Speaker 1: Report from Development Services Recommendation to adopt the West Long Beach Livability Implementation Plan Districts one, two, six, seven and eight.
Speaker 0: Okay, thank you. We're going to turn this over to staff. I know they've got a good presentation ahead of us of a lot of information. And so. Mr. West.
Speaker 10: Mayor Councilmember, I'm going to turn this over to the deputy director for Development Services, Angela Reynolds. And we also have local architect Melanie Smith to assist Angela.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Good evening, Mayor. And City Council Members. Before you tonight is the Livable West Long Beach Plan. This planning effort was funded by the Port of Long Beach. And while the port is a tremendous economic engine for the city and the county and the country, there have been many environmental impacts to the community in and around the city's port. The study focuses on Port Area one A, which includes West Long Beach, Willmore City, downtown and the Wrigley neighborhood. The livability plan was formulated by identifying projects that had already been published and working with community stakeholders to prioritize these projects and initiatives. All of the projects in some way improve livability in these neighborhoods. Some aimed at improving air quality. Some reducing noise impacts from nearby heavy industry. Constructing and connecting bike paths with walking paths throughout the city. And continuing to provide community health initiatives. So I'm going to introduce Melanie Smith from Melendez. She's the principal there, and she's going to give a slide show that will more fully talk about this plan and then will be available for questions in you.
Speaker 1: Luck of council for having us here tonight to hear about this plan. We've been over a year in the making to to prepare this this plan. And just to start by saying that the direction that was given by the by the funders and by the city was that we were really not being asked to to take a clean slate approach to say, you know, be your most creative self and think about, you know, how we could improve livability on the west side of Long Beach. That might be interesting. But what we were asked to do was take a look at already adopted city plans and programs and take take a look at their goals and take a look at programs and and projects that were had been identified in those plans that had not yet been implemented and start to compile those. And we were also well aware that the Port of Long Beach is green port policy in the San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action Plan are certainly on the books enacted and that those will continue to be implemented within the ports boundaries and improvements will be seen there. And so we sort of set those to the side recognizing that those those elements are underway and we're not building those into this plan. But we were asked to take a look at the city of Long Beach has recently adopted a new mobility element. To go back to a plan that I worked on a number of years ago, the community livability plan for the 710 corridor neighborhoods. Take a look at the Long Beach River Link projects, the yards west side plan. A portion of that plan is the Terminal Island Freeway Repurposing and decommissioning project. We'll talk about that a little bit more. The city of Long Beach, open space and recreation and housing elements, and also its recently adopted healthy communities policy. So this process has been multi-pronged and has involved a great deal of community engagement at a bunch of different levels. This really sort of barely scratches the surface. This summary of the community engagement process we had for this project for the Livable West Long Beach Plan, we had two major convenings workshops, the first one at the start of the project last December and then a second one earlier this year. And in addition to large convenings of the community, we held all of our meetings at Silverado Park on the West Side. We also took a availed ourselves of a number of other groups and organizations in the community that already meet to do drop in meetings and presentations. A little hard to read on the screen, but a large number of meetings there and and with folks across the spectrum really of stakeholders in the area. And we've also presented the plan at the Planning Commission and at the Board of Harbor Commissioners. And so that brings us here tonight. When we started the process again, we were taking a look at it already adopted plans that that had already had really a large amount of community engagement around them in order to have them been adopted. And we took took a look at the goals of those plans. And from there, we we identified livability criteria that we brought to the community. And we asked the community to prioritize these criteria relating to what might improve in their minds, some of the most pressing livability concerns on the west side of Long Beach. And of course, no surprise, clean air and water was at the top. Availability and access to jobs, goods and services. Number two, safe neighborhoods, beautiful neighborhoods and great schools were really the top five criteria. And while we were identifying criteria and asking the community to rank that criteria, we were also developing a list of projects and programs that again had been part of previously adopted city plans. And those project, that project list really fell into a number of different categories. As you can see on the screen, a number of streetscape projects, bike and pedestrian improvements, and a category that we call the Focus on community. And that was, you know, urban greening community, neighborhood watch, things like that, safety and security having to do with safe routes to school and things of that nature, park improvements, major roadway projects. And you might say, why are roadway projects part of improving the livability of the West Side? The 710 Terminus Realignment Project really will create a great deal of new open space and better connect the community and bike and pedestrian community connections in that part of town transit improvements, health, education and activities and health services. So these were all the categories of projects in the projects are listed