Recommendation to receive and file a report on the Restaurant Retention Strategy and provide input and policy direction to staff on economic relief strategies for independent, full-service restaurants, with an emphasis on equity, designed to improve the economic survival of restaurants impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic across Long Beach.  (Citywide)
Let's do 68 since it's restaurant related and then we'll go back to the dashboard and the health order issue and COVID. So the 68. Then, then 48 and 65. Report from Economic Development Recommendation Receive and file a report on the restaurant retention strategy citywide. Mr. Modica. Here. Mr. Keisler can give a brief staff report of the committee's recommendations. Excellent honorable mayor and members of the city council. Thanks so much. As you know, the Economic Development and Finance Committee of the council takes items from the council to review and recently had a meeting on December 1st. Went through some of the background of actions taken by council since August 18th to support the restaurant sector in Long Beach. Of course, there's a lot of survey data that we presented to the Economic Development and Finance Committee. We recently had an economic forum as well to see just how hard this industry in particular has been hit, both businesses and workers, and how it's impacted employment. In L.A. County. Almost 200,000 jobs lost in just the last few months. Know in Long Beach, of course, over 25,000 of our unemployment claims are from accommodation and food services. This is our largest group by far in terms of raw numbers and percent of total claims. And so we know that both business owners and workers are suffering in this industry. Now, the core components of our restaurant retention strategy, we looked at eight different core components that we've seen and plans ranging from research to technical assistance and some of the other things that we've already implemented as a city. But the committee really wanted the council to focus on key performance measures, things like the percent of restaurants retained, the percent of jobs preserved, promoting equity across the city, improving the actual business and sector resilience, assessing of an individual business, health and strength, and then improving outreach and education so that we have a better ongoing communication with business owners. And then in terms of the committee recommendations, adding to those core components I just mentioned, there were seven key areas that have to do with developing a really comprehensive and equitable restaurant retention strategy, not just a reactive one full of activities, expediting application and approval processes, approving an urgency ordinance related to delivery fees. Adopting a resolution to prioritize restaurants in our next round of federal stimulus. Providing regular public reporting on the distribution of federal stimulus funds like the CARES Act, and specifically identifying any available funding that we might reallocate to the industries like restaurants that are experiencing the greatest impacts. Expediting and simplifying the business grant application that businesses have to go through to access those funds and reduce the documentation that's needed just to apply, and then having shovel ready projects in anticipation of future federal funding. We know that we've got to have a strategy that has projects ready to go to be funded the moment those dollars are ready. So finally, in terms of next steps for a restaurant retention strategy discussed with the committee will be starting tonight just incorporating those city council priorities that you would like as a staff to add to this this plan and identifying available funding at the local level, taking action now on urgent items and things we can do either at the administrative level or with city council approval in the coming weeks. We need to complete a research report using an industry expert that knows the restaurant industry. Continuing our community outreach in our industry input. Adapting our emergency policies and urgency ordinances. And advocating for policies and funding from state and local or federal government. So our hope is, is that we can do things right now while we're developing this strategy. With that, I'll turn it back over to the mayor and city council for your input. Constable Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thanks. Thanks, John, for the presentation. Thanks for the many members that Economic Development Finance Council member Mongo Guzman Turanga. Not a healthy amount of discussion. You know, some themes that were were brought up during the committee meeting I think needs to be highlighted here. It was a lot of discussion about scope, accountability, transparency and expectations. We know that there are significant losses the restaurants are doing. And the reality is a lot of the programs we put forward there, we've done as best, the best we can. But it's not going to make hold all the losses the residents, the restaurants have taken. However, when we think about the policy changes we can make, for example, the committee made a recommendation to you know, we made a motion back in the committee, talked about third party platforms, delivery fees back in May and June. Still hasn't happened, but in the committee meeting we came back and made a recommendation, bring the council to say, let's do this with urgency now with delivery fees of 15%. Those are some of the things that can make a difference in terms of the bottom line now. So with the restaurant retention strategy, what we're really interested in are short term, immediate term and long term things that we can do to help make make the, you know, how actually have a plan to make our make our survivability, our survival rate of restaurants a bit higher. And so the first thing I want to do is obviously, I'm going to make make a motion to accept all the recommendations here. But I want to ask about specifically one of the parts related to the the third party platforms. The committee made a recommendation to council to give direction to create an ordinance with urgency capped