City Council Meeting — July 20, 2022

Let's see, I called the meeting to order. Next, flag suit please rise.

And today's flag suit will be provided by the Monopark Police Explorers.

And today's flag salute will be provided by the Monterport Police Explorers.

FDA FDA Thank you. Turn over your heart.

Put a heart.

Breathe at colors.

Ready, begin. My allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands,

all nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Please remain standing.

Hold guard, order, colors. Hold guard, outward, face. Forward, march.

Pole guard, post, alert.

Pole guard, about, face.

Pole guard, dismissed. guard dismissed

Thank you very much. Please be seated.

Clerk, please call the roll.

Thank you. Council Member Yvonne Yu. Council Member Peter Chan. Here.

Council Member Hans Liang. Here. And Mayor Henry Lo. Present. All present. Thank you. Let's see. staff, do we have any agenda, additions, deletions, changes and adoptions?

Yes, Mayor. We were notified by Senator Rubio that she would like to make a presentation.

She could not be here at 6.30. She'll be here at 7.30. So our suggestion would be, depending on how many

public comment cards we have, how long it's going to take us

to get through public comment, we may leave presentations where it's at. but our suggestion would be to move presentations to after the consent calendar

to give her a little time to get here to make that presentation.

She does have an update on legislative items, and she'd like to address the council on one other item. So that is the change for now.

Okay, so the recommendation is to move presentations to after consent agenda?

You're correct, Mayor.

Okay, but both still have staff communications, right?

You're correct.

okay thank you so much okay then we'll do it then we'll have presentations after

consent calendar item okay let's make a note of that presentation after consent

calendar thank you very much okay public communications well all comments are

welcome. The Brown Act does not allow the City Council to take action on any item not on the agenda. The Council may briefly respond to comments after public communications is closed. Persons may, in addition to any other matter within the City Council's subject matter jurisdiction, comment on agenda items at this time. If you provide public comment on a specific agenda item at this time, however, you cannot later provide comments at the time the agenda item is considered. Clerk, do we have any requests to speak during

public communications? Yes, we do. Okay. Proceed.

Okay. Thank you. First speaker, Nancy O'Curry.

Good evening, you all. I'm here to speak out against the health care workers' request from Garfield Medical Center that they demand the city of Monterey Park approve their request to have $25 an hour minimum wage to be paid to them by the hospital. The staff report requests that the city council adopt a resolution that certifies petition to qualify for the ballot based on the city clerk's certification. The staff report has requested that City Council adopt the petition and add it to the city's municipal code in order to elect or request a new recordance to election code 9214. Now, we're going to have to pay $30,000 for these people. And I wonder how many of these speakers at Garfield Medical Center are taxpaying Monterey Park voters.

Now, they're going to cost us an extra $30,000. I'm against it. I know we're a general law city. We have to put it on the ballot. But I think we should think of becoming a chartered city so we don't have to listen to Sacramento and all that telling us what we have to do.

So please, when you consider it, considering $30,000 is a lot of money, that could go to benefit all of Monterey Park residents, not just Scarfield Medical staff. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker is Paul Young.

Hi, good evening. My name is Paul Young. I'm with the Hospital Association of Southern California. We represent over 180 member hospitals and 35 health care systems across our six-county region.

We're thankful and appreciate the City Council recently requested an economic analysis

to better understand the unequal pay measure and its potential impact on health care services in the City of Monterey Park. We have real concerns over the measure's impact on health care providers, the workforce, and access to care in this community. New research from the Berkeley Research Group has found that 54% of Monterey Park health care workers who make under $25 would be excluded in the city. That's over half of our local health care workers. Based on our own analysis, 75% of health care facilities, of licensed health care facilities here in the city, would be excluded in this measure.

In addition, the Berkeley Research Group's analysis also found that the proposed measure would increase salaries by approximately 9.3% in Monterey Park hospitals to approximately an $8.6 million price tag. We respectfully request that you refer this measure to the ballot as it was originally intended and allow voters the opportunity to examine the merits of the measure and determine what best makes sense for the city. To approve the initiative as a city ordinance for immediate adoption would be risky and unfair to the workers here in Monterey Park.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Bingo.

Good evening everyone.

I come speak for you on behalf of the Garvey School District as the Board President.

First off I'd like to recognize something that's done from the Mario Park Police Department

and that is they did the due diligence and they took leadership in visiting two of our

Garvey School District Schools at Monte Vista and Hillcrest a couple of weeks ago, actually this month.

And why is that important?

Well, it's absolutely critical that our first responders, in particular the police department,

knows where the buildings are in the case of emergency. Something that I wish and hope I would never be able to see in my lifetime,

but it is absolutely important that they know where to go in case of an emergency.

So I commend the Montepark Police Department and also City Council for your leadership, as long as the City Manager, in getting a very, very strong police force in the city.

Thank you.

Christina Smith.

Hello. Good evening, City Council. My name is Christina Smith, and I've been a registered nurse at Garfield Medical Center for 33 years. And I'm here today because in all those 30 years, I've never seen such a time as this, where we're literally in a crisis with our staffing issues

because we cannot recruit, we cannot retain, we cannot provide enough staffing to support the needs of our patients,

our patient care. It's like an ongoing daily basis. It's not just once in a while.

And when you have that much overwhelming, overburden, and that lack of support, you know, it turns to burnout, and the nurses are not able to do their jobs adequately to provide the care that we need. So we're here today to request that you support increasing the wages of our health care workers. A lot of them have left because they can get less stressful jobs for better pay, what they're making there. And basically they're doing the job that nobody would want to do, you know, and they're risking their lives, you know, daily, you know, and working in a, you know, biohazard environments with infectious diseases, on the front line with COVID, and there's no hazard pay. There's nothing else to offer for what they do, and I don't think we're showing them the respect and the support that they need

because they are essential. We can't do our job without it. And God forbid any of you get in an accident and end up in a hospital

because you're going to have to wait a long time for just someone to answer that light. You know, what if it's your mother, you know, your father, your sister and brother in the hospital?

Because we don't have the resources we need.

So let's, you know, make a difference. Stop the bleeding.

You know, so just support that and for increasing the wage to $25 an hour so they can provide for themselves and their families and do the job that we want to do.

Thank you.

Okay.

Next speaker is Rolando Calero.

And after him will be Erica Ruiz.

Good evening, Council Members. My name is Rolando Calero.

I work at Garfield Medical Center.

I've been there for 10 years.

Since the last meeting I came, we were talking about the short staffing, the impact that it's had. I work in the dietary department, so we provide the food service for our patients to get well,

because that's also essential for the recovery of a patient.

It's just not the medicine. Everybody has a role to play in the hospital.

But with that being said, I just wanted to let you know that since our last meeting here, as short as my department is already, we lost three

co-workers because they just could not continue with

the shortness of hours and the shortness of their pay and paying their bills and whatnot.

This might sound a little funny, but this is the truth that's what's going on in my department and in other departments

as well, I believe. We hired one person. He came in the first day, saw the situation,

and didn't come back the next day. He said that he could get more money somewhere else. Now, to the person that said that those people, those people are the same people that are going

to take care of her family, are going to take care of her loved ones, but how can we do our job

the way it's supposed to be done with efficiency and timely manner

if we're underpaid because nobody wants to stay there and we're a short staff. A lot of my coworkers couldn't come today

because of the fact that they're doing double shift because of what happened recently right now. Today is my 12th day in a row, okay? On a total of this schedule,

It's very alarming, you know, especially coming from a hospital that's prestige and, you know, well-known,

and this is how they take care of their workers, and this is how we're supposed to take care of our patients with lack of resources. You know, you, the council members, have the power to do something. Do not let yourself be persuaded by these big companies that want to talk for us because they don't know my situation.

They don't know their situation, how we're struggling, because at the end of the day, for them, it's just profit.

It's not about us, okay? But you are with us in the sense that you are workers, you have families, you may have taken your families to Monterey Park or Garfield. And how would you feel if your family is not getting the attention, you know, in the timely manner because of so many wrong things that are going there?

Nobody's going to want to go to Garfield.

Nobody's going to want to come to Monterey Park when there's so much other hospitals that are providing better services and better pay for their workers that want to stay there and they want to work hard because they're being rewarded for their hard work. And we're not.

So please, I encourage, you know, to adopt this bill. Help us so we can help our community and our patients. Thank you.

Erica Ruiz. It's going to be folLod by Jordan Sorto.

Hi, everyone.

I'm a little nervous.

I don't usually speak out, so please bear with me.

SEIU has Senate Bill 1014 on the state legislature to get state funds for community clinics. Yet the same hospital association is opposing that while saying our initiative is unfair to workers. It's simple. They just don't want health care workers to have a livable wage.

I work at Garfield Medical Center. I'm a full-time worker. I work there 40 hours a week, not to mention callbacks and overtime due to short staffing. Monterey Park is like a second home to me. I spend more time there than I do at home. I miss milestones at home with my children because I'm always at work, because I do make my job a priority, because I am helping people. With that said, having to do all of that due to short staffing,

it's because of the low pay. It's because people come to Garfield for the experience

and then they end up leaving with that experience for better opportunities in a different city where they get paid more, where they're valued more. I have personally trained being a senior tech in my department, in the radiology department, I have personally trained about Half a dozen people thoroughly since I am a senior tech there. And they have all left. Nobody wants to commit to the hospital. They are all per diems. Even though we have a lot of open vacancies for part-time and full-time, they don't want to commit. And one of the main reasons, it's because of the low pay. It's not competitive enough to stay there when they can get the same benefits, even better benefits somewhere else.

At the end of the day, I'm asking you to heavily consider to vote in favor of the $25 for minimum wage.

Because although you won't remember my face or my name,

this decision can possibly not only change the life of me and countless others,

but also the life of my children. Thank you.

Jordan Soto. or sortle sortle sorry uh we folLod by christina ruiz

oh sorry hi uh my name is jordan sortle i wanted to thank the council for you know sharing my time with you um i wanted to say that uh i worked at garfield for almost a year now i've been introduced to Monterey Park and I go into like the community actually well mostly food actually so as one thing I enjoyed is I actually legitimately enjoy working at that hospital the staff there are pretty nice and so overall it's been great so far Jimmy working helping people and assisting the nurses there with their duties to their patients personally I don't like to waste other people's time or money I put my best effort in doing my job and do the best and go above and beyond. From my recent annual performance review I've been told that the director that my fellow nurses enjoy working with me. You can ask any nurse at the emergency department just ask for Jordan and they can tell you how I work with. Experiencing work in the hospital in

the pandemic firsthand at the front lines the short staffing really affects everyone not just the staff but the quality of care and the increased workload and the stress of my fellow workers.

The shortage of ER techs has nothing short of intense and the workload that piles on can be

with having other fellow tech working with me. I've been doing job of two people

and not gonna lie it's been pretty stressful. Past two weeks recently we had

like booked every emergency department has been a room has been booked. We were just waiting for admitting patient we're just holding patients waiting for a room to go upstairs and from there from there we just have to tell patients who are waiting in the waiting room like how long is it gonna take how long is it We have to assure the patient we will get to you when we can. We're just waiting for a vacant room to open up. And the people just pile on. The increase of $25 is a great incentive to attract promising staff to the hospital and retain current staff for this increase. The lack of CNAs, and not just text, but the lack of CNAs for sitting for mental illness patients has been pretty intense.

And from there, it's just like I've been asked to help other departments, not just ER. from the overflow to even second and third floor i've been asked if i can sit and watch a patient

make sure they're not pulling out any iv lines so i hope uh from my experience uh working there i really want to do my best and help others and i really hope that the council considers uh in favor of the 25 minimum thank you for your time Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. So, Christian Ruiz will be folLod by Jennifer Acosta.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It's kind of on the whim for me. I am currently a critical care nurse at Gartham Medical Center, so I just want to attest to the fact that these critical care techs are very important to us. Night after night, you know, we have two patients apiece. Sometimes it's hard because we don't have other nurses on the unit to help us clean, churn, or even just prepare a patient's body when it's deceased. These techs are the backbone. When I'm in one room, these techs are my eyes and ears. They are the people who call me to let me know something's going on in another room. So I think it's atrocious that we don't want to pay them more than $15 an hour, $17 an hour, whatever it is. We have a high turnaround rate because they can go elsewhere.

where they can go to Chick-fil-A and make more money than they're making here. And I get it. People don't want to pay higher taxes. But let me ask you this. When your family member comes in, are those higher taxes really going to matter to you?

Because I can't give them a higher quality of care because I don't have the techs that I need. So think of that when you vote, please. Sorry. Thank you.

