Trade, Travel, and Tourism Committee - 10/3/23
the r Park present moscar here soda Martinez here three members in a COR Madam chair all right thank you Mr clerk um so colleagues uh today is a special but Bittersweet moment um Justin herbach our friend and leader of lawa is departing the city and embarking on a new chapter chapter putting his expertise and experiences to work in an exciting new Endeavor um Justin I just wanted to personally take a moment as chair of the committee to thank you for your steadfast leadership over these last several years I know that you were presented with curveballs and challenges that no one could have expected and you helped the city and the airport navigate those incredibly trying times uh with with just steadfast determination and Leadership um you assumed this position on the eve of the pandemic and you have managed to get us through the shutdown and the recovery and simultaneously you led our ongoing development of a$ 30 billion Capital Improvement project at the airport which is highlighted by the construction of the automated people mover and conrack things that are going to Outlast all of us and will reshape uh not only the way our city looks and feels and how we move in and out of our airport uh but Economic Development uh for years to come your efforts on Workforce Development and sustainability and your personal engagement with Community groups are things that I observed and really appreciated about you um your friendship and your knowledge and your patient mentorship uh of me and others that have dipped into the airport its operations its economy its culture has been really instrumental in preparing all of us for the work that we're doing here at the city level so on behalf of this committee and the city of Los Angeles uh we have something that we um would like to present to you um so I'm going to hold on to this for just a second but I want to offer my colleagues um the opportunity to say a few words to you as well thank you very much it's very gracious of You Justin um I met you during my campaign should I start over thank you very much Justin I met you during the campaign and you were gracious with me uh and with everyone who came to you to ask about this most important project and I was really uh amazed at how far it had come you know over the course of my career I've seen a lot of stops and starts uh over airport uh modernization improvements and have never uh never experienced such tremendous progress and uh you have set a path that we will continue to follow uh that will you know get us there and I appreciate that you know you're your services and your skills are uh demanded around the world I wish you well and I thank you very much for all of your leadership and all of your uh Service uh to this great City I just want to say Echo the same words uh you know doing this through the pandemic I'm sure was not easy and I heard about what you're going to be doing it sounds really exciting so I hope you take that with a lot of Grace and sort of recognize a pretty amazing opportunities I wish you all the best so Justin I know that you have well prepared this team and I know that they are going to take the helm they are well prepared to move the work forward and I can tell you that as councilwoman for the 11th District home to LAX as well as the chair of this committee we are all going to work really hard to move your legacy and your work forward so thank you for everything you've done um with that we are just going to take a very brief five minute recess for a quick photo with Justin and present him with his certificate have the committee me off um before we begin public comment um we are going to go ahead and continue item nine there is also a friendly Amendment for item seven which reads as follows remove the third moving clause and replace the first moving Clause with the following quote I therefore move that the city council instruct the economic and Workforce Development Department with support from the chief legislative analyst City Administrative Office General Services Department Bureau of engineering La sanitation and City attorney to report back within 120 days providing a a highlevel order of operations for the site to move forward and assessing possibilities of future use of the site including necessary departmental funding and external funding sources required to move forward with plans this includes La San reporting on continued remediation of the site and coordinated with the LA Regional qual water quality control board so that will bring us to public comment members of the public wishing to give comment can sign up at the kiosk in the back you'll be given up to one minute for general public comment and up to two minutes for multiple items so with that uh I will call our first Speaker green span come on up greenpan going once going twice [Music] gone Herman you're up next going once twice all right goat puppet you're up but I'm you want to speak on all right you got three minutes oh where the hell is number two three six seven8 on this goddamn agenda even the police officers want to know I don't see number two three four six seven and eight I only have here number one and four and five and n what is Tracy Park up to what is she trying to do to my mind and what is pet mccosar doing over there not paying attention and giving us a short agenda that we don't know how are we supposed to talk on these items how but they're all about that dirty filthy backward of an airport LAX which of course you drive down the the for Five freeway and can never reach it a Subway that doesn't go into the freeway and parking that costs more than a mortgage payment in some fourth world countries yes that is the Legacy Justin leaves us he leaves us with billions of dollars of debt he leaves us with an air traffic control system from the 1950s he leaves us with passengers that can never get their baggage on time and he leaves us with the most ridiculous car rental rates in the world in other words this is the dream airport of one Jose Louis wear the biggest criminal in the world let's give him a hand oh yeah yeah that's right yes a sewer a septic tin a place where no one should go goat puppet strongly recommends John Wayne Airport and Burbank Airport don't do anything with lax so that one day Mike bonnan will come back to office tear the whole airport down and build the largest homeless shelter on the West Coast putting all of our homeless behind an 18t wall yes it's our plan and it's Hugo's secret plan too and nithia yes and let's not forget today was the big day did Tracy Park file a motion to suspend and the now Infamous staffer B John Lee no did she do the same for Mr Price no so why is Kevin Deon not cering on committees while the other two criminals are free to Servant committees that's what we're asking we're asking Hugo the same thing as he attempts to take that grease off of his head because he put too much on it on the hair today we understand what's going on don't we so remember stay healthy and with Pat I think you're gaining extra weight there Pat thanks goat puppet anyone