City Council Meeting — May 3, 2023

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Recording in progress.

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Good evening. We're going to go ahead and get started. We'll call session, we'll open at 6.37.

The City Council of Monterey Park, the City Council acting on behalf of the successor agency, of the former redevelopment agency, the Housing Authority, the Monterey Park Financing Authority, and the Monterey Park Geologic Hazard Abatement District Agenda. We are going to go ahead and start with our flag salute.

If we can please stand.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks. Please place your right hand over your heart.

Ready? Begin.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for

which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. First, post, colors. Post, face. Forward, march.

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Please be seated. Thank you to the Monterey Park Fire Explorers.

City Clerk, if we can do roll call.

Council Member Lo? Present. Council Member Yu? Here. Council Member Ngo? Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Wong?

Here. Mayor Sanchez? Here. We have a quorum.

Thank you.

Are there any agenda additions, deletions, changes, and adoptions?

None from the City Manager's Office.

No, sir.

Thank you. Do we have any public communications?

First speaker, Rick Ng from the L.A. versus Hate program, Chinese American Citizens Alliance.

Good evening.

Mayor Sanchez, Honorable City Council members and city officials.

My name is Rick Eng. I am here kind of representing two organizations in the presentation I'm about to do.

One is I work for the county program called LA vs. Hate, which started about seven years ago,

where the county has appointed a dedicated task force to work with communities in the greater L.A. County to unite against, combat, and resist and report hate.

The other capacity I have here is I am currently the president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance.

We are the oldest continuous civil rights and advocacy group for Americans of Chinese ancestry.

We were established in 1895. The Los Angeles chapter was founded in 1912.

So I had mentioned this to some of the city council members in social settings, and I wanted to just kind of like give my thanks and my praise to the leadership that you've all demonstrated in the aftermath of the Monterey Park shooting. and I am also part of the Monterey Park Community Healing Fund so it's been a great honor to work with some of my colleagues on doing what we can with the funds that are available to us so I thank all of you for your efforts in behind that but one of the things that I continue to get is information from around the country So I have here something that was given to me by the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA. It was a package of letters and cards, and they didn't know what to do with it. And so they asked me if I could look at them. And this is from an organization, a student organization in Rutgers University. It is called the Queer and Asian Alliance. It was founded in 2010. And basically it's a group of young folks who are Rutgers students talking about the intersectionality of LGBTQ and Asian identities. So what I have here are cards that are addressed to the city of Monterey Park, the community of Monterey Park, sympathy cards, condolence cards in the aftermath of the shooting. And so I think that these rightfully belong in the hands of members of the City Council representing the City of Monterey Park. So I wanted to present these cards. And if you get a chance, you can take a look and read them. Some very nice messages. Monterey Park is mentioned in a few of them.

So this is where I think it rightfully belongs to the community. And then if you decide you want to reach out to the organization, in this piece of paper, there is their address and contact information.

And one last thing, if I might, it's not on my original letter, but this is because you guys have that outstanding memorial to veterans out in front of the city hall. CACA has been really involved in working with Congress to ensure the passage of the Congressional Gold Medal to Chinese American Veterans of World War II. We are proud of the work that we did, and it still continues. And I want to just announce that the Library of Congress will be here this month. They'll be conducting interviews not only with veterans of the Second World War, but they're also reaching out to Korean American veterans. They're also reaching out to Vietnam War veterans. And so one will be held at Santa Monica Civic Library, and another one will be taking place at Alhambra Civic Library.

put them on display in the in our City Hall lobby as well. Yeah, there are only 13 but you know still they're all quite moving

and it it we just appreciate that you know a city had the thoughtfulness or organization of thoughtfulness across the country to send this to the City of Martin Park. Thank you.

Next speaker Nancy Curry.

Good evening. I want to know when this council will be ready to review the requested zoning changes on the marketplace from retail to commercial since our city could use the higher property taxes as well as additional sales taxes to support our city services. I moved to Monterey Park in 1971. We had a very successful downtown shopping area. Then in the 1980s, we became the first suburban Chinatown. So many of our businesses closed down because the new immigrants would not shop in our American stores. It took us more than 20 years to have a developer, Eminem, to develop the property called the Marketplace. Many businesses would not set up shop in our town because they believed that the new immigrants would not shop in their stores. The Marketplace is now very successful and kept our hometown afloat during the pandemic. During the pandemic, many businesses went out of business because many people were afraid to shop in public. Now, online shopping seems to have become very popular since many of the brick-and-mortar stores are closed, as you can see, by all the vacant stores in our hometown. Michelle Yee, our city clerk, is not a member of our city council, so she speaks as a resident. She may not be aware of our more than 20-year struggle to bring additional shopping into our city. She said she was worried about the heavy traffic that the new zoning may cause. Heavy traffic is a good sign that many people are shopping and dining in our city. Currently, the 18-wheeler trucks serve all of our marketplace stores, enter the site from the 60 freeway through Montebello. We currently pay the city of Montebello a percent of our sales tax for our right to use their streets. Jose Sanchez is a schoolteacher, and he may not be aware of the more than 20-year struggle to bring additional shopping into our city. Henry Lo has been working with several elected officials, so I am surprised that he is not aware of the more than 20-year struggle to bring additional shopping into our city. I want to thank Vin Ning, who's a banker, and Yvonne Yu, an investment manager, for their yes vote on the marketplace zoning changes.

I have been attending the city council meeting since August 1996, so I've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Now I hear it may take one more year for additional zoning changes to be made to the marketplace. I hope the two council members remember that our hometown needs more stores and restaurants in the marketplace to support our city's wonderful services.

Next speaker, Larry Sullivan.

Good evening, council, staff, people at home. I'm here for a single sole purpose, and that is the Lions Club breakfast coming up on the 20th of May.

And it is in conjunction with the fire department.

If you have not, and I'm speaking to the people at home, if you've not been to this event, Fire Service Day, it's fun. For kids, it's great. They get to run around with the uniforms on and just see hoses pulled all kinds of things So the breakfast runs from 8 until 11 and after 11 o'clock The fire department has a hot dog event. They're going to be doing also now

What I've done is I know all of you. I know where to find you. So I'm going to give you your tickets tonight

Okay, so the only thing is the two gentlemen on the end over here will get the greater abundance of tickets there rather than the council.

Okay. That's all I have. I hope you can make it on the 20th. I'll be back here on the 17th in the next council meeting, probably pushing more tickets. Jose? Thank you. I already purchased two

during the Cherry Blossom Festival.

You must have two more friends or two more voters someplace.

Larry, I already got two tickets as well. Looking forward to the pancakes, and I hope that you will be making them

for me personally.

My daughter likes the Mickey Mouse shaped pancakes.

Let me just say this, help you understand the pain for it.

If you don't, my wife will be after you. And you know what that's going to be like.

Okay? Thanks a lot.

Next speaker, Jennifer Tang.

We'll wait until 5A.

No more speakers.

No more speakers?

Okay. So then we'll go ahead and move on to staff communications,

if we can have library services.

Great. Good evening, Mayor Sanchez and members of council. Victor Castellanos, adult literacy coordinator. This evening I'm here to talk to you about some of our many upcoming programs

at the library during the month of May. So let's see if the, oh, okay. Hey, that's no

No problem.

We're having some technical difficulties, so we can continue with the presentation.

Sure, absolutely.

Thank you.

So the first program that I want to plug, and something that's ending pretty soon, is the Play Days Read and Ride Reading Program. So this is in partnership with the Recreation and Community Services Department, and for kids ages birth to 13. They can sign up online at montereypark.beanstack.org, read for four hours, and log it on the Beanstack app. And they can get free tickets. The last day for this program is next week, May 11.

Great, thanks. One more slide. Thank you. Another program is for children. It's our homework help on Wednesdays. from 4 to 5.30, and Saturdays from 2 to 4. This free homework help assistance program is available to elementary school children. They can bring their homework and their assignments and receive free help from high school volunteers. No registration is required, and the last day is on May 20th.

Next slide.

Oh, let's see. Can we go back a slide? Oh, okay. That's okay. Let's go to the next one. All right. Classes in Spanish. So also coming up soon is some of our computer classes. So our series of computer classes at the library are conducted in different languages every month. Last year was in Vietnamese, and for this month in May, it's in Spanish. These classes will begin on May 9th. We'll continue on May 9th, May 16th, and 23rd. Librarians in the workshop will be on hand to assist with anything

computer-related. Next slide, please. At the end of May, on May 20th, rounding out some of our big

events is our citizenship workshop, presented in partnership with Asian Americans Advancing Justice. On May 20th from 10.30 a.m. to 3.30 p.m., immigration attorneys will be available to provide free confidential consultation. They will review legal documents, U.S. naturalization applications, and help determine eligibility for a fee waiver. This is by appointment only, so please call the LAMP Literacy Office at 626-307-1251 to register.

Also coming soon, and this is part of our big events in May, May is Mental Health Month. And in light of the tragedy a few months ago, the library is hosting mental health programs for every age group. On Thursday, May 11th, is our Child and Teen Mental Health Seminar. Parents and caregivers are invited to learn about the importance of mental health, types of treatment for mental health disorders, and how to help their child or teen manage their symptoms. This will be conducted in English and Mandarin by the Garfield Health Center.

And on May 20th, in the Langley Senior Center, from 10 to 2, the library, in partnership with the Recreation and Community Services Department, is proud to present the 2023 Mental Health and Wellness Fair. At this event, you can meet mental health organizations from throughout the San Gabriel Valley to learn about all of their services.

There will be free giveaways

and the Garfield Health Center will provide COVID vaccinations.

And on May 24th at 4.30, teens and adults will learn the art of journaling for mental health and awareness. Participants are welcome to bring their own journals or even create their own online journal in the computer lab.

Thank you. Any questions?

Any questions from Council? Comments?

Always job well done.

And, you know, I'm always proud to say that we have one of the best libraries in the area. Not just Ingo Valley, but Southern California.

Definitely.

May I ask on the Advancing Justice Citizenship Day on, you can go back to that slide. I believe it's May 20th.

May 20th, yes.

And it's by appointment only?

