Recommendation to conduct a Budget Hearing to receive and discuss an overview of the Proposed Fiscal Year 2019 Budget for the following Departments: Fire, Police and Disaster Preparedness; and, Capital Improvement Program.
And then we also have our kip, which I know is of interest to the council as it relates to infrastructure of all of our streets and sidewalks. And so this is obviously the opportunity for the Council to engage on the largest part of our budget, which is public safety as well as our infrastructure budget. So with that, I will turn it over to Mr. West. Mayor Councilmembers We were very, very excited to present the fiscal year 19 budget, I think, last week. So this is our first budget presentation. We're starting off as we normally do, with our continuum of care. Tonight, you're going to hear first from our fire chief, Mike Terry, then from our chief of police, Robert Lunar, then from our disaster management director, Reggie Harrison. Then we can either hear questions, questions from the council, or we can go straight into Craig Beck's Capital Improvement Project. And then for questions. Let me ask the council, unless there's any objection. I know that different people like it different ways. Last year we just we heard all the presentations and then we did questions. So I'll keep it that way unless people want to have. Department by department. Is there any objection to keeping it the same way? No. Okay, great. So we'll go through all four. So, Craig, you'll follow disaster management. So the mission was the one where we do have to divide it up, I think is we need a separate CIP. We certainly have a safety continuum because those are two very separate. Never mind what I just said. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So right now we will start with our fire chief, Mike Terry might take it away. All right. Good evening, Mayor Garcia, members of the city council. This evening, I will be giving you a brief overview of the Long Beach Fire Department's fiscal year 19 proposed budget. My presentation will touch upon the services provided by the Fire Department some of our key accomplishments for the current fiscal year. Notable changes for the fiscal year 19 proposed budget and some major challenges and opportunities that we foresee in the upcoming fiscal year. The Fire Department delivers fire rescue and emergency medical services, marine safety response, hazardous materials response, and non-emergency response services to residents, businesses and visitors. In the city of Long Beach, we provide a 24 hour operation for which all first responders must be prepared at all times. Additionally, we work to ensure the safety of the community and to prevent fires through proactive fire prevention and code enforcement programs. And we also provide training and education that is essential to the delivery of our core fire and rescue services. I'd now like to outline some of the fire department's accomplishments and highlights for the current fiscal year. Over the past 12 months, we have responded to over 72,000 fire, emergency medical services, mine safety and other emergency incidents. This equates to more than 153,000 individual unit responses. Included in this number are over 52,000 medical calls and 5800 fire calls. This number also includes hazardous materials responses, airport responses and other non fire responses. This year, we converted our patient care reporting system from paper to electronic. Our new electronic patient care reporting system, or EPR, has resulted in better patient tracking, improved communication with area receiving hospitals, robust real time data collection and retrieval and expedited ambulance billing. Also, earlier this year, we partnered with the water department to place a pump pod into service. This particular piece of equipment enables us to save over 1.8 million gallons of water each year by recycling water use during training, testing and certification exercises. Our training division developed and conducted training to address response to mass casualty incidents of a criminal nature such as those involving active shooters. Our Fire Recruit Academy Class 2018, a graduated 19 new firefighters and our Community Emergency Response Team or CERT program, continues to be a busy and popular program. This year alone, over 155 adults received cert training, which they will be able to use to assist the community in case of an earthquake or other natural disaster. Finally, the fire department instituted a mental health first aid program and began providing training to our fire and marine safety first responders. Training is provided by our Hart Team members and equips first responders with strategies to assist individuals experiencing a mental health or substance use related crisis. The proposed fiscal year 19 budget for the fire department is $126.8 million. We have a total of 531 full time equivalent staff consisting of 406 sworn is in fire ranks. Another 25 full time year round marine safety first responders and over 180 seasonal lifeguards. 26 full time ambulance operators. Additionally, the fire department is supported by a civilian staff in fire operations, support services, fire prevention and Fire Administration. As you can see in the graph, most of our budget or $96.4 million or 76% of the department's total budget is in the general fund, which supports most departmental activities. The Long Beach Park, the Long Beach Airport provides financial support in the amount of $5.9 million for fire and rescue services that the fire department provides. The airport and this is included in the fire department's general fund budget. 22% of the department's budget is in the Tidelands Fund, which supports marine safety activities, as well as our fire operations in the Port of Long Beach. The harbor department provides cost reimbursement for services provided in the port, and that is also included in the $27.8 million Tidelands Fund budget for fire. Rounding out the fire department's budget are the Police and Fire Public Safety Oil Production Act Fund, also referred to as Prop H, which provides an additional support of $1.6 million for fire staffing and the Cooper Fund, which provides for funding for inspection services and business emergency plan reviews to ensure hazardous chemicals are handled, stored and transported in accordance with current state and local standards. The fiscal year 19 budget includes ongoing funding for a second Homelessness, Education and response team or heart unit. The mission of the Hart team is to reduce the number of fire department responses to individuals experiencing homelessness through rapid response to 911 calls for service, collaborating with our continuum of care partners and educating fire, the fire service and community members about issues surrounding homelessness and available resources in our city. Our first heart unit has attained great amount of success toward meeting this mission, and the addition of a second heart team will allow us to build on that success and reach even more people in their time of need. The fiscal 19 fiscal year 19 budget also provides one time funding for a second fire academy. This will this will allow us to fill our current and projected vacancies. Additional changes in the budget include support for a firefighter inspector, a development services permit counter to streamline plan services and a second storekeeper to ensure proper inventory controls and maintain warehouse operations that experience a high volume of transactions. Looking forward to fiscal year 19. The department has several significant challenges and opportunities. Our first challenge is to continue to meet the expectations of the community while facing increased demands for services, especially emergency medical services. Another challenge is for us to continue to identify emerging public safety issues and implement programs that meet the needs of our community. In addition to providing fire and emergency medical response services, it is important that we remain aware of other public safety needs and try and stay agile as an organization so that we can implement innovative programs like the Hart Team. While we. While we. Excuse me. We need to be aware. Excuse me. We are aware that we need to improve diversity not just in the ranks of entry level firefighters, but also in the promotional classifications like fire captain and battalion chief. In fiscal year 19, we will work with the Civil Service Department and one of the city's new management assistants to identify solutions that address this important challenge. We also have a number of retirements in supervisory and management positions coming up in the next several years. And that means we face the challenge of identifying and developing the next generation of leaders requiring strong management, development and succession planning programs. And a final challenge is to maximize available revenue sources and attain full cost recovery for our services. We provide our community whenever feasible. With resources and support in the fiscal year 19 budget. We also have a number of opportunities and reasons for ongoing optimism. First, the potential restoration of Engine 17 would further improve our emergency response capabilities. These increased capabilities would have a positive impact on the entire service delivery system throughout the city, not just in Engine 17 immediate response area. We also have an opportunity to improve quality assurance, data collection and cost recovery through the implementation of our electronic patient care reporting system, referred to as PCR that I mentioned earlier. In the few months since implementation, we've already begun to realize some of these benefits, and with a second Hart unit in service, the fire department and our Continuum of Care partners have an opportunity to expand services to individuals experiencing homelessness. And finally, investments in our public safety infrastructure, specifically funding to renovate and modernize our fire stations and our fire training center will enable us to improve our service delivery and overall working conditions. Mr. Mayor and Council Members, I thank you for the opportunity to present an overview of the Fire Department's Fiscal Year 2019 proposed budget. This concludes my presentation and I'll wait to respond to any questions you may have after I handed over to my partner, the Chief of Police. Thank you, Fire Chief Dewey. Good evening, Mayor Garcia. Vice Mayor sitting over there and members of the city council. The police department is a is a dynamic organization. We are tasked with the incredible responsibility of enforcing laws, investigating crime. Securing the city's critical infrastructure. And fostering positive relationships and trust within our diverse community. Most importantly, we respond to our community's calls for help 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The police department's mission is public safety. Through partnerships, public safety services are delivered through the work of five Barrel's 17 divisions and over 100 distinct units and sections. Our core services include 911 response across the city's 52 square miles, with over 211,000 calls for service in 2017, which averages to about 578 calls for service on a daily basis. Investigating misdemeanor and felony crimes ranging from murder to bike theft. The child abuse. Securing major critical infrastructure, including the port, the airport and metro blue line that you just heard the presentation on previously. And providing contract services to city partners such as the Long Beach Unified School District, Long Beach, City College, Long Beach Transit and the Pike Outlets just to name a few. Long Beach Police Department operates on all cylinders. Throughout the year, our employees and volunteers are absolutely doing amazing work. As you will see in the next few slides, our department has many accomplishments in FY 18. Thanks to the mayor and measure funding, the South Division was restored and became operational in February of 2017. The restoration of South Division represents our community's ongoing support to invest in public safety. I am also proud to share that the police department has officially completed its first year of providing services to L.A. Metro over the past year . Officers had approximately 17,000 Metro related contacts, which included calls for service and officer initiated activity. This roughly equates to approximately 50 contacts per day. Response time to the Metro rated metro related emergency calls was 2.4 minutes for those priority calls and 6.7 minutes to routine calls, which is actually pretty amazing. This past year marks a successful public safety partnership between L.A. Metro and our city. The size and scale of special events are dramatically larger in the previous than the previous years. As such, the demand for police services to staff these events has increased significantly. In calendar year 2017. Our officers staffed 170 events. Those events generated 220 days of staffing. So far in calendar year 2018, 150 events have been staffed, generating 186 days of staffing year to date. We have provided staffing for 14 large concerts and music festivals, 98 film productions, 44 parades and holiday staffing. In total, the police department has secured safety for nearly 1 million special event attendees. In technology. The police department recently deployed 200 body cameras in the south and north divisions through a one year no cost contract. We are grateful to the Departments of Technology and Innovation, Financial Management, Public Works and the City Attorney's Office for their assistance in making this new program possible. We look forward to updating the City Council on the progress of this new body worn camera program. Responding to homelessness and quality of life issues are priorities to our community and therefore are top priorities for our entire department. However, I would like to highlight our quality of life officers who have done tremendous work in addressing homelessness challenges in our city. Since January of this year. Quality of Life officers have made 644 contacts with persons experiencing homelessness. They have provided referrals, supplies and mental health evaluations. They have helped transport 149 individuals to the Multi-Service Center, Long Beach Rescue Mission and other social service organizations. They've helped 103 individuals, and they participated in 174 homeless encampment cleanups. This is absolutely amazing work. And I do want to point out, even though I'm highlighting the police department, this is absolutely a team effort with other city departments. The police department is an active supporter and participant in diversion programs as an alternative to arrest and as a solution to reduce recidivism. In addition to our Youth Diversion partnerships with our local nonprofits, we partner with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, the L.A. County Office of Diversion and Reentry, and the City Prosecutor's Office to assist with grant funded diversion outreach focused along the Long Beach Boulevard corridor. We also participate in the countywide Youth Diversion Program. I am excited to share that we continue to partner with the Office of Civic Innovation, formerly known as the A-Team under the Justice Lab. Together, we are working to better identify individuals who are current high frequency offenders and determine their social service needs. As part of this effort. The Jail Mental Health Clinician Program, in partnership with the Guidance Center is underway. In addition, we are firming up the data sharing and communication between our patrol commanders, crime analyst and data researchers with the Office of Civic Innovation. The Police Department continues to provide training and develop policies aligned with the Task Force Report on 21st Century Policing, which was released back in 2015. As part of this effort, our training division provides innovative training principles consistent with the current industry standards. Topics include procedural justice, implicit bias, fair and impartial policing, and assisting individuals with mental illness. In addition, a special order was issued department wide outlining police department procedures that align our department's operations with SB 54 and the Long Beach Values Act. Building community trust through relationships is a foundational principle supported by the Long Beach Police Department. This year we have hosted 13 community police academies funded by the PCC grant. Since the community support for this program has been so extremely positive. We plan to host future community police academies in 2019 and have already expanded the curriculum to include youth community police academies, which were showcased recently on the local Long Beach network. I am happy to report that the police recruit class number 92, which is slated to graduate here in the next week, which started back in February of 2018, closely mirrors the ethnic demographics of our community. It's 67% minority. Highlighting our commitment to support the advancement of diversity within our department. With the great work of our Community Engagement Division, we have ramped up our social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram in an effort to humanize our police officers. Under the umbrella campaign of hashtag. Long Beach Police Department cares, the warmth and compassion of our police personnel are consistently showcased. In Fy19, the proposed police department budget totals nearly $259 million and includes which includes all funds. The police department is supported by the general fund, grant funds, gas and oil tax revenue and the Title IX Fund . The police department also generates revenue through fees, charges for contract police services and revenue from other agencies. In Fy19, the department is proposed to generate $45 million in revenue for the General Fund, General Grants Fund and the Tidelands Fund. The total FTE count is proposed to increase from 1214 FTE in FY18 to 1241 FTEs in Fy19. The increase includes three net new sworn positions, as well as the transfer of 27 civilian positions from the airport department to the police department. I would like to take this opportunity to highlight some of our department's notable changes. The Police Department's proposed FOIA 19 budget includes an overall increase in sworn in civilian positions. Personnel changes include two additional quality of life officers funded by Measure one officer in the North Division and one officer in the West Division. This mean this means that we all have a quality of life officer in each geographical patrol division. Two New Quality of life officers and one detective to support blue line operations. The Homeland Security Lieutenant will be transferred to oversee the airport police section. As I stated earlier, this will include the transfer of 27 special services officer positions from the airport department to the airport police section. Two new civilian positions to support the department's personnel and financial workload. And and as part of operational efficiencies, 4.5 vacant civilian positions will be eliminated in addition. And it's part of the proposed plan to reduce one vacant lieutenant and one vacant sergeant position to the police officer classification. Other changes include a pilot program to deploy up to four civilian community service officers in the field to assist with select priority three non-emergency calls for service and continued funding for background investigations for cannabis related medical and recreational use business applicants. We are grateful for the Council's support for one time funding in past years and propose the following one time funding for 19 a second back to back police academy. Funding for an upgrade to our records management system which will ensure we are in compliance with state and federal mandates. 