This is what is it today is the 16th of May 2023 and this is the study session of the city of Beverly Hills good afternoon. As we begin we begin with comments from the audience people would like to address us on matters not on our agenda. It would, I will, like a yellow card, you can use the City Clerk. Only have one, Ms. Wendy Clank. You are indeed. Three minutes. I'm going to start with the next question. I'm going to start with the next question. Nice running from the parking garage. And here you are. Okay, now better. Sorry. How's that? Great. Okay, couple of things. My phone is blowing up off the hook because somehow you guys put trees in that we were unaware that you were going to be starting to put trees in. And I don't know what kind of heaven had to chance to drive over there. So I'd love to know. Larry, I know Jamie, you guys are in conversations. I know we're on the study session for today, I believe. To discuss, I think what Jamie had sent over to you. So I'm not really sure. I kind of thought that the trees were on hold at the moment. So I just want to, to be honest, just ask for your help here. Because if something's going on, I think if we're working together, then we don't have everybody getting super upset and I don't know, my phone blown up off the hook. So we're just trying to work together. So I thought that was what we were working towards. And just asking for your assistance so that if something is going on, I'd like to communicate it to the street and letting everybody know that. So that would certainly help. The other thing is, I've been doing a lot of research on the Urban forest management plan in terms of the city and how you're executing it and how you proposed it and the work that went into it and it's great. And you know Beverly Hills Courier did a story in September 19, 2021, which is what's in front of you. And the first sentence is, that's what our goal is here. Falls graph says, let's improve the canopy. Let's improve the temperature in the city and the wildlife habitat. That's the bottom line. And then there's also something from you, Shirona. But I'll let you guys review it. But the bottom line is in terms of what this is about. It's about increasing canopy in the city in Shirona. One of the things that you ran on was increasing the canopy in the south, which is in the DUDEC report. Again, just to reiterate that we are only at 10% in our humble area of the city. And by taking out all of those phycastries, we're down to less than 5%. And by putting in new trees that aren't mature trees number one, but somehow it presumes that the tree is disposable, which I just hate that whole argument anyway. But the new trees, those are carbon sources for the next 20 years. So they're literally not going to have any benefit to the city for 20 years. And to do a mass project again like this, it's not helpful for the environment. And I really wanna educate, not only you, but the rest of the residents and the value of a tree. Really everyone in this country, people just assume that a tree, you just cut them down and another one will grow back and new trees aren't in any way similar. So that's really all I came here to say. And then also again, we are, I put everyone on pause about speaking here because of our communications because I actually thought we were on a path to trying to resolve this. So I'm just asking for your help moving forward. Okay, Wendy, we have not heard yet. We will in close session later. Okay, okay. About communication. Yeah, thanks. Really, I appreciate it. Thank you. We have a few written comments. Sue's in, please go ahead. Hey, first comment is from Darian Bojou and Candice Tahur. They both sent the same comment. LMVH, of course, falsely purporting to be from residents and containing numerous other false claims about the Shevaal Blanc project, including the upping the claimed income from $778 million to $1 billion. Shevaal Blanc has dishonestly denied involvement in this fraudulent scheme, even though the Shevaal Blanc team were seen passing these flyers out the Sunday before last at the farmers market. Also, the flyer reports to show a model of the Cheval Blanc and the only model that of it was commissioned by Cheval Blanc, which would not allow it to be photographed. This was reported to our city attorney, but what is being done about it. The City Council must denounce Sheva Blanc's fraudulent conduct and should also realize by now that Sheva Blanc people are not the kind of people we want in our city. We want honest people whose word we can rely on not fraudulent scammers. Please denounce the fraudulent flyer, Sheva Blanc in public television announcements and at council meetings and please withdraw your support from a project which is being orchestrated by people who lack honesty and integrity. The next comment is from Daniel Hollander. Dear city council members please withdraw your support from the Shevelblanc project in a recent flyer the developer makes false claims about the projected income for the city and the size of the project is minimized by deceitful imagery in its flyers. In light of the false advertising in LMBH's recent flyers, you should withdraw your support for the project today. The final comment is from Mitch Waldo. This morning, a walking man distributor handed me a yes on BNC flyer as I was leaving my home on Rexford Drive. As I looked at the card, I noticed there was no attribution on it, no organization's name indicating who sponsored its publication. I asked the man who he was working for, but he didn't seem to understand my question. This flyer would appear to be illegal under city ordinance as there are no sponsors attached to it. I would like to see the hotel developer publicly disavow these illegal flyers, but barring that, I would want the City Council to publicly repudiate this activity. The developer is spending enough money on this campaign to come out from the shadows and take authorship of any election materials. This ends the non-agent ice comments. Thank you. That's it. No more? Okay. That is correct. Thank you. We'll close the public comment. Let's it. No more? Okay. That is correct. Thank you. We'll close the public comment. Let's move on to item number one. This is the recommendation of the Beverly Hills City Council liaison, rodeo drive, special events, holiday program committee regarding the citywide holiday decor for winter 2023. Honourable Mayor and City Council, public works is pleased to present to you the holiday decor for this year. We do this on behalf of policy and management. And I'm introducing Theresa Reffis, who walks the streets at midnight to make sure everything is perfect for the holidays. And with her detailed, you'll see the love and pride that she puts in this project and this presentation. the love and pride that she put in this project and this presentation. Thank you for having this on the agenda today. Let's see. Nice to the moving podium. So we'll start with the 2022 décor that's continuing and then go into the liaison recommendations for new or replacement items. We have street spans on Wilshire Boulevard and North Cannon Drive as well as this Santa and Rain Deer display at the intersection of Beverly and Wilshire with colored lights and lighted sidewalk displays on South Beverly and La Sienaica, Tree Canopy Decor on La Sienaica and South Santa Monica, and Garland and Bose on Brighton and Dayton, as well as warm white tree wrap lights throughout the business district and Wilshire Boulevard. At Beverly Gardens Park, we have the pond, light and music show, as well as the Christmas tree and menorah. We also installed banners with uplights throughout the business district and as well as La Siena and Wilshire and South Santa Monica, I'm sorry, North Santa Monica, and also background audio music installed on North Cannon, North Beverly, Brighton, and Dayton. Moving on to liaison recommendations for 2023. The North Beverly spans have reached their end of their life, and the liaisons were presented in a number of options for replacements, and selected the canopy option with accent stars, seen on the top left of your screen. The option includes programmable RGB light spans that run parallel and perpendicular to the street and also connect at random points along the street to create a canopy effect. Accent stars, our custom will be custom created in warm white light to provide accent and connect with the warm white LEDs on the tree trunks. The estimate for this is $450,000 and the lifespan is five years. For next for Robert Symbolovard, the liaison recommends installing decorative fixtures on the light poles along with pre-lit garland and bows going up the light poles along with pre-lit Garland and Bose, going up the light poles. These would be instead of street pole banners. They're a unique festive and elegant décor option on Robert Simble of Ard, and the fixtures will be include twinkle lights and sparkling disks to create an impact at night and interest during the day. Estimated cost for these is $150,000, and the lifespan is also five years. Next are the lights on the Lilly Pond show, which will be on its third year in 2023, and the decor is in need of additional replacement parts and equipment, including improved audio. Additionally, the ligands did agree with the staff recommendation to add a ripple maker to create movement in the water for a fresh look to the installation. The designer is also creating six new shows with new music and light movement that will include Christmas, holiday, and Hanukkah music throughout the season. The Leasons also agree with the recommendation to have more frequent show times. And this year instead of only once an hour. Estimated cost for all of these improvements for the Lily pond is $95,000. For Beverly Ken and Gardens, this decor changes each year and for 2022 we did receive some unfavorable feedback from the adjacent businesses. So we're looking to go back to a large 36 foot walk-through tree in the grass area with a a criss cross light pattern with brightly colored ornaments, as you can see the concept on the bottom of the screen. Then the second element would be a walk through ornament, which would include seating on the inside. And the combination would be estimated at $350,000. We're also negotiating with the vendor to receive a discount if the base tree is used for multiple years with new ornaments and decor package each year. And finally, the projection mapping in 2022, staff worked closely with the City Council of the Aesons to create a unique projection mapping light show called Unwrap the Magic on the City Hall Tower. The video was projected onto the north and west facing sides of the tower and ran every half hour every day of the six weeks of the holiday season from 6 p.m. until 9.30 p.m. with additional clips between the shows. These clips could be selected from a kiosk located in the prime viewing area at the southeast corner of North Crescent and North Santa Monica. The liaisons were presented some options for projection mapping and recommended continuing the projection mapping this year with all new content in the same location, estimated cost of $750,000. Additionally, the liaisons expressed interest in continuing the projection mapping in the same location for multiple years. So staff is getting to work on some additional infrastructure that could support the project and provide some long-term cost benefits and environmental benefits. That would be over multiple years. And staff will return to the liaisons and counsel with more detail on those at a later date. Three additional items were discussed with the Leesons and these are the small business task force requests for the North Cannon spans to be up year round and for additional decor on Camden Drive and Brighton Way. For North Cannon Drive, the spans were purchased and first installed in 2021 and are installed each year for the holidays and programmed with a full range of movement and color. The city's consultant estimates that the lifespan of the lights would decrease from five years to three years if installed year round. And the purchase cost of the spans is approximately $450,000. The annual cost to install, remove and store them is just under 100,000. So if the spans are installed year round, we would not have that annual install, removal, storage cost, but we would have additional costs for maintenance and replacement parts which is estimated at $13,500 a year. So overall if the report has a whole table of the breakdown but if they are installed for five years the average cost would actually go up a little bit but if we keep them longer, it goes down. The table does not take into account that they are already two years old, since we don't know how that will impact their lifespan at this point. But the lesons did recommend leaving keeping the up year round, but programming them to warm white so that the holiday display remains unique. The lesons also requested staff to return to them in one year to review the year-round installation. Next is Camden Drive. In 2022, Camden Drive Decor was street pull banners with uplights and warm white LED lights on the trunks of the trees. The Laisons agreed with the staff recommendation to use the decor previously on Robertson, which is colored tree wrap lights and colored light fall tubes in the canopy of the ficus trees on Camden. Estimated cost for that is $25,000. We also talked about Brighton Way. In 2022, Brighton Way Decor included pole banners with uplights and warm white LED lights wrapping the tree trunks of the palm trees as well as garland and bows all the way down the street. The holiday music was also expanded down Brighton Way in 2022. Staff discussed options for increased decor on Brighton and the liaisons asked the staff to come up with ideas for nighttime appeal that was within the budget of $100,000. Staff is requesting Council feedback today on adding that decor and going back to the Leesons for approval of that specific decor at the later date. For key dates, the the core timeline is relatively the same each year with the install prior to the Thursday before Thanksgiving. This year was November 16th. And removal beginning January 2nd. Staff is still working with the metro team to determine the install date for Santa and Ranger display. And whenever possible, we will include Hanukkah colors throughout the season. This is the breakdown of the cost presented today and in the report, there's no request for additional funding based on the liaison recommendations outlined on the slide. The funding has been included in the proposed fiscal year 2324 CIP for citywide decorative lighting and holiday decorations. So no additional funding is requested at this time. Staff will also return at a future date to discuss the 2023 holiday decor proposal for rodeo drive, as well as programming and lighting ceremony requests for the 2023 holiday season. Those items are not part of this CIP and will be presented for review at a future meeting with separate funding. And with that, I would request the Council provide feedback on the decor and the liaison recommendations. Great. Thank you. Great report. Appreciate it. Do you have a particular slide that's got all of the things you want coming on? I would say we can start with this. Before we get to that, we'll start with public comment, but just so that we have something to work from. Wendy Kling. Once again, if you'd like to speak to us three minutes, just fill out a yellow sheet. I didn't know this was on the agenda, so I appreciate it. Because I've made time in the past about this. My comment is or a objection is to using the trees as a prop for holiday decor. The trees, there's been numerous studies essentially plugging in the trees and performing putting the electrical around the trees. You're shortening the life of a tree and you're killing and displacing the birds, the bees and the species that live in the trees. And anytime I talk to people about this, they're like, oh, I didn't think about the trees. I didn't think about the birds and the bees. You can't light a tree 24 hours a day and expect that anything can live in that tree. I mean, just imagine if you were lived in a room and your lights stayed on 24 hours a day, you couldn't sleep. So I know that you were trying to be a green city and I know we're all trying to work together to save the trees, but I also think the birds and the bees also need our consideration. In other cities they've had poles, they'll buy poles and instead of wrapping the trees they wrap the poles and so there's just lots of other ways that you can decorate the city without killing everything in its wake, right? We all have to live here together and we kind of need the birds and the bees in the trees. So I'm just asking if we could look at another solution and another alternative as opposed to wrapping the trees. And you know, no tree should be an electrical outlet. It's