It's by appointment only.

There is 30 slots available. And immigration attorneys will work individually with each person to go over their application forms, eligibilities for fee waivers, and any legal assistance they might need regarding their immigration status. There's also immigration attorneys who speak Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, there's, I think, 10 different languages.

Yeah, I believe Thai and Cambodian or Khmer is the other language, and that's provided by support from, I just happen to know this because I signed up for that day, the Bank of America, the LanguageGate people are helping to do the translation for that day.

So it'll be a good event.

Yes, I'm looking forward to it. The people that I've met so far, they're super helpful. They're excited to help. And we're also in talks for doing a citizenship date.

IN SEPTEMBER. I APPRECIATE AGAIN AND ECHOING

OTHER COUNCIL MEMBERS APPRECIATION FOR THE AMOUNT OF PROGRAMMING THAT OUR LIBRARY DOES REALLY APPRECIATE EVERYTHING THE STAFF DO BEYOND RIGHT THERE'S SO MUCH THAT THE LIBRARY DOES BEYOND JUST HELP PEOPLE ACCESS BOOKS AND NEWSPAPERS AND REALLY DO OPERATE AS A COMMUNITY CENTER MORE THAN MORE THAN A LIBRARY

quick question on these

invitations and the events that are coming up do we translate these invitations into Spanish and Chinese and other languages

yes especially for the citizenship

workshop yes so we have

flyers in Chinese we have pre-registration forms in Spanish and Chinese

and English so yes those will be translated

awesome and I assume Robert

and others will be posting this on social media so we can all very

easily share on our networks as well thank you thank you so much for the

presentation and for all the amazing program that you guys do in the library very very impressed I had a lot of my students go and visit this past weekend the exhibit in the lobby so they're very impressed by by the work that you guys

do thank you so much thank you next staff communication police department

Good evening, Mayor, Council, and everyone at home, staff.

I'd like to, my name is Officer Lam with the Neighborhood Engagement Team. I'm following here the Community Engagement Bureau.

Next slide, please. I am, in my team, we're composed of a sergeant, Randy Esparza. Our detective is Corporal Alice Porter.

I have two other co-workers that work with me Izzy Flores and Tony Huin

We also have a housing coordinator with

That helps us with case management every time we have a person who's experiencing homelessness

That needs further assistance. Her name is Shadeen Womack. We also have a psychiatric clinician Assigned to us from LA County Department of Mental Health Dario Tejeda and We're projecting for next year to have a fourth officer assigned to our team. Next slide. So from January to up to date, April 30th to be exact, we've had our team have offered services to multiple people within our city that are experiencing homelessness 61 of them declined services 37 of them accepted services and when we say accepted services we mean

like we've helped them obtain their driver license we've helped them give them transportation to the department of social services we provided them with either food or clothing everything other than sheltering them into like a bedding.

We had 47 repeated contacts.

So this is calls for services that we've had with individuals that we've had ongoing problems with within our city.

For an example, someone like Sherry Dong, who's been with our city for several years, over 10 years, that she would be considered one of our repeat contacts.

Homeless person sheltered. We've sheltered six people so far in April.

I'm sorry, from January up to April.

Yesterday, I also sheltered one person, although the numbers might seem small. I just want to let you know, yesterday when I sheltered someone,

It took me over three hours to take this person to the shelter and to get them admitted And then I had to call around different shelters to see if there's a bed available and that process can take hours as well

if you have ever been If you ever call two-on-one for services you can be on hold for four hours

And at the end they could they might tell you that there's no beds available

So that's why the this process takes a long time and so although that numbers seems a little bit low

It was a big accomplishment for us

and the estimated number of encampments that we've handled so far is 17 and this number also includes encampments where we've cleaned up in the past and then

Someone else has come back into the location to reestablish an encampment. So an example of this would be Atlantic and the 60 Over by the on-ramps the off-ramps we've collaborated with Caltrans before and we clean up that area maybe Over 10 times but every several months or so It repopulates with someone new so

Next slide.

In terms of mental health calls and also homeless calls, the entire calls for service

that our department has had since January up to now is 24,808.

So this is all calls, like criminal calls, welfare check calls, homeless calls. and with the amount of mental health calls and homeless calls is 774.

This only includes calls that are labeled homeless or are labeled welfare checks. But sometimes our officers respond to a theft or a shoplifting, for example, like at Ralph's, and that might involve a person who is also experiencing homelessness. So that although that number is 774 for us now, it might actually be a little bit higher.

And the total number of mental health calls requiring our team to follow up is 513.

And depending on any questions regarding the stats for our team, I'd like to talk to you guys about Neighborhood Watch.

I'm sorry.

Thank you. I am curious. On the side with the homelessness engagement,

how many of those are individuals and how many of them are part of, say, a family?

If you know by chance.

Are you talking about, like, how many of them?

Like those who have accepted services, the repeat contacts.

I'm just curious. like are they in your in our community engagement team's observation are they

individuals or are they families? Most of the time there are individuals. We've had

two families so far. It's usually like a mother and they're a child. I see.

And the reason I ask is because you know I mean again thank you for all your work

in engaging and make sure they have services but you know especially you

know if they're families and you know it may also involve other county agents as

well or even the local school district as well so if they are you know here and

these children need additional services I would imagine yes so even if a student

that it's one of our that goes to a school in one of our cities even if they're experiencing like their their housing situation isn't optimal but for

example they're sharing like a room with four or five other siblings we also work with different organizations that will help them improve that situation and try to get them into a bigger place

okay thank you

thank you officer for this update really appreciate it uh this data is very actually very helpful and uh i know the city manager mentioned that we can get these slides after the pres after the meeting as well. I would love to be able to take a deeper dive into them. For these numbers, for the homeless person sheltered, do we go through the coordinate entry system for LASA, or is this just your, it sounds like you were just going directly to shelters to call for space?

Yes, so these numbers are numbers that we've sheltered just ourselves, just our team. We've

also work with Lhasa and Volunteers of America as well and then a couple of other organizations

where if Lhasa have came to the city to actually provide shelter for someone.

So if they're in the city and we're not called out, we don't count it as our staff for something

that we shelter. So that number is strictly just for us.

Is there a reason we didn't go through LASA and the coordinated entry system for those?

So, sometimes the, for example, so 2-1-1 through the coordinated entry system,

if someone from LASA were to come out to try to provide services, they might not be able to transport that person,

so they wouldn't go through the coordinated entry system.

So when a person is being transported

and it's not being transported by LASA

and it's just transported by us, we don't have access to that system. So we wouldn't enter them into that system.

No, I'm just wondering if we have, as there are, difficulties with LASA's coordinated system and there are a lot of delays there. It sounds like that's part of the reason. for the encounters that we have with homeless persons that are listed here. Do you know the approximate kind of breakdown of how many are actually from the area versus coming in from outside the area?

I don't know even a ballpark number,

but then I have noticed over the past several months

or even the past couple of years,

although we've been housing a lot of people it seems like there's more more and more people

coming into our city that are not familiar to our team usually when we go out to make

to do an outreach with someone but we're really familiar with our the areas the hot spots in our

cities and we're usually familiar with the people that we're helping but I have been noticing there's

a lot of people like new faces in our cities.

Sometimes they might be just walking in to our city because we're right next to East LA.

They might be taking the gold line and they can either walk south towards East LA or they can walk north and they'll end up in our city. That's why Atlantic and the 60 is a hot spot for us.

sometimes in the north end if you see a lot of people who are experiencing homelessness

it'll possibly be because sometimes when a EMT or an ambulance is transporting someone who is

experiencing homelessness they'll go through the entire county system to see which hospitals have beds and then if they take them to either one of our hospitals and then once they get discharged they get discharged into our city.

For the encampments that are listed there, is that referring to individual tents or is that multiple tents as an encampment?

Usually it's multiple tents.

When we get a notification of an encampment, usually it gets big enough.

Of course, we'll try our best to be proactive with

Cleaning an encampment before it even gets that big, but usually it's more than one person living at that area

our

Geographically for the city or most of these encampments that have been handled and reported are those mostly along the 60 or

Where we're kind of about in the city. So most of them are by Atlantic and the 60 There's other spots. It's mostly on Atlantic. There's also like private properties where let's just say it's the business is empty and it's an open or it's a vacant lot. Sometimes the people might go in there and set up camp and the business owners have called us or property owners have called us. We've had an encampment over on 303 or 300 South Garfield. The encampment that they set up was underground in a parking lot of a business. Over at Mars Center at 141 North Atlantic, 331 North Atlantic, that business strip just north of Garvey on Atlantic across from Rouse. we've had several people in the underground parking lot set up an encampment there as well so anywhere where they have access to where they can find like shelter that's where an encampment could be yeah no I appreciate that okay that's very helpful thank you

any other questions comments thank you so much for the presentation I think he's oh I'm sorry

There's still more. Also, I also want to introduce our – we're trying to bring back the Neighborhood Watch Program as well.

In the past, we've had Neighborhood Watch Programs in different beats in our city. It's been proven to be very helpful with us, especially when we're discussing any issues that the residents are facing that we might not be aware about. and it's also been proven to help reduce crime from these neighborhood watch meetings.

So if there's anyone at home or anyone that's watching this, if you're interested in becoming a block captain or starting your own neighborhood watch in our city, please feel free to call the number provided 626-307-1215,

which is the community engagement bureau which is the other side of the bureau where I work at so it's a different team but they'll be able to assist anyone with creating a neighborhood watch that's it I just had a

quick question about the the neighborhood watch program is this up on the on the police website our residents talking residents retrieve this

information? So a lot of times the other team or the other team under our bureau, they would go out to different residences, businesses, they'll actually

just reach out to different people to create the neighborhood watch teams. For

example, they might go to a like an elderly folks home or over at the at

At the marketplace they reached out to all the different managers for all the different

businesses like Costco and Buffalo Wild Wings.

So they do outreach kind of like how we do outreach to kind of spread the word.

And we also provide flyers all around the city as well.