1.9 million in Neighborhood Safe Streets funding to support community based, focused enforcement, and $100,000 to support the jail mental health clinician in FY 19. The law enforcement profession is and is is evolving. And at no other time has it changed so much, so quickly. The demands, accountability and expectations have never been higher. The next slide will highlight a few current and future challenges facing our police department and profession. Criminal justice reforms continue to negatively impact our police department and our community, as does unfunded state and federal mandates. These federal mandates and state legislation have placed new technology, data gathering and reporting requirements on local law enforcement agencies. Unfunded mandates impact our ability to prioritize and administratively support our core function when limited or no funding is made available by federal and state legislators. Looking ahead, future legislation also seeks to change use of force standards, which will not only significantly impact police training during the response to threatening situations, it could endanger the lives of our officers and members of our community. In totality, the police department is facing an ever changing legal environment, and adapting to these changes requires many financial resources that must be absorbed by our department and city. Additionally, the police department actively applies for grants from the federal, state and county levels. Recent DOJ grant applications require mandatory certifications to comply with ICE data request and other communication conditions. We have paused applying for DOJ grants that require these certifications and will continue to confer with the City Attorney's Office to review new grants that may be of interest to our department and city. One of our most challenging issues is homelessness and our community safety concerns. In January, 250 police chiefs from the nation's largest police departments, as well as local government researchers and community partners, convened in Long Beach for an executive level dialog on homelessness. As we all know, this is a community wide challenge, although the law enforcement community collectively advocates for compassionate and fair treatment of individuals experiencing homelessness. When the law is violated, enforcement action will be taken. An enforcement tool that is useful in addressing recurring homeless challenges is the stay away order system, which organizes court ordered stay away orders in public locations that are target targets for misdemeanor activity. This has been helpful in addressing the needs of residents, neighborhood groups, local businesses and other public locations that have been challenged by ongoing criminal activity. Across the country and specifically in Southern California, the Southern California region. Police departments, including our own, are facing high rates of attrition due to retirements. This is a natural demographic pattern given the large hiring trends that occurred 25 to 30 years ago. Coupled with a healthier economy and competition among local and regional police departments, it is more challenging than ever to on board and retain police recruits. In Fy19, we will maximize our opportunities to support the needs of the department and our community. We look forward to the potential restoration and funding for a community rapid response. Bike team composed of one sergeant and five bike officers. Well, it has been a challenge to implement new technology solutions. We are looking forward to the rollout of Long Beach Coast, a new records management system. The increased use of body worn cameras. Additional contributions to the open data portal. And the new citywide fiber plan. Upgrades to citywide technology and police related platforms can make routine activities more efficient, encourage transparency, and allow for more refined data analysis. The police department is also looking forward to rebuilding a training center, which will be an asset to our community and region. We will finally retire 20 year old trailers and cinder block buildings at the training division, which have been operating past their useful life. Lastly, to address challenges in police recruiting, we will once again partner with the Office of Civic Innovation. We will follow the City of Lee's I-Team approach to do a full assessment of our recruitment, selection, onboarding and training process to identify any opportunities for improvement. This concludes my presentation, and as always, I'll be going after the Master of Disaster for questions. Thank you to you for that great introduction. Really appreciate that as always. Mayor, vice mayor and members of the City Council, thank you for this opportunity to present the fiscal year 19 proposed budget for the Department of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Communications. I also want to thank the city manager, the police chief, the fire chief for their support, collaboration and keen understanding of the critical role that this department plays in the public safety continuum. Natural and man made disasters have dominated news headlines throughout the year. Over the past month, an unprecedented number of wildfires have burned. From Northern California to Southern California, over 600,000 acres have been burned. Hundreds of thousands of residents have been evacuated. A few thousand structures have been destroyed. And unfortunately, 11 lives have been lost, including those of six firefighters. Each disaster, rather manmade on its orders, that is a disaster. Either manmade or natural, serves as a reminder to the city of Long Beach and its residents of how important it is to be prepared, have an evacuation plan, a disaster, go kit, and be prepared to be self-sustaining for at least seven days while first responders are en route to the scene. Lessons that we've learned from recent disasters is just how quickly the public tends to respond to provide aid when disasters occur. During recent hurricanes, neighbors and motorboats, canoes and even Paddleboards were first on the scene to aid fellow residents trapped by rising waters. Therefore, I offer I 19 budget and staff work plans reflect greater work with our residents and recognition that neighbors will be the first ones in our communities to take action after disaster strikes and before first responders arrive. After the fires and the mudslides in Northern California, we learned that residents will heed emergency notification warnings from police and fire and emergency managers to evacuate or shelter in place. Alert notification warnings that are sent timely with consistent and concise managed messages, if heeded, can and will save lives. Therefore, our budget and staff work plans reflect a greater investment in tools and technology to notify the greatest amount of residents and visitors possible more effectively using multiple methods of communications. And finally, this year is the 50th anniversary of the first call to 911. And while we celebrate this occasion with our dispatchers, we are well aware that 911 equipment across the country are aged and in use. 24 seven. Long Beach is no exception. Therefore, we have invested in new corps communications systems to ensure clear and predictable communications with our residents and first responders in the field. The Department recognizes the important role that we play as part of the public safety continuum. We are dedicated to making Long Beach a more prepared city through our emergency communication systems and our disaster preparedness, outreach and training programs through through the department's course services. We've touched the lives of our residents in many important ways. The core services of the department are really echoed in its title. We provide 911 communications for police, fire and emergency medical calls for service. And we are responsible to work with our city staff, our community partners, hospitals, school district transit agencies and the business community to provide to respond effectively to a major emergency or disaster. The department is also responsible for the coordination of the city's Homeland Security grant funds. Accomplishments in the 911 call center include handling over 800,000 calls for service and answering 90% of those calls with an industry standard of 10 seconds. We completed the replacement and upgrade of both our radio dispatch system and a911 telephone system at a combined cost of just over $8 million, funded through Homeland Security grant funds and the California Office of Emergency Services. And I am proud to note those upgrades were completed without any disruption and emergency calls for services in December. Reliance Text to 911 system which provides equal access to emergency services to residents who are hearing and or speech impaired. The system can also be used by residents in situations where it is too dangerous to call 911. The department was rest was recently approved by FEMA to implement the Federal Wireless Emergency Alert Messaging System. This system allows the city to send emergency messages to residents and visitors directly to their mobile phones. Similar to the way Amber Alerts are sent, there is no need to sign up to receive these messages. The system will be used in the event of a major citywide disaster. The system will be supplemental to our current alert Long Beach system. And as was stated earlier, we coordinated Homeland Security grant funding this year totaling $14 million, a portion of which was used for the radio replacement project. Accomplishments in the area of disaster preparedness include implementation of the pilot ready your Long Beach Neighborhood Program in two neighborhoods . The Ready Your Neighborhood Long Beach program trains residents to identify those at risk in their neighborhoods elderly neighbors, mobility impaired neighbors who will require assistance during a disaster. The program also trains neighbors to identify the resources they have retired nurses, neighbors who have ladders and other generators that can be used during a disaster. This program teaches. And prepares residents to work together in the event of a disaster. And we're really, really happy to have been able to work with the Grant neighborhood in the ninth District to pilot two neighborhood programs. We are also really pleased to have established a Long Beach disaster relief fund just today, announced in partnership with Lambie's Community Foundation. This fund is designed to provide assistance with local recovery efforts for incidents not covered by FEMA. The fund is managed by the foundation, and contributions to the foundation can be made at the Lambie's Community Foundation website. This was a very busy year for us. We conducted outreach to over 30 community businesses and resident groups on business disaster preparedness topics. We also maintained a robust social media presence, and we conducted or participated in a number of annual preparedness events, including the Tsunami Walk and Preparedness Fair, our Pet Preparedness Month Outreach Program, and the upcoming Ready Land based Preparedness Expo, which we invite all residents to attend on September the 15th at Cal State Long Beach campus. And finally, we continue to receive reimbursements from FEMA for claims following the 2017 winter storm, events so far totaling $600,000 in reimbursements. We accomplished all of that with minimal impact to the city's general fund. 80% of the department's budget is devoted to 911 call taking and dispatching. The remaining budget covers disaster preparedness, outreach and training, facility maintenance and Homeland Security Grant Administration. The department's notable changes include a new disaster preparedness officer, Jeff Duvall. Jeff, would you stand? We recently recruited Jeff from the city of Anaheim, where he held a similar position for a number of years. We also are pleased to announce a new administrative officer, Diane Brown. Who's handling the slides at this moment. But please stand, Diane, to be recognized. We recruited Diane from Long Beach City College, but she is no stranger to the city of Long Beach. She spent 15 years in our health department before going over to lobby City College. Both of these individuals are going to be assets to the department, and we will. And we continue to work on measure funded projects, upgrading the EOC, heating and air conditioning system using $800,000 of funding in the area of challenges and opportunities. We continue to be challenged by the slow pace by which residents have been signing up for the Long Beach. We encourage residents to sign up for a look at Long Beach so that we can ensure everyone receives timely notification in the event of a disaster. To help with the sign ups, we are in the process of switching a little Long Beach to a new vendor who will make the sign up process easier and quicker. Cross-training work continues with our 911 dispatchers. Cross-trained. Dispatchers have been utilized to provide additional resources for large scale incidents. We currently have 20% of the staff in the cross training program. However, our priority continues to be recruiting and training additional dispatchers to reduce overtime. And we will continue to work to expand the Ready Your Labs neighborhood program to include several additional communities yet to be identified. And finally, in October, FEMA will facilitate a tabletop exercise for our department heads to support their ability to make policy level decisions that support field responses to doing an incident. Thank you. Thank you for your support. This continued. This concludes my presentation. Thank you very much. And the last of my four speakers will be capital improvement program, actually. Vice mayor. We're now going to conclude and go to questions for the three departments, and then Mr. Beck will do capital improvements when the questions are done. Thank you. Susie. Q Yes. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your presentations. Each of them was incredibly informative and impressive in terms of all the accomplishments. And of course, looking ahead at the opportunities, present some great opportunities for us as council members in terms of policy setting. So I'll take them in the order that they were presented for. Fire Chief Drury, thank you very much for your presentation. I note that our response times are good and they're expected to get better in Fy19. Could you share a little bit about why that's important and how the restoration of some of the fire resources that we have has assisted and response times overall? Mayor Councilmembers. Councilmember Price. Yeah. Thank you very much for the question. Our response times have remained pretty static over the last year, although on an annual basis we still see about a 3 to 5% annual call volume increase. And so obviously the restoration of Engine eight last year and adding Rescue 12 back into the system last year helped ease the pressure that would typically be applied to our organization as a result of increasing call volumes. So across the city for first response, first engine or truck on scene, we're still writing about the same ballpark. We've been about 6 minutes and 35 seconds, and we're still meeting the national standard to get the paramedics on scene within the allotted time set out by the NFPA. Of course, to your question, as you add a resource back into the system, which our data shows clearly that we're still seeing the same call volume increases, we're staying about where it was and it's continued to grow over the years. Adding into the resource back into the system will enable to enable us to ease the pressure citywide. I've said this before many times publicly that just because we put a resource in North Long Beach doesn't necessarily mean it's dedicated just North Long Beach at any given moment throughout the day, that resource could be called upon to respond down to Naples Island or to downtown and vice versa. So as we add another resource into the system and it's been proposed Engine 17, which is over on the east side of Long Beach, that will help ease a lot of pressure that we currently feel in central Long Beach or downtown by adding that additional resource. So we're excited about that as an opportunity, excited to continue that discussion. And I think anything that we add back into the system now will just make our system more effective than it already is. And I appreciate that explanation and I've shared with with my residents. I know we've increased response times in the third district in several areas, and that has occurred as a result of all the restorations, whether it's a rescue 12, whether it's hopefully going to be 17, whatever it is, it takes the pressure off of the whole system , and I think that's a great thing. So I wanted to highlight that. I also noted that one of the changes that you have proposed for FY 19, I think it's a really great change and I don't think it was highlighted enough, with all due respect, in your presentation, because it's actually a business friendly addition, and that's the addition of the additional staff for Planned Trek. I think that, you know, sometimes you don't associate the fire department as as helping us be business friendly. But for us to be able to expedite this and streamline some of these requirements as businesses go through the permitting process, I think it's it's really important. So thank you. Would you like to comment on that. Councilmember? I just want to say thank you for acknowledging the work of our Fire Prevention Bureau. That that bureau is led by Deputy Chief Rick Brant, which we all know is perhaps one of the best in the business in the world of fire prevention, special events, filming all the stuff that he does and his entire team in fire prevention have embraced his vision there. And that is to be more business friendly, to speed up the process and ensure that those people that want to want to do business in Long Beach know that they have a partner in the fire department, that we're going to help them get to where they want to be. So I appreciate you bringing that up. And I apologize for not highlighting a greater. Well. It's again, it's it's kind of not a natural connection. But I think that the, you know, residents may not understand the important role. And we have a team member on the city three team Lisa West, who's our business liaison. And anytime a business applies for a permit in the district, she kind of holds their hand and walks them through the process. And it's only been through her eyes that I've been able to see the work that the fire department does. So thank you for that position. I wholeheartedly support it. I also want to commend you on the use of the electronic patient care reporting system. I had the opportunity to go on a ride along with the fire department recently and got to see them use it. And my sister is one of the physicians at the New Star Behavioral Center that we have and Councilman Oranga as a district. And she told me that she is actually when the Long Beach fire has come, has been using the program and she was speaking very fondly of it. So, you know. So you can get some feedback from one of the practitioners on the other side. I think it's been very successful, so thank you for that. And then finally, just a comment to you. Gosh, it was probably about a year ago that you and I were having just an informal conversation and you shared with me some of your vision on peer support programs. And who would have known at that time how important your commitment to peer support would have been for your department in the last year. So so kudos to you for having that vision and for making mental health mental health focus such an important part of your leadership. Both both the work that you do and the work that Chief Learner does involves leadership of a group of people who are susceptible to vicarious trauma on a daily basis. And again, your foresight was very, very, very apparent to me during the last few months. So thank you, Councilmember. I feel like I need to jump in here. That's that's as much as I embrace that. The entire command staff, the deputy chiefs, the assistant chiefs, the rank and file, our union, everybody in our organization embraced that mission together. And one of our deputy chief said during we're going through a very dark time about a month ago, said that everything we started to put in place five years ago was was preparation for that moment. And I couldn't be more thankful for the work that these men and women in the organization do and the support that they lent to that program specifically. Well, thank you. Thank you for keeping up the great work of your department despite unforeseen circumstances. We all appreciate it. Thank you. So I'm going to move on now to Chief Luna, if that's okay. Chief Luna, a couple of questions I had for you. You talk on page three of our department