City Council Meeting — May 17, 2023

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Okay, we're going to go ahead and get started.

If we can take our seats.

And we'll go ahead and call this meeting to order at 6.36 PM.

The City Council of Monterey Park, 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 Abatement District Agenda. Welcoming you tonight, I'm going to read our mission statement. The mission of the City of Monterey Park is to provide excellent services, to enhance the quality of life of our entire community, and our land acknowledgement. We would like to acknowledge that the land we inhabit today was once known as the Tomvangar, the home of the Gabrielino-Tongva people. We show our respect to the Gabrielino-Tongva people, as well as 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. We'll go ahead and start with our flag salute.

If you can please stand.

Go, go! Forward march!

If you can put 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, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Dagger, Order, Colors!

Dagger, Outward, Face!

Dagger, Forward, March!

Color door, hold colors.

Color door, all power face.

Cotard dismissed!

Thank you so much. If you can take your seats.

Could we start with a roll call?

Council Member Lo?

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

Present. Mayor Pro Tem Wong? Present. Mayor Sanchez? Present. We have a quorum.

Thank you.

Are there any agenda additions, deletions, or changes in adoptions?

None, Mayor. Thank you.

And are there any public communications?

Yes.

First speaker, Larry Sullivan.

And Scott Kelly.

Mayor, member of the council, thank you very much. Just wanted to come in and remind you this Saturday is the fire service day as well as the Lions breakfast. All the money that we raise goes right down to the bottom line, goes right back into the schools for the ISLIGHT program.

So you can come and get a ticket there at the stand at the day of the event. You buy a ticket.

In conjunction with the fire service day, the library will be having a library set up from 11 to 1 o'clock,

11 to 1, 11 to 2, 11 to 1, where kids can learn about the library and sign up for a card. So we've got a lot going on. I'm going to let Scott, Captain Scott, say his part there.

But I remind you, the tickets are $7. dollars. It's eggs, sausage, and pancakes with coffee or juice. So with plenty of seating, we're expecting a good crowd. We're up to a neighborhood of around 600 people just for our

event. I'll let Captain Kelly. I'll just dovetail right on top of that. As soon as the breakfast is done, we're going to transition into fire service day. We're going to have our entire fleet. We're going to have our entire fleet out. We're going to be doing junior firefighter challenges. the library will be there we're going to do some extrication drills and simulations with the jaws of life and we're also going to be doing hot dogs refreshments Chick-fil-a is going to be offering drinks we're really excited it's been a long time since we've been able to do a conjunction with the Lions Club to bring our fire service day back last year was great it was great to introduce station two but now that we're able to do this in conjunction with the Lions Club breakfast we're super excited and hope everybody can make it out

I'll close by just letting you know that Councilman Vinn up here bought 15 tickets.

He's bringing 15 people with him to the breakfast.

So not to put heat on anybody else. He's at 15. Do I have to bid up to 18 tickets? Anybody for 18? No.

Anyway, thank you very much.

He made me buy one. Thank you.

Next speaker, Jorge Rivera of the Healing and Justice Center.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Jorge Rivera. I'm with a nonprofit organization called the Healing and Justice Center. We're a community-based nonprofit that serves all of Los Angeles County with a focus in San Gabriel Valley. And our mission is to support communities, individuals, and organizations

by creating safe, healing, and connected spaces. We believe that if we're going to build strong, long-lasting movements and relationships, we need to have healing and relationships strengthening at the center of our advocacy and our organizing. Some of our services include free tenant counseling hotline, nonviolent parent education classes, regenerative conflict resolution, as well as movement-based healing practices. And our advocacy currently focuses in on tenant rights and affordable housing, as well as digital equity, which is what we want to talk with you about today. The COVID pandemic highlighted several vital community needs, especially as it surrounds internet and broadband access. I think we all saw, if not heard, the pictures of the two children sitting outside of a fast food restaurant trying to connect to Wi-Fi just so that they can get their homework done during COVID. And it's just the fact that these children and thousands of families like them during the pandemic had to resort to these measures is just shameful. If you wanted to find resources like food, you wanted to find employment, you wanted to work, you wanted to find information on COVID vaccines, see your doctor, go to school, go to work, pass the time watching Netflix, or even attend a city council meeting,

making it a monopoly. We found that they were offering much Lor promotional prices in places like Rancho Palos Verdes and Malibu than they were in denser, Lor income areas of color, like the City of Monterey Park. We published our findings in a pricing disparities report that you can find on digital equity LA.org, and we began to urge the County Board of Supervisors to investigate these pricing and discriminatory practices and to put a stop to them as well as to regulate the internet service providers. In Monterey Park, as many as 40% of the households in more than half of the city census tracks lack broadband access with modern speeds of 100 megabytes per second for downloading. So we're asking city councils all across the San Gabriel Valley like yours to help us close the digital divide by writing a supportive letter to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors urging them to investigate these pricing practices and to put a stop to them and to find community based solutions and take steps so that all of Los Angeles County, not just places like Rancho Palos Verdes and Malibu, have equitable, affordable access to the internet, including residents of Monterey Park. So we've provided you with data sheets, fact sheets, and even sample letters from like the city of Alhambra who have already written a letter to the Board of Supervisors. We're open to meeting with you individually and answering any questions, providing you with data so that you can support your position in writing a letter to the Board of Supervisors. We're just trying to make sure that everybody should have affordable access to the internet. It should be a utility, not a luxury, because we're all moving online. Banking is moving online. Financial is moving online. And if we want to have our community members be able to access those resources, we need to make sure that they have access to the internet. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Next speaker.

Next speaker, Nancy Okuri.

Good evening. I would like to ask for a progress report on the property located at 126 North New Avenue that was slated for development with 60 residential units. That is the old New Avenue school for those who don't remember the area. Last I heard the project was the developer was waiting for final decision on our zoning. Do you know anything about this property site?

Okay, and then I wanted to know what you're doing to promote businesses in South Atlantic Shopping Center that houses Ralph's store.

This property has many vacant stores that could be enlarged to bring in new stores or restaurants into our hometown. The South Atlantic Shopping Center is one of the many shopping centers that provided our city with much needed sales tax. I have heard that the rent is high at this location, so maybe that's the reason why all the empty stores. The shops across the street at Prado Shopping Center seem to be fully occupied. Can our city council and city staff help us to attract more businesses to our hometown?

If our council and residents need to understand our planning process, then you need to attend our planning commission's meeting to better understand why and how their planning decisions are made for our city. Thank you.

Next speaker.

Next speaker, Jesus Hernandez of Labor Union SEIU 721.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. Mayor Jose Sanchez, Pro Tem Thomas Wong, Council Members, Go, you, and Lo.

My name is Jesus Hernandez. I'm a resident and electrician with the City of Monterey Park.

I'm here to inform you that we are shocked with City's management contract proposal. We're asking you that you match our numbers.

I'm joined by our SCIU 721 represented employees.

These include Public Works, the Burgmire Library, and non-sworn personnel of the Police Department. We're also asking you that you match our numbers.

Show on paper that we are appreciated for our commitment and dedication to serving the Monterey Park community. We're asking for a fair contract, a fair cost of living adjustment, match our numbers. Thank you.

Next speaker.

Next speaker, Lauren Frazier of SEIU 721.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, City Council members. My name is Lauren Frazier. I am a children's librarian here at the City of Monterey Park

and the Vice President of the Monterey Park Chapter of Service Employee International Union 721 SEIU. Our union membership is made up of a diverse set of workers across departments, from library to public works, finance, fire, police, recreation, and economic development. We make up a large percent of the workforce, and you'll see us everywhere working to make the city of Monterey Park a wonderful place to live for the residents. I am here tonight to let you know that our union membership is in contract negotiations with the city to secure a fair agreement for all our represented workers who make up such an important piece of the city workforce. What we are currently being offered in salary and negotiations is unacceptably low. We are seeing unprecedented levels of inflation. Groceries, rent, gas prices, all things that we need to live and work have increased to an extent that tiny salary bumps will never match. We are the Lost paid full-time employees in the city, and small percent increases to our salaries don't go very far. Those are cents, not dollars. If the city wants to recruit and retain quality employees who will stay for the long term and cultivate a lasting relationship with the community, the city needs to pay the employees fairly and enough to live and work in the community. I'm 30 years old, along with many others of my generation. I've long since given up the dream of buying a house of my own. I just want to continue to work in the city that I love, doing what I love, while living happily with the hope of being able to retire one day, without the fear of having to move somewhere else because I can't afford to live in Los Angeles County. What we are being offered is not enough. Please support us. Please support us as workers in this fight for fair wages. Thank you.

Next speaker, David Zapata of SEIU 721.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council Member No, Council Member You and Council Member Yo. Hello. My name is Davis Zapata. I work for the City of Monumentary Park Water Department. I am your cross-connection inspector. I have been here 16 years, going here next month.

and in my time here I have grown I have made some lasting friends and I am at

its worst the person that your residents see coming to disconnect their water because of some issue at its best I might is when I'm there to assist one of your residents with a water main break, a water leak, or locating a leak on their property

that is going to be saving them hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Now, I enjoy my job. I enjoy being here.

But it's like my illustrious well-spoken co-worker here stated, it's not enough anymore. It's not. The cents don't help. The cents don't help me, and they certainly don't help our younger employees or coworkers.

My coworkers are trying to make a living. They're trying to live the American dream. They're trying to stay above the working poor in what used to be a job that kept you in middle class.

that's no longer it's it's a dream that seems further and further out of reach and I'm hoping

and that the loyalty that my co-workers and ourselves or myself are showing the city is

reciprocated and helping us live and maintain a quality of life and that will see us into our retirement you know provide for our families and you know and help just we're just asking for help we're just asking for your guys's assistance and and or encouraging or attracting workers and keeping them here because we're not saying that in my department alone within the last

Last year, I have seen a turnover rate so large that there are only five people here that could be called long-term.

And as of today, I'm going to be losing another one of those.

Because another city is giving them a better lucrative offer.

Stuff that I know the city can do. I know the city can assist us with.

So this is what I'm asking of you.

Help us, because we like helping you guys. We like helping your residents, your constituents. Please help us. Thank you.

Next speaker, John Lien of SEIU 721.

Hello, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Councilmembers. My name is John. I work with the Public Works Department.

I've been here probably over 20 years.

I really like this city. And like my colleague says, you know, we've had a lot of turnover rate in our city.

People going to other cities for better rates, better stuff.

And I think I feel that if we do get a fair deal that we can retain

What we have now and attract more people to us That way we can you know work better and help off all the residents. Thank you

Next week next speaker is me Michelle

Hi, neighbors.

I need to clarify some things because there's some confusion in regards to my intentions

when commenting during our council meetings. When I ask our council members to ask questions and for items to be properly vetted,

I'm not necessarily asking for the council to vote no and or to deny items.

I'm only asking items to be channeled through the appropriate boards and commissions and properly reviewed by our experts.

It is extremely concerning when our city leadership think that they know better and purposely evade instituted review processes to ram through legislation, their opinion, and pet projects with no discussion or examination by experts or the public. It makes you wonder why.

and you need to ask yourself the same question. Why all of a sudden do they hide budget line items

under different sections randomly? Why does that occur?

Why is it when you ask the city attorney

a one-word answer that they could provide you, why does he give you a two-minute speech when all you ask is, can we move this to the planning department for review? Why can't he just say yes?

Why is it a dance around that whole response? It makes you wonder, what are you trying to accomplish by not answering the question directly?