Jennifer Acosta?

It will be folLod by April Vye. Vye. Vye.

Vye. Hi. I want to start off by saying thank you for listening at this time. We feel like we're being pushed under the rug, so thank you for caring. Today, I woke up with an image of an ad getting mailed out trying to tear down everything we're here for today, because for that, they have money for. I felt at that moment it was just disgust, sadness, and honestly disrespect. We used to be called heroes by everyone. Everyone at home on Zoom, scared and sick. We were all here at work.

We didn't stop. Things went faster. People called us heroes. We felt fear, but we wouldn't stop working. We continued to work. as the kitchen's aide came in and tended the hallways with our tarps that we had everywhere to contain the COVID, the TV, tuberculosis, whatever we have. We have tarps all through every hallway, through every unit. But these people, our techs, our CNAs, our housekeepers, our kitchen aides, they all came in and they still continue to come in even though that we've been asking for our short staffing to be helped. We've been asking for them to do something about it we've all we got out of that was the most deaths out of any hospital nearby our hospital got hit and we had the most deaths in our employee wise but yet we still continue to work and we still fight for everything that's right even though we know that the people the little staff we have are still leaving us to this day but we don't stop coming so I just want you to understand that no matter what, even though we're not nurses, we're not anything, we still matter. They can't do our job, their job without us. They can't feed their patient without us. They can't turn the patient without us. They can't do anything. It takes a village to do one patient. So I just want you to understand that. Thank you.

April?

He'll be folLod by Marta Alvarado.

Good evening, Council. My name is April Valle and I'm an incoming junior at Alhambra High.

My mother is a current employee at Garfield Medical Center.

My mother is a single mom of two minor children.

My brother and I are very involved in sports and extracurricular activities.

In fact, I am currently missing my softball practice in support of my mother.

I had to miss out of practice today to be here.

My mother has been employed at Garfield Medical Center for over 18 years, and that's where I and my brother were born.

I've seen and lived the struggle of having to figure out how $100 will last till the next pay period.

She's always told me that she provides what we need and not what we want.

but there has been a time where she has not been able to provide the necessary for our day-to-day living.

There has been times where my brother and I would ask for some takeout food.

She would tell us what she could purchase and what we would buy,

but not knowing that the food was only for my brother and I since she could not afford for herself as well.

I've seen her cry herself to sleep, trying to figure out what she needed to do to get us what we needed.

With the pandemic still at peak once again, my brother and I will once again have to face the reality of seeing our mother at dinnertime and maybe a couple of times at my softball games.

That she might be able to attend if alLod by her work schedule. for yet again the restrictions of the pandemic. My mother is a dedicated, hard-working healthcare worker. Yes, her job title is admitting representative. You might be saying, oh, she's not exposed. Oh, yes, she is. She is the first employee at the hospital the patient will interact with. Whether it is for information or advice, she is exposing her life. Unfortunately, we all caught COVID in the beginning of the year, and even though it took a lot for her to care for

her children when herself was also ill, my brother was running a fever of over 100 degrees, and I with several headaches, nausea, and body aches.

She still had to care for herself as well. The reality of this is my mother has been exposing her life to do the work she loves, understanding that if anything was to happen to her, my brother and I would be left to care for ourselves. I will ask for you to please consider and raise the minimum wage for health care workers in Monterey Park to $25.

Marta Alvarado. And our last speaker will be Lisa Edwards.

Good evening, everyone.

! My name is Marta. I'm the Certificate nurse assistant in Carpidio Medical Center.

! I have been working there for almost 22 years.

! I was not able to come in the meeting in July,

! because I had COVID. ! This is my second time.

Actually, in this time, I contacted my daughter. and this time I contact my daughter.

I'm a single mother. I'm in the sole provider for my daughter and me.

I'm here today because I'm asking for a support

and pass the health care workers minimum weight.

That's what we help a lot to the health care workers.

please

listen to us

I work in the COVID unit

we have up to almost a whole unit COVID

probably they might open another unit for COVID

because the case is going up

we still do have enough We still have enough staff.

We don't have enough CNAs to care for those patients. Some days we don't even have enough RNs.

There are not just COVID patients, those patients that are in full precaution and restrictions and heavy patients. Almost every day, my schedule day to work, and I may stay until 7.30. Because they have shortstop.

To help them, the other shift, a working morning shift. The swim shift, even worse. Sometimes they have nobody.

When our hospitals refuse to pay the same or more than Target or In-N-Out, The community should not be surprised when they can't hire health care workers.

The people like them, they are ones of the sloth, and so our patient, Garfield, still has signed in.

In front of the hospital, we have health care workers, heroes who are here,

but they don't treat us like heroes.

Please vote and support our healthcare workers to pay in the 25 minimum. And thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Lisa Edwards.

Hi, good evening. I concur with all my coworkers. I work at Monterey Park and I'm a MRI tech and I'm a nurse.

I worked at Monterey Park for about 15 months and I agree with the short staff. And I'm going to tell you a quick story.

I was working alone in the MRI trailer. They bring in ambulances from Alhambra Hospital and from Greater Almane,

and we perform the MRIs. Because I was working alone, when the EMTs pushed the patient, he'd had brain surgery twice, he had a G-tube, he was paralyzed. The gurney flipped. The patient was face down with his neck crooked.

We couldn't get him up. We were so short, the patient laid there.

We couldn't get him up. I should have never been in the position to be alone. And the patient suffered. and that is one of many episodes of my 15 months there that have happened.

I've had codes there by myself. I can't call the ambulance because there's no,

I don't have any extra hands. The patient's seizing. I take my shoe off and I throw it at the ambulance hoping somebody will come help me. I should never be in that position and the patients don't deserve that.

So eventually somebody's going to get hurt worse. I mean the patient's G-tube got displaced. He had to go to surgery. I mean, we should never be in those positions. These patients don't deserve this.

I wouldn't want my mom there or my dad to go through that. I mean, I've been through so many things in 15 months.

There should have been a transporter. There should have been a CNA to help. So the poor patient lay there.

It shouldn't happen. Patients don't deserve that.

It's sad. And I've had codes. I've been out there in the trailer by myself. By the time they get out there and you get them down the ramp, patients expire. It shouldn't happen. We shouldn't be that short.

Patients are dying in parking lots. This isn't, we're not a third world country. We're supposed to be better than this. But we're so short. It's happening. It happens on a daily basis.

And it's wrong. Patients don't deserve that. So thanks for listening, and I hope we can do better and get more help, get more people to come in and want to work in health care. Thanks for your time.

Okay. Any more speakers? No more speakers?

Last chance.

You have a card?

Okay. Don't forget to fill out a card after, okay? Oh, sorry. Hello, everyone. Thank you for having me. I live in Monterey Park. I work at Garfield Medical Center. And I work there because it's like a second home. When you work in your community and you're trying to offer help, it makes a big difference. It's not always about the pay sometimes. And I concur with all my colleagues here. What they say is true. We are short-staffed. And it makes a big difference. with the minimum wage of the 25. I had lunch with my wife today. She goes, oh, look, Padre Express are hiring. They're paying $26 an hour. That could be your second job. At Garfield, I work as a respiratory therapist in the cardio department, and I work in ER and the ICUs. And it makes a big difference when we have the support because I cannot do everything by myself. If I'm doing CPR on one person, I can't do CPR on another person as coding. Guess who jumps in? My crew, my team, my family back here. It makes a big difference. I don't want to lose the talent. Because you can't just put somebody on and say, hey, you got this. I'm compressing. You compress next. Tag. When you have multiple codes through ER, you don't want to wait. My parents live in Monterey Park. I live in Monterey Park. I had two kids at my hospital. I love it. I don't want to leave, but I need the help. And I don't want them to leave. And I want them to stay. So I hope you guys vote for yes. Thank you for having me. Okay.

I guess those are all to speak. One more.

Okay, Mr. Clerk.

Same procedure.

we need to have a card from you so go ahead and speak first please what's your

name

I rest the Hara okay

good evening mayor law and city council members my name is Iris Tejara I am working with like certificate nurse assistant at Garfield Medical Center. I have been working

for there for five years. I would like to share with you a day on my job. In my uni we work with

30 patients every day. What kind of care can we offer with one CNA in the floor, with two CNA in the floor, when the rules is four CNA for each shift? Our employer GMC believed that with a salary

of 16 per hour, we can't afford our rents, gas for cars and food. I have co-workers that rent a room because they can't afford their own place. If I want them to can go back to the school, how can I do that if I need to work over 40 hours a week to afford my rent? The pandemic hit us the hardest. I don't know any co-worker that has not gotten sick from COVID, including myself. Now, cases in our hospital and community are growing up, and we are still short-staffed because no CNA wants to risk their life. Take a patient load of 15 to 30 patients for $16, dollar not enough. This is how much GMC is offering new hire. It's less than money and almost all the other CNA are leaving GMC to work at other hospital that pay more or are leaving to work at Target for $20. We are getting sick. We are getting our families sick. We are stressed and many of us are suffering with PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. My bones hurt from trying to do the best I can for our patients that can't turn or near health walking. This is why I'm asking you, Mayor Henry Lo and City Council members, to support and vote yes for the Health Care Work and Minimal Wage Ordinance. This is only way to Monterey Park City Hospital that will be able to recruit new healthcare workers. My colleagues and I are asking you as a leader to helping us have safe staffing and living conditions. I hope you all thinking about the legacy that you will live for your community, for patients that come for healthcare to our hospital, and for the healthcare workers that keep our hospital running. the same healthcare worker you are all the point calling healthcare heroes with DNA, fliboromics, transporter, food services, worker EMTS, monitor tech and EBS. Just to name a few, the hospital will have to shut down because all co-workers are trying to finding another job in other hospital for new increments for the money. Again, I am asking that you pass the healthcare worker minimum wage ordinance that will set the minimum wage for healthcare worker to 25. This is a little small group we have here. But we are here for to present another worker that's working right now. Another co-worker in the house, maybe. But this is the voice for them. Thank you for that. Good time.

All righty. Looks like those are all the registered speakers we have.

Okay. Well, thank you very much.

Mayor, Councilman. We do have a public communication by our Deputy City Attorney, Joaquin Vasquez, next to me. So if you want to indulge his public communications. Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chair Manager, Mayor, members of the City Council. I am making reference to a written communication that was submitted by the City Attorney Carl Berger regarding a proposal. and all of us at the Hensley Law Group are deeply saddened by the loss of former Mayor Pro Tem Fred Sornoso and inspired by his thoughtful enthusiasm for public service and his undeniable fanaticism for the Dodgers I mean I thought I was a Dodger fan we're recommending proposing that the council create what we're calling the Fred Cernoso Dodger Day Memorial Fund and this would provide assistance for up to five young Dodger fans that are experiencing a financial hardship in attending the city's Dodger Day and there are some details we can get into but we would like to request that this be placed on a future agenda and to kick-start the fund the Hensley Law Group would provide $2,000. So we're hoping that it can be placed and considered on a future agenda by the council. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you.

Actually, before we continue to stop communications, can we take a 10-minute break because I have to go to the restroom?

Okay.

Thank you. So 714, so how about we come back at 724? All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, yeah.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

She's showing now. She's bigger than me now. A lot more.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's good. I guess you have more.

I'm a football team.

I'll tell you.

You're a young one of the football teams.

Oh, yeah.

I'm a young one of the football teams. I'm a young man. I have a lot of kids to think about.

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. Yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay.

It's 722, so we have two more minutes, and we shall resume session.

We have two more minutes and then we will resume session.

So it's 7.22 p.m. So just a FYI, we will resume session two minutes.

Thank you.

Oh, wow.

And we're back. Good evening.

Okay, thank you very much for everyone's patience. All right, let's continue with the agendas. Next we have staff communications. First, communication from staff, Recreation and Community Services Department.

Okay, good evening. Good evening, Mayor, City Council members,

Recreation Community Service Director Robert Aguirre

Here tonight

Just to talk about a few things from the Recreation Department So since our last council meeting

We have actually had two city events

And so tonight I wanted to

Send a thank you Both to the River of Life Church

For the continued support

And attendance at our events They've been actually coming out to the movie nights And providing water to those in attendance

And also chips And I also wanted to thank the Burgumire Library

for their continued involvement in our movie nights and support. We had a movie night on July the 15th, which was scene two. We had about 200 folks that came out and watched the movie in Barnes Park. Next, I wanted to thank the over, well, I estimate it was about 50 residents

that came out on July the 16th to our first friendly Fred walk.