overview, you talk a little bit about the pilot staffing models that we have. And I was hoping that maybe you could share a little bit more about those pilot staffing models and what we're hoping to accomplish with those. And I think that's kind of the use of some non Swarns to assist to support. Members of the council. Councilwoman Price Our vision for that is, is kind of something we did years ago and we stop doing, and that's to hire civilian individuals to go out and in a pilot form and handle some priority. Three calls. Some report calls, non-injury, traffic collision, things of that nature to relieve some of the pressure from the police officers out there. There were some things that worked in the past, some things that didn't. I think it's it's worth trying and and see where it gets us and and see how. Number one, the safety of the employees is important. Is it going to increase our capacity in other areas if we can get more proactive time for our patrol officers to do either quality of life work, more crime prevention work, getting out of their cars and playing with kids in the park, that would be awesome. We're always trying to find ways to maximize our police officers times in the field, and we think this may be a way to do it. So are you open to some suggestions on what that might look like in terms of the support role? Of course. Well, I don't know how defined the program has been, but I do know. Well, first, let me just start with saying you're absolutely correct that these are changing times in the world of law enforcement and public safety. And I commend you and your command staff for being nimble and responding to some of the changes that have taken place that have really changed the way policing is done. And although there's a lot of, you know, kind of fluffy rhetoric about how things should be done, at the end of the day, it's our police officers that people turn to when they have quality of life issues or when a crime happens and they expect them to solve every problem. And oftentimes it's not a police problem. And when we take tools away from police officers that limit their ability to enforce laws, I think it puts a lot of pressure on police departments to solve problems that really are not their problems to solve. So I commend you for leading at a time like this, and I can understand that right now is probably one of the most challenging times for someone for police officers, because it's very hard to recruit people into the profession. With all the changes that are happening. So I appreciate your commitment to enforcement and I support your efforts to do the work on the front end, the outreach, the education, the work on the back end, and the diversion programs and efforts to rehabilitate that, balanced with the commitment to enforcement, I think, is what makes a modern day police chief successful. And I see all of those qualities in you. So thank you. I appreciate that. And if I could just have a quick couple seconds, if I can have a lot of our command staff is here, if you guys can just stand really quick, it's good to stretch after being sitting here for several hours, but just stand and be acknowledged. It's it's a team effort from our entire command staff and every every employee who works on this police department. Just absolutely amazing people. We're so blessed to have them all. So thank you, guys. Absolutely. Thank you. They do amazing work. And I have been I have been incredibly blessed to work one on one with several of them sitting up there. So I feel very lucky about that. So before I go back to that question about whether you're open to well, no, I'll go into it right now. So I think there there's probably some opportunities. And for us to use the resources that that you've talked about, these are new kind of creative pilots for things like supporting our police officers. You know, when an arrest is made, could there be an inventory team that would that would identify the property and store the property so that the officer doesn't. Could there be a booking team that would transport the individual and book that person so that the officer doesn't have to go to jail? But just, you know, those kinds of ideas of of how non sworn could be used so that we're not taking police officers off the street. But I defer entirely to you and your team on on how that works. But I will say that is something that I've heard a lot of police chiefs are looking at right now in terms of trying to manage resources with the changing staffing and the changing limitations that we have in the industry. So I, I think that that has some potential and I look forward to hearing how that rolls out in practice. You aren't one of the pages here in our budget book, we talk about key measures, performance measures, and of course, we have on their response time to priority one calls. And we have violent crime rates. And this isn't meant as a criticism whatsoever. But is there a reason we don't track property crimes or quality of life crimes as a performance measure? Because, you know, those seem to be the bulk of the calls for service that some of us get. And I wonder if there is a way to track those as a performance measure as well, or is this kind of the best practice to track these things is performance measure. We absolutely track crime and that's how we anybody would grade their police department, including ours. For us, as of July, our our July index crime report, that's the latest one we have. Our property crime is down 8.5% throughout the entire city. So that is one area that we consistently look at in regards to quality of life crimes, whether they're lower grade property crimes, that is well within what we look at. And each month. And I'd invite anybody behind the dais to join us for our monthly crime meeting. That Deputy Chief Heber facilitates to see exactly how much we do, how much we pay attention to, and the creative responses by our entire team of employees to address these these crime trends. It's it's absolutely impressive, and it's done consistently. We take this stuff personal. We lose a lot of sleep over it. We want to make sure that this city is safe and we do everything we can to make sure that happens. Thank you, Chief. I appreciate that. And I know you're committed to that. I just I would like to see those numbers highlighted more as well, because those are really important to anyone, you know, who has had a residential burglary or something and feels that that crime maybe isn't taken as seriously, because I know it is. And I want us to highlight those numbers more. So we talked a little bit about grants and in your presentation you covered grants a little bit. And I think you touched upon this, that maybe we've paused for applying for some of the grants that require certification because of the state and our position on the the Values Act . But is there any indication that national policies are going to impact our existing grants or the grants that we're relying on for Fy19? I would say yes, yes, and yes. That is such a fluid situation with national politics being what they are. There's consistent challenges in court and honestly, we're working hand in hand with our city attorney consistently to try and stay ahead of this. We don't want to miss out on any grant opportunities. And it seems like, at least in some of the ones that we weren't able to put in for because of our current city policies, those are things we're paying attention to. And obviously if we get to an area where we're deficient and funding will be coming back to this policy body to ask for additional funding, if we can't get it through the normal grant channels that we normally get them from. And Chief, I'm asking you as a as a member of this body to please do that, because it's important. I think that we know I'll tell you right now, as a matter of principle and as a matter of my fiduciary duty, having more police officers on the street and having the resources to be able to fund that is more important to me than sending a message. And so I think if we're in a situation where you feel that significant grant funds are going to be affected by some policy that we're setting, please. I want to know that because I want to make those decisions with that in mind, because we are at a great place with our police department. We're continuing to increase and hopefully, hopefully there is some wisdom at the highest levels of this nation that realizes that we shouldn't be punished. But if that starts to happen, then I would ask that you please keep us up to date on that. Yes, ma'am. Or there is an imposition of a traffic collision fee that we're going to be implementing. Is that a fee that's assessed to the suspect or the defendant in a DUI case? To the suspect. Or suspect or defendant. Did they have to be charged? Do we now? I'm sorry. I'd have to double check on that. Okay. No problem. Thank you. The transfer of the 27 positions at the airport, the TSOs. Does that affect their job at all, their job. Duties or their training? Is that something that is going to be impactful to those 27 individuals at all? We believe the impact will be positive. They will fall under our imbroglio, our chain of command, our training standards. And that will, even though they are great people and they've done great work out at the airport. We believe that the scenario that we're proposing makes them better, makes us better, makes our airport and city safer. Okay. Thank you, Chief. You on. Page 384. Where we outlined the summary of changes, there's a reference to downgrading two positions a sergeant and a lieutenant position. But then there was also a reference in the PowerPoint about filling two vacancies. Is that I'm sorry, removing those vacancies. Is that the same reference? There is. There is one vacancy with the sergeant. The lieutenant position is not vacant, at least not in the location that is proposed to be reduced. Do we know what departments those are going to be in? The lieutenant comes from the patrol bureau and the sergeant comes from the investigations bureau. Okay. Proposed. Okay. So my only concern with those is that, you know, there are certain that many obviously every division in the police department benefits from expertize. But there are a couple of areas where I think we especially need expertize right now. And I would hate to downgrade positions and that would be with pretty. Special events. Many of those are events are in my district and in Council Member Pearce's district. I know representing the coast. And so having that historical context and that knowledge to be able to work with and and collaborate with community members is so important that I would hope that, you know, I wish we weren't downgrading those positions or filling those vacancies. But if that has to be done, I just would ask if there could be a second look as we go through these discussions to see if that's necessary. Yes, we will. We have been doing that. Those are very difficult positions to reduce. But in a sense, when you get the directions to balance your general fund budget, at the end of the day, that equates to about $140,000 that I'm going to have to find somewhere else. There are there are no good positions to reduce. We're just at from a capacity perspective, that's just where we're at. So it was the best case scenario of not a very good situation to begin with, if that makes sense. It does, Chief, and I appreciate you sharing that. I think it's important for me and my colleagues to understand that, because it may be important for us as we think about the budget. So I appreciate that. Thank you. I know that we're going to do a body worn camera. You know, we're doing the pilot with the 200. I've I've said this many times and I know a lot of my colleagues feel the same way. We'd love to see a full roll out of body worn cameras. And this is more, you know, a request to the city manager. I think that we think of a way that we can incorporate a full rollout in FY 20. And I'm hoping that maybe we can collect some data on the positions that we're going to be funding to examine the cost of redactions for the body worn camera , to see what the true cost of that will be and maybe pilot, you know, for those 200, how many praise are we getting and how many redactions are we actually doing? Because it may be that we've overestimated what the operating costs might be, might be. And so I just hope that we would be thinking about a FY 20. We really need to have body worn cameras throughout the whole city. I can't stress important how important that is. Yes, we agree. And that's the purpose for not going city wide deployment at this time. To do them in south and north gives us the opportunity to look at the logistics of it. The investigative portion of it, the proportion of it. And we believe doing this for the amount of time we're going to do it will give us the ability to come back and give all of you a true cost for what this would cost for a full blown body worn camera program. Great. Thank you, Chief. Do we anticipate to get some data on the clinician that's in the jail in terms of how many people the clinician sees and how many are referred to successfully for services? That is our goal. We have some very, very smart people working on our innovation team and over at the Health Department, they're all about stats and data, and I can't wait to see what comes out. I'm really excited that the city put this much effort into looking at creative solutions, not just complain about criminal justice reform, but look at thinking out of the box and trying to figure out how to solve these problems long term. Thank you, Chief. And then I just have one final question, and that is, I know you referenced the number, I think it was 825, but how many sworn officers do we have now and what would be the ideal number of officers for a city of our size? But I'm going to I'm going to refer to some of our financial policies. But looking at it from an optimistic view. What would it be? So you notice everyone laughing over here at me when you ask me that question. Our F-18 budget, it's sworn numbers are 848. That's what we're budgeted at. And in regards to what's that right number? Honestly, four, I mean, there's formulas that different people use. And you look at formulas for each cities. If you just look at California, if you compare us to Oakland, Sacramento, Fresno, we're within about the same range. There's arguments about, you know, officers that are just assigned to you as opposed to contract bodies. Every city is unique. They have interesting needs. I can tell you this, our people are working their butts off. I believe that the officers we have are doing the same work of the officers we had seven or eight years ago before the recession hit. All of you wonderful people, but you work our butts off. And I'm not complaining. That's just the business we're in. So. So getting to the number of. Of what we need. I know when we had 1200, we used to say it wasn't enough. It just depends on the community. My job is to stay engaged with all of you, with our community consistently, listen to the needs that they have, and then try and prioritize and figure out what we can and cannot do. You guys, all of you, ladies and gentlemen, are, I think, are doing a good job of managing the city. We are with our department that runs a lot on overtime. And and like I said, our people are working their tails off. But I think we're getting the job done. So we'll continue to monitor it. I will not be shy about coming to you and saying that we're at capacity and we may not be able to do something that you're asking us to do or reshift and reprioritize because we just don't have the people to do it. Now I'm not talking. That's everyday business. If we're dealing with an emergency or where we've got to call people back to work. Our department is very well trained and very well prepared to deal with that any day of the week. Thank you, Chief. And and just in conclusion, I agree. Your department and the men and women of your department are doing tremendous work, and it's obvious in the things that they do every day. I recently have the opportunity to go to the Long Beach courthouse on an Orange County case because a judge had sent a case over to Long Beach because of a conflict. But anyway, as I was walking through the hallway in my capacity as an Orange County prosecutor, I saw the hallways of the courthouse lined with Long Beach officers. And I'm a huge sap, and I don't think anyone here is that shocked to hear that. But I literally had to take a moment in the hallway just looking out at the Sea of Black with just the sense of incredible pride for this department. I wanted to walk up to every officer and say, Hi, I'm on the council. I'm so proud of what you're doing. But I didn't do that. I just walked by them as as did the other prosecutors in the courthouse. But I just feel just I get to work with them all the time and I get to work with officers from agencies all over every day. And I'm really proud of the officers from the Long Beach Police Department. They're incredibly respectful and everything that they do and our firefighters as well. So thank you to both chiefs for everything. We really appreciate that. Just a correction on the numbers. I said before the recession, I said 1200. It's actually 1020. That was our where we were top budgeted numbers before. I just want to correct that before somebody puts out in the paper and says something about that. Thank you, Chief. Okay. So just one final question. I have and I really don't want to call you the master of disaster or whatever it is they've been calling you. I'm not sure. Do you like it? I don't. I can't tell if you like it. You don't like it? I don't. Think so. Remember that it originated somewhere? Yes. By the city manager. I believe. I've heard it come out of his mouth. Anyway, I wanted to just acknowledge the great outreach and partnership that you and your team have been doing. We've been privileged to have two San Army walks with your team, and I think they both had great turnouts and it's been fantastic. So thank you for that. The 911 operators, you talked about the ongoing training. I just want to make sure that that training also includes maybe how to interact with the residents that are calling about. The priority three calls are the quality of life calls, because some of the concerns that we get sometimes from residents is that if they're case that they're calling on isn't a priority one call that maybe, you know, they get a dismissive tone or something like that. I just want to make sure that every resident feels heard and that that training includes that type of education. Yeah, totally. Totally agree. Councilmember, if you recall that the Public Safety Committee meeting a couple of months ago, we talked about, you know, what residents should expect when they call and what they should expect from our dispatchers. And one of the primary things is that every call is important and the residents should feel that way and assure residents that help will be on the way for their calls, the way that they're prioritized. So we don't make that distinction in that regard. They're all important to us. We really appreciate, Councilmember, your support of the annual Tsunami Evacuation Walk and Resource Fair. It's growing every year in size and scope. And we think that's and that's an important community event that you support and that we try to support with you. Of course, it's our pleasure to do so. And and a huge kudos to a nine on one operator. So I ask that question not because I've identified any opportunities for improvement, because having worked with Commander Herzog, he's really good at when residents would say, well, I called 911 and they said, blah, blah, blah. He would pull the tape and send it. And sure enough, there were some factual inaccuracies in some of the way that the phone calls were reported. And in every single time that I had the opportunity to listen to those calls, it was always the dispatchers who were very respectful and frankly, often abused by people for no apparent reason. And I just think they do a really great job of standing their ground, but also being very empathetic. So thank you. They? Excuse me. Okay, you guys, I just woke up. Okay. This is mango units. Thank you. Knowing that I have the pleasure to serve on Budget Oversight Committee, I'll hold back some of my questions. And I also think that there are so