We put it out through our social media, through Instagram, through Twitter. we put it up on the police department's website and we're starting a program now where if we have commercial thefts, if we have a string of residential burglaries, anything that impacts an area in the city, Community Engagement Bureau then follows up immediately with that area and tries to begin a neighborhood watch program in that area. And it's just one of the ways that we're going to target property crimes that are occurring throughout the city. We had 120 approximately neighborhood watch groups before COVID. And when COVID hit, we shut the whole program down for obvious reasons. We went to re-contact a lot of those people, and very few of them are still around or are interested in running the program again, so we're kind of grassrooting it, but we're gonna hit as many areas as we possibly can and try to build those numbers back up again. It's a very important program for us. Puts eyes in a neighborhood. If you're in a neighborhood and you see something that doesn't fit for your neighborhood, you know it better than the officers that patrol the area because you live there. We wanna we wanna capitalize on that ability of the community, the ability of that neighborhood to say, listen, that doesn't look right. That car doesn't look right. Something's wrong here and calling us. And that's what Neighborhood Watch is all about. And getting to know your neighbors. There's so many people in our city that don't know the people that live right next door. That's what Neighborhood Watch is all about. Bringing small groups in the community together and eventually meshing that throughout the whole community so everybody kind of feels comfortable with everybody around. That's what we're searching. That's what we're going for right now. Okay, do we have any Neighborhood watch programs that are currently operational we have a few I don't know in your district which ones are operational anymore Right now the Community Engagement Bureau is putting together a list of the people that were active before and Kind of looking at kind of some of our crime trends and that's what we're trying to build from right now

Okay, thank you Other questions?

Chief, we talked about this. I'd love to see it back in action. Let us know what we can do in terms of reaching out to the community, social media, or just walking the box and letting people know that we're back up. And if you can't do it because of health reasons or you've done your due for five years and you're now done, let's talk to a neighbor.

We can start that process. That's really how this program works. most neighborhoods if there's been a burglary or some type of property crime the people in that neighborhood know because they see the police car at the neighbor's house and they want to know because people want to know so we capitalize on that and then we go to the neighborhood almost immediately and start knocking on the doors and they're like oh maybe we'll get some information about what happened and we say listen there was a burglary it's not a secret there was a burglary we want to stop burglaries from happening but we need the neighborhood's help. It's almost like having eyes on the ground 24 hours a day. And part of that program is we talk about people's, a lot of people have cameras at their houses now, ring cameras and things. We want to build that into the program. So that's kind of how we're looking at it, and that's how we're going to build it out into the future. But I will absolutely keep council up to speed on this, and as far as our NET team and the updates, we'll continue to provide council with updates on a regular basis of the progress we're making within our homeless community here. I appreciate that. I think that would be very helpful.

And one would like to request a ride-along with the NET team when possible.

Or your grubbies.

And then on the – for business owners or other residents who are noticing homeless people,

I know people are making calls. How can they report encampments or other homeless activity that's going on? Is that just the non-emergency line for the city?

So we have a non-emergency line for this. They can just call the PD and just request, hey, can you have the NET team come out? I've been experiencing or I've seen this person here. And then whenever we get the request, we'll try our best to go out there as long as we're not being tied up with something else. They can also, if they want to just provide outreach but they don't want to get the police involved, they can actually go online on Google and put in or type in LAHOP, which is LASA's online service where they'll fill out the information of where this person is at and the description of this person, and then they will send outreach workers as well. So their response might not be as fast as ours, but they usually come within three or four days as well.

Go Monterey Park is a great way to do it also, the app. Any homeless issues that you end up having, you can go to the app. You can send a picture, make an entry. The police department gets it, and it gets transferred over to the net team, and then they handle it. And then the person that sent it in will get a response, obviously, about what was done.

also the pdceb at montereypark.ca.gov pdnet, N-E-T, at montereypark.ca.gov is the net team's email

and citizens can send anything they need to through that process also to the net team so there's quite a few ways to get a hold of them they don't work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week we're trying to expand them with additional officers so they can work into the evening hours

and perhaps into the weekends

like officer lamb said it's a it's a very time consuming process that for him to get someone

situated for him to get someone housing he probably has made contact with that person six or seven times over many many months to gain the confidence of that person to trust us that

we're going to help them it's all about trust and establishing trust it's not a one-time meeting and they take services.

It requires follow-up and follow-up and follow-up and trust-building.

And that's where these officers are so good at. But that's why they have to do it on a regular basis. And that's why we have a team.

No, I appreciate all the team's efforts and would love to get that regular report out on a monthly or whatever basis makes sense. I appreciate all that the team is doing.

Any other questions or comments? Thank you so much, Officer Lime. Thank you, Police Chief, for the report. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next staff communication is Recreation and Community Services.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor of San Bernard, Councilmembers. Robert Aguirre, Director of Recreation and Community Services. here this evening to share some updates and also welcome a new member to the team. So it's my honor and privilege to introduce to you Christina Alatore. Christina comes to us from the city of San Gabriel where she was a recreation supervisor. She is now a recreation manager here in the city of Monterey Park. And she comes to us with a wealth of knowledge and experience. Christina also has a degree in recreation administration from Humboldt State University. she's the president-elect for the California Parks and Rec Society for District 13 and some fun facts about her she's actually a women's rugby coach at Cal State Northridge and going into our

next slide she's actually a avid Dodgers fan so so honorable Mayor Sanchez and council members I

look forward to serving this great community of Monterey Park I also look forward to working alongside our great Monterey Park team that we have going on here.

And in true team and Dodger spirit, our city has a Dodger night.

That will be on Friday, June 23rd. Game time is at 710, and tickets are only $36.

Tickets are available by calling the Recreation and Community Services Department

at 626-307-1388 or visiting the website

at www.montereypark.ca.gov

backslash dodgers. And as of this evening, we have 44 people

registered for this event.

Next slide, please. So just a reminder.

Next week, we'll be doing a tribute to Cinco de Mayo

to kick off our annual Play Days Carnival.

So on Thursday, May the 11th,

we'll do a tribute to Cinco de Mayo here at Barnes Park.

The event starts at 5 o'clock, and we're going to have a Latin DJ playing. Following the DJ, there will be a mariachi.

And then I know last year, we had a lot of people that said they want to dance, and so following the mariachi,

we actually have a Latin band

that's going to be playing cumbia, salsa merengue,

all types of music. So it'll be a really festive event.

Also that evening, we will still have our farmer's market, so folks can still come out, get their produce, delicious food, kettle of corn, all that good stuff, and really enjoy all the carnival rides. As the library had mentioned earlier, there's still the Read and Ride program, an opportunity for students to get free ride tickets for reading. And so we're really excited and looking forward to seeing everyone come out

to our Cinco de Mayo tribute on May 11th. And then next slide, please.

I had to make sure that this was memorable for her.

I'll go ahead.

As mentioned, we do have our Play Days Carnival that starts on May the 11th. It runs through May the 14th.

I'll do that for you.

That's here in Barnes Park.

We're really excited this year, so we'll also have more food trucks this year, as well as we make sure we packed the weekend with some great bands. As mentioned, we have our tribute to Cinco Mile on Thursday. On Friday night, we have an amazing 80s band called Video Star. And then on Saturday, we have like a top 40s kind of everything under the sun band that plays just a little bit of everything called Brobots.

And so we're really excited. We think it's going to be a great weekend.

Counting on great weather, it seems like I've been lucking out with every event that's coming up, even as it's raining, that one day it seems to get the sunshine. So we're looking forward to it, and we really hope to see all the community out, dancing, having a great time, lots of smiles, and just a festive way to celebrate 107 years here in Monterey Park.

Next slide.

And then finally, just want to remind everyone, as Council Member Wong and folks have just mentioned, that continue to follow us on social media at Monterey Park Rec. We try to keep everyone updated on not only the rec events, but also anything that's going on in the library, the police department, fire department. I really just try to engage with the community as much as possible and keep everyone updated on all the wonderful things Our department all of my colleagues departments are doing really proud of the city and everything that's going on So thank you and we're available for any questions, especially her. She's really available

Any questions or comments from council? Mr. Mayor? Yes. Councilmember Lo. First I'd like to say, Ms. Alatorre, welcome to City of Mallory Park

Thank you. We are looking forward to working with you and Yes, we expect Just a continuation of all the good things we've been doing in the city.

And, you know, I just want to just give my compliments to Parks and Recreation. Earlier this week, I was involved in a planning meeting for the upcoming June 3rd Pride March and Festival. And Robert was able to join the planning meeting that involved the O'Hambra Teachers Association as well as the SGV LGBT Center. And really, it was a sort of pride for me to talk about all the good programming we've done and really how, you know, Robert and your crew, I mean, you really are purveyors of happiness and joy in our community.

So keep on bringing the happiness and joy. Thank you. Thank you.

So, Christina, welcome to the city of Monterey Parks because we have 13 parks, more than most of our local cities around here. So looking forward to working with you.

Thank you.

Just a second, thank you and welcome to Monterey Park. I appreciate Robert introducing her. And Robert, I was expecting you to hide and come out of the side room like last time.

I couldn't fit in the cake.

But no, thank you.

Appreciate everything the Parks and Recreation and Community Services Department does for the city and to help bring the community together.

I'd also like to welcome you to the Monterey Park family. And thank you, Robert, for introducing her and for bringing her to Monterey Park to be

part of our team.

looking forward to a lot of the great programming

especially Cinco de Mayo

really excited about that I try to bring my family

to a lot of the events so I appreciate a lot of the great programming that you guys are doing thank you

I was expecting the mariachi band to come out

but now I'm going to do better

I also wanted to say welcome and it seems like you're planning really well

and welcome to our

great partner and look forward to having fun with you. Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll go ahead and jump to presentations and we have one from the Monterey Park Community Healing Fund.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council members. I want to update you with what's going on with our fund. We do have some very good news.

As you know, our goal was always to help the community recover after the tragic shootings in January. In the last couple of months, we were able to talk to some of the victims and the people that were there from the shooting. So right now, we are happy that we are able to offer small financial grants. to witnesses of the Star Ballroom Dance Studio. The Agents for Advancing Justice has raised over a million dollars, and how they are spending their funds is to distribute to families of the deceased and people that have been injured from that shooting. What we learned most recently was that there are a group of victims that have not been compensated.

