City Council Meeting — August 16, 2023

We're going to go ahead and get started with our city council meeting. I'll call the meeting at exactly 6.30 p.m. I'd like to get started by reading our mission statement for the city. The mission of the city of Monterey Park is to provide excellent services to enhance the quality of life for our entire community. and our land acknowledgement, we would like to acknowledge that the land we inhabit today was once known as the Tavangar, 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 Gabrielino-Tongva people and invite you to acknowledge the history and join us in caring for this land. I'm going to go ahead and invite the Monoran Park Police Explorers to get us started with

our flag salute. So if you could please stand. our police explorers to get us started with our flag salute so if you could please stand ! The guard, up and up.

The guard, over and march.

The guard, over and march.

Upward face. Upward face.

Breeze and colors.

If you could 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, with liberty and justice for all.

Outward face.

Forward march.

Pulse colors.

About fixed...

Dismissed.

And if you can take your seats. Thank you.

City Clerk if we can do the roll call please

Council Member Lo

Present Council Member Yu Here Council Member Go Present Mayor Pro Tem Wong Here Mayor Sanchez Present We have a quorum

Thank you

And City Manager do we have any agenda additions or deletions or changes or adoptions

No changes

Thank you

And do we have any public communications?

One speaker. One speaker.

Allison Newman of the Monterey Park Community Garden Coalition.

Good evening, Council Members. My name is Allison Newman. And I'm Jolene Wong. and we are part of the Monterey Park Community Garden Coalition. Recently, we noticed that many cities around Monterey Park have community gardens, including East Los Angeles and Alhambra. Many of these gardens rose out of community interest to develop previously unused land. In Monterey Park, we also have a shared interest in gardening and growing our own food. The Monterey Park Gardening Facebook group has over 200 members who post new and interesting ways to cultivate vegetables and prune fLors. Providing our citizens an accessible and interactive way to do so would greatly benefit our community. For instance, Monterey Park's poverty level currently sits above the national average. A community garden would benefit the impoverished 13% in Monterey Park. Additionally, inflation has increased the cost of fresh produce in grocery stores, making it difficult for just about any family to have regular healthy meals. With a city-sponsored garden, citizens would not only learn to produce their own food, but they will also learn to manage food waste.

Our vision for this community garden includes having small plots in the corner of Elder Park that houses the abandoned log cabins. These log cabins are suitable for a meeting space and tool shed should they be altered towards ADA requirements. We have shared a general survey with various groups across the city spoken to commissions and clubs. Responses to our survey have been positive with citizens notably mentioning that the city does not make community beautification a priority. The addition of a community garden would bring enrichment and many great things. Another citizen wrote they would love to rent a plot at a community garden because they have very little sun and space in their residence. In order to get a greater idea of who's interested in this program

We will be hosting the introductory party at elder park on September 9th from 12 to 3 p.m We would like to extend this invitation to city council and anyone here that is interested in beautifying our city Gardening or sustainability. Thank you

And we also have some invitations physical invitations that like to pass out And that's it Thank you so much

and if you can leave your contact information as well with our city clerk.

No other speakers.

Mr. Mayor, while they're here, encourage them.

I know the Parks Master Plan process is getting underway soon and I'll encourage the speakers to make sure that they're engaged in that process as that kicks off. I don't know if Robert can take their contact information.

Thank you.

Seeing that there's no other speakers for public comment, communication, so we'll go ahead and jump to staff communications. And we have a staff communication from our police chief.

Good evening, everybody. Mr. Mayor, members of City Council, this is Scott Weiss, the police chief. And I want to give you an update, our kind of monthly update on what's going on in the police department. I'm going to start off with kind of a solemn remembrance, if I could have the first slide. In August 8th, 2022, we lost one of our brand new police officers. He was the victim of an armed robbery in the city of Downey. And Officer Gardiel Solario was killed at the scene. The three suspects that killed him were taken into custody and they're awaiting trial on capital murder charges. But it's the first time, it's been a year, a very solemn event in our police department. A lot of tears, a lot of memories. It's not something that we ever want to happen, but it's one of those things that we'll never forget. And it brought us together a little bit as a family, even more. But I wanted to bring it up tonight and just remind everybody that the officers do, they're 24 hours a day.

They're police officers on duty and off duty. And whether he was targeted or not as a police officer, it's still a tragedy when we lost him.

So it's a solemn day for us. Next slide, please. On a more jovial note, my police explorers, I'm going to ask them to come down. Hopefully they're paying attention.

They were so good with the flag, weren't they? so we have a law enforcement explorer post here in monterey park pd like a lot of departments do it's a uh an offshoot of the boy scouts of america and part of the process for these young adults between the ages of 15 and 21 is they learn police tactics they learn procedural things and to test that we put them into different competitions this is the the third or fourth time we've done competitions and I like to to tout my explorers here and I started off as an explorer 42 years ago. We rode horses back then and and things were a little different but 42 years ago I started off as a police explorer and it prepared me for where I am today. So the things I learned 42 years ago prepared me to be a chief of police. So there may be a potential chief of police somewhere in this group, hopefully for Monterey Park. They competed at the Southern California Law Enforcement Export Competition. There were 25 teams from around the state that were there. It was in San Diego. Next slide, please. This is how we finished. First place in warrant service. Second place in assault and battery investigation. Second place in active shooter response. Fourth place in high-risk traffic stop. Fourth place in officer down rescue. And fourth place in crime scene investigation. Now, those six trophies were won by these four people.

So they all participated in each one of these. I actually sent some of my cops home tonight, and they're going to take over the city. Give them a day off. You know, they're young,

and they're hard chargers. But I wanted, next slide, please. I want to introduce them. First, it's Matthew Chang

go ahead and step up here Matthew there you go Michael Chang his brother

Nathan Villanueva

and Annabelle Magana

turn around and face the crowd

now it's here

congratulations

our explorers yep

our explorers are overseen by police officers, and they volunteer their time to be Explorer Advisors.

I was an Explorer Advisor years ago, and the mantle gets passed on every year to different people. Tony Nguyen right now is our, he's part of the NET team, you've all met him. He is our Explorer Advisor extraordinaire. The Boy Scouts of America here in Southern California have really take a shining to our

post, and we are the model post for police departments in this area.

Other cities that want to start Explorer programs come and learn from us how to do it, and they talk to Tony about how to do it right. So I've got Tony Wynn, Alice Porter, Samantha Corona, and Kenneth Tam are our Explorer advisors,

and they were there for the competition and helped get our people through it, so I want to thank them for everything and another round of applause for our Explorer. Thank you.

Good job. All right.

Before we send them away, if we can give maybe an opportunity for council to perhaps take a picture. And I know there's family here as well. That'd be fantastic.

Let's do that. Yeah.

I guess we can stay up here.

Congratulations on these awards. Let's give them another round of applause.

Thank you.

It's okay to smile.

It's all right.

I'll suspend the rule for now.

Chief, do you want to get up there, Chief?

I will.

Stop in. It's not about me.

One shot. All right.

Hold on. Stay there.

I wonder if I looked that young when I was 15 years old.

Thank you very much, guys. Thank you very much, guys. !

Yeah, these are the ones that were at the competition. Yeah, these are the ones that were at the competition.

Okay.

And just a little bit of quick background. I know, like with our fire chief, we look at our explorers as kind of a pipeline for future police officers, whether they decide to be in the program or not. It still builds leadership. It builds responsibility.

