Recommendation to receive and file a one-year update on the implementation of the Racial Equity and Reconciliation Initiative.  (Citywide)
Report from City Manager Recommendation to receive and file a one year update on the implementation of the Racial Equity and Reconciliation Initiative citywide. Great. I'm happy to make the motion and kick it to staff for presentation. Thank you very much, Mr. Vice Mayor. So, yes, we do have a presentation for you. Our team has done a tremendous amount of work over the past year plus and culminated in a really comprehensive report that's in front of you tonight. So we will give you a summary and I'll turn it over to Theresa Chandler and Alana Grant to walk us through it. Thank you, Tom. So. Good evening, Honorable Vice Mayor and members of the City Council. I'm really happy to be here in partnership with our newly appointed equity officer, Elena Grant, to share equity, racial equity and reconciliation one year update. We're really excited to share some of the work that has been done by our equity leadership team and champions from across the city departments. Though we have a long way to go. We have made a lot of progress with uplifting this work since the initiative was initially approved. We also don't want to proceed without making a formal acknowledgment that today is the first day of Black History Month. This initiative centered and amplified the black community voices, and we honor this spirit as we lead racial equity work for the city of Long Beach. If we were to cover all the work that has taken place since the initial approval, it would definitely take us longer than 15 minutes. But to keep our conversation brief this evening, tonight we're going to cover we're going to walk through our implementation of the initiative, including the staffing infrastructure in some of the most prominent updates. We're going to walk through the reconciliation investments, share about some of the promising practices and challenges identified throughout the first year. And we'll take a look ahead at our two year priorities. In our initial presentation, we delve deep into how we got to this point as a city, as our city leadership. You all declared racism as a public health crisis and then put in a call to action for the city team to prepare the framework for reconciliation, to put Long Beach in a position to address systemic racism. Ultimately, our vision is that race and ethnicity do not determine social and economic outcomes for those who live and work in Long Beach. This framework continues to serve to support the way we move this work forward and hold us accountable not only to ourselves, but to the community at large. We continue to acknowledge, listen, convene and catalyze in multiple spaces as we proceed with this critical work. As a quick reminder, Council adopted the Racial Equity and Reconciliation Initiative initial report on August 11th, 2020. Each of the four goals have anywhere from 3 to 8 strategies. Upon council direction, we walked away with nearly 120 potential actions to support all of these strategies. Tonight's presentation highlights key updates within each goal and provides information on some of the actions underway. The next few slides will explain how the Office of Equity organizes staff to add capacity to our small but mighty team. I will also describe some of the tools we've developed to support city staff in understanding and operationalizing equity. You all have seen our implementation structure in previous presentations. Today we would like to highlight some of the changes to this infrastructure. First, we rebranded the Racial Equity Advisory Group to the Racial Equity Executive Team. We wanted to we wanted the name to be reflective of our intentions for convening department heads. The executive team plays an active role in learning and implementing equity frameworks within their department. Additionally, workforce equity has emerged as a policy workgroup priority. Members will explore the feasibility of making recommendations to the city's personnel, policies and procedures with support from the Civil Service and human resources departments and the City Attorney's Office. Lastly, rather than convening a large workgroup for Communications, Office of Equity Staff is working closely with the public affairs team to develop tools and strategies for equitable communications. We would like to provide a few in-depth updates on some of our work groups. To achieve a future where race does not determine social and economic outcomes. Accurate and specific data collection is critical to our decision making. The Data and Performance Metrics Work Group began by creating an implementation strategy to address the proposed actions within the initial report, such as creating racial equity centered benchmarks for our results based accountability process and developing equity profile snapshots that allow users to compare citywide population level indicators across council districts. Over the last year, workgroup members supported the Technology and Innovation Department and Commission in researching best practices around the governance of facial recognition technology. Finally, workgroup members helped develop the Equitable Data Collection Toolkit, which works in tandem with the city's Communications Plan for Equity Toolkit, Data Privacy Guidelines and Digital Engagement Toolkit. Following the Government Alliance for Race Equity Theory of Change. We first began with normalizing conversations about race within the city organization. We do this to establish shared language and grounding for our work. The Internal Transformation Workgroup consists of 1 to 2 champions from every citywide department. Champions facilitate racial equity one on one trainings and are actively involved in the Results based Accountability Training Series. We have a total of 41 champions and over the last year they completed 32 hours of capacity building workshops. They've also trained nearly 1000 city employees, and currently six departments have fully trained their entire staff. The word cloud on the slide comes from the Champions Responses to our Year two survey. When asked what three words they would use to describe being a champion, challenging, emotional and important were among the top. These words underscore how impactful but how hard this work is. The Framework for reconciliation began in response to an act of police violence. Consequently, community stakeholders pushed for the city to explore the creation of non-police civilian response teams. The Alternative Crisis Response Work Group became our first special project as this objective garnered support from City Council with funding to pilot an alternate response program. The workgroup is developing recommendations for a non-police civilian crisis response team to