City Council - Regular Meeting

Great.

Welcome, everybody. I'd like to call to order our city council regular adjourned meeting of 03/03/2026. I'd to begin with a pledge to the flag. I'd like to invite down to Zoe Nichols of Maricosa High School.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God with liberty with liberty and

justice for all. Thank you.

You. Zoe, I'd like to invite your principal down, maybe to explain a little bit about why you were selected to lead us in the pledge, but you did that beautifully.

Hi. Good evening, everyone. Jennifer Winn, proud principal at MiraCosta High School. I had the distinct pleasure to be able to nominate a student to come and deliver the pledge to the city of Manhattan Beach this evening. And it was a no brainer to select Zoe Nichols.

And if you don't know, she recently delivered a TEDx talk, at Costa in November, and it was selected as one of the high editor's picks, and you'll be able to see it publicized hopefully very soon. But specifically, she wasn't nominated for her TEDx talk. She was nominated because of who she is as a student and as a human being. She's part of our different committees on campus such as our EDSJI committee and our No Place for Hate. Along with all of her academic studies that she loads her schedule for, Zoe is just a completely wonderful, thoughtful, intentional, kind person.

And I could not think of anyone else who fit this role more than Zoe. And I'm going to miss her when she graduates this year, but so grateful to have been able to experience my time with her and the wonderful positive interactions that she's had with all our staff and our students. So congratulations, Zoe. Well done.

Zoe, I can echo many of those comments based on conversations we've had because you've been involved in Leadership Manhattan Beach and many other initiatives in the community. What is your current greatest interest besides studying, which I know you do a bit of?

I do love reading. I'm super into some religious satire, super funny, as well as Twilight. I'm a huge Twilight fan. But, yeah, I would say reading is my favorite pasta.

Fantastic. Thank you for leading us in the pledge of the flag on behalf of all our colleagues and have our colleagues come down. And then we get to present you with proclamation and, wait for it, a city pin. So we're not putting our chairs back because we are going to do a roll call first and then we're going to move on to our ceremonial calendar. Can I have a roll call please?

Councilmember Tarney? Here. Councilmember Sherrillian?

Here.

Councilmember Howarth? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Franklin? Here. Mayor Lesser?

Here. And now we move on to our ceremonial calendar. We have one item, which is presentation of a proclamation declaring March 2026 as international long COVID awareness date. Can we have with us doctor Elham Raker? Doctor. Raker is a resident and she can describe how long haul COVID has impacted her both in her practice, but more particularly her family.

Hi. Thank you. Thank you for having me and agreeing to this proclamation. Long COVID has been a big part of our lives. Sorry.

Today was a particularly tough day. My daughter got long COVID at the age of 12, and she's been infected with the virus twice, which has severely affected her. I'm just gonna go through some slides to just give you some stats. Thank you. So, currently, these stats, we have to look with a grain of salt because it's really hard to estimate given how hard it is to diagnose.

We don't really have any kind of perfect testing to know who has long COVID or not. Given the fact that also most people aren't testing for COVID anymore. So if you do become ill with these symptoms, you may not associate it with a COVID infection, which is one of the criteria. So it's estimated about sixty seven percent of The US adults, so that's about twenty million people in The US. More than one in five infected adults develop persistent symptoms, and it's recognized under the ADA.

Fatigue, cognitive function, dysautonomia, which many people are starting to hear something called POTS, postural ortho orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. You stand up, your heart rate stays elevated, it doesn't respond like it should be, and that comes with a lot of other disabilities. So these are kind of the the things that we're seeing coming up more and more. Pediatric long COVID. So one to five one to five percent, although, again, I do think these could be much higher, and we're just not catching all of it, unfortunately.

In pediatrics, fatigue, headache, abdominal pain, dizziness, and brain fog are very common. In The UK, which they're actually a little bit ahead of this in long COVID, maybe they got hit sooner, but they've been studying it a bit longer. One in twenty children still symptomatic at eight to twelve weeks, and I would say that's probably at a year or two we're still seeing some symptoms. For children, of course, the main issue is school and being able to attend school, or if they can't attend school, how we can accommodate them. So five zero four plans or IEPs are definitely needed.

This is a recent JAMA article. It talks about a lot of the symptoms by age, and in this article, they found that it's about six million kids in The US affected, which makes it the more the most common chronic illness above asthma in The US. So as we see, long COVID is causing prolonged abscesses in school. Being on the board of the medical advisory committee for MBUSD, we definitely talk about more kids getting sick, more kids, you know, needing more help. The POTS diagnosis has come up.

Parents have to reduce their work hours so that they can be there for their kids. Accommodations are beyond important, the flexibility, good ventilation at schools. And, unfortunately, in LA, you would think we'd have good access to pediatric clinics, but there isn't any really for long COVID. So kids in the Western US are really stuck trying to find where to go. So this is a big issue that I'm really glad that our city is recognizing. LA County is recognizing it for the first time. So I think awareness is gonna make a big difference for how we can help all these people get help that they need.

Doctor, if you wanted to say anything to those that might be watching this who might suspect that their symptoms of long COVID, is there a general or emerging best practice on what the recommendation would be?

There is. There's places like the Bateman Hort Center and Sinai Core that have come up with best best practices, and that's a good place to look. Always check with your pediatrician. We always hope that they start learning more about it and hopefully can guide you. I'd say the things with kids that's really tough is it's waxing and waning when kids can one day kids can go to school, the next day they can't.

We start to think about school avoidance. But if it's something new and you really think something's going on, please pursue it. You know your kids best and make sure you advocate for them. It's not clear cut, so it's really hard for many parents and unfortunately many physicians as well.

Thank you, doctor. Thank you for being here. We have a proclamation, which I will give to you, and it's hardly something we're celebrating. But I appreciate you for bringing this to the community's attention. So thank you.

Thank you for being here. If you want to get a picture with our We now move on to item number e, the approval of the agenda, waiver of full reading of ordinances. At first, I wanted to indicate that at the request at a request that's been suggestion that we move item number 10 which is the emergency notification item to the first item of general business. So we would just go one place ahead without objection that would be part of the motion for approving the agenda. Also, there any council members that would like to pull items?

Yes. Mayor, I'd like to pull number seven.

Okay. Is there a motion to prove? There is by council member with a second by mayor pretend Franklin. Call for the question.

So many motions. Okay.

Motion passes five-zero.

Okay. We now move on to City Council and Community Organization announcements and upcoming events. This is an opportunity for members of the public to provide a one minute announcement. And if you would like to provide information from your seat, please inform the city clerk or raise your hand, and we can bring a microphone to you. So for those that would like to make a community announcement, please feel free to come down to

for the beautiful city Manhattan Beach. I just wanted to come and say thank you to Kelly from the Downtown Business Professional Association. She allowed me to table at last week's farmers market. I thought I'd just go hand out some home organic buckets, But I was really amazed at the engagement that our residents came with and the questions and being able to answer them and assist them in a lot of ways. We gave out 12 home organic pails. That's a big success for something that's really just for home use. So thank you to Kelly. Thank you for your time. God bless. Have a great night.

Thank you.

Hello. Cassandra with the Manhattan Beach Library. I just wanted to promote one of our upcoming events, which is going to be an author talk from the writer of OtoNormal's monster monster tin. She's got a very interesting event. So it's gonna be Saturday, March 14 from eleven to twelve. But what's fun about it is it's not just an author talk. The illustrator will be there as well and is gonna teach kids some doodles. And then there will also be the musical composer from the audio book that's gonna sample some of the songs and the music and the animal noises in it and, like, test the kids on it as well. So it should be a good time. Saturday, March 14, eleven to twelve.

We'll also be participating in the Manhattan Beach Chamber of Commerce Ready, Set, Grow on Sunday, March 15 from nine to twelve. It'll be out on the patio of the library, and it'll be a lot of organizations that is geared towards preschoolers. So you can get a lot of great information from that as well. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi. Good evening, Mayor Lesser and members of the City Council. I'm Gil Gamboa, your city engineer, and I'm here tonight to announce the upcoming groundbreaking ceremony for the 28th Street storm drain infiltration project, which will take place at 11AM on Thursday, March 5 this week. The ceremony will be held at the Northeast Corner of Mahan Avenue and 26th Street. This ceremonial event marks the official launch of the construction phase as we prepare to begin construction mobilization at the end of the month.

So in the coming weeks, the public will begin to see preliminary activities, including site preparation, temporary construction traffic striping, installation of the project signage and construction fencing and other typical construction mobilization will follow as we move closer to active construction. Staff will also hold a community outreach meeting on Thursday, March 19 from 07:30 to 08:30PM at the Joslyn Center. And then during that meeting, we will review construction schedule, discuss anticipated activities and impacts and then during that are going to occur during the first phase of the work and then answer any questions from residents and stakeholders. So we encourage residents and interested parties to stay informed by visiting the project webpage and by following the city's social media channels for ongoing updates during construction. More information can be found at www.manbeach.gov/infiltrationproject and the project manager is Eddie Peck, who can be reached at epechmahanbeach dot gov.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kim. Other members of the public in chambers, would you like to come down and make a community announcement? We'll wait for public comment to make an announcement. Public comment? Okay. In which case, Brianna, is anybody on Zoom that would like to make a public comment? Actually, community announcement of an upcoming event.

Yes, we have Lisa.

Good evening, mayor Lesser in Manhattan Beach City Council. Can you hear me okay?

We can. Please proceed.

Great. Okay. My name is Lisa Coppage, and I'm one of the four founders of Grades of Green. Grades of Green is an environmental education nonprofit founded in the Manhattan Beach Unified School District almost twenty years ago. The mission is to inspire kids and the broader school community to care for the environment.

And this is what brings me to public comment tonight. Grades of Green has submitted a proposal to the city to jointly work together for a community tree planting in honor of Earth Day and Arbor Day. The event is proposed to be held on Saturday, April 18, from ten to 1PM to plant eight trees, one for each school on the Veterans Parkway across from Jocelyn Centre. Thank you to the City Council for dedicating staff time to working on this tree planting event. I have met with both the urban forester, Ernest Aria, and the sustainability manager, Brittany Cokey.

Ernest has located eight spots on Veterans Parkway in the type of tree, which is a beautiful California sycamore. I want to also thank the council for voting unanimously on the climate action and adaption plan, the cat plan. It is well written and is very

important for our city

to start planning for climate change for the next ten, twenty, and thirty years. This is incredible leadership. Thank you.

Thank you.

A fun fact.

Did you know that in

the cat plan, trees are mentioned over a 150 times? Did you know the words education and educate are in there 55 times?

Excuse me, Lisa. So actually, this is the community announcement. We're about upcoming events, but you've made a great presentation. And if you'd like, you have another opportunity to speak, if you'd like, during public comment.

Okay. Finish all. Sorry. I didn't realize this was the preamble to this. Okay. Thanks.

Thank you. Are there any other members of the public on Zoom that would like to participate in making a public comment? Excuse me. See, I've made the mistake myself. A community announcement, so that's why that might have been confusing.

No further requests on Zoom.

Alright. Colleagues, any announcements?

Yes, Mayor.

Mayor Patim Franklin.

Thank you. So once again, I want to thank American Martyrs fifth grade class. I believe they're studies social studies. And they each one of them made these wonderful handmade cards to the council members here, thanking them for, you know, the work that we do, and it's just a terrific visual sign of children participating in the process. So thank you to those students and their parents.

There was one, however, who said that he wanted us to make rad bike ebikes legal. So a little bit of push in there. But speaking about ebikes, I have another important community announcement is I was at the bike store the other day and there was an announcement there that they had posted of a battery recall, for, for, the same rad type of, sorry, it's just a little hard to read here, for the rad power bikes power bikes with the numbers RPDash1304 and HLRPS1304. So those batteries are being recalled because of spontaneous fire issues when they are being charged. So once again, exercise safe e bike battery charging procedures.

Try to do it outside if it's at all possible or a place where if there is a spontaneous fire that it can be controlled a little bit more. But I I think the city manager, Mirzikhanian, are we gonna be posting this somewhere in our social media?

Yes. We're working on posting them on our fire socials.

Okay. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you, mayor.

Council member Hobart?

Well, I would ask actually that we posted on all of our entire social because I don't necessarily get fire socials, but I get from the city. And I know that we have in the past three years had a fire that started because of an ebike battery. So yeah, thank you. Any

other council If not I first wanted to acknowledge and say thank you mayor Pretem, for bringing up the mayor. The cards that we received from American Martyrs, I as mayor, I sent a thank you note, but you really have to see these. These are really adorable, creative, thoughtful, personalized to each of us from their class. It may have been a class assignment. Just saying. But nonetheless, the thoughtfulness of the cards is very much appreciated. I also wanted to announce my upcoming coffee with the mayor. This coming Friday, March 6 at 9AM at the Metlocks Plaza, it would be my monthly meeting with residents to talk about whatever you wanna talk about. It could be a specific issue. It could be one of the policy issue that we're addressing as a city.

I look forward to engaging with residents. These have been really enjoyable and great interactions so far. So please come on down Friday, March 6, 9AM at Benelux Plaza. Alright. With that, we'll now move on to public comments.

This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address an item that's within the subject matter jurisdiction of the city for up to three minutes. If you want to speak on an item that's on our agenda, we ask that you either speak now or when the item is called, but not both times. If you would like for member of our staff to bring a microphone to you in your seat, please just raise your hand or come to our city clerk and we can bring you a microphone. So with that members of the public would you like to make public comment?

Please.

Yes, please.

Good evening, mayor Lester and council. My

name

is JT Kaplan, and I'm a senior at Maricosta. Also in council chambers with me are about 15 other members of our cross country team. We are here tonight to invite the Manhattan Beach community to participate in the epilepsy walk on March 14, either in person at the Rose Bowl or as a virtual walker in honor of our inspiring cross country teammate and friend, Ryan James. Ryan was in his first month at UCLA when he had a breakthrough seizure in his sleep, which resulted in sudden unexpected death and epilepsy or SUDEP. Ryan was someone who truly made everyone smile around him.

