Speaker 1: Motion carries.
Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Item next up is 26.
Speaker 1: Communication from Vice Mayor Richardson and Councilmember Arango. Recommendation to work with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Veterans Affairs Commission to develop a Veterans Affairs strategic plan that includes programs and policies designed to assist veterans in multiple capacities and build stronger connections between local veterans and the community.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Vice Mayor Richardson. Thank you. In November 2014, I was I was proud to propose the creation of a Veterans Affairs Commission, which was eventually established, approved by the city council and funded over the past year. Our office began a community wide conversation about how to better honor our Long Beach veterans. We did this in partnership with local nonprofit city fabric, who's known for their creative approach to civic engagement. We held five focus groups with over 20 veterans services organizations, 22 neighborhood leaders, and the entire Veterans Affairs Commission, and facilitated an online campaign that engaged hundreds and generated over over 45 ideas. The process resulted in a comprehensive report. Hashtag Long Beach Honors Vets that presented a number of finding the recommendations on how we can better honor our local veterans. Focused on three themes sustainability, engagement and programing. One of the main recommendations in that was to examine the feasibility of creating a strategic plan with our Veterans Affairs Commission in order for the Commission to further develop and set its direction in focus and establish priorities as a group to work on in years to come. We we envision the development of this plan to follow a similar path to the creation of our sustainability. So our Sustainable City Commission Action Plan, where city staff helps guide the process over the course of about a year and a half. So that's what we envision. This recommendation came from the community and so we want to park it there at the Veterans Affairs Commission. Obviously, anything that would this plan would have to come back to city council. We might have to go out and seek funding to conduct this plan. But I want to make sure that we just sort of close the loop on this since it came up and park it there with the commission. And so, again, similar to the way the Sustainability Commission has a sustainable, sustainable action plan. We want the Veterans Commission to have a veterans strategic plan. So and I'd like to finally just take a quick moment and encourage you to join us to attend our 2017 Veterans Day celebration. That's this Saturday, November 11th. Many of the changes that you'll see in this year's celebration are a direct result of that report as well. So we'll have food trucks and open street event. Touch a truck. Touch a truck event. We'll have a ninja style obstacle course. A lot of cool, cool things. So we hope that you can join us. So, again, that's my motion. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Okay. Price, actually. Okay. Okay. I want to go to Councilwoman Pryce and. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Sure. So I support this item. I think it's. It's really great. The only concern I have, and I'll be perfectly honest, is that and I don't know if you get the same feedback, Vice Mayor Richardson, but I know we tasked the health department with a lot. And usually when I have an item, they'll say to me, we don't have the resources or something to that effect. So have we thought about and this is a great item. I mean, who who would not propose this item? It's a great item. I'm just. Where are we ranking the work we're asking the health department to do? Because I think there are other issues we've asked them to work on that are really important facing the city like homelessness and other things like that. So if we and not that veterans aren't important, I mean, my husband's a veteran. Absolutely. But my point is, is that a something worth thinking about? Because I just I don't know if you have the same conversations with them that I do. Oh, yeah. Okay, great.
Speaker 0: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 0: Absolutely.
Speaker 6: Because sometimes because because we just also task the great economic economic development there. Apparently, they're going to be doing listening, helping with the listening tour.
Speaker 0: We gave a $40,000 to help with that.
Speaker 6: Oh, I thought, okay, that didn't go to economic development that went to health department.
Speaker 0: So they're not doing a listening tour.
Speaker 6: Oh, okay.
Speaker 0: I'm saying we're mixing up the items, but continue.
Speaker 6: Okay. Well, I think one we've called item. No, I may have misunderstood, but when we were on the listening tours item, there was something in the end about the health department conducting workshops or something. Was that not related to a listening tour?
