Recommendation to approve the 2023 - 2027 Five-Year Consolidated Plan (Consolidated Plan) and Fiscal Year 2022 - 2023 First Action Plan (Action Plan), and prior Action Plan Amendments (FY 2021-2022, 2020-2021, 2018-2019, 2017-2018) for the Community Development Block Grant, the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, and the Emergency Solutions Grant Program Grant Funds; and Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute all necessary documents with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and other entities necessary to receive these funds, and execute agreements necessary to implement and comply with related federal regulations. (Citywide)
Thank you. Congratulations. All right, so we'll move now to item 23. And I think this is the last item with the staff presentation. So this is the last longer one, folks. Let's hear item 23. Report from Development Services recommendation to approve the five year consolidated plan and Fiscal Year 2022 2023. First Action Plan and Prior Action Plan Amendments for the Community Development BLOCK Grant, the Home Investment Partnership Program and the Emergency Solutions Grant Program. Grant Funds City Wide. Thank you. Staff Report. Thank you, Vice Mayor, Members of the Council. We're excited to be here today to talk about our five year plan for CDBG funds that come out of the federal government. These are really transformational funds for some of our most impacted communities. And the team has been doing a lot of planning with the community about how best to invest those limited resources. So we do have a presentation tonight as we really look at how those funds are going to be focused. And I'd like to turn it over to our sports, he and his team to go through the presentation. Thank you, Mr. Rocha. Vice mayor and members of the City Council. Earlier this year, we conducted. A workshop with council to discuss and help us provide a framework. For the Consolidated. Plan. I want to say that Council, we heard you. We put your comments into action, including. An extensive. Public participation process to gather input that helped us prepare this plan. Tonight, we are here to provide you a presentation on the five year consolidation plan. As well as the annual action plan. So with that, I've got Nikki Haymaker, our community program specialist. Who will provide you a presentation. Thank you. The city's current consolidated plan will expire on September 30th, 2022. The new consolidated plan will take effect on October 1st, 2022, and will expire on September 30th, 2027. Once a five year consolidated plan is adopted, the city must submit an annual action plan for each of those five years. The annual action plans are guided by the Consolidated Plan and they identify annual goals, deliverables and funding for each fiscal year at the end of each fiscal year. A paper report, which is consolidated annual performance evaluation report, is also submitted to HUD and that summarizes our annual accomplishments. The Consolidated Plan is required in order to receive these three grants, the first of which is the CDBG program. This program can be used for both housing and non housing activities that improve lower income communities. The city anticipates receiving about 5.4 million each year under CDBG. The Home Investment Partnerships Program supports affordable housing production, and we anticipate receiving about 2.3 million under home and for ESG. This funding is specifically for programs that support individuals and families experiencing homelessness. Our health department administers this program and we anticipate receiving about 500,000 each year. There's a lot of information to cover in this presentation, but these are the big takeaways. The need for more housing, particularly affordable housing, is something that we heard a great deal of during our input process. So this plan cycle focuses on all things housing. So that includes new construction through funding for site acquisition, accessory dwelling, unit construction, homeless prevention and continued home spending. The plan builds on community input, HUD priority areas and other related efforts, such as the recently adopted housing element. We're also expanding programs and staffing to prevent homelessness through landlord tenant mediation, anti displacement regulations and other supportive programs. We also received input regarding increasing grant amounts for our existing rehabilitation and facade programs to increase the impact of those programs. This change will also reduce the overhead expenses to to administer those programs. Funding for our city parks will continue. However, there will be a shifted focus from programs to improving the physical facilities. Oh, I'm sorry. Lastly, the plan supports community grants and partnerships through capacity building for nonprofits, community land trusts and neighborhood associations. The first step in the development of the consolidated plan is to determine the different needs in the community within the areas of housing, community development and homelessness. These needs are determined through analyzing available data and gathering public input. The second step in this process is to identify any gaps in services and or determine current available resources to meet needs. And because the level of need tends to be greater than the limited resources that we receive through these grants, we then move on to the third step, which is to identify priorities or prioritize needs, rather. So we do this by considering the extent of needs, the impact toward our