His contributions to the many organizations and teams that he was a part of truly brought life to light to other people's lives. And especially on the cross country team, his ability to put others before himself and really foster a supportive community are something that we'll remember for years to come. And even though Ryan is sadly no longer with us, his legacy remains, and it is powerful. Even today, my teammates, and I speak for both myself and the rest of the Cross Country team when I say every day, we strive to be more like Ryan and to exemplify all the amazing characteristics that made him so special. And now, joining and being a part of his legacy is easy when you can join the team run for Ryan.

Our team page can be found at give.classy.org/runforryan. Once again, if you wanna write it down or make note of it, our team name is give.classy.org/runforryan. Epilepsy is the fourth most common neurological disorder in the world. If you have epilepsy, surges of electrical activity in your brain can cause recurring seizures. In The US, about three point four million people have epilepsy.

About one out of every a thousand people with epilepsy die from SUDEP each year, including our good friend Ryan. There has been some progress with epilepsy research, but there is much more work to be done. All money raised at the Epilepsy Walk goes to the Epilepsy Foundation Los Angeles, which is a resource for families impacted by epilepsy. We really hope that the Manhattan Beach community members will join Team Run for Ryan in memory of our Maricosta cross country teammate and friend, Ryan James. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mister Mayor.

Thank you to members of the team for coming down. Council member Tarne?

JT can sorry. Can you come back down? I have a question for you. If someone is unable to physically show up to do the walk that day, can they still participate?

Yes. It's a you can either register to be an in person walker or a virtual walker, and both signing up for either one is very helpful. And if you can't make it in person, we'd really appreciate if you can sign up to be a virtual walker.

Thank you. And you can donate, right? Just with the even if you're not

Yes.

Sorry. We're trying to coach you in some way.

Please sign up to be a virtual walker because that donation really helps.

Your team name, is it Run4Ryan or?

Yep. Team name Run4Ryan. Okay.

Great. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you to all of you for coming down tonight. Thanks for your remarks. Are there any other members of the public in chambers that would like to make public comment this evening?

Good evening, mayor, mayor pro tem, city council members, city officials, and community members. My name is John Sparra.

I'm the

CEO for USA Volleyball. I came here to speak today to talk about the city of Manhattan Beach's integration into the LA Olympics and through the sport of volleyball. It has come to my attention that there's not a current operating agreement for the Manhattan Beach Open, and I'd like to propose that USA Volleyball acts as the sole operator of this iconic event with partnership with the city. I have a brief deck here to go through. As you know, you have an incredible event that we often within the volleyball community refer to as the Wimbledon of the sport. As a non profit, our strategic intent would be to come in and to elevate this equity on a global stage, not extract value from it. Next slide.

I'm sorry, can I I've not seen the deck before, I'm just curious how many slides do you have?

Seven, it's real brief and I can be within three minutes.

Usually we have pre approval of the deck like what has been shown before, if there's not objection, Mr. Seifman? Mayor, we did approve

Okay. The

is news to me. And if there's no objection, Thank counsel, you may

you. As an NGB, our purpose is, of course, to increase access to our sport. So with this in mind, we guarantee local access and we also are in the mission to serve kids and we believe youth sports has an incredible impact on the development of our young people, so we would ensure a deep youth integration. We understand this is a neighborhood event, we take care to ensure the community felt like it was appropriate scale and to leave a lasting legacy of impact. Thank you.

You can refer to this slide later, but this is what success looks like for us, predictable execution, transparent governance and of course, integration into the Olympic qualification process on the front end. Community outcomes are youth clinics and volunteer engagement, of course, sustainability. Business outcomes are up to the city to determine the scale at which you'd want to go here. We could certainly make it global and expand. If you wanted to keep it local and community, we can certainly do that within our business model, and of course, elite competition and athlete services.

As the national governing body, I think it's most important to communicate with this slide that we run elite level events. As one Olympic partner told us, we run three events the size of the Winter Olympics three times a month for eight months of the year, so we can run high level events. And we wanted to let you know that we were very stable financially. In LA twenty eight, it will actually be our one hundredth year anniversary, and what I wanted to share with you as a non profit, our revenues. So this is our total ten year trends, and we've been profitable for the last nine years straight.

And there's an opportunity for significant global alignment, not only on the front end as we look to integrate Manhattan Beach Open into the Olympic qualification process, but on the back end. It turns out that the schedule fits so that the week after the Olympic Games would be the Manhattan Beach Open, so it could be a post Olympic celebration of the Olympic moment. And finally, we seek a multiyear agreement starting in 2027, where we ensure the City Council has complete visibility and strategic control over this crown jewel. I'm available to answer any questions you may have as I know this is a big event for the city.

Think not at this time. Obviously, will be a contract process, assume, but thank you for making your presentation.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Other public comments?

Good evening, mayor Lesser and members of the council and staff. I'm here tonight to speak publicly about the October 2 incident investigation findings at the Chevron El Segundo refinery. If I may, I'd like to ask for your permission to use our shared time for a total of approximately six minutes to Thank you. My name is Brian Stock, and I am the director for the Chevron El Segundo Refinery. I'm joined tonight by my colleague, Jessica Vincent.

As you'll recall, at approximately 09:31PM on the evening of 10/02/2025, there was a loss of containment and fire in the isomax hydroprocessing unit at the Southeast corner of the Chevron facility. The isomax is one of eight primary processing units that produces jet fuel in the refinery. For those who witnessed the fire, the flames that night were bright and tall. We've now learned that the failure was isolated to one location and one component. What residents would have seen that night was a combination of flame from the single fire and flames from our safety flares, which were activated that night, acting as they should to safely depressure the plant.

Within forty five seconds, our automated safety shutdown systems were activated, and Chevron response teams, including our refinery fire department alongside El Segundo and Manhattan Beach fire departments, worked together to safely extinguish the fire by approximately 7AM the next morning. Thankfully, nobody was seriously injured. Shortly after that incident on October 2, I committed to you that I would share what happened as soon as the investigation was complete. Chevron's internal investigation was just recently completed, and, it was completed by individual subject matters experts from around the company globally. Kalosia's investigation report, is expected to be released soon.

I'm here in front of you tonight to follow through on my commitment to provide you with immediate transparency with what we know and to tell you what actions we are taking. Following the investigation, we now know that a localized section of piping if you could advance to the next slide, please. I'm sorry. We now know that a localized section of piping at the top of one of the isomax furnaces became thin and ultimately failed. This was due to a mechanism called hydrogen free low sulfur sulfidation corrosion.

The slide that you see on the monitor shows a portion of the piping circuit at the top of the isomax furnace. The green arrows show the direction that the fluid flows when the furnace is in operation. The red star identifies the location where the failure occurred, and the area in yellow identifies the closest location where we were conducting routine inspections for piping thickness. This is just three feet away from the failure location, and the piping was okay at that location. The investigation report indicates that the failure was due to a combination of this very specific type of corrosion plus the geometry where the flow moves from one piece of piping into another piece of piping causing increased velocity and turbulence at that location.

What's important is that today, we know the cause of the failure, and we know how to prevent it from happening again. I'd like to assure you that the learnings from this incident are already being shared and applied across our refinery and throughout Chevron's global operations, and this will become an industry learning as well. I'd also like to share with you that we've assessed and inspected all other furnaces in the refinery that operate under similar conditions. We have not detected concerns at any other locations. We have replaced this failed piping with alloy piping that is more resistant to this type of corrosion, and we have also added these inspection locations to our inspection program going forward, so we will be monitoring them.

We're also looking at the application of advanced technologies, such as AI, to help processes more robust and less human dependent. We recently completed our pre startup safety review at the Isomax unit, and Cal Losche has endorsed that review. We're now in the early stages of restarting the isomax plant carefully, methodically, and safely. We expect it will take some time for the isomax to be fully operational. When I provided an update to the council last year, I also committed to reviewing our communication effectiveness during the night of the incident, and I committed to making the necessary improvements.

I'm really pleased to share with you that since the day of the incident, we have worked in partnership with the city of El Segundo and in coordination with the city of Manhattan Beach to further enhance community alerting and emergency notification systems that will provide, timely, actionable guidance in the event of an incident through the integration of multiple communication channels. Chevron has committed to fully fund the personnel, equipment, and services required to support the community alerting system. I hope that by coming before you tonight, I have provided some transparency and some answers to the questions and concerns you may have. I wanna reiterate that our top priority is the safety of our employees, our contract workforce, and our community. And I appreciate your time this evening, and I look forward to the opportunity to restore Chevron's good neighbor status.

On a personal note, I didn't have the good fortune of knowing Ryan, but I'm incredibly impressed to see that his team showed up for him tonight.

Thank you. Thank you. I have just one question, and that is if members of the public do have questions, more follow-up information than what was just presented, how can they get that information? Is there a contact person, or will there be some information posted on the website of the refinery? Where can people go for more information?

Yeah. Tonight is the first public comment. We will provide a summary statement to the council that you can make available to people.

Is there a contact person at Chevron that members of the public?

Yes. Our corporate affairs adviser, Jeff Wilson, would be the primary contact for that information. Thank

you.

Thank you.

Are there any other public comments in chamber? Seeing none, Brianna, is anybody on Zoom?

Yes. We have Lisa Koppage.

Part two. Hey.

Hi. Take two. Sorry. I jumped the gun there. Do you guys want me where do you want me to start where I stopped?

Wherever you would like to. You have three minutes.

Okay. So I was thanking you for the passing unanimously the climate action adaption plan, and I mentioned that there's a fun fact that there's trees are mentioned over a 150 times in the cap plan, and education and educate are in there 55 times. So the community tree planting opportunity will not only bring the community together to celebrate the greatness mints Manhattan Beach City has with a Manhattan Beach tree ordinance and a staff with the urban forester and sustainability manager. I believe this event will educate the kids, the parents, and the community at large with a hands on educational experience, supporting the importance of trees and the role in our city. I wanna mention that I also been social socializing this idea with the MBUSD Green and Garden team members led by superintendent doctor Bose.

And I've seen overwhelming support from all of them, including Nick Days, Penny Camp Garden Club adult leader with 12 members already signed up, and Vanessa Beer, the Robinson Green Club adult leader who is a green club made of twelve fourth and fifth grade members ready to go, and the American Martyrs Student Council Safety and Ecology student leader who's ready to plant. I could go on with the list, though across the district, all the schools look forward to this event. Thank you, council, for your ongoing support and environmental stewardship. I wanna also recommend that the city of Manhattan Beach applies for the Tree City USA nomination as it would be great to proclaim this honor at the tree planting as the city meets all the four requirements to apply for this. And lastly, I want to put a quick recommendation for the plastic bag ordinance that's also on the agenda tonight, which I recommend please vote for option a to continue to have Manhattan Beach be a leader in environmental steward for our kids and their future.

That's all I have. Do you have any questions?

No. Thank you. Thank you, Lisa, for your advocacy and your engagement in this. Any other questions? Thank you. Any other Okay.

Thank you.

Members of the public who care to comment on Zoom, Brianna?

No further requests on Zoom.

Great. I will then close public comment. And we now move on to item h, our consent calendar. Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar with the exception of item number seven?

So moved.

Motion by council member Horford with a second by council member Shirley and call for question.

Motion passes five zero.

We now move on to item I. The item is removed from the consent calendar and that first item is item number seven, which is consideration of an Earth Day community tree planting event. This is pulled by council member Charade.

Thank you, your honor. I feel like Lisa three point o here. But I pulled this item because I'm I'm just really proud of the the way that this process worked that Grades of Green approached us and and through our process through council, we moved it along rapidly because there was an end date with Earth Day and we wanted to get this done. So so kudos to staff for moving through this process so well that we can actually do this. I'll be present that day.

I hope everyone else is as well. This is this is a big deal. But I just wanted to ask the community development director or, you know, Britney for environmental programs if they wanted to say any additional words. I think Lisa articulated it really well. There's anything else you want to add, maybe reiterate the time because I know it was supposed to be April 25, but it's the eighteenth. Maybe you can kind of just give a quick update on the time since you have an audience.

I'm sure. No. Britney Coker Moen, our environmental programs manager can provide Good some brief

evening, Mayor Lesser, Mayor Pro Tem, members of the council. My name is Britney environmental programs administrator. Just to bring light to some of the details for the proposed event that is on the consent calendar, we're proposing the Earth Day community tree planting for Saturday, April 18. This is the Saturday before Earth Day. We're proposing from 10AM to 1PM.

In addition to the tree planting, which Lisa mentioned, we'll have groups of students from all eight schools, including American Martyrs Catholic School. The general public is also welcome to join. Folks will be there. They will get assigned to a various group that will also be led by the students, and we hope to plant eight trees on the Veterans Parkway in between 15th and 18th, next to the Veterans Memorial across from the Jocelyn Center and Live Oak Park. And we'll also have community booths, tables, environmental resources. So if you're not interested in planting a tree for some reason, you can still come out, celebrate Earth Day with us and take advantage of all the resources and education that we'll have there.

Great. Thank you. Any further questions?

Just a quick question. Are you on all the trees, are you going to be phasing those in? Are they going to be between ten and one or is the goal to start it at ten or eleven and then of get them all done at the same time?

Yes. So right now the plan is because we have so many schools interested, they will all be planted simultaneously. We would kick off the event in part after opening remarks with instructions on how to plant the trees. We have Ernest, our urban forester, who will be there as well. We anticipate having either Ernest, a staff person or a member from Grades of Green at each tree site with additional instructions guiding those groups. So they will happen simultaneously, but each group will have support and guidance on what to do and how to get that tree into the ground.

Great. Thank you. Great. Councilmember Howell.

Yeah. Britney, since you're standing up there, of course, love this idea. Lisa mentioned Tree City USA and that we already meet all the, you know, metrics. What would it take to get that going?

That is correct. Earnest to my knowledge has actually started the application. So we are on our way. As far as I know, we're just plugging through and submitting what we need and hopefully we can get that in time for the event.

