Recommendation to receive and file a report on the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, and provide input and policy direction to staff on next-step strategies for the City’s emergency response to COVID-19.  (Citywide)
Thank you. That concludes the hearing. We're going to go ahead and transition now to item 25/1, which is our COVID report worked. And I'm going to give staff an opportunity to get set up here just a few just a minute. And as they do that, before we begin, just note for the council that this is a very large presentation. It's one of the longer presentations that staff probably has made to the the council in a while and has a lot of important information. So I'm going to let staff just give them a minute. I know they're getting set up and then we'll start this in just 30 seconds. So and I'll and I'll open it up and then I'll pass it along over to Mr. Modica. And then I want to make sure council that you can see the, the summary on your screens so you have the report in front of you. So thank you. Text message. Okay. I think the team is ready for the presentation. So I'm going to do some opening remarks and we'll go right into this into this report and an opportunity, I think, for a lot of questions and comments and input from from the council. I want to just begin by just noting that we are in a certainly this city's largest health crisis that we have seen in decades and likely our largest economic challenge as a city since the Great Depression. Long Beach has always been a city that has led that has had a great team of employees and and and really in managers and community. And so this is certainly testing that in in the weeks that have gone past and in the weeks ahead of us. I want to thank our incredible, incredible team for their amazing work on this. They have been amazing to watch. And as we know, first and foremost, this is a health crisis. And the men and women at the Long Beach Health Department, along with their partners in in the fire service at the police department and across the city, have been really great to see how this effort has really been a city led effort, but really one that's been in partnership with the entire medical community or hospitals of the work that's happening in. And the retailers are providing access to food. And of course, our partnerships that we have with the County of Los Angeles and and the CDC at the federal level. And so it's really been an entire group of folks that have worked on this as a as a city and as a community. One thing that I've been proud of is that our effort has really been around health and around ensuring that we listen to experts and that we're being guided by the science and by the data. We've forged partnerships because we're listening to what to our internal experts, and that includes the team at the Health Department, but especially Dr. Davis and her team of just these specialists and others. And we have the city through our through our management team is not rush a process, but really gone through the process in a way that I think has been great to see, which has been focused on looking at data. And we're going to see a lot of data tonight. This council has also worked really hard to encourage input from the community because we know at the end of the day we want to have a lot of input and a lot of information. And so you have seen and you're going to hear tonight about the the economic recovery group that Mayor Foster has been involved with. You're going to hear about a survey that has that has over 15,000 responses from the community. You're also going to hear about all the things that are being discussed. We had our economic development committee, of which three of our members are a part of. They had a great committee meeting. I'm bringing in experts and talking about how we grow the economy. And many of the council offices have also hosted their own roundtables and conversations with businesses and surveys, with businesses to hear from them, which I know I'm sure we'll hear about from council members tonight as well. And so all of that information, everything we're hearing, all of that data really informs the work of the Lombard Health Department and the city. And but we know that at the end of the day, the calls that are being made and the final decision decisions must rest with the health experts and the medical advice. I think that is what's guiding us as we move forward and as we reopen our community. We strongly believe that's what should center us. We know that. And I think it's important to remember that our safer at home order and health order is through currently through May 15th. Of course, we're going to hear tonight that the governor has placed reopening plans and that some some municipalities and some counties will begin moving at their own pace. And certainly that's going to begin to happen. And we're going to hear tonight, I think, from our team about looking at what the data actually speaks to and which is very impressive. But it's still chair shows the challenges we have ahead of us. And so I want to thank Mr. Modica for your leadership. And we look forward to this presentation that you're about to give with the team. And so with that, I'll turn this over to our city manager, Tom. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think that was a very well put introduction. Like you, I'm just constantly impressed with the team that comes to work every single day to help keep the community safe. Their efforts have been unbelievably impressive and also very, very proud of our community as well. We'll talk a little bit about what has happened over the last couple weeks and months. It has been really impressive to see the Long Beach community come out in force and by and large really do the right thing in order to help keep COVID 19 from spreading. And the results really are palpable. And we're going to see that today. And we're definitely headed in the right direction. We still have a ways to go, but things are looking good, and we're going to show that to you with data. So it is going to be a long presentation, as the mayor said. We're actually doing something we I don't recall us ever doing, which is we had so many things to tell you and so many slides. We actually created a slide appendix because there wasn't enough room to put it in this slide show presentation and still be somewhat concise. So we have additional detail. We thought those were important things the council can see and those are attached as well. But the overview we're going to be going over are really cover the following things. We'd like to talk to you a little bit about our emergency operations and how they work and how we're set up and how we are delivering and accomplishing all the things that you're going to see. We're going to have a review of our COVID 19 data. So we have a data team that does nothing but really look and parse out data, and you're going to see the results of that work. You're going to talk a little bit about the governance framework and then also line up how Long Beach data compares to the various framework components that he has laid out. We're going to talk about the community input that we received. And so the council has that. We're going to go through some of the financials. We're going to talk about next steps. And really, today is a chance for us to hear additional input from the city council. The city council has been very involved. I talk to them regularly all the time. It seems about every single day of answering questions, getting input and getting feedback, but we have not had a chance to do that as a body. And so today also we we know you are hearing things from your constituents that you want to be able to make sure are being considered. And so that is what part of today is as well to give guidance and thoughts to the EOC, to our health officer, to city management as we navigate this together. So I'll talk a little bit about the timeline. So it would take several screens to be able to show all the things that have happened. But these kind of eight points talk about the major parts that have happened. So we declared our local health emergency. We were one of the earlier ones to do that on March 4th, and then we had our first three positive cases on March nine. So we actually had a whole week to plan before we got our first positive cases. On March 10th, the Council took the action to ratify the emergency declaration, and then March 14th is when we first saw what we called community spread, where it was no longer travel based, but it was spreading in the community . On the 18th, the Council took some very bold action on approving 25 different ways to or it was a request to really look at our resiliency program and it was 25 different items. And then the city instituted our Safer at home order on March 19th. We had our first fatality on March 23rd. And that brings us to today, where we put in a number of things to safeguard the community and to respond. We are in what's called an emergency management structure or the incident command structure. It is a federally NASH or a federally recognized system on how to deal with emergencies. And under the charter there is a position called the Director of Emergency Services. It actually is the city manager, and below the city manager is the team that does all the work. That is our emergency operations center. We are stood up at a level two and they have been working around the clock. The emergency operations center is guided by what we call our agency administrators, and those are really your major department directors and executive management who are providing some of that guidance on a daily basis as we implement the emergency actions. And you hear a lot about a GIC, a joint information center, and that really works for the EOC and is what provides all of the information to the community in the media. And they work seven days a week every single day. We have had a maximum 102 city employees actually assigned to the EOC. Our response to the emergency is actually several thousand employees who are all working either at home or in their assignments. But actually at the EOC, it's 102 covering 40 job classifications and covering 16 different departments. And the amount of resources departments have volunteered to stop doing what they were doing. To go help out has been really impressive. Some of the accomplishments, these are actually broken into the sections that we have set up our emergency structure and there's a logistics section, planning operation and finance. And so we've distributed 1.5 million PPE. We've given out 31,000 N95 masks, 16,000 gowns, 9000 cloth and sewn masks, 860 deliveries across the city. In our planning area, they've developed a really robust hospital bed availability dashboard that allows us to really monitor how our hospitals are doing. We analyze every day what our workforce is doing and whether we need to pull them from one area to reassign them to the emergency. In another area, we created a data group with digital dashboards and data summaries and predictive analysis. We have our operations section has stood up seven testing sites over the past couple of weeks. We are now testing 1000 people a day and you're going to hear that later today. Why that's so important. We've managed four shelter sites. We have a number of different contingency plans, all in operation and development. And we have done multiple food distribution sites. We have a whole section set up on finance to make sure that we can get reimbursement. And we actually have received $3.6 million in FEMA reimbursements to date. That team really makes sure that every dollar is accounted for every hour and all the paperwork is in place to be able to get that 75% FEMA reimbursement. And so one of the things that we have all realized during this time is just how unique we are as a city where just about every other city in the state of California at this point really is relying on their health to partner on the county health department to make those health decisions and doesn't have the same sort of resources that Long Beach does. We are one of only three operated, city operated local health jurisdictions in California. Our health department is actually quite large. We have 340 staff in the health department. They do over 40 programs in nine sites throughout the country or city. And we provide on a yearly basis our public health services that 350,000 people a year. So what do they do? They implement local health orders. We have a doctor on staff, Dr. Anissa Davis, who is our local health official. We have a lot of this is informed by our federal, state, county and local effort experts. We look at data, we look at case investigations, and we do things called contact tracing that you hear about tonight. We are a leading supporter of our skilled nursing facilities. They are under state regulation, but they are supported by our health department and we help them and provide PPE and testing for the residents in the staff. We actually have our own warehouse where we do distribution of PPE and supplies for Long Beach medical institutions. We have a rapid assessment clinic providing free health care. We have mobile hospitals that we have actually distributed to three of our local hospitals. We now have COVID 19 drive up testing centers with walk up access a thousand tests a day. We have our own public health lab that allows for 24 hour turnaround results, the fastest results anywhere. And we're testing symptomatic first responders as well as nuns, as well as medical providers and long term care staff. We have done pop up homeless shelters and project roomkey housing and isolation sites. We support older adult information lines and support systems and education of our businesses. And we're also creating business recovery playbooks and and working on things like hospitality recovery. And of course, we also look at some of our disadvantaged populations and we really use an equity lens, and we'll talk about that later today. We have a joint information center, which is really the public information arm of our EOC. And so they're responsible for the media relations, the press conferences, releases, advisories. There is something going out every single day, even on Saturday and Sunday, three press conferences a week that the mayor and Dr. Davis do. And those are very well seen. I believe the latest one had I believe the number was 45,000 views, which is which is very robust. Engagement. These are not impressions. I want to make the distinction. These are actually engagements. We've had 751,000 people engage on Facebook. So not just view, but actually make a comment, make a share. That's an incredible amount of activity that's happening, 188,000 on Twitter and 63,000 on Instagram. And Instagram has really exploded in terms of our following. We also have been tracking website and we'd encourage everyone to go to Long Beach Dot Gov, COVID 19 and it's working. We've had 750,000 page views and 608,000 of those are unique. And so we find and we track where people are going so that we know exactly what type of information they're looking for. And that helps us customize our response. We have set up call centers, a seven day a week call centers, our 570 info line and 5704 biz line. And so 200 or 2800 calls into our info line and 681 calls into our business line. What do people ask us about exposure? And testing is by far the biggest at 78%. They ask about our city services, businesses, employment, and they want to know things about what are happening at our parks or beaches. How do I get help? How do I access resources? How do I get masks? All of those things are answered by our city staff seven days a week. We also do it in multiple languages in English, Spanish, Canadian, Tagalog. We translate documents so that press releases are translated into those, into those languages and sent out. We have staff that actually answer the phone and and call in, can call you back. We have multilingual website pages. We have multilingual trends, location staff that are dedicated to the GIC. And we have a lot of community partnerships with our African American community, Cambodian and our Latino leaders. We also realize that we need to be looking at some of this response through an equity lens. And that's something that the council, as has indicated, is important to them. And so while everyone is impacted by COVID 19, we know that individuals who are already disadvantaged and underserved are affected and even higher proportions. And so, you know, COVID 19 is a burden on everybody, but it comes on top of some of those existing racial, economic, health, education and gender inequalities. And so that actually multiplies that disadvantage. And so we presented the equity toolkit to the EEOC and really done some training. The Office of Equity is embedded into the EEOC structure, and that was something that the Council wanted us to follow up on. And so I want to turn it over now to Kelli Colby, who's going to really walk us through the data and talk to us about, you know, what is it that we're monitoring and seeing out there? And then also, how does that line up with the governor? And then you're going to hear from John Keisler to talk a little bit about the community input. So with this, I will turn it over to Kelli Collopy, our director of Health and Human Services. Good evening, honorable mayor and council members. So we're going to take some time to walk you through the data that we've been tracking very closely throughout throughout this pandemic. So the first slide, this is our most up to date slide in terms of number of confirmed cases. We have 789 confirmed cases, 48 people currently hospitalized, 38 deaths, and 494 folks who have recovered. Of those who are positive cases, 53% are female, 47% are male. 15% are under the age of 30. And then sort of for all the other age groups, it's sort of a range between 16 and 18%. So really, the the positives, the positive cases are pretty evenly distributed across all of our community when it comes to age groups. You can see when you look at the zip code maps, 90803 and 90807. Those are the locations that tend to have the greatest number of long term care facilities. And we do have increased populations in some of those long term care facilities. So that is demonstrated through these maps. Our citywide case per 100,000 is 160. When you look at the when you look at our trends in positive cases and our deaths, what you'll see is that we continue to track below L.A. County for both the positive cases and for our deaths per 100,000 population. So we are higher than the state of California, but below both. The city of Los Angeles and the county of Los Angeles for our cases and need to be quite a bit below Los Angeles County in our deaths per 100,000. Now, when you look at the total hospitalizations, we started at a much deeper curve in terms of our deaths per hundred thousand. But we've started to flatten while L.A. County is increasing. The slide, you'll see we sort of passed out the difference between our community. The COVID positives within our community compared to long term care facilities. So the way this works is, is that we report on a specific date, the number of cases that we get in. But those cases may reflect testing up to five days prior. And so what happens through here is that we go back and redistribute these to the days when they actually had the test or when their symptoms occurred, whichever the date are that we have. And so you'll see that in terms of our positive cases for long term care facilities, none showed up through through the last three days , no new cases but the that they were distributed prior to that. And when you look at those in the community, we had very low numbers so far reported in the community. When we look at the community versus long term, long term care facilities, what you'll see is that for the among those that are positive cases, you'll see that 72% of those folks are in the community and 24% are in long term care facilities and 4% are in other, which is sort of Borden cares and other institutional settings are group homes for hospitalization. You'll see that 63% of those who are being hospitalized come from community, 32% from our long term care facilities, and about four and a half percent in our other board, in cares and in long term care. Sorry, Borden cares. And then among deaths, you'll find that 81% of our deaths are from long term care facilities and 19% are from the community. So you'll see that our long term care facilities are are overrepresented in a significant amount in the in the deaths from COVID. The slide here. So for those who are positive in the community, 20% have been hospitalized. For those who are positive in long term care facilities, 32% have been hospitalized. And for those who are positive in the other group homes, 33% have been hospitalized. When we look at the deaths of those who are positive in the community, 1% of them have died in long term care facilities. For those who are positive for COVID, 6% have passed away. And no, there have been no deaths in Born Cares and other group facilities and group homes. We're also breaking out our data by race, ethnicity. And what you'll see is that we see African-American and Pacific Islanders are overrepresented in the total number of in the total number of cases. And I'm sorry, that says percentage hospitalizations, but it's actually the number of cases. And you'll also see that the same as within within hospitalizations. When we start to look at our deaths, you'll see that African-American whites are also overrepresented in the number of deaths, and partially because what we find is that for African-Americans, they're more susceptible to the underlying health conditions such as lung disease, heart disease and diabetes, which most