City Council Meeting — November 3, 2021

Monterey Park. Monterey Park. Monterey Park City Council. Monterey Park City Council acting on behalf of the successor agency, the former redevelopment agency, the housing authority, the Monterey Park financing authority and the Monterey Park geologic has a big district. Today is a regular City Council meeting. Today is Wednesday, November 3, 2021. And it's called to order. Now it's at 630. Assembly Bill number 361. This meeting will be conducted for soon to two.

Government Code Section 54953, Prime Minister E. Recording in progress. Oh.

Should I continue? Okay, Assembly View Number 361. This meeting will be conducted pursuant to Government Code Sections 54953, Prime Minister E, as implemented by City Council resolutions. Accordingly, council member will be provided by electronic meeting lock-in information. They will not be physically present at council chambers. Pursuing to City Council resolutions, the public may provide public comments utilizing the method set forth below. Notice that the City Hall is currently closed to the public. It will not be admitted to City Hall. General information, documents related to an agenda item are available to the public in the City Clerk's office located at 320 West Newmar Avenue, Monterey Park, California 91754 during the normal business hour. And the City website at www.maribart.ca.gov. The public may watch the meeting live on City Cable Channel MPKTV, AT&T Universe Channel 99, or Charter Communication Channel 182, or by visiting the City's website at www.monerfart.ca.gov. The agenda may include items considered by City Council acting on behalf of the Successful Agency of the former Marriott Redevelopment Agency, which is solved every 1st, 2012. Successful Agency matters will include a notation of SA next to the agenda item number. public participation in accordance with government government code section 54953 p.m. e and city council resolutions remote public participation is alLod in the following ways via email written communications public comments will be accepted up to 24 hours before the meeting via email to mpclark at modernpark.ca.gov written communications if any will be briefly SUMMARIZE AND INCLUDE A NAME OF EACH INDIVIDUAL STAT SUBMIT A COMMENT. THE SUMMARY WILL BE READ VIEWED, PRE-RECORDED VIDEO AND PLAYED DURING THE PUBLIC COMMENT SECTIONS OF THE CITY COUNCIL MEETING. TO VIEW THE FULL TYPES OF WRITTEN COMMUNICATIONS, PLEASE VISIT www.monitor-park.ca.gov. ALL WRITTEN COMMUNICATIONS ARE PROVIDED TO THE CITY COUNCIL AND FILED AS PART OF THE CITY'S ADMINISTRATIVE RECORDS. Via telephone, public comments may be submitted via telephone during the meeting before the close of public comments by calling 888-788-0099 or 877-853-5247 and entering soon meeting ID 289-222-5995, then press pound. When prompted to enter participation ID number, press pound again. If participants would like to make public comments, they will enter star 9. Then the clerk's office will be notified and you will be in a rotation to make public comments. Press star 6 to unmute yourself when to call bond to speak. Participants are encouraged to join a meeting 15 minutes before the start of the meeting. You may speak up to 5 minutes on an agenda item. Speakers will not be alLod to combine time. The mayor and the city council may change the amount of time alLod for speakers. as part of the virtual meeting protocol. Anonymous person will not allow to provide public comments. Important disclaimer, when a participant calls in to join a meeting, their name and or phone number will be visible to all participants so that all public meetings will be recorded. So, city clerk, would you be able to prepare the flag for pledge of allegiance?

So let's all stand up and put your right hand on your heart. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the state of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation.

Thank you all. City clerks, please call the room.

Thank you.

Council Member Peter Chen? Here. Council Member Hans Liang?

I am here. I just want to make an announcement. when I'm not, I'm away at a conference and I will not be using my video as I don't have, it's not set up for that. So just to let everyone know. Okay.

Thank you. Council member Fred Cernoso. Here. Pro Tem Henry Lo. Here. And Mary Yvonne Yu.

Here.

All present. Thank you. Thank you.

And so city manager and city attorney, do we have any agenda addition, deletion change or adoptions?

None from the city manager's office, Madam Mayor. Okay. Yes, Madam Mayor, with regard to item number 4A, that is the public hearing with regard to the geologic hazard abatement district. So to the request of the property owner, I'm recommending that that be continued to January 18th, 2022. Okay.

Thank you. Okay, so for public communications, while all comments are welcome, the Brown Act does

subject matter jurisdictions comments on agenda item at this time.

If you provide public comments on a specific agenda item at this time, however, you cannot

later provide comments at the time the agenda item is considered so staff communications

our Recreation and Community Services. Good evening nice nice mustache there Fred.

Good evening Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and City Council. I hope everyone's doing well Robert

Aguirre Director of Recreation Community Services. I wanted to start out tonight with some some some some well-deserved thank yous.

First off, recreation and community service department and also the Burgermeyer Library, we'd like to send thank yous out to all those that participated in our community altar. The community altar has been up at the library from October the 11th, and today was the last day, November the 3rd. It was in celebration of Dielos Muertos and honoring those loved ones who have passed. So definitely wanna thank all the community members that participated and submitted loved ones to be included in that community altar.

Next, I wanted to send a huge thank you on behalf of myself and my department and also the library to all the service organizations, the clubs, the employee groups, the city departments that all helped make our Monster Mash HalLoen event a huge, huge success. It was so wonderful to see everyone come together and joining together at a festive event at Barnes Park again. There's so many wonderful costumes and it was just really great to see the community come out and enjoy and have just a great time at one of our events. And then finally, I'd also like to send a special thank you out to UCLA Health Corps.

For those who don't know, UCLA Health Corps has partnered with the city for over 15 years on putting on a community health fair each year.

That's free to the community. and they provide health information, services, and health screenings to the community. So this year, on October the 23rd, we had a health fair at the Langley Center, and they were able to serve over 300 residents, most of which don't have medical insurance. So huge thank you to UCL Health Force for continuing to partner with us on that community event. So that's what we've done, and here's some of the stuff that we have coming up. I just want to share some of that. this Saturday, we do have our first annual pickleball tournament that is on from 8 a.m.

to 2 p.m. That is at Barnes Park. We are completely full. We have 54 teams competing in three levels.

So although residents can't compete, they can definitely come out and watch and learn about one of the fastest growing games in the country. So definitely encourage folks to come out, take a look, learn a little bit more about this game called pickleball. and it's a really exciting game.

Next week on November the 11th,

we will be co-hosting the Veterans Day ceremony. This year's ceremony will be actually moving locations and it'll be at the American Legion Post 397, which is located at 338 Ramona Avenue.

And that'll be outside in the American Legion's parking lot.

And it's going to feature some veteran guest speakers and the ceremony will close with live entertainment from the band Free Wing. And for those that are in attendance, you'll also be treated to a free lunch that will be provided by the American Legion Women's Auxiliary Group 397. And so the last item I have was our upcoming Holiday Snow Village is returning. Although this year's event will be a little bit different, it'll be at George Elder Park on Thursday, December 9th.

That will be in conjunction with our weekly farmer's market.

The event will still feature over 20 tons of snow with two sled runs and a snow play area.

This year, there will be a registration requirement for snow play, which is filling up very, very quickly.

Folks can visit the city's website and search Holiday Snow Village and register for the snow play area.

Now, if you're unable to register for Snow Play Area and you still want to come out and get your picture taken with Santa, you can still do so. There's still going to be crafts, delicious food from the farmer's market and also vendor booths and some other activities for the kids to enjoy.

So still, definitely, if you can't make it for the snow, still would love to invite everyone out to the Holiday Snow Village on December the 9th.

So thank you and thanks for the time. And I look forward to seeing everyone out during the holidays.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Robert. and so um and next will be the fire departments

hey madam mayor mayor pro tem and council fire chief matt hallick here to uh give you some updates on what we're doing with vaccinations and uh and flu shots in the city so you can see the flyer before you uh beginning today again on friday the 5th and next tuesday the 9th we are offering free flu shots. And for those that qualify, free Pfizer or Moderna booster shots.

Or if you've yet to get either a first dose or second dose, you can do that as well at each of these events. It's from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. And it's on the grass area, kind of in the left field

portion of the softball field between the tennis courts and City Hall. No appointment is necessary, so you can walk up. If you have insurance, still ask for it. You can put it on the form,

but it's not required. And you can also do both shots, the flu shot and the booster in the same day. I did both of those today. So thankfully, no symptoms yet. I'm feeling good. So that's,

I guess, I can't think of the right word. But anyways, it's offered for all of our community. And for those that are wondering what those groupings are for the booster, because there is a little bit of confusion about that, it's for those that are over 65 years old. It's for those that live in a long-term care setting environment that are 18 years or older, people with underlying medical conditions 18 to 64 years old, and then those that work or live in high-risk settings. And those are first responders, educational staff like teachers or daycare workers, food and agricultural workers, manufacturing workers, corrections workers, postal carriers, public transit, and finally grocery store workers. So if you fall into one of those categories, then come by if you would like a booster. I would like to mention that this has been made possible by Chinatown Service Center. They have been an incredible partner for us throughout this entire COVID event. And without them, we wouldn't be able to make this possible. And it was as simple as me reaching out to them to see if they would again partner with us. And before I think I finished even asking, they said yes. And they're doing this at no cost to the city. So again, a tremendous partner. My incredible thanks and appreciation to them and the city for making this happen. That concludes my presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions if you have any about this. Any council member has any questions?

Actually, I just want to thank Chief Alec. And actually, I want to thank the city and our partners for being so aggressive in ensuring our population is vaccinated.

And the results show. And what I mean by that is if all of you go to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, they have a list of vaccination rates for cities.

And I'm very, very proud. I think we should let the community know that Monterey Park vaccine rate is now 91 percent. Wow. Wow.

And when I say 91%, it's those who are 12 or older who have received at least one dose.

But that's still something to be impressed about because I'm pretty sure if you look at our neighboring cities, our immediate neighbors, I don't think any city is at 91% yet. And so that's something we should all be proud of as far as achievement. Wow, great.

And if I could add one more thing, with the recent approval for ages 5 to 11 for Pfizer, we're looking at that. And, of course, if the demand is there, we will certainly look to possibly bringing that in to our community. I think most parents would probably take their child to their pediatrician. But for those that don't have that available, we'll certainly look at doing that.

And then one more thing is if these dates don't work for you, you can go to vaccines.gov and you can put in your zip code and it'll give you locations that are available that if you want Moderna or Pfizer or J&J, you can certainly go to that site and find a location that works best for you. Thank you. Council Member Personoso, you have any questions?

to encourage our residents to do that. My parents and my aunt and uncle myself, we're all over 65,

so we got our shots last week at Rite Aid. And if you go to Rite Aid and get a flu shot,

you get a free scoop of ice cream. So I don't know if that's part of the deal with the fire department, but Rite Aid gave me a free scoop of ice cream. So I asked if I could go every day and

get a flu shot. And they said, well, if you want to, but anyway.

