Recommendation to request City Manager to work with Police Department and Technology and Innovation Department to report on the feasibility of creating a free voluntary online bicycle registration program for use by residents and Council offices, an app-based registration system, and an education campaign to inform residents of this service.
Thank you. We're moving on to the next item, please, which is item 20. If you. If we could read him. 20 Communication from Councilman Price Councilmember Supernova Councilman Andrew's Councilmember Urunga Recommendation or request of City Manager to work with Police Department and Technology and Innovation Department to report on the feasibility of creating a free, voluntary online bicycle registration program. Thank you. Councilwoman Price. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. So as as most everyone here knows, bike theft is a continual problem throughout the city, but not just for our city, for for many cities in the region and throughout the nation. The problem that we see with bike thefts is that, unfortunately, they are underreported. So the data that is maintained by our police department and many other police departments doesn't accurately reflect the the magnitude of the problem in Long Beach. We have 30 to 40 reported bikes, reported stolen bikes every month. And many of the reported many of the bikes are not even reported stolen. Bikes are the only item of personal property that we have that we actually leave outside in public for extended periods of time. And we have, generally speaking, no documentation of ownership. People don't report their bikes missing when they're stolen, so the data doesn't show the full story. And when they do report it, they often don't have a serial number, make or model or any photos they can provide to the police department to get the bike returned to them. There are currently opportunities for residents to. Register their. Bikes through a few different companies, but the data is not connected to the Long Beach Police Department, making it impossible for the police department to access those databases and get stolen bikes returned to their owners. This item came about in order for the city to get more proactive and take an active role in confronting this growing problem . It's important that the public be a part of the solution, so making registration easy for individuals is essential. And why a program like this needs to be free to encourage people to sign up and voluntarily ensure that such a program is not punitive. We see cities up and down the state dealing with this problem, and if we're to claim we are a bike friendly city, we need to find ways to reduce bike thefts occurring citywide. Bike theft and any theft should not become so normal that we accept it as a part of urban life or a cost of living in a coastal community like Long Beach. Craigslist and eBay, for example, have made it even easier for bike thieves to sell bikes or bike parts. We see bike thefts, funding, additional criminal activity, as we have seen nationally, bike thefts being used as a currency for possession, for purchasing controlled substances, for petty theft and property crime, because bikes are vulnerable and can be stolen relatively easily. We can't expect the residents to fight this problem alone. So the city getting involved by providing an easy way for individuals to register their bikes and have their bikes returned to them if they're found is, in my opinion, a common sensical approach. This item requests a report back from our hopefully our multiple departments working together to determine whether or not we can create an app based program that allows residents to register their bikes with the police department so that the bikes can be better tracked and returned to their owners if in fact, they are retrieved at a particular location . I asked my council colleagues for their support in moving this item forward so that we can determine from the city what is feasible with the resources that we currently have in place, so that we can be a little bit more proactive with tracking bikes and allowing bike owners to have a vested interest in the investigation and the recovery of any bikes that they have that are stolen. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Ringa, please. Thank you, Mary. And I want to thank Councilmember Price for bringing this forward. You know, when I was a kid, I remember registering my bike with a fire department. You know, I would go to the fire department. It would be there. And and they give you a little sticker and a number, and your bike was registered and protected. And I'm surprised, actually, that that we got away from that. I think we need to go back to that. Unfortunately, in this day and age of of bigger and better bikes and more expensive bikes, especially, this type of program is is it's critical and it's timely. So I want to thank you for bringing this forward. I totally support it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Andrews, please. Thank you, Mayor. I would like to thank Mrs. Price, Councilwoman Price, for bringing this, because this item is also supporting the request. You know, actually has had bike registered in the past, and I provide an effective service to the public. You know, being in the age of information, we have easy access to right on our fingertips. But, you know, bike registration apps would improve the line of communications between our department and residents and would also reduce the storage of unregistered and recovered bikes and decrease the number of bikes registered as theft and loss. I want to thank you and I truly will support this item. Thank you very much. Thank you. Councilmember Pearce. Yes, thank you. I want to thank my colleague for bringing this item forward and reaching out to the second district on it. Obviously, in our district we have chop shops and alleyways behind my house that we continually to go back and try to catch the guys, also our parks. I personally have had three bikes stolen in our city, so I feel the pain. So I think this is a great idea, making it be something that's accessible to everybody that that we can. So I just really hope that we come back with some exciting new opportunity that we can broadcast and use widely. So thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Mongo. I want to praise the councilwoman for her commitment to bikes and bikes after I know that in the fifth District, what we're trying to do is get people to keep track of the information that Councilman Price talks about. But what I definitely want us to also explore as a