consolidated plan goals, availability of other funding, and eligibility for funding. Based on HUD's program parameters, HUD does have rules about what we can and cannot use the funding for, so we need to be mindful of that as well. Public participation is key to the development of the Consolidated Plan and the Annual Action Plans staff has been engaging the community to identify high priority needs in the areas of housing and community development. Due to COVID, much of our outreach efforts have taken place virtually. But we have employed some other methods to try and engage as many people as possible. We created a multilingual survey which was provided in English, Spanish and Tagalog, and all detailed the results of the survey in a later slide. The city also conducted a variety of outreach efforts, including promoting the Consolidated Plan, community meetings and the survey via the City of Long Beach and Development Services, social media. And just to give you a picture of the reach. The city of Long Beach social media has about 193 contacts and development services. Social media reaches just over about 10,000 contacts across all of the various social media platforms. We also placed advertisements and multilingual newspapers as well as sponsored posts via the Long Beach Post, English and Spanish social media accounts. We emailed all neighborhood associations and CDBG areas. We sent email blasts to community organizations and residents through the Neighborhood Resource Center and Link L.B.. We've promoted the plan in the Go Along Beach newsletter, which goes out to over 56,000 recipients. We issued a public notice to the city manager's office and we sent hardcopy mailers to 21,000 residents and businesses in CDBG eligible or recap census tracts. We also hosted for Neighborhood Association Focus Groups three virtual community meetings, two public hearings with the Long Beach Community Investment Company, and one virtual feedback session after the draft plan was published . Interpretation services were provided at the community meetings, the public hearings, and the feedback sessions as well. Staff have also consulted with and held meetings with several city departments. The Long Beach Continuum of Care Board. And we hosted two study sessions, one with the LV CIC and one here with the City Council. So the next couple of slides detail some of the key findings as it relates to housing conditions and challenges in Long Beach. The majority of residents in Long Beach are renters and 52% of households are lower to moderate income. 12% of households are considered large. WATTS Which means that there are five or more members living in the home. 20% of households are headed by seniors. 7% of households are headed by single parents. And the vast majority of those single parent homes are have a female head of household. And 40% of those households have children living in poverty. 10% of Long Beach residents live with one or more disabilities, and there are 3296 persons considered to be homeless. The majority of housing stock, 83% was built before 1979. So the implication here is that many units currently require or will require upgrades and rehabilitation. Other key findings illustrate the challenge of housing affordability and overcrowding. 2089 Publicly assisted affordable units are considered at risk of converting to market rate housing. Home prices have increased significantly over the last five years by 22% between 2017 and 2020. And then from January 2020 to January 2022, it's increased another 24%. Additionally, the median rent at Long Beach is higher than what HUD considers a fair market rent for smaller units. So studio apartments, one bedrooms and only about 14% of rental units have three or more bedrooms, compared to 63% of owner occupied units. We also looked at housing problems among low to moderate income owners and renters. Housing problems, for our purposes include physical defects, overcrowding, cost burden and severe cost burden. So cost burden means that a household uses 30% or more of their gross income to pay for housing. And as you can see here, LMI, renters experience cost burden at a much higher rate than LMI owners at 47% compared to 19%. 27% of LMI renters experience severe cost burden, which is 50% or more of their gross income spent on housing compared to 11% of owners. And overcrowding, which is more than one person living per room, is experienced much more frequently by renters at 14%, compared to 3% of LMI owners. So now we're looking at the prevalence of severe housing problems among and how those disparities exist across race, ethnicity in general. Extremely low income households experienced severe housing problems more than any other income group in the city. However, when we look at these problems, when factoring in race and ethnicity, we can see that Pacific and Pacific Islander households, as well as Hispanic households, experienced the highest rate of severe housing problems at 100% and 84% respectively, which is quite a bit higher than the citywide average of 75%. This is also true for the very low income category. Pacific Islander and Hispanic households experienced the highest rate of severe housing problems at 81% and 58%, respectively. When looking at cost burden, American Indian Alaska Native households experienced the highest rates of cost burden at 33%. However, black households experienced the highest rates of severe housing cost burden at 28%. So in addition to assessing for housing needs, the Consolidated Plan also evaluates what we consider non housing needs. This