else anyone else in the audience okay public comment is done unless there are any objections from my colleagues I would like to move items one two three four five and six on consent any objections from my colleagues okay U Mr clerk if you would please call the role Park yes m yes soda Martinez yes three eyes on those items have been approved great that brings us to item seven Mr clerk if you would read that for us please item number seven motion Hernandez mccosar relative to the Redevelopment of the former Lincoln Heights Jail located at 401 North Avenue 19 Los Angeles California 90031 thank you Mr Clark um before we consider this item is amended I want to commend council member Hernandez for her effort eorts to reimagine and remediate this site this is a city asset that has sat underutilized for too long and she has my commitment to move this process forward expeditiously so that it can be put to use on behalf of residents of Lincoln Heights and surrounding communities so unless there are any objections from my colleagues I move that we approve item seven as amended okay seeing no objections Mr clerk if you would please call the RO Park yes moscar yes soda Martinez yes three eyes and the item has been approved as amended all right chugging right along that brings us to item number eight Mr clerk if you would please read that one for us item number eight City administrative officer report relative to increasing and diversifying participation in City Contracting all right thank you do we have Miss Chu from the CEO's office oh there she is they're back behind the post I couldn't see you thank you for being here and if you could just make your introductions thank you good afternoon my name is Leia Chu with the CEO's office of procurement with me is good afternoon I'm Linda mlin with the Bureau of contract Administration all right well thank you very very much we are looking forward to your presentation so the report in front of you today discuss um includes a discussion of various programs that the city uses to increase the diversity of participants in the city's Contracting processes um it includes a discussion and how departments May potentially monitor subcontracting opportunities it highlights a couple of things like uh networking opportunities that we open up to subcontractor or contractors like accessing LA and also program like the LA Small Business Academy to help businesses um increase their capacity um it the report ends with a general process for establishing the city um the practice of community level Contracting Citywide um couple things that we note on the report is that uh we acknowledge that Gathering Citywide procurement information right now is currently a very manual process and so it makes it difficult for us to provide timely reports and sometimes analysis on all the procurement activities that are happening Citywide so um in order to address that the office of procurement is developing an end-to-end procurement platform um to help address these issues to help capture both bid award and subsequent payment information um finally the report recommends that the city departments be instructed to identify contracts um that are appropriate for CLC and to request for assistance from um from the office of procurement and also from the Bureau of Contracting uh Administration when it's needed and um second recommend recomendation would be for our office to report back to you with applicable next steps as well as the resources that would be required um by City departments should CLC be required of them and that concludes my report um we're available to answer any questions I have I have a few I I just want to say that you know since I took office I've been studying the city's Economic Development and Business Development programs and I have been really impressed by the intentional effort the city is investing in creating opportunities for small locally owned women minority veteran owned businesses and I think this work is incredibly important um we in this committee have had the opportunity to be briefed by Port of Los Angeles and lawa on their strategies in this regard but I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit more about um the Board of Public Works program how successful has that been do we have metrics on how that one's going so um please forgive me I did not bring the metrics with me as far as the success uh we have been doing a business inclusion program that uh we M that most of the other Council controlled City departments mirror to some extent uh the the um it it varies in terms of the participation but we do ensure that uh Prime biders contractors do do an Outreach do consider all new contractors uh submitting sub bid sub proposals to them uh fairly and will uh and then uh something unique to Board of Public Works I believe is that we follow up after award to ensure that those contractors actually get the work and perform the work uh and on the construction side we will recommend penalties to the contractors if they don't get uh utilize those subcontractors as pledged uh beyond that we have uh as you mentioned uh Board of Public Works uh has led with accessing La uh and partnered with the proprietary departments on the Small Business Academy I'm pleased say that our next Small Business Academy will be kicking off later this month and we have uh over 40 participants that we've accepted to that Academy it it will be focusing on personal professional uh business we're also partnered with uh the mayor's office for our accessing La rise with uh program that is scheduled for the 14th of this month and then we ha we have our additional uh accessing La um opportunities or Outreach events uh build with which will happen in February and then team with uh in may we uh as far as Community level Contracting I would say that we uh we and especially the Bureau of engineering who's really led the way in public works have been quite successful the very first one was our small sidewalk program program we had a total of 35 contractors on that list of which 66% were firsttime biders so we feel that that was very significant uh we and of those uh 40% were minority business enterprises there they were also sbes and local business uh Enterprises 29% were emerging business and if um for those that may not know uh emerging business means that they had annual revenues of less than 5 million dollar a year we also had uh 6% of those being Women Business and this was at the prime level for that Community level Contracting uh opportunity so that that was our first one uh Bureau of engineering has done some others we are actually just about to release our small sidewalk again and uh we're excited because we partnered with Merryweather and Williams we did that on the first one we've continued to do that on all of our community level Contracting opportunities Mary weatherin Williams who has the uh Bond assistance contractor development program contract with the city has been working uh over over a year now to prepare uh people in their contractor development program for this opportunity uh last call they had