respond to nonviolent, non-medical, non-criminal calls for service related to mental health crises, with technical assistance from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government Performance Lab. The workgroup plans to conduct stakeholder engagement with community members and service providers later this month. And we are hopeful to have a pilot model up and running by the end of the summer. Next, we're going to walk you through some of the specific updates and accomplishments that fall under each of the goals. I'm sure you noticed that the one year update is just as long as the initial report. And that's because there are so many actions to address. Our update focuses on implementing the immediate and short term potential actions outlined in the initial report, as these items were estimated to require less than six months and between six months and a year for implementation respectively. In the report, the updates are formatted in a table just as you see on the slide. Updates were gathered from department leadership, racial equity champions and other staff between July and December of 2021. Each potential action identifies the city department and or workgroup assigned to the item. There's a status indicating whether the action item is completed in progress or not started. Over the last year, the implementation team and corresponding city departments began implementing 93 immediate and short term potential actions and have completed 12 of the recommendations uplifted in the initial report by aligning existing resources, programs and staff. In Goal one, we are acknowledging that government has long been the creator and perpetual perpetual excuse me perpetuate of racist policies and practices. And it is our role and responsibility to proactively dismantle the systemic racism. To date, we have made the most progress and goal one because we had to start internally in order to create a foundation to effectively uplift the actions outlined in goals two, three and four. We've already talked about many of the accomplishments that are listed on the slide, but we want to take a moment to highlight one more as well as some of the work that's in progress. Earlier earlier this year, the Council directed the city manager to work with the Human Relations Commission to update and expand its mission and scope to align with the recommendations from the initial report. The Equity in Human Relations Commission's name, purpose functions and membership were modified with stakeholders input and approved by the City Council last fall. Financial management is working to transform the city's procurement processes to remove barriers for black and other historically marginalized business communities by streamlining processes and policies, developing resources for internal and external stakeholders, and improving outreach. Mechanisms to. Racial equity. 1 to 1 is a staff led training that provides a foundational understanding of racial equity. Though adapted from care, this training uses local data to contextualize the inequities in Long Beach, and it explains the historic role of government in creating and maintaining inequities. The training also introduces the equity lens, which staff can apply to various elements of their work. Additionally, the Office of Equity is utilized utilizing anti-racist results based accountability, also known as RBI, to develop and operationalize racial equity action plans for the 21 citywide departments. These strategies will be specific and measurable guaranteeing guaranteeing that we can monitor and evaluate our impact in the years to come. Allen is going to walk you through the steps of RBA framework later in this presentation. The acts, the actions outlined and goal to provide an opportunity to systemically look at the local and economic barriers which perpetuate violence in communities and begin to address them. We are focused on moving upstream in order to address the root causes of violence and continue to expand on community safety efforts from a holistic place that includes a spectrum of city departments and cross-sector collaboration efforts. This goal also focuses on building a coordinated reentry network, as well as a structural city investment in best practice and what works for community based violence prevention and reentry. The Health Department is in the process of filling positions related to community safety and youth development. The youth and Emerging Adult Strategic Plan, as you know, was adopted by council last February. $50,000 of reconciliation funding was allocated for the Long Beach Advancing Peace Steering Committee in four place based areas across the city, and 100,000 to contract with the nonprofit partnership to provide technical support to startup and small community based organizations. Libra funding will be allocated to expand the violence interrupter model from central Long Beach into North Long Beach. Staff concluded a landscape analysis of the Reentry Service Network in Long Beach and drafted a report with recommendations to pilot a reentry integrated model. And the police department is working with human resources, civil service, civil service and labor organizations to develop the roles and responsibilities of the community services assistance which will be unarmed civilians trained. Trained to respond to nonviolent crimes. Goal three comes directly from the Long Beach community, calling for reimagining of police practices and assurances that none would disproportionately and negatively impact the black community and communities of color. And so it takes a deeper dove into redesigning the police approach to community safety. One of these challenges, one of these changes includes the Office of Constitutional Policing, with whom we meet regularly to coordinate implementation of the Racial Equity and Reconciliation Initiative. A few of the accomplishments and activities to highlight include the REACH team, which serves as an alternative response model focused on increasing access to services for people experiencing homelessness. In addition, the city is seeking to establish an alternate response model for nonviolent calls for service related to mental health needs. We previously mentioned this program during the workgroup updates. The police department is also developing a course catalog of trainings and professional development for officers to include topics related to procedural justice and racial equity. And lastly, the Technology and Innovation Commission has led discussions on regulatory approaches for the city's use of facial recognition technology. Our fourth and broadest goal is to improve health and wellness in the city by eliminating social and economic disparities and the communities most impacted by racism. We know that if we want to improve health and safety for all, we must look at the root of what creates opportunity. Things like economic justice, early child and youth development, housing, environmental justice and more. Accomplishments and work in progress include structural funding added to the Health Department budget, which we will share on the next slide. The Parks, Recreation and Marine Strategic Plan, which acknowledges that Park Equity is directly linked to life outcomes. Hiring two full time positions to lead the Office of Youth Development and alignment with the Youth Strategic Plan. Allocating recovery funding to invest in health equity and economic equity. And $6.3 million to increase youth development through the Long Beach Youth Climate Corps program. During the fiscal year 2021 budget process in alignment with the framework for reconciliation. More than 3 million in one time and structural funding was allocated to support communities most impacted by inequities. 