We all met at Bella Vista Park and give us an opportunity for the community to not only talk with each other, fellowship, and also exercise

and go on a two-mile walk from Bella Vista

and then also stop by the Cernoso family, pay our condolences, and just kind of enjoy a nice morning in Monterey Park in the Bella Vista area where Fred's home was. May he rest in peace, you know, Fred. That was in honor of him and his friendly nature in the community. So it was a great event, and I want to thank the residents

that all came out to support that.

Next slide, please.

Next, I want to invite all those residents out to our next movie night.

This is a special movie night.

It's going to be on July the 29th at the Barnes Park Amphitheater, and this will be with the classic movie Grease.

And this movie will also be a sing-along, so when all of the very well-known classic songs come on,

there will be the words up on the screen.

And there's someone that's in the crowd tonight

who actually is going to be helping us sing along with the songs that night

and getting the crowd involved.

So we're really excited. We've actually heard a lot of buzz in the community about folks

that are looking forward to coming out, seeing the movie, and singing along to all those very well-known classics.

Next slide, please.

And then lastly, I just want to share with everyone,

although these activities are in August, both of them have been sold out. So our annual MPK Night at Dodger Stadium, which is on August the 5th versus the Padres, and also the Hollywood Bowl trip on August the 27th have been sold out.

So we're very excited about that.

Over 100 tickets for each of those activities, they are sold out.

But next slide, please.

For those residents that are always looking for things that are fun and interesting to do, I do encourage you to follow us on social media at Monterey Park Rec.

That's where we post all of our upcoming activities and events

And so it's a good way to stay up to date on what's going on in the city and within the recreation department

So you can come out and have a good time. Thank you

Okay, thank you much up council members any questions Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay next step presentation by our library

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Honorable Council Members. My name is Deborah Niblick, and I am a senior librarian for the Monterey Park-Breggemeyer Library. I am here tonight to share with you the photo exhibition currently housed at the library entitled Through the Lens, An Asian American Experience in 2021, and to invite you and the public to attend our upcoming reception. Sponsored by East West Bank, Through the Lens and Asian American Experience in 2021 is a project co-organized by the Press Photographers Association of Greater Los Angeles and the Chinese Culture Development Center The exhibition features more than 20 photographs by 10 leading Los Angeles photojournalists These photographs provide a panoramic view of 15 anti-Asian discrimination rallies and commemorative events throughout the greater Los Angeles area from February to June 2021. In response to hate crimes against the AAPI Society, people of all ethnicities participated in these events and used banners and signs to speak out their words, which is to love, not to hate, to unite, and not to divide. On Saturday, July 30th at 2 p.m. in the Friends Room, the library will host a reception welcoming the photojournalists who captured the movement who will then discuss their experience and what this project means to them. Attendees will have the opportunity to view photographs, additional photographs not displayed in the library,

and to speak with the photojournalists. I want to extend an invitation to everyone in council chambers tonight to stop by the library to view these incredible photos. Thank you so much for this opportunity to discuss the exhibit and hope to see everyone at the library.

Thank you so very much. Questions, council members? Okay, thank you very much. Council I also see that we have a guest here tonight. We have our state senator, Senator Susan Rubio, and perfect timing because we're still in communication. So, Senator, please come forward and welcome to tonight's council meeting.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone. Good evening, council members, and of course... County County . us. It was really important for me to stop by and say hello. It's been a little while, and I know the pandemic has separated us quite a bit, and now that I'm able to stop by and say hello, I wanted to.

As you know, our lines are changing in terms of districts, and there's a big possibility. I may not represent Monterey Park, which I'm very sad about, but it's not official yet. It's really difficult, complicated to explain, but eventually after the election in November, we'll know if I will continue to represent Monterey Park, and that's because your district may not have a

representative until 2024, so I may be assigned Monterey Park. So until further notice, I will

continue to represent you, but real quickly, I just wanted to go over some of the items that we've been working on in the legislature, and again, just wanted to reiterate what an honor it's been for me to represent you and get to know you and the community. So I see that we have the

presentation up there. I really just wanted to share one of the biggest, you know, I would say, you know, the pride of what I've done here in the Singero Valley. As you know, I was a former

council member myself. I was on the dais for 13 years, and one of my biggest frustrations was when

we had ideas. We had great projects, but we didn't have any funding to get it done. So in 2019,

I passed 751, the bill, SP 751, which created the housing trust with the COG. And in 2020, I created the board that would handle the financing for the COG. And so in 2019, I brought $6 million.

In 2020, I brought $20 million. And this year, I'm happy to report that I was able to secure $30 million. Now, I do know that Monterey Park is still not part of the COG, and only because, you know, I get to see the umbrella of all the wonderful things that are happening because of that funding. According to the report, they built approximately 500 homes at this time,

many different cities from Pomona to Claremont to Montebello. So we're building housing for the homeless and other low-income housing for families.

And so, again, I would encourage you, if you have an opportunity, it's just a great way to leverage funding that's there. $50 million that I brought is not small, and it's going to be there for a little while. So if you have any projects that you're working on, it's a great way to partner and be able

to get that gap funding. So I would encourage you to just look into it and see if that's a possibility for your city. And so currently we have 22 cities already that are part of the COG. So just so you know, it keeps growing.

And so, I'm sorry, not the COG. It's the San Giro Valley Regional Housing Trust that is being housed with the COG. Can we go to the next slide, please? And that's just an example of some of the funding that I've been trying to secure for our region. Again, I have to keep reiterating my frustrations as a council member.

So as a state senator, of course, I wanted to be able to help each and every city as much as I could.

And so I did bring, so far, $63 million. And it's just been different cities, different projects. But I do know that there's a nonprofit organization here in your city. It's Inner Circle Children's Advocacy, which provides support to children that have been either abused or in danger.

danger, and so I was able to secure $3 million for them to stay at least open for the next three to five years. They were struggling, and so once again, that's here in your city.

And I also wanted to share that just in general, I've been bringing, I think it was last year,

$12 million for open space for parks. Right now we're building one in Baldwin Park, one in La Puente. I also brought $12 million, which will help mitigate some of the wildfires that we're

experiencing and families can secure grants to retrofit, make sure that they have defensible

space so they're able to be a little safer when it comes to the wildfires. We know the weather

is getting worse and it's not going to get any better. So my hope is that families take advantage of that. And can we go to the next slide please? I'm trying to go in an expeditious way because I

know how our residents are eager to get back to the work of the city council. But these are some

of the things that we're struggling with currently protecting women's reproductive rights, which we know we've heard a lot about, and the California legislature has been very in the forefront of trying to ensure that women have access to health care. We've also been able to expand Medi-Cal access to Californians. There was a group that didn't qualify. Now all Californians

do qualify. We've also been investing a lot in the health care space in terms of workforce and

recruitment. During the COVID pandemic, we've had a very difficult time retaining some of our

wonderful healthcare workers because it's been a very difficult thing to do during the pandemic. So we're investing in trying to ensure that we put funding to incentivize them to stay and to

bring new people into the workforce. And something that I'm very passionate about, can we go to the next slide? You know, as you all know, I've been a teacher for 17 years. I continue to be a teacher

on leave, and one of my greatest joys is to step into classrooms. Today I was in three classrooms,

which was really exciting for me, and we were able to invest this year $128 billion, which is record-setting in terms of investments. We've been able to give schools for infrastructure,

and there's a lot of programs that we're working on. Now we have invested also in free college,

the first two years of college, which is something that some of our low-income families, communities have always struggled with, myself included, when I was young. And so now our youth has that ability to be able to go to college and not have to worry about the tuition. Can we go to the next one? And lastly, I will say about education as well.

As a teacher, I remember that my students used to always come to my class hungry.

And they used to always say, I can't think, Ms. Rupio. I haven't had anything to eat. So that's very personal to me.

And so for the first time ever, we have universal meals for our students.

So anybody that goes to school can have a meal, which is, I think, very important as Californians that we take care of our kids. So I will leave it at that. Just wanted to come and say hi really quickly.

I try to rush so I don't take too much of your time. But again, thank you for the honor and privilege of representing you and getting to know you.

And I'll continue to be here to support you. I'm not going anywhere, as I stated.

You will not officially have a senator until 2024, which is unfortunate.

But, again, I've been told that I may be able to keep Monterey Park, so we'll know until after the election.

So thank you, and thank you to everyone listening at home. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much, Senator, for coming to us, and your very comprehensive presentation.

Colleagues, any comments? Oh, Commissioner Chan, you've got the mic up. Yes. Thank you, Senator, for coming to our city, which is great. and like your presentation. But I want to talk to you one thing, but we can talk in more detail. It's because of the swimming pool that we have right behind us. It was beyond repair, and it was closed. And we've been applying grants and funds from the state and county, and the usual answer is that we have 13, 14 parks in the city, and they need to give the funding to the city that's not as many parks. So we are penalized by doing a great job to the residents. So I just want to let you know about it. And we are still, the residents and the swimmers and students, they are still looking to repair this park because it's a 50-meter Olympic-sized pool. And there's not that many around in this area. So I would like to personally and also with the council and all the residents to ask you to give us some assistance in putting in some fundings for the pool. Thank you.

Council Member Chen will definitely sit down and talk about it. I'd like to hear in more detail and see how I can support you. I will definitely try. Thank you, Senator. Anyone else? Oh, yes. Council Member Yu, you have the mic up.

Yeah, Senator, I wanted to. Really happy to see you.

and thank you so much for your effort, especially you're big into women's rights and homelessness. So hopefully you will continue to represent us and let us know if anything that we can do. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you.

And I don't have time, but I have passed about 10 pieces of legislation as it pertains to domestic violence, and it's a long, extensive list. And when I have time personally, I'll share with each and every one of you. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator. Any other comments or questions? Yeah. Okay.

Sure. Well, again, thank you very much for coming tonight, Senator. I think all of us appreciate that you have been such a steadfast leader and hard worker for our community. And the sentiments of my colleagues, I hope that you do remain our senator for the foreseeable future.

I would love that. I would really love that.

And for your legislation as well, or any of your projects, please let us know, and this community know how we can help you in your efforts as well.

Thank you. And before I leave, I just want to thank our public safety and all your police officers who've also been really hard at work

during the pandemic and all the other issues that we face.

And, of course, I want to just reiterate what I thought I heard here.

We need to stop API hate, and I've been also in the forefront of trying to support as much as we can,

and we need to do this together. So thank you, and have a good evening.

Have a good evening. Thank you.

Okay, let's see.

Continue on the agenda. Let's see. Presentation, none.

Old business, none.

Consent calendar items number 3A to 3H. Council members are staffed.

Any items to be pulled?

As well as clerk, if we have any public comment requests for any of the items.

Just Mr. Leon, Joseph Leon.

okay okay one request 3b okay okay so one request for 3b are by treasurer

staff yes yes we like to put 3d 3d and 3 e 3 e okay staff any items hearing none

Okay, so we will be pulling item 3B, 3D, 3E. May I have a motion to pass the remaining item on the consent calendar, please?

So move.

Second.

Moved by Councilman Lang, seconded by Councilman Chan.

Members, please vote.

Votes unanimous. Motion carries.

Thanks so much.

Thank you very much.

First item for discussion, item 3B, monthly investment report June 2022.

And as our clerk has told a moment ago, we have a comment by our esteemed City Treasurer,

Mr. Joseph Leon. Thank you, Mayor, Councilmembers, and of course, residents of Monterey Park, Joseph Leon, City Treasurer. First, I'd like to start with my deepest consolation to the Soroso family, because they're lost. Very sad. I just want to make a quick update on investment reports and it's on the agenda for tonight. Since the last council meeting and after the current investment report was printed out and given to the council,

the city received approximately $7 million, which our director of management services, Martha Garcia, put temporary into LEIF because she had to move the money then to pass some of the pension funds that the city owes. So the current investment report that you have is not accurate. It's more accurate than right now, we have $43 million in the county pool and approximately $40 million in life. So just an update. It's not reflected, so it's not correct on the investment report that you have in your agenda.

It's been changed because money was moved since then. So just a quick update.

Also since our last meeting, we had an investment committee meeting and we discussed our city's investment policy, which was discussed earlier by the council, they wanted an update on our investment policy but we do have an annual investment policy presentation in August every year so we decided to wait until August to make the presentation of Council in the meantime we all agreed that we want to retain Michael Bush which all of you know he's helped us the city before and I also worked with him as a city treasurer to help us to review the city's investment policy for any recommendations or changes and then we'll meet with him prior to the presentation and then at that time he'll be here and so will I to mention and answer any questions. And that's it. Any questions or anything I can

answer? Thank you so much. Thank you Mr. President. Colleagues, questions?

