Recommendation to adopt the Mayor’s proposed budget recommendations, as amended, to the FY 16 Proposed Budget.  (A-10)
Thank you. Now we're going to move on to the continued hearing, which is continued hearing one, but beginning with item 15, which Vice Chair Lowenthal will walk us through the next few items and then we will take a break from the budget and then come back to it after we've gone through public comment and some other items . So. Vice Mayor Lowenthal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Frank is just handing out. Some material for us. So Councilmembers Item 15 is the mayor's fiscal year 16 proposed budget. It corresponds with a Dash ten and the motion is to approve the mayor's proposed budget. And investment advice. If you want to just walk through, even the emotions are, Oh, no, no, I want to make sure that. I will go through the item. So for the mayor's recommendation, we have $600,000 from general fund fiscal year, 15 state mandate reimbursement funds, and the use will be toward opening three branch libraries on Sunday for a total of $183,000. Increased crime analysis resources for a total of $100,000. My Brother's Keeper Project for a total of $30,000. Arts Council Support for a total of $50,000. Be Safe program for a total of $186,000. And then improvements to 309 Pine Avenue for $51,000. Secondly, there's $100,000 recommended, which is a drawdown from fiscal year 16, general services beginning funds available. And this would be for the telephone system at $100,000. Lastly, $95,000 drawing down from fiscal year 16, refuse beginning funds available to be used for one time purchase of two clean team trucks at $95,000, and the amount is in total those three items, $795,000. Those three source items. Okay. So we have a motion in a second. Any public comment on the first item? Saying None. Please cast me. Please. Oh, yes, please. Absolutely. Come forward. Sorry, I will. Good evening, Mayor Garcia. Vice Mayor Lowenthal. Council members. My name is Margaret Smith. I reside in Long Beach, 6516 East Bay Shore Walk in the third district. And I am speaking tonight as a board member and vice president of public affairs for the Long Beach Public Library Foundation on behalf of libraries, supporters and users throughout the city . We are extremely pleased, pleased that Mayor Garcia has included in the 2016 budget recommendations the $183,000 for expanding sun hours to three branch libraries. We fully support the recommendation of library director Glenda Williams to select Bayshore BURNETT and North Libraries. We thank Mayor Garcia for his leadership and commitment to expand library access. We thank Councilmember Susie Price for initiating the pilot program that opened Bayshore for Sunday hours last February. It was a huge success, drawing over 400 people per Sunday to a small branch library. And these 400 people checked out over 250 items every Sunday, 400 people in 4 hours. That's a hundred people an hour coming into a small Bay Branch library on a Sunday afternoon. We hope the council will support this recommendation so that the value of Sunday hours to our community can be further demonstrated and documented. And we hope that in future budget discussions, we can expand Sunday hours in each council district so that all our libraries will have access on Sunday in this information age. Libraries and branch libraries especially, are more important to all our residents of all ages. Thank you very much. Thank you. Councilman Richardson. Thank you. I'd like to just take a moment to acknowledge a number of things in these recommendations that I'm proud to have an opportunity to support tonight. I think we just heard a little bit about the three branch libraries. I made a request that we spread these out across the city. I was very glad to see that Library Services put out a memo that really distributed these Sunday hours across the city. So everyone in town has access to library hours on Sunday. So I'm glad to support proud to support that and want to acknowledge Councilmember Price for taking the initial step to get this process, move this process along. Secondly, the My Brother's Keeper resources, a lot of times we take part on we embark on initiatives, but we don't put the resources behind it to make sure it's successful. I think this is a very worthwhile cause to invest in our boys and young men of color throughout our city. And this recommendation of $30,000 I am proud to support tonight. I'm glad to see the resources to be safe, invest it tonight. Which which is significant and and where by once we adopt this, we're going to go ahead and start thinking about having the be safe games next year like a competition multi-week competition, the be safe games at Highland Park for all ages. So this is something I'm really excited for, for the whole community. And then finally, I think it's really smart that we're investing in the to clean teams. Dumping is a significant issue across town. So that said, I'm very pleased to cast my vote in support of the mayor's recommendations. Thank you, Councilwoman Pryce. I want to thank the mayor for the recommendation for the Sunday library hours. I, too, hope that this is something that we can incorporate into our city throughout all the districts. I'm not sure if all of my colleagues would be interested in having Sunday hours at their branch libraries. But I can tell you from personal experience, it has been such a huge success at our branch library and I hope that it is citywide. I was there this Sunday and I was there with my family for about an hour and a half. My husband was reading a book. My two boys were reading a book. One of them explored the computer for a little while, and during the time that we were there, we heard the librarian announce every, you know, 10 minutes or so that another computer had opened up, which made me realize how many people in the city go to the library because they don't have computer access to Internet, which is something that a lot of us have and take for