below. Those that we identified took to the community and again asked the community to give us feedback on that. So, you know, this is the process we underwent as a as I've been talking about. The next step was really to package projects. We but but first we were really ranking them. And I just wanted to give you a snapshot of what that ranking process look like the city really asked us to to create a tool that would then be available to the city after this project had been concluded. And that would give us a measurable way to take a look at these projects and measure their livability. So in order to rank a project such as the Santa Fe Avenue streetscape project that had been identified, we had to figure out some metrics and some data that we could measure this project against and figure out how it would. To what degree it might positively impact livability on the West Side. So we could look at how much population would be served by the project. So 20 over 27,000 people would be served by this project. And we could take a look at its proximity to parks and schools and see that seven schools and three parks would be served by this street and that that Santa Fe Avenue streetscape project is going to serve ten and link ten transit routes and actually 103 bus stops. Not linkages directly to LRT in this case, but 103 bus stops is nothing to sneeze at. And so we were able to then demonstrate how we could link, how we could rank these projects and leave the city with a tool that it can use really to to refer back to as it takes a look at these projects. So as we went through the community process and took feedback, one of the comments that we got in our second workshop was that these projects were great and folks were very interested in seeing them implemented. And a lot of the things in this plan have been talked about in the city for, you know, a long time. And the recommendation was that we should think about or explain how do these projects add up to something? How do they add up to, you know, a larger network of improvements that would really see that they would really be visible within the communities? And so we ended up taking another look at the project list. We didn't change it, but we took a look at the list and developed what we ended up calling Livable Neighborhood Connection Strategies. And we identified three of those link strategy areas on the West Side, so that really the west west to the northwest and the southwest . And we identified packages of implementable projects and a network of projects that would really have synergy among each other. And I think, as you all know very well, a large part of what staff does today is seek grant funding to to implement these projects. And we know that what we see a lot in in criteria for grant funding is that we've got to show multiple benefits to projects and that they're really hitting a bunch of different criteria. And so we think that as packaging strategies in this way provides again another helpful tool for the city to use as it seeks to implement these projects. So the link one area incorporates a number of streetscape projects, again, biking, pedestrian improvements, transit improvements, park improvements and and major road projects, a variety of those. And these are the projects that we can really map and show folks where they are on a map link to. Again, we've identified this set, this grouping of projects that can be thought of to really add up to this strategy for this this area of the West Side. And then strategy three area similarly. But it was clear that not everything could be mapped in this way and that there are many important project projects and programs that really would feed into all of these link strategies and really be important to think about. And that the community ranked very highly as well, falling out of the health services, health, education and activities that focus on community, community gardening, urban forestry projects, and that safety and security security category, which was also important. So those have been included as well and are important. And then another comment that the community made as we were going through the process was that folks certainly are well aware that the port has been doing mitigation, grant funding in a number, a couple of different rounds and that those categories of projects that the port has been funding in response to projects that are done, the community has has found valuable and wanted those categories of projects to be included in the plan as well. So things that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, that improve air quality and and and the physical environment at schools and related sites and health care and senior facilities were seen as very desirable for the community to. To include in the plan as well. So a lot of folks ask to have asked us. This is great, you know, that they've really supported this effort and this initiative to develop this project list, this ranked and community prioritized list, and and have this available as a tool to to the city and to the port moving forward. But they asked us, how is this going to be different? What's going to be different about this? What we did try to do is identify distinct and relevant funding sources that the city may pursue. And we tried to include ones that we knew the city wasn't already using. So more because the city is pretty good at this. But we tried to include things that could broaden the horizons a little bit and and give some good case studies of how other communities have used these tools. And then we also identified, actually, staff identified the approach that would be used for implementing the plan in the form of a city staff and port staff livable West Long Beach working group that would be formed and would would host quarterly meetings to lead track and report progress using a tool again that we'd provide, taking a look at current project status, developing conceptual costs and budgets for projects where they don't exist, identifying funding sources. And then the Planning Commission recommended that there be an annual report to the commission to track progress over time. And that's just an example of the workshop that we're thinking about using as a tool. And that, I think, gives you an overview of the plan.