It exposes them to public service, and some of them go on to be police officers or firefighters,

and it's a great program for us and the fire department. They have an explorer program also. Next slide, please.

Our Neighborhood Watch program, we are moving along. We had our first Neighborhood Watch Block Captain meeting on Montechico last week. There were 25 people there, which is a great showing for a Neighborhood Watch Block Captain. There were 25 people there, which is a great showing for a neighborhood watch block captain for the first meeting. ! They had a lot of great questions. We dealt with emerging trends in their neighborhood homelessness.

! They expressed some desires. We did some follow up after we met with them in the meeting. ! We had a lot of great questions. We dealt with emerging trends in their neighborhood homelessness. We've ordered signs for their neighborhood, and we'll be able to put signs up in their neighborhood. Public Works is putting that together for us.

So I encourage anybody who's watching or anybody in the audience who wants to start a neighborhood watch program, the number and our email is up here on the screen. We've got another meeting next week somewhere else in the city,

and then we'll be pushing and pushing and pushing and calling some of our old block captains and trying to get the program resurrected again.

Next slide, please. Our annual youth activities golf tournament is coming up.

The Explorers that went on the competition, this is how we pay for them to go on their competitions and help support them in the program. We offer scholarships for the kids to join our program and to purchase uniforms and some of the training like that. So this is one of the only fundraisers we use.

Go ahead, next slide, please.

It's going to be an Almanza golf course on Friday, September 22nd.

Everybody's welcome to sign up and play golf with us. Next slide, please.

Check-in times at 745. We'll have a putting contest. We're giving away a putter.

I believe that we are working on a hole-in-one of an automobile. I know. I know. I'm trying to figure out how to win that. Got a kid that's turning 16. I'm going to need a car for her soon.

So it's going to be a great tournament.

We're anticipating 130, 140 golfers, and it's always a big event for us. We have a great time. We always have a big raffle at the end with raffle prizes and things like that, and it's a great fundraiser for the Explorer program. Next slide, please.

Also, I want to talk about our Pink Patch car show. It's our first time we're ever doing this. It's going to be in Barnes Park on October 7th from noon to 5 p.m. There will be classic cars, music, food trucks, vendors,

and the benefits from this program will go to the City of Hope, and it's in conjunction with our Pink Patch Project. Next slide, please.

I'm going to start introducing some of my new people to you here, and you'll see them around the city. This is one of my new police officers, Aramanta Reyes. She's upstairs and briefing right now. She's a lateral officer that came from another agency to us. She's assigned to field training right now. Now, like all of the emerging officers that we see coming into law enforcement, she has a bachelor's degree, which is fantastic for us. I have them kind of sit down with me and we talk about their goals. And she is a very strong, focused, driven young lady. And one of her goals is to build a great relationship with the community. And she talked a lot about how she as an individual does that. And she did it at her old agency, which was a large agency that patrolled the county areas of the city. I'm not going to say which one, or the county. And this is going to give her an opportunity to reach out to a public that I think is open arms to someone like her. So I'm looking forward to getting her out through training and on her own. Next slide, please. And we have a new animal services officer to add to Will Estrada's group. So we'll have two, which will expand our coverage seven days a week, we hope, or into the evening hours. Laura Rodriguez also has a bachelor's. She has prior animal services experience. She was a code enforcement officer in the city of Rosemead and was animal services for Pasadena Humane. She was a supervisor there, so she comes with a lot of experience. and one of her goals is aside from helping animals, which is a passion for her, she wants to educate the community on the coexisting of wild animals and the public. We all know how that affects us here with our coyote population. I think she's going to be a great addition to our team. So she's our new animal services officer. And I believe that's the last slide. If you have any questions, I'm here to answer them.

Well, thank you so much for that report, Police Chief. Are there any questions or comments from Council?

Council Member Lo?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor and Chief.

I just want to give my compliments to the entire Police Department. I'm glad to hear there's been a lot of interest in reviving the Neighborhood Watch Program, and I think that a large part of it also has to do with the great National Night Out event we did. I remember I was by the police department booth, and I distinctly remember people coming up to ask about the Neighbor Watch program. And certainly, you know, I think that our community has a lot of trust and a lot of appreciation for what everyone in your department does. I know for myself, whenever I've had residents calling with concerns about a situation in their neighborhood, an office is always accessible to come out to meet with the resident,

to let them know what's going on and how we can work together.

And so we've always appreciated really what I think what you do represents community policing at its best.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

I would just echo one congratulations on the explorers winning those awards and appreciate. I know that also speaks not only to their abilities and their training, but also to the officers that put in the work to help coach them and get them to that point too. So I appreciate everything the police department is doing to support this next generation of future police officers and public safety-minded citizens. Can you share, I didn't catch the pink patch event, if you can share the information.

Sure.

Have Diana send that to the council members.

Yeah, absolutely. Try to come by.

I will. We have shirts that are very, very nice.

And I will make sure that that goes on the regular calendar, city calendar.

And I'll push out the flyer and everything to council so you have the dates and the times and everything like that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And, again, thank you so much for all the awards that our police explorers won. How many in the audience are family of some of the police explorers there? Thank you so much for everything that you do. I wanted to acknowledge you because I know a lot of you guys are parents. I'm a parent as well, and we take pride in what our kids and our students do. So I appreciate you committing your son or daughter to the police explorers and perhaps sending them on a career path that will lead them into law enforcement and public safety. So thank you again and appreciate you. If we can just give the parents a round of applause.

A little bit of trivia. Newport Beach Police Explorers were at that competition, and we beat them in several of the different areas.

I was a Newport Beach Police Explorer, so it's kind of nice to see that, you know, we developed a better team here. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much.

If we can go ahead and jump into our next staff communication, the Recreation and Community Services.

Hi, good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and members of City Council. I'm Alejandra Espinoza, and I am a Recreation Coordinator for Recreation and Community Services Department. I'm here to provide some updates on events we're offering at Langley Center. So we continue to partner with Garfield Health Center to offer health screenings for glucose and cholesterol every fourth Monday for seniors 50 and over, as well as health seminars on a variety of different topics for also seniors 50 and over every second Thursday.

Next slide, please.

Another service that we're offering is we're partnering with the Department of Mental Health to offer a jewelry-making class to promote mental health, which has become highly popular. They're expanding to other types of jewelry, such as bracelets and earrings. So we're constantly getting feedback on how that's very popular, and the seniors are really enjoying it and creating friendships while promoting their mental health.

Next slide, please.

Our next dance for this month will be the Wildest Party in the West for older adults, 50 and over, on August 24th from 1 to 3. We typically get over 150 participants at our dances. We have decorated our center already, so hopefully the decorations, you know, encourage everybody to come out. Staff will be dressed up as well, and we encourage all participants to, you know, dress for the occasion as we do with all of our other dances.

Next slide, please.

and on Thursday, August 31st at 1 o'clock we will be having a karaoke contest. Tomorrow will actually be their rehearsal, so we're excited for that. We have over 70 participants enrolled as well as our contestants already lined up for it, so we are excited. Next slide, please. And that will be all. If anybody has any questions, I'll be happy to answer

them. Thank you so much for that report and thank you again for all of the amazing program you do any questions or comments from council

mayor just thank you again to parks and recreation department parks and community service community services department for everything you're doing and all the programming looking forward to as well I know you guys are partnering with other parts of the city with the opening for the the resilience center I don't know if we can announce there if there's any additional

information on that we want to share.