Well, now our line might be a lot shorter on Friday.

And so, yeah, thank you so much, Faj Cheven, for the information. And also, yeah, thank you, Chinatown Service Center, for being such a great partner to our community. Thank you so much. Thank you. So if we don't have any other questions, then we'll be police department for your staff communication. Oh, hi.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, City Council. Mine's going to be extremely brief, but very important. So as we move forward, we're going to get back to doing some more in-person public events. So we're actually going to finally roll out another coffee with the cop. And that will be on Thursday, November 18th at 830 in the morning from 830 to 1030. And it will be at the corner of Garfield and Newmark right there in front of Williams Donuts and Subway and CDS in that parking lot. And that little picnic table area that's right in front of Subway and Williams Donuts. So we would love to have the community come out. We can have some conversation, have a cup of coffee. and yes there may be a donor or two involved but the most important part is that we just want to get out and engage with the community and be able to talk to them answer their questions concerns and share a cup of coffee together so thank you thank you so um city staff actually um

we do have um public communications right

Madam Mayor, I can ask the public if they would like to speak during public communications.

Audience, if they would like to speak during public communications,

you can utilize the raise hand feature or press star nine.

I believe Arthur Fong wanted to speak.

Sure.

Mr. Fong, did you want to speak during public communications?

Good evening, Mayor.

Can you hear me, you guys, right? Thank you for having me here, okay? Mayor, council members, I just have one question. I'm still in the military, okay? So I have an organization, Chinese military, American military support. We would like to help the local veterans only in Monterey Park and work together and to help them to do business in Monterey Park. And also some of our members, we always want to look for places for ceremony like promotion, retirement, stuff like that. When will you consider to reopen our enchantment building for everybody? I know that you guys have to shout out that building for anyone to do anything there. Do you think that you can open it up for veterans, for military members or the Chamber of Commerce? I think it's not overdue. That's my question. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. And maybe city manager can help to address a little.

Oh, you're on mute, Ron.

Sorry, I thought I unmuted. I will give Mr. Fong a call and talk to him about the El Encanto building. And we'll work out a facility that he can utilize if he wants to use it for the veterans. But I'll give him a call.

Okay, thank you. So, City Clerk, do we have any other public communications?

There are no other public communications, Madam Mayor. How about written communications? There are no written communications. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. So, actually, I'm sorry, I cut off the police chief last for your reporting. So, any council member has any questions about anything? Okay, council member Fresno.

Russell. I just want to thank Chief Gordon for making this opportunity available to have coffee with the cop. I don't drink coffee, but I'll have a hot chocolate. I don't know if you have hot chocolate and donuts and stuff, but I'll be there to support our police department. Saw one of your young ladies in the area this morning and talked to her a little bit. I found out what is a cadet versus a parking enforcement little car thing. So learned a little bit about the police department this morning. So thank you for sending your folks out this way and keeping

us safe, Chief. Thanks. Thank you. So we'll make sure we have some hot cocoa for you.

Thank you. And then Mayor Potem, Henry Lo. Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor. I just wanted to say

Thank you very much, Chief Gordon, for doing Coffee with a Cup, because I remember before pandemic, it was very often that the community had an opportunity to meet with their law enforcement official. And I hope that this is a good omen that as we do this event, that going into the new year, we will have the opportunity, the community have opportunities to be able to also have more in-person interactions with their civic leaders as a sign of recovery for our community. So again, thank you very much, Chief Gordon, and your department for doing this. Thank you. Thank you.

So yeah, thank you so much, Chief Gordon. And also congratulations for your swanning ceremony last week.

Thank you. Thanks for all the great work that you've done. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. So okay, moving right along on our agenda, we have...

Oh, can I speak, Madam Mayor? Sorry. Oh, yes. I'm sorry, because we didn't see you. So I'm sorry. Yeah, I just wanted to thank you again, Kelly, for the coffee with the cop. And also, again, as the others said, to congratulate you on being sworn in on the 29th. You know, I don't know if many people know, but as a result of COVID, you know, Kelly was already our chief and had already served as our chief for over a year in the midst of COVID. And as things have eased up, we've had the opportunity to swear her in formally. So I want to congratulate you once again on that and thank you for doing such a wonderful job.

Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you. And so moving right along to item 2A.

Mayor, I'm sorry, but it looks like Mayor Pro Tem has his hands up still. I'm not sure if he has a question or a comment. I don't. I will Lor my hand.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. And so, okay, so for item 2A, mayor rotation schedule. So do we have a staff report?

I think that's me. Okay. All right. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So, in response to California law, the city council amended the Monterey Park Municipal Code by changing the regular municipal election date to November of even number years beginning 2022. As a result, terms for all elected officials were extended by eight months pursuant to Elections Code 10403.5. The mayoral rotation schedule was amended to reflect the November 2022 election and is attached for your reference. And last meeting, October 2021, the city council directed the mayoral rotation schedule to be placed on the agenda for consideration. and so you know the city council may choose to modify that schedule if it's the council pleasure tonight to do so so that's the end of my report okay thank you if there are any questions uh whether myself or deputy clerk uh will be happy to do that okay thank you and actually

last time I would like to bring it up, the mail rotations, and knowing that we have extended before due to the change of election year from odd to even number. So we each have additional like three to four months per year term. And in July we are changing the election month from March to November. So there's an extension of eight months. So actually we have three options. And first of all, we can do nothing and actually the rotation will go faster. And the second is to share the eight months, the extra eight months among all five council members. So each will get 1.6 months on the mayor term. And so for number three, then if any council member decided not to take additional mayor rotation, then the eight months can be shared among those who wanted to extend their mayor term. So my suggestion is I bring it up. The reason is because as all of you know that my mayor term will end next month on December 27th. And And unfortunately, all my mayor pro tem and two-thirds of my mayor term are under pandemic, which I hope to get some extension in order to serve the community a bit longer as mayor. And I don't want to propose anything unfair to all council members, so I propose to share the extension and mount all of us, unless some council member wanted to opt out on this option. So I would like to hear from all of you. So, Council Member Chen, you have any comments? NEW SPEAKERS WONG.

WELL IT'S NOT MUCH OF A CONCERN TO ME.

YOU GUYS DECIDE. AND WELL HANS AND I'S TERMS UP IN NEXT NOVEMBER. and and

but I want to ask a question to the city clerk Mr. Vincent Chang

that this according to this schedule

would there be any effect on the future because I know that we want to have the retained the nine and a half month mayor rotation for the future councils

and it's been working for that for a long time well actually it's been there for ages and then because of the extension of the council

months and the election extension so it was extended but I think the schedule as it is will not have any impact on the future council rotation many years down the road. I'm not sure. So that's the question is to the city clerk that how far away will the new council that got elected and will be mayor pro tem or mayor right away. I think that's my question. So City Court? Yes. Thank you. All right. So really, I'm sorry. Okay. From the schedule, it really doesn't look like there'll be an effect until, you know, sometime in a kind of a distant future. and you know for all intents and purposes

you know how it works is that you know somebody's not going to maybe be affected

maybe I don't know what

looks like in 20

at least 2024

Did it click, Chang?

Yeah. Hello? Yes. Oh, there you go.

Hi.

Yeah, I'm trying to look at the schedule here.

Go ahead.

Okay. So with the current November elections rotation, eventually down the road, the council members, the newly elected council members will be in the leadership role. The first one will probably occur in 2028. So at this time, it's not going to affect that, but eventually the rotation will affect where the newly elected council members will be coming in in a leadership role in the mayor for 10th seat.

I see. So 2028, so that means seven years down the road. Correct. Right. So to me, well, I'm just talking to me, my personal things. OK, I don't want to decide for the future. And because it won't affect the present council. That's the most important thing, that it won't affect the present council. and the next new councils that comes in the next election. And that will be seven years down the road. And so I don't want to really make any decisions for the future. And then, of course, I love the term that I can be another month and a half as the mayor. Well, as the mayor is a prestigious title. But I think it doesn't work, you know, months and a half. And then you have the business cards and, you know, all those things. It's too short a term. And then as for me, you know, they're not.

Of course, it's a prestigious title and have the responsibility. But I loved it. I have to admit.

But I don't think it is good for the city to have that much change. We would like to see stability and continuation.

And so most likely I will not support this scheduling

because I do not want to make the decisions for the future.

And it's too far down the road. That's my only comment, and I will leave it to my colleagues. Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

And so for Council Member Haas, Councillor? Yeah, thank you. I have some questions. You know, if I'm hearing you right, in 2028, you know, because traditionally when we have elections, we run for city council seats and that's what we're running for. And our title is city council member when we're running, if we are an incumbent. But is this going to change where one of the candidates would be running as a mayor or as a mayor pro tem? because that would, you know, I know that that was avoided in the past in order to create an even playing field when we're having elections, whereas, you know, you're voting for council members, not voting for the mayor or for the mayor pro tem or having that title in order to, you know, it ends up being an advantage for anyone in the candidate because, you know, you have a title that's above everyone else. So is that what I'm hearing that in 28 Mayor Pro Tem will be running? That would be their title when they're running?

In 2028, the newly elected official will come in in the Mayor Pro Tem position. Now, with Mayor Yu's, some of the options that Mayor Yu suggested, that may affect the 2024 election, where when they're running, they may be running under the position as a mayor or Mayor Potem.

Okay, so, okay. Who is running as mayor or Mayor Potem?

uh i can i don't i i i don't have the sample right here um off the top of my head first

so if that's the case first so should be finished um the term before that um actually he runs as a

mayor because uh he's he's the last one is the re-elections that will come in 2024 that only three of us so um even though the last one we extended so um council member first and also

will be the last mayor and he should be done before november of 2024 he should be done on september 24 so he would not be run as a mayor so that would be actually either district one or five will be mayor so but then they're not running for the elections at the time

with the extension, right?

Okay, with the extension, I don't have that sample in front of me. I don't know.

We can definitely look into that and come back at the next council meeting to present that.

I don't have the information in front of me.

I am looking at the November election at this time and at the November election, that would not be an issue.