They were not physically injured, but they are suffering.

so what our group would like to do is extend small financial grants to them and we're going to be

having a press conference and having criterias and if they do meet that that's what our fund

will be doing to bridge that gap any questions or comments from council council member low

thank you mr. mayor again just thank you i know

small grants that you were talking about, is there an application process for that?

There is. We are working on the application. Hopefully we'll get that out by next week. Okay. Yeah, if you can share that,

I think maybe we can post that on the city website as well.

That'd be great.

And then before I forget, because I keep forgetting, Amy, it sounds like you're already in touch with Advancing Justice on some issues.

They did come to one of our last meetings.

I know they had reached out about an event that they're trying to do on May 20th

or something like that.

I don't know if they've brought that up with you but maybe that's something they're trying to do an event at the Lai Lai Dance Studio in partnership with other entities as well I think it might make sense for the Community Healing Fund to maybe be a partner on that and get some details on what they're actually trying to plan

and see what might be I can reach out to them or I'll speak to you often thank you

and I just had a couple follow up questions Amy for the small grants that we're giving

Have you guys said a numeric figure about how much?

We have not. We are still working through that.

Okay.

And then how early are you guys planning to put an application up?

We would like all the applications to be returned by July 30th.

And do you have any idea when they're going to be going live?

Hopefully we'll have the applications out by next week

and then have them all returned by the July 31st.

and then at that point depending if we how fast we can go through the applications will be

disbursing the money okay and the committee's going to go through the through the applications of the media okay thank you so much welcome

we'll go ahead and jump to seeing there's no old business uh consent counts mr. mayor if i could

uh before we go to the consent calendar if i could request uh that we take item 5a first i I assume that will be a relatively quick item, and I know our guest is in the audience before we get into a longer discussion on some of the items and consent.

Yes, that's fine with me. Is that fine with counsel? Yes.

Excellent. So if we can move up item 5A, reappointment to the Library Board of Trustees. Is there a...

One speaker. Jennifer Tang.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor Sanchez and City Council. Thank you for moving this item up. My name is Jennifer Tang, and I currently serve as the president of the Monterey Park Library Board of Trustees. I come before you tonight to ask for an appointment for a second term on the board.

I was first appointed in June of 2020 after encouragement from former library trustee and city clerk David Barron.

He felt my background as an educator would be valuable to serve in this capacity. And since my swearing in nearly three years ago, it has been my honor to serve.

I've had the opportunity to support the library through a tumultuous but productive three years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the excellent library staff pivoted from in-person service to virtual programming and contactless checkout. Despite being physically closed to the public, library patrons were still able to borrow books, print copies, access Wi-Fi, check out Chromebooks, participate in virtual story time, and so much more. Since reopening the library to the public, they have continued to push the envelope. For AAPI Heritage Month in 2021, I helped organize a virtual panel of local Asian American authors to discuss their work and the role of literature and storytelling in AAPI communities. For Pride Month in 2022, I helped organize a book talk with a local author and the teens. These are just two programs amongst so many amazing programs, as you saw from Mr. Castellanos earlier this evening, that the library puts on. and I want to thank the library staff for always being so open to program ideas and making them

into a reality. In regards to policies, in 2021, the library eliminated late fines to expand accessibility to library resources, particularly to low-income residents. We became one of the first libraries in the St. Gabriel Valley to implement this policy. In 2022, I was part of

the library's strategic task force and alongside other community members helped to create the Library's new strategic plan. This helps set a vision, mission, and goals for the next few years,

and I look forward to continuing to serve and helping these plans come into fruition.

Following the tragic mass shooting on January 21st, the Library stepped up and partnered with the Chinatown Service Center to make mental health and victim support services easily accessible to our community. These critical efforts are an important step in helping our community heal,

and the library did so without hesitation. They're always there to give our community what it needs. So I want to say thank you to the dedicated library staff, our city librarian Diana Garcia,

all of our library supporters including the friends of the library and the library foundation and to the city council for your support of this important institution. I also want to put in a

plug for library funding, increased library funding because after all many people in our community want to see increased service hours.

I'm told I don't have much competition for this position, thank goodness. So I will take any opportunity to highlight the library's important work.

I respectfully ask for your yes vote on my reappointment this evening. Thank you very much.

Thank you. If we can,

are there any questions or comments from Council?

No? Want to make a motion?

Move for approval.

All right, so moved by Councilmember Lo, seconded by Councilmember Yu.

If we can take a vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

Congratulations to Trustee and your reappointment. I appreciate all that you do and have done for the city and the library and looking forward to three more years of your service.

Yes, three more years.

We look forward to all the great programming and a lot of the services that will come during the next three years.

Jennifer, thank you so much for your service.

Okay.

So we'll go ahead and go back to consent calendar items 3A and 3 through 3K. And, Council, are there any items you would like to pull for discussion?

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to pull 3B, only just for staff presentation.

Okay, 3B.

Anyone else?

I'll pull 3D, 3F, 3G.

And that's it.

And I would like to pull 3H.

So I have 3B, 3C, 3D, 3D, 3F, and G.

Okay.

All right. So the remaining items, 3A, 3E, 3I, 3J, 3K, is there a motion?

So move.

Second.

If we can vote.

Approved unanimously.

Excellent.

So if we can get a staff report on 3B.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Council Members.

Martha Garcia, Finance Director. So today we're presenting the ACFER, it's the

Annual Comprehensive Financial Report. What we are, what I have on the slides is a

summary of our general fund, but it's mostly our ACFER audits all of our funds.

We have over 30 funds and it represents all of our funds, but we focus a lot of

our time while we focus on all of them a lot of our time is spent on the general fund.

Next slide, please. So our we received an unmodified or what's also referred to a clean opinion

from our auditors and that is an opinion that provides reasonable level of assurance from our independent auditors that the financial statements represent true and fair reflection

of our city.

We've also received 33 consecutive awards

for our ACFER from the GFOA. We've submitted the ACFER for 21-22

for hopefully we will receive

the 34th consecutive award.

So like I said, I want to talk about general fund

in this discussion, even though the ACFER is.

For over our 30 funds, it's a full comprehensive report of all of our financials.

I'll focus a little bit on our general funds tonight.

Our general fund revenues, I heard council they wanted to see a historical.

So our general fund revenues have been slowly increasing.

They didn't really have a big hit during the COVID years, but because of the marketplace it stayed pretty safe but it's been slowly increasing and this year we had in 21-22 our revenues recorded at 49.1 million our tot grew quite a bit almost a million

if you could see that yellow bar at the top it grew it's grown a million dollars from from previous

years and we received $2.1 million last fiscal year.

Our sales tax is $9.3 million and our

TOT is

$21.3 million.

Next please. So our expenditures, I do have to have a disclaimer here.

Our expenditures in transfers and uses

in 21-22 I extracted and I have a note at the bottom of the

PowerPoint I extracted

100 million 100.9 million

because that was when we purchased

when we sold the bonds for the POBs and what happens is it's an accounting journal entry that has to go through our books

because the money was lent to us and was given to CalPERS. So we went through our books as an expenditure, and then it went out of our books through our transfers out.

So I took that out so that you wouldn't see a graph that was skewed with that huge dollar amount. It would have went off.

So the blue line is our expenditures, which are operating expenditures, and that includes capital assets and everything.

and the red line is our transfers in or transfers out.

If you see a red line at the bottom below the bar,

that means that we receive more revenue in transfers in than transfers out. Well, we receive more. I shouldn't say revenues. We receive funds came in more. They were higher than the funds going out. So there's one year in 1515 where I see it where the revenues, the funds came in more than the funds going out.

For this fiscal year, our operational, again, that includes all of our capital projects. That includes the gap. That includes all of our operational, includes all of our departments. And it's all our general fund. It was $52.4 million.

And then $2.8 million was a transfer out that went to our pension fund. That goes into subsidize or supplement our pension fund because we currently don't have enough revenue coming in from the pension property tax. It doesn't cover all of our costs. Next slide, please.

So on this slide, I wanted to show where we've been with our reserves.

And our reserves includes our committed, which is our committed that includes our non-spendable.

It includes some cash flow money, and it includes catastrophic money,

and it includes 1.7, but I'm not 100% sure,

for the Petraille Gronda project.

Those are committed funds that we as a city know

we cannot use without council having a vote.

Then we have the assigned funds that are at 19,

that were a little bit over 19 million,

and those funds are assigned to carryovers

and to capital projects.

Those are assigned funds that work for those type of accounting practices and expenditures.

So last year, of course, we were at $35.1 million, and this year we dropped to $38.9 million.

And that is almost all of our...

Monterey Park. We have a lot of it attributed to the the Gap Project we had more revenue less revenues coming in than the expenditures going out and it dropped our reserves but if you see it's been in the 20s before we've stayed pretty much in the 20s it was in the last three years that it went up to the 30s and now we're back to the 20s again so it's been fairly consistent throughout the years

and that concludes my presentation so I'm here available for any questions

any questions or comments from council

council council member go I do

so I have two questions so

you explained earlier that unmodified means if you can repeat

that? So unmodified means that it's there are independent auditors or any independent auditors gives the

reasonable assurance that our financials for the city are stated accurately and

it's the highest level of an

opinion that an auditor can give to a municipality.

So it's like getting an A if I was in school?

A plus. A plus. Even better. Okay. All right. So thanks for clarifying.

And then the second question, I think you mentioned about the, on one of the chart, you mentioned briefly that the $28 million in revenues, you mentioned that it actually covered GAP, the GAP project for?

Yeah, the $52 million in expenditures, that's where the GAP came out of. That's where the expenditures for the gap, those were the charges for the project. And you can also find them in page 22 of our ACFER.

It's included in expenditures on community development. That's $5.9 million that's included in community development. And then there's also another $800,000 that's included in general government that was hitting a subrogation account.

But you can find it throughout the book.

There is one on page 22, which is our statement of activities. You will see it there under our statement of activities.

You will also find it in page 29, which is our income statement, our revenue expenditures and change in fund balances. You will also find it there. Again, it's under community development, and the 5.9 and the other 800 is in general government.