Great. Thank you.

Great. Any other questions? Seeing none. Thank you.

Thank you.

Any members of the public in chambers that care to comment on this item? Seeing none, Brianna, is anybody on Zoom that would like to comment on this?

No request on Zoom.

So I have remarks

and I've made a motion and my

remarks I'm sorry. We have a late raise hand. We have DNB.

You may proceed.

Hi. Mayor Lesser and members of the city council, this is Diane Wallace. I think this is a great idea to plant trees, but based on the information that came from the Palisades fire and the Eaton fire, they're recommending that we not plant sycamore or melaleuca trees because they have a high oil content and tend to catch on fire. And I'm just wondering if grades of green might be able to select a different tree. Just just an idea. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Any other members of the public?

No further requests on Zoom.

Alright. In which case I'll close public comment and ask if there is a representative of public works or community development or Britney who can address the question about this tree selection.

Since Ernest is here.

Honorable Mayor, Mayor Portin, City Council, thank you for the opportunity to address any issues or questions that you might have. The Sycamore tree is a native, California native, the area that we're planting it in is turf, so it's irrigated three, a minimum three times a week. Fire is not a consideration, it's just not even if we were in the middle of a forest, sure, I would think about that, but it's not even an issue.

Okay. Thank you. Any other questions?

May I ask Yes. Hi. So we've from time to time had complaints from neighbors that live across from the Veterans Parkway that the trees that were planted like this are now obstructing views of the ocean and the like. Sycamores grow rather high. I mean, we going to be able to trim these trees accordingly to the fact that if there was a view and now it's obscure, can we manage that?

We don't currently have a view ordinance. The only view ordinance that we do have is on the walk streets. And so it's not the idea behind the urban forest master plan is to increase canopy density in the city. Tree height is part of canopy density. So it's it's something that it's it's not no. No. Honestly, I don't.

Okay. I'm trying to picture that area.

It's just north of the Veterans Parkway Memorial, the Veterans Memorial at 15th. Mhmm. It's and it's between 15th Street and 18th Street crosswalk area.

Okay. Is it more on the to the east of the path? Or

There'll be trees. I believe four trees, five trees on the east of the path. And on the west of the path, there'll be three trees.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Okay.

Thank you. Any other counsel, comments or questions? If not, for my comments, I wanted to thank Grades of Greenham, particularly miss Kopich for approaching me initially to try and come up with some sort of community centric event that engages our young people in planting, in trees, in community building, and trying to work with staff all through the process, and more particularly to go through council to see if there were budgetary resources available for staff, and I think they've really done that and I thank them for their efforts here. So if there's no further comments or questions, I've made a motion to approve the Earth Day community tree planting event and I see that has been seconded by council Charmaine. Call for the question.

Thank you. You. Can we teach them

about Motion passes five zero.

Thank you. Think Mayor Pro Tem has just quipped, is there a way to ask if we can teach them about raking leaves as well? I don't think that's part of the scope of this particular program, but it could be a future event. Okay. With that then, we will now move on to our public hearings, and that would be item j. And the first and only item is item number eight, conduct a public hearing for the cons to consider the introduction of an ordinance amending sections of the Manhattan Beach Municipal Code chapter 6.01, business licensing regulations and provide direction on the business license modernization plan.

Thank you for the introduction. My name is Libby Bretthorf, finance director. And I'd also like to introduce a few others here with me tonight, including Emmy Rosanna, our financial services manager, who will be sharing some of the presentation with me. And then we also have Matt Slenth of Collentino Highsmith and Watley, who has been working with us on the ordinance that's included tonight as well as some other guidance for legal assistance. But also to get started on tonight's item, I just wanted to share that it truly has been a collaborative process, including our internal city staff, but also with some additional external partners as well.

For staff members who assisted with the project, we have John Albee, Josh Grady and Tony Page. And these are truly our subject matter experts on our business license program and what's written into our current code. But also, I'd like to call them our experts on our customer service questions, complaints, the positive and negative feedback that we get every year through the business license renewal process. So we really relied on their feedback as we guided the changes that we're presenting here tonight. But I'd also like to thank Jill Lampkin representing the Chamber and North Manhattan Beach Business and Professional Association, as well as Kelly Straumann from the Downtown Business and Professional Association, for meeting with our team early on and providing their feedback, and we look forward to continuing this partnership, as we move along this project in the months to come.

Alright. So our presentation tonight will first provide some background and history on business licensing in general, and then we'll share some information on what we're calling our business license tax modernization plan, and including some potential fiscal impacts and the goals and priorities that we're trying to achieve through this process. Our immediate goal tonight with the public hearing is to introduce ordinance number 26 dash five, which amends sections of municipal code chapter 6.01 with some administrative cleanup and other clarifying language. Now we'll conclude the presentation with a tentative timeline and public outreach plan for the second phase of our modernization efforts, for our business license tax code. So just as some background, the per well, I was asked we were asked in the meeting, what is the purpose of a business license tax?

So we wanted to start there. So the purpose of business license taxes are to ensure that one, businesses comply with local regulations and two, they also contribute to our public services because they also benefit, from our city services, including our clean and well maintained streets and sidewalks, as well as our safe and secure community. So our our excellent city services contribute to the overall quality of life and atmosphere that makes this community so attractive for business owners to operate and residents to live and visitors to to come visit. So the other side to that coin is that our businesses also bring in employees and customers into the city, which, you know, has its benefits, but it can also, that extra daytime population, for example, could also add to some costs like the wear and tear on our city streets, so that is why through the taxation process, they do contribute to our city's general fund as well. And government code section three seven one zero one authorizes cities to levy a tax for revenue generating purposes or if imposed for regulatory purposes, it could be imposed as a fee.

If imposed for regulatory purposes, then the regulatory fee revenues are limited to covering the cost of the regulatory program. However, in Manhattan Beach, we have a tax. So our tax and this is typical across many cities is that the tax is based on gross receipts and that is true for most of our categories. A few categories are based on the number of employees or vehicles in operation or the square footage of the business. And then just a few statistics.

Over 95% of cities and counties in California impose a business license tax. According to some according to some data compiled by the League of California cities, on average, business license tax is about 3% of city revenues. Some cities can generate up to 30% if they have a really large business district or maybe they rely on car dealerships or something like that. But and just for some reference, the comparison cities that will be using, their business license tax goes anywhere from 1% to 18% of the journal fund, the lowest being Redondo Beach and the highest being Beverly Hills at 18%. So So some history of business license in Manhattan Beach, starting with the nineteen seventies.

Who remembers the nineteen seventies?

Not even Steve Napolitano.

I personally don't, but I do know the city's ordinance that was passed in 1971 was definitely typed on a typewriter

and

any tax calculations were probably done by a number two pencil. I did ask our finance historian, Henry Mintzner, who I'm sure you remember, about the calculators in the seventies and he said there was one maybe weighing about 40 pounds until the late seventies. So it was all done by hand and the tax code was more simple back then as well, but just completely different era than what we find ourselves in now. Right? So subsequent changes to the 1971 code were pretty minimal and in some cases, oddly specific, like the games of skill and the fortune telling.

Not something must have happened at the time that prompted those. And then in 2006, there were some administrative cleanup for some definitions and clarification that the license is required. And in 2019, it was our latest change, when language on sidewalk vending was added. So after fifty years, I thought our team thought it was time for a comprehensive update and review and considering the significant changes in state law, case law case law and the just the modern ways that businesses operate these days. For some there's just any fiscal impact questions.

Although there are no fiscal impacts to the what you're being asked to approve tonight, the ordinance, there are some our broader business license tax modernization plan that we'll get into in a moment does come with some costs, which were approved with the midyear budget update on February 17, including some special legal counsel, including you know, that contract is assisting here tonight with Matt's presence if you have any specific legal questions later. We also included up to $60,000 for the financial analysis and tax study that we're just starting, and we also budgeted 90,000 for polling and consulting on a potential ballot measure. So some of the tax equity and fairness issues that we'll describe later would require voter approval, and I think this came up last week in the work plan meeting where I said, if we tried to increase one person or one business' tax by $1, that would have to be approved by voters. So we wanna be really clear what we're addressing tonight to what would need to be approved by voters, that will be phase two of our plan, which we'll describe in a few moments. So with the with any ballot measure, you know, there's a lot of preliminary work that has to be done, and we're going to be analyzing our current tax structure, looking at various scenarios and the resulting potential resulting fiscal impacts for both the city and individual business categories.

And then with this data, we would share that with the city council, our business community partners, and look for their feedback, and then also do some community polling. So if if if the polling didn't yield success successful results, then the city council at that time could decide not to move forward with the ballot measure and we would continue on with our current tax structure, but at least we would have a reference point in time that, hey, we studied it, This these were the results. So as I mentioned earlier, this project has been and will continue to be a collaborative process. And taking into account years of business customer feedback and questions, our staff developed five goals for our modernization effort, which include simplifying the language of our code, clarifying several confusing parts of our code, simply modernizing the code so that way we could have ways to address, you know, the the big example recently was Waymo. They don't really fit into any of our categories because we couldn't even come up with a business like that fifty years ago.

We also want to make sure that the tax structure becomes more fair and equitable, and then we also maintain the fiscal sustainability for our city revenues as well. So all of these goals have been shared with our two business community liaisons, Joe Lampkin and Kelly Straumann first. And then also we shared this with our finance subcommittee a few months ago and received support from all of the people we presented this with previously. So now I'm gonna turn it over to Emmy Emmy Rose Hanna, our financial services manager, to go over some of the specific priorities that we are addressing, to achieve these goals.

All right. Good evening, mayor Lesser, mayor Pro Tem Franklin, and members of city council. My name is Emmy Rose Hanna, financial services manager, and it's my pleasure to walk us through the remainder of the presentation this evening. I also wanted to thank Libby for walking us through the primary goals of the Business Licence Tax Modernization Plan. So in these next few slides we'll be diving into the overall 20 priorities of this plan, which are broken up into two phases.

The phase one, which we're addressing this evening, includes the first 10 priorities that can be approved by ordinance, whereas the phase two of the plan addresses the remaining 10 priorities that must be approved by voters. I also wanted to share that all the priorities listed in these next few slides all tie back to at least one or more of the five main priorities, which are to simplify, clarify, modernize, ensure fairness, and sustainability. So you'll see the upper right corner of all of the slides will include the icons that relate to the five goals. And they all are represented within each of the 20 priorities that are listed within the slides. So with that being said, on this slide, we highlight the first five priorities.

Priority one is to clarify the requirements for mobile and sidewalk vendors. Priority two is to clarify the business license revocation, denial process, and appeal process. Priority three is to clarify the required documents for different business types. So an example is clarifying the requirement of ensuring submittal of a health certificate, seller's permit, other required documents that are part of that license. Priority four is to clarify the language regarding confidentiality in our municipal code as it relates to that business's gross receipts and the tax business license tax payment that is submitted, which is all confidential information.

And then priority five is to clarify the delinquent process code in our municipal code section six point one two five zero and six point one zero four zero, which indicate that will indicate that failure to comply with the licensing rules and regulations is deemed a violation of the chapter and is subject to further escalation. So moving on to the remaining items under phase one. On this slide, the sixth priority is to update and modernize the due date from March 1 to April 30. And again this a lot of these priorities were based on feedback received over the years from the business community regarding confusion on the due date and we'll talk more about the due date but we're essentially correcting the due date within our code to recognize the current practice. And then priority seven here is to revise and further define the city manager's authority to exempt a business from paying the business license tax.

Similarly, priority eight is to revise and modernize the police department's authority to make arrests for violating business license code, which based on special counsel, this is not a best practice to make arrests for violating business license procedures. And then priority nine is to update the and modernize all references of the business license code to remove the word fee and replace it with the word tax since the business license is a tax and not a fee. And then item 10 here is to update the recordkeeping procedures for gross receipts and IRS documentation for the life of the business plus five years. Again, this is not a best practice to actually keep and retain the records on file both physically and electronically, that's confidentiality as well, so not a best practice. So with that just wanted to highlight the ordinance that's presented this evening for ordinance number 26 dash zero zero zero five, and then several sections of chapter 6.1.

And the sections indicated on this slide here, there are many, but they vary from minor to substantial changes to the code language. And they are detailed the specific changes are detailed in the legislative digest, is attachment two of the packet, which includes strike through changes that are being made to the code. So some of the minor changes in this ordinance include modernizing the language in many sections, such as the changing of fee to tax. And then other substantial changes include amending the appeal section within the code by removing the requirement to appeal business license to city council and instead amending it to allow appeals to be considered by a hearing officer, which is consistent with other appeal processes in other programs within the city. Another change mentioned earlier is setting the business license due date to April 30 to match our current practice.

Because the code currently states the due date is March 1, the city has historically allowed a grace period to April 30 considering that the the tax filing deadline is April 15, we've always historically provided a grace. However, our code never recognized that grace, so we're, amending the code to actually match our current practice. And so with that, ordinance 25 dash zero zero zero five accomplishes the 10 priorities that were mentioned as part of phase one by applying a lot of the administrative cleanup of the code, modernizing the language, and updating it based on best practices. And again, many of these updates are long overdue and based on feedback received from businesses over the years. And with that said, I will pause at this time for any questions regarding the ordinance or regarding phase one.

Let my colleagues change their screens to be able to push their buttons, but why don't I ask an initial question and that is in Phase one priority seven is to authorize the city manager to exempt a business from paying business license taxes. Can you give some examples of what that might include and what the criteria would be for granting such a waiver?

Yeah, So thank you for the question. So currently, the code already includes the ability to have the city manager exempt a business from paying a business license tax. However, the changes that were made are refining further defining the process by which the city manager can elect to exempt a business. So there's it was very broad, the language in the code was very broad before and it's tightening and refining the process by which the city manager can exempt. It's not a common practice, I don't know that it's ever been in the recent history executed. That

was gonna be my next question. Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mayor Pertem Franklin.