Speaker 5: Mr.. REYNOLDS Is that the conclusion of the staff report? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. We have a motion by council member your anger and second by Councilwoman Gonzalez. Councilmember Your Honor, would you like to address the motion?
Speaker 9: Yeah, but I'd like to get some input first from members of the audience. Okay. At this point.
Speaker 5: Councilwoman Gonzalez. Okay. Okay. So if you would like to address the Council on item 12, please come forward. State your name. Thank you.
Speaker 6: Good evening. Good evening. Mayor and council members. My name is Elizabeth Warren. I'm the executive.
Speaker 12: Director of an organization called Future Ports. And I have a letter that I sent to each of you today as.
Speaker 6: You have it in your.
Speaker 12: E-Mail. I also have hard copies if you'd like a hard copy for reference today.
Speaker 6: I'm very proud.
Speaker 12: Of this letter.
Speaker 6: I stand here as a representative of a coalition, of businesses and labor together that have been looking at this project.
Speaker 12: At one project within the program, and.
Speaker 6: That is the decommissioning of the Terminal Island Freeway. And we have a coalition made of five labor, five ILWU, locals to labor trade laborers and 11 businesses. We have 18 organizations that have put together a letter. I think this is sets a precedent that we've never had labor and business together on one letter.
Speaker 12: Sending a message that we have some very strong concerns about decommissioning.
Speaker 6: The Terminal Island Freeway. This would be the largest freeway removal project in Southern California history, according to the Press Telegram. And it's a critical truck route between the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles in the local businesses. There's 11,000 vehicles that travel daily on this freeway. And then and if this project is comes to fruition and it's decommissioned, those trucks and vehicles are going to be.
Speaker 12: Rerouted onto surface.
Speaker 6: Streets. Alameda, Anaheim and Pacific Coast Highway.
Speaker 12: We are concerned.
Speaker 6: That some of the goals to reduce emissions and to and to have some other positive impacts are actually going to have a negative impact. And that is one of our our very strong concerns of this would not increase freight efficiency and competitiveness of the California freight system, and it would likely impose costs in the form of lost productivity and construction inconveniences for the local residents and businesses. We would like to make sure that you do have a copy of our letter. And our ask tonight is that we, although we do support moving forward with climate change initiatives that promote sustainability and have attainable goals, we want things that are based on sound science and that are economically feasible. So we urge you not to move forward with the removal of this part of this particular portion, the the the decommissioning of the Terminal Island Freeway this evening. And we'd like to.
Speaker 12: Suggest that there are further.
Speaker 6: Studies, full environmental impact review, traffic analysis and other studies before moving forward on this particular project.
Speaker 5: Okay. Thank you this morning.
Speaker 6: I will give the letters.
Speaker 5: To the hard copies.