Catherine, do you have the mic? Yeah, actually I wanted to say yeah thank you so much. You have done a good job and so this is something that as you may have

actually remember the two money market funds are at about 0.2 percent before but now as you can see on our report it is at 0.94 percent almost one percent and the other one is at 0.69 percent

so because of the interest rate has increased dramatically so I would like to point out that all the city purchase to all of you I did not say anything last time when you guys decided to buy more CD. But now I would like to show all of you that please look at maybe the CD page on page 24, which is the investment reports that start from those which purchased in 2022. So on January 2022, we purchased a few two-year CD, which only pay about 0.7% to 1.25%. Now even money market is over, is more than them, is at 0.94. But we have to lock two years to get the 0.7%. So when you look closer to now in May, which is the last one, the CD purchased, May 2022, you also purchased a two-year CD, which paid 2.65%. So it's a big difference only a few months apart. The interest rate is still going up.

And yes, every time we purchase, if you notice, we haven't purchased a CD in a little while because rates are going up, waiting for the rates to kind of stabilize. But, you know, it's also hindsight because we don't know what the rate's going to be. I mean, we all realize the rates are going up, but should we wait a year before we buy another CD to make sure it's going to, you know, stop? Or do we continue investing in CDs now at the highest possible rate that's being offered?

and as far as I discussed this with our with Garcia and we still have the funds that we can use and we can and most CDs are for at least two years there is no

I haven't seen you see these are reasonable for six months to a year the

most reasonable is around three years for that for the higher returns I mean and I

know the ones we bought in the past of course the rates are less than there have been offered now because rates are going up and it's always gonna change you know I mean, now the way the economy is, rates are increasing. That's why we haven't bought any in July. But we saw some today that are a little higher. So the question is, do we wait? Or do we purchase every now and then a CD that's, you know, the best return we can get at the time?

But you're right. We're looking at the best CDs that we can purchase at the time, but we're not buying as many. If you notice, we haven't purchased a few in a while because rates are fluctuating. just kind of you know give a little bit comments from what you have said my point is when interest rate is going up try not to lock up for a long time and so three to six months you know cd that you can renew automatically for three to six months but then the interest rate is going up that means you will actually get a lot better rate after like a few months. But let's say if you say, yeah, I mean, you should invest in CD. I'm not saying that you should not, but just lock up in a shorter time when interest rate going up. Then when interest rate is actually at high, then you can lock up longer. Thank you.

Thank you, and thank you for always sharing your expertise. Council Member Yu. Colleagues, any other comments or questions? Hearing none. Okay. Yes, Mayor. I'm sorry, but

Mayor, Council Members, just for clarity, The statement that was made that the investment report is incorrect, it is correct as of the photo, as of when it was posted for June 30th. The $7 million that came in after that point will reflect in the next investment report. So just for clarity.

Correct. And actually, I don't think I mentioned it was incorrect. I just thought it was, it's not current because it has changed. So I was just giving you an update. No, the current, the investment you have, the report you have was correct when it was presented, but funds have since been moved. That's when it comes to know the current status. So it's not incorrect. It is correct, what you have. It's just been changed. It's always changing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

And thank you, staff, as well, for clarifying as well.

Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone.

Okay.

So 3B, so recommended receiving FIO and take additional steps.

Do we need to make a motion pass or is it a receiving file?

A motion.

You can just take it and receive it.

Okay, take it and receive it. Okay, then we will accept this receiving file.

Thank you again very much.

Okay, item 3D, Cannabis Tax Fund Grant Program, CTFGP,

funding fiscal year 2022 to 2023 resolution.

Staff report or staff report, yes.

Council Member? Yes. Okay.

Captain Reese will do the presentation for the staff report.

Thank you, Captain Reese. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Council Members. You looked at this at a previous meeting, and the CHP required a resolution. That's why I'm back in front of you.

It's acceptance of a grant from the California Highway Patrol to assist with driving out of the influence as it relates to marijuana

and education, that's the main purpose of the grant

is to increase our enforcement capability to reduce accidents and increase our ability to impact drivers that are under the influence of marijuana.

Okay, great.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Captain Weeks. Councilman Chan, you have the mic?

Yes, thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Captain Weiss, for the presentation. and I just want to clarify because the topic, the heading is cannabis tax. So I just want to make it clear to all the residents, it's not that the city is changing the position on the cannabis situation. And I would like to ask the deputy city attorney to confirm my statement.

is that in our book, the city does not allow any selling, buying, or anything, or growing in the city.

So that's, am I making the right assessment?

Thank you, Council Member Chen. Yes, you're absolutely correct. The action before the council would in no way alter the ban on commercial cannabis activities in Municipal Code Chapter 6.35. So that would remain unchanged.

Right. But I just want to let the residents know that although it is titled Cannabis Tax Fund Grant,

yes, the money may be coming from the cannabis receipts or profits or whatever or taxes, but it's not that the city is allowing any cannabis operation in the city.

And this is only to do with the traffic like Captain, in your report. So this is where the traffic is concerned, but nothing to do with the cannabis. I just want to make sure that everyone understands this point.

Yeah, that's correct. This is part of Proposition 64. When it was passed, there was a section of 64 that allocated funds for law enforcement agencies to do enforcement and education for their officers. It has nothing to do with the sales of marijuana in the city of Monterey Park. Right.

Thank you for the clarify this point.

Thank you so much.

Yes, thank you. Councillor Chipliang, you have the mic? Yeah, thank you. I just want to get some clarity on this. I know that even though, and maybe the city attorney or deputy city attorney can address this, it's my understanding that given that we are explicitly prohibiting cannabis, commercial cannabis in our city, there were some laws that were passed by the state that alLod for delivery services to take place within the city regardless of whether or not a city has a prohibition or not. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

So that continues regardless of whether or not we have banned it or not?

That is correct.

Now, I just want to verify because I remember in some of the provisions in Prop 64 that they stated, and I don't know if there's some exceptions here, but they stated that cities that explicitly prohibited any commercial cannabis in their cities could not receive funding that came from the cannabis industry. Is that still the same, or is there something different with this specific provision?

What I know as far as this tranche of funds is that it's facilitated through the California Department of Highway Patrol. So I believe through their due diligence assessment of applicants, local jurisdictions, local law enforcement agencies like the Monterey Park Police Department, they would be eligible and we are eligible and have been awarded the funds, which would provide about $83,000 for enforcement. So I think the logic there is that despite having a prohibition within the jurisdiction, we're still confronted with impaired drivers and feel the effects of public safety hazards.

Okay. So it appears that this is coming through the California Highway Patrol, right, and not coming from cannabis control or anybody like that, right? So that's probably how or it's probably a provision that allows for that type of funding for those type of services and support. Okay. Yeah. I just wanted clarity on that because I remember reading some provisions saying that if cities were explicitly prohibitive, that they would not be able to get any of the benefit of the tax revenues that were generated by Canada. So thank you.

Thank you very much. Any further comments or questions? Okay, hearing none.

Thank you so much for that presentation. We do have the item before us to adopt as a resolution.

May I have a motion, please?

I'd like to move to adopt 3D.

Moved by Councilman Chan. May I have a second, please? Second.

Second by Councilman Yu.

Hearing no further comments or questions, members please vote.

Votes unanimous. Motion carries.

Thank you, Clerk.

Item 3E, State Homeland Security Program. A word of contract to Michael T. Little of Counter Risk Incorporated for the Regional Training Group RTG Intelligence Chief Position.

Staff report. Good evening, Chief.

Hey, Mayor and members of the Council. Before you tonight is an item to execute a one-year agreement with the potential to extend for an additional two years with Michael T. Little of Counter Risk Incorporated to provide and coordinate effective intelligence sharing between the Los Angeles Area Fire Service agencies and the intelligence, counterterrorism, and homeland security stakeholders for an amount of $606,720. The intel position has been prioritized by the Urban Area Security Initiative as well as the State Homeland Security Grant Program approval authority since 2017 to ensure that our region's firefighters have the best intelligence they can receive regarding threats and emergency tactics. The position helps them be more effective in service to their communities, schools, businesses and places of worship. The host city Monterey Park benefits by having a closer relationship with public safety information and intelligence. This intelligence chief position is a full-time position that has an office at the Joint Regional Intelligence Center, which is the region's fusion center, but travels to the various cities to work with and deliver trainings to fire and paramedic personnel, emergency managers, and other key city staff. Monterey Park will benefit greatly by hosting the position, but most importantly, it's cost neutral to the city, fully covered by the Homeland Security grant. That concludes my report and I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have as well as I have Mike Little on the line to answer any questions that I can answer on his behalf.

Thank you, Chief Halleck. Council members, any comments or questions? Oh yes, Council Member Chan, you have the mic.

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chief, for the presentation. Just because of the title, so that's why I want to put this item to have more understanding. And first of all, are we under any danger of a terrorist attack or are we a target for anything like that?

Well, you know what, I have Chief Little on the line. I think he's the expert that can speak to that. So if you don't mind, I'd have him answer that. Sure.

Yes, thank you very much. Regarding are we under any specific threat, specifically the city of Monterey Park? of course there's no current intelligence that speaks to a threat that's in motion or actors

that are planning to attack some location however the threat environment is extremely fluid right

now we're very concerned about what's taking place with all sort of violent extremism you see what's taking place with schools also hospitals and specifically government locations that are representative of the government that is including elected officials. And so this is something

that we see taking place across the country. It's important that our first responders receive the best information not only regarding these emerging threats, but how to better protect,

you know, our critical infrastructures in our communities, and that they really keep on the cutting edge of working unitedly with other members of the public safety community,

law enforcement and emergency management. So in spite of there not being a specific threat,

we have the posture that we have to keep a very high level of vigilance

and be looking out for what's coming around the corner so we can provide the best service and best protect our communities from threats as they emerge, irrespective of where they may actually take place. Okay, thank you, Mr. Little. And can I ask you, where is your headquarters? Where are you located? Yeah. We have 20-something cities that you're looking over? I'm sorry, sir. Absolutely. Yeah.

The Joint General Intelligence Center is located within the city of Norwalk on Imperial.

And it is a location that brings together representatives from various federal agencies,

law enforcement agencies throughout the region, as well as other representatives in the emergency

management realm, as well as public health.

And by bringing that gathering with people together, it allows for the sharing of information, maintaining a common operating picture of what's taking place in the region, and delivering

the best of services throughout the region. But I'm mobile as well. And so I've been to Monterey

Park numerous times. We've done training in Monterey Park, as well as other cities throughout the region. The host city has a certain privilege because there's a certain connectivity there. However, the regionally hosted positions, the objective is to ensure that we're bringing value to the region, essentially raising all boats. And so as we improve the response capacity within Monterey Park, we're also improving the services of not only the city but adjacent jurisdictions. So the offices in Norwalk, but our services are provided.

to assign some officers in your office or the police department to oversee this operation?

Well, you know, this position is a regional asset to the entire Los Angeles area. So through that connection, we do training on a regular basis through the fire department. And then I believe Chief Little has a connection with law enforcement. So to directly assign somebody, no, there is somebody that interacts within the realm of this intelligence position through the Los Angeles Area Fire Chiefs Association Regional Training Group. So it's an ongoing basis. It's not something that is new. Chief Little has been in this position since its inception in 2017. It's just a matter of us now hosting the grant from the previous subrecipient. So he's not new to the region. He's been well involved in this position for a number of years. So we have established relationships with him already.

Yeah, okay. Thank you. And I like the idea that this is all funded by the grants. and there's no funding by the city, which is great. And we have the added protection, which is good.

And another added benefit, if I can add real quickly, is as the host agency, it allows us opportunities through Chief Little to provide a tour of the Joint Regional Information Center. So we can set that up at some point for our council members to go and view and see what it's like firsthand within that. And I'm sure chief little would be more than happy to assist with setting that up

Sure, we'd love to uh take a tour and would like to meet mr Little's in the in the near future. Yes, thank you. I'll look forward to that

Thank you councilman chan um any other council members which may comment oh yes councilman land you have the mic

Yeah, thank you uh chief for the presentation. I just have um, uh just a little bit of follow-up question I understand basically what this item is about, but I would like to get some more elaboration in terms of when we talk about intelligence, counterterrorism, et cetera, what are the actual mechanics of what will be done? Are there going to be meetings? Are there going to be trainings? Are there going to be briefings? If so, how often, you know, just sort of the mechanics of what it is that will occur as a result of us entering into this contract.