just crazy to me. I just don't understand that. We're already bearing the trees alive in the cement. They can't even breathe. And now we're electrocuting them and the birds in the bees. So I just would ask you to look at alternatives as opposed to, doing what you've been doing for many, many years. That's really it. Thank you. Thank you. We have any other public comment. I can include public comment on the side. Layers on. Thank you. First of all, thank you for a very thorough and wonderful report, Theresa and Shana. You pretty much covered everything. I just want to add a few comments in terms of the Beverly Drive spans. The reason why this is before us is because the spans that were currently there no longer have any lifespan. So I do want to recognize that as you had mentioned as well, whatever we do over Beverly Drive and what is being suggested has the ability to change color lights or whatever color we want can be done. And I know, for example, during Hanukkah, certain locations that being one of them would be program to be blue, just like the lily pond and other areas as well. One who would dress the projection mapping, you know, that is something that I think we all recognize was a huge wow factor in our city. Literally, I think that people globally were talking about it. You know, I've seen that people from all over were saying, this is a major while, so I'm happy that we're considering continuing it. I do want to address that part of the Layazans recommendation was to use some of the show from this past year, use the wrapping that is currently there, you know, the wrapping of the different shows, perhaps using elements of some of the shows as well. And the goal was that we would use a lot of material that was from last year and this year and then use that for future years ahead. And then lastly, in terms of the small business task force, I think what's been really wonderful is that people that are part of the small business task force feel like we have listened, that they've made recommendations and that we have put them forward, for example, looking at the parking garages and such. So these were recommendations from the small business task force. The vice mayor and I, for example, one of the recommendations. And you had mentioned it on bright and away. We felt didn't represent what the goal was, which was more about creating an evening holiday experience and what was proposed was more of a pedestrian experience on the sidewalk. So that was something that we couldn't support. And I know you're gonna come back with other recommendations. But the goal in mind for the vice mayor and I was obviously to keep in the budget, which we did do try to continue with wherever we could, if lights had a three year, five year lifespan to not touch that and add what we can in a reasonable way. But you did a wonderful job documenting a very many parts of the city did a great job and that was our direction. Anything else you want to add? Any way, Mayor? Yeah, thank you. You know, we all know that our city is a very special city and especially during the holiday season when it's really extra special. People really come to our city to see how festive we have decorated our city and I think it's a really, really positive image for our city. The changes that we have made, some of them are to have a year-long ability on some of the streets so that it is illuminated much longer than just the holiday season, but a different type of illumination than it is during the holiday. So we've really always maintained the difference between holiday decoration and normal decoration that we have. In terms of the projection mapping, it was a huge success. I mean, it was really, really beautiful as Councillor Marraibossi said, really a wow factor. And it was. One of the things that word was discussed is while it is an expense, if we even have the projection mapping, just having it even the prior years projection mapping, there is a fixed cost in doing that. What we talked about during the the liaison meeting is that if we maintain use of part of the projection mapping around the, I think it's three shows that are in between and we are able to bank bank of three shows. We then have six shows that we can interspers in future years, which would then keep the cost down in those future years, assuming that we want to continue doing this. And quite frankly, I think it's unique. And I certainly see us doing it more into the future. But that was one of the reasons that we went with the option of having additional portions of those shows so that we would be able to ban come for the future. Other than that, I think Theresa, you've explained everything well. And thank you to Councilmember Bosse for filling in some of those other spaces. And that's my report. Thank you. Okay. Members, in the area. Yes, thank you so much. Thank you for the report. I agree with my colleagues that we love the festive feel. We absolutely want to have something that will attract visitors and will really be a benefit for our businesses and also for our overall community. We really love that festive feel. And so with that said I do have a few questions and ideas that I wanted to share. I think that it's great that you're increasing the time span to half an hour for the Lilly Pond shows because I remember there were a lot of people waiting there until the next show started. So that's gonna be a great benefit. I wanted to talk about the menorah that's there. I'm wondering if there's a way that we could put some form of background to kind of encapsulate it or put something behind it so that more attention is brought to it because it's very thin and especially at night time it really gets lost. I know we tried to put some lights to eliminate it last time but whether it's even more lights around it and then do something different. I think that we really could be try to be creative to try to showcase that because the tree looks so gorgeous on the other side and just to kind of have a better balance of those two. I agree that the projector, the projection mapping was spectacular. I was a huge fan of it. I do know that a few of the nights the projector did break down and I did some of the math and we have our holiday lights up for about 47 days and if you take how much we paid for it it's about $16,000 a night that we're paying for the projection mapping. And I'm wondering in an effort to be to hold everybody accountable. Are there any form of compensation or credit being given to the city for the nights that the projector was not functioning properly? No, I mean, that's a factor of the... We were using generators, sometimes generators fail. We did have some issues. They never lasted a whole night, but we did have some shows that were out. And we are looking at a different vendor for this year's Generators and some other ways to make it more reliable, like hard power to the actual server so that we can have, part of the problem is the generators come on right before the show and then if there's an issue, you lose that first show fixing it. So, we're looking at some improvements. Okay, great. Thank you. So, I'm glad that that's being looked at. Now, we're having some issues with electricity throughout the city. And we want to expand these projects throughout the city throughout the whole year, which I'm not saying that I'm not in favor of. I do have some questions, though. And I'm going to ask you a little bit about the things that we've And we want to expand these projects throughout the city, throughout the whole year, which I'm not saying that I'm not in favor of. I do have some questions though. All of the lighting that is being used as LED is that correct? Great. And do we have any kind of backup generators that are in place for any of these things? Only for the projection mapping. And to look at this, we want to be leaders as far as sustainability is concerned. What are we using for? Are we using anything that is perhaps solar to illuminate some of our lights, especially if we want to keep them on your year round. Not directly, but I don't know the city's power structure. All of our power is purchased through the Clean Power Alliance, which is all green power. So that is something that we do do. So any of our generation is green. Great. So I would want to see if it's possible to see ways that we could be even more green and be leaders. I appreciate that it's the green powers alliance and I know that that's something that our city is really taken on and we're we're we've brought that to our community as well but if we could look at that a little more. I think where we're where the vendors are really show their sustainability is when they repurpose everything that we no longer use. And so they will, when we're done with the reads, they will take everything apart and reuse it in some format. Right. Thank you so much. And finally, I think for the designs that we're looking at, again, we want to be leaders, we want to have a clean, yet classy, modern, and also classic look. I would want to possibly look at some inspiration from European countries. I know that Singapore is doing an incredible job with their lighting right now, as well as having it. Sustainable, obviously, are European locations. So I would wanna look at some of those options as well for ideas, because that was something that was brought up to me several times, people were saying, this is Beverly Hills, we need to really be Beverly Hills. And for me, the lights on crescent, like those colorful lights, I think we could do a little better than that. The proposal for Camden, is that what you're saying? Yes, okay. Yeah. All right, otherwise I am you're saying? Yes. Okay. All right. Otherwise, I'm in support of this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Just a clarification regarding Camden. I think that also was really being mindful of expense. And that was just repurposing lights that are not being used on another street because the businesses on Camden had asked. But if it is something that in the future is going to continue further beyond that, then I think I would say we could look at it. But I think this was really more to address an immediate request and also be mindful of cost as well. Thank you. John? Did we consider, did we look at projection mapping for other parts of the town like Rodeo Drive? We looked at other options last year. This year we didn't get that far. We just looked at either doing it here or somewhere else and the What do you mean somewhere else? We didn't go into like exact locations We're so if you didn't do it here, where would we do it? We will last year when we looked at locations We didn't determine a place on rodeo that we could maintain it for the season There was conversation about doing it at one of the hotels for like kickoff weekend, but they couldn't maintain that for the whole season. But not the street, the way that Disneyland does main street, both sides, we didn't look at like the 300 block of Rodeo or something and say we're going to do it there to draw people. Councillor Member Pothra. I just want to address it because I was and I believe the vice mayor was the lay is on last year as well. I think we were. We were the lay is on last year on this. So first of all the reason why we looked at City Hall was really primarily because- I understand that was last year but I'm wondering- So I want to address that for this year as well. That we felt that City Hall was something that had the height and the presence that you could see from far away, different parts of the city is why we continued along with using City Hall as the main location. That was why we did that. Do we know how much it would cost though If we did the whole block one whole block of Rodeo So in other words if we did you know probably three is too much, but if we did that the 300 block Do we know how much that would cost? multiple projectors Yeah, this is only one project. Yeah, and to that point, you, part of what we had talked about last year is a matter of fact is even the two sides that we chose for City Hall, because initially we were looking at the entire parameter of City Hall as well as the front facing buildings and it was, it was, well, well, well, well, well. So it was a cost issue. Yeah, it was a cost issue. Now, we're talking about keeping some of the lights year round. Let's say we wanted to keep projection mapping, at least for while it's light out. What incremental costs we have if we wanted to keep it and so say you would then change it, and you could do a Valentine's Day show, and you could do, same Patrick show. There are many things that you could do. Some of the messages that we project on the wall, you could use it to do that. If we were to keep that there as sort of a semi-permanent fixture, what would the incremental cost be? Would it be worth looking into so that we could, because that would, I know the goal is to attract people and if we change shows, you know, people, oh, we've got to now see the Valentine's Day show. We've got to see these different shows. Is that something that was discussed or? We did not discuss it in terms of a year round opportunity, but we did discuss that we felt that this is something that ultimately assuming the council would agree on, that this would be something that we would be investing in for a long term and for future years. No, I get it, but that's only the whole thing. No, that in terms of year round possibilities like, you know, go Dodgers or Yeh. Right, yeah. We didn't discuss that because we first needed to get support for what's important for us. Well, I agree. I think that is a wow, but I get it, it's very expensive. But my guess is that if you're going to keep it for double the time, it doesn't double the expense. And so maybe we're going to get banged for our buck by keeping it, whereas I think that if you were to vary the shows, people are going to be intrigued. Yes, that, all these different holidays or dodgers or whatever. I mean, so I'd like to look into that. I mean, I think that makes sense. It certainly was very eye-popping and very cool. So it's a lot of money. It is, but it is, as said, it's from the budget. And, you know, and we're, the merchants are all okay with this too. The only thing that we've heard and please correct me if I'm incorrect. We've only heard positive, positive, positive. So, I mean, from residents and business owners. Right. Yeah, from, I can say from last year, I think the most feedback was from the projection mapping and people just were blown away by it. So I'm supportive. Thank you. So, I just want to make sure on the projection mapping are there two projectors that, or is it more than that or less than that? It's more than that. It's two towers. Each of them holds four projectors. So there's eight projectors to create sure. The towers are like 10, 12 feet high. Can't recall. I think they're closer to 20. OK. And those are on the city hall grounds. And we make them look as pretty as we can, but they are obstructions that are there for that period of time, right? Yes. Okay. Members of projection, I like to call them. I'm sorry, there's. Members of projection. Members of projection. Members of projection. Have we, well we haven't looked any further than having the pillars of projection but in looking at this in the past, were there any other options in terms of other than having these objects on the city pole on the grounds? Yes, I just want to say that, like for at least my experience at Disneyland is like a main street, it's from the roofs. The roof, they'll have a rooftop and so it projects down to the other ones. You don't need the tower there because it's projected from the roof. But they own the entire property. Yeah, you'd have to get permission from the property owners to be able to do it. Absolutely. We did look at using the roof of the wall is, but the roof that would be appropriate, as close as it's not an actual roof, it's just a facade with HVAC equipment, which would not be conducive to having projection because there's vibration. So we did and we looked at having it across the street. We looked at a few different options before that location was determined to be the best. Okay, and I do agree that I think that having projection mapping for a longer period of time for special events would be nice. I think that's a whole different subject right now than this. Although if we were able to come up with something, it was certainly reduced the yearly cost of building the pillars. And you know, it's something to look at into the future. I would certainly be supportive of at least looking at it and seeing if we can do something. I think we've covered the projection mapping and I thought the report was The projection mapping and I thought the report was excellent. It is within budget. We were very mindful of the fact that we had to stay within budget. We cut, pasted and made sure it was