So page 22.

Page 22. And page 29.

Okay, so roughly, I thought I heard $6 million and $800,000, $6.8 million.

Roughly, yes.

Which was allocated for the amount of money spent last year.

Correct. Okay.

Yeah, our auditors recorded it and had it rolled up because they do a roll-up.

So they took our expenditures and they rolled it up to these two different line items.

So anyone can actually go into our finances, well, in the audit report and pull those numbers.

I mean, it's transparent. Yes. We pay those amounts. Yes, it is.

And we also have our module, a city module that shows all of our expenditures throughout the year. specifically to what vendors we're paying them to.

Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments? Yes. Council Member. Actually, I wanted to congratulate Martha. You got an A-plus, you know, from the audit reports, and this is very outstanding.

So, and also I wanted to say, even with the pandemic, we don't see any deep or our revenue source is still very strong,

and also we manage our expense really well, and thank you so much for Martha, your hard work.

And you championed on the budget reports, budget meeting,

that you're the one man handling the whole thing, and that explained really well.

So thank you so much for all the good job that you've done. And I remember before I elected to council, I actually saw a lot of the previous finance manager meeting

that I remember at that time was Annie. she mentioned that we keep having problems every year on the pension obligations and now actually we don't have that problem anymore

so I wanted to say thank you so much for the teamwork and thank you so much Martha for solving a big problem for us too. Thank you so much.

Any other questions?

Martha again thank you for the summary and not to mention the

staff report that's in the agenda, which I know it's already in the staff report, but

since Measure MP passed and we were implementing it, can you tell us how much additional revenue we've been able to collect through, or will collect through MP?

Well, for this year, I'm anticipating about 1.2 million, and then moving forward, our

HDL consultants are anticipating about 8 million.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Martha, a couple questions. First, thank you for all the team's efforts on this. I know a lot goes into putting the audit together and working with the auditor to get them a lot of the backup material. I appreciate the clean audit results. It's a stamp of approval that our processes and our financial statements actually reflect where we are.

And so appreciate that. Question on this.

Cliff and Larson, CLA has been our auditor, it says, for the last seven years.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Do we have currently a city policy for changing up our auditors every few years?

Good question.

We did an RFP, and we are bringing next council meeting our new auditors. So we will have new auditors for this fiscal year.

Thanks. That's very helpful.

Is there policy we should enshrine in terms of?

It's not.

So it's not a written policy, but we tend to, our practice is to move every five, to do an RFP every five years. But what happened in this case, we can legally continue with the same auditors as long as we change the partner. And we changed after five years, and we did change the partner.

So we had a new one.

but what happened was that with COVID and us moving into a new financial system it was very hectic to for finance to to bring in new auditors with the new system and it would have been so late the act for to council so the council at the time approved an extension of the two years so that we could get it back, you know, get us back into the system set up,

get the new CAFR and the new numbers rolled up correctly, and we didn't have to have the chaos because when the new auditors come in,

there's a lot of all the questions at the preview they all know, so we're going to have quite a bit of work the next couple of months getting the new auditors on.

So, yes, it's normally five years.

In this case because of the special situation we got approval from council because of the code we just switched partners and we had them for seven years.

I would like to enshrine that in policy. Maybe we can bring that back at a future council meeting and package that with the RFP for our new auditors to make sure we are going out going forward every few years.

Of course we can do that, yes.

And then I have a series of other questions that I didn't understand in the audit. on, I mean, it's page 34 of the agenda packet. I don't know what page of the CAFRA it is, sorry. It notes general fund balances as of June 30, 2022. And I don't know if you found it yet.

Page 34?

Page 34 of 412.

It's on the Stafford, okay.

Yeah.

There's a line there, or let me know when you...

I've got it, yeah.

There's a line there for economic development 2002 bond proceeds. So the city issued a bond in 2002 for economic development projects? I'm just curious what that amount is for and if it's been set aside for specific projects.

What line item is that one?

It's the table. Oh, okay.

So that is not a bond.

That is money that we have in the bank in our investment portfolio.

We eventually, this is probably, I'll change the language of it.

It shouldn't be written that way. But this is money that we have in our investment portfolio that has been set aside under committed for the Potrero Grande project. When that project is, the funds are needed for that project, we will have to come back to council to move it from committed to assigned.

We will need council approval to do that. But that that is probably at the time

I'm guilty of this. It was from years past. I'll need to remove that information. It's not necessary there

Okay, that's that's helpful. I was just curious if we had yeah, no, we have money from a bond from 20 years ago that we haven't spent

sorry I'm going it's a long document I'm going through my my bookmarks and comments

going to page 66 of the agenda packet the statement of activities

66, yes.

Can you explain or help me understand my reading of this, the total column, going from year-end 2021 to year-end 2022, the public safety spending went down almost $9 million, about $9 million, and then community development went up $7 million.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

Oh, yeah. I'm just curious, right, the general government, public safety, community development all had significant changes from year to year. Just wondering if you could explain that.

So when we issued the POBs, we no longer previously in our budget, we would charge the departments for the UAL. When we issued the POBs, we moved the expenditures for the bond over to the retirement fund, which is Fund 202,

and we moved it over and it dropped the expenditures for all of our funds

because now the payment comes out of the retirement fund.

We're using the property tax, the pension property tax, to pay the POBs.

So that's why it's that a significant drop because those dollars came out of there.

They're no longer charged to those departments.

So it just shifted to other accounts pretty much?

Pretty much, yeah. And then for the community development, it went up. That is because that's where your gap is.

Okay.

But it's also more than that. We've rebuilt the community development, so it's growing. We're actually going to make more changes to it next year, which we'll talk about at the budget workshop.

but the 7.5 million is a 6.8 is just the gap okay no that's helpful and so we would expect

uh addition right that wasn't the full gap spending that's no no no the community so we've

added uh we added uh more staffing in there throughout the year we added a we had a director

that we didn't have before.

And we added, I think it was mostly staffing that we added to rebuild that department.

No, thank you. That's helpful.

Going over to page 68,

at the top of that page

details the Street Capital Projects Fund. So this is the funding that was, that we issued street repair bonds, right? So this is the funding that's from that.

And there's, as of last year, right, $20.5 million,

that's because we haven't spent that money yet. The next CAF or the next ACF or whatever it's called will show significant.

Oh, definitely.

Yes, we've been spending a lot this year on that.

I just want to note that for the public who may be paying attention,

that that money's not just sitting there.

This is money and funds that is as of June 30th, 2022, almost a year ago, and that money is being deployed for street repairs currently,

since I know a lot of us get asked about when their potholes and their streets are going to be repaired.

We're deploying that money as quickly as possible, right?

going back going down to I think that same page actually under business type activities financial

analysis for sewer fund revenues noted that they stayed the same year to year from the previous year to this past year. I'm just curious, since there was a change to our water revenue, I believe, just in my mind, I'm not understanding. So the sewer funds are tied to our water use, right, for households? Or why wouldn't that be different?

currently they're tied

but we have been

we haven't been receiving

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So we currently had to drop our, or we have our rates drop to 2019 rates, calendar year 2019 rates.

So other than that, I would have to do more research to find out why it didn't increase. But my understanding in our practices that we don't have, in the past, it was connected to water.

in our prop 218th that we might be bringing to council,

it'll be not connected to water via flat

because we have to follow the law.

Okay. No, I, yeah. That'd be helpful if you can do some research. I'm just curious why.

Yeah, I'll find out why it was, what happened.

Yeah, I'm just curious why,

because the, right, with conservation, it's noting in one of the paragraphs that water revenues were down because people were conserving water,

which is good. We want to encourage that.

I'm just curious why there wouldn't have been a corresponding decrease in sewer fund revenues along the same lines, but if that's a 218 and the rate process or rate difference and something,

I'm just curious. I will find out for you.

and then going to page 70 of 412 in the table for long-term debt can you detail what I mean what is a section 108 loan and why is that a line item or I mean what is a section 108

Section 108 loan was a loan from the HUD to the marketplace for the Phase 1. We did finish paying it off this year.

We no longer will have it.

So CDBG funds were being used to pay for it, and we finished paying it.

All right.

So that's just a HUD loan to help rehabilitate a former landfill site, is that?

Yes. Okay.

So that's just funding that the federal government pitched in to help us?

Correct, yes.

And then can you help, I don't know what this means, on that same graph, claims and judgments. There's a line item right for $22 million, $19 million.

What are claims?

So is that saying that we have been taking out loans to pay out claimants? No.

These are judgments that are on the book that we haven't paid out?

These are, it's like a UAL.

It's an unfunded liability. There's no bonds.

This just sits there because it's a potential cost to the city.

This is litigation we are anticipating.

We're currently in.

We are in, and we're setting aside potential liabilities.

Correct.

Not insignificant. And then along the same lines of one of my earlier questions going to page 90.

For the state of net position for proprietary funds under water utility, right, this as of June 30, 2022, shows about 20, just under $23 million in cash in investments being held under the water utility. This was the money that we built up for capital projects right when we raised rates a few years ago, and that money will be spent, and it's going to be spent on already allocated projects.

Is that right? Correct.

But our unrestricted funds is at the bottom, we have $16.7 million.

The rest of it is in other items that cannot be spent. So our capital projects would be for $16.7 million.

Great. Thank you.

And then going further down to page 99, there's the Redevelopment Property Tax Trust Fund. Are we receiving still significant amounts of money from redevelopment dissolution assets?

Yes, we are. We are paying two different bonds. One's Atlantic.

I can't remember the two, but we are paying two different bonds.

You'll see it during our budget process, our budget workshop.

And we receive a little bit over $2 million to pay for those bonds.

Does that cover the full cost of our...

Yes, yes.

And those bonds will be paid off in 2028, but they do come from the property tax in that area, and the bonds are fully covered.

Okay.

So there's no extra money then beyond bond payment or debt payment?

No, no. Once we pay the bonds, that money will be thrown back into the pool and we'll get a portion of it that will go into our general fund. But for now, it's been all of it. We won't get the same amount.