many of you here today that are here for future agenda items. And while the budget is the most exciting thing in most of our lives, I know that you have other important matters. So I'm going to get to the meat and potatoes of my quick questions. I appreciate the work of our fire department. I really appreciate going over the budget in detail, and I don't have any questions for you at this time. My questions are really going to be with the police department at this time. So first, I want to compliment you and the T.I department for the new platform of tracking crimes. I think that this has been a significant contribution to the community. I want to give a special thank you to Commander Herzog, who has since moved on from the East Division. He recognized the number of individuals in our communities that used to use the crime report tracking website and the major setbacks that it had. He took their input and worked hand in hand with community members who would identify specific inaccuracies on the website to try to identify as we moved into this new system, what caused those inaccuracies. And I think that accurate, important, accurate, transparent data for the community to know and be able to see their own crime stats is important in communities taking ownership and making those calls when they see something that is suspicious. However, we've had some challenges with the Go Language P.D. app. I appreciate the Ericsson for getting that back online. As soon as our neighborhood association said that it was down. It is back up and running tonight. I really, really appreciate the ability for a community member to give their own police report. However, when we talk about adding non sworn to do that, I have some concerns in terms of costs and training. And so I'll bring back up what I brought up four years ago and three years ago and then I kind of gave up on for a while, but I'm back at it. We have 48 police officers scheduled to retire this year. We are we instituting a reserve program where they could come back to the city in a reserve capacity. Knowing and understanding the knowledge and information that they have from their years on the force where they could potentially take some of these community service officer. Non-emergency. Priority three. Focused. Immediate. The information on the new pilot program with notes on Councilwoman Mongo. We actually have several police officers who have retired and have become reserve officers now in our reserve program. They're slated to work. I want to say it's 10 hours a month and some special events because it's a volunteer assignment. Mm hmm. Not to me. Not too many people are going to volunteer to go out and become a report card. So that's a little bit of a challenge. So that's why we wanted to try this program. Again, we're just giving it a shot, see what works. We're open to any option that would reduce the police officers workload and have them do more priority type work. How many reserves do we currently have? Sorry about that. I'd have to get back to you on that. I want to say it's in the range of about 25 or 30. So I will ask that our Long Beach police officers who are considering retirement in the next 12 months or have retired over the last 12 months, I think in the next 24 months we have upwards of I don't even want to say eligible because it would scare us the numbers, but I would guess we've been averaging somewhere between 30 and 40 to 50 a year. And so I would strongly encourage all of those reserves to do that. And then I would also encourage us to look at an opportunity where, in addition to your volunteer hours, other reserve agencies, after you meet your minimum requirements of your 10 hours, you can be on an hourly paid position, which is at a significant reduction from what an hourly full timer would cost because they're already receiving their pension and they're already retired. They have to keep under their 960 hours unless they get an exemption depending on the agency from was ERA or I can't remember the acronym is for LAPD. But I hope that we will sit down and explore this as a opportunity because the ability for us to keep those individuals, so many of them are changing agencies and going back to work full time. And we just are missing out on that experience. They know the streets, they know the communities, they know the neighborhoods, they know the trends. Which leads me to my second question. I'm the big the. Investigations, Sergeant. Is it specifically burglary? I know Councilman Price mentioned a couple of different areas that it could have been in, but I don't think I heard what specific section the downgraded sergeant was coming from. Burglary. It is burglary. Okay. And is that an area where. We are caught up or behind in those investigations. I know that we have backlogs in lots of areas. We have backlogs in all of our investigative units. So that would concern me. I know that we want to clear these investigations because the sooner we get these individuals in jail, the better chance we have of less victimization. So I look forward to working with you and your department on what those opportunities are. I really just can't stress enough what a great outcome reserve programs have been, including you as our police chief, who started as a reserve. And I'm so proud of that and and the work that you did and and how you've led our department over these last few years. And so I hope that at least it's something that we can consider over the next several weeks, because 25 reserve officers I know that we had a a staff member in your office who ended up retiring, who was working on building that back up. And we had regular meetings. But as that staffing change happens, I know it's challenging. And so anything I can do to help and work with you and the team, I just feel so passionately that keeping these individuals with that level of experience on the team is so important. And with that, I will pass it off to the next council member, since I know it's a long meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Next Miss Universe. So thank you. My little lighthouse. I can't tell if it's on or off. Thank you. Have a very few. I'm not very. If you have very little to say. I think it's a great budget and it's wonderful. And I think that thanks to the citizens of Long Beach, they helped us basically get this budget that we have right now that we can really implement a lot of our programs and re and reintroduce others like my my colleague, Councilmember Mungo, who had no questions for fire. I do. And I had no questions from for PD budget a little bit. And I have just one for the master of disaster. In terms of fire, you didn't mention anything. About the research program, the Community Emergency Response Team. I was wondering, is that still in effect or I know we were challenged of a year ago or a couple of years back. I'm getting some funding for some emergency kits or some igloos for to store some emergency equipment. What's the status of that? Mr. Vice Mayor, Councilmembers Councilmember Urunga Yes. The program is still very much active. In fact, this past year we trained 155 additional adults in in basic cert programs. This program has has grown beyond just cert now. And we're now we're doing teenage cert and we do Spanish language cert classes. And the program is started to grow throughout the city. Jake Heflin, as you guys you guys all know Jake Heflin, he is our program manager for Year Program and it's thriving, doing very well. And this past week, I'm happy to report that we've got a number of young men and women in our community that come from challenged backgrounds throughout the community. And all sorts of different situations have been put into what we're calling a fire core program. And they've gone out to the fire stations. They're riding along, they're getting firsthand experience on what it's like to be with the fire, the fire department and firefighters on a daily basis. But each one of those young men and women teenagers went through a 24 hour training class before we let them go right along with our firefighters. So, yes, the program is functioning at a high level. It's thriving, continuing to grow, and we anticipate it will continue to grow in popularity for years to come. That's that's great to hear because I know it's a very important community benefit that we have out there. And it really gets our our members of the community engaged with the city in terms of disaster preparedness and and being able to provide emergency response when we need it, which is a good segue way to my next question . A lot of us were already a lot of the questions that I had there was that we're asked by our customer representative. Thank you for being so astute with a lot of your questions regarding disaster preparedness. We great that one. The one aspect of your presentation that stood out to me was the cross training of the dispatchers. Could you go into a little bit more detail in terms of what does cross training entail in regards to their their performing their their jobs as dispatchers currently? Thank you, Councilmember. Currently, we have co-located dispatchers, police and Fire Hall located on the second floor of the Emergency Communications Operations Center and have been co-located with similar skill sets since that building was erected about 15 years ago. We've always identified. The potential to create some economies and skills as well as to be able to provide additional resources when we have large scale incidents that occur in the city, like a major fire, like the Paradise Gardens fire that we experienced a couple of years ago, or like some of the police activities that we've also experienced . So these are very similar disciplines. Staff are all accustomed to talking to telephone and doing radio work, some in code, some not in code. But we've had success with the dispatchers that we've been able to put through the training course. As I said, it provides a force multiplier for us when we have a large event. Our challenge in the cross training program is our need to continue is our need to answer all of the phone calls that we have as they're coming in. So an analogy that I use quite often is we have to keep this plane flying while we're trying to build another wing, and our priority is to keep the plane from flying. So we spend most of our time just bringing in new dispatchers, training them in one or the other, discipline, police or fire. And then as time and resources permit, then we go through some training on a cross-training program with other dispatchers. So we're about 20% of our dispatchers that have completed the training. They go back and forth between the two centers. If there's an influx of calls on one side, we will bring some cross training dispatchers in to assist as opposed to calling dispatchers from home to come in. So we have a much quicker response and it has paid dividends for us. Our priority, though, is, as I said, reducing overtime by bringing in by training dispatchers continuously on one discipline or another. Okay. Yeah, that's what I figured that cross-training was included because I would recall that there were actually two two sites, one for a fire in another location and one for police, which was down here in the basement of City Hall once upon a time. And so now with the the EOC establish out there, Redondo, it it creates a great opportunity to have these these two services put together. And the cross training is a is of course, a one of those benefits that the community would would greatly benefit from because of the level of service that would be expanded. So that's what I have. Mace Mary, you can wake up now. Thank you for the visit. You guys were losing our audience. You must answer. Mrs. Pierce. Here. My turn. Great. Oh, excuse me. Well, I want to say what a great budget it is. I think that the staff has done a fantastic job. And when I sat down and looked at it on the first day, I just kind of sat with it because it is such a different budget than the first budget that I was able to participate in passing . And so I just want to give a congratulations to all the staff that's worked really hard on this. I'm going to go the opposite direction. So let's talk about disaster preparedness. I want to first say how great it has been to work with your office. We have done some fantastic things. We've done some Facebook Live videos with your team, or we came in and did one around earthquakes and then we went to the aquarium and talked about tsunamis. And so my goal is hopefully to do one of those quarterly with your office and also with fire and PD. And so I just want to thank you for being willing to think outside the box and having your team like they come in with everything. So when we did the one for the earthquake, she brought in a whole box of goodies to show everybody all the little bitty things that you can do to make a difference that now my house is finally disaster ready. So I want to thank you for that. I did want to ask my staff, did the active shooter training in the main library last year, do you have plans for that training again in the next year? Thank you, council member. We appreciate your staff outreach to us to do some Facebook Live. We think, you know, as many other departments utilizing social media really helps us to get our message out. And especially in the area like disaster preparedness, where people don't really think about it much until something happens and at that point it's too late. So it's great that we able to get out in front. And so we appreciate your participation there. Yes. Last year we did active shooter training with every department in the city. We did it with all of the council officers. We did it with the ranchos, with the with the museums. And we continue to offer those services to city departments that need it, council officers, turnover and staff. And we're happy to come back out and do those trainings. Wonderful. I have a hole about a three new people on my staff and I've got seven. A new intern. So I think we'll be calling you soon. I did have one other question. The current roles of the administration, bureau managers and disaster preparedness manager positions. What will change with them with the title change? Yeah, you know that that nothing will change with the title change. The title change better reflects the the magnitude of the job as opposed from an officer to a manager. But with our staff, we have the same we have the same responsibilities and administration as other departments have, sometimes on a smaller basis in some areas, sometimes greater in some other areas. And so we are really, really fortunate that through a recruitment process, we were able to identify Diane Brown, had previous experience with the city, could hit the ground running and kept us all of our recruitment. Everything stayed on track. So great. Okay. I think that that's pretty much it will be outreaching again, like I said, to do a couple more activities with with your office and just really appreciate your efforts. And I am going to ask my staff that at the end of each of our signatures that we add to download the alert app on their phones. And it did take me a while when I tried to do it, I couldn't multitask and do it, which I'm a pro at multitasking. So it took me a minute, but we're going to add that to the end of our signatures. And maybe if we could do that for the entire city, that might be a great step to get awareness out about that. Thank you very much. Okay. Let's go to let's see Chief Luna. I have several questions on PD and I'm going to try not to duplicate those that have already come up. And before I begin, I want to say when we looked at the budget and I saw the added quality of life officers, the bike officers, I was elated in my district where we have a it's a denser district than parts of the east side. We've had many requests, particularly in our business improvement district, for bike officers that are able to be more nimble. And so I if you could walk through for me where the bike officers will be, I see some metro, but what is the ability to have them in our beds, like the Dhaba Fourth Street and our beaches? It seems like an appropriate use on our beaches outside of the the trucks that we have. Yeah. Councilmember Pearce, the concept or the vision that we have for this rapid bicycle response team that's proposed is we wanted to get one sergeant and five police officers really available to the entire city. It would not be for just one area. The concept would be is that we put them on some type of whether it's a bicycle, motocross bicycle, put. Them on scooters. No scooters, no scooters, less DC he says yes, but we have some significant challenges throughout the city with not our homeless population but the criminals within the homeless population. And as most of you can attest to, they're on the beaches, in the flood controls, places that are very difficult for a police car to get into. So when this team gets put together, if it if it goes through, they'll figure out the type of vehicles to get into those areas. Their task would be to focus on the high frequency offenders, the people with extensive criminal histories that we see out on our streets within that population and the significant mentally ill. So that team would focus on that group and we believe it would reduce the numbers of crimes that are occurring within that population that is increasing our overall index crime, especially in the aggravated assault categories. We are having multiple incidences where the individuals I've described to you are either the suspects or the victims. This team can get to them and we believe would have an impact. But whatever the problems are anywhere in the city, that's where they would go. Great. Okay, let's see. And then I had a question on the quality of life officers. I know with the Hart team, you know, there's only so much that they can do with a quality of life officer. Do they have the ability to transport or do they have to call in somebody else if they have a situation where they need to take someone to the hospital or something like that. They transport themselves. They can. Yes, great. They do. And they do often. Okay. And I wanted to to talk about the community policing model. I remember my first budget, we talked about this and it was like we just don't have the capacity. We don't have the capacity to even talk about getting out of our cars and playing games with the community members. So I'm really happy to hear your comments tonight about that. And just wanted to highlight it's great to be chipping away and adding more officers each year to get us closer to that to that goal. If you follow us on social media, hopefully you do. You'll see a lot of our officers engaging, getting out of their cars, whether it's parks, neighborhoods. I'm hoping that through the clerk's office, they give you all the capes that we handed out on National. We've got capes. Yeah. And that's something our officers are doing every day, every night and really, really building relationships out there consistently. Great. Thank you for that. And following that question on community policing, what is the standard for keeping officers within their beat? How long do we typically shift somebody around or keep them. In patrol calls for service. It is currently a six month deployment. The officers get to choose based on seniority division shift days off and again, that's based on seniority. Some end up staying a lot longer than six months because they like where they work, but it gives people the opportunity to move around the city and do some different things. So is there I know that in having some conversations with other cities and other jurisdictions where they have attempted to have people in the same community for two years or three years and that same area. So they're able to build that trust with with that population and really they're able to outreach them and build trust and not having to rebuild trust every six months. Is there any I mean, I'm not telling you how to do your job. And same thing with Susie Councilmember Price. You know, some advice on how do we continue to build that trust within our communities. Is there anything else keeping us from extending that time or encouraging people to stay longer? But it is something that we listen to. We look at best practices, not only in the region, around us, in the state and the entire country. And those are things