Okay, thank you. Also, you know, just some of my personal feelings about this. You know, when we were elected, we were elected to serve the people. And, you know, when I was elected or when I had my term as mayor, right, you know, COVID hit as well. You know, I was the mayor when COVID came in until my end of my term when COVID was still here. And then also Peter had served his mayorship under COVID as well. But the thing is, is that when it comes to service, and at least in my philosophy, when it comes to the title as mayor, whatever, you know, I know that I don't get to pick the circumstances in which I serve in this role. And I know that and regardless of that, it's my personal feeling that whatever the circumstances, that that's my responsibility as mayor and I will take it. And, you know, if there's any loss, you know, for example, when I was mayor, I had scheduled a number of trips to Taiwan, China, Philippines. I had contacted the elected officials of those places. I had set up friendship city agreements to be signed. And as a result of COVID, I had to cancel all of that. And, you know, one of the things, you know, as mayor, you know, for those types of things, you cannot do it unless you're the mayor. The mayor signs those type of agreements. And I understood, you know, that these are the circumstances and I was okay with it, you know, because it's my duty to serve. now in terms of being able to do things regardless of whether you're the mayor mayor pro tem or city council member you're still one of five votes and there's a number of things that we still do whether we're council member mayor pro tem or mayor now i understand in the circumstances where you must be the mayor there was a a friend of mine who wanted to get married and he wanted to have me officiate his wedding, which only a mayor can do. But then COVID hit and I wasn't able to do that. I was looking forward to doing that favor for a friend. But I accepted the fact that in my job duty as mayor that I must be able to adjust and modify to the needs of the community and the city. So while I was disappointed at that, I accepted that. So, you know, I, in terms of what Mayor Yu was saying about COVID and about wanting to serve the community more. I think that she's not turning out. And I don't see at this moment how she could not continue to push her ideas or to share her knowledge and to advance the city forward as a council member as we're only we're one of five votes it's uh even if uh you know i jokingly tell my friends you know when i was mayor they go you're the mayor how great is that i said well it's just a title it doesn't really mean anything uh if i can't get two of my colleagues uh to see eye to eye with me it doesn't matter what i'm called uh i still won't get an agenda moved forward right so so those are kind of my thoughts about that one of the concerns is uh you know We went through a lot of time and effort in coming up with the schedule before in order to align everything up, given that the state had forced us to move our elections with their mandates twice. And then that had to put us in a situation where we had to deal with the mayor rotation and things like that. So I, along with Peter, I think that we should stick to the original schedule. I don't know if there's some specific reason. You know, I think for Yvonne, you can continue to serve the city. I think that we have been very grateful for your knowledge and your contribution. And I think that that can continue regardless of whether you're mayor or not. So I tend to side with Peter on this one. I don't think that we should make too many drastic changes given that we've been changing, changing, changing. And you think about the residents, you know they there are residents that were unhappy that we went to district they didn't get to vote last time you know there are residents uh who are upset you know like they don't understand why why the elections have changed they've always gone in march and then now after we've stabilized things to shift it up again i think would also create a little bit of a you know a little confusion also for our um our residents uh you know as peter said uh 1.2 months here, 1.2 months there. It's like, it just, I think it makes things muddy. It muddies the waters. So, you know, that's my opinion. I think that Yvonne, you have been very helpful for the city. And I think regardless of whether you're a mayor or not, we would continue to support any of those ideas that you have that we believe would continue to move the city of Monterey Park forward. So, SO THOSE ARE MY THOUGHTS. NEW SPEAKERS THANK YOU. THANK YOU. AND COUNCIL MEMBER FIRST AND ELSE, DO YOU HAVE ANY THOUGHTS?

NEW SPEAKERS HOLD ON. I KNOW SHE'S I'M LOOKING AT THE MAYOR ROTATION ON PAGE 9 OF THE AGENDA AND LOOKS LIKE EVAN

IS COMING OFF AT THE END OF THE YEAR, RIGHT? DECEMBER 27TH. SO SHE HASN'T REALLY HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO APPEAR BEFORE THE PUBLIC.

I think that's something that she was looking forward to. And frankly, I mean, she's a lot more attractive than I am. So, you know, I wouldn't mind shortening up my mayor term

to give her more time. I don't know if Henry would be willing to kind of push back his time. So I'll have the same amount of weeks and just shorten my time.

That's not important to me. So I'm willing to do that. I mean, I don't know what the others feel, but.

Thank you so much.

We want to make sure everyone is fair and to choose the mayor term extension.

So how about Mayor Chen Lo? Thank you, Madam Mayor. First, I do have some questions as I'm listening to the questions and comments that have already been presented by my colleagues. And I too am looking at page nine of the agenda. So I do have a question. So when Council Member Chan had asked the clerk about how does it affect the weeks in terms of the term for each mayor.

Now, I was, I think Deputy Clerk Trang said something to the effect of that it would have an impact in 2028.

So I'm looking at the chart, the section that is for election November 7th, 2028, and it looks like there are terms for mayor from November 7th, 2028 to August 20th, 2029. and it looks like that would impact districts one and five and then august 21st 2029 to june 3rd 2030 that would impact district two three and four and by the way by that point um for someone like me if should i get say we elect a second term i'll actually be termed out that at that point so it doesn't impact me but i still need to know when you say that it may have an impact in 2028 what does that mean um because i think just like your councilman chan has said um you know i think we want to make sure that um we don't do anything that necessarily shortens the term for somebody so what does that mean when you said it will impact 2028 can you

please clarify sure may have uh may have a time low so with the initial march election and then

we transitioned to November, that was an extension of eight months.

So that eight months was actually the term of each, the sequence of each council members

in each location with the extension, it is actually pushed to the back. So then the council members at the back end, not in the leadership roles, their eight months

are reflected there.

So with moving to November, that took away the eight months for the newly elected officials coming in in 24 and so forth, 2022, 24 and so forth, because that took away some of their time in the back end so that they can learn their positions before they achieve the moving to the leadership role in the mayor pro tem or the mayor's office. role. So in 2028, the election for 2028 is November the 7th. So right at that election date,

the seat for District 2 moves right into the mayor pro tem position. And then that individual will stay there for 41 weeks before that individual move into the mayor position.

So the goal of this is to, when we have an election, to have the newly elected officials

at the very end so that when they come on board, they have some time to be in their

current seat so that they can learn their role and eventually move into the leadership

role down the road. Okay, so again, if I'm looking at under the category of November 7th, 2028, and I'm specifically looking at District 2, 3, and 4, that rotation, which is 41 weeks, would begin August 21st, 2029, and end the rotation end June 3rd, 2030. So how would that be affected if we were to make an adjustment tonight?

If we make adjustments, depending on what type of adjustment, and like I said, I don't have the, I don't know what type of adjustment, and so I'm not.

at what you're proposing and then bring it back at the next meeting.

According to this particular November rotation right now on page nine, at the November 7, 2028 election, the new individual is going to come in for district two, three, or four. They're going to come in right on the election day in the mayor pro tem seat,

stay there for 41 weeks, and then they will transition to a mayor on August 21st, 2029.

Okay. And now with any adjustment, with any adjustment, that is going to, could you please continue?

Oh, so with any future adjustment right now, you know, what we're proposing right now, that's definitely going to change the sequence. I don't know how it's going to change.

that may take away you know some time for the newly elected officials to to learn the role in you know the as a council members and then you know transition to to the leadership role that may affect that i don't know at this time because i don't know what the councils are

proposing and i don't have that in front of me okay but but you're saying though that depending on what so i guess my question is so right now it's 41 weeks depending what is proposed are you saying that it possibly shortened from 41 weeks is something less it's not shortening the 41 weeks the 41 weeks reflect the late leadership role uh in the mayor potem or the mayor but because of the

extension we're taking away so the the when we move from march to when we move from march to November, we took away eight months for the newly elected officials toward the very end

to learn their role before they move into the mayorship and the leadership role. So that already happened.

But with this new rotation, whatever the council is suggesting, I don't know how is that going

to affect how long they're going to be in their current seat before they transition

to the leadership role.

Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members, if I may also add in to maybe help provide a little bit clarity to this, if I may.

Sure. So the question, Mayor Pro Tem, that you're asking, it really depends

on the adjustment that you're going to make. So if we're going to keep in the spirit of nine and a half months, it's going to basically push everything down, which would eventually

take it out of the spirit of what we have adopted. What you see before you is one, try to keep an incumbent out of the mayor's seat and the mayor pro tem seat as much as possible should an election come up for their second term. We all know that it's very difficult for anybody that is seeking an elected position on council to be running against an incumbent, let alone it makes it very difficult for someone to run against somebody that's an incumbent and a mayor.

So when we went through this, what you have before you, this mayor rotation keeps in the spirit of that on keeping out a reelection and a person that could be mayor or maybe mayor at that point in time.

Now, when you look at two, three and four, that all depends on how many votes each of the districts get and where they see.

So it could be the opposite way, too. It could be four, three, two. or it could be three, two, four. But what you see before you really has to do with trying to keep it as a democracy, try to keep democracy at an even keel as much as possible. Now, what I will say is if you decide to make some adjustment, and from what I'm hearing from council member Sonosal, that he's willing to give up time from his mayorship, If he was willing to give up time specifically to provide additional time for Mayor ProCam and the mayor right now, then we could make that adjustment and not even change how the schedule is set up right now.

It would just lessen his time as the mayor. However, I caution us to do that. Reason being is he has constituents. You all have constituents that voted for you.

And they look forward to you being the mayor someday and serving at that capacity for that amount of time.

So I think that's something that you have to weigh in when you're looking at this entire process. It's not as easy as I want to give up time or, yeah, I'm going to have more time.

because you have constituents that are looking tonight on what this will really do. So I don't know if I add clarity or a little bit more confusion, but I'm trying to help this process.

What I would suggest, well, I'll let you all finish, and then there's a suggestion I may have.

Thank you, Mr. Sinatra. No, that does help clarify. You know, let me just throw out just what my thoughts are right now about this conversation. So, you know, I think by now many of you have probably heard me give anecdotes stories of when I was on the school board and I served for 17 years on the Garvey school board. You know, one of the things that we did not do on the school board, which I am actually surprised, but I'm glad that we do here on the state council, is that at the school district we did not set the rotations about who becomes the next incoming board president. and you know i hate to say this you know and certainly i don't mean to say this as a criticism of my former colleagues on the school board but it did come it did become very politicized in other words did did the majority like someone to become the next board president or or if the president should be in the next rotation meaning the vice president board happened to i don't know upset other board members, then they could pull a stunt, and it happened before, where

they bypassed that person.

And for the public perspective, you know, it reeked of electioneering and politicizing the process. And I can see, and I'll be honest, when I first was elected to the council, I actually was surprised. I remember, I think I even said to Ron, I said, oh, why do you guys set a schedule?

shouldn't just be the responsibility of the city council i mean we set our own rotation why

do we have a set schedule and i would say since serving my term for the last 18 months i actually see the value of it um and because i because i think i hope what it does it tries to depoliticize or at least remove the veneer that this rotation and yes i know it is ceremonial But nonetheless, it becomes a political volleyball for people to toss around the position or to, you know, punish or favor their buddies on the governing board, or in this case, the city council. And I will say this, that, you know, to my colleague, Councilor Sinoso, I mean, that was very generous of you to say you are willing to give up some of your weeks.

but you know the way I look at it is that when we are elected to serve it is

actually a very what we all know it's only determined only four years it's a finite time and and the way I look at it is that it presents an enormous opportunity and enormous challenge the challenge is that you are trying to accomplish as much as you can in four years but the opportunity is that you You get to try and accomplish those goals in four years. And so there is that urgency. And I think as probably Councilor Finos has realized, there's a lot to learn. And I think all of us, you know, are still learning our responsibilities.

