um uh am joined today by my colleague councilmember blumenfield mr espinoza uh can you please call the roll yes i'm councilmember rahman here councilmember blumenfield i would feel president and member price it looks like council member price is i'm currently absent so there's two members and a quorum great thank you very much um so we're going to start first with public comment but before we start with public comment i'm just going to go through quickly the items that are under consideration today there are six items two of which are mine which i'm really excited about item one is a city administrative officer report relative to a contract with frontier california for telecommunications services item 2 is a motion from from my office relative to improving access for the reporting of hate incidents and hate crimes and synthesizing and analyzing hate act data trends in the city more effectively item three is a motion relative to modernizing the city's online presence item four is a cio report relative to the price and sale of four tax defaulted real properties located within the city item five is a city clerk report relative to the annual report of the real property trust fund and item six is a motion relative to a transfer of jurisdiction of the city-owned property at 1739 north albion street from the department of general services to the department of rec and parks so with that i want to open us up for public comment speakers are going to have a minute if they're speaking on one item in two minutes if they're speaking on multiple items and they can also have one minute for general public comment if requested and i just would request all of our commenters to ensure that they're hewing to the subject of this committee and to the agenda items before us today mr espinoza do you want to provide the instructions for the public if they'd like to participate in this meeting thank you madam chair members of the public who would like to offer public comment on the items listed on the agenda should call 1-669-254-5252 and use meeting id number 161-8920 and then press pound press pound again when prompted for participant id once admitted into the meeting press star 9 to request to speak colors please select star 9 if you wish to speak morning good morning council member price welcome we're just waiting for our first caller armenia do we have anyone who's i want yes but it's not allowing me to allow to talk can you hear me yes oh here we go sounds like okay can you hear me yes please state your first and last name my name is hamilton i'd like to speak on all available items and after general public comment please thank you you have two minutes total for all items and one minute for general comment please begin thank you make sure everybody's muted okay so for the first item you guys are talking about frontier california inc for telecommunications services i wish that you would in your summary because i know you have the ability for item one i wish you would add you know a little bit of information about what frontier california is right for item two um hate incidents uh i read the i read this hash file for item two and you guys are really broadly talking about you know i think you're talking about the stuff that the media is you know talking about you know stop asian hate and all these things which i feel like you have good intentions i see that ramen and lee you guys both put this in here so you guys are both non-white people right you're putting forward anti-hate i want you to address the hate that's happening inside your council right you guys have nuri martinez who is saying very hateful things about unvaccinated people and here in item two you talk about perceived disability perceived race under the unruly act perceived also includes medical conditions unvaccinated is a condition of medical right it's a condition of a medical medical condition so i think that you guys if you're going to talk about perceiving and hating you should really address the hate that's happening in your heart okay including the way that you address these meetings actually i'll move to my one minute general public comment please so the way that you guys are having these meetings i want to address the attorney who spoke in the very beginning you guys constantly are repeating that these need to be relevant to your items right uh i understand that but you're also doing this in reaction to me and a few selects like five other people who call consistently and we want to share the way that we feel we want to express ourselves and me specifically i want to express myself through quoting the bible now i've been cut off by you ramen and i've been cut off by other people in the council and other attorneys and i want you to know that that is infringing on the constitution my freedom of speech your job to protect that i don't i don't want to fight with you guys every time and i don't want my life to be a constant struggle to express myself you guys turn these into battlefields of free speech you are turning your meetings into free speech battlegrounds and that is not right that is a problem and it shows you you know you guys are the ones who are getting elected so it shows what kind of people you are right you're making yourself look ugly no one cares what phyllis says right no one cares but what you say that's what's on record honey have a beautiful day god bless you thank you great let's move on to our next caller yeah please state your name and the items you wish to speak on hi um i'm doing public comments okay do you have a minute uh please begin awesome um hi councilmember rahman so as we all know animal issues are human issues uh when we have grown men chasing after a horse clapping its hands scaring the horse hitting the horse forcing the horse to work pushing the pony when it stops in the middle of the ride while it's wanting to take a break i asked all of us today what kind of lessons are we teaching our children adult modeling is crucial in the development of a child and teaching them to be kind to animals should be one of them i have deep concern for the children who visit griffith park and pony ride in petting zoo because we are modeling our future generations to be unkind to animals when individuals are unkind to animals they will indefinitely be unkind to humans but if the whole point of