includes needs for persons experiencing homelessness, non homeless, special needs, which may include needs for persons with disabilities or single parents, for example, and non housing community development needs, which includes things like infrastructure, neighborhood cleanups or economic development. As mentioned previously, this plan includes about $500,000 annually for homeless services through the Emergency Solutions Grant, which is not a lot. However, the city receives funding for homeless services through a variety of other sources, including the city, county, state and federal, which totals over 77 million. And so even though the Consolidated Plan contribution just makes up a fraction of these overall resources, the Consolidated Plan does play an important role in the Health Department's overall homeless response and strategy. The continuing production of affordable housing is critical to addressing housing stability and preventing homelessness. The city currently receives annual funding for affordable housing under home at approximately 4.3 million per year. But we are also a recipient of the permanent local housing allocation, which gives us about $3 million per year, as well as some other one time funds, such as the city's care home grant. So as we'll discuss in future slides, the current plan and the first year action plan really maximizes those home funds. And aligning and leveraging all of these other different housing resources help us maximize our impact. Over the last few years, 302 new affordable rental housing units were completed with financial support from the city and the LBC, AC . Currently there are 323 affordable rental housing units under construction across four projects. The City and L.B. CIC provided about $14 million in funding, primarily through home. To support these projects, a total development cost for these four projects is over $180 million, which is to say that the city's $14 million investment leveraged 166 million and outside investment into these projects and into the city. The average city subsidy has been about 44,000 per unit, which is very low compared to past years as we asked developers to work hard to maximize other resources. The first of these four projects under construction is Anaheim Walnuts. This property will offer 87 affordable rental units for extremely low to low income families. Long Beach Senior Housing is a 67 unit rental property for extremely low to low income seniors. 26.2 apartments will provide 76 affordable homeless rental units for extremely low to low income households. And lastly, there's The Cove, which provides 89 affordable units for extremely low to low income homeless veterans. Another important tool to address housing needs is the housing element. The housing element is a required component of the city's general plan. It was updated this year and it shows how the city will meet housing demand over the next eight years. Our housing element goals are aligned with our Consolidated Plan goals, and some of the programs contained in the housing element will be addressed in the Consolidated Plan and with the funds that we receive. Housing element law requires that all California cities, towns and counties must plan for the housing needs of all residents, regardless of income. The California Department of Housing and Community Development determines the total number of new housing units that must be built. And this is called RINA, a regional housing needs allocation. Our local arena requirement is given to us by Skaggs, the Southern California Association of Governments. They look at several different factors in determining what our arena requirement will be. Some of those factors are household growth, future vacancy needs transit and job accessibility and household overcrowding. So as you can see here, the Long Beach Rina allocation is 26,502 units, and of which 57.9% of these units need to be for the extremely low, very low and low income households. These are our consolidated plan goals to assist in the creation and preservation of affordable housing for lower income and special needs households. To support activities to end homelessness. Support activities that assist with basic needs. Eliminate blight and or strengthen neighborhoods. Expand economic opportunities for low income households, and promote fair housing choice. When we develop a five year consolidated plan and the action plan activities, HUD regulations require us to focus on and address the listed priorities here. So housing needs, homeless needs, economic development needs, community facilities and infrastructure and community services needs. These are the steps that we take to develop the action plans. We start with HUD regulations and what is eligible. We gather meaningful public input. Input. We conduct an analysis of data which informs the needs assessment and helps us identify gaps in services. We also incorporate housing element goals to align our efforts. We consider resource constraints and we make geographical considerations in line with HUD requirements. So as we've discussed, one of the ways we've collected public input for this consolidated plan is through a multilingual community survey. This survey was posted online for a period of two months and was promoted and community meetings, workshops on social media and the various outreach efforts that I mentioned previously. The survey received a total of 586 responses. Respondents were asked to rank the relative importance of different programs and services, with one being the most important and seven being