I would say all of the above. And I'll let Chief Little speak to that. But definitely trainings. And maybe, Chief, you can refer to the most recent one at the Los Angeles Air Force Base with regards to what was provided to the region at that time.

Certainly. And when we talk training, the full spectrum. I actually offer a product that goes out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday that just addresses a broad range of issues, public health issues of concern, as well as, in many cases, crime threats. It would affect our firefighters, the issue with fentanyls, human trafficking, and so forth. So we want our folks to be aware of these things as they're moving three days a week. It was five days a week, but we're moving to a posture now where Tuesdays, Thursdays, there will be a cybersecurity document that goes out to our cities and, you know, the agencies and those that are stakeholders in that arena. Regarding presentations, I do those to a variety of audiences, both emergency management, public health, and others regarding a broad range of issues that I receive information on. I'm a member of the Department of Homeland Security, State, Local Intelligence Council, as well as the Director of National Intelligence, Law and Homeland Security Partners Board, and other boards that allow really cutting-edge information to come in that I then put into products that are shared with our local stakeholders. I work with the Disaster Management Area Coordinators, recently worked with Diana Manzano on a product that deals with assisting elected officials to provide service in the aftermath of active assailant sorts of events. So those are some of the things that take place. The event that Chief Halleck is referencing is one we did in coordination with Northcutt, as well as the L.A. Air Force Base regarding nuclear yield events. Heaven forbid something like that happened, but should there be a nuclear yield event in any part of the world with detectable fallout here, we need to have a plan. We didn't know how information will move. That was a program that I actually took the lead on, and we're going to continue down that path. We don't want to make everyone panic, but we certainly want to be leaning forward as threats such as even this emerge. So that's just a quick snapshot. But as new threats emerge, we're on the cutting edge with COVID. We're on the cutting edge with monkeypox. We're looking at all these threats that may have public safety implications in our community. We want to make sure that our first responders receive

the best of information. Thank you for that. That was exactly what I was looking for in terms of understanding the mechanics of it. Thank you, Chief, for working with them. And, These collaborations are good, I think, but to maximize that also through the process of working together, I'm sure issues and ideas will come up, and to be able to use this collaboration as an opportunity to maybe come up with some ways to do things better as you move forward with these endeavors. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Little, and thank you, Councilman Lange and colleagues.

Any other further comments, questions?

Hearing none. Okay. We have an item before us.

I'm ready to make the motion to approve 3E.

Second. Moved by Council Member Chan. Second by Council Member Liang.

Hearing no further comments or questions, members, please vote.

Can we be voting?

Okay. Please re-vote.

Both unanimous. Motion carries. Thank you.

Thank you, clerk.

Okay. Thank you very much. Moving on to public hearing, item 4, none. Then moving on to item 5, new business.

We have 5A, ballot proposition to pose a three-quarter sales tax for general municipal purposes.

Do we have a staff report?

I'm sorry.

Do we have a public comment, actually? Do we have a public comment? Yes, we do. Yes, please.

Natia Curry.

Good evening again. I support this ballot initiative to increase our sales tax from 9.5%

to 10 and a quarter. We desperately could use additional money

for our general fund. It's finesse made that Monterey Park would increase the sales tax

that would increase our income to 1.6 million of our general funds.

Please consider this, and we need the money. Thank you very much.

Do we have any further comments, requests? No further speakers. Okay, thank you.

clerk staff presentation please good evening mayor council members let me frame this item before i pass it over to our assistant city manager the community outreach team that will be speaking tonight and providing you the presentation have walked through the financial outlook and the future challenges of the last few months with the community and and i'd like to emphasize and they emphasize several key points. Help from the federal government with the ARPA funds will end, which is one-time funding. In 2023 budget, the ARPA funds were used to help us have a balanced budget. That will soon go away and we will no longer have that funding source. The marketplace revenues alLod us during the time of COVID to pay our bills and remain status quo for operations and service to the city. As a full-service city, calls for all services have increased and responding with less staff continues to occur. Repeatedly in our numerous community meetings from our chief of police and other first responders, there have been an increase in calls for medical emergencies crime, and also homelessness. These concerns were also echoed both in our forum of participants and in the opinion research conducted. I would like to introduce our Assistant City Manager Inez Alvarez and after the presentation by the team, they will hand it back for me for some closing comments and then shortly after that we can take questions or if uh council chooses uh you can uh listen to public comment but i think we've already taken care of that uh but inez

thank you good evening mr mayor and members of the city council um this item's presentation is actually going to be given by a team that has been working on this item actually since um late late 2021. So we've been working together on the potential of this item to come before you. So I will turn it over. Let me introduce our team tonight that we have with us. We have Martha Garcia, Director of Management Services, Diana Garcia, our city librarian, and we have two consultants that the city has hired to work with us. One is they were hired to work with us on community outreach and public opinion research. And we have with us tonight Richard Bernard. He's

with FM3. He's going to be joining us virtually. And also we have Rob Kerenke. He's with Grassroots Lab. And so I'm going to turn the presentation over to him now. Rob? Thank you, Inez. And thanks

members of the City Council and members of the public for joining us tonight. As Inez mentioned, we've been conducting community outreach really in earnest for the last six months. And I wanted to walk through some of the outlines of that outreach effort, as well as some of the feedback that we received. I want to lead off with thanks both to the Assistant City Manager as well as Martha and Diana, who you guys are going to hear from in a moment, but also to many members of the City staff, Chief Gordon, Chief Hollick, Captain Weiss, Robert Aguirre, and many others who helped us present in these meetings. They brought a lot of expertise, were able to answer a lot of the community's questions, and it was really a very robust effort. In total, we hosted a series of 18 meetings. The first few were virtual. I'll walk through them in a bit. But it was a very robust program, particularly for a city the size of Monterey Park. I've worked in a lot of cities and counties across the state. This is a very broad effort. As Inez mentioned, we had hundreds of participants across the meetings. Some were extraordinarily well-attended with 50, 60 participants. Others were more intimate with smaller participation. But overall, We were in every council district of the city, virtual events and in-person events. We also promoted these events in a variety of ways and really tried to utilize as much of the city's communications channels as we could. We advertised them in the Cascades newsletter, on the city's website, via social media, various different kinds of flyers, and we also distributed a mailer to every household in the city, and I think it went to all businesses as well. The setup of the meeting was to educate residents on the services that the city provides. Monterey Park is a full-service city. We really tried to draw out what the city does, the services it provides that differ from those that the county provides or the state, how all those services are funded, what the city's budget is comprised of, and what the forecast of those finances are over the coming years, and to try and engage the residents in a dialogue about their priorities and to walk through how the city is trying to meet those priorities and the challenges that it faces. This is an example of the mailer that we sent to every resident. It was in English, Spanish, and Chinese. It advertised the first round of our forums and invited folks to attend. There's a QR code on the mailer where they could actually view virtual events, recordings of the events, and also engage in a survey that we made available on the city's website and via other means. Also had a letter from City Manager Bo, who I neglected to mention at the beginning, was also a strong participant in these meetings and very essential in answering communities' questions. Go ahead. This is a listing of our meetings. The first five of them were virtual. The first in-person meeting we actually had in this room, it was a meeting of the city's commissioners. It was a joint commissioner meeting. From there, we went throughout the city to community centers, to elementary schools, the library. We responded to invitations that were sent from community groups that we could go present at. And we had a fairly standard presentation, as I highlighted, that talked through the city's budget, its services, but then always offered an opportunity for residents to give input. And I'm going to walk through some of the input that we received in the latter forums, where we had an exercise that people could participate in, where they actually got to allocate like a monopoly money resources. We gave them all $6, so to speak, and they could allocate it across 12 different priorities. And in the earlier events, we also had a survey, a more formal survey that Diana will walk through. Just some photographs. Again, there were 18 of these meetings. We gave just a few photographs here to show you the kind of participation.

You can see Captain Weiss, I think, is featured in both of those.

I'm going to keep going here. If you want to go to the next slide.

Again, there were a number of ways that we solicited feedback from the community.

Richard Bernard from FM3 is going to talk about a scientific survey that was done. I mentioned that there was also an online...

At the conclusion of our meeting, we had posters across the back room at all of these meetings, and they could go along and they could allocate dollars to these various resources. Here's what we found. The number one issue that the community was telling us was a priority to them was preventing theft and property crimes. That was folLod by a number of issues that were sort of close together in priority, Maintaining 911 emergency response services, protecting local water and upgrading the city's water treatment plant. There's an other category that included things like the Olympic-sized swimming pool, which I believe was mentioned earlier in the meeting, dog park, fiber optic internet, various kinds of infrastructure, economic development, attracting different kinds of supermarkets. It was a bit of a catch-all bucket. Other issues that were listed as a priority were keeping public areas safe and clean, addressing homelessness, retaining and attracting local businesses and jobs, and then in kind of the Lor tier, while still a priority, maintaining programs for seniors, maintaining library services for youth, upgrading life-saving emergency rescue equipment, improving the city's cyber security, and protecting neighborhoods from hillside fires.

Some of the priorities that were expressed in the forums verbally when we would ask for questions. Among that was amenities that are dilapidated. And again, the community pool, it was brought up repeatedly in meetings.

And there were some very dedicated advocates for that one particular amenity.

Many residents discussed streets, the state of the streets and roads and potholes. Homeless issues came up, I think, in virtually every meeting.

And Chief Gordon and Captain Weiss were always very good in addressing those issues with the community.

Many residents brought up vacant properties and storefronts. many had questions about specific corners or shopping centers in their neighborhood.

Better internet came up very frequently. And then, as I mentioned earlier,

also attracting new kinds of businesses to the city was expressed as a priority.

Somewhat different from the questions we received, but were concerns because we were walking residents through the budget, through the potential for the need for different revenue. and some of the questions that arose out of that.

Inflation and recession concerns. And I will note that this was an issue that evolved, that was not mentioned in the earlier part of our work, but did as it became a greater part of the news cycle, was mentioned more often in the latter parts.

Economic development and what is the city's plan, what is its engagement plan to attract new businesses, and what is already kind of on the horizon. The Marketplace Center was often mentioned, and there was a lot of discussion around that and questions about how that was playing out. Residents seem to be very well aware of the fact that the city has a tax split with Montebello, with Costco and so forth,

and they asked how any new revenues would be split or what's the status of that split now. And we also educated residents on the relative rate of existing tax between Monterey Park and other cities, and that engendered a discussion, too, about the relative advantages of that versus the revenues brought in. I'm going to hand it off to Diana now, and she's going to talk about another little bit more formal survey that we engaged in.

Thank you. As Rob alluded to, in addition to the exercise that we did in the community forums, we also distributed a community priority survey. And so this survey was distributed to residents in a variety of means.

We had it available in paper copies at our city facilities as well as at the meetings.

And we also had it available online to complete. And it was available, of course, in our three community languages, English, Spanish, and Chinese.

In total, we had 445 responses from the community that we collected between the months of March and June of 2022.

So these are the results of the survey. We had 12 priorities that we asked our residents to rank in order of importance. So they could rank it between 1 and 4, 1 being a low priority, 2 being medium, 3 being high, and 4 being very high priority. These are the same priorities that we had asked our residents to vote for in our community forums and the later community forums.

As you can see from the results of this survey, our residents ranked all of these services as high or very high priorities for them in Monterey Park.

So we've got up at the top echoing the results of the in-person exercise, preventing thefts and property crimes, protecting local drinking water, keeping public areas safe and clean, and maintaining 911 emergency response systems.

And then grouped below that, but still as a high priority, retaining and attracting local businesses and jobs,

upgrading life-saving emergency rescue equipment for our paramedics and first responders, addressing homelessness, improving cybersecurity, protecting our neighborhoods from hillside fires, maintaining library services, and maintaining programs for our seniors.

We also included a question at the end where they could give us additional feedback in addition to voting for their priorities. And some of the feedback that we received, we actually received a lot of comments, probably about 200, with lots of different priorities for residents.

But some of those included affordable housing, dog park, speed limits on our local streets, speed bumps, improving that safety. Traffic was an issue that came up often.

Climate change, our pools in the community,

community programs and events, improving quality of life, parks and playgrounds, internet service and walkability

were some of the themes that we saw brought up over and over again in those comments.

That's the end of my portion, and I'm going to pass it on to Richard Bernard from FM3, who's joining us virtually.