Do we have any other new information on the resiliency center we can quickly share, especially since we have so many parents and people in the audience?

Yeah, we'll be at Sierra Vista Park, but Robert will take over on that.

Thank you, Robert.

So yes, on Monday, August 21st, the MPK Hope Resiliency Center will officially open.

We do have a press conference scheduled for 5 p.m. at Sierra Vista Park. Address there is 311 North Rural. So everyone is invited. Definitely you'll see more information on our social media.

We did just post that up, I believe, today.

So definitely everyone's invited. It's with China Sound Service Center, as well as a number of other community partners. will be providing a number of resources and outreach and services for mental health and also just coping with the tragedy that happened this past January.

Thanks.

I'm just looking forward to hearing what Robert dresses up as for his costume.

For the dance? I got a hat. No boots. I don't need boots.

They just make me taller, so I'm going to hit my head on stuff.

I'm expecting pictures so just let me know

and what about for the rest of us that aren't 50 yet but would like to still go stop on by

excellent that's what I wanted to hear

but if you stop by you're going to be expected to dance trust me the seniors will get you to dance

thank you and then if we can go back

to one of the slides with the health screenings I believe

at the Langley Center

I happen to stop by one of the health seminars which was this week on the

on the high health that was private Garfield Health Center so I was really glad to see a lot of people out there and taking advantage of that so if there's any way we can still continue to advertise this and try to get more people out to a lot of valuable even even I learned a lot of quite a bit information on the eye health and stuck around for a while absolutely I will

share the staff at Ling the Center has done a great job of partnering with Chinatown Service Center Garfield Medical Department of Mental Health on providing a number of services for our seniors so they do a great job i will also share that we do have a covid test i know there's an uptick in in cases so at langley center we do have some free covid tests so if anyone is looking for tests you can go ahead and stop on by and we'll

provide that to you okay covid kits yes okay we don't happen to have any here for any people

might be in the audience uh chief yes we do oh okay so maybe as a parting gift if you guys would I'd like to take one with you if you need one.

Take the test, not COVID, yes. Thank you so much, Robert.

No problem. Thank you. Thank you.

Excellent.

We'll go ahead and jump to our presentation portion of the agenda. And item 1A, resident needs assessment survey results.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Temp, Council Members. Martha Garcia, Finance Director. The City contracted with FM3 to perform a resident needs assessment survey. Mr. Richard Bernard, sitting next to me, is a partner at FM3 Research. His firm specializes in local resident public opinion research and he is here today to present the results of our recent community survey. Thank you.

Good evening. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council members, staff, I want to thank you for inviting me to present the results of your resident survey. So I'll start. First slide, please. So I'll start talking a little bit about methodology. We conducted the survey between May 3rd and the 11th. It was a dual-mode survey, which means a portion of the respondents responded online and a portion on the telephone. The survey's respondents

made up a random sample of 400 City of Monterey Park adult residents, 18 plus. For questions asked

of everyone, the margin of error is plus or minus 4.9%.

We contacted residents by telephone, email and text, and the survey was available in English, Chinese and Spanish. Next slide, please.

So I want to start by just getting a general view of the city.

We asked folks how they would rate Monterey Park as a place to live. 29%, so about 3 in 10 said excellent. 55% said good. So you have 84% with a very positive, favorable rating of the city as a place to live. 13% said fair, which I consider average. And only 2% said poor. So very high ratings for folks as a place to live. And then we asked them in an open-ended question. So that means in their own words, and we took down their own words. And then we grouped the responses. ! and then we grouped the responses. ! We asked them, ! what do you think is the most serious issue facing residents of the city that you'd like to see city ! And you could see the top answer, 21% said crime, and you'll see this theme again in other responses. 13% said homelessness and 10% said housing, affordable housing. And this is very consistent with many of the cities in Southern California, most specifically in L.A. County. The rankings are sometimes different. I find that the rankings in your city with respect to homelessness is Lor than we find in most other cities in L.A. County, though crime is clearly a major top-of-mind issue. Next slide. We then moved on to asking them to rate the city services.

So overall, we asked them for a job performance rating for your services that you provide overall. You could see 57% had favorable views of the performance, with 11% saying excellent, 46% saying good. 31% said fair, again that's about average, and 7% said poor.

I have found over the last number of years probably, at least five if not more years, mentioning the word government typically does not result in someone saying the word excellent

because there's concern in general.

I partly attribute that to the federal and state governments,

and it trickles down, sort of a negative halo effect on local city government.

Nonetheless, you still have a majority of folks who say favorable ratings about the services overall. Next slide. And then we asked them about very specific services that you provide in the city. We gave them a scale of 1 to 7 where 1 is not at all satisfied, 7 is very satisfied, and we randomly presented the services to them and we asked them how satisfied they were. And you could see the dark blue is the 6 and 7, which is very satisfied. The bright blue is 5, which is somewhat satisfied. So if you take them together, you'll see a fairly large swath of your community has satisfactory views. Neutral is the dull orange. The bright orange is the folks who said one to three, which is not at all satisfied. And that small sliver of gray are the folks who said they didn't know enough to offer an opinion. And for those people who are comfortable with math, the mean or the average scores for the 1 to 7 are on the right-hand side. The lead services that people ranked, they're all ranked very high, as you can see. The neutral is 4, so everything is above neutral in the satisfaction range. The top ones are the fire protection paramedic services, which is not unusual for almost every city I've ever worked in. And I've been doing this for more than 20 years. Then special events, very highly rated in your city, and you'll see shortly after they want more special events if you're willing to provide them. The maintenance of public parks scores well, 60% say very satisfied, and pickup of trash, yard waste, recyclable, graffiti removal, and library services all rank very highly in the view of your residents. Next slide, please. Then we asked them a series of questions about the types of businesses that they may want in the city. By asking them, we gave them a list of services, as you can see here, and we said, do you think there's not enough of those services, just the right amount or too many? The bright orange is the not enough, the light gray is just the right amount, and that blue, which you don't see very much of, is too many, and then the darker gray is the folks who didn't know. The top items that we asked of that your residents would like to see more of because they're saying there's not enough are national chain stores such as Target and Walmart, though it doesn't necessarily have to be those particular stores, and then fine dining restaurants. Almost one in two said that there weren't enough of those particular items. You'll note that while the brew pubs, only about a third said there was not enough, you had almost 3 in 10 that said they didn't know enough about broodpups to offer an opinion. So that's something that if you wanted, you would probably have to educate them. That doesn't mean they necessarily attend, but at least they know what's coming into the city. Next slide, please. And then I want to move on to opinions about sports programs and infrastructure, which is a very important aspect of your services in the city. We asked folks, we gave them a list of different types of park and rec types of programs that you could offer, and we asked them if they thought that the city should have a high priority, which is the dark blue, a medium priority, which is the bright blue, a low priority, which is the dull orange, or not a priority at all, which is the bright orange. I've aggregated high and the medium priority on the right-hand side. But you could see about almost 3 in 10 would like to see more leisure classes. Three out of every four voters see that as a high or medium priority, as well as senior center programs, of which I see you have a fair number tonight because I just saw that presentation.

