Recommendation to request City Manager to provide an update to the City Council on the recently completed Downtown Parking Study which was requested at the November 11, 2014 meeting.
Item number. Item number 22 Communication from Councilwoman Lena Gonzalez recommendation to provide an update on the recently completed downtown parking study, which was requested at the November 11, 2014 meeting. Councilman Gonzales. Yes. We'll start with a staff report from Public Works, please. Great step. Our director of Public Works, our Malloy, and we'd be happy to make this presentation. Thank you, honorable man Ann Arbor Council members. Good evening. It is my pleasure to provide an update update on downtown parking since the department's initial report to the city council in June. As you're aware, the City Council requested a comprehensive assessment of downtown parking at the end of last year. The department provided a parking study after months of data collection, outreach with downtown stakeholders and rigorous review of existing practices. This present presentation today summarizes those findings and provides an update on the action items described in the report. Tonight's presentation will provide a background of the issues, discuss the changes to parking facility management practices in downtown, including the principles which guide our management practices, cover important next steps we are undertaking to further enhance the experience of residents, businesses and visitors. As always, it's my pleasure to take any questions at the end. The city owns 14 public parking structures in downtown Long Beach. The largest of these facilities include the city place garages located on third, fourth and fifth streets, and, of course, the Civic Center garage on Broadway. In total, all 14 facilities provide 4151 parking spaces for residents and visitors while the city owns these facilities. The city has standard parking plus formerly central parking, operates and maintains this facilities. The City Council approved this contract in 2013 and the contract will expire at the end of the March next year. This section will highlight the changes to parking facilities and in light of face feedback we received from various stakeholders in downtown Long Beach. Our commitment is and will always be to be responsive to the concerns raised by residents, businesses and visitors in a timely manner. To that end and to fulfill that commitment, we have three established principles that guide our approach to managing the parking assets in downtown. The first is to ensure safe parking facilities where residents, businesses and visitors feel welcome to park in downtown. The second is to provide well-maintained facilities that have operational elevator elevators, light and other amenities. And finally, we endeavor to provide guidance to and from parking facilities to ensure that motorists safely identify and travel to parking facilities that best meet their needs. With the first principle. We have accomplished the following. Since issuing the June report, public works crews have replaced and added new lighting fixtures to to enhance security, installed new high definition cameras and recording systems to cover key entrances and exit points. And finally, enhanced security patrols and measures at the garages. We have also enhanced the parking experience with key infrastructure improvements. For example, a persistent issue was nonfunctioning elevators in some of our garages. Our crews identified the issue as overheating in elevator equipment room and invested in new cooling systems to keep the elevators operational. We have also worked with local businesses to enhance the timely removal of shopping carts, and city staff are prepared to intervene and remove the cars quickly if the business is unresponsive. Having excellent well-maintained parking facilities provide little if our visitors don't know how to get to them. We have made strategic changes and parking guidance, including researching and selecting through the RFP process a candidate for an advanced parking guidance system working with the City Managers Special Events team. Public Works is making progress in designing electronic message boards to direct motorist to open and available lots. This project would also include occupancy detection devices to convey the number of open parking spaces available. The project is funded by grants received from Metro. We broadly categorize these next steps into the following. Parking management, community collaborations and innovation. Parking management. Many of the discussed changes came as a result of a change in parking management early this year. We consolidated our parking operations under the Public Service Bureau, Uniting or parking management with our parking maintenance due to hard work of Public Service Bureau. We drastically improved our responsiveness to many of the issues brought to our last brought to the to you last year. We continue to advance and make more management practices, recognizing the complexity of the breadth of the city's parking operation. The city manager presented a budget to the city council that would add a citywide parking manager for our parking operations, both downtown and along our coastline. This position is offset by other reductions. Our committee members are our partners and our boots on the ground for delivering feedback to us. Our parking staff have embarked on extensive community outreach, having walked the garages with stakeholders and work with them to identify challenges and potential solutions. Since our last report, we have worked with DDR to offer free validation for parking at the park with the opening of the outlets. We have closely monitored and solicited feedback about the first five free program for the on street meters. And as we saw, public works rapidly responded to the decision to have a meter holiday. In