Recommendation to: 1. Request City Attorney to draft an ordinance related to banning the sale and distribution of expanded polystyrene and other polystyrene disposable food service containers within the City of Long Beach with exemptions for the Long Beach Unified School District; 2. Request City Manager, or designee, to work with the Office of Sustainability, the Sustainable City Commission and community stakeholders to develop a public education campaign related to the ban, which would include, but not be limited to: a. Timeline for implementation, b. List of Vendors who sell non-polystyrene products, c. Website with all available information regarding the ban and information about polystyrene, d. Hotline for questions and concerns; 3. Request City Manager, or designee, to work with the Economic Development Committee of the City Council to come up with financial incentives for local businesses who implement the ban of these products before the implementation date of the ordinance; 4. This ordinance, education plan and incentive structure 
Thank you. Congratulations on the on the appointment as well. So the new Connie ZEEBLE. Thank you. With that, our public comment has concluded and we're going to go ahead and go into our next item, which is going to be item number 14. And then after right after 14, we're going to hear 13 and 24. So the order is Styrofoam copy open data for item 14. Communication from Councilwoman Gonzalez, Councilmember Pearce, Councilmember, your recommendation to request the city attorney to draft an ordinance related to banning the sale and distribution of expanded polystyrene and other polystyrene disposable food service containers within the city of Long Beach, with exemptions for the Long Beach Unified School District. Request the city manager to work with the Office of Sustainability, the Sustainable City Commission and Community Stakeholders to develop a public education campaign related to the ban and to work with the Economic Development Committee to come up with financial incentives for local businesses to implement the ban before the implementation date of the ordinance. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to turn this over to Councilwoman Gonzales. Okay. Thank you. I know we have quite a few folks here for this item, and so I'd actually like to turn it over to them to hear them first, and then I actually have a presentation and then we'll go forward. So if that's okay. Sure. She went to public comment for. Yes, please. Okay. So we're going to public comment first. So if you have public comment on this item, please line forward. Line up. But there is there is a motion in second on the floor. And so, just so you know, there is a there is a motion in a second which is the item is presented. Okay. Please begin. Good evening, Mayor and council members. My name is Kobe Sky. I'm a second district resident environmental engineer, and I'm an appointee of the Long Beach Sustainable City Commission. I want to say first, I support the motion and it's really great to see several council members coming together on this issue in a consensus way. There's really a lot of benefits that will come to the city of Long Beach by moving forward with this motion, especially for our environment and for tourism. That's really important for those two issues. But there are other benefits as well. I thought it was interesting that the motion points out that Conservative Council member and ocean lover Frank Colonna brought up this issue more than a decade ago, and it's been discussed thoroughly since then. Other cities, the County of Los Angeles, many other jurisdictions have studied this issue extensively. The federal government has as well, and 99 other cities or jurisdictions just in California have adopted similar ordinances. So it should be an easy decision after so many years of study and after these so many better alternatives that are easily available. This really is a nonpartisan issue, and I hope that the Council tonight will consider further directing the Sustainable City Commission and the Office of Sustainability to investigate options to make the ordinance even stronger. For example, promoting reusable food service where. Or connecting the ordinance to the new mandate for composting food waste. We have the expertize to bring these options forward to you and we hope that you'll make use of that. Long Beach can be a leader to other cities in the region. We can address our mandates for reducing pollution to our waterways and have a very positive impact for the whole region. I hope we're going to be jurisdiction number 100 tonight and adopt this motion. Thank you. Thank you very much next week. Please. Hi there. My name is Gabrielle Weeks. I'm a resident of District two. I'd like to really thank the council people, the green leaders who have brought this to the agenda tonight. That's awesome. Tonight, I'm not really speaking as a Long Beach resident, though, but as one of the people who elected to run your Sierra Club for the Angeles chapter. That's all of L.A. County, all of Orange County. Out of those two counties. We've already had a whole lot of cities that have banned polystyrene as often as some of them, as often as seven or eight years ago. So we're not reinventing the wheel. As Coby mentioned, we would be the 100th in a city or county in just California. Just California. There's already 99. So this is nothing new, nothing scary. Let's do it. Because we care about human health and the health of our wildlife and clean beaches residents and tourists want. The Sierra Club asks Long Beach to join the 99 cities and county who have banned polystyrene packaging in California. Are you tired of expanded? Expanded polystyrene also called Styrofoam all over your beaches and sidewalks. It makes up 17% of our pollution. Just that. And these flimsy clamshells and cups are easily replaced with something that I got an Al Austin's district's. Are you? This is a coffeehouse in your district, right? Drink on Atlantic. I think they are. They are. Well, so there's a lot of our restaurants here that are already using no Styrofoam voluntarily because customers like it. And as Koby pointed out, this was started over a decade ago by Tonya Ray as a ranga being continued by her husband, as her husband should do, finish his wife's project when she's too busy and Frank Alona and your district. So over a decade of studying Styrofoam, that's how we know it's 17% of our pollution. That's how we know how much of is it inside birds and fish that show up dead on our beach because of them? So we've been studying it for a decade. And also, according to the U.S. EPA, numerous carcinogens are found in expanded polystyrene. Including formaldehyde. And benzene. These things have a lot of bad side effects, so even the US EPA is recommending people not use Styrofoam if they've got an alternative. You know, I love Long Beach and this is great. This this intersection of two of my favorite things eating out and the environment. So I'm really hoping we can pass this tonight because as it is, I just go to a bunch of the different restaurants in everybody's district that I know don't have expanded polystyrene because it makes your coffee taste gross, I think. But what if we ban it citywide? We're going to have all the restaurants open to all the people who want to be able to taste the food and the flavor, not the weird chemicals. And unfortunately, as the hours ticked by, a lot of our members had to go home. They had babysitters texting them, and the babysitters needed to get out of here. But we still have a bunch of signs out there. Going to take a moment to anybody. Yeah, we had a lot of people at the rally. A lot of people wanted to stay here longer, but their babysitters were hungry and angry. So with a lot of support for this. And thank you so much. Let's join those other 99 cities. Thank you very much. Next Speaker. Hi, Mayor Garcia, members of the council and staff. I'm honored to be standing at the podium tonight. My name is Katie Allen. I'm the executive director at Al Goleta, Marine Research and Education. We're actually the world's leading research organization focused on ocean plastic pollution. And we're located right here in Long Beach, and we have been here 20 years. I'm here tonight to share the results of a nine month study our organization conducted in Long Beach and surrounding areas in collaboration with master's students from the Brand School of Environmental Science and Management. The overarching purpose of our investigation was to identify the types source fate of plastic debris in our region. The information was synthesized into action items ranked by their feasibility and effectiveness, so the full report can be found. We passed out some bamboo flash drives. If you guys got those from the Clark, the full report can be found on those drives. If you're interested in digging in. After nine months of digging into the problem here at home, our researchers determined that phasing out expanded polystyrene was actually the second most important action item to implement. Immediately through our investigation, we found that expanded polystyrene makes up roughly 26% of the litter on our streets. The material has low market value, especially when contaminated, so it's not recovered as frequently as other plastics, like polyethylene terephthalate or high density polyethylene. Since EPS breaks down easily, it has a higher chance of making its way through capture systems into our rivers and oceans. And EPS is also lightweight, making it transportable by wind and water. Once EPS enters our waterway, it continues breaking into smaller and smaller pieces at a rapid rate. So our organization has actually been monitoring plastic accumulation on the Long Beach Peninsula since fall 2015 and expanded polystyrene is identified as the most common type of microplastic. By count, we found over 2100 pieces of expanded polystyrene in ten liters of sand collected on the south side of the Long Beach Peninsula. We're literally changing the composition of our ocean and our beaches. These microplastics soak up toxicants and maybe entering our local food chain. They become bite sized morsels for the fish, turtles and other animals living in our local ecosystem. Beyond that, the individuals in our community feed their families fish collected from this highly polluted area. The issue is so bad here at home. Our Oregon organization invites stakeholders from around the world to visit us to experience the Microplastic issue up close and personal. Just last week we had over 35 plastic industry leaders and companies like Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Procter and Gamble. Simply sifting through sand on our beach, we're quickly becoming the city known for Microplastic. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for your work. Next beaker, please. Really? Hello. Try to keep this brief. Mayor Garcia, members of the council. My name is McDonald. I'm a freshman from Long Beach State University. Yeah. And today I'm here just to speak about my support to ban polyester, polystyrene and polyester in the city of Long Beach. So whether it be in the form of a single use cup or some kind of packaging material. Polyester, not polyester. Sorry. Polystyrene is one of the most littered pieces of debris found on our beaches. This is not without its consequences. Along with being labeled a possible carcinogen by the EPA and affecting functions of the human central nervous system. Polystyrene does not biodegrade meaning as these pieces of debris flow into the ocean and sit under the sun, they fracture into tiny bits called microplastics like stated. So once they're in the ocean, these microplastics absorb other toxic chemicals like DDT and PCBs, which aren't good, and fish and other animals mistake these tiny bits of plastic for food. And because they cannot digest these microparticles and the chemicals leaking into the animals bodies, they'll either die or pass on those chemicals to us once we consume them. So there are many other alternatives to polystyrene, such as biodegradable or even other recyclable plastics. And many other cities in this country, from SFO to New York, have already moved to ban this toxic plastic. And at a time when the issues of the environment are being targeted, we must do everything that we can to protect not only our environment, but also ourselves. And for these reasons, I hope that the Council supports this issue and bans polystyrene in the city of Long Beach. Thank you. Go Beach. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor Garcia. Vice Mayor Richardson. My name is Steven Johnson and I'm the water resources policy analyst for Heal the Bay. Heal the Bay supports the Long Beach City Council's efforts to eliminate the use of a single use play siren from its business businesses within the City of Long Beach's Sustainable City Plan. The second paragraph of the Green Economy and Lifestyle section begins. Ecologically and socially responsible products can help reduce our resource use as well as reduce our harmful impact on the planet. Heal the Bay couldn't agree more. And in the same vein, eliminating products that are known to have a harmful impact on the environment will work exactly the same way. If council members truly want what's best for the health of the environment, they should bite the proverbial polystyrene bullet and ban single use polystyrene in any of its forms. Drafting this ordinance is an excellent first move in this endeavor. Last week, the city of Culver City followed in the footsteps of the city of Manhattan Beach, making it the 100th. So maybe I'll be 101. But they're in first and recently instructed their staff to include straws and coffee lids within their ordinance. This is sometimes the city of Long Beach. This is something that the City of Long Beach might want to consider when drafting the ordinance. Thank you for the opportunity to comment. Thank you. Love your bay. Good job. You guys do great work. Thank you for partnering with the city on so many things. Okay, next speaker. Thank you very much for including this on the agenda tonight. I was thrilled when I saw it and I've never been to a city council meeting, but I just had to come because this is the most important issue to me personally. I just bought a house. My husband and I just bought a house in Long Beach. And this has just been the issue that they held me back from loving Long Beach. So thank you so much for considering it. I bring my lunch to work because I don't want to consume things that are in polystyrene and we never go out for Chinese. There's so many things we don't do because they're going to be on polystyrene and this would just mean so much to me. Thank you very much. Thank you. Welcome to Long Beach. We're glad to have you here. Next speaker. Hi. Just real quick. Student at Cal State, Long Beach. Same. Nice to meet you. Starring as primarily used in the production of polyester, polystyrene and plastics and resins. Now some exposures to human exposure. So these short term or acute would be results in mucous membrane irritation and eye irritation and gastrointestinal effects. Now, the National Bureau of Standards Centers for Fire Research did identify 57 chemicals that are byproducts of the released during the combustion of poly styrene. So a lot to consider. Hopefully we get your support. And I thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello. City Council and staff. My name is Seamus. And I'm a resident of the fourth District. Faro. And I'm the chairman of the Loomis chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. We have over 300. Members in Long Beach, and we've been working with you guys and your staff for many years. On this topic. In 2013, I ordered 2000. Of these postcards and we've been getting residents to fill them out and I've been putting stamps on them and hand-delivering them to you and giving them to you. And I know all. Of you have hundreds of them. I'm sure you never throw them away because they're so valuable. But I've heard from some of you. That you really appreciate hearing from your residents and your constituents and even tourists. I send all the tourist postcards to the mayor. So sorry, Robert, but you're happy to hear from your constituents about what they believe. And they've been telling you. Get rid of the foam in Long Beach. It's important. In addition to the postcards, we've been working on this program called Ocean Friendly Restaurants, where we go out and find restaurants in our community that have already gotten rid of Styrofoam and we give them a little plaque to put on the window, says. Ocean Friendly. Restaurants. We put their name on our website and we encourage members to go shop there because we think they're doing the right thing. And invariably, time and time again, I'll ask them, Why did you. Decide to get rid of Styrofoam? And they look at me like I just fell off a turnip truck. And they're like, Of course, you know why? It's because the ocean is because the environment. So they already have this figured out and they've done it on their own. And in that light, I want. To introduce you to the following figure, our Long Beach hero right here. My name is Carson. Countertenor. Honorable Council Members. And I'm Eric Garcia. I'm just here to speak out as a local Long Beach business. I own two small restaurants in town, a coffeehouse and a restaurant about to open my third one. And I voluntarily about 12 years ago decided not to use Styrofoam anymore. It is a little bit of a cost for a small business, but it's a penny per item. And if I can absorb it as a cafe, that really coffee is a business about pennies and every cup of coffee you really count every single penny. But I was able to do it and I'm still growing my business. So I really like for you to support this item and I fully stand behind it. Thank you very much. Speaker, please. Thank you. Hi. Good night. I counsel an honorable mayor. My name is Natasha Dyer. I live in the first district. I wear a lot of hats and belong to a number of organizations around town. But as an environmentalist, which I really think is just a survivalist these days, that's really the way I look at myself. I'm not really a tree hugger or anything like that. I'm just trying to try to make us aware of things that have to do with climate and environment, that type of thing. I'm here to say that it's time as a society to figure out ways to decrease our waste and really actually actually eradicate waste that doesn't biodegrade or is not able to be upcycled in some way. So I urge you to ban Styrofoam here in Long Beach. Styrofoam and plastic in general, as you all know, really doesn't go anywhere. It sits in landfills for 700 years or so, eventually leaching into our. Water tables, making drinking water toxic gets into our waterway waterways, where it is then. Mistaken for food by our marine life. We, in turn eat the seafood and the plastic ends up in us. And just for using polystyrene, when you get your take out, just you all know that that kind of leaches into the food. You can't even heat heat up in your microwave. We all know that already. So it's time to get rid of this stuff because it's actually it's just toxic. As a member of the Don't Waste Long Beach Coalition, a coalition that is campaigning to raise the standards of Long Beach's waste and recycling infrastructure, and we're also trying to get to zero waste. I also support a ban on polystyrene. I also work in the way I work for waste hauler and environmental complaints. So I work every day where I'm getting businesses to comply with state mandates that are getting us to recycle. And as you might know, California has wants us to be diverting most of our 75% of our waste by 2020. And Long Beach. I think this is low hanging fruit. I think there are some some types of waste that actually just should be eradicated and we can actually start to comply with mandates because Long Beach, it actually isn't recycling as much as we should be. And we can actually get some of it just out of the waste stream. And as this restaurant said, I was going to say that to Styrofoam. There are there are there are alternatives that are actually just price competitive. And I think once we become a zero wasting city and we're finding different ways to do with our waste, such as like composting eventually and we'll be getting these types of alternatives to serve foam that can be composted. That's actually just such a win win, because I know the mayor, you've signed on to the Compact of Mayors and you want us to be a climate resilient city. So I think things like actually doing things with waste are it's just it's just that low hanging fruit. And we've got to, as a society, begin to think what we're doing with the things we're making that are ending up in our landfill. So I think that was it. Yeah. Thank you. Please Ban sir from. Thank you very much. Next Speaker Good evening, Mr. Mayor and City Council. My name is Sona Coffee and I'm. A resident of the fourth district. Darryl and I also serve the city as a sustainable city commissioner. I'm here also wearing a few different hats. As some of you may know, I serve in the city of Manhattan Beach. Is there environmental programs manager? So I wanted to share just. Briefly some of the points that we went through when we adopted a polystyrene ordinance a few years ago. We went through actually pretty identical process that Long Beach is in right now. We had an initiative come forward many years ago. It was put on hold for a few years. We circled its way back with some community support and council leadership. That item came back, we did more research and we had an evening just like this one where we were at that juncture where we decided we talk about it now. Do we draft an ordinance, come back with an ordinance to ban this or do we not move forward? And the City Council decided to take action and direct staff to draft that ordinance. I highlight this as an example, just to show that this is not going to be a final process tonight. We're just asking for you to authorize your staff to move forward with drafting that ordinance that will give them the time to look at the different. Options, the different components that can go into a polystyrene ordinance, and then that will come. Back again for your review and approval and probably more public. Comment and discussion. When you do hopefully become that 100 or 101st city that bans polystyrene. There were a few things we did in the city that I think will be helpful for Long Beach. We had good support of our business districts. We worked with the districts, with our Chamber of Commerce outreach, with the community to understand what would work and what wouldn't for the businesses and the retailers in the city. We initially passed just a foam ordinance, a foam ban, put that in place for about six months and came back to council with amendments to the ordinance to include additional products such as straws, cup lids, utensils. And banning the retail sale of all polystyrene items in the. City. So this is a really good first step for the community, for the businesses to become aware and familiar with how they go about working a polystyrene ordinance. The other. Thing I wanted. To highlight was the outreach to the community. So while we agree that getting polystyrene out of the waste stream is important, it's a toxic material. Material. You've heard how it ends up on our beaches and our coasts. We want to protect our environment here in Long Beach, but we also wanted to help the retailers. And the biggest way to do that is encouraging individuals to take. Action. I see. Councilwoman Mango has a great sampling of products up there, but what we really want to do is get people to move away from disposables and be reusable. And so encouraging folks to bring their own tumblers, their mugs. Exactly. Things like that. When you're going out for your coffee, when you grabbing your drink and take out containers. So we did a giveaway in the city where we did take out containers and utensils. We had a bring your own campaign to educate people that it's not just reusable bags that you need to bring, but you need to bring your tumblers, your containers and your utensils when you go out to avoid that disposable waste. There's wanted to show that this is a very easy thing for people to do slip into your purse or your pocket and take that with you. So I hope that Long Beach does become the next city to do this. So we can help protect and preserve. Our natural resources. And our environment. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next speaker, please. Sure. Good afternoon, Mayor Garcia and members of the council. My name is Robert know tough. And I'm the director of Don't Waste Long Beach, which is a local coalition comprised of community, environmental and workers rights organizations looking to transform our commercial waste industry to provide recycling, composting and good green jobs for all Long Beach residents. And I'm here today to urge the council to move forward with an ordinance that to ban polystyrene in the city of Long Beach tantamount to don't waste Long Beach's mission is diverting waste from landfills, and that's through increased recycling and also through source reduction. So that makes today's vote of particular interest to our coalition. As you know, other cities have banned polystyrene from the recycling programs because once collected, it's difficult to sell and easily contaminated by other materials in recycling bins, which makes it difficult to store in our recycling facilities. Furthermore, food, soil, polystyrene is typically not accepted by recyclers by recycling companies. It's not compostable and as a result it ends up in our landfills. And the end result is the sobering reality which was documented in a report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. And this is really kind of key and mindblowing, but that found that if we do not divert the current stream of plastics ending up in our ocean by the year 2050, there were by wait. There will be more plastic in our oceans than fish again by 2050 by weight, more plastic in our oceans than fish. So we also know what polystyrene has to do in terms of like just beautifying our community or lack thereof, right? It pollutes our oceans, our beaches. We see it in our streets and on our in our parks. And I you know, it's kind of less desirable for our residents and also for residents, for those who visit us , like I have family coming this holiday season to visit me here, I'm proud to say. And lastly, given the in the political environment in Washington and given the fact that we have somebody who's proposed a climate change denier who may be the head of the EPA, we have to look to you one more than ever to kind of lead by example. And so, again, we are asking that you all take the stand for Long Beach residents to do this, to move forward with our community and to please pass a phone free LBC. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. Mayor and council members. Thank you so much. Staff. My name is Kathleen Irvine and I am the president of one more City Heritage Association and also serve as vice chair for sustainability. Everybody's going to talk about the science behind this, and I think we're all very aware of the problem with the pollutants. I think that moving forward with this ban is really, really important because unfortunately, living in the first District, we see a lot of issues with trash, in particular Styrofoam, the food, a lot of the small food places use Styrofoam. And even though people know they're not supposed to, if for whatever reason, they don't seem to feel badly about throwing it in the ground. And of course, we all know where that ends up as well. The other thing that is important, I think for us is the first district is that we are right along the borders of the L.A. River and as it develops, all that stuff is going to come down the river. If we do not make a stand here, then they can certainly say, Oh, well, it's not our problem. If we make a stand here and say, it's your trash, take care of it, I think that's really important. So please support this study and I'll look forward to the ban. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker. Hi. Good evening. Thank you for hearing us out on this. My name is Donna Birch. I'm from the eighth District. I have a couple of things I want. First of all, I want to thank Al Goleta Marine Research for being here. I follow them like a puppy dog. They are doing seriously some of the greatest work of our time. So you guys, I mean, this is some serious, serious Marine research that they are doing and not just in Long Beach. And they've been doing it for a long time. Captain Charles Moore is like my hero. Anyway, I just wanted to bring up a couple of things that maybe didn't come to the surface. But these are the cities in California. These are just the coastal cities. Right. There's 99 cities just in California, but these are the coastal cities that already have a polystyrene ban. Carmel Carpinteria. Dana Point. Half Moon Bay. Hermosa Beach. Huntington Beach. Laguna Beach. San Francisco. Santa monica Seaside South. San Francisco. Malibu Manhattan Marina. Newport Beach Pacific Grove, Pacifica. San Clemente, Santa Cruz and Sausalito. That's compliments of the Surfrider from their website. Anyway, those are just the coastal cities that already have a ban in place. The counties are Ventura, Sonoma, Marin, Santa Clara, Monterey, San Mateo, Santa Cruz and Los Angeles counties. So there are some partial bans in place. So that's just kind of an overview. But the other thing I wanted to talk about or just to bring to your attention is what's happening in Long Beach. The Surfrider Association already has their own standards in place for restaurants, and they are as follows. They are the silver level, the gold level and the platinum level. And as the other speaker mentioned, the restaurants are given like a badge for adhering to these standards. So for the silver level, they have no Styrofoam takeout containers. Gold level, they achieve silver. And at least three of the following options plastic straws are provided only upon request. Takeout bags are provided only upon request. Take out beverage containers may not be plastic, including plastic bottles. Take out food containers may not be plastic. Disposable utensils for takeout food provided upon request only proper recycling. This is really important. Proper recycling and trash disposal practices are followed throughout the restaurant. Right. This is our big. One of our biggest sins, I think, in all of our restaurants. And for the platinum level. No plastic take out containers. This includes Styrofoam bags, tableware, straws, etc.. So the Surfrider Association has already set a great standard for restaurants, which I think could be considered when this does come up for a vote. In Long Beach, we have in those categories we have two platinum, we have eight gold, and we have 19 silver. We only have one in the eighth district. And that's there. Back there. That's Lola self. Think us. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi, I'm back. Okay. So again, my name is Dr.. Eileen de Banal and I teach organic. Chemistry at Cathy at Long Beach. So one thing I have heard tonight after a couple of things. Is that at the end of the day, in the. Manufacture and synthesis of polystyrene, it makes us dependent on petroleum. You can't just, like, whip this up over the lab. And call it a day. Like you have to get the petroleum. And distill it and do all kinds of crazy things with it. But more chemicals in it, and then then becomes polystyrene. And then on top of that, to recycle. It requires also more. Energy. So if we're serious as a community about climate change, then we would really look into this study and go on with the ban. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Please. Honorable Mayor Council. My name is Luis Navarro. We have three restaurants here in Long Beach. We're not in the business to tell people how to run their business. But about seven years ago, we decided. To cut out all Styrofoam from our restaurants and we were able to make it work. It literally is a game of pennies. And it's something that can be done to make a. Big change. And I think that if you're in the. Business of in the restaurant business, that is you do have that conscious choice to make a difference and leave a small footprint on the environment. And why not take that extra step and and become environmentally friendly? Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is Peter Hanna. I'm here wearing two hats. I'm I, I run clean OLB, which is a beach clean up at the base of one of Paro in the second district. I live in the second district. I'm also on the board of the Friends of Bixby Park, and we run a monthly beach cleanup, our monthly park cleanup. So I do lots of cleanups. And so any data I'm going to offer you is going to be entirely anecdotal. But I think it's a it's my anecdote. So I can tell you in the six and a half years that we've been doing beach cleanups at Cherry Beach, we've picked up over eight. Tons of trash from that beach. And that's not a terribly helpful measure, though, because weight isn't really what we're concerned about. If it really we're talking about volume and if we're talking about volume, by far the worst offender is Styrofoam. If you talked about just the they're all consistently and this is not just in our beach. This is in the beaches up and down the state of California. It's in the top five most found little pieces of things. And so that's what we find all the time. I want one of our volunteers. He likes to take a break and excavate one square meter along the wall by the parking lot, and he can regularly fill a bucket in one hour excavating underneath the sand full of Styrofoam. Now, the reason this is significant is that once Styrofoam enters the beach, the only way it can be cleaned up is by hand. When you try to clean up the beach, you can bring in those big earthmovers and you can sift through a lot of sifting. But you're only going to get the larger, heavier particles. Smaller things like Styrofoam can only be cleaned up by hand. And frankly, I don't think anyone has the budget to clean that, to really comb the beach, to get rid of that Styrofoam. The only way you can do it is by volunteers. And frankly, there aren't enough of us. So the only way to address this is to cut it out at the source. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for organizing all those cleanups. Appreciate that. Thank you. Very much. My name is Robert Palmer. I live in the third district. There was a PowerPoint presentation emailed to city council. I don't know if that's available to load or what, but anyway, if it is, I'll continue on and tell it is. It's not loaded or can't get loaded. It's kind of loaded. Actually, why don't we go to the next speaker while we load that? Okay. Next speaker. Hi. Good afternoon, Mayor. Members. City Council. My name's Dahlia Gonzalez. I sit on the Sustainability Commission. I just wanted to. To thank the council members who introduced this item for including the Sustainability Commission on this. I know that when the mayor first took office, one of one of his transition teams recommendations, something that council member Pierce at the time was on, was that we activate this commission, and I would like us to not only hear from the groups that we've heard from today, but I also want this to be a business friendly policy. I have a small business and I often hear in the environmental discussion that the business and environment don't go hand in hand. And I want us to get get rid of that mindset. I think business is important for for economic thriving. I think environment is obviously very important for for everything that we need to live. So that is one of the things that I'm looking forward to, to working with this council on, and I hope that we can have your support for this item. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Robert, I think we're basically we're good. My name is Robert Palmer. I'm with Surfrider Foundation. I've been representing Surfrider Beach cleanups for 17 years now. We currently have for a month. And I went out yesterday to Cherry Beach and I took pictures of the Styrofoam. And if I could. Yeah, okay. Here we go. It's it's all over the place. The problem with it is, you know, the regs come through. They do a good job, but you'll see pieces are cut there. But it just the breaks just break this stuff apart. And there's a cargo container and and I took some pictures in the planters around the parking are around the beach and the parking lot and you'll see what happened. I got to start over again. I don't know what's going on here. Pardon? Oh, that's all there is. Okay. But anyway, the bottom line on it is, it's it permeates our sand. And the only way we get rid of it is picking it up, like Peter said. So I definitely support the city council and hopefully you guys can come up with a plan to ban Styrofoam. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. And then I'm going to cut the speaker's list off here. It looks like we're the gentleman. That gentleman at the end will be the last speaker. Okay. And then we're going to. Carry their council. My name is Mike Murchison. I apologize for being under the weather this evening. And I'll start off with a caveat of saying that I love Berlin and I love Lolas. I go to both places very often on behalf of the the industry and the business d'arte on behalf of a lot of restaurants here in Long Beach. I want to express some concern from the standpoint of expectations in initiating a band discussion tonight, directing the city attorney to draft that. It's not that we don't applaud the environmental industry. We all love Heal the Bay, the Surfrider Foundation. I think there's nobody in Long Beach that doesn't think the same way. What we're concerned about is process. And I noted way back because I represented 18 restaurants back then in the minimum wage discussion that there were a lot of restaurants. There's over 550 of them that are full service restaurants that were not involved in the minimum wage discussion because there was not the outreach that was done at that point in time, and yet there was already a process moving forward. So what I'm here tonight to express is we're all about getting the stakeholders together. We're all about sharing the dialog back and forth. I applaud having the environmental groups. I applaud having the industry, and I applaud having the restaurants all together at the same time. What I'm saying is take a step back before directing the city attorney's office to enact this ban and draft it. Move it forward. Set a time line that you want for the Commission, sustainability or the environmental committees of the city to get together. And we'll get behind that. But without that, you're missing a key component here. Tonight, you've heard from the environmental community. Terrific. How many restaurants did you hear from this evening? Again, love Berlin, love Lola's. But you're missing over 550 full-service restaurants, over 100 fast food restaurants. There's a lot of dialog that still needs to occur out there. I encourage you to do that. I encourage you to take a step back. Think about that because there is a financial impact, especially a mom and pop places. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor and council people. My name is Wayne Murchison, second district. Um, the gentleman mentioned a lot of restaurants and just picking and going off of him and seems to me a lot of the fast food places have already been Styrofoam and their places are using just biodegradable stuff. So, um, you know, once you do it, people are just, it's not going to be that big a deal. However, like a lot of other groups, we do do a lot of beach cleanup. And last time I did one just the sun, same type of pictures and I had buckets of Styrofoam. And it does it breaks down the the scoopers can't get it. You could literally, as one guy said, stay in one's square spot and dig up a whole bunch of Styrofoam. So we need to ban it because it just gets into our wildlife and everything and permeates our every life. We're probably breathing it as well. So it's a good thing to burn it. To burn it. Thanks. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Hello, Mayor. Council members, my name is Bill Hickman with the Surfrider Foundation. And I was here five years ago when the city council was considering a plastic check. Out bag ban. A lot of the similar arguments came up and ultimately. The Steve Long Beach was one of the early adopters of a plastic bag ban ordinance that went statewide, as you all know, was passed by the state legislature in 2014 and confirmed by voters last month. So there are a lot of similarities. And Surfrider, we see this at our beach cleanups. It's one of the top items. And before we look at banning something, we look and say, hey, is this recyclable with polystyrene? The answer is yes and no. Technically it is, but it's not economically feasible. A lot of examples were given why. And I think this is an important issue. I think there's consensus to do the final studies. I think we've been looking at it here for ten years and it's finally come to the forefront. So there are other municipalities that this has taken place and it's not a big hardship on businesses. I'm not aware of any business that has gone out of business because of this. So there are success. Stories and we need to. Look at the whole watershed and set an example here. In addition to the expanded polystyrene from restaurants, you should also consider the retail sales of polystyrene, the foam coolers, foam cups, things along those lines. Those are the items that we find out are beach cleanups. Also, those are included in some of the other ordinances throughout the state and something that can make an increased impact. A couple of the statements in the aquarium video early really struck me. Humans living in harmony with nature. The actions taken today will determine our tomorrow. The future generations. And how your actions can make a difference for this community. And beyond. So please move the item forward and please consider strong language to be an expanded polystyrene. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Next speaker. Hello. My name is Brian. I want to say thank you to the city council members and the mayor. I'm very pleased about the talks of banning polystyrene. My personal experience with. It is a. Little bit like local beaches and the fishing community. So there's two type of people in the fishing community, the ones who are economically well-off enough that they don't rely on the food. And the a lot of our people of. Color who go there to feed their families, who just have. Little economics means of getting food in other ways. And there's two people who go there. The people who can't. Who can say, I'm not going to eat that because there's this constant warnings of pollution levels on our coastal fish croaker perch. And I'm just really concerned for a lot of our people of color who rely on coastal foods like the fish who are getting polluted through small particulates like this that get into their bodies. And who have no other means. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Hi. Thank you for hearing me. My name is Samantha martinez and I represent the Plastic Foodservice Packaging Group. We're a trade association and our members include the manufacturers. And resin suppliers of all different types of foodservice material. The type that you're talking about today. Tonight, polystyrene expanded polystyrene, as well as the poly coated paper that I see up there and a lot of people have with their coffee cups, the biodegradable compostable materials, the rigid plastics. You get the point. Anything that's that's a single use is made by our folks. And we don't want to see any of our. Products in the litter stream and we don't want to see any of them in the waterways. But there are many different types of materials. Because different food service providers utilize different materials for different needs, mostly for functionality, for hot or cold, for sizes, and also for. Fairprice as well as some of them are concerned about. End of life options and look at recycling and composting and the availability of those in their cities. But like I said, we don't want to see any of our products in the litter shimmer in the waterways. And we do support a lot of recycling programs, composting programs. Clean ups and educational programs. But we really don't believe that a ban is a solution because what you're going to find, unlike the plastic bag issue, you're going to replace one single use food service package for another that has environmental impacts when they're manufactured and has some end of life issues as well. It would be great if we all could go to reusable and I encourage you to look at that as part of your discussion. But again, I would encourage you to have a longer discussion. I saw I heard two restaurants were here tonight. I heard from the. Restaurant Association, the Grocers Association, that they heard from some of their members that they weren't aware that this was happening. So I would encourage you to make sure to reach out to some of their members. I do have letters from from just both of those organizations, but none of their members came mean. I just want to state that the State Water Resources Control Board acknowledged that replacement products banning and having a replacement product is not the answer. I'm not going to quote their whole their whole analysis. But they said any product ban enacted by an ordinance that would not reduce trash would not assist in achieving compliance. So basically don't ban one and replace it with the other. But we. Support this council looking. Into solutions of litter and waste. We think it's an important issue and it deserves discussion. And we hope that you will include stakeholders in the community. Thank you again for for the time. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor Garcia, city council members and city staff. My name is Craig Cadwallader and I'm speaking on behalf of the Surfrider Foundation South Bay chapter and have handed out to all of you some documents that indicate that the Food and Drug Administration is changing its position with regards to styrene. And we often hear arguments that the FDA has approved the use of styrene packaging for food contact. And as you can see from the document, they are reevaluating that position. And I believe that's because the National Toxicology Program Report on carcinogens has listed styrene as a reasonably expected human carcinogen. And there is evidence that the styrene leaches from the containers into the food and beverages that are contained. And we think that's a bad idea. 100% of people who have been tested have styrene in their body fat. I've heard arguments that styrene occurs naturally in things like cinnamon. Well, I might also add that nicotine occurs naturally, lead occurs naturally, and we don't want those items in our body. So our position on polystyrene includes not only the litter but also the health impacts of this product. Expanded polystyrene is unique in that it is 95% air. It blows around easily and very often doesn't even make it to recycling because it blows out of the containers. We also know that it breaks up into tiny little pieces that are nearly impossible to clean up. But the other forms of polystyrene, including oriented polystyrene, which is a non blown rigid item that lids and straws and utensils are made of, also contain the same chemical. And we would really like to see you expand your consideration to not only include expanded polystyrene but oriented polystyrene and do something that's positive for your residents and business health and help us keep the environment clean. Thank you. Thank you very much. And our last speaker. Very good to. It's obvious. I think it's obvious based upon the what has been presented here. You can't make an intelligent, definitive decision long term tonight that would be based in law. It's going to take a while to synthesize everything and come up with a strategic plan. In the meantime, however, in the meantime, there is an opportunity. What you do is you can put forward tonight an action and put it in place. The next council meeting. Passing an ordinance to go after the slobs that throw the stuff away on the street, on the sidewalk. Start with a $200 fine for the first one. Double it for the second one. And if depending on the age of the person is under 21, they will wear a t shirt. My mother raised a slob. If it goes further, you'll have the record of the guy. The mother will wear a T-shirt saying I raised a slob and go after it, period. I'm very serious because it's going to take you at least a good six months to a year to put something in place based upon what you heard from the Trade Trade Association and if you want to do it effectively. Not so with play passing and updated or revised amending the city codes relative to the fines for acting as a slob period. It's easy to see them. It's easier to get that. And that goes also to the issue that I raised earlier on when the during the early on in Sydney relative to the city as a whole , i.e. some of the union are going to have to work know some of the police will cite for that. Some of the parking people will say for that those people that are out on the street, a bus driver will do that work. Thanks. Thank you. Now we're going to go ahead and go back to the city council. Starting off with Councilman Gonzales. Yes. Thank you so very much. I know all of you have been here for some time, so I appreciate your patience with us and I appreciate your amazing words. And more than ever, I appreciate your expertize. You're not just advocates. You're really experts in the field of the environment and in what you do. And I really appreciate that. So thank you very much. So before I begin my comments and the presentation that I have, which I promise will be quick, I wanted to make some amendments on the front end relative to the item. So before I started, I wanted to just clarify that we'll be directing the city attorney to work with city staff to change basically to work with city staff on this ordinance to begin the ordinance. The second thing is I'd like to add the Environmental Services Bureau as one of the lead agencies in the second recommendation to help put together the outreach plan and work with stakeholders for education and feedback on this ordinance. And lastly, I'd like to change the third recommendation to read the Economic Development Commission rather than the Committee. In business outreach. So with all that said, I want to again thank everybody for being here. My office personally, we've been working with many of you for over seven months or so. And the agenda item before you as narrowly crafted and thoughtful to all those involved that respects not only the work of our city staff and respects the impact to local businesses, and most importantly, respects our constituents in their yearn for a better environment. And as you will see in our presentation, the item builds upon the decade of over a decade of research and studies that the City of Long Beach has compiled, including work with the Sustainable City Commission, which was chartered with our very own council member. Darrell Super not currently this issue has carried on through three different city council members and will seek to implement a narrow ban on expanded polystyrene or starter styrofoam to go with food containers. So we'll begin this quick presentation. Okay. Here's the issue, as we've seen, of course. So background, I think we've gone over it, but I'll just go over it very quickly. So again, expanded polystyrene is not biodegradable. It can stay in landfills or marine environments for upwards of 500 years, risking mammal, marine mammals and seabirds. Expanded polystyrene, also known as EPS used for to go containers in the food industry, is not considered recyclable because of the food contamination and is unfavorable economically. And as of 2011, the EPA's Municipal Solid Waste Report represented about 2.17 tons of waste, to which only 20,000 tons or less than 1% was actually successfully recycled. Now the expanded polystyrene negative impacts locally. How does it affect us here in Long Beach? I've become, let me tell you, a an expert sort of on polystyrene. I never thought I'd know so much about this, but I have. And so EPS is the second most abundant form of marine debris, as we've heard many times. Long Beach, we conduct over 100 cleanups or so a year. And if the Environmental Services Bureau is involved, it's about 800 to $1000 per cleanup that we're at is costing the city. EPS has health risk associated with the carcinogen styrene as we we heard as well Granada Beach according to Heal the Bay received a beach bomber grade F during wet weather months for poor water quality due to trash, debris and toxicity. And lastly, the EPA says the leading cause of litter in the form of takeaways. 