It'll be less, but it'll grow our general fund and the bonds will have been paid for.

Cool. That's helpful. Thank you.

further down to page 128 long-term liabilities talks about the 2004 taxable pension obligation bonds so we issued a pob in 2004 as well is that right

so there was a pob in 2004 and the two got merged

in uh when we did it in 2021 okay no that was going to be my question

we keep it separate as uh for accounting purposes

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you

And I think that is it most of my other questions are really on the budget We'll save those for when we when those come back in a few weeks. Thank you

Okay, any other questions comments?

Okay

Okay. Is there a motion to approve the item?

I'll make a motion to approve the annual consolidated financial report as presented.

Do I have a second? I'll second.

Thank you. And if we can have a vote?

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

Thanks, Martha. I really appreciate you and the team on this. And just to confirm this, that the ACFER will be posted in its entirety on our website.

It's already there.

All right. Cool. It's already there, yeah. It's in the finance department. It's in the finance department, and it has it in the financials.

Perfect. Thank you, Martha.

Thank you.

Thank you, Martha, for all the hard work.

We appreciate it, and we look forward to the budget meeting.

Yes. Thank you. Okay. Item 3C, authorizing the mayor to sign a letter on behalf of the city, supporting

assembly bills 1406. I'm sorry? Oh, D, I'm sorry, D. Sorry about that. Oh, land acknowledgement

statement. Is there a report?

Oh, sorry.

Hi, this is Mona Morales-Ricaldi, and I'm more than happy to report on it. If you could hang on, Mona. Sorry, we lost a video connection. If you could just give me one second, please.

Okay.

In the meantime, I will do the report, and we have Mona Morales-Ricaldi on the line, and she's going to be here to answer questions as well.

Are you able to hear me?

yes we are able to hear you thank you so much great okay thank you me ha netwantane mona morales

recall day i am a tribal member of the san gilbert band of mission indians and partnered and worked

with um the city of monterey park to draft a land acknowledgement and what this does for our tribe

is that it acknowledges that the ancestral land that monterey park is on is gavilino tongvaland

And so we would appreciate your consideration of adopting this land acknowledgement, and I'm open to any questions. Any questions or comments from Council?

No real questions.

I really appreciate your work and our staff's work on this and getting this together for us. My question, I guess, is how do we plan to utilize this land acknowledgement going forward? Are we planning to Make sure that this is included on our official documents going forward and maybe I would suggest adding it to the top of

Our council agendas going forward as well. Absolutely. Um, thank you. Mr. Mayor members of the City Council

Inez Alvarez assistant city manager. So yes, if adopted tonight At the direction of council we could add it to the City Council agendas And council can choose to read it and opening of meetings or opening of events as they choose

Any other questions or comments?

I'll move for approval.

Thank you so much to CitySaf for taking the time to work on this land acknowledgement. I think it's very powerful, and it speaks to the community that we are and who we've been in the past. So I appreciate that land acknowledgement was drafted, and I'd be more than happy to move to approve this.

I have a second.

And before we do, let me...

Okay.

Before we approve it, I will take the time to read the land acknowledgement.

Sorry, scrolling through.

Just a second, sorry.

Here we go.

The land acknowledgement reads, we would like to acknowledge that the land we inhabit today was once known as the Tobangar, the home of the Gabriolino Tongva people. We show our respect to the Gabriolino Tongva people as well as the all indigenous people, past, present, and future, and honor their labor as original caretakers of this land. We commit to uplifting the Gabriolino Tongva people, invite you to acknowledge the history, and join us in caring for this land.

Thank you so much for that land acknowledgement.

And I'd also, just to echo what Council Member Wong said, aside from putting it on the agenda, I'd like for us, whenever we have any public meetings or events, if we're moving forward, we can also read the land acknowledgement during events as well.

Noted. And then we'll go ahead and move to approve the land acknowledgement.

Is there a second?

I already seconded. Oh, you already seconded.

So we can take a vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you so much for your help. Thank you for being here tonight.

Thank you.

We'll go ahead and move on to item 3F, National Police Week Resolution.

Is there?

Yeah, just wanted a quick, very quick staff report, Chief Lees, if that's okay.

I can be quick.

so I present to you tonight a staff report and resolution making or recognizing May 15th to 21st as National Police Week National Police Week was first brought about in 1962 by President Kennedy and it recognizes the officers that are killed in the line of duty throughout the nation

in years past Monterey Park has recognized those officers we've had an officer killed in the line of duty here and named a park after him so that's the presentation tonight and I hope

everybody understands how important it is to our officers and to the community here and I offer any questions any questions or comments from council I just wanted to pull it

to make sure that we are giving it time on the agenda and for this council

meeting,

appreciate chief lease and all of our officers and staff that are serving in

the police department,

keeping our community safe and acknowledge our own officer that was lost in line of duty in our city's history. And many who wish their lives right on a daily basis, going out to keep our community safe and our neighborhood safe. Appreciate this opportunity to just take a very quick moment, even if it's symbolic to mark that recognition and appreciation for our police officers and everyone that's that's working hard to keep our community safe. I'm happy to make a motion but also wanted to just I'm happy to make a motion to to adopt this resolution and I know the previous resolution on correctional officers was also we put it on the consent calendar but also appreciate correctional officers and others that are working to keep our community safe in other respects and in light of the shooting, the Lunar New Year shooting that happened in our own community, our first responders, both police and fire, that responded very quickly. Our officers were on scene within minutes, risking their lives to keep our community safe and do that on a continuing basis, on a daily basis. So thank you so much to everyone who does that for us here in the city and I appreciate all that you do.

Thank you very much for those kind words. On behalf of the men and women of the police department, we really appreciate the support that council gives us.

any other questions or comments from council councilmember again chief we thank you for the

public safety and what you guys National Board of Justice. We probably should look into this and think about doing it once a quarter rather than just one week for the year so that we can get the appreciation out a little bit more and we can do a little celebration with it as well. Thank you. And I just want to read one part of the resolution because I think it's so important for people to hear it. It says the safety of our community is dependent upon the dedication and commitment of our officers, our police officers,

And so I wanted to thank you, Scott, and all of your officers that do such an amazing job day in and day out to keep our community safe. I see them patrolling our neighborhoods. I see them go up and down my street where I live. And in all honesty, it just makes us feel a lot safer. And, of course, in light of what happened with the tragedy, everything that your police department and officers do continuously to keep us safe.

We appreciate you guys.

Thank you very much.

And if there's a motion to approve.

So moved.

Is there a second?

Seconded by Council Member Yu. If we can take a vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you. Thank you, Chief.

And if we can move on to Item 3G, Public Works Week and Logo Resolution.

Is there a report? Thank you, Sean.

All right.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor and City Council, Sean Igoe, Public Works Director. So tonight you have a four-year resolution for adopting Public Works Week as May 21st to 29th. This year's theme is Connecting the World Through Public Works. This highlights the way public works professionals connect all of us physically through infrastructure and inspirationally through services in our community, whether first responders or our daily workers that carry out their duties with integrity and pride. Additionally, as you can see here, we have an open house at our Public Works yard located at 751 South Alhambra Avenue on Thursday, May 25th from 11 to 1.30. Each division of Public Works will have a booth there in addition to some vendors. We'll also be providing hamburgers and hot dogs at this event.

So it's open to City Council, obviously.

We hope that all of you can attend and to all residents. So this gives us an opportunity as Public Works to show what we do, how we do it, and

the importance of Public Works.

We'll obviously be offering opportunities to assist our residents to understand how we do things, what we do, the importance of public works, and then also update them on CIP projects and things like that. Additionally, as part of this staff report, you'll see the addition of our public works logo. This logo has been used in the city here within public works for a couple of years now, and this truly encompasses the many disciplines within public works, which includes engineering, water, maintenance, and parks. So this really embodies what we do here within the city as far as Public Works is concerned. And so we ask for your support in adopting this logo for us to use. For promotional items, our apparel will be used for city official business only.

With that, I will gladly answer any questions. Questions or comments from Council? Sure, Mr. Mayor. Council Member Lo?

Yes. I just want to offer my high praise for the work that everyone at Public Works does. I live right by it.

the city yard and so early in the morning I see your crew coming in and out as early as

6 a.m in the morning and I think it's a testament to the dedication and you know throughout the day

I see you know the the vans and the trucks with the city of a drive around you know

pothos and installing traffic lights and so yeah again just thank you for all that you do

day in, day out for our community.

Actually, I have a quick question. I really appreciate, I really like the poster

that you created. Is that created by the CHET GPT?

So the logo on the left,

that symbol, that is actually done by

American Public Works Association.

So they're the ones that put that together. This is

their theme, and this is how we share within

not only our community, but

within the nation around the world.

Good job. Thank you.

council member yeah just well quick question so sean thank you for you and your team

for kind of going about the city and making sure we stay modern so quick question for you how many potholes are you guys fixing a day we fix a lot of potholes a day i mean honestly again like i

talked last time we fix thousands within a given month and so it's really the testament to the team they are truly dedicated to providing the best service that we can with us and within this community so again you know we do what we can within the means we want to make sure we're filling every pothole that we can and so

we definitely do our best and folks who still see potholes if they're not being

fixed they can get help by doing what go on PKA app or they can call Public Works

so we are definitely able to assist them in any way we can and I can testify

that it gets done within two days sometimes earlier but two days is the

one I had to check in for. So thank you.

Thank you.

And I'd just like to add my appreciation with the other council members for everything that you and the department members do. I don't think any other department can do their job, right, whether it's police, fire,

RON, without the work that the critical, right, very basic work that the Public Works Department does in terms of keeping our streets paved and in order. Our water system is run by the Public Works Department. Things that are very basic and that are more often than not taken for granted by many of us in the community, that's work that's being done by the dozens of folks that are in our Public Works Department and appreciate everything that they do on a daily basis to keep our community safe in the physical sense and helping to keep our community working and going and our businesses able to conduct business as well. So thank you so much. Looking forward to the hot dogs and hamburgers at the open house and hope that and encourage community members to come out and learn everything that learn more about everything the public works department does

to keep our community going. Yeah, thank you, Sean, for everything you do and your department does.

