Recommendation to receive and file a presentation from the Long Beach Center for Economic Inclusion on their progress and activities in their first year of operation; and Direct City Manager and Economic Development to prepare a memo on the implementation status of the city’s Everyone in Economic Inclusion Plan and present to council within 90 days.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think a time in times of. Thank you, sir. Next up is that of 15 policemen. Clear indication from Vice Mayor Richardson, Councilwoman Cindy, House Councilwoman Sara, Councilmember Arango, recommendation to receive and file a presentation from the Long Beach Center for Economic Inclusion on their progress and activities in their first year of operation. With me, Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to take a moment and invite the leadership of the city's newest community development corporation, born out of action here at City Council on the Center for Economic Vision to provide an update on their progress in the first year. And so I want to pass it over to the leadership. Jeff Williams and Byron Reed. We have our presentation. Good evening, Mayor Garcia and Vice Mayor Richardson and council members and staff. Thank you so much for this opportunity. To give you a brief update on the new Miami Center for Economic Inclusion and and introduce our new leader. I it's good to see everybody. I haven't seen so many people since the before time. So in a quick aside, I just wanted to say that so many of you have been so supportive of me and the work I've done over the past ten years. And and I always felt like I had a lot of access and opportunity here. One of the roles we did and you entrusted us with your leaders and and your staff and your and we were able to bring 700 people over the last ten years to the city hall and the chambers to learn about our city. And I think the the big takeaway from that for me was it was about public service. And it was great to introduce our leaders to true public servants, elected and staff. So I just want to say that aside, and I thank you for for all your support tonight, I want to give a brief update on on the organization. And then I'm gonna introduce our our new leader, and you have the presentation in front of you. I'm I'm just going to walk through it kind of quickly, and I'll be happy to answer any questions at the end. Go ahead to the next slide. So the one B Center for Economic Inclusion was actually born out of a partnership here with the city. So the blueprint for economic development in 2017 called for one of the seven focus areas to be economic inclusion. And following that, thanks to the vision and leadership of the Vice Mayor, the EVERYONE Implementation Plan was brought forth. Working groups. Many people who are probably here in this chamber were part of the everyone in working groups centered on bringing how we can bring more inclusive economic opportunities to our city. And out of that was was the one the plan and that was unanimously adopted by the city council in 2017. One of the main outcomes of that plan was to create a new community development corporation, which became the Lobby Center for Economic Inclusion. So next slide, please. So there you can see the mission is to is to create a community development corporation that will expand inclusive economic opportunities for underserved communities in our city. Had it called out five focus areas, as you can see here. And the purpose of this is to serve the historically underserved economic communities, primarily in north, central and west Long Beach. Next slide. The vice mayor put out the call and said there was a gap and we need help. And as you know, probably recognize many of the people up there. This is our founding board of directors that came together to help take this plan from a vision to action. And between them, they have decades and decades of community experience. So even though we were starting from scratch, we had all this experience and and passion and commitment to community as part of it. And I was also asked to help be part of that and was honored to join this group as the interim director. Next line. So as I mentioned, the city of Long Beach matched a sea grant that was provided by Wells Fargo to actually launch the Community Vilma Corporation. And we started and we had our very first meeting on March 12th of last year, 2020. And that date might ring a bell because we had all these grand plans. We had our whiteboard out and we're planning how to launch this organization. And the next day was the stay at home and COVID hit. So we threw all that out the window. And a few weeks later we reconvened and said, Well, we have a crisis and we're serving our community. And there are those that are disproportionately affected by it and what can we do to help? And so we put together the in this together plan, which came with some seed funding from the Bridge Development Corporation and some of the other funders listed up there. And we put it into action. And because. Next slide, please. So in the start of COVID, thanks to these supports, we were able to build partnerships with local community organizations and directed over $250,000 in funding to help those affected by the pandemic. And these areas of food security, small business support, digital inclusion and housing support. And I think the big lesson here is, is these are all partnerships with existing Long Beach organizations. And I think that's the model that we saw was our job is not to go out and recreate the wheel. Let's find people who are doing good work in our community, provide them more resources, health, and expand their work and better serve our community. And I'll just quickly go to these next ones. Next slide. One of the one of the first things we did, actually, vice mayor, former staff member Ilana Grant, who's now the city manager's office , put together a group of nine churches and