So while some wish our city was a dictatorship so they can do whatever they want without question, that's not what our country democracy is about. It is not only our right, that is also our responsibility to speak up. Through our voices, we serve as a check and balance to ensure integrity and transparency in our government. Even when we disagree, it is important that we safeguard everyone's right to speak, not only those who we agree with. Colluding with and enabling those who act to silence and threaten those who ask questions is a dangerous and slippery slope.

Do not confuse those who demand answers for all of our benefits, including yours, as the enemy. Ask yourself, why don't they want you to know?

can witness what is going on. As I informed our mayor and our mayor pro tem, I was never informed signing the code of conduct was voluntary. As it was agendized during the council meeting and I was asked to sign the document during a televised meeting, I felt pressured and signed under duress. In addition, as the city attempted to defame me by omitting the fact that I had crossed out provisions of the Code of Conduct prior to signing the document when telling the public I had signed the document, I rescind my submission and no longer agree. If the city cannot conduct itself ethically,

I don't feel that it's fair to hold me to a higher standard. Please let me know which public forum

you would like to conduct this investigation under. I do not feel safe and would like additional witnesses and outside parties to safeguard the integrity of the proceedings. Thank you.

Next speaker, Teresa Real Sebastian.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Michelle, thank you for coming forward to advise us what's going on.

I'll address that in a bit. I wasn't going to speak during oral communications. May I remind you that we passed the sales tax? It was $6 million, $7 million, $8 million that is going to be coming in. So why do our SEIU members have to come here to ask, beg for the money that should be paid to them? When your sewer lines break, or the sewer lines of the city break, and you come into your home and now there's three feet of sewer, not your sewer, but your neighbor's collectively sewer. Guess who fixes it?

They provide emergency services.

Emergency services are not just heart attacks. They're not just fires. They are not just COVID issues.

Emergency services also include when you don't have water. Try not having water for four days. Try having sewer issues for five days.

That's an emergency. So please, give them the due respect that they need.

And by the way, I have noticed that less and less of the people who work in public works

are actually city employees. They tend to be for contract hires.

And let me tell you, they are extremely rude, extremely disrespectful.

And I have called to lodge complaints I've got in their names.

And Ron, I recall, I had this conversation with you when we were discussing you possibly becoming city manager. And I had relayed the comment to you that our former city manager wanted to contract all the services out for public works.

And I recall vividly you telling me that'll never happen on my watch. Well, guess what it is?

Please address it. You council members, you're here to represent. You're here to lead. Staff doesn't lead. The five of you lead.

And as far, let me, I'm going to go now to Michelle. I don't even know how to address that.

I hope there isn't a gag order because if there is, I will personally call every single newspaper out there to let you, let them know what's going on here in my city of Monterey Park. Because even though I may disagree with what you say, I believe you have a First Amendment right to speak your mind.

Every single one of you. I may disagree with you, but that is your God-given right.

And I will be damned if that is removed or somehow hindered from anybody, including any of our electeds.

And when you come to speak at this dais, you most of the time will speak as a resident.

So, yes, I encourage, and Michelle, thank you for having the courage to speak up. this is a forum for meaningful discussion. It is not for rubber stamping. Jose, I'm going to stay

this whole meeting because I want to hear you speak. I want you to be so tired of speaking, you can't move your jaw by the time you get home tonight. That's the kind of representation I expect from all five of you. And by the way, where's Carl? Where's our city attorney? I'm just curious

because I hope we're not, you know, paying him for this discussion, or is he going to Skype in? I'm not sure what's going on in the dynamics here. But I expect each one of you to speak up. At every agenda item, speak up. Ask questions. You guys are bright people. Thomas, I mean, I've had plentiful discussions with you, and I know you're very vocal, and I have to say I am quite proud of you because you do speak up a lot, and I know sometimes staff will try to cut you off. And I

I will defend every single one of you. Even you, Vin.

You ran against me, but guess what? If they try to curtail your right to speak, I'll be here to defend you. So speak up tonight. Thank you.

No other speakers? One request to move item 5B up, if possible.

No, denied.

We're going to go ahead and move with the agenda.

and we're going to start with staff communications public works

good evening our mayor and city council again just want to remind everyone that we have public works week next week

In addition to that, we have our open house on Thursday the 25th from 11 to 1.30.

Public's invited. You're all invited. We hope that everyone can come.

We'll have booths set up. We'll be talking about how Public Works operates, the projects we have going on, all those different things that really highlight Public Works. So I ask all of you to attend. We'll have transportation with the Spirit Bus coming from City Hall up to the Public Works yard.

So there'll be transportation available if anyone needs that.

So with that, I'll answer any questions.

Any questions or comments from Council?

Yes, Mr. Mayor. Again, I appreciate that you are offering free transportation.

Are we advertising that?

I know we have a flyer poster, but are we also sending out email reminders about the open house and that people can take the show?

We can put that on our social media page and push that out. I think we should, yes. You got it.

Any other questions or comments? Thomas?

Thank you, Sean. I appreciate all the work Public Works staffers do to keep our streets and essential infrastructure in shape. I know that this is during the workday. I don't know if next year or in future years we could consider moving this to a weekend just to make it more accessible for the community to understand Public Works through the open house when more people are a little bit more available, perhaps.

We can look at that.

I appreciate that.

And my only question in jest, I don't see Robert.

Robert is up there.

My question is if Robert's going to come dressed as a truck or some other public works vehicle.

I can ask him. I hope that he will.

That's all I got. Thank you so much, Sean. Thank you.

Our next staff communication is Recreation Community Services.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor Sanchez, Pro Tem Wong, Council Members.

Next slide, please.

I'd like to thank the community for coming out to our Cinco de Mayo event and our Monterey Park birthdays.

It was a very, very long weekend for some of us, but it was definitely enjoyable.

We had bands every night from Thursday through Sunday, carnival rides, food trucks.

It was a really great event to be had by many. I'd also like to thank not just our community, but our departments for coming out and working together on this event.

It was quite a feat.

There are a lot of different departments and different individuals assisting the Recreation and Community Services Department to host this event.

And along with that, we had a program called the Read and Ride Program, which we did in collaboration with our library.

And we had 512 participants registered.

And of those participants, 299 tickets were redeemed for a ride. And with that, we had 118, 831 minutes read by those in the program. And on that note, I'd like to bring up Diana Garcia to go over the Mental Health and Wellness Fair.

Next slide, please.

Thank you, Christina. Good evening, everybody. Diana Garcia, City Librarian.

I'm just here to remind everybody to come out to the Mental Health and Wellness Fair being presented in conjunction with Recreation and Community Services

and Chinatown Service Center.

It's going to be this Saturday at the Langley Senior Center from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

We have almost 20 different community organizations that are going to be attending.

Attendees can visit with those folks.

Chinatown Service Center is also providing food trucks. There will be vouchers for the first 100 people that show up. They'll get a free meal. And they're also going to be providing various programs on journaling,

making terrariums, things that can help with mental health and wellness. And there will also

be therapy dogs and COVID vaccinations for anyone who needs a booster. It's completely free. It is

for the whole family. And we'd really like to see you out there. Of course, May is AAPI month.

It's also Mental Health Awareness Month. So we're very excited for this program. Thank you.

Over at our Langley Center, we are having a senior prom. This prom dance is for ages 50 and over, and this will be held on Thursday, May 25th, from 1 to 3 p.m.

Again, located at the Langley Center. There's a small registration fee of $7.

There will be live entertainment, refreshments, a photo booth,

raffles going on, and more.

If you need more information, you can contact the Langley Center.

at 626-307-1395.

This information is also available online on our city's website.

Next slide, please.

We'd also like to invite the community out for the Memorial Day celebration on Monday, May 29th at 10 a.m. This will be located at the American Legion, post 397 on 338 South Ramona Avenue. Any community members interested in sharing a story and photos of their fallen veteran hero can contact the American Legion at post397MPK at gmail.com.

Next slide, please.

Over in our aquatics division, we are having swim lesson registration begin at the end of this month, Tuesday, May 30th at 7.30 a.m. Swim lessons will be held at George Elder Pool throughout the summer, which is located at 1950 Wilcox Avenue. For more information, residents can call 626-307-1388. And again, information is also online about this program. Registration will be taken online at 7.30 a.m., just as a reminder.

and swim lessons will be at the cost of $46 per person.

Next slide, please.

On Saturday, June 3rd, the city, in collaboration with the Alhambra Unified, Alhambra Teachers Association and the Boys and Girls Club of the San Gabriel Valley, we are hosting our third annual Pride event festival. There will be a parade that will start at Mark Keppel High School at 9.15 in the morning and the parade will end at Barnes Park where we will have our festival starting at 10 a.m. and the festival at Barnes will be from 10 a.m. to 12 noon. There will be entertainment, there will be resources, giveaways and much more. Again, this will be an event located at Barnes Park which will be free and open to the public and anyone interested in joining us.

Next slide, please.

we are hosting a Monterey Park night at Dodgers Stadium and it's going to be an exciting game

Houston Astros versus the Dodgers

this will be held on Friday, June 23rd at 7.10

tickets are only $36

tickets can be purchased online

at our city website following the game will be a night of Friday night Dodgers fireworks

It will be an exciting night to be had by all. Currently there are 73 people registered for this event at Dodger Stadium. Next slide please.

So we are offering a whole

City Attorney. The Hollywood Bowl Trip for Kool and the Gang and the Village People on Saturday, July 15th. There will be a reception at the Langley Center at five o'clock and the bus to the Hollywood Bowl will be departing at 6pm. The cost for this program is $55. There's more information online on our city website. Registration can be made online and for more information, anyone looking to join can call us at 626-307-117-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257-7257

1388.

And that is all I have for you tonight.

It's an exciting, packed month for all of us here in Monterey Park. If you have any questions, I'd feel free to ask them, and I would be more than happy to answer any questions.

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

You know, thank you very much for more exciting programming for our city. I also just want to thank city staff, especially in making sure that the mental health welfare on social media was in other languages. I know when I was brought to my attention actually from a resident that when I first

posted on Instagram, I mean first, it was only in English.

I know you've since added other languages and again just, you know, as practice, especially when we post stuff on social media, make sure that it's always in other languages so that all residents are aware of these programs and are able to get the information.

I have a question.

Do we have an idea of how many guests came out for the play day weekend?

I do not have an approximate number for you, but from what I have been told,

this has been the most attendance that we've had in quite some time, even more than last year, especially on the opening night, Thursday night.

So it's the most amount of people we have had ever. so it was well attended

Mayor Pro Temo

I just want to add my appreciation to all the staff that helped pull off the successful play days in Cinco de Mayo and I think the community appreciates these opportunities including the many events we've already had this year and that are still to come to have these opportunities for the community to come together and support each other and just enjoy each other's company so thank you so much to

the staff. Thank you. And I'd like

to echo that as well. A lot of great programming and appreciated the Cinco de Mayo Festival and the play days. I took my daughters the entire weekend. That was pretty awesome, especially the, you might have seen me dancing with my daughter there, but appreciate all of the hard work that you guys put to make

a lot of this happen. Also, thank you so much for

working with the Elhamford Teachers Association to help set up the Pride March towards anything that's very valuable in our community.

And I've signed up

already, not just myself, but my family to go to Dodger Night. So we'll be there in our Dodger gear. Thank you, Robert, for all of that. And thank you guys for everything that you do.

Thank you. Thank you.