pony rise is for children to interact with animals then it needs to be in a fashion that is kind to animals i ask you kindly and respectfully today please do not renew the concessionaires contract have those animals go to a sanctuary and please pass an ordinance to eliminate pony rights because these confessionaries have proven time and time again that they cannot care properly for these animals that profit is above welfare thank you so much have a wonderful day thank you next color do we have any more callers on the queue we do hi my name is denzel i'd like to speak on general comment thank you you have one minute please begin hello councilmember rahman i wanted to let you know that on july 17 2021 a child was severely trampled and dragged at griffith park pony right and petting zoo and suffered broken bones a deep concern for the children who visit this park because another disaster is just waiting to happen i know that you're a working mom of pre-school-aged twins and understand the importance of child safety this is a huge liability for the city if a child falls dials dies or is injured the parent will come after the city for damages please do not renew this concessionary's contract and pass an ordinance eliminating pony rides and petting zoos in los angeles city to protect the welfare of our children thank you thank you next caller give me a second connor with the last digit ending in one four zero three please press star six to mute color fill to a mute we'll move on to the next color hello please state your name and the items you wish to speak on hi good morning i would like to speak on general public comments please thank you can you please state your name as well sorry thank you um could i could i is that required oh no i don't think so thank you i just don't i i just want to just remain on this perfect you have a minute please again good morning council um i am pleading with you guys every every time you guys have a counsel meeting start meeting on time because 10 o'clock start at 10 o'clock the main reason why i'm contacting you guys is that as you can see the vaccine mandate has created like a huge huge problem not just for l.a county but for the city of los angeles now my concern right now is that we're seeing um police officers firefighters quitting in record numbers like we've never seen before and that puts public safety at risk when we have uh understaffed um safety officials and uh restaurant owners um have been all been complaining that this um vaccine mandate is gonna destroy your livelihood where they're gonna they're gonna be forced to um admit customers based on vaccine status and restaurant owners do not want to be in that position so i'm urging you council to please do something about this because um the vaccine is not going to stop the transmission of the virus and i'm just pleading with you guys to please take into consideration that the livelihoods are going to be lost in the city of los angeles and l.a county so i'm urging you guys to reverse this policy because you can see it's creating a huge problem that's all i have to say and thank you so much for taking my call thank you next calling please say your name items you wish to speak on sure it's eric previn calling from studio city and i'll keep a short comment on the items in a uh a general public comment as well if i may on items i'm sorry you just want to clarify yeah that's fine okay thank you you have two minutes total for all items and one minute for general comment please begin okay i was looking at the um real property trust fund and i you know i have a little experience with this and i don't know if council member ramen is fairly new but you must know that the nbc universal you know it was part of the community benefit for cooperation and such with cd2 and cd4 um have amassed quite a good sum of money i i didn't i was looking and i noticed that cricorian um it's hard to believe actually but cd4 that's yours 359 at the beginning uh balance in june 2020 359 000 jumped up to only 372. but when i looked at cd2 uh if you can believe it it was 703 000 in uh june of 2020 and it jumped up this year to 1.26 million so that is a enormous uptick and apparently there were a bunch of donations to the tune of 537 thousand dollars so i'd love to know from whom those that money came i'm guessing nbc universal or i don't know maybe it has to do with that other project out there but boy we'd love to know how that money is going to be earmarked and just going to um you know council district 4 just because i said i would uh you guys are doing okay but not modest actually sort of modest so i don't know where all that money went because a lot of it was being filed in there um prior to your your great service by the way i stand with uh councilmember rahman who i'm worried about the 2-4 districting roulette game but i'm not worried about ramen because she is a progressive leader who in any district literally in any district will attract the kinds of angelinos who i think want uh leadership that is focused on smart things and hopefully breaking the mold it's getting harder and harder for you to be independent and act without the 14 council members breathing down the neck but that's what we're facing and that's what you're facing so i i don't know um i i was hoping that uh would be a little bit easier but it's it's never easy as we've learned and so that's my comment for now thank you thank you um colors please select star nine if you wish to speak let me try again fourteen zero three oh yes um all items and general public comments okay thank you you have two minutes total for the items and one minute for general comment please begin yes so it's very good to see uh nithya roman noodle getting acquainted with city hall and raising all of that money and office holder account campaign donations free tickets to trips all right caller yes we're talking about things that eric prevent talked about you didn't rule him off topic what but you rule me off topic because of your hatred towards little tiny animals like myself that's not very nice i i think it's very rude of her yes i think so and now because you've done that i'm gonna recommend that unfortunately you're going to have to be moved to cd24 and we're going to support paul krikorian taking over your district which agenda item are you referring to or