nonprofits who were already doing food service in our community and brought them together in a network. And over the over those first few months, we were able to serve a thousand households in a partnership with food finders. And as many of you have involved in, food security is a real issue in our city, and we're able to address that. These those food pantries were in north, central and west and the districts one, two, six, seven, eight and nine. So thank you to those council members and those staff who supported these efforts and allowed us to do that work there. Next one. And if you remember, early in the pandemic, seniors were disproportionately affected as well, and many of them couldn't leave their home for food. And we set up a partnership with a couple organizations to provide senior home food delivery. So in those first few minutes, we delivered over 1200 boxes of food, primarily, again to those zip codes of five or six. They won three, but actually that program served all the city. And we had a good partnership with the city's senior women, which provided referrals for seniors who who needed this kind of work. Next slide. Digital inclusion was another effort. And especially when people were home, students were home, and we were able to answer the call with some partnerships. And we've provided laptops to both students of the YMCA as well as Long Beach City College and some small business owners and nonprofit owners explained. And small business navigation. And, you know, there are a lot of the business structures in our cities that support businesses. But the small businesses and many of small business in North, Central, in West do not have those structures and support. And so we were able to partner again with the city. Economic development. I really want to thank John Chrysler and Eric Romero for allowing us to partnering with us to work with navigators to keep them abreast. If you remember all the loans and grants and everything was flying out at that time, keep our small business owners informed. Help them secure those funds and get through those very difficult months in the beginning. And and we also partnered with some of the other organizations, especially in central Long Beach, United Cambodian community, who also has a business navigation services. Excellent. We started with a group called Project Business Lift and again they became the trusted partner for small business. And we were getting so much information. They're trying to keep their doors open and they needed a trusted someone who could work with them and help them get through those time and help them get resources . They fled. And Housing Service as well. Of course, that was a big a big challenge at the time and continues to be an excellent. So as we came out of last summer, certainly the crisis was not over. But the recovery and the economic repair is what we needed to address and work on. And so we were able to take that initial seed money from the city, which was $125,000 that this body supported. And over those over the last ten months, we've been able to raise seven times that much through other other grantors, partners and private, private sponsors to continue to do this work. And I think what the work that we were doing in those areas that I just mentioned, we had proven models and we've been able to build upon. We've been able to direct resources directly to more than 31 Long Beach nonprofit community organizations in north central west long used to do this work. And we're also able to leverage many of the CARES Act and the areas that the small business support food security, digital inclusion and ongoing with COVID and vaccine outreach Exide. Well, that's an excellent. So one of the big areas where we really continue to need to do help and continuing to provide resources is in small business support . I know the but again, there are other structures in the city that support business owners. But many of our small business owners, especially in north, central and west, don't have those kind of support structures in that trusted resource. And so ongoing business navigation support is something that we will continue to advocate for and support. And we were able to do some small business programs to help small business owners, including a partnership with Long Beach Economic Partnership. Omni Works, SBC and CSC will be called Go Digital. I think Michigan Long Beach Economic Partnership is a sister organization of ours that will start at the same time, you know, their focus is on building up industry and serving and and ours is to serve our community and uplift those in the communities that we're serving. But I think it's gonna be very important for the two organizations to align. And everyone. Time's up on that one. Oh, I didn't realize. I'm sorry. Well, can I. Can I at least introduce Byron very quickly? Yeah. What I'm actually going to do is I'm going to turn it back over to Bozeman Richardson. And maybe he can help in the introduction. Sure. I mean, more slides that you have, I think. Just give him a couple more minutes to just finish. I don't have anything else to add. What everyone do, probably a summary of I'm following along. I think you have that many more slides as continue and introduce. Okay. I'll go ahead and get to the get to the end there. And you'll have this information, and I'll be happy to answer questions. So right there. I just just wanted some of the lessons that we've learned. And we're going to continue to work and operate as a nonprofit. But the next flight. We're here for a for our new leader. So we have a wonderful new leader who's come to our city to serve this this need and serve this organization. Byron has 30 years of banking industry experience, and he is he's not only gonna be a great leader for our organization, he's also going to be a great leader for our city. So I'd like to at least briefly introduce Byron Reed. Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council. Folks, it's a pleasure to be here. I'll speak very quickly. I'm very excited about this opportunity coming from the financial industry, primarily the CRA side of the house, which is. Community Reinvestment Act. Which aligns very well economic inclusion. I'm excited about bringing in all the skill sets that I've had a call list of all these years to the city of Long Beach. I see. Opportunities here. I see their. Natural tenants that. Mary Well. With the work that I've done from a community. Development perspective. Corporate relations perspective. And so what I want to do on behalf. Of the city of Long Beach is bring some of that to bear and. The areas of concentration that have already been spoken about. Of course, is housing and home ownership. I more than just the words. It's creating homeownership programs. If you really identify community. Based organizations. To help those. Individuals that are seeking first time homebuyer or a home, an opportunity. The resource to get into those homes, small business diverse. Entrepreneurship is another important tenet of what we'll be doing going forward with the center. Supplier Diversity Procurement had several conversations with some some very key leaders here in the city about creating some real supply diversity procurement programs directed toward minority vendors to give them an opportunity. But we're going to. Prepare those. Vendors to stand. Up for the RFPs that come forward. Training them in the right way. Not sending them out, and then them being disappointed by not getting the opportunity. Workforce development and. Youth development programs are very, very important. What's more important. About putting people to. Work are workforce development programs that will help. Folks understand. How to get a job, the soft skills, the resume, writing the whole nine yards with regards to the workforce. Development space. And so we'll be spending some time with organizations like Pacific Gateway. Creating collaborations because. That's what they do. And will. Make sure that the work that we do seamlessly together is something. That produces the results that I know that. You are seeking. And then lastly, last point of. Reference to that like to mention is the connectedness. The economic resiliency. That is very important as well. And as part of the. Work that we're going to be creating. As the programs. That we'll be doing. It'll be around economic development. And everything that I've spoken to. Has a financial education, financial wellness overlay over all of it. I think that's paramount to their success. For them to. Understand how to financially succeed. Is key to their success. But how do you succeed financially? We don't have any money. We've got to create those winds for them, whether it's investment. Clubs, given the dollars, to help them. Understand how. To create the value proposition of those. Dollars. To be be impactful and to grow those dollars for their families. Again, training them where they are. And so with those those those five things, those are the items that I'd like to share. It's a pleasure. Vice Mayor, thank. You for the opportunity and look forward to working with. All of you. Thank you. And I'm just trying to I know the vice mayor has a certain amount of time allotted for his presentations and is trying to keep it as much into into his time as possible. So sorry about that, but thank you for your and welcome, Mr. Reid. And we look forward to working with you here in the in the months and years ahead. Councilman Sorrell. One zero. Okay. Sorry, I. That the vice mayor is going to go next. Thank you, Mayor. And yes, sir, I want to make sure thank you, Mr. William, for your presentation and the update. I know that, you know, the excitement was there when you were about to launch and you had to pivot really quick in order to shift to the needs at that time, which is really uncertain and, you know, really scary at that at that time. So I appreciate I asi many of the volunteers and staff board members around ensuring that support was provided during the pandemic. And also so I appreciate all the work that's been done during the pandemic for relief and now as we're moving into recovery. I want to also just welcome and congratulate Mr. Reid on becoming the new president and CEO. I had the pleasure of meeting you virtually and am so glad to meet you in person and really excited and really glad to hear some of the things you share to give us a preliminary sense on what you're going to be working on. And I'm just thrilled to be able to work with you very soon so that we can ensure that we are doing the things you mentioned, which is getting the financial, education and wellness really integrated into the fabric of what we need to do to really lift up the parts alarmists that needs the support at this moment, especially during this recovery period. So thank you so much and looking forward to working with you. Thank you, Katherine Mungo. Thank you. I want to welcome Mr. Reid. I haven't had the opportunity. A great fortune to meet with you yet. That's a little bit disappointing, but I know that we'll get that opportunity in the next few weeks. If you didn't know, I'm currently chair of the Economic Development Committee and the chair for the first four years that I was on the council in creating the economic blueprint that really a lot of those strategies deemed everyone in with the cool, catchy name were really developed through a lot of community impact. And I really love the word inclusion and I think it was well written in the blueprint. And I think it's important that when we talk about inclusion, we talk about the whole city, not just any particular region, because Section eight vouchers, they're not limited by zip code. Poor students, they're not limited by that code. They live near schools and they live near transportation. And they they have great needs. And our side of town has many