Speaker 1: Councilman Ashton. Motion carries.
Speaker 0: Okay. Item 38, please.
Speaker 1: Report from Economic Development Recommendation to hire an independent jobs coordinator to work with contractors for all eligible projects under the remaining term of the Project Labor Agreement and provide any recommendations to the Joint Administrative Committee citywide.
Speaker 0: The motion of second is your public comment on this item. Seeing none. There is. I'm sorry, I thought I didn't see it. But you said councilman. Okay, there's a staff report. So, Mr. West.
Speaker 3: John Keisler.
Speaker 0: Do we have a no staff report? Councilman Pearce.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 0: We're going to go to public comment, I guess. Sounds like so if you have public comment, how many folks do I have for public comment?
Speaker 7: Just a few.
Speaker 0: Too. Too. Okay. So I have two folks here because it's closing the speakers list. Mr. Simpson.
Speaker 10: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, city council. I'll be brief. I first want to thank the city staff and you, the council, for listening to us over the last five years on what we continue to feel is a very important matter, what's being handed out to you? It's a synopsis of what I'm speaking to and I won't be long because I know it's been a long evening. But I just want to pull out a few things in terms of when we talk about the independent jobs coordinator and you continue to consider this matter as staff and as the council. Please consider what we feel. Most important things such as the issue of facilitating implementation of the hiring of local residents residing in Tier one ZIP codes. We just want to reiterate that local to us as the community that you've seen here tonight on many other areas continues to be a priority. And it continues to mean to us in definition the city of Long Beach. So to the extent that we can hire those that live and work or live and aspire to work in our community, we want to ensure that the jobs coordinator is able to work with us in the community to do so. In addition, develop and create design and market specific programs to attract targeted, disadvantaged workers. I always tell my staff, one of my greatest fears is I don't know what I don't know. And so if we can help you in any way, shape or form, advise our community that opportunities not only exist, but help them along the pathway to connect with those opportunities. We want to do that and we stand ready to assist as a community and especially as Long Beach can be, action partnership to do so. The other item is coordinate services for contractors to use in the recruitment of local residents. Again, at Long Beach can be action partnership. We have 2000 people a year coming through for life services. In fact, Mayor, you'd be pleased to know that just yesterday says for the first time as a co-location in Long Beach Community Action Partnership during the Cal Fresh program, and that was through me advocating as a Department of Public Social Service Commissioner for the County of Los Angeles that for a city our size, we need to have a presence here so we know even more people will be coming through and we want to connect. And lastly, establishing of a referral and retention tracking mechanism for those place. We just want to ensure that not only can we refer, but we can track the success or not. And if it's not, then what can we do to address those gaps that can ensure that the people in our community have a fair opportunity? A lot has been said tonight about equity and this to us as equity in a place that matters most and that's helping someone. You can't live yourself up by your bootstraps if you don't have boots. This will help people get jobs that will help them do better for their families. And that's really important to us as an agency. And I know it's important to you as the representatives of our community. So thank you for listening and thank you for reading this.
Speaker 0: Thank you very much. Next speaker, please.
Speaker 3: Good afternoon. Thank you guys for having me. My name is Eric Miller and as I've stated before and the executive director of Jobs and our mission is to provide valuable jobs. We work as third party independent jobs coordinators on multiple contracts throughout the county. Currently, we have a small construction portfolio of a little bit shorter than $7 billion. And in that process, we're able to help hundreds of people a year find opportunities for employment. And we do that through the community benefits programs that are built within place. These plays help us get folks like ex-cons, people who don't have a high school diploma. People that have come from some of the most at risk neighborhoods throughout our county, an opportunity to interview and be placed on a lucrative full time employment opportunity. With that said, we have been working really closely with the building trades and my friends John and Nick to get this place structured to do exactly what it's built to do, which is continue to improve the community. The one piece that I do want to make sure that everybody is aware of is that there is a really strong opportunity within this community benefits program to help the at risk. And there is a best practice in regards to the categorization of what disadvantage is, and I wanted to share that with you. With that said, folks that are considered disadvantaged and one of our best practices, which is the Metro play, are people that are coming from the homeless population, custodial, single parents receiving public assistance, lacking a GED or a high school diploma, having a criminal record suffering from chronic employment, emancipated foster youth, a veteran of the Afghanistan or Iraq war or have been an apprentice for less than 15% of their time within the trades. We have also made the suggestion of making folks that come directly from the LPC apprenticeship program as part of that disadvantage track. And I think that these suggestions would give this play and the community benefits program within it. The strength that we're looking for. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 0: Thank you so much. Councilmember Pearce.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 7: I want to thank a staff for your work on this. I know that it wasn't simple to get to this place, but hopefully tonight will be so. I want to support Stop's recommendations and I want to clarify that it does have an independent third party coordinator and that that third. Can you define what that third party means for us? I. Clarify that for me.
