank you, Mr. Cohen. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and honorable counsel. My name is Dave Zanardi and I hail from the great eighth district. And I'm here this evening to represent a wonderful city organization, the sister cities of Long Beach. We are a 100% volunteer organization that spans all nine districts in our city. We have been involved in the city for over 50 years. And I do want to. For the new council people to want to mention our six existing long term sister cities. Mombasa, Kenya. Nam. Penh, Cambodia. Monta. Ecuador. Sochi, Russia. Qingdao, China. And this evening, it's my great honor to introduce a delegation from our oldest sister city, which is celebrating its 51st year here. David Chi Chi. Japan. I actually think that you probably want to speak to in public comment. This is a budget hearing. Public comment. Oh, but is there here and you've introduced them already? I will I will let you introduce them and then just make sure that everyone else is here for for the budget hearing comment and then public comment will be after. I apologize. Okay. Thank you for continuing us to do that. Sure. So now keep it short. I'd like to introduce Mr. Michael Bond, who is the past chairman of the Sister City Association. Mr. Mayor. Members of the Council is my privilege to present to you tonight the goodwill ambassadors from the city of York to Japan, for this is the 49th exchange of a teacher and students that we've had. This program is designed to create new leaders for our new century. And I'd like for them to introduce themselves. They have some gifts. First of all, they were selected by the mayor and the city assembly to represent your chi chi. And they are the official representatives from the city. They have brought a number of gifts, one particularly for Mayor Garcia from Mayor Tanaka, but also a book that celebrated the 50th anniversary that we celebrated last year, both in your chi chi and here. So may I present them to you, Megumi? Just introduce yourself. Hello, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Megumi Kondo. I'm an English teacher in junior high school in your city. 30 years ago, I had a chance to be treated on the beat as an exchange student with a YMCA program. This year, I could be back here, Long Beach, and we had a wonderful experience, I should say. Thank you very much. Alive, Long Beach. I just I'd like to tell my students how. Rhonda Rowland. Thank you. Me? My name is Amy Scala. I'm 17. Years old. Thank you for your kind of warm welcome. I want to develop the language and the sister city relationship. Thank you. Hiro. My name is Masako Tagawa. I'm 16 years old and I'm. I, I'm happy because I can. Have a. Wonderful experience here. So I'm. Thank you. Thank you for. That. Mayor Garcia Masako has a letter from Mayor Tanaka for you and a gift from him to you. And these are gifts from the City Assembly for the members of the City Council. And if we may, may we get a photograph with you and the. The trio. Well, they're doing this. I'd like you to close your eyes and envision two of our students and one of our teachers doing the exactly same thing in their city each year as an exchange. Thank you very much, Mr.. And thank you for letting us take this slot. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. We're not talking. Mayor Garcia and council members and staff. I just wanted to thank you for having these budget presentations and allowing the Department of Library Services to present all of the information they presented. I always learn something new. We try to keep on top of all of the programs they're doing, but they really are amazing. I'd like to thank Linda and her staff for the tremendous job they did and for the presentation they gave and congratulate them on the summer reading program and their record attendance. I think Glenda said some really terrific statistics about why libraries are so important to our community and why we really need them as that tool to help with the prevention of crime and keeping our kids busy, especially during those summer months, to both prevent the reading slide and to help them get the tools that they need to raise those literacy rates which will benefit all of us. We I represent the Long Beach Public Library Foundation, but we also have members of a separate nonprofit, the Friends of the Long Beach Public Library, also in attendance. And so I'm speaking on behalf of both those organizations and our supporters. And I want to thank you for both having the Department of Library Services here and for many of you coming to see our libraries, attend our programs and make time for tours. For those of you who have not yet seen our studio space that Glenda mentioned, I'd love to host you on a tour. It's amazing what libraries are doing. And I'd also like to say that we were so pleased to see in the recommendations from Mayor Garcia the $200,000 in one time funds to add to books and materials. We, both organizations and our supporters support this recommendation, and we hope that you will understand the importance of it. The books and materials. We monitor state statistics to see how we compare with our with our sister cities and Oakland, which is usually the best comparison. City spends $3.84 per resident on books and materials while we spend $1.73. And we really can do better. And so we appreciate Mayor Garcia recognizing that education and libraries are so important in making that recommendation. So we do hope that when it comes time that you will see libraries is an important, important use for those one time funds. We look forward to a continued partnership with all of you. We welcome the new council members and look forward to continuing to talk about the branch libraries in your districts and the libraries that your constituents use. So we also thank you for your comments on open libraries and look forward to a continued discussion that does match what our constituents are saying to us as well. So thank you again. Thank you, sir, very much. Kathleen. Hi. My name is Kathleen Irvine. I'm the president of Whitmore City Heritage Association in the First District. And although we are a preservation organization, part of our mission statement has to do with the quality of life in our area and in our neighborhood. So two of the things I wanted to address is, first of all, for code enforcement. My understanding is that there were 28 people boots on the ground, as Angela said, and originally code enforcement used to patrol our neighborhood. But I have not noticed that happening any longer. I don't know if that's because of cuts or just the safety issue, but it was very helpful because