are most impacted by COVID. For our white population, our white population, or among older adults in the long term are more overrepresented in our long term care facilities. And so that is where you're seeing the information, the overrepresentation for deaths among the white population in the city. This is a trend line. And so what you'll see here, this is the number of cases within the city they are based on when it was an episode date, so not when the tests were reported to us. The orange line is a seven day moving average and this is what the state is looking at and others to determine whether your case rate is in decline. And so what you'll see there is that orange line shows that we are since sort of the middle of April, we have been in an overall decline moving forward in the cases. When we look at this, we look at the transmission rate. So anything over a one means that your cases are growing and anything under one means that your cases are declining. So you hear often about the doubling rate and how many days is the doubling rate, or given that we are no longer above one as this thing where we are in a decline and there is no doubling rate. So you'll see that in mid-March. So March 19th was was when we put in the safer at home orders. And you'll see from there the numbers started to decline and have been declining essentially since that time. So that is the number that we'd like to see. So those are the data. And I'd like to go into the governors services key strategies to reopen. The governor has six key indicators focusing on the ability to protect our communities through testing, contact tracing and isolating for those who are positive or exposed the ability to prevent infection and people who are at risk for severe COVID 19. The ability of hospitals and search and health systems to handle the surges. The ability to develop therapeutics. To meet the demand that is held. And that is not something that we are doing within the city. Will leave that to our federal to our federal partners and private labs. So that is that's an area that we're not tracking on. Number five is the ability for businesses, schools and childcare facilities to support physical distancing. And number six is the ability to determine when to reinstate certain measures. So if, for instance, we start to see large increases as we start to loosen orders, what measures would we look at to start to tighten back down again? You also laid out a roadmap which has stages. So right now we are in the current stage of stage one, which is a place of safety and preparedness. And so that is the safer at home order. And during this time, they're sort of calling it stage one. A is all the preparation that it takes to begin to move to stage two, stage two, as lower risk workplaces gradually opening up with adaptations. The governor, as you heard, discussed the sort of the opening of retail with drive up. That is sort of what they're calling the soft opening of stage two. There are a lot more areas of stage two to be focusing on, but that would be the starting point. Stage three is your higher risk workplaces. That would also be open with adaptation, and stage four is the end of the stay as the statewide stay at home order. And that is something that would not really come into play until we have a vaccine or other sort of medications that can treat and treat COVID. And it is something that they see as something much further out. So our progress on the indicators, first of all, our ability to monitor and protect our communities through the testing, contact tracing and isolating. What you'll see here is our trend, our growth trend and the ability to test. So we started out with our public health lab with ten tests in early you know, in early March. And since that time, we now have the capacity to test nearly 1000 people per day through all of our drive up sites. So we do have we have a small site at the health department that is prioritized for health care workers, first responders and long term care facility staff to make sure we get the quickest turnaround possible to ensure they don't go back to work. And then we've got these sites that the Long Beach City College, the PCC campus, the real high school, Jordan High School, St Mary's, the New Jordan Plus site, and the new Long Beach City College Veterans Stadium. So once again, we can test up to a thousand per day to date through those drive ups. We've tested 7263 people. And then if you include all of our hospitals and private labs, we've tested over 12,500 folks. So it's a it's we've actually tested more than 13,000, but we're pulling out those who are not from Long Beach. So it's the 12,500 numbers, those that are from from the city of Long Beach. When you look at our contact tracing capacity, it really is crucial that you have contact tracing to slow the chain of transmission. So those staff work with COVID 19 patients to identify their contacts during the timeframe when they're infectious. And then they work very closely to contact all those folks and work with them to quarantine. They call every day now to determine whether people have symptoms and follow up. And if people are in quarantine and don't have capacity for food or access to resources, then we support by we support in any way we can to help people continue to quarantine and to isolate. And they estimate that you need somewhere between two times and three times the number of new cases each day for contact tracing capacity. So if we had 40 new cases in one day, we would need a capacity of 80 to 120 people to respond. And so we have developed a surge plan. We are working very closely with the EOC and deploying our city staff as disaster services workers to be able to participate and support the contact tracing capacity as we can't open the city any broader until this is in place. We're also looking at potential state resources. It's just being brought up within the last couple of days that they may be able to supply some resources and we'll be working with them to see what shows up. The state is also providing a contact tracing app to all jurisdictions throughout the state. They plan to pilot in early May, which is right now we're waiting for the pilot to roll out and then are hoping for full implementation by either late May or early June. In terms of quarantine and isolation capacity. Generally, we people quarantine and isolate safely at home. But there are people who don't have a place to live, people who are experiencing homelessness or those who live in locations that are overcrowded and it's not safe for them to quarantine or not possible for them to quarantine or isolate at home. We have 124 bed site through Project Roomkey that can be utilized for both people who are experiencing homelessness or for those who cannot safely quarantine at home. We are in ongoing negotiations with additional motels to make sure that we have just to ensure that if we need surge capacity, will we be able to turn those on? And there is a the state has an agreement with a local hotel to support first responder responders and medical staff who can't isolate safely at home. So the next indicator is the ability to prevent infection in people who are at risk for more severe COVID 19. The first is looking for people who are experiencing homelessness. So we currently we currently have about 1200 people who are unsheltered. And our last point in time count that that do not have places that do not have shelter. And so what we have been able to do so far as the city, we were awarded $1.1 million from the state. And those dollars are being utilized to leverage the project roomkey access and other sheltering capacities as a as a match for FEMA. We opened on our first shelter. In addition to the winter shelter was the Silverado Shelter. The winter shelter then moved from the old to the old North Library. We opened King Park, then our first project, our project Roomkey. That first project, Roomkey, is approximately 135 beds and it is currently filled to 120 beds. That space is very specific to people, to people who are older, older adults, and those who are have underlying health conditions that make them more susceptible to more severe COVID. We also have the isolation and quarantine site that I shared earlier. As of last night, we had 71% of our total total occupancy for all the beds. So our maximum capacity right now is 294 and our occupancy last night was 208. Older adults are also a focus. We have 51,000 over 51,500 people over 60 over the age of 65 in Long Beach. 18% of those folks live in poverty. 52% live alone. So we've been asking people to stay at home and to self-quarantine. And there's a lot of needs of support. The Healthy Aging Center continues to provide our Senior Link's case management to older adults who have multiple health issues and social needs. We go out and we do a home visits and other things working to really provide the services they need. The Healthy Aging Program manager is also working really closely with the non-medical senior residential facilities. So we have a lot of senior living apartments in the city of our Mitch and our program managers working very closely with them to answer questions, provide guidance and support, support safety and health in those facilities. And then we're also that program manager is also the liaison between the senior residential managers and the Our Communicable Disease Program, so that they have so we can really provide the building, manage their direct contact for their questions. Our EOC is working closely with nonprofit organizations who are engaged in food distribution. Now. We implemented an older adult resource resource line for those who are self-quarantining, so that if they need supports with food or medication or other things, we can help link them to the various services. Our long term care facility cases. We currently have 236 cases in our total in our long term care facilities and 31 deaths. The long term care facility cases are 30% of our total cases across the city. So far we've had 19 facilities total. We've had at least one case. Eight of those have not had any additional cases in the last 14 days. So we see that as an area of no transmission. So at this time, we have 11 facilities that have one or more cases. When we compare our sort of long term, long term care facility to Pasadena and the county, where you'll notice is that our case rate for positives is low per 100,000 is lower than both the county or Pasadena. Pasadena is having a lot of issues within their long term care facilities. The state of California, there is a much lower rate. When we look at our death rate. We're similar to L.A. County overall and far below Pasadena. Moving forward. So with our long term care facilities, we do outreach and education regarding all the protocols for safety. We have spent a lot of time over a number of years working closely with our long term care facilities to ensure that they are safe. We have re over 93 long term care facilities in the city. And so we just want people to understand that, you know, you're seeing different you're seeing different and skilled nursing facilities in others with cases. But as a proportion of the overall long term care facilities in the city, it's really, you know, approximately 20% of those facilities. We are testing all staff and residents and sites where there are cases. So we want to make sure that that we're capturing all that we're capturing everybody and that we can effectively quarantine and isolate within those sites. Um, we do, if, if, if there is a facility that has positive cases, we make sure that we sort of, we set aside areas for people who are positive. We set aside area for people who are have been exposed but are not currently positive. And then we set aside area for people who have not been exposed or are not positive staff do not cross the lines between those three. So they are assigned to one location so they cannot carry it from one place to another. We are providing PPE to those long term care facilities when they are low. We're prioritizing lab results of the residents and staff. All those are being run through our our health lab to make sure that the turnaround time is quick. Um, and we, we implemented a health officer order specific to long term care facilities that limits entry, requires face coverings and temperature screenings for those who are entering, as well as a lot of these other protocols. We're also spending time really focusing on more vulnerable populations overall. You know, we've you've heard earlier about the overrepresentation among our African-American population, also among our Pacific Islander population. And so we have a group we have an African-American outreach group that is focusing on there where there will be a city hall or Spanish city hall or. Sorry. Yeah, city hall. That is coming. I'm sorry. Town hall meeting coming up. And then we'll also be meeting with our native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders on Friday. The key focus for all of these is how do we really get out the message around safety and prevention, the importance of it, and how to do it? How can we increase access to testing and health care for populations that may not have access otherwise? How do we effectively isolate and quarantine? How do we create those spaces to prevent spread? Priority is given to older adults and those with underlying health conditions. And then how do we really start to focus as things turn back on for the economy, for our in our economic recovery? How are we making sure that we have representation and leadership from all these populations with an equity lens to really ensure that that everybody is represented in our economic recovery strategies? We look at our ability of the hospital and health systems to handle surges all of our area. If you add all of our capacity together across all the area hospitals, we have about 1500 patient beds available daily. This does fluctuate based on daily staffing, current needs and projected situations. The bed usage is as average less than 50% of that of those beds. So there is capacity there. And the area hospitals have averaged between 50 and 55 COVID positive patients daily. And then that does not include the VA is not included in those numbers. We have surge capacity of an additional 400 beds on top of that, 1500 at the hospitals, as well as 100 beds at the convention center as an alternative care site. Over there are 225 ventilators available at our Long Beach area hospitals. And they've been averaging about 30% of use in the month of April. We look at our hospitalizations. That civilization reporting rate is similar to that for cases so they the dark bar is sorry the the light bar is when hospitalizations are reported to us. So we will you know, we will say today we have 40 hospitalizations, but we often find out sometimes that people have left already or that there's new hospitalizations and it takes time for the data to capture, to catch up. So the the dark bar actually shows the most accurate and current data moving forward. So we again, we continue to be sharing with you what we hear each day and the most current data for that day. And then also we go back and sort of fill back in where we understand what the data look like to help us for policy making and decisions. Kelly, this is this is Robert, the mayor. Garcia, just want to just can you go back once like this one, to make sure that we just highlight this for think it's really important? And Kelly, correct me if I get any of this wrong, but I think I think this slide is really, really important for for obviously not just the council but for the community to take a look at. And I know this slide and this data point really guides a lot of the questions on how you kind of transition back into the economy. If you look at the hospitalization rate in Long Beach and you particularly look at the last two weeks, last 20 days or so. It's really I mean, you're going to have you have ups and downs, but it's really generally a flat in flattening of hospitalizations. And I think that particularly the last few days, we obviously hope that trend continues. There's not enough data yet, but we hope that trend continues. And I think that when when you hear the governor often talk about what he and what he views as the amount of time that's appropriate to look at hospitalizations and not see a spike, he typically says that a minimum of 14 days, which you really want to look at. And so I just wanted to provide that context. If I got any of that incorrect. Kelly, let me know. But I think you see here, obviously more than 14 days and you do see a pretty steady R rate that it's going to go up and down on depending on the date. But but fairly steady, is that right? KELLY Yes, MAYOR, That is true. And we haven't we really haven't had a lot of spikes. We were we were at 61 at one point in earlier, you know, like about a month ago. But, you know, since then we've been right in sort of the mid 50 and high 40 range for some time. So we have been able to we haven't had anything that you see like in New York or other places where it's just overwhelmed the system. We've been in pretty good shape in terms of capacity. And this is a chart that I know that that I that I really look at often. I think that everyone should be looking at this this this data often because obviously other data points like the positive rate obviously will always continue to go up. And there's certain there's certain charts that are more difficult to to gain valuable insight as to how you're doing within that moment. And I think this really speaks to how we are doing today, but also how we've been doing for the last two, three, four weeks. And so I just want to thank you for the work here. And and I do appreciate the the difference in the hospitalization as reported and the updated number, because I think we know that sometimes there's a lag time. Hospitals might change their data. And so I appreciate that. Not only are you are we reporting what's reported to us on a daily basis, but then as as those numbers change and as hospitals make those changes, you can see those, too. And so I really appreciate that Kelly and your team are doing a great job with that. So I'll turn it back over to you. Thank you, Mayor. So the next into the next indicators, the ability for businesses, schools and childcare facilities to support physical distancing. We have a lot of different groups working on this, so certainly our health officer, through the emergency health orders, has been focusing on outlining what, you know, what the practices are. Um, through the EOC, we have a resilience and recovery group focused also on early childhood and youth services capacity. And then, you know, we've been in contact with the school system and will be working with them as well. There's a human resources group that is looking at city staff returning to work, an economic recovery advisory group that John will be sharing more about for the really looking at the local economy and business practices there. Our environmental health team is also working on a business playbook for reopening in connection with the advisory group. And the hospitality task force is looking at opportunities there. We are hosting City Council community forums for Community Input and EDI and our committee is looking at economic and financial impact. So there there are a lot of different areas where we're looking at how we, how we ensure the physical distancing and all the different needs to keep people safe when when businesses are opening. The next is the ability to determine when to re-institute certain measures of the stay at home order. This is really an area that we while we've been working on the indicators about when to turn on. We have we're still working on what those indicators look like. So if we start to if we start to see growth in, you know, higher growth in cases or higher growth in hospitalization rates or deaths, like at what point do we say, okay, we need to we need to like we need to tighten back down a little bit. So we do have a team that's getting ready to start working on that moving forward. So then the, um, the State Department of Public Health has been working to identify what measures we need to be looking at to be able to sort of accelerate into phase two. So we've got this opportunity of sort of a soft opening and then they're providing, you know, when the numbers start to look right within different communities, then they're talking about this ability to accelerate into phase two, to open things a little more quickly. They're really focused on some of the rural communities that may have had one case and other places that, you know, that are that are ready to go. But we've been looking at those indicators. And as of this morning, these are the indicators that they're looking at. And the indicators I've been meeting have been moving a little bit. But right now, the the trend is so the trends we have look at in terms of a new case goal would be no more than one case per 1000 people in 14 days. And so we are already at that. We've met we've met that goal. And then the next one is no more than one death in 14 days. We are not at that goal. And so that is something that we'll be working with and really has a lot to do with the long term care facilities. But when you have community spread, even if our deaths are low in that community, many of those those workers who who are in long term care facilities need to be protected. And we need to make sure that we're focusing we continue to focus on our community to make sure that they are safe when they're walking into our long term care care facilities. In terms of the testing goal, it's 1.5 tests per thousand testing capacity. We have far exceeded that goal. The other one there is that you have to be within 30 minutes and