Speaker 0: Thank you. City Council. I think that's going to be a great relief for a lot of folks. Appreciate that. Let's move on to the rest of the agenda. Let's see. Next up is item 16, which is. Stars.
Speaker 1: Report from Development Services Recommendation of declare ordinance amending the Long Beach Municipal Code related to short term rentals. Read the first time and lead up to the next regular meeting of the City Council for Final Reading and adopt a resolution to submit the ordinance amendments to the Coastal Commission citywide.
Speaker 0: Thank you. I think this is a staff report.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We do have a report to give you kind of the history and the background of staffers and remind us of kind of where this where this sits. I will ask Linda Tatum, our director of development services, and Charles Staver from Development Services, to go through the report.
Speaker 2: An evening Mayor and City Council. We've had a team working on this.
Speaker 1: Project for the last couple of.
Speaker 2: Years, and that team includes the Our Administrative and Financial Services Bureau manager Lisa Fall and Jill Stauber, our real estate project coordinator. So Jill will give a brief overview of the proposed ordinance.
Speaker 6: All right. Good evening. In January of this year, staff presented a draft ordinance regulating short term rentals. And we are back tonight for a new first reading following that discussion. This brief presentation provides a recap of the proposed regulations and also highlights the changes requested by council in January. With the slide forward. Okay for some background in 2017. At the request of City Council staff conducted research and recommended hiring a consultant to conduct a more thorough study. Throughout 2018, we held a series of community outreach events. An online survey conducted several case studies and presented our findings and recommendations to City Council for discussion. At that time, Council instructed the city attorney to draft an ordinance in 2019. Staff responded to additional questions, created a phased implementation plan, and executed a voluntary tax collection agreement with Airbnb, and ultimately drafted an ordinance allowing for limited staffers . Then in January of this year, the Council discussed the item and requested some changes to the ordinance. So here's a recap of some key elements of the ordinance and establishes that we vocal annual city registration and fee protects the housing stock by limiting the number of non primary residence staffers citywide to no more than 1000 units. Includes enforcement provisions and a mechanism to remove individual bad actors. Requires a limited event permit to exceed the maximum occupancy limits. And allows residential property owners to petition for a prohibition on Unhosted staffers in their neighborhood. The slide shows the maximum number of stars any one operator would be allowed to operate. As a reminder, a primary residence star is defined as the unit where the host resides at least 275 nights per year. And during that time, any guest stays are considered hosted and there's no limit on hosted stays. So that would only leave up to 90 days maximum per year in which that unit could be rented as an unhosted stay. By definition, it's also worth noting that the majority of operators in Long Beach are currently operating only one unit. Here are just some of the basic regulations, including collection of transient occupancy tax. Homeowners associations may request inclusion on a STR prohibited properties list. Occupancy is limited to two guests per legally permitted bedroom plus two with a maximum of ten guests and staffers are prohibited and deed restricted. Affordable housing units, dormitories and adus. Yeah. And the enforcement provisions of the ordinance are the key to dealing with operators that do not abide by the rules. Violations would be subject to $1,000 fine per day, except a 30 day warning period shall be provided for advertising in store without a valid registration. And of course, you only get one of those. There is a 24 seven complaint hotline with a live operator upon issuance of three fines. The STR registration may be revoked. Violations include but are not limited to failure of local contact to take action to a complaint within one hour of completing a booking transaction without a valid city issued registration number. Violations of STR. Maximum occupancy. And conduct. Or activities that constitute a public nuisance. In order for the program to be successful, we'll need the cooperation of the hosting platforms, particularly for removing listings that have not registered or have had their registrations revoked. So hosting platforms cannot complete any booking transactions for an STR. If notified by the city that a valid SDR registration number has not been issued to the operator platform, so remove any listings upon notification from the city and on a monthly basis the platform so provide to the city. The SDR registration number of each listing name of operator address of the SDR unit number of days each unit was booked and the total price paid for each rental. The petition to prohibit Unhosted stickers is one of the areas that the council asks us to take a closer look at in January. So there are a couple of changes the property owners can petition to prohibit unhosted stars within a census tract or block group, and I'll discuss the group in more detail in the coming slide. Is now a simple majority of the residential property owners that must sign a petition to prohibit unhosted stays. Upon request for the city to initiate a petition, signatures will be collected by the city staff via US mail. If the petition is approved, the restriction remains in effect for three years, at which point the restriction can be lifted by a similar petition process. The initial petition process is available within 