in budget. So of course I'm very supportive of this. Thank you. And again, thank you for the report. That was great. I think Camden, you know, is an up and coming street. I think we're going to, we now have some new restaurants are more coming. I think moving forward next year, we should sort of put it on the list of what do we want to do there? You know, what we're doing now works well. That's great, but perhaps, perhaps to do some more also. Also in the Beverly Cannon Garden, I know you've addressed that. I just want to underscore it. Most of what I heard from that was at night it was pretty nice during the daytime. It was not. And so as we look at this, it would be nice to create something that activates that area both at night and during the time and has some impact when lights are on as it were. I wanna spend a little time on this projection thing. First of all, I loved it. I thought it was great. The one thing I heard from most people was, wow, that's amazing. The second question was how much did it cost? The response was always, wow, that's amazing. The second question was, how much did it cost? The sponsor was always, wow, that's expensive. So walk me through this a little bit. We spent $750,000 last year. Presumably, they did some work that had to do with what the framework of the projection mapping would do, which I assume has cost embedded in it. Why does that not work this year? It does. They will use that again. But why don't we subtract that from what they're charging us? It's only about $10,000 of the whole round number. I mean realistically, what could we do that would make this less expensive? I did pull together some cost-saving options. One would be to reuse the content, which is not unheard of. That is something, you know, Disney doesn't do it at brand new full show every year. So that's one option. The next, that would be about $120,000 in savings. They reducing the run of show. So instead of being the full six weeks, we could cut it down, do it for two weeks, savings estimated at $150,000 to do that. Of course, that would be a shorter rental term for the equipment, for labor, for the generators and the fuel. That would reduce the number of people getting to see it, of course. And then reducing the projection area to just the north side of the tower. We're asking about $150,000 savings if we just did that. We would require, we would have to get new content then. We couldn't reuse any of the content. And, but that would probably take away, it would take away the towers that are on the front lawn. We wouldn't need those, we would use the rooftop, but it would only be on the north side, so it wouldn't be as visible from the west side of town. And then not using the kiosk has a minimal impact of 15,000. And these are all round numbers because we haven't gotten all the details for this year. Once we have direction, we'll get down that 10,000 for the projection. I think that's great. I would like to add that the reuse content was something that was disgusted liaison and it really felt that to have all new content would be good so that we could put it in the can and really mix for the two years of worth of projection mapping material as we go forward if that's something we want to do. Yes. And we also did because the same conversation that the mayor is having is the same conversation that the vice mayor and I had quite a bit on this particular subject and we did go through a lot of this and I think what we tried to balance was we are going to be using reusing the wrapping paper of of all it so that you know I don't know what that's worth but it's it's it's something and I think as we said earlier you know we we felt that to use to do the exact same show as last year it's still a while but it's not as well because everybody has seen it. And if we, as the vice mayor said, if we have the content from last year and the new content from this year, it's similar to what we've been doing where we now have continued the longevity, so that we have much more content that for the next year and the year after people won't go, yeah, I've already seen that show. We can take elements of the different two shows, as the Vice Mayor said. And then in the years forward, we have more that we can do cost savings. But we absolutely have the same conversation, and we agree. Other thing I wanted to make sure it was understood. We reduced the show to two weeks. This year, last year, we were fortunate at Hanukkah and Christmas collided. But this year, they are more separate, so it would be cheap to happen that one holiday we don't have it up versus the other. Yeah, and I'm not, I don't, that would not be my goal to reduce the length of the show. Walk me through a little bit where the, we don't have a sheet, perhaps a liaison saw it, where the costs are. So the $750,000, how much of it is the rental of the equipment, how much of it is the building of the kiosks, how much of it is labor, where's the money? Unfortunately it's not broken down very clean. I'll tell you. The audio system is about 70,000. The servers and switching control display and monitoring is another 300. I'm not even adding these up properly, but I'm trying to group them. I'm sorry, the rental of the computers is $300,000. Well, that's the servers and all the control and equipment required to run them. The content is about 120,000. I mean, I can try to break this down into a functional. Well, I think at the very least we should have a line item detail of what's in $750,000. Because so far we've got a half a million issues that's unaccounted for and that's a big unaccounted for. So I would like to see that. I mean, I would move this forward, but I don't think that this. Before we are, we're not voting on this tonight, Army. We'd like to, yes, so that we can move forward with design. Well, then between now and this evening, I'd like to see a line item of this. Which we should have had anyway. Thank you. I mean, that should have been part of the initial presentation. Secondly, are we, we're not paying the vendor themselves. We're paying somebody who's paying the vendor. Right, this is under our main, our primary holiday consultant. And what's the markup between, excuse me David. David? David? We're talking, please. Quietly. Work this and I get it. You're talking. You're talking. How many orders? the what is the markup between what we're paying our people and what they're paying the vendor the project management fee is 10% is that what you're looking for? They're going to take $75,000 just to make the contract. Well, and to cover their labor involved with managing it because they have staff onsite night at night and things like that. Who does? When we can't. The our primary consultant. So I want to understand the firm we use to design it is a Madrid. So they design the work in Madrid. We do everything virtual. And then basically the contractor Utopia helps them get all of the different equipment. Everything that they require to make their show come alive. They do come out for a run of show just the week before and then they leave and basically it's all managed by Utopia who runs the project. So as part of this, the three quarters of a million dollars, are we paying for hotel rooms and airplanes and that kind of stuff? There are travel fees included but it's not broken down. It's just a set amount. They're not billing us. And there's nobody closer to us that can do this kind of work. There is and we looked at options last year and they had the best content package and price. So we looked at both of those items in an informal RFP last year. We've gone back to them this year for an estimate. We haven't committed to anything for this year, but we also think there will be some savings. We just don't have the number with it, just from doing it a second time. But we couldn't put numbers to that yet until we go out to bed and say, could we, now we know exactly what scaffolding we need. So let's see what our options are. We can put the drawings are done so we can say here, what can you do first? So that's this year's projector for next years. For this, for 2023, we'll be doing that. So we're hoping to have some savings just by doing that. But we don't have a number to put on that at this point. I noticed on the, I didn't know they were in Spain, but I did notice on their website, the vendor, we're prominently featured. When you get to their website, where, what pops up? Are they paying us for that? We give them permission to do that. We did. We gave them permission to video the show. And to use us for promotion at no advantage to us. Now they didn't ask for it in writing. We didn't actually notice if there was a logo there or not. But there might be our logo. I think the logo might be in the show, but we didn't let them put the logo on. I know where I was very involved with that. Well, it seems to me that there's some opportunities here where we could, and before I actually finish that sentence, let me finish my broader thought. We're really gonna talk about doing this going forward or longer periods of time or in any other context. I think it would be helpful to know how we amortize these costs over whatever those years are or whatever those projects are. You know, I don't, again, it's okay. It's a wow. We've got the money. I'll go along with it, but I really do think that we need to take a harder look. The costs are what we're paying, what our alternatives are. There's going to be a give back here. I'd like to know what that is, just for the cost of advertising that They're doing, you know, from us for free. You know maybe we should get something back for that too. So I'd like to have a much more robust conversation around this contract and I recognize that we don't manage this contract so if we have to manage a third party at arm's length I don't know how we do that but I think it's a conversation we should. We're happy to take and count all of those places that we can save. We're not paying for the peninsula hotel, are we? No, we are not. I think they used like an Airbnb and they all like four or five of them all moved in. To the mirror's point, maybe if they are using this for advertising and we are looking at doing something on an ongoing basis, you know, for events and that sort of thing. Maybe we can work out a deal with them where we're not paying their normal rates. We're getting a better than the most favored nation and we're getting the kind of service. If they're using us, I think that's a valid point. To get other business, we should have not that they should pay us, but maybe that they should be working for us in a way that's going to save us money. It is correct me. Didn't we have a discussion last year about potential of keeping the cost down by having advertisers as part of the show and we rejected that? Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, there are ways that we can reduce costs. Some of them, I mean, it wasn't that we went into this blindly. There were certain things that we certainly excluded, which was using it as a commercial venture for advertisers. So sometimes when they see Beverly Hills, I think that there's an extra zero that's added or so. Well, I think that. Well, to your point and actually to Councilmember Marish's question regarding Radeo Drive, a number of years ago, I remember that the Radeo Drive Committee did entertain and I believe it was on the two Ridaire property, entertain having video mapping. And because of the cost factor then, it was a number of years ago, they discounted it not to do it because of the cost factor. So it was something that was looked at to do, and it's expensive. It just is. So it's hard to find video mapping for a low price in general wherever you do it. Yeah, and I get that. And as I said, it was a while and everybody liked it. But I do think that maybe if we take a little harder look at some of the detail here, we can find ways that it could be less. You know, maybe they do want to enter into our information. We are featured on their website and we are looking to do something in an ongoing sort of way. Maybe there's something we can do where we can get some benefit from that also. Well, look into that. We were the first client that they actually used the 3D technology. And so they're very proud of you know, that's the first time that they actually used the 3D technology and so they're very proud of you know that's the first time that they got to use the 3D technology and so I do want you know that they were a great company to work with and we had lots of changes until the very end and so they were very flexible and so that was so we will but we will continue work on different ways we can cut costs with this. Okay. All right. I don't want to belabor the point, but okay. Anything else? Nope. I just wanted to make one comment on the tree, the blue and gold. I thank you for paying homage to UCLA and the Congress. And Sweden. There you go. All right. All right. So I think you have consensus around all of the above. Thank you very much. Thank you. We're going to move on to item number two. This is a recommendation by the City Council of Arts and Culture, Layers, Arts and Culture Commission to purchase Trinity by Judy Chicago. Good afternoon. Mayor vice mayor members of the city council, Stephanie Harris, director of community services. Here before you today with a recommendation from the Arts and Culture Commission and Arleazons at the time, which was Council Member Basie and Council Member Nazarian, for the acquisition and installation of artwork Trinity by Judy Chicago. A little background about Judy Chicago, she is among the world's most influential female artist of the 20th century. After six decades of professional practice, Judy had her first retrospective at the D. Young Museum in San Francisco, curated by Claudia Schmuckley. In 1974, Chicago created her most well-known work, which is titled The Dinner Party. The Dinner Party is permanently installed at the Brooklyn Museum. Chicago's work is in several collections, including the British Museum, Tate Modern in London, Whitney Museum in New York, Lackma, Mocha, the Hammer Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, as well as the Art Institute of Chicago. This sculpture was selected and recommended for acquisition during the 2022 Fine Art Priority Exercise at the Arts and Culture Commission meaning. It was then brought forward to our Arts and Culture liaisons for consideration March of this year. The purchase price of the artwork is $450,000, however the Jeffrey Ditch Art Gallery has offered a discounted price of $400,000 to the city. The Arts and Culture Commission, as well as the liaisons, have approved the all-in cost of $550,000 to cover the purchase of the artwork, as well as the fabrication, engineering, inspections, permits, transportation and installation, or an installation, as well as the creation of the base and the lighting. This proposed artwork is a part of an exclusive edition of three. The first went to a private collection at a state. The second is at the Whitney Museum in New York, and the third would be installed here in Beverly Hills, if approved. It should be known that in Beverly Hills if approved. It should be known that two proofs also exist. One is an artist proved and the other is a foundation proof that will be retained by the artist's foundation. The artwork is constructed out of stainless steel and painted with Matthew's polyurethane automotive grade paint. It measures 64 inches high, 127 inches wide, and 60 inches deep. Staff and the gallery have continued to work through warranty details, and the gallery has offered an additional four years through the fabricator for a nominal fee, and this is an increase of the one year that was indicated in the staff report when this was posted. The gallery is working with RLA conservation of arts and architecture, which is our city contract, who we do all of our art maintenance with, to provide a detailed maintenance plan. Should this be improved, this artwork be approved and installed, it would go into our annual maintenance rotation. Here you have renderings of the proposed location. In November of 2022, Judy Chicago joined staff for a site visit to look at the proposed location. The artist, artist representatives, arts and culture commissioners, as well as arts and culture liaisons, unanimously agree that the preferred location is the corner of Crescent Drive and South Santa Monica adjacent to our parking garage. the area of the city. The area of the city is the area of the city. The area of the city is the area of the city. The area of the city is the area of the city. The area of the city is the area of the city. The area of the city is the area of the city. The area of the city is the north of the restrooms. To ensure the longevity and success of the outdoor installation, the artwork will be installed in a concrete base. This base will be constructed of integral colored concrete in the color musky mulberry, which was selected by the artist to complement the artwork. Should the base suffer any chippy, and the color would carry through out and be less noticeable? At this time, we are seeking council recommendation and approval and direction for the acquisition and installation. I would like to note that I am joined today by members of community services and our Arts and Culture Commission and we're here to answer any questions. Should you have any? Thank you. Again, public comment, three minutes. Mr. Gingel. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on It a way is on meeting between two council members and the Arts and Culture Commission a number of months ago. There was unanimous approval between these two entities, the AESON and the Arts and Culture Commissioners, including a Pam Maltzmann Beck. At the art show of 230 people, six months ago, one of our council members awarded Pam Maltzman back, the Mayor's Award for Finest Art with a Cash Award. And I said that that was a conflict of interest at the art and culture meeting recently, that those kind of awards give the appearance of a conflict of interest of agreement on things and should only go to outsiders, as it says, at pavilions, you play monopoly, but an employee or a relative cannot participate at the morongo, and employee cannot participate. I'm gonna speak about this artwork, about what I've seen at art and culture meetings. The artist came and said that she had sculpted items like this. She was unable to sell them. She had them in storage. She couldn't afford the $200 a month storage fee. Try to give it away. Nobody would accept it. And so she threw him in the trash. Our cultural commission member is Korman, Craig Korman. His mother, Nan Korman, who taught him about arts, wrote a letter to the editor that this piece is worth $500. In the Beverly Hills Courier, there is a V like that upside down, an upside down V that a graphic artist did. On Beverly Hills View, our TV show, there's a huge V. You turn it upside down, that is the sculpture. As far as the stainless steel, my generation did something like that in mandatory metal shop in middle school. The item that they say is painted by a car repair shop, you can have a whole car repair painted for $1,000. On Silicon Valley bank that just went bankrupt, they've got the sideways V like this. If you want to see sculptures, go look at Stanley Black's house on sunset and all the beautiful sculptures that are really sculptures. What we have here, which was originally $600,000 by the city, you could get this work done at any frame shop in the city right here. You put one, two, three, you have Trinity for over a half a million dollars. Thank you, David. We know that Howard Fisher has made complaints about some expenditures. May I wrap it up please? One sentence. I feel that this is a waste of city assets to be spending half a million dollars that something that is not an original sculpture. We know what a sculpture is, whether it's the David in Italy or it's Stanley Black's house. And I suggest that you wait and not spend $600 million on something that anybody could do this with. Thank you, David. Thank you. Any other public comment? I received one written comment from Stephanie Vaughan. As a former commissioner on the Fine Art commission and the arts and culture commission. It was an honor to participate in the growing of the Beverly Hills City Art Collection. It is my belief that the addition of Trinity by Judy Chicago would add to the prestige of the collection because not only is the work important, the artist is important and we need to increase the amount of female artists in our collection to keep up with the times. Debra, as well as the information provided by Stephanie Barron, the head curator of contemporary modern art at Lackma provides a detailed accounting of the importance of this work, as an art advocate and former commissioner I highly recommend that you confirm the purchase of this piece. That concludes public comment on this item. Thank you. Did you guys want to speak? Arts and Culture Commission. Hello. Is it not going to be afternoon? In Mayor Gold, Vice Chair, and Mayor and City Council. Judy Chicago has made groundbreaking contributions to the art world, paving the way for greater representation and recognition of female artists over the past six decades. Her influence, pioneering spirit, and legendary status are widely acknowledged. In light of the current focus on inclusion and diversity, the acquisition of Trinity and its addition to the world renowned Beverly Hills Fine Art Collection sends a powerful message about the importance of female voices and perspectives in the art world. As Stephanie Barron, senior curator of the Modern Art department at Los Angeles County Museum of Arts has noted, Chicago has been steadfast in her commitment to the power of art to affect social change and has been an advocate for women and artists for the crucial role in addition with the women in our society. As an educator, writer, and artist, she has remained a dedicated leader in her field. She is recognized for her early contributions to the minimalism field, as well as the Finnish fetish group of Los Angeles artists in the 1960s. I'd like to highlight that not only is Judy Chicago a legend in her role as an artist, but also in the fashion world too. And I think it's notable in the city here in Beverly Hills because we're about fashion and luxury. In 2020, Christian Dior invited Judy Chicago to design their set for the spring summer, Oak Goutour Show. Her set design received such an overwhelming positive response that the House of Dior then asked Judy to create what became an incredible successful handbag selection collection. Judy is a renowned artist whose paintings and sculptures are featured in museums worldwide. Her influence in the art world is evident from her inclusion in Time Magazine's 2018 most influential people in the world. And additionally in the same year, Artsy Magazine also recognized her as one of the most influential artists of the year. I wanna emphasize a couple of things. We would be the only city in the world to own this sculpture. As Stephanie had mentioned that the Whitney also purchased her sculpture Trinity, and it was most recently in an exhibition in 2023, and the Trinity sculpture was featured in the balance between painting and sculpture. So in summary, I want to reiterate that Judy is a visionary, a pioneer, and an icon. The Trinity sculpture would fill the void in our collection of one of the most vital artists of this generation. Adding Trinity to the collection of artworks in Beverly Hills would be a great contribution for our local, national, and international visitors to encounter the public sculpture in our region. Thank you. Hi. So I want to start with Van Gogh sold none of his work while he was alive. Does that mean today that his work is worth zero? No. I did a lot of research with this piece. I was always a fan of Judy Chicago's, but I wanted to make sure this is in fact what we want for our city. So I called people who really know their art. First, it was Susan and David Gersh. I spoke to them. They have one of the premier collections in the country. They were thrilled and thought this would be a huge addition to the city. Susan Gersh was also an art commissioner for many years and I don't know anyone more knowledgeable than she is. I also spoke to Yarl Mone since he's got probably one of the top minimalism in light and space collections in the country if not in the world. And Yarl not only does he own two of Judy Chicago's pieces. I think if he were in town he would have, he's in Tokyo right now, but he would have come in and spoken on behalf at this Jewish Chicago purchase. I think we're so lucky to have this opportunity and I hope we get this. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Stephanie. Here to answer questions that you may have. Right, thank you. Okay, any other written or phone or Zoom or other? I'm sure you can go first. All right. First off, I want to thank the commissioners and staff. I know that it takes a lot to be able to bring a piece to the city. And I'm a strong, strong, strong and strong, strong, strong, strong and strong, strong, strong, strong, strong to be able to bring a piece to the city. And I'm a strong supporter of bringing more female artists to our city, I think that's extremely important. I did have, and I'm not very familiar with this piece. I'll start off with that. I did have some reservations because we weren't sure what the makeup of the piece was. And so we spoke of the material. And they said that it would be steel. I also wanted to know more about if this piece was put out in the open air in the past. And that was a little unclear to me, but they did talk about putting a base, which I thought would be more helpful in supporting the piece. And I also asked about a warranty. And at the time of our liaison meeting, the warranty information was not clear. And I was told that we need to accept a piece before we could go back and speak to the artists about the type of warranty that is going to be presented. From previous experiences, we saw that we had this gorgeous Kusama in our parks, and unfortunately it was not able to be maintained, and it ended up costing us double what we paid for, and I'm actually curious, where is the Kusama at this point, because it was supposed to be brought back. I have answers and statements for most of that if you are ready but I'll wait till you finish. Well I have please go ahead. Okay so we will start with the item is made out of the art piece. I'm sorry it's going to be made out of stainless steel. So we have included that in the staff report. It was included in the commission presentation at first. The second question was warranty. So the typical process for acquisition of fine art is it goes through the priority setting during the commission. The commission will recommend the piece that goes through I-Lay is on and then before the full city council. We usually don't get to the nitty gritty of the agreements until we know that we have support from the full city council to move forward. At the request of council member Nazarian, we started those conversations earlier. I think staff is in favor of starting those conversations. However, when legal teams do need to get involved, a lot of the time the galleries and the artist are hesitant to know if they want to go that far until we're going to actually acquire the piece. So with this, we were able to start those conversations. I did have to post the staff report, the initial one was for a year and after further negotiation we have come to a four year extension, so five years total. As far as the Kassama, that is a great question. So as you know, the restoration and refabrication of the piece started in 2019. We ended up facing the pandemic which took everything offline for approximately three years. Unfortunately, during the pandemic, our original refabricator went out of business and staff needed to secure a second fabricator. We were able to execute agreements and get that going. However, then there was a supply change shortage of just about every material needed as well as travel restrictions. So at this point, I'm happy to announce that we have already had the ODA fine art representatives come out for their first inspection. They are working on their second date. We have started the permit process for installation and our goal is to have it installed this fall. Great, thank you. Welcome. Again, I wanna thank our commissioners because really we go to our commissions because they're the experts. They're the ones who have the experience and the knowledge. And this was supported by the entire commission. Is that correct? Yes. All right. Those are my thoughts for now. And just to clarify, you did support moving it forward. You were the layers on with me, so I just want to confirm that. Yes. Okay, thank you. So I echo my thank you to the art commission. I know how measured you take the acquisition of art in our city in terms of the level of research you do, the level of analysis you do. I myself have served on the art commission. I serve with Susan Gersh. I serve with Nan Korman. I do recognize that purchasing art is taken with a tremendous amount of seriousness. And it's not like you every week are suggesting art for our city. This is something that you are thinking about in terms of the future and for it to have the viability of our city going forward. I also wanna say an address art in general, there is no right or wrong to art. Art is generally a conversation. People can look at a piece of art and love it or hate it. And that's part of the wonderful element of art. We can look at the art that we currently have now in our city. One can look at the I-Way way and say it's just extraordinary and remarkable. Somebody can look at the I-Way way and say that looks like a tree trunk. Same being, and I'm talking about the more recent acquisitions, the Tom Friedman. One can look at that and say that's incredible.. One can look at that and say that's incredible, and others can look at that and say that's people in takeout, silver takeout containers. One can look at Ellsworth Kelly. And I look at that and say, oh my goodness, that's just a white or a, you know, triangles. And what is that worth? Well, it's worth millions upon millions. Jesper Johns, circle upon circle. And you were all, anybody can make a soup can. Jackson Pollock, dots, dots, dots. So this all came to me as I was sitting here hearing some of the commentary about art and its value. And honestly, I think that's wonderful. That two people can look at the same thing and have a difference of experience, but the bottom line is there's a conversation. And that's what we want, as long as it's respectful. In this instance, most of, pretty much all of the art that our commission has purchased actually has gone tremendous in value, whether it's the Kusama, where at some, I mean, I remember I was actually on the commission when that was purchased, and I remember there were some people that thought it looked like Disneyland, and now we know what a Kusama. And what's wrong with that? Exactly. A good point. Very, very, very true. So from my perspective, I am a tremendous fan of Judy Chicago. And when you look at her, and you look at the fact that her work has been shown at the D'Yong in San Francisco, currently has a full time, the dinner party, which I don't want to age myself, but I remember seeing it at the hammer when it was there as a temporary exhibit. The Whitney, Lackma, MoMA, the Art Institute in Chicago. I'm sorry, but that's kind of pretty epic. And I actually would say that there's some art that we have in our city that doesn't even have the level of showing that this particular artist has. She's 83 years young and clearly in institution and in icon in terms of not only in terms of a woman artist but in terms of an artist. In terms of this particular location, I think when we're talking about who we're going to put on city hall grounds, this is somebody that is worthy of the icon of our city and is a wonderful bookmark to Iwayway and specifically to be across the street from the Wallace, another extraordinary visionary in our city. So I thank my colleague, Council Member Nuzerian for supporting this, our incredible visionary, art and culture commissioners for bringing this to our city. A hundred years from now, we'll be thanking you. So I hope we'll wholeheartedly support it. Thank you. Thank you. So we've heard that, you know, Kusama's worth a lot. Ellsworth Kelly, Warhol, Pollock, worth a lot. Do we have a list of sales prices of her art so we can compare it with? I mean, that's really, it's not only, it's an investment as well as, as well as a piece of art too. I didn't see a listing of either sales at auction houses or public or that sort of thing. Isn't that information available? That would inform us as to whether we're overpaying underpaying that sort of thing. I do not have that but I can research that and bring it back. Yeah I think that's really important because if we're if we're in debt. I'm sorry um one of our commissioners does have some of that information. Well but why wasn't it included in the report? That's so relevant. It actually was in the report that we had I don't know what I could see you had, but it was the same price for the Whitney Museum. In fact, they only had a year warranty and due to the tremendous negotiation acumen with the city staff, they were able to get four more years. So the other thing I was going to say is you could go- Do you have, do you have, because there's so much of a secondary market for art and that's so determinative, do we have lists of what she's fetched at auction because that would indicate an upward or a trend? Well, here's the thing about