Thank you very much. Next slide. So I'm here to talk about the statistically valid quantitative survey that we conducted. This is a follow-up survey, a tracking survey from the baseline survey that you may recall I presented earlier in the year, last year. We conducted the survey between May 10th and the 25th of this year. It was a dual mode survey, which means a portion of the respondents were randomly chosen to conduct the survey online and a random portion were chosen to conduct it on the telephone. We completed a random sample of 440 City of Monterey Park voters who are likely to vote in a November 2022 election based on their past voter history or if they've recently registered to vote.

and the margin of error for the entire sample is plus or minus 5.2%.

We contacted folks by telephone, emails, and text invitations, and of course we offered the survey in English, Chinese, and Spanish. And if you're very quick and notice something doesn't quite equal 100%, I blame that entirely on rounding error. Next slide. We began the survey as we did the previous survey. Next slide. asking about basically the mood of the electorate.

We wanted to know if they generally thought things were headed in the right direction in the city and subsequently their neighborhoods, or if they thought things were off on the wrong track. The dark green is the right direction, the blue is the wrong track, and the brighter green is the folks who volunteered they didn't know.

You'll notice that we have the May 2022 results, which is the current survey, and then the November 2021 results, which was the baseline survey. What's striking to me here, you could see a slight majority say that things in the city are headed in the right direction

and in their neighborhoods a little slightly more mid-50s in terms of right direction in their neighborhood.

What's striking to me here is that in spite of the fact that we've had multiple months of 40-year high cost of living index and very high gas prices, and I'm seeing in a lot of cities where their baseline survey has declined, their tracking survey in terms of right direction has declined since their baseline survey, yours has been very resilient and consistent across surveys. with at least a majority saying things are headed in the right direction.

That tells me that this is a well-run city and that generally people are happy in spite of the fact that economically we're experiencing some tough times.

Next slide, please. And we also, before we get into the ballot question,

wanted to get a sense conceptually if they even really think you need additional funds

to provide the level of city services that residents in the city need and want. On the left-hand side are the November 2021 numbers, where 66% said there was a great or some need for additional funds.

So there is an understanding that there is need for funds.

In May 2022, there's an increase of six points, but just slightly above the margin of error in the perception of a great or some need. So even though we're about to show you a question about sales tax and whether people would support it or not, you start at the benefit of people disproportionately perceiving that additional funds are needed for the city.

Next slide, please. And now in the following slide, please, I'd like to show you the placeholder ballot question we asked.

legally are only alLod a 75-year ballot title.

In summary, here we read this to respondents on the phone or they read it if they were online.

And effectively, we were asking if they would support a three-quarter cent transaction and use tax, commonly known as the sales tax, generating approximately $6 million annually. Now, it's a 50-plus-1 measure that the survey is considering. So legally, you're not alLod to promise where the money would go, but you can provide illustrative examples to show what traditionally general fund money is used for.

The choices of services that are included here, such as 911, emergency safety response,

conducting neighborhood park police patrols, helping prevent thefts and property crimes, and the like,

are items that your residents, your voters,

indicated in the baseline survey, which were priorities to them, and many of them showed up in the previous research

that the previous speakers indicated. Next slide, please.

So we read this to them if they were on the phone or they read it online, and we said, if there were an election today, would you vote yes in favor or no to oppose? If everyone could just bear with me and look at the right-hand side That's the May 2022 numbers. I'll explain the results. So if they said they would vote yes in favor, we ask them, is that definitely or probably yes? Because we want to know the intensity of support. And if they said they would vote no, we ask them, is that definitely or probably no? Because we want to know the intensity of the opposition, i.e., the percentage you say definitely no. And if they were undecided, we push them a little. We said, well, would you vote yes? Would you lean yes or would you lean no? If they said they would lean yes, we put them in the yes camp. If they said they'd lean no, we put them in the no camp. And then in the case of the May 2022 survey, on the initial vote, 5% said they were undecided and needed to know more. So on that initial vote, just hearing or reading that ballot summary that I just showed you, 63% said they would vote yes, 32% said they would vote no, and 5% were undecided. If you can compare it to the left-hand side now in November 2021, when we asked them that ballot question, it's virtually no different statistically over time.

So in spite of the fact, you know, we're going through 40 years, highest cost of living in 40 years, as well as the factors like gas prices and concerns about recession.

This measure, at least with just hearing that ballot summary, is very resilient and continues to receive at least 6 in 10 saying yes.

and bearing in mind that the margin of error is plus or minus 5.2,

you're way above that margin of error in terms of support.

Next slide, please.

I thought it would be important because I am presenting to the city council that you have a sense of where the level of support is in your city. This slide looks at the level of support on the initial vote by city council district.

The green bar, the folks who said definitely probably or lean no on the initial vote, The blue bar are the folks who said definitely, probably, sorry, lean yes. The green vote is total yes. The blue bar are the total no, definitely, probably, or lean no, and the gray are the pure undecided.

And then you could see each city council district there.

And the percentages underneath those numbers in city council district are the percentages we anticipate that will make up of a likely November 2022 electorate. And as you can see, looking at the green bar across city council districts, there is support across the city with the strongest support being in city council district three. However, every one of these city council districts, in spite of the larger margin of error, support exceeds opposition by a considerable amount.

Next slide, please.

And so now in this part of this presentation, I wanted to...

support. So we had a number of statements that we presented, and we randomly presented it to the respondents. And after each one, we asked them if it would make them more inclined to vote yes on the measure. If they said it would make them more inclined, we asked them if it's much more inclined, which is the green, or somewhat more inclined, which is the blue. And I've aggregated the total more inclined on the right-hand side. You'll notice we asked similar questions to the 2021 survey, and you could see, again, fairly strong resiliency, consistency across the surveys. Now, talking about the substance, the words in the parentheses, quality of life, local control, accountability, and in a moment, but not now, the words crime, streets, and water, are simply for us in our presentation. We did not read it to them, nor did they read it if they were online, but it gives you a sense of what the statement was about. Among the lead statements, of which you have many, which tells me you have a really compelling story to tell because voters in your

city are very persuaded by much of your story. Among the top themes that voters reacted positively

to is the fact that this measure will help them maintain the quality of life in terms of services that they expect in the city, making the city a better place to live, work, and raise a family. Local control was very important. I know the council knows this, but perhaps at the time many of your voters don't know that, that right now L.A. County collects $10 million from the last three sales taxes from Monterey Park, but only receives $0.16 for every dollar in return. All this money would be collected and kept locally for local decision makers such as you to decide how the money is spent because you have a better sense of what the issues are in your community. And of course, accountability is very important. People don't vote for a measure because there's accountability, but they're inclined to vote against a measure if there isn't accountability. And so ensuring that there's strict accountability in this measure goes a long way in terms of level of support. Next slide. We also presented some statistics about crime in the city, the quality of your streets, of which one-third of the streets have been rated as fair, poor, very poor, and the fact that the money could be used to help local water supplies. all of those messages strongly impact people's views about supporting the measure. Next slide, please. So after we simulate education, we re-asked that ballot question that I showed you earlier. On the left-hand side was that initial vote that you saw that I went through. After just seeing ballot summary, it was 63% yes, 32% no, 5% undecided. And then after education, basically telling your story in a non-advocacy way. Support goes up five points to 68%. No drops from 32 to 25, so seven-point drop. And knowing that the margin of error is plus or minus 5.2 indicates that you're above that margin of error and that with education, this measure could be viable. Next slide. These are my conclusion slides. Next slide. So Monterey Park voters overall feel very positive about the direction of the city. Comparatively to many other cities where the view of right direction is below 50%, you are not there. and there's a consistency in spite of the fact that we've been experiencing many months of high gas prices and high CPIs. Most continue to think the city has significant need for funding. As a matter of fact, 72%, close to three in every four, said there's a greater some need. More than six in 10 voters would approve a three-quarter cent sales tax measure presented with the 75-word ballot label that I presented to you. Monterey Park's voters responded strongly to statements, particularly about providing funding to maintain the high quality of life in the city and that funds must be used locally rather than taken by the county or other jurisdictions, and that that would include strong accountability. In sum, these findings suggest that the potential ballot measure is viable at this point in November 2022, as voters regarded an appropriate way to fund local services that ensure their quality of life and community safety. Of course, I don't have a crystal ball and I don't know what we'll have in five months in terms of all this economic, the economic situation. But nonetheless, at least at this point in our juncture, it's clear to me that this measure is resilient and there is support in the city. And I'll pass it back to the colleagues.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members.

So I'll be speaking about the budget needs and concerns.

Next slide, please.

So the city's fiscal year 22-23 operating budget is $123.6 million.

And of that, about two-thirds is from dedicated funds. Dedicated funds means funds, for example, water, sewer, gas tax.

Those are funds that are received by the city but must be spent on specific purposes.

The about 50.5 million of the 123.6 million is from general fund.

And that is that that those that revenue is used to fund core services for the city.

Next slide, please.

So we're going to talk a little bit about the 50.5 million of the 50.5 million, about 58 percent is for public safety. and that includes police, fire, emergency medical response, and anything related to public safety.

About 14% is for public works and public improvements, capital improvements, and that includes, you know, for assistance for roads, streets, piping, and other items like that. And the remaining 28% is for other items such as parks, recreation, the library, city planning, and administration.

Next slide, please.

So one of the questions that we were asked when we were out in the community was, what about grants? Can grants provide more, can grants supplement the general fund a little bit more? in general we get about three percent of our operational budget is generally uh from grants

and in the past 12 months we've received these grants which includes 268 000 for transportation

traffic safety and streets it includes 988 000 for community development it includes 86 000 for

recycling 80,000 for literacy and in the span of five years we've received

11 million dollars for water we've also went out and submitted applications for

about 200,000 more in grants but those grants were denied next slide please a

little bit I want to talk about our revenues versus our expenditures so the slide that you have before you this shows that the city anticipates

expenditures will begin to exceed its anticipated revenues beginning in fiscal year 2324. In fiscal

year 2223, when it was adopted, it was adopted as a balanced budget, meaning a balanced budget

means that expenditures are expected to be equal or less than anticipated revenues. The City was

able to present a balanced budget for this fiscal year because the ARPA funds were used to supplement

the general fund. ARPA funds are one-time funds and must be used by the year 2024.

If a sales tax measure were to pass, it would take effect no later than July of 2023 and

would allow the city to continue to present a balanced budget with no impact to city services or city reserves. And I'm done with my presentation. I'll pass it on to our city manager.

uh mayor council uh i'd like to you know thank the community outreach team they've worked extremely

hard to get the word out we've spent numerous nights and weekends getting the word out

team thank you very much for working so hard to get us to where we're at right now

you you saw in the presentation that there were many priorities and some of the priorities we probably realized but we didn't really realize that it was so high the priorities continue to increase and our capacity to deliver has been the same what we're looking to do is increase our capacity to meet some of those priorities

and also expectations by the community you heard from our management services director martha garcia we're facing some increased pressures on our reserves it's estimated that 50

57 percent of the people that shop here in monterey park are from outside shoppers

with all of these issues many of which are not new to you or unique to monterey park the most important question is why now we believe the physical case is increasingly clear by our presentation for the reasons that I described and also the information presented to you we also believe the timing is increasingly critical many cities have raised their taxes in recent years because they face the similar challenges, but also the recognition that state and county, school, and even special districts may compete for sales tax dollars. For example, L.A. County collects approximately from Monterey Park $7.000,000 annually for measures R and M. We receive $1.3 million annually. A huge disparity between what the county collects and what we get back. The county is also one of the agencies that could increase taxes.

We hear increasingly concerns from local government and advocates in Sacramento that the business

community may run a ballot measure that will curtail cities' ability to raise revenue. City Council must then weigh the pressures on the budget, resources that are available versus surrounding communities.

Without a doubt, uncertain economic time will be a factor as we move forward.

Balancing the budget, collecting additional revenue is extremely important.

This concludes my closure to the presentation.

the community outreach team is here to answer any questions we also have Richard online for FM3

we'll be happy to answer any questions that city council and the mayor may have. Thank you.

Thank you very much outreach team and staff for the presentation. Colleagues I'm sure we have many questions and comments let's see Councilman Yu you have the mic

Yeah. With almost all city has already passed the sales tax measure two years ago, I support the increase of our sales tax measure because of three reasons.

Number one, sales tax is being charged by people who spend money in Monterey Park, not just our residents, which majority is our visitors.

But the money can be used all in Monterey Park. Second, from the 9.5 sales tax that we receive, only 1% being used in our city. Other has been taken by the state and county. But if we can increase to 0.75% at this time, the whole increase can be used for our city.