urban I'm sorry, 50, 30 minutes within an urban environment to a testing site. And we've certainly got that covered across the city. The containment goal is that you have contact tracing, staff capacity of 2 to 3 times the number of new cases. We are not at that, but we are working on that as I've shared earlier, and that you have sheltering capacity for about 15% of your people experiencing homelessness for the city of Longreach, that's approximately 300 people. We are at 290 something, so we're very close to that. And when the year round shelter opens in June, we will meet that goal. The isolation goal is the ability to quarantine and isolate people within 24 hours of a test result. That relies a whole lot on your contact tracing as well as safe, safe locations for quarantine and isolation. So we're working on building the capacity to be able to quarantine and isolate. We do have the quarantine and isolation site and then the hospital capacity goal is that that you have the physical and workforce capacity to handle a 35% surge based on current numbers. We have those. We have that capacity and that is met. So Kelly, before, can you go back one slide? Again, this I think it's important. I just want to make sure that the public, particularly business owners that are asking this question, understand this indicator, what you're talking about. Exactly. So you want to add a little a little a little more color to it. So what what the governor has essentially said is that, you know, the state limit orders. Cities cannot go beyond the statewide orders, obviously. I mean, the governor has a baseline and city must follow those. And so a lot of a lot of folks, for example, ask us, you know, can you please open restaurants up tomorrow? Well, we legally can't because the statewide order says that that is later in phase two. And the earliest any of phase two can begin. Of course, we know is is later this week as a as an early point and that only a limited amount of businesses would pick up drive thru manufacturing. The second part of what he has said is exactly what you're talking about. He has said, however, if counties or cities want to accelerate their reopenings and I've heard this question, well, you know, the governor said some place some some locations can maybe go faster than what the governor has said. Is that possible? The answer to that is it is possible. But, A, with all of these indicators and a minimum have to be met. And so I just want to share that because there's been some confusion about us being able to automatically move ahead of the state order. And that is not that is not possible. And you have to, at a minimum, meet all the indicators. And then once indicators are met, you have to submit those to the state for for state partnership and approval to move forward. And so it's a complex process, but I want to make sure that we understand exactly what these indicators are speaking to. They're really speaking to a speeding up of the state mandate. Did I get any of that wrong? KELLY No, that is correct. So at each local level, people will have to complete complete a plan to indicate how they meet all the different criteria. And they have to attest that they can meet these criteria and post it and then work with all of the businesses to make sure that they can meet the safety protocols and others that we'll be moving forward. So that, you know, really what they're looking at is they're providing an opportunity for areas that have very low cases, particularly in rural areas that have had, you know, only one or two cases to be able to demonstrate that they have met all of these criteria and maybe to be able to move forward more quickly. The urban environments, the story it's going to take longer is the is basically where we're standing right now. Right. Thank you. Appreciate that. Let's keep going. Okay with that, I'm going to turn over to John Keisler and he's going to share about reopen language. Good evening, the mayor and city council. I'm going to talk a little bit about this reopen L.B. survey that was conducted over the past week, which has been an effort, among many other efforts, to collect public input about the reopening process and so on. On April 28th, we actually opened the survey. There was an announcement through a press release and through a number of our different news outlets, as well as social media and many of the city council newsletters. We were able to garner 15,000 responses in just a few days. And so we have a number of different insights to share with you today. But we wanted you to know that the survey just closed yesterday at 5 p.m., and so there will be an effort to dove deeper. That is happening right now in some extensive data sets which require a lot of disaggregation. So in short, 15,258 total survey responses were received and 63% of the survey participants identified as female. Many of them also over 60% identified as workers. We tried to break down the survey so that we could collect information about zip code, about gender and about race, so that we understood more about the priorities of different communities throughout the city of Long Beach. That data, as I mentioned, will be available in the coming days. What was interesting also is that people identified in terms of their age and that we had over 60% of the response coming from people under the age of 49, and that could have been attributed to many different factors. We're trying to understand that better. But in in short, the fact that this was distributed in just a seven day period online meant that people who were responding to the survey had to have Internet access, of course, and that if we had a chance to open the survey for a longer period of time, one of the recommendations that we've seen, first and foremost, is that we would be able to print that and deliver it in hardcopy to every household in the city of Long Beach. The survey was also translated into Spanish, Kulmiye and Tagalog. We are still seeking responses in those additional languages because of the translation occurring about 24 hours after the the initial survey was opened. We are going to keep the survey open for a little bit longer. For Spanish, come on in. Tagalog. And so if you've received recently either a press release or an email that shows that the survey is open for certain languages, that was an intent to to broaden our diversity and include more survey respondents. And so the survey really targeted three different groups workers, residents that may not be employed currently or business owners. And the reason for that is that we wanted to make sure that we asked different questions. For instance, if you are a worker, did you feel do you feel safe in returning to work at this time? Or if you're a business owner, do you feel safe reopening your business and what the city might do to assist you in making you feel more safe? We also included residents who were currently working with a different set of questions because they have obviously a different set of concerns. And so if you received the update from the city manager this afternoon, you can find this survey posted on our website. Now, most of the city council with the summary as well as the list, the full list of questions and the full list of of answers that were provided by these three different groups of workers, business owners and residents who are not currently employed. And so some of the interesting takeaways about the survey response of of the 15,000 plus participants was that outdoor recreation was number one. By far, over 60% of the respondents selected outdoor recreation as the number one activity that they felt could be reopened and not risk in additional transmission so long as certain certain precautions were taken. Beaches, parks, small scale retail and office work followed. Those all had more than 7000 responses in favor. And then from there, there were 23 total options that residents had to choose from public events. Large public gatherings, concerts, movies. And senior centers ranked the very lowest as things that the residents felt were ready for reopening. Something else that I think is that stood out and that's important is that we received a tremendous amount of written comment as well. And so as an example. Of those 15,000 plus responses, over 114,000 different activities were selected and rated. 21,300 plus. Comments were also received through an open ended question, which asked them, What do you feel that you can do or residents can do to to be safe? And what can the city do to help that? And what was interesting about that, and the slide that you're looking at is what's called word meaning. Obviously, there are hundreds of thousands of words in the responses that we received in just these past seven days. And so our data scientist took a crack at just trying to surface the words that were most used. And so on the left, what you're seeing is steps that residents felt that they could take. And in an open ended response, the word that popped up the most was home, stay home and wear masks. And so they felt that as individuals, these were the things that they could do most. You see washing hands. You see other very familiar numbers, like six, six feet perhaps. And then the second one on the right is steps that workers, business owners and residents felt the city could take to create a safe reopening environment. And of course, these are different words because this focuses on city efforts. So the words testing as an example, really jump out at you because that's the role that the residents really felt that the city could take in making them feel more safe. So we're going to do additional mining of this data. We're also going to be diving deeper into zip code based responses. We're going to disaggregate some of of the specific responses about the open ended suggestions that they provided, and we'll be able to publish that data later, just as it is an example, to try and download this much information in a quick time period. We weren't able to then provide it in a format that would be useful or make sense for the public. So that will be posted in the coming days. And then in addition to the the reopen lab survey, we've had actually a number of recent opportunities for input, including our Hospitality Recovery Task Force. We've had economic development and Finance Committee meetings to talk about and give a chance for public input from various business owners and stakeholders in the community. One such group, the Economic Recovery Advisory Group, is an informal advisory group that was actually identified by our city manager in partnership with former Mayor Bob Foster. And the purpose of this group is really to provide ideas and approaches about how we can restart the local economy in the safest way possible. Now, it's important to recognize the committee has been very clear that there's nothing we can do that's ahead of the governor's order or the health orders that are established at the local level by our own health officer and Lisa Davis. But the members that were assembled because they had an expertize in a broad range of activities, industries, sectors, and so we had doctors, we have small business owners, labor representatives, education leaders, among many others who have expertize and experience to really advise the city manager and city staff in what is possible with regard to a safe reopening of many of these different activities. So so over this past weekend. And we were able to distribute this initial report from the advisory group there. The initial report covers some of the major conclusions about what we should start first. And so if you're working at home, you know, one of the recommendations is to stay working at home. You saw that actually come out in the residents response from reopened lab is that that's something we can we can continue to do if you know you know staying home does not get in the way of making money or providing for essential needs. Also, to begin with, sectors are least likely to start a second wave of transmission. I think that popped up pretty strongly in the reopen L.B. survey, providing protective equipment and protocols, and that's for businesses and and event or venue operators. Robust testing was another major recommendation which came out in both reopen L.B. as well as from the Economic Recovery Advisory Group and then making sure that form follows function that every economic sector needs their own unique and specific protocols. It's not a broad brush here. Each size and space and type of activity needs its own protocols to make sure that we're able to comply with the recommendations from the public health officials. And then finally and Kelly just covered a lot of this is the real time data on hospital and ongoing medical infrastructure to both monitor, test , trace and to keep reporting on the trends that that have emerged. And so the the recovery group restart Long Beach recommended four different stages. You'll see that they align with the health officer and the state recommendations and guidelines. And that report is also now available through the city manager's web page for reports to the mayor and city council available to any member of the public to read and follow up with with the with the group. And so in terms of the four stages that are recommended by the state, by the governor's office, in terms of stage one, two, three and four, they're really about moving from lower risk activities to higher risk activities. You can see that many of these recommendations actually were corroborated or reinforced by the survey data that we received back from businesses and residents. And so the good news is, is that it seems like the community is moving forward collaboratively and collectively with a very common understanding of the challenges, but also the opportunities to reopen aspects in in a staged and phased way. And so with that, I'm actually going to turn it over to city manager Tom Merkel to talk about financial impacts. Thank you very much, Shaun. So, Mayor and Council, I know we've gone quite a while. There is a lot to unpack and give you information on, so I'm going to wrap it up. I want to talk a little bit about the financial impacts. As we know, this is an incredible time for finances for every single organization and Long Beach is not immune. And then we'll talk a little bit about next steps. And then again, we're really here tonight to present you information, to give you a report on everything we've been doing on on your behalf, but also then to really listen to the council. So for financial impacts, we had put out a memo about a month ago about our FY 20 shortfall and future shortfalls, trying to predict, you know, what we thought the impact was going to be. We do have some updated numbers now. And as we had suspected back then, that was an initial first blush. I think we had estimated around 14 to 21 million in that range in the general fund for this year. We do believe that's going to be higher in the 25 million to $41 million range. I know that's a large range, but there's a lot of unknowns. And so we believe there's been more severe impacts to sales tax. Our top our our hotels are 5% full rather than 80% full measure is taken some reductions as well because it's sales tax based. We've seen a large reduction in parking citations in our parking garages where people are no longer going to park. Oil actually went negative for a little while, and so now it's hovering around the $15 a barrel rather than the 55 that we budgeted and the 65 we were experiencing $65 a barrel. And then, of course, there's unreimbursed pandemic cost. We have we have not updated our shortfall for 21. But I did want to remind you that was already pegged at about 9 to 16 in the last memo. And we believe that's going to get worse. There are going to be out year impacts as well. And that we will come back to you on. And it's still very uncertain what's going on out there. We are watching a number of other cities. We're in a slightly different financial position because we're in a federal fiscal year where they are in a state fiscal year. So their fiscal year starts in July, our start starts in October. And we do believe that the economic situation could make it more likely that shortfalls will be worse than projected rather than better. We have also provided you some information on what this response has cost. So our financial section tracks every hour that is spent and every dollar that is allocated for this. Some of those are within existing budget, so we have a total of $13.9 million tracked so far. Some of that you'll see the Labor 10.5 million are budgeted positions, but they are no longer doing what they were doing before. They're now COVID related. So we account for that. We have $3.4 million in non-Labor expenses. And so there's a memo, if anyone's interested in the details on this, we have that out, but we're expecting about a 75% reimbursement of eligible cost from the from FEMA. But we are expecting about 3 to 6 million in our financial projection that it would be un not reimbursed. Language has been aggressive in asking for large city funding from the Federal Government. We don't quite qualify from a population standpoint, but we certainly qualify from an effort standpoint. We have 470,000 people rather than 500,000. And we are asking aggressively and our mayor is leading that charge at the federal, state and local level to get funding that could help us offset some of those unreimbursed cost. So as your city manager, I'm required to put in place things to balance the budget. Once the Council adopts a budget, it is our job to manage it and we have seen a huge drop in the last two months. And so we are putting in place plans and we will be coming back and revisiting the steps we are taking with the Council before the end of May. But that includes a hard hiring freeze and cutback in non-essential expenses. We are going to be creating list recommendations to defer non-critical capital projects. We also think we need to reconsider those summer activities. We may not be allowed by the governor's order to do those and the programs impacted by the pandemic. We were about to hire additional police and fire and we are going to recommend deferring those for the short term so that we can get a better sense of that and also build some of those savings to close the financial year. We are looking at emphasizing full time staffing over part time staffing. We also need to restart our 21 budget process, which was supposed to start May 3rd or March 3rd, and we had to suspend due to COVID and then we're continue to project these updates. I also need to tell the council that this has impacted our entire organization. COVID 19 and saving lives is by far our number one highest priority. And so we've been reassigning staff in very significant numbers. We have large numbers of staff who are not physically in the building, who are working remotely. And so as a result, non-critical functions have been delayed and stopped. The council has been incredibly patient and understanding with that, and we want to make sure the community knows that too, that some of the traditional things that we do as a city have been impacted. We've had to stop. Our whole FY 21 budget development process, and now we need to restart it, which is going to result in a different type of process. And of course, we have initiatives that the Council gives us, and we've had to slow those or suspend some of those as just because of workload. And so these are our last two slides I want to kind of talk about next steps. Really, tonight we presented you with a lot of information and now we want to start listening and get input on our emergency response where you think we may need additional focus, the things you are feeling that we're doing well. And then of course, what you're hearing and your thoughts on the restart efforts. We will continue to work with L.A. County on the health order. That work is happening over the weekend and this week. We have not put anything in place about what reopens, at what time that work is ongoing. And we do expect some changes to the order before May four on or before May 15th. So May 15th is really the date that we have targeted is when our order goes through. Until that changes, it will be May 15th. We may make some slight changes related to recreational opportunities. We may make some changes regarding retail. And so those have not been decided yet. But May 15th is is the date that the current health order runs out. And our philosophy, when we do make some of those changes is to do what we've done with essential businesses, which is providing businesses with direction on how to effectively be safe and then allow them to put those measures into place that are appropriate for their business and sit in space. And so communication is going to be critical in all of this. We know we need to talk to everybody who has questions. We also need to make decisions based on data and medical expertize. And we also need to make sure that we're in alignment with the county as much as possible for regional consistency. And our goal in all of this is, of course, to keep the mayor and city council informed, like what you're doing tonight. And so with that, I know that was a lot. And we appreciate your time and your patience and we're available for questions. Thank you very much, Mr. Modica, and just a great presentation, just a lot of information to just thank you to you and the entire team. I do have council members that are queued up, so I'm going to just begin going through the queue. And if you're if you want to speak, please queue up on the messaging system. And I'm going to I'll begin with Councilwoman Pryce. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to thank staff for that very comprehensive presentation. I think there's a lot there for us to absorb and obviously some of the stats and the data we've seen. But we didn't see this presentation too far in advance. So there's just a lot of information to digest. And I know staff knows that and appreciate that. So I want to thank our health department director, our city manager and his entire team, including all the department heads in helping put together this presentation. I know that it was a collective effort and I appreciate the update and I want to thank our mayor for really advocating for the city when it comes to large city assistance. I think it's it's it's quite a shame that we are just shy of that large city threshold. And looking at the group that the mayor has put together who are advocating for assistance from the federal government. Our city is obviously the largest of that group and clearly has a lot of the same demographics and dynamics that many large cities of 500 that meet that 500,000 threshold have. So I really do want to thank the mayor for his advocacy, because if he's successful in that effort, I think that can be huge for us in terms of the deficit that we have ahead of us and how we're going to be able to deal with a lot of these impacts. I appreciate the mayor's comments regarding the city's ability to accelerate a little bit what the governor is doing. I know that a few weeks ago we had our council, our regular council briefing with the city manager. And through that process, we talked a lot about council members, every single one of us wanting to be involved in this discussion. Every single one of us wanting to have a seat at the table and wanting to make sure that our residents and business leaders and their needs are represented in the discussion. And the city manager really did encourage us to not not wait for this council meeting, but to go out and seek input in whatever way we could. We wanted to we saw fit from our residents and business owners. So I know that several of my colleagues took advantage of that opportunity, and I'm grateful that they did. We also did in the third District. We had five focus group meetings via Zoom, and then we we published a survey that we received over 1000 responses to within 24 hours. So I was really pleased with the with the interest. But what all of that told me is that people are very interested in having a voice. People are at the point now where they want to have a meaningful discussion about what the next steps look like. They're there. They're ready for that. And and I really do think it's important and I'm not trying to say that we haven't been, but I think we're at the point now where the city needs to be a little bit more aggressive in terms of our discussions about what reopening looks like. And to the extent that we can get to a place where we're able to meet the indicators and move forward. That's obviously. Should be our goal, and I know that. That is our goal. So I guess my first question would be for Miss Colby in regards to the indicators, what indicator and or indicators are we missing before we can move forward and submit an accelerated plan to the governor's office regarding the stages? Councilman the the indicators primarily. But the first is that you can only have one of the indicators is one death in 14 days. At this time, we haven't met that. And so that is something that we'd be tracking on. The next is the capacity to contact Trace. So to really actively be able to trace and they estimate that each person who is positive at least has ten contacts. And it requires a team, you know, to to follow up and to try to follow up with all of those contacts. And then if it's a close contact, that's the quarantine and the default, which is those quarantines as well as the person who's isolated. It is a significant responsibility, and that's an area that we're working to build our capacity right now. And then I think the I'm trying to remember, I don't have any more than one check. I'm finding the rest of the indicators. So those are the two the two primary. And then the the ability to quarantine within 14, within 24 hours of a positive test also is based on the need for that contact tracing. We have met our capacity in terms of the the the housing for people who are experiencing homelessness. And then so those are the those are the primary ones. Now, these are indicators that were announced today and then so they may change some, but that is really the focus area. So I think those are the two key areas. This one is continuing to focus on the deaths. I think we have a lot of other capacity and and the ability to really build up our contact tracing and making sure that we are quarantining and isolating effectively so they don't have further outbreaks across the city. So what I'm hearing you say is that there are two critical indicators that if we can meet those. Obviously the ability to quarantine would be the ability of the individual and those identified through contact tracing to have been impacted. They would need to self-quarantine, correct? That is true. So there are two pieces. One is that we can identify them quickly and then work with them to make sure that they are quarantining and then the ability to follow up if they do not have a safe place to quarantine. So for instance, if you are in a household where you like, let's say you have a large family and not that many bedrooms, it might be difficult for someone to quarantine. So in that case, we would we would determine whether we could move them off site and provide a place for them to safely quarantine or isolate to ensure that they were not exposing and infecting the remaining members of their household. Muted. Okay. So in regards to the death, the death indicator, the one in 14 days, how are we seeing any trends and how far do you think we're. I know you're speculating and a little bit of tele reading here, but how far away from that are we? Well, we had a death reported last night, so we're still 14 days out if we had no more deaths over the next 14 days. And I think that there is a lot of conversation about what that looks like with our long term care facilities. And so really, our focus is continuing to work very closely with our long term care facilities to support people there in their safety and in their health, but also working very closely with the employees of those facilities to ensure that they're not being exposed in their communities and walking in there. And those facilities, they are you know, they're taking temperatures, their tests, they're doing all those kinds of things and following all the right rules. But we want to make sure that that we're making sure that everyone who is involved in those communities is healthy and is not exposing not exposing people. So there is more work to do there moving forward. Okay. So in regard to that indicator and this this question's really coming out of me not knowing. So it could be a very simple question. But in regards to that indicator, no more than one death in 14 days, is there any subcategory of whether the death occurred in a long term facility or in an area where it couldn't be contained or could be contained any any sort of further definition on the breakdown of either the category of individual who passed in terms of vulnerability or the conditions that may have led to the spread of that particular individual's situation. It's interesting, I asked the very same question this morning, too, on our state call, and at this time there is no subcategory. So there that is that is the that is the number that they're holding with it there. You know, each of these conversations, they change a little bit over time. So the indicators may change a little bit as well. But at this time they are holding that there is no sub category. That is the indicator. Okay, I got it. All right. So that's a key indicator. And until we're able to get to that two week period, we couldn't really ask to accelerate anything. But it's quite possible that the governor may himself advanced two additional stages, even without us meeting that indicator. That is correct. Those indicators are specific to accelerating more quickly than the governor's orders. Okay. And with a lot of those indicators and I think I know the answer to this question, but do those indicators are the city indicators or county indicators? Are they steady because we have our own health department? Yes. Their health their local health jurisdiction indicators. So because you have a city health department, it's city focus, not county. Okay, got it. The second indicator regarding contact tracing are the contact tracers. Are those folks who work would be working within the health department and are these paid physicians? Are they volunteer kind of internship positions? And how how are we going about recruiting? Is that even an issue? They can be any of those. And so what we're doing right now is we are looking. There are about I think it's approximately 200 folks across the city who have been identified, who could be who could move to support various efforts, be reassigned based on the disaster recovery or disaster service worker criteria. So all city staff are considered disaster services workers. So in this where we have capacity to be able to to reassign people, we are looking at those folks as as a population. We would also, you know, volunteers are also possible as well as the possibility of hiring. When you are looking at a pipe, you know, when you're looking at a workforce of 80 to 120, there will need to be some folks hired to be able to manage and lead the smaller groups moving forward. So it really is a mix. And we are you know, we do have a proposal in and we're working closely to be able to assign people so that we can at least, you know, get the first group started early next week. Councilwoman. Anything else? And myself muted. So I was talking to myself. How far do you think we are from meeting that contact tracing indicator? As a city. We need. We're looking at the need to bring on some between 60 and 80 people to be able to start to meet that indicator. It also depends on how many new cases we have. So if we continue and the number of cases declines and we have ten cases, then we would need 30 folks. If you have 20 cases, you need you know, you need 60 folks. So it really it just it all depends on what the number is. And we realize it's going to be up and down. So we're focusing on trying to get in somewhere around 60 right now as we've been seeing approximately 20 cases per day being reported . If we have any increases, then we would have to increase that capacity. So in regards to that issue, do you are we these are going to be temporary positions through the city, I'm assuming, and are we advertising for them? Is there something the city council members can do to help disseminate information, to recruit these individuals? At this time. We've been focusing on internal staff, but we can certainly create a job description or a, you know, a request for support for folks to be trained and others and be able to move forward. That is something that we can work on. And Councilmember, this is Tom. This would actually be an area, you know, also, given the budget that we're going to have, you know, huge amounts of of of staff that are going to be impacted. And so we want to be able to also see that this is rather than adding on staff and trying to pay people that we don't currently have on payroll, we would be reassigning folk, looking at less critical areas and basically saying you're now a contact tracer rather than what you were doing before. You for that. Okay. Thank you. I really appreciate those answers from the health department because I've had the same same questions. I will tell you, I think from a mental health perspective, our residents really, really are anxious to have some recreational opportunities open back up with specific social distancing measures in place. What I've heard repeatedly from people is that the bike path on the beach being closed has really eliminated the desire for many people, especially with young kids or folks in the older population to ride bikes. Because even though we do have a lot of great bike paths, bike lanes throughout the city, not every road has a bike lane. And a lot of people don't want to share a traffic lane with a vehicle or have a vehicle with in such close proximity. So the bike lanes, I mean, to me, it seems like bikes are a very natural social distancing mechanism because, you know, there's a limitation of how close you can get to another individual and for how long of a period of time when you're on a bike. So I think what we heard loud and clear from our residents is that the beach path, the bike path needs to be opened back up. I will say I did notice that there one of the questions I get a lot is how come the neighboring county is doing things that we're not doing? And of course, you know, the governor has weighed in on that. But just yesterday and today, we saw that several speech cities were able to present plans to be able to accelerate openings based on plans that they have provided. And I wonder, you know, have we done that? Have we submitted plans for golf courses, tennis courts, the beaches? And if other cities can do that or could we not do the same thing? Because I. I don't know what their indicators are. Perhaps I can't believe that. This would be true, but. Perhaps Orange County, for example, has met all the indicators and has sufficient contact tracing in place. And that's why they're able to submit plans to to reopen some things in advance of the governor's orders. But I guess the question I would have for I guess it's not the final question for our health department is why can't we do that? Why can't we submit plans, even though we haven't met all these indicators to at least open up some recreational opportunities? So the the way that at least what we're hearing from the state is that people are submitting plans, but the state isn't in itself right now. I mean, these criteria that just came out came out this morning. They're they're new. So whatever the plans are that they're submitting, they're not related necessarily to to these pieces. There are, you know, some other things people are looking at in terms of PPA and others. But, you know, there is concern in this city about the opening of a lot of the beaches and other things. You've seen a lot of crowds and others. And so, you know, there's there is a lot of pressure to open. People want to be outside and we want to make sure that we are that, you know, that we're making sure that we're not creating opportunity for for for large scale increases. So we are moving in what we feel fits within our data, fits within our capacities moving forward. And we're holding pretty tight to that. So I'm not I don't know exactly what the other plans are necessarily, except that they're putting forward some strategies for how they believe distancing can work. But but if you know, the there isn't a place right now under the governor's strategy for a plan that exceeds what is out there in terms of the orders. And can't remember this is Tom. So recreation is one of the areas that the governor had started to say that you could take some some changes in. And so that work is happening this week. We are looking at some meaningful changes to recreation. We totally agree that, you know, people are looking to be places that are safe and be able to be outdoors. So we've heard that for a while. We do not have exactly what that will look like yet. That is work that is continuing this week. But we have heard that very consistently. And so our goal is to is to have that plan and really work on it this week about what can meaning what kind of meaningful change to recreation can happen and how soon it can happen. Great. Thank you. I think, you know, I'd like to to say that overwhelmingly the residents that we've talked to in our survey would like tennis courts, golf courses and the bike path opened back up. So to the extent that we can consider those. I'd appreciate it. And then the final kind, I want to let my colleagues weigh in. So I'm going to I'm going to end it here. But in regards to the the deficit that we're looking at, I'm just. Just this fiscal year, the 25 to 41 million. And I'm trying to pull up our the document here that Mr. Modica referred to the FY 20 shortfall. You know, I think I like some of the priorities that the city manager has already identified. I imagine we'll have a lot more conversations about this in the weeks and months ahead, especially at the below sea level led by Councilwoman Mungo. But I think that really having the city manager identify what projects we can defer, infrastructure projects, capital improvement projects we can defer would be critical at this stage because I think that would allow us to see kind of where we're eliminating what is not necessary and really being able to focus on the basics. For me, the priority for the entire city would be what are the basic core services that every resident in this city is entitled to? And I know we're all going to have different opinions about that. Some of us may think art is a core service, and I'm a huge fan of art, so I'm just using that as an example. Or maybe libraries are a core service. You know, we're all going to have our different opinions about what a core service says, but at the end of the day, we're going to need to be able to have quick response times when residents call 911, because that's a matter of life or death. We're going to be able we're going to have to be able to address infrastructure needs throughout the city. And I'm sure there are a number other core basic services, you know, trash and street sweeping and things that we identify as core services that the residents should be entitled to by virtue of their tax dollars that provide the revenue to the city and the return on for their tax dollars. So I look forward to those discussions. I know there's going to be a lot of difficult conversations to be had. And I want to thank city staff and I want to thank my colleagues for allowing me to speak first and take out take up as much time as I did. I apologize for that. It's a very, very dense topic. So I tried my very best to be efficient. And I want to thank staff again for giving us this information tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. I want to just add two things that I think you brought up that I think are important, that the commissioner you mentioned contract tracing, which is really important. I just want to also add that the state is developing an app and a technology that will allow the idea of tracing and contact tracing hopefully happen in a very efficient way and in a way that will also take less actual bodies, hopefully in the future. And so that's just more of a FOIA for the council. So hopefully will be developing. Some of the top tech firms are working on this. Our contact tracing app and and system and then in. Mayor if I can can I add to that. So Long Beach Health Department has been really pushing the state to say we want to be one of those pilot sites and we expect to be one of those by the end of this week. So to really be a model, to be able to test that out. That's that's exactly right. And we're working with the governor to be one of the first groups to do that. And it's going to be you know, it's going to be hopefully a great way of doing this work. And it will really get people that are infected to be able to contact, you know, who they've been in contact with. It'd be a great way to trace everything through technology, and it could really make a dent into positive cases if it's done, if if it does what we think it's going to do. So we're very hopeful about that. And so I just wanted to mention that. And then the second thing is for for for the public as well, because Councilman Price is right. Two cities petition the governor on beach openings and they did so because beach beaches is a is something that that's in the current stage that's at it's allowable and the petition them after the governor closed them down and so I think Kelly, I think you clarified that pretty well. And I just wanted to add that as well. But we are excited about the contact tracing. And so I'm thank you for that. And the next up is Councilman Richardson. Thank you, Mayor. This was an incredible presentation, so I have a lot of thoughts and comments here. First, I'm glad that we're at the place where we can have a full conversation about reopening the economy. No one wanted to be in this place where the economy's closed. We want our schools back open. We want our economy back in operation. And we understand the importance of public health. This is a great presentation, and I have to say most of the communications that have come out of the SEC, most of the communication that's come out of sitting members of the European agenda have been have been great. You know, I see the link language accents are coming out in four different languages. I know that that takes you know, that's that's incredible. But I want to make sure, you know, I want to I want to just recognize that. Thanks for highlighting that we're a local public health jurisdiction. You know, we typically have to when we're not a public health emergency, it isn't the first thing we think of. And I hope that moving forward, we can, you know, understand the value of having a public health jurisdiction here locally. We've got I'd say we have we have the best local public health response in the state of California with who we have in leadership with our city manager, but also Kelly Cosby and Dr. Davis. They're doing an incredible job. And that's why here across the region, council members, at least six or seven council members from other cities and six Southern California counties have called me about different pieces of our response, and it makes me proud that we