1.5 million came from the funding sources such as Major Measure US Cares Act and the Recovery Act. The 1.5 million you see on the screen is the structural funding that was allocated to support implementation of the initiative. The largest allocation was invested in the health department to increase the capacity to support some, but not all the actions outlined in the report. Throughout the year, community grants and contracts have supported black mental and physical health providers planning with Latinx community stakeholders through the movie La Quinta Initiative, vaccine outreach, support for reentry, youth social capital programs, early childhood education through the library's summer community. Engagement in parks and training and capacity building. In addition to the goal area updates, we wanted to uplift the Long Beach Recovery Act, which provides one time funding to support many of the objectives from the initial report, such as food security programing, digital inclusion, early childhood education, business support and housing, just to name a few. Reconciliation and our Equity Toolkit have equipped city staff to lead a smart and inclusive recovery over the past 18 months. This includes equitable access to COVID testing, vaccinations and the administration of the CARES Act and LIBRE funds. We are centering community in our program, development and implementation as we reflect on our first year of implementation. We believe it is important to uplift many of the promising practices and challenges we've encountered thus far on our journey. In naming them, we lean into the equity team's core values of humility and transparency, and we use these lessons learned to inform our priorities and next steps as we move the work ahead. Last year, the Department of Financial Management Management recruited employees to join a core team known as the FM equity advocates. The team's primary role is to build an inclusive culture to integrate the reconciliation potential. Actions across the bureau's financial management is one of five departments to organize an internal equity team in year one. The other departments that demonstrated this is as a promising practice include economic development, the Harbor Department's Equity, Equity and Inclusion Champions, Library Services, Racial Equity Committee and the Water Department Equity Coalition. The Library Services Audit is a strong, strong example of applying an equity lens to our work as it as it engages diverse communities and centered the recommendations on the community's distinctive needs to improve equitable access to library services and programs. Another promising practice we like to uplift is the Harbor Department's hiring of AI of AI diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging consultant. The Port's consultant, partner and with department leadership and Key Project leads to provide facilitation, support and help shape internal actions regarding the initial report. We uplift this work as a promising practice because the port is the first department to hire an external consultant to support their equity efforts. The first. The first challenge we name concerns, leadership support and the prioritization of racial equity as each department implements the initiative. We have observed champions and department heads navigating unique organizational cultures, varying capacities, resources and priorities, all of which can affect implementation. That said, it is important to note that this work starts with buy in and engagement at the top. We've done a great job of building capacity through our racial equity champions and we are therefore prioritizing capacity building and engagement at the director level. Likewise, we look forward to continuing our counsel briefings to keep you all engaged on the initiative. During the past year, champions have struggled to balance the time needed for racial equity tasks with their assigned duties, causing many to experience burnout and feel unsupported. Ideally, we would like to reach a point where equity is fully baked into the city's day to day service and culture. So to further integrate equity into each department. Champions are recruiting members of other bureaus to serve as part of their internal equity committee. Committees will provide additional capacity in the work to come. The initial report focuses on improving outcomes for black, indigenous and people of color. And other underresourced communities through the equitable delivery of services, programs and resources to address the community facing strategies. We have spent a significant amount of time on staff training and education. Looking ahead, we plan to balance our focus on internal infrastructure with external strategies. So this will be done through stronger communications and community engagement. From the inception of our country, government at every level has played a role in creating and maintaining racial inequity. Too often, racial equality, racial equity efforts focus on the symptoms of inequity acting as more more as bandages that do not address the underlying root causes. Therefore, our results based accountability methodology will help us develop race explicit strategies to achieve equity for black communities and communities of color, which in turn benefit all of us across the city. Leaving Council tonight. Our champions will continue to develop departmental racial equity action plans using RBA or results based accountability. To quickly walk you through this process. We begin at the top of the inverted triangle. Looking at the results. All people in Long Beach are healthy, safe and thriving. Next, we use population level indicators low income, extreme rent burden and life expectancy to help us measure whether we are meeting this vision. Champions are currently at the root cause analysis step where they repeatedly ask, why is there a gap for black