So number three, if we do not pass the measure, that means we don't want additional sales tax. Then the LA County, the LA Community Colleges may be able to increase the tax to 10.25% and take the 0.75% from us. That's why so many cities have passed the sales tax measure two years ago.

Imagine if more visitors come to Monterey Park to spend money. We have more traffic, higher crime rate, and road repair costs,

and our public safety staff would need to go up for the expense. We as Monterey Park residents, we need the additional income to pay for higher costs of expense. So please, let all pass the measure at this time so that we can improve our community with more resources. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Ryu. Any other comments? Councilman Chan, you have the mic?

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, the team, for the presentation. I've been also...

put this into November ballot. Let the voters decide if the city will increase the tax. But for me personally, we need it because as you can see in this chart projected revenues versus expenditures, we are in a deficit in the next few years. If we don't have some extra revenues, we may have to cut back some services, which I don't think we want. I don't think all the residents would like to see that we cut back in our services because we are a good city, a food service city, and we provide public safety and all the public services to all the residents. and so this tax increase is needed. And the most important thing is that 57% of this sale tax is coming from people from outside the city. So we are kind of like the minority in contributing to the revenue. So why not use some of those money for our own use? As you can see in the presentation, that the county is not really giving us the fair share that we pay and we only getting you know a percentage of what we supposed to get back that we pay more to the county than we get back from the county so but this three quarters of a percent increase will be hundred percent to our city at the city's discretion and we have already mentioned that this money will remain in the city and will be accounted for and transparency and everything will be enforced so the people will know exactly where the money going and it is not going to be a waste and we need that money to continue a good service to all the residents

so thank you for that thank you councilmember chan any other my colleagues uh councilman liang you

have the mic thank you mayor um i'll try to be brief um i'm also in support of this measure I think just if you think about historically the past 10 years here in Monterey Park, almost about the time that Peter and I would have been serving when we finish in November, I'm certain that all the residents have seen a lot of the growth that we've had in the city. The marketplace, which I remember when we were knocking on doors in 2013 and talking about that, how cynical a lot of the residents were saying that that's never going to happen. They've been working on that for years. But being the eternal optimist, I was always kind of cheering for that. And, you know, it took many generations, but we were fortunate to be the one to cut the ribbon, to break the ground, and to make that happen. I think that also, as the years have progressed, you know, people have seen, for example, Courtyard Marriott has opened. It's a very successful location. We have our Atlantic Times Square, you know, before we came on. but that was also part of the shifting and growth of the community. We have our Raising Canes. We have Celadon Project moving forward. So, you know, while in these past 10 years we've worked really and focused on bringing in some of those types of businesses that our residents have asked for for a number of years for creating an environment in the city of Monterey Park that our residents can be proud to be part of. not only the business communities, but our public safety, both our fire departments and our police department in keeping our communities safe. You know, I think now is the time really to move forward on this. It's really an investment into the city. Not only are we talking about bringing in businesses, but we're talking about infrastructure. We're talking about public safety and also to be able to maintain the current level of service that we currently provide to all of our residents. And the question that was asked earlier, I know the city manager asked, why now? I think many of you are aware of the financial condition, the inflation. I think it was 8% last time I was looking at it. And with all of these financial struggles happening, it's not just our city. It goes throughout the state and the county. It also is important to do it now. As Yvonne, Council Member, you mentioned, there are a number of cities who had passed this two years ago, which basically ensured that those tax dollars were going to stay in those cities. We need to, at this time, support this measure as well to ensure that we secure this funding. And especially now, because we think about, as some of the examples, some of those measures we voted for for the county, supporting homelessness, et cetera, et cetera, those tax dollars are leaving our city. And why now? We need to secure it now in this crisis time before the county or other agencies get the idea to say, well, maybe it's time. We're struggling. We need to get more tax dollars. Let's go hit up all the cities that haven't passed their measures already. So I think the timing is right for that. I think that there is a level of urgency for that. We are very proud of the community that we work to ensure that services are provided, that we have safety, that we have with our community and parks and rec services for, you know, in the parks, our senior centers, all of those things. I think no one can deny that we've worked along with the staff to ensure that those services are at the highest level and that our residents experience a high level or a high quality of living when they're here in Monterey Park. So I'm here to support this measure. I think that the timing is right. I think the timing is it's critical at this point before anyone gets any other ideas to Encumber our tax dollars for other Endeavors at this point we have the opportunity to secure it as a number of cities have done already To keep that tax revenue in the city and to be able to use that to continue to enhance and expand on The services and the quality of life that we already provide for the city. So I stand in support and I want to commend all the staff for their work. I know you did a number of outreach events, which I think is really important because the community needs to know what's going on. And as the presentation had illustrated that when people were educated about what was going on, their likelihood to support it went up. Part of that education is the city's responsibility and I just Again, I want to commend all of you for your dedication and your time and making this an important thing, not only for the city but as your team to get through. So thank you for that. I stand in full support.

Thank you very much, colleagues. Any further comments? You're ringing on.

Let me then add my comments to the conversation.

You know, this issue, certainly I have been thinking about for a long time now.

And like many of my colleagues, I have been attending the committee meetings to hear resident concerns, as well as to myself be educated on the city's fiscal situation.

And, you know, I often, you know, when I think about, you know, what drives my decision-making on policy, you know, it actually goes back to even why I ran for office, why my colleagues ran for office.

And I think oftentimes the commonality is that we want to do our part to contribute to make our community a better place for our residents.

And, you know, I think all of us, I know certainly I, when every morning when I check my email, oftentimes what I hear from residents are, you know, how can we do more?

And I think that there are several issues that seem to always stand out.

I'm sure my colleagues and those on city staff here often, you know, number one, how do we enhance our public safety?

Because of concerns about safety in our neighborhoods, the traffic safety for those who are pedestrian, and those who drive on our streets?

How do we extend and maintain library services? Just this morning, when I checked my city email, I had a resident who said she grew up in Monarch Park, family still lives here, is a student,

and asked, Mayor, how can we extend library hours

to not just herself, but too many residents

who rely on the services that our library provides.

And we are very blessed that we are one of the few communities in the region

that has own library services.

I've had constituents in my own district have asked,

you know, I noticed that one of the parks that I had to take my children to,

the playground was removed. And we understand that, you know, probably because the equipment was old,

but are we doing anything to bring a replacement playground?

And, you know, I will say that those are issues that sometimes keep me up at night

because, again, all of us who run, who want to represent, you know, we do so with the best intentions. And yet we have, as was once described in one of my public policy courses in college, was we have wickedly challenging issues.

All communities do.

And because they're wickedly hard and challenging, I think we do have to then ask ourselves,

have we exercised all policy tools at our disposal? And I know that our city staff at the directive of the city council,

we are oftentimes asking ourselves, well, is there a way in which we can find more funding via grants, bring more businesses? And I think that we will be derelict if we did not look at all policy tools at our disposal. And the conversation we're having tonight is one that is not just, you know, limited to the four members sitting on this dais, but depending on the action we take tonight, it will become a conversation in the community. And I hope that, you know, as residents, as those who live in this community, work in this community,

that we will take a very close view about, you know, how can we move this community forward

and in a direction that will, you know, I think reinforce the city's motto above us, which is pride in the past, faith in the future. And I would like to hope that as residents, you know, we could live up to those ideals that we, all of us, operate and believe in when we sit up here.

Let's see. I do have a question, actually, which I don't know if the outreach staff can answer.

But, you know, we're at this point because we have had a very robust outreach into community. So my question is, moving forward, because I imagine that there may be other items on the ballot, how do we keep this issue at the forefront of residents' minds and salient? So to what extent can we continue to educate the public on this issue moving forward? And again, educate, because I think that's where we want to be able to provide the facts to residents.

You know, if I may, and the city attorneys can certainly weigh in on this as well, once the council does vote to refer the measure to the ballot, it's a much more constrained kind of work that the city can do. Certainly the city is within its rights to educate residents that the measure is on the ballot, the provisions of it, and to promote that. but it has to be in a very circumscribed, very neutral tone.

Okay. Yes?

Yeah, I'd just like to add that information provided has to be objective and impartial in nature. There could be no advocacy for or against any ballot measure.

Again, just to educate.

And I think that based on the presentation, I think it sounds like, you know, we've had certainly, that's been our approach. And so I guess my suggestion and comment to staff and to city is that to the extent that we can continue to be objective and neutral, I really would like to ask that the city strongly consider

continuing to educate the public about the matter. And certainly I think that

yes, we need to work within the confines of what

is permissible because again we want to operate in a very transparent and honest

and what I'd like to suggest is that, you know, we continue that type of education outreach, you know,

it continues to be salient in their minds.

Anyone want to comment?

Noted, and we will work back with our city attorney's office to see what we can do.

Okay, and you will, okay.

Yes.

And is this something that will be reported back to the council as well?

I'll take the question. Yes, okay. We understand where the line is drawn on how much staff can actually present to the public about this measure. We will make every effort to continue to educate the community. This council meeting, starting at 8.05, is a very good educator to the public. They can easily jump online and watch the meeting, and they can be very well educated on how we got to where we're at. I think it's a great educational tool. So there are many ways to do that without us actually having to be out in the public, but we will be out in the public educating people.

Okay. Thank you very much. Colleagues, do we have any further comments or questions?

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I had another thought. Yes. As staff, we are doing everything we can legally possible regarding this ballot measure. And even if council decides tonight to move it to the November election, I think it's very important for the council to also educate the community as well. So as elected officials, I think you actually have a lot of voice and staff and even a city manager. So we would also hope that you will help us educate the community as well. Thank you. Okay.

Thank you very much. Colleagues, yes, Councilman Chan, you have the mic.

Yes, thank you. And since in here we have, I think last time when we put this on ballot, I was the person that draft the argument on the ballot measure in the ballot book. But this time since I'm leaving the office, you know, at that election. And so, and of course, Council Member Hans will be leaving at the same time. So I would like to suggest that maybe the mayor, Mayor Lo, you take the lead in writing that argument. And then maybe all of us will sign on it. And we can, just like last time I took the lead, but we all signed on the ballot. Because you all put in ideas and make changes and edit it and so forth and make it a good argument or a good message. So I would like to ask that since you are the sitting mayor, so it is good that you take the lead to write that draft and then we all look at it and maybe we can put inputs and suggestions and then we make it a final product with all our names in the argument.

Mayor and Council, if I may interject, I don't want to sort of, I want to stick to the sequence because we need to we can't explore an argument for against until there's actually an approval to submit the proposition to the voters okay so I think we definitely have to cover that councilmember Chan if we just put a pin in that and that's all contingent on approval of the submission of the measure to the voters at the beginning okay well um well based on you what you

You just advise, I mean, given that there are six items in the matter before this item,

should we take each one, like bifurcating each one, one by one, or how should we?

It's the council's discretion. They can take the four resolutions together and subsequently by amendment order address

the um the preparation of the ballot um the argument for and the rebuttal so essentially

you can take out number two put that at the end and then as a whole take all of the resolutions if that's the council's wish okay um okay um well so and and i guess i'm sorry to interject there's

just one proposed grammatical modification, and this pertains to the first resolution,

which presents the text of the label,

the ballot question, and it's on the ninth line.

And it is the line that says, that reads allowing for other government use.

And my recommendation is to remove the word for,

So it would read and allowing other government use by establishing, et cetera. So it's just removing that word for.

It's grammatically unnecessary, and this will help ensure that the proper flow and understanding of the question.

So would that be then if it was a motion to accept staff or city attorney recommended

amendments to the language?

Yes, to this initial resolution, placing the proposition on the ballot, that first resolution.

Okay.

So if I understand correctly, then the motion then should be adoption of stipulations in item 1345 and include edits.

recommended. You could say as amended. As proposed to be amended by the city attorney.

Okay. Is that your motion, Mayor? I guess it is. Did that just make sense what I just said?

Yes. So I think perhaps to restate it, you're saying adopt the resolutions.

Adopt resolution with amendments. Recommend amendments. Okay. Adopt resolution with recommended motion to adopt resolution recommended amendments. And the resolutions, just to make

sure I heard you correctly, Mayor, are for recommendations from the agenda 1, 3, 4, 5, 4 and 5. And for

recommendation items 1, 3, 4, and 5. Okay. Second.

Okay. Moved by me. Second by Councilman Hounsou Yang. Yes? Is that okay, good. Thank you for making sure it sounds right. Okay. Okay. Votes in, please.

Votes unanimous. Motion carries.

Subsequent motion to appoint Mayor Lo as a designated person filing argument in favor of the ballot proposition.