at 15 at 15%. Mr. Chrisler, can you speak to that? Absolutely so. So we have actually taken this up as part of the Economic Development Commission. That was the initial review in in our July agenda. And we actually talked with restaurant owners who are experiencing this challenge to understand, you know, what the what the costs are, how it impacts their business and their bottom line. So we now have some research. We're going to be sharing that with the city attorney and to to identify what would be in a similar ordinance in some of the other cities nearby. And then if we can bring that back to council, our goal would be in the the first part of January. Of course, we will need to review that and put some language together. The city attorney obviously would need direction from council. So we would have to just sequence that process in a way that is acceptable. So we're ready to go with our research and we'll we'll communicate to you what those next steps are. Fantastic. And and so, you know, as I wrap up with with my motion as two things, it's one, I think this fits very well with the motion we just received from the mayor. We talked about that. These are the strategies you've done the research. We looked at the National Restaurant Best Practices Plan. We've engaged healthy lobbies. We engage with our businesses and we have a plan that we can stand behind. And so I move these recommendations, and I also, within that motion, am requesting that the city attorney work with the with the Economic Development Department to come back with an ordinance that caps restaurant fees and urgency ordinance, having restaurant fees at 15%. And so that would be my motion and and thank. Thank you. I think I have a second by councilman. Mango. Mango. Yes. Thank you. I just wanted to kind of speak again to how important the outdoor small business infrastructure relief will be that I discussed in an early item when I was spoken to the mayor, Mr. Chrysler. Mr. MODICA. And I guess my question to Mr. Heisler is now that you are. Headed in that direction. What kind of timeline do you see before businesses can apply for and receive this relief? Council member. So last week's meeting with the committee was really helpful in advancing some of these recommendations, which we've now brought back with some potential options for the city manager to take a look at. Of course, we need to coordinate across our different departments to make sure that we identify which funds are available in the existing Appropriation for CARES Act. And so we should have something available for City Council in writing over the next couple of days, and I hope would be that we would be able to make sure that those funds are committed by December 30th, given that this is CARES Act funding. So we believe that that timeline is is possible. We also believe that we have a regular communication with the businesses in the restaurants that have outdoor commerce going on right now and have the permits in place and have also already incurred costs related to those improvements. So we believe this could be a program that could move very quickly. We just need to get all the technicalities in writing for city leadership to to review. Wonderful. Thank you. And when will we be receiving the financial report requested at last Tuesday's meeting? Absolutely. So we we have it for the economic support programs. We obviously track all of our our financial information. That's the same on the same timeline. In a matter of days, we will pull that in, likely communicate that information also in a memo format and provide that to the city manager. So that's available for for council review. But we have that information and we're happy to provide it. And what steps were taken when the request was made to ensure that that information was provided timely. Because it seems like it's been seven days that we don't have that information yet. And it seems like from a position of a budget manager that and again, I know this is not just your division, but if we have $40 million that it needs to be committed and extended by December 31st. We approved this in May, and one would think that we would have budget status reports and updates on a regular basis so that this council could have made decisions at this meeting. I'm related to. Underutilization or underspending by some of our contract providers so that we could have made sure to put that money into the hands of others. I was glad to hear from Mr. Modica and we've had several conversations. I just think it's important to to kind of have this dialog again that. But that we won't be leaving any money on the table. I think that that's important. I think that when there's any dollar available, the Long Beach workers and Long Beach businesses, we need to make sure we have it. But I would just strongly encourage and I wanted to make the statement publicly that whenever we receive funding, that there should be at least monthly updates available, not necessarily published to the Council, but available upon request. Should there be a need to make a pivot and I know we're in a a new economic time, but I just want to make sure as the next set of funding comes down, that those those controls are in place. Because businesses and workers are counting on us. And then lastly, I spoke with a member of the press who asked about some of the. Ideas that are brought forward in this recommendation. But it's my understanding in talking to Mr. Keisler that the strategy as a whole would really be part of what we're asking the contractor to do. Your council member, too. So the the we're asking an industry expert to to review our our economic data related to to restaurant activity. So the consultant will provide an economic analysis of how we compare as Long Beach to maybe some of the regional and national standards, those retention rates, which the percentage of of these businesses that are at risk. So we'll really be looking for guidance on the economic information. But then when it comes to developing the strategy, the staff will actually be taking the lead on that. That's something we can do in-house with the input that's being provided, of