Speaker 0: No. What we said was they have a tool. I think we're getting a little mission creep here. I'll take a borrow Nas motion, but I'll speak to it if. If it's fine, I'll say sure. The Officer Equity volunteered to help craft a tool to help facilitate the focus groups, and so that's sort of their expertize in office . Equity is a developer equity lens that's a little bit different than what we means that we traditionally go out and do engagement. The idea about economic inclusion is engaging people who typically aren't included and may be speaking to them different ways because for whatever reason what we've been doing hasn't worked. So we try to do it a little bit differently here. Just to take it back a little bit. We already have a Veterans Affairs Commission and we voted in the budget to allocate a part time position to support that that office. This motion is really about we created the vessel. We have a lot of different commissions and they always ask the question, what should we be working on? Well, I think this commission, this is sort of what came from the community to go back and say, here's what the community is asked that you work on. So I'm closing that loop to say this would be a great thing to work toward since you have a staff person and you haven't been giving any clear direction. So that's the hope here that we can give them some direction to sort of work on work on this. Now, they don't have the staffing, they don't have the funding to actually complete a sustainable or a strategic plan at this point. But our hope is maybe if they started the work, you know, the preliminary work of maybe scoping it out, discussing what should be engaged in it, maybe doing some of their own work, you know, identifying philanthropic groups who might want to fund this kind of work. I think that's the direction what we're asking them to go. So but I agree with you. The Health Department does get a lot of competing the competing demands. What I try to do is try to coordinate and don't sort of drop it. All right. On the director, but I try to coordinate with the different offices when the health department to see if there's space capacity to take on certain things. And I try to complement what they're already doing. That's the idea here. We set up the commission, we gave them a staff person, and we're complementing what they're doing. That's the hope.
Speaker 6: Okay. And I appreciate that clarification. So so just so I'm clear, you have coordinated with the health department that this this is an undertaking that they can take. It's not a right. There's no resource issue with them on this.
Speaker 0: I mean, typically, city staff will come back if there's a significant staff change so that we can figure that out. But my hope is I mean, last thing I want to do is overburden our health department, who's already overburdened. They only get only 2% of their budget comes from the general fund. I mean, you know, this we talk about this probably every three months or so it'll come up. And I do think we need to continue to fund them more. But again, this goes back to in 2014. We asked them to take a look at establishing a commission. We did then we place it in the. But they came back and said for us to adequately do this, we need a position. And so we placed that in the budget, we placed that in the budget and so they have it there. So now we're talking about a workplan similar to where I remember we did a motion asking like there was youth commission to take a look at park programs or then we did a motion asking the youth commission to look at reforming them. So it didn't require any additional consultants and additional staffing. It was more so focus your work that you're already doing on this topic. So that's the hope here. Okay. Vice Council councilmembers, if I could weigh in here, we had a lot of requests that come to us from council offices on Tuesday nights and things, which is great. So what we'll do is like after listening to how the entire council responds to a request from a council member or a group of council members, we go back and if indeed there is a fiscal impact, we certainly come back with a two from four. So we'll take we'll regroup tomorrow, Kelly. Her team, John and his team, and they'll regroup on the comments they heard on all the items tonight. And if indeed we find that, oh, here's an item that definitely is going to be out of pocket on something, we'll come back and do a two from four and stuff. But again, they're all unique. Like, as the vice mayor pointed out, numerous items. I came with a bucket of money. So those are different. But certainly we all talk internally and if we picked up a duty that's going to impact or get in the way of other core duties that we've already been assigned to do, then we'll come back with a different floor and educate everybody.
Speaker 6: And that's great, and I appreciate that. And again, I would love for us to be able to fund all of everything we ask the health department to do because it's really, really important work. So I don't want to take away from that. I just want to make sure that we're all involved in the discussion of the priorities if there are resource limitations. If they're not, it sounds like there's there's not a resource issue with this particular item. So that's fantastic. It's within the operating current operating structure. So that's great. I just want to make sure that we're we're all involved in the conversation in regards to setting priorities for how the limited resources of the Health Department are used until such time as we can fund them with more money, as I think we all, we all agree would be worthwhile so that we can work on common goals and objectives for the city. So thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilman Mongo.