is this your general public comment sir well we're going to since you're interrupting and hating is the hate item on the agenda eight crimes hate reporting i think so and i think you hate me no yes i think she hates me because she interrupts me when eric private gears off so who are the haters you and the council are the haters and you heard meetings two of them at the same time your puppet was on another line trying desperately to talk at the other meeting why do you hold both at the same time over acts of hatred why do you hold these meetings on a thursday morning at 10 am why not the afternoon because you want to sneak sneak speak behind the back of the fbi and the public because you know they can't attend the fbi can attend yes but what about the public now we'll go to the general public comment and if the ramen noodle has been very very bad since taking over for the great david what has she done her district looks worse he votes yes on every item and cow towed to mark ridley thomas while he was getting ready to have his indictment and seal and ground game while she works for ground game that's why homeless criminals have the advantage do you want this criminal to be your representative now the hollywood hills if you're listening to me fight back and ask for paul martin krikorian so that nifty ramen noodle will be expelled to the new resida canoga park and renekta homeless district where she could experiment with more tiny homes like bob boyd but boyle has done he already destroyed it now it's okay thank you caller please select star nine if you wish to speak okay there are no more callers in the queue councilwoman okay well let's move on to the items um i want to recommend this remember i'm sorry to um interrupt you would you like to officially close public comments at this time sorry yes we will close public comment at this time i'm also sorry councilmember um someone just raised their hand and it was the only person that hasn't been allowed to speak so okay let's have this person provide their comment and then we can um yes please can you hear me yes please state your name that i don't speak on yes my name is michael fujimori i'm i'd like to speak on general public comment uh this is uh for council member ramen on december 22nd you have one minute for a general comment please begin okay thank you council member ramen on december 22nd 2016 the city of australia allowed for a concessionaire to sign on to a contract with the city that neglects and is unkind to his animals as a member of los angeles airlines for animals caller i'm sorry an animal this is not within the purview of are you intending to call into to a different meeting no no i'm calling on general public comment like everyone else before me is done all right please continue sir yes thank you we have yes we have video footage of horses and ponies not receiving a drop of water for almost seven hours overworking 90 degree temperature and when a pony stopped in the middle of the ride the worker pushed the pony this is consumer fraud as parents are bringing their children to the point of right operator thinking that they are contributing to a facility that treats the animals with respect and kindness that they deserve however a significant complete opposite as the owner isn't properly caring for his animals los angeles constituents do not accept uncon treatment to animals and we ask you kindly to not renew this concessionaire's contract and please pass an ordinance eliminating pony rides and petting zoos in los angeles as these concessionaires have proven time and time again that they have placed profit above welfare thank you so much thank you there are no more colors in the cube councilwoman okay thank you so much armita for your support in handling public comment today i will now be closing public comment and moving on to the items and i want to recognize also that council member price joined us um right in the beginning of public comment thank you so much councilmember for today's agenda i wanted to recommend that we take items five and six on consent unless there are any objections okay great mr espinoza can you call the role on this thank you madam chair council member ramen yes council member of bloomenfield mifielda and councilmember price hi three eyes and both of these items are approved thank you very much um let's move on to item one which is a cio report about the contract with frontier california inc for telecom services maria ramos i believe is here today with us from the cio who can give us a brief overview marie are you here yes i am okay great hi maria welcome um and please please share with us good morning thank you uh before you is an information technology uh agency is requesting authority to execute a contract with frontier california for telecommunications services for a term of three years uh with uh two one-year options to extend for a total compensation amount of 10.8 million frontier provides services uh in telephone voice and data through its centronet system frontier centrenet system is a legacy telecommunications service circuit infrastructure and it is owned by the contractor and that is currently being used by multiple city departments um the city relies on the use of the centrenet system to receive and relay communications the city has contracted with frontier for sentiment services since 2000 we are currently in the process of transitioning away from the sentiment services and switching over to voip and solar telephone unfortunately delays in uh transitioning away from the legacy communication infrastructure have been uh due to the perfect pandemic and the separation incentive program and ita uh would like to source this contract with frontier as utility communication services being delivered on foreign proprietary infrastructure is still needed funding for the contract is included in the department's 2021 and 2022 budgets within their communication services account i am available to answer her questions and as well as entering if there are any thank you very much um maria are there any questions from council members blooming field of price on this item go ahead guys member price thank you thank you madam chairs and thanks for the uh presentation of miss ramos um obviously telecom is vitally important as we the government moves forward and communicates but talk a