Yes. Hi.

Thank you.

Olivia and Tammy. So what about a business that was headquartered here, but then makes sales all around the country and the like or the world,

like Skechers?

Well, mean that's one, but there's a lot of different companies that do it. Do we use those numbers in the assessment of the business license fee?

What you're referring to is the term is apportionment. So the taxes that people should be paying should be based on the activity that they are doing within the city of Manhattan Beach. So we're actually gonna talk about this in a few slides because that is an area where we also want to clarify and simplify some of the language. We know we could be do a better job explaining that, but that's going to fall into our Phase two changes where we're going to go into more details on that.

Thank you.

Excellent question. It's something we get very often.

Okay. Thank you.

Is that it for now?

Mhmm.

Okay. Any other colleague questions?

No questions.

If not, you may proceed.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Alright.

All right. Thank you. So in these next few slides, we'll discuss the Phase two of the business license modernization plan. And there we'll be discussing the 10 priorities which will require voter approval. So this second phase will be addressed through a separate ordinance at a later time which we'll dive into.

I wanted to highlight, I wanted to share before we dive into these next 10 priorities that ultimately the research and the results of the polling and the tax study and the consultant services will ultimately help guide the outcome of the next few priorities. The results of these efforts will be presented later in May or April and May of this year, and then that will drive the ordinance and ballot language that's proposed in June. So with that, we'll dive right in to priority number 11, which is to update the business license categories based on the business type rather than their location. So just to shed some light, if a business operates at at their home then it's currently classified as a home occupation and not tied to that business category. So for example, if an accounting firm is home occupation, they currently pay a lesser tax than same business equivalent if they're operating in an in office environment.

So raises questions of, you know, fairness and equity since that home occupation pays less currently in taxes. And then priority 12 here is to simplify and consolidate the tax types based on gross receipts. As mentioned earlier, some businesses are not assessed based on gross receipts, some are assessed based on the number of vehicles they operate, some are based on number of employees, others are based on number of rooms, like an example is hotel is based on the room count. So they're assessed at varying levels and metrics, so we really want to consider a consolidation and a fairness would be to do gross receipts, but that would be part of the tax study. Priority 13 here is to clarify and expand the professional services categories, the real estate agents, brokers categories, and create new business types that have emerged and just did not exist fifty years ago.

So, creating new categories, new business types, sometimes we are challenged with trying to fit them into a preexisting category and so this goal would be to consolidate them and allow for those new industries be able to pay into the business license tax. Priority four here is to clarify the tax category for short term rentals versus the hotel category. So currently hotels pay based on number of hotel rooms, while short term rentals pay based on gross receipts. So they're treated a little differently and we'd like to reassess the tax structure based, you know, to look at best practices to ensure fairness. And then the last priority here on this slide, number 15, is to consider a standard deduction for business license taxes.

So an example is, you know, some cities have adopted a sales tax or a credit for their business licenses where a business can get a credit for the first 200 in gross receipts, and this is just an example of what other cities have adopted. They'll apply a 200,000 credit in gross receipts so that smaller businesses pay less or no tax at all. This would, of course, be analyzed through the tax study that would be accomplished through HDL, and it would look at how it would affect small businesses and other categories. Moving on to the last set of the priorities under Phase two. For Priority 16, we would look at considering changes to the sales tax credit, which is currently in our code.

The way this works is a commercial property category is able to elect to receive a credit for the sales tax generated from their tenants. However, the tenants do not have the option of receiving a sales tax credit for which they're generating the sales tax. So this creates an issue with fairness and equity, so we'd like to revisit that sales tax credit that's currently only available to commercial property owners. And then property sorry, priority number 17 here is to address the apportionment which, mayor pro tem Franklin, you mentioned earlier, regarding gross receipts generated in other cities, other jurisdictions. So this is to address that that concern.

So 17 is to address the apportionment by kind of two ways, one look at the possibility of eliminating the base tax to where a business would only pay based on entirely based on gross receipts. And then secondly, it would clarify the deductions and the exemptions for revenues and gross receipts that they generate in other cities or jurisdictions. So for an example, if a city or if a business operated in four cities, they're only responsible for remitting their business license taxes based on the gross receipts they generated in Manhattan Beach, and they would then pay the taxes to the other jurisdictions based on that that respective gross receipts. Moving on to priority 18, is to clarify the definition of employees to include both on-site and remote employees since the nature of telework has drastically changed since COVID nineteen. And then priority 19 here is to evaluate the current tax structure and evaluate it compared to other neighboring cities, which Libby mentioned earlier, part of the tax study will be will include evaluating seven other city tax structures including Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, El Segundo, Torrance, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and Culver City.

And then lastly, the priority number 20 is to research and really reevaluate the current business license cap, which is the maximum a business would pay in taxes. And this ultimately will be an outcome of the tax study that's completed by HDL. And in our next slide, we'll explore the cap a bit further. So with this next slide, we just wanted to share one item of the tax schedule analysis, the fiscal analysis will be to address the cap. So as you can see on this slide, we have gross receipts based on we have eight different scenarios of businesses generating varying levels of gross receipts.

And in the middle column you could see what they would pay in business license taxes, and then on the right side of the table you'll see what percentage of the taxes they're paying in proportion to their overall gross receipts. So essentially the cap is limited to $12,156 To reach that cap, a business would have to generate $4,500,000 in gross receipts. Any income or gross receipts above that amount, there is no additional tax that is assessed. So essentially a business that generates $5,000,000 would pay the exact same amount in taxes as a business that generates 10,000,000 or $20,000,000 So this goes back to questions of fairness and equity and really is an opportunity to revisit and and reassess the current tax structure and the current cap maximum. And so with that, as we discussed in the last few slides, phase two would consider changes to modifying the tax structure, so therefore the voter approval is required.

And before the city can proceed with a ballot measure, staff plans to present the results of the tax study and community polling later in April or May of this year. And at that point, council will have the available data and information, to make a informed decision regarding how to proceeds how to proceed with the next steps. And then following that process, staff will coordinate various community meetings regarding the overall plan and the impact to businesses. And then we would return in June to present the final ordinance language and ballot measure language that would be considered for the November. So at this time, I'll pause for any questions regarding phase two of the business license modernization plan.

Colleague?

Mayor Jim Franklin.

Yes. Thank you. I just had a quick question on the ballot. Is it a simple majority or super majority to pass it?

Thank you for the question. I'll defer that to our special counsel since it's a general tax.

Yes. That's going be

a really quick answer. It's going be a simple majority.

Simple majority. 50% plus one. Thank

you.

That it?

Councilmember Schirlea. Thank

you. Thank you for the presentation. Well done. Good pace. You for getting us through that. I really appreciate Phase one. There's a long time coming. So thank you for doing the due diligence and I read strike throughs and all that. Well done there. Phase two, I guess more of a I guess my question would be, we're doing it for we're talking about fair and equitable, you said that a few times and I appreciate that.

I'm just concerned that this ballot measure is more of, you know, to generate more taxes from inherently show in that table that you did from the larger businesses. When right now, we have about what 5,000 business licenses?

Little above that amount.

Little above that. Thank you.

Five to six months.

So I think roughly as I recall it, all the ones paying north of $10,000 which is closer to your cap, probably about 150 of those 5,000 make up the majority of your business like 50% of your annual revenue for business licensing. Just from the way I remember it, don't know if you have those numbers, but so it seems to me that the larger businesses are already taken on 50% of the business license tax revenue. So when I hear fair and equitable, don't see I don't really see something that is not the burn is not being pulled by the larger businesses, just again my optics. And then we have a current CPI increase, is that correct?

That is correct.

That's built in. So that probably ranges around the 3% raise. So 3% per year over a ten year period compounded that'd be like a 35% increase on the business license tax rate already that we currently have per se that we're already kind of adding to the current business license tax. Over twenty years, it's closer to 75% increase. So maybe it's not keeping up with inflation, but there we do get a lot more tax. So another question would be, do we know how we selected the cities that are on the survey?

Absolutely. So I'll start with the survey, and then we'll talk about the tax measure. So the survey was formed based on surrounding jurisdictions that border Manhattan Beach, and also regional cities that have recently refreshed their business license tax code in because there's gonna be a mix of cities that haven't touched their code whatsoever in decades and there's going be a mix of cities that have looked at their tax code more recently. And so it is hard to compare our city with the past, with those that have not touched or adjusted their tax structure in decades and it is a good measure to evaluate other cities that have more recently looked at their tax structure, modernized the language, the categories, bringing their code up to date based on modern practices. So the seven cities that are being included in the survey are certainly a sprinkle of surrounding cities and regional local cities that have updated their tax code more recently.

And we can certainly consider additional city survey as well if there is desire to expand the survey, but we felt that seven cities to compare to our city would be a good volume of cities in the comparison.

Are those cities that they do a phase one update of their code or did those that these seven cities go and do a ballot measure prop two eighteen process?

It varies. Some cities have addressed it in phases and some have done it all in one package. So without having all of the background and history of each of the city's process in which they amended their code, that's certainly something we can include in the comparison as to what process did they take, and that would be outcome of the survey.

Great. Thank you, I'll have more questions later but

just wanted

to set that up.

I did want to address your questions regarding the tax generation. So addressing this business license modernization plan really was a buildup of years of feedback from the business community on questions that have been received at our finance counter, as I'm sure you're very familiar with a lot of the questions, complaints, clarifications that our team has expertly been able to navigate. And so over the years we've built together a wish list, a priority list of what businesses have come forward with and the real nexus of this driving this plan is really to relook at our code. It's not focused at all on generating more taxes, it's really to modernize, refresh, clarify the code, include additional guidance and criteria for our tax. But it is a priority to maintain fiscal sustainability, but that is not the underlying goal.

The goal is to refresh it, modernize it to where it should be.

And I appreciate that, I think you can get that goal in Phase one, but Phase two is definitely removing the cap as you're going to generate more taxes and more revenue. But generally, I'm just concerned that we're creating more taxes for our businesses.

Absolutely. And the results of the tax study will provide more information regarding the outcome and how it affects all the business groups ranging at different gross receipt levels. So we are sensitive to that.

Great. Thank you.

Yeah. Just to add on to what Amy was saying, I think our minds were going to the same place that the goal of the phase two is to provide you that analysis to make informed decisions. So we'd love to to do the analysis, show you some various scenarios. That's why we were looking at if we raise the cap, you know, that's where we also come in looking at this a standard deduction to where maybe, again, we're giving the smaller businesses, emerging businesses a break who would have lower gross receipts, and so maybe some of the businesses in the middle maybe pay about the same if the whole tax bracket moves up, say, just kind of like income taxes. So we'd be looking at all of those different scenarios and providing that data to you to make more informed decisions.

Let me my question goes to perhaps direction of what would be helpful when phase two comes back. And it has to do with perhaps other objectives, policy objectives that our city might legitimately have in shaping its tax code revisions. So for example, let's say council wants to attract large businesses by virtue of the number of employees they might have that bring to our city and intentionally keep the tax rate low. What guidance can be given? This is just one of multiple criteria that we need to consider in lawfully adopting changes.

But what guidance can be offered? And maybe this is a justification for our special counsel for having made the trip. Thank you tonight. But just what what criteria would apply to the different changes considering?

What? Do you have an

immediate answer? I have a staff answer too,

but Let's go to the staff.

Okay. So I I my response was going to be just a staff, but, like, we will accept any and all questions and ideas for us to research. We've assembled this team of experts to got help us guide us, and, you know, they know what other cities are doing in California, you know, way other ways that people have modernized their tax code to address certain issues that are, you know cities are all dealing with a lot of the same issues. So we're probably not the first to ask these questions, but we're happy to do the research and that's why we're here. And so we will take any any questions or ideas of policy considerations that you'd like to see come back to you, and we would love to bring those back.

Okay. That's helpful.

The only thing right here. Please. The only thing I'll add, and obviously, have a long road in front of you considering all of these issues as they come forward in the HDL study. Generally speaking, you can set a tax rate at a certain level, which you think is appropriate, and which you think voters will approve if that's the direction you choose to go. And then you have the option to not collect the entire tax if you decide for policy reasons that there's a certain industry that you want to give a break to or attract, and you can collect less if that's the way you wanna go. The only thing you can't do is collect more than you who's been approved by voters.

And are there specific criteria that go into that determination that we would need to make to be able to support

that change?

Not under proposition two eighteen, so you don't need to put that in your ballot. But that's something that you would definitely want to consider when passing a resolution. Always, you wanna make sure you have objective criteria to avoid any challenges.

Right. Thank thank you. Thank you both. Mayor Pro Tem Franklin. Sure.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you. So you said you can you wanna compare it to seven cities. I I only had time to write down six of them. Verdondo, Hermosa, El Segundo, Torrance, Beverly Hills, Culver City. Was there one more?

Did you say Santa Monica?

Santa Monica. Okay.

And Culver City and Santa Monica both recently updated their code in the last few years. So that's why we wanted to include there's just for comparison.

Okay. Is there some way that you can normalize the data, for example, maybe on a per capita basis or related the to general because you have a nice stat on Slide four, which is Manhattan Beach provides about five business license tax provides about 5% of the general fund revenues, about 6,000,000. So it's just some way to normalize that so we can see on the percentage how much they're relying on business.

Absolutely. Will be a thick report with a full tax analysis, comparisons to other cities, charts, graphs, tables, we'll have it

for you.

Make it in big type. Alright. Is that for a question? Yes, I think that's it.

Council Member Schrodinger.

No, I just wanted to follow-up on a couple of things you mentioned Mayor. For years, my background is heavily on business licensing. We've used this, the business license tax rate structure as an economic incentive when businesses do come in. And we also don't have utility users tax, which is one of probably 25, 30 cities in the State of California that doesn't have utilities users tax. So since we don't have an economic incentive department or division or manager economic vitality, whatever you want to call it, but the utility users tax and business license were incentives when people used want to relocate here because there was a cap and there was a utility users, there was no utilities users tax.