And I appreciated the tour of all of the facilities, the other especially the water treatment plan. That was pretty amazing. I still keep talking to people about it, my students. I told them I was drinking water right before it hits the city.

That was pretty amazing. My wife said, why didn't you bring me any?

So next time I visit, I'll bring a jug with me or one of those five-gallon tanks or whatever. But truly, I also have some questions about the logo. Are we planning to print these out as stickers, kind of like we did with the Going Green campaign?

We can look at that. Maybe slap one on my iPad or something like that.

We can definitely look at that and help promote Public Works and this new logo.

So definitely we can have that done.

Yeah, or some of those, like the police did with their badges as well.

Sure. Get them on.

These are pretty cool.

And then also, if you're running short, I know there's a lot of potholes. I know any of us would love to volunteer to fill in some potholes.

Just let us know. Oh, yeah. Sounds good. I will let you know, definitely.

I wouldn't mind learning how to do that. Oh, yeah, yeah, same here.

I wouldn't mind. Yes. Sounds good. Greatly appreciate it.

Thank you all for all the kind words. Again, we have a great team.

and I couldn't do my job without the amazing team that we have in Public Works so we're greatly appreciative of the support that Council has for us and we will continue to support all of you.

Thank you. Thank you.

I'll make a motion to approve.

Do I have a second? Seconded by Council Member U if we can take a vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

And I just wanted to mention, because I know we're passing a lot of resolutions here, public works, National Police Week. This week was also National Clerks Week and City Clerks Week. And so I wanted to acknowledge and mention that we have a lot of city clerks here that help our city run. And so I would be remiss if I didn't mention and I didn't take the moment to appreciate the work that you guys do in your office day in and day out to make our city run. So we appreciate you, and then we want to also recognize that this is your week, but like Council Member Ngo said earlier, you shouldn't be getting a week. Once a year, you should be getting something maybe a little more quarterly, right?

Every day. Every day, that's right. Every day. Thank you.

And we'll go ahead and move on to item 3H, Tree Memorial Recommendation for Fred Sornoso.

Is there any report? Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and City Council members,

Robert Aguirre, Director of Recreation and Community Services. Before you tonight, just at the last meeting, the April 19th meeting,

City Council had nominated former Mayor Pro Tem, Fred Cernoso,

to be recognized with the tree memorial for his dedication and service to the community. As you know, Fred Cernoso contributed countless hours in dedication to the community. He was known for his fierce devotion to helping others and looking out for his fellow neighbors. Fred promoted community collaboration and fostered good friendship and goodwill.

He spearheaded the MPK night at Dodger Stadium that we spoke about earlier tonight,

and he also assisted with numerous community outreach and community cleanup events. It is my honor and privilege to come before you tonight to recommend that City Council approve former Mayor Pro Tem Fred Cernoso for a tree memorial.

I'm available for any questions.

Thank you. Any questions or comments from the Council? Yes, Mr. Mayor. Okay, Council Member Lo.

Thank you. Again, thank you, Robert.

And thank you to my colleagues for bringing this issue up. As someone, along with Councilman Yu, who served with Councilmember Mayor Pro Tem, Fred Sonoso,

what I really appreciated was we were all sworn in during the beginning of the pandemic, and I really am proud how we all pulled together, working with our community, during the darkest steps of that pandemic and to really weather the challenges before us. And probably one of my fondest memories I had was, because Fred was with me when I picked up my phone and said in the morning when we did those community cleaners on Saturday he called me like, hey, what are you doing? I'm like, ah, I am going to join you. And yes, we would then spend the next four hours driving around the city picking up items to be disposed of on our bulky item pickup days. And so, you know, really it's just something that a fond memory I'd like to share for the record of an example of Fred's dedication.

I have a question.

So once we approve this, what is then the next steps in the process for establishing the tree memorial?

So with all of our tree memorials, like we had last meeting, we actually had Victoria Carderone Chavez. So we will work with the foundry to develop the plaque for the tree memorial.

Then we'll pick a tree that the memorial will go in front of.

And then we'll set up a ceremony with council and with communities so that we can dedicate that tree. So like right now with the Victoria Chavez, I'm working on finding a tree for that position. So after tonight, if this is approved to honor Fred Cernoso, then we'll look into a tree here in the city that represents maybe an area or a park or somewhere that Fred may be frequented or may be special to his family. and then we'll get the dedication plaque done and then we'll work on putting together a ceremony for council to then dedicate and unveil that tree.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments? Council Member, you?

Yeah, I wanted to also say thank you for nominating the Fresno. So we elected at the same time, so we have a lot of fond memories with him.

And I also wanted to suggest

that maybe we should look into his district, right? the tree and then make it closer to his church or house and because he you know belonged to a

church that you know he dedicated his his life to it so um yeah i wanted to make sure that we have

a tree that closer to that area as well yeah and i do know also uh miss city manager today had

mentioned that fred's birthday is coming up in uh august so that may also be a date that we try to shoot for to aim for by getting uh the um memorial printed by and completed so that we can put that

in hopefully for his birthday. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you.

I want to just share some thoughts. I met Fred about two years ago, got to know him a little bit. And when he was sick, I communicated with him through Messenger. What a fitting night tonight to recognize Fred because he's smiling right now. The Dodgers were down five to one,

top of the ninth inning walk off grand slam so Fred

I know you're happy

just echo what the other

councilors have said looking forward to the

tree memorial ceremony for this particular item

and also the others I know that we have to

we've been delayed I think the last few years

with COVID

on doing some of these memorial and celebrations

for a few others

we do still have one that's pending

and that's for Mitchell and Gloria Ng. And then we'll be working on getting Victoria now.

If tonight's passes, then Fred's.

Thank you so much for all the work that you guys do and for moving this forward and for bringing this to us. Fred was my predecessor, and he lived in... And so I'm happy to...

Sorry, I have a lot of emotions. When I have emotions, I get tongue-tied.

But anyhow, I hope he's happy that I've taken over his seat, and I really hope that he will provide some guidance to me where he's at. And I'm happy to move this forward.

If someone will second?

Or, yeah, you guys do it, actually.

No, would you like to? Second? No, but you guys would like to?

someone want to make a motion?

Yes, would you like to second that?

Council Member moves this, and who seconds? Council Member Lo? Yes.

of the Chinese Exclusion Act and recognizing and honoring the month of May 2023 as Asian American

and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Is there a... Council Member Lo? You brought this forward?

Yes, thank you very much, and thank you, Council NC, for allowing us to have this on the agenda for tonight's meeting. The Day of Inclusion is a day that actually has been recognized by the state of California since Assembly Mike Ng was the assembly member for this district

and has been carried over by his successors in the state legislature.

But basically it's called it inclusion because it also marks a dark moment in our country's history in which we actually excluded an entire community of American residents and citizens and that was the Chinese American community. In fact, if I can just read off a few of the points in this resolution. On May 6, 1882, President Chester Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act,

the nation's first law to prohibit proprietary immigration solely based on ethnicity.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was renewed in 1892 and 1902 and made permanent in 1904, prevented Chinese laborers from entering the United States

and denied Chinese a pathway to citizenship for more than 60 years.

Chinese and Chinese Americans in the United States have suffered every moment, every action, every offense, and every heartbreak as triggered and scripted by that act. And I'd like to also add that because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, it was also the basis for further discriminatory legislation that was passed by the federal government as well as state governments. And it was not until actually in the 21st century that the United States Senate in 2011 and the United States House of Representatives in 2012 unanimously condemned the resolution of these Chinese exclusion laws and affirmed Congress's commitment to preserving the civil rights and constitutional protections for all people.

And if you think about from the moment in which the exclusion act was passed in 1882

to the first condemnation in 2011, You're talking about over a century in which we essentially codified discrimination and xenophobia. And I think it's also very salient and relevant today because we all know about the degree of anti-Asian hate that people in our community, in Asian American communities, in the United States, had to experience during the COVID pandemic.

And now because of the heightened tensions between the People's Republic of China and the United States, it's also given license to have, which is really concerning, very similar legislation in intent to what was passed in 1882.

And I'll give you an example that, for example, today in the LA Times, there's an article about Florida, which has two bills, SB 264 and H.R. 1355, which purportedly, you know, is to prohibit Chinese government ownership of real estate in Florida. However, the legislation is so broadly written that if someone is a U.S. citizen now or a natural resident of the United States, by having previous citizenship to the People's Republic, or even the way the bill's written, if it just even was recently from the People's Republic, then it could become the basis to deny someone buying real estate in the state of Florida. And furthermore, the language of the legislation requires those to sign affidavits that they somehow are not prohibited from buying. Essentially, a registration.

And this is, again, targeting people who live in the United States because of their ancestry, because of their ethnic affiliation.

And it's not just in Florida.

It's happening in other states. Texas has similar legislation.

And also we've had people in our community whose own loyalty to the United States have been questioned.

I point to Congressman Gooden from Texas who questioned our own Congresswoman Judy Chu and her loyalty to the United States,

as well as Dominic Ng, who is the CEO of EastWest Bank, a very prominent bank here in our community.

And so it's now more than ever, you know, a residence like this is important and it's relevant, unfortunately, because we have seen a history of time and time again of Asian Americans being targeted by being scapegoated and not just Chinese Americans, but I also add Sikh Americans after 9-11 who were mistaken to be Muslim and were attacked,

as well as Asians who were of the Muslim faith. And during World War II, Japanese Americans,

who, and again, in the name of national security, had an entire community of Americans, Japanese Americans, put into concentration camps

here in the United States.

So, you know, I ask for your support for the resolution because, again, it is very timely and relevant to this day.

Thank you, Council Member Lo, for bringing this forward.

Are there any questions or comments from Council?

Let me just add some comments here.

In my perfect world, we wouldn't have to celebrate May as Asian Heritage Month or February as African American Month.

It should be all the time.

that's when we have true cultural diversity and we can all celebrate that living together.

But we're not there yet.

We're getting closer, which is good. You know, America is successful and I look at our folks today in this community.

We're successful

because we have a melting pot culture and heritage that makes us successful.

And I'll leave it with that.