We'll go ahead and jump to

the presentation. We have a Monterey

Park Community Healing Update.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of the City Council. This is Inez Alvarez, Assistant City Manager. Tonight,

our funded administrator, Amy Lee,

is not present with us so she asked for me to give the update. So as the fund administrator mentioned last week, sorry, last meeting, the oversight committee is accepting applications to provide small financial grants to witnesses of the January 21st shooting incident. These grants will be provided for witness victims or it's defined as victims that were on site and not

NOT PHYSICALLY INJURED AND HAVE NOT YET RECEIVED ANY

COMPENSATION FROM ANY OTHER FUNDS. APPLICATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED THROUGH THE END OF JULY

2023. AND THE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE IS NOW

MEETING JUST MONTHLY. THEY WERE MEETING BEFORE WEEKLY BUT ADJUSTED THAT TO NOW MONTHLY.

AND LASTLY, THE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE, THE

sorry, the Monterey Park Community Healing Fund participated in the Play Days event over the weekend,

and they had a booth that they hosted.

It was a wishing tree booth on Saturday at Play Days, and so they would like to take the time to thank students from Mark Keppel High School who came out and helped volunteer and run that wishing tree booth, so they wanted to just say a special thank you to those students. And this concludes the report provided by the fund administrator.

Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any questions from Council? Council Member Lo?

Yes. Thank you, Ryanair, for that update.

Quick question. For those who wish to apply for assistance, how are we getting that information out?

Yes. The Community Healing Fund will have an article in the Cascades with information and an email address. Also, the website where you can make donations will have a link to the application as well. That's how they're getting out information.

And is that in language?

I believe they're having it translated correct. Okay.

Because I'm a suggestion.

I think also, I mean, I know the Cascades are a paper as well, but, you know, perhaps

also reaching out to World Journal, which is headquarter here in Monterey Park,

and they're our partners for our Lunar New Year event,

just to make sure, because again, well, for example,

my mother doesn't read the Cascades, but I mean, she reads Sing Tao.

So my point is that maybe, you know, and if you need contact, I'm sure we can provide you with contact,

but it might be helpful just to make sure that the media outlets, that those who would be able to get the information,

IT MIGHT BE HELPFUL TO ALSO REACH OUT TO IN LANGUAGE MEDIA.

NOTED. I WILL DEFINITELY SHOW THAT WITH THE FUND ADMINISTRATOR.

ANY OTHER QUESTIONS? ALONG THOSE LINES, MAYBE WE JUST SUGGEST

PRESS RELEASE IN LANGUAGE TO ETHNIC MEDIA TO MAKE THEM AWARE ONCE THE APPLICATION IS AVAILABLE.

OKAY. I WILL MENTION THAT AS WELL. THANK YOU.

NEW SPEAKERS, AND JUST ONE QUESTION, MS. ALVERS, DO WE KNOW WHEN THE APPLICATION WILL BE UP ON OUR

WEBSITE? IS THERE A DATE THAT'S?

I'M NOT SURE WHEN THE APPLICATIONS, FROM MY

UNDERSTANDING, I BELIEVE THE APPLICATION ITSELF IS READY. I'M NOT SURE IF IT'S POSTED ON THE CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY FOUNDATION'S WEB PAGE YET, BUT WE WILL DEFINITELY MAKE SURE THAT IT'S ADDED THERE SOON.

and I had one more follow-up question so for the um I'm not sure how I because I haven't seen the application but how long the actual application is if it's on the smaller or shorter side if

if there's a way to maybe even publish it like in the in the Cascades some people can fill it out

maybe cut it out mail it in um that might be useful if it's a lot lengthier then obviously It doesn't make sense, but if we can look into that, that would be great

I would just I don't know if Ron was gonna jump in on this, but I

check on making sure because the

The healing fund is a separate entity from the city I'm gonna be careful about how close we coordinate this stuff and what's what's allowable and what's not so I Let's check with Carl on that before we do whatever

DEFINITELY. WE WILL SHARE THAT INFORMATION WITH THE FUND ADMINISTRATOR SO SHE CAN TAKE

THAT BACK TO THE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE. BUT DEFINITELY WE DO UNDERSTAND THAT THERE IS A

SMALL ARTICLE WITH THE SCANNABLE QR CODE THAT WILL BE INCLUDED IN THE NEXT CASCADES. THAT IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE THE LINK TO THE APPLICATION AND AN EMAIL THAT THEY CAN GET THE APPLICATION emailed directly to them or ask questions about the grants that are available yes i'd like to add

uh i spoke to advancing justice uh connie jung joe yesterday about this topic they're vetting their process in terms of the applications for people coming in and asking for funding so they're having a third party entity that's vetting the process we don't want to get in touch with them or have our community folks get in touch with them to make sure that it's the same group of people because if they're going to do the vetting, I don't know if California Foundation needs to kind of do their independent vetting. I think our application for the request here is probably a small amount versus the amount

they have, right?

Because I think our fund generated 30,000 or 50 versus they've got a million bucks. So we can probably leverage off the partnership here because they'll work with us in terms of how to work through the applicants and vet the process and make sure people get what they need.

Understood.

So from our understanding, the Lunar New Year Victims Fund that was hosted by the A.J. SoCal is the lead agency. They're providing funds to victims that were physically injured. And so the Monterey Park Community Healing Fund are looking at providing these small grants to victims that were not physically injured but present on site that evening.

And yes, I believe that last check, the Monterey Park Community Healing Funds had collected about $58,000.

I think to Councilmember Ngo's point, I think just encouraging the oversight board for the healing fund to coordinate where they can and where it makes sense. I think if we're going to put up or advertise and help make the community aware about their application for the healing fund, I think we can also look to help disseminate information around the California Victims Compensation Board process as well because victims that were not physically harmed as well are eligible for funding from the state as victims of crime as well. So maybe we can help publicize that process and those resources that are available too alongside that.

Noted. Thank you. So we're going to go ahead and move on to consent calendar

ITEMS 3A TO 3L.

COUNCIL, ARE THERE ANY ITEMS YOU WOULD LIKE PULLED?

I WILL PULLED 3B, 3G, 3H, AND 3K.

I'M SORRY, DID YOU SAY 3H? Yes. Yes, I did.

Okay.

Any other ones?

I will be pulling three aye.

I'm not hearing any more, so I'm going to go ahead and ask if we can, someone make a motion to.

I'll make a motion to approve consent calendar items remaining.

I'll second.

Thank you. And if we can have a vote.

Approved unanimously. Thank you.

Mayor, Mayor Protena, and Council members,

when we get to each item that you pulled,

if you can just direct us or staff that's presenting it

know whether it's a report or you're just going to ask questions and you need

some answers to your questions we'd appreciate it thank you yeah 3b if we

can get a abbreviated staff report

good evening mayor mayor Potem and council members Martha Garcia of finance

director. I also have with me tonight Mark, who from Poon Group, he is the engagement manager,

and Kenneth Poon, he is the lead partner. The city of Montgomery Park posted a request for

proposal seeking professional auditing services. Three firms responded with the proposal. One of

the three firms submitted their proposal late. Therefore, the remaining two qualifying firms

cost ranges from $216,000 to $239,000 for a three-year term.

The Poon Group was selected. They were the Lost bidder, and they also come in highly recommended from several other municipalities.

The proposal is for a three-year agreement at $216,363 plus a 10% contingency at $21,636 for a total not to exceed of $238,000 for a three-year contract.

Any questions, comments?

Mayor Proton. I have a comment.

Martha, the last, I think we spoke about this just a couple of weeks ago, the last firm that did our audit has been doing it for how many years?

Seven years.

Basically, it's a five-year, but because of COVID, we extended it for two years. And typically for these audits, we usually would do it for how many years?

It's typically GFOA recommends five years. So we typically do it for five years.

However, California Code allows us to, under circumstance,

allows us to continue with the firm as long as the partner changes.

So when we did the seven years and when we added those extra two years, we did change partners for those extra two years.

Okay. Thank you.

Thanks, Martha.

One, I appreciate that we went to RFP for this. I remember the last council meeting inquiring about that, So I appreciate that we were very proactive on that front. How do you know offhand how the annual costs for this low bid?

for an RFP for auditing services going forward and want to make sure that that will happen before this contract ends obviously. Definitely before the

contracts up. Thank you and that's that's all I got I'm happy to move the staff's recommendation on 3b. Do you have a second? I'll second. Thank you. Can we have a vote?

Approved Thank you

Mr. Mayor sorry one point just

I know that the Winning you don't have to come back Martha I know the winning bid

Was the package was not Included in the original

Packet I know it was sent out afterwards

I just would ask the staff

Going forward to make sure as standard Practice to include the winning bid for RFPs Going forward in the agenda packets

Thank you, Martha.

Item 3G, amendment to agreement number 1967-AC for the upfitting slash conversion of police department vehicles.

Can we get the staff report?

Thank you.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, City Council Members. I'm coming to you tonight to request the transfer of funds from the current Public Works vehicle upfitting account to be able to outfit nine leased vehicles that are overdue for lease

replacement in the police department out of this fiscal year's budget. The police department leases investigative vehicles from enterprise leasing. We've been doing it for several years.

We do it for several reasons.

One of the reasons is our vehicles are used extensively for law enforcement operations. And when we purchase vehicles, we purchase through a fleet process.

And most of the time, those vehicles are very vanilla-looking, normal kind of cars.

We tend to get better vehicles through the lease program at Enterprise. They don't look like police cars. They look like civilian vehicles, and it allows us to do our complex investigations

and do our surveillances and things like that.

We keep the leases for three years, and at the end of the three years, we've established equity in those cars. When we start the new leases, we return the cars to Enterprise. They sell them. We do have the option of purchasing those vehicles at the end of the lease if we want to at a reduced price. But we establish equity, so we roll over those cars. To meet the requirements of Title 18, which is a legal requirement in California for a police officer to operate a vehicle that has a red light facing forward and the ability to turn on a siren, that relieves the city of liability when an officer operates that vehicle following state law and department policy, we have to upbit those cars to add that equipment. We add a radio, we add a light, we add sirens.

The cost of that through our current vendor, the vendor we've had for many, many years, is approximately $8,000 per vehicle. The money is in the account, but we just need to transfer it from one to the other because of the amount requesting, which is $72,000. That's why I come to Council tonight to get that authorization.

Questions from Council?

Thank you, Chief Weiss.

Just a couple quick questions.

So these vehicles would be used, one, how many vehicles are there total in our police department fleet versus, I'm just trying to understand what the kind of differential is.

Sure. The police department has 68 total vehicles. That's everything that has an engine and a wheel.

So if you break it out over the entire department, we have our different divisions, which you're pretty familiar with.

Our administrative function, which includes my office and the captain's and the other administrative functions, they have eight vehicles.

The Traffic Bureau, which is motorcycles, traffic vehicles, electric vehicles that we use for parking enforcement, all of those.

There are 12 vehicles there. Patrol, which is the black and whites you see very commonly, we have 19 vehicles there.

Our emergency response capability, which is one of our armored vehicles and the other vehicles that carry equipment and that manage our drone program, there are six vehicles there. the investigative administrative cars which are vehicles that the city has purchased that we use for investigations but they supplement the nine that we lease because we have more than nine detectives there are four vehicles there community relations has six and we have seven I'm sorry we have four cadet vehicles. So a lot of those vehicles, for example, patrol. We have the SGVs that you see. We have new vehicles in the fleet for patrol. It took us two years to get those because of COVID and the shortages, but we're still operating vehicles that are 2009 that have well over 100,000 miles on them. So it's very difficult to replace some of our police vehicles in a timely manner. We have a very limited fleet. We felt it was necessary to cut our fleet several years ago to be more fiscally sound and we've done that and we've stayed pretty close to what we need as a minimal operating fleet for the police department. And the lease vehicles, we've been testing this program for several years and it appears to work very well for us. Enterprise, when they have vehicles when there isn't a pandemic going on they're they're really good partners with us for the for the upfit of the car or for the purchase and the upfit of the cars great no i appreciate

the detail so it sounds like right with the vast majority of our fleet is purchased um and then the

lease has been an experiment to make to allow for flexibility for uh and are there cost benefits to

leasing versus purchasing or have we done that analysis for vehicle if covet hadn't occurred

i'd have a better understanding of how that works for us the leases that we need to return

according to the contract which enterprise allows us to keep it as long as we need to

those vehicles are are overdue by over a year because of enterprises availability If you drive by a car dealership over a year ago, you saw that the lot was pretty sparse. You go by a car dealership today, and you'll see that it's pretty full. Enterprise is a reflection of that, and they're starting to receive vehicles that we can use in law enforcement.