Trinity. It was made in 1972 out of wood. It was never made until literally the Schnitzer Foundation had it and the Whitney. They would be making it for us. So it's sort of apples to oranges. If you were to go look online, maybe one of her paintings would be a couple hundred thousand, but this piece in specific, it needs to be measured with the likes of somebody like an Ellsworth Kelley or somebody in that area. The other thing I was going to say. Sorry, no, you wouldn't compare art different artists to different artists. You compare. You'd rather compare a sculpture of the same artist to a painting or something of the same artist. Because in general markets are not for triangular shaped pieces of art, therefore this artist or that artist. I think there's many ways to evaluate, so I'm not going to just... So what I'm saying is I would love to, and it wasn't provided, and you probably don't have it, a list of auctions and you know Sotheby's and Christie's and all of that sort of thing and look through it because in the packet that we had for our commission We actually had all that information. Yeah, and that was something that we took very seriously Right The other thing that I would note is that you might look at some of Judy's work From years ago, but the value and the cost of it is going to be different now because the price of stainless steel went up. So you've got a lot of factors to look in. Well, I understand, but I think in purchasing fine art, the goal is as an investment, as something for the community as well. You know, we shouldn't be looking at what the price of the raw materials are, but we should be looking at what appreciation might be. We should be looking at what her art has sold for at Sotheby's or Bonham's or Christie's or whatever. And that will give us an idea of something you can look at, it was mentioned warhol or if all of us had purchased warhol's 50 years ago, we'd be zillionaires. If we'd have zillionaires. If we'd have purchased a David Hockney oil or something. But that's important because as said, this is an investment and I think it's important for us to see where our investment would go. So I'd like, we don't have to do it now because there's, again, there's no fire. I'd like to see a list of, of sales. And I would also then suggest that because, as council member Basi said, it's very subjective in that price range. If we're going to be spending 550, what other contemporary artists? And I think it's okay if we want to say, you know, we'd like to have more women. That's fine. What other women are out there? What female artists are out there? And what are we going to get for the money? Because to me, that's a really important factor. You know, what else could we get for it? And also, using the same sort of, where is the price appreciation? Where are these artists? There may be some that are up and coming. There may be artists who are willing to, not just give us a little bit of a break, like with I way, way, the commission was way. By the way, is there a commission on this? Is that included or baked into the price? So the sale price would be $400,000 that would go to the gallery and the artist and the gallery's negotiations is not something that we are aware of. We don't know the details of that. So it's too a gallery and it's not directly from the artist. We're working through the gallery as we typically do. I believe I way, way was the one anomaly. Right, and that actually, because I know I way, way wanted to have that here. And it was, because we don't have unlimited funds, maybe the best way to leverage it is to try and work with artists who want to be here, who are willing to work with us and that sort of thing. So. I'm sorry, Council Member Mesh, if I can, I apologize, in the initial proposal that went before our liaison back in 2022, as well as our proposal that went to the Arts and Culture Commission, there is some of her work that is listed and the approximate prices and that they were estimated as well as things that they were sold for. So she does have. So I would like, I mean, I think this is, again, when we're spending this kind of money, it's pretty, it should be a fairly simple thing. A list of recent, you know, and, you know, at reputable to say the Whitney paid this or whatever, but reputable houses like Sotheby's Christie's bottoms and that sort of thing. Other places where you would have art sales like that. I mean modern art is, there's a tremendous market for modern art these days. So that should be something that we should get. It should be part of the report. And as said, okay. Now, again, to me, I'm not sure that the location is the most appropriate one. We did look at the location of Beverly Gardens. Yes, sir. Okay. All right, well, I think I need to have more information to approve this. I'm not completely convinced. I've also spoken with other people who are reputable art, who have substantial collections, who, you know, and I don't want to name names, but who did not necessarily think that this would be the best thing that we could get for the money. And I certainly would like to have a look at other options before we commit this level. And as said, even if it was decided, I'm not comfortable with that location. You know, it's true that some people love art, some people love a piece or don't love a piece, but if we're gonna spend over half a million, I really would prefer that all of us do love it rather than just spark a conversation. So that's where I'm at right now, thank you. Thank you. So I'm one that really believes wholeheartedly in the commission system that we have within the city. We have commissioners that are selected art because of their expertise. Certainly on the arts and culture commission that is really something that we look at when we make an appointment. And I am extremely impressed with the fact that the Gershis have. I say humble, not mentioning the extensive collection that her and Dennis have. I really put a lot of weight behind that and not having nearly, well, I'll say I don't have any experience in estimating the values of art. I put a lot of stock in their opinions. So I just wanted to start it off that way. I just think that we have commissions for a reason. I know that they did a lot of work on this. The fact that Deborah and Stephanie have stepped up to the plate who are also aficionados of art. And Carla. Hi, Carla. Hi. Hi. I just put a lot of stock into that, but I do have some questions. One of the statements was that Whitney has the piece. Is it the same fabrication that we're looking at? Yes. Okay. Is it outdoors or is it indoors? It is indoors. Another statement that is within the report here says that the same work has done well in the elements. What is there to back up that statement that has done well in the elements? So there is another piece of art that is titled Zig Zag. That was installed both indoors and outdoors. And the gallery has informed us that they were not made aware of any issues with that. And is made out of stainless steel as well as the same painting. And where is that piece? That specific piece that is outdoors. Miami. Have we checked with the actual purchaser or user of that piece or have we checked just with the gallery to see that it has done well in the elements? And I just want to make sure that we're really doing the ground work. And again, my point of reference is that I believe that the same paint coating was on the Kusama if I'm not mistaken. No, the Kusama, I don't have the specifics as far as the paint utilized, but that one was also at a fiberglass. That had fiberglass material around it as well. I can speak to the Kusama a little bit. So the Kusama was a, it was an automotive paint, but it was on top of the fiberglass and part of the challenges with the Kusama's that the fiberglass cracked over time. So there were some issues with the paint, but it was really the entire piece that was problematic. Okay. The other comment I'd like to make, the other comment I'd like to make is that it was fiberglass, like Nancy had said, the armature, which is the inside of how something's made, also wasn't made correctly. And then when you look at a piece like that, it was top heavy versus the bottom. So there were many elements. And one thing that Judy did when I had mentioned earlier that she was part of the finished fetish movement was she specifically studied auto body paint. And it was one of the most durable paints we've all done a significant amount of research where we, in fact, we have other items in our collection that are stainless steel, that are outdoors that are in the Beverly Gardens Park, and they had maintained, like the Thomas Friedman. It's in perfect condition. I mean, of course, we have to have maintenance for some of it for a while. So that can answer your question. Yeah, and again, answer your question? Yeah. And again, I guess it's from a non-artificial not only being ignorant as to those issues. And again, I just wanted to make sure that the durability of the piece would be able to withstand what we are going to do with it. And if the zigzag piece is a piece that is very similar in fabrication, I think again checking the groundwork with whomever the ultimate purchaser user was would be beneficial to us in that setting. I think your questions are valid and welcome. In fact, you mentioned Ziggs that Pamela was sitting here in the office. Let's just keep going. You guys finish. Okay. Let's keep moving. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If you were up all the way if you don't mind, if you had a comment, sure. Definitely you may want to look at this. There was a Jewish cargo piece in 2008. And the estimate for it was $350,000 for that piece. And that one was called Rainbow Picket. So that was really answering Council Member Mirish's question? No, not really, because I said I'm looking for actual auction results. Is what I'm looking for. Okay. Let's have a reading. Can I just say one thing regarding John Mirish's comment, the council member, Mirish, regarding getting an artist, making a deal directly with an artist, it is really rare. I realize we did this on that occasion, but it is really rare. Any artist of the level that we want to purchase for the city, you're going to have to do it through their gallery because they'll get in trouble with the gallery. They have exclusive. Okay, let's take focus on the question. Okay, thank you. I also, I'm sorry, I have one clarifying statement. I'm somebody asked if this was voted on unanimously. It was a four to one vote. I apologize for mispeaking for the commission. Okay. The addition, it says three of three plus one was at AP's artist proof and one foundation proof. So is that mean that there's only going to be five of these but three in circulation and then what happens with the other two? So there is one that is in a private collection out of state. So that's one of the three. As well as the Whitney Museum, then this potential one that would come to us. The other two are belong to the artist. One is her proof that she's keeping and the other one belongs to her foundation. And last let me just ask, no more can be produced either, should. And that was the next question. And that's the limitation of the amount of- And that is information. I believe we worked on that in the past where we've included that information in our agreement and that would be the direction from City Council that we would include in an agreement with her, with the gallery, I'm sorry. In terms of the base, there was a photo of the magenta, what was called? Musky Mulberry. Musky Mulberry, which is different in at least production that the one we have in our book, which is a little browner. this the more the most accurate one So we we were provided a sample that went back however, it is a very It is very like a Like I would say lighter than Nancy's sweater. It's very light But it's it compliments. It's very light. But it compliments the color that she feels compliments the work the best. She wanted it on a colored platform. Subsequent to the price having been whatever it was that was negotiated, was it after the negotiation that the basin lights were added or was that before? Because I thought originally this piece was going to be on the ground directly. So we staff recommends and we've worked with galleries and artists in the past to not install any art directly on the ground as it poses potential danger to the piece as we do landscaping. So if anything is placed in, you know, typical grass turf, we have it placed on a base. So that was the discussion that was had pretty early on in this conversation that it needed to be established and placed on a base to avoid mowing material equipment to damage the art itself. OK, so going back to my question, though, which was the purchase price of the piece when it was first quoted at $450,000. Did that include the base and lights? So the base and lights are part of the ancillary cost that we have in the $550,000. So the purchase price of the art itself is the $400,000 and then the $150,000 covers all of the ancillary cost including the base. And there will be no lighting that is directly affixed to the base that's actually going to be ambient lighting from the planter area. Okay, so then the only thing that's included within the $400,000 is the piece and whatever commission or whatever deal the gallery has with the artist's. Yes, sir, it's the acquisition of the actual artwork and fabrication of it. Another comment I want to make about that is Councilman Friedman, it is customary. When we bought other pieces in the past, that we end up discussing the lighting afterwards. So it's never really usually in the purchase price. It's something ancillary, like Stephanie had mentioned. Okay, and that's fine. That was, I see that now. One of those key words that I'm trained to hone in on in my practice is when people use words like nominal. Nominal is a, it means a lot of different things to different people. What is nominal mean in extending it for the additional four years? I have that, give me one second. $2,750. That's a total amount for the entire four years. Yes, sir. Yeah, what is that? Is that all parts in labor? The fabrication and the integrity of the actual piece. That includes fixing it, the cost of fixing it. The labor who would take to fix it if it has to get it. Yes, the warranty would cover them fixing the piece. No matter what happens to it. Uh, wow. So, you know, having had some experience with this, I think I can say that it probably would deal with the structural integrity of the piece, how it was fabricated would be the warranty. If there's damage to the piece that's done outside of the fabrication process, I'm guessing it would not cover that. So if somebody intentionally spray painted it, God forbid, I think we would not, that would not be covered by the warrant. Okay, and you can go in our insurance. So we do ensure all of our public fine art, and so we would have insurance on it for vandalism. Okay, those, that answers my questions with the, um, the, uh, not unanimous, but certainly the support of the arts and culture commission. I'm ready to. Thank you, sir. All right, thank you. Well, if art is designed to start a conversation, I'm going to avoid my conversation about this piece of art. So I'm just not going to talk about the art, because I don't know enough to talk about it intelligently. No. Sit down, David. Sit down. David, you had your, their commissioner sit down. The commissioner's had their commissioner sit down. The commissioner's David, sit down. Sit. No. No. Sit down. That's good. That's fine. Thank you. Thank you. David, thank you. Sit down, please, David. Let the record show. Thank you. Sit down, please, David. Let the record show. Thank you. How long did we have Kusama before disintegrated? I think you have to define descent to great. It was installed. I believe in It was installed and I believe 2007 2007 2007 it was removed to be refabricated in 2009 It was in prior to that in 2015 it was restored right so we had had a warranty with our original It was restored. Right. So we had had a warranty with our original fabricator and it was restored. Unfortunately, the restoration didn't quite take. So then there was discussion to refabricate it which started in 2019. So if we're going to learn by life's history, we know that it can take seven years or more for this to happen now with the other thing, the white one. Carol Bove. Carol Bove. That actually we had trouble with sooner, right? That was much faster. That was skateboard. Well, no. If they had wings. That happened in a much tighter time for me. So anyway, in terms of how we protect this, because these are significant investments. And we've seen mostly with the Kusama, but some of the Bouvag, what the actual, I mean, we've now tripled the cost of Kusama. We've paid for three times, original cost, and then twice as much to