180 days of the effective date, and a new 180 day petition process period shall be established annually thereafter. The boundary of the prohibition we had previously recommended using the census tract. But there is some concern that a full census tract was too large an area and also that the corresponding cost could be prohibitive. So a census tract is still an option for your consideration tonight. But what staff is now recommending is using the census block group. A census block group is a geographical unit used by the United States Census Bureau, which is between the census block and the census tract. All census tracts in Long Beach consist of between three and eight census block groups. Using block groups also increases the petitioning party's chance for a successful petition for those more localized neighborhoods that have a strong desire to opt out. To give you a visual idea of a census tract versus a census. BLOCK We're going to show you two maps of the same census tract. So this map shows one residential census tract surrounded by the black lines. And the next. And this is the same census tract showing the census block groups within that tract. So there are six block groups within that census tract, their smaller geographical drop geographically. And this is the the boundary that we are now proposing. So pending council action tonight. This would be our updated timeline for implementing the ordinance. If the reading is approved tonight, then the final reading would be June 2nd. But the ordinance would not go into effect for an additional 121 days or four months, during which time the registration process would be set up. And we would select the compliance monitoring consultant. The initial registration period would last 160 days over a six month full register, full enforcement would begin at the end of that initial registration period. And just to clarify, the initial 180 days is not the only opportunity you have to register. People will be allowed to apply for registration after the initial 180 days. The next step would be to adopt an ordinance amending Title 21 of the municipal code. That's the zoning code, submit the local Coastal Program Amendment to the California Coastal Commission for approval and develop the implementation guidelines, which would be the actual registration process. That concludes the reports. We are happy to answer questions. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Let me. I have a motion and a second, Councilmember Pierce, and then a second I think is going to be by Councilman Price. But let me turn this over to Councilmember Pearce.
Speaker 4: Great. Thank you so much. I really want to say how much I appreciate staff's work on this and. Hey, Robert. Oh, man. I like when people use video. I appreciate staff's work on this. I appreciate the years that we have trying to get this right. And I think it's unfortunate that we're bringing this forward in a period of COVID, because when we brought this forward, it was a time when our economy was strong, our hospitality industry was around 78% occupancy. Our housing needed to be looked at. We saw housing prices increasing every month. And so today it is not that reality. But I want to recognize the value that short term rentals have for mom and pops that, you know, if they need the additional income that they're in their house and they're saying that we want to make sure that this is something that that can bring them that additional revenue. And so I say all of that because I think that it's important that we realize that we are not in the same era that we were when we brought this item forward originally and I moved my motion. So they are so organized and I got unorganized. Okay. So trying to find the balance in between small business owners who host their homes, the native visitors that desire alternatives to hotels, the necessity of the city to protect our neighborhoods while allowing us to in the budget needs for enforcing this ordinance. This council has worked very hard to strike that balance. And COVID 19 hit. Our hotels have been hit hard. They've stayed engaged, working with the city, working with the health department to implement training and cleaning standards within all of their hotels. Meanwhile, we have not had a substantive conversation about what the future of stars means in a COVID era. So before I make my motion, I actually have some questions for the city staff around the health orders and how short term rentals fall into to play within our health orders. Are they deemed essential? Do we have cleaning standards for them? And so staff, if you could answer some of those questions for me, that'd be great.
Speaker 2: We do have the city attorney on the line, Councilwoman Pierce, and he is prepared.
Speaker 1: To respond to that.
Speaker 2: That question regarding the city's health order. And that is city attorney and deputy city attorney Mike Mays.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Mr. Mes or Ms.. Galatia.
Speaker 4: If. They're not.
Speaker 3: Okay, Councilman Pierce, member of City Council. Can you hear me, Mike?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: All right. Currently, the health order, the city's existing health order does not directly mentioned short term rentals. It is not considered to be an essential business. So therefore, under the order, if the ordinance was passed tonight, under the current order, short term rentals would still not be allowed until the order is released or amended once, but several more times, probably. So it's not directly covered. The ordinance itself, as you said, Councilman Pearce was drafted in a different era before COVID. So there are no standards written into the ordinance that pertain to cleaning and sanitizing anything of that nature. It was just assumed that the operators would come. So there isn't any guidelines in the current ordinance to address that issue.