I could tell you I'm way over 50, and to hear 50 is senior. Very broad. You're a very inclusive city. Kudos to you. Increasing the number of special city events. I noted that people think highly of your city events,

and at least a majority would like to see it as a major or medium priority in the future. Next slide, please. I also was, we asked a question about the pools. I know you have two pools, of which one is being used right now, And we simply asked in the last five years, how often have you used a Monterey Park public pool? And you could see only 15% said frequently, occasionally, with 3% saying frequently. Most had said hardly ever or never. The vast majority had said that. Next slide, please. Moving on to public policy ideas, every progressive and thoughtful city, not only progressive, conservatives do, but have ideas for public policy, and it was an opportunity to sort of vet some of those ideas with the community. And we asked them again if they thought these various policies were a high priority, medium priority, or low priority, or not a priority at all. Again, I've aggregated the high and medium priorities on the right-hand side. Among the top priorities, of which there were several, was affordable housing for middle income and working in individual families. That seemed to be among the highest priorities that we asked. Providing job training, internship, and summer employment opportunities for local students scored highly as well. and creating programs to attract and retain businesses in Monterey Park, folLod by requiring environmentally friendly development and increasing the number of police officers in Monterey Park were among the highest in terms of high priorities. Next slide, please. The survey then moved on to issues about public safety. Again, we asked an open-ended question, so in their own words, and then we grouped the responses together. What would you say is the most serious public safety problem in your neighborhood? Here you could see in isolation, homelessness rose among the top with 12%, traffic congestion, 11%, crime in general, and then speeding and unsafe driving along and street takeovers. If you were to go down this list and we categorized all the crime-related responses, you're at 36%. Consistent with the open-ended question I asked earlier in terms of top concern that they would like the city to do something about. So clearly the concerns about crime is number one in your city among the questions we asked and, of course,

among the top-of-mind answers that people gave without any prompting.

Next slide, please. We then drilled a little bit deeper and wanted to get a sense of, generally speaking how safe do they feel walking around in their community we gave them the option of very safe somewhat safe somewhat unsafe or very unsafe you have a little bit more than eight and ten who say that they feel very or somewhat safe when walking around in their community however a little bit more than a third said very safe so there clearly is opportunities to improve in this area, but overall people do feel safe in their community. Next slide, please. And finally, I want to focus a little bit on communication. Overall, we asked how would you rate your satisfaction with the city's efforts to communicate with city residents through mail, online, and other means. 76% said that they were very or somewhat satisfied. I think this is a really good number. You have three in four saying you're making a very good effort. you have a little less than 2 in 10 who say they're dissatisfied. Again, always room for improvement. And then we moved on to ask, we mentioned a variety of ways people could get their sources of information about what's going on in the city, and we simply asked them how frequently do you use the source. We gave them the option of frequently, which is the dark blue,

occasionally, which is the bright blue, rarely, which is the dull orange, and never, which is a bright orange, and the gray are the folks who said they didn't know. I've aggregated the frequently and occasionally on the right-hand side.

I've also ranked it as that. It was presented randomly to eliminate any bias. On the right-hand side, I've also aggregated rarely and never together.

You could see the lead areas in which or lead sources in which people get their information about the city

are street banners. I guess it's a really great opportunity when you're stuck in traffic in a car to look up at something and see a simple message, and you tend to remember it. You're not the only city where this has risen to the top. It's a very good source of information. Clearly, your city's Cascades newspaper is very highly valued as a source of information. That's not always true in a city, so you're clearly getting some good responses here. notices or flyers included in your water bill also ranks highly in word of mouth, which is always very important. My takeaway from this extensive list is that you want to try to communicate in a variety of places because if people hear it in one place and then they hear it in another,

it kind of sticks. And also through word of mouth, various people are saying, oh, I saw this here,

I saw this there, and that's how you get the word around. And if we can go to the next slide, you can see some of the items that score a little bit Lor.

I want to be mindful that items like the World Journal, obviously among Asian API respondents, it clearly scored higher than those folks who identified as Latino or white. So clearly you want to continue to communicate as you do as best you can in Spanish and Chinese.

And then finally, thank you for being so patient. I'll just go over the conclusions. Vast majority of residents find Monterey Park a favorable place to live. Top of mind concerns are crime, homelessness, cost of living, recreation parks, and open space. A majority of favorable views of the job being done in terms of services. You'll get high ratings in terms of your job performance. and more specifically fire protection and paramedic services, city events, park maintenance, pickup of trash, yard waste, recyclables rank among the highest services that people are satisfied with. A plurality like to see more national chains and fine dining restaurants. Three quarters would like to see more leisure classes and senior center programs. Next slide. At least half liked the city to place high priority on affordable housing, job training for local students, and to create programs to attract and retain businesses. Top of mind public safety concerns include crime, which we saw a couple of times in the presentation tonight. Homelessness, it's relatively high, but as many of the other cities that I work in within the county. and speeding and unsafe driving. Most feel either very or somewhat safe walking around their neighborhood. Three-quarters are satisfied with your efforts to communicate with them, and the frequently received information comes from street banners, cascades, and notices of flyers in the water bill and word of mouth.

And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much for that very detailed report. Are there any questions, comments from Council?

Council Member Lung? Yes.

Again, thank you very much for this very extensive survey. For my information as well, the audience, when was this conducted?

Sure. The period? Sure, May 3rd to the 11th. Okay, so this was conducted after January then? Very much so.

I'd be curious. But it's clearly in the minds of folks. Right, right.

All right. What I find interesting is especially those, and it varies by issue, but the sections where there are the don't know that seem a little higher than usual, would you say that's average for most cities, or is this something that you think that we should be more mindful of? That, you know, again, depending on the issue, but there seems to be some issues where there are a higher percentage of people who have a don't know answer about various services.

Yeah, well, if we... We could go to slide, sorry, let's go to slide eight please. This one. Yeah, no, go one more, two down. There, yeah, perfect. I actually would argue that your committee does have a lot of opinions. And I think I would argue they're well informed. You have a very educated community. In the cases of where you do see some higher don't knows, like the library services, for example, if I don't go to the library, I have no idea. And I think this is actually pretty high. Sometimes people, it's not unusual to have residents of the city have opinions about things they don't, they're not familiar with. That is true. But in your community, they seem to have an opinion about a lot of things. And I wouldn't worry about, I mean, you always want to inform people the best you can, and there's always room for improvement. But I think your community is well-informed. I see. All right.

For now, I may have more questions, but I think those are my questions for now.

Thank you, Council Member Lo. Council Member, you?

Hi, thank you so much.

As you have seen a lot of data, your firm is pretty well-known,

and I'm sure you have done a lot of polling for other cities and other candidates.

What are the answers that you were quite surprised in Monterey Park?

I guess given what happened in January of this year, I would have expected that there would have been a higher priority on getting more police. There is a high priority, but compared to some of the other items, it was a little Lor.

That tells me that they trust the police here, that police do a really great job. And the other thing that I've been fortunate enough to do, polling for your city for other reasons as well,

and it's been striking to me that relative to other cities, while homelessness is important, it doesn't seem to rise to the same level as most other cities. So you're either doing something right,

or they're just noticing it's worse in other places. I'm not sure. My guess is it's a combination of both.

So it seems like a police has been doing a good job.

I mean, sure, everyone would like the police to do better, but it was striking to me that that wasn't higher. There would like to be, I'll be clear, they would like to have more police. I don't know any place that doesn't, but it wasn't as high as some of those other items in terms of policy and priorities.

Okay, interesting. Thank you so much for your comment.

Council Member Rigo?

Richard, I have a question on your sample size.

Sure. You said 400. Yep.