Speaker 10: Good evening. Mayor and members of City Council. My name is Western Labor and I actually represent three of the organizations that signed on to the letter. I'm the executive director for both the Harbor Trucking Association and the Foreign Trade Association, as well as the policy director for the South Bay Association of Chambers of Commerce. And as we've looked at this, we look at several key things. One, as it was alluded to by the previous speaker, we think there are studies that need to be done to look at the environmental impacts and traffic impacts that would be result of the closure of the TII freeway. We are trying desperately at the ports to reduce congestion and truck congestion continues to be a major issue that we're dealing with in the South Bay as a region. And we think we need to look at what are the alternative routes. When we've met with the outreach team, we've we've been open about the fact that if we can find alternatives that benefit both the community and our goods movement sector, that's something that we would really embrace and we could really get behind the project. But at this point in time, the decommissioning of the freeway becomes a major concern of our organizations because of that major component. I also want to add that this is kind of an important issue as it has brought together people that would not normally be together on an issue. To think that you have PMC and the ILWU signed onto the same letter is pretty remarkable, and it just shows how important this issue is to the entire port community. And as I've heard the mayor say multiple times, we are a port town and we embrace our port. It's something that we need to look at and see how it how it impacts the the future of our port and how we grow and how we can move more cargo and move more cargo efficiently. We have supply chain optimizations, meeting meetings going on on a regular basis that are bringing the stakeholders together and to to move forward with the decommissioning of the freeway without studying it, to make sure it's not going to be a major impact on on goods movement, to make sure that it's not going to be a negative impact on the regional environment is very important. And the one last thing I will say is that the TII freeway provides the only major overweight corridor between the Port of Long Beach and IETF. And to remove that, you're going to remove the ability for many businesses to be able to get overweight containers from the Port of Long Beach to the active facility as it's currently constructed. And so we need to look at ways to overcome those sort of barriers that will allow us to continue to move America's cargo. And with that, I'll probably reach out to many of you on this issue over the coming weeks, but I'll let the next speaker talk. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 8: Good evening, Mayor Garcia. Council members, my name is Dan Hoffman and the executive director for the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce. And so your neighbor and I hope your friend. I did want to before I say another word, I want to thank some of your staff who I've reached out to, Angela Reynolds, who is nice enough to call me back on the phone a couple well, actually last month and then a part of your team made a presentation to our board of directors just last week. They were professional. They were courteous. They were kind enough to answer as many of our questions as they could. Having said that, unfortunately, our Chamber of Commerce, you know, has joined this coalition, are opposed particularly to the tie, the Terminal Island Freeway elimination and for I think, a couple of really valid reasons. The first has been I think the purpose of this whole plan is to make our environment better. And I think that's something we all need to strive to do. It's good for our employees. It's good for our community. We all want to be a little healthier and live a little longer. However, as we look at this project, it appears that what it's going to do is move a lot of this truck traffic from Long Beach area to the Wilmington area and therefore making a community that's impacted a little bit better, but negatively impacting a community that's even more impacted. I don't think that that was the intent of this, but I think if you actually take a look at it, that that that's what it does. Additionally, we're talking about an estimated most recent figures, 6600 trucks that will be diverted down Pacific Coast Highway to the Alameda Corridor. And so another one of our concerns is the businesses that are directly there. So we're talking about Tesoro, about fast lane transportation, about California Sulfur, about Cal Cartage, and potentially looking at the impact that this project will have. So, again, I thank you for your time and and for your consideration and most of all, for your attention. Something that I've noticed here that I don't see a lot of and a lot of different meetings. I try to see how people are engaged. And for the most part, I think your community can be very proud of you, that you're very engaged and listen to the folks. So thank you again.
Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 12: Good evening, Mayor Garcia. Members of the city council and city staff. My name is Joan Greenwood. I reside at 2091 San Francisco Avenue in the Wrigley District of Long Beach. I'm here today to say congratulate all of you on this wonderful plan and also to tell you. But your work is not done yet. And just as they said that this plan took into consideration existing plans. I noticed that a very important community within the one eight zone seems to have been left out of it because we weren't truly aware that we could have impacted more projects in Wrigley by participating in these workshops. So the reason I say this is there's a couple of points I'd like to make that I'm going to focus on this evening. First of all, Tidelands funding, and I've given you a memo with a couple of topographic maps and they show that historically Wrigley between where currently there's PCH and Willow Street, west of Pacific Avenue, was wetlands. It is still under tidal influence. And from PCA, Willow Street South is considered by the Regional Water Quality Control Board to be an estuary that is tidelands. So I think the city staff needs to look into this a little more depth because they have far better graphics capabilities than I do. The second thing I wanted to address was the use of enviro screen as a ranking tool. It doesn't matter when it comes to your health and where you live. If you are in a1a zone for air quality health risks, it doesn't matter what age you are, what ethnicity, it's being a sensitive receptor. And so it skews a little bit of the ranking of the projects. And I got this by looking at a precinct up in Bakersfield that had a very high end virus screening. And I couldn't figure out why until I found out they were next to a food processing plant that had an above ground storage tank of liquid chlorine. So you have to be very careful with virus screening. But I do think it's wrong to look at this one zone and say any one part of it is at greater risk than another. We're all at equal risk. And to a certain extent, Wrigley is a greater risk because we are downwind of both the Freeway and Wrigley Heights from other areas. The other thing is the Streetscapes River Link referenced the 2007 plan, the original River Link project in 2003. Specifically address linking the neighborhoods within the Wrigley District to the L.A. River Trail. And that has been completely left out of this project. And part of it is because of the potential impacts of the I-70 ten freeway and their diverging diamonds, and we're waiting to see the geometric on that. So that may be part of the reason, but there was a project that Metro had along Willow Street for improvements, and it's gone away. And the last is the trails were taking too much of a piecemeal in Wrigley. And I think we need to continue on in this program. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you, John. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 13: Good evening. I'm kind of sick right now, so I'm going to let her speak for me. But she knows exactly what she's going to say. My name is Jessica Alvarez. I'm with Long Beach.
Speaker 12: I'm. I'm speaking about. Thank you, Mayor and Councilor, for letting me speak. I am a long time resident.
Speaker 7: Here we go.
Speaker 12: Thank you, Mayor and Councilor, for letting me speak. I am a long time resident of Solana Beach, so I went around and as residents about tai chi with commercial conversation and and some residents were for it. Some were against it. I think most are an indicator about on it or not.
Speaker 4: Or not educated on it.
Speaker 12: I think if we came to an agreement, we as a city could benefit from it. Every possibility came up with a comment committee or more community involvement. A lot of great ideas were we could all benefit from and for our generation to come. Oh, and part of me.
Speaker 4: I think it's a great idea.
Speaker 12: Your name. Oh. My name is.
Speaker 1: Carla. Sorry. Um, I believe in the website. I think it's a great idea, because when.
Speaker 12: Kids come out of school.
Speaker 1: The smell. It's the pollution from the drugs and. Where we try to catch busses. There's a lot of traffic.
Speaker 12: And it's contaminating a lot of people. And especially we're in school.
Speaker 1: That's all we smell. And then kids with asthma, they end up in the hospital because of.
Speaker 4: The pollution and.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 12: Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Excellent. Okay, next beaker, please. I think these are. Last speaker here. Right. Okay. Yes. Good. Thank you. Honorable Mayor and City Council. My name is Brian Olszewski.
Speaker 10: I'm the executive director of City Fabric. We're a.
Speaker 0: Nonprofit design studio dedicated to improving our.
Speaker 10: Communities through public interest design, planning and.
Speaker 0: Policy. It's great to see the Westside Livability.
Speaker 8: Implementation Plan coming before the Council today. It is the culmination.
Speaker 0: Of multiple community workshops, over 20 stakeholder meetings and interviews. The plan was built on a foundation of nearly a dozen previous community plans, including general plan updates, redevelopment, strategic plans, specific plans and even community initiatives. These plans were formed by over 100 workshops, neighborhood meetings, commission hearings, public hearings, and city council sessions that together engage over a thousand residents and stakeholders at Long Beach. With all that said, there's still a long way to go. While the Westside Livability Plan maps out a strategic guide for improving health, wellness and vitality of West Long Beach, each community oriented project will require funding, design, engineering and further stakeholder engagement. Whether developing bike facilities, enhancing.
Speaker 8: Pedestrian connectivity.
Speaker 0: Creating new park space or mitigating pollution. The project, identified in the Westside Livability.
Speaker 8: Plan will go a long way to enhancing that quality of life for residents.