Speaker 4: Right. Thank you for that. And I expect that as businesses are coming back on, as the phases are changing, that there will be new standards applied to each one of those at that time. I do want to offer for transparency. I want to share with everyone that I did ask if there was a way to postpone this item so that we weren't hearing it in the middle of COVID. But we do have other items that are really important, like the Mello Act and our inclusionary housing and staff has worked really hard on this, and from the presentation that they just shared, it is going to take, you know, 120 days to be able to get this program up and going. And so we know that it wouldn't be like tomorrow. We just signed this and it would go into place. So with that being said, with the consideration of our local economy. One other note before I make my motion, I'd also like to note that that I appreciate the hotels being at the table, but I also recognize that thanks to measures like Measure W hotels have cleaning standards in place, that we understand what the workload is and that there's oversight. I think we've all. I know most of us have probably stayed at an Airbnb by now or a short term rental and have great experiences. But we all have that one experience where something wasn't clean to the tee. And so I think this is a good time for us to to pause on non hosted and really make sure that we have a good policy in place for the health and safety of anybody that might be staying in one. So with that, I have a motion that I'd like to make and I know that Councilmember Price has some comments to. I, I'd hope that you guys hear this motion with the full belief that that we should move forward with a program that is respectful of our tenants, of our small business owners, and of all the work that we have done through the years. So with that, my motion is to adopt the ordinance as written with the following changes only permit the operated operation of hosted expires at this time in accordance with Long Beach's COVID 19 health orders and related protocols. Request staff to work with the hosting platforms and other regulatory agencies, including the city's health department, to develop cleaning and sanitizing protocols specific to the operations of short term rentals, with an emphasis on standards for non hosted rentals. Prohibit the operation of non hosted staffers for a period of at least six months until and until city staff presents a report to the Council for a vote to reconsider amending the ordinance to permit non hosted stays. The report should contain the following information. Proposed cleaning and sanitizing protocols as recommended by the Health Department. Information regarding the economic impact of COVID 19 on the tourism industry in the city of Long Beach. A report on the transit occupancy tax paid to the cities by hotels and staffers during the last three years. The number of registered permitted staffers in the city since adoption of the ordinance in the city's housing rental housing vacancy at the time of the report. I've spoken with the city attorney's office and it's my understanding that these changes to the ordinance that could be made because of the motion will require that the ordinance be brought to City Council for another first reading and hopeful adoption. I. I hope that there is support for this. I feel like it's measured, it's thoughtful, considering where we're at and considering that it would that it would be only really two months of hosting while staff has the opportunity to do the work on the back end, to set up the structure, to make sure that there is enforcement and registration and all of those pieces as well. I think the work that we did the last time on the council took a lot of work. But I believe that the language that we have in place right now is the best language for our our city, based on my conversations with development services and their wish to maintain the language as we have it now. So with that, that's my motion. So I look forward to hearing your comments. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. The second is by Councilwoman Rice.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Can you hear me, Mr. Mayor?
Speaker 0: Yes.
Speaker 2: Okay, great. Thank you. And thank you to the staff for your comments on this. And thank you to Councilwoman Pierce for making the motion. I want to reiterate that I spent quite a bit of time talking with staff about the proposed ordinance and making sure that the preferred language that they have proposed is what I encourage my colleagues to adopt tonight. These are. These are novel issues to some extent for the city. And I think staff has included language in here that will allow the staff to better regulate this industry in the city as we as we welcome it as a as an operating and legitimate business in the city. So I think having staff's preferred wording in here in terms of the regulations of both the STR operator as well as the the host platform I think is very important. And so I am going to be asking my colleagues to support staff language. I do have a couple of clarification points and I think I know the answer. But just for the record. Councilmember Pearce, the unhosted stars that they would face in no earlier than six months from the adoption of the ordinance. Is that correct? Correct. So that would allow hosted to begin and get phased in, which would take about 120 days. And then somewhere around then is when I imagine staff will give us a report on the Unhosted regulations and the items that you thoughtfully included in the report back. And then hopefully then at that point is when we would go into the Unhosted phase, which would be about two months after the hosted is already online.
Speaker 4: I think that timeline's. Right? Yes.