Speaker 6: John Geisler.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Good evening. Council members. In fact, Nick Shultz, our executive director for Pacific Gateway, is here tonight to talk a little bit about those definitions.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 6: So I. I apologize, Councilwoman. We were sidebar.
Speaker 2: That's okay. I can. Can you repeat the question?
Speaker 7: I can repeat and I'll repeat both my question. I'll say both of them now. I want to understand what staff's definition of a third party independent coordinator means. And I also want to understand what you guys have as disadvantage worker.
Speaker 6: So. So currently within the recommendation you are talking about independent third party jobs coordinator would be a coordinator that the city procured to work across all projects on on the play.
Speaker 7: Okay, great. I just wanted to make sure that it was very much third party, somebody that can ensure that they're working with all groups, whether it's groups that are in the audience or other ah worker center or churches that their main job is is doing that outreach and then to for targeted disadvantage worker. I think the comments the community members made around an individual prior to commencing work on the project graduated from LPC construction pre apprenticeship, tier one, tier two, zip code census tracts and the metro definition is very helpful and I wanted to know if that was something that was teased out on staff side.
Speaker 6: So so the so the definition as.
Speaker 3: As as.
Speaker 6: You're referring to it right now is, is not teased out on the staff side within our current project labor agreement, disadvantage means that you're at or below 70% of the lower standard of living as as per the federal definition or your pipeline from the Long Beach College pre apprenticeship program.
Speaker 7: Great. Thank you for that. Well, I support staff recommendations. I know you've done a lot of work at the Jack and with the building trades and with community groups. So I'll leave it to you guys to to include as much as the metro in there that we could include without it requiring to trigger anything else. I don't want to trigger anything. I just want to make sure that we get as many disadvantaged workers as possible in that pipeline. Okay. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you very much, Andrew.
Speaker 5: Yes, thank you very much. I first, Eric, I really want to. Just scream out kudos to your group, because the fact that individuals in my district, all of them feel like this is a lack of hope, I think they would have what was up here tonight and could hear this. It would give them some form of hope because the fact that most of them feel that they are all at risk and when they feel that way, that loses all hope. And tonight, you guys really hit it on the nail. You're making them feel like you do have a chance. You just need to come out and give yourself some support. Don't beat yourself down because you guys are on the right track and we're going to get this thing done. You are our brother's keeper. Thank you very much.
Speaker 0: Thank you. And counsel.
Speaker 9: I think so. I don't think we're I don't think it's necessary, I guess, to do the staff presentation. I guess it's not going to happen. So, look, this was, you know, a little contentious, the process to get here. But I'm glad that we went through that process, you know, that this recommendation went to the JAG that they were able to do, you know, evaluate these things, these three options, and then make a decision, which is all the community really wanted and which is what what you know, what we wanted. And I'm happy with the result that we get to test this out with the final two projects of the play. And as we go into the negotiation, the next play, I want to make sure that this you know, this will have some evidence of, you know, the benefit of having a local jobs coordinator that the community wants . So that's good. And then I look forward to after, you know, seeing how these two projects, these two final projects go. I think, you know, the comments that Mr. Miller lifted up about disadvantaged communities makes a lot of sense to me. The more we can connect the dots on, you know, our homeless efforts, our economic inclusion efforts, in our efforts to get people to work who need it the better. So, you know, this just makes sense. And so I'm really glad to see that we've we finally gotten to this point. So I support the recommendation.
Speaker 0: Thank you. With that, we have a motion in a second. Please cast your votes.
Recommendation to authorize City Manager, or designee, to hire an Independent Jobs Coordinator to work with contractors for all eligible projects under the remaining term of the Project Labor Agreement (PLA) and provide any recommendations to the Joint Administrative Committee (JAC); and 

Increase appropriations in the General Fund Group in the Economic Development Department by $20,000, offset by revenue from qualified PLA projects.  (Citywide)