Speaker 0: Of West Long Beach and across the city because pollution doesn't stop at any arbitrary border. We look forward to being part of this process, this solution oriented process going forward. And thank you for continuing this effort to improve the Westside community. Thank you. Thank you very much. And with that, I'll turn it back over to the council and to Councilman Ranga. But I wanted to just a couple clarifying points, which I think are important, and I appreciate everyone that came down and spoke on this item. I just want to make sure that we note that the Westside Livability Plan that before us today, as was noted, does not decommission the freeway. I mean, that is a different process that will be debated. And I think there's a lot of important debate that needs to happen around that conversation. But what's in front of us today is a plan that was that's been funded by actually the port of Long Beach. The Port of Long Beach has been a partner in this plan from day one. And we wouldn't have this plan if it wasn't for the port and for their interest in coming to the city and going to the community and saying, we know that there are impacts. We know that oftentimes the dollars that we spend in the community aren't always spent in West Long Beach. And so we want to change that. And I think what you're seeing from the Port of Long Beach is two things is one is they've they're changing their policy on how they assign community dollars. So the focus is on the communities that are most impacted by the port. That is a new policy. They're just in the process of implementing, which I know a lot of you have been involved in conversations. And the second big piece of that has been funding and supporting this plan that the Council has in front of it today. It's a recognition that the communities that have been most affected by the port need additional support to continue to need investment mitigation and and green space and clean air and the cleanest water possible. And so I think the community should be proud of this process and pushing this process. I've seen hundreds and hundreds of community members involved in this. And to obviously my friends in industry, there's no greater advocate for the Port of Long Beach than myself and then the council members that are on this on this body. And I think the discussion that was brought up on the freeway piece is an important discussion that we will we will have and have a chance to to converse. But but that is, you know, a few sentences in the plan that has before us today. What I want to focus on and just remind us that the big focus of this plan is on the additional park space and green space and building a healthy community and ensuring that young kids aren't constantly affected with the effects of asthma and air and pollutants that are in the air. And so that's to me, what this is about. And I want to make sure that the conversation really is focused on on that and that this council, if and when this council makes a decision about the freeway, which is a big decision, that will be a debate that will be before the council. And whether the council adopts this plan or not won't have a bearing on that specific project, which is one of dozens and dozens of projects that are in this plan. And so with that, I mentioned this over to Councilmember Turanga.
Speaker 9: Thank you, Mayor, because that was exactly one of the things that I wanted to point out and clarify is that this is a start of a conversation at the start of a discussion in regards to, well, the two freeway, but better yet, it's about a whole process of building a livable west with that community. If you look on page 17 of the report, you'll see the the the neighborhoods line, which is is is one of. Or it's neighborhoods. We're talking about the neighborhoods of downtown. West Village. West. West side. South or west side. West side. Upper West Side. The Valley. Community loss, Fritos, Wrigley, as was mentioned. And one more. So the the impact that this study does is much broader than that. But maybe people are understanding it to be the discussion that the mayor has stated on the to freeway and whether it's decommissioned or not is another discussion will take place at another time. And the the community groups that came together to talk about and participate in the in the workshops for a livable livability study was precisely that to look at what impacts our truck trucks, the freeway, the river transportation health is having on those West Side communities. And I think that they did that. I want to thank obviously, I want to thank our staff for putting this together. And tonight is a big step for the residents of West Long Beach and taking back the community and fighting for access to things most people take for granted, such as clean air, green space and basic multi-modal mobility and connectivity. I want to thank Amy Warwick and Reynolds and Eva Brown for their work in collaborating with our residents. I also want to thank Melanie Smith from Melendez as we get from West Communications for facilitating the workshops in regards to the two freeway itself. We understand that there is a lot to be done with that. We still need to look at Square, we still need to look at transportation studies, we need to look at environmental impact reports and and studies there. So that discussion is going to be coming soon to commit to the council. And it's also that that opportunity, I think that the goods movement, people and everyone else who's concerned about the to a freeway would that would be the opportunity to come down and share your thoughts and share your concerns that you think that project is going to have. Should it or should it not be decommissioned? So I asked that my council members, my colleagues on the council support this plan. It is much broader than just one aspect of it. It is, and it's much too important for us to not adopt it and accept it as something that we can look at for our residents to clean up the air, to provide better health benefits as we move forward with our goods movement and as we move forward to establishing Long Beach as the leader in the West Coast. So I ask for your vote.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzalez.