So but with that said, I'd like to open, I think we should hear from the public.

That comes next.

No, appreciate that. But I'm just kind of concerned that we have motions before the public hearing that kind of concerns me too.

All right. With no further council member questions or

any other staff comments? Yes.

At the tax analysis and study, we'd look at those in any potential incentives because absolutely, we don't wanna alienate any large businesses that we, you know, bring so much to our city as well. So it is going to be a real balancing act to try to encourage all businesses, large and small to continue operating in Manhattan Beach. So we'll definitely be looking at that from all angles.

Great. Thank you.

Thank

you. Which case this is a public here. I'm sorry. We actually have two

more slides. Okay.

You go.

Thank you so much, Libby. So lastly, we just wanted to share this timeline to provide a complete picture of all of the past, current, present and future efforts involved in this business license tax modernization plan. So on this slide, 10 various activities that are included here, but our first step was early on we engaged with the chamber and business improvement district representatives back on October 23, And then shortly after, we met with our finance subcommittee this past December to share the overall plan, timeline and priorities. And then in advance of this public hearing, we included a published notice in the Beach reporter on February 19. Public outreach is a priority, so we continue to plan outreach efforts throughout the process, which we'll touch on in a moment.

But this brings us to today, March 3, where we will shortly conduct the public hearing to address phase one of this plan. And then from now through April, we will be actively working with our experts to conduct the tax study, the polling and the outreach. From there, in April to May, we'll present the results of the tax study and the polling to council. And then in 2026, staff will be coordinating community meetings and resident information sessions to the public, keeping in mind that only residents can vote on this ballot measure and businesses cannot. So we wanted to share that.

We'll be targeted outreach to the business community and the resident community. And then in June, we'll present the new ordinance and ballot language that would be part of phase two along with other required documents that are necessary for the ballot measure. And then finally, in November 2026, we'll have the general election take place. And then lastly, I wanted to share that as part of our outreach, we will be developing a web page specific to the business license modernization plan and the ballot measure, and we will be sharing informational materials, handouts, brochures in the coming months in advance of the ballot of the election. So with that, I will transition this back to Libby to conclude the presentation and begin the public hearing.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Emmy.

And so at this time, this is the conclusion slide now. We recommend the city council conduct the public hearing, introduce ordinance number 26 dash five, amending sections in the Manhattan Beach municipal code related to business licensing, which will this will come back for a second reading at the next city council meeting. And then if you'd also like to discuss and provide further direction regarding the overall business license tax modernization plan, including the priorities and tentative timeline that Ami just shared. So this concludes our presentation, and we're happy to answer any other questions.

Thank you. Thank you for that very comprehensive presentation. Council colleagues, council member Tarne.

Thank you, Libby. I just had a quick question on when was the last time we looked at the when was the last time the tax the business license tax rate change? When was the last time? Well, as

mentioned earlier, we do change it every year per CPI. Mhmm. However, we've we haven't really done a comprehensive look at the categories and the structure that we're looking at doing now to my knowledge. It was done many years ago, I'm not sure.

Is that it?

Yes. That's all I have for now.

Councilor Horvers, did you want to ask

a question? No, I was going wait till after public Okay.

With no further council questions at this time, I'm going to open the public hearing for public comment. Any members of the public care to address this item in chamber. Come on down.

Hello, Mayor Pro Tem and City Council, Jill Lampkin, Chamber of Commerce. First of all, thank you so much to Libby and Emmy Rose. They've spent a lot of time with me on this already. In fact, I was on the phone with Libby about thirty minutes before we came in here. I did want to point out a couple of things and same that Emmy Rose just said that the exercise here wasn't necessarily to generate additional tax revenue, however, that could be an unintended consequence.

I would like us to look at other similar communities not just nearby localities, but other beach communities, affluent beach communities, I think that's important. In terms of the way that the tax is calculated, you max out at 4,500,000.0, there's a big difference between a $4,500,000 business and a $20,000,000 business or a $30,000,000 business and we're talking $12,000 I think that's a very big difference. So I want to keep that in mind. Another thing that I want to make sure that we are considering and I know gross tax revenue is the easiest and cleanest way to do that, but we also live in a unique community that is very affluent and a lot of our businesses donate very generously to the non profits in our community. When you only look at what the gross revenues are, we're not making any deductions for any of the charitable giving that they're making and when they're continuing to support public education and the roundhouse and all of these wonderful things that are a part of our community, that might be something that we wanna consider.

I also wanted to mention that the offering a lower business license tax is only one economic lever in terms of economic development. There are lots of other things that we could do and I would like for us to look at this as a part of a holistic approach to economic development, not just one single thing and I know that this started as just an exercise of looking at business license tax, but if we are starting to think of it as a strategic way to lure business or encourage different types of business that maybe it is a part of a bigger picture that we want to explore. And I also want to remind counsel that a part of my work plan with you is that we are going to put on a business license tax forum for the entire city for all of our businesses because I think this is a major issue that we want to make sure we have a lot of feedback on. Although businesses cannot vote, lot of our business owners are residents of this community as well and so they would also be voters. And so I want to make sure that we give ourselves enough time to really create a valuable forum that people can participate in and give feedback, not just receive feedback from consultants and staff.

I think that's about everything. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other members of the public and chamber that care to address this item? Seeing none, Brianna, is there anybody on Zoom that would like to speak on this item?

No request on Zoom.

Which case I will close public comment on this item. And is the appropriate course of the city attorney close the public hearing? Yes. So closed. Closed. In which case council member questions perhaps first and then we can have comments. Is there any questions?

I mean, I I asked my questions, but obviously if people have questions, they we can still ask them.

Why don't I call you on on you first? Council member Horowitz, questions or comments?

Think again, I didn't have questions per se. I mean it's Thank you so much. First of all, want compliment Libby, Director of Bradhauer and your team. This is so comprehensive and I do know that it is welcome in the business community. I mean you work very closely with the chamber and your downtown business association.

And I think we should, you know, if if there were problems, I think we'd be hearing, from them. And I think it's important to get the comments. I really appreciate what what, Jill was talking about holding a forum that is not just to receive information, but to provide additional feedback because people could come to that who maybe didn't go to the North End Business Development District meetings or the downtown and etcetera. I think that's an excellent, suggestion. You know, it's fascinating. I'm so glad you mentioned the what was it? Specific skill and scientific whatever that category was?

Games of skill and

Games of skill. I'm still puzzling over that one. And it just it's so intriguing. But more importantly, I it's so fascinating, isn't it, that Waymo. How do we how do we even categorize Waymo? That could be game of skill, right, or or, you know, a fortune telling thing. We work. All these category remote work. Right? Like, it's it really we will we will recognize more revenue from this, I I believe.

But I think you're hearing from the businesses, it is so confusing to apply with these, you know, the the old codes as they are. So I think that this was an incredibly huge endeavor and I'm, you know, just grateful for that to start with. And I will say so I I do see that it we we've got a two part, decision before us. And the the motion I've made, and I know there are other comments and questions, so I'm I'm just gonna state the motion and we can discuss it, you know, as much as we want. But my my motion was to adopt the ordinance 26 dash zero zero zero five amending sections out of the Manhattan Beach Municipal Code six point o one licensing rail regulations.

So that was, you know, the parts that don't have to go out to the voters. This is a change in our ordinance. Is really cleaning up, you know, clarifying language regarding confidential documents. The fact that we used to keep the records and the gross receipts forever, you know, that's that's a really, that's that's great.

They have all been properly shredded.

Yeah. Oh, okay. Good.

Thank I'm being serious.

No. I I understand you're being serious. But, like, you know, changing references as feed of taxis are all the things I'm talking about. This is just but it's it sounds maybe pedantic to people, but it matters. So kudos.

That was my, motion. But I wanna make a comment. I know we're gonna talk more about the next phase. I think you've provided a really clear process which will, allow for a lot more input before we, talk about any potential ballot language. But again, businesses actually are in favor of this, and especially that cap, Jill mentioned, I've been hearing about that as long as I've been on council from our small businesses who kind of really it gets under their skin that they're paid the same amount as, you know, the bigger, you know, 30,000,000 businesses.

As Joe mentioned, it's a huge difference between a 4 and a half million dollar business, which almost doesn't sound that doesn't sound small to me, but god bless them. We have a lot of them. Right? That's really important to people. And and that's the heart and or the backbone of our community. And I think we really need to to pay attention to that. I really appreciate the fact that the seven cities that you've chosen are ones that have already updated their code.

Can I clarify? Not all of them have.

Oh, okay.

Some of them have, some of them haven't, but we thought it was important to still include our neighbors from both in Redondo just for reference and comparison.

Okay. Alright. Because I do think that when we get that information, please highlight it because Yes. Again but I also thought that Jill made a really important point that there could be other, affluent beach communities, whether it's Newport Beach or whatever those other cities are, Laguna Beach, that could be very similar in the types of businesses and the types of communities. So I would I would be open to that, but that's my motion. I know there's lots of comment, but it's only for the first part right now.

Great. And I see that motion has been seconded by council member Tarne. Mayor Perthem Franklin, Question. Can hit the button to

how widespread has this been socialized is the word or you know presented to the business community?

When we first met with Jill and Kelly a few months ago and gave them our plan, I did attend the last chamber meeting. I I missed the last downtown business professional associations meeting, but I'll be going in March, and I know they helped publicize it through some outreach emails. So this this first phase where it's a lot of just the administrative code cleanup, we didn't publicize it like on our social media or anything like that because we also didn't wanna cause a mass confusion or panic that we were making tax changes because that's not what we're doing here tonight. Tonight, we wanted to get the administrative cleanup out of the way and then kick off the next phase where we will be talking about those types of things and then really doing a public campaign there.

Don't we kind of want to survey them to get an idea of what in this proposal is important to them and their concerns or, you know, they may all like it.

Yeah. That's that's a good question. I think, the the tax forum that Jill mentioned will, go a long way in that where we can present our current plans, know, present some information for them to to think about, and then we'll certainly take their feedback and questions. We could look at doing an online survey that would probably be fairly low cost to the business you know, surveying the business community because as Emmy mentioned, this is an interesting endeavor because we're it impacts the business community, but it's the voters and residents who will be voting on it. So we're gonna be doing a lot of outreach to to everyone, the voters and the businesses, and hopefully everyone can be aligned and be supportive.

Right. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Charnay.

Thank you. Thank you, Lameen, the team for just diving into this and coming back to us with such comprehensive proposal. Think, you know, having that initiative to bring us up to date, to modernize our system, I understand, you know, having looked in in my previous work at old the old way of doing things, if we don't modernize it every time somebody comes in to pull a license, I'm sure there are issues that staff has to deal with. So I appreciate that being proactive to in this regard. And also, I think, you know, the fact that we haven't looked at it in so long, you know, calls to the question of that we need to do it at this point.

Just like I think there are other things that we're doing including maybe looking at the bag on the meters to see the revenues. I think it's important to have more information. And then I I like what you're doing with bringing in bringing in the business communities and keeping the communications going and having the forums because I do think it's important to hear from everybody. So Mhmm. The second that I have on the floor is for just the introduction of the ordinance number 26 dash zero zero five. And then I'm open to discuss further discussion on the direction of everything else.

Thank you. Council member Sheridan.

Thank you, mayor. And I'm more confused now because I would hope that we can separate these two. There's there's a motion, I think, you know, everyone agrees on phase one, but we're talking about some phase two items during this. Well, you talked about the cities and the surveying, that's a phase two thing. So that's I'm not really taking my turn right now. I'm just saying can we just vote on the first one and then Turn

to the maker of the motion, who also would like

to Yeah. Mean, I just I made some comments because I didn't ask any questions before. And I think most of us contracted two different issues. I mean, the the motion is the motion. So

what's the But

I well, I I did wanna make another comment about the first part of the motion because there were comments made about, well, how do we survey businesses about these changes for the ordinances? And I know you have been working with those businesses, but I also would ask, has haven't you guys been hearing for a long time about the problems with that the ordinances that we're voting on will fix? I mean, this is not just out of the blue. These are things that they want fixed.

Yeah. A lot of it that was the basis for a lot of it. It was the staff talking like, gosh, got this question over and over and I have to constantly explain this one thing over and over, and so that's what started a lot of this. It was just some of the the cleanup, the the due date being written as March 1 even though for years, we've always said it was April 30 even though the code said something else. So it's A lot of it's just little cleanup like that, just things, you know, happen organically over time and change and then it's not that we, you know, bandwidth was an issue sometimes and it's just, you know, now we have the team in place and the capacity to do this, Well, we're moving

that's my motion, would call for it but I see you have a comment.

My only comment is I've held business licenses in the city for almost thirty years, and I have appreciated the work of staff in trying to identify how our code should be improved. And this first phase, I think, is proactive and appropriate. I'll be supporting the motion.

Before Do the motion, I'll read the title. Ordinance number 26 dash five, an ordinance of the city of Manhattan Beach amending chapter 6.01 of the Manhattan Beach Municipal Code regarding business license regulations, and the motion was to introduce.

Motion passes, five zero.

Let's move on then to direction for phase two or what is called the business license tax modernization plan. Colleagues, what would you like to add or maybe I turn it back to you Libby. What type of direction are you most looking to from counsel this evening?

Well, sure. So I guess one would be any feedback on the priorities that were shared or if there are any specific questions you might have off the bat, ideas of things you want us to research further. So that would be one thing. Secondly, as to the comparison cities, that's already been, mentioned a few times. So with our the current study we're doing, any additional cities we would like to add would add a little bit to the cost of the study.

That would be nominal, but I just wanted to reference that that it's it is a lot of work for, the HDL experts to pull the the codes of each of the cities, put it into their models so that because they're gonna, like, take a, say, a dentist. What does a dentist here pay here, you know, in all of those other cities? So if we wanted to add more and more cities, it would just add to the the cost and the time of the study, and at some point, there might I don't know if it would be so helpful anymore if we're, you know, looking at too many data options. Right? So it would be one consideration I would add, but we can certainly they're just beginning the work, so if we wanted to swap out any of the cities we could do that, or we could add one or two more and probably still stay within our contingency.