40% of trash collected near the 17 freeway and the S.R. 47 is from the city of Long Beach. Now I want to clarify the item because I know a lot of questions have been asked about what are you banning, what are you proposing , what does this mean, what are you doing, not doing, etc.. So requesting this, what I'm trying to do is requesting the city staff, city manager to direct the city attorney to work with city staff and draft language for an ordinance that bans the distribution of expanded polystyrene. So that includes plates, bowls, trays, cups, wrapping. You get it? This is a ban similar to Pasadena who passed theirs back in May. This includes foamed number six, also referred to as Styrofoam as we've seen. And it does not include. So this policy is not including polystyrene, the solid type, which is a plastic utensils, and it's not including the retail sales. So some of the key points to note from the city of Pasadena that had just passed back in May, similar to that city, it provides a one year phased approach to allow for business and public education to the businesses in public. And it also provides a hardship waiver to businesses as well. So if for any reason they can prove that this is going to be a struggle for them, it would be taken by a case by case method. Lastly, the education piece in the agenda item also discusses the Environmental Services Bureau working with in conjunction with the Office of Sustainability and our Commission for an Educational Campaign. Lastly, Big Business Progress. The Economic Development Commission would work to reach research business incentives and also see how they can bolster our green business program, which we currently have . But perhaps we can do a bit more. Now getting specific on the city recommendations because as we've mentioned, this is over a decade's worth of work. And specifically, this is from our former city manager, Jerry Miller. He says litter problem resulting from polystyrene foam food packaging is becoming increasingly difficult to manage and has costly negative implications. The recommendations he made at that time were to eliminate polystyrene foam in municipal facilities and city sponsored events and to revise the city's purchasing policy to include language prohibiting the use of polystyrene. And then 27 also by our then director of planning and building, Suzanne Frick, and then acting director Chris Garner of Public Works. He's they both said expanding expanded polystyrene is not easily recycled and currently the recycling process is not financially feasible. In that report in which they worked with many stakeholders, including DART and the Grocers Association and including stakeholders on the environmental side, including dozens of businesses back in 2007, they came up with the recommendation four different recommendations, which again reiterated to create an expanded polystyrene reduction program, create a green business designation program, ban expanded polystyrene at all city buildings and events. And the fourth, what do you know? City wide expanded polystyrene ban. So this is just a timeline of what has been done since 2005. Frank Colonna was involved. He initiated it. It was actually implemented by council member Tony Saranga in 2008 motion by her. Then we also did the single use plastic bag ban back in 2011. And now here we are revisiting the ban on expanded polystyrene. So just some cast comparisons. This is on the San Jose's website for sustainability. And I chose this because it gives you a good example of the options the IPS, fiber, plastic and paper options that are available to businesses. And in some cases, the cost differentials are cost neutral, and in some cases they are $0.01 cost difference depending on the unit that you purchase. So it's very different. I know with every different business people are purchasing a little bit more expensive material. Maybe some people are purchasing paper or whatever it might be. I know there might be a cost impact, but what that will be will be dependent, of course, on the business. But really, relative to what you're seeing here and what is mostly used, you can see the cost differential could be very low. And then California cities. So as I mentioned, we could be the 100th city to ban polystyrene. And this would be a ban, of course, a partial ban. This is not fully banning anything. You can see the cities that have partially banned in government facilities, partially banned polystyrene. Just in what we're doing for retail locations or for restaurant locations. And then lastly, a partial ban I'm sorry, a full ban that would include retail sales. And so this is just a blip that I'll Goleta shared with us relative to the EPS impact for businesses. So the average cost of a $20 meal and an estimate that 20% of meals are carried out, which means that there are 55,000 meals. Then this average restaurant uses 11,000 takeout containers per year, which translates to £550 of EPS that can be replaced with compostable alternatives. So that's it. I wanted to make sure we had some information. I'm happy to share this with my council colleagues. I will reiterate. To everyone that again, this is just an action that will begin the process to of course, we'd like to start the ordinance process. It gives us 120 days to think about the options and what we can emulate, similar to Pasadena or some some other cities that are doing the same thing or have already implemented what we want to. And for example, you know, working with our partners in labor and in business and making sure that we get it right. So it's the best vision for Long Beach is certainly most important. And I also want to note that, you know, we just sat here in the council meeting just approving a $10 million payment for one of the leaders in sustainability for the aquarium. And so as leaders, I feel personally that we need to be consistent in making sure that if we're going to do that, then why can't we ban polystyrene, a partial ban? We're not going from 0 to 1000. We're going from 0 to 100. And I think many of these individuals are experts here. Again, they're not just speaking from emotion, they're speaking from expertize and research. And I really appreciate that. And again, we've also unanimously supported climate change actions, lower L.A. River plans, we've breakwater discussions, recreation on our waterways. And the only letters of support or the letters of support that I receive were over well over 200 in my office. The only ones that brought up concerns were Dart Grocers Association and the California Restaurant Association. Only those three out of the people here today, we had about 26 people in support and about three in opposition. So again, I asked my council colleagues to really think about the work that's been done. Let's be respectful of that. It does take more money and it costs to do another study. I think we've already done that. The time is now to get this done. So thank you very much. Thank you. Councilmember Pierce. Well, I just want to say what a great job Councilmember Gonzales just did presenting that. I think that you've said everything that I had cued up and highlighted, ready to say, knowing that you were going to touch on, but and not such great detail. I also want to thank everybody that came out and stayed out tonight and not just tonight. People in this room, as she mentioned, have been working on this for over a decade. And I think there are two questions in front of us tonight. One is, what kind of city do we want to be for our children, for the environment? And Long Beach continues to talk about being a sustainable city. Right. We've had the commission my commissioner met with me. Kobe presented the sustainability plan where we look at in 2017. This was already done and part of your proposal was to ban Styrofoam. You've already done this and you've done it time and time again. Those are public meetings that are people are know are out there. And I think the second question is, outside of the environment, what other waste are we doing? We're wasting a lot of time kicking the trash down the road and not tackling it whenever people continue to say they want it. And I know that you guys are volunteers. I know the people that are out there cleaning our beaches, picking up every piece of Styrofoam, is a volunteer working and taking time away from their family to do that. And so I believe that what Councilmember Gonzalez has done has laid out a great path to get to what we've all said we wanted to get to by directing the city attorney to say, let's draft an ordinance but have process in there. I'd like to ask a question of the city attorney in the process when it says work with the Office of Sustainability, the Sustainability City Commission, community stakeholders. Could that be interpreted to also do one community meeting around this issue that restaurants and everybody else can come and be a part of? Councilmember Pearce. The way I read the motion as drafted. No, the request. The city attorney to work with staff to draft the ordinance relating to the ban. And I will say that the PowerPoint by Councilmember Gonzalez was very helpful to answer a lot of the questions that I had. But then the second part of the motion was to request the city attorney or designee, I mean, the city manager designee to work with officers sustainability on developing the public education campaign relating to the ban. So those are two, as I read them, two separate items. But we will be working with staff through the city manager's office, whoever they designate us to work with on preparing. If this motion were to pass the draft ordinance, and as I understand the presentation, we will be looking at cities like Pasadena and including those elements from there. And we have been talking to Pasadena actually about their ordinance, including those best practices. So in including working with community stakeholders to go through the process though, I mean, there's nothing keeping us from talking to some of the restaurants and making sure that they're meeting with staff or meeting with council to share their concerns or questions. Correct. There would be nothing correct that staff could have a community meeting on that, but it wouldn't be the city attorney's office leading that. That's fine. No, not that I thought it would be the city attorney. Thank you for that clarification. And just again, to reiterate, I mean, in 2007, the memo I'm looking at says that we had the Grocers Association, American Plastics Council and Long Beach Restaurants. And to be very clear, there were also two steps put forward by city manager, city staff before that directed to steps. And one of them being this step that we have in front of us, the work's been done. I think it's challenging for a city like Long Beach that our residents have vision and they have hope for what city we can be. And when we continue to let sometimes government bogged down by putting into too many steps to keep us from doing what's right. It's frustrating for for my constituents. And it's time for us to go ahead and put that step forward, guys. And so I'm I'm asking our council colleagues to vote with us today to make sure that we do the right thing, but to make sure that our staff and our sustainability commissioner and everybody else can move on to work on other things and not be talking about Styrofoam in another five years. So thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Councilmember Ringo. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank my council colleagues, Pierson Gonzalez, for bringing this forward as well and for inviting me to join them in this. I'm also, as many of you know, and that has been pointed out, I have history with this was pillow talk before but it's a it's now come full circle to fruition into a council meeting. The the fact of the matter is, is that as council members piercingly pointed out, this is talking about process. This has been a process. It's been a long, long process, more than ten years with many council members involved, including one named Durango. And it took up our time that we come to the forefront with this issue, that we bring it to the fore to forward, that we bring it to a closure in the sense of having some kind of ordinance that deals with this. I think Councilwoman Gonzales said it perfectly. We're not going from one to 1001 to 100. We're talking about implementation slowly so that eventually we develop what would be a workable ordinance that would be available to everybody as a member of the Coastal Commission. My my responsibility is to ensure access on our coast and also that it's a clean coast and it's part of that. I mean, there's no question that the cleanup at the Coast Commission has had on a yearly basis, polystyrene is the number two major polluter that's out there. They're always picking it up because it's always there. And we are a beach city. And I think as a beach city, we need to take that responsibility to ensure that we address the polystyrene issue. So I'm fully supportive of this of this memo, of this motion to move forward with with an ordinance. And I also very much support the fact that we need to get our stakeholders involved. They need to have we have to have their input. And one of the things that is that and Councilmember Pearce took the words right out of my mouth. There's a lot of volunteers out there, tons, millions of people who are volunteers who go to the beaches, volunteer their time to clean it up. So that people can enjoy the beauty that the beaches have to offer for us. So it's not only about the experts. It's not only about people who have an extensive knowledge of what polystyrene means to the environment. It's the volunteers who are out there every weekend cleaning it up because they know instinctively or maybe educationally what polystyrene does to not only our beaches, but to our waters and to our marine life . And that's where it's important. Very true. We just passed a motion to help our aquarium to continue their programs in education and climate change. There are still some people out there and one in the in the Oval Office who doesn't believe in climate change while it's real. I deal with it every month when I go to, of course, the commission meeting. We're always talking about sea level rise and we're talking about the impact of plastic in our oceans, and we're talking about the pollution that we deal with on a daily basis and that marine life that we're losing all the time because of the pollution that we have. So I do want to implore my council colleagues to support this motion, to move this forward so that we can have a a environmentally safe beach in Long Beach. Where is Long Beach water? What makes it long, anyway? That's that's a a rhetorical question that does not end that answer. But that's what we want. We want a beach that people could come to and enjoy. And that's the only way we're going to be able to accomplish that, is by having limits on our pollution. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. I want to start by thanking everyone that's here today. I'm Gabriela Natasha, the Marine Research Group. The stuff that you do is really important and I appreciate your input. Also love your your t shirts. I think that it really stands for something that I truly believe in. When I was elected to the city council, I came to an early council meeting and noticed that in the back where we would get water had cups that were not environmentally friendly. So I went out and purchased for all my council colleagues cups with their names on it for them to bring to council each week so that they would not be using throwaway cups. And so I'll return this to Councilmember Price and I know Ms.. Pearce doesn't know. Councilmember Pearce does not yet have one, but I'll work on that. Now in the back we have something different. This is a compostable cup. However, this cup was manufactured in Colorado and polluted its way all the way to Long Beach and then to recycle this specific kind of cup, it is recycled in Kern County. And so it's a different kind of pollution that we're talking about. And so I'm concerned that we're not really addressing the system as a whole. This cup, which many people hopefully don't use as often anymore because they have more environmentally friendly coffee cups. The challenge that some of the providers in my district have is how popular the order on demand has become. So now you order your drink on demand and just pick it up. And so people are reducing their reliance and utilization of those cups. And so what does that look like? Furthermore, there's a business in my district that has revenue of $5 million a year, which is significant to sales tax revenue in my district. And they use a cup similar to this. This cup is produced locally and is recycled in L.A. County, and they had a significant recycling program that they put into effect to ensure that cups like this are recycled. However. The programs available are, in my opinion, the ones from START are too expensive. They rely on businesses fronting the cost for it, and I don't think that's fair either. I think that there are steps in between that are not being brought in on planes and trains and automobiles and ten wheel 18 wheelers or don't have the interior . That's plastic. That makes this very difficult to recycle as well. I took part in the discussion that we had at the L.A. County level that actually moved over to the corn cups. And the challenge with the corn cups became and I think Natasha talked about the eventual options for composting is we don't have a long term compost available in the region and so those corn cups are ending back up in landfills in Long Beach were burning them and a corn cup actually burns better than some of these other alternatives, but we still have a challenge. Additionally, I go to Washington, D.C. with the Federal Legislative Committee and meet with the Army Corps of Engineers about our beaches. And and one of the challenges is. The problem is the people who are littering, whether they're using this cup or this cup, they're still going to be littering. And I think that we need to do a lot of public outreach in that way as well, because whichever cup is on the beach is going to come back. And I would also say that if you were to come to me today and say, Stacy, I want your support for a foam cooler ban immediately, I would support that because that specific kind of of Styrofoam is almost never recycled. It breaks up into tiny pieces. It has those kinds of issues along with it. And so I'd like to see us get some reduction in recycling goals. I'd like us to potentially instruct waste management, our recycler of residential recycling, to clean poly polystyrene and sell it back to the other recyclable areas. There's another secondary recycle cycle center in South L.A. County that could recycle those if they were cleaned properly. And they buy it because it has a market versus a cardboard, which we have piling up in our landfills as well, because the price of cardboard on the secondary market is so low. I appreciate that. We've done lots of research over the last ten years, and I know that we are a group of bright people who could come up with something bigger. I imagine that we could come up with instead of just a ban, we could say, any Long Beach business, who wants to buy whichever one of these cups is made locally? Let's say this one was made locally. All Long Beach businesses get a certain price on buying this kind of cup from a local manufacturer because we would be in a position then to say These are all paper, not plastic and filled recyclable cups. In what environment? And so just trying to find a bigger solution than just banning one item where they're going to replace that with another item that could, quite frankly, be less recyclable, that there are certain clamshells that don't have fiber in them, that are solid plastic that we actually are hearing are even worse off. So I'd like to figure out what that looks like and and go big. That would be my comments. And I look forward to hearing from my colleagues. Thank you, Councilmember Supernova. Thank you, Mayor Garcia. And I'd also like to thank all the speakers tonight. I really appreciate you coming out on a different issue I referenced. It's tough to have folks out during the holiday season when you have a lot of stakeholders involved. And it really appreciate you coming out five days before Christmas. Just by way of background, it was mentioned that I used to be on the Sustainable City Commission. I was actually a charter member in 2007 and served for seven years and two terms as chair. So when we referenced the the city's actions seven years ago, I remember that because that was our first year of our commission. And in fact, the very first speaker mentioned Frank Colonna in those days. So our city manager and his staff, knowing that that item would come up tonight, actually forwarded as a memo today from Suzanne Frick in 2007, November 28, and referencing that. So the other part of my background, I have to tell you, is I chair the Environmental Committee of City Council. I learned about this item 11 days ago. Now to compare that to what happened in 2007, the environmental committee held outreach, invited over a thousand people to come and meet on this issue and the plastic ban issue simultaneously. And to say I haven't done my due diligence as chair of this committee is a gross understatement. And so I'm really kind of painted into a corner here. I don't want to be an obstructionist based on process, protocol and principle, but I think I'm really there because I just need to do the bare minimum due diligence. What I have is a plan in place where I'm open to holding as many meetings as as possible, starting right away if my council colleagues can do it with me. Councilmember Pierson and and Vice Mayor Richardson. And get this item vetted. You guys had some great positions tonight, some great ideas. I took a lot of notes, so bear with me as I try to quote many of you. And I think we can put this together very quickly. Now, part of the proposal is 120 days to come back to to us with with just the council deliberation, the education plan and whatnot. I think we can work a fast track if we get the environmental community involved and and really get all the input with all the stakeholders. If I can just go through the item a little bit here. For the agenda item 14 and. I think, first of all, I should put the caveat in that that it it changed to involve city staff and that's a great move. But part two mentions the Sustainable City Commission. Part three. Mentions Economic Development Committee. And then I mentioned the 120 day item, and then upon approval, it will make it to the Environmental Committee. And I would suggest that sort of the the cart and the horse syndrome, I think it should come to the Environmental Committee first. We get it fully vetted. All the stakeholders can be invited that time. There will be none of this talk of, boy, you really try to slip this bias five days before Christmas. I've heard that on multiple issues over the years, and it's tough to do an item like this that has the word ban in it at this time. So. I'd also like to just to quote some of the folks and and I really appreciate Tom Surfrider being here. Sonya Coffey from Surfrider and also you, my nominee to replacement in the Sustainable City Commission. You had mentioned that you directed staff in the city of Manhattan Beach, but you mentioned the word outreach to the community , and that was evidently a key component that you had, and I think we need to do that. Elliot Gonzalez on the Sustainable City Commission, we served, I think, a little bit of time together that business friendliness. I think that what Surfrider does in their program is excellent and I think we could enhance that in the weeks to come because you're going to you'd have to wait 120 days anyway. So let's see what we can do from a council standpoint to enhance those programs, get the buzz out there that that it's open and robust. Speaking of robust, I think that we could possibly bring this back with stakeholder input and then present the city attorney with something that's ready for primetime if we go with it tonight. My fear is that it's in little too rough a form. Councilmember Mongeau just mentioned things that she like included. Many of the speakers mentioned many items they'd like included. If we do a little due diligence upfront, we can get a cleaner piece to the city attorney that might be able to be turned around quickly and more efficiently. My other fear is that coming back to another night like this where it's not quite right, and then we have another delay as it goes back. So with that, I'll go ahead and propose a substitute motion for a little different approach, and I'll just kind of briefly go over some of the points here. So we would remove the language of the ban of tonight's item. We would request the city manager or some someone else to work to form a stakeholder group as a primary means to create the well-informed public participation process. The working group would include environmental groups, small business and restaurant owners, nonprofits and churches, the polystyrene or other product manufacturers and distributors. And I'd written down city staff before the council ever mentioned this, but definitely Environmental Services, the Office of Sustainability and one that no one's mentioned is the Health Department. We're talking about food safety here. We have our own health department that's kind of unique in the state of California, and I'd like to see them involved. And economic development, I think, is another key player. Part three would be request the city manager. And to to develop the stakeholder group for litter collection, maintenance, disposal of polystyrene, recyclability of polystyrene and other alternate food service containers. Economic cost impacts on restaurant community regarding food service service containers, alternate disposal efforts, composting waste to energy conversion and secondary material recovery facilities. And again, Councilmember Mongeau alluded to that and it should say here, hold up, prop now. So. I'll hold up a prop. This is actually a food container. It's half of a container that holds. I think it's a lemon cake or something that comes in in a tin. That's only half of it. This would not be banned under our ordinance. So these are the types of things. Just food for thought. Pardon the expression that we might want to look at moving forward. So that is my. Motion, and I'd asked my colleagues to support it. Thank you. Next up, we have Vice Mayor Richardson. So do you. Well, I was just going to. So I just want to make sure that we there is a substitute motion on the floor. And before we move on. Is there a second on the specific motion? There's a second on the substitute motion. And before we move forward, Mr. Richard, attorney thing, do you want to clarify that motion? I think you wanted it clarified. Thank you, Mayor. Members of the council member. Council member. Superman was one of your items to was to remove item one. The second was to form a stakeholder group. And then the third was asking for information or a study from the city manager's office. Was there a referral to the environmental committee or where was this to go to to do this study? Yes. The third item would involve the environmental committee. I mean, we would get them involved at any one process here. Do you want that delineated at this point? Exactly. I think it would be helpful for the purposes of the motion to see if the item isn't moved forward tonight. Where it is. Where are you sending it to? So that these items could be brought back to that body? Okay. Well, I had mentioned the city manager as the entity developing the stakeholder group. He could designate the Environmental Committee to do that or be involved in that process or anyone of his choosing. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Next up, we have Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So just following along this conversation, let's see that last motion. Mr. Enviro Committee Chairman commits the environmental committee to a bunch more meetings. I don't know how the Environmental Committee feels about that, but but thank you for that substitute motion. So I just saw this presentation. It was it was put together well. And I think that the presentation from the aquarium adds a lot of context, particularly when, you know, ah, we're literally about to build. We just invested in building a new facility to talk about issues like that. So, you know, that's fresh in my mind and in my context. And then, you know, a few comments from the public. Some of them were striking. One, the statement about more plastic than fish in the ocean, that's just staggering to think about. You know, and that comes from someone who enjoys the ground fish. And I just think about the term. There's a lot of fish in the sea. Just, you know, it's it's kind of kind of a big term considering considering we are, you know, at the mouth of two rivers. I do think, you know, we should be leading on this and having conversation and setting a standard, especially if we're going to expect communities upriver to follow suit so that we don't continue to pick up everybody else's trash. I think there were a number of good points brought up by the council. So in terms of like the engagement, the health department makes a lot of sense to me. The environmental standards looking at that makes a lot of sense. Councilmember Mongo had a lot of good recommendations in terms of looking at the awkward shaped things. And, you know, if we're going to, you know, repeal, you've got to repeal and replace, right? If you going to ban, you got to replace it. How can we guide that process? And, you know, I think there's a way we've learned a few things from the banning of plastic bags about enforcement. I remember when that went, you know, came the council. There was a lot of conversation about being punitive to small businesses and and how would we handle sort of how we handle , you know, fines and things like that and enforcement. And I would say whatever we do here, we need to prioritize enforcement closer to the beaches, into the rivers, and ask staff to look at that. And I heard the concern about engaging businesses or stakeholder groups, and that's all supportive. So what I want to do is try to throw a compromise motion that at that keeps the integrity of the first the first motion, frankly, just because on principle, I believe a lot of work went into this. And I want to make sure a lot of work went into this and a lot of stakeholders were involved in this, and that should be used as a starting point. So we'll start with the structure of that, and we'll try to integrate some of the concerns that that Councilman Supernormal and Councilmember Mungo expressed. And so particularly, I understand the concern about being an environmental committee chair and cart before the horse and those sorts of things. But I have seen when, you know, sometimes when the city attorney is the one to write the the ordinance, we don't we we tend to go get the input ourselves and then be very prescriptive on what we ask them to write. And I think this is an opportunity to do the opposite. We can delay just a little bit and ask the city attorney to get in, get engaged in writing the ordinance now, but be a part of the process, that outreach, that input process, so more specifically referred to the Environmental Committee to do a little bit more outreach with these stakeholders as a part of crafting the ordinance. So when it comes back, it respects the work that's been done, the ten years of history with former Councilmember Turanga, the work that the sponsors have done and sort of make sure this is a series of ten because I understand when folks ask about including stakeholders, but I also understand when that's a tactic to delay just when there's no intent to actually bring anything back. So I think there might be a way to sincerely, sincerely move forward, make sure those things are are included. And to be more specific, what might come back are very specific, you know, feedback about the timing because there wasn't in these recommendations was a lot of flexibility. I saw in the main motion about the timing for implementation, there was no conversation about finding all of those things, like the punitive elements are what we need, what we actually need the business community to weigh in on. So what I'm hoping is maybe we can get ourselves out of the way and, you know, add, you know, an extra two month delay to this timeline for the city attorney and the committee to actually work and gather information and use that. So we have a draft to look at. So I'm going to structure that as my substitute motion. So the main integrity of this at a at a, you know, two months to this 180 day time, 120 day timeline. So let's make it 180 days. Let's ask staff to a city attorney to begin the process, but make sure, you know, it's inclusive of those things that we didn't prescribe tonight and allow that feedback to come in in terms of like those punitive elements and then to actually add staff as a part of. The second piece of this motion here asks staff to look at, you know, explore some programs or some opportunities for us to take in consideration some of Stacey's excuse me, Councilwoman Mungo's recommendations, because they may have made a lot of sense. I don't have an awkwardly shaped Styrofoam item hold up, but it was compelling. It makes sense to me. So if the intent here is to try to find some common ground, something moves forward. I hope that that was a satisfactory compromise that still moves us forward. So that's my substitute substitution. Oh, the mayor left. I'm in charge. Okay, so that's my substitute. Substitute motion. Is there a second on that? Oh. Councilwoman Gonzalez. Great. Okay. So next we have Councilman Austin. Thank you very much. And first of all, I'd like to thank my my colleagues, Councilmember Gonzalez, Pierce and Urunga, for making this meeting fun and exciting and educational. This is an important issue, obviously, to many of us here in this beach city. I want to especially thank the public for coming out. Your public comments were not only educational, but, as I mentioned, to show that we have a lot of subject matter experts among our residents here and a lot of people doing a lot of great work at Goleta, the Marine research. Katy, thank you for all you do. I had an opportunity to sit in on a presentation about a year and a half ago, two years ago with Captain Charles Moore. I found out that he was the grandson of William Reed, which was another December last year, would take you back to some of the conversations we had as a council. But he signed a book called Plastic Ocean, and reading that book was very, very informational for me. And last year, I actually sponsored and participated in a beach clean up with the Surfrider Foundation, which was very helpful to me because I witnessed the negative impacts of Styrofoam on our white sandy beaches. And that's a no pun intended. It was that our beaches are a Styrofoam sand blend. And and it's very concerning for for several of the reasons I expressed here earlier. My question I mean and I do support a process, you guys, I'm consistent in that regard. I'm always going to be for a process that and make sure that we we do it right. We're not rushing that. We're considering all factors and we're engaging all stakeholders. And so I believe the substitute substitute motion accomplishes that. I do think but I do have a couple of questions and why this? This particular item does not ban retail use because at the end of the day, I mean, what we are proposing to do is we're asking businesses, small businesses, to alter their practices, but we're not asking our residents to alter their practices or retailers to alter anything. And so that is something I think we need to really, really consider if we're going to be intellectually honest about an approach to ban Styrofoam in the city of Long Beach. Again, I said I think the process should be fair and measured, it should be transparent. And I think the start up accomplishes that. Styrofoam doesn't work well in microwave oven. A Band-Aid in my own household. And I want to just just to say that, you know, week after week, we hear issues come up. And it's it's really important, I think, for us to be consistent. And I want to commend my my council colleagues for being environmental stewards. I want to commend the public for their commitment to the environment. Obviously there's some great efforts to to to to to to fight for the beaches and the environment and fight for the residents here. But there's other types of pollution as well. And we discussed those ad nauseum last week with over three and a half hours of study session, noise pollution, air pollution. You know, and I would just say, on behalf of my residents, I'm sure that they would appreciate some consistency on that issue as well. Right. Thank you. And so when we when we talk about other types of pollution and impacts on neighborhoods and communities and other areas of the city, unless, let's remember, the passion in which we fought for this evening. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Pryce. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I, too, want to thank my colleagues, and especially Councilwoman Gonzales, for bringing this item forward. I think the presentation that she did was excellent. And I have to say, I'm a big fan of people articulating their position via PowerPoint or in whatever way it helps them identify what is important to them and why . And I'm glad to see that that is something that we are doing more often because I feel like I learn every time there is such a presentation. So I'm very grateful for that. And I know Councilman Superman did it last week. And again, same thing. Perhaps that's the way I learn. I found it very, very helpful. So I want to thank my colleagues for bringing this forward. This is actually a really great item. We, my chief of staff, Julie Maliki, had worked with Council District Twos Chief of staff about a year ago in exploring this item. And so we did a little bit of study on the history of the item and a kind of understanding what had happened. And I agree with my colleagues that there has been a great deal of work on this particular item in the past. I do think it's important, though, that we have stakeholders involved at every stage, and what happens is that people change, right? Business owners change, community organization leaders change. And it's important for people to feel heard at the time that the item is happening. So to to talk about a process that happened that they weren't involved in doesn't really make people feel like they were heard. We have had Goleta come out to our community meeting to do a presentation and we've been very happy to support a lot of their efforts sponsoring some of the programs that they do in our local schools since we were my district represents a lot of the coastal community and so we've actually partnered with them. We do trash pickups. We do a monthly trash pickup event. I'd love to see some of the folks here at them. We we have done two now where we've picked up trash with about 30 community members. And yes, there's a lot of Styrofoam. It's all over the place. It's very frustrating to see. And it just makes me sad, honestly, to see it all over the community and especially in the lagoon and in our waterways. So I support the item. I wanted to hear from all of the people who came out to advocate for the item and from my colleagues so that I could really consider what everybody had to say and kind of trying to decide where I stand on this particular item tonight. I think it's important, like I said, to include current stakeholders, current business owners. I want them to feel heard. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Councilman Super Na. I don't take his expertize on the commission and the work that he did there lightly. I think it's definitely something that is worthy of the respect, respect for everybody, the ones bringing the item today and also those who have worked diligently on this item in the past. My only concern, and I have to be honest, I'm a little bit confused about our substitute and our substitute substitute because it sounds like they're similar or very similar. My only concern would be I think it's great to have a date certain because I understand that it happens when things get sent out for a study or something and they never come back. It's happened to several of my items, but I think it's important. I'm okay with the date certain. My my question is if really the ordinance is going to reflect the involvement of the stakeholders, would we not want the city attorney's office to. Listen to the information that we get back, because what's the point of us having a process if parallel contemporaneous to the process? They're drafting an ordinance not mindful of what's happening in the various committees or commissions or stakeholder meetings and that kind of thing. So I'm okay with the date certain, but I wonder if there's a way. I wonder if Vice Mayor Richardson, if you're open to a friendly to your substitute substitute that has a date certain but doesn't but allows them to start their ordinance drafting maybe after some meetings have been had so that people actually are heard because if they're drafting an ordinance and we're doing a stakeholder process, then the ordinance isn't going to reflect what the stakeholders are saying. And what I loved about the presentation that Councilwoman Gonzalez gave is that she is open to and is suggestive of some business incentives and business ideas. So perhaps I know we've done a lot of outreach, but we haven't done outreach with today's stakeholders in the business community. I know that for a fact because a lot of my businesses didn't know this item was on, so I would like to at least put that out there and not get the criticism of us. We didn't know about it. Sure. Yeah. And I think and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to clarify. I think that was the intent that when I say begin the process not of drafting it. Right? We just don't want to have to take a step of going back out, do outreach, coming back to the council, going through more procedure. Right. So the when I say involved in the process, I mean in that stakeholder part with the committee, like we want that to help inform those items that weren't prescribed tonight. Tonight was very high level. It said we want some some phase in it said we want some incentives and said we want, you know, to look at the, you know, any punitive elements that should be informed by the businesses who are impacted. So rather than like we know what, we need input on the council saying we're okay with getting input from them. So what I'm saying is city attorney like we're, you know, via councilman super knoll's recommendation of the committee just go, you know , let's sort of narrow that down, get that input there, give it straight to city attorney. When it comes back to council, we're ready to make make a no one can say that haven't been engaged council expressed interest in in doing something substantive and we want to just demonstrate that we're serious. It's not just a and we've seen it before, you know, delay to delay to the delay. Right. So so I think you're right. And so if that you need that to be a friendly, accept it. That's fine, too. Yeah. I mean, just just something to the effect of the city attorney to wait prior prior to drafting the ordinance, wait for feedback from the various stakeholder communities or groups. So the way I think it would be, we added an extra, I think 60 days, right? So we would hope that that element, that element, you know, stays. So the know outreach to the stakeholders through the committee happens in two months. And, you know, so that we know it's not a perpetual thing and that still allows the four months they originally requested for for crafting the item. I mean, the ordinance and sometimes and frankly, some of it may not be in the ordinance like incentives and all that stuff. Those a lot of times are separate programs as funding is available and it's not linked to an ordinance. So all of that together could come back. Okay. Thank you. Let me let me go ahead. Before Mr. City attorney, I mean, a little clarification as well here. So just before we get to I never want to have a chance to speak. I want to just say a few things and then go back to that. The substitute substitute this on the motion on the floor. One, I just wanted to say for all the for all the folks that are out here, like thank you for your advocacy. And so, you know, when this ordinance comes back, whether it's in 90 days or 120 days, when it comes back to to this body and certainly when it's passed, I look forward to signing it and I look forward to getting making this law. I think that's really important. So I'm going to be very supportive of where this is going and where this well, this will end up. I think that Long Beach led the way on the plastic bag issue. It was a tough vote. We led the way, more cities followed and the state went and did their work in this case. But a lot of cities have done this work already. Long Beach can help lead the way. And eventually I think what will happen is the state again will follow and we'll end up with this with a statewide policy, which is oftentimes, as you all know, cities have to lead for the state to follow in these important environmental issues. This has everything to do with with what's happening currently, as you all know, in our oceans and on our planet. And it's absolutely direct ties to our climate change initiative. And so I support that. What I did want to say is what I think the substrate substitute has. I think the way I heard the motion is and I want to thank you for the clarification from Councilman Price and others, is a sense that you were going to take probably 60, 90 days or a couple of months to do public outreach. The Environmental Committee of the City Council will be involved. There'll be conversations at the Economic Development Commission. There will be conversations and hopefully reaching out to the business community, reengage our environmental folks and our leaders within the first few months of that process. Then after that process is complete, then at that point the city attorney begins drafting. The draft ordinance does need to go back to the council for approval to start the ordinance. But it begins it begins. The drafting process begins after all that input has been collected over the next couple of months. And then at that point, the draft ordinance comes back to the city council. It sounds like to me now 180 days, is that what you had said? I mean, I think that's that's I think, what, six months? Okay. I mean, that's. I. Think, you know, that could be scaled back. But I mean, if that's that's the will of the council 180 days. Is fine. And so then you. Can come back sooner if they're done. Well, if it's done sooner, yeah. Obviously, the most important part is the public outreach portion at the start. Right. So you don't want to rush the meetings with business. You don't want to rush the meetings with the the commissions and the committee. And if there is if it comes back sooner, at that point, the city attorney, that really becomes up to you. And I think in fairness, I do I do think it's important to engage the small business owners that are out there that have legitimate concerns. They obviously, a lot of them I've heard from care about the environment and they just want to know and want to, you know, both on the education side, but they want to be partners in this, too. And so let's let's let's make it a win and ensure that our small, small businesses that are operating good restaurants are also partners in this process. And that we can all go and hopefully do this together, I think would be ideal. And so I think that was the substitute substitute. Mr. Vice Mayor. Sounds sounds really good. And I think the small business piece is spot on. Let's not make the mistake of thinking all our small businesses are using plastic bags. Let's just be honest about implementation. Right. This is the we're going to need a lot more education in multilingual format for this to really be a success. So. Yes. Absolutely. And so I agree. To me, the sub sub sounds, I think, fair, and it includes the business community. And I want to thank Councilman Gonzales. I think you've done a great job in leading this issue as well. So thank you for that. Councilmember Pearce. Yes, you clarified some of my question. So I definitely am supportive of the substitute substitute as Vice Chair of the Environmental Committee, as I would like to say that I definitely want to push to have that meeting happen soon so that we can spend the next two months engaging with stakeholders and hopefully the next two months after that, drafting an ordinance so that we can come back soon. So with my committee members sometime in January, maybe. So that's all I'm going to say. I think everybody's done a great job. I think it's a late night. And I just want to continue to say thank you guys for sticking in there with us. Councilmember supermodel. Thank you. I think everyone in the room knows what my intent was. If anyone thought it was a delay tactic, you are absolutely wrong. I was trying to speed up the process. I guess I suffer from being around too long. I've seen this go the wrong direction too many times for something is sent over here and we never see it again. I guess the 2000 motion would qualify under that heading and I was sincerely trying to avoid that. Also, just just one one of the comments that the vice mayor said was, get ourselves out of the way. It's not that he's wrong and I'm right, that it's just so contrary to my style that we're probably never going to agree on that. I'm very hands on and and that's just the way I work. Finally, I'd also just like to add one other city department and that is serve not your kind of serve, but the SC RF. I just realized in my credentials I forgot to mention I believe I'm chair of that committee right now. And so when we meet next year, remember that Vice Mayor and I will do everything I can to hold the meetings efficiently and and soon. And we can have a quorum with two members, myself and and Janine peers, if the vice mayor is not available. And the whole purpose is to get that stakeholder input. That was my goal for that. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that, Mr. City. Attorney. Mayor. Thank you for the clarification. Just a couple other points. I think the vice mayor's motion substitutes substitute included the recommendations as amended by the council member from the first District. Yes. Which would. Okay, thank you. Which should include elimination of the sale. And just the and this is for the beginning point, I think at the Environmental Committee meeting, we would probably provide them with some sort of a a draft similar to what Pasadena has adopted as a starting point for discussion, because that was in as part of her motion and part of her handout. So we wouldn't be drafting a motion, we would be waiting for feedback. But as far as a starting point, we may provide them a copy of the Pasadena ordinance for a starting point to discuss. And then we would also send this to the Economic Development Commission for discussion of local business incentives. And as the Vice Mayor said, that may or may not be included as part of the ordinance because that would have a financial component that may not be part of that. And then I had 180 days. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Councilman Mongo. Thank you. I am. I'm not in favor of making it longer. I mean, I'll go with it. I also think we should bring it back 120 days. I was looking for something closer to May 4th. I would like to see us also write into the ban. Specifically things like this and the Styrofoam ice chests. I think those are really terrible and I think that there are many alternatives already. But I would also like to see some exemptions if you have a business that has a recycling program on site so that they don't go over to a worse cup, they should be exempt from the ban. Or and or we should talk about what are the other things that many of these industry groups move over to that are actually worse? And we should make sure that that's included. And I think that's part of the dialog of bringing it back, because if we just say we're going to do a ban and we're going to reach out to the community and hear how they feel about it. And they're going to just change over to products that are worse. We need to talk about that because I don't think that that gets to any of our outcomes. So I'll definitely be throwing a stakeholder in there who will come and discuss the recycle program or what that looks like, and potential options for other businesses that want to implement something such as that because the other products that they have to choose from aren't as friendly. So thanks so much. Thank you, Councilmember Andrews. Yes, thank you. I'm just hoping you could just bear with me for the next 20 minutes. We should be able to get through this guy. First of all, I just want to commend Lena for such a fantastic job. And I think everyone of us really understand now a little more about what we're trying to do, because it's very important, especially when you talk about our oceans and the cleanliness, that we should be really looking forward to. So at this point, I would just like to call for the question of we can stop all of this right now. Okay. There's a there's a motion in a second called call for the question, which was any objection? I'm going to go ahead and go take a vote. Okay. No objection. Great. So with that members with no objection, please go ahead and cast your votes for the motion in a second. I'm cued up if that's prevent the system from working. No, we need to do the voice vote. A voice vote. Yes. On the call for the question. Yeah. There's a. There's a. There's. All right, that's fine. Well, on the on the actual motion itself, that's not. Yeah, yeah. On the motion. It's on the motion itself. Yeah. Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any oppose? The abstentions. We can't say in any ways. Okay. Motion carries unanimously, so great. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone, for coming out. And we will now move on to. Yes. Wow. It's been a long night already. We're going on to 13 and then 24 and I see Rob out there. You're very patient.