that we assess. Each patrol division has what we call police resource officers, and they're there a little bit longer, depending on if there's movement, opportunity for promotion or opportunities for another bureau. But this is something that we believe works here for our city. It it works for our employees, but we're constantly reevaluating it to see if if we're having challenges in building trust in certain neighborhoods. We believe at this time this six month deployment is working for us, but we're never stuck in our ways. We always look at best practices. Okay. Thank you for that. And then you mentioned that we're running a lot on over time. I think I had a brief conversation with you in regards and maybe financial management can help us understand. I understand that the Tidelands funds could be used to pay for overtime in the Tidelands area. Is that something that one what would that look like and to is that something that would help? PD Particularly in our Entertainment Convention Center, I mean, the beach zone there, we I know we have a lot of challenges right there in our marina. So if you could walk through what that would look like using Tidelands funds for PD overtime. I'll start off and then if you need to add to that financial wizard yourself. However. We currently do use overtime from Tidelands to do exactly what you just described, and we've been doing that successfully. Generally, we get the support not only from all of you, but the city manager's office and financial management to be flexible in regards to retrieving funding, overtime funding from different funds. And although it's welcomed and it's effective. I'm really concerned about our capacity right now in overtime employee wellness, psychological well-being, making sure our employees are spending time with their own families so they are more productive at work. So those are all things we have to fine balance with. And that's the thing I talked about earlier is if at one point over time is just not the way we're going to get this job done, I have to come back to this council and say we are beyond our capacity and we may need more staffing, structural staffing increases. And I mean, I've said many times that I don't necessarily support overtime with our PD because I understand how stressful your job is. And so having a department that's all working overtime leads could possibly lead to, you know, situations in the field that we could deter if we didn't have officers working overtime. So I think what would be helpful for me and maybe it could be in front of this council or not too from for on how many overtime hours we have and what would it look like to fill those with with FTEs instead would be kind of helpful I think for us to understand, not necessarily in this budget cycle, but for the next year for me to understand would be helpful. Did Financial have anything else to add? I believe that the police chief is correct that we are already using the overtime from Tidelands, but we will. Verify that and get back to you. I think that we are okay. And then one to last things for PD. I think that this morning we would we sent you an email, but I did go to a community meeting last night and I don't mean to put you on the spot, but one of the challenges that I've had in my district is that we have transients or folks that are on drugs have a situation where they get violent or physical or cause a situation with another resident they call PD. And the gentleman last night I asked him to call to make sure that residents know that if they're not happy with the situation that they had, that they need to call and talk to a supervisor in PD. So number one two is that when we have situations like having PD come out and they said we want to file a charge against this person, this homeless person that attacked me or whatever, that sometimes the officers will say, well, why do you want to do that? There's nothing we can really do. And that they feel. I've had three situations the last two months where they said they let the person walk away and the officer was said that they were on drugs or they were high. And so that's what we're grappling with with the beach challenge. And so how can we help knowing that we don't have room in our jails, knowing about Prop 47, what is a best practice for our constituents to understand and what they need to do whenever they do call police and they feel like they've been in a poor situation? To let us know. I need dates and times. Yeah. If. If somebody alleges that one of our officers responded to the scene of an incident and they didn't perform their duties. I need to know. I need to follow up. Many times we get those type of allegations. Somebody stated it earlier. We'll check with our communications center. Everything's taped. And if I've learned anything in the last three years of my career is there's two sides, every story. So we get both sides and we figure out what happened. And many times people do get frustrated because they call the police. And when we get out there, we find that no crime has been committed. And and obviously, you know, there's sometimes we can do something. But taking a crime report, you don't take one unless a crime was committed. But it's still our obligation to explain to somebody what what we're doing and why and explain from that perspective. And we have great employees, but once in a while we do make a mistake. And if we do, we'll correct it. Great. Thank you for that night. That was exactly what I told community members last night. But I know that I had a room of 30 people that are watching at home right now. So I wanted to have it not just come from my mouth, but have it come from yours as well. And my very last thing for PD is back to the airport. I wanted to understand what is what are the staff that are there now and what would be the change, having them underneath you versus the airport? And is there a cost differential there? There is some cost differential for the exact numbers. I would need some assistance from financial management there. But in regards to the responsibilities being under the police department, it just completely changes the dynamics. Our training standards, our expectations are just very much different than what they've had in the past. And that's not to say I mean, it's a great group of people. They've been doing a good job. We just believe being in our chain of command, they would do that that much better and they would perform. From a safety perspective, making the airport a lot safer than it is now. Can you. Has there been a situation or something that's happened that's been a red flag or is it just trying to create a different atmosphere? A little of both. Okay. I'll leave it there and we can check in before the budget processes are final as well. So that's all I have for you, Chief Luna. A fun. I didn't promise a short one, so I've got a fire next. I just want to say with fire, I'm extremely happy that in the last budget we were able to make the Hart team structural. They were adding a second Hart team. I love that we're adding 17, you know, crossing fingers. So I have two big questions for you. One is, I know that the Hart team cannot transport, and I know that we've had conversations with Janice Hahn. We've talked at the state level. Is there can you give us a status update on where we are in giving the the Hart team the ability to to transport? Councilmember the that the intent of the program was to never have the Hart team transport. If you go back a couple of years when we first put the program in place as a pilot program, we were figuring it out. It proved to be very successful. So we, the council structurally funded it last year. One of the things I brought up during last year's budget presentation was ultimately down the road. We'd like to get to a place where we go to L.A. County Emergency Medical Services Agency and make that resource response capable under the 911. So that's what I meant, right? So it's not or it's not the the rig itself is not configured to transport first responders. So we are still in the process of debating and discussing how we should best approach that. I will tell you this. The Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency has already told us that adding another resource into the system is no problem, provided that has the right tools and equipment on it to meet the criteria that they call out. The question we're dealing with internally is the mission of the Hart team has proved to be very successful and we continue to grow the program and it's morphing. And the Joel Davis and Justin Berger, the two firefighter paramedics that are on that are teaching us really about what that program should be. And so we have to be very careful as we move forward not to take them away from their core mission. So I do like the idea of having them become a response capable unit that for surge protection or overflow or those situations where we're just out of resources, we could dispatch the Hart Unit, maybe an A and an ambulance to transport somebody, but we have to do it in a very measured and deliberate way to make sure that we are not on a daily basis taking them away from from their mission. Yeah, because their mission is important and they're making a difference on the things they're doing right now. That is very helpful. Thank you for that. And I love that they're doing the trainings with everybody. I'm just really thrilled with how you guys have taken it and really been measured and slow at moving it to make sure it's the right fit. Also, I think the same thing that Councilmember Susie Price mentioned planned small business has been a key part of my term and I think that as much as we can do to open those doors quicker and so adding an additional staff for that, the electronic system is wonderful. So that's really what I have for you guys. I'm just really thrilled. And oh, I did have one more question. I know that you guys have a list we don't like to talk about all the time. Downtown Long Beach is growing our residents by 3000, we have station one. We have some improvements around the Queen Mary. If you could just talk about fire for me in downtown and what that looks like not only with our new residential units, but we are adding potentially three new hotels. What does it look like to reassess kind of the needs for first responders and downtown. Councilmember Yes, that's an ongoing discussion we have in our Fire Prevention Bureau. And to your point, as I mentioned earlier, our fire prevention bureau, I think I'm biased, of course, but I think we're the best in the business around the state of California. We take a very proactive approach with our business community to get them to a yes where we want them to do what they. Want to do. We want them to do it in a safe and productive way. We constantly evaluate the downtown, the entire city, really. But the density in downtown is a constant topic of discussion and fire prevention. No more in in this area of the city are things that there's no no more sprawl. Now, we're going vertical with the density. Right instead of the response times have always been calculated in the fire service from the fire station to the address. But now we have to take into account not only to go from the fire station to the address, but you also have to go up 24 hours to get to wherever the issue may be. Or 34. In some cases. Yeah. So we are we are evaluating that scenario on a regular basis to make sure that we're doing what we can to augment our resource responses to the downtown environment. Secondarily, going back to fire prevention or Fire Prevention Bureau has been really good, as are all the developers that are coming to town and using the latest materials and the latest fire suppression systems really to try and minimize the incidence of a conflagration or fires happening. Not to say they won't happen and they're just meant to hold them in check until we get there. But our fire prevention, working in concert with the development community, working in concert with our operations folks, are talking about these things and crunching the numbers. And you said earlier our list, I believe you're referring to the list, the restoration priority list. And certainly if we ever got there, if we were fortunate enough to find the funding for Engine 17, we would certainly look very hard. Our next resource on that list is Engine one, two, one, or we would have have a discussion there. So we'll continue that discussion and do everything we can to minimize the potential impacts of density. Great. I want to thank all three of you for your leadership. Everybody on your teams. Rank and file people that do the hard work every single day. I appreciate you guys. I know sometimes we have tough public conversations and sometimes put each other in difficult situations, but know from the bottom of my heart, my constituents, we appreciate you guys and we're going to continue to push to make sure that we remain the best that we can be and just really. Thank you. Thank you. Congressman Soprano. Thank you. My comments will be very brief. I just have one question. But to paraphrase Reggie Harrison, we've got to keep this council meeting flying and I'm afraid the wings might fall off so long. So no questions for the director of disaster preparedness or Police Chief Luna. But Chief Theresa, you probably want to know the topic I want to bring up here, and that's Engine ten. You're supposed to be shocked. Okay. Now, actually, the first image you had in your. Presentation was a photograph of Engine ten, but it was sitting out in front of Station 17. And that just struck me because. Engine ten occupied Station 17, while Station ten was. Being remodeled and you had the same thing for Engine 22 was that 17 while Station 22 is being remodeled. So I just realized since we've had Engine 17 and mothballs, Station 17, it's kind of been the Airbnb of the Language Fire Department. So I'm really looking forward to. The restoration of Engine 17, so it won't have that distinction anymore. The one question I do have, Chief, is we asked this of you a couple of years ago. Once, if this council pulls the trigger on this restoration, how long would it take you to get that engine company in service? Would it be a matter of hours, days or weeks? I can't remember the I will give you the standard response. I tell every every one of our our council members and our mayor. If you ask how long it would take me to turn the resource on in town, I can have it in service tomorrow morning at 8 a.m.. But the reality is that the smart reality would be for us probably after the first of the year, so we can plan for it. We'll have another academy that will graduate and we won't have the staffing issues that we might have if we turned it on tomorrow. So we'd give us a little bit of time to get it up and going. But functionally, we're uniquely well positioned that we can establish a response profile anywhere in the city very, very quickly. But I would say probably January 1st would be a time that we would shoot for to make it an effective transition. Okay. Thank you. Great to have you all tonight. Thanks you through, Mr. Zuber. No. Councilman Salvador. I'm okay. Councilman Richardson. Thank you, Councilman. Vice Mayor. Andrews. A couple of things. So first, having seen a number of budgets, it's a good budget. It's a budget that doesn't require a bunch of scrutiny, but rather, I think, you know, this is a budget that allows us to kind of imagine vision, what the future looks like, and that's really refreshing. So first Chief Tory, so I noticed you mentioned a challenge for you was increasing diversity in the department and and I know that that's been a commitment of yours since you've become chief. I've seen the evidence, but I think it's great that you will step up and actually acknowledge that we have to do more. And I've heard the same from the rank and file. So what are some of the tactics you envision sort of deploying as you ramp up for this next academy? Well, Councilmember. The question for US centers, not so much about the command staff. My teams will or our intent to diversify the organization when we have the opportunity to do that. Well, what we want to focus on is we are literally only as good as the people who show up to take our exam or the people who end up on our list. Right. The list that we get from civil services eligible, that's that's what we select from. So we want to we want to take it a step farther. We want to we want to actually get into that how that list is created. How are these people being provided the opportunity or the knowledge that the opportunity exists for them? And what are we doing as an organization, a fire department? And I'll give Candace in civil service a lot of credit. She wants to partner with us on this so that we we can we can create new modes and methods of actually getting these people in our community that represent our community to come take this exam and be successful in the process. So we're fortunate we have a management assistant that's going to be rotated through fire a little bit later on into the year. And we believe we're going to we're going to hand her the keys, really. And we believe that she's going to produce a really deep dove to figure out where those issues are and and really set us on a course that we can change some things. And I just want to say this. I've said this for years, but for me, as the fire chief in the city, diversity is not a numbers game, it's an inclusion game. So I want to make sure that we're creating a safe and inclusive environment for anybody in our community that wants to become a firefighter. And that at that point, we're also providing them all the opportunities they need to be successful. So I think if we look at it from a pure numbers standpoint, we're missing the opportunity to actually create an inclusive, diverse workforce. And that's what we want to focus on. I enjoy that. You use the words inclusive and diverse and and I agree they're more than buzzwords, I think is the recipe for success. If you see the the trend line of the demographics of our city and we just saw another agency in Metro, they embrace this early and they're thriving, successful. I think we should play to our strengths. And in my opinion, that means when you get this management assistant less and less, engage Lumbee City College a bit more. I think, you know, there's an there's you know, there's real opportunities for us to, you know, continue to develop a real pipeline leveraging lobby, City College. And it will help our enrollment at the college, but also allow us to better engage the community because we don't have to do this alone. We have this apparatus here that we need to utilize more. So that's just a recommendation. And then and also, you know, this fall, we should receive a report from policy link on our economic inclusion strategies in a piece. There may be some some national best practices on how to engage or better engage the local community. So I look forward to sort of just playing with that, this concept with you a little bit over the course of the next year. I obviously support the restoration of 12. I mean, of 17 I saw the impact when 12 were restored. And, you know, I've said and I'll continue to say it, we saw three minute diminished cut in the response times in North Palm Beach. And, you know, the more resources put in the play, it supports better, stronger response times across the city. So you have my complete support there. Just a question on GMT. How does that come in? I know that you were in the process last budget, last few budgets on implementing that and getting the tablets and all that. How's that coming along? The GMT funding and process? Councilmember The GMT program is up and running. We submit an annual cost report to CMS's Center for Medicaid Services through the State of California. And we are I'm I'm trying to recall, but I believe we're budgeted and I think we're bringing it about a little over $1,000,000 million to. 1.1 $1.2 million a year into the system. So it's proving to be successful so. Far and there's still potential for that to increase. Right. Are we not artificially optimized there or what? Yes, sir. Currently we believe we are fully optimized at this point. There could be some changes that come through the GMD program in fiscal year 19 that could could provide us some different avenues for revenue out of that program. But it remains