And so I think that, you know,

part of that challenge opportunity is to have the opportunity to serve in the role of the mayor in the set rotation and schedule that has been agreed upon

and tries to give that mayor whose position and the constituency that that person represents, he or she, and in this case the district represent an opportunity to implement their vision or to govern in a style that they that reflects their own values and their personality um and i will say that you know as as um as has already been expressed in a previous comment it certainly yes there is a degree of prestige with the position but does it diminish what one can do absolutely not um um and certainly i can say that whether or not i hold the jimmy or not you know i mean i mean i have certainly goals that i want to accomplish and of course some people probably heard me um um discuss it during council meetings and so i guess right now my honest opinion is that I am not sure how I feel about tweaking something that we've now gone to some exercises for. And only because, again, I appreciate the deference that Councilman Sanoso has offered. But I do wonder, though, nonetheless, you know, and I have to say that, you know, I think that we're very fortunate that as a council, we have been very collaborative. We've been working very close together. We understand and respect each other.

But elections have consequences.

And who knows who will be up in the dais with us for six, eight years from now.

and I just want to be careful that we don't go down a space float

where it becomes subject to depoliticizing. And again, there are examples all over the region

where they don't set a rotation, and when it comes time for a rotation to happen, you see a lot of electioneering occurring, which, depending on how the tone of that conversation goes,

can either create a lot of hurt feelings among colleagues or even in the public

who then ask, like, what are the goals and intentions? And that's just really my stream of thought right now, based on what I'm listening, based on what I'm looking at as well. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Pro Temlo. Actually, the reason why I bring it up, because we have a history that has been doing it. let's say we change the election year from odd to even number so that we all get about four months additional mayor rotations and because the reason that someone actually get more of the

four months mayor rotations and so when i actually as a new council member become mayor pro tem i only have four months mayor pro tem instead of a full term mayor pro tem just because we allocate more term, mayor terms to, you know, other council members so that my actually mayor putem term got cut half.

So and also I'm actually, you know, accept council member first and also request to take on this position sooner so that, yeah, I actually wanted to accommodate, you know, different

people. But actually for this situation, I'm not trying to get more, but it just we have now changed from March to November. So we get an additional eight months. So I wanted to see if we can do the history again, which we have already demonstrated before, that we share the terms fairly with all five council members or three council members. It depends on, you know, who wanted to join in the mayor extension. So I understand that for Peter and Hans, they only if we divide it into five, then we only each get about one point six months.

And so maybe they don't want the hassle of having 1.6 months and swan in and be a month and a half of the mayor. So then leave it at the decisions to three of us that do we actually want to share that terms about two and a half months for three of us.

So that because that is an additional term that we vote on to extend the elections month. So my suggestion is that if we wanted to know more detail about it, maybe we can actually set up, have the city clerk to lay out the schedule. Let's say I heard from Peter, I heard from Hans, and then they may not be agreed to that extension. So that we wanted to see what the schedule like, let's say, if we share among three of us. So we wanted to see the future council member with us take away, you know, certain rotations and positions for them so that it will have a more clear understanding at the time. So because we don't have the schedule right now in front of us, so maybe we can request the city clerk to be able to bring it up maybe next time with a clear schedule that we can all see.

And so to make sure that there's no mayor actually being compete with, you know, the incumbent mayor. And also there's no new council member become mayor right away so that they don't have.

come back up next time.

May I put a time low since you're actually the camera is on? Do you have your way with bringing that?

Well, actually, no, but let me ask. So I know for the clerk's office, they said that it depends on how many weeks are we talking about. So let me ask again, I'm looking at schedule. What is the adjustment for weeks that is being proposed?

How many weeks?

Well, because again, I look at schedules.

So again, there are some terms that are 56 weeks, some are 41.

So my question then is, what is being proposed as far as an adjustment for the weeks to the rotation?

You're asking me, right? Yes, yes, yes. Okay. And then so what we propose is the additional eight months that we change. then we can share among five council members so each get 1.6 month which is like maybe seven seven weeks and uh and or if the two council members decided to opt out and if they share about three for three of us then would be 2.6 month then it will be about about 10 weeks

the extension so you're saying if we were to divide it up evenly by five you're so you're

talking about seven weeks seven weeks so you're saying yeah about six to seven weeks um and then so if we divide it by three that would be about 10 weeks okay but okay but or if we divide among

five it's six weeks meaning that it could be for example um a term that is 56 weeks could be 62 weeks and the term that is 41 weeks becomes 47 weeks

so but then we only added to let's say whoever that wanted to share the term let's say if three of us but then not the future council member because the future council member that would

be nine and a half months because they haven't made any decision of extending any election let's say for example in the future then they have come across with extending um the election to next year or maybe then they have another decision to make

if they wanted to share that mayor rotations, the term.

So because that will be a lot of future decisions. And even with us, we can actually change the decision later. If we decide if it's not fair for somebody, then maybe someone actually can, you know, divide it up or make it even.

And actually it can be changed by the future council as well.

I see. Mayor, I wanted to add a comment if I may. Sure. I just want to be clear. There was a comment made about the council extended eight months, all that kind of stuff. We made decisions. I just want to be clear that the city council of Monterey Park did not get together to decide to give us an additional eight months, four months, whatever. I just wanted to be clear that there were mandates from the state that mandated that we must have an election on an even year. And for those of you who live in the city of Monterey Park, you know that our elections were on odd years. So we were forced by the state to make that change.

And then the state came back and said, you know, for those of you who have been in Monterey Park,

you know, our elections were in March. But the state came in and said, no, you're going to have to do your election either during the primary, which is in June, or during the general election,

which is in November. And from the state's perspective, it's in an effort to have bigger

voter turnout for these these races so let it be clear that that the state had made mandates that we responded to and thus made decisions but we did not make a decision as the council to say okay let's give ourselves extra extra time i want to be clear on that so um it's not uh you know um in terms of a bother it's i don't see it as a bother to to be mayor again like if that's the the case, but in terms of the spirit and keeping everything aligned, you know, that's kind of my philosophy. And another thing too, it's interesting because as, you know, Mayor Pro Tem Lo had made some comments about politicizing and all that kind of stuff. And then, you know, we traditionally,

since the beginning, had nine and a half month terms. And when people were elected, they knew that in nine and a half months, or, you know, they would at some point in their four-year term, served nine and a half months as mayor. And they didn't have to worry to think like, oh, are they going to vote against me? I mean, as Mayor Pro Tem Lo had indicated,

we've, you know, those of us who had been involved in politics a little longer have seen, you know, had an opportunity to see that kind of toxicity where certain people don't like someone else. So then they, you know, even though they were next to be mayor, they got voted out. So, you know, it's funny because here we are discussing it, changing this, moving this, et cetera. And to Mayor Pro Tem's point, the nine and a half fixed schedule made it so easy that it wasn't even a discussion. right so I just want to be clear and also you know while it doesn't affect me I know that you

know Mayor Pro Tem I don't know you know are there you know I think this is a consideration is that is there anything that Mayor Pro Tem had planned to initiate as mayor or you know that required his title to push certain things forward I think those things and I don't know if you know if he any plans, but I think that those kind of considerations need to be taken as well. Because before you knew nine and a half months, nine and a half months, nine and a half months,

you could schedule your plan as mayor. You could figure out what initiatives you wanted to push,

et cetera, et cetera. You know, and I don't know if Mayor Pro Tem,

Lo, just, you know, I don't know, just my consideration or courtesy to you. I don't know

if you had planned to do things, you know, when the rotation was originally going to be scheduled. So I would take those things into consideration as well. And, you know, that's just my philosophical position. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments from anyone?

Actually, just one, I don't know if the final, but, you know, again,

And as much as I appreciate Customer Sonoso's magnanimous offer, I still feel that part of the responsibility as well as opportunity in the term is that when you assume

one of the leadership positions that, you know, there's expectation that you are able to serve the full term, because that is something that I imagine that your constituency asked of you. And certainly, you know, I think also in the spirit of collaboration that, you know, no matter who holds that position, that, you know, we should be there to support that person as well as support each other no matter what our initiatives are that we want to accomplish while serving during the finite time which is four years on the term.

I mean, those are my thoughts as far as I'm based on where this conversation has gone in this direction so far.

Okay. So are we actually okay with, we have the city clerk to print out the schedules in a more clear way in order to discuss again next time so that we all have clear pictures on what would be on the rotations and who actually have conflict or not? So is that okay to do that?

Oh yeah, Council Member Chen. Thank you. And to me, I really don't want to say much, but this is not, you know, the city has a lot more urgent things to do as in the agenda items. And I don't think we should push off this item for longer discussion. So why don't we make a motion and see how it goes. That's my thoughts. Okay. And so I would like to make a motion to expand, to share the extensions of eight months and mount maybe the three council members since there's two that decided not to share the rotation. So I would like to see if, yeah, we wanted to do the extension of the eight months and share among all three council members. So may I get second?

Madam Mayor? Yes. May I ask the public if they wish to speak on this item before you take your vote? Thank you. Audience, if you would like to speak on agenda item 2A, this is your time to do so.

You can utilize the raise hand feature or you can press star 9 at this time.

Madam Mayor, there are no speakers for this item. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. I heard that there's someone speaking. I did too, but I don't see anyone with their raised hands, Madam Mayor. Yeah, I want to speak, but I could not find the raised hand button. Is it too late to speak? This is Arthur.

Thank you.

Okay, officially, I put my raised hand now, okay?

Okay, thank you. ! Okay, thank you.