have that. But also, we have a responsibility to maintain this. I think what we've done around testing has been great. Thank you for raising that up and it moves really, really quickly. We saw that we had a problem and it was disproportionately impacting certain communities moved really, really quickly to get sites set up. I think that we see, you know, that builds a lot of trust and confidence with our with our community. So I'm very grateful for both the Jordan the Jordan high drive thru as well as the Jordan Plus site. And I think the way we've been able to rally and the way the EOC has been able to rally around some of the other things to help secure community like the food distributions, the food with the other partnerships with different food agencies, the nonprofits. The way that the COVID relief fund has supported a lot of nonprofits has been tremendous. And where we're doing the food distribution. Jordan High Park just on Saturday, where we can feed up to 2000 people with a box of groceries for the week. So all of this, I understand how much of it was fiscal challenges then, but I think, you know, folks are really rising to the occasion. I want to take a minute and just say, you know, I don't say this enough, but I made our mayors doing an incredible job in the way that he's been out there consistently , three times a week on video, his social media. He's been a tremendous leader for the city. And I just want to make sure that, you know, while we're having this conversation, you know, I get an opportunity to say thank you to Robert. The city council is doing their thing. I see that some councilmembers invited me to, you know, have different conversations. And our city council committees is our dinner committee had a really good meeting or another meeting soon. The first meeting we heard from John Keisler, we heard from Health Department, we heard from the nonprofit sector, we heard from the hospitality sector and we heard from restaurants. And we had some really good feedback, particularly about some pieces that the city maybe has talked about, but we haven't done anything on. For example, you know, a lot of restaurants are dependent on delivery fees. And, you know, it was highlighted that the delivery fee issue, you know, sometimes given 30% of their sale, which is their profit margin away to delivery companies. And, you know, originally the marketing plan for the delivery companies were this is an addition to your business. Therefore, give us a piece of this additional business. But now it's it's core to their business. And we need to think about what we can do to either incentivize or regulate how how these programs engage with our small businesses. And we also have to think about, you know, another things come up is, you know, technology to help people queue from home due to when barbershops get open. You shouldn't have to spend 2 hours waiting on a haircut or whatever their cue system is. We can look at that. We should have our I.T. department, our Technology Innovation Department, take a look at how we expand into some of these these platforms. Our next meeting is Macy's, May 15th at 3:00. We're going to hear an update. We have a finance report on the city. We're going to have we're going to hear from the manufacturing sector, which has reached out to the committee for us to engage them. We're going to hear from the Arts Council and Arts community about their specific impacts. You know, I think they're going to have an opinion on whether or not, you know, arts. Are essential or core and then labor. We're going to hear from Labor LA County voters and Labor is going to speak to both the concerns of essential workers as well as laid off workers because they have opinions as well. And so this is really just serve as an opportunity for people to engage in this time where it's really difficult to engage with leaders. And so thanks to the committee members and city staff for the support that that work. I also want to lift up I thought I did a credible job introducing this presentation and all the staff brought their pieces together. But I think Tom really said that it set the tone with it with, you know, how sophisticated and how much work it's going to take to get into this. And I think this is a you know, I really appreciated the way that he referenced equity and the issues from a standpoint that are taking place in our city and and that it would be to 29% of the deaths in the city are African-American, but African-Americans make up 12% of the population. That's that should get our local government attention. And I should say that we should place an equity lens in all our decisions. And thanks to I want to thank the entire city council for helping reinforce that this is the direction as we sort of get into rebuilding our economy, rebuilding our city. These are core competencies that our city is going to need and core competency that we have to sort of reflect for others. Now, I know that, and I'm going to get into some questions. I know that when we reopen or start the process of reopening, some people are not going to come outside still. You know, we're talking about seniors. We're talking about people who live in who are in vulnerable circumstances. From a health standpoint. They're going to be confined for a long time. And we want to make sure that we're making plans and take into consideration, you know, what we're doing to help support these people. So that's going to be my first question. So I'm telling you again, when we open, fingers are going to be your fingers are going to stay in for a while until we see, you know, a change in the virus or until we see a vaccine or different therapies for the vaccine. Can you speak to how we're going to help support our vulnerable populations, our seniors and those individuals as we get into this reopening process? Yes. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I am sorry. That was from way back when. Thank you, Councilmember. So one of the things that we weren't able to get to, we talked about how there is lots that we just couldn't put in the presentation. Are some of the efforts at our EOC to really coordinate a lot of the volunteer efforts that are happening out in the community? Our nonprofits have really stepped up to serve. And so we have, you know, hundreds of volunteers and groups that are out there that are supporting seniors. A lot of them have gotten funding from our disaster relief fund, from the coronavirus relief fund. And so that has raised over $1,000,000. We have over 60 groups who have been funded and seniors support. And bringing food to those who need it is a big part of that. We are coordinating that through our EOC. And so we actually have dedicated phone lines in our GIC where seniors can call and ask those types of questions. We also have Global World Kitchen, who is delivering to these major kind of senior facilities. And then the governor has announced a new program last week. It's not quite set up yet, but the ability to purchase restaurant quality meals from local restaurants and connect those to the seniors who are living by themselves and get most of that federally reimbursed. And so we are very cognizant and we're not encouraging seniors in if they're able to stay at home. We're not saying you should be coming out now. We still want them to be, you know, kind of limiting their movement for sure. And so we we realize that they're going to need support to be able to do that. Okay. Yeah. I just want to make sure that, you know, we think we do what we can from a quality of life standpoint from them and from a public health standpoint. So the programs that we're seeing that are coming together around food support and food delivery for seniors, I think as we think about reopening, we think about figuring out how to leverage CDBG or other things to make those programs who just came together. We need to make them more sustainable because this is going to happen. We may need that program for a year. So let's just make sure that we think about what it takes to make that happen. Also, quality of life means some people are going to be, you know, we got to exercise bike. I don't get it on it as much as I as I should. Our girls, you know, they like watching yoga on YouTube. The reality is our Parks and rec folks, if folks are in the house and may not have it, frankly, they may not have bike paths in the neighborhood or tennis courts in the neighborhood, and they need to do what they have to do. So let's figure out how, you know, just because we're locked in the house or some people are going to be confined for a long time, we don't forget them. We can't do concerts in the park. But you know, you know, these are nice Instagram concert or verses, right? We can make sure that we have entertainment happening online or whatever it is that our Parks and Rec team does. Well, let's figure out how we adapt it, because some people are going to be in house for a long time. We have Zumba classes that we have. Let's just think about how we can make sure we manage at a very low cost, the quality of life of what happens. And it really doesn't cost a lot of money. We're talking about just giving opportunities for folks to our own channels and to engage with people. And I also would say I love the idea of the business playbook reopening playbook. I love that idea. I think and I think about we have different when you go to the planning desk, you'll have different handbooks for every different industry. I think we if we're going to do one, I think we definitely need one for childcare in private and private schools. You know, the public schools are a big organization. They're going to do their own thing. But a lot of the childcare providers who receive no public funding and we're going to need to give some guidance to them because they don't know how to plan for the future. And a lot of these childcare providers are who are essential workers and our workforce is going to depend on as we open up and I know that childcare providers are included in stage two of the reopening. So I would hope that we have, you know, some some guidance in the playbook for them. Additionally, another thing that I'll recommendation would be we've learned a lot about and we work with, we're going to have to change some behaviors. What I don't want is if people don't wear a mask, we're slapping them with $1,000 fines when we need to really be focused on education and trust. And so, you know, we've talked with our city prosecutor about programs. We did the past program where we treated young adults differently than than, you know, people over 26. Those are the types of practices that we've done in the city that we need to lean on right now. What I don't want to see a bunch of people when we come out, we're going to have a requirement, masks and social distancing. And some people are not going to follow the rule. And we have to just be mindful that we don't want to create an additional problem for that individual, which, you know, I don't want to get into all the context around it. But we know how to do this in the sense. In terms of the reopening timeline, I think there's been a lot of conversation there. That's all good. I think as we relate to contract tracing, the conversational contract contact tracing, we need to make sure that we are figuring out ways to contract with community based organizations and individuals who, you know, who are trusted messengers already in the community. Because, again, it's going to be about trust and confidence with the community. So if we need to track down ten contacts or someone we know or someone who knows, our community is tracking down our neighbors. I think that's incredibly important. And then we should think about, you know, whether we can leverage CDBG or other things that are tied to, you know, geographic areas to see if we can tie this to some sort of CDBG program. Great. And then I would also say, finally, we should probably figure out this is a good long presentation. I know it's overdue, but we got to get back to some sense of normal. We have I know we get different too from boards and memos. The manager does a good job briefing individual council members. For the sake of the public, I think we need to have a more regular cadence on how we receive these comprehensive updates. Now, I don't know that they mean for the time that we spent in the city council meeting, but I but I'd like to understand some milestones in time. Maybe you can speak to some milestones that you think we can expect more comprehensive updates. So can you speak to that a little bit? Sure. So, yes, we definitely want to have the opportunity to keep the council involved. Things change so rapidly. By the time we write something down, it seems like it changes the next day. So we do like to look at things. You know, we're going to be continuing to do our daily press releases that we get to everybody. Our GIC operates seven days a week. But we do think it would be wise to take some time to put together larger reports backs. I'd like to make those kind of benchmark focused. I don't have those yet what those would be. But we do expect in the next week or so for the county and and the governor to kind of lay out when they think the other stages are going to happen. So I think some appropriate times to report back is if we see a major change in our indicators. If we are getting close to where we're able to accelerate through a phase or if we believe that there is going to be in a short period of time a major change and going through a phase, I think we also need to prepare for the fact that we may have to go the other direction. We hope not. But if we need to see and we start to see a resurgence to really get in front of the council and make sure we're educating everyone on what those data look like. So I'd ask you to let us do a little bit more thought about what those look like. And and we can be doing more regular memos. We publish our data every day on on the data dashboard, but we can assemble some of these other indicators and do those through some memos as well, and then get in front of the council if we're going to be doing any kind of major changes in the data or, you know, going either, you know, forward or hopefully not backward. Okay. And so I'll close with this and then I'll make a motion to receive a file because I know we need that. So I know that there's a lot of conversation that needs to take place. And I know we have to understand what reopening looks like. I, I, I think we should want to reopen. Right? This is, this is what we should want to do. I also understand that, you know, we're going to have a tough time in terms of the budget. I would say to a director, city staff would be be really mindful and thoughtful about how we consider, you know, what's important and what's core and what is. You know, if we if we get the police and value one on one aspect over the other without a real conversation about context, like saying reopening certain things, but, you know, closing down other things and limited to 911 services. I think that sort of exacerbates the behavior that kind of got some large news in a position where right now, if you don't have parks and libraries and tennis courts and beach, that you don't have those things. So to say, you know, let's limit infrastructure investment or whatever it is during this crisis, but maintain this essential core service. I don't think that's the city that we are today. Maybe that's who we were in the past, but that's not the city we are today, the city of the future. So I would hope that, you know, we're going to take all you know, all of these things in the context, especially since our districts are just so diverse and so different. Every district has different needs and we're really, really diverse. And so we should embrace that diversity and make sure we make plans that are really respected, what the needs of all of our communities. And so I'm I'm I'm glad that we received filed this report. And. Okay. Thank you. I have Stacy's queued up next. But Roberto, I know, just seconded the motion. And Councilman Mangano, so you want to second it in your comments? Councilwoman with the mood. On the mood, yes. I moved in, seconded it in the text thread and the beginning. So happy to do it right. Councilwoman, got your next. Great. Thank you. A couple of quick things. Thank you. Councilmember Richardson, I appreciate the comments you made regarding watching yoga and all of those things and how little money it can take. It could actually take no money. There are so many current city assets, whether they are nonprofit partners or local businesses that are doing this. And they would love to be elevated on our platform through our social media that it wouldn't cost us anything to kind of get them and their name out there during this time to feature a fitness of the week or whatever. But I'm really cognizant that the staff of these departments really need to maintain working in the EOC and working on the contact tracing. To that end, I'll also say that there are lots of community members who would be happy to do the contact tracing as volunteers, so I'm not sure how we would facilitate that, but I'm open to exploring a few of them. I've started to text people that I thought could help us kind of navigate through, and if I get some answers back, maybe I can recue at the end. And we kind of talked about the 14 days since a death tracking context and that there's no secondary category. Ms.. COPLEY Are you able to tell me you mentioned that there was a death on May 4th. Was there a death on May 3rd as well? No. There was no reported deaths the day before, so there was one. My second was that we had one report. I don't have the dates in my head, but we reported one overnight and then we had two days prior to that with that one. Right. So if there's not more than one in 14 days, you wouldn't actually need I don't know what staff member said. We need 14 days from yesterday. That's not actually factually correct. We need 14 days from the second death, which if it was two days ago, that means we are 12 days away if we don't have another death. Is that accurate? I believe that is accurate. Okay. I just wanted to clarify, because I know people it is not 14 days without a death. It's a 14 day period with only one death. And I would strongly encourage our health officer and our EOC to potentially make a proposition to our state health officials or our plan to kind of be guided by community. So I guess I have another question around the deaths. If an individual is a Long Beach resident but is staying with a family member in Riverside. And taking care of them or what have you. And they pass. Whose numbers are they counted under? Encountered in the location in which they're living, in which they're the residents. And I think that that's huge right now. I have four people that live on my street that are currently staying at other locations, and I don't know what that percentage looks like, but I think it's really important that the death had the context where it was contracted or where is it suspected to have been contracted and where were they at the time? If there are Long Beach resident who passes away in Palm Springs or San Diego or Riverside, I think that that needs to kind of be added. And I know that you're not the one who makes these rules up, but I think that we as a city need to continue to advocate for that . The data needs to tie directly. When looking at your slides and I don't know which side number, I think it was maybe 23. It talked about the long term care facilities and the number of cases. And one of the things that it didn't differentiate here, but I think you've differentiated for us in the past is the number of patients that have it versus the number of staff that have it. And I think that that's also very different because the patients are homebound versus the staff who are circulating back out into the community. So just something to think about that. Yeah. Yep. And then in the slide related to the positive test case results, you'd mentioned the days delay in reporting. And while I appreciate that the Health Department has a 24 hour return on tests, we do use some testing sites and agency. There are test result dates. Did you explain what those are so that people can have a little bit more context to that slide? Yeah. So the so the health department turnaround is 24 hours. Our sites that are the drive thru sites at this time are approximately 48 to 72 hours in turnaround time. The Jordan Plus site is utilizing a private lab. So I believe the turnaround time might be a little bit longer there. The sites that are so our hospitals and medical providers and others are using some private labs. Some of those turnaround times might be five or six days. So it depends on on where it's coming through. So we might say that we learned today that we had 20 new, you know, 20 new positive results, but that could those 20 could be spread across five different days of when they were actually tested or when they were they their initial symptoms came came on. Okay. So that's really important, too. So when you showed the chart the last two days, it showed zero. But the health department only gives ten tests a day still. Or is that increased? Now, the health department right now is we're up to around 50 to 60 because of our long term care facilities. Another so we are doing much more testing at the health department specifically for the high risk individuals. So that just let everyone know that of the 1000 tests a day, only 50 to 60 are getting results within 24 hours. So when you look at that chart that shows in the last 48 hours, there's zero new cases. That's zero new cases of the 120 tests, not of the 2000 tests. And I think that that's also really important because I, I hear a lot of hope in people when they talk about our tests are coming back so negative and all of those things. And when I subtract the number of total cases versus the number recovered, the number of cases among which is low. And that is true. And. But I think that the context of when these reports are coming back is really, really important. I want to thank you and your staff for all the hard work you've been doing. It is just another reminder that everyone needs to take their census. We are 30,000 people who probably lived here and were undercounted away from being able to have a possible full cost recovery of this epidemic. And. And so if you have not taken your census, please take your census. If you're a member of the media and you're watching or listening today, please do an additional reminder to take the census. 