little bit about any focus or tension any consideration of diversity in the uh in this team that's that you're recommending either by their own initiative or requirements imposed by the city you comment on that on on any diversity achievements or status on this team i believe i have ita here who may be able to provide that information certainly uh ted ross general manager of the information technology agency that's a great question council member uh the the vendor is subject to all the city's requirements for diversity and inclusion uh one of the difficulties we have when it comes to telecom vendors is we're limited by those who are in the area so you know when we had a phone service in a specific area for let's say a city department we're limited to the telecom vendors in that area as was mentioned by the cao we are working aggressively to eliminate legacy phone lines this unfortunately is one of those legacy phone systems that we're still on while we're replacing and modernizing our phone systems i just hope that we can be mindful of you know the the the the impact and the desirability of having greater diversity you know all kinds of professionals are able to provide a variety of services and i think we're going to be uh certainly identifying those opportunities as we move away from legacy uh providers look at those opportunities to expand and and to increase the diversity uh in ways that can really make a difference uh and you know the city is a major player so we ought to be modeling that i think that we can so just appreciate your attention to that detail wholeheartedly agree thank you dear that's all i have thank you um i know this contract is running through 2024 march of 2024 do we anticipate being fully transitioned from telephone lines to cell phones by then ted ross general manager with ita um it's it ebbs and flows uh during the covent pandemic uh it was one of those items in which became extremely popular as you can imagine to make the replacement prior to it we still had replaced thousands of lines but it's predicated on augmentation in city buildings and the speed at which we could do that our ability to work with the departments to replace their phone systems uh and then some of the kind of the areas of coverage etc so there's no simple answer on the frontier side in regards to that that that side um but we've been receiving funding every year and we've been using that funding uh and we're over 5000 uh handsets replaced and counting so i don't have an immediate answer in regards to with frontier but the elimination of high cost legacy uh phone infrastructure is at the top of our list for priority unfortunately it's just one of those things where if it's especially smaller city facilities it's five handsets at a time or 10 devices at a time um so we've been juggling between large buildings that that have the quantity uh and small buildings that sometimes have a more expensive phone service got it okay um well i think that's all my questions councilmember blumenfield unless you had any additional questions um i'm gonna recommend that we approve the cio's recommendations uh mr espinoza can you please call the role on this item thank you councilmember ramen yes councilmember bloominfield and councilmember price yes and three eyes and this item is approved thank you so much ms ramos and um mr ross for your comments as well um item two let's move on to item two item two is a motion relative to improving access for uh reporting of hate incidents and synthesizing hate act trends um over the last few years you know i think we've seen a really big rise and alarming rise in hate incidents and hate rhetoric and in the country as a whole um related to kind of the national tenor of politics i think and also in particularly in connection to covid and the supposed origins of kovid and i think particularly the aapi community has faced a rise in these hate crimes but i think there has also been an alarming rise in anti-semitic incidents as well in locally in los angeles and across this country as the motion states incidents of hate crimes in la rose 55 between 2016 and 2020 um and the increase in hate crimes shows a rise in a anti-api hate crimes anti-semitic um hate crimes and islamophobic attacks during a time when hate crimes overall have become more violent um but the evidence is also suggesting that these numbers misrepresent the true number of incidents which are widely believed to be much higher and there's data from other places that shows that hate incidents and hate crimes are rising comparison data from non-profit organizations and from other government sources also show a wide gap in reporting to law enforcement which has historically been the only direct reporting mechanism for both hate crimes and hate incidents in the city of los angeles so i'm happy to see all the great strides that the city has made um in this and i wanted to just invite um i think we have jumana here to speak on this issue from [Music] from the civil rights department they have been pushing for a um for a 2-1-1 reporting option so it adds to the 2-1-1 reporting platform um and adds to kind of the ways in which incidents can be reported to the city and this motion is really i think intended at making sure that data coming from different places in the city is being collated appropriately and is being provided to both lapd and across city departments in ways that can help us to develop really meaningful and impactful mitigation strategies and i think it's really important that we have access to this information so i wanted to thank both ita and the la civil rights department for their partnership and i also wanted to give um jumana silian saba from the civil rights department an opportunity to speak on some of the challenges that we currently face in collecting this data and the importance of investing in this framework um and ted ross is also with us if if we have any questions from members on the committee in um with relation to the technological pieces of this motion so with that i want to invite johanna to say a few words on this thank you so much madam chair uh and good morning uh council members if i may take a moment of privilege to wish you a happy diwali day thank you and to wish our hindu community a happy duality you know this is a celebration and so i wish you