perverse it. And we haven't added for how many years So how do we not have that problem again and it doesn't sound like this particular warranty Much of a warranty. I mean if the paint chips then maybe we'll get it painted But if something structural happens for whatever reason. I mean the Kusama that's what happened so How do we what's, how do we protect ourselves from that? That's a challenging question. We do have public art that is out in the parks. I do think one of the proactive measures is having this one installed in the suggested location is something that would prohibit a ton of, you know, unwatched interactions. We do have, you know, patrols of our park rangers and our security team. We don't have as many, like I said, unsupervised interaction. We have the Arts and Culture Commission has pushed for us to continue to place signage around all of our public art, hoping that people respect the public art and identify that it's actually public art and not jungle gym equipment. So we're doing the best we can. Okay, but how much of this is related to the elements and not related to people? the elements and not related to. That's really it's really hard to say. I feel that our conservators have indicated that with proper maintenance and annual maintenance and restoration when necessary prevents that. So I don't know that I mean the art precess that we are purchasing are indicated to be outdoor public art and we are taking that into consideration when it's brought forward by the commission, the artist as well as the galleries know, which art we are purchasing for outdoors versus indoors. And I feel that that's the recommendation of the professionals providing us the information. But unfortunately it's been insufficient in the past. And what I'm looking for is some longer term guarantee that this will be a good investment and will persist and is not going to have these sorts of issues. And if we were, that the responsibility for them is not ours. I mean, if somebody takes a hatchet to it, I get it. That's the direction you provided today by City Council before the agreement does come forward. We would definitely take that direction and initiate further conversations with the gallery that we would require or request in a longer term warranty. And more specific than the length, I mean, length is important. But I think we have to be more granular in what we want from it so that it's not, we're gonna guess at it if something happens. Kind of what happened with summer, right? We didn't know what the warranty really was until we needed the warranty and then it was too late because they said, well well it's not our fault You know it's the our fault low. I mean I don't want to be there And I don't want to be that period But if we are you know if we do get into that sort of space I want to know that we've nailed down a warranty that's gonna protect the city and that they will take Responsibility and fix it and it's not gonna cost us the kind of dollars that we're paying to have and fix it and it's not going to cost us the kind of dollars that we're paying to have current art repaired. That's the direction provided. We will be sure to include that in the agreement the details of the warranty so that it would be listed. So it would include repainting if the paint just fades. That would be included. We would confirm all those details. We would also confirm whether or not the fabricator has also received a warranty from the paint company. So we would be sure to indicate all of that in the agreement. Well, I don't, I mean the paint company, that's not our concern, that's between them. I think our concern is if the paint fades, they're going to repaint it. Although you do make an interesting point, I don't want to go so far down the rabbit hole, but in five years they may not make that color paint. What happens then? Well, I mean, you only have to keep parts for seven years. Yes, our conservator, RLA, one of their specialties is, being able to... I think paint color. We match your paint color. Okay, so anyway I would like to see you be more aggressive with the warranty and and to the vice mayor's point I suspect it's gonna not gonna be a phenomenal cost side what that warranty is gonna I don't think for $2,000 they're gonna do the kinds of stuff we want. I mean, I'd be happy if they did, but I'd be surprised if they did. Be happy to include that if this is the direction. I think we need to know what the cost of that kind of warranty would be up front. Yes, sir. And by the way, all of this comes out of the fine art fund. Exactly. I was going to say we're not asking the city for anything. It's part of the arts and culture fund for that. But I want to go back to you. But that is the city. I mean, it's your right. City money. Exactly. Taxpayer money. Absolutely. When you had mentioned about where it was going to be located, there is a natural barrier by the elevator of a hedge. So that also is going to prohibit a lot of people like running up to it, like they did with the Ksama needing to fence it. And I have to also applaud the staff. Normally it was due to Commissioner, I mean council member Nazarian's question, do we have a warranty? What are these things? Normally, a piece is approved and then they go to the drawing board. So they've really done their due diligence and gone ahead. So all of the points you're making are valid and they can bring that up once the warranty is approved. Well, I don't think you would have gotten approval today without the warranty. So it's, I mean, whether or not they would have done it, I doubt that we would have moved ahead without having some significant warranty here. Frankly, when it comes back, I think we need to see that. And I would make my approval of this contingent on that, that this warranty is in fact, does what it's supposed to do, and it's a price that we can afford to pay. So maybe I misunderstood this. I mean, I thought that what we were discussing was, do we like the piece we want to put it there? And then the details is certainly something that we as a council would look at in the future. Isn't that the way it works? Yes, so the typical process would be we would bring forward the recommendation of the acquisition of the art piece based on the commission's recommendations and the liaisons and then in past history it would be the support of the city council and then we would go forward and negotiate all the deals or all the details work on the agreement and bring forward all of those specs at a future council meeting along with the appropriation of the funding from the fine art fund but because with the appropriation of the funding from the Fine Art Fund. But because Commissioner, I mean Council Member Nazarian, had specific questions, we started those conversations early so that we can bring forward a much more comprehensive report with some of those questions being answered. Okay, but I mean I always assumed that we would discuss the warranty at some time because I would not approve it unless there was a warranty. And I think Mayor Gold's comment is absolutely correct. We should learn from what we didn't get previously and make sure that we include that in this warranty. Yes, sir. All of those details and the specifications, the answers to the questions that are being asked today. If this is approved, the direction would be to bring all of that back in the staff report for the agreement. All right, and thank you. I just want to suggest to that going forward, maybe we should think about our process and maybe these things should be part of the initial presentation as well as the art and not in the reverse just because we've seen the importance of them and I know I don't know about future councils but for me they would have a big impact on my decision making. No matter what I would like please to get that comprehensive list of prices realize you know like one would do of all of her art basically because that to me gives a good idea as to whether whether you like the art or whether you don't, whether it's a good investment or not. And to me that's an important thing. It's one thing to say the Whitney paid this, another person paid this, but again aside from the art it's an investment and from my perspective this is not a question of trusting the taste or whatever we have a commission that knows this is pretty simple. This is a process of this is what the market is and this is what we're paying and it's within that. And that to me, just sort of well, the Whitney paid this or lithograph of her sold for that. I think it needs to be systematic and comprehensive from my perspective. I think we own that. I think we have direction moving forward. I think there's a direction moving forward. I think there's a consensus to move forward. But we'd like to see it back with some of that other detail. But okay with that. But not in a minute. All right. Thank you. We move on to item number three. This is report on the open VH code changes and fees subcommittee recommendations. And request for direction on permanent open BH programming. Nancy, what's our time frame for closed session? So I'll tell you 445 and the hopes that we can break it 5. We have a very full closed session today. The worst case we can put off this last. Mayor, that's correct. Item 4 is not time sensitive and we can bring that back at the next meeting. That's great. If we had a lot of time tonight we could do it tonight. Depending on. We can check and see if commissioners are planning to come as well and whether they be available this evening. Ms. Wei. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor Gold and Council members. My name is Timothy Attoi. I'm the Director of Community Development and this is an update on the Open BH Code Changes and Fees Subcommittee. As you recall, in the effort to create a permanent Open BH program, so the Open Air Dining Program, two Council subcommittees were established. This report specifically summarizes the work from one of those subcommittees, the Code Changes and Feed Subcommittee, which met six times over the past two years. And there was broad support for updating code requirements in the zoning code and the approval process and fees for open air dining with the goals of streamlining the process for business owners, encouraging dining where appropriate and protecting and enhancing the pedestrian environment. Today I'm here to seek direction on whether the city council generally agrees with the subcommittees recommendations for the code changes and fees and get feedback on some outstanding questions. Then staff will work with the planning commission to draft a permanent ordinance where we will work through specific issues and details based on the general guidance provided from the council. So today's a high level discussion getting support for what the subcommittee has discussed. So the subcommittee was comprised of mayor gold and vice mayor Friedman. And they first looked at development standards. So four outdoor dining specifically looking at where dining should be allowed. The recommendation is to actually allow the dining to extend beyond the restaurant facade with the approval of neighbors. Currently in our code, outdoor dining is not allowed to extend beyond the restaurant facade. For parking, the recommendation from the subcommittee was to require parking only if the outdoor dining was beyond the first 40 feet from the sidewalk. So toward the rear of a property and the idea was to encourage outdoor dining toward the front of the property to make a more lively atmosphere. I would like to note that since the subcommittee's last conversation, there has been a new state law called AB 2097, which impacts this recommendation. AB 2097 prohibits the city from imposing parking requirements for new projects if they're within half mile of a public transit stop. And the vast majority of our restaurants would fall under this. So we recommend that when we go to the planning commission, we'll talk to them about the nuance between the state laws and we'll make sure the code language matches up with that. This also impacts what we call patio dining or open air dining installations that you see toward the rear of properties sometimes behind restaurants in parking lots where they've created a patio atmosphere. While these aren't currently prohibited, they've been allowed during open BH. In the past, we didn't see them happen because they were usually over existing required parking or would increase the parking requirement beyond what a property could provide. But now with these parking changes at the state level, these are patio dining installations could be allowed, and staff is asking that the council direct us to work with the Planning Commission to create appropriate regulations. Should you want to allow this type of dining in the future? The subcommittee talked about path of travel on the sidewalks right now. A five foot path of travel is required between dining and any obstruction, and the recommendation is to require six feet, The five foot path of travel is required between dining and any obstruction. And the recommendation is to require six feet and to allow five feet with discretionary review and to look at current installations if they already have five feet to allow that to continue on into the future if it's not an issue with the public. And they also recommended tightening the umbrella and barrier standards and requiring umbrellas to be integrated into barriers and railings so that the footings do not project into a required path of travel. Talked at length about the approval process and permit renewal process for open air dining with again the goal of a streamlined simplified process for business owners. Currently there's no-right approval, meaning that someone cannot come into City Hall and check some boxes and show us a plan set and get a buy-right approval. Everything requires discretionary review at the staff or planning commission level. The subcommittees recommendation was to create a buy-right path for simple dining installations that meet certain standards. If someone does not meet those standards, it can be reviewed at the staff level. Permits would be renewed every five years, which means we can re-look at the installation, make sure it's operating the way it should every five years with no expiration. And the director can review installations that are problematic or not operating per the approval and have them re-examined at any time. The second part of the conversation was about lease fees. So this is the fee that a property owner or restaurant owner pays to lease us the sidewalk or street space for their dining. Currently, the existing fee is based on whether a dining installation has a railing, in which case it's $1.64 per square foot per month or no railing and it's a $1.13 per square foot per month. The subcommittee landed on a tiered pricing system similar to our in-loop parking pricing where it's encouraging through cheaper lease fees dining on areas where we don't see a lot of dining and reflecting where there is a high concentration of demand for dining. And so you'll see the fees outlined here, some of them end up being more than the existing fees, but many of them are lower. And then parklets would also pay lost-meter revenue for the meters that they are using for their space. Some additional questions that staff has for the City Council at this time is should regulations be developed to continue other non-dining open BH uses? So the conversation at the subcommittees thus far has been specifically about dining installations, which is the vast majority of the open BH participants. However, there are a handful of hair salons, retail stores and institutional uses that have open-bh permits where if we did not change the code, they would not have a path forward for doing the types of services they do outside right now, such as cutting hair or having queuing stanchions outside retail stores. So if you direct us to work with the Planning Commission to allow some of that to continue, we absolutely can. But absent that direction, when OpenBH ends, these types of uses would no longer have a path forward with an OpenBH permit. We undertook a significant amount of public outreach for this item, including informational handouts, surveys, interested parties, emails before every meeting, and then you'll see we met actually in person on site with all 29 parklet owners, hand-delivered notices to all restaurants in the city, worked with the chamber to make sure the word got out, and so we had lots of public participation during the subcommittee meetings. We did have an online survey. It was open between January and March, and we received 24 responses from business owners, and they noted the main factors that would influence their decision for open air dining or parklets in the future were permitting costs and approval and installation times. We did not receive public