Speaker 2: Okay, great. Okay. So for staff, I have I do have a question. Slide seven of your presentation, is that consistent with the language in Section 5.7, 7.50 sub a? I just want to make sure that the language on Slide seven is consistent with what's proposed in the ordinance, which is that the burden would be on the hosting platform. My understanding is. To make sure that they include the registration numbers that. Correct. That is correct. Is the the the ordinance that's proposed includes that language. With a burden on the platform. Okay. I just want to make sure because when I looked at Slide seven and again, I'm looking at it very quickly here in the course of the the meeting and haven't had a chance to analyze it. But I just want to make sure that we're consistent. And it's my understanding that although the hosting platforms may not prefer that model, that's a model that staff believe will best allow it to enforce the order. Is that correct?
Speaker 1: That is correct.
Speaker 2: And I say that because a major component, Councilmember Pearce and I, I believe it's districts two and three that have the majority of the short term rentals that we know of right now. Is that correct? That is correct. And I know that one of the issues that we have to balance, in addition to the requests and the desires of the hosting platforms that I know have contacted, council offices is the needs and the interests and the concerns of the residents. And regulation of the stars and neighborhoods is very, very important. So I just want to make it clear, as I have from day one, that my goal would be that staff would have the tools that it needs to help easily regulate this industry so that we are mitigating neighborhood impacts such as noise and parking and public safety . So I just want to confirm I know that the. Hosting platforms, you know, maybe want prefer different language. But I did speak with staff and I know staff has a strong preference for this language. Correct. That is correct. Okay. And then I. And so I'm going to support that because I want to do whatever I can to help regulation be as easy as possible for staff. And I do know that staff is also willing to sit with with the hosting platforms after this ordinance is approved to figure out how to make that particular requirement and that language hopefully workable for all parties. Yes, we've made it very clear that we'd like to sit down with them and explore best practices as we develop the administrative procedures associated with the ordinance. Okay. And I know you will do that. But since this is perhaps not language that would have been selected initially by the hosts and platforms, I urge you and your team to do whatever you can to try to have a meeting of the minds of how to best effectuate your intent in accordance with how they're used to running their operations. If there's an opportunity to to have a meeting of the minds, I would I would hope that that can be accomplished. And then on page 12, the language about the 180 dead. Oh, by the way, my I would like to offer a friendly to this motion that we adopt the opt out provision as to census tract blocks , not census tracts. So hopefully that's okay with you, Councilwoman Pierce?
Speaker 4: Yes, that's fine with me.
Speaker 2: Okay. Can we clarify, Councilwoman Pierce, that you meant the census block group, the the lower level. Councilwoman Pryce and Councilwoman Pierce. Yes. We want the census block groups. Okay. Thank you. So my question in regards to that is the 180 days I know I talked with you about this earlier, Ms.. Tatum, but on page 12, you know, the the language of how that 180 days would roll out. I understand the intent of it, but the language of how that would roll out and how neighborhood associations.
Speaker 4: Or block.
Speaker 2: Neighborhood track blocks would know when the 180 day period is up. I'm not sure if there's a way to fine tune that language a little bit more. Councilwoman, we we actually have proposed some language that fine tuned it and the city attorney is proposing to use that language. It does not change the intent or the substance of it in any way. The language is just rewritten to be a little bit clearer. Great. Thank you. That's. That's all I wanted to make sure. And then with that, then I have nothing further. And I just want to thank staff for their excellent work on this. Thank you, everyone.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. You see, I got. Next on the list is Councilwoman Mongo. Are you muted? Councilman Mongo. Okay, I'm moving on to Councilman and day house.
Speaker 4: Hello. Hello.