happiness and prosperity and to everyone in the community i also want to thank you for bringing this motion forward this is a very important motion and it comes at a very critical time when as you very well stated we continue to see an increase in hate incidents and hate crimes and unfortunately these trends have been on the rise for the past several years part of what we're really hoping to do here at the city level and understanding and recognizing our challenges when it comes to reporting reporting of hate crimes and hate incidents is goes directly to our law enforcement it goes directly to lapd and while we do have our data from lapd we also know that that data isn't reflective uh not only based on what we know anecdotally but it also is not reflective based on what we are getting reporting from community-based organizations who are also getting direct reports from members of the community and part of those barriers um are essentially a number of those barriers and these are barriers to accessibility for reporting we know from data and research that communities have a mistrust of police and so we know that particularly communities of color immigrant communities are very much reluctant and hesitant to call and report hate crimes and hate incidents and these are not just anecdotal information this is actually based on current ongoing research by land as well as some initial findings by a research that's currently in progress through the ucla school of public health and some of what this data and this research is showing is that not only the preliminary data is showing communities have a mistrust and fear of reporting hate to police there is also a lack of understanding of what hate crimes are so even though an individual may be subjected to hate they may not recognize it as a hate crime or a hate incident so that contributes to the barriers in what this motion is proposing is to look at what we can leverage in terms of tools and technology that we have our disposal here at the city in providing additional points of access for reporting outside of just law enforcement and certainly having our 311 system which is a system that everyone in the city is familiar with is looked at as a possible tool where people can call and report i think that could help us to alleviate some of those barriers and the fears for reporting um and so with this motion and what we're really looking at is how we can increase remove barriers to reporting but also increase our ability to better understand the data right now the data we're looking at is is solely coming from law enforcement and again we need to be able to look at the data holistically so that we understand as reports come in that we understand these data as it comes through our 311 system as well as two on one which has already been activated through the county um we do get some preliminary numbers from 3-1-1 but i think part of what we're really hoping to do in working with ita is how we can better leverage our technology to increase access to reporting thank you so much for those words um mr ross i don't know whether you had any additional no i think jumana just summarized it quite well the information technology is here to help support and provide the electronic tools and services needed to try to help tackle this really important topic so we've had great partners in chred and we'll continue to work in a system where possible great um and the only thing i would add to that to what you said um jumana is really i think people also don't understand what rises to the level of of an incident that they should be calling about so they may understand that there is an incident that they've responded to or that they've been the victim of where um you know they would classify it as related to you know to hatred of particular categories or religions but they may not think it's worthy of reporting and i think having a lower barrier of entry to reporting can help us make other kinds of interventions that the city currently has doesn't have the capacity to think about because we don't have the data to think about it except at a very broad and general level um at this time i wanted to open it up to the rest of the committee for questions if you have any go ahead councilmember bloomfield great thank you and and uh thank you for introducing this motion i think it's uh it's just as you mentioned especially with the rise in hate crimes and hate incidents that we need to do everything we can um i've been involved in this issue for a long time i served on the the board of the anti-defamation league for many years the chair of the valley board and it occurs to me that there's a lot of great groups like adl and others that are are ahead of us in many ways and are doing doing some of this work so i just want to make sure we're going to partner with those groups i know a lot of people when there's hate incidents they actually call adl and other groups and that's where they make their reporting so for us to be truly effective we need to partner with those organizations so that either those organizations when they get those reports they they trigger it on ours or they encourage people to to also report to us but for this to truly work we need to leverage the amazing groups that we have that we're blessed to have here in los angeles that are on the front lines of fighting hate every day you know adl is in my mind chief among them um i want to open it up to ted and to jumana for response on that question but i also did just want to say that actually our office just met with adl a couple weeks ago to talk to them specifically about this issue about their log of hate incidents and to brief them on our motion and to ask them for their feedback on it and to make sure that all of the information that they have about reporting includes whatever work the city is doing and to make sure that their uh expertise is being uh wrapped into any work that we do so i appreciate your comment councilmember blumenfield um and i think there's an uh adl and others who have been really on the forefront of talking about hate um and to bring uh light to it are absolutely essential resources that we need to look at so and i wanted to turn it over to ted into jumana for any additional feedback thank you and thank you councilmember bloomingville for pointing it out and it's certainly