What are the demographics like? Are they homeowners, renters, and are they sporadically spread throughout the city? Just curious where your sample size is.

Sure, sure. Would it be helpful if I give you some demographics to give you? Yes. Yeah, I'm happy to do that.

So by zip code, 91754 was about 60% of the respondents, and 91755 for the balance, 40%. It was distributed around the city.

Latinos made up about 27% of respondents.

And this is self-identified, so I want to be really clear.

We didn't self-impose any kind of ethnicity or race on anyone. It's all self-identified. 39% self-identified as Chinese.

23% self-identified as other Asian or Pacific Islander group other than Chinese.

8% identified as white, and 1% said they were more than one race, and 1% preferred not to say. And so in terms of age, we have – I've got to do fast math, sorry. Right, 24, 38, 40. About half were 50 and older, and the balance, half were 50 and younger, of which we had 11% who were between 18 and 24, which is unusual.

It is very hard to get young people to do a survey, and yet your community young people were engaged.

And we looked at the most recent demographic data to make sure that they mirrored the responses. And where they didn't, we weighted it appropriately to make sure that it does reflect your community. In terms of home ownership, we have 55% who said they owned their own home, 36% who rented, but 9% preferred not to say. so it's kind of out of whack in the sense I can't tell you the top like exactly how many homeowners versus how many renters because people were uncomfortable saying that. There 32% had children under the age of 18 in their household.

Does that help?

Yes.

Okay, and did you want me to speak to the 400 or you're okay?

I'm okay. It's the reflection of the demographics. So thank you. Sure. Sure. My pleasure.

Can me open to one? Thank you. This data is helpful. I appreciate the work that went into

this and the summary as well. I guess this question is more for staff. I don't know if we're thinking through having this as a regular going out to pull regularly for the community. I know we kind of talked about this a little bit as well, but any thinking on that? We did

we did budget for this fiscal year to have another poll go out.

I think this data would be very helpful to inform as we go into strategic planning towards the earlier part of the year some of that prioritization of concerns and issues and things that the council should pay attention to at least to be part of that. I think that would be helpful data to have. I'm wondering if we want to think about I'm not saying we should also adding in focus groups as well to test kind of more nuanced thinking around some of these issues potentially know this or even engaging with specific parts of the community I know the polling and the makeup of the demographics of the pulled sample you can tease out right I think given this sample you can tease out some right senior population others in terms of how they feel at some of these issues but I'm wondering also if we can, if there should be or we should do outreach to perhaps the business community to see what their sentiments are, right, because they're not residents and their perspective on things is a little different, but we also want to make sure we're addressing their concerns that probably wouldn't come up in this resident survey and potentially

others who are to help us guide, right, how we want to support or establish a better or

different business climate for different kinds of businesses as well if there's I don't know that from a residential survey that a whole lot's gonna change year-to-year maybe every other year we kind of do this and then we do a different kind of community like a business survey or something like that or business businesses focus group to get that kind of data one year and the next year go back to residents or something like that but this kind of data would be it I appreciate that the city when the staff were going to get this proactively I think this is very helpful for us as council members to have this data to work with as one source of where the community's concerns are and what the needs

should be and how we should prioritize that going forward. Thank you. Thank you. And there's one

more question. I have a follow-up. Actually, this is more for Inez. Inez, this is pretty much from what I remember from our April, is it April or late March, the city council with staff meeting. is consistent to what we saw from the surveys of last year and kind of our priority for this coming year, which is public safety, homelessness, cost of housing, call it affordability, and then recreation and open space. So you don't have to answer this now, but I think if you go back to your notes, if you can just bring it back up in the next meeting, say it is or what are we differing in, and just do a quick analysis of how we've kind of looked at,

these issues

to what we did in the beginning of the year

for the entire year.

Noted.

Thank you again for the report. If we can go back to the

results at the end, the findings. There's a couple of things that stood out to me that I wanted to

mention on the conclusions.

I believe it was the conclusions or the summary at the end.

I think it was the findings.

I think what spoke to me a lot during your presentation was just how satisfied a lot of our residents are with the services that we're providing. So I wanted to take the time to thank our city staff, and I know we have a lot of department heads here, and take that information back and thank a lot of our city staff, our fire and police, for a lot of the work. I THINK THE RESIDENTS OBVIOUSLY FEEL VERY SATISFIED AND WE JUST WANT TO THANK YOU FOR THAT. SAME THING WITH A LOT OF THE SERVICES WE PROVIDE THROUGH PARKS AND REC AND LIBRARY AS WELL. SO WE'RE OBVIOUSLY DOING A REALLY GOOD JOB. SO WE APPRECIATE THE WORK THAT YOU GUYS ARE DOING. AND ALSO, I MEAN, OBVIOUSLY THERE'S ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT. SO, YOU KNOW, NEXT YEAR, MAKE IT MORE EPIC.

YOU KNOW, BETTER NUMBERS. I'M JUST KIDDING. BUT, YOU KNOW, WE THANK YOU FOR THAT. THANK YOU FOR THE RESULTS.

Any other questions or comments?

Council Member, you?

Just a quick question. Can we get a copy of the survey?

We can.

I'll give it to our interim city manager and she can hand it out. Yes.

Thank you.

So we'll go ahead and jump to our next presentation then. Which are zoning item 1B, zoning code updates.

Good evening, Mayor Sanchez, members of the City Council. I'm here tonight to inform you about an exciting initiative that consists of zoning code updates that are being undertaken or led by our community development department called Our City, Our Plan. Next slide. This slide provides you with some background as far as what the general plan is and the zoning code. The general plan is the visionary document that serves as a blueprint for development over a 20-year period. It contains seven required elements addressing open space, circulation, noise, conservation, land use, housing, and safety. The zoning code is the vehicle that implements the general plan, and it typically contains standards which dictate how properties will be developed and used, such as permitted uses, design standards, land use regulations, development standards, parking and sign and setback standards. Next slide. Additional background on the general plan is that in recent history, in recent times, the city did make amendments to its land use and its housing element. Going back to June of 2020, the city adopted an amendment to the land use and urban design element, and that actually went to the vote of the people. So the city residents voted to adopt this updated land use element in 2020. Actually, the vote happened in 2019. And also in January of 2022, the city council amended the housing element, updated its housing element. In March of this year, we worked with HCD after that adoption, and we finally achieved certification earlier this year in March. And so with these, next slide, with these recent updates to the land use and housing element, staff began work to create consistency between the general plan and the zoning back in February of this year when the city council adopted awarded a contract to Rincon to help us with these code updates. Also we in April we kick-started the project with Rincon and staff has been working with them over these past few months. Currently, we are in the phase where we're making this presentation to Planning Commission, to the BDAC, the Business Improvement District Advisory Committee, the Economic Development Advisory Committee, and today to you, the City Council. In the future, we are planning a community workshop in September regarding these code updates. I'll speak more about the workshop later in the presentation. Additionally, between October and December of this year, we're anticipating the public hearings before Planning Commission and City Council. And then furthermore, looking in the future of 2024, there's additional work that staff will be doing to implement our general plan, specifically housing programs. Next slide. With these zoning updates, they will create general plan consistency. We will make code updates to comply with state laws, and there's also going to be some cleanup work as part of that cleanup code updates. We branded this effort as Our City, Our Plan, because these updates that are forthcoming are based on the voice of our residents who voted to enact the land use element back in...

housing opportunities for all. Next slide. To provide a few more details about these code updates,

the code update includes new standards for the mixed use zone which was created through that measure, JJ, the land use element. There's also gonna be some rezoning of sites

to create that consistency to change it to the new mixed use zone.