comment for this specific council meeting. So with that, at this time time I am looking for general broad direction as to whether the council is supportive of the subcommittees recommendations at which time we will go to the Planning Commission and work through some of the details and bring back a draft ordinance for you. And so here's some guiding questions for your discussion. Thank you. Very much. Do we have any public comments? We do not have public comment on this item. Please. So I think that the staff presentation, thank you very much, Timmy. It was accurate. There was a lot of discussion that we had regarding the lease fees. And we felt that coming tearing it was the appropriate way to handle the usage. I must say that the rate that is being charged is significantly lower than whatever the rental rate would be for the inside space that any of the users would have. We played around with the numbers and came up with this amount, which seemed to be generally well accepted by those who would be having to pay the fee. Other than that, the issues that need to be addressed, that is whether or not we want to continue it for hair salons or other uses, is something that we need to discuss. But not something I don't think that we really got into as I recall. So that is something that has to be discussed. But if we want to continue the vibrancy of our dining areas, I think that this does that. I think that it fairly handles the issues that need to be addressed. And that's my take on it. Thank you, Vice-Payton. So I agree. I think the report is complete and accurate. And thank you, Timmy, for that. And I agree with the Vice Mayor. I would just sort of note that as we started this, we kind of had two things going, because we had allowed outdoor dining before, and we were actually charging for use of the sidewalk. And then when we came to COVID, we sort of had outdoor dining, but we were actually charging for use of the sidewalk and then when we came to COVID we sort of had outdoor dining but we called it something else and then we added the parklets and we didn't charge for it and so it was pretty clear that we needed to have some consistent strategy that took a look at what are we charged for everything outside of the outside of the restaurant. We did initially take a look at whether or not there was some way to tie it to the rent, but that was problematic for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was how would we know the rent. But so we sort of backed away from that and went back to looking at what we had done before, which was charging for the outdoor dining, sidewalk dining, and started it started from that. We recognize that different parts of the city would be impacted differently, and so the fees are different depending on the places. But the vice mayor said tied loosely, very loosely, to what in-loop parking would cost in those areas. Some of the stuff is kind of makes sense. You don't want umbrellas or umbrella stands or huger stands impeding the right of way, especially when we're defining the right of way. So we try to create a way to clean that up so that it ever understands some things. They already have limits to what they can do, but the basis couldn't be in the sidewalk. But other than that, this is the framework of what we came up with. Curious to see what the rest of the council. Councilmember Nazarian. Yes, thank you very much. I know that this has been very time consuming and we wanna make sure that we do it right. So I know that both liaison committees have been working diligently and I also wanna thank staff. I know that both liaison committees have been working diligently and I also want to thank staff. I know that you've taken numerous hours to reach out to our various community members and restaurants to make sure that we cover what is important to them and address all of those issues. I would like to ask questions and comments. Questions and comments. And comments. Okay. Great. Thank you. That's what I wanted to know. So, yes, I do support the general code changes and fees that are being proposed. I think that it's important for us to examine the regulations for private property, just for safety issues, that made a lot of what was created was makeshift and it was temporary. And we wanted to be able to be available for our community and our businesses to be able to thrive during a very challenging time. At this time, we are no longer in a pandemic and it's time to organize, restructure, regroup, and be able to start over again. And so I think that it's important to make sure that we have safety. It's interesting that Mayor Gold mentioned the heaters and the umbrellas. I was also imagining umbrellas and heaters and the combination and if they weren't properly positioned, what could occur. So we want to be able to absolutely protect things that that may pose a risk. As far as should staff still accept new open-bh applications? Yes, but under the new regulations, because at this point, I don't feel that we are in the pandemic mode anymore. But I do have a question about that. Are we still receiving a lot of applications? Are we open VHS? We are not receiving a lot of applications, but we are receiving some applications. It's slowing down as people are realizing new regulations are coming. And we added this question because it's an issue we're dealing with. More specifically with parklets actually because people do invest a lot of time and money into their parklets. And as we know that these regulations are going to be, you know, the temporary regulations where we don't really have clear cut idea of what people can and can't do. We don't, we are warning people to not necessarily put a lot of time and money into something that might not comply with regulations that are put in place in three or four months. So if there's interest from the council to say, look at this time we're not going to accept new parklets or new open air dining, people have to wait until the permanent regulations are in place. That's really what we're looking for. If there's no interest in that, we will continue to process things and be very frank with people about what the rules are looking like. They're going to look like in a few months and what it looks like to invest time and money in something that may not be allowed when the permanent regulations are here. And how would you, if someone did come to apply now, how would we know what new regulations to propose to them? I mean, this is something I was wondering about. Yes, we should have new regulations, but they're not in place yet. So, what is the plan? And that's exactly the challenge we have. So, we can show people these reports. We can say there's general consensus, but we don't have code language to point to to say, no, you cannot do XYZ or you must do XYZ. We're still operating under the kind of fluid open BH where we're trying to work with people and make sure we're protecting the pedestrian environment, but also working with people and warning them seriously that new regulations are coming and they're coming soon. So please take a look at what they might look like. But again, we can't give them certainty because it's not done until the council adopts an ordinance and it goes into place. So you know I'm a big supporter of communication. Is there something that we could perhaps give to these businesses that they sign that they understand? Because I could imagine in a few months we'll have new regulations in place and they went and spent whatever they needed to to get their new space set up and then all of a sudden we come and tell them it's time to redo what you already did. Yes, we absolutely can add a disclaimer. I think it might already be on there. Oh, Patty's nodding. So we have, you know, in recent months, added a disclaimer to our open BH permits, stating as such that these are temporary regulations, and you should be aware that new regulations are coming, and you may not be allowed to continue with whatever you've installed at this point. All right, great. And with regard to location of dining in the discussion, I noticed that it says it can extend if property owner and the business both need to agree, right? I mean, the business, the neighboring businesses also have to agree. So how is that going to work if that is something we have to work through, and we'll work with the Planning Commission. We have an internal working group that's already working between public works, planning, building and safety to figure out how do these things work. But it would be written verification and signature from neighboring property owner and business owner that they are with something encroaching in front of their business. And then there would be code language that specifically addresses what happens if someone revokes that permission. How long do you have to remove it? How does the city go out and verify? So that's all things, you know, anticipating this is the direction we're going to go in, that we're working on what that would look like. Right, thank you. And part of the travel path that is discussed here is currently it's five feet and it's going to be six feet in the future. Some areas are much more narrow than others. Is that going to impose a major barrier for some of the businesses to be able to have their park lit and are there options in place in situations like that that we can perhaps put in an exemption? Yes. So that's something that the subcommittee did discuss. Six feet is wide. It's great for pedestrians, especially as we, you know, things get tight in very busy areas with lots of pedestrians. So there would be kind of a relief mechanism. The by-right standards, so not needing discretionary review would be six feet. If you could not accommodate that, there is a path forward for you to ask for five feet. It would just require a review from staff so we could look at whether or not there, you know, it's a reasonable place to allow that deviation for the six-fold requirement. Right, thank you for that. Now, with regard to renewal of permits, I notice that it says a five-year and then an additional five-year option. Can you can you speak to that? So right now we have a required five-year renewal, but you can only do that, I think, two times. And then you have to totally reapply for your open. Even if it's the same restaurant, same configuration, you have to come in, pay the permit fees, go through the whole process. What we have seen is that generally things don't change enough for us to make a business owner go through that process. And we know when there's problematic installations because we get code enforcement complaints or we hear from people. And so we've added that mechanism for the director to review and maybe require changes for problematic installations. But we do not think it's necessary to have an expiration of the permit after a certain number of renewals. If a business is operating as they should and they're operating well, we think it's fine to check in every five years. Make sure it's still happening. Make get updated information from them, but not have the permit expire and have them fully come in and ask for a new open air dining permit. Because I was curious about this and I think we agree but I just want to clarify. Because this is a new process that the city is bringing in, I think that it would really be important to have that space and the option to say, okay, after five years, let's revamp and review this process and see what's working and what's not working. And in a sense, I don't want to tie the city's hands. I don't want to tie anybody's hands so that they wouldn't have that option to be able to look. Perhaps, you know, if we see something isn't working well or the fee structure isn't what we had anticipated, this is new. We're still working with it. And I just want to be able to give our city that option. Is there any way that we could work that into this? Yes, and let me clarify. The five years is for each business. So each business gets a five-year renewal. In terms of code, language, and fees, if it's not working after two, three, four months, the council can always ask staff to bring it back or we can raise it as an issue to council and say, hey, this one section is not working or we're seeing issues here. That is always available to the city council to address code issues. Okay, great. Thank you. And the last one, I think I answered all of your questions except for the last one, which is with regard to other retail stores, religious congregations, hair salons. How many of the requests that you're getting now or the current are associated with these types of requests? So right now we have eight retailers using this and again it's mostly to put out stanchions in front for what you know, security purposes or to regulate the number of people going in the store at once. We have one congregation using this on a private lot to do things outside and then a hand. Two hair salons. Two hair salons, yes, thank you. So that's really the world of things other than dining that would be affected. And the regulations are not pertaining to these. I'd correct. So everything seemed like it was mostly geared towards dining from what I read. Yes, we were very focused on figuring out the dining piece. And so one of the questions is, as we go back to planning commission we absolutely can make a path forward for the other businesses if there's a desire but there you know there's a handful of them and we're not sure if there's a desire in the community to continue to allow those specific you know retail salon congregation to operate outside. And have you asked them, or are they still interested in continuing? So they continue to reapply so with the open-bh permits, they have to reapply every three months, I believe. So these are all retailers or groups that have reapplied recently. So they are either still using it or reapplied to kind of maintain their rights. But based on this conversation, we will absolutely reach out to them and talk about, the activities they're doing if they still want to do it and what that looks like moving forward. Okay, great, thank you. Thank you. Senator. Thank you. Firstly, I want to thank the laya zones. I think it's, you did an extraordinary job. Especially when we're talking about fees. It's never a subject that anybody generally likes, but I do believe that we have been very, very upfront from day one that, you know, that that was the path forward. So I feel very confident that the businesses that partook in this understood that that was always the goal. And I'm also aware that other cities completely eliminated their outdoor dining in general, you know, once the COVID restrictions were lifted and that we continued to move forward with that. So, you know, I think that was a very forward thinking of us to do so. But I do want to think my colleagues and of course, thank staff, because as was mentioned, there was a lot of outreach that was required and done and I think that's very important. I agree that communication is key and clearly that was done. And I really do support the tier approach, because I think we're very cognizant of certain areas, have more foot traffic and more exposure than other areas and the smaller mom and pop type of situation. And I don't know if you have this information and if you don't have it read a yet hand, you can, I think, it might be worthwhile to provide that when this goes to the planning commission so in terms of sidewalk dining lease fees and you know we have the tier one the tier two and the tier three do you have and again if you don't have it now it's okay do we know how many businesses will be affected in each tier I do not have that, but I think that is a great suggestion. Both the open-BH installations and the existing restaurants that have open-air dining permits to integrate that information and see what that would look like. I just think in terms of, you know, forward thinking, and again, I didn't expect you to have it, but I think in terms of the sidewalk dining and the, you know, the parkour dining in terms of tiers, how many of the open-bh permit will this affect in each particular tier? You did call out in terms of the other type, you know, the stores, the hair salon and the religious institutions. So I think it would be helpful to see the impact on the tears. And also in terms of lost revenue, of meter revenue, that was something clearly that the business owners that are part of the park lip program, they understand that that is something that's going to be implemented as well so they can do the math. And Councillor Mabin-Nazaria and I are on the other subcommittee that also deals with the design. And I think we've heard as well that when businesses are going to determine if they want to move forward, they're going to have to decide what the fee structure is going to be, how much it's going to cost them once these fees go into place, as well as