course, by the consultant, but also by our industry experts, our local businesses. We've been meeting with them regularly and ultimately receiving their feedback as well. So that that report, the strategy itself, will be prepared in-house. And that will be back to us in January. February. What's our timeline? Yeah, absolutely. So so our expectation is that we can have our our or outline our draft report in in January. And our goal is, of course, we're going to be talking about the economic recovery strategy. We want to have that that done and ready to go as soon as the the second quarter of 2021, because, as you know, we move forward with health orders and in the COVID situation being stabilized to have shovel ready projects as soon as business can resume or as soon as federal dollars are available means we've got to move quickly. So that doesn't mean that we can't bring you one off items, urgency items like the cap on delivery fees or like the restructuring of a grant program. Those we'll bring to you as soon as those ideas are available and we can get them on the agenda. The overall strategy that's waiting for some of this economic information, some of the economic equity studies that we'll talk about it next council meeting on Tuesday. Next Tuesday, that that just is going to take a little bit more time for that data to arrive. Councilwoman, your 5 minutes is. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, I have. Who is here. This is Councilwoman. I'm sorry. Councilmember Aranda. And then councilmembers in the House. Thank you, Eric. And I want to commend the economic model for bringing this forward. We had a great meeting last week. A lot of great ideas are out there and they're really working hard and trying to deal with this COVID 19 pandemic and getting projects ready for implementation once we are over this. So I want to thank John and his staff for all the work that you've been doing. It's been creative, somewhat frustrating. I can understand that because they are there are limits to what they can bring forward and the council to consider. So I'm fully supportive of Councilmember Retreat into motion. Thank you and good. Get support on the rest of the city council. Thank you. Country councilmember, actually councilwoman in the House. Thank you, Mayor. I also would like to thank the Economic Development Department. Thank you, John, for all that you and your team are doing to help our businesses. I know that the businesses in my district have benefited greatly from all the programs that that you've been putting forward. So I'm really excited about this. This restaurant retention recommendation that you guys are making on this program, I think is going to be very important moving forward. One of the things that I wanted to ask Councilmember Rex Richardson is if with your motion, maybe you could if it would be okay to include maybe what the feasibility would be of those 33/3 party charges that are being made through delivery services and what the feasibility could be if the city could actually subsidize those. That 15% cap for our, you know, maybe getting some funds down to us. Would that be something that maybe we can include in in that? Council member. I've become unclear on on what it is. Let me tell you what I think I heard and said. We're going to direct staff to come back with the cap of 15%, but also create a program to subsidize restaurants so that we. May not necessarily like create a program, but maybe bring back information on the feasibility if it's even possible to be able to help out the restaurants with that 15% cap. Because I know that even even the big restaurants, but also including the smaller restaurants, that fee can be really hard on them, especially right now when we're in this economic credit crisis. So I was wondering if maybe. I think I think I think staff in. Look at that. So I think it's what I'm hearing is, you know, because what we're talking about is the fees that the restaurants are charged by the third party platforms for instituting a cap simply because, one, they're they're dependent on those now they don't have indoor or outdoor dining. So, yes, we should cap it. But if you're talking about relief for that, I that that exists. I think that to be within the realm of how, you know, whatever support funding we have, you know, we can put that in the mix. I agree. So I think so. I'm I'm okay with accepting accepting that feasibility that question before born feasibility on it. Thank you. Thank you. I think that it's very important moving forward. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Pierce. Thank you. I think most of the comments were were said before me that I wanted to make. I fully support putting a cap on that third party platform. I know in Long Beach we've got a lot of local places that are trying to to do those deliveries for our restaurants. And being able to see more of that during this difficult time would be great. Thank you. Councilmember. Councilmember. Did you guys not hear my comments? That's right. No, I did. I did. I'm just waiting. I wasn't sure you continue. Our staff was waiting on something else. No, I didn't ask any questions. I just gave my input and said thank you. Okay. Let me I don't I don't have any other councilmembers lined up yet, so why don't we just go ahead and do another public comment on this? Yes, we have De Shukla. However, if you go on file just like the stuff my support for, which should hopefully become a model program. Thank you all very much for working on this. Thank you. That concludes public comment. Okay. Richard Clarke. Yes. That concludes public comment. They had somebody else. And I guess there there's no. Okay. So that we'll we'll close then do the roll call, please. And the woman's in the house. I had to remember Pierce. And to remember Pierce. Councilwoman Price. I. COUNTERMAN Supernanny. All right. That's one manga. I. I saw Anders. I. That's Miranda. I come from an Austin. I can't remember Richardson. All right, ocean cares. Okay. Thank you. We've had a request from our vice mayor who has to head out soon here to move up his item, which is 64, and then we'll go back to the agenda.