30,000 people. That is a fraction of a council district. That makes a difference in in potentially $85 million that would have come to Long Beach, if that's the number I heard Tom mention a few days ago. I also think it's really important that the death rate you mentioned, Ms.. Be, is among those tested. And there are thousands of people in Long Beach and elsewhere that may have COVID or have COVID and have not been tested. They shelter in place and they decide not to go to a testing site. And so when you say that our our death rate is 1.2%, I think it's important to have an asterisk there that says 1.2% of those testers. We actually are still are we getting every single report from all the private testing that's going on back into our data yet? I know we were working on that. Are we are we there yet? We are. So the the the private labs are all reporting into cal ready. And those data come to us. And for quite a while we were not getting the negative reports. We're getting the positive reports and not the negative reports. We now have a better idea for how many people are actually being tested across all the different protocols. So we're currently so far, we've we find that we've tested, you know, over 13,000 people across the city. So and then the number of positives is that 790 number of that 13,000. And over what duration have we actually gotten the negative results back? Because the amount of time that we did not get the negative results back would have in fact skewed that data as well. Did we get the back data on negatives as well or was it on a go forward basis? You know, I'm not sure about that. I'll have to look. And if an L.A. County city resident goes to a Lakewood testing site or a Fort Carson testing site or any of those that's coming back to us in the in the data from the state. Yes. There's the positive. The data going to car ready. So anyone with a Long Beach address would come would be counted as a Long Beach resident. Perfect. And then. Let me just mark off some of the things I have here. So our numbers, even without the total number of cases being known because of not everyone wanting to get tested, are below the city of Los Angeles, below the county of Los Angeles, including our hospitalization rates. And so I would just encourage you the reason that this city chose to invest a considerable amount of money, arguably not enough over the past 15 years in having our own health department is so that in times like this, we can stand apart and use our data and make our own decisions. So thank you for the work that you've been doing. I feel like you've really stepped up to the occasion and we just need to now see that same leadership in moving forward with our protocols. I know that social distancing is the best word used across our country, but to kind of speak to what Councilman Price said about the mental health of our residents, we really need to talk about physical distancing and not really social distancing. We really need to bring people together socially through other means and technology. And so I appreciate that we're working hard on that. I also want to say that and to Councilman Price's point, we kind of talked about golf courses and beach paths and all of those things. And the barrier to getting all communities in the city access to those is really the fact that our parking lots are closed and that is a decision that the city has made and I am not in support of that. I have one of the largest parks in my district and I have the city's largest park and the gates have been closed. And that is not fair to residents across the city who use that service. We as a city have made the choice to close that parking lot. It's come for us to open it. I also think it's time for us to encourage those who do not act appropriately, physical distance, to be told they cannot participate in the park and to be asked to leave, and that there can be a methodology for which we similarly monitor the bike path. And I feel like in my communities the residents are really monitoring each other and I think that that's been very helpful. So. Mr. MODICA We talked a little bit about that. The city is the one in judgment of outdoor recreation and that a plan would be coming. But what what context can you give us? Are we talking about the Billie Jean King tennis courts over in central Long Beach? Are we talking about opening up our fields where kids could again run and play soccer as long as they don't touch the ball and they're playing with a smaller group of people where they're not getting close together, like, what are we talking about that can really get people out of the house? Because right now what I'm seeing is the parking lots of Long Beach Unified schools are asphalt and kids are playing soccer and other things far apart at their parents guidance and under supervision. But but that's not the play areas that we've really invested in and should be available to our residents. Yes. So thank you, Councilmember. So we are looking very acutely at this type of question of recreation. So that work is happening right now. And the governor has provided some guidance about the types of activities that cities can decide could be turned back on. But he's also asking us to make that decision based on kind of the data and the medical decisions. So that is a role that our doctor plays for us and helps guide us on those things. I don't want to get into a specific list, but the things you mentioned are all being reviewed. We are going to be looking at our park parking lots. When is the appropriate time to kind of to lift that? And again, we are hoping by the end of this week to have some some good answers for you on what recreation could look like in the city again. I think we are going to be cautious. I don't think you'll see the city staff propose that we just open everything all at once, that we do want to make sure that our residents are doing any activities that we do on a recreational basis safely. And as you mentioned, that they would need to be spread out and that if we do see resurgences where people are coming together, we're going to have to take action. So there is a long list of governor kind of approved recreation. I think anything related to balls that are being touched and shared, those are going to be a lot more difficult than sports or activities where people stand far apart from each other. And again, we've never closed our parks for walking and and being able to actively kind of pass through. That is something that we always kept open. But we did restrict the parking lots for a while to really encourage people to not drive because that was part of the governor's stay at home order. So I think those times have to have changed somewhat. Again, we are sitting down and really looking at the data this week and we hope to have some meaningful answers and changes at the end of the week. Well, I appreciate that. I guess I would only say that it would be great if we could open up a forum. And I know I've stayed in contact with a lot of the leagues that are in our district. Related to what? Social distancing, I'm sorry, physical distancing and other measures they can put in place to protect the youth to play. It's also important to look at the fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percentage of any youth that are contracting it. I don't know. I can trust the news media that's on television anymore because I hear conflicting things depending on which channel that I'm clicking through. There was some discussion about something that's in the the lungs of youth that really make them almost. Just so resilient against COVID that perhaps if you had baseball and they wore gloves and after each inning they threw them in the trash or whatever you have as an option. I don't know that. I think that the use providers really need to bring to us what that looks like, even if it's soccer and the rule changes that the kids can touch the ball with their hands any more. They can't throw the ball in, they can only kick it in, etc., etc. And the goalies wear gloves, which they already do. And those things are something that that our our youth are really missing out on. And to get what our neighbor calls, they do an evening walk every night where they say they're getting their crazies out because the kids are trapped in the house all day doing homework and schoolwork and they just need to get out and about. So the sooner that you open that, the better. I don't think I can encourage enough that we really need those facilities open. I know you've heard that from me at least three times a week since this has started. And if opening the parking lots is a component of our concern because of the distance. I appreciate that the the Fifth District has a lot of parks that people can walk to, but I just don't think that that's fair and equitable city wide. And perhaps we talk about coning off every other parking space to give people the space to get in and out of their cars and things like that. But and we just need to give people that access to our parks again. And I don't know what else I can say, but also within I talked a little about baseball. Within tennis, there are often people in the same household that want to play tennis together and they're already in the same household. And if those two people have the same ball, that wouldn't make that big of a difference. And so it wouldn't make any difference. It's the same situation. So just to keep those in consideration and then to again, if our numbers are great and our real hold back is the long term care facilities, then maybe we need to submit our own plan to the governor to be rejected or reviewed. We need to take a lead in moving forward and protecting the jobs of our neighbors. And people without jobs for a long time is another form of health crisis. People who can't pay their bills. That's another form of health crisis that's on its way. And we just need to work harder. And I really appreciate you discussing the restarting of the budget. As you know, many of my budget oversight committee meetings were canceled due to lack of staffing available from the city side to really support the reports that were necessary for us to move forward. The longer we wait, the tougher the decisions are going to be. And so we really need to get behind that and get behind it quickly. With regard to the governor's phase two, I look forward to as many businesses being open as possible. And for us really to tack down on the businesses that are not enforcing the social distancing, the physical distancing, I'm going to use physical distancing over and over again because I really feel like the social isolation of our our neighbors is just too high right now. But that physical distancing, then, then individually, let's let's take on those businesses. And then also, as we do open, I just want to add one context. We had a business in the district that was allowed to be open. It was an essential business. And they did have a rep, an employee that got COVID. And I think that those procedures that need to be in place when a member tests positive are really, really important. That particular business decided to close down and but every single staff member, regardless of if they were on that shift in their home for 14 days and then they went through and did some testing and evaluation of symptoms of all of their employees before they reopened. And they they kept the entire business closed for 14 days. They are a business that at multiple locations, they chose not to bring in people from another location. They really took it seriously. And I appreciate that. And I think that we need those kind of guidelines on a go forward basis to know and understand where we can go from here. So thank you again to my colleagues and all of the things that we've each contributed to listening to our community. And thank you to the mayor for the consistent reports. The only thing that I'll oh, I'll just say is once again an ending. We pay for our own health department because we have our own data and we are our own unique organization. So let's not be in a rush to follow the county or what they're doing. Let's stand on our own with our own data and our own circumstances and situations. Let's use the data and make good decisions. And in closing, I'm just thank you to all of the workers that have been working for weeks upon end while others are staying at home. And to all the moms and dads that are parenting right now and the teachers that are going into the community, I just can't say enough of how proud we are of everyone and how grateful we are to have you as neighbors and that everyone's really come together. So and thank you again and I look forward to the budget meetings so we can have some idea of a future. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. I'm going to turn this now over to Councilmember Pearce. Thank you, Mayor. I had some assumption that I would. Everybody else would have gotten before I came down. I want to first start by just thinking city staff, thinking you, mayor, for your leadership. Council member Richardson said it right. It's moments like this. I think you really shine. Making sure that Long Beach is a city of the future. Making sure that we have great representation regionally, even at the state level and at the federal level. So I really appreciate the time that you guys are taking, and I appreciate every staff that's out there working every day . You guys are the front line workers that so often we don't talk about. So we know about our grocery workers, our nurses, our firefighters, our police officers. But I know that our city staff is also key in that first responding. So I really wanted to just say how much we appreciate you. I know it's an easy times. I know there's been cities that have had to take drastic measures. And so being a city employee at this time can't be easy, but really appreciate that the approach that our new city manager has taken and really trying to reallocate staff to do things like the testing and the tracking. And I want to just say that in the beginning. I also wanted to say that Long Beach isn't like other cities. We're not Orange County. And Saturday I, I take food to some older adults in Costa mesa, and I took the coast this time and it was packed and nobody was wearing a mask. Probably 1%, if even that. And it was packed. And I looked at their numbers because I was curious, why would a population not be worried? Well, they don't have numbers like we have. Their density population is not like ours. They don't have an urban core. And so their numbers are going to be different. And so there are expectations of how they live. Every day is going to be different than we do in a city of nearly half a million people in the space that we have. And so I think it's really important, and I think that that can be taken, you know, to understand that Long Beach is very different. The Fifth District is very different from North Long Beach. But we are our whole system and really thinking about how we approach coming back online in a systematic way where we are all part of the same system. And that really brings me to the conversation that the Health Department had today. And so I know every week we ask for a lot of numbers. We ask for those numbers to come in differently. And I really appreciate the fact that we have been laid out in front of us today. I want to ask you to reiterate some of those, but I do have a couple questions and I have some thoughts I'd like to share. First, this question is really for our health department. I had spoken with our health department director previously this week and talked about our long term care facilities and a lot of requests for people asking us to shut those down. And I know you talked about it, but if you could elaborate about what the state's thoughts are on these long term care facilities and how we are trying to flatten the curve inside those facilities when they I've been in many of the ones in my district, I've been in the one that has the highest numbers many times , and I know that it's a very different space. And so I'm wondering if the state has any other thoughts on how we're going to address those facilities at the state level. If staff could elaborate. So right now we have state consultants that come in and are working with us and working specifically with some of the long term care facilities. And the key focus is really the UN is really the focus on the practices internally about how, how we're working with those facilities. Um, there are some folks who, and we've seen them in some other jurisdictions where they are moving some folks out and trying to create some space. But the people in our long term care facilities are incredibly frail. So, um, you know, we, we're sort of like that. We're not, as we look at the population that we're serving, we're not sure that that is the right step to take. And so what we're doing instead is creating the safe spaces internal to long term care facilities. So, you know, as I mentioned before, there are there are a set of rooms that are very specific to those who have been tested positive. There are set of rooms that are very specific to those who are who have been exposed but have not yet developed symptoms and then etc.. And for those who have not been exposed and those are very they're very discrete areas within the long term care facilities, the staff do not go back and forth. So if you are if you are working with those who are COVID positive, who have been exposed, um, then you are not going across to, you know, to any of the other rooms and really doing everything we can to tighten down any sort of other exposures. We are doing screenings as folks are coming in to make sure that, you know, that that the people are not coming in ill, they're not coming in with fever, fevers and other sort of things. And and then when we hear of of a case, we are testing as quickly as possible to be able to turn around. We also want to make sure that there is sufficient capacity for for PPE. One of the other things the state is looking at is the ability that long term care facilities have two weeks worth of PPE available to them were they to have to have a positive case or any sort of outbreak. So it's it's also working to make sure that they have all the things, just like our hospitals and other health care facilities to be able that they can be safe and respond as well. Great. Thank you and thanks for walking through the different spaces that have been designed inside those facilities. I know one of the things we talked about that I'll say publicly just I think as we talk about separating out, we've had a lot of conversations about isolating. And this is a population that that remains in the same building. And so how could the state help us have these people more self isolate without being in the same building? And I know that we have spaces and we've really tried to get some of these hotels to step up to allow us to have quarantine space. But even if it's taking the healthiest people out, I know that this population, though, is struggling the most with the underlying causes that are really respiratory and so many of the other causes that the CDC has talked about. And so I just wanted to say that for my constituents that are also concerned with these facilities, that we are working very closely with the state. And I think that you're having those conversations every day. So really appreciate trying to address that. I'm going to dove into I'm going to talk a little bit about this being a case study, and then I have some questions about the reopening, and I'll try to be as brief as I can. But, you know, these are this is a unique moment in time. So for a very long time, we've had conversations around people that haven't had access, people that live a different life, life expectancy differences. In my district there is in between a six and a seven year life expectancy difference from my constituents that live on Ocean Boulevard in downtown and those that live on 10th Street. And they are that life expectancy difference is what we talk about when we talk about equity. And so in the health department, our health department comes forward and shares with us a data that says that African-Americans and Pacific Islanders and people are older adults, are the ones that are most impacted and then says it is because they have the underlying conditions. The CDC has said that individuals with chronic medical conditions like heart disease, diabetes and lung disease, the same diseases listed as premature deaths by air pollution. So when the CDC is telling us that COVID is something that that happened, but that there are cases where we could have done better to stop the spread and it's not necessarily washing our hands. It has to do with what's in our air. And we know that what's in our air impacts those that live along the 710 that live along the four of five. These are areas where you can look to and see higher cases of asthma, higher cases of cancer, and that these are the very people that are dying