Speaker 2: There she is. Go ahead. Oh.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Thank you. Um, I guess I was hoping to find out the. Safer. The safety of our residents is of utmost concern to me and the safety of our residents, especially our hosts. Obviously, they can choose not to participate and not host when people come into town. But I would think that from a COVID perspective, Unhosted would be safer than the hosted. Now, I don't want to change the motion. I just think it's important. The lifeblood of a lot of these neighbors income is completely zero right now, and they are hoping that they're able to get the supplemental income or primary income in some cases back in place. And so I appreciate the balance. I also see that we've received communication, that there are already cleaning protocols that have been issued to some of the platforms limf hosts. I think this is important because right now across the region, we have first responders who are being sheltered in a lot of these platforms, vacancies during their COVID quarantine period. So they're cleaning protocols are there. I want to make sure that we keep that in mind and don't give a misunderstanding or misconception to the community. I actually think that measure w while it did provide a limit on the number of square feet that can be cleaned by a hotel, I don't think it came with specific cleaning protocols. And if it did, I would imagine that COVID would would potentially even increase those. And so I rely upon the management of those organizations to do a good job in bringing that forward in the same way that I would hope that these platforms would bring forward that work. And I say that because our staff is extremely overworked right now with COVID, it is very, very difficult for me to see additional time to be carved out for issues like this. And I appreciate Councilman Pearce's statements related to not wanting to put it on hold again. They've done so much work so far. I would just be cautious about the depth of the amount of information and what's available and the cost of that information. We often have to outsource that to vendors and consultants and that consultant. Money on those reports could be kept in-house to pay for our plumbers and our carpenters and our parks and rec staff. And so $100,000 report to me is not that high of a priority. So I guess what I would ask Councilman Pearce to do is put a financial limit on it for for it to be gathered through city resources only because when we're at the at the chopping block where we're cutting park programs and library hours. I think we all just need to work hard on pulling data from the sources that are out there and really limiting our contractors. Is that something you'd be open to? This is Pearce. Yeah, I believe there's two things that I've asked for, and this are all things that either our health department, our economic development team or development services team could provide. I appreciate that very much. I know that the city manager had previous a previous city manager often used his management consultant fund. And I just didn't want us tapping into that under any circumstance like this. I think that that kind of consultant is is really more important to be paid towards our city workers and the the the time that we need them. Next, I'd like to kind of just repeat something that Councilman Price said. I completely agree that the platforms are really responsible for telling us who that we if we tell them there is a violator. Miss Tatum, in our discussion the other day, if we tell them the following, 15 homes are in violation of our policy. Is it your understanding that the language in the ordinance today states that it would then be the time for the platform to remove them from the platform?
Speaker 2: That is that is correct. The ordinance has written with a couple of purposes in mind.
Speaker 1: If we identify an.
Speaker 2: Unregistered ACR, we can ask them to remove it and they would be obligated to do so. However, the first premise of the ordinance is that they should not put up on the website any stars that do not have a city registration number. So we have come at it in the ordinance from both directions.
Speaker 4: And then if a person were to lie with a fake registration number or type in the registration number, that's not truthful. The platform is also providing us on a regular basis some data about who is on their platform that we can verify against our own sources to let them know that there's a piece of a host that's not appropriate.
Speaker 2: That is correct, as well as the additional resources of a consultant who specializes in data mining and having, I guess, a way to check that information. So, yes, we would have that available and the ordinance calls out for that specifically.
Speaker 4: And then if a host is potentially violating the 90 days, we would possibly get a report from neighbors. And then we would, as a city, let that platform know or let multiple platforms know because they may be only doing 90 days on one platform but say 90 days on another platform. But we would let all the platforms know and then the platforms would be required to let us know how many days that facility had been rented.
Speaker 2: That is correct, because the 90 days is a 90 day limit on the unit, not on each platform.
Speaker 4: Right. So then we as a city would have to take that data in to verify. Okay. On this platform, they did 50 days and on that platform they did 50 days. So thus they're in violation. And then we would then notify the platform that they are in violation of the city policy and they need to be taken down for the remainder of the year. Or would they lose their permit?
Speaker 2: They if they violate or exceed the 90 days and we can document that they would indeed be cited for a violation and that would count as one of the three violations that they're allowed before they would proceed to the revocation step for the as to our license.
Speaker 0: Just before we continue, I. I think that there's maybe a crickets or maybe someone's outside. Diane. The crickets are really loud.
Speaker 4: Oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 0: It's okay.
Speaker 4: It's the baby's inside asleep, though. And when I talk, I'll wake her up.
Speaker 0: Well, we'll take have as the sounds of the fifth district.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 0: I just want to make sure that that was. Maybe that was catwoman's life. Just everyone else's muted. That's what those are. That sound is. Ah, crickets. So that's fine, you know, really.
Speaker 4: Crickets. Thank you. And then just to provide some additional clarity and. When? If. If we pass this tonight, it will come back for second reading and then implementation will start in six months from the second reading.
Speaker 3: With.
Speaker 4: Once that implementation happens.
Speaker 2: Then the.
