Recommendation to direct City Manager to support State legislation that would add a permanent seat to the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Agency Board of Directors for the City of Long Beach without disproportionately affecting representation from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors or adding more than four new voting members to the Board, bringing Board membership up to no more than 17 voting members.
Wishing Karis. Thank you. We already handle 16. That makes it number 17. Item 17 is communication from Councilman Austin, Councilwoman Gonzalez, Councilman Andrews and Councilmember Durango. Recommendation directed this recommendation to direct the city manager to support state legislation that would add a permanent seat to the Metro Board of Directors for the City of Long Beach. Thank you, Councilman Austin. Thank you very much. And I want to thank my colleagues for signing on on this very, very important item, which is very consistent with our state led agenda that was adopted by this council in 2015. There is and specifically, we stated that our led our agenda was would be to monitor or sponsor state legislation that proposes to change the structure of the state and regional boards on which Long Beach is represented and maximize the city's representation. There is currently legislation making its way through the legislature. Specifically, the House of Origin was in the State Senate SB 268 by Tony Mendoza. Senator Tony Mendoza and was approved in committee as well as the Senate floor. Now it's in the Assembly. Currently, that bill has quite seeks to to restructure the MTA board, but it does not have a permanent seat for Long Beach. And as you all know, Metro serves as the largest metropolitan transportation planning organization in the nation and is comprised of 13 voting members and one ex-officio member. Metro does not include a permanent seat for the city of Long Beach currently, and as the second largest city in L.A. County, inclusive of the port of Long Beach, Long Beach shares representation with 25 cities, mostly from the Gateway Council of Governments, but also from surrounding areas. As part of the southeast Long Beach sector, current law prescribes membership on the Metro Board directors to be five members of the Board of Supervisors, the mayor of the City of Los Angeles, two public members and one members of the City of Los Angeles, appointed by the Mayor of the City of Los Angeles, and four members, each of whom shall be a mayor or a member of the city council appointed by the L.A. County Selection Committee. And these are from four sectors the North County, San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley sector, the southwest corridor sector in the southeast Long Beach sector, which we are a part of. And again, we compete with 25 cities for that seat. I'm really happy to say that currently today, our mayor serves on the MTA board. He was recently selected and he's doing a fantastic job. Almost we saw almost immediate results once he was appointed to that board. But the years that preceding that, eight years, we weren't at the table. And we have to ask ourselves what actually happened during those eight years. Measure R was passed and major decisions in terms millions of millions of dollars were planned for transportation throughout the region . And most recently Measure M was was passed by the voters in L.A. County. Long Beach was not necessarily at the table in terms of setting the priorities for the expenditure plan. I think it's very, very important that that we again and I've said this long before I ever got on the city council that Long Beach have a strong regional presence on boards, particularly like the MTA. And I'd like to just move this, this agenda forward to, to, to, to support legislation in any legislation coming out of the Sacramento. And hopefully it's this session that would include a permanent seat for the city of Long Beach. Lastly, I would state that a permanent seat through legislation would improve our city's influence regionally and assure long term benefits to local taxpayers who depend on and are impacted by the decisions at the MTA. So I'd like to make a motion to move that the city council direct the city manager to support state legislation that would add a permanent seat to the L.A. County MTA Board of Directors for the City of Long Beach without disproportionately affecting representation from the L.A. County Board of Supervisors or adding more than four new voting members to the board, bringing the board membership to no more than 17 voting members again. And I appreciate the second by Councilmember Gonzalez. This this is very, very important to the city of Long Beach. It is consistent with our state led agenda. And I would like to also get a. Have input on this as well. We have Diana Tang, who has also been working very, very hard with our state led agenda. Mr. Mayor, if I might, my. Mayor, members. Of the city council, I believe that Councilmember Austin provided a fairly robust description of the bill and what it chooses to do. Currently, the City of Orange does not have a position on this. The bill is in the California Assembly that's been referred to local government and transportation and does not currently include a proposal to add a seat for a Long Beach. And so the bill must pass. Both policy committees by July 14th. We do have an opportunity to ask for amendments that do do what the recommended action tonight here at state. And so we stand ready to implement your direction. Thank you. Is there public comment on this? Okay. Councilman Gonzalez. Thank you. I just wanted to thank Councilman Austin for bringing this forward. I think it's absolutely needed, especially in addition, as we have millions of dollars of investment along the the metro. And we should certainly, you