the wake of the power outages by efficiently changing the meters after authorization from city manager West will remotely change the parking meters so the residents and visitors could support our downtown businesses. We will continue these efforts to ensure a partnership with our community. Last, but certainly not least. We answered the mayor and City Council's call for innovation by thinking strategically about how to use technology to further improve the parking experience. We're working to further centralize parking information already consolidated at w w w that long beach topgolf slash parking. We're looking into technology that would provide real time street parking meter and parking structure, occupancy data and to motorist more mobile apps. And with this new data, we're examining data strategies and analyzing of real time data. The current example of how our embrace technologies are smart parking meters that were installed in April. Since then, we have collected valuable data. And I would like to share with you some some briefly tonight. Credit card usage has grown by eight percentage points since the meters were installed citywide. That translates to 34% of users are paying by credit card. The park in particular has seen remarkable success, with over 50% of users paying by credit card. And our business friendly approach with the first three five program is popular as well. In July alone, we have over 41,001st five free initiations. This translates to over 250,000 free minutes. Over 3403 hours. Or over 142 days of free parking. While we have made significant progress within a short time frame to implement important changes to better improve the facilities, it is our philosophy to proactively identify next steps to further improve the experience. I would like to share with you the next steps we're taking to further fulfill our commitment to our parking principles. We're continuing our continuing work on the parking guidance system and wayfinding. We're awaiting the decision of another metro grant that could fund additional projects. We have obtained coats for painting and Spaulding, which is the process of repairing daily wear and tear on the parking structures. We seek to standardize parking signage. We will prepare to review data with stakeholders as we reach our six month anniversary. And we will continue to proactively work with our community collaborators to identify projects for other improvements funded by the parking meter revenue collected above baseline projections. Thank you for this opportunity to present. I'm happy to answer any questions you have. Thank you. Councilwoman, another vice mayor? Yes. If there's public comment, I'll take that first before we get into. Okay. Is there any public comment on the item saying no public comment. Councilman Gonzales. Okay. So I have a I want to thank you, Ari, for putting this together. As you know, as many of us know, downtown parking is like the hot topic item in downtown for both the first and the second district. And, you know, putting this together was I'm I'm certain, very difficult on your part because it was a lot of there are a lot of nuances. And so I just thank you for putting this report together. But I still do know that we have a long way to go, especially as our downtown is thriving. It's getting better. The development around it is is certainly looking better esthetically. But also there's just more interest in the downtown. I see that there's a lot of potential that we have. So I have a few questions related to your presentation. So you had mentioned I have seen some enhancements to security and maintenance, but I still don't think it's enough at this point. So I would like to ask you, what more will be done for security and maintenance? You said, you know, enhanced security patrols and rigorous maintenance schedule. And then related to that. I know there's been some issues in some of our city play slots specifically. And I know the calls for service were pretty high. So how much is the in addition to that, how much is the maintenance and security costing us? Thank you for that question. It's kind of a complex question, but I will try to answer that as coherently as possible. So Central Parking has a contract with the city to provide the maintenance and the security. They, in turn are in contract with Platts security to provide security for these parking structures. From my understanding, they are paying 30,000 a month to Platts security to provide security in all our parking structures. And that translates to 312 hours on a weekly basis. So what the city has done in addition to that, we have increased or work asked Platts security to increase about 264 hours per week of additional parking security in those facilities. So we have total of 576 hours of weekly security that's provided. So we've kind of doubled the security that existed in addition to what was in their contract. So that was the basis of the original contract. Now we have practically doubled as far as the security is concerned, similar questions in regards to maintenance. The existing contract, which will expire next March, has provisions for maintenance. The city is also adding maintenance to these parking structures since we have reorganized our parking operations as of the beginning of this year. So you have kind of added our personnel working and doing maintenance issues in the parking structures. So we we sometimes will reimburse central parking for the maintenance cost or we will do it ourselves. But we I can say that practically we have doubled the amount of maintenance that's going on in those parking structures. And I have to say that I've personally walked the parking structure and I'm aware of every single issue. I spent close to 3 hours with our business partners and our staff looking at what opportunities we can have to increase. And that's that's where