Would that be appropriate, Mr. Deputy City Attorney? Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

Okay. And maybe also signed by all council members. Do we need to add that in?

So the options are you can have the council as a whole or you appoint a particular member on your behalf and that would take the priority. So if you want to just select the mayor, that would be one option. Can we sign on with his statement? Absolutely. Yeah. It's up to five signatures.

So I would like to ask the maker of the motion to add that all council members sign on this argument.

Yes, I accept the amendment. So to assign the mayor as the designee for filing argument in favor of the ballot proposition for all council members to sign once complete. Yes, I will second that. Yes.

So I just want to kind of give you a...

a brief history of what happened the last time.

Basically, Council Member Chan authored one of the measures

and it's filed with the clerk's office.

And then the other council members would come by the clerk's office and then sign off on the argument.

Okay.

So in this case, Mayor, you would draft it

and then you would file it with the clerk's office.

And there's also a deadline that you have to meet. Once you filed it, then the rest of the council members,

we reach out to them.

and then they would swing by the clerk's office and then they can sign off on it. I believe the last time there was a little bit tweaking of the argument right then and there. And then we also have to make sure that the word counts when you meet the word count.

And remind me or remind us what is the timeline of when such an argument needs to be submitted to the clerk's office?

So once the, so we adopted this already.

So if we decide to go in this direction, there's a deadline of 14 days after the adoption, which is August the 4th. So you will need to file something before August 4th so that the clerk's office can notify the rest of the council so that they can come by the office to sign on it.

So August 4th is the final deadline? Correct.

Okay. And then August 4th would be the deadline for all the signatures as well?

Yes. So hopefully, you know, the mayor will file it a day earlier or so, and then that way, you know, we'll have enough time to contact the rest of the council to sign it.

Okay. No, no, procedurally, again, city manager, I mean, obviously I'm not going to wait until the last minute, but nonetheless, would it be prudent if we were to, I mean, nothing to stop us from, say, filing it next Monday if I wanted to,

because, again, when I'm hearing that there has to be enough time for review and any possible amendments to the statement?

So the reason why we're doing that is because, you know, if three of you meet, then it's going to be a conflict.

Okay.

And so that's the reason why they're designating you as the mayor to draft it.

Okay.

So there was just some minor amendments, but, you know, the base of the text, the content was there.

So my question is without the risk of violating of course like the Brown Act, how do we although yes, I may be the designated author, but then how do we make sure then that there is a way to provide input without violating the Brown Act?

You mean prior to you drafting or?

After it's drafted.

So I think that.

Yeah, I can jump in here. Thank you, Mayor and members of the Council. So the Brown Act gives a green light here because you're acting upon a notice recommendation where one or more is appointed. So understandably with other authors, there's going to be collaboration, which is alLod for argument authors. So I think it can be shared with the other members because that's what's being clearly and transparently authorized this evening.

It can be shared prior to submission to the office or has to be?

Yes.

Okay. Prior to submission. So it can be shared. Yes. Okay. All right.

Mayor, council members, we'll make sure that we do not violate any legal issues. we will help facilitate and make sure that we meet deadlines and we'll make sure all the signatures are on there as long as you take leave with our city

attorney we'll get things done all right very good just on that note as noted in the staff report staff cannot be designated to of course assist with the drafting but we can definitely let you know where the legal boundaries are on what activities are kosher for you all.

Repeat that again, please.

So the restriction on city spending money on advocacy extends to the use of staff. And so staff would be prohibited from assisting with the drafting of the argument, which you are being potentially tasked with. So you would be precluded from using staff and assisting with that drafting.

Yeah, and I think that if I may, I'm certain the city manager and the city attorney will be quick to illustrate any violations that we may be having in that degree. I think that the city staff, for example, clerk's office, and correct me if I'm wrong, can assist us in areas of word count, formatting, font size, those types of things that would be related to the printing and the format of it. But that they can't use any resources like, well, what do you think this first paragraph should sound like? Can we put that type of assistance? So I think that, if I'm not mistaken, Deputy City Attorney is trying to articulate that and let us know that there is this line, we should be aware of it, and there are certain things that the clerk can do regarding this drafting of the ballot measure and there are certain things that they can't do.

Okay. Absolutely.

Yes, that's correct. Thank you for that clarification. Okay.

So I think, do we still have a motion and second?

Already, yeah. So we vote? We vote. Did we vote already? No. No. A motion has been made, right? Correct? You make the motion. I made one and will second it? I seconded it. Hans seconded it. I make the amendment. Okay. So if you're okay with the amendment. I'm fine, yes. Okay, thank you. Don't further. Then we can vote. All right, please vote.

I'm sorry, can I get a clarification as who made a motion?

That Mayor Lo would be assigned as the writer of the document in favor and that it would be drafted for all city council members to sign on.

Okay.

Okay.

Yes. And yes, I will second that. Yes. No. No. No. No. No. Yes. Yeah. It's been moved and seconded so. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Yes. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you for clarification. Okay. It's and I was getting late. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Members again. Thank you all for this very informative conversation. If there are no further comments or questions please vote. Vote unanimous. Motion carries. Thank you very much. Thank you. Can we take another 10-minute break? So 8-15 maybe.

I know, 915. Make them at 925. Thank you. I know, but yes, I know.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, because there's also even more than I saw. I saw 14 minutes. I was here.

So that was a fight. It started before. And then I read that.

It's all. It's all. It's all. It's all. It's all.

It's all. Right now.

So let's compare notes.

I think if we can get more time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, I see we have two minutes left and so everyone, two more minutes and we will resume session.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay. It is 9.23. Although I did say 10 minutes.

Are we okay with resuming?

Okay. If we're ready? All right. Then we will resume session.

Okay. Item 5B, proposed dissolution of the Newark Avenue Underground Utility District,

creation of the Monitor Passport Underground Utility District.

Staff, report, please.

Good evening again, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. Tonight we have our contract engineering manager, Ziyad Mazabi.

He's going to be presenting the item for us tonight.

Ziyad.

Seed, please. Seed, please, I said, yes. Thank you.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, honorable council members. My name is Ziyad Mazboody, and I'm going to try to keep this item as simple as possible.

the the utilities commission allows under rule 28 some funds for the cities to underground utilities this ruling is going to expire at the end of this year so we want to make sure that the funds that are available for the cities don't go away and they will literally go away in 2009 the city adopted a utility district for Newmark and the undergrounding for that district is about $4.6 million. However, this undergrounding district never went anywhere. It wasn't really a major priority. And at this time, there's $7.7 million that we're trying to take advantage of. There's going to be a project on Monterey Pass coming that we're getting around $30 million for some improvements on that road. So the recommendation is that we underground Monterey Pass between Garvey and Vagabond. So that will be part of the project that's recommended. It will complement it, and there will be $7.7 million available for the city to use to underground all the utilities within that area. So at this time, we recommend to the City Council to dissolve or to abandon the previous resolution that was adopted in 2009 and then to initiate the process for the undergrounding for Monterey Pass. And the process will include, I am tomorrow having a conference call actually with Southern California Edison and all the affected utilities in that district. And then we are setting a public hearing for August 17 at 6.30, where the public will come and oppose or support. And at that time, the City Council will adopt it if you so wish to do so. And I'll answer any questions.

Thank you very much for that presentation, colleagues. Do we have any requests to speak, Clerk? No speaker that I can see. Thank you. Colleagues? Okay, hearing none. Oh yes,

you have the mic, Councilman Chan? Yes. Yes, I would like to ask a simple question to the deputy city attorney. By dropping this Newmark project, Newmark and Garfield, do we have any liabilities or anything at all to the city? Not that I'm aware of. Okay and then to so we kind of like abandoned that idea not on Garfield and Newmark and then use that because there's a fund some funding there so we just transfer the

whole thing that that's my right password. That's correct and and this is an initial step before that dissolution indicating an intention so the final steps would still be a bit down the road but this is sort of step one in that process to to access and utilize those funds for a new district okay thank you

okay any further questions move to approve item 5b moved by council member lang seconded by

councilman chan hearing no further comments or questions members please vote vote unanimous

motion carries. Thank you very much. Okay. City Communications. Councilman Rieu, any

communications? Yeah for the final communication remarks, I attend friendly Fred Walk this Saturday. I want to say Fred is always in our heart and being missed by all of us. There was a conversation come up about lately about donating to his family to pay for the bill. And I told people that I said, Fred has no debts.

And people asked, how do you know? I remember last time we had dinner.

Fred forgot to bring cash. So I said, I treat. And Fred insists to pay and send me a check. I did not cash the check. So Fred called me when he was sick. he asked me if I'm going to cash the check. I said never. Then Fred said, thank you, Yvonne, as I'm taking care of my own finance and make sure no debt's left behind. I'm so impressed, as I don't think many of us can do that.

And Fred, you are our angel and our role model. When we bring back the memory, there's a lot we can learn from Fred. So that's all for me to share. Thank you.

Thank you for those very poignant words, Councilman Ryu.

Councilman Chan? Yeah, I also participated in the friendly Fred walk and walked two miles, although he's kind of hot, sweaty, but it's worth it. And it's a chance to pay tribute to Fred and his family and walk around the neighborhood and also a good chat with the neighbors in the walk. So thank you for all the residents coming out to support Fred and do the walking and talking. And we should do it more for Fred. Maybe I would like to ask Robert Aguirre to organize another one shortly and do some kind of this thing to pay tribute.

tour to the police department and the fire department. And I just received a thank you letter from them. And they say the students were so happy and so enjoyed the tour. So thank you, the police, especially Lieutenant Paul Inigas and his team to take care of the school children and also the fire department. They loved it. And they're supposed to do two hours, but they ended up three hours. So that means they really enjoyed the tour. So thank you so much, and have a good night.

Thank you. Councilman Chan. Councilman Lan? Thank you, Mayor. I attended the Fred Walk as well. Just to share a little story, you know, usually during council meetings, I would, you know, after Fred had stepped down, you know, I would send him little texts about, you know, what we were talking about, or he would joke around with me. And last council meeting, you know, I'd sent him a text at the end, letting him know that I had gotten COVID a week back and that I was really sick, et cetera. And, you know, usually he responds either later that evening or the next morning, but he didn't respond that night and he didn't respond that morning either. so uh it was it was worrisome for me and then i had to go to philadelphia um for a week uh for our international um union convention so i wasn't here so in my mind i was saying okay you know i'm going to stay away from fred for a week at least because i had the covet i don't want to take any risks and then after i get back from philly i will go see him and then uh it was just like a day or two before when, you know, city manager called to let me know that he had left us. And I felt a little bit bad that I didn't get a chance to see him, you know, one last time and I had planned for it. You know, so, you know, I think it's a, it's a, all of us can feel the loss. And I really want to send my condolences to his parents, his mom, Alice, his father, Fidel, and his sister, Christine. Um, you know, through all of this, uh, we've had a good opportunity to meet with the family and get to know them. And it was great, uh, to be able to see them, uh, when we did the Fred walk. I know that a lot of us were hoping that, uh, Fred would have been around at least a little bit longer so that when we did the walk, we could all, you know, wave to him through the window and, and, and show him our support. Uh, but sometimes as we know in life, things don't always work out the way that we would like them to. but again I just want to give my my highest respect to Fred I want to and give my condolences to their family and Fred we're gonna miss you but I know you're always gonna be around and and you know we will we will miss you so those are just my I just want to end with that thank you thank you very much Council

Council Member Lang. I think I will also conclude my comment for tonight saying that I want to just express my gratitude by the outpouring of turnout by residents for this, what we call our first friendly Fred walk. And yes, Councilman Chan, it is my intention that we have more of these walks because it's important, I think, especially right now, these days, that we continue as a community, as neighbors, to be able to do as simple as go for a walk and talk to our friends, our community members, important issues. And so, yes, I do see more of these. And with your support and the city's support as well.

And it was very touching to see at this walk we had at Bill of Asta Park

to see members of currency council pass, council members, commissioners,

members of Fred's circle of friends and family,

as well as people who wanted to attend just in the spirit of coming together as a community

for something as simple as for a walk and for a conversation. And so it was very touching, and it is my hope that we continue these types of events, which I think really are vital and important, especially these days, when as part of our public discourse we really need to be able to come together

and have basic conversations. And with that, I actually would also like to ask

if we can adjourn tonight's council meeting

in Fred's memory as well.

Thank you very much. In that case, if there are no further comments or questions,

then I would like to adjourn tonight's meeting at 9.35 p.m. and we are adjourning in the memory of our dear colleague Fred Sonoso.

Have a good evening. Okay.