And also, we're amending our multifamily residential zoning to include density and height limits that are consistent with our general plan.

Right now, we have inconsistencies. Next slide.

This next slide shows you a map. This is our land use policy map that was adopted by the vote of the people. And the areas shown in purple and circled in red reflect the areas that will be rezoned to mixed use. The purple represents our mixed-use land-use designation.

As you can see, this area encompasses our downtown area, which is located along the Garvey Corridor, portions of Garfield, and North Atlantic. The rezoning and new standards will positively impact future development of our downtown and will help streamline development within this area. The existing uses within the downtown will be alLod to remain.

the new zoning standards will apply to should those properties be redeveloped in the future next slide this slide shows a side by side two maps the one on the left is the land use policy map the map on the right is the zoning code map and as you can see on the left the areas in purple represent the mixed use. On the map on the right, that same area, you can see different colors there,

which represent different zones, including commercial services, central business, commercial residential specialty zone, and neighborhood shopping. As part of the rezoning

efforts, the map on the right will be amended to be consistent with the map on the left,

and change to reflect the new mixed-use zone. Next slide.

In addition to these presentations that we're making to certain commissions and to city council, we're also planning a community workshop, which will be held at the Friends Room at the Bergemeier Library on September 11th at 6 p.m. The workshop will be held in person, but participants will have an opportunity to join virtually. Next slide.

We are promoting the community workshop in next month's edition of the Cascades and on our city webpage and through our city's social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We're also teaming up with NPK Rewards to encourage participation.

we'll be granting the attendees five points of MPK rewards, and we'll also be promoting the flyer through the app. Additionally, we're sending out a letter to the property owners and the businesses of those properties which will be rezoned to inform them about our upcoming workshop, upcoming public hearings, and to allow them an opportunity to meet with staff as well if they have additional questions. All the promotional materials will be provided in all the primary languages in our city, English, Spanish, and Chinese. And additional public engagement will be provided through the public hearings that are forthcoming in the fall and winter. And to conclude, I'm happy to answer any questions at this point.

Thank you, Ms. Ronna, for that detailed report. Any questions, comments from Council? Yes.

Council Member Lo?

Yes, thank you for that presentation.

So September is when we'll have our next public workshop,

and then when will the Council then get an update from the results of that workshop?

We can certainly provide updates at the following City Council to let you know. we can do a presentation like this to let you know number of attendees comments we received and you know we can certainly include that as part of the public hearing materials when we provide the staff report we can present on you know what kind of

feedback we received as well okay all right thank you any other questions or comments from council

mayor pretend one can you remind me what time the workshop is going to be on the 11th 6 p.m

6 p.m. And I placed some flyers at our table at the front,

so feel free to grab one on your way out.

Perfect.

Is that the only meeting we're planning to do?

That's the only public workshop in addition to the public hearings.

So there will be a Planning Commission public hearing, and there will be a City Council public hearing,

and the community can come out and speak on this item as well.

Great. Thank you. Thank you.

We'll go ahead and jump to old business items,

and we have item 2A, the Firearms Pledge.

Is there a report?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council.

Inez volunteered me for this particular presentation,

so I'll give it to you.

2A and 2B both addressed items that the city council wanted to come back at its July 19th meeting and as outlined in both staff reports there's a reason for them to be separated

so I'm going to deal with 2A first

you'll see that 2A is comprised basically of two items one is a resolution and the other one is an ordinance

and the resolution incorporates all the things that the city council discussed that were not in ordinance form on July 19th

So that includes, for example, the standard conditions of approval that would go into conditional use permits for firearms dealers as part of the buffer zone.

It also includes direction to the city manager with regard to participating in the county program as to gun violent restraining orders, which the Board of Supervisors approved on August 8th.

It also discusses the education of for or implementing education types of programs within the city to help both supplement that and to expand the knowledge of folks in Monterey Park about these options.

In addition, there's a pledge that's attached to that, which hopefully encapsulates all the things that the city council has been considering since the tragic events in January.

We thought that might be something that the City Council would want to put together and sign and use as part of its campaign for educating both the legislators and also for the general public.

So I'm happy to answer any specific questions with regard to the resolution.

The pledge is up there on the screen.

the ordinance that is is proposed as part of 2a has to do with the prohibition of firearms on

public places as we discussed in july that is absolutely something that the city council can

do and as you can see the regulations being proposed in that ordinance are fairly comprehensive

i should note that the ordinance was passed through the police department and chief weiss

who can speak for himself but i believe i can speak on his behalf gave his thumbs up on approval

with regard to those regulations and he's prepared to enforce them so again this is uh 2a and we can

talk about 2b in a moment but i'm happy to answer any questions thank you uh so much for that or any

questions uh or comments from council so after we passed ours the county fellow suit right yes exactly because i know i know those questions about well it'd be great to encourage neighboring communities and so i'd like to say i think we were ahead of the rest of county in this regard weren't we

As you say that, I know one other thing is that the resolution also would give direction to the city manager with regard to surplus weapons that were seized by the city, either through law enforcement or for whatever reasons, and forbid the city from actually reselling those items.

THAT'S IN ACCORDANCE WITH AB 773 I'M SORRY 733 WHICH IS PROPOSED BY

ASSEMBLY MEMBER FONG WHICH HAS NOT YET BEEN ADOPTED BUT SIMPLY THE

CITY COUNCIL CAN SIMPLY GIVE THAT DIRECTION AS A MATTER OF POLICY WITHIN THE CITY'S JURISDICTION. ANY OTHER QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS? MAYOR PROTEMLONG?

YEAH, THANK YOU TO STAFF AND TO OUR CITY ATTORNEY FOR THE FOLLOW-UP WORK AND THE WORK TO PUT THESE ACTIONS TOGETHER. I fully support moving forward on all of these. Just a couple of requests and or questions. On the L.A. County action, I believe they're moving forward with a campaign on or putting together sort of a campaign for GVRO awareness for L.A. County. I'm wondering if that's one. I don't know where they are. I know they passed the motion. I don't know if they have to go to a second reading. if it's worth the city issuing a support letter officially to support the county's actions at this point,

or if that's already done?

So the draft resolution directs the city manager to do exactly that, which is to participate in the program that's been approved by the Board of Supervisors on August 8th.

The materials that were provided to the board are included with your staff report,

and the resolution gives specific direction as to that,

which would include, for example, certainly a letter of support, and perhaps even if the council wanted to execute the pledges,

sending those along as well. Yeah, I think that would be great.

And I think part of our expression of support should also include encouraging them and making sure that the county includes language and cultural competency as they develop their outreach program on GVROs to make sure that everyone in our community, at least, especially in our community, has access to the outreach they're going to be doing on GVROs.

And then I'm assuming, I don't know if you know this, or I don't know, I'm assuming if LA County adopts, as they begin to adopt their GVRO kind of assistance in this whole program that they're working out, do you know if that would apply only to unincorporated county areas? So if someone wanted to pursue a GVRO, is someone that lives in unincorporated LA County only going to be able to access that, or is that something that others in incorporated cities can also access resources for?