granted. And every single computer station was packed. There were people there from age 3 to 90 in the library, all within the same space, all residents of the same community enjoying the space together. And it just to me, that's what those are the kind of programs and values that we should be promoting in the city. Just a space for people to congregate that is sponsored by their city, brought to them by their city, supported by their city. I think it's just a really great offering. So I want to thank the mayor for for making that recommendation and to my colleagues. I would say that I urge you to to think about this for your district. If if one of the libraries isn't going to be yours for next year, because you will absolutely have my support if that's something that you want to bring to your district. And I also want to thank our library staff for the recommendations that they made, because I think the libraries that are selected are spread out in a in a geographically desirable way so that residents throughout the city can have the opportunity to enjoy the Sunday hours regardless of where they live, without having too far to travel. And I really am grateful that the that the geographic spread is so wide. So thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you to our library team. And I support this motion completely. Councilwoman Mungo. Thank you. It gives me great pride that the city of Long Beach and our libraries are so successful. Today on KNX 1070, when many of us were sitting in multiple hours of traffic, they did a report on library usage in the region, and our Long Beach statistics far exceed that of anyone else. As other libraries are on the decline, our libraries have been innovative and we have several successes in the technologies we've brought into the libraries, including our 3D printers and our ability to download either digital books or audiobooks through our Overdrive media program. And even though we are offering this great service on our own, we are still in a cooperative partnership with L.A. County to continue to expand and be able to use our library cards in all of the libraries throughout the region. So this is this is really an amazing thing. As this came up on the agenda, I had the opportunity to talk with a bunch of neighbors about homework help. And I know that was in our budget study. And homework help is available online through our our county with our Long Beach library card after school each and every day. And then you can still go into our libraries and get that one on one help. And those are the things that are really, really important in being able to deliver to our youth the opportunities to learn and our seniors to share that space. So I'm very excited about this. I'm very excited about all the great work that the Library Foundation did over the last year, and I really appreciated working with you to raise those funds, and I look forward to the projects that will be delivered. So thank you. Continue to be innovative. Thank you. And just as a reader, I know this was discussed A, B or C, but I think it's worth just restating. My recommendation was to fund three libraries on Sunday hours. The recommendation on which libraries were selected was left up to the librarians and the library staff. And so that was something that was that was done through their work, separate of of of the council. Councilman, you ringa. Thank you. I want to add my voice to the kudos that's going out for the recommendations that are stated here. I want to especially focus on the three that Councilman Richardson mentioned, the be safe, the the My Brother's Keeper and of course, the libraries. Those three are addressing our issues with our youth. That's very important. I also want to mention that in the BC program, there's a big concentration in the West Long Beach area, an area that needs a lot of support. And I hope that this B.C. program can really be expanded in that in that district. I had the honor and privilege yesterday of participating in a program put together by the Job Corps yesterday. It was called the Youth to Youth Initiative. It's a new program that the Job Corps is putting together to basically address the issues of youth, to youth, get used to youth violence, whether it's gang or not, doesn't matter. It's talked about bullying. It talked about relationships with kids among themselves. And it basically addressed all the issues that youth face while in school or well in the community. And I would like, if we can somehow next year look at that program. It's an initiative that is taking place. And one way that we can support how we can support that program in the future and other programs such as that that address the the youth and the violence between youth and among youth so that we can address our future crime. Because as we know and I can't remember the eye, it is a tired kid. It's good kid. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzales. I got a lot of stuff over here. Mayor, thank you so very much, as well as our financial services team and all of our community, community members and departments. This is a very comprehensive recommendation that we're bringing forward, and it touches every single one of our districts, but also creates a very citywide approach as well for the first district, which also means for the whole city of Be Safe is very important for us and our kids, like Councilmember Muranga mentioned LED lighting. We've talked about that so, so very often streamlining our street, sweeping. There's far too many individuals that are waking up way too early just to move their car. Welcome to Long Beach Science, which is important, and I think those need to be made in Long Beach. So I hope that certainly happens. And our innovation hub, which will be in downtown but will be open and available to every single resident and business owner. And I hope it really becomes a real center for innovation. So, again, thank you to our mayor for all this. Thank you, Councilman Austin. Thank you. And I just wanted to