our work with adl goes back for many years we have been partners particularly in the space and working with their center on extremism as well as understanding their heat maps that they've put together they're certainly at the forefront of this work and their partnership in this space is something that we have had for years and we will continue to have and you're absolutely right they are critical to this conversation and to our forward movement um part of part of sort of in in understanding how we are looking at the data and understanding how the data gets reported certainly adl is a point of access but there are also other community-based organizations and as we start to think about how we're going to aggregate the data so that we can better understand and target policies as well as initiatives we're not only going to need to look at the data stream coming from lapd as well as data streams coming from 3-1-1 and 2-1-1 but also data streams coming from adl and other community-based organizations including stop aapi h it's also been collecting and so on the data analysis front those partnerships are core to what we are doing and if i may ted ross with ita uh in addition to kind of the basic tools that could be made available we know folks like the university of southern california have extended their assistance their martial school in which they train data scientists and provide data science services they have found tremendous interest in being able to assist also free of charge with these types of efforts so there's a lot of data out there there's not enough data out there but there is a lot of data out there and so the ability for chred and for the city of la to gather key data to be able to assess and analyze the data and use it to inform decisions and to inform outreach i think is going to be critical thank you um councilmember price uh thank you you know folks thank you for the reports back report backs on this subject people need to be feel free to report incidents that they need to be able to report and so just wonder kind of what's the 311 app now in multiple languages i know we talked about that in this last budget cycle but have we made any improvements now in terms of expanding the number of languages that the system can accommodate and if not how can we move forward doing that as well so yes sir certainly under the leadership of you council member price in your office you know we're key among others to be able to help push and ensure that we made the translations uh in the myla 31 app i'm going to ask ed magos to summarize the recent development and to summarize how many languages that mobile app is now available good morning yes thank you so the myla 311 app uh on the android platform and the ios apple platform uh now supports five languages uh beyond english so it includes spanish korean armenian simplified chinese and traditional chinese and one of the prospects for expanding that to another five generally speaking additional funding and additional time to be able to make that work that's all it's about to take time and money classic classic city answer it's time and money but but it is it is the truth we have a platform that we've been able to perform this on and so then it requires because the translation requires translation services to be able to accurately move it into it as well as the implementation and might i add there is no other major city in the united states that has their 311 services available in so many languages we're a diverse city we can have 100 languages and still find number 101 and that's understandable but i do think it is laudable i do give credit to this council and to to you council member price for helping lead the charge to ensure that the mile a300 mobile app is available as a multilingual app across you know multiple very large communities in the city well thank you ted and thank you for your leadership in implementing such a system so thank you good year great um well if we don't have any additional questions i'd like to move forward with approval of this item uh mr espinoza can you call the roll yes councilmember ramen yes and council member blumenfield looks like he's currently away from his death so council member price hi okay well you got two out of three yes yes yes so we have two two eyes and this item passes great oh wait i i believe he is back councilmember blumenfield or do you vote yes on this motion this is a tough one uh yes yes yes we got him we got him it is unanimous we have three eyes and this item is approved great uh moving on to item three today which is about modernizing our city's online presence um i wanted to thank ted ross and ita staff for your help we spent a lot of time with you drafting uh this motion and with council member buscaino staff who was also really involved and i know who deeply care about this issue um i'm going to invite ted to speak on some of the points in this motion but i did want to say you know i think this is a really important um important moment i think in l.a the pandemic forced us to change
how we deal with our um with you know our digital assets and and um our we have a almost entirely for some departments almost entirely remote workforce um and i think we have an opportunity now to not just have uh real conversations about remote work and about how that can impact transit and travel you know in and around city city offices but also to ask about how we can improve our digital presence and how can we enable residents who did take advantage of remote access to city services how can we learn from the lessons and challenges that they've faced um how can we improve on our ability to have an online presence and ensure that we're increasing our capacity to make that online presence really powerful really robust uh while ensuring that we maintain accessibility and equity uh in terms of access to our city services so ted i wanted to give you the opportunity to speak on this motion because i know you're being asked with uh tests with a big responsibility in this one um and i wanted to just get a sense from you of where we currently stand and how this motion would help us move in a better direction for the city certainly first i'd like to thank the leadership that's across various city departments so you know we may be the ita but i think there is a tremendous call for