That's an excellent question, and I don't know the answer off the top of my head. I will say this, that I do know that there was discussion of, for example, having the county council's office provide a specific attorney that would help with folks that were trying to get GVROs. I don't know if that was actually implemented or not. I can only speak

to what was in the staff report presented to the board of supervisors. Certainly the direction from

this city council though would be to coordinate with the county and provide access at least for

the residents of the city of Monterey Park to the county to the extent that we can and also expend

resources to the extent that we can yeah i think it would be great to follow up on those questions

to find out what programs the county moves forward with that our residents can't take advantage of and which ones they might not be eligible for and uh come back to i i would appreciate bringing back to council any actions in terms of funding or other resources that might be needed to make sure that uh marley park residents can access uh the resources the county is starting to move forward ON BOTH FOR EDUCATION AND AWARENESS CAMPAIGN WHICH I MEAN SOME OF THAT WILL PROBABLY NATURALLY HAVE TO HAPPEN OR OCCUR IN IN OUR SPHERE OF INFLUENCE BUT IN TERMS OF ACCESSING ASSISTANCE FOR GVRO'S AND OTHERS IF THAT'S SOMETHING WE NEED A RESOURCE I THINK I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE THAT COME BACK TO COUNCIL FOR US TO FIGURE OUT BUDGET AND RESOURCING THAT MY RECOMMENDATION WOULD SIMPLY

FIRST AS A FIRST STEP TO COORDINATE WITH THE COUNTY TO SEE WHERE THEY'RE AT THIS WAS A BRAND new thing that the Board of Supervisors adopted and then come back in 30 or 45 days and provide

a report to the City Council.

Yeah. Sounds good to me.

Thank you again Carl for us bringing this back and for all the time that staff and you spent on bringing this back. I'm also in favor of moving this forward.

Okay. Mr. Mayor. Yes.

I have a follow-up question actually. Carl, out of curiosity and my question is how your answer

There may or may not be future action.

But right now, at the state or county level, until the ordinance of the laws, are gun exhibition shows heavily regulated?

Gun exhibition shows? So gun shows?

There are state rules with regard to gun shows and the ability to regulate those gun shows. One of the bigger ones happened down actually in San Diego County with regard to the Agricultural District in Del Mar, the Del Mar Fairgrounds and gun shows there.

To answer your question, they're far more regulated than they are.

I will be frank with you. I'm not prepared to exactly tell you how regulated they are tonight.

It's not something that I prepared for. No, of course.

And, again, maybe something to research. But, you know, I mean, we do have in our cities several facilities, private mostly, but places that probably will be large enough to have some type of exhibition. And I'd be curious, depending on what your research yields, whether or not we should adopt something, if necessary, saying restricting gun shows of any type in the city?

I mean, should that even be necessary?

Maybe we're already preempted by the county ordinances,

but I'm just curious.

We'll put that in the hopper to report back

when we report back on the GVROs. Certainly if the city council eventually adopts the ordinance that's being proposed tonight for introduction, then those types of things would not be alLod on public property,

but there is still the issue of private property, so that's something that we can look into.

Okay, yeah, please, thank you.

I don't know if this is too...

Director of Public Works. Director of Public Works. C or 2. Or I don't remember if this is this item feel free to tell me to wait for the next item if if not on on the prohibiting possession of firearms on city property is that this item? Yes. Okay. So for in the exceptions on page 48 of 214 it lists a number of exceptions right where obviously the Constitution allows for possession of firearm and law enforcement. It lists for exception C, persons issued a concealed weapons permit by MP, the police chief, in accordance with California law. Is there a reason why someone who's issued a concealed weapon permit would still, I'm not sure why that would be an exception we need to have for this.

To be honest, you don't.

The exception was added in simply because it's the Monterey Park police chief who would control the CCWs issued within the city's jurisdiction,

and it differentiates between, for example, the chief and the county sheriff.

So the only CCWs that would be alLod are those that were issued by the police chief,

but certainly you can strike that out if that's preferable.

I would like to strike that out because I don't think there should be any exceptions for other than those who actually need to carry a weapon like our police officers on public property. so I'm in favor of axing that exception out

may I

yeah I guess the question for the chief and Carl is if I remember correctly we have roughly 50 in the city 30 that's approved by the chief and 20 by the sheriffs or the other way around I think it's the other way around the other way around so 20 by the city So does this clarify that? Or, I mean, pro tem is right. Do we, if this is necessary, is it necessary or not, based on what we know about the permits?

So, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, from a legal perspective, you can strike it out.

I'll let the chief speak to the practicality of it, but he's nodding his head, and so he's fine with it as well. Quite frankly, it's an issue of local control and simply having the police chief having control over his own CCWs. That was the intent behind it, but there's no legal reason to have it in there.

When we issue CCW permits, we can set up parameters for where they can be carried. State law prohibits them to be carried on any school grounds per the education code. and I have the ability to restrict CCW timeframes for when they're carried, what they're carried for. I don't have leniency on some of the sections, but we control city property. I believe the city attorney will back me up on that. We control city property. You control city property, and we can restrict that. I personally have no problem restricting that. And we can strike that. I can add it to the conditions of carry when we issue the permits. There is legislation that I've heard about coming through that would prohibit carrying concealed weapons in a lot of places

and would really just allow them to be carried on a public street.

Most buildings would be prohibited, including any government building.

That hasn't been passed yet, but I believe that that's somewhere in committee up in Sacramento. But we can restrict it here. I have no problem with it.

I would like to strike that exception. I don't know that there's a need for that exception.

It doesn't make sense to me.

And as you were talking, Chief, I would love to see how we can support that bill. I don't know where it's at.

I don't know either. I'll do some research and find out where it is at.

I've viewed some of the public discussion of it up in Sacramento. There's a lot of opposition to it.

My personal opinion is I think the state should take over the issuance of CCWs

and take it away from city police chiefs. That's my opinion.

Most states do that.

California is one of the only ones that puts the onus on individual cities for CCWs.

Most states do it themselves. Great.

I do want to strike C. I do have a question though, Carl, for exception A on constitutional being able, do you know offhand what exceptions there would be for the Constitution allowing people to have guns?

No, that's my safe clause. Okay.

I was wondering if there was something there already. And then how does this match, if you know, with our existing school district restrictions on guns on school campuses?

Guns are not alLod on school campuses per the Education Code of California unless they're possessed by law enforcement officers

or school district employees that are exempt like school police, things like that.

CCW holders cannot carry firearms in an education setting on a school ground.

All right. And then this would also restrict open carry?

Open carry is illegal in the state of California, except for police officers and licensed security guards in the performance of their duty or in a sporting environment, like at a shooting range or in a hunting environment.

That's it.

All right. So just for my clarity's sake, if we adopt this ordinance as recommended, striking exception C, the only people that would be alLod to carry a weapon on city property would be police officers and those who are performing a public safety option.

Law enforcement officers that are authorized to carry a weapon.

Right. That's what, in effect, this would be.

Correct. But I want to make clear that's not just Monterey Park police officers.

I mean, that would be... Federal officers, FBI agents, Secret Service, Deputy Sheriffs, CHP.

DEA investigators.

DEA's investigators, everybody.

Okay.

But, yeah, so that would be what I would support, and I would support axing out exception C on that.

Do we have to do a different motion for striking that part out, or just...

Nope, as long as it's introduced with that amendment.

Okay.

And I have a question regarding the Mayor Temp's item that he brought up with carrying concealed. How would that look like in our city? Would that mean that we would have signs everywhere along public buildings that say you can't carry a weapon? How is that usually enforced?