people and people of color? And what city policies and practices are preserving this disproportionality? From this analysis, we identify the hot roots or the things that the city can seek to change. And those hot roots inform the strategies or performance indicators each department will prioritize within their racial equity action plan. With those strategies, we will build in accountability measures to evaluate our impact and to adjust as necessary. So this slide summarizes all of the priorities we've discussed this evening. Deeper engagement of city leadership and community. Stronger communications. Finalizing our racial equity action plans. And seeking resources to further support this work. So as you can see, the 136 page update that we provided all of you, there's really a lot of work. We had to use a lot of pages because there's a lot of work being done and there's so much more to come. We're grateful for the ongoing support from our council and our mayor and our city team and our community members, and we look forward to moving forward with this work in all the years to come. So we thank you for your time this evening, and we are available for questions. So. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. That concludes staff's report. And just we're really proud of the work that they're doing. Teresa and Lot get to present this tonight. But there's a whole group of our champions, of our department directors, of our managers who are really engaged in this work every single day. And we're very proud of what they do and we'll continue to support them and move this forward. So we're available for answering questions. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. That was a great report. Big you very much for that. I want to go ahead and. I have the cute back here. Councilman Murray Ringo. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank staff for a very thorough report. It's a lot of good work done there in regards to a real big challenge that we have not only here in Long Beach, California, and in the country and all whole that as well. Very good aspects of it. I have a question regarding to the champions. It seems like the report really relies a lot on the reporting that these champions go through in terms of getting the data and the information necessary. They went through some training. Is how are these champions chosen? How are they trained? And do they get any kind of compensation or reimbursement or some other kind of benefit for. Are they volunteers for volunteering to be a champion or is it something that is done through another methodology? Thank you. That's a good question. We're going to tag team on tab, tag team on our responses this evening. So our champions, we do have one to do champions. The first initial commitment of the champions was six months. Many of the champions have rolled into full gear, but we have had some turnover. Champions were referred through a leadership team that was already established from department directors, from managers across the city, and people that just showed interest in the work. So we do have a bit of a formal process for bringing people in and they receive some training and support from the equity office directly. We were able to they this work has also worked into their regular work day because all the directors are embracing this work and so the departments, you know, it's baked in are baking it in to the champions work life balance. Of course we still have opportunities to grow in that space, but we're a work in progress. We also were able to provide the champions with bonuses this year for that work. And our our hope is that we can continue to do so moving forward. So I'll turn it over to Alina. Yeah. Just to quickly add, some of the champions were identified as members who previously participated in the GARE cohorts that the city also conducts as part of the A national network. So are these bonuses going to continue throughout the process or is there going to be a soak in the termination date? Is there a process to either turn them over or is there just be an opportunity for these individuals to serve as champions for as long as they want? Or they can. Councilmember. So those bonuses were identified through a one time funding source. Ideally, we would definitely love to look at ways to structurally fund and support our equity work across the entire city. So that's definitely something we we we hope to have your support with. Regarding the continuity of champions. We definitely do not turn anybody away who wants to engage in this work. Equity is a responsibility for all of us. That said, the champions who have opted to stay on are continuing to support and serve as champions. But by creating these racial equity committees for each department, we are bringing more people into the work so that we can better disseminate equity and the responsibility of this work across the city. Well, I'm glad to see that all departments are being engaged in this process, and that's where we start to get a change of culture in order to change the attitudes. So thank you very much for your report. Thank you, Councilmember. I know that Vice Mayor Richardson, you made the motion at the start. Did you already make your comments on the motion? No, not yet. Okay. So let me just go back to you since you made the motion and then I'll go up and down the. The folks have like you up. Great. Thank you. Well, first, I want to just congratulate the team on a tremendous degree of progress. 105 out of 120 some items progress, 105 of them. That's significant. I know also that you also had a lot of other critically important work to do at the same time. And I love to see that how this work includes those significant things like the distribution of pandemic resources, critically, critically important from testing to vaccinations, food security, all of those things we we were confronted with since implement this plan. And I've seen evidence of this work lays throughout all of that work. We also continue a lot of progress on a lot of progress on our land use work up plan that significantly advances equity, that work. That's incredibly important. I know we we've taken some significant steps on that, creating some nonviolence response models, the rich themes. Looking forward to seeing that roll out. I also know that our efforts look like mental health support are called out as priorities when it is planned. And we're finally taking steps to localized mental health here. That's super important. I'm excited for the Office of Youth Development at Toronto's Alacrity Center of Youth Development and run our youth center directly directly called out within the reconciliation plan. The youth funding measure us huge, huge advancement. I look forward to seeing that impact the lives of youth and use our