Speaker 4: Yes. I first want to thank staff and all of the community partners for being involved with this, because it truly is a night that we can all celebrate. Because, you know, the west side, we've often talked, both Councilmember Muranga and myself, about the West Side and all of the different attributes of the West Side. And what needs to be done in this certainly is just one step, but there's a lot more to do here. And as I am the chair of the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority and the I-70 Project Committee, I'm very understanding of the goods movement in the industry and exactly what it is that we need to do to continue being the number one port complex together, both in Long Beach and in Los Angeles. But I do feel that, you know, as I mentioned, this is a wonderful plan. We need to really emphasize all of the community work of our neighbors. I see our friend, longtime advocate Jessica on the west side. And you're I don't know if it's your daughter or your friend that came. One of your youth that came and spoke so eloquently. And it and we thank you for being here because I feel we really need to hear from the residents and how this impacts you every single day. And so I want to thank you for that. I just wanted to ask a few questions of staff before anything else. I know that outreach has been, you know, an issue for some people. I know we've done a lot of outreach with community. But what has. The outreach been like to the businesses directly affected specifically for the tie?
Speaker 6: Councilwoman Gonzales, you heard that we had to are actually three outreaches with communities in the broad community, but we also did a multitude of focus groups, lots of them with goods movement folks. And so I did bring those if you want me to listed, I can certainly do that. We met with Tesoro, Cal Cartage, Three Rivers, Noble, L.A. Grain. We also met with Watson Land Company. We went and did a presentation of future future ports, Vaseline and Three Rivers. The U. The CAC will be Tech Park and several other health type organizations. We also met with Portage Group. We met with Gateway COG, Caltrans, Metro, Skaggs and the like. We also met with Hudson and Cabrillo Harbor Trucking Association. We met with. Twice, once in a focus group and once at their meeting. We also met with West Coast Marine Terminal operators. That's WCM toA. I think you'll see all these people on the letter that you got. PMS say we met with Union Pacific Andy Perez several times. International Warehouse Logistics Association, the I, WFLA, and and I already said future ports. But I think we touched them twice.
Speaker 4: Okay. Thank you. And then I know this is coming back and there will be a process, so we'll still have to go through and are secure in a number of different processes in order to.
Speaker 6: Councilwoman, I think you're referring to the Thai decommissioning. And one thing that I did want to say is the West Long Beach plan. That is one project out of 58 projects and 27 programs policies. And I will also say that to the goods movement, folks, all the issues and concerns that you mentioned, we totally agree. And when we do come back with the the decommissioning of the Thai plan, you will see in the next steps all those things that were talked about, the ERs, the the truck routes, the traffic studies, all those things. I mean, there's a long road ahead on that and at this point. We're not asking council to push us forward on any particular plan for the Commission, and the Council would have to come back and actually do that in a separate action.
Speaker 4: Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to ask those couple questions. And again, I want to thank you for your work in this. It's a it's a huge deal for the west part of the city. I'm very, very happy to know that there were many community members, as I mentioned, that were involved in this process that we continue on. And then I know that there will be follow up meetings, is that correct as well internally, just to ensure that we're on in progress with with this plan?
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's councilwoman that's in Chapter five and that's our implementation plan. Development services will be the lead on that. However, there are lots of other interdepartmental is working with us, which is healthy public works, Parks Rec and Marine. Certainly the port, that's our working group that we've had all the way through this process. So we'll continue to meet.
Speaker 4: Great. And what type of outreach will be done to allow the community to understand where we're at and the progress and every.
Speaker 6: Step of the way? Well, we're going to report back once a year to the planning commission. And, you know, many of these projects are going to have their own process that goes along with them. That's a public process as well.
Speaker 4: Great. Thank you very much. And congratulations to the community.
Speaker 0: Next we have Councilwoman Mango.