In the past, they only had two-door, four-cylinder little cars that someone like me had to oil up before I got in the car because I couldn't get in.

Very hard to do police operations in small cars like that, so we had to wait. And Enterprise understands that.

they're one of the only lease companies that we're aware of that do this on a regular basis with law enforcement in the Southern California area.

No, I appreciate that. And once we have the opportunity to do the analysis, I think that would be, I'm just interested in understanding it. I'm sure we will appropriately adjust as needed.

City manager. Mayor, if I could add some additional comments to what chief has said. When I became the city manager, we had a lot of vehicles that were in our fleet for quite a long time. I think everybody knows what a Crown Vic is. And every time someone sees a Crown Vic, they know it's a police car. Well, unfortunately, we had a lot of our operations driving Crown Vics. And it wasn't about the money. It was really about the safety of our officers that were driving these vehicles. vehicles. So we needed to change these vehicles dramatically to where we're changing a certain portion of our fleet to turnover vehicles so that people can't recognize these vehicles on an ongoing basis when we're doing our operations. So other than the cost part and the analysis, I just want to make sure that we understand it's the safety of our officers that are also important too, that is the reason why we went to leasing. Because every three years, we've got a different vehicle that the individuals are driving when they're doing their operations. So I think sometimes you have to outweigh the difference between how much it costs versus the safety of our officers. And we've been pretty good, Chief's been great about it, about balancing both. So I just want to add that a little bit to give a little bit more context about this leasing part of it. Thank you.

Thank you for that clarification.

I have no further questions.

I'm happy to make the motion to approve staff recommendation.

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

Approved unanimously. Thank you.

We'll go ahead and jump to item 3H,

amendment to agreement 2231-AA with Colu Technologies.

If we can get a staff report.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of the City Council.

I stand before you today to advocate for the continued funding of our smartphone-driven

shop local program, the Monterey Park Rewards Program. This innovative platform has successfully integrated our local businesses with the daily lives of our residents,

enabling them to break through the clutter and forge meaningful connections.

Our residents, in turn, have embraced the NPK Rewards Program.

Today, I will highlight the reasons why our community strongly desires this program to continue

based on the feedback we've received from our residents and business owners.

By investing in this program, we can propel our local businesses forward while fostering a stronger sense of community and economic growth.

First, residents tell us they want to engage with local businesses on mobile.

The Monterey Park Awards app has proven to be an essential tool for residents seeking

convenient ways to engage with our local businesses.

By being readily accessible on their smartphones, the app seamlessly integrates these businesses into their daily routines.

This integration ensures that residents are consistently reminded of the incredible offerings available within our community, increasing food traffic and customer loyalty.

Second, being on a resident's phone integrates our local businesses with their daily life and breaks through the clutter. In an increasingly saturated market, it's becoming more challenging for businesses to cut through the noise and capture consumer attention. The smartphone-driven shop local program has emerged as a powerful solution to this problem. By delivering personalized and relevant rewards directly to users' mobile devices, the app breaks through the clutter and provides a unique avenue for our local businesses to stand out among competitors. It offers a direct line of communication that is not easily ignored, allowing businesses to engage with residents effectively. And third, residents want a shop local program that is personalized and delivers relevant rewards all through easily accessible innovative technology. Consumers today crave personalized experiences and meaningful interactions with businesses. The Monterey Park Rewards app offers precisely that. This level of personalization not only increases customer satisfaction, but also strengthens the bond between residents and local businesses. It fosters a sense of belonging, loyalty, and community pride. As an example, during the month of March, and in the heels of the mass shooting tragedy, we implemented a Share the Love campaign on MPK Rewards. We ask our residents to rally behind our downtown businesses impacted by the tragedy and offer a bonus of 1.5 points or a 30% discount for every purchase they make at participating downtown businesses. Through the app, we urge our residents to come together and unite as a community to share their support and earn extra MPK points in the process. Please allow me to share the results of the Share the Love campaign. Our new user registration in the month of March doubled compared to previous months. In addition, there was an 81% increase in rewarded users from an average of 93 to 168. There was a 73% increase in rewarded transactions from an average of 116 to 201. There was a 162% increase in the awarded amount from an average of 728 to 1,960.

local business community. And from a resident named Margie, just wanted to let you know the app and the rewards program is great. We now only go to restaurants that are on the list. In conclusion, mobile devices have become an integral part of our daily lives, providing us with a constant connection to the world around us. By utilizing a smartphone-driven an app, we tap into this existing behavior and create an immersive and user-friendly experience. The MPK Reward app allows residents to discover local businesses, explore new products and services, and receive real-time updates on promotions and events. It empowers them to actively engage with their community while enjoying the convenience of mobile technology. By continuing to fund this program, we not only support our local businesses, but also foster economic growth and a stronger sense of community. I urge the City Council to recognize the overwhelming desire of our residents to engage with local businesses on mobile and to continue supporting this invaluable program. Thank you, and I'm happy to answer your questions.

Thank you, Joe, for that report. Any questions or comments from Council? Council Member Lo?

Yes. Thank you, Joe. I'm kind of curious. So it's been a couple of months now since I'm watching more than a couple of months, but have we gotten any feedback from the businesses that have participated in the shop program? I'm just curious what has been some of their own experiences and suggestions about improving the app?

the app is completely transparent for them and we did we designed that on purpose because we realized that a lot of our business owners are busy enough trying to keep their doors open so it's business as usual for them they welcome the app as a a business tool to promote their business Some of them even have volunteered to fund the program so that they can implement their own bonus programs. In fact, one of our businesses, I think Aliyah Lavaland, actually promoted extra points on a couple-week period time. And with Tokyo Fried Chicken, they actually offered free drinks for customers that actually use their app to purchase their products.

So businesses do welcome it. They love it because they don't have to manage it,

and they love it even more because it doesn't cost them anything.

Thank you. Any other questions? Council Member Ngo?

I have a question.

I think a few months ago we talked about this, and part of the challenge was that it didn't have the different translations

in the language dialect.

So I'm hopeful that when we come back in December, we'll get another shot at this to make sure they have that ability to do the translations.

That's my first comment.

My second comment is out of transparency, this was taken up to the commissions for a vote to basically adopt this or extend this for six months. And what was the resulting result vote on this?

There was overwhelming support from both EDAC and BIDAC to continue the program. They understand the success of the program.

They also recognize the potential that we can still realize in utilizing the program,

not just as a shop and dine local program, but also for civic engagement.

Thank you for that.

And also thank you for our commissioners for spending time and investing in our city to do that work.

And Council Member Yu?

Hi.

I just wanted to ask how many restaurants are participating right now and how many participate on the redemption program?

We actually have, you know, in the staff report that I submitted to Council,

I actually showed a graph of the total number of merchants. Our restaurant community represents 57.4% of the total participating businesses.

So it's a significant amount.

How about number-wise? Do you know the number-wise?

Number-wise, I don't have that exact number right now, Council Member Yu,

but I can certainly obtain that number for you. I have the total number of participating businesses right now, which is 169.

Okay, wow. You guys did a lot of work to sign up for, yeah, okay, 160-some.

And so the total, we generate more than $400,000 in local transaction, and then we pay them 10%, right?

So $1 out of $10 that they get the discount.

So that means we pay them 10% back.

Yes.

The way we've structured the program, initially when we launched the program, it was a 20% discount because it was one point for every $5 purchase that they make.

Effective April, in order for us to continue to sustain the program,

we changed that structure to $1 for every $10 purchase that they make, which equates to a 10% discount.

And even with that change, we didn't get any pushback from the community.

Because they've realized the value of the program, especially now with inflation and with higher prices,

people are looking for ways to save on their spend.

And this is a great way for them to do that.

So it not only benefits our users, but it benefits our businesses by keeping all that revenue within our city.

Okay, thank you.

Mayor Protemois?

Thanks, Joe.

I appreciate all the work on the application. I have no issues with extending this through December as a program. Just to clarify, the action before us, though, is to extend the authorization for the program, but funding authorization would come during the budget discussions for the next fiscal year, right?

Correct.

Actually, the authorization that we're requesting is to authorize the city manager to execute an extension to the agreement because the overall cumulative cost of the contract would exceed the authorized amount

THE CITY MANAGER IS AUTHORIZED TO SIGN. OKAY.

AND THEN FOR THIS APP, THERE'S ONE CONCERN THAT I WANT TO ECHO

IN TERMS OF JUST SEEING IF WE CAN, AT THE PROPER TIME IN DECEMBER, WHEN WE LOOK AT THIS AGAIN, TO SEE IF THERE IS A WAY TO OFFER TRANSLATED IN-LANGUAGE OPPORTUNITIES FOR MUCH OF THE REST OF not just our city but our region to be able access these rewards programs and I know that when I assume and know that there have been conversations around cost and what this might look like and I think that conversation will come during the budget if there's an opportunity why I would be interested in doing an analysis on what their return on investment has been for the funds that the city has put into this app and the rewards to give out and how much I'm

just curious if there's a way to extrapolate how many how much of the

transactions potentially would have occurred regardless of whether this app existed or not and if there are better uses for money that the city is putting

towards this that could help attract right business to the city of Monterey Park

and to support our businesses that we want to support through this app I just want to make sure that we're looking at other alternatives potentially if we're going to go towards continuing to fund this program in out years. What's the best value and return on investment for the city's dollars to support our businesses? If it is this app, we'd love to continue that and see how we can expand that.

If there are other options and other programs that other cities are utilizing that might

garner a better return for our dollars, I think we want to explore, I would like to see and explore that and be able to kind of tease that out.

Absolutely. And I totally agree with you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem,

as stewards of our taxpayers' money,

we are constantly looking for the highest and best use on our funding for these types of programs.

You know, when you run shop local and loyalty programs,

such as what we have with Monterey Park Rewards,

some of the more common KPIs

or key performance indicators that we look at.

And per user, customer retention rate, and the incremental margin. And that's one of the most important things that we look at is the incremental margin.

because based on the cost of running the program,

let's say with software licensing fees

and the amount of points that we've paid out in the community

from launch of the program to today's date,

let's say approximately that would be around $80,000.

but during that period that program has generated 433,789,000 in local economic activity. So if you compare that with what we've spent to run the program, that's a 480% return on investment. Now, if you take the same money, let's say $80,000, and you, let's say, do a small business loan program that you implement in the community, to be an effective small business loan program, you've got to loan at least $5,000 per business to make a significant impact.

If you average that out, that's only helping about 18 to 20 businesses.

This program not only helps 162 participating businesses, but look at the interest and the connectivity that it's generating for our residents at the same time. So it's a program that not only focuses on incentivizing the small business community, but it also involves our residents.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that.

As we get more data, well, I will make a motion to approve extending this program, but as we have more data, I hope that we will continue to evaluate what's best and if there are other options for us to potentially pursue. Even if it's in addition to this program, I think we want to be able to evaluate that.

Just off of, I don't know if you know off the top of your head, right, the staff report notes that there are 2,247 registered users.