less important. So they ranked these items in three different categories community development, housing needs and economic development needs. So based on the survey results. Services for people experiencing homelessness was ranked as the most important community development need, followed by street improvements and neighborhood improvements and engagement. For housing needs. Housing for people experiencing homelessness was ranked highest, followed by rental housing for low income families and low income housing for older adults. And then finally, for economic development activities, respondents ranked job creation and retention programs as more important than small business assistance. Oh, sorry. I also want to mention the survey is just one of the ways that feedback is gathered. We also gathered input through community meetings and workshops, so we also recorded those public comments and weighed them as part of the overall needs assessment as well. And we received many public comments around the need for more affordable housing, increasing access to that affordable housing and services for people experiencing homelessness, which is in line with with the survey results that we received as well. I mentioned these structural changes at the beginning of the presentation. However, this slide just provides a little bit more detail about what those changes are in the new consolidated plan compared to the current consolidated plan. The proposed plan places an increased focus on new affordable housing construction through CDBG funded site acquisition, 80 new construction and continued home spending for affordable housing production. The plan expands programs and staffing to prevent homelessness through landlord tenant services. Support for the implementation of anti displacement regulations and complementary fair housing services. The plan also phases out the place based Neighborhood Improvement Strategy Program and modifies existing programs like the Home Improvement and Commercial Improvement Programs to increase increase grants of up to $25,000 to increase impact. Again, funding for parks will increase just with a shifted focus from programs to physical facilities. And the plan will also support grants and partnerships for capacity building for nonprofits, community land trusts and neighborhood associations. For the first action plan. Under the new consolidated plan, which is fiscal year 2023, we are proposing the following budgeted activities. Under Consolidated Plan Goal one Create and preserve affordable housing. We are focusing on affordable housing, production and site acquisition, anti tenant displacement services and housing rehabilitation under goal to support activities to end homelessness. We're focusing on preventing and responding to the needs of persons experiencing homelessness. I do want to point out that in fiscal year 23, the ESG activities shown here have since been revised. In FY 23, the focus will will be on rapid rehousing, $373,000 for that, and about $85,000 for street outreach. As we've all seen, the recently published homeless count has shown that the number of people experiencing homelessness has increased significantly over the last two years. So getting as many people into housing is the priority. We're also continuing the security deposit assistance program, though this time around it will be funded under CDBG rather than home. Under goal number three, eliminate blight and strengthen neighborhoods. A variety of community development activities are being supported, including graffiti removal and prevention funding for the Neighborhood Resource Center, capacity building for neighborhood leaders, grants to assist community organizations, community land trusts and business improvement districts. Park Facility Improvements. Code Enforcement and tree plantings. Under goal for the city will continue its technical business support program and undergo five. Fair housing services will be provided, which includes support for tenant landlord disputes, fair housing workshops to educate the public about protections and rights as well as some other services. The activities that we just covered do not constitute all of the activities that the five year plan will carry out. The programs listed here are currently funded under the 2018 to 2022 Consolidated Plan, and they will continue in the news cycle because these programs have existing funds already. They will not receive additional funding under the year one action plan, which is why they were not shown in those previous slides. However, these programs can receive funding in years two through five, depending on the need and the available funding. As mentioned before, local needs do exceed the funds that we have under this consolidated plan. However, there are some existing programs and resources that are working to address some of the needs identified in the plan process, which you can see here. So that includes some home ownership assistance programs, community land trust development, additional accessory dwelling unit programs and eviction prevention services. As required by HUD's recent directives. The Fiscal Year 23 action plan will not include any unspent REPROGRAMABLE funds from prior Action Plan years. Instead, these funds will be reallocated through the amendment process to different programs that are in line with the last consolidated plan, and they'll just continue to be accounted for and spent under their original fiscal year. So the table shown here details the reallocation of remaining FY 22, 21, 19 and 18 funds contained in