Recommendation to declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding Chapter 5.94 prohibiting the sale of certain flavored tobacco products within the City of Long Beach, read and adopted as read.  (Citywide)
Thank you. That concludes that item with item 24. Adam, 24, is communication from City Attorney. Recommendation to declare an ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code by adding chapter as amended by the City Council prohibiting the sale of certain flavored tobacco products within the city of Long Beach. Read the first time and lead over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading City. I do have some public comment. Did you want to do any comments first, Councilwoman? I have no comments. Okay. If these following folks could come forward, I think it's Hymie Rojas or Jimmy Rojas. James Nino. George Johnson. Sanjiv, come on. And Imran Khan. Mohammed, I sorry if I mispronounce some of those names. If you can just come forward in that order, please. I'm in. Rojas. James Nino. George Johnson. Sanjeev Kumar. Imran Khan. Muhammad. He's come forward. Time I went to dinner. James At dinner. James Hi, James. Nino. I just want to thank the council for giving me an opportunity to voice my opinion as a small business owner. And thanks for actually taking in and, you know, revising the ordinance. I know now I'm a firm believer that one person or one voice. Can make a change or a difference. And I just want to thank you guys and I'm in support of this ordinance. Thank you, guys. Thank you. George Johnson. On behalf of who could Chamber of Commerce, a small, grassroots organization, I would like to thank you on your proposed amendments to this ordinance, and we give you our full support. Thank you. Thank you. It. Sanjiv, come on. Thank you for. Giving me an opportunity to be. Here. So I'm a small business owner here. You know, I have a 7-Eleven franchisee, which I owns with my wife, Sue, who happens to be a 21 year Air Force veteran from the U.S. Air Force. We put all of our savings in here, and now it means we just need the. Menthol cigarets are. Regulated by the FDA. So we don't know how after having all this regulation made the difference, we are going to. Make on that. So the other request. Will be, you know. Looking to see, you know, how you guys manage. You can, you know, protect us that, you know. We can still survive in the business. That's my request. Thank you. Thank you. Is the next speaker. Here is Imran. Please come forward. The height of a city council. My name is Imran Khan and I too am a 7-Eleven franchisee. Me along with my dad. My dad has had the business in Long Beach for over 30 years now. We are in Belmont Shaw and, you know, we've been there forever. We've employed a lot of members of the community. We have, you know, always paid taxes. We you know, we we we also have a job. He was saying that we want to request that you guys look at the menthol cigaret ban because the tobacco sales are a big part of our business. And menthol cigarets, too, are, you know, a huge part of that. And I don't want to see my customers, my loyal customers that have been with us for, you know, ten, 15, 20, 30 years. I don't want to see them going to different cities to get their their product, you know, going under SEAL Beach or up to San Pedro. I'd like to see them as customers for our business, you know, taking a seeing a loss in sales. Not only, you know, the tobacco sales would lead to, you know, a decrease in sales and ancillary products. You know, people come in and buy their cigarets or buy sodas to buy chips to buy, you know, food items along with their cigarets. So if the menthol cigarets, if they can't come to our business for it, all their sales would come down. And we you know, I just want to make sure that, you know, that doesn't I don't want to see that happen. You know, and I also want to let you guys know that, you know, 7-Eleven, we do have a pretty good system of checking IDs to make sure that everybody is over 21. We have we actually have to physically scan their I.D. It won't even let us sell them, you know, any jewel product, anything. We have to scan their I.D. to make sure that they are of age before, you know, buying that tobacco product. And, you know, lastly, you know, with the increase in minimum wage, with the increase in rents, I don't think our business can afford, you know, any more loss of sales. So please take that into consideration. Thank you. Thank you. There is a motion and a second on the floor. This is, I believe, the second reading. And so, members, please cast your votes. The first reading, because we made some amendments, some pretty substantial amendments. So I'd ask my colleagues to continue to support this item again in an effort to continue to work with our businesses while the policy and safety concerns continue to settle. We have made this a temporary ban, which is a lot more mitigated than what most other municipalities are looking at. So I would hope that that would carry some weight with our business owners who understand the predicament that we're in. With that, I'd ask my colleagues to support this item. Thank you. Please cast your votes, members. Council member Austin, Bush and Kerry.