Speaker 4: Unhosted. Right after that it sounded like a council in Pearce added in an additional vote to the council or something, because I get some clarity on that. Yes. Councilmember Mungo. The motion that I made says that staff need to do a report with. In six months. And at that time the council would vote on what would be appropriate for non hosted stars. And the reason for that is that this entire ACR policy was crafted when we were in a very different economic situation and a very different situation with our hospitality industry. And so giving us some, some more tools in the toolbox before we decided on what that appropriate number is. So yes. Oh, you're saying? I guess my concern is if we're only allowing a thousand citywide and we're only started starting with. Posted. Theoretically, all 1000 spots could be filled by hosted. Is that correct? That is not correct. Okay. Help me. Posted is on unlimited. It said that the number that thousand was non-votes. Got it. Okay. Thank you. That helps. This motion allows for hosted to go forward now, and there's not a limit on those. And then it says, let's look at the economics and then come back and then have a discussion about what what non hosted looks like. And our housing market might be very different. We have no idea what it will look like at that time. So it makes it very difficult to bring on an entirely new, quote unquote new industry to the city in a time like what we're having right now. The question would be to Mr. Modica, we have been budgeting revenue for and hosted and hosted and we've been receiving that revenue. So what is your prediction if the motion on the floor to pass in the amount of cuts we would need to make? Due to the loss in revenue of. Potential.
Speaker 2: An Unhosted.
Speaker 4: Non allowable. Airbnb, the RBA, whatever.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So that is something we want to bring back to you at the first reading when this comes back. So there's two components of it. One is the. On General Airbnb, which they had just been it been we had done the agreement and it's gone the general trend that certainly has gone down because of COVID. So that's one impact. The second is we were planning on charging the cost of the program to the thousand units for non hosted through a registration fee as well as hosted. So with the reductions the Council is making, that's going to be a smaller amount of people who are going to be paying those registration fees. So we will come back with an estimate of how we're going to do that. It will likely be a smaller enforcement type program. So we know we may not be able to do all the enforcement that was originally envisioned until we get to a larger program and we'll report back on that when this comes back.
Speaker 4: Councilman. What was the number? I'm sorry. Just one quick thing. Mr. Modica, do we know what the number was that we were projecting in those registrations in fiscal year 20?
Speaker 5: Well, 800,000 was the TOTY, I believe, or. I'm sorry. 800 stars. You're. Yeah. Lisa forward would say that under the mike. I don't think you could hear that.
Speaker 1: As part of the Fy20 budget process, we had made a conservative estimate that there would be 800 staffers registered. That was because when we were first doing our estimates, we had assumed that.
Speaker 4: Only property.
Speaker 1: Owners in the city would be allowed. But with the change to the cap.
Speaker 4: That number then did increase.
Speaker 1: But we did not change the budget estimate with the registration being $250. The total revenue budgeted for FY 20 was $200,000.
Speaker 4: Million, 200,000 and registration fees and 800 and top of which the total is split 5050 with the city. So that would be a 100,000. No, the 800 was the number of stars generating the 200,000 and.
Speaker 3: In registration fees.
Speaker 1: The estimates for total.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure what was budgeted this year. But I.
Speaker 6: Believe that.
Speaker 1: So far this year, 1.6 million has come in for FY 20.
Speaker 5: So that would be the 800,000. That would be the 800 split into the two different funds. So 800 and general fund, 800 in SAP. So that's the numbers off the top of our head will reconfirm that when this comes back.
Speaker 4: And so, Miss Pearce, are you okay that we're going to move forward the way we are now? And would you be open to the process coming back September 1st so we could still record that 200,000 of revenue before year end on the registrations? I think that there's. There's a couple of things that maybe need clarifying. One is that we're only talking about a two month period in between when hosted would be on board and the conversation would come back around on hosting. It's a two month period. It's not a long period. The second piece is that these projections and these numbers staff is giving you are based in an economic time. When our hotels were at 80% capacity, nearly 78% capacity when the economy was strong. We have a stay at home order right now. So it doesn't matter what number we say right now. These are still not deemed to be operating nonessential businesses right now. So what I'm asking for is for us to consider the economic time that we're in right now and and be able to have that conversation in six months . So I don't think that the calculations are as big as it would be if we would have made this decision in a non-covid time, which I think is why Councilmember Price and I are. You are here. And I think we we need to just move the motion as it is. I've tried to be really thoughtful about the entire process and all SDR, so I'd like us to move forward with the motion as it is, as supported by Councilmember Price and and hear what my other colleagues have to say right now.