I know for myself one of the fundamental questions I'm going to be asking when the Phase two results come back to council is how might these changes impact businesses coming to our city, whether they're enticed to come here or deterred or whether it encourages businesses to leave. So I'm not sure what criteria you're going to be able to provide as staff, but that is a core decision which I'm going to be looking at it whatever staff comes back with for Phase two. I appreciate the direction you're going. I think this date is going to be helpful. Other colleagues, Council Member Sherrilla.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. I would like to see a few more cities added similar, you know, a fluency or near the beaches or have a Manhattan Village mall of that high end caliber. But again, so is the $200,000 include the cost of it actually going on a ballot measure? If if if that's where it goes?

Yes. The $200,000 that was added with the midyear budget that includes legal counsel, the polling consultant services to help us draft and look at the ballot measure do includes outreach, and then also, the HDL tax study as well. Great.

I guess for me, is the polling going to be someone like True North or some of that similar? Yes. So I guess I just, last time we had this with the short term rentals or when we did the survey, will we get a chance to, I guess, is it our can we have a can we look at the questions before they go out just to kind of see if they're slated one way or another. I don't know if I'm asking

Let ask that, how might that work? And does that slow down the process to keep this timeline in place?

It's a good question. I don't know, our city manager can certainly jump in as well. The I think the first step is to receive back the initial tax analysis study to look at the numbers, and I think from there, you might we all we'll have a better idea of what direction this could go or might go, is first to look at that data. And then from there so Team Civics, the polling cons or the ballot measure consultant, TrueNorth, HDL, they partnered on these studies, multiple ones in 2024 that were successfully passed in November 2024, and they're, you know, used to working together collaboratively, and so I think we'll be able to get a lot of good guidance and have good drafts of questions based on their expertise, having done this now multiple times in other cities. So if we if you'd like to have those questions to be shared to you in advance, we could probably do that without adding too much time into the timeline.

Madam city manager.

I was just going to add that the community survey questions are very different than the polling questions. And the people we hire to do the polling questions, this is their expertise. They do this day in and day out, and they know exactly how to draft those questions. So we we really do rely on their expertise to word those questions for us in a particular way.

So maybe if I could, council member Schroeder, and I do see council member Howard, who'd like to speak. Are there questions that you can identify now that might be helpful as part of our direction as a council to staff to move forward and keep on its timeframe that you can identify that you'd like to have addressed?

Yeah. And I appreciate the city manager saying that and I've been on several ballot measures for prop two eighteen and work with the vendors that they're going to be working with and I understand they're the experts and set up the questions, but I would at least see what we're asking our residents to do prior to doing it as far as taking the survey. As well as how do we get the how do we add additional cities? What's the process to that? Is it something that we start throwing out cities here on the dais or what's the process?

I feel like I'm sort of the telephone operator, but back in the day there used to be such a thing, but

I would recommend not adding too many more just again because it will add to our cost and also depending on the city. I think someone mentioned New Port Beach a We few minutes did look at them as you know, I think I just assumed that maybe their code was more updated, but it's actually really outdated and very low. Do you Was it a flat? Yeah. It's a flat tax actually. So Newport Beach. I threw

it out.

Which was surprising. Thought they would be generating more business license tax, but they're not. So if you want to give us a few options to consider, we'll look at it and if it looks like an appropriate comparison, we can certainly do that. But again, it will just add a little bit of cost to it.

Yeah. And I guess I would want to know, you know, I hear Newport Beach and I know other Orange County cities, you know, don't really emphasize on their business license tax, know, one of them is Costa Mesa, they have South Coast Plaza, know, similar stores as we do here at the village. I guess, you know, I understand why now because you brought the ordinance, but, we don't really have a broken business license tax schedule in my opinion. We get from 3% of our 5,000 businesses are paying 50% of the business license tax. We increase it by CPI every year, mentioned earlier over ten years, that's 35% increase.

So we got $6,000,000 coming in from our business license tax, is 5%, 6% of our whatever the number is of our revenues. So I just I'm concerned that this is going to increase taxes and it's going to it's not going to be a positive impact to me in the business for the businesses. Even though some have complained over the years when we have 5,000 businesses, if you look at the number of people that complained, it would be the similar number of people that complained that says, you know, grocery prices are going up. It's it's it's not it's not overwhelming the number of people. So that's just my input.

Thank you. Council member Howard.

Yeah. Respect your opinion. I, you know, respectfully disagree. But I have a question for you, council member Freeland. I have a couple other comments, but I I want to ask about the I'm I'm questioning why you wanna look at the what you think you would see if you looked at questions that we're asking our residents? Like, what what is it that you'd be looking for? Because maybe that would be helpful to the people who are making the questions.

I'm not sure unless I see them.

Okay. Alright. Well, I, you know, I do think I think what the city manager was saying about polling versus survey, it's it is the the it's a little more it's well, anyway, I I don't think we need to and I I don't think it's actually beneficial because we do have biases whether, you know, maybe I want the increase, maybe somebody else doesn't. We bring our biases to it and that's actually something that they're not looking for. First of all, they want success and so they if they're asking questions, they wanna suss out they wanna suss out the the weaknesses, right, because they ultimately want us to have a successful measure.

And if they might find out that it's not possible, that there's no level of support. So I wouldn't wanna get in the way of that with with my bias or not, you know. So that that's just my comment there. I don't I well, I appreciated, you know, what Jill had said about the other cities. Your comment about Newport Beach, etcetera, actually really helps me understand that.

So personally, I don't need to add more. I would want and I would wanna swap out if we're and I'd want us to decide that somehow because we don't need to add money to it. A question again that council member Schirling raised that I I was a good one about the cost. None of that money covers a campaign. Like, we're not the the outreach that we do is simply factual. There is this on the ballot. Right? We are not saying vote for this. We are not taking out ads in the paper. We are not doing anything.

So if if there was to be, and, you know, some sort of effort, some sort of campaign that would it would be extra money that would not come from our general fund. That does not come from the taxpayers. So, you know, we don't we don't ask the taxpayers to pay, you know, to campaign for them. So that would be a private independent thing which we which your consultant will probably tell you you don't do in a in a situation like this. Mhmm. That's just my guess. So those are those are kind of how I'm feeling. I I think we should let this process play out. We may find that residents don't support it. We may find with the forum that it's bad for business.

I do think we need to update our the structure of our business license tax. I think, you know, the fact that it dates to 1971 and there's been some updates, but there's a lot more that need to happen. So I I think we should support a process that they've identified. I think it's really hard to tell what's going it's not just I think somebody else mentioned, it's not just the business license tax that's going to incentivize people or not. When you hear about incentivizing, you're really talking about at the state level and the state taxes.

And like when when people running process talk about film credits, which is a huge deal in California, you know, those are the bigger things that really drive businesses in or out of this state. We're talking about, you know, not not nothing that impactful, but I think we need to do it. So

Thank you. Councilmember Tarne.

Thank you. Just a a few comments, and I just wanna to follow-up on what my colleague Amy just said. I think it is important to just update the process. Whatever the results yield, we should be open to learning more. It's been a while since we've done the study, and so I don't see I don't have any objections to wanting more information to see, are we in line with other cities?

I'm okay with the cities that we have. If we want, we can there's a city that someone feels really strongly to include. I'm open to including another one or removing one that we don't think is aligned. But I've in looking at the list, I think it's a a fair kind of slice of the the cities that are out there. And as far as incentivizing or disincentivizing, you know, that's gonna be a policy decision we will make once we get the information.

I think it's important for us to have the information first and this is why this exercise is important. And I trust the professionals who are doing this. This is what you got the the our professionals at the city is hired to do. So for me, on a, you know, my what I see my role is is a policy maker, and I I don't think all of us will want to review the specific questions because we do have different biases and, you know, there the we know at this point the made of a motivation is to update and not not to generate revenues. As long as we're clear on that and that's the direction that we give our professionals, I'm confident that they can do what's necessary to survey, to get the information, and let us make the policy decision on whether or not we proceed

with this.

Those are my comments.

For my own comments, I'd share the comments of my colleagues in moving this second phase forward with direction to staff, come back with data, with information, so that we can make the policy decisions as was just stated by council member Tarneh. Provide us with options for modern tax structures and categories, and then let's understand what some of the implications can what might be, and then we can make a decision on the policy grounds as to how to proceed. Mayor Pertem Franklin?

Yes. I agree that with council member Schirrullian that we should be able to just take a look at the survey. It's not going to delay that much time. Take advantage of business, and backgrounds of the people here on the dais. I remember there was a couple of questions on some of the other surveys that we put out that I sort of questioned.

So just to go ahead and it couldn't hurt and it's not going to slow down the process. So I would want to see us taking advantage of that expertise. And the cities I think are really important to take a look at. I would I would say that we, you know, drop Culver City. No no offense to Culver City, get something. I I was gonna ask about Newport Beach. And then, you know, you you indicated

Why why can I mean, what's the I'm curious? I I don't know. Why why drop Culver City?

Well, because of the expense.

Well, cities currently listed are already included in our contract. So we've already

Oh, they're already included.

Oh, okay. I thought

And the reason we wanted to include Culver City is because they adopted their measure in 2024, the last cycle, and they actually just hearing a little bit of information from their tax study, people who are doing ours also did theirs, and you can imagine they have a lot of headquarters of really large corporations and they were faced with those same struggles of, you know, the impacts to those large corporations. I won't name names, but they really had to do a lot of analysis and outreach and discussion on those policy decisions. So they were faced with all of those issues that you're you're starting to think about too.

Mhmm. Okay. Alright. Thank you. I didn't realize it was already part of the package.

And they were also where we got the standard deduction idea from where they did raise their cap, but they introduced the standard deduction to try to lessen the burden on everyone.

Okay. From a process standpoint, is staff then looking for a motion for the direction? Madam City Manager?

I think just motion to move forward as demonstrated today.

I see a motion has been made by council member Horvath with a second by council member Charney. The one outstanding question I'll let you state it is whether or not we would have questions brought back to counsel and thus the public. Is that something that staff can accommodate and keep?

I was gonna make a motion.

But let me defer to council member Hoebert to make a motion.

Okay. I was gonna make a motion to conduct a tax study, polling and research. And I don't think the question should come back to a council meeting. I think if we wanna see them, okay. But I don't think we should have input into the questions, so that is not part

of the motion.

Mayor, I don't really need to see the questions. I don't need to

see questions. Okay. Any other council member comments? If not, we'll call for the question. Motion by council member Horowitz with a second by council member Charney.

Motion passes four to one. Council member Schirlian voting no. Okay. Before we move on to

the next item which will be out of sequence as was approved earlier, it would be item number 10. Does do colleagues wanna take a break now or proceed with the next items? Oh,

I could use a little break.

We'll take a five minute break. Stand in recess.

Pegasus, can we go live? Thank

you. I'd to call our meeting of March 3 back to order. We'll now proceed with our k item k, our general business calendar, and we're gonna take out of order item number 10 before proceeding to nine. Item number 10 is consideration of an update regarding community emergency notifications.

Good evening. Thank you, mayor, mayor pro tem, and members of the city council. My name is Alexandria Latruni. I'm the communication and civic engagement manager for the city of Manhattan Beach, and I'll be presenting the item of community emergency alert and warning systems for the city of Manhattan Beach. And before I get started, I'm just gonna introduce some of my colleagues that are here to present with me.

I have fire chief, Jesse Alexander. I have our police chief, Rachel Johnson. I have our emergency preparedness administrator, Ashley, and I have our regional administrator of Alert South Bay, Soraya Sutherland. And we also have to answer some questions, Brandy Villanueva, who's our area g disaster management DMACC. Area coordinator.

Sorry. DMACC. And we also have the El Segundo Division Chief, Evan Sifke, who's here also to answer some questions. So we have a full house here, which we we feel really lucky about. So I'll go ahead and get started.

Manhattan Beach is vulnerable to a range of natural and human caused, emergencies, including earthquakes, tsunamis, hazardous material releases, industrial incidents, and our proximity to the Chevron refinery makes robust emergency communications very critical for our city. A significant incident occurred at the Chevron refinery in El Segundo in October 2025 requiring emergency communications to be sent out to Manhattan Beach residents and businesses. City council subsequently, requested a detailed report on emergency communications infrastructure and any improvements implemented since the incident. So I'm gonna give you oh, that was the just the city context for you, and I'm just gonna give you a little bit of a, brief overview of what our mute emergency alert and warning system looks like. And this represents really a comprehensive multilayered approach that ensures that the critical information that we wanna put out during an emergency reaches residents through multiple channels.

So it's not just one channel that we're utilizing. We're utilizing all of these channels. And the first one there is our main, system. It's called Alert South Bay. This is a regional system that is utilized by 15 cities in the, South Bay region, and it utilizes the Everbridge platform. So we call it Alert South Bay. You can sign up for those alerts. We do push that message a lot, on how to sign up for those alerts. If you need help, on that, there's information in the back that tells you how to sign up for those alerts. But this is a critical system for us.

It has the capabilities of sending voice messages, SMS, so text messages, email alerts, and it integrates our NCSEL, system as well. So anytime we send a message via Alert South Bay, it also sends one through our NCSEL system. Everbridge is, which Alert South Bay utilizes, is an industry standard, so there's over 60 federal agencies that utilize Everbridge system as well as every major US airport, does also utilize this type of system. And it also integrated into Alert South Gray Alert South Bay is a city maintained contact database where no registration is required, and it's called resident connection data. It reaches all wireless customers within a geographic area.

And moving on, we also have an IPOS system, and that stands for Integrated Public Alert and Warning Systems. So this is a federal, federally managed system. It has capabilities through our county and regional partners of sending wireless emergency alerts, and it's geofence data that will, reach people even if they haven't subscribed. So you don't have to subscribe to that system. It's something that will reach, all wireless, customers.