especially if, as Ms.. Burdick said, they instigate Saturday patrols. There's a lot of stuff, you know, in the cat's away, the mice are playing, and we're kind of tired of watching the things that happen on weekends. And we have no recourse if there is a patrol around, a lot of things will not happen simply because there's a patrol and they know somebody is watching. So that would be very helpful. The other thing I wanted to address is our parks. I was just made aware of the Park Patrol program and I am aware also that it's my understanding that there are three park rangers over at El Dorado Park. So my request is simply that all parks are equitable as far as safety because we all have the same issues. There are homeless, there is drug use, there is narcotics going on, and if the parks are to serve all of us, then we all need to feel safe, especially Drake and Chavez, which are so close to the river where you guys know what that means. It means homeless. And it's sad to me to hear that parents that are living in the downtown feel that these parks are unsafe to take their children. I don't like hearing that. The other thing about the parks is I don't know what the hours are at the other parks, but if you are serving our community, if you go to Drake at any time on the weekends, there are at least 150 literally. Children playing there. Why are we not open on Sunday? Why is Chavez not open on Saturday and Sunday? Why are they not closed on Monday and Tuesday? Surely there's a way for our population of children to be able to go to the parks on the weekend with their parents or their grandparents and their family. So I really think that if you guys could look into that as. Well as code enforcement patrols on Saturday. That would really help us. Thank you. Thank you, Kathleen. Hello. Good afternoon. My name is Jim Danno. I'm also with the Bellmore City Heritage Association. Councilwoman Gonzalez, I support your solution to having code enforcement work on the weekends, maybe take a day off during the week. I think that would really help us out with the illegal activities that are happening mostly on the weekends. With that being said, I'd like to also see the administrative citation that's over $100. Quite honestly, if you're installing $7,000 for the vinyl windows, $100 bills are going to make a difference. I'd like to see that be the first action, possibly even increasing it up to, let's say, $1,000 to where you had 35 days to correct the violation. And if you decide on your own to waive that correction, then you will be assessed that thousand dollar fine. That will also help with the general fund. Hopefully it will collect quite a bit of revenue going that route. Parks. Parks does a good job. I like to see that the new water app also have to do with maintenance. The best tool the citizens of Long Beach have right now is to go Long Beach app. It puts the power of the people right in your hand when you're seeing the violations. If maybe to help out parks, seeing some of the maintenance issues that aren't being addressed, it'll make it quicker to get those things changed. Going to Councilman Austin, I believe you were talking about parks and you have kind of underserved area with a lack of parks. Chavez Park and Drake Park have helped the community. Community has helped Parks and Rec combined with private partnerships, and it gives the community a chance to invest in their neighborhood with their parks and kind of get more bang for the buck. Actually. Also really quick with that is that you're talking about the wetlands program of a DeForest. We've also hopefully the Drake Park, Chavez also has a wetlands. We've got millions of gallons of water running freely right down the L.A. River. I'd love to see some of that water diverted over to maybe wetlands so that we can take that and use that as a greywater system to water our irrigation on the West Side parks. With that being said, thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Jim. Next speaker. Hi there. My name is Claudia Skow and I'm president of Friends of Bixby Park. And I first wanted to thank Councilwoman Susan Lowenthal and Councilwoman Susan Price for bringing this Park Public Safety program to the attention of the council. One of the biggest public safety concerns by your constituents right now is at our local parks, and we've got about 160 parks in Long Beach. And it's not just at Drake Park or Chavez Park. It's citywide. And ever since the park ranger program was cut from the budget three years ago, our city parks have are in desperate need of support from park rangers. And until Parks and Rec can come up with a program that will work to provide public safety at our local parks. We have public drug dealing and public drug use, a lot of pot smoking right in front of families. Parents are really annoyed and very disappointed about this. The park patrol program that Mr. Chapman just mentioned is actually the second program that we've had at Bixby Park over the past couple of months. The first program was a park ambassador program that we funded ourselves with funding that we obtained from Mercedes-Benz of Long Beach, specifically for park safety, public safety, because we found hypodermic needles and glass crack pipes, and that man is snoring really loud. So I hope I'm not boring him. But so we have this program in place and we asked Parks and Rec to cancel it because we were getting emails from residents who were complaining that the ambassadors were not being effective in their jobs. There was still public pot smoking, and there were situations where residents felt that there may be drug dealing over at parcel one near the planters, which is a hotspot. And so after complaining to Parks and Rec and forwarding all these emails, we did successfully get Long Beach P.D. out there. They sent in undercover police officers and. They did arrest. Two drug dealers there. So this is where. All this frustration is coming from. It's not just Bixby Park, it's citywide. I have reached out to the neighborhood association presidents around the city, and I'm hearing similar stories. And they're all very happy to sign a letter to city council asking for help immediately with either park rangers that we already have on staff or pleading to please find some small budget for one or two extra. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and City Council. My name is Carrie Gallagher. I'm the executive director of housing Long Beach, and my information is on file. We're really grateful at Housing Long Beach for the conversation that was opened tonight about code enforcement and the existing program that serving our city. Because for us, it really relates to housing quality and substandard housing issues, which are often referred to the code enforcement department. We had the opportunity to have a positive meeting with Ms.. Reynolds and Ms.. Ranka just last week. And we learned, just like all of you did tonight, that the existing code enforcement department is extremely effective. As you heard tonight, 91% of cases come into compliance within 120 days. So the critical question in front of us is not is it working, but it is working for whom? The question really has to lie. Who are the current cases? Who are the people reporting these things? And through our conversations with many of you, I've often shared that the large majority of existing cases being reported are oftentimes by homeowners about their neighbors, whether it's weeds, you know, paint issues, trash, things like that. The people who are not reporting are the renters living inside a substandard home with health and safety violations who are absolutely fearful of retaliation. And there is no question or doubt it's not a complex issue. That is why people are not reporting. And so, again, it's this question of we see really good numbers, but we have to ask who is not currently being served under the existing program? Housing Long Beach has done hundreds of surveys, primarily through laundry mat outreach throughout the city, and less than 5% of the residents with whom we've spoken have received a routine inspection or if they have had issues, have ever reported it to the existing code enforcement program. One of the most disheartening stories we've heard was of a mother who whose children were very ill. And so she took them to the doctor. And the doctor quickly determined that the illness was due to lead poisoning. The doctor said, I'm sorry, but I have to report this. And when the inspector came out the following day or a few days later, the next day, the woman received an eviction notice. Now this woman and the thousands of renters across our city have little or no protection under the existing city ordinances for fear of retaliation or rent increases if they are to report safety and health violations within their home to the existing code enforcement program. So, again, we really have to ask ourselves now who is currently being served but who is falling through the cracks? And so we really look forward to working with you. I have really good news for all of you that protecting people doesn't cost anything. It causes it's political will from you all to say that people who are renting in this city matter and they deserve to be protected. And so we look forward to working with you on the upcoming ordinance on other protections for renters and on the issues of housing quality within our city. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello, everybody. My name is James Hall, currently known for being a sort of guy in auto on one lap and 45 seconds. Some professional track athlete. I was focusing on the Park and recreation and also the library too as well. I've put together a program that focuses on 21st Common Core values. I've noticed that the children, they love academics, they love athletics. Too bad politics is mainly their main focus. I've noticed that with this program we're able to attack literature, English, math, geography all through fitness. We hook kids up to one of my sponsors, which is Polar, hook them up to heart rate monitors, and they get to see how graphs go up and graphs go down when they stay in his own. Kids are happy and excited when they get to win awards. So incentives matter too, as well. So I came here today just to discuss that. How could we come together to get into the school systems? Because it starts with who you around the most you are who you surround yourself around. And if anti-bullying is going on at school, if drugs and different things are going on at school. That's the foundation. It's getting late at school. So they take it to the parks and it continues to go on and on and on again. So I would think we should form a program that focuses on attacking the schools first with the people in the workers that you have already at the parks and the staff grooming them to be able to display what it is that I've already put out in structure this program that I've created. It's already at five schools in the city of Long Beach, Barden. Duly Garfield, Carver and MacArthur. And you duly have seen the Graves race within three months. So just imagine if I had a whole school year to again work with the Parks and Recreation on again building a safety. Healthy community as we come together to form one thing, to be able to focus on these children. All right, you guys have a good day. Thank you. And her last public speaker. Hello. I'm Maureen Nealy. I'm on the board of Long Beach Heritage. And just quickly, I wanted to reiterate what several people tonight spoke about with the code enforcement issue. This has been on our radar for quite a while, as most of the council members know. We see we see code enforcement in our historic districts are 17 historic districts as not just a nice thing to have happen, but it is definitely a crime issue. It's the broken window theory. These historic districts often have homeowners. They are community minded residents and homeowners, and to support them through code enforcement so that things the wrong things don't denigrate these districts is very helpful overall to the city. We have spoken with the police and the development services as well as. See the police development services and the city prosecutor, and I anticipate having some meetings with them this year to move this forward. So we if we could make a statement that we really support having weekends and on call and ways to reach out to code enforcement when issues happen in our historic districts off the 9 to 5 clock, that would be fantastic. So thank you very much. You. Thank you very much. That's our last comment for the budget hearing. And so with that, I would like to ask for a motion to continue our budget hearing to the next meeting, which is on August the 12th. So move. Okay. There's been a motion, actually, Councilman Gonzales. I see you cued up. Who is at the gym. No comment. Okay. So there's been a motion in a second to continue the budget to October 12th. Members, please go ahead. And Castro votes. Okay. August 12th. Thank you. Motion carries nine zero. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. And thank you all for being for being patient. This is budget time. So these are regular meetings to start a little bit later because of the hearings. So from that, we're going to move on now on to public comment.