modernization for digitization and i really do have to thank the leadership across many different city departments to hear that column to respond as we describe in our digital strategy i think it's better for us to build a new better and not just a new normal we have to use cobit as a catalyst there's been many terrible things that have come out of the copic pandemic but if there is a silver lining it's our ability to better leverage technology post-pandemic even just to be able to be a better electronic digital government that can connect with people where they want to connect how they want to connect and you're right it isn't a very important time in regards to that we're very proud of what we've done at ita to help modernize the city's presence in the last five years we've really tried to work to transform the way the city delivers its services online so for example all 70 plus websites supported by ita are hosted in the cloud on aws they have over 99.9 uptime which means when you go to that website it's there and it does what it needs to do and it performs well all of our websites are mobile responsive which means whether you're on a desktop a laptop a tablet or smartphone it will resize itself appropriately to make it easy to use whatever device you're on 66 of our 70 websites have language translation which means with the simple click or with the default setting that you already have it'll convert it to over 108 languages we use drupal content management solutions the same software used by the nfl by johnston johnson by tesla and others and lac.org has almost four million if you can believe unique visitors a year even earning a prestigious webby award honorable mention which is both government and private sector but as you described this has become even more important during kovid under executive directive 29 for contactless government the ita facilitated a comprehensive exercise where all city departments reviewed their department services that were paused by covid and identified ways to try to digitize them after two months of reviewing 97 different services we as a group and i give a lot of credit once again to state departments digitized 74 of them this was done with 13 key technologies that applied across all 74 in which we took it and we adopted and published it in our digital strategy and we continue to work with and use that the motion has several categories is describing it's a comprehensive it's a very large motion it talks about improving websites it talks about a new.gov web address it talks about ensuring city services are accessible through 311 or other websites and talks about digitizing consolidating city services so i'll briefly try to touch on them but i want to be open for questions i'm sure anyone could ask a question on any one of the topics on the improving website side we're going to analyze we're going to report back on these items after initial discussions with staff you know we can certainly review how to best deliver a single user-friendly portal but it's going to have to cover 120 plus websites a good example is lapd it has over 10 000 pages just in that site alone so taking all this content and making it something that's streamlined and easy to use for a visitor so they can find what they're looking for and they can get to it or they can stumble on something that's very useful to them and they can get to it is of course always going to be the herculean task of the city of los angeles how to best do that we'll also work to improve the clarity and communication of website policies we've got various different policies that exist but things like section 508 compliance with the americans with disability act responsiveness to smartphones security using ssl these have really become table stakes for modern engaging websites so a consolidated web services policy that clarifies the standards in one place for departments will likely be a result of the report we'll also identify tools and mechanisms to ensure compliance these will be things that will of course cost money but having a tool in which we can take all these different sites and automatically identify where maybe things are lacking and work with whether it's our website or work with the website the webmasters who manage that site will be a great way of course to improve the way the city's online presence is one area that certainly will be more complex be complicated is the elimination of department domains as you can imagine the elimination of let's say lapl.org with
library.lac.org can impact millions of libraries annual users we want to analyze this further we may likely look to consult and help you know new york city attempted this and has since started allowing independent department domains again so there is no clear practice across the country we want to make sure that we do this right so we may actually be trying to bring some folks in to try to help put our heads together on that in the area of the dot gov web address this as well as no-brainers that everyone asks me in the beginning the nationus.org and la city proudly used.org in the beginning but then there
was the creation of dot gov and when we were assessing.gov we were going to be stuck with a naming convention we would have to be called los angeles hyphen ca.gov not a very pretty not a very useful gov web address however i'm proud to say in the last year that we a large city like ourselves are now able to secure los angeles.gov or lacity.gov and we're working with the mayor's office right now we require a formal letter from the mayor to secure those so we're in the process of doing it so we can have a good official legit but easy to use dot gov web address the third item was around ensuring city services were online and they were in 3-1-1 i'm proud to say that through a controller's audit even over the last year that we're in the middle of a 3-1-1 city-wide customer service strategy with the controller's office as well as cd5 and others in which we're bringing someone in to help assess houses 311 services are identified providing things like service level agreements to the public et cetera many other things included in the motion and the last item was around digitizing and consolidating city services a lot of work has been done there's more to do and there's tools that are described even in that motion that