the list of improvements came from. We are adding or we added more lights, we're adding more signage that there are security cameras. We fixed the elevators that were not functioning properly all the time. We have done power washing. We have re stripe the parking structures as far as refreshing the stripes so that the users can see the existing spaces. And we have much more potential enhancements to the parking structure that that will give a better experience to to our customers. So when do we think that all of the main you know, all of the issues that are still existing, when will those be completed? So part of, as you can understand, the parking structures are 2 hours free, so they're practically not making any money for every transaction. There's a $0.14 that the city gets on every ticket that's sold. So that's part of the challenge. Fortunately, we have a business partner that has purchased a tremendous amount of parking spaces and one of the parking structures, and that's really giving us a good source of income to to to enhance the, the the security issues and also the the maintenance issues. Part of our parking meter installation was that with collaborations with the LBA, we have a baseline. So any time finances or the income exceeds that baseline, we're going to use those funds to improve our parking structures. So we're still in for two years. We are basically at, you know, in four months or 15 months of our parking meter installation. So we have not seen that revenue yet. But when we see that revenue, we will definitely use those monies for two years to enhance our parking structures. When we're going to see that fact. Was that after six months or how how long was that time frame to realize the revenue coming back from the smart meters? I think in six months as part of the installation, if you recall, it was recommended by city council and staff agrees that we're going to come back to city council and give you a report on the status of the parking meters and how it compare to our previous baseline. So we have data from previous years. What was the income at that point per month? And then when we complete that six months of installation, we will come back to City Council. I think that's a good point to discuss. If the revenues are up or not, I would say in October would be a good, good opportunity. For us to come back. So we'd get a report basically next month and see about how much above we're above our baseline and how much could be allocated potentially to the downtown. In October. In October. Next month. Right. Well, I'm sorry. September. I think we're in September. I wish I wish we had passed the budget. So I know. It would be in October, but I will definitely in October. Welcome back, because that's kind of my next point. So I know that in relation to receiving more funds or more revenue from the parking, you know, for instance, we didn't get an online payment system for the parking structures at City Place until, I think earlier this year. So I think we need to rework our marketing and we really need to remain committed to that. I think it's very important that we have residents, you know, I use well, I live across the street, so we were able to pay for parking, but we had to go in this dingy hallway and it was just such a nightmare. So people don't want to do that. They want to be able to have something at their fingertips, pay online. I think that would be more beneficial, of course, to the city in receiving revenue that way. But as far as marketing as a whole, I would really like to look at receiving information back from you in October about the smart meter revenue and seeing how that could be. How that could work for our marketing. And aside from that, were we looking at any other funds to be able to use for marketing for this or what was the thought? Honorable Gonzales. Let me go back to the first issue that you raised. Currently, customers can go online and purchase their their parking passes, they can go to WW dot, SPL, USA dot com, or they can go to Long Beach dot parking guide dot com. So we have two sources that customers, visitors, residents and businesses can purchase parking online so they don't have to physically go into a space. If some residents want to go to if they want to pay cash, they need to go physically to the office at 275 East Fourth Street. That's where a central parking office is located. They can do that. After they do that, the first time they can renew online, they can also choose to have to pay continually, automatically. Or they can go to month to month. So. So there are definitely options and we will try to communicate that information since we have a new website. We could probably put that on the website to show that information that which is available to us. It would be good to have a one stop shop, you know, so it's not you have to go to HPD, you got to go to Long Beach parking slap, hash tag or slash parking. It's just a one stop area. So maybe I'm not clear where we're going to pay for. How are we going to pay for marketing? As far as you know, I mentioned a smart app in the original agenda item in a wayfinding signs are in the in the work so how is that all going to come together and be paid for by the city ? Well, the wayfinding is a completely separate project that we have. We were successful in getting a $1.2 million grant from the MTA that will help us with the wayfinding and also identification. How to get to the parking spaces, which is which is a large project as far as marketing we can come back to in October and come up with a program. I'm hoping that we'll do that next month before we get to to October. We'll probably accomplish that via communication with our business partners and the LBA and homeowners associations that are our community partners. We can provide that information via a flier or we can tweet or a bunch of technologies that's