the amendments. The proposed amendments are refocusing the majority of unspent funds to support housing acquisition. And with that, here is the staff recommendation for this item. The Consolidated Plan, an annual action plan must be submitted to HUD no later than August 15th, 2022, which is 45 days prior to the beginning of the new fiscal year. Thank you very much, Mayor Council. I know that was a long report, but you can see how much thought and how much investment has gone in with community input into the next five years of these really, really critical funds. So I want to thank the team and thank Nicky for a really comprehensive report and shows how much we're paying attention to the community needs and housing in particular, and we're available to answer questions. Thank you. I'll start off here and I'm happy to make the motion here. And you're right, it's it's important. Lots of community engagement went into this plan, and we only get one bite at the apple every five years. So it's important that we take our time and understand this program. In the district I represent, North Long Beach community is incredibly important. We it's one of the only flexible dollars that we have to address some real serious issues like economic development and improving facades. And we had a good conversation a few months ago, and I'm really proud to see a lot of the feedback from the council reflected in here. We talked about how the $2,000 grant program had an increase with inflation in many years. I'm really proud to see that it's now $25,000. That's enough to get a property on an open the door and, you know, sign the paper to let us spend some money to improve the facade. So so it's 25,000. Yeah. So that's, you know, that's a that's a that's a big deal. I also love that, you know, and based on our conversations, you know, when we first I mean, you know, last time we did a plan and the time before that we didn't have an economic development permit, we do now. And so this still allows you some flexibility to allow economic development. Whose you know. You know, I know they're short staffed today, you know, but but to allow that team to utilize things like this grant to go out and actually make things happen in the community, I also the last thing I'll say is it's very, very clear that you have an intentional focus on housing these five years. And I saw based on the surveys and all the feedback, that is the top issue. We have to use every tool that we have to advance affordable housing and so on, and to keep people in their homes. And so I particularly love the the the piece in there to help people stay in their homes. So that's incredibly important. So happy to make this motion and I move on to Councilman Sorrell. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Yes. I want to thank staff for a great work done with this report back, reflecting our priorities. But I also am interested in learning how I'm new to kind of this CDBG grant process in the way that the reports or surveys are done and the reports coming back. And I see that it's now changing the emphasis from place based neighborhood programing to the housing development. And so how does that look? Because before when it's place based, it's based on kind of the criteria used in the most need, right? So how are you? So using the same criteria or approach? Before we answer your question, I just want to just remind you that the place space will still will still be in process. We have two or three different project areas that we need to address, and I will be working with the corresponding districts to complete those efforts. It's under the separate the previous consolidated plan that that effort was unique. It was something that we discussed. So as far as projects to be able to identify brand and help neighborhoods in terms of improve its economic sustainability. Again, based upon the input we received at our public outreach efforts, we shifted our priority now to really focus on all things housing. So that's kind of what led to the phasing out of that of that program and into more housing opportunity areas. And to further answer your your question, COUNCILMEMBER So when we talk about a shift from, you know, sort of the place space program where those are infrastructure improvements, so sidewalk improvements, crosswalk improvements, landscaping, lighting and your district in, you're familiar with those. When we talk about housing production that comes in the form of a loan, it's a residual receipts loan, meaning the developer does not have to pay that loan unless there's extra revenues in a given year and then they make a payment on that loan. So we have two different pieces on the CDBG side. It's what's called a side acquisition loan. So it's to buy a piece of land to develop in the future an affordable housing project. So that may not end up being in the most the area of concentrated poverty. You've talked about on other items this evening and other occasions about, you know, housing being built around the city and not just in your district. So the emphasis has changed from the federal government over the last ten years and the emphasis is on high opportunity area. So we would do a solicitation of developers asking, you know, propose a project and we would look at a number of different factors the financial performance, the number of units, but also the location. And we would consider a location that might be over concentrated where there's a certain stretch of Long Beach Boulevard, which has a high concentration of affordable units. And those are great