! I hear your argument about extending the term of mayor, okay? ! It sounds reasonable, but I just ask you one question, okay? ! ! If the rule and regulation has been working five or 100 years, ! And because of one incident, you change it. ! I mean, what is the real reason behind that? You know, when you talk about the experience, okay? I got it. Let me share with you my experience, okay? If you are a commanding officer of a Navy ship, okay? officer of a navy ship okay you got two years okay we gather you are in the yard in the maintenance or in the front yard uh in the front line okay uh you don't get to choose the term when you want to serve okay so but i i feel very uncomfortable as a as a voter as a resident when you guys feel like changing the term of a of a mayorship uh uh you know so uh my personal opinion is uh before you proceed you have to be careful and and i don't agree with you changing it only because of the pandemic uh that's it thank you for giving me a chance okay thank you thank you

so any other there are no other speakers for this item okay thank you thank you

so actually just uh for the um comments uh so it's actually not because of pandemic we changed the mayor term is not at all um it's actually because uh we changed the um actually statement kind of like give a suggestion set to change from march to november election day because november has a higher turnout so that's we decided to change the um the election state so um and that's the reason why um we wanted to have more months to to share amount our term so that the new council member actually would be elected eight months later so they would come in eight months later so for the rest of the eight months we can either actually pass it on the future council that have a rotation faster or actually we can share amount the council member that currently is serving now so from the previous history that we state also suggested that we change from the odd number to even number election year, we already shared the extension of the mayor term before. So now actually it's the second time that the state actually also mandate us to change the election month. And that's the second time that we're doing the same thing. Since the first time we got share of the mayor rotations, and then the second time, I think we should also be able to share the mayor rotation as well. so that's my suggestions to do it fairly among all the council member it's not just for me just because my term coming up so that we want to make a decision sooner so that i know do i get the extension or not but it's not because mainly it's not mainly because pandemic that i want to more mayor term now i always want to propose everything fairly for everyone and also since we have a history of extending the mayor term so i suggested that we should do the same so um that um that's actually my um suggestions and that um plus you know what i mentioned about the pandemic is because i cut short my mayor pro tem term usually it's nine and a half months but i cut it to four months just because the previous um council member get an extension of the mayor term so that when i come to be mayor pro tem i have half only half of the time so that i could become mayor and so um now i hopefully you know if i can we can get a little extension maybe about a month or two i think that would be good enough for um you know all the current council member because you know we make a decision of changing the the date so it's not because that we've all of a sudden we wanted to extend a mayor term so it's not and i will not do anything that just to my benefits but we have to be fairly uh for all the council members and also we wanted to look for what happened to the future council members so that we don't have much

I understand that Council Member Chen and Council Member Liang, they have been on the council for a very long time, and they have been mayor for four times, so that they may not be interested in taking a little bit more of extension.

so that my suggestion is actually mainly for the three council members to make decisions we wanted to extend.

And if we don't want to extend, then hopefully we'll see how we wanted to shift the schedule to the new council member.

City Manager, Ron, you have any questions?

Isn't there a motion on the floor? Sorry.

um um because of the public comments so um i wanted to answer that questions um so is you send any questions at city manager you show yeah you show up oh you're on mute uh ron

it's not so much a question i was trying to get some clarity but you did state a motion on the

floor so you have to move forward with the motion okay sure and so um i would like to make a motions

to suggest that we extend the eight months since we changed election dates from March to November. So we will be able to share the extended mayor rotations among the three council members that we have for the Henry Lo, myself, and then Fresno Sos. Hopefully each will actually get extended about two and a half months so that we will be able to actually continue the rotations that way. So if there's any, yeah, any seconds?

Okay.

If we don't get any seconds, then there will be no motion. There will be no voting.

Okay, thank you so much.

Then that means that that will not go through. So we will just resume the do nothing options.

Thank you.

So, okay. So, any other questions? So, we're moving on the consent calendar on item 3A to 3D.

And so, anyone wanted to pull any item on 3A to 3D?

Council Member Chen?

Yes. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I would like to pull item 3B and 3C.

B for boy? Boy and Charlie. Okay. Okay.

Okay. So any other council member? I'd like to have an item 3D as in David poll, please. Okay. Any other council member? Okay. If not, then the mayor get a motion to approve item 3A, the minutes. I apologize, Madam Mayor.

May I ask the public if they wish to speak on the consent calendar item? Oh, sure.

Thank you.

Public audience, if you would like to speak on the consent calendar item, this is the time to do so.

You can utilize the raise hand feature or press star 9 at this time.

There are no speakers wishing to speak on consent calendar items. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you. Okay. So may I get a motion to approve item 3A?

I'll make a motion to approve item 3A. Okay. Second.

Okay. I second. City clerk, please call roll. Council member Peter Chan? Yes. Council member Henry Lo, sorry, Hans Long?

Yes. Council member Fred Sinoso? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Henry Lo?

Aye. And Mayor Yvonne Yu?

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you. And so for item 3B, that will be, bring it up by Council member Chen. California State Library Stronger Together, more about library grants. I'd like to hear the librarian for this presentation.

Yes, Diana, the fourth year. Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor and members of the council. This is Diana Garcia, city librarian. Item 3B this evening before you, ask city council to adopt a resolution to authorize the city manager to apply for grant funds FROM THE CALIFORNIA STATE LIBRARY STRONGER TOGETHER GRANT. THIS GRANT IS A COMPETITIVE GRANT AND IT PROVIDES FUNDS TO LIBRARIES TO PURCHASE COMMUNITY OUTREACH VEHICLES FOR MOBILE LIBRARY PROGRAMS. SO IF THE CITY IS AWARDED THIS GRANT, FUNDS WOULD BE USED TO PURCHASE A SMALL ELECTRIC MOBILE OUTREACH VEHICLE, BASICALLY A MODIFIED AND OUTFITTED SOUPED UP GOLF CART WHERE THE SIDES OPEN UP TO REVEAL SHELVING FOR LIBRARY MATERIALS. So these smaller vehicles are increasingly favored over larger bookmobile vehicles because they're easier to drive, to park, and to store. They're less costly, and they provide more flexibility in terms of where they can be taken. In addition, with COVID, it's safer to have an outreach vehicle that doesn't have to be boarded by staff or by residents so that we can avoid confined spaces with limited air circulation. There are several library systems in California that have such vehicles. Close to us, Monrovia recently accepted delivery of their vehicle, which they are very, very pleased with. And they were kind enough to let us visit to check it out and actually test drive it around their city yard recently. So just a little background on the need for an outreach vehicle in Monterey Park.

The library building has obviously been open since May.

But as you know, many of our residents in Monterey Park have taken a very cautious approach to dealing with the pandemic. And outdoor programs are still preferred by many folks in our city. So currently, all of our library programs and events are being held either outdoors or for our literacy and citizenship classes via Zoom. The library is currently offering outdoor story times, crafts, fitness programs, team meetings and other programs. And we're also offering what we call MPK Library Around Town, which is a weekly pop-up in Barnes Park. And we offer free Wi-Fi, materials to read and check out, library card sign-up, tech help, and other services. Currently, our staff are using either their personal vehicles, dollies, carts to move equipment for our outdoor programming and pop-ups. But a vehicle would extend the library's reach and make services more efficient. The proposed outreach vehicle that we're going to be applying for the grant for would enable our staff to take these pop-up library services into the community to serve our residents at parks, schools, senior living facilities, and city events.

It would be equipped with staff laptops, public Wi-Fi, and a collection of materials so that

visitors would be able to do nearly everything they're able to do inside the library. So making library cards, checking out materials, attending story times, using Wi-Fi, attending talks and meetings. As I mentioned, this is a competitive grant that we'll be applying for. There is also a 25% match required if we do receive this grant. And the plans would be to use our already budgeted staff costs as in kind to fulfill that match. That concludes my staff report, and I'm very happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you. Thank you, Librarian Garcia. And I'm so happy that the library is doing it. I know that you and your staff are doing the right thing. And we need that grant and hope that we will get it eventually. And what is the timeline? Do you think, if we are looking to get the grant, when do you think we'll see the mobile library will be really in place? Sure. Thank you for your question. So the grant application is due mid month. We will be notified if we receive the grant by January, 2022. And then obviously because it is, it does take a little bit longer to procure vehicles because they are all custom. We can't just go to, to a car lot and purchase it. It's about a year and a half long grant. So it wouldn't be immediately that we'd be able to get this vehicle out on the road and serving our residents. but we will be working on it. And obviously in the time being, we'll continue to do our pop-up libraries and our story times and our other programs just without the use of the vehicle. Okay, thank you. I really hope that we'll secure the loan and get the grant and everything. Not the loan, I mean the grant and have this noble Janet going throughout the city to help out the students and seniors and everyone to gain in their, you know, reading the books or doing their homework or do whatever they need. So thank you very much. And I'm in support of this. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Fustinoso, you have questions?

So Diana, so this mobile vehicle, so I'm assuming you're planning on going to like parks to schools to the senior center any place where people congregate or maybe possibly they

might not want to come to the library but you go rather than coming to you you're going out to them is that correct absolutely so the idea would be that it functions as a sort of bookmobile we would be able to take it to parks schools senior living senior center any city events that we might have. And because it is a smaller vehicle, it does make it easy to get into more spaces than if we were to purchase a very large automobile. But absolutely, that's the idea. We've seen a lot of people returning to the library. But as we were talking about at the beginning of the meeting, our residents have been very cautious during COVID. So this is just another way that allows us to deliver services to people outdoors.

So are you planning on decorating it or some way so people can recognize it as it's going down the street saying, oh, there's the library bookmobile so they know that something's happening

and they can follow it, kind of like the Pied Piper where people start following it, looking for ways to take part in it.

Yes, absolutely. We plan to, if you receive the grant and purchase the vehicle, it would be wrapped so that it would be very recognizable. The vehicle right now that we're looking at, the vehicle itself is very recognizable. IT IS SORT OF SMALL AND BOXY AND LOOKS ALMOST LIKE AN ICE CREAM TRUCK. SO TALKING TO OTHER LIBRARIES THAT HAVE PURCHASED THE SAME TYPE OF VEHICLE, THEY HAVE NOTED THAT THEY GET A LOT OF ATTENTION WHEN THEY TAKE IT OUT ON THE ROADS BECAUSE IT'S SOMETHING THAT PEOPLE REALLY HAVEN'T SEEN BEFORE.

OKAY. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. MAYOR PROTEMBLO.

THANK YOU, MADAM MAYOR.

Ms. Garcia, question. The vehicle, and again, I think it's a great idea, but I have a question about the vehicle itself. Is it a combustion engine vehicle or is it an electric engine vehicle? Yeah, thank you for asking. The vehicle that we're looking at right now, if we were to receive the grant, is an electric vehicle, completely electric vehicle. Good. No, no, I think that's important, at least for me. That's what I'm really glad. Actually, what kind of vehicle are we looking at? And maybe I missed it in the notes. What kind of vehicle are we looking at again? What we're looking at purchasing is a gem vehicle. Basically, yes. So if you look that up, it's sort of a large format, sort of a golf cart. And what libraries do is they purchase this gem vehicle, they outfit it, and they have it customized so that there is storage in the middle and then both sides open up so that there are shelves on both sides of the vehicle. And then the wings of those shelves open up to provide shade. I see. And specifically, with the reason why it's a gem vehicle, because what I'm hearing is that it offers the robustness you need to, I guess, really maximize the potential of a mobile library.