available right now . We can do that. And Councilmember, if I may, just to add. We're really looking at three different. Areas where you can invest here. One of them would be the grants that we talked about. MTA has specific grants that can help with some of the signage and the message count or the the automatic counting. So that's. One. We also do have a stream of revenue. Coming in that we can and we have a budget for some maintenance. And so that's that's an ongoing program and we'll continue to have that. And then really, we wanted. To have the money coming. Back from the parking meters. That was a commitment to reinvest that into the downtown area for two years is, as Mr. Bohan said, that's a couple of hundred thousand dollars. And so that'll really. Be for the extra services, the parking app. The excuse me, the parking app. The we could do painting all of that additional maintenance marketing program. That really was envisioned for that, a dedicated funding source. Well, I was hoping to find that in this presentation. So is so I guess now we can go back to, I guess, directing you in October to come back with that information, like detailed information on how we can formulate the smartphone app, if possible, maybe a one stop website, more emphasis on on on all of those components that Tom had mentioned. And then last question is for the parking manager. What will be the role of the parking manager? If it is approved. If you're kind enough to approve that position, that person will be dedicated to managing all the parking facilities within the city and also all the parking lot. So it's it's all the parking in the city will be under that the purview of that parking manager. Okay, but what would I mean? And then that person will be managing, doing our piece for the for the maintenance or for the new. If we did, they will they will manage the contracts. They'll be focused on marketing and focused on bringing new technologies. Okay. And so from now until October, can we make a good effort in ensuring that central parking is stepping up their maintenance and security? I really I can't stress that enough. Currently, as it stands, we still have complaints of. Shopping carts. We still have complaints of trash. We have complaints all over the place. And I just don't think that there's enough being done. So from now until October, I would love to see a commitment on our part to meeting frequently with our with our stakeholders and then also ensuring that we're I don't know if someone has to be there every single day until the issue gets better, but we really need to remain focused on this. There's a lot of folks in the area that have invested both businesses and both residents, and I just think we need to make that commitment to our stakeholders here and our residents and business owners. Well, do. Bison really want for? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm. Did we have any public comment on this? We did. No, didn't. They didn't speak. I concur with Councilmember Gonzalez's. Issues that she raised. I don't I'm not going to reiterate them. I think staff's done a great job in getting us this far with this study update. And I'm pleased with the report and progress on downtown lots such as City Place. I know Councilwoman Gonzales spoke to it very much. These are the complaints that she had expressed are really coming from our property owners, residents and visitors, especially when you have our parking assets adjacent to condominiums and apartments. So that impact does transfer over to our residents. So the increase of security by doubling the hours, I believe you said, is something that's that's critical. Mr. Malloy, if I can ask you, I know you said a few sentences or expressions regarding the parking position. What's the title of that position? Please remind me. It's in the proposed budget as a parking manager. Is that the same position that Mr. Maldonado held until two years ago? I believe so. Okay. So I know that my office and certainly Councilman Gonzales, his office has spoken to you and your staff, I hope, regarding some of the challenges that we had when Mr. Maldonado was here. And that probably could have been the mayor's office at the time. It was the mayor and I Mr. Maldonado, did a fabulous job. But I think we were not prepared to establish the type of authority for parking and parking management that we seem to be today. And you were not here. So I'm not directing any of this as responsibility for you. But we had an immensely talented individual with the best of intentions and the greatest of skill to manage our surface lots and as well as our other parking assets. And we were, as I said, ready for that. I'm comforted in knowing that through this study and through your work, that I think we're in a different place as a city. And if I can hear from you that you feel confident that we are bringing someone else in to ostensibly be a parking authority for us of sorts , not only to be able to manage parking and do it demand based and probably get us into a place where we can think of managing demand through price, all things that we think can be done with parking, aside from ensuring that the facilities are safe. Do you feel confident that we can do that, that we're in that place here in the city today? I would definitely would like to have that discussion. And maybe since we don't have the position and we haven't finalized the job description, that could be the qualities that we could ask for the next parking manager to have. As I said, this this person will be dedicated to providing that and depending on the policies that the city council directors will will implement those. So the answer yes, and I wish that we could have more specific job descriptions that or skills that you require from this individual we can seek in our recruitment if the position was approved. So if the position gets