Do you know how many are actually Monterey Park residents versus outside of Monterey Park?

You know, we've been trying to work with our software developer to come up with a metric system for that. They're working on it. Hopefully by the next time I stand in front of you, I'll have that number for you.

Great. No, I appreciate that.

And then have we done any survey of the business community or businesses in Monterey Park to see what other programs or ideas they might have that the city can support them right beyond the shop local app?

Yes, we're in constant communication with our business community.

We've talked to them about, you know, what are their needs? We talked to business owners about, you know, what's keeping them up at night? What are those issues?

We are in the verge of doing a formal survey as we get into our economic development strategic plan update.

We're going to be working with a consultant.

Of course, that's a different kind of request that I'm going to present to council.

But, yes, we are in constant communication and engagement with our business community as to what they need.

Our main job right now, given our limited resources at our city, is to leverage other economic development partners' resources.

We, because, again, of lack of resources on our part, what we do is we become connectors to the resources that are available through the county, through the state.

As a matter of fact, I'm working with the SBA on coming to the service center at Barnes

Park the week of June 5 for two weeks to provide assistance to our small business community

in applying for the EIDL loan program.

As you know, based on our experience during the pandemic, even though EIDL and PPP were made available to the business communities, not a lot of the AAPI business owners were

able to take advantage of that, either because of cultural and linguistic challenges or the

complexity of the program and so forth. This time around, we have full support from the SBA to deploy.

given our limited resources, we make sure that we inform them about the programs that are available out there. And we see some of that working right now because we constantly are in touch with our economic development partners,

and they have shown us some of the results of our efforts with the amount of applications they're getting,

the inquiries they're getting, and so forth.

Thanks, Joe. It sounded like the city manager wanted to jump in.

Mayor Pro Tem, Mayor, Council Members, we hear you loud and clear on your concerns about the efficiency and the effectiveness of the Monterey Park Rewards Program.

We understand there's some analytical data that you would like to have to analyze and make sure we're getting the best, you know, efficiency out of our money.

And also the translation, we've been trying to figure that out.

we'll see what we can do maybe outside of the program to be able to do that but we hear you loud and clear what you've asked for thank you thank you and enjoy I just had a couple questions

very brief first of all thank you for bringing these numbers and data to us I'm happy to see a lot of my favorite restaurants are on that list that people are using so I did have a question regarding the app just in terms of making use of the app as well I'm not sure what other items we could potentially do with the app in terms of I was thinking just off the top of my head a lot of the businesses around the dance studio that might have been impacted during the shooting maybe if there's a way to highlight some of those business to kind of help them out with the rewards and be kind of crafty or creative with this I'm not sure how much leeway we have with the app to be able to do stuff like that to help businesses that might be struggling but also looking at to what other items we could potentially do that with the app I don't know from to help the businesses also but to also make use of the app I'm not sure that might be something that might come from the company that we're

that we're using but no it's really up to us to explore all the other

benefits of using the app again civic engagement is one of them we can potentially use them to

provide points for residents that volunteer time for civic duties for civic events if they want to

volunteer with the museum, for example, their time, you know, we can give them some bonus points, you know, those kind of things, you know, those are available now through the program. It's really

just a matter of us sitting down and coming up with those programs. Now that we have a lot more

traction with the program and most of our residents are aware of the program itself.

And when it comes to translation, you know, it's been kind of a cost issue for our software

developer to actually translate the app itself in Chinese. But outside of the app itself,

we have been developing instructions on how to apply. We have been developing collateral materials

in Chinese and in Spanish. And that's helped a lot. In fact, it has moved the needle quite a

bit in terms of enrollment for our business participation and we're in the process of we're planning on putting together an instructional video in chinese as well so that they can play that

off of our website we can we can direct them through our website they can play it they can

listen to that instructional video in the language that they're more comfortable with Thank you, Joe.

You're welcome. Is there a motion? Actually, I'm sorry. Question, Council Member Lo? Well, just a suggestion, Joe. But again, I'm glad that city staff is hearing loud and clear about the, I think, utility of having language, in-language accessibility. You know, I was just looking at our own website, which, you know, has the information. And because we have a Google Translate link, that means that when you go to the ShopMPK page on the website and if you press, say, Chinese, it immediately does a translation.

But I think the issue for all of us is the link, I'm sorry, is the app itself.

And so it seems like to me maybe, although I'm not a tech person, but can the app not

maybe just add under the general utilities, I'm looking at the app right now, maybe something like link to city website so that, again, if the software developer is saying it's a cost issue, but if Google is relatively free and we already do it on our own city website,

Can we not just ask the software developer put a link under the general menu that takes the reader back to the city website,

but where it already has all that information in language, or actually any language, as long as it is connected to a Google Translate app?

Absolutely. And I think that's a great idea.

we can just put a button there that says click this for you know for a link to a

translation website or something can we get an update I mean we're not in

December but just soon again I'm just curious because yeah I think we all want this to be a successful app but I'm very curious is this something that we can answer sooner than later about whether or not the software developer can you

know actually applied this additional utility sure well we'll definitely run

that by our developer because you said that you when comes where you asked you

use a hundred and fifty seven businesses have applied we have currently let me

just a hundred and sixty nine participating businesses I believe it is

and out of how many business total in the city we have I would say about 4,000 businesses. But that's total businesses. Keep in mind that this is just for retail.

I know, but I'm just saying that I think there's a lot of potential for growth.

Absolutely. There's a huge potential for growth.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Joe. Is there a motion? I'll make a motion to adopt staff recommendation.

Seconded by Council Member U, if we can have a vote, please.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you. So we'll go ahead and jump to item 3i playground projects at Bella Vista Garvey Ranch Highlands and Sequoia Parks their staff report

Good evening mayor mayor for 10 and City Council members Robert Gary director of Recreation and community services

The Recreation Department has been working with playground providers to work on developing themed playgrounds, playground structures at Bella Vista, one playground structure there, two playground structures at Garvey Ranch Park, two at Highlands Park, and also one at

Sequoia Park. Now, I've been in the city a long time, and one thing I've noticed when I talk to residents

is a lot of residents only frequent the park that's nearest to their home.

So with the playground designs, we really wanted to theme these parks so that it would encourage residents to not only visit the park that's nearest to their home but

really kind of tour the parks and get to know the cities that are also available I'm sorry the parks that are also available throughout the city so

we've been working with a with park providers to work on some

themes some exciting themed playgrounds to get the kids out there in a time when

kids are on their their phone devices or their electronics we really wanted to

help promote positive engagement interaction and also kind of encourage

them to utilize their imagination not just what's on a screen right so that they're out there playing with each other or interacting and they can use their imagination the and these different theme playgrounds so after receiving design concepts the top department has met with the Rec and Park

Commission on two different occasions to get feedback and input and we came up

with six unique designs with Zoom Recreation which is also a part of Superior Recreation. Out of these six designs, three of those designs are actually recycled materials.

So there are 26,000 pounds of post-consumer recycled plastics that are part of three of

these playgrounds.

And this is Green Circle certified.

So for those that don't know, Green Circle means it's a process that is vetted for being

sustainable.

and following the designs we looked into different agreements to try to find the best pricing so we

were able to identify a buy board which has a percentage a pre-negotiated percentage agreement

and we also looked at CMAS which is a California state cooperative agreement and we were able to

find that buy board actually has a better and more cost effective agreement and which will allow us

to not only save money but also save on cost so if approved tonight the this

project would go out to bid and we would come back for the construction and

installment installation for the construction and that would also come to

council for approval so staff tonight is recommending that council approve the playground designs and for a purchase order for superior recreation products

I can go through some of the playground designs and share with you and I also

have Justin Lotz here from Zoom Recreation who's helped us along the

way with some of these designs so as you'll see a Bella Vista school this is Bella Vista Park we went with a dragon theme now for those that are familiar with Bella Vista school their mascot is actually a dragon so you see some photos

on there with some dragons it's actually a castle so we imagine the kids playing interacting with each other maybe they're a knight maybe they're a princess maybe they're slaying a dragon can you next slide please there's also a slide that has a dragon head there so you may be sliding down through the dragon's mouth there's also some spinning uh break hitting balancing uh climbing

items on there there's also some inclusive and ground play items maybe for some of those folks maybe having some disabilities or some of our younger playground users. Next slide please. At Garvin Ranch Park as everyone may be aware or if those that aren't aware we do have an

observatory at Garvin Ranch Park which is open on Wednesday evenings. Short little plug there. So Garvin Ranch Park we went with on the big we went with a space theme so this this park is going

feature a giant rocket lots of shade and slides also some ground elements it's kind of hard to see there but there's also some some musical elements that are there we also wanted to add some different fields than your normal

playground next slide this one also has in our two to five year old area a full space shuttle that's there and the ground rover so you can imagine you're

on the moon you're going off to space and when we're going through these

themes we really just thought about you know those times when parents say where do you want to go today well you know what today I want to go I want to go be astronaut next slide please and tomorrow

I want to play some baseball so on the other side of Garvey Ranch Garvey Ranch is one of those fortunate parks that has two playground play areas we also we know that that's a huge baseball

program there at Garvey Ranch Park so we wanted to go with a baseball theme and so you got some baseball there you got you can see the catcher's mask there it's kind of hard to see but you see our little fellow there he's ordering a hot dog which is probably at a price that we've never seen

in most of our lifetime but they're able to order a hot dog a soda and next slide is there next slide can you go back to that one it's kind of hard to see on here but on the Lor right slide there there's actually a jersey so we when we met with zoom recreation on that jersey i said hey you know

what this is garvey ranch park on the back of that jersey why don't we put the name garvey and then

let's since the since the city's birthday was in 1960 let's let's also put the number 16 on the back of there so they're going to actually customize that piece for us that'll say garvey with the number 16 to kind of really showcase that it's a garvey ranch park next slide highlands park

again i mentioned we do have two two playgrounds there the first playground is here it's a fire

station we often know that you know lots of little kids sorry scott but lots of little kids want to

grow up and be firefighters. And so we thought this was a nice exciting playground. I showed it to my daughter and she was she I asked her what would be the first thing you do if you saw this playground. She said I'd run run right to it and start jumping on it. So you also see some inclusive swings there. Next slide. And also there's there's an overview. There's a giant slide there. Numerous giant slides. Some climbing pieces and it's a full fire station with a nice big tower. next slide and then on the other side of Highlands we actually put in a ranger station and at the ranger station you'll see the little girl there there's actually another musical element it's kind of like bongo type drums they can go into the bear cave there that is not fully enclosed so we won't have any folks that try to live under there the bear you can escape the bear through all the other the other sides there and then on the top you can actually put your

head through you can be Smokey the Bear and you can also let let folks know what

the potential for smoke for fire is on the little dial that's there next slide

please and then up with Sequoia Sequoia we went with the nature theme and so you'll have two areas one for five to twelve-year-olds and also one for two to

two to five-year-olds and both are more of like a treehouse theme and it's kind hard to see in these pictures but the little red red um you miss me oh sorry so uh there's like a

red barrel that's there that's actually a ladybug it's something you can kind of drum on it plays

different things surrounding the uh playground as well there's some some fLor elements and those

also have uh some musical elements to them as well so this gives people not only like i said not an opportunity

mentioned to have Justin Lotz here from Zoom Recreation and we're both available for any questions.