to be seen whether the federal government will change the guidelines. Thank you. Well, I'm pleased with the job that you guys are doing. And, you know, one thing I'll just I'll just offer not operations related, but our beautiful new station 12. When you take a look the landscaping a little bit, it's a I don't know if the drought or some sprinklers are broken, but looks like we're going to have a replace probably like two thirds of the plants that. That is that is super drought tolerant vegetation. All right. They're not that tolerant, then. Well, thanks a lot. Chief Lula, just you have a lot to be proud of. I'm glad to look at your accomplishments and as very visible work, particularly. I see you called out the diversion work, the lead diversion work on Long Beach Boulevard. And I know that that's grant funded and they're doing a fantastic job actually engaging with the residents in the businesses and they know the officer by name, but I know with grant funded. So when do we anticipate that grant to end? Two years from now. Two years. Okay. So I, you know, I'd like to think about. I know there's a lot of activity there in terms of like, you know, motel conversion, other work. I'd like to think of like a transition plan to set some goals on the, you know, on the planning side and on the development side for things we can tangible things we can see on that corridor when that program goes away. So. So we're well aware of what resources we have, which resources we don't have a lot of Beach Boulevard, and we could see some tangible improvement. And and in addition to that, and he's just come it's not really a question. Just just comments and thoughts. Um, I'm glad to see the quality of life officer deployed in North Long Beach. Are they going to be is the lead off is that that's more of this doing that right after the more. I believe it's more that. Officer Commander's been identified. Detectives is the one working on the crime that probably he was talking about. Look, some more is doing lead. So is this person are they going to work together because it's really the same corridor where you have the majority of the problems related to human trafficking and homelessness? Yes. Okay. So so that said, I want to I want to start a conversation with you this year. And it's just an idea, I mean, kicking around a talk with Councilman Austin about it and talk to some others, the idea is and it's not really a new idea, but I want to reintroduce it. But the idea is maybe look at the Focus on Zombies Boulevard or perhaps the new community center, Highland Park, and think about establishing a community policing center, which is essentially the new quality of life officer the staff from the lead program that's handling human trafficking, the resource officer and our business district security staff, and sort of having sort of a focal point. You know, we have the North Station at the Alamo, but we don't have anything in the actual nine or 805 zip code. And I think that's it could be interesting for us to explore that for a number of reasons. Number 190805 zip code is growing by population four times the rate of the citywide population growth statistic. And you know, with with these recent opportunities that we have, I think we should think about what that might look like. We think about that, Chief. Worth exploring. Okay. Well, quite an endorsement, but we'll look forward to continuing that conversation and look forward to continue that conversation. And but overall, this is a this is a good budget master disaster. Mr. Harrison, I got to tell you, you know, you're always I mean, you've come engage with our North Lambie's executive leadership, our leadership council. And, you know, you and your staff and the police dispatch have done a good job really addressing a lot of the concerns. I have no really no concerns and just encouragement that we want to continue the conversation we've had with the North Miami Beach community and your office. So thank you for your hard work and look forward to continuing to engage with you. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Councilman Alston. Thank you. And I'm going to really be brief. I want to just just commend all of our public safety. I think the presentation was great. The budget is, I think, sound and one that I think takes into account all of our needs. Certainly we could have more officers and use more officers, more firefighters, more more resources. But I think we're we're moving in the right direction. And I commend city manager and the department heads, both chiefs, for for for putting together a sound budget. I do have a couple of questions. Number one, for emergency disaster preparedness. Mr. Harrison, in the the budget, it talks about key measures and the number of public safety dispatcher candidates process for recruitment. And I'm looking at a a decline from 2017 when you had 244. And then in FY 17. And here in Fy19, you have 150. Why is that? And can you talk about your recruitment and retention of dispatchers? Well, we are with that. We have the public safety dispatchers is one of only two other jobs in the city that has aa1 year probation. One being police, the other being fire and public safety dispatchers. We go through a process. It's a one year probationary process. So depending on where we are, we bring in candidates off of the off of the hiring list. And we populate our center with our training staff and then we go through a one year process. And so we have an elasticity of a certain amount of dispatchers that we can handle during a 12 month period of time. And so we're going to go through some ebbs and flow as we have, you know, we're staffed up, trainers have out there at capacity. So they can't take additional dispatchers off the off the list. It's really pretty much as simple as that. And then the job of a dispatcher, you know, we kind of describe it as multitasking on on steroids. It is a challenging job for many of the dispatchers. It's a rewarding job for all of the dispatchers. But it is a job that's detail oriented. It is a job that takes all of the concentration that an individual has. And it is a job that takes all of that 12 month probationary time to actually be able to master and graduate out of that program. And so how many dispatchers do we actually employ? We are budgeted for, I believe, 75 dispatchers. We did some reorganization last year in recognition of the cross training as an incentive to be able to pay those dispatcher that have completed cross training so that they could receive additional income with that skill. So we had to do some reorganization, as I recall, with about at 75, I believe, with what we have. I'm looking at 81 in emergency communications, but that's close. So so with that many people coming to training, I mean, how many folks are actually sticking with the department? It's a challenging it's a challenging job. Council member it really is an across the board, across the board nationwide. So it's not just an issue for for Long Beach. We will have on average a 40% graduation rate with our dispatchers for a variety of reasons, for a variety of reasons that people, you know, they they come in with their own concepts of what dispatching is all about. And, you know, and then they're then there's a certain reality that sets in in terms of what the job is. Dispatchers are really busy. They're moving from one station to another. The calls that they take, they paint a picture for first responders in the field. They can see visually because of the series of questions that they're asking, pretty much exactly what a first responder is going to see when they arrive on scene. And sometimes that experience is a little bit more reality than some people feel comfortable with. I thank you for explaining that. I really appreciate that. And I ask that question because oftentimes it's the support staff that don't get get recognized for for some of the really important work that they're doing. And so we appreciate those dispatchers as well. The next question I have is for Chief Luna, and I'm also looking at the support bureau numbers here. And while I'm looking at the the F y 18 FTE numbers, it looks like there's 256 at this point, five in the support bureau, and it moves up to 286. And I'm trying to figure out which is that is that the proposed move to bring the assessors from the airport into the Department Support Bureau. That would be the 27 assessors. It would also include the body pick up, the intended proposed body pick up from Metro. Metro Blue Line is under our support bureau. Okay. My last point is the great job. Then all the way around. I think the budget is sound. I would just influence upon Army Chief and commander in the North Division to keep the North Station open for 4 hours, if as much as possible, because that is a a resource that I know our residents out there truly, truly depend on. It's great to have a police station. You know, it's really frustrating when when people go to the police station and they can't make contact with an officer when the doors are closed and not open. And I know we rectified that work to to to have those those doors of that police station open of, you know , at least a certain amount of hours every day. But I would just ask that you you continue to focus on on making the public or keeping the North Station accessible to the public for for for those those type of calls and situations where where people really need to touch the PD for many years. And I'll just say this was before I took office. I think the police station was closed for several years and people there was a sign on the door and said, hey, you know, if you need to to talk to somebody, go downtown. Right. That's a that's a huge if convenient for anybody be is for anybody living in the north part of the city and for the resource to be there. I just want to emphasize that, you know, it's good to be able to make contact with what the public safety officer, the police officer for our public. So thank you very much. Looking forward to to another year of great public safety all the way around. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you very much. I do have some some comments and then a one suggestion by Senator Jeff. Sorry, I didn't see up there. Let me go to Vice Mayor Andrews first. You go first. I have your. Name of a mine so. That I see first of my. Yeah, I've been kind of sleeping on the job, so I'm glad you came back. Here and. We're back. Okay. First of all, I want to start out by saying, you know, I agree with councilwoman, you know, Price, that we do need to take a second look at the employees reduction because I'm very, very happy to see the quality of life, you know, for officers added to the West Division. You know, I'm looking forward to these officers, you know, coming to my monthly briefing, you know, and neither the police or the I need you know, I need the police or the fire budget. Did I see fireworks prevention, enforcement, you know, outreach. Notice that as a key service. And I did not see any specific line item for this. I know that the conversation about this has been a priority, and we want to do it. We want these efforts to be proactive as well as reactive. And I'm hoping is somewhere in the budget we have allocated funds, you know, for this issue, you know, and anyway, I think the South Division stations is doing a great job to keep up the good work, you guys. And for the last question, I, I will I will add any you know, I want to know what any of the airports, you know, as as as always, do they lose any authorities or rankings with the proposed budget change? Vice mayor? I don't believe so. I will double check and get back to you. Thank you, sir. Okay. In last, I'd like to leave this to Reggie. You know, I won't use that word because I know what a great job you guys are doing. But that's a prevention emergency communication. You know, I need a lot about you know, I've heard a lot and continue about the outreach and the social media information material and access to the deaf and the blind residents that we have. But what about those that first language? You know, if it's not English, are they reaching out to those communities as well? Yes, Vice me. I'm glad that you asked that question. We have we have all of our outreach material, which is all translated into the various languages that our language act requires. Additionally, we our emergency messages are quickly translated for our speech impaired vision impaired residents so that we send out American Sign Language videos almost simultaneous to the English language. This third party provider also provides Spanish language interpretations pretty quickly as well simultaneously. So we believe that on a countywide basis, the city of Long Beach is at the forefront in terms of that kind of outreach into those diverse neighborhoods. Not to say that there is more that we could do and we'd be happy to work with you and your district and some additional outreach. But in terms of getting messages out quickly and concise and consistent, we're able to accomplish that. I want to thank you for really recognizing that, because I have so much, you know, diversity in my area and, you know, in your team. You know, we realize it's key when people call 911, you know, are we having a mass emergency? I would like to be sure that all this information is reaching out to everyone. So many thank you guys for everything you do. And thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I want to I want to make some comments. And then I do have an ask of the Budget Oversight Committee at the end of the comments. I want to I want to thank, obviously, the staff for making their presentation. I've heard this presentation I was mentioning to Mr. Lester, I think many, many times it seems like ten or so as we've been developing the budget. And so I it's good to have it out for public comment. And I want to mention a few things, some of which were referred to earlier tonight by some of the councilmembers . In 2014, when when this council, as we sit up here, was formed, we had 803 police officers and 406 firefighters. The current budget proposal allocates the funding if four restorations are made to 851 police officers and 431 firefighters. So certainly an increase of both police and firefighters over the course of the last four years. The restorations up to now have included Engine eight and Belmont Shore Rescue 12 and North Long Beach, the Hart unit that we're talking about this year, Engine 17 and East Long Beach, the restoration of South Division, the creation of the new Metro Division as part of the Metro Blue Line, which we know was part of our Metro contract for new quality of life officers and a six person bike officer team, which is part of this year's budget in addition to the growing of these departments. We're also investing, of course, in infrastructure and technology as it relates to police and fire, and that includes modernizing the both of the police and fire academies. That's in this year's budget, the upgrading of Long Beach PD and fire technology, including radio and communication systems, the funding of body cameras, which was I think mentioned earlier by Councilwoman Price, and the purchasing of modernized cameras across the city as it relates to the COPS system, which is our camera. I don't know that that's the acronym, but it's our camera system that we have across the city. So these are some significant investments. And I want to thank the Council for for making all of these which were really we're really grateful of. I also want to mention that we are committed to all of these restorations as outlined in the proposals today. But one issue has come up. I mentioned this to Mr. West. I've been talking to some folks, and I want to make sure that this gets addressed. It's been mentioned actually a few times tonight. I know in the F 19 budget, we have the reduction of the one sergeant position that's going down to an officer position. We know that the position has been identified as a sergeant that's assigned to a burglary detail. That's right. Chief Luna. That's correct. That's correct. And we know from what I understand and just talking to a few of the members of our police team, this is a sergeant that's kind of responsible for vetting, assigning and prioritizing theft cases in the city. Correct. Burglary and theft, yes. Okay. And so I know that this is a busy section of the department. And I also know that part of this part of the proposal we have in front of us is to possibly combine the burglary detail with auto theft with auto theft auto under one, sergeant, is that correct? Yes. Okay. Thank you. So, you know, and again, in just and in the budget, a moving you know, it's it moves and evolves as we move along. So I'd like to request tonight that the Budget Oversight Committee take up the it take up this issue and not reduce. Police sergeant position to the officer position. I think others have shown interest in this already on the council tonight. And so if I can make that request to the Budget Oversight Committee as we move forward, I think that the position in this case should not be downgraded to an officer position. So I think we need to keep it as a sergeant. And so, Mr. Mango, I'll leave that to you and to the BBC. But that's something I think that we've heard is going to be important. And so with that, I want to close my comments on on police, fire and disaster preparedness and Councilman Mangle. Yet an additional comment. I just wanted to take a moment to think and recognize the number of budget staff that are here tonight. I know you were only at the the midway point before we get to see the most exciting budget that I believe in, which is the CIP budget. But I know it's a long night and I know months and months of work went into all of the preparation that each of you do to make this book a reality and to make it possible for these department heads to sit before us and and say the words that you wrote for them. So thank you so much. And then Miss Mango, you'll take your you and the committee will take a look at that position. Absolutely. Okay. Excellent. Good. Well, with that, I'm going to open it up. What we're going to do is we're only halfway through our budget presentation. We're skipping next. So I want to take public comment on this portion of the budget presentation, which is safety. So if you have a public comment on this on on the police, fire or disaster preparedness only, please come forward on this part of the budget. Yes, sir. Members of the Council, I'll be very brief. My name is Renee Castro. I'm director for community engagement at Century Village. Is that Cabrillo? Of course. We provide housing for 1500 formerly homeless individuals, over 700 veterans, 600 children. And of course, that kind of huge operation requires. The collaboration with police fire, of course, development services and of course, our Health and Human Services Department. But recently I will really. Highlight our partnership. With the Emergency Communications and Operation Center. ECAC really want to thank Reggie Harrison for the incredible training they. Did for all of our partners. We had over 15. Partners who went to the CAC and we had a training on 911 and dispatch and it was incredible. So just. Wanted to highlight Reggie. And all of his work. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Next speaker, please. Good evening. My name is Richard Suarez. I'm with the International Association. Of Machinists and Aerospace. Workers. I represent employees working in both the police department, the CISOs at the airport, and folks working at the Emergency Preparedness Department. I stand before you this evening because I believe that some information was shared with this council that does not reflect the accuracy of what we have out on the field. In the deepest department, we have approximately 18 trained fire folks and 30 trained police officers excuse me, police dispatchers. It was mentioned that about 20% of that number is cross utilized when in. Reality there's only one. Or two folks that can answer both the police and the fire phones and about five that can only answer the. Fire phone. So 20% is a figure that that's not realistic with the folks that are there. Now, in addition to that, we spoke about overtime and about stress on the job. These are the only folks in the entire city that the M.O. you excludes them from a free from duty period. Every employee in this city has an eight hour free from duty period at the negotiating table. Three years ago, the city would not agree to give that same level of relief to the men and women who. Answered 911 calls. For the last four and a half years since I've been here, there has been mandatory overtime in this department every single week. People are forced to work overtime every single week. So when we talk about reductions in cost, we have an issue here. The social situation at the at the airport is severe and grave. They the chief said that there will be no change in authority when in fact, their level one training, their post training has been taken away. They will no longer. Be post trained. They will keep their there and they realize that the time is short here. And I would invite to meet with each and every one of you in your offices. But perhaps Councilwoman Mungo, who has a experience in law enforcement, knows the importance of this. Level one training with the police department is attempting to do is to put them through a ten day home made training here in Long Beach, not send them to Rio Hondo, not send them to the police academy. None of that. And this is concerning on many levels. Right now we're speaking about 27 SOS. There aren't 27 SOS at the airport. There's less than half of that. There's 13 of them. And we have had these openings for years. So I believe that by design, there is an attempt not to staff properly. There's 13 men and women who protect this airport. There has been no deficiencies in the security detail. What they're proposing to do is to fill these positions up with police officers at a significantly higher cost than what an SSL makes a cop out, so makes about $30 an hour. Almost double for the top out, officer. Thank you. Thank you very much for source. We'll be happy to get together and chat about that. Yes, I trust you. Thank you, sir. Jim Foster, president of the Long Beach Police Officers Association. I come to thank you, Mr. Mayor, for your recommendation to take a second look at that sergeant position in burglary at your continued support of public safety for all of us. I also want to extend my thanks. To the Budget Oversight Committee, chaired by Councilwoman. Mangal and Councilwoman Pryce. Your questions today. This burglary. Position is the central node within the. Department where all of our property crime really filters through. This expert who manages all of that property crime throughout the city is the best advice giver to the upper leadership on how we should give our resources out to stop property crimes. So this this one position to me was very important to try to retain. To keep my employees who are working there properly managed. But I do appreciate. That's taking another look at that because I think somewhere in the budget we're going to be able to try to find the funding to keep this position. It really affects the entire city, not just a small portion. So thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Foster. And the next speaker? No. Oh, yes. Please come forward. Dave Shukla on file. I'd just like to thank the Mayor City Council for this budget. Specifically the emphasis on public safety and disaster and emergency preparedness. I recently was trained a couple of weekends ago at the fire department. It was a great experience. Very, very useful. And I look. Forward to not only continued support, but expansion along with diversion. Other programs for civilians can not only get skills but be of use in the storms to come. For next year, I'd love to see. More specifically about climate change. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes this part of the budget hearing. I want to thank everyone that spoke and police and to our police fire to that preparedness team. Thank you all. I know that this is a hefty week, but as a reminder, this is also seven almost 70% of our total budget. And so these questions and this discussion tonight is very important. So thank you. So we're going to go into our second half of the budget presentation tonight, which is on CHP, which is on infrastructure, which is I told them I told Mr. Beck and others this is my favorite presentation of the year when it relates to the budget. It's all about our streets and our park projects and our infrastructure improvements all across the city. And and again, a lot of great news as it relates to Missouri and our CHP program and everything that's in this presentation. And I would encourage the council to really kind of deep I mean, do a do a deep dove and take a look at all the great projects that are being proposed. And so thank you for that and we'll turn this over. Mr. West, did you have any opening comments before we turn this over to Mr. Beck? Yes, Mayor. This is a huge, huge undertaking. The Capital Improvement Project, a lot of time and energy has gone into this, and we want to review it with all of you. It includes measure A, it looks at the entire 50 square miles. And I can't say enough about the entire team on the presentation that you're going to see right now. So I am going to turn this over. To our public works director, Craig Beck. And his team to present the capital improvement program for fiscal year 19. Craig. Thank you, Pat. Good evening, Mayor. City council and community members viewing this presentation. We're here tonight to discuss the city's capital improvement program, sometimes called KIPP for short. It provides the city's infrastructure investment plan for the coming year. The following presentation will detail proposed funding for the design, construction and maintenance of citywide infrastructure, which is the building blocks for a great city. As you can see, the fiscal year 18 cap budget, which is this year, is comprised of different funding sources that equal about $96 million. These funds support many different projects and are organized in our recipe book in six different categories. As identified on this page. They are mobility, public facilities. Parks and recreation. Beaches and marinas. Airports and utilities. Some of the major accomplishments that we would like to highlight for this year is our new sixth Street Bike Boulevard, a very important East-West connection across the city. Our Admiral Kidd Artificial Turf Sports Field and the city decided to use safe caulk and sand fill as opposed to recycled tires. Our Rainbow Bridge at Seaside Way. This is a great connection between our Terrace Theater and Convention Center. A new Harvey Milk Park refresh, which continues to have other improvements happen and will conclude with a new outdoor office function and our ongoing citywide paving projects. So what is our investment plan for fiscal year 19? It's about $120 million. This represents a $24 million increase over the current year, and that's driven primarily by two significant changes. First, the water department is planning to invest $30 million into pipeline replacement projects for both sewer and potable water. That's a $14 million increase over what they've committed in fiscal year 18. And I also want to highlight that the city is receiving new transportation dollars from the SB one gas tax funding. That $8 million that we're going to get from SB one is going to support 11 new street projects in the city just in fiscal year 19. So how do we plan to spend that $120 million? You see the six different categories here. I'm going to go through each of them in more detail. And first, since I'm wearing my new blue tonight, I want to highlight mobility. And I really appreciate our partners from Metro being here this evening talking about all the wonderful projects that they're doing in the city. And those are just some of the high profile projects that they highlighted this evening. There's a number of different partnerships that the city is working on with Metro, and we look to continue many of the great things that we do. So how does a city approach mobility? We do something which is called a complete streets. So what we're looking at is what type of improvements need to happen, and we want to look at that in their entirety. So, for example, does a street need to have new curb ramps added or do trees need to be trimmed? Are there broken sidewalks it should be addressed? Or is the street part of the citywide bicycle master plan? A good example of this approach in how we build out new streets is Bellflower Boulevard. If you haven't driven on it recently, I encourage you to do so. Not only is there brand new paving on Bellflower, but we also addressed much needed sidewalk repair and added protected bike lanes as this is a key connection point for riders going to Cal State, Long Beach Go Beach. So this year, all in all, we've added about 17 miles of bicycle lanes and we're adding those for all residents 80 to 80. This further enhances the city's livability efforts to provide alternative to single occupancy vehicle trips. That's bad. So mobility, $51 million plan for fiscal year 19. There's three major corridor projects that we're going to engage, including Market Anaheim, which is a pedestrian safety corridor project, and Artesia, which is a Great Streets project that we're coordinating through Skaggs and our adjacent cities. We also continue our investment in repaving our dirt alleys. We were able to accomplish about 1.6 miles of paved dirt alleys in fiscal year 18, and we look to replicate that in 19. And we'll finish paving all dirt alleys in fiscal year 20. That's our plan. Lastly, staff is recommending that council look at adding money to sidewalks while we prioritized our traditional sidewalk investment for new curb ramps as specified in our accessibility settlement. We think it's also important to address path to travel and similar to the action that council took in fiscal year 18, where $1,000,000 is allocated for sidewalks and divided by need among the nine council districts. We're recommending that that happen again and actually increase that number to 2 million. Again, divided throughout all nine council districts by need. So I love to highlight this map. This is a great picture. This map shows the city's five year street investment plan. And in particular, I want to highlight the Green Street segments. So those Green Street segments are streets that have already been completed or that will be completed by the end of this year. And that's almost 50% of our planned work. Now, granted, many of these streets were slurry and we were able to get those down a little quicker. But it really represents the great investment that we're making and the great progress that we've made to date. Still, we have many important projects ahead. So this map here is showing our street investment plan for the next two years, fiscal year 19 and fiscal year 20. Last year, council asked for a forward looking snapshot and staff is trying to provide that, showing two years of planned street work. My goal next year when I bring CIP to this council is I'll provide a snapshot for three years of street work. That's what we're working towards as a team and we hope to deliver that to this council and the community. So I'd like to shift to public facilities. For public facilities, there is a plan to invest $16 million. This will further some of the key projects completed in fiscal year 18, including workplace privacy improvements at Fire Station seven and ten. Also upgrades to our Expo Community Center in Bixby Knolls. So fiscal year 19 will include work at our public safety buildings, at the Fire Department Training Center and the police department west substation. We're also identified a number of city libraries for new roofs to ensure that those facilities don't leak. Assuming we get some weather this coming winter and also major renovations for our north health facility in Halton Park, this is a complete redo of that facility. For Parks and Recreation. This category we see some of the, I'll say, fun projects that the community gets to enjoy. In Bixby Park there is a new dog park added this year. The red car greenbelt next to Colorado lagoon is a wonderful walking path with native plantings and this just happened recently. It was very exciting to see, but a signature themed playground was opened at Lo Cerritos Park and we have Vets Park, Drake Park and Whaley Park Playgrounds coming real soon, and we should be delivering those within the next 90 days. Priority projects for fiscal year 19 include the restoration of the Eldorado Duck Pond. This is a high priority project that we're glad we're able to get to. And also Davenport, what we're calling phase two, which is really the buildout and activation of the greenspace from the former landfill closure. So moving to beaches and marinas. Fiscal year 19, we're going to be able to address the junior lifeguard station at 55th place. Also, there's an exciting new concept for the Alamitos Beach concession stand, which we hope to bring the council within the next few months for approval to move forward. This will add to the fantastic amenities completed this year at Bayshore, which is the place to beat the heat this summer. So if you haven't been, you have to go to the new swim, dock and aquatic playground. It's an. Absolute hit. The airport will continue to invest in improvements for accessing the terminal building and also rehabilitation on some of its airfield runways. And lastly, again, utilities. There's many men and women who work in this city that do work every day, ensuring that our utilities are safe and function for all of our residents. And I want to again champion the work that the water departments do, planning to do to invest in their infrastructure. And we're also planning to do work for our storm pump station. This continues addressing some of the emergency upgrades that we need to do to ensure that we're safe when we have storm events. So that's the overarching copybook. But I wanted to delve a little bit deeper into measure. There's some great things happening with the measure of funds that the voters of this city approved. Hopefully, everyone is familiar with the Measure Reinvestment Plan and hopefully we've had an opportunity to actually visit the measure. The city's measure, a web page at Long Beach dot gov board slash measure a in there you will see this map and some details about what that investment plan means. So this is a snapshot of three years of measure. And it's amazing when you start thinking we are receiving $80 million towards infrastructure in just three years. I cannot emphasize the positive impact this has had to our cities. See IP. So kind of part of that five year investment strategy and infrastructure. This map is showing just the facility and park projects. So we've taken off the street layer and we wanted to highlight over 50 and park facility projects are identified as part of Measure a plan. And if you look closely, it's probably hard to tell on the screen. But if you look closely, there's 17 projects that are highlighted in green, which will be delivered by the end of this year. Again, we're making really good progress on our commitment to this community, and I look forward to continuing that. 19. So measure eight projects, new park projects. I mentioned El Dorado, Duck Pond and Davenport. I also want to highlight some upgrades to our sports courts at El Dorado, Low, Cerritos and Silverado. These are important recreation opportunities for many of our residents in the city. Measure also supports many facilities. Improvements to Alamitos and El Dorado libraries are planned for fiscal year 19 public safety buildings, as I mentioned. Also our animal care center and our health facilities. So back again to mobility projects are citywide. Investment in streets, sidewalks and alleys and bridges is very important. This council has made that commitment and you're seeing that continued with the investment that were planned for 19. And I mentioned the pump stations earlier. I want to transition a little bit and talk about the future. So while Measure is planned right now in the first three years to provide $80 million of its commitment towards infrastructure, staff has identified some additional resources. So during the city manager and mayor's budget presentation, there was a discussion about $55.3 million a future measure. A staff is proposing that $35 million of that be allocated to infrastructure. This would include 25 and a half million dollars to support the fire and police training facilities, $6.3 million for facility improvements based on priorities in the facility condition assessment. Also, an additional $2.3 million towards new park playgrounds to include a new signature themed playground and recreation park and also upgrades to playgrounds at Eldorado, Sycamore Grove, Cherry Park and Ramona Park. Staff is also recommending that of that $55 million, 20.3 million be allocated towards public safety budgets. This would help support additional PD and fire academy classes. Body worn cameras, which were talked about in the previous presentation and other investments. Investment in the city's infrastructure is driven by successful strategic planning, which starts with understanding the needs. This council supports smart investment strategies, including those identified in our pavement and alley management plans, which we will continue to update every two years. A new sidewalk assessment which is currently underway, and that's going to create a full GIS structure that will allow us to track all necessary improvements across the city. We're also working on a facility facility condition assessment, which will help us all prioritize where the most critical needs exist and are over 130 facilities across the city. Stormwater Masterplan is also important. While we've looked at our pump stations in 2015 and we have emergency work identified that we're moving forward to address. We do need to work to identify funding to understand exactly what our stormwater system needs. There's a number of deferred maintenance in our pipelines and we look forward to identifying future strategic funding for that purpose. The proposed Fiscal Year 19 Capital Improvement Plan provides a balanced approach in addressing much needed maintenance and new amenities, keeping Long Beach a great place to live, work and play. Thank you for your time and I'm available to address Council's questions. Thank you, Mr. Beck. I'm going to start with Councilwoman Pryce. Thank you. Excellent presentation. Mr. Beck, we all enjoy your announcer voice. The it's just rolls off so naturally. But I just really wanted to thank you and your team. It's been a tremendous amount of effort on your part to, you know, efficiently utilize the incoming revenue in a way that is balanced and across the entire city. And I personally appreciate that and I thank you and your team for that. I wanted to ask about libraries. I know a lot of our libraries have critical needs. We're trying to encourage people to go to libraries. We're trying to make sure that they remain relevant part of the community. And so I think taking a hard look at where we can improve our library facilities to modernize them a little bit would be really great, especially since we're going to have a beautiful modern library here at Main. And we want to make sure that that spirit and the welcoming nature of that is shared throughout. So, you know, I know we have a lot of older buildings, if there's any, as we're thinking about roof improvements and things, if there's any design elements that we can utilize to make the spaces brighter, more open, things that can be done that are not as costly but perhaps would create a more inviting space. I think that would be really good. And I just wanted to kind of throw that out there as a suggestion if there's some efficiencies to be had because we're out there doing work anyway. I know we've been working with you on Bayshore and some opportunities there, but I'm sure many other libraries are in the same boat because they were built around the same time. So so that's really all I wanted to add. And I just wanted to thank both public works and PRM and all the city departments that have been involved in the implementation of a lot of these CIP projects. It's just been a fantastic year, I think. And again, I like to see that we spread the the benefits citywide so that every resident gets to see the benefits of the investment that they've made in the city. So thank you. This Councilmember Price, I would like to highlight a little bit on the