approved through our budget process, I think we can certainly help you with the attributes for the candidate. I think I was more speaking about our own attributes in terms of supporting that position, and Mr. West is aware the city manager, West is aware that it's one thing to have great talent on hand , but if we don't support or empower that that particular position, it accomplishes very little. And so that's really what I was getting to. Not so much of the candidate's qualifications. I'm I'm pretty certain you are immensely qualified to determine what those qualifications are. I'm talking about our own qualifications. And maybe I should have asked the same question of Mr. West since he has that history. So I think I've made myself clear. I think possibly. So with that, Mr. Mayor, I do want to express my optimism about this report and the progress on downtown lots and staff is to be commended . Absolutely commended. I couldn't. Now, I do have to say I couldn't help but notice the mention of the community parking program on page five of the report. I would have to. I would be remiss if I wasn't a little cheeky about this. So I do question the characterization of the online program being new, since, if you recall the second district's involvement we originally created and offered it in 2007. But I'll say that I am pleased nonetheless to see its inclusion in the report as phase two of the implementation. Maybe that was your passive way of allowing me authorship of Phase one, but I'll thank Councilmember Gonzalez and Mayor Garcia for their work on this. And as they know, the use of an online parking program was and remains an important resource for residents inside and outside downtown to fight find overnight parking in our parking impacted area. It's also important for property owners. During the first iteration, which my staff and I worked on, the community parking program created in consultation with I Park. It enabled property owners to manage the administrative portion of overnight parking online, which was a great tool for them, and leverage for our efforts to convince more businesses and churches to participate in the program. And for those of us who were here during that time, that required a lot of door to door walking and footwork and and really physical exertion to to get those arrangements in place. I'm wondering if that component would still be offered the business component. Yes, ma'am. Unfortunately, I Park decided not to be a partner with the city. That's why that darn application went away. We're in process or central parking is in process of creating a very similar application, and that would be in our total package. As we discussed, we're kind of expanding this. The first application would be for on street parking. So when we have completed that, it will get into the parking structures that the city owns and operates. And thirdly, we can expand that to all possible parking and parking lots. And I have to acknowledge that this was before my time and also acknowledge that that something that I learned my with my briefings with Mr. Brock Calvert that this was your program. So I appreciate that. And your your thought process behind that. Unfortunately I decided not to participate with would continue that business with the city and it was a proprietary program that they used. They used. You're right, I. It was too bad that they left. Thank you. I don't know that you'll find too many people that are enamored with parking and managing parking as our offices. So, finally, timeline for completion of phase two. Do we know? We're waiting to complete the RFP for for that component. I think we should get the results back by the end of this month. The on call for that consultant and then. Yeah. And we can get back to you on that. As far as when that RFP is approved and contract is awarded. Okay. Thank you. I am looking forward to it. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Councilman Gonzales. One more thing I failed to mention. I know we talked about this aura was the parking around the courthouse. And so I know the courthouse is a major impact for residents and businesses there. So in studying that, perhaps that could be something that would come back as well in October, just a preliminary study of the area and what the impacts are. And I know we've talked about parking meters in that area that might make more sense. So, yes, we'd love you to do that. Thank you. Absolutely. As we discussed, we had reviewed the parking, the residential impacts from the courthouse parking. We have discussed about the possibility of having a preferential parking district. That's going to be difficult to justify. But we will discuss or try to come out with any out of the box thinking and try to come up with some solutions for that residential district, for sure. So my staff and I will be discussing this in our next meeting, and it's on my radar for sure. Thank you. I appreciate. That. Thank you. I'm going to just make a couple a couple comments and then we'll go to the vote first. Mr. Miller, could you say also make sure in the future that we're at least thinking about how we're going to manage or work with the private lots? I know that there's a different relationship, obviously, but if you go to the private parking lots throughout downtown, there is there are some inconsistencies or upgrades that need to be also completed. And I think I don't know if sure were encouraging that some of the private lines but that could be could be helpful as part is part of the future phases and many private lots that are not that don't have a relationship with the city. So for example, one of the lots that's right off of Pine Avenue adjacent to the promenade is one of those lots where I think that there could be some they still have, but they just installed the the coin, the credit card machine, for example. They still have the