We also utilize our, MPTV website, social media, and we also have community partner outreach. So we have a twenty four seven local cable broadcasting broadcasting channel, a website with e notification subscription with over 35,000 subscribers, a very and very active accounts on all of our social media channels with, 26,000 followers on Instagram, 5,600 followers on X. On Facebook, we have 6,400 followers, and we also recently implemented our GoReach application push notifications, which we could use during an emergency, and that has 5,000 subscribers. We also have the capability of sending push notifications via Nextdoor, which would reach approximately 30,000 people. So this allows us to release in those rapid fire, verified information very quickly to our followers and through multiple channels.

So even if you're not following on us us on maybe our website, maybe you're following us on social, we have different avenues to reach you. But in addition to these channels, one important component of our emergency communication are our community partnerships, and so these are this is where if there's an emergency that happens, I have really great relationships with our school district personnel where I would coordinate messaging with them, let them know what's going on, and vice versa. That's a critical component to any emergency that happens. We know first thing I'm gonna call, call up our partners at the school district and, coordinate that messaging through their leadership. The same goes with all of our other community partners, which may, many of the the community partnerships are outlined in our local hazard mitigation plan, but these are different partnerships that we have to reach vulnerable communities that may be harder to reach, that aren't following us, or that have access to their own set of followers, and it allows us to reach a much broader audience.

So these critical partnerships do exist and are maintained, by our city. And then we also have those physical systems. So if in the case where we wanna reach pedestrians or vehicle traffic, we have electronic changeable message signs, that can be, utilized to send out critical messages. And in the case where there may need be the need to evacuate or do a shelter in place, that's when, our police and fire departments could go door to door and utilize a public address system that is on their vehicles. And at this point, I am going to turn it over to our fire chief to speak a little bit about Unified Command.

So good evening. I'm Jesse Alexander. I'm your fire chief. And tonight, I'm here to talk to you about going over an incident from start to finish, and that includes incident command, the notification process. So I'll just kinda get started of what it looks like on an incident.

So first thing is you have your emergency, you know, citizens call that into 911 and dispatch determines the location, threat, jurisdiction, and the potential resources based on that. They're then gonna dispatch the those appropriate resources. I don't want to speak for law enforcement, but what it looks like for in a fire when we have something like that happens, they tone out the fire department, we go ahead and don all of our personal protective equipment, and then we respond to the same. A very, very good response time from the start to finish, right there is about five to six minutes. Now that could easily jump to a ten to twelve minute response time from arriving at scene based upon the remoteness of the incident or challenges accessing it.

The second thing once we get there is first responders are gonna arrive at scene and they're gonna attempt to perform a size up, where they're trying to look at the scope, the hazards, and the immediate needs of the incident. This is gonna be accomplished in four different ways. So recognition prime decision making is one, which is basically a fancy way of saying I have experience, I've seen these incidents before. Another is visual indicators that you're going to see when you arrive at scene. The third is going to be using reconnaissance.

The incident may be so complex that you have to send out what we call bird dogs to go out and determine, try to circle the incident, try to figure out what's going on. And finally, it could be preplanning of the incident. You're familiar with the site, you've identified some concerns, and that you've gained that intel from that portion. That whole time as you're gathering that information, you're also determining what resources you're going to need to be mitigating. Many times a complex incident, you're going to have to augment your resources and go through dispatch and start sending additional resources to help you.

The third thing is you're going to be transitioning over to as first responders are going to start activate the incident management system or an ICS, which is basically something you're legally required to both state and federally to do that. As a result, you're going to assume command and declare a command post in a safe location so you can run the incident and maintain command and control. If it involves multi departments, if the incident is complex where it involves multi departments or multi agency where specifically crossing cross jurisdictional boundaries, you're going to activate the, again, the incident command system and go into unified command where you're taking multi agencies and putting them together. Probably the most common one that you're going to see is one where you're having fire and law enforcement going into unified command. A good example would be that would be a major traffic collision, an active shooter, things along those lines, but it doesn't have to necessarily be at that level.

Let's say we have a plane crash, that

at that point I'm going to

go into unified command with FAA and NTSB, those are all things that I have to do before I can start moving this the airplane, And so those are things you have to do and get those agencies involved in those mutual aid. Excuse me. Oops. So now we're on to the fifth portion. When you once you're in unified command, you're trying to build situational awareness from the intel that you're gathering.

Command's gonna develop an incident action plan or an IAP. You're gonna be focusing on looking at for critical factors and prioritizing them so that you can determine objectives while looking at a risk assessment and putting in control measures to make sure that we're not getting anybody hurt. That will allow you to build on strategies and tactics. Not only are you trying to anticipate what's going on at scene, but you're also trying to anticipate what's where the scene is going to go and how far that that's going to spread out. This seems like a lot, and it is, and this is where honestly where experience matters, being able to show up, this could take from a few moments to calculate all these steps to multiple minutes based upon the complexity to be able to come up and formulate the plan.

Once you've got these plans put in place and you have decided and you anticipate the impact is going to expand outside of your immediate area, you need to make appropriate notifications to the public. There's three types of mercy notifications that Unified Command will be making. One of those is shelter in place order, that's where you are expected to go into your residence, close your doors, shut your windows, turn off your HVAC system. The reason why you could be doing this is for a variety of reasons, one would be an active shooter, you don't want the public out on the on the street, in the front lawn if you have a shooter. Another could be a hazardous materials incident, you want to get them in, isolate them from the chemical.

Another warning that you might give is evacuation warning. Evacuation warning is prepping individuals to let them know that there might be an evacuation order coming, that as this incident progresses, that that might be occurring. It also gives those people that need an opportunity more time to evacuate, gives them opportunity to hit. Maybe I should go ahead and get started cases gets that way so you're not falling behind the scenes. And the last one is an evacuation order.

This means that the incident is so severe, we do not want you staying in your residence. We want you to leave for your safety and the safety of first responders. This could be something where there's a bomb, a fire, an explosion, something along those lines that would put your residents at fear of you being inside of it. When unified command is making these decisions, they have to get it right of which one of those orders. So example, if you tell people to evacuate and they are evacuating and there's a hydrogen sulfide leak, you've now just sent people out into the public where they're going to be exposed to the chemicals and have more potential consequences.

Vice versa, if you tell everybody to shelter in place and that's next to an explosion, you're going to get people killed. So it's very important that you make the right decision at that specific time because once you send that information out, it's very, very, very challenging to withdraw it because it creates more confusion. So once you've done that, you need to start, okay, I've got a plan, I've got my objectives, I got my strategies, we know what we're going to do, we have to start working on our messaging to go out. So it has to you have to figure out who's going be impacted and which type of message that you are going to do. It has to be clear and it has to be action oriented.

You have to tell them exactly what they're going to be doing. So what to do and where to go. So also that's one of the things at Unified Command, if I give you an evacuation order or warning, I also have to try to find a place to send you to. So there's all these different layers that just keep building on themselves. Once we've established that messaging and started to work through it, then we have to follow our protocols and make the notifications for the Alert South Bay, social media, the WIA, and then door to door notifications.

So we're going to start implementing all those things, but we have to get it right the first time before we start that process. That's why I'm a big fan of utilizing Genesis because a lot of people are visual learners and it's one thing to be able to push the message out, it's another to show a picture of exactly what the situation is and where it's going and have it color coded And we'll we'll talk a little bit more about Genesys in just a little bit. And then finally, you have to evaluate your IAP. Is the plan that you are working? Is it working?

Is it progressing? Are you starting to mitigate the incident? And that may also involve making additional alerts to the community as the situation either evolves or deescalates. I mean, you want that's again another good reason behind Genesis. You can show as it builds up and goes down because things change.

Changing of emergency notification is a very big deal. I've seen in the past where they've done evacuations, lifted the order, brought people back in, and then the incident progressed back up. It's almost impossible to get people to leave after you've let people back after an evacuation. That's why as unified command, you're having to go through a very systematic process before you make some of these decisions. So what I'm showing you here is a normal routine emergency incident.

I do understand that the catalyst for tonight's presentation is dealing with the Chevron fire. In that specific incidents, Manhattan Beach was no way involved in the unified command aspect. The unified command consisted of Chevron fire and El Segundo fire. Assembly Bill sixteen forty six outlines that refineries establish cupas for notifications of refinery incidents. El Segundo, as the local implemented agency, also known as the LIA, is the CUPA for that legal requirement to make those notifications. At this time, I'm gonna turn it over to miss Sutherland to talk about the alerting system.

Thank you, chief. Thank you, counsel. So I'm here today to talk about what we've done since with the incident in October, and immediately, stakeholders. We convened El Segundo fire, we looked at Manhattan Beach fire, the refinery, and really our working group on how our alerts work, how we can improve, and certain steps that we can take immediately to put some some real actionable steps in place so that if something, god forbid, should happen, we can respond immediately. Right away, we put together holding statements, that was something that was really clear from both communities that we needed something very clear, very actionable that gave residents something to do.

As the chief mentioned, it takes time, we have to do an incident size up, we have to determine the scope, the areas that are being impacted and what we want people to do, but initially what we can do is we can tell people to go inside. We can go inside right away, we can give that message out to the community, and we can direct them where to get further information. So right away we got that together, we had that approved very quickly, and that's ready to go and access to be able to access from the users to that template is prepared and ready to be executed. We also looked at enhanced communication protocols, so how do we ensure the process of information and the flow of information happens in a timely fashion when that information is available. As the chief mentioned, we have to be sending verified information out to the community.

The problem becomes if we are quick to act and that information is not correct, there's ramifications to that as well. So we take direction from the field incident commander, that's where the direction comes from and that follows the state standard emergency management system model in implementation of ICS which is the incident command system that the chief is discussing earlier. We also clarified all of our notification triggers and thresholds on when and if we issue alerts and how we stratify that messaging. Not every alert is going to rise to a wireless emergency alert. Some alerts may go out via text, some may only be necessary for email, some might be distributed via social media, so there's a lot of different ways that we can utilize the different methods of pushing information out into the community.

So we looked at those criteria, all those different criteria categories, and we made determinations to say, under these circumstances, these are the types of alerts that will be sent to protect life, property, or the environment, and those are the three drivers on how we really look at how messaging is then delivered. And then lastly, prior to this we had a comprehensive standard operating procedure that all 15 cities in the South Bay work under, and it essentially talks about how, if, and when we send emergency notifications they will be coordinated, and that's really the key operative word here. Coordination amongst all the agencies responding is our goal, we want to ensure we have one voice messaging so that we're not issuing multiple messages potentially conflicting with what they're saying from multiple different agencies. And so our system is truly designed to be cross jurisdictional so that we could send alerts when they impacted multiple jurisdictions without a delay to those residents to get that information out. And so we updated that SOP, we actually just I sent it to FEMA and to the state and got word back from FEMA and the state that it's one of the most comprehensive plans they've seen, have asked if they can share it as a best practice.

It really is an industry standard on how we're operating here in the South Bay. So that's kind of the big overview. In addition to all of that, we've done enhanced training with all of the division field chiefs and with those individuals that are constantly using the system so that they know how to use the system, they're prepared to do it, and really we've been drilling that process over and over again to ensure that we're really ready to be able to send something immediately in the event that we should. So with that, I will turn this back over to the Chief. Thank you.

One of those enhancements is a first responder evacuation guidebook, and what that does is it was developed by staff and this is specifically for Manhattan Beach Police and Fire. It's a staff development, a comprehensive playbook providing very clear standardized guidance for first responders when issuing emergency notifications and outlining a very detailed plan, and it is a working document for unified command when they're doing this. Because unless you've been involved with multiple evacuations over the course of your career, the two in the morning it's happening right now, you're going to miss things. So this is a document that Unified Command can sit at the command post, go through, hits allows them to hit all the emergency notification types and the process for making those notifications gives them an idea to look at their community relocation centers and make sure that we're activating if we need those. The Red Cross Evacuation Shelters locations gets them started on that process.

Identifying traffic control points because if you're evacuating, you have to determine what your choke points are, especially with working with Genesis to figure out how we can keep traffic flowing. This is a document that helps police and fire identify those so they can put resources there to keep traffic moving. Identifying public reentry criteria. This is that step at the very end where you want to make sure that you checked all the boxes before you allow people back into an evacuation area. Part of this process also includes the Genesis component, which I will turn now over to Ms. Hopson to discuss.

Thank you, Chief and good evening, counsel. So, Genesis Protect, it is something that we're bringing to the city. So, on Genesis Protect, you are able to locate your area within Manhattan Beach. So we were able to outline 18 areas within Manhattan Beach for designated zones, and the campaign that we're rolling out will be know your zone. So we do have flyers that have a QR codes that you can scan, and we also created refrigerator magnets so you can have that at home so you can actually write your zone on it.

So we do have some out front if you would like one. That, it basically targets we have with the 18 zones, we scheduled it as only one zone has one school. So if there is an incident at a school, we can actually just designate one zone to let people know shelter in place, evacuate, or, you know, more information is coming instead of alerting the entire city and causing, you know, mayhem within that. We also have the zones along the beach. So if we do have a tsunami warning, we can go ahead and let everyone know in that zone, like, hey, just a fair warning, gather your items, and if things escalate, we can go ahead and just let them know for that as well.

Along with that, everything else, we can have the shelters on there. If we need to evacuate, we can let them know. They can look up and it just pings where they should go. So we also have that available for them too. All the cities in the South Bay cities are also rolling out Genesis as well. So it's a community thing. Palos Verdes has been Rancho Palos Verdes, it's been active there. If you actually log in, you can see some of their areas now from the landslide. So it's been active for quite a while. So it's definitely a great system that we're rolling out to the city and we want everyone to be safe.

And for public outreach, the first rollout of this was at the town hall. We got to present that and we'll also give out some literature. We're gonna do the know your zone campaign. I'm gonna work with the CERT team, MAPRY neighborhood, to start rolling it out to them so they can also get it out to the community. And then also alert South Bay for the flyers. I know that they're gonna send those out to for sign up for Alert South Bay. And also when there is information for Genesis, Alert South Bay will send out that information, but we can also work with them and get it out on also all the other communication platforms for them to log in, know their zone, and see what else that they need to do from there. Thank you.