organization across the city. That's incredibly important. And you know, the work that we're doing to establish this structure, the structure you set up is great with equity champions. I think the work within the police department is critically important about building trust with our police department and embracing community policing. That's absolutely critical. I love the new capacity infrastructure in place. Long Beach Center for Economic Inclusion, the Black Health Equity Collaborative, the new Data Center of Media Report with the Latino Health Equity Initiative. All of them have been incredibly active, super active throughout this year with health, health fairs and getting resources out communities. That's great. I also just generally want to comment that, you know, these are this is not easy work. It's important, but it's not easy if it's a shift in culture. Like, quite frankly, to be frank to say, it's a shift in the service of your city, a commitment to shaping a city where every neighborhood is healthy, safe and driving. That's great. Where every neighborhood, no matter zip code, you know, have an opportunity to provide. We know that hasn't been the case. But that's a commitment. That's a commitment that the path forward will require acknowledgment of deep inequities, not being afraid of using it, talking about race, looking at data, the those issues that have plagued our communities for a long time, from poverty to deep inequities on health and economic inequity. Those are outcomes of largely human based decisions land use decisions, environmental decisions that we made, things like red line and yellow line and where freeways are built. We're dealing with that result today. So I pointed to residents. Do you kind of sum up with this equity works with be about? For me, I use the analogy of a garden. If you have a garden, that garden in order to bear fruit is going to need some level of nourishing and nurturing. But if that garden is starved of water, you know, lack of care, it takes all the bad and characteristic risks in our communities that might be crime, may be poverty. Some of these characteristics. But you can't simply just turn on the spigot and expect with regard to the balance right back, you got to reinvest in the very soul. You have to restore the garden in order for it to bear fruit. It will take care. It's going to take some more planning and to take resources. It's going to take leadership. Those are the types of things. It's really true equity in the city. So to me, it's about building a modern and resilient city. Doesn't happen overnight. Neither did the transition away from harassment, the culture of harassment, the workplace, and two years of training. It's years of capacity building. And so to. But, you know, I would say a city has a robust infrastructure around harassment. Culture is probably a stronger, more resilient city. I say the same thing about creating an anti-racist, inclusive city, which is the city that Long Beach strives to be. And so, you know, I want to thank all the staff for all the work you've done. I know that you called out things that still needed to be done. It's important to do that. It needs to be mean. There's certainly more to do. And I want to thank the 41 equity champions across the city and the new Equity and Human Relations Commission, all of you, for doing a great job. There's significant movement, significantly more focus, but continue to chart. This is culture shift in our city. I think our city be better off for it. Thanks. Thank you very much, Mayor. Let me go through the impressive list I have. Councilmember something. Thank you, Mayor. Yes. I want to add to my thanks to the team that Chandler and Grant for the comprehensive presentation to making sure that, you know, you kind of come through the report, making sure you report back on all the goals. And I also want to make sure to thank Katy Balderas, who had recently left for her hard work and, you know, going through the listening sessions as well as getting to this, helping to get at this report as well and thank the equity champions. It's I think it's a lot of work. It's a lot of great work to be able to kind of be that person to make sure that you're being conscious about. How do you bring the conversation about race and equity to the forefront and to be that representative for your department and the city? You know, I want to make sure to just acknowledge how how far we came. Right. So much has happened and so many difficult conversations had occurred. And there was a lot of pain, a lot of pain involved in this discussion and creating this framework. And I just really want to make sure that that that we're moving in. And I see this report back as a healing process and a process that we're taking toward a solution that we're not stuck on, you know, the problems and that we're able to really kind of move together collectively and how we think about working towards solution. And that is really where it's about collecting data, about really being able to see what's happening on the ground. When we talk about inequity into numbers, right? We're talking about numbers we're collecting around poverty numbers to unemployment numbers and breaking them down. Also, I like seeing race because then we'll see a clearer picture when we're able to really dig in what those roots problem are. We want to be able to then think about those solutions. And I know that this report back was demonstrating some steps towards that. And I really appreciated and really look forward to continuing on that journey because I it gives me hope as a representative of the sixth District that has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty and violence. Right. It gives me hope that and it lifts up my heart to know that we're able to work towards the solution, to be able to address it collectively together and to give people hope in the district, too, that we're not sitting down and, you know, we're thinking about it all the time. Staff is thinking about it. So we're always thinking about how can we do better at the city? And that's what I want people to leave with when they think about this equity, this framework for equity, equity and of the solutions that we're working towards. In the end of the day, how do we make sure that we're overall making our city a better place to live, work and recreate? Right. Thank you. City Council member. I have come a supermarket. Thank you. I'd just like to thank staff for a great presentation. Theresa Chandler, your usual stellar job. Thank you. And I also want to mention Alana Grant and say congratulations on your promotion to equity officer. I think is this your first presentation of council as the new equity officer? And you did an incredible job. Thank you. You have council member Irena. Oh, sorry, Mayor. I