more than 50 contractors that will meet that minimum criteria for our new small sidewalk program so we're excited about that we uh as good as it is we've still learned some lessons and so this next time around we're improving it one of the things will be doing is once the list is established we're going to create a specially tailored Small Business Academy for those firsttime biders to help them be more Su successful from the start and uh so that that's one of the things that we have uh planned I'm glad you mentioned that about the Small Business Academy for first time biders because I think you know here we are creating these programs and opportuni ities for new and emerging businesses to be able to do business with and around city of La and its proprietaries and yet there's a lot of sometimes barriers right whether it's understanding minimum you know Capital reserves record keeping requirements having a business plan making sure that that new business is actually meeting benchmarks and Milestones and delivering so that they're viewed favorably the next time an opportunity comes around and so I'm glad to hear that you know there's a small Business Academy where maybe we can you know educate business owners on some of those requirements but once we get a new business a minority-owned women-owned business into one of these programs are we what are we doing to set them up to succeed how are we training them to be successful so both the engineering project managers as well as our inspectors uh they act in a way as mentors so they are helping but that's why we want to do this small Business Academy style uh training for them before they start this time around so that they're a little more comfortable with the way the city operates in terms of what will be expected in submitting an invoice how to ask for uh requests for information on the project if they're not sure about something because they may not be used to government contracts and how that all works uh so we're pretty excited about that uh they do work on that and I am uh pleased to say that some of those firsttime biders have gone on to bid as primes and win other projects great great and that's the kind of success we want to build upon um one thing I will just say you know for like accessing LA and La Small Business Academy I know you've got one of those events I didn't catch which one coming up later in the month but you know if there's anything we can do as council members to help get word out let you know our business communities and our districts know that there are opportunities to participate in these it would be great so um let us know if we can be helpful in any way there one more question and then I'll open it up to my my colleagues um as we are encouraging Community Contracting do we have enough Staffing and resources to ensure that these bids are being properly vetted and that we are working with folks that are going to be reliable I think that's part of the challenges that we've identified in implementing a community level Contracting because inherently what you're doing is you're taking a larger contract and now requiring to create a lot more smaller contracts and so we want to be respectful to the city departments and their operations and that's why we were requesting that the second um recommendation on this report is for us to report back to you once we get to all the city departments for them to outline hey if you were required so what kind of resources are you looking for is it just staff or is it just training or or B because we want to create efficiency um but we also we want to create opportunities but we don't want to get in the way of efficiency either so just just a general thought and comment about it um I don't have any other questions Mr Moser just thank you just a couple um I've heard a lot of good things about the Small Business Academy one suggestion though is that and I don't know how really how to solve this but one of the things I've heard is that we go we go um uh by you know or professional know that obviously have a cohorn together they're in the same sort of business and folks have to wait a while before theirs comes around and so maybe the answer to that is doing it more frequently or in between cohorts doing sort of quick checkins with folks so the Professional Services firm for example doesn't have to wait another know three years or two years when their C comes around that's a positive because folks are saying we really like it we really want to do it again one of the things I didn't see and this is more of a question in here is any any linkages we have to ewdd and our business source so we have we're out in the field we collectively are out in the field we're talking to small startup businesses in each one of our communities especially other communities and are we linking the ewdd folks or that group of folks that are reaching out to us and are in our centers to the various opportunities that either in LA or Public Works are we connecting we are working with ewdd um in terms of we're trying to meet with them at least on a regular basis to find out like how we could better coordinate all of our our resources and all the the training and all the because BCA does offer a lot of services so that's ewdd our office offers some training as well and so I think finding a way to better coordinate all of our trainings is one of the things that we're working on so yes and opportuni in in business source folks being able to quickly access the opportunity onil supp whatever definitely and so that's why we have ramp LA and on ramp is where we actually upload all of the city's Contracting opportunities and we do monthly um monthly trainings to to to teach people how to use that system because that's basically the Gateway on all the opportunities yeah I want the ramps and business sources as an example connected so they're talking that our business sources particularly because there's a lot of in my we have a new wat business source center it's great but I didn't see a lot of I don't see this information the only thing I can tell you is that for our accessing La events we do inform ewdd we often invite them to be speakers as well as the business source centers to be uh uh exhibit hall uh participants all right council member soda Martinez no I I you took my exact question uh council member mcoser uh it's like the communication but I just want to say I'm very happy to see that the percentages are going up every year on the lbes like started at 23% now you're at 31% um but I do want to sort of echo the point of of conf mosar I think but I think we'll probably talk offline and see what we can do to support creating a bigger funnel into the airport but thank you for your work okay thank you um I would move then that we approve item number eight Mr clerk if you would please call the role Park yes mosar yes soda Martinez yes three eyes and the item has been approved all right thank you we have anything else before the committee the desk is clear all right this meeting's adjourned what's my time 31 yeah did good [Laughter] was
2023-10-06 21:13