part of this is there are already bike registries and within the last several months, different bike registries have started to merge to make a national bike registry. And so I think that it is important for people to take the time to register their bikes. I think that what we really need to look at is some kind of partnership with the organizations that sell bikes. I know that it is challenging that not all places that sell bikes take as much ownership as, say, a bicycle shop like a performance bikes or a jacks bikes. A lot of places when you buy a bicycle at a generic big box store, they don't give you any encouragement or information along with the registration of that bike. And so how to register that bike. And so what I know is challenging is that. The culture in which we owned bikes has changed. And you don't just go down to the fire station anymore and register your bike. But the fire service is also changed and our calls for service are up and the number of calls are up. And so I don't want the city to take on a responsibility if we can also, as a part of this item, explore the options that are available for partnership and to potentially find perhaps a partnership program with the bike shops in the city to take the ownership. Because what is challenging for me to say once again is we already have apps in the city that need significant time and effort. And I'm still frustrated that our Go Long Beach app is still not at top shape. It's marginal at best at this point. And so what I don't want to do is create more apps are online data portal is still not to where it should be. And so while I support the general idea of this, I just don't see that our departments have made the strides that we need to in technology to open up another platform. And so I'll be supportive of the study, but I really hope that in it we bring back alternatives where we don't have to take the ownership of another app, where where the world is changing and the platforms are changing and the city is not yet at the speed we need to be to keep pace . Thank you, Councilmember Supernanny. Thank you. I was happy to sign on to this item. The one thing I did request is that the app would work with fares that we might have on the weekend, so that it's an easy app application that if we had a bike fare or something, we could have a canopy set up to registered bikes at our various events. We have also. Not only do I support Councilmember Price's idea that it should be cheap or free. I think we have to look at incentives. And an example I'll give you is 20 years ago, Cal State, Long Beach had a real bad bike theft problem. So they came up with a plan where if you registered your bike, you got a you lock for $5 and it was a $30. You like I'm not saying we can put something that robust together, but let's look at those opportunities, too, as we move this forward. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Price. I agree. I think there might be some grant opportunities available since we're encouraging more bike ridership that we can explore. Just a couple of quick points that I wanted to make. The Councilwoman Mongo is correct there. There has been for many years a national bike registry and it recently merged with I think it's the company I forgot project 5 to 9. And the problem is that, yeah, that's wonderful for residents to register with the national registry, but Long Beach PD is not connected to it. So so we used to be, but we no longer are. So obviously that's something that we will also consider. But in regards to the app base, that was just a suggestion because obviously the way people would register would be through the Internet and sometimes that's a little bit more cumbersome. So it would be. Using technology that already exists or that is being used in other cities for us to be able to make it easy for people to register, which is the whole point of it. And I think on moving forward, we have a lot of emphasis on bikes in the city and if we're going to do that, we may want to. And I thought I talked about this with Craig Beck. We may want to think about an app that is kind of a bike friendly app so that even the bike rentals that we have, the bike share program, you can keep everything in one place almost like a bike wallet, where all the information that you need in regards to getting around town, whether it's maps, whether it's the bike share card code that you need, all of that could be through one particular app with so many different apps in the city of Long Beach, we just recently looked at the newsletter that the Go Long Beach newsletter that we have, and it had featured the go along beach apps that we have, that we have some police department specific ones, we have some public works specific ones. I know there's someone here from our I.T. department. We're doing a lot of great things with allowing residents to report things and file things more readily through an app or through the Internet. So if we can do that with bikes, I think we'll be in great shape. So I look forward to seeing the report, too, and excellent comments by my colleagues. Thank you. Thank you. Any public comment on the registry? Mr.. GOOD. You. It's certainly a good idea. And I think we should also consider given the impact. Do run the numbers and. Get a firm figure, a firm handle on the benefit of getting people out of cars onto a bike. Whenever they can. And then. Figure out its aggregate benefit in terms of reduction of smog, traffic and all the nine yards that are connected with going someplace. And then increase the fine, which is deadly, and make it a 3 to 5 year prison sentence. In addition to that. I think we're. I'm not a techie guy and my Homer Simpson isn't around tonight, so I can't ask him. But it seems to me that one of the things we could do is develop same type of devices that can be in cars that when they manufacture or you get it from the dealer, they can weld into the frame of the bike, a tracking device. And I don't know how long the battery would last like that, but it would certainly, I think if the volume is there, that would drive that down and so you'd be able to track it. But I think going back to the original penalty, I think it should make it to find some people in Sacramento. That understand the import of it and pass a law that it would be. Put them away for 3 to 5 years period. And increase the increase in the penalty that would bring it down dramatically. Couple that with the tracking device and I think probably 95% of the problem would go away. Thank you. Thank you. See no other public comment. There's a motion and a second. Please cast your votes.