Yeah, so the idea with the GEM vehicle, they're completely street legal.

Being that we are a smaller city and not having to serve an entire county or a very large city, it would definitely work for our purposes.

And the idea with the grant, because we haven't had a bookmobile in Monterey Park since the 1950s, 1960s, is to sort of pilot our outreach bookmobile services with this vehicle.

and then if it turns out that it is very successful and we need to expand,

we would have the opportunity to apply for additional grants in the future to purchase additional vehicles if we needed to.

I see. Okay, no, that's good.

I just want to clarify about the vehicle question

because I know from reading in some of the industry publications for EVs

is that I think in the next 24 months, practically every automaker will be rolling out a type of EV. And so I just want to make sure that with this brand, if we, you know, through this effort, get one, receive the money that, you know, we're also, I guess, getting the best we could with the amount of money. And the reason why I ask is because, you know,

I believe some automakers are coming out with EV SGVs

or hybrid minivans or even wagons.

And again, I'm just throwing it out there because I always want to make sure that with this money, we get the most bang for a buck, if you will.

Any questions from any council member? If not, council member Chen, would you please make a motion?

Yes, thank you. I would like to make the motion to us adopt a resolution

authorizing the city manager of destiny to apply for receive and appropriate grant funds

for the California State Library,

stronger together mobile library grant. Second.

Second. City clerk, please. Thank you. Council member Peter Chen? Yes. Council member Hans Liang? Yes. Council member Fred Cernoso? Aye.

Mayor pro tem Henry Lo? Aye. And mayor Yvonne Yu? Yes.

Thank you. Okay, the next item, item 3C, council member Chen?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. And, oh, yeah, I can see Chief Gordon is here. So we'd like to hear your presentation. So Tuesday, November 9th, is going to be Law Enforcement Records and Support Personnel Day. This day comes across once a year. And this is our day to honor our support personnel, including our records clerks, our clerks who do our payroll process our backgrounds and do all of the hard work behind the scenes that don't get recognized enough so tuesday november 9th uh it's sponsored by the california law enforcement associate of record supervisors and like i said it's celebrated andley and it's important that we recognize them just as much as we recognize though that we see uniform. They're often the ones that when the community comes into the station are the ones that greet them. They're also the ones that answer the phones when the non-emergency line into records comes through. They field a lot of the calls from the community and they certainly make it possible for us to do our jobs. They process all our reports and they handle all of those details that keep us running and efficiently moving forward. So I have a great appreciation for all of my staff that works in this capacity and we certainly couldn't do our jobs without them. We are a team and they're an important part of our team.

Thank you, Chief, for the presentation. And the reason I want to put this item is that I want to say thank them personally for their hard work. And it's just like a movie star. They have, the stage to perform and people recognize them, look at them and they do good. But behind the scenes there's a lot of people to make them success. And the personnel, the information desk, all those paperwork clerks and so forth those are the supporting cast that make a performance great. But they are faceless and no one knows them. And so that's why I want to use this opportunity to say thank you to them and next Tuesday, right? So hopefully I may buy some donuts or something to celebrate the day for them. So thank you so much. And thank you, Chief Gordon, for bringing this so that they can be recognized properly. Thank you. Thank you.

Any question from any council member? If not, council member Chen, would you like to make a motion? I have my hand up, mayor.

Oh, sorry. Hans, you may want to speak up because I cannot see you. So thank you so much. Council member Hans, ma'am.

Yeah, I want to thank you again, Kelly, and thank all of those support staff. You know, the conference that I'm attending actually right now is called Wellness on the Front Line. It's put together by the Public Safety Peer Support Association.

And, you know, oftentimes even dispatchers as well as first responders, you know, we end up facing some trauma in our jobs and exposure to certain things.

And, you know, it kind of goes in alignment in that we recognize that in our conference here we're learning how to help people that are front, you know, frontline workers to deal with, cope with, and manage, you know, their mental health as well. But again, like what Peter said about behind the scenes, there are a lot of those people that we need to recognize as well, that, you know, provide the support for the frontline people to be able to do their job. And I really want to commend our Chief Kelly Gordon as well. I was very pleased, as you know, I serve as a president for the LA County Deputy Probation Officers Union, and thus I'm attending this conference. But I was happily surprised when I ran into one of our Monterey Park police officers who was also attending this conference. And in my inquiries with Chief Gordon, we do also in the city of Monaco Park, and I'm very proud to hear this, have a peer support group for our police officers. and that we have one of our officers here attending the training, learning about the different types of traumas and strategies to help us not only do our job better, but to be able to continue our regular lives with a healthy sense of mind as well. So thank you for that, Kelly. And also, as Peter said, I also want to echo the sentiment to thank all the records and support people. although you're not seeing your critical to the operations moving smoothly, and I want to thank you all for that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Liang. Any other questions or comments from other Council members? If not, then Council Member Chen, would you like to make a motion?

Sure. Thank you.

We'd like to approve or to adopt a resolution decurring Tuesday, November 9th, 2021,

to be law enforcement, records, and support personnel day.

Any second? I'll second. Any city clerk, fiscal roll?

Thank you. Council Member Peter Chan? Yes. Council Member Hans Leon? Yes. Council Member Fred Cernoso? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Henry Lo. Aye. And Mayor Yvonne Yu. Yes. Motion carries. Thank you.

Thank you. Item 3D, purchase and conversion of police department vehicles. And Council Member Freston-Elsal.

So just like Archive to give us a report. Thank you.

Certainly. Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members. So this staff report is in relation to the approval of back in June when the American Recovery Relief Funds were allocated. $1.1 million were allocated for the replacement of police department vehicles. So in the last three months, staff has been working diligently to identify which vehicles, how many vehicles we would be replacing, and with what. As been alluded to and talked about briefly prior, this is challenging. Vehicle shortages are definitely a challenge. So we're trying to get this done as efficiently, effectively, and cost-effectively as we can. So we will be purchasing, if approved tonight, 20 vehicles. Those vehicles will include approximately nine new patrol vehicles, a new special service truck for our SRT equipment truck. We will also be replacing a command post vehicle, and then we'll be replacing several detective vehicles. We have several vehicles that are in our fleet that are administrative vehicles that are up to 18 years old and have over 100,000 miles on them.

One thing that I'm happy that we're able to do is that currently our parking enforcement officers have four Ranger pickup trucks.

They're old, 2008, 2011 years. They're right around 100,000 miles. and they've reached the end of their service life. But we are not replacing them with new Ford Rangers.

We have actually found an all-electric Chevy Bolt EUV vehicle that we will be replacing them with. I think that we'll probably be the first ones in Southern California to do so. They have a range of 250 miles on a full charge.

We're working with Public Works to have appropriate charging stations in place for them. So without their help, we wouldn't be able to do this. But we think this is a great alternative. This will be the first electric car that we have done and actually also outfitted with emergency equipment because it still has to have a light bar, our MDCs, which are our mobile computers inside the vehicle. So this is going to be a bit of a challenge, but one that we're up to. And we think it's going to meet the needs of the city and it's a good long-term solution for us. And the hope is that as more of these electric vehicles are developed over the next several years, that we can find different ways to incorporate that within our fleet.

So as part of this, we'll be purchasing these, if approved tonight, through Sourcewell and the National Auto Fleet Group.

They actually give us the best government pricing that way.

So all of the cars included in this, all 20 cars will be done through National Auto Fleet Group and Sourcewell.

We will be experiencing some unusual delays. Normally when we order a new patrol vehicle, it's six months. We expect that once we place our order, it could take up to a year to receive those vehicles. Along with most of them, I think we will be able to hopefully get a few of them earlier. We had to make some adjustments on the fly, so to speak, in order to pick vehicles that we could get in a reasonable lot of time. We will have the vehicles upfitted by West Post Lights and Siren. They've been our vendor for 14 years. Their quality of their work is exceptional. It allows us to have consistency amongst our vehicles. They also do custom fabrications, and no other vendor has ever been able to do that for us. so I can provide more details if you'd like but that's the short story I guess you would say of all the hard work that's gone into this so I come to you tonight to ask you to approve the purchase of 1.1 million dollars in vehicles for the police department it's approximately 20 vehicles and that will include the purchase the conversion as well as those that need graphics in and I'm available for questions. Okay, Mayor Pro Temlo. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Chief Gordon, I was wondering, and I'm jesting right now, but since you've been mentioned a bulb which is produced by Chevrolet, would it be possible to delay its purchase? Because I understand that Chevrolet is working on a electric Corvette.

Sure, I'm sure my parking control would love to have electric Corvettes to drive around the city in.

Okay, Council Member Farson also. Yeah, I was muted. So, Chief, the librarian mentioned the bookmobile that they're going to be putting in place. Is it something that the police department could do, like some kind of a police mobile and go throughout the city and get a closer, give the citizens a closer view of the police by bringing out different things. I mean, you could do the coffee with the cop, right? Going out with like this vehicle where they have, I mean, not only coffee and donuts, but brochures, other things that you could pass out that might be of interest to our residents. Just a thought. I don't know.

The biggest thing is that I try to encourage my police officers to get out of their vehicles. And that's the best way in order to have the property emergency equipment. We do have a couple of, they almost look like the term would be a gator that we use. And we do events in the park so that we can be more accessible. We have what's called T3s, which I don't think you've had the opportunity to see where an officer rides on them through the park. So we do have actually some alternatives. We typically use them at the parades, all the functions at the park. We certainly can try to incorporate. And I know that we're always looking for new ways to engage the community as we move forward. So I look forward to trying to incorporate your suggestions as we move forward and try to get back into community

engagement as things start to open up. And then as far as these electric vehicles you're talking about for the parking enforcement, how soon do you think those will be put into operation while

we'll see them around the city? I'm going to be very optimistic and hope for less than a year, I think it will probably take us a year.

Okay. And that would be the one that we would see the soonest, right? Since it probably takes less outfitting. The other ones sound like they need a lot more equipment and stuff.

It's really just going to depend on what's available the moment that we place the order and where we get in line as far as production is concerned. We're really at the mercy of production. These aren't vehicles that they produce and have sitting on a lot somewhere. So especially because of the shortages. So we're going to have to actually, the manufacturer, so in this case, the Chevy will manufacture them starting, get them in the line to be manufactured the day we place the order. So I'm going to be optimistic that we can make it happen within a year. But like I said, we are certainly at the mercy of the vehicle shortage.

any question from any council member council member chen uh yeah just want to check on a council member of restonzo's idea is to have the uh well just like uh he mentioned the uh library mobile unit has come out to the community and because lately we have some uh safety issues the traffic uh you know some some pedestrian got hit and so forth so this may be uh some ideas of course it's not in this, but I want to say it fast, is that maybe do some traffic safety education for the drivers and for pedestrians, and maybe use those, consider some mobile units to go out to the community and educate people on that. Just a suggestion. Thank you. And we do have our new Office of Traffic Safety grant, so we will be hopefully be able to get BACK TO DOING IN-PERSON EVENTS SUCH AS THAT. SO THAT IS OUR HOPE.