did not bring down my hand. Okay, great. I just. I want to thank staff for the for the report. I know how many of us are receiving briefings and updates on the progress, and I agree with a lot of what has been said. I do have just a thought. Mr. Murdoch, I thought it would be good. I know we have a presentation coming to the council about the P.C.C. Our reforms and our conversation has happened and public safety committee and community forums. That's been a big part, I think, of this report. I mean, I know that it's in the report as one of the recommendations, but I think there's been a lot of conversation about what the next steps are. So I know this is coming in front of a council, I believe, for some recommendations for some of the outreach that's happened. I mean, community meetings. Can you provide the Council a framework of the kind of C.P.S. process and how it relates to the reform framework? Sure. So you raise a really good point. The report's over 130 pages long, and tonight we did a 15 minute presentation of kind of themes and certain items. We did not get into every single item. And then, you know, a lot of that is in the report itself. I also want to make sure we do remember that in December we talked a lot about the police specific reforms. And so we really focused on a heavier presentation on those in December. And then in February we're going to be coming back February 15th on the PCC. So that recommendation was it's gone through an outside consultant. We brought on some experts to really do a lot of listening and then come up with some different ideas and concepts. They did some initial revealing of their recommendations, kind of the framework back in December and did some community meetings. They'll have their final report done fairly soon, and that'll be on your agenda. We're shooting for February 15th to talk both about what can be done under the current structure and then what are the options for a ballot measure, which is one of the items in the reconciliation report and and get that to council so we can start on the meeting confer and if we want to go towards a ballot measure getting ready for November 20, 22. Thank you. I know that a lot of folks on the council's computer are looking forward to that, the presentation. I think everyone's been working on that. I know it's a big initiative happening at the city. I do want to also just take a second to think not just all the champions and the equity champions, but also the Office of Equity. I know that we've had some changes as well, but just to the to our former team and the new team that's transition and just really great work. And I just want to thank them individually for just continuing to think about equity across all of our city departments and and really to serve as models for the rest of the country and that they're also doing and engaging in this work. So a huge thank you to them and to everyone and all of our city departments that are doing this work. Councilwoman, did they? Thank you. Marry me. I thought I had already queued up, as they say, headed. I just want to say thank you so much to staff, to Alana, to three staff for all the incredible work that they've done on this, the equity. It's it's been it's been a tough road. I know that that because I remember where we were when we first began. And it was so difficult and so really, really intense and very heavy on all of our hearts that I, I agree with with council members sorrow that we must move forward and we must really focus on what we're doing from here on and correct things and really emphasize on making a positive, positive impact for our community to be able to grow from there and thrive. So I'm really excited about that. I also loved everything in the presentation. I think that that's great. I'm really excited to have you back with that as part of the, um, initiative on, on this. Awesome. And I think that, um, one of the things that, that is very, very important is our, our equity champions. I mean, I can't thank them enough for their role. I think that they've done some amazing work and really, really hard to really get deep down into it. And I think that, you know, I think that they're very, very important of the success of this. And so hopefully we can find some structured funding to be able to provide for them and be able to to show them how much we we value them as we move forward. And so because this is a very, very complex but very necessary step to take. So to to all the champions. And thank you. Thank you very much and to the staff for doing a fantastic job. Alana, like the council members for now said, you know, they did great on their first official big presentation on this. Congratulations. And we cannot forget about Katie and all the work that she put into this, too. So thank you very much. Thank you very much, Councilmember. I do have some people cued up. Councilwoman Price. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you to Teresa and Alana for your presentation tonight and also for providing us a briefing along the way. I really, really appreciate that council offices are being brought to the table regarding city wide initiatives so that we can all weigh in on on the things that are important to all of us beyond just the greater efforts. I love that you called out specifically the library efforts that we've made in response to the city auditor's audit. I know that Councilman Ranga and I have both been really involved in that, and I think it's great that you guys called it out here. And that was very important. And I'm hopeful that as we move forward with next year's budget, the city manager is able to prioritize some of the items that we requested on our agenda item that we brought to council that resulted in a finding that those additional items were going to be. Significant of significant cost to the city. But still, they're very important for the future of our library system. I think we really have to start thinking about the way that we utilize our library system and the importance of access and what we can do to try to incentivize and encourage residents to continue to use our library system . So I appreciate you guys covering that specifically. I think that's really important. And I know that the city manager mentioned the the work of the police department that was highlighted in their own presentation on this topic. But I do know that when Councilman Superman and Councilman Austin and I were on the Public Safety Committee along the same time that we were working on some of these policies and initiatives, we talked at length about some opportunities for adoption of best practices by the police department. And the police department has been completely 100% supportive of taking on additional best practices. And I just want to point out, I know that the police