Recommendation to request City Manager to establish a Rebuild Long Beach Relief Fund to assist Long Beach small businesses with repair and loss recovery from damages sustained during the evening of May 31, 2020; public funding shall be allocated in a way that maximizes benefits paid to businesses, and to partner with private programs.
Thank you, Madam Court. That concludes I'm 21. To item 14, please. Next. Communication for Mayor Garcia, Councilwoman Zendejas. Councilmember Pierce. Vice Mayor Andrews. Councilmember Richardson. Recommendation to request city manager to establish a rebuild Long Beach Relief Fund to assist Long Beach small businesses with repair and loss recovery from damages sustained during the evening of May 31st, 2020. Thank you, Madam Court. I want to just first mention, this is not this is often something that a lot of us have been discussing council members, business associations, different philanthropic groups out there. There's a lot of interest in how we really support the businesses that were affected on May the 31st. We know that businesses were affected in different ways. Some may have been vandalized, whether it was graffiti or etching on a glass or even a broken window, which were, you know, smaller acts, obviously, of vandalism to much more extreme types of damage. I mean, you saw obviously in some cases, storefronts having major damage. You saw in some cases major looting that happened in some of these businesses where much of the inventory was gone. And in one case in particular, you saw a major fire that really destroyed one business, both the structure and the what was inside. And so what this motion is asking for us today is just to look comprehensively at creating a new fund to really assist all of these businesses. I think as a city, we have to be committed to every single business that was affected on May the 31st. They all deserve our support. They all are having been invested here in Long Beach, and I want to make sure that they all have support from the city in some way. Now, we know, obviously, that these are these recovery programs can be complex, where we know that a lot of these businesses, for example, will have different types of insurance programs that cover much of their cost. Others may not have the same access or may have a high deductible. Others may just have storefront damage. Their needs need some support with storefront. I also heard from some businesses, for example, in Cambodia, Town and North Long Beach, that they just wanted that want support with costs that they had to put to protect their business, to put up a plywood, which wouldn't be more than a few hundred dollars. So there's a variety of types of support. And while I know there are some really great efforts happening in some of our business corridors, some of our business improvement district, in fact, have set up their own funds. And there have been some philanthropic efforts as well. Those we support, those need to continue. But this is a city effort and this effort is, I think, us putting our commitment on the table that we're going to help all of these businesses. I know that there is a list that's being put together by economic development and working with all the bids and the businesses to see what is out there and who and who we can support. But this is can really also be a combination of resources. I think first and foremost, we're talking about grants. And so we're looking at staff to identify resources that we have for direct grants from the city. We're looking at loan programs, obviously donations. It's all laid out in the recommendation, but we want to make sure that the community gets support that they need to restart quickly and open up. And so just thank you for that. I know that obviously we have a lot of support for this item. I'm from from the council and we appreciate that. And I want to turn this over for to make the motion. And Vice Mayor Andrews just cued up first. So Vice Mayor Andrews. Vice Mayor Andrews. Yes. Yes. Thank you, man. Thank you very much. You know, first of all, I want to thank you for leading this discussion. You know, you know, having lived through three major, you know, protests in the city of Long Beach, this is unfortunately not for the first time I see the sixth District broken and looting. I have faith that we are resilient. Resilient and together we are strong beach. You know, I'm proud to have already begun working with diplomacy ship Dallas Small Business Repair. And anything we can do to levy assistance is greatly appreciated. And I want to thank you, gentlemen, for leading this. Vice mayor with that emotion also. Yes. Okay. Can I get a second, please? On on that motion. Okay. Okay. I just needed to go into the queue system, please. Second by Castro. Richardson. Castro? Richardson. Any comments? Sure. Yeah. Use my kids in the background. So. So. A couple of things. So first, I believe that this is this is really a chance to acknowledge that a lot of our programs really haven't worked for some of the businesses that were impacted on these corridors. Know some of the shopping centers that were hit. We've gone out and done outreach to see if they would like to improve some of their signs or some of their windows with the, uh, some of the CDBG funding that's out there. And it's hard to get their attention. Folks are busy. I think this is an opportunity to say, you know, why we have everyone's attention last and the last can be fixed. A lot of these things can be replaced. But how can we get get the captive audience of these businesses and help them improve some of their signs and some of their windows? Paint the buildings. It'll go a long way for the corridor, but what I'm really hoping for is out of this program, we can address some of the some of these buildings that their windows are broken. But they haven't been able to tap into the resources that we have for them already. So while we have their attention, we should really take advantage of this opportunity to improve some of these corridors. And with that, I'll second the motion. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilman Pearce. Yeah, I totally support this effort. I just want to say how much I appreciate having your leadership on it. We had a agenda, something similar last week and pulled it because we know that if the whole city is really working on it and if you're focusing on it, that these businesses are going to be able to benefit so much more. There's a lot, like you mentioned, businesses that have small graffiti and things like that. And so we'll make sure that our District two team is reaching out to the businesses in our district and connecting them with economic development. And many of the bids are listening. You know, I hope that they outreach, too, and that we can have a wider effort than just having another fund in the city that might not be tapped. Because I know sometimes that tends to be one of the challenges. So appreciate this item. Thank you. It's a member, Councilman Austin. I fully support the item. I think all of my sentiments have already been expressed. Thank you all council members for bringing this forward. I think this is a welcome gesture from the city of Long Beach. My my only concern is how we prioritize the resources or maybe possibly limited resources we have to to support businesses and what we can do to develop, you know, I guess a a a system of that that is fair for for everyone to participate. So those are my comments. I look forward to support it. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. And that's. Thank you, Mayor. First of all, thank you very much for letting me join you on this item. I know that the First District was hit very, very hard. But thank you to your team for putting this item together and working really hard on this to support our small businesses here. You know, these small businesses were already struggling before COVID. And, you know, this this destruction that happened just made things even worse after COVID hit. So I think it's really important that we show our small businesses that we care about them and we really want them to thrive in our in our city. And by providing not only opportunities to to to micro loans is a good thing, but I think that even better than that is providing them with opportunities for grants. And I'm very happy to be able to be maneuvering some resources to be able to cover grants for those in in in need right now for the small businesses . And I will be together with my office working on putting together a little workshop so that all the businesses that were affected citywide, you don't have to be in the first district. But we're working on putting that together so that everybody knows the step by step thing, you know, that they will be needing to take in order to take advantage of these opportunities. And I look forward to supporting this item. Thank you. Next up is I think that it's everyone on the list here to speak. So, Madam Kirk, any public comment? There's one public comment for this item. Victor. Lucy, you have 3 minutes. You all just spent all that time about looting, about throwing up businesses. But the major issue is. That the city of Long Beach does not respect Black Lives Matter. Spent all this time deliberating about small businesses, small businesses looting. Why were the people out in the streets? Because OB and the police are brutalizing us. And y'all don't hear the message. Countless citizens spoke to God about the terrorism of the Arab, how we want to defund the police. But you also spent all this time whining about small business, this small business that. I understand why all this happened. Get to the root of the problem. The root of the problem is too much money goes to our big PD. We are going to be fun to elbow deep. Are you of my time? Thank you. I want to. Go ahead and call the roll call. Vote, please. District one. District two, my district three. I. District four. All right. District five. District five. I. I. District six. Hi. District seven. I. District eight. All right. District nine. My motion carries.