Recommendation to declare ordinance amending Chapter 16.16 of the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Section 16.16.140 relating to Prohibiting Adults Not Accompanying Children Under The Age of 12 From Park Playgrounds, read and adopted as read.  (Citywide)
Motion is carried. Item 24. Report from City Attorney Recommendation of Declare Ordinance Amending the Long Beach Municipal Code relating to prohibiting adults not accompanying children under the age of 12 from park playgrounds. Read the first time and later over the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading City Wide. Mr. City Attorney, do you need to give any updates on this before I turn it over to Councilman Allen? We can give an update, if you like, but this is an ordinance that was requested by the council to come back for I think Councilmember Allen brought this forward and we're just bringing it back. I just wasn't sure if there was an update to Councilman Allen. Any comments? Yes. Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank you. And the city attorney's office and the Parks Recreation and Marine Department and over there for their work on this ordinance at one of my first neighborhood community meetings after being sworn in. There was a resident and her name was Sandy Nair, who reached out with an idea about kids zones. And she talked about the issues like adults misusing the playgrounds or engaging in activities that discourages children from using playgrounds. And this issue was not just at her park near her house on the promenade, but citywide. And she shared the idea of marrying San Francisco's No Adult with a child in the playground program. In the following months, more residents shared similar ideas. I spoke with the Parks Recreation, Marine Department and Animal Care Services Department about checking out what other cities are doing and how we can model and look at that. And I know this has taken a little while since March of 2021, but, you know, good policy takes a little time. And I know that we've had a chance to work with other neighborhoods, parent groups, other council offices to make sure that this ordinance is balanced and representative of our entire city. Throughout the city, we've seen that these spaces designed for children have been misused, vandalized, and even just outright destroyed. And I think we've listened to our residents who use these spaces, and we're taking the steps to protect them so that our young people can enjoy the outdoors and enjoy the parks. And by establishing kid zones, we can ensure that the city playground equipment in these play areas, specifically designed for children, remain safe, open and accessible spaces for their use. Parks in my district, like Miracle on Fourth and then the Promenade Square Park, which is now as my colleague wonderful Mary's and de has this district are you know are still impacted by ongoing loitering issues which discourage park usage by shot by children and by their their guardians. So this ordinance today establishes protections and guidelines for public spaces. And I hope this policy makes our parks safer for our residents and our families. The one element that I have some concerns about is the is the enforcement. And I did get this question. So if there's someone that can answer this, I know a resident ask specifically the language about 12 year olds prohibited youth older than 12 for from enjoying these amenities. So if you can clarify, because one of the things and I thought this was a good question, I have a nephew who's Pacific Islander and he's, you know, 12 years old, but he looks like he's 20, a linebacker getting ready to are the NFL draft or something. So. So I just just want to I just want you to address that constituent, whoever is here on those concerns. If someone can do that, that would be great. Yes. Thank you, Councilwoman. This is Brant Dennis, the director for Parks Recreation Marine. That's a very good question. I know. Typically, when we are designing our playgrounds and working closely with public works, we have, you know, the youth, the top lots that are, I guess, zero through age five and then the older children, which is traditionally five through 12. And that's kind of how we define youth in a lot of our programing. Also, I think the intent of this is really just to have a watchful eye over the type of use or abuse of our playground spaces. And I don't think it's going to be the custom that we're checking IDs. Actually, a lot of youth probably don't have forms of identification on them, but I think the intent of it really is to, as best we can, just keep a watchful eye on our playground spaces that are designed for for younger people. But we have had some examples where. Adults have. Actually caused a lot of damage by aggressively using or abusing our playground equipment. So I think it's all for the good of the child, of the children, of our community and young families in particular, that we want our play areas to be safe, welcoming and respected. I just want to say thank you so much for all your hard work. And also thank you to my colleague, Councilmember Yaw Ranga, who's also been a champion of this. I really appreciate all your support. Thank you, country, Renko. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Councilmember Allen, for also bringing this forward. Very happy to sign on to this. As you probably remember, about a year ago, our playground at Admiral Kidd Park was totally destroyed, probably because someone just abused the playground. I would also another playground in my district at Silverado Park also went through a lot of damage. And fortunately, through funding and fundraising, we're able to replace those two big playgrounds again and make them state of the art. So I think in order to ensure that these playgrounds remain safe for kids and last a long time and have a nice, long shelf life, I think that this ordinance would be would go a long way in helping protect that. So I'm very happy to support this, and I hope that I can get the support of my colleagues as well. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Price. Thank you. I do have a question for the city attorney because I received several emails today. I know there's other cities that have similar ordinances and Councilman Allen touched upon them. Has this type of ordinance been through any sort of litigation to determine whether there's any access or constitutional violations? I'm going to ask Anita to respond. Good evening. There has not been any constitutional challenge or litigation on these particular ordinances. Specifically the city of Santa monica, which this is modeled after. Great. Thank you. And then the other question that I had is, what's our enforcement mechanism? I imagine it's going to be a calls for service type of reactive response. And then is our approach going to be outreach or or citation? I thank you, Councilwoman. In speaking to my colleagues in both Santa monica and also the city of Las Vegas has had a very similar ordinance in place. They both pursued a very broad community awareness campaign. And I know with our army of community recreation services team members, it'll be out and about all of our community centers and our parks that happen . To have the playgrounds that's going to be on their task list is to engage with the park users and in particular, I think more watchful eyes with our young families so that they're aware of that and also will be posting kids zone ordinances with the municipal code clearly stated. At each of our I think we have. 82 playground sites that they'll have the kids own signage posted. So it will be