Well I pulled this item because I was very excited. As you know I have kids and they were

super excited when I shared the images with them so the big question for my daughter was

when are they going to be up? So if approved tonight we do we start the process as far as the

purchase order for the purchase of the equipment. That does go through

engineering. Engineering does take about eight or seven to eight weeks and then fabrication does take about seven to eight weeks. During that time we also work with Public Works on getting going out to bid for the installation. So

you're looking at 16 weeks for product fabrication and then we would have to go out to bid, come back to council to award the contract and then we'd be looking at

We're starting installation can't give you a hard number because obviously those are those are those kind of slide

but

We will also be working Although there'll be six going in we'll be working with zoom as well as the

Installer to try to phase these in and so we're getting them done rather quickly one after the other

Yeah, thank you any questions comments from council

councilmember you Yes. When you mentioned about that this will use 26,000 pounds of post-consumer recycled plastic,

which are Green Circle certified, and I'm curious to know that compared to regular plastic,

is this going to be more expensive or less expensive?

I believe it's less expensive. Am I correct in saying that? I would say it's about equivalent for plastic. Some of the elements do have new plastic. Can you come to the mic?

Thank you for asking the question. I think sustainable is one of the best elements of these playgrounds. And I would say it's about equivalent, actually, to reuse recycled plastic versus new plastics.

Oh, wow. Wow, okay. So how long would that last compared to the regular plastic? Would that longer or shorter? How does that work?

Another great question. They have the same lifespan as your steel playgrounds. We warrant them exactly the same. The frame itself, which is the recycled portion, has a limited lifetime warranty on it.

Oh, okay. Wow. And then so can you tell me that so you used plastic from bottle and how does that work to get those plastic?

Right. So we have a supplier for this recycled material, and we, of course, take that and turn it into the playgrounds. And one of the references that we like to use is that one pound of that recycled material is equivalent to eight milk jugs. So you can imagine just the amount of thousands of milk jugs that is in 26,000 pounds of material. And I also want to extrapolate that we do have some that are steel framed as well. We do use a minimum of 30% recycled steel. And at the end of the playground's lifespan, 100% of the playground is recyclable. So whenever that time comes, hopefully 20-plus years down the line, 100% of the playground can be recycled.

Wow. Okay. So you said also steel can be recycled. So recycled from what and into the recycled steel then?

Recycled into what? So you would just take it to your recycling facility someplace nearby that would be able to take in the steel, and of course it can be turned into, I don't know, the imagination runs wild with what it came to be.

Wow, I wanted to learn more about it. And how about the road, pothole and road, and do we use plastic, recycled plastic to also pave the road?

I'm sorry, I didn't quite understand that one.

Okay, paving the road. I heard they use recycled plastic to pave the road and pothole and stuff.

That may be a little outside his wheelhouse. He's a playground guy.

I'm not sure how many potholes he's, you know, he's from Monterey Park, so you may be familiar with GoMPK. So I would share that. So Justin didn't share that.

But, you know, a part of this project that's been really unique is that during the process, I found out that he's actually a resident.

So he's also a father. So just as Jose the father and I'm a father and we understand and you have children, you understand.

The part of the process, it becomes very unique and very special because he is his child is not walking yet. And so he can definitely imagine all of the things I spoke about, the imagination and astronaut and climbing the treehouse and all those things. Those are things that he gets to kind of imagine that one day

his daughter is going to be playing on these playgrounds.

So let's just say he made sure they were extra special.

Glad to know we do business with our residents and also have passion in what you do. Thank you so much.

Definitely a high level of pride for this particular project. And we're also a small business entity. here in Southern California. So thank you for doing business with us. Thank you. The potential.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Council Member Glauber. I'm actually a little bit jealous here

because when I was growing up 40 years ago, all we had were swing sets and that little thing that spins you around. And the swing sets was like the metal chains, but I'm glad we're having this.

So I don't know if you saw,

but at Bella Vista, there's a thing that swings you around. So I'll be happy to push you on it.

We'll live out that dream.

I'd be happy to make a motion to support this.

Any just really quick.

We'll appreciate the sustainability elements of this project. And I know that this I would imagine this will come up during our sustainability plan as that gets rolled out for going forward materials that we purchase increasing or seeing how we can integrate more sustainability measures to our purchasing policies

and hope that that will come back.

But great to and appreciate all the effort that staff has put into this look forward to these Playgrounds being installed and for us to cut ribbons on them. Hopefully

Ribbon cutting and slides in sliding will happen. Yes, absolutely great and and spinning and spinning. Yes

Yeah, and Robert not too late to become a firefighter yourself if you want. Oh

He's not here. I

astronaut. No, I thoroughly enjoy recreation, so I love what I do, so I'm good. Thank you.

And just to echo, extremely appreciative of all the work that your team and you, Robert, did to finalize and be so creative with a lot of the playground equipment. I know that my daughter's going to be asking me to go to all the different parks, so I really appreciate that motif that you

guys added. I'm sorry that the travel is not sustainable. Is there a motion? Council member

Gough and seconded by council member Yu if we can take a vote. Approved unanimously. Thank you.

We'll go ahead and jump to item 3k memorandum of agreement for the coordinated integrated

monitoring program and watershed management plan i just asked for an abbreviated staff report thank

you that's the new key term abbreviated staff report i will do my best to abbreviate and there

are a lot of there are a few acronyms in here so i apologize in advance that stormwater um just

at its best so um good evening mayor mayor pro tem city council sean engel public works director

tonight you have before you an MOA between 20 agencies for the Coordinated Integrated Monitoring Program or SMP and the Watershed Management Plan or WIMP for the Upper Los Angeles River Watershed Management Area or ULAR for fiscal year 2024-2026.

So in a nutshell this is really the most effective and efficient way for us to use our resources to accomplish our monitoring requirements for stormwater.

There are things called TMDLs or total maximum daily load requirements that we're responsible for monitoring within our agency and other agencies.

So these groups come together.

They do this throughout the area in Los Angeles to try to pull their efforts together to reduce costs and continue to meet compliance needs. So, again, in a nutshell, we are required to do this per the state permit that was adopted in 2012. AND SO AGAIN, THIS IS JUST AN OPPORTUNITY FOR US TO COLLABORATE WITH THESE OTHER AGENCIES

AND REDUCED COST.

AND WITH THAT, I CAN ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS.

THANK YOU.

ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS FROM COUNCIL?

THANKS, SEAN.

I APPRECIATE PUBLIC WORKS STAFF'S WORK ON THIS ITEM.

JUST HOPEFULLY A QUICK QUESTION.

THE FUNDING FOR THIS MONITORING PROGRAM, DOES THAT COME OUT OF GENERAL FUND OR WHAT'S THE

FUNDING SOURCE?

So this originally was being funded through our enterprise fund, through our refuse enterprise fund,

because there was a trash TMDL component. So to meet that compliance, we're using those funds.

Starting next year, we'll be using our Measure W, our safe, clean water funding, to start paying for this, because we were using that money to fund another project which we partnered with the team with.

You read my mind.

I was going to ask if Measure W local return money would be eligible for or utilizing that for the costs of this since measuring contaminants in our wastewater or stormwater.

It is, and we will be using it starting next year because, again,

we were using those funds for another project in the previous years.

Great. I mean, you'd set another question off for me.

I mean, not on this item, but I'm personally interested in what our Measure W local return funds are funding, And I'm guessing that that will come up during budget. But if it doesn't, I would like to, I'm just curious.

Yeah, so previously this was funded.

So we were paying $600,000 a year to the East Los Angeles stormwater project. So that was, again, a group project where we were capturing about 3,000 acres worth of area. And that would capture about 21 acre feet of water from stormwater runoff. So it was a large project where we were devoting a lot of money toward, again, through a group effort to utilize our resources together and pull them together but moving forward

we'll be using them again for stormwater projects for monitoring uh for maintenance and operation

needs so it can be used for a lot of different things as long as we meet the reporting requirements

for um these funds yeah so when we do we have and this may be off topic if carl needs to

come in virtually to stop me but uh for the right stormwater capture projects in the tmdl meeting

the team nails and the ms4 permit requirements for the regional board did we do an estimate of the amount of infrastructure projects and upgrades that we need to do on our stormwater sewer system and what and the point i'm trying to ask i guess is how much need or gap is there in terms of the infrastructure we need to build out to meet uh like the ms4 permit standards that are that we're

under now. Sure. I don't currently

have that information before you

tonight, but typically this is over years that we'll project these

out. And that's part of this MOA.

So within the SIEMP and with the WIMP, those two components, we actually

use those to identify projects to meet those

TMDL requirements. So that's all

outlined in this plan, this program.

Yeah. No, I'm just curious. I'm sure it'll

come down at a future

agenda as well, since we'll have

to pay for this stuff.

AT ONE POINT OR ANOTHER.

ABSOLUTELY. BUT I'M HAPPY TO MAKE THE MOTION TO ADOPT STAFF RECOMMENDATION ON THIS.

APPRECIATE THE STAFF MOVING ON THIS.

I'LL SECOND.

AND IF WE CAN HAVE A VOTE.

AGAIN?

COUNCIL MEMBER GOLD.

THERE WE GO.

Approved unanimously.

Okay. Thank you.

So we're going to go ahead and jump into item 4, public hearing.

Are there any comments?

I mean, public comments? No? Just continue.

Okay.

So, council, these are all continuances, so if we can...

I will move to continue both item 4A and 4B to the June 7th agenda.

Do I have a second? Okay. Council member, you second it. If we can have a vote, please.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

And at this moment, before we head into new business items, I'd like to request that we take a quick 10-minute break to give people a chance to use the restroom

or take a quick stretch, and then we will resume at 840.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, Marina, go ahead and reconvene.

We can start taking your seats.

Okay, so we'll go ahead and reconvene at 840. And we'll start with new business items, 5A.

Is there...

Good evening. I'm Jessica Serrano, Community Development Director. I'm going to go ahead and present this item, which is a request to obtain time extensions for two entitlements, including tentative map 1701 at the southwest corner of Orange Avenue and Pepper Street

and tentative map 1801 and conditional use permit 1804 at 130 through 206 South Chandler Avenue. A note for the record, staff has a correction on page 64 of the agenda, which is page 2, section 2F of the resolution approving the extension of entitlement TM-1701. The correction is that it should state that the entitlement is for the construction of four residential units, not three. This correction will be provided to the city clerk's office for final documentation. Next slide. This first slide shows a timeline of actions that led us to this point. Beginning in March of 2020, when the COVID pandemic hit, the City Council declared the COVID-19 pandemic a local emergency and adopted a series of actions aimed at combating or supporting local businesses known as the Monterey Park Business Recovery Program. In April of 2020, the extension of the local emergency occurred and additional extensions happened thereafter. In June of 2020, the City Council suspended their expiration dates for approved land use entitlements during this local emergency. And in April 2022, the extension of entitlement expiration was issued until April 1st of 2023. Next slide.

the applicant for this project a tentative map to subdivide one lot into four lots at the southeast

corner of pepper and orange highlighted in yellow is requesting that city council extend their entitlements by one year to complete the project the tentative map was originally approved in 2018 the approval granted them two years to record the map the project was extended by city council on August 19, 2020. The project also benefited from the suspension of entitlements that were granted blanketly by City Council in 2020 and 2022. This alLod their entitlements to remain valid until April 1st of this year. The applicant submitted their request prior to the expiration date and has been working with staff who is reviewing their final map and grading plan. They are close to finalizing their final map. If City Council grants this request, the final map will be brought before City Council later in June, the second meeting in June, for consideration. The grading plan and design review application will also be reviewed and approved by staff. Without this extension, the project cannot move forward. If extended by Council tonight, the new expiration date will be April 1st, 2024. Next slide. The next couple slides show pictures of the project site, which is an undeveloped property that is on a slope, and the property is at a Lor grade than the street level. The photo on the top left is taken across the street from the corner of Orange and Pepper, looking southeast. The photo on the bottom right is taken on Pepper, looking southwest towards Orange. And you can see the difference between the street level from where on the sidewalk from where the photo was taken and The the difference in grade that goes Lor on the project site next slide The next photo is taken from a Lor portion of the property on orange looking north east towards pepper Next slide the Next slide shows building elevations proposed by the applicant. These have not yet been approved, and will be processed, and reviewed, should the City Council, approve this extension, tonight. Next slide. The second project, the is requesting, an extension, is the subdivision, and a conditional use permit, to allow the construction, of a 40 unit, senior housing project, which was approved, in 2020. The approval, granted, them two years, to record the final map in one year to exercise the conditional use permit. The project also benefited from the suspension of entitlements that were granted by City Council in 2020 and 2022. This alLod their entitlements to remain valid until April 1, 2023. The applicant submitted their extension request prior to the expiration date. In August of 2022, the applicant also submitted construction plans to the Building and Safety Division. Without this extension, the project cannot move forward. If extended, the new expiration date will be April 1, 2024. Next slide. As shown highlighted in yellow, the property is located on the east side of Chandler between Garvey and Newmark. The project site consists of a vacant, undeveloped lot and an additional property currently developed with existing residential development. To the right is a color elevation proposed by the applicant. Next slide. The next slide shows site photos, and the photo on the left was taken across the street on Chandler looking east. The photo on the right was taken from the sidewalk on Chandler adjacent to the undeveloped portion of the project site looking southeast. East. Lastly, staff recommends that the City Council grant a one-year extension for these entitlements and take such additional related action that may be desirable. Next slide. Staff and the applicants for these projects are available to answer any questions.

