Recommendation to request City Manager to communicate the City of Long Beach’s opposition to Senate Bill 9 and Senate Bill 10 to the Governor and urge his veto of these bills.
I think we're on 22 now. No. 34. Looks like 34. Sorry. Item 34 is communication from Councilman Austin. Councilwoman Price, Councilwoman Mango. Recommendation two requires City Manager to communicate the City of Long Beach opposition to Senate Bill nine and Senate Bill ten to the Governor and urge his veto. Of this bills. Thank you. Councilman Austin, thank you so much. So we're going to try this again. So in July, city council unanimously approved the motion for the city staff to review potential impacts of nine and ten in Long Beach and report back to the state led committee. The state led committee met on August 25th and received the staff report. However, the item was agenda item that received the file on the report so the committee could not even consider taking a motion on the bill or position on the bill, despite all three committee members voicing opposition to the bills during the committee meeting. We now have time to wait for a formal committee recommendation on these bills. The board's 49 items have now passed the legislature and are on the governor's desk and he can act on these two bills within the next few weeks. Any day now. I believe that we should urge the governor to veto both of these bills because they are bad loans. We've worked hard to create more affordable and workforce housing in our community. We've had an extensive community engagement as we work to adopt new land use element and housing policy policies like student. Earlier this evening, we discussed the enhanced density bonus. Provide an additional tool in our city to incentivize. To build more affordable housing along transit corridors in many areas that are already given for multifamily housing. The policy was buried in the Planning Commission and through the community outreach process for the housing element update. However, roughly nine in ten. Applies a one size fits all approach to the entire state without the benefit of community input and extensive work that we put in at the local level to address our housing crisis. The legislation requires that by right approval, this new housing for completing the important local government review process that includes extensive public engagement without any requirement that the new housing development. The affordable housing. As we all know, it takes time for new housing to be built. We're seeing new housing opportunities, including affordable housing, in many parts of our city today. We're seeing more reuse built throughout the city. But at the same time, we've work to preserve the integrity and distinct character of our many great neighborhoods in our city. This legislation is opposed by a broad coalition of hundreds of local government. League of California Cities. Social justice advocate. Affordable housing group. Neighborhood Council. And many others. So tonight I'm asking my colleagues to join me in urging Governor Gavin Newsom to veto these bills and instead let our city continue to work to meet our housing needs with our local community input and policies and zoning that take into account our own local needs. The Long Beach Way. Thank you. I asked my colleagues, do you think you can form Mongo? Thank you. I. Brought the initial item forward. I think that there has been a lot that we've learned through the years on how much a bill can change during the process. And I think that it's important for committees to be active and hear what the bill says and where it stands and then to advocate for those. And I've appreciated each committee's opportunity to do that. In hearing that, a majority of the members on the committee were supportive of opposing Senate Bill nine and ten. I had hoped that the committee would bring it to the full council in a similar way that we were just discussing another item that came to the full council because it had an unanimous committee support. So with that, I'm very supportive of this item. I appreciate council member Austin taking the leadership to bring it out of committee, even if it was a solely slated item. I think we've all learned a lot on Brownout because of the way that it came to the table. I appreciate that. And the advice and guidance of our city attorney and the changes we've made as the council. And I hope my colleagues will support this item. Thank you. Councilman, your anger to comes from our mongo. That is precisely the point that did not come out to the committee. It came out through to the city council directly. We did have a robust discussion at the state level committee about these two items. It was a receive a final item that we voted on. And despite the feelings of the other members that were there still was a receipt, a final item that should have gone to the state committee for a vote. If we're going to come to the council and which had been brought separately, it was not. It came directly here. And that that's my issue with the with this item at this point, which I will not be supporting because of the procedural effort on that, just that we've had before in other committees. And we just had a discussion right now about the committee structure and what it does that we're supposed to do and we're supposed to work together. We are. But when we had and, you know, many of us have been here for a number of years now. So we know the process and we know what we our expectations are. And we need to work together on trying to bring things forward. Now, in these two areas right now, I think that this letter to the governor is. More symbolic than anything else. The governor is going to sign it all the it's passed both legislature, the legislature and the House. I mean, the assembly and the legislature. It's a it's a done deal. Now, there's other ways I understand from my participation other in other organizations, committees, that there is a. Growing effort in the community to bring a vote to the people of California. There's there's petitions being circulated that will address both SB nine and every ten. That'll be, of course, later on down the line. I'll wait for that to see what the result of that is. But right now, I think my vote for this would be a symbolic vote. And I don't do symbolic vote. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Arthur. So the symbolic vote was the receiver filed in committee? That was the symbolic vote. And you, Mr. Raja, respectfully had the ability to determine whether that was a receiving vote or if that was a straight up and down vote for a recommendation to come before this committee. Thank you. Excuse me. I'm not done. No, I actually didn't realize. I let everybody speak once. I didn't realize we had public comment. So I'm an invite to public comment if you want to queue up and speak right after that, I want to finish my point. You go you get this final point that we're going to public. Okay. So the point is that, yes, you spoke in committee and you said that you were opposed to both SB nine and ten. There was it was unanimous all three members and so. During the committee, I said, Well, why aren't we bringing this to the floor and let's bring it to the floor. So I brought it to the floor and I gave you, Mr. Chair, as well as our vice mayor, who was also on the committee, the opportunity to serve on the bill. And both of you declined to sign on the bill. One on item two, to oppose this legislation here on the floor as a body, as a city council, and to send that message to the legislature and the governor. And so I just have to call it what it is. You said the process, I think is disingenuous. And I think to members of the public here. Dietrich Geiger and Janet Foster, if you can come forward, the Dietrich here. Okay. Dietrich first and then Janet. I'm a resident of district shares in the island district and I am coming today to urge you guys to support those SB ten and to not oppose it. I come today with the perspective of a real estate agent who works primarily with first time homebuyers. Those are renters. A lot of them are Long Beach residents. And it really sucks because a lot of the times I have to tell them, most of the time they cannot buy a house and they are not poor. They are not low income. They are not $100,000 income earners either. To tell them that if they want to buy, they either have to get a small little condo over here in downtown or they have to be back to the desert. They don't want to do either. They do not want to be super commuters. They want to own a home. They want to build equity. They want to have something they can pass on to their kids or that they can have something as a back up for themselves. Please support SB nine and SB ten and increase the housing that we have here in our city. And an all star for you. Thank you. Thank you. Next identified the. Good evening. Thank you for this chance to speak to you. I am I am a resident of District two and also I am a co-leader of the Long Beach chapter of Yimby. And I'm asking this Council to support SB nine and SB ten. I enjoyed a lot of the spirited conversation tonight, particularly with Councilmember Mongeau stating that Long Beach is doing as much as we can in terms of dense housing related to transit. There's still another thing that Long Beach can participate with and also the cities that are mentioned where they're not doing as much as Long Beach. A lot of times one of the key components of SB nine and SB ten deals with the single family lot, and that, unfortunately, in California as a whole has been weaponized a lot. Whether it's based on equal access, opportunity to purchase, or whether it's from working and middle class earners as well as it has a history. And we all know that history of how single family lots were leveraged in the 1950s and this is the last vestige of this. And I asked this council to not ask the governor to veto SB nine and SB ten. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So I'm going to offer my my comments on this on this item. I don't see any other council comments here. So I want to thank Councilman Austin for bringing this forward, I think. What I want to say is that I think we've we've been very clear time and time again and throughout the years about the issue of local control. Long Beach protect local control in our state legislative agenda. It's been there. It's not new. We advocate in support of protecting local control already as a part of the legislative agenda. We've submitted amendments on nine and ten, many of which have been accepted. I and and I personally opposed a number of these bills. And my role as president is guard and other roles. And it wasn't because I don't doubt. I don't deny the housing crisis that we have. In fact, and I've been a champion on a number of things and had very difficult conversations around the green and other things . And so I think the issue is that I personally believe that we should try to maintain land use decisions as local. Also been clear. Even recently I expressed my opposition to these bills at the state level committee. I met with the governor's office who? Just two weeks ago. Talking about this bill and the prospects of the future of the bill. I met with them just to just two weeks ago in my capacity as the immediate past president of Sky. So the city's position, my own position on the city council have been very public about their position on local control. So that's that's not an issue here. I think I think there's also a reality that we should acknowledge that that Janet brought up and nice to meet again that Janet brought up is that single family housing in general in a number of cities. And I notice of our regional high single family housing has been used as a means to block any growth from taking place. And the ultimate result of the, you know, the abuse of single family housing is that housing and the burden. The burden of density gets pushed on things like Long Beach because other cities have not done their part. And so and in that from that standpoint, the state has attempted to take action to fix the issue of the squeeze down in one area and push everybody out of one community popped up in the other, and it exacerbates the homelessness crisis. And so from the state standpoint, I actually understand why five or six members of our local delegation voted to address this, and the state has taken action. You've got you know, in the last week or so, the legislature approved a bill with 28 to 6 vote in the Senate. 