Speaker 2: So I missed my original call because I had to take a quick bathroom break, but I will say that the dialog has changed a bit, so I'll change my comments as well. I want to also thank both of you for the dialog about where we're spending our resources and our time. Because I think it's really important to a a constituency. And I think that oftentimes those allocations and discussions and priorities are incremental. And when they are incremental throughout the year, I think that's what the Budget Oversight Committee has tried to, at least through our new fiscal policies, put together some sort of criteria about resource allocation, because throughout the year we might resource allocate. And when a department comes to the table and asks for resources for something, they only come if they aren't able to find the resources in their own department by repurposing. But that's not a part of our dialog. And so on. This particular item, I appreciate that you sat with the staff and I think that my comments earlier to some of our other department heads in closed session about the great work that they're doing and how they're prioritizing and making sure that the needs of this council that ultimately means the needs of the community are met. To that point, we're also going to be having some some tough discussions in the next few months. And I think that it's important that we keep all of that open and transparent. And so I know that in some of my dialogs we can be super supportive of the items. And I just want to say that I seconded this motion. I too believe in it. I think that it's important and that there does need to be a time in the next few months where we as a council talk about here are the priorities of this department overall and here's how we allocate time and resources, because those those things really represent the taxpayer dollar in every single thing that we do. And so I appreciate you being mindful of that, Councilman Price. And I know that sitting on the Budget Oversight Committee gives you a unique perspective into the details of each and every one of these decisions. And I don't want that to hinder members like Councilmember Richardson for being creative and going out there and taking a stand on things that's important. So I will be supporting this item. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Basically. RICHARDSON Thank you. And I just wanted to sort of refocus this again, veterans assets to create a to work with them to create a strategic action plan. And we have a part time Veterans Affairs Coordinator, Council member to my right, Councilman Austin asked me, hey, why is this with health department? And that actually triggered to me that maybe we should opened up by stating we have a detail, we have a, you know, a commissioners place within the department and a staff person that's within the department. I think that could have guided the conversation a bit differently. So I'll just say, you know, this is this is sort of this is a continuation of work and steps that have been that began in 2014 and that have all evolved. But it really isn't new work. It's really just continuing to focus in hone in a conversation that started in 2014 and so so again, my hope would never be to overburden the health department or any other department. But I do think they should be I mean, they should be aware when folks ask for something, we should have the ability to refer to them, to evaluate it. And the hope, again, is that in my answers, I anticipate we might be able to identify the resources to put something like this together. And I hope when when those funding that funding does become available to do a veteran strategic plan, then we can say when our commission say, Hey, I was appointed to a commission on a commissioner, say that we can say when someone asks them, what do you actually do? And they can answer the question. As a Veterans Affairs Commissioner, I prepare and approve those. The Strategic Long Beach Veterans Strategic Plan every year, every two years. That's the hope to kind of give purpose to these commission, to this commission and to these commissioners. But thanks a lot. Thank you, Councilmember Pearce.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I did just want to highlight I appreciate how anytime you bring items forward, you really work with staff ahead of time and trying to identify funding sources and partnering with the different departments. Talking about equity is hard for some people to wrap their head around and understand that it's the equity lens that's been so important to me in my life is that it's a tool that we use, no matter if it's economic development, health, veteran's, but that there is that toolkit there. And so doing that is really important. And I also want to, you know, as a previous chair of a commission in the city who really struggled to get staff to move forward with a vision on our own, it really helps to have direction from the council and city staff. Well, we all know here's our goals and here's what we're working towards. There's nothing more frustrating than being appointed to a commission. And I think. The mayor has done a fantastic job of appointing people that are not just on commissions for their name, but really want to roll up their sleeves and do the work. So I again support you for making sure that there's actually a work plan in place and doing that together with the commission and the community . So thank you again for another wonderful item. Vice Mayor It's what, what do we call it? Rex Night. What is it? The Rex Show. I love it. Rex Fest. That's a good job.
Speaker 0: Thank you, councilman orson.
Speaker 3: Okay, I am. I'm in support of this item because I'm in contact with and meet with my veterans commissioner quite frequently comes to all of our community events, but also has my ear and has expressed frustrations with the commission in terms of direction and scope. And so I'm supportive of creating a commission and strategic plan that hoped with and hopes to give the Veterans Commission a better direction, which I think this this does. And so I'm happy to support that. Not clear.
Speaker 0: Why.
Speaker 3: And how this is connected to equity in Office of Equity. I don't think it is.
Speaker 0: It's not.
Speaker 3: Okay. It's. This is about our veterans. Yeah. So the veteran. Okay. Thank you. I'm supportive.
Speaker 0: Katie, public comment. CNN, please cast your vote.
Recommendation to request City Manager to work with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Veterans Affairs Commission to develop a Veterans Affairs Strategic Plan that includes programs and policies designed to assist veterans in multiple capacities and build stronger connections between local veterans and the community.