Other questions or comments?

I would just add on to what was already said by the other council members. I appreciate that we're considering this resolution, especially given our city being well more than majority Asian American. And it's an appropriate time to celebrate this and mark this on our calendars. I appreciate the opportunity to bring this forward. I appreciate Council Member Lo leading on this and putting this resolution on our agenda. I'm happy to make a motion.

Council member, I'm sorry, Mayor Pro Tem Wong made a motion to approve. Is there a second? I'll second it. Will you take a vote?

Approved unanimously.

Thank you. We have item

6B, a resolution of the City Council

of the City of Monterey Park declaring May 18th,

2023 as National Asian American Pacific Islander Day Against Bullying and Hate.

Mayor Pro Tem Wong, do you want to speak to this?

Along the very similar lines as the previous resolution,

this is to declare May 18th as National AAPI Day Against Bullying and Hate.

So along those same lines in terms of the mistreatment historically of Asian Americans in the United States, adding to that not too long ago in the 1980s Vincent Chin the murder of Vincent Chin in the Midwest was a

touch point for

a lot of Asian American communities including many here and led to

a wider movement

for empowering Asian American and Pacific Islander communities throughout the United States

this is to mark

and in light of the pandemic, the rise of anti-Asian sentiment and hate and the data that backs that up, wanted to bring this resolution as well to formalize the city's position on making sure that we are addressing Asian hate and bullying in activities that are going on that continue to roil our community and to be a drag on our community being able to come together in line with the previous resolution calling for our community to come together in diversity and in inclusion and in celebrating the diversity that is here in Monterey Park. So I would ask my fellow council members to approve this resolution as well.

Are you making a motion? I'll make a motion, yeah, to adopt the resolution.

Excellent. Is there a second? Seconded by Council Member Yu, if we can take a vote.

Approved unanimously.

Mr. Mayor, really quick, as we've adopted these two resolutions, I just wanted to ask, I don't know if Robert's still there, the Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month of May typically coincides with our play days and city's birthday. I know it's kind of late for integrating any additional programming to our current play days. of maybe going forward into future years if we can start thinking about ways to integrate AAPI heritage into our Play Day celebration in some way, shape, or form. I'm happy to put our heads together on how we might be able to think through that and see how we can combine those efforts together.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Wong, for that. And since we are talking about resolutions, I know we don't have a resolution here, But I did want to make mention that next week, May 8th through May 12th, is Teacher Appreciation Week. And there are currently nine schools in Monterey, public schools, sorry, in Monterey Park. And four different school districts, Garvey, LAUSD, Alhambra, and Montebello. And scores and scores of teachers teach within our city. and we know that our public schools are the bedrock of our community in terms of educating our students. So while we don't have a resolution, I do want to acknowledge and for public record say that next week is Teacher Appreciation Week. If there are teachers who are listening, we appreciate you.

We appreciate you, Mr. Jose Sanchez, teacher in El Hambre.

Well, I don't teach in Monterey Park. But thank you.

But I know there are a lot of teachers in this community. I know there's two schools in my district and many others in your districts as well. So I would recommend find a way to connect with your teachers and schools within your district to thank them for educating the kids within our city.

And we'll go ahead and move on to, are we doing city communications?

Okay, so future agenda items?

Anyone have any future? Oh, okay. So if we can do city communications. We want to start with Council Member Lo.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor.

So for my report, on April 20th, I attended the San Diego Valley Public Affairs Network,

which held its, well, they rotate their monthly meetings in which they bring community leaders and spokespersons. And for April, they have their monthly meeting at NBC Restaurant in Monarch Park.

And the keynote speaker was Darren Kettle, who is the current CEO of MetroLink. And I had the opportunity to just share a few words and discuss how local municipalities like ours, when we have our own shuttle system that is meant to be complementary to the wider regional systems, and we're not that far away from a metro link station. But again, we should always find ways to work together to address first and last mile linkages and encourage greater use of public transportation. It's good for the environment. It's good for reducing congestion.

and so I was pleased to represent the city

at the SGV Public Affairs Network monthly luncheon. And then also the following day, I and some of my colleagues were back at NBC again and we want to thank our Assemblymember Mike Fong

who actually gave a tour of the Speaker-designee Robert Rivas.

He will be the incoming Speaker of the Assembly. and Mr. Rivas, along with Assemblymember Fong and other colleagues, Assemblymember Lonthal and Assemblymember Pacheco,

all Southern California legislators had an opportunity to visit Easter Lake College

and then come to a luncheon hosted by Assemblymember Fong to hear about our issues. And, you know, I want to say that Speaker-Designate Rivas was very kind in asking, you know, how is Monterey Park doing in the aftermath of the shooting? And, you know, what can the legislature do to help our community? And so, you know, we want to thank Senator Fong for having that meeting, as well as our Speaker-Designate, Mr. Rivas, for visiting our community. Then also on the 22nd, I had an opportunity near my home to stop by an Earth Day sale of recycled goods sponsored by community organizations such as the Unhambra Young Democrats. And so I do want to thank those who organized the event. I got to buy some books, which, you know, to add to my library. And then later that day, I also had the opportunity to attend the Trans Day of Visibility in El Monte, sponsored by the Sangamah Valley LGBT Center. And, you know, it's, I think, again, since given that we had just passed some resolutions acknowledging... ются.ются.ются.ются.ются.ются.ются.ются.ются.ются.

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think about when we talk about being an inclusive community. Also, I attended the following week

our Winter Park Police Department Town Hall, and we want to thank Chief Weiss and members of your PD who was there, who were at our library as well as Zoomed in to discuss their concerns and to also here initiatives by our police department. And again, I just want to also continue the message that for our community, let's work together to keep our community safe. And as our chief mentioned tonight,

if any of you wish to revive a neighborhood watch group

or to start a new one, let us know. We want to work together with all of our residents. also I want to

thank our local women's club who held a successful charity fashion show this past

weekend which I think all of us here probably

attended and again it was always a pleasure to just see so many

people in the community and to support our

Marburg Women's Club which is over a century old

and for all of the charities

and support they have given to our

community and

also on Sunday I attended what also made my colleagues the Hanborough Unified School District that had their reading festival and

as my colleague Mayor Sanchez mentioned

before, Teachers Appreciation Week at Hanborough Unified School District

has

several schools in Monterey Park and many of our residents maybe we know are teachers or PTA people or alumni and still live and work in this community and so it really was Great to see Kimmy out to promote literacy, and I think that's it for me.

Thank you. Council Member Yu? Sure. Last Saturday, we attended the fashion show hosted by our Monterey Park Women's Club. It was a blast, and we all had so much fun. And it has been our tradition and has been very successful, as always. Also, last Friday, I've been elected to the vice president of the CEO, Chinese elected official, and thank you all for your vote. I also attended our former mayor, David Lau's birthday party last Wednesday.

I was so excited to see so many former mayors of Monterey Park at the party. We have David Lau, Mike Ng, Anthony Wong, Hans Liang, Peter Chen, and our whole council attend the party as well. So, yeah, we had so much fun.

Last Monday, we all attended Assemblyman, the Mai Fong press conference, announcing the gun safety and emergency response legislation on AB 732, 733, and 1638. I've also posted detail on my Facebook with both English and Chinese explanation. So, thank you so much.

All right, I'll try not to repeat, but we were in a lot of those events together. So what I will do is I will kind of just carve out. So on the 21st, before Speaker Designee Rivas and Assemblymember Blanca Pacheco and Assemblymember Fong, they actually tore the St. Gabriel Valley area. And we gave them a tour of our Chinatown Service Center facility on the Atlantic. and we also got about an hour of time just explaining to him what our community has been doing, bridging after the tragic events of January 21st, and he was appreciative of that. My understanding is that he toured our facility and he also went to the St. Gabriel Mission for that entire afternoon. The 21st, I also attended the My Park Mantle Ray Swimathon.

so there are roughly 150 plus swimmers

who are now, they're expanding, they're growing so kudos to that leadership team at the Manta Ray Volunteers April 26th, Police Town Hall at Brueggemar Library so great event, a lot of questions answered I believe Scott Weiss did his best to kind of interface between the on-person question as well as the Zoom calls

let's see here what else we have

the women's fashion event this past weekend that was a

success I think there were like 500 people

at least it was a full house at Quiet Canyon and

of course Sunday was Read Across America by the Alhambra

Teachers Association

so I can't tell you how many students were there

but I know they gave out thousands

of books because they had thousands of books there and basically it was the message was take them home we're not going to bring them back so i know a lot of students took just piles and piles of books to go back and read so thank you

thanks uh mr mayor uh went to many of the same events appreciate a few of those appreciate assemblymember fong for introducing his gun control bills uh and utilizing our city hall area as his uh location and his venue for doing that i know we've signed on to support just about all of those bills and look forward to tracking how they do and go through the legislature also attended the women's fashion show great event again and thank you to all in the community that supported that event um also attended the read across america hope that the alhheimer teachers association and others will come and do a similar event in monterey park if not maybe we can see if our library or recreational community services can organize a similar event for our own community along those lines next year perhaps and then for future agenda items would love to see if we can set up an item at a future council agenda for SB 710 just to bring that back for council to see where that bill is going and strategize on how we should approach that as that moves its way through the legislature and the session continues.

Also, just Council Member Ngo noted the

manta rays. I also stopped by I think after Council Member Ngo was there to check that out. I swam manta rays as well when I was a kid. The team's come a very long way. They're much better than when I swam on that team. And I think back when I was

there, there were like 20

of us on a good day swimming in the pool, so it's great to see that many kids taking advantage of the team and our pool at Elder Park. They've already outgrown, I think, long before this swim-a-thon, but our need, obviously, of pool space, and there's a lot of interest in recreation and swimming in particular. I look forward to seeing how that team continues to grow and succeed in the future.

Thanks.

Thank you.

And I'm not going to repeat a lot of the similar events that we went, so I'll just try to keep it very brief. I did have an opportunity to attend a community prayer walk with a lot of the local pastors in the community as part of our healing event. For those of you who were able to attend,

there's probably about a couple hundred people. Very powerful.