old, you know, stick a dollar in machine right next to it and some of the old machinery that needs to be removed or updated. And so just some thought about some of the future lights would be would be great. And I just want to just add to what the vice mayor and the councilwoman said. I think the the truth is, is that the reason why we're not able to do all this stuff, because the lots aren't paying for themselves. And so I think we're at a point where we have to and I don't know that you didn't say that, but the truth is that we haven't budgeted these lots to where we would like to see them be. And I think that's just the fact. And it should be should we be receiving better service from the the vendor and that's operating? Absolutely. Are the lots a mess? Absolutely. They're twice or three times as bad at night. I mean, there there's trash everywhere. There's shopping carts all over the place. It's not something that we should be proud of as far as a service as being city lots. So I'm certainly not satisfied with the service. But we also, I think, should recognize that long term we have to think about what the investment that needs to be made to actually get those lots to where we want them. I think we've been trying to operate on a system of we we invest what we're getting in return for the actual lots and we try to balance out that we only spend what we are actually making. The truth is that what we're actually making is not enough at this point to actually fix the lots to where they're actually appropriately funded. So we have to have that conversation, I think, broader in the future. So I appreciate that. And with that, we'll go and go to go to a vote. Motion carries six zero. Okay, go ahead. Let's start the budget presentation. Item number one. Report from City Manager Financial Management Recommendation to conduct a budget hearing to receive and discuss an overview of the proposed fiscal year 2016 budget. Actually, you know, Madam Clerk. There's only, I think, four public public comments for the speakers lesson. It's getting late and I want to make sure we do them before it's too much too late. So why don't I just do this real quickly and then we'll go to the budget presentation. So I have please come forward. Elizabeth Andrew. Mary Rau. A rate goblets. Please come forward. Please go ahead. Hi there. Good evening there. Council. I'm Elizabeth Andrew. My address is on file. I reside in Long Beach on seventh July 7th, six of you voted to study an international expansion at Long Beach Airport, a calculated response to JetBlue's quest. Nothing about the study is being released to the public regarding who, when, the cost and how the study is being designed. Research is a guided activity and it is easy to omit facts, insert half truths and skew results. Denying community input and access to the study is extremely alarming. We suspect JetBlue and the fourth, which is the fourth largest airline, is the authoritative voice behind the scenes. They are the driving force for expansion. JetBlue secretly has worked with the city since 2013 on this project, when collusion between JetBlue and city staff was leaked. The precise words from city staff and I quote, I guess the cat's out of the bag. End quote. This statement is a hallmark of corruption. Now the city is having a study that's secret councils, providing no mechanism to ensure the study is fair and guided with the best interests of the public. Railroading the public with a study like this. Hmm. Interesting. At the February 2015 study session, both the city attorney and the city prosecutor's office explained the costly legal ordeal that we fought to have the airport protective noise ordinance today. Our municipality insures a rare asset that maintains a quality of life in neighborhoods and schools across Long Beach because of the U.S. Congress. Virtually no other municipality in the U.S. has this remarkably unique airport noise ordinance protection for our neighborhoods in schools. The grave risk is losing it by changing Long Beach Municipal Airport to Long Beach International. No one's talking about this. That in addition to JetBlue's international flights, this is opening the entire city to unlimited international charter, unlimited international, private and cargo jets. That thwarts the very point of protecting neighborhoods and schools will not be just a few friendly flights. And JetBlue going on vacation destinations. We're talking 747 Airbus large aircraft flying over us. I read in a Long Beach newspaper, quote, International flights and the noise ordinance are separate issues, end quote. Wrong. Intentionally misleading and irrelevant. Statements like that one horrified the community emissions of the irrevocable negative consequences of unlimited international charter, unlimited international, private and cargo jets can catastrophically destroy your neighborhoods, your constituents neighborhoods and their children's classrooms. For the public record, the City of Long Beach must have meaningful dialog. Staffs already kept a secret from the community for two years. You must give a voice to the neighborhoods on this study. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello again. First of all, I want to thank you guys for passing a version. It's very good news. I gave everybody a copy of some of the comments I want to make. But basically, my ass before I start speaking is I just want to know what a community nonprofit needs to do to speak to the mayor about something very important. I don't understand why it takes a year and a half. I don't understand why I have to be here to ask is not getting it. So. Ma'am, I know that you've had a chance to meet with members of my staff, as well as multiple conversations with my staff. And so we try the best that we can with the schedule. But if you want to continue with the comments, go ahead. Okay. Well, I haven't actually met with anybody from your staff. So that's how you met with Sharon Weisman, who's in the room? I've never met with Sharon. Okay, go ahead. Um, so QMI formed in 2012 and we met with then Councilmember Lowenthal, his office eight times over the course of a year. Um based Vice Mayor Lowenthal attended one of those meetings. During our last meeting, two of the staff members basically told QMI that because of direction they've gotten from the city attorney's office that they could no longer support us as possible ambassadors for the ship and that we needed to continue our conversation with the ship leaseholder, which we've diligently tried to do for a year and a half. What we're being told now is that all of our preservation objectives have to be put on hold due to the new direction that you're taking with the Queen Mary task force. We're trying to understand how they're linked, because it's my understanding that the new task force is going to be focused on the surrounding land and not necessarily the ship. And as a nonprofit, we don't understand why all of our efforts to help are being ignored. So that's my question that I'd love to hear any comment or suggestion from any of the council members or the mayor. Thank you. You're done? I guess so. Okay. So, ma'am, after the meeting, we'll be in touch that I think you're referring to the Queen Mary task force, which has nothing to do with whatever's happening currently on the ship. So I can't speak for for garrison or evolution, but they're the ones that are managing what's actually happening on the ship as far as a historic preservation piece that I think you're referring to. I think that, you know, John Thomas, who is the historic preservation officer on the ship, is the one that manages that portion. The city refers to historic preservation when it comes to the ship through John Thomas. And so I know that some of that we refer, or at least my office referred you to, to speak to. And so that is kind of what who is managing the historic preservation piece as far as the ship and as far as what they're what they do and Garrison does. That's I mean, that is that's what they're doing. So my question to you that. Well, we can so that public comments are probably happy to talk to you offline. Okay, we'll talk. Well, it's a. Promise. That we will talk to you offline. Thank you very much. Ray Gavlak, eighth District resident. On July 7th, six council. Members voted to proceed with an RFP to further study. Items. Related to for approving a customs facility at Long Beach Airport. Austin, Urunga and Superdome. Voted against opening this Pandora's box, since it has the ability to compromise some of the most successful. Neighborhoods within our city. Your RFP requests include planning and design for a customs facility. Isn't that premature since the decision has not yet been made, at least publicly, to support this enhanced service to our municipal airport? Will project plans not add to the costs associated with this study and move closer to clearing this project for takeoff? Councilwoman Mango, you initiated the desire to gather the. Facts, yet there is yet to be a public discussion. On the studies that were already completed. In addition to the process, a study of November 2013 that is still viable today. That was a there was a January 2014 request made to Cal State Professor Joe Maga Dino to do an economic impact study. The cost of this study was $12,300 on January 29th. Professor Maga Dino stated the following. The main question appears to be the impact of new visitors on the Long Beach economy. We deliberately left it out of the proposal since we believe the impact. Of visitor expenditures on the. Long Beach economy will be small. He attached the following reasoning that most of the anticipated 15,000 travelers will be leisure travelers, a large number of them will be U.S. citizens and live within the region having little impact on expenditures beyond those. Within the airport facilities. Foreign travelers are likely to use the airport as. Entry into Southern California rather than visiting Long Beach per say. Since foreign passengers are leisure travelers, their destination is not a convention hosted in Long Beach. And as for flight crews, the numbers were not included since the proposal. Is to add foreign flights and to reduce domestic. Flights. Since this economic study was never finalized, I will assume direction was given to not complete it, given that the opinion of the independent expert did not produce the desired outcome. We will continue to use this platform to further educate Long Beach residents and ask them to visit LP Neighborhoods First AECOM to join the movement to put our residents ahead of corporations. Council members. Your industry expert will give. You what you ask for your two community meetings. Allowing residents a brief three minute comment is not sufficient to gather the concerns from thousands of citizens. Please do your due diligence on materials available today. Host your own district meetings or attend a meeting held in airport impacted communities. Identify the unattended consequences that could be related to this venture and then vote with your elected elected conscience to receive and file when this returns for your votes. Thank you. Gabriela Hernandez, please. It's Gabriela Hernandez here. Okay. Jerry Thomas, is Jerry Thomas here? Please, sir. I just want to make a quick. Comment that I think it's a great idea that. Now we step forward. And. Make a statement. To the world. I raise. Minimum wage for nine months. $9 an hour to $15 an hour. Make sure you are at. 3% payroll tax. Bearing. Tax. So you got a nice. Tax base on that. And and that that. It's our chain reaction. Is election. Year. It might make a big difference that you're in make. Thank you, sir. That because the public comment. Mr. West start with the budget presentation.