45 to 19 in the Assembly. Now, I wish this hadn't been the case. But the reality is that's the case. This is an issue statewide. We advocated for protections for us here in Long Beach. Many of those have been included. And that's the hard reality, is that although we wish that hadn't happened, the state has taken that action. And so I think. Personally with overwhelming support in the legislature. I think the things that are you know, in the conversation with the governor's office, I think the reality is that this thing is going to be fine. This is the law. The state is taking action. This is about to happen. And thinking about that, I think, what's this? This vote is going to have very little impact on the actual trajectory of the bill. So what are we doing tonight? I think we have to really think about, you know, we're already on the record. We're already in one place. What action are we taking tonight? Are we taking an action to shift the course of this process? I don't believe that that's possible at this point. From a process standpoint, I think it's time to be honest with residents, that it's time to be honest with the residents and and it's time to move on from this issue. And so tonight, for that reason and for many reasons, I don't think that this is the action the city lobby should take tonight. And moving to ask the governor to veto this, it is not likely to happen. And we need to move on from this issue and be honest about the reality of this legislative session and what we need to prioritize in the future. So that's it. I think we have one more Councilwoman Margo. I honestly just don't know. You'd stated that we are already on the record with our position on these items. Dr. Hurley Had we sent our position on these items to the delegation or. What was our position formally? The city is neutral on the bill currently. And why are we neutral when the state legislative agenda states that we are against removing local control? Well, in terms of SB nine, one of the main things that have changed since last year, this is the bill that was closest to SB 50, which the city opposed last year and this year. The bill basically is the definition of local control in the sense that city would have to make an effort to take an action in order to avail ourselves of the streamlining that allowed in the bill. So in terms of SB ten, that's one of the core changes over the last year and a half or so. And on the SB nine, I think as the Vice Mayor was referring to, one of the items we added to the state legend of this year was in response to some of the conversations that council has had recently actually for the development of single family homes into multi-unit properties. We included a new item to allow for more advocacy around reasonable requirements on those developments. So one of the things that we did try to incorporate in 39, how much is around affordability requirements as well as owner occupancy options for local agencies to impose? And that is one of the things that did get amended into SB nine this year. Now there is a requirement for property owners to subdivide using SB nine to sign an affidavit that says that they will live in one of their residences for at least three years. I'm very supportive of those things. I guess my just misunderstanding is. We currently have more control than we would have if this bill passes. That could. That's what I thought. Our former presentation stated. That is correct. Okay. So this takes away some of our local control and we as a council have advocated for more local control. And I appreciate, Dr. Crowley, that you got a lot of the things in there for us. And I know that as a councilmember who was very engaged in consistently working with Chris and Oscar and all the crew over there, we were consistently working to improve the bill. Before figuring out now that it's out of state where it probably will be. My agenda item was to refer it to committee at that time, but I think it's important, even if we are okay with some things. My understanding is that local control is still what we believe is. The strikes. And so for those reasons, it is. What would you say we have as an official position? You said no position. So I guess I'm confused by the vice mayor's comments when he says that we are already on the record on this item. Could you help me understand how we're on there? I just don't know. We have not sent any formal on the record of our opinion of these bills or have we. Not on behalf of the city. Okay. So. I appreciate Councilmember Austin for inviting me to be a part of this, because I do think it's important that we take an official position on requesting the governor veto these two bills. We'll see what happens. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kirby, for all the hard work you've done through this session. And to everyone who's engaged, we know this is important to everyone. And thank you and also for continue to focus on this issue. Members, please cast your vote. Emotion fail. Right. So I think we're that satisfies the agenda. We're now at closing public comment. I don't have a list. Vice-Chair We have item 39 and also item 29 being withdrawn. So we have two more. Okay. Left here 39 and 29. 39.