and the libraries. While I didn't have it in my presentation, there is work ongoing in many of our libraries besides some of the maintenance issues we're looking at improving circulation desks and also adding hearing loops at many of our libraries. And I know that's an important topic for you. Thank you very much. Next up is Councilman Mungo. Thank you, Mr. Beck. I really appreciate your presentation. As you know, this is my most exciting part of the budget. I want to echo your comments related to path of travel. As our city ages, it is of the utmost importance that our community is out and walking and to be able to walk our community path of travel is of the utmost importance. I appreciate the efforts to double what we put forward last year. I only know that it would only be better if we could get to four times where we are. Because I know that to get to the standard amounts we were at before the curb cuts would be 4 million. I also appreciate that within your requirements are many, many long term and big improvements. And while I am very excited about the number of additions and upgrades to our Park Playground equipment, I look forward to working with the Budget Oversight Committee over the next after the budget process, but more towards the winter months. On working through the three year plan and the breakout of those specific categories and where they could be. Because as we want to make sure there's a new park playground in every space of the city that's accessible to everyone and adjacent to any of the areas that have a lot of activity related to older siblings where the younger siblings can play. And so I appreciate the work that you've done on that as well. I appreciate working with your office on Creative Solutions. And so I know that not all of the things in the capital improvement projects like Storm and Sewer are sexy. I think that they're really important because as the rains do come, the work that you've done in stormwater facilities and the such have really made a considerable impact on the flooding in our neighborhoods, especially with the uneven pavement of the streets that haven't been graded in a long time. And so I know you're working through your street plan. You specifically mentioned the 11th Street projects and the gasoline tax. And so if that would be repealed, those would not be completed. Do you know the 11th Street projects off the top of your head? Councilman Romano I do not, but there was an item that this council approved they had to pass originally, right? Yeah. So they're all listed on that. And yes, you are correct, those 11th Street projects would go away if the SB one tax is repealed. I just think it's important whether you're for or against it. I just think it's important that you know what you're voting on specifically. And so I know that I'll do my best to pull that too from four from before and actually with the council presentation, wasn't it the council presentation from before? And just so that people are aware because I get a lot of questions about that tax and I'm not always able to off the top of my head tell them which streets they know of that would be repaired and so those would not be repaired should that be repealed. And I think that's important for people to know. Thank you for all the work you've done. Great, great presentation. Best presentation in four years. So I'm excited about the new improvements. Think a councilwoman. And before I move on to Councilman Austin, I can just quickly respond. I think from what I remember correctly, well, there are a variety of highway improvements that are immediate SB one funded streets, the immediate SB one and largest project that gets funded is the entire reconstruction of PCH. That's from the entrance of of Long Beach on the on the east side, all the way to its exit in western in the west side of the city. So I know that's the that's the first project that the state has funded using SB one as far as major street project. And of course it will be many, many others. But that because that is a a state highway, I know that that is on the list on top of, of course, all the residential streets and everything else that will get funded through some of the local return dollars. Councilman Austin. Thank you. And this is a very encouraging presentation, CERP budget. I wouldn't say one of the the best that I've seen in my six years on the council and seven budgets. So kudos to our public works department and every department that has had anything to do with this. There are a couple of major art arteries in the north that are better called out here. Obviously, Market Street has been a high priority for my office to fix that. I mean, and many residents are sitting here and getting emails from residents watching the construction going on around the district and they're asking about Market Street. And so they've seen great improvements on Orange Avenue and and all around the district. But Market Street still is a street that is a priority. And I'm glad to see it's it's being funded and and we're close to getting some work done there as well as. Olmos Boulevard, I believe the Alamo is to one funded as well. Is that correct? Mr. Beck? That sounds correct. I don't have the list in front of me. I can get back to you. Well, I don't know if anybody mentioned it or asked the question, but what are the impacts of SB one? We do know that that is a funding source that was provided by the legislature after many years of work to to get that done. And, you know, there's there's some some efforts to try to repeal that on the ballot. Where would that be? And the repeal specifically, what would that mean in dollars in terms and in projects to the city of Long Beach right now? So we did receive a little the city did receive a little bit of money in this fiscal year, about two and a half million dollars from SB one, though those dollars have already been implemented into projects. In fact, we're currently working on a project in District three on the ATO that is SB one funded. There's a couple more in the city that we're working on. The one that I've highlighted in the CHP presentation, those 11 streets that this council adopted by resolution will be built with roughly $8 million that we anticipate receiving in fiscal year 19 from SB one. So if SB one was repealed, we would not receive $8 million and those streets would not get built out at this point in time. We've also put into our five year plan an additional $8 million in 20 and an additional $8 million in 21. So you can see that that would add up pretty quickly, 24 or $25 million in three years. That goes directly to street projects. Yeah. Thank you for explaining that. And it would just you know, I'm sure we'll be talking more about that outside of council over time and what the what the public in the near future. I will say that that I've also heard from many residents and I just just will compliment your department for the management and even the contractors doing the work. But there is a noticeable difference in terms of the quality of work being performed as well. I'm hearing that from residents who are, you know, seeing it firsthand and are really, really thankful and appreciative of the the curbs, the the the gutters, the sidewalks, the streets. I think we are experiencing unprecedented amount of infrastructure and infrastructure and and construction in our city right now. And I can say specifically, even in my district right now, we're seeing quite a bit it's a little bit of an inconvenience. But these are these are good inconveniences. They have because it's, I believe, an investment in our in our future. And we talk about being a livable city, increasing livability and quality of life. We don't do that without investing in our infrastructure. So those are my comments. I'm going to be very brief. I like what I see. I'm thrilled that that we have identified money for the hopefully to build out of Davenport Park and phase two complete can now complete really soon and the street improvements are just just just fantastic. So this is the best budget that I've seen in seven years. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Pearce. I too enjoyed your announcer voice and your AP budget and so great work. I do have a couple questions. Let's see where to start. I do want to say I know everybody's giving you praise. I want to give you too much praise and we get too excited. But it is a really exciting time to be a councilmember. I know that you guys did the hard work to get Measure E passed. The voters did a hard job of passing that, and it's really great to be in council whenever we're able to to see all these changes. And you've done a great job on Broadway. I know that it's kind of a terrifying we'll be doing this whole story. You've done a great job about doing it piece by piece, working with the residents. And so I just want to say to you and your staff how much we really appreciate how smooth that has gone. So let's see. I have where to start. The beach, playgrounds. Can you talk? It says that it's unfunded. Can you talk about a funding plan for those beach playgrounds and a timeline for those? You know, I'm just like. So are you referring to the unfunded section? Yes. The city book? Yes, sir. So we thought it was important to add not only projects that were funded, but some projects that were still seeking funding for. Hmm. There are a number of priorities competing against the Tidelands dollars. We have seen some slight increase in Tidelands with the increase in price of oil. Hopefully that will continue in a way that will allow us to fund some of our priority projects. Playgrounds, pools, many of the other activities in the Tidelands, there's a number of different competing projects, but if there is extra money available, we wanted to make sure that that was highlighted. So this council would understand that there are projects on the shelf ready to go. If funding is available. Great. And I do I love seeing all the new park programs that are in here. I do want to lift up the Bixby Park. You know, and I know my predecessor did a lot of work envisioning Bixby Park. Spend a lot of time and money. And I want to thank Councilmember Price for sharing the cost of putting in the dog park there. We divided our divide by nine funds. We did not have majority funds to do that. We still have. I asked our most recent owner director to try to come back with the budget for what parcel one would look like. And I know that, you know, the funds of Bixby Park are going to work hard to fundraise. We're going to work hard to fundraise. In my mind, though, that parcel probably won't cost that much. And so it would be great if we could try to identify some funds and measure A to try to finish that parcel and the visioning with the dig and everything so that we're not spending another two years trying to put pennies together to make something happen that your department could probably make happen much quicker and save us all a lot of time and energy from all the conversations. I will have to have to get that funding together. So I want to put that as a priority that if we could get parcel one done along, you know, sometime after Broadway is finished, I think would be awesome. Yeah, there's some great work happening in Bixby Park right now, not only the dog park, but the investment in the community center in the shade structure. It's really great to be able to see those assets get improved in that community. Absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, parcel three, parcel two and really parcel one is that other parcel where we've got the structures in the middle. I mean, it is we went over there to have a community meeting and they are falling apart. And it it's going to take some capital to make sure that we can deter that that we've got lighting over there. And because of the situation, I know we have to have P.D. out there a lot. And so we did meet with them with our both of our commanders and Bixby Park. And they're going to go out there and do an assessment to try to help us get to there. And we're going to work with our new parks director. So I just hope that that as we're identifying funds, if it is, you know, smaller pennies, then building a whole new park, it would be really helpful, I think, for that community to kind of have that finished. And then I had a question around the senior center. I know that we're looking at trying to relocate that senior center. I know there's some conversations happening. The funds that were earmarked for Measure eight for that, are they still earmarked for when it moves? Yeah. So there's a couple of things going on with the senior center. There were some major funded to do improvements. We paused those improvements because we were concerned about potential subsidence issues and structural challenges in the building that the senior centers in. And we're talking about the senior center on Fourth Street. Yes, we did do a review and a geo technical survey and determined that we can address what subsidence was occurring and that it was a non structural challenge in the building. So at this point in time there is that money available to move forward. I know there is a secondary conversation happening about a potential move at the senior center. I think at this point in time it looks like the senior center is going to stay at its current location for a period of time and that we're planning to move forward with those improvements. So kind of green light, we're moving forward and we'll be making some improvements. Senior center soon. Great. And just while it's on the top of my head, I know that the seaside print shop was recently sold and is going to be a senior daycare, but it's a high end senior daycare, so I'll connect you guys with the people that recently purchased it, and maybe we can talk about shared resources on that corridor. It's not ideally what I would love there, but I think it's going to be a good asset. They're going to keep it nice and clean and tidy. Two other questions. You've talked about doing roof repairs. What is the conversation been within your department around the core roofs program that L.A. has implemented? So I think citywide we really have been embracing sustainable efforts and not only cool roofs, but solar. We're getting ready to do a new battery program at our public safety buildings so we can look at how we're we're purchasing and offloading not only solar, but but peak power. We we support sustainable efforts. We have installed the cool roofs. And I think you're referring to kind of the white colored roofs instead of a black or a charcoal, which has been typical many roofs. So we have done that and we support doing more. Great. And then at the convention center, is it a million that we have earmarked for the convention center or more? And in the FY19 budget, we're proposing $1,000,000 for convention center improvements. And can you quickly, if you have it, if you can remember the improvements that we did last year and what these went to and what these improvements would go to. I know that. I apologize. I don't have that list. I know there was some lighting work and some other. I can get. That for you and follow up. Okay. I just want to I know that every year we talk about the convention center and the needs to focus on the bones and everything else. And last year we were able to put in a beautiful fountain. And I also know that we have a lot of other projects in the Tidelands like Alameda Speech, Rainbow Lagoon and a lot of these playgrounds. And so just want to be able to have all that information in front of us and exactly what is proposed to be funded so we can make a decision on the Council and Tidelands if that's in fact where we want to spend our money this year. And then the last thing is, I see that Vision Zero action plan so that it's unfunded. I thought that we were moving forward with with that. And that may be misleading certainly to the development of the Vision Zero Action Plan is funded. We are moving forward. We have a consultant on board. We have started that work. What is unfunded right now is improvements that would come out of that action plan. We don't know what those are exactly. I don't have that report. I do anticipate bringing a Vision Zero action plan to this council, hopefully in the next six, nine months, on the outside, six months. And then we could start having that conversation about where those priorities lie. Okay, great. And I'll just echo my support for four Vision zero. I think you guys have done a great job about your improvements and as we continue with Measure A, makes sense. So get that in front of us sooner rather than later. So great, great, great work. Really pleasure working with you guys. Love your energy efficiency, sustainability vision as you go through this work. So thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Andres. Yes, thank you, Mayor. Real quickly, Greg, I just want to thank you guys for a great job you're doing. And I just hope my council, my community is really watching this because the fact that when we have our community, you know, like budget, you know, meeting, I really hope that they can come and hear the good news that you have done for our district. Thank you again, big guy. Great job. That would be Thursday at 6:00, I think. Mr. Sanders, thank you. Councilmember Cipriano. Thank you. Great presentation. And I won't get into the weeds here, but since it was brought up, you had the traffic circle listed on the presentation. We've talked about that in the past, but it just struck me if the PCH project doesn't go through, that would impact that traffic circle differently. It'd be a lot easier to do the Traffic Circle Project if the PCH project goes through also at the same time. So we'll keep an eye on that. And I want to echo what everyone said about the the a great budget here. But I also want to say to Craig Beck. Every day I marvel at your management skill in operating a very complex department. Thank you. Thank you. And I think you, Mr. Beck, you and your team are doing a great job managing all the new projects that we have, just all of a sudden. So thank you. Is there a public comment on the CHP budget? Please come forward. Oh, my God. Oh, my gosh. Karen Reside, resident of the First District. It's great. To see all of the advancements. The city has made in the project. There's just a couple of things to put on my Gray Panther hat right now for the seniors, a city of our size, according to recommendations, should have a senior center for every 50,000 residents. So we only have six, which wouldn't really be full fledged senior centers. And we're the only city of our size that doesn't have a modern, up to date senior center. So it's great that we're starting. To to look at that process and to see what the needs are of our seniors are. But we want to also preserve the senior center that's on Fore Street. That senior center is. Heavily, heavily used. By residents in that district. And if that senior center as close to the services go away, it's going to very negatively impact the seniors that live in that particular area. They just want to bring that. And also I want to mention sidewalks. You know, we're replacing sidewalks and there are some still that are really. When the assessment was done, like the ones around St Mary's, where a lot of seniors go, that there's one that's got a razor that's like eight inches high. And I walk it twice a week when I go and volunteer there and one is afraid I'm going to trip over it. So if that could be pushed out. That's really health and safety hazard. And the tiles on Pine Avenue, the snatch where it's all elevated. I know Donna Darnella has tripped and fallen on those tiles. So have I. And so is Jack. Matt Smith, who before he passed, said a lawsuit on that. So those are just some key issues that needs for our seniors and also lighting. And I know we're on a road lighting replacement program. I hate going down Pacific Avenue. It's the street I heavily travel. It's not that well, but thank you for all the hard work and it's great to see the improvement province. Keep up the good work. Thank you. There's a motion in a second to receive and file and and will continue to the next budget hearing, which is next council meeting. Please cast your votes. Motion carries. Thank you. And the next item is the the last item that we will try to time certain but it's the budget so it's been difficult is item 19.