department never mentioned it before, but I want to highlight again and that the participation in Georgetown Law School's able program is a huge thing for our city police department. I know that they are working to make sure they have the funding to do that and have interviewed for that. But as someone who is in the criminal justice reform space every day, that program is getting a lot of accolades in terms of top down management training that changes culture and helps integrate best practices into our police departments, especially when we're talking about bystander liability, bystander responsibility. And that's just been a huge, huge, a lot of progress made in that program. So I'm glad that our police department will be participating in that. And I just want to thank you guys for the report. And I look forward to the February 15th meeting where we talk about changes to the PCC. So thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Durango. Something has came to mind in regards to the police department and how you brought that up was the fact that there was a constitutional committee or something about it in the police department. Are we going to be getting an update on that eventually? Sure. So the Office of Constitutional Policing is. It's on its way. So they are actually bringing on more staff to the team. I think they are taking on more just more initiatives. We work very closely with the Office of Constitutional Policing. They are great partners with us, and especially focusing on our goal three of the initiative that we are walking hand-in-hand through these concepts together and initiatives or items. We also have the Office of Constitutional Policing Online. If you have more questions, but if you wanted a specific update from them, I'm sure we could talk to them about providing one later on. Yeah. Yeah, that was my only request would be that maybe we could get a report later on down the line. And in terms of the work they're doing and what are the expectations? They? Thank you. I have Count Vice Mayor Richardson. And just just two things. One, um, I'm kind of embarrassed. I didn't congratulate a lot of great on her first first presentation. Congratulations, Lana. I think you did an incredible job on the presentation. Secondly, you know, I think, you know, thinking back to the presentation, I think to years, two weeks ago on homelessness, when I talked about the population of our chronic homeless in 44, 46% black, I think at one point it was a cultural when women talk about race. I think it's important particularly with justified is work with the public by using data points like that is important to have a culturally appropriate response when we take on issues that everyone cares about, there's great agreement on the issue of homelessness. I think some would say, you know, that the way that we address it, given the significant over representation of the black community, is the lead in with folks like the newly established Black Health Equity Collaborative. And to make sure that there are community groups that, you know, have a similar shared background help, do a lot of engagement in the work, and that you also acknowledge that, you know, there's, you know, alignment between the homelessness and the poverty work that we're talking about and that we're doing here in the city. And so I just wanted to give that up between last presentation. This presentation and given today is Black History Month. It's important that we acknowledge these things so that we can do a better job in the future and address them. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Councilmember Austin. Well, thank you. And also, I just salute our staff for their presentation, which unfortunately I had to miss. I had to step away. But I read most of your your staff report, and I wanted to just say the accountability after one year in the progress is something that we should salute and and celebrate. We are making great progress here in the city of Long Beach, in the areas of racial equity and inclusion with our our. A reconciliation initiative and much of the work that has gone into it. And I think that that is a credit to. So obviously our city management team working with Teresa and Helena Grant, having a dedicated staff who truly believe and are passionate about this work. I think that is there's evidence in the presentation, but also of the staff report and the work that is actually continuing here in our city. You know, obviously, a big piece of that work was also of, you know, policing and changing policing of the mission or guarding the office of Constitutional Policing. Councilmember Price also mentioned, you know, many of the the the reforms that have kind of gone in place as a result of council direction, but also listening to our community as well. I'm looking forward to the PCC presentation, obviously a former chair, that commission, somebody who served on the commission. I'm looking forward to us to the recommendations and actually going fully vetting those recommendations from a consultant who has been working with our community for some time. And also, I just want to point out the fact that we also, as a city council, have made some bold moves to talk of accountability and transparency in policing and saying that, you know what, we want to we want to be a leader. And so, you know, the move that we made to join me and partner with the Louis Registry at USC, I think should also be noted here as we as a city have demonstrated great commitment to to the issues that have been communicated to our council by our residents, but also, you know, just understanding where we are in terms of, you know, the policies that need to be moving forward. So with that, I just wanted to just my voice and congratulations and appreciation to our team for their great work and understand that they will continue to do this and they have my full support moving forward. Make a council member. Do we have public comment? Yes. At this time, if there's any members of the public that wish to speak on this item, please press star nine or use the raise hand function. Our first speaker is and I can pay. Hello. Please go. Hello? You hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay. Thank you. City staff. Excellent report. I read all 136 pages. Although, to be fair, it really is about 120 pages. And then you guys kind of overlap too with the equity talk, but I know that's just city staff trying to make sure our pilots are engaged. Council is keeping up with these reports. That being said, I think what the Office of Equity in the city manager's office has been able to do with this document is essentially provide an infrastructure plan for the future of the city of Long Beach with respect to equity and race relations. And it's up to the culture. As a council