an awareness campaign and I think it's going to be a kinder, gentler approach. I don't think we're going to be hard, fast and and keep people from enjoying all of our play spaces again are intended for kids. Thank you. Okay. And then I just want to clarify one of the things I think there was some misinformation and some of the correspondence I got. This is definitely not prohibiting people from going to the park. It's just literally the playground space, which a lot of times is delineated by sand or some sort of a safe landing floor space or ground cover. Yes, Councilman, that's correct. Most of our place spaces by design have have curbs and accessible walkways surrounding them. So I guess the optics are to be fairly easy to see once there's a kids on signposted what would be perceived as the play area. Great. Thank you. I appreciate that. Councilman Austin. Thank you. And I think a couple of my questions were answered already, but I want to get back to the the issue of equipment and and its design. Can you explain go a little bit deeper in terms of the playground equipment that we have throughout the city? And who specifically is it designed for? Because I did receive some comments from adults stating that they like to utilize playground equipment or that their their special needs adult children may need to utilize playground equipment. What sort of provisions have we made or are we taken for that? And to your. Councilman, that's a good question. So essentially, when we develop playground concepts and I think our signature playgrounds are kind of the flagship of quality. But we work closely with our colleagues at Public Works. They actually will bring on board a consultant. A lot of times it's a landscape architect to look at. The. Design of the play space. And most of the manufacturer products have tried and proven specifications for durability and longevity and ease of maintenance. But I think going back to the premise of the the ordinance proposal, it really is not. Prohibiting an. Individual to engage in the play as long as they're supervised, supervised from someone. It's really just that individual who wants to just hang out and maybe interfere with the play actions of kids. And that's really the intent. So I think we'll be very, I think, empathetic towards certain cases. And again, we just really want to create an environment in and around our play areas that are welcoming, safe and respected. So and today, if, if, if we go out and we see an adult creepy person hanging out at the park or at play at a playground and, you know, we asked that individual to leave. Is are we out of line? Well, once the ordinance is passed. And signage is. Posted with the municipal code listed, there's a stronger basis to inform them. And usually the awareness they'll find another. Place to hide. So this ordinance gives us a tool to. It's a tool in the toolbox. Yes. I just want to be clear on that, because there's, I think, a lot of confusion as to too the intent and what we are trying to accomplish. I know, you know, there was a measure, a playground that we worked really hard to get put in place in one park in my district in Jackson Park. And I received a number of complaints over, you know, a couple of weeks period of time from residents who said that there is somebody here who's kind of taken over the the equipment. And, you know, I'm afraid to take my my children there. Other complaints that we've received at other parks are paraphernalia used, condoms, things of that nature on playground equipment, which is really appalling. And so my my take on this is I think that playground equipment should be almost a sanctuary space for our children and for our kids. And for that, I'm going to happily support this item. Thank you. And thank you. Again, Councilman Zendejas. Thank you, Mayor. As a person who's has had fire in her district at one of the playgrounds, I am very, very supportive of this. And thank you, Councilwoman Allen, for all the work that you've done along with Councilmember Muranga and the team. I think that this is very, very important. Our little ones deserve to have a safe space for them to enjoy safe playgrounds. And the parents also deserve to have a place where they can take their children to the playground and feel safe. I'm very supportive of this new ordinance that places the safety of our kids at the forefront of our park policy. So for that, thank you. I also wanted to clarify, this policy will be applied to all parks in our city, correct? That is correct. To all parks that have a playground. Thank you. I think end and the signage that will be going on, you know, what will that see? Yes, councilwoman. That's a good question for details. So there will be graphics run by the P-I or Kevin Lees, because we do have graphics standards for tape, font and colors and all that. But essentially it'll be a 24 by 24 inch metal sign orange field in the background with black lettering that will say kid zone. And that beneath it will be the municipal code that cites this ordinance once its chips are passed. And will it be posted in different languages as well? You know, that's a good question. The term kid zone, I don't know if that's a universal term. It may not be. Well, we always do go through. Our language access step, but that's a very good question. We'll make sure that that's addressed. Thank you. Thank you very much. Very supportive of this item. Thank you, Vice Mayor Richardson. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Just just a few things. So as a dad of little ones, we go to the playground all the time. So I completely understand the need to keep your playgrounds safe and kid friendly. And so for that reason, I'm happy to support it tonight. I think also, you know, there are playgrounds that we like to frequent and sometimes there's a lot of broken equipment. And it's because, you know, sometimes people mistreat the equipment. And I know how hard it is to identify resources to replace that equipment, you know. So I think we definitely need to need to think about that. I am empathetic about the circumstance around someone with my son. Someone has special needs and they're above that age. Or sometimes, you know, a 16 year old, a 19 year old may not be, as you know, they may be maybe smaller or have mental health issues . I figure out we're going to need to be empathetic in how we deal with how we make this policy developmentally appropriate and sensitive. I also think I think about real examples of high school kids from Jordan High School that go next door to out in part and sometimes hang out on the equipment. I don't want to see those kids getting tickets or caught up in the criminal justice system. But I think we need to just work with our park staff because it doesn't happen often. But kids do from Jordan High, go over, hang out when no one's using the playground. I think once the playground is invested in, more little kids will use it, more parents will be there. And that will kind of sort of self-police itself. So I would say, you know, when we have some funding for design, the sooner we get that program, that playground designed and built, I think the better it is. But I just want to say, I understand the sentiment of what we're trying to do here. Let's make sure that we are developmentally sensitive in how we implement and that we're looking out for the circumstances of teenagers, high school students who just are being high school students. And so those are things that I just want to be mindful of. Thank you. Thank you for your public comment on this. Then we have a motion and a second was cast our votes. Motion is carried.