Speaker 1: I want to thank the staff in the port for their leadership in making sure that our communities are livable. I think that that's a a huge component of being a responsible steward of the public trust and what we are responsible to do to the community. I appreciate the neighbors who came out to speak today and industry and business and labor who united for a letter. I think that the misinformation on what council items are about has been happening more often. But I appreciate that you came here to give your voice on the potential risks. And I think that hearing from the mayor that you can be assured that public comment and input and community outreach will be done before heading in that direction right now. I'm very supportive of the item as it stands and to work towards making the Long Beach more livable. Anything we can do to improve the sustainability and breathability along beaches is really important. So great work to everyone. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Council Member Richardson.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just got to say, this is amazing work. This is a tremendous legacy I see for the residents who engaged in this. For the leaders who took part in this. And for the staff who drove this. This is this is just fantastic work. So I've had a chance to, like, look at this and follow it. I think it's a great model, great model for subsequent plans, strategies that we can implement in other communities. One part that I thought was really cool was the link areas, part where you can look at separate elements the mobility, the open space, the public safety stuff, streetscape stuff, and look at how it's all organized into linked areas. I think that's amazing and we should look at doing that in other, other areas of town. So so I've always been supportive of the port doing being smarter about its mitigations. And it seems like whenever there's some port lease that we have to hear an appeal for. It seems like there's a different deal with every different mitigation measures. So I think it's smart to have one plan, one strategy that steers and guides those. So I think this is great. I would say that, you know, with that, this is, you know, fantastic for Long Beach. But, you know, we got to make sure that we keep, you know, the work isn't done. We got to look at the entire 17 freeway, all the communities along the 17 freeway in subsequent discussions and and as well as the 91 freeway. And then the only question I would have, what list of questions I would have is how long did this process take? How much did it cost, and who paid for it?
Speaker 6: Are you asking me that question, Councilman?
Speaker 8: I am.
Speaker 6: Okay. It took 18 months, and it cost $300,000.
Speaker 3: And who paid for it. How was it paid.
Speaker 7: For the port?
Speaker 3: Got it. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Councilman Turanga.
Speaker 9: Finally and on the project that we understand it's going to be a long process. There are already some efforts in addressing some of the the livability plan. There are some major project improvements taking place on Santa Fe corridor. We've already installed LED lights along that corridor for public safety purposes. We have a monitoring devices at the schools to measure the air and the air quality there so that when kids are outside, they come inside at the quality is poor for them to be outside. So there are things that are already in place. And we also have to look at the fact that, you know, when you look at the at the law, we always talk about a tale of two cities. Well, I want to talk to you about the tale of an island which is West Long Beach. And that and it's an island because it's connected by bridges. It's connected by a bridge over the river and the and the freeway on PCH and Willow and water on the other side. So I understand that those streets would also have to be part of this plan in terms of improvements to improve access and improve transportation and accessibility for the residents of Long Beach. The part the one part about the West Side in terms it affects me. I have 27,000 residents in that in that area right there. That's just about half of my total district that resides in West Long Beach. And I and it's important for for me and for us and the council to look at a neighborhood that is basically like an island. And there are a lot of needs out there, a lot of services that need to be improved upon, and definitely an improvement on accessibility to good health, clean air and some better transportation. So, again, I would appreciate your.
Speaker 0: Thank you. That concludes both public comment and council comment. There's a motion by Councilman Urine Guy and a second by Councilwoman Gonzalez on the plan. Members, please go out and cast your votes.
Speaker 1: Motion carries.
Speaker 0: Thank you and thank you all for coming out and addressing the council on this issue. And, of course, we look forward to working with the community and industry, certainly on the next discussion around the freeway piece. Next item, please.
Speaker 1: Report from Economic and Property Development Recommendation to approve the Magnolia Industrial Group Property and Business Improvement District Annual Report and assessment for the period of December 1st, 2015 through November 30th, 2016. District one.
Recommendation to adopt the West Long Beach Livability Implementation Plan and accept Categorical Exemption CE 15-139.  (Districts 1,2,6,7,8)