what will cost them to build. And so I think the intention and our goal is to obviously incentivize, we really love the positive that has come out of the open-BH program, the revitalization and such, but recognize that some businesses once they see the fee structure, as well as the requirements for the design, might choose otherwise. But I think the goal here is to have a wide path forward that makes sense, that is smooth, and that going forward is what the expectation is. So in terms of going forward to the planning commission, they don't generally look at fees. So what exactly will they be, what's going to be their purview? So their purview mostly will be all of the other changes that are code changes. So anything in the zoning code would be them. So all of the other things path of travel where dining's allowed, how much is allowed, what the process is, things like that. Okay. So I think that's also clear important for people to understand. The fee structure that we're talking about today is really more of a council direction, which I support. I think that the laya's on's working with the community came with, to me, a very a reasoned approach and a fair approach. You know, I think we all wish we lived in a world where everything was free, but that is not realistic, obviously. So yes, I support the proposed code changes and fees and I do believe that the planning commission this should go forward to the planning commission. I also do believe that we should address regulations for the private property dining areas, especially as was called out in terms of being next to a transit zone. I think we need to be very cognizant of impacts when it's near residential areas or such. I agree that we should continue to look at the planning commission should look at the other non-dining options and I would assume that if there is support moving forward that there would be fees attached as well to that. That wasn't addressed here. And I do believe that we should still accept applications, but completely be very transparent that this is a temporary stopgap that in the number of months there is going to be a fee structure and show basically what at least in terms of the fee structure, what, you know, the council has decided that we're looking for, so people know, you know, what the path forward potentially can be. But I definitely feel at least if somebody does want to invest and have the outdoor dining for, you know, a temporary period of time that we shouldn't close that door, recognizing that this is again a temporary. So that's my direction and again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So in terms of what was it? AB 2097. What we're doing now is we're allowing on public property and expansion of business. That's something that we can decide to do or not to do. Maybe it's a question of the city attorney. Could we instead of changing the code, make this into a development agreement between if we, for example, decided that we needed parking, of which the development agreement could specify that in order to take advantage of this you need parking. I think there are a couple of things. Development agreement is one of them, but there are a couple of ways that we could address that. Because this is public property. Right, it's public property. This is not an approval we're giving to a property owner to do something on their own property. And I think we need to look at that. We maybe don't need parking. I mean, on Canon, we've got lots, there's this sort of thing. So we could do a parking demand study or whatever, and it could say, you know what, we're good. But I don't think we want to be in a situation where we create additional traffic by people circling, maybe looking for a free spot or something like that. So I think there are, it sounds like there are ways for us to deal with that because this is something that we're working out. But in general, of course, I think it's great to keep the parklets. I think it's great that we're going to look at design standards so that there's not going to just be K-rail and individual that there's going to be hopefully some sort of a unity of design that people will see and people will enjoy. So I'm supportive of this. I think that the mayor and the vice mayor have been very generous. But you know, you know, because as you correctly say, they're effectively increasing the square feet of their restaurant. And in fact, some of the best dining is in the parklets or on the patio or on the street. That's, you know, people would much rather be there than in the back of a room somewhere sometimes. So that's prime space you're giving. And my guess is we know, I don't know, Flogan is here, what the average price is on, for example, Canon, what is it, like the average price is on, for example, Canon. What is it? $6 a month or something? Yes. So I think Logan is probably in the next room over, but I would say it depends on which block and which property and all that, but I would say average is probably $5 to $7. $7. So let's say 6 and we're giving it to them for $1.75 or 2. That's the definition of a mitsia. So I think it's OK and I think people will understand that they have to pay. I mean, I think we'd all like free beer and free food, but they're not giving it to us either. So, OK, you don't like free beer. Danny likes free beer, I bet you. And so I think that's good. And you know, I've just been curious and asked of you, how did you arrive at the figure? I get it and I kind of like the idea of tying it to rent and get a percentage of that. Even though in theory, it's better than some of their back of house square footage. But how did you happen to come up with these? Well, we started with rent. We started with a percentage of rent. Yeah. And it came out to be too big a number in conversation with the businesses. They basically said, nobody can afford to do that. So, and I think that's true. And recognize that the other piece of it is that although they're paying less for this square footage, they cannot do this without paying for the other square footage. So effectively they're paying and of course the business is paying in business taxes and all the rest. They're paying based on the full on people. Well that's true but it gives them what I'm limited. We've limited without discretionary review. We've limited the amount of outdoor spaces, a percentage of indoor space, recognizing that the two are tied together. Well, but it does give them an opportunity to expand their business. That's a good thing. Asset, my guess is my hope is, especially in the summer, you're going to have more people who want to be outside. Probably so. That has been true to this point. Right, not just if there's, you know, listen, it feels that- An infectious to this point. Right, not just if there's, you know, listen, it feels that- An infectious virus or something. Well, but I mean, the city feels better when people are outside, right? No, it's good. Not only for the people eating dinner, but good for the people walking around. It is great, and again, that's why I think we need to nail the parking down, because it disturbs, there are a lot of people driving around. You want, ideally, you'd want people to go to the free lots or whatever park and then walk around. You'd want to reduce traffic. I think the parking is, if you added a cost of parking to the equation, you'd price amount of the market. I think when you take a look at that, if the point is we need to, we need to make sure that we're not generating. There may be certain areas where the, and we looked at this, I think, where the removal of the parking meters had a more detrimental effect than in other spaces. And it might be as part of a discretionary review if there was. As there have been a major impact. But my guess is like on cannon because the lots are there. So my guess is we're probably any of a big valet there. Right, we're probably good. But it's also behooves us to try and reduce the amount of drive by just because, and also as we know, we sometimes have on cannon and other streets, those obnoxious people who are gunning their engines. And that's just unpleasant. That's not, you know, and also fumes or whatever. So again, we probably have enough parking. We're lucky in that we're a city that has that. But I just think we should look at that. Now you're good with this other way. Yeah. Yeah. Now, no, hair salons. I get it in COVID. You didn't,'t you know Those kind of needed to be outside that was the only way they could operate Why would we have hair salons out? I mean that to me is You know people's hair flying around and stuff right health here Well, I don't think for then maybe I don't know, but why would that be so that is the papers? The page why don't it was just a planning commission so that is the papers? For the paper. Why don't we, it's just a planning commission to look at it. So where are those two salons? The two salons are Brighton Salon at 9409 Brighton Way and Olen Salon at 8912 Olympic Boulevard. Yeah, that's the only one I'd be a little bit skeptical of. I mean people can continue to wear masks and that sort of thing. But I don't know, outdoor, I'd rather have dining. I think that makes sense. There may be other uses as well to have street activation. I think this is great. I think it's important that it means that we have street activation. And again, just to that point, related is when we look at land uses that are allowed in parts of town that maybe aren't the trying, like the southeast that we want to stimulate, we should really be looking at ensuring that we have the right land uses there. And I'll ask for this to be brought back again. When you have ground floor medical or ground floor bank or ground floor of CPAs or ground floor lawyers, you're precluding other businesses like these kinds that would activate the street from being there. And I think that's something we can address by zoning. But I think this is good. I think that I'm glad you got the buy-in from the businesses. And I think, as said, I look forward to permanent designs that create a look that makes this look like this is something organic and maybe something we plan all along. So thank you both for your work and let's go. Yes, I'll try and be real quick just in terms of how we arrived at the rates. There is a limitation on the amount of space that can be used outside that did not exist under open BH in terms of there being a percentage of the space that is indoors and how much can be outdoors. So that's limiting. The other thing that limits the amount of space outside is the kitchen. Whether or not the kitchen can accommodate more patronage. And lastly, there is another thing that if they, if any, restaurant increases the amount of chairs that they have from what they have indoors, there is going to be another fee that is not payable to the city, but to LA County sanitation, I believe it's sanitation, that is a per additional chair amount that each business will have to pay. So there are limitations that are built in when you just look at the rates that are being charged, yes, it's less than what the rent is, but there are other factors that really constrict the amount of space that they will be able to use in the future. Why is it only to LA County and not to the city as well? That's the same. But just the sanitation, but if somebody has additional chairs, there are some. No, no, they're going to pay for the space. It would pay by the square. It's just an additional chair. But in any event, there are costs that are associated with once we move over to the permanent program. Let me go through these real quickly. I definitely support the proposed code changes and fees and it should go forward to the planning commission to examine regulations for the private property dining. The other uses a More skeptical on the other uses. I think that it certainly should go to the planning Commission whether or not Harris-Alons and there's only two of them should be outdoors. I'm extremely skeptical about that. Cuing for retail stores, maybe on an as needed basis with review of some sort, I hate to see stanchions out and without there being any regulations, by the way, which would impede pedestrian traffic. So I think that's something that needs to be looked at. And I'm not sure what the religious uses are, but again, that's something that needs to be looked at. And I'm not sure what the religious uses are, but again, that's something that the Planning Commission can take a look at. And in terms of accepting new open BH applications as long as there is the disclaimer out there, I don't have a problem with that. I think I don't know how much longer this is going to take to become a permanent regulation. I wouldn't want to impede someone in the short term, but they would have to be well aware of the fact that whatever is being allowed right now could change, will change in the future. So I think that addresses. Okay, thank you. And I'm okay with that. We have item number four which we can either put off to our next meeting. Is that what you want to do? Nancy? Either way is fine. We don't we are fine to do it this evening or the next meeting. If we carry it over to this evening we'll make a decision this evening that we want to carry it over yet again. Can we do that? Yes. All right, so why don't we do that? We'll make a decision. Let's kick the can. If we get done really early, maybe we can get through it quickly. All right, and we'll put it to a vote at the time and see what people want to do. Okay, so with that, we're close session agenda we'll do roll call in advance of that which roll calls are we doing? We have two one for the City Council and the Nexus for the in parking authority. First one is for City Council council member Nazarian here council member bossy here council member Mirish vice mayor Friedman here mayor gold here the Nexus for the parking authority director Nazarian here director bossy here director Mirish, vice-chair Friedman, and chair Gold. Right. Do we have any public comment? Yes we do. We do have one public comment from Mr. David Gingold. Times, when I have opposed the city council views in a number of times, when I have opposed the City Council views and number of times when I have supported them depending on the facts and the law according to staff reports commission meeting, city council meetings and interviews in our newspapers. No one has ever challenged anything that I said that wasn't true. I support the City Council on the closed item agenda for the Robertson, Robertson group of people who are opposing the cutting down of the remaining ficus trees. Support the City Council to continue to cut down every single tree. I said the evidence that was provided by our tree arborist, Stinguist Kenneth Paul's graph who showed videos. It was my testimony and afterwards Sue Brucker, former first lady's testimony, as well as a written comment by the Carter Hardware Store, that the routes are not only uprooting sidewalks, but they go underneath. They invade the pipes of the businesses as they have done in homes. John Epstein has even said that there have been claims against the city because of ficus roots that have gone into the pipes. It happened to Carter Hardware on Robertson. What happens is the roots clog up the pipes and suddenly the water comes overflowing out of the toilets and floods the entire interior of businesses. It's the health, safety, and general welfare of our community that is paramount. When the leader of that group spoke on a non-agenda item, she said that I'm not having my forces talk to you about it at this time. The opposition to the trees has not given any legal reasoning or proof or evidence, which is necessary according to superior court, appeals court, and supreme court, that you have to give evidence, especially to something that's called irreparable damage to them, because it might take away their shade. I had a postcard from 3-day blind I was going to give them, but I see Larry Weiner put that in the attorney league, put that in their papers anyway, that all you have to do is get shades. They could also get an ony, or they could move. But they are not such a special interest that we have that this city has to cave in to some people who I believe are emotional problems that they come in here crying that their whole life depends on these trees. I was in Century City yesterday in the high rises. There's no trees on Avenue of the stars. This has nothing to do with their happiness. It's how they cope. And I think the city should definitely stand. They could make the findings based on staff and policy and prior history of what those roots do. Thank you, David. The city did agree to take out the ficus trees on El Camino. So I support you and your closed hearing session on this. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Okay, so with that, we'll adjourn to closed session for those items on the closed session.