weigh in and say and I'm glad that we got to this point, this has been a relatively smooth process. And that is a good thing and certainly a. An improvement over years past where we were dealing with very tough budgets in the Army when I first got here. And so kudos to Vice Mayor Lowe and to the BRC. Mr. Mayor, your budget in itself, I think it's thoughtful, it's balanced. And when I say balanced from a standpoint that it addresses many of the needs that we have as a city. And I'm particularly enlightened by the support for the BCA program. Obviously, the My Brother's Keeper project, the three libraries, the branches need that. I mean, I wish we could do do more. I think this this budget does no harm. It could be better. But in light of what we know in the future, it's a safe budget and a responsible budget. I did want to just just just weigh in on the, um, the strengthening our policing citywide. I mentioned this in our, our hearing a few weeks ago that, you know, there have been some, some remarkable gains by our police department. I see Chief Luna in the crowd. Hello, Chief. Our police department, I think, is is top notch. However, I think with the the uptick of gun violence that we are experiencing as a city, that we we need to really dial in and pay attention to doing all we can to to prevent gun violence in the city as well. And I know I know that there is a $2.2 million allocated to one time funds, and that's rather open ended. I'd just like to just express my my desire for a portion of those funds to be least allocated toward getting guns off the street through prohibited possessors. I'm not I'm not convinced that gun buyback programs are necessarily the answer this time. But we, we did a, um, earmark and actually, um, I believe it was $250,000 in the budget before last to go after prohibited possessors. Our chief actually laid out some, I think some very impressive data on the work that our police department did in getting those those guns off the streets from, I would call it the low hanging fruit. I mean, that's that's what we need to be going to be to begin with and obviously doing more to mitigate and and and deal with the gang violence as well. So those are my comments and I'm looking forward to supporting this budget. But the chief is available. Could you possibly respond in terms of how you expect to use these resources? And we'll let Chief Luna come down and make a few comments. Good evening, Mayor, and members of the City Council member, council member Austin. The if you're referring to the. $2.2 million, I would I would like to see as your chief is for that to be discretionary. As this year progresses. Every year we address. Excuse me and will continue to address emerging crime trends. And because our system in the police department is to be very visible and accessible in our community, we're consistently out in every part of the city. And from that perspective, we're very responsive not only to our community, but to all of you in regards to things that come up. It can be a burglary problem. It can be an auto theft problem. It could be a a gang violence problem, whatever the issue may be. We have been very fortunate in that all of you have given us the resources and the discretion to use them as we see fit. And when I say as see fit, it really is responsive to our community needs. Thank you, Chief. And I think also at the councilmembers is is just adding is that, you know, he's interested as part of the program and as part of all the work you're doing that we're also looking at how we remove guns and remove access to guns within our community. And I think that's something I know you and I have talked about. I know it's part of the work you're doing and perhaps there's a conversation that council can have. There is other things from a policy point of view that we could be looking at in the future as well. So I think he's referring to as long as that's part of the mix. Chief. Yes. Okay. Thank you, Councilman Andrews. Yes, thank you, Mayor. First of all, I think this is extremely robust, you know, budget item, because I think I also would like to thank our vice mayor and the mayor, you know, for this, because I think each one of these items, it seems to me that you have really taken time and looked into it and took a look at the whole city and looked at things that we need. And it's very important, especially the three that I really think of, like as My Brother's Keeper and the one with the library. Because the fact that I could only think that individuals who cannot afford to go places, you can go into the library and travel all over the world. And I just want to thank, you know, our staff and everyone who's really taken time with this budget and letting everyone know, because I can remember so much money was taken from our libraries, but that that has been put back in because of the mayor's, you know, situation, I think we're going to be able to do things that we wasn't able to do. And hopefully that this year will come out the way we're hoping and everyone will be, at least for a moment, satisfied. So thank you again, mayor and vice mayor, for this again. Thank you. And then to close this up, Vice Mayor Lowenthal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. It's been said many times, but I wanted to also express my thanks to you for taking a very holistic approach to these expenditures. It does touch every aspect of our city, whether it's the libraries or the crime analysis or the programs such as My Brother's Keeper or Be Safe. It does take a very broad stroke across our city, and even though it's not a lot of money, it does end up impacting all nine districts. And so I want to personally thank you for that, for taking that approach. And it also shows that you've been listening and hearing from not just your council colleagues here, but also the constituents. Thank you. Thank you. And we've done public comment. And so please go ahead and cast your votes on the motion. Motion carries. Thank you very much. Next item, please.