councilmember, Turanga stated, It's up to the culture of the of the city staff and bureaucracy and just as a whole and to the development of a progressive future. Okay, so that was the positive. Now we've got to get to the meat of the bones of it. I have an issue. I have to be honest, I have issue because I don't really see in this document. I see references to being in other groups, which I love them and everyone, Dr. Andrew Johnson, everyone involved, April Parker and Jackson, everyone involved. That said, I have issues with this report because I don't really see funding in pipelines towards black led organizations and groups. And to be clear, as Ms.. Chandler referenced, the city takes responsibility for its part in systemic racism with respect to life here in America. Okay, I understand that. But if we're trying to create solutions, we have to create financing structures of opportunity for black led organizations to deliver with respect to our communities. It's not enough that there are carve outs, one time carve outs with respect to things like a food crisis or a food desert I live in. 908131 out of three people in my in my zip code is living under the poverty line and it's over. Even though my ethnicity is an underrepresented group. Now we're overrepresented, I think as a vice mayor, Richardson referenced with regards the homeless report from a week ago. So unless there's financial funding in pipelines for black led organizations, this is just something that's going to be perpetual. And I would rather that we as a city and as a community provide black. If I accept as a black community, we don't have capacity, but we need the city structure to help us build capacity so that we can be the architects of our own future and not be opportunities for charity as it currently. That being said, this infrastructure help but helps us. We just need you as a city to really extend that dollar to towards black led organizations. So thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Ailsa Chang. Hi. Good evening, city council. I actually don't have prepared remarks today, which is kind of a new thing for me, but yeah, I just wanted to. Well, first of all, I'm in District five now, Satterlee District seven. And then secondly, I wanted to formally and through public comment, congratulate Alan Grant on the being the equity officer and during this presentation and now so many thanks to Teresa Chandler and the whole Office of Equity Team. There's a lot to digest, unlike the previous speaker, since I did not read all 136 pages. But what I am incredibly, incredibly encouraged about is the city's use of the anti-racist results based accountability framework. I have personally worked with the city's consultant that is called Equity and Results, the team of Theo and Erika. And I'm I love them. I'm super encouraged that the city is is working with that team and using this anti-racist results based accountability framework to go really, really deep into the root causes and therefore solutions. And then lastly, I just want to support the comments of the previous speakers and I can say in terms of building pipelines for funding for black led organizations. Thanks so much. Our final speaker is Dave Shukla. Good evening, ma'am. Yes, we can hear you. Okay, thank you. And thanks to Chandler and Ms.. Grant for that wonderful presentation so that you can better assess and make up your own mind about what I have to say. Next couple of. Quick points. I'm a son of the sea. The I in that statement did not refer to Dave Chappelle. Third point, there are few things more racist in the history of California over the past 140 years than the division of oil, knowledge and oil moneys. Fourthly, the passage of this framework, an initiative in August of 2020, was not without its own inequity. And five, we need a black Supreme Court justice. Female Supreme Court justice. All right. Okay. At 7:49 p.m. this evening. The coalition. Which coalition, please. At 7:50 p.m., the court is hiring a consultant that should be a full time staff. Jedi to Justice, Equity, Diversity and inclusion staff. 7:51 p.m. We want to have equity baked into the city, baked in like oil and gas. I think we need to call the question on the mission of the city. At 7:54 p.m.. Did the feedback in the audio mean that robert garcia and Rex Richardson are in the same room? 7:58 p.m.. No, this is a friendly, but the goal should not just be to disseminate, but it should be to transmit, to transmit this data, these practices and these results. Now I've written notes, comments on the report and translation. I can email, but with what little time I have left, I'd like to briefly explain some of my comments back in August of 2020. Basically, without getting too deep into sort of details and all that, I was being asked to betray myself. And that's not what I'm about. I left graduate school to do a thing. And a guy like me, he picks his dates, picks these moments and today's the day. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. That concludes, I think, public comment. Is that right, madam first. That is correct. Public comment. As I go. Back to jump ready to go back to Councilman Alan Grayson to leave that to me if you're in my corner. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I appreciate that. I just also I just want to say thank you to you. Thank you, Alina, for this just incredible informative presentation. I know this was a lot to take in, but as a council member who was not on the diocese during the 2020 process, just the simplistic nature of all of this just just amazes me. And I'm sure that it hasn't been easy. I saw in the report some issues like burnout that you had to overcome, and it still persists. So I just want to say just thank you for your hard work. Overall, what I see is a rigorous examination and progress, and I know that the progress of ensuring that equity is part of all our decisions is is something that's going to take years of sustained effort. And I just look forward to that periodic update on our progress and any recommendations that you have, both internally for our city team and externally for our whole community. So just thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you very much, gentlemen. That concludes the comments and the report. There's a motion on a second. Remember who you are. Local District one. District two I. District three. I. District four. I. District five. District six. District seven. II. District eight. II. District nine. I. Motion is carried. Thank you. We will now move on to item 26. I don't think my I was recorded city clerk Keith. I received. Thank you. Item 26 Report from Financial Management Recommendation to receive and file the results of the user fee and cost recovery studies for the Energy, Resources and Public Works Department citywide.