projects, but we're looking at doing projects elsewhere. So we would look at the location in that way, which is a different way of thinking about it than how we did the play space. But you're still serving people in poverty and very high levels of poverty and actually providing them certain options to experience different locations around the city. Does that answer your question? Yes, because that's really where I'm getting it is regardless of where the housing is built, I would just want to make sure it's serving. Those who it's supposed to address are people living in poverty or people who are in at risk of being homeless. So I just wanted to make sure that regardless of where is built, if it's not identified as these sites as being high poverty areas, that people would be able to who meet at least a criteria would be able to have access to those housing. And I'm going to let them give you the exact criteria for who we can assist and who we don't assist in general. Which is used mostly for affordable housing. In the first instance of the completion of affordable housing, we serve people that earn 60% area median income or below. And then when we also put together the contracts and the agreements together, for instance, out of 100 units, we have an option to make like 60, 70 of those units to be to go for very low income or basically hard money, whether it's home or some of it. You can only assist in housing production, land acquisition, people that are on 80% or less in the area, median income. Thank you. The other point I want to mention here is we have several other strategy funded activities. Those activities are still remain for us in low income eligible areas. Great. Thank you so much. One thing I'll add is to say appreciate seeing more money being added to enhancing our neighborhood leadership program is so vital because some of the reason why many of the neighborhoods are needing support is because it does also need leadership in the area. So I hope to see more. I know that it's set there, but I hope they can be increase a little bit more because I think that's really what helps maintain whatever gets built in those the neighborhoods. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Thank you. I just wanted to ask. A question of clarification about the presentation. It talked about. Homes with more than one adult. And I think that I just wanted to clarify. I know that people are watching at home and we want to be accurate and I could be wrong. I think that it's more than one adult that are not siblings or more than one adult that are not married to one another or cohabitating . I think that those would be exceptions. If they're not exceptions, I'd like to know about that. It's now. Yeah, I'm trying to find the exact slide, but we look at overcrowding in a couple of different ways. So one would be what you just mentioned, adults that do not have a, you know, relationship through marriage or sibling or parent child. And we also look at just the sheer number of persons per room. So there's two different ways to look at it. And I think both are actually alluded to in the presentation. Yeah, I just know that we're a family or a city of family values and we appreciate to parent families just as much as one parent families than if there are two parent families. That's a reasonable way to live. And so when you count those numbers, we don't wanna be penalized for the number of families that we have in our city when the statistics are aggregated. And then my mom comes from a family, and I come from a family where my brother and I shared a room and my mother shared a room with her three sisters . And I think that that's a my girls share a room, even though I could separate them. I think that there's a lot of value in that and we want to make sure to have accurate statistics on a true need. Thank you. Thanks and great work on this presentation. It's been a long time coming and I know a lot of work going into it. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilman Price. Thank you. I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the staff for that amazing presentation. It was really thorough. I know these are topics that we've talked about quite a bit, certainly over the last eight years. But just recently we had the opportunity in April to touch on some of these topics, and the presentation tonight was fantastic. So I want to thank staff for everything that you're doing and also for the work that you do offline, not in a council meeting to educate all of us and teach us how we can be part of the solution in terms of working with housing providers and not only just helping shape policy, but also helping implement some of the policies that you bring to us for recommendation. So really grateful and appreciate the presentation. Thank you. Fantastic. Thank you. Public comment on this item. If there are any members of the public that would like to speak on item 23 in person, please line up at the podium in Zoom. Please use the race hand feature or dial star nine now. In present day Sinai campus. Sixth District Resident Councilwoman Mongeau. Page 26. I've read it multiple times, so you know you. I would let you know when we get this home acquisition program in and in movement. I would love to volunteer all my free time that I already spend reading your guys's white papers and reports. Amazing. Uh, uh, presentation. Uh, Miss Nikki. Uh, it's. It's amazing when the data supports, when you spent years of your life talking about, you know, we were losing our working class, uh, framework and, uh, it's