THANK YOU. THEN I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE MOTION TO ACCEPT ITEM 3. day. I'll second. City clerk, Ms. Carl. Thank you. Council member Peter Chan? Yes. Council member Hans

Leung? Yes. Council member Petronoso? Aye. Mayor pro tem Henry Lo? Aye. And Mayor Yvonne Yu? Yes.

Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. So moving right along, the item 4A for public hearing will actually move to January 18, 2022. So then we'll actually move to item 4B. Do you have any questions? Yes, Madam Mayor, members of the council,

if you would take a vote on that continuance, please open the public hearing and then continue to the date certain that will allow us to continue the public hearing without having to renotice it.

Oh, great. Okay. So do you want the motion? Please. Okay. So any...

I move to, did you open public hearing? Any second? I think you need to open the public hearing first, Mayor. If you open the public hearing, I didn't have the motion. Thank you kindly.

I see. So opening the public hearing for item 48.

Okay. I make a motion to continue it to, what is the date you had indicated?

January 2022. January 2022. I'll second it. Okay. City clerks, please car up. Council Member Peter Chan?

Yes.

Council Member Hans-Leung? Yes. Council Member Fred Sinoso? Aye. May I put Tim Henry Lo? Aye. And Mayor Yvonne Yu? Yes. Motion carries. Okay. Thank you. So we move on to item 4B, public hearing to consider a conditional use permit of CU-21-XX for constructions of a drive-thru facility at the marketplace development. Okay, now we're opening the public hearing. So can we have the staff reports?

Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor and members of the council.

I'll actually do the staff report.

I made a mistake and let the acting city planner for this particular item take the night off.

So that's entirely upon me. This is a proposed drive-through for the marketplace. As you know, there are three other drive-throughs that are already available at the marketplace.

This would propose a Chipotle drive-through. The difference between this particular drive-through and the other ones that are already on site is that the other ones were alLod through a ministerial process, which was adopted in 2012.

This is a conditional use permit, and so the council is acting in a quasi-judicial capacity to consider whether or not to approve it.

Most of the information is actually in your staff report. Although I'm happy to answer any questions, I think a quick overview is fine.

It is located, again, at the marketplace.

Most of you are familiar with that. and the Chipotle standards and the proposed site are included with your staff report starting on page,

I'll give you the exact one, page 91 of 97, which shows you where the proposed restaurant location is and shows you some diagrams of what that would look like.

The applicant specifically requested that the city council consider this as a conditional use permit.

It wanted to make sure that the city council was fully involved with understanding what was going into the marketplace and again I'm happy to answer any questions.

Any council member I'm actually wanted to open up for public communication first so city clerk or that we say do we have any public communications.

Thank you madam mayor audience if you wish to speak on this item item 4b you're either going to utilize the raise hand feature or press star nine. Madam Mayor, we do have a speaker for this item. Okay, thank you. Joe Morris, please state your name and go ahead.

Thank you. Hi, good evening, everybody. My name is Joe Morris. I'm with M&M Realty Partners, the owner for Marketplace at Monterey Park. I'm here to answer any questions that you may have for this application. That's all and hello to everybody.

Okay, thank you. So any questions from any, actually, I would like to, if there's no other public hearings, no other public communications, how about written communications? Do we have any written communications? None registered, Madam Mayor. All right, thank you. So I'm going to close the public hearing. And so I would like to ask any council member, oh, okay, council member Fresno, so you have questions?

So being fairly new to the city council, we've had conditional use permits before, but can you just refresh my memory what a conditional use permit is? Sure. So drive-thrus in Monterey Park can be approved through two different processes, generally speaking. One is an administrative use permit, which can be issued by the city planner.

And so drive-thrus can be approved with an administrative use permit in those areas where they are already approved pursuant to the zone. So for the most recent example was the Raising Cane's drive-thru.

That was approved with an administrative use permit. Conditional use permit is a property right. It attaches to the property. And what it does is it's a discretionary permit to some extent. It allows the city council or the planning commission, if the planning commission is acting as the city's planning agency, to consider an application provided by the applicant and make certain findings with regard to whether or not a drive-through can adequately provide enough traffic control, is wide enough, those types of things. You can attach business hours to it.

Again, I refer back to the Raising Canes project, which is the one that the city council most recently considered late last year.

So, again, it's a use that runs with the property, and it allows the property owner to erect something not as a matter of right. So, for example, single family and dwelling unit would be erected as a matter of right, meaning that it would be ministerially processed.

It would never be reviewed by the planning agency or by the city council. So a conditional use permit is a specialized property right that the city council acting as the planning agency can grant.

There are a number of conditions, as you can see from the proposed resolution that are attached to this particular property.

They mainly deal with security, with landscaping, with engineering requirements, those types of things in order to ensure that this particular drive-through fits into the overall marketplace vision and the precise plan that helps guide how that particular development will be constructed.

There are also some fire requirements.

It goes on for several pages, and that's fairly standard for a conditional use permit.

The applicant, when it starts constructing its project, will have to go through each one of these conditions and verify that, indeed, it's complying with these conditions. And that's something that the city oversees, administers, and enforces. Happy to answer any other questions. All right. Thank you.

Mayor Potempo. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just to clarify, because I'm looking at the map. So where is this located? Is it next to Home Depot?

it's close to the to the well it's close to the costco and and uh it's part of an overall plan for the entire marketplace you can see from page 92 of 97 it shows a little bit closer in terms of where the where the freeway is and where this particular path is proposed uh i don't have the overview of where exactly the costco is but it's going to be that retail d that is is on page 91 I drove there yesterday to see exactly where it is between the Ono and Buffalo Wild Wings.

Thank you, Councilman Sennos. So then this is not part of that phase two that we have been hearing about that they were planning to work on the future. This is not part of phase two, right?

That's correct. This is part of the already developed area. And so they're simply putting in a new drive-thru.

You may recall that, I forget if it was last meeting or the meeting before that, the city council considered an interpretation of whether or not a dentist's office could go into the already developed area.

This is sort of ancillary to that.

It's an additional use for things that have already been developed within the marketplace.

I see. I see. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions from any council members? Yeah, I just have a quick question. Sure. Yeah, you know, as our quasi-judicial role, I just want to be clear from staff that all of those findings that need to be made are within the requirements. Yes, so all of the substantive evidence is in the record. It's part of the staff report, part of the resolution. and so the substantive evidence is there for the city council to make the findings necessary to adopt a conditional use permit you may of course attach additional conditions to this but not recommended by staff okay I just want to make sure that we're all copacetic on the findings thank you

yes thank you council member Chen thank you and uh Joe good to see you haven't seen you for like two years and uh yeah so and i know that uh marketplace is doing well very busy and uh and we are happy too because the city has a lot of tax revenues generated from my marketplace so thank you for you know all your hard work and uh i look at your site plan but because it's uh too small and so forth. And do you have outside seating? I saw you have a canopy. And but do you have outside seating as well?

John, I think that's for you. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Yes. Good evening, Councilmember Chen. The answer to the question is yes, there is proposed to be outdoor seating. for this building. We're still working on those final details with Chipotle.

Right now, we're utilizing the previously approved footprint

for discussion purposes. And obviously, with the blessing from the board,

we can go into more detailed design. But the answer is yes, there would be some proposed outdoor seating. Good. And I know that you have inside sitting as well, and there's quite a lot of tables and chairs that I can see. And, of course, Chipotle is a great addition to the city, especially in that area. So thank you for bringing them in to the city. And I know that there's one on the Atlantic as well, but this is another good one. My question is because I think the public works and your engineers and architects make some good designs. But one concern is that in going to the drive-thrus, because I've been there and I, you know, especially when you're in drive-thru, you may, you know, stuck in traffic and so forth. And I also have an experience that I park on the space and then the drive-through traffic kind of blocked my exit that I cannot even back out. So do you have any plans or any mitigation methods to improve the traffic experience for people that's parking and want to go out? 100 percent, Council Member Chen. And what happened was, and it was pretty famous across the country, you know, tenants like Chick-fil-A, they kind of took matters into their own hands and did their own arranging for cones and other things to address the pandemic. And, you know, it got away from them a little bit. It's our intention and efforts are underway as we speak to reel that in and to get the parking back more in line with what was approved and what we feel works. But absolutely, as you know, this is a project where ownership is hands on from the very, very top. Both owners of the property are actively involved in it. And this is something that we're obviously paying very close attention to. But we absolutely are certain that it can be remedied. and be made better. It's functional now, but it needs to obviously improve, and we're committed to doing that.

people back out, that kind of things will make it easier. So I just want to suggest that to you. And like the other drive-thrus, they do have that kind of service. MR. I'm making that note as we speak, sir. MR. Okay. Thank you. And I want to ask the public works director, Frank Nopas, because we have only this proposed plan. And so you think the drive-thru lanes and everything in the proposal will be okay for the traffic flow

and will interfere with the other drive-thrus because we have already in and out, Chick-fil-A, Starbucks.

Oh, no, there's already four drive-thrus. And so this is our fifth one. So do we have adequate space and plans for the flow of the traffic?

I'll jump in for Mr. Lopez, if you don't mind.

Sure, please. So on page 85 of the conditions, you'll see that there's condition number 13,

and it lists a number of requirements with regard to the drive-thru,

including stacking for six cars various other things and one of the things that a conditional

use permit allows the city to do is to adjust anything that isn't going correctly from the

standpoint of a drive-through so this particular drive-through will have to comply with the

municipal code and more importantly Mr. Lopez will get to determine whether or not it is complying

with the municipal code so although you are correct that we have simplified plans in front of you

a more much more detailed plans will come through plan check and for Mr. Lopez's approval before

it's actually constructed so the city will have control over the drive-through from that perspective sorry Mr. Lopez I didn't mean to jump in on your thunder but I just wanted to point that out

uh no worries the attorney uh good evening uh councilman mayor mayor pretend council members

uh as uh our city attorney just stated yeah we'll be reviewing in more detail

and as you said we'll have control over what that looks like uh in the meantime i can say that uh

these plans were preliminary reviewed by our uh acting uh city engineer john turner and i trust that he's looking at all of the right things to make sure this works okay thank you

Mayor, you might be on mute, Mayor.