churches that did really, really active food donation boxes for our schools and for our seniors. And I think that there's a lot of value in lifting up because our side of town, we had an abundance of fruits and vegetables that were donated, but really a lack of grains and other things that are on the less expensive side. But we have fruit trees and so there are things that if all the connectivity is made across the city, there's some serious value. And we're also working really hard right now, and I'm pretty involved in the blueprint to point out, and I hope you'll be a part of that, because one of the things that I see in the city is there and you'll hear this from Derek Simpson when you meet with him. There are a lot of amazing organizations and many of them are doing the same thing. And in between those organizations, there's big gaps. And so I think it's really important to see where those gaps are and focus our energy on those, because any area that already has a nonprofit doing something amazing, we really want to lift them up and help them strive and succeed in those areas. So I look forward to working with you closely. I attend all the Economic Development Commission meetings I hope you'll consider attending because the Economic Blueprint 2.0 is really our future. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. And they have. Thank you, Vice Mayor, specially for all the amazing work that you've done on this amazing project. And I also want to wholeheartedly thank Jeff. Jeff, you just did a great, great presentation and you continue to pour your heart into the betterment of our city as a whole. And I really, really thank you for that. Welcome, Mr. Reed. I'm really, really excited about you, you know, leading us through this. I think it's very, very important to have someone with so much passion, but not only passion, but also the expertize to move such a project forward. So I really thank you and look very much forward to meeting with you and working together with you during this time. I absolutely agree with you that on so many levels we really need to provide opportunities to provide a path to home ownership and hopefully eventually and ultimately wealth to a lot of our residents here in the city of Long Beach. I think that that's very, very important and especially for residents in my district, in the first district, so that we can end the cycle of low income families having to go through that and not finding a way out. I really, really look forward to working with you closer. Thank you again. Thank you, Councilwoman Allen. Yes. I thank you, Vice Mayor. And I also would like to thank Mr. Williams for his presentation. And thanks to my colleagues Vice Mayor Richardson and council member, your reynaga. Councilwoman Ciro and Councilwoman Van de haas for bringing this item forward. I also would like to say hello and welcome to Mr. Byron Reed. We definitely look forward to your contribution and your important work in Long Beach, especially with housing and home ownership and diversity and business opportunities and diversity and procurement. And I definitely want to see more diversity in procurement. So thank you for the presentation and I look forward to supporting this. Thank you, Councilman Pryce. Thank you and welcome, Mr. Reid. It was a pleasure to meet you. Just briefly before the meeting started, and I appreciate the presentation tonight, I certainly learned a lot about your efforts. I am not sure if the two of you know this, but I wear many hats and one of them is I'm also a small business owner . And so I think it's really, really important, especially since city funds went into the formation of the organization that we look at helping business owners all over the city. And, you know, Jeff, you made a comment and I'm just not familiar with this this information. It may be. Absolutely true. But that business owners and I think you said west, north and central Long Beach have less resources than other parts of the city. There's only one district left and that would be east. And I'm not really familiar with that, because one of the things that I found during the pandemic especially, is that actually, if you were not if your business wasn't located in certain communities, you didn't qualify for many of the grants. And so as a business owner who employs an entire female staff, many of them single mothers who needed a 2 to $3000 grant just to make payroll so that we didn't have to lay those people off. It was incredibly difficult for us, for us, because many of the grants were just not even available if you were located on the east side. So I know Jon Keisler is here. I'm curious, is that an accurate statement that there are more resources for the East Side business owners than other business owners? Because I feel like we should be supporting all business owners. And I'm not aware that any business owners get more or less support, although those are that are located in certain zip codes do actually get qualification for additional grants that others don't. Yeah. Councilmember. So the short answer is that we serve businesses citywide. In fact, there are grants that are specific to certain zip codes or eligible for certain areas based on income levels and other things like that. That was part of our CARES Act and of course our CDBG programs. I think probably some of the questions that have been raised over the past couple of months is how do we get more geographically based business and technical assistance providers? And so we've been working with our partners at the Small Business Development Centers, some of our community based organizations to actually add business assistance to those community based organizations . And a good partner for us over the particularly the COVID 19 pandemic has been the Center for Economic Conclusion. We were able to geographically deploy these programs and services from in in North Long Beach, from both pop ups that we had