Any questions or comments from Council?

Yes, Ms. Chair. Council Member Lo? Yes, thank you. Thank you very much, Jessica, for the presentation.

Question.

Because the State Department of Housing and Urban Development just approved our housing element for this cycle, does that change any of the permitting or design of the development projects?

What I can say regarding that is that one of the projects is included in the site's inventory in the approved housing element.

And so it is included and counted as one of the sites

used towards meeting the city's RHNA allocation.

So just one site, but not both sites?

One of the sites. The second site, you know, unfortunately, I didn't see it initially.

I'd have to do a little bit more research to figure out if it is, in fact, listed there. Okay.

And if it isn't, I mean, I know HUD just approved,

and I also know that it was a very long and grueling process, and I thank staff for working so diligently to get HUD to approve our housing element.

But let's just say one of them is not included.

I mean, is it a simple process to say,

can you add this additional project to our list of inventory?

we wouldn't um necessarily change our our um sites inventory like we wouldn't have to go back to hud to change our our document our approved document um but there are laws which state that if we don't approve items or units on approve or sites in the sites inventory then we would have to accommodate those units somewhere else. Like it's a no net loss. Like we can't lose those units. We'd have to approve them somewhere else. I do see our city attorney queued up on Zoom. If you'd like to add anything to that, Carl.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. My apologies for not being there tonight in person. As you know, I'm at a city attorney conference in Monterey. I just wanted to chime in on this, not with regard to the question, these are vested property rights at the moment. So the changes with

regard to the housing element that was certified by HCD don't necessarily affect the entitlements. The only question is whether or not these entitlements that were granted, I think, in 2018.

Is that correct, Jessica? One in 2018, the second in 2020. Right. So the only question is whether

or not to extend those vested rights in these projects whether or not they are included in the

inventory as jessica indicated one of them definitely is and we would have to do further

research on the other one but those whether or not they're included on the inventory is not

really presented to the city council tonight the real question is whether or not to extend at the tentative map in the CUP.

Okay. Happy to have any questions. Thank you.

I have a question, Jessica. I think for clarification, I believe that corner is the southeast corner.

Maybe a typo.

You can just double check. I think it may be a typo.

Thank you for that correction.

Just Jessica for the 40 unit senior housing projects Do you know if those units are for rent or meant to be for rent or plan for for sale?

The project at pepper and orange that one is intended The the channeler project and that one is an apartment complex that is intended for rental

Okay. And the owner, developer, slash operator, if that construction moves forward, has history of operating senior four-wheel housing?

They are available here tonight. I think they would be best to answer that question.

Sure. I'm just curious their background.

Good evening, City Mayor and then Council Member.

What a question was talking about my part for 40 unit senior housing?

Yeah, if you can talk about just your background if you've done other senior housing developments and operate current senior affordable rental housing or any affordable housing.

You're talking about this construction or later operating. But we are personal. My background is a general contractor.

I work here in California over 20 years.

I think we can handle the construction, break the ground to the occupancy.

But the future, if we completely, I will be by purpose,

rental if you finance too hard maybe so so the some you only mean we want to keep

the keep the the party for right right yeah so that the hope is to keep all 40

units for rent yes but depending on your financing yes the market you might but

you know the problem the finance is really top and bottom heart and do I

don't know Jessica or other staff know we currently the city currently has a lot of senior affordable housing units but as far as I know all of those are for sale or our owner occupied units right not not rental or do we have it I'm familiar

with one other rental but there may be more I guess I'm following up on council

Member Wang asked her, so you're the builder, who's going to be the operator? Do you have an arm of the business that does the operations? Because it is senior rental. It is, I mean, there is some aspect of that from an operations standpoint.

He'll be hiring other people. He looked in a lot of senior homes.

Can you please approach the mic, please?

And he'll be looking for operators for senior homes. He's been looking for it. He's primarily a contractor.

Have you built other senior or other affordable housing units?

We have a lot of background for experience to build the big project. I can handle it with the size.

We are professors of concrete work. We have a special license.

We do the footing and the structure. That's the one we are to my job.

I will be handling it perfect. we restarted.

All right.

Have you operated or are you currently operating other affordable rental housing units?

No. Not senior homes, no. Okay.

But other affordable, non-senior?

No. Okay.

But do you operate at market rate rental units?

Mostly he built those and sell them.

and he will be getting kind of operated to do the senior homes because he has no experience on that.

Okay.

So, okay.

And then do your, or can you talk about what your, do you have long-income housing tax credits as part of the financing or what's your financing stack for this?

We are not getting any tax credit. We've been looking for financing. The lender we are trying to get for about four or five months

and the land is from First Republic Bank. You know, they just went under and Chase took over.

So that's why the pay work took so long to pass through. We are still waiting.

And the guy said, it's approved. Just wait.

This is where we are at right now.

After we get a financing, we'll start right away. It's waited for too long already.

So that's your construction loan? You're waiting for a construction loan to start?

Yes.

Well, one, I want to make the point. I fully support affordable housing unit construction in the city of Monterey Park. We have a very large arena goal that the state is imposing on us and others that we want to do our best and make a best effort to meet. I'm assuming the 40 unit project was the one listed on the site's inventory for our housing element, I would guess. And so I would love to see this move forward. I'm happy to support a time extension. And I guess my other question would be, so you have no intention of seeking other funding sources for this affordable housing?

We get from the bank, we have no kind of credit, anything like that. I mean the tax credit thing.

Purely get a loan from the bank and build it out and rent it out.

Okay.

Well, I wish you, I know the financing sector or the banking sector is going through some challenges currently. So wish you a lot of luck in pursuing financing and appreciate your efforts to make this work in the city. I'm happy to make a motion to, unless there are other questions, I'm happy to make a motion on this.

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

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

Thank you. Good luck.

Thank you.

Next item is 5B, donation of mural at George Elder Park for AAPI Heritage Month.

Do we have a staff report?

We do. Thank you, Mr. Robert Aguirre. Go ahead. All right.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Patel, and Councilmembers. So on May the 4th, the Los Angeles Rams contacted the Recreation and Community Services Department, and they expressed that they were interested in providing a mural at a community facility to celebrate AAPI Heritage Month. AAPI is Asian American Pacific Islander Month.

In light of the recent tragedy, they also wanted to help to bring beauty and help uplift our community.

and while at the same time celebrating all of the AAPI cultures.

The Rams also agreed to cover all the costs of a mural

and then proceeded to set up meetings with city staff along with the artist DJ Javier, who was commissioned by the LA Rams.

And when we met with the artist,

he was able to share some of his vision of the mural.

And then on May the 10th, we set up a community participation commission meeting

and met to review the artist's rendering and the commission voted unanimously to support

the mural.

Now I want to reiterate the mural is not a memorial although there is a portion of the

art piece that does pay tribute and honor the 11 fallen within the horrific tragedy that occurred in January. The mural is a commemoration of the AAPI Heritage Month and it also serves to provide a space

where visitors may reflect or kind of sit and to reflect on the resilience and the diversity

of Monterey Park community. If approved tonight, there will also be, along with the mural, a plaque that will also tell the story of the mural, some of the meaning and the story behind the art piece. The artist hopes to inspire the community and also future generations of artists in the community and those part of the AAPI culture. It is my pleasure and honor to introduce tonight DJ Javier. He's the mural artist and he can share a little bit about himself as well as some of the art piece. Also on the line tonight is Mary Morales. She's also with the LA Rams and she's the one that had actually reached out to the recreation department and kind of got this

process started. So DJ I'm going to turn

Thank you all again.

But yeah, I'd love to walk through just like these brief little chunks from what I had created and presented to the team. And so here, just a brief overview, partner with the Los Angeles Rams to concept and execute a mural in Monterey Park celebrating API month and honoring the Asian community in Los Angeles. Next slide, please. and so here's you know this is the select wall space um and so um yeah just like a really grand and like awesome opportunity to do something that is like very celebratory and um just uh just from a visual standpoint um just really striking and um something that for me i hope that a lot of people can find ownership in and a sense of belonging to of um you know obviously the los Angeles Rams are supporting this project, but something that they can see and just see a part of their community and a part of their heritage as well. And so this is the select wall space that we're working with. Next slide. And so here's just a brief concept direction that I put together. And this was almost something for me that was more internal just to kind of help focus my concept. for me being Filipino American, first generation immigrant, seeing things that my parents had gone through on their journey here and coming to America. I mean, my family and friends and peers who are also Asian American, Pacific Islander as well. One thing that just kind of rang true in my mind as I was kind of concepting and figuring out, you know, what would this artwork look like is, you know, this idea of resilience. And obviously, from what your community has experienced and just Asian Americans throughout the whole U.S. with, you know, the rise of AAPI hate, there's a sense of resilience. And I feel like that word just kept buzzing in my head of being resilient, powerful, and bold. And I feel like the Asian American community has always had that sense throughout the years, whether it's, you know, in the early like 1920s when a lot of, you know, for instance, like Filipino immigrants were coming and working in like Stockton, California to like Larry Itliang, who's like on the bottom right, who is pivotal during the Delano grape strike. And so, yeah, all that to say, I think for me, I wanted to create something that had this sense of you look at it and you feel this sense of strength and pride in the work that not necessarily it's for me being Philippine American within my own personal artwork there's a lot of themes and motifs that are specific to that but I want to create something that felt like there was a common thread throughout you know a lot of Asian cultures where like it was a theme that they saw in one way or another within their work that kind of like condensed into this thing that kind of represented like this larger community. Next slide. And so here is the mural concept that I put together mocked up. And so as you can see, it's this kind of like curling dragon going up and down and kind of spiraling. And so within my own work, for me being a graphic designer and fine artist, a lot of my work tends to be simplified color palette, but very bold and vibrant and alive. And I think, you know, this work will really kind of like from a visual standpoint, just be something that you can't miss as you drive by and hopefully something that the community can be really stoked on and feel like they have some ownership and yeah, like a sense of ownership with. Next slide, please. And so here, this was like a little excerpt from my presentation as well. And so as you can see, there's, aside from the color palette itself being influenced by the Rams brand color palette, just to show that partnership that we have together. There are like little hints and nods to like their branding as well. As you can see, like the LA logo, kind of like the curving of the horns is kind of like, you know, you know, subtly embedded into the work. But I think above all wanting to create something that, you know, still spoke to that. But at the end of the day, it truly was or truly is something that speaks to the AAPI community and celebrates that. And then also on top of that, But two, doing something that, although this mural isn't necessarily a memorial mural, as Robert said, doing something that was a tribute to and pays respects to the 11 lives that were lost. And so these 11 stars that are kind of like wrapping around or sitting around the dragon as well. And so creating work that, like I said, has like a through line within different cultures. you know if you kind of like dig into like what the dragon might mean for different cultures a lot of it was like this sense of like you know protector being bold and brave and powerful and so wanted to do something that really spoke to those things and so I think there might be a next slide but yeah and so yeah that's that's kind of like a short version of what I had presented to the team and kind of like where we had ended up. And once again, I just want to thank you all for this opportunity. And it's, it's, it's super exciting.