great to see finally some teeth behind the methods used. To facilitate preserving that population, it's imperative for the future for the future of our school district, because our schools are going to be closing in next seven years because there's not enough children attending them. And honestly, just for the continuity of our communities and neighborhoods, I think I agree with Dr. Sorrell with respect to the concentration. HUD has the scattered method that they use now, but the concentration is of affordable housing projects in the 66 district neighborhood is always something to bring up. I think one topic, a solution that I like that was referenced was the, uh, the storefront facade thing, the $25,000 would help. The problem is that some people want to maintain blight. About a year or two ago, Councilman Austin tried to bring up a bill or relation to the vacancy tax because there's corridors like the Civic Avenue where people willingly choose to leave their storefronts empty, blighted, because they're waiting for the next economic kick to, you know, over sell their, you know, antiquated property for. That's something that we as a city need to impact and either force them to either drop the land so we can do something with it, like house these people or move on from it. The second thing would be that because although we do financing as a sneaky reference, we take county financing. When we do that, they one of the stipulations is that we have to take a list housing lists. So even though we are, to Mr. Hogg's point, providing opportunities of housing, it's not Long Beach people that get put in those buildings. And that's a problem. We cannot continue to allow, you know, projects to come onto our land and be built here, but don't facilitate eliminating those 3296 people. So great presentation, great opportunity for the public to see data and hopefully we can do something with this. Thank you. Well, finally, one thing is that L.A. Metro just announced that they're going to be facilitating land banking around all the transit hubs and transit zones. Maybe this is an opportunity to engage as a city with the county to facilitate some type of development. And I know lobbies Boulevard all the way up to Norfolk. Mr. Can Vega, Time's up. Has a lot of car dealerships that need to go. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. My name is Clarissa Cooper, and I came about a disturbance of the very and the city of Long Beach, a sanitation department. I have a picture here on my phone was so disturbing. And I don't I just like to show it to one individual or whatever to get something done. And there's another problem in the city of Newark, Long Beach beginning, maybe Cher Park and going forward, going north there, there's a bad rodent problem. And there are there are just many things that, you know, just really, you know, this is really getting really foul as far as like, well, the rats are really starting to come all around the apartment building and some people like four and 3:00 in the morning, they will take, you know, like their rubbish and throw it in the big vendors and I alley because it's you know so many apartments right around there and I was just to do anything they can be done about that because the raccoons are really the motion and I don't know whether in a Daytime Cher Park or not, but you know, it's really getting bad and they really need some type of situation to, you know, have it sprayed or, you know, it's really out of hand. They're going all the way from from from from right there along Beach Boulevard over to Atlantic. All the way down del Amo, up all the way to maybe South Street. And you know, if you ever be out in the evening by people that, you know, work at night and are coming home, this is this really is getting scary. And I've been here Long Beach for 50 some years, and I've never I've never witnessed this situation. And I was just wondering, cause I had a lot of fine people in my family that worked for the sanitation department that have gone on. And I just worried, you know, if they could do anything, it would be deeply appreciate it. I would really, you know, really. You know, thank God for that. Thank you. So if I could show someone this picture, if I may. Maybe Mr. Murdoch is cued up. He'll help make sure someone can. Speak with his shoulder. Yes, absolutely. Aubrey, if I can ask you to come to talk to this lady and get all her information, and we can certainly work on this problem. So thank you for bringing that to our attention. Thank you so much. I think that concludes public comment here. Members, please cast your vote. Councilman's in Dallas. All right. Councilwoman Allen. Councilwoman Pryce. I. Councilman. Super. Now. I. Councilman Mongo. I. Councilwoman Sara. I. Councilmember, your anger. I. Councilman Austin. Hi. Vice Mayor Richardson. My motion is carried nicer. Thank you. Good news. We have some results for those who have been waiting on the permit results. So, Madam Clerk, I'll hand it back over to you. Let's pull the let's pull the midtown up first. So regarding results of assessment ballots cast for the Midtown Business Improvement District, the total assessment ballot distributed was 61 total valid ballots counted were 22, and the percentage of assessment in favor was 58.89%. There is not a majority protest. Though. That's good. News. This is good news. This passes. Congratulations and we need to take a vote on this one before we move to the next one, correct? Correct. And we pull the item up on the system. And this is item 17. I joined 23 International.