established outside the libraries, as well as through their networks. But having a geographically based program is really, really helpful for business owners that may not come downtown as much or see City Hall. They can see those those service centers right down the street. So this has been a real positive learning experience for us, and we want to do more of it. So that's really great. But I guess my question is, are there resources for small business owners and let's say what would be considered affluent areas that are more robust than other business owners. But know that the resources themselves are available to everybody? It's more of the outreach activities and making connections and making people aware of those resources. That's been one of our great partnerships with Long Beach Center for Economic Inclusion. Well, let me just dispel the notion that business owners that don't live in certain, that don't operate a business in certain districts have abundant time to come to City Hall and are more plugged in with City Hall. I think any business support we offer we should be offering citywide, because running a small business is very, very challenging for every business owner, regardless of the zip code that they operate in. I mean, that's just a reality. So as someone who cleans or mops the floors and wipes down the entire business that we own once a week to save the cost of cleaning so that we can pay employees. I can tell you businesses all over the city deserve support. And so I know that you're committed to that. But I just wanted to kind of dispel that that that there are some people that have some areas that have more resources than others. I don't think that's true. And I for good measure and I just really appreciate everything the center is doing to support business owners. This past year has been incredibly difficult for small business owners. And if you own a business, I guarantee you've lost a lot of sleep about the people who depend on their salaries being able to to make their rent and pay for their family. It's it's very challenging. So thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just wanted to take a moment and kind of close this out. So, first of all, Jeff and your entire board, thank you for stepping up and answering the city's call. When we I understand what you mean when you say we're focusing on north, central and west. Long Beach Economic Development Corporation focuses on a broader economic development. But a community development corporation has this point at a community. And so this is the community we were designed to serve. And there were tremendous, tremendous conversations at the everyone in table, at the roundtables about the simple fact that for generations the story has been the same in north central west Long Beach. When we put forward and we learned a lot of this, we saw it play out during COVID. When we initially released Small Business Resources. Our communities didn't get the applications in. It was harder to reach our communities. They didn't apply and there's not as accessible. We've seen it over the years with the $2,000 CDBG grants. They're not effective. You need a wet signature. You have multiple owners. This is not accessible. So we saw that and we saw a need. And the data in the Long Beach, we did a a profile, inclusive Long Beach economic equity profile that showed that this isn't just a feeling, but the data supports it. The funding doesn't get to these communities for a number of reasons language barriers, a whole host of things. So to have an organization to stand up and say, we will help the city close those gaps, meet those needs, that is a good thing. I encourage you double down on this. Continue to go where the need is. It doesn't mean that we don't support businesses across the city. That's a false proposition. We want every small business to thrive. But we know there are barriers connected to redlining, yellow lining, the evidence of freeways in our communities, you know, overconcentration of nuisance liquor stores in motels in some communities. All of these things have an impact and make it more difficult for a business to survive or a family to be resilient, to survive. I encourage you continue to do that work. I also want to say to you, Mr. Reid, I know that there was a search. I know you went through the entire process. I want to thank you and I want to welcome you to the city of Long Beach, because, you know, I don't want you getting caught up with the politics behind the dyes. You're here to serve the community. So be self-righteous. Stand up. We're going to continue to support you and make sure that our communities have the resources that they need to thrive. So I have whenever I see there's another person cued up, but I want to make sure that we get you this. We want it to you know, we support a lot of organizations, but it's not often they come back and tell you how we've done. Some do. Steve Goodling does. And when he when he shows up, we say, hey, Steve, keep up the good work. We don't say, you know, I want this. I want the downtown community center on my list. We don't say that. We say keep up the good work. What's good for the downtown is good for the whole city. And I say for you, what's good for north, central west Long Beach is good for the whole city. Keep up the good work. And I want to present this to you when the time comes. Maybe after the next spokesperson. Thank you. Councilman. Mongo. Thank you. Something that Councilmember Richardson and I worked on together probably five years ago, I think could really bring together the two sides of the dais tonight, which is we talk a lot about businesses and the employees. Councilman Price brought up specifically the employees that maybe you work at a business on the east side might not live on the east side. And so, Mr. Modica, I know you weren't city manager at the time, or maybe Mr. Chrysler, you have some information. But back in the