at a higher rate are being impacted, a higher rate than the rest of our city. And so my my plea today with my council colleagues, our mayor and our city staff is that as we come back online, when we talk about public safety, we really challenge ourselves to say public safety is about making sure that we're saving a life. Public safety is making sure that people live as long as they can without negative impacts. And for me, that means that we have a health department, which it's great to hear council members support for our health department and making sure that that stays funded. But it also to me means that we have to rethink some of the things that we do, not only in this area have we tried to ask individuals to step up, but for the city to really be aggressive about our efforts around public safety and around climate change. And I know that's not something that a lot of us have been talking about, but I bring it up because the CDC, I've done a lot of research in the last couple of weeks. The CDC draws a direct correlation. Harvard just released a study that says that in Manhattan alone, just up until the beginning of April, 400 people died in addition to what would have because of the particulates in the air. And so I see that whenever we talk about coming back online or we talk about bikes, when we talk about parking spaces, reducing the number of parking spaces. I hope that we can be thoughtful about how we come back. And then as we were talking about where to spend our resources, you know, I had a great conversation this week and I won't name names someone in the city that talked about a joint purchase agreement that we have for 11 solar projects in the city. And what was great about that is we went into a purchase agreement and that the city now is locked into a 2% increase every year for our energy at those facilities as opposed to a six or 8%, which is what is projected. And so how can we really have a holistic, systematic look and say, these are some things that we can do differently as we come back online? It is a difficult task, but I think the team that Thomas put together, the fact that everybody is working across departments and departments, that they haven't worked together before. I have hope for that. I also want to say, I think that there's when we talk about public safety, my office was already starting to talk about reimagining public safety again with this idea around how do we extend life and how do we make sure that people have access to the resources that they really need? And so I appreciate that you guys have listed a long list of things to possibly be cut and that some of those are police academies and fire academies. I would like to have an understanding, and I'm sure you guys plan on doing this, but of how many officers we have, how many firefighters we have, how many people that are working with our homeless, do we have an understanding that if we cut some of those areas, does that mean that we're going to lose out on grants? So we know our health department historically has been funded by grants. I know our fire department has some grants that that they depend on. And so I'd like to understand that when whenever heard this item, when you guys come back to us is really making sure that we're not just taking a quick approach. I think Councilmember Richardson said it well, you know, we need to make sure that we're being holistic and thoughtful about where we cut and how that impacts those communities that have suffered the most over the long term. And really what's happening right now is when African-Americans, Pacific Islanders and our seniors are being more affected. It's not the districts that they live in that are paying for it. It's all of us. It is on all of our shoulders. So how do we make sure that we have a systematic approach that is thoughtful and forward thinking in that? So that's my soapbox. I'll get off my soapbox now. I'm not done, though. So on the reopening, I think it's important to talk about what it looks like cost May 15 and being mindful about how we communicate that. Tom We've had conversations about communication, and I expect that we'll see great things in that area. I have some concerns about what it will mean for some of the workers and the renters whenever they get offered their job back at 10 hours a week or 15 hours a week. What does that mean for them with their benefits? I mean, I've. People aren't getting a phone call back in two weeks. People still haven't received checks that have applied for unemployment. And so I want to have an understanding of that. I don't know if that means that we have a rep from EDV kind of share with us what that means so we can ensure that the safety net isn't pulled out from underneath people. I have a family member that that is a singer and she has been doing songs for churches over a video like this and she lives in Texas. So May one, they lifted the order and then the church said, Well, you have to come in and we're not going to pay you. Well, she has an underlying health condition. And so how are we going to make sure that when things reopen that we're not putting people back at risk? These are questions that I think have to be answered before we send off any reopening plan. Well, I love the idea of having a plan and understanding of what it means for each business. We have to really think through those impacts and what's going to happen three and four steps after we reopen. I also have questions around office buildings. I know in downtown we've really struggled to try to get at capacity. And if we're coming back and we're having people work from home more, I think there needs to be a good balance in that. And what I would advocate for from somebody whose my ex-husband transitioned to work at home several years ago, and it had an impact. It has an impact on people's mental health. It has an impact on how many hours they work. I know many of us are working longer hours because there's no break to get up and go get your kid or do something else. And you're constantly trying to to get everything done and then you get in a groove. So recommending that people go back to work, maybe in the office two days a week, and that that's how we social distance, but that people still have a community connection. I would look forward to seeing some of those conversations to be had. I love the idea and I'm sure we'll talk about later about outside spaces and dining. I think that's fantastic. And then I will. One question on finance. Let's make sure I get them all. The other question I would say is I've, as I've talked to others, is as we're talking about our budgeting, understanding that oil is something that is fluctuates, that it went -$40 a barrel, and now our our budget is dependent on that. How do we have a five and ten year plan that coincides with our climate adaptation action plan so that we are not reliant on those funds in the same way? And if we are that those funds are being used in a way to neutralize the impacts of those funds. And I think. Office buildings stay at home. Libraries. I love libraries. I'm anxious about how porous books are. It makes me anxious. I think that that's so I really guess I don't have many more questions. I really appreciate staff. I look forward to a lot of hard work that we have in front of us. I know it won't be easy, but I'm very, very proud of the entire team that's worked on this, from economic development to our health department , to everybody that goes out and does a little things every day. So thank you guys very much. Thank you, Councilmember. Thank you for your I think you raised a lot of great points. Appreciate that. Let me turn this over to 1/2. That the Q I think it's council members. COOPER Not 1/2. Council member, supra. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate the mayor's work and the presentation. I'm just going to cover some issues that haven't been covered and I'll be very specific and hopefully very brief. So the first item I'm going to go back to John Chrysler's presentation and it happened to be slide number 56. If you guys recall, it had the words steps residents can take and steps the city can take. And on the right hand side, it was under steps the city can take. And the largest word on that graph was testing. So I would like to look at that word from a business or through a business or economy lens right now, and that is for businesses reopening. I think we're going to have a real need for there to be a testing that's available for asymptomatic and non essential workers. So, for instance, if you want to reopen your restaurant or let's say a hair salon, you might want to get your crew tested. And so that would be critical that we step up and provide that to the non-essential workers and asymptomatic workers. And also the turnaround time, I think the last quote I got was 72 hours. So, you know, within California labor laws, this is not something the employer would do. Is it wrong? You would be on the clock to do this. So I think it's imperative that we do this efficiently and get the results back right away. The second point was on page 63 or slide 63, and I think Councilmember Pearce just touched on it and these are, you know, actions in response to financial budgetary situations. And I think we can all look at these the hiring freeze, you know, and. Reconsider summer activities and. Programs. But the one that was mentioned that I think I'd kind of take a hard line on was defer summer police and fire academies. I think that this would kind of be off limits for me. And I'll just speak to the fire academy that training centers in the fourth District. So if, in fact, we do this, this is the epitome of kicking the can down the road or planning to a future generation of council members. I think the impacts of this will be felt for a long time and it's very difficult to recover from and a missing academy. The other part that bothers me a great deal is these are first responders. This is a population that is susceptible to COVID 19. And heaven forbid if you ever had an outbreak within our first responders, you certainly wouldn't want, you know, reduced academies or reduced replacement forces overall. So those are just two drilling down, just kind of getting to particular isolated items. I noticed in the presentation they really weren't mentioned in detail before. I certainly have interest and everything else that was mentioned, but I just wanted to cover those two points for now. So that's what I have. Thank you. Thank you councilmember super now appreciate that and councilmember you know. A man. Well, the maps. You're on, you're on. Okay. I couldn't access a roundabout in person. You know, as we all were listening to the presentation and we all made our list of topics that we want to touch upon. And I want to thank all my colleagues ahead of me. I had to cross out a lot of my little asterix and point all the time. So I'm not going to take a very long time because only the questions that I had were asked and there was response to. But one thing that did come up very much at the high point and they circled it, underlined it in all that it is our health department. What a wonderful department we have in the city of Albany. And I remember a few years ago we were actually making some drastic cuts. Because we need to work. We need to balance the budget. I wasn't on the panel, obviously, but I was working for the health department at the time. And it was it was horrible that we were looking at having to make something drastic cuts the Iraqi it. What a valuable lesson we have now that we're doing this in this stage here. And so I of that when I first got elected and I said, you now we need to institutionalize our health department. They're 95% crap funded. So they rely a lot on outside sources to do their work. Epidemiology, which is what we're dealing with now, is huge. And I think our department has been basically almost, almost eliminated. We need to bring it back. So when it comes down to it, it's all about. Everything that we are talking about tonight, everything that we're considering for the future. Has to do with test. And the amount of testing that we do will determine where we will how we're going to roll out in stages one, two, three and four, because it's all determined, tested, and it is simply not enough of that going on right now. I asked the city manager the other day. About how we do the testing and the testing available for for everybody. And, of course, there's not at the present time, the testing that is only taking place is for essential employees. And workers and. Myself or my kids or anybody else who feels that they want to take a test, they will have they have to go either to a company facility or the city has opened up their testing to everybody, but not alone. So the questions that were asked earlier about, you know, getting getting the statistics in terms of testing results, whether you're here or Riverside or where else, whoever, does it really matter to me, what matters is we need to get through our testing, our testing capacity. That's the only way we're going to be able to determine whether we're operating to a stage one, two or three or four or three reopening. And that's what it relies on. And until we get a vaccine, that will make it possible for people to go in large settings like. All games and parts. Well, there are conventions and a lot of big events. I think that we're basically looking at a time bomb here without having enough tests around and determining what the extent of the damage is for communities with this virus. So those are the only two things that I have thought that will be covered pretty much. But I do believe that we need to applaud our healthy with the work that they've done. And it's going to be a very tough budget year. And I certainly hope that when we look at the budget for our health department that we institutionalize important parts of that department so that we are assured that they are thriving, that they have the tools and the equipment they need to do their jobs and keep us safe. And now get off that dinosaur. Thank you very much. Thank you. Councilmember Let me go ahead and go to Councilwoman Zendejas. Thank you. I was trying to get on. Thank you very much. First of all, I would like to congratulate and thank Tom and city staff for this awesome presentation that you guys put together. I think that, you know, it's very important for us to share this information with all of our residents. I know that you've been wonderful in keeping as the council updated, you know, throughout every process of this of COVID 19. But it really it's really important to also include and share all of this information with our residents. And you've been doing such a great job at this. This presentation was able to answer a lot of questions that my constituents have been asking and stuff. So I'm. And if my constituents have been asking that, that means a lot of other people had the same kind of questions. I also want to give a huge congratulations to our health department. Like Councilmember Oranga said, our our health department has really stepped up for us right now in this crisis that nobody nobody imagined we could be in. But actually, you know, we're here and they have stepped up and, you know, they have done a remarkable job and are continuing to do a remarkable job. And the the only reason that we have a really phenomenal health department that's able to have the resources to actually help us through this is because of the great people that we have working in our health department. So starting with you, Kelly, thank you very much for that, for your leadership in this, for your strength through all of this. And you really, really have are taking this city to a new level in that respects and and making us so very proud of having our own health department here in Long Beach. I was also going to address the issues regarding the nursing homes, but thank you to Councilmember Pearce, who has already addressed those issues and has actually answered most of my questions from there. I also wanted to say a big thank you to Jake for the language access. I think that it's very important in a city like ours where we have so much uniqueness and so much diversity that we actually provide resources so that everyone who lives in our city can have access to what is going on and in the language that they feel most more comfortable in. So thank you. Thank you very much for that. I feel that we also need to continue looking at this issue through our equity lens because it is very important to know that. And I think we all already know this, you know, but I just want to say and again, that, you know, this really, really is going to impact and is having a greater impact on those with less resources at their disposal. And those are the ones that are being affected the most. So we need to continuously look at it and look at everything actually through an equity lens. So thank you for for doing that. And I also want to say that I am in total agreeance with Councilmember Super Na in regards to our fire department. I know that there's been a proposal, you know, consideration of making cuts here and there, and there are some that we are going to have to do, and there are a lot of them that will be hurting us. But I think that that right now we cannot afford to to do cuts to our fire, especially because we need new people. We need more people in this. And this outbreak has just showed us the importance of public safety and fire being fire being very essential, I think is very, very critical. We could look, if we want to make cuts, maybe we should look at other ways within the fire department that we can make cuts. But I think having our academy and having people come in and new people and come in into our fire department is going to be very important. I also want to give a huge congratulations to John and Sergio from our Economic Development Department for just being so open to the community and being so eager to restart Long Beach. But we. In Long Beach the right way. I myself am also very eager to get Long Beach reopened again. But I really, really want to make sure that we open it in the correct way so we can remain open and not have a relapse and not have to come to this again and have to repeat this because once in a lifetime, it's way too many times to do this. So thank you. Thank you, John, in the Economic Economics Department for helping us through this. I know we've been working really close on trying to see how we can help our small businesses, our businesses and everything reopen here in Long Beach. And it's it works so much better when we all work as a team. So, you know, I think I think that this is really good. So with that, I know that we've all been talking a lot. So I just want to make sure that, you know, I say thank you. And I've never been prouder to be a resident of Long Beach than I am today. And having all this all of us work together on that. So thank you very much for this. Thank you. Vice Mayor. The Andrews. Yes. Yes. Thank you very much. You know, first of all, I want to thank Tom in the health department and most of the staff, because the things that we're reviewing tonight, I think each of us realize the situation that we're in. And I heard the mayor and I felt the same way about this as well. After this is over, you guys, we're going to reduce the influx of homelessness. We really don't get this right. And that's one thing I don't think we need to really go through a repeat of. We've got the fact that the crisis is bad enough, but our homeless is in that same situation. So I really hope that we really take a serious look at that. And I truly want to thank Eimear for that update every day because everyone is busy to listen on their reading. And I think that's a great job. Now what you're doing with that update every day with reports, right, without consequence, an uproar. I don't think we can afford to realistically talk about messing with the academy, especially on first responders, because these are the individuals, like I say, whether we have this crisis or not, they're going to be there and we tend not to talk about that in the last that we did the. But this cannot be one. We're going to need this more than anything. Not about individual talk and interview services. We need that academy more than anything now. I really hope in the current situation we really kind of take a hard look at overlooked situation and move on to something that I think we will be willing to tighten our belts, but not, you know, academy. And that's all I can say. Thank you very much. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I have a couple of people that have queued up that have already gone. But I do have an Austin queued up that has not gone. So I'm going to take them and then go up to the folks that have already talked. Councilman Austin. Councilman Austin. Councilman Austin Rokita. Are you on mute? Hello. Okay. I'm going to move on and we'll come back to. I will come back to Councilman Austin, Councilwoman Mongo. Hi. Thank you for the opportunity to reach you to two things that were brought up by Council colleagues that I know that the data isn't out yet, but we're working on seeing and understanding more. I spoke with someone pretty high up in L.A. County testing the chain of command today, and they're spending over $1,000,000 a day on testing related to individuals who don't have symptoms. And as you might imagine. A majority of those tests are projected to come back that they don't have it. However, they could, in fact, have it a day or two later. And so. That's one of those. Challenges with the discussion. I'm very interested in our city pursuing the antibody testing. I know that there's different levels of antibody testing in terms of what medical directors feel is reliable, but I think that's really the direction that we need to go so that people can know that they've had it and therefore in the past, then they can kind of reengage. The other thing I do want to echo is we need to somehow project what our requirements are going to be, because if we get into a position where we don't run these academies and we don't have any people, I mean, we're going to be in a tough situation should another medical. Emergency come. Or a second wave. And so I want. To. Kind of repeat and give emphasis to the comments of my colleague, Councilmember Super. And I am comfortable that those academies are critical. I've looked at some of our fire agencies throughout the region that didn't do hiring for years and years, and they are now really hurting. And my concern is right now, after a pandemic where people are better understanding. The importance. Of and the ability and being one of these first responders, we might have individuals who lost their job but may consider a career change. And it might be a perfect time for them to enter the market. And if we don't seize the opportunity and running the academy at this time, we may miss that. They might go back to a different career line and then get back into it and not consider transitioning over 911 with a time where my husband with a college degree said, Now's the time I need to serve, and went to the Army recruiter's office and signed up. There are going to be individuals like that. That would be amazing. First responders, firefighters, police officers, nurses and for our city. And we need to be able to take those on. So we do need to look at ways to say, I'm the first to say let's not spend money we don't have. But I also am one who says. If you have a small hole in the roof, if you don't hatch it and spend that money to invest, you're going to be in a lot more of a world of hurt when that flood or that that rain comes in the water again. And now you have mold and all these other issues. So let's make sure that when we get these recommendations from the city manager, that we begin with the end in mind of what the residents need, not just today and tomorrow, but two years, four years, five years from now. And I know it's unusual that anyone wants to announce when they're going to be retiring, but perhaps there could be some kind of partnership with our unions to get some real good at retirement data from our first responders that we could use to do some better projections. And I would also say that I've worked with our finance office on some potential bring back retiree re hires for our reserve programs. And there's even some pension savings that could be had had we done it. How we do it. Right. Those numbers worked well when I worked on with John GROSS. But to make it a possibility, we really need to talk about a state legislative opportunity in the CalPERS system. And so I know I've been trying to connect with Kevin Jackson now for probably a week or two on what that looks like and if it's possible . But then we also need to connect with our state senators and our Assemblymember Patrick. O'Donnell and our. Other state senators and Assembly members to see if they can rally behind something that could really be a savior to our budget and to the number of first responders that we are able to retain on a go forward basis. Thank you. Thank you. I have Councilman Richardson cued up, but I had gone to Councilman Austin. Are you able to you there, Councilman? I don't know. It's looking like maybe he. Is he muted by the clerk on this call? Should it be? Not an option. Can you? We're not getting Councilman Austin. City clerk. Can you check in with the council member to see what's going on there? I'll go to Councilman Richardson. Councilman Richardson. You're on mute. Right. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Well, I just wanted to conclude, I thought I heard some common themes tonight from a number of the council members. One in particular was, you know, we certainly want to want to keep, you know, be mindful of the health data. But as soon as we want to sort of prioritize the recreational use, then I heard a number of council members mention that. And I want to make sure that, you know, I left that up. And, you know, when they hear that the city manager understand that received that some of that either is reflected within the motion or if need be, the motion, or I just want to say that very clearly, you know, some direction for the council would be to make sure that that recreational you heard of a number of people that recreational opportunities are sort of prioritized when the time comes. I think that's something we control. I think it's easy for us to track and it's a good test of sort of other things that we don't have direct control over. I heard a lot of concern about about public safety with a number of different definitions on that. And I think we're just going to have to be we're going to have to communicate with our employee groups and, you know, about about, you know, all of these different decisions. And I know that we know that we typically do that, but it's incredibly important. And no one wants to see, you know, our first responders, our firefighters and our police officers taking cuts in this moment, particularly when, you know, it's a health emergency. And our firefighters, for example, you know, a lot of them were infected right out the gate because they're our first responders. So to those who think that that lifted up that, I want to make sure we we sort of refocus on that. We have a good game plan as it relates to public safety and that we prioritize recreation first. Thanks. What? Okay. And then I'm going to go to counseling, right? Yes. Hello. Okay. We can hear you again. So, yeah, I think everything has been pretty much dead that I wanted to say. But I did want to just outline the fact that that did a great job with this presentation. And and the the city, I think, is handling this this this crisis in the best way we possibly can. Great leadership from our mayor, our city manager, our city coming together and responding in crisis in innovative ways. And so I congratulate everybody involved, including the council. Everybody is stepping up and doing what they need to do for our communities. Obviously, this is a health crisis. But listening to the the financial outlook for our city, this is also an economic calamity facing our city. And we are going to have to make some very tough, careful decisions moving forward. When it comes to our budget, a budget is going to be very difficult. There's going to be some impossible choices in front of us. I already hear my colleagues kind of drawing lines, and that's fine because we all have priorities that are important to us and we all have a vision for what a great city is supposed to be run like. The in my my estimation, based on what I've heard here today, I mean, it's very clear that there's this COVID 19 pandemic, and the effects of that has really set our budget and our local economy back probably ten years or more. Right. And so that's very, very important. I mean, I think we need to understand what that means. And yes, there will be cuts in the future in front of us. And I think we all need to absorb those those cuts as city council members as well into our own budget. The I think we have engaged residents to work with over the last week in terms of getting input from residents is something that I'm very proud of, proud to see the responses that came back. So, so much so that it seems that we did a good job of communicating that. And I think that should be almost standard operating procedures for when we have big issues in front of the city today. Our residents are more captive than they normally are more expensive and what's happening with local government. And so it's an opportunity for to to educate. And I think the decisions before us need to be data driven decisions when we talk about reopening. And there's a lot of good information in front of us that can help guide that. And I expect that. And we've heard that that those will be markers that will help make those decisions. But also what are lovely and and looking at creative options for continuing the service provide the service the level of services that we currently do in the city. I'll just tell you, my priority and the way I've always approached governing is that health and safety of our of our residents should be the priority. And that will be how I proceed forward with my decision making and keeping the safety as a priority for for for the residents of the city and everything that supports health and safety of our residents moving forward. You know, much has been said about the the value of having the health department. And I do recognize that value. And I do believe that we should be very proud of the fact that we have our standalone health department. But at the same time, with that, that comes great responsibility within our health department, an opportunity to I mean, because we think Councilmember Moore mentioned that we we can make decisions independent of L.A. County. We can make decisions independent of Los Angeles County. Orange County certainly is is taking another approach. And they are very close and will be concerned, you know, I guess regional partners in some respects. So I think we need to look at our data and make decisions based off of the data. Not not. And look, Ludlum have said and I don't know, Councilmember Longoria also mentioned recreation and youth sports. But let's keep in mind that, you know, we are now approaching the summer months. I mean, today the requirement is I think it was over 90 degrees. People are at home becoming more and more restless. I think it's very important that we at least establish some guidelines for for youth sports, and we don't have anybody on that. The task force representing most of those those organizations, I think it would be really good to do that as well because that is a major part of our way of life here in the city of Long Beach as well, just like arts and culture is, I would say youth sports is a very, very much important part of what keeps families going, but also keeps our kids motivated. And so we talk about recreational activities. Again, understanding the data, being as courses and careful as we possibly can, we need to make sure that our our young people are physically healthy and and inspired as well. And so and then lastly, I'll just make a point to say that when we put our stay at home orders into effect, I saw a remarkable response from our residents throughout the city when we when we said stay at home. I would say most people complied. I don't know. I would I would be I would say the. Vast majority of people comply when we ask people to practice dietary practices and use facial coverings when in public. When we go out, I would say most people in Long Beach are adhering to that. And so as we reopen in our our city, our local economy, in a phased in approach, I would say that we should trust our small businesses to do the right thing. We should trust the people in our city to do the right thing as well, because they've already showed that they understand the impacts and the importance of this. And so I think social distancing will obviously be a practice that will be with us for for some time, possibly facial coverings. And I think people are going to be a lot more cognizant of how they think they govern themselves with the right type of guidance and education from the city. So those are my comments. I appreciate every one else's comments. Obviously, we're in this together and we are going to this council is going to have to make some some tough decisions moving forward. But we have made tough decisions, you know, over the last eight years since I've been on the council and I can. Thank you, Councilmember. I think Councilman Sun has, I think, your cue to back up. Thank you, ma'am. First of all, I just wanted to agree with Councilmember Austin about our residents that they have been doing an enormous job of respecting the stay at home order. And I think that's why our numbers are the way we our numbers are. So thank you to all the residents of Long Beach who have been doing a great job in helping, preventing the spread. Another thing that I wanted to touch on that I forgot to mention earlier was. Site. Our response to two. Are our people experiencing homelessness? I'd like to hear more on that. I know that. I want to hear more about what we're doing right now and what we plan to do in the future. I understand that we are working with the state to help shelter people in in vacant hotels and and motel rooms. I'm happy that we have the Project Roomkey program extended to offer to our people experiencing homelessness. We still keep getting, though, a lot of calls into our office about people experiencing homelessness, and the constituents that are calling in to the office are more concerned for for them not be not knowing that there is options for them. Right. So that's one of the things that I know why I wanted to bring this up. From what I understand, the project Project Roomkey is for those individuals over 65 with underlying health conditions. I'd like to know if we have any plans to scale up this project to meet the needs of all our neighbors experiencing homelessness and other resources that may be available and other funding that may be available as well, including from FEMA. The thought of everyone in our city without a place to shelter in really concerns me. I'm. You know, it just makes me nervous to think that there's people out there that are not able to to get shelter, whether they are , you know, under 65 or, you know, in any circumstances. Because, as you know, there's also a lot of younger youth that are homeless in our city and that may not qualify for that. But that could also. Contribute to spreading COVID 19. So I'd like to see if maybe there might be a ways that the city could work with hotels to kind of bring together incentives that would help those hotel owners to help get some of these some of our neighbors experiencing homelessness off of the streets and into shelter where they can be protected. Councilmember. So there are a number of different steps that are being taken right now for all ages. People are experiencing homelessness. So excuse me. So Project Roomkey is very specific. So yeah, so Project Roomkey is very specific in that it is either for people who are COVID positive or quarantining for COVID. Or for people who do you know who have not been exposed or, you know, have not tested positive, but that those who are older adults and have underlying health health conditions. So those are the two spaces where FEMA has agreed to do the 75% match and we are utilizing our state dollars to draw down those resources. Now, in addition to that, we also have the the Silverado site. The Silverado site is a congregate site. And we are making sure that before people go in, we screen every day before they're placed at the site as well as every day. We do have nurses onsite and others, and so there is space at Silverado that if someone is ill, whether you know that they may not have, that may just be, you know, sick, but not COVID related, that there is a space for them to stay. And then if someone is tested positive, then we move them to the isolation site. So that allows for places to that allows for people to have a place to sleep that is safe. And we're following all the distancing practices. So normally at the Silverado, we would be able to put it, I believe, our original one. We're just looking at basics like emergency sheltering, the capacity there would be 196 beds because we are doing all the distancing protocols and all the other things that are required to have the right space and safety protocols. We have 70. So we are as we are looking at sort of some of the congregate options, doing everything we can to make sure that we are providing the safest options possible. But so the the project roomkey in terms of the ability to, you know, cost recovery and those sorts of things is very specific in who it covers. And then for all else, we do have capacity. So the Silverado right now is not operating at full capacity. We do have the capacity to bring on another facility when those are full. And then we are also the winter shelter is now a 24 hour shelter. So that is going and then the year round shelter will be opening. It is still scheduled to open in June, which to bring another 125 beds online. So we're doing you know, we have capacity to expand. We have been reaching out to many of our hotels and motels. And we have someone on our team in EOC who has dedicated her time to calling and following up and spending a lot of time engaging with hotels and motels who that, you know, may have interest. So we continue down that pathway to engage and we could look at, you know, other mechanisms for payment. But to date, the Project Roomkey and the FEMA reimbursement is is has been our strongest partner moving forward. But we do have those capacities to be able to congregate settings that that allow for the safe distancing and safe practices. Okay, great. Thank you, Kelly. Thank you. That that concludes our our our list. I'm going to just do some close some some closing thoughts and then we'll I will go ahead and take a vote on the motion. I just want to just uplift some of the items that were brought up and just kind of highlight them because they're really some of the key, I think, pieces of information that got listed today. Just as a summary, I want to thank the staff. I mean, the fact that the city of Long Beach has moved 1.5 million people, 31,000 of the N-95 masks. And we've gotten those to nonprofits, we've gotten those to hospitals, we've gotten those to our nursing care facilities is really amazing. I just want to thank our entire team. I saw this team move really early on this issue and there's a lot of foresight and I just want to thank them for doing that. The wrapping up, too, over 1000 tests a day. Again, I don't know if Meredith is on this call somewhere, but I also want to thank Meredith Reynolds, who's part of our team and is doing a lot of this work behind the scenes as well. And I want to thank her and Diana Tang from from my staff as well. Early on when we weren't getting those tests, we had to go out and get those tests ourselves. And I think that Diana and Meredith and a lot of other folks in the city system got aggressive and started calling companies and getting those test kits. And I just want to thank both of them. It was highlighted by a couple of council members that we are tracking below L.A. County, both on the positive cases as well as as deaths. And of course, every single one of those deaths matters. And it's obviously not just a number, it's families. It's a there's loved ones attached. But I do want to just note that the city is trending a little better than the county, and the county is doing as best they can as well. But we were the number to look at also noted that of our 38 fatalities, 30 have been from our long term care facilities. It's where a majority, I want to say 80% of our fatalities are, and which is why there's so much effort there going on right now. Want to uplift the fact that our hospitality I'm sorry, our hospitalization rate has remained generally flat for the last 25 days, 20 to 25 days. And that's a really good indicator. I believe the state's indicator is 14 days to be flattened. So I'm proud of that, that the team has done such a great job in the hospitals. On that rate and a couple of other keynotes we have right now, our hospitals are at 50% capacity. And so when you hear a lot about other US possible reaching capacity, we have created that room within the capacity. We've got 225 ventilators that are available for for use and we've created an additional 500 beds to add that to the capacity of our hospital bed system. And so what all of that tells us, I think, is that within this stage one that the governor laid out, the city is meeting that challenge. And this stage has, has and is being met. And we're doing a great job because of all the teamwork and our employees to meet it. And so that's the information in the data that we need to have as we now transition into stage two. And and I want to note just again, that from what I have heard tonight from Tom in the team and in other conversations, it's really over the course of the next couple of days that we're going to hear a lot more about what our local process is like, of course, driven by our health officer and our medical teams. But we are looking forward to those meaningful adjustments to outdoor recreation. I think you heard that a few times tonight, and we're really looking forward to having those announced and and on our way as we go into this weekend as because people are really ready to to enjoy our community and our outdoors in a way that is. And so I just want to reiterate what we've mentioned multiple times and many council members that there seems to be some consensus and the data really speaks to there being consensus around that being something that we are moving into. And then of course, we know that our safer at home order, a ghost goes up until May 15th and I'm looking forward to hearing from our team on their best recommendations in the days ahead. And so thank you all for that great report. There's a motion and a second. And please, if I can have the clerk do a roll call on the motion district one. District one. Yes, a district two. I. District three. I. District for. High. District five. Thai District six. District six. Hi. District seven. District seven. I do. District eight. I. District nine. I. Ocean carries. Okay. Thank you. That concludes the first item on the agenda. So an and an important one. So thank you all. Let's we're going to take a couple of items now. The next one's going to be item 27.