Thank you. I just went in to

figure out my zone.

There was a map on here, but

I just want to spare.

We're comparing zones. That was great. Well, part of the oh, sorry.

Could I ask a question since I'm in the app or no? I'll wait.

Do you confirm you're looking for the zones Yes. In the city? Correct. So that's important to show as part of your presentation?

Okay.

And if you don't have them, maybe we'll proceed to questions.

We can proceed to questions.

I'm gonna start with a question. I want to cut through this because of genuine frustration in the community, and maybe this is for the chief, maybe this is for Ali. And that is, how will these enhancements result in more useful information in a more timely manner is the question that I've been asked based on assurances that there actually have been some enhancements that have been undertaken.

Now, are you referencing specifically a Chevron specific incident or just a general incident that occurred in Manhattan Beach?

I think from my perspective, the Chevron incidents was a helpful case study to understand how we can improve our system, particularly with a multi agency response. So can you talk to the response and also to the communications, particularly for those that might be in an adjoining community to where an incident occurs? How will what these enhancements are help get the quality information out perhaps in a more timely manner.

So I'm going have to turn the in regards to the notification process over to chief I'm going to pronounce it wrong, Over El Segundo to talk about what they are doing as the the Coupa in regards to this process. But in regards to our response itself, it's the exact same. We're still standing the entire department. So when we have an incident like that, every single fire department employee is responding there in operational capacity to help mitigate, not to go in unified command, but to there to assist. Turn over to chief.

You go. There's the zones.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm the A Shift Division Chief in El Segundo. I was not there on that evening. One of the other that evening that the incident happened, we were in unified command with Chevron Fire Department, which is usually the case for an incident that occurs on the refinery. Their battalion chief, when they set up incident command, they're usually first on scene, they're the technical experts within the plant itself.

When we arrive, they're minimally staffed, but when we arrive with all of the South Bay agencies in mutual aid, we do establish mutual aid or unified command with Chevron. And so one of the our off duty division chiefs did come in that evening. We were working towards training and getting obtaining equipment for notifications for emergency communications. And so what we've done since then is we have two off duty division chiefs with portable communications equipment, including Starlink, we have battery backups, we have laptop computers that have access to Alert South Bay in order to ensure that we can put out the information. What we do our dispatch center will contact via text and cell phone both off duty division chiefs who are on call twenty four hours a day.

This position is fully funded by Chevron Corporation. They've funded all the equipment as well as the personnel to be available for the emergency communications. Our dispatch center will contact us via phone and text message that there's an incident going on. We will get in touch with the incident commander because all of the information that is pushed out to the public has to come from incident command, so we have an accurate message to push out to the public. And so we will, continue to get updates from the incident command and we have the ability to push out Nixle alerts, text message, as well as the wireless emergency alerts, which we can select zones based on the impact of the incident, we can actually target which zone and anybody within that zone, within that cell tower will get the alert.

So similar to like an Amber Alert, if you drive through a certain area, it will hit your cell phone, so that type of capability working with Saray and Alert South Bay and Brandy, our area GDMAC.

Okay. And I know colleagues have questions, but the particular issue here, of course, and thank you very much for being here, No appreciate problem. For those residents that are outside the city limits of El Segundo, just what can you tell them to reassure them for future incidents that they will be receiving these sort of notifications?

Well, one enhancement that like I stated before, we're always in unified command with Chevron and I think one thing that we have improved is part of our process is we, every morning, we have, we put out an email. It's it's, elsegundoalerts@elsegundo.org that, we attach. It's an email group of, all of the Manhattan Beach staff as well as El Segundo staff of who the on duty or the notifiers are for the day. So we also have a complete phone list that we will be contacting the city of Manhattan Beach city leadership, including the fire chief, if there is an incident. So improvements as far as getting a representative to the command post, to, keep internal stakeholders and external stakeholders, apprised of the information so they can start communicating with with their the people that they need to to communicate with.

Thank you. A question for the city representatives, I could. Can you reiterate the communications with our school district? I recognize it's through our our PIO. But if the PIO for whatever reason is not easily available, which I recognize rarely occurs, but I wanna better understand the backup. How do we get through to our school district so they are not absent?

Absolutely. So we have multilayers that would step in, our our city manager, our police chief, our fire chief, the PIO for the police department as well, all have the contact information for our

school

district. And, you know, it really is a great working relationship. I've seen it happen time and time again. Unfortunately, when there are incidents that happen in the school district or in the city that communicate those lines of communication are really open, and they're they've been a great partner for us, and we've been a great partner for them in coordinating that essential communication.

One last question I wanna turn over to colleagues, and that is for our older adult community, not all of whom have electronic media, what should be our messaging here to them so that they're better prepared for an emergency which may or may not present at the Chevron refinery?

Right. So number one, we would love for our residents to all be prepared. Have your go bag, be ready, have a plan, have a plan to shelter in place, have a plan to evacuate, get your medicines ready, get your, anything that you might need in in, you know, the time that you you may have to evacuate. Sign up for those alerts. If you don't have access to that, we and it is a huge crisis, then we will put that information, of course, on our website.

We'll put it on our cable channel, which is available twenty four seven. We also you know, we do keep up lines of communication with our older adults program, so we will send out information about how to be prepared, how to sign up for alerts on our older adults', newsletter. So and we do lunch and learns also, just so that we can maintain that open line of communication with that vulnerable population.

Thank you. Council member Charney.

Oh, think she has

Oh, is there more information that you can start? Please. Alright. So

Ali talked about all the different data connection points, so we also still do have landline data in our system, so we're not just relying on wireless data and cell phones and everything else. The other thing I wanted to mention, there's a really wonderful community organization called Beach Cities Care, it's k c a e r, and it's actually they're set up all over the state of California, there's so many incredible wonderful resources about what to do and how to shelter in place. It talk there's just great community resources, it talks about how to sign up for alerts from Alert South Bay, if you're in other areas of the South Bay closer to LA City and Wilmington, what those alerting systems are. So it's a great organization, we sit, we participate, we are all on, the task force for Beach Cities Care, so we're contributing and trying to help get that information out, and they get a lot of really good community feedback because they're out at schools and they're talking to community members to help enhance how we're doing our preparedness efforts. So they just revamped their whole shelter in place campaign, working with Chevron, and they're they're all part of this group, along with Valero and the Torrance Refining Company and Phillips and Marathon are all part of this.

So really it's about public education, so it's another wonderful resource that we can direct people to, to get additional information and we can make those flyers available at city hall if individuals don't have access to the Internet. Oh, it's on their website as well. So it's just another resource for individuals to access.

Thank you.

Mayor, to expand upon your question in regards to the technology, especially with individuals that may not have it, we don't just rely on the technology component. We're also, as mentioned earlier, we do door to door aspects. So we are putting first responders in a hazard area and making sure that we're trying to go door to door, but just know that that does take more time. And so that's why we want to be as effective and efficient as possible because, again, as fire, we're asking law enforcement to potentially be going into a hazardous materials area or a threat from a bomb. I don't wanna expose them any longer than I need to.

So the more people we can get out and do a timely evacuation, the better. While we do have the map up here, I would like to expand on this. One of the things you may see a little bit different here about what we did with Manhattan Beach is Genesis creates, I would say, very generic zones. We went back and identified 18 zones. We were very specific about how we developed the there was nothing to the madness in regards to these, because I can tell you from experience, you cannot effectively evacuate an entire town.

Roads just are not designed to do that. So this way we can be much more surgical in what we're doing. Each one of those zones does not have more than 3,000 people, we analyzed wind direction, what our biggest threats, whether it's tsunami, whether it was the Chevron, only having one school basically school in pretty much each one of those zones, analyze and take a look where some of our flood prone areas, so that we could be very surgical and evacuate only what we have to and then set warnings up expanding so that we can slowly try to eliminate or decrease the impact on those traffic control points.

Thank you. That's pretty cool.

Council member Charnay.

Thank you.

Thank you, chief.

Thank you so much. I'm gonna take this now a little bit and just thank all of you from everyone over at Chevron, Citi staff, and all of our communications divisions and El Segundo. I know that this was kind of a very scary incident. It's and I see it as a best case of a worst case. Right?

We have an opportunity now to go over everything that we didn't do properly and to improve on it, which I, you know, I really appreciate all the effort and the your talents in putting your heads together and coming up with a plan. I know this is a probably really difficult question to walk us through, but learning best practices and now thinking about what we will be implementing. If the Chevron incident were to happen tonight, can someone walk me through what happens first, who starts command, how communications get sent out so that we we can, you know, visualize what happens from this point out?

So it's going to be basically everything I discussed on that entire process, but that's going to be occurring with El Segundo and Chevron Fire Department. So they're going to be doing all those exact same things, and then they're going to start that notification process, the enhanced protocols that the Coupa has put in place for those notifications. So they're still going to be doing all the same things. They're still going to have the response time. They're still going to have to determine where the incident going, what the type of incident is, is it hydrogen sulfide being released or is it an explosion type or is just regular isolated fire. They still have to go through that entire process and come to that incident action plan and work through, but those notification process will be different based upon what they have put in place.

So I know that our residents were really and, you know, I live above Sand Dunes Park, so I saw seconds after the initial explosion, and it was terrifying. Right? But so I know that from for myself and my neighbors and other residents who live in the area, people wanted answers right away. And so we're we're talking about communications, but from what you're telling me, there still has to be time to assess the situation to make sure that the communication that you're sending out is is correct and that it's been I think incident command is the the agency that that makes that determination. Right?

So we have to wait for all those steps to clear before you can communicate that out to us.

So in some extent, yes. So you still have to respond. So even when I give you those time frames, it's you're still we don't have a system where people can just unless they're actually monitoring our dispatch center, and even then, you don't really know what's going on when you're hearing the dispatch component go out. So the people still have to respond, get in there. What is different, and then what we've added is Alert South Bay has received authorization to do a holding statement.

So it's not going to be an evacuation order or a shelter in place per se, but it's a holding statement to let you know, hey, we understand that there's an incident, it's there, they have authorization to do that, but they still have to determine which order they're going to be given. Because again, the consequences of giving the wrong one can be detrimental.

But that holding statement will come out kind of, right, like that's the thing I think you're trying to figure out what's different, it's going to feel different because you're getting a holding statement right away.

That's correct. So one of the one of the key components of that of what that we enhanced that Soraya alluded to was the holding statement and it's specific. We have templates built out in in Everbridge that so we don't have to reinvent the wheel every single time, can just it starts you off, and one of those is a holding statement. And it's basically go indoors and wait for further information, click on this link and it takes you to a website that you can get more information. It's tied with our Twitter X and it updates in real time on our city's website.

So what will happen is if we had an incident right now, I'm the on duty division chief, I would be responding in establishing unified command with Chevron, we would be getting all of the normal appropriate resources including Manhattan Beach Fire Department, and part of that would be the initial phone call from our dispatch center to the two off duty chief officers that have the equipment the communications equipment, and then we will be they will be getting in touch with me as the incident commander and say, let's get a holding statement out. And that is the first thing that's gonna happen is that holding statement goes out to let people know that something is happening, the fire department is en route and they're investigating and stand by and wait for further information. So that was something that was that was not that evening, it did not happen. And so that is a major enhancement is like, something is going on, we're aware of it, and this gives you an initial action is just go indoors and wait for further instructions. That way, we it gives us time as incident commanders to get the information exactly the size, complexity, the scope of the incident, and is it leaving the property, the Chevron refinery.

And so that gives us a little bit of time, and then we will follow-up with a more comprehensive notification as to actionable items, whether it be if it's an imminent threat, then you're probably going to get a WIA, you'll actually get further further communications. So that will happen right away, and that's with two off duty chief officers available twenty four seven in communication with the incident commander. So that's what we have right now. We're working towards a more enhanced model, which I can't really get into a lot of the details right now, but we are working with Manhattan Beach and the Chevron Corporation to enhance the current model that we have. And we would be happy to once we have the final details worked out from our legal perspective and from working with our talks with Chevron and the City of Manhattan Beach, we will we can come back and provide you with more comprehensive details.

And I can tell you it's going to be much better than what we have right now. So but right now, we have people that are available 20 fourseven to push out notifications.

Thank you. Just have one more for chief Alexander. Think you're gonna regret saying that you always look for the worst case scenario in every scenario. Right?

Experienced

the worst what happens if there is a cyber attack that takes down all of our online communications? Do we have an analog method to reach all of our residents?

In regards to our alerting system?

Just any kind

of

emergency.

I'm gonna turn that over

to our

assistant because I am not the notification specialist.

Well played.

So the good news is, this actually happened with another software provider in 2025, and we have multiple redundancies in the state. So we are backed actually by the state of California Alert Morning Center. We know them very well, we talk to them all the time, anytime we have issues or concerns, we're constantly on the phone with them. They have the same capabilities we have, and right now we're in discussions to enhance our system so they can actually access some of our system data and not just rely on wireless emergency alerts. When it goes back to the analog system, AMFM radio still holds true to this today, and that is absolutely going to be a resource that we tap into, in getting that information out.

There's NOAA weather radios that we promote all the time to for people to get in their homes. They are still very valuable resources and the emergency alert system, EAS, is how we will access those radio systems.

Thank you.

Thank you. That's very helpful. It may be part of an outgoing communications plan for our community. Councilmember Sherrillian.

Thank you. I just want to say I appreciate Councilmember Tarne's questions. Those are real questions and I appreciate the question he asked about what would we do if it happened again today to walk us through the process. So quick question, I think it's Chief Sheffky? Sifti.

Yeah. You

can ask

me one question. I

should all practice first

before it Sifti

of Chief. Chief.

So you mentioned the holding statement didn't go get out in this incident where you're talking about the Chevron fire.