day, we asked for reports based on the number of employees and how many of those employees lived within our city. And at the time, Mr. Richardson and I were told that that wasn't a report that could be pulled. You know, we were on a 1970 system. It's too difficult, all these things. But now we've implemented several systems. Are we moving in a direction where we could actually find out which of these businesses are really employing Long Beach residents? Because then we'd be able to do a better picture of helping our city and our more impacted communities by helping the businesses that impact the most wages that come back to residents in our own city. Are we moving in that direction? I mean, this is five years ago when we were asking for this. Yeah. Councilmember So that's a that's a good question. So the data where we would be able to, to try to, to connect an employee their place of employment to an address and then perhaps their home address would likely be through the Employment Development Department of the State of California. So it would be about the quality of their system. It wouldn't be data that the city tracks. When we're asking for it on their business license. So on a business license, you currently say the number of employees and I'll give you an example. AmazonFresh opened in my district and they said, Well, we're going to have 300 employees and more than 50% of them are going to be hired from Long Beach. And I said, Where are you going to do those job fairs? Are you going to do them in north Long Beach and central Long Beach on the east side, we've got a lot of young kids that need jobs. And then on the first day, they only had a 100 employees. And I said, how many of them are Long Beach residents? And they said, 50%. And I said, Where do you live? Where do you live? Where do you live? Where do you live? Where do you live? None of them lived in Long Beach. None of them. I mean, the five or six people, I thought, this isn't a good start, so how can we hold people accountable if we don't have the data? Yeah, yeah. That's not data that we collect through business licensing. We don't require them. The number of employees, of course, they report as part of their business licensing, but not their their addresses are location. So census data is going to be really interesting. We're going to get that soon and that will help us to understand some of those commuting patterns. But it's really the Employment Development Department data that's considered confidential data. We do have a look at some of it, of course, through our workforce development agency Pacific Gateway, and we use Cal State, Long Beach Office of Economic Research to really disaggregate some of that confidential data will likely not be able to produce, you know, lists tied to specific businesses. But we should be able to get some of the roll up data that shows where where employees live and commute and maybe not tied to a specific address. Well, I think Mr. Orsi still in the back. I'd love to see that field added to the business license, even if it's just a self-reporting. But if we're doing grants in the future and you're able to say that 50% of your employees are from the city of Long Beach, and of those 30% are from disadvantaged communities or things like that. I think that's an interesting way to look at future grant opportunities instead of based on where the businesses, I think where the employees come from is is a big impact. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have a comment, please. Mr. Sun. I can pay. So I came from sixth district. I just want to say, any of these people that are handing out these postcards in the fifth District. I got two mortgages I'm paying on right now and I need help. If you want to build a Adu at my mom's or my grandmother's house. I would love the support. My my address is a public fund. That being said. Once Council, Women's Council people. I don't know how to say women council women. Cindy Allen and Miss Mongo join forces and actually make a real local higher requirement. All of this tension will immediately go away. So just piecing it together. That being said, big supporter of Mr. Byron Reed. I've been an avid fan of all the work that he was doing at West Angeles. I'm a firm believer of the CDC. Format. With respect to housing. I think I'm not putting any pressure or energy. Just as a private citizen, I can say that we've seen the success of the model in Harlem with Abyssinian Development Corporation, with Reverend Calvin Butts and also with West Angeles, with Bishop Blake, and how they've been able to sustain and combat displacement, as well as bringing a lot of jobs into it. You know, what's that? So that being said, it's an honor and a privilege to have you here in the city of Long Beach working to combat a lot of the economic woes that marginalized communities of interest. That's something I've learned, a term I've learned recently at the redistricting meetings. Marginalized communities of interest that we are dealing with here in the city. And we welcome you and thank you. Mr. Williams, with respect of your interim. I think, you know, I live in a district that I believe we have to two bank branches, Bank of America on Willow and Bank of America and Cherry. And I think there's like eight. There's four. Or as yours. Oh, so we have one. Okay. I think there's I think there's seven or eight bank bank branches on Second Street. So I think that's what resources mean, speaking about resources in respect to those kind of things. Nothing against Miss Price. I know what you mean as a small business person, but I think that's what you meant about resources. So we're all on the same team. It's all of, you know. But thank you. Welcome to the city. And let's keep it moving. Sir. There's a motion in the second. Members, please cast your votes. Motion carries. Thank you. Next up is the budget hearing. Item 12. We still have very long agenda ahead of us.