Oh, I'm sorry. If we don't have any questions from any council member, can we get a motion to approve item 4B? Yes, I will make the motion to approve item 4B. Okay, City Clerk, any second? I second. Okay, City Clerk, please call roll.

Thank you. Council Member Peter Chen? Yes. Council Member Hans Neon? Yes.

Council Member Pretzernoso? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Henry Lo? Aye.

And Mayor Yvonne Yu? Yes. Motion carries. Thank you.

For our next item, 4C, continuation of public hearing regarding modifying precise plan PP-14-02, conditions of approval for a hotel located at 555 North Atlantic Boulevard. So this is a continual public hearing. So any staff reports that add it or comments? Frank Lopez.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Botem, Councilmembers. I know this is simply an extension of the public hearing for the precise plan, as you see there on your staff report. For the hotel located at 555 North Atlantic, we're still working with the property owner. And so we'll be bringing this back to December 15th.

Okay. Thank you.

So motion to continue the public hearing originally noticed for August 18th, 2021 to December 15th, 2021.

Right. Any second? I second. So, City Clerk, please call roll.

Thank you. Council Member Peter Chan? Yes. Council Member Hanson? Yes. Council Member Fred Cernoso? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Henry Lo? Aye. And Mayor Yvonne Yuen? Aye. Yes. Motion carries. Thank you.

Madam Mayor, members of the council, I'm sorry for interrupting.

Can we go back to item 4A?

There's a correction on the date. My date was off by one day. It's January 19th is the second meeting in January, not January 18th. Okay. Since I made the motion, I would make a motion to continue to the date that you had indicated. Thank you. That would be January 19th. Thank you kindly.

Thank you. So any second?

I'll second.

And so, see the clock, Mr. Carlos?

Thank you. Council Member Peter Chan? Yes. Council Member Hans Leong? Yes. Council Member Fred Sinoso? Aye. Mayor Pro Tem Henry Lo? Aye. And Mayor Yvonne Yu?

Yes.

Motion carries.

Thank you. So, that's the end of the agenda. So, now will be Council Member Chen? Thank you, Madam Mayor.

and last two weeks was quite busy and I know that council members attending that Monster Mash but I was not there because I was attending the call meeting at the time and the call meeting finished like around six o'clock and so it's pretty much done so that's why I cannot go but next year for sure I'll go and then I attended the AYC the Asian Youth Center annual fundraiser dinner. They did not do it last year, but it was this year they did it again. And it's a good event, good turnout, and

see a lot of people as well. And I attended the Chinatown Museum. They memorized the 150th anniversary of the Mexico of the Chinese residents in Chinatown. Los Angeles. And Mayor Pro Tempo was there with me as well. And at that time, Mayor Gazzetti made a formal apology to the Chinese being Mexican. So that was a very nice event. And also we all attended the police chief's appealing. And congratulations to Chief Gordon. Great work and I also attended a recognition for one of our residents Lillian Powadatani, a long-time resident and she was recognized by the Business and Professional Women's Club and for her achievement throughout the years so congratulations to Lillian and then also I I attended the police golf tournament and had dinner with them. And I know that Council Member Hans Leon was there as well and had a great time. A lot of raffle tickets, prizes, and so forth. Everyone's happy. And I want to say one more thing. One more time is that the Metro Youth Council is accepting applications for councils age 14 to 17 to do the public transportation. And so please call this phone number if you're interested to finding, getting more information. It's 213-922-2852. Again, 213-922-2852. Please call the number to get more information. The deadline for this application is November 17, I think. So please check it out. Still have time. So if you are interested, please apply for this position. Thank you and good night.

Thank you, Council Member Chen. And Council Member Hansland?

Yeah, I'll just make it very quick. Peter was very thorough and he also indicated those events that I was at as well. I'm going to make it brief as I am at a conference and I'm gonna get back to at least getting some dinner. So everyone have a great evening. Thank you. And then Council Member Furstenoso?

So I want to recognize a couple of our attendees tonight who are going to be running the LA Marathon on Sunday. So our city manager, Ron Bowe,

and our fellow council member, Henry Lo, are both going to run and try to qualify for the Boston Marathon this Sunday. So congratulations ahead of time, you guys. Good luck being a former member, I mean, former runner. I'm glad it's not me out there this Sunday. So good luck to you guys. also I want to thank our librarian Diana Garcia and her staff my family which is my uncle my mom myself are reading these series of crime novels and I asked Diana if she could get us the full set and she was able to do that so thank you Diana for making that happen and anybody that wants to read these stories about this game warden and this family that happened in Wyoming. It's a novel, but deals with different crimes. I highly recommend it. The author is C.J. Box. So if you want something to read before you go to bed at night, I recommend those novels. Coming up is our Veterans Day ceremony, and I'm hoping to have my uncle Frank, who's 96 and who's a World War II veteran, come out and take part in that. our historian Ken Iwakawi came out and interviewed him the other day and he enjoyed visiting with him so hopefully my uncle will be able to participate in that. Also want to bring our fire chief on screen to talk about what's happening with station 62. So Matt.

Thank you, sir. Well, after a little over a year and several delays, we have finally moved in to our new station today at about 3 p.m.

So while there's still, I would say, a handful of cosmetic things that have to be fixed, which is standard with any type of construction, we're responding from the station. We're living in the station. And if any repairs are needed that we have to move out, we always can. But I don't think we'll have to. But we're as excited as you can imagine to finally be in there. There's a handful of retirees that probably thought this day would never come. There's a handful of us that have been there for a long time that thought this day would never come. But it is here finally. We're excited. And we can't be more grateful to the council and to the city and all the staff that have supported this project. we are very excited to be responding from there as of tonight. And then also on Saturday we're having our first pickleball tournament. I don't know anything about pickleball,

but I know that Henry and Yvonne are teaming up as a beginning team.

I know they've been practicing hard.

So I don't know if either Henry or Yvonne want to come out and on

and tell us about how your practices come and are you looking forward to taking the first place trophy on Saturday, Henry?

What is pickleball? I'm kidding.

Henry, you wanted to update us? Yes, thank you very much.

Councilor Estenoso, actually, since you and your family have an interest in crime novels,

may I recommend In Cold Blood by Truman Capote?

It is an excellent example of what the genre is called nonfiction fiction. But it is one of my favorite crime novels. And so I would recommend, if the library has it, to read In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.

And also, thank you so much, customers, and also for well wishes for R.C.

manager myself for Sunday.

But actually, I think it's also fair that we also, you know, give credit to yourself as well.

I mean, you have also completed, although not the full course, but the virtual marathon.

And so I think that is an incredible feat. And so thank you very much for also completing the full marathon virtually by running through our neighborhoods and also running with other people in the community and really inspiring all of us that no matter what age you are, you know, we all can be active and healthy in our neighborhoods.

So thank you, Councilman Stenoso.

I also want to also acknowledge that I attended the Chinese American Museum,

as well as Councilman Chan, as well as the Monster Mash event. And it really was, I think, incredible to see so many people in our community come out, not just from our community, but even our neighbors as well. While I was there, I ran into recently appointed John Tang, who was out there with his family.

And for those of you who may or may not know,

Council Member Stephen Lee is currently in the Middle East for the Army under deployment and the City Councilman Rosemee appointed the head of the Planning Commission, John Tang, to serve in Mr. Lee's seat while he's under deployment in the Middle East for the Army. So, of course, we wish our neighboring Council Member Stephen Lee safety while he is in the Middle East. And, of course, good luck to

newly appointed Councilmember John Tang. I also attended at East Dillet College last week there was an unveiling at the President's Office, an upgraded donor wall. For those of you who know more of the history of East Dillet College, they are now celebrating their 75th

anniversary. The donor wall is a highlight

of the alumni who have come and gone through the halls of East L.A. College and have gone on to become leaders in our community and continue to support East L.A. College. For example, former Supervisor Gloria Molina is a graduate and alumni of East L.A. College as well as former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Viragosa. And at the donor wall, there actually are photos of our congresswoman Judy Chu when she was on the city council because I think she actually no she was a professor and instructor at East Valley College when she was on the city council I also attended last weekend along with some other residents in Monterey Park the pumpkin run in our neighborhood of Alhambra and the funds raised for the pumpkin run actually goes toward the Alhambra Education Foundation, which supports Alhambra School District schools that include schools that serve our students in Monterey Park. And so it was fun to run to a 10K, which I thought was a warm up for the early marathon and support a worthy cause, which is our local schools. Finally, and on a more somber note, I'd like to actually ask if we could adjourn tonight's council meeting in the memory of Duarte Councilmember Brian Arias. Many of you probably have read in the newspaper that Mayor Arias unexpectedly passed away on October 24th. And if I could,

I went to the viewing today for Mayor Arias, and they had a bio which I thought I'd like

to read for the record. Brian Arias, age 40 of Duarte, California, passed away unexpectedly on Sunday, October 21st, 2021. Brian was born April 9th, 1981 in Fontana, California to his parents, Alfred and Rosa Armita Arias. And for those of you who are familiar with

Brian, he actually was a very visible public servant in our own community. Prior to his

election to the city council, Brian served on the upper San Diego Valley municipal water district. And I understand, and Mr. City Manager, please chime in, that as a water board member, he

also represented our region on a federal water board, which oversaw water issues that included

Monterey Park.

Mr. Rice also was a staffer and worked for then Congresswoman Hilda Solis and Congresswoman

Judy Chu. And so when those members of Congress would attend events in Monument Park,

you oftentimes would see Brian staffing Congressman Chu and Congressman Solis. And so

he was a person who served the Sangamah Valley as well as our own community.

And, you know, just wanted to ask if we could adjourn in his memory tonight.

Sure. Thank you. And so, yeah, hi. So I wanted to actually give my remarks that I attend the Monster Mash as a big success and also the police chief and congratulations for this morning ceremony. And so I also celebrate my 50th birthday yesterday. So I think the age is not the secret anymore when you become a politician.

But then I keep telling people that, yeah, actually my family is actually celebrated at the Albeck Steakhouse. And so some people said, you know, why Albeck? But that actually is my favorite restaurant and same as my son's favorite restaurant. So we had a very good time. So, and yeah, I wanted to, yeah, according to what Henry Lo mentions that we adjourned in memories of the Duarte Mayor Rice, right?

So I wanted to just, so can you, can you, yeah, repeat the name again?

Sorry.

Well, actually, before I do that, but also perhaps, well, adjourn in memory of Duarte Mayor Brian Rias, spelled U-R-I-A-S.

And also, can we also adjourn, wishing our mayor a happy birthday. Thank you. Thank you. And, of course, you know, always with every birthday, we say congratulations for another round around the sun and best wishes for the future as well. Thank you. Thank you. So Melissa joined the meeting. So thank you. Happy birthday.

Thank you. Bye-bye.