Thank you for that explanation. And thank you so much for the, for the work that you did. Yeah, thank you. And we have a representative from the Rams here as well.

If she would like to make a statement.

Hi, everybody. Thank you again for having us on here. Yeah, again, like Robert said, we really just wanted to come over to Monterey Park and celebrate AAPI Heritage Month and really build something beautiful for the community.

That was our biggest thing we wanted to work on, and we're happy to hopefully move forward with this project for you guys and happy to continue a partnership with Monterey Park.

Thank you so much. Any questions or comments from the council? Oh, we have speakers. That's right.

First speaker, Tammy Louie.

Good evening, honorable members, council members, and mayor. So the staff report does mention that the mural is for in honor of AAPI. And thank you very much for the rounds for wanting to donate to our community. It's a very generous and thoughtful gift that they want to do.

But the mural, and I appreciate the artists, but the mural doesn't represent AAPI. The mural represents a dragon, which is mostly Asians.

Let me read. The U.S. Census Bureau defines a member of the U.S. Asian population as a person having origins in the Far East, Southeast Asia, and Indian subcontinent, including examples, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, and the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Pacific islanders are persons of origins of Hawaii, Guam, Samoans.

A dragon doesn't represent an AAPI. And it's something that you want to put into our community, which is an awesome mural. I mean what a great beautification thing to do for our community, but it's it's not the right graphic design for our area and I mean if you want to put a dragon put it more I guess maybe in the Garvey area Garvey Avenue every year, but that's that isn't an AAPI Representative and I ask if you would please redesign that graphic. I mean it's a very large mural mural, it's not your average mural size that represents our community. We're not just, I mean, I am Chinese, but that's not what we are. I mean, we are a huge community of many ethnic groups. And Pakistan would say dragons, not me. Samoans would say dragons are not my community, a symbol of our community. So please consider redesigning a design that

represents AAPI everyone and just a side note if we're doing zoom transparency we should see

council members I mean the city attorney up on the screen so that we know because we didn't know

he was actually physically on there until two and a half hours later almost two and a half hours later and I'm sorry but that's just my feeling on transparency of being in the city council

Next speaker.

Next speaker, Juanita Medina.

Good evening, everyone.

January 20th was a wonderful evening. So many children and so many families taking their dogs out, dressed in cultural garb,

children dressed up so beautifully,

so many different ethnicities sharing that one night.

It was amazing. So many different languages.

And it was so much fun. I think I got fat just from smelling the food that night.

You know, maybe a good 10 pounds.

And I was watching the people dance. The students from Stardance Studio were dancing on that stage, and they were so excited to be there to present what they learned.

And then it started to dwindle out and everyone was going home. And then it happened. I lost a dear friend that night.

And I'll never get over that.

I was going to teach her Spanish because she was so excited she wanted to learn Spanish.

I think, from my point of view, and I could also show you from other people,

this mural was a well-thought-out idea to have a mural, but to advertise for the Rams

and then to throw in a couple of starbursts to say it's representative, you go from a regular mural to now it's a memorial. I don't care how you put it, but you've just turned it into a memorial.

I don't want my friend represented by a stinking starburst

on an ugly-looking cartoon of a so-called representation of our community.

And who in the hell said that the Rams had to dictate to us that we needed beautification,

that we needed this ugly-looking mural for our community?

It doesn't represent all of our representation of all of the members in our home.

It doesn't represent my friend who died. I'm never going to hear her voice again. I'm never going to be able to dance with her again.

She was a beautiful lady. She doesn't deserve this. I'm sorry, but you guys sold your souls

to get a damn mural free from the Rams. Big deal.

The Rams could have contributed money to our fund. They could have done a scholarship fund.

They could have done so many things.

But this mural, please. My grandson took one look at it. He's a little boy.

He goes, Grandma, what school is getting a new mural? I go, it's not for a school, mijo.

It's for the whole community. He goes, it's ugly, Grandma. And I go, I know.

And there was nothing more I could say about it until he picked out.

He goes, Grandma, why are there so many ram's horns in the body of the dragon?

I go, because they're advertising for the rams.

He goes, but that's not my school.

That's not where we live. Why, Grandma?

I don't know.

My part of this community isn't by East L.A. College. I live on the east side of L. Atlantic. My neighbors think that we don't have a voice in anything, and I'm here for them to say,

we have a voice. I'm here for you. Whatever it is you want to say about this, you let me know.

And one person told me, if this is a representation of our city council that does things without asking for the advice of those that suffered, the victims, and for the voices of the community

itself, then what good is this council if you disregard us and disrespect us?

We should have had a say-so about this.

We didn't want it anywhere near that. We wanted some, if it's going to be here in some ways, that it's going to be symbolizing of our community, symbolizing of our people, of our languages, of that night.

Not some stinking starburst on a wall. My friend and the other people were all family of this community, and they deserve so much

better from this council and from the people who decided that this mural was a good idea. Shame on you.

as the lady before me, I just wanted to know, why is this, with all due respect to the artist,

why is this mural looks like a, to me at least, a grade school mascot? Looks like a smiling mural that you will find in junior high or elementary school somewhere. While I'm not an AAPI, I don't think some of my AAPI friends would respect such a cartoonish character representing them,

and much less representing 11 people who lost their lives to senseless violence. So I ask you, implore you to perhaps ask the designer to design something more contemplative, more perhaps serious, and not as cartoonish as Moscow-ish.

and also the monstrosity of the size of this thing. I passed by it this afternoon.

It spanned about 11 car parking spots. That's a big old, big-ass mural.

Also, as the articulate lady before me said, is this a billboard for rams, or is this honoring, reflecting on AAPI community?

It looks like a RAM advertising, RAM's advertising.

And another, on a more serious matter, I passed by it this afternoon, and I saw already the walls being painted already or primed and also had this, what is it called, hydraulic man lift already there. But I thought you guys haven't decided yet what to do with it or do anything. So why is it the work already started on it without you voting on this matter? That's very curious.

That's it.

I hope the council reconsiders the mural

and postpone the mural,

maybe open it to more comments for some other people to come and make comments. Thank you very much.

Any other speakers?

Teresa Riel Sebastian.

Hello once again. I, too, passed with my husband in front of Elder Park, and I don't know if you can see this,

but the wall's been whitewashed.

That area of the parking lot where the mural is going to go up has been blocked,

and there's some kind of hydraulic lift there. How can this be possible if you haven't taken action?

Who decided this, or has a council already voted and it wasn't televised, or does someone have three votes in their pocket? This is extremely alarming, extremely. This is not our city council.

This is not our city. This is not transparency. Please go look.

I actually posted it on Facebook.

Check it out, Monterey Park Life. First of all, I do want to thank the Rams for donations, and I will be the first to say I know nothing about football.

I had to confirm that they were a football team because donations are great for our city. But although they're free, it doesn't mean you have to take them,

or it doesn't mean you have to take them as is. You can modify them

because although the Rams are donating it, they're this, and we have an artist that's donating his time,

you're the one that knows Monterey Park. You're the one that understands it.

So it is incumbent upon you

to actually flesh it out. And I appreciate, Robert, you saying that this is not a commemoration or anything like that related to tragedy. However, I'm going to read to you from the staff report, which I'm assuming all of you read. It was only like three pages long. It says, the staff report states, the mural design has 11 stars symbolizing and honoring 11 deceased victims of the shooting incident. The mural project aims to bring beauty to the community and celebrate all AAPI cultures while honoring and paying respect to those affected by the recent tragedy. The mural provides a space of healing and inspiration for community members to visit and reflect. So what once started as a simple mural

has now turned, morphed into a memorial. And that's where you need to start asking questions and that's where you need to be sensitive and that's where you need to sympathize and that's when you need to start taking into consideration comments. I posted this on Monterey Park Facebook Live because I thought it was so important that the community know.

And the comments that were received by far, people did not support it. We've got to be respectful. First of all, take those 11 stars out, whatever you do. Have an appropriate memorial. I agree. Sorry, Rams, this looks like advertising. You have your advertising logo there. The staff report even states that there's horns within the dragon that are resemblant of the rams. Why? If this is a donation, then by very graciously donated, we'll give you a plaque that says artist such and such person donated by LA Rams. There's your plaque. But it doesn't have to be in advertising. We are not for sale. We're not. And can we just be a little bit more discreet about this?

And with all due respect to the artist, I'm not a fan of the artwork. According to the Santa Barbara Independent who interviewed the artist, DJ Javier, he lives in Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara. So we have no local artist here that we can engage that are familiar with our San Gabriel

Valley in a Monterey Park. The artist finds inspiration in traditional American tattoos, Saturday morning cartoons, and graffiti culture. In my opinion, AAPI friends deserve something more

and something refined. And lastly, this is going in District 3. Jose Sanchez, this is your district. District 3 was created to preserve a Latino majority district. Thomas and Henry, you spoke about that, and you approved the map that included Elder Park. Yes, I remember. I've got my notes still. Where you came up and you supported that way back then when we were going into the district maps. So my suggestion is, please, let's modify this mural. Let's accept a donation by the Rams. We'll modify the mural. And as far as putting something up at Elder Park, why don't you put something up that is reflective of the AAPI culture and the Latino culture. Latino Heritage Month is coming up in September, and what a great way to include inclusiveness. Thank you so much.

Last speaker, Christine Lim.

good evening everyone my name is christine and i'm a resident of district 4 and someone who also you actively utilize elder park as my son is part of the manta ray swim team um it was recently brought to my attention that the city has accepted a donation from the la rams to help celebrate API month and to beautify our community. I appreciate the LA Rams for their generosity. While I love DJ Javier's art and what he has done for other communities, I am opposed to approval of the mural for these reasons. While I understand that there were certain parameters to work with within creating this mural, this mural is not a donation but a paid permanent billboard advertisement for the LA Rams. Two, in order for there to be buy-in from the community, there needs to be input from the community. Hence, to prove my point, this is a billboard commissioned by the LA Rams. There should be buy-in from the community regarding the design choices. The artists should be working and seeking approval from our community and not the LA Rams. Three, I encourage city council to check out the comments on the Facebook as there has also been many who oppose this. And also DJ Javier's Instagram to check out his body of work as I feel there are other options that is more appropriate for this space. Four, I am alarmed that the city has moved forward with this project without city council approval by prepping the site and that the artist is also already on site. I do not understand why the work has moved forward prior to approval from the city council. Five, the design might be more appropriate for downtown Moiré Park. I encourage city council to either oppose or table this vote until we can receive buy-in from the community. Thank you.

No other speakers.