we will be looking to secure like an enterprise data lake et cetera so there's a lot of content in here we're getting to work on a report back some things are slam dunk including the policy something's more difficult but we appreciate taking advantage of the catalyst that covet has provided so that we can try to really deliver better digital services that are easily accessible 24 hours a day so that any angelino regardless of race or gender or you know or what kind of tools or devices they have can easily access to the information and city services that's the world we want to be thank you so much ted and i know that you guys really did so much during covid to enable the city to continue to function as much as possible like normal during a time when there was a great deal of uncertainty and when offices were inaccessible so i want to thank you for your leadership and all that and um and i do know that as we were working on the motion with you or working on the steps of it that you are working on a number of parts of it for me the exciting thing about this motion is that enables us to come together as council and department to set goals to mark progress and to see where we are falling short and to see what kind of resources you might need from the council as you're moving through the steps of getting us to a better digital presence you i know have uh have made a push towards this um uh already and i think for us it's just conceptualizing together what is our goal what is our shared goal and agenda for this and how can we work together and make sure that we hold each other accountable for that uh councilmember price i know councilmember blumenfield had to leave the meeting uh early um councilmember price if you have any questions i wanted to just offer you the opportunity thank you thank you thank you mr and thank you for the forces again another exciting development that we are embarking upon uh chairman thanks for your leadership on it uh i know it's still early but give us the idea what costs are going to be associated with something like this sure a lot was included in the report so it really is going to depend some items are no cost you know establishing a policy taking items out of other policies and consolidating a policy and clearly dictating to both ita and city departments where the various standards are whether it's security etc that's no cost one of the items in there talks about let's say data sharing across various city departments that's an area in which certain platforms do not exist so the cost to do that would require us to implement those platforms so you know i don't have anything offhand because there's a lot in it and it depends on exactly how we approach it but but you know as you know council member we try to be very uh fiscally aware in what we do we try to really be lean especially as a technology department i think people expect us to be so some of it's free but some of it if we really were to push for it as a city will have a cost like an automated tool that identifies any city department's website and it looks for let's say easy to use language and it identifies that make sure that language is at a certain grade level anything that has um cost and make sure we include this proposal and know that if we were to spend this money here's the outcome we could expect so we can make a clear decision i think not just an expenditure you councilmember price and i'm obviously very excited about this so um i and i've had the opportunity to ask a number of questions to the department already and i just wanted to thank you again ted for you and your department's support um with that i think we can move ahead to adopt this motion uh a cio report relative to the price and sale of four tax defaulted properties um we have eve bachrock i hope i'm saying that last name correctly no yes okay with the cio's office presenting on this report uh welcome eve and we'd love to have your thoughts thank you very much good morning my name is eve with the cio asset management group there are two transmittals related to item 4 on today's agenda the november 3rd cao transmittal which conveys an updated purchase and sale agreement as well as the october 19th original ceo and department of general services in accordance with section 3775 of the state's revenue and taxation fee the city is required to concur with and approve the price and sale of any tax defaulted property located within the city the updated report provides the necessary concurrence and recommends approval of the price and sale of three tax defaulted properties from the los angeles county board of supervisors to the los angeles county chief executive officer as well as attestation of the sale and purchase agreement to reiterate the proposed sale is by the county to the county ceo for privately owned property seized by the county for non-payment and property taxes the original october 19th report listed a fourth tax developing property that the county has since removed the sales price for the three remaining companies set by the county treasurer and county tax collector is 102 774.13
the fiscal impact of the general fund from approval of the recommendations is unanticipated and expected to be positive the city's commensurate share of the proceeds from the sale of these privately owned contacts defaulted properties will be distributed in the same manner as with other property types the revised november third transfer is accompanied um clarifies what we're doing here uh which is that we as a city do not own these properties and we're not the ones selling these properties we're just approving a sale so and unless councilmember price has any additional questions on this item nope i recommend that we approve the ceo's recommendation um mr espinoza can you call the roll thank you and to clarify we would be moving forward with the recommendations as found in the sale report dated november 3rd 2021 correct that's correct okay thank you okay councilmember rahman yes councilmember blumenfield is absent and councilmember price hi two eyes and this item is approved thank you thank you miss bacharach um and i believe with that we uh do we have anything else pending before the committee today no the desk is clear okay great thank you all happy diwali to everyone who celebrates uh and this meeting is adjourned
2021-11-13