know, have a seat at the table, an additional seat at the table to be able to talk about so many things happening in our city, but also just have a regional seat at the table. But, Diana, I wanted to ask. So July 14th is the the deadline basically. What happens next after that? What is the process? July 14th is the deadline to get out of policy committee. The bill is key to fiscal and so it would need to go to the Assembly Appropriations Committee as well. And the deadline to get out of that committee is September 1st. So assuming that it passes both policy committees on the appropriation committee, then it would go to the assembly floor for a vote by the full assembly. And because we have heard from Senator Mendoza staff that there will likely be amendments, the bill would need to go back to the Senate for concurrence before it would be eligible for the governor's consideration. So end of the year, we're thinking sometime around then I believe end of October, around that time frame. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. I do want to come to an answer. So I'd also just like to add that I didn't mention that this bill got out of of the state Senate, got out of policy committee. It was also voted on on the Senate floor and passed. There have been several iterations of this type of bill moving through the legislature over the last few years. And this is the furthest such a bill has gotten. This one has me concerned because it doesn't not prescribe a seat for Long Beach, a permanent seat for Long Beach. And I will just state that, you know, our state senator, Ricardo Lora, did support this bill as well moving forward. So there is there's, I guess, support for some sort of change on the MTA board. We just want to make sure that we're not left behind. We're going to have public comment in just a minute, I think. But I just want to reiterate, I think what Councilman Nelson's point is that it's been the position of the city, I think both from as mayor and certainly as members of the council, that this body would support changes if, if and when Long Beach was explicitly added as a voting member of the Metro Board at Long Beach were to gain a seat. And so I think while this has been discussed, certainly Diana Taylor, government affairs manager, is a thing can be there in the past at former iterations. We discussed this last year as well. I think this explicitly puts the city council on record once again and just making very clear that that we would support a bill that would include Long Beach as having an explicit membership permanently on the seat. With that, let me invite any public comment. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Members of the council. My name is. Sadly, I'm here on behalf of State Senator Tony Mendoza. On his behalf, I wanted to thank you for your courtesy of letting me speak. Sentiment also has been supportive of the idea of having Long Beach. On an expanded. And reorganized MTA board. Last year he offered Senate Bill 1472 and Long Beach was listed as one of the seats. There's a historical reason for that. Some of you may remember that before the current MTA was organized, Long Beach had a seat on the previous commission. However, last year, Senator decided to hold his bill 1472, which had the provision for Long Beach because there were three concerns that. A lot of organizations raised. They'd had two legislative appointments made by the speaker and the pro tem. The people were not happy about that and the size of the board was 25 members and people felt it was too big and secondly, that there needed to be a local process. So the Senate went back to the drawing board. He has met at least six or seven times with a working group consisting of the League of Cities, L.A. Division, the Independent Cities, Contract Cities, the County City Selection Committee, the mayor of L.A. and the chair of the MTA board. And the current. Bill emerged out. Of that discussions. And now it's a very simple bill. It essentially expands the board to make sure that the 87 cities other than the city of L.A., the city of L.A. and the Board of Supervisors between them are represented on the board. That is proportionate to the share of the population that govern the 87 cities. That includes you represent 52% of the county's population, the city of L.A., around 38%. Both of them. Have 31%, each of the board seats. So by expanding the board once again, we hope that we can accommodate various groups. What the bill does not do right now, unlike last year, is specify which cities should serve on the MTA board, and that is at the insistence of the three city associations and the city and the county city selection committee. So the Senator wanted me to come here to make sure that I explain that to you. And he would very strongly encourage and he would work with you. Mr. Mayor, the council members, if you wish to work with him, to stress his recommendation that language should be accommodated on the MTA board. But it is a decision that this time is developed through this consensus process, and I've named the groups to you. The second issue that Senator wanted me to bring up to you is the part of the motion that restricts the size to 17 members. If we do that, then the current imbalance which runs against the interests of the smaller cities, 87 cities, will continue. And I'll be happy to get into the details with that. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. And thank you to the senator. Any other public comment? See? None. Well, there is a motion and a second on the floor to support on as part of our legislative agenda, to support a bill that would have Long Beach as a permanent seat. Please cast your votes. Motion carries. Thank you. Next item. I think that was the last item was public comment. Second public comment period at this time. My name is Steven Cardio.