Speaker 0: Okay. Mango. Anything else?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I'd like to finish my sentence. I'm not asking for the delay. I recognize 60 days doesn't seem like a lot, but it's a difference of ending a fiscal year upside down or right side up. And I know 200,000, $250,000 doesn't seem like a lot, but $250,000 is two or three or four plumbers. And so I recognize that this is a time and again, this is I'm not talking about the million dollars that 800,000 times plus $800,000. Those are both also a big risk of loss. But again, registration fees are a person paying a fee, even though there are no reservations. And so my ask is only not to approve the unhosted today, but just that the Unhosted presentation come back September one. A couple of things. At least you'll still be on the council if it goes into November, you won't. And I thought you'd want to still be a part of this discussion. The presentation could be September 1st. Still, a decision doesn't necessarily need to be made that day. And again, it still could be two months later. I was just asking for the presentation to come back sooner because so many things are changing so rapidly. I appreciate that. I don't think that the presentation coming back that soon will give us a full understanding of what's happened to the tourism industry or be able to provide us with the data that that I've requested in my motion. So I. Okay, well, I'll think about it. And if I feel strongly, then maybe I'll agenda it as a separate item. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman in Dallas.
Speaker 2: Aaron, I'll keep this really quick because I know that we have a lot on the agenda. I just wanted to say thank you to staff for all of their years of working on this. And thank you to all the council members who have brought this item to where it is today, especially council members Pierce and Price. Thank you very much. I think it's very important that we realize that there's going to be a lot of cuts that are being done and that in the next six months, maybe another, a lot of people will be using these short term rentals, the unhosted ones, because we are all you know, we all have to be very careful of traveling right now our, you know, just for safety reasons. So I just wanted to say support this item as is. And thank you very much for bringing it forward.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman de Haas, Councilwoman Press.
Speaker 2: Sorry. I do have one quick question, and that is I just was looking at the audience right now, and I cannot believe that I missed this. But in regards to the area that where we talked about the opt out. So on page 11. 5.77.080 since we're going to be adding some different language for the 180 days and since this is going to come back for a first reading anyway, I wanted to have some language in there that made it a little bit clearer of the fact that you need the majority of the property owners for the petition to prevail. And also, we had talked on January 21st about the fact that I wanted to make sure that those who were circulating the petitions were property owners, because one of the concerns that I have is we don't want people paying folks that don't have a vested interest in that neighborhood to be circulating petitions. So that was something that was that that was very clearly an intent of mine. So I'm wondering if Councilmember Pearce, if you're okay with them clarifying that intent, which was the intent from January 21st under somewhere under section 5.77.080 and making it clear how many votes are needed to prevail on this.
Speaker 1: Councilman Price, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Speaker 4: But I'm on.
Speaker 1: Section B of that section, page 12, line three. It talks about the petition must include the signatures, printed names and addresses of a majority of the property owners of residential real property. Does that address your concern?
Speaker 2: Yes. Okay. So that's good. I see that that wording there now. Thank you. But what about the prohibition against signature gatherers?
Speaker 3: What? Anyway.
Speaker 1: Because this.
Speaker 4: Is being done by mail gathering.
Speaker 1: Signatures.
Speaker 3: They wouldn't people.
Speaker 1: Would be stopped in the street to get the signature.
Speaker 2: And we will be it would only be by mail.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 3: Tonight.
Speaker 2: Okay. Got it. Thank you. I appreciate that. Those are two things that I wanted clarification on. So that makes sense to me. Thank you very much.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Roll call. Vote, please, on the motion.
Speaker 6: District one.
Speaker 2: I.
Speaker 3: District two.
Speaker 4: I.
Speaker 6: District three.
Speaker 2: I.
Speaker 6: District four.
Speaker 3: High District five.
Speaker 4: II.
Speaker 3: District six.
Speaker 6: District seven. I. District eight.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 6: District nine.
Speaker 3: I. Ocean carries.
Speaker 0: Thank you. All right. We have a full agenda, so I'm going to go through the next ten items we have. Should be rather quick. And then we have two items that will take a little more time because they're both a presentation. So let me go to these other items. They should go rather quickly and then we'll get to the other items. Item item 15, please.
Recommendation to declare ordinance amending Title 5, Regulation of Businesses, Trades and Professions of the Long Beach Municipal Code, by adding Chapter 5.77, related to short-term rentals, read the first time and laid over to the next regular meeting of the City Council for final reading;