The way that I've seen it kind of evolve in California is the same way in Arizona and other states that have CCWs, is that local businesses then put a signage on their storefront that says no firearms in this business. In Arizona and places, they have a picture of a gun with a line through it.

And that, I don't know if that's their state law that talks about the signage, but that would be the business owner's prerogative to say that this is my private property and I don't want you to carry a firearm here.

Obviously, police officers are exempt from that, but that would prohibit a concealed carry person from carrying on private property. When we issue concealed carry permits, they go through an extensive debriefing, if you will, by my staff and by me before the permit is issued,

explaining to them that private property is private property, and that person can prohibit them from carrying a firearm on private property.

So they understand that when they get the permit and that they may be told they cannot carry as an example Staples Center Dodger Stadium places like that Even police officers are not alLod to carry firearms there if they're in an off-duty capacity Okay, thank you

Councilman go motion the second

pro tem one's

striking of that language

I make a motion to adopt the resolution with or the disordination with the exception C for exemptions for this to be struck.

I do have another suggestion on this before we go to a vote.

I know I talked we talked about looking into where the county's processes on their moving ahead on outreach and GVRO implementation and support for residents and others who want to pursue that as we're looking at resourcing that potentially in our own community it just general direction of staff as we're looking at resourcing some of this outreach and other we're helping residents who might want to pursue GVROs and others if we could also look at potential funding, and this might be kind of trailing into the safe storage ordinance next, but look at also resourcing potentially one signage for

gun prohibitions or looking into what other cities do and seeing if we can give out to some of our businesses or partnering with the chamber or whoever on giving these out to folks who want to put up signage to that effect in the community. And then and also potentially funding, right, gun storage devices, right, put a grant program together or some sort of giveaway program together, or to think about how to resource that as well.

But I'll make that motion.

Oh, actually, Mr. Mayor, may I pretend if I can,

and maybe my color mentioned it,

but since we're talking about also signage and also resource information,

could we also then also include then more enough of red flag laws, existing red flag laws as well?

So the resolution provides specific direction for the city manager

to be coordinating not just with the county, but also educating on all of those levels,

which would include, for example, gun buyback, red flag, all of the types of things that the council has been interested in. I think it's very broad. Thank you.

If I can address the one issue from the mayor pro tem about the storage, firearms in California cannot be transported without being in a stored lock container and

they cannot be sold they can't leave the gun store without having a gun safety device attached to

them or in a lock container and that's been the law for a number of years so there are most firearms

that are sold in the last 10 years cannot leave the gun store without having a safe California approved gun lock and or locking device attached to the gun even if a police officer purchases a gun it has to be in a safe container or with a safety lock attached all manufacturers sell firearms in the united states with some form of safety lock in the package

that's very helpful thank you thank you and i think there was a motion and a second

by council member Ngo?

As I understand the motion, it's to introduce the ordinance

and adopt the resolution with the amendment

in the ordinance. That's correct. Thank you.

If we can please take a vote.

Approved unanimously. Thank you.

Before we leave this item, you do have

the pledges in front of you if that's something

that you want to do now

for Instagram purposes. I'm sure we can

get somebody down here to take a picture of you all taking or signing the pledge.

Do we have pens available?

While we're signing this, if we can also, like we have for the other gun ordinance, the buffer zone ordinance we passed last time, if we can share this ordinance language in the backup material with maybe some of our neighboring cities as well to encourage them to consider adopting similar restrictions. in their own city i think that'd be helpful

and since we passed it maybe we can do a press release as well

all right Are we going to do this sitting down? You can scan.

You can scan.

Oh, yours. OK. On the front of her. Actually, somewhere a little more symbolic. Maybe next to the line or something.

Can our sheep join us? Would our sheep be the one next? Sure.

One win, one stop. Yeah. Oh. Oh, we'd like to get you guys done. Oh, let's get you guys to go.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, so we'll go ahead and jump to item 2B.

All right. So relatedly, this is item 2B and it has to do with the trigger locks and the storage items. So let me, we talked about this briefly in July during that meeting, and I noted at that time, and it's also noted in the staff report that historically this has been also very clear that local jurisdictions have been able to do this.

There's a specific case out of 2014 which supported San Francisco regulations along these proposed regulations,

which is basically you must store your weapon at home in a locked container or have a trigger lock.

The 2014, as I mentioned, the 2014 case upheld San Francisco.

includes Goleta, the City of Davis, and there are various other ones.

I believe I've listed them, or maybe I didn't list them in the staff report in any event. There are a number that we looked at in order to prepare these particular regulations. My concern, as was expressed in July, and I reiterate now, is the decision that was handed down in June 2022 from the U.S. Supreme Court and the subsequent decision from the Ninth

Circuit Court of Appeals this year in June 2023, which casts some doubt in terms of whether

or not the regulations would be upheld if challenged. The reason for that is that the Supreme Court made a plan that the previous analyses under the law was wrong, and it established a new type of analysis, which was basically, if you are directly impeding upon the Second Amendment, that regulation is absolutely thrown out this one doesn't directly impede so we don't have to go through that analysis but the next part of it was if you're regulating any part of firearms you have to make a determination whether historically speaking there has been a historical record demonstrating that the clinton colonial times these types of regulations were actually adopted and enforced by some of our colonial ancestors and so that's where it becomes more interesting because

absent extensive research with regard to the colonies of Massachusetts and the 13 colonies

and what have you, I cannot speak sitting here whether or not a court would find that there's been a historical record demonstrating that these types of regulations were things that were enforced. There are indications from previous case history demonstrating that at least in Massachusetts and in New York that these types of regulations were adopted, and so there is a precedent for it. I want to put that out there because I can't ordinarily. I try to bring to you regulations that I know I can defend in court. I will say historically I would be able to defend this in court,

but were you to adopt these regulations,

I don't know that they would stand in this day and age, in this year, and ongoing.

So with that large caveat, I will tell you that we have crafted something that if adopted,

we would certainly defend and we can make a good faith argument were challenged in court that they are legitimate.

Great. Thank you for that, Carl.

Are there any questions, comments from Council?

Yes, actually, I'm thinking, Mr. Ambrose.

Thank you for very impressive. You went far back at some colonial times.

That must have been a very fascinating exercise, I imagine.

The cities that you mentioned, like those in California,

Have any of them so far experienced a challenge on their constitutionality?

We ran a litigation check today. None of them are currently being sued because of these regulations.

The time frame that we put in in terms of the parameters for that were post-June 2022 because that's when the U.S. Supreme Court decision came down. I should note that only one other city in California has adopted these types of regulations this year.

So after that decision.

All the other ones were either decided beforehand or closed thereafter and before the Ninth Circuit decision.

Okay, good to know. Any other questions or comments from Councilor Mayor Portempoise? Thank you.

And again, thank you, Carl, for all the work that went into this. In terms of safe storage, I mean, I mentioned this earlier already, but how would,

can you detail how the enforcement mechanism would happen for this?

So one of the, obviously this particular ordinance doesn't have a list of all the violations that would occur or the penalties that would occur if this particular regulation were violated.

And the reason for that is the remainder of the municipal code, specifically in Title IV,

outlines all the possible violations of the entire code.

So in other words, there's a general regulation with regard to what happens if you violate any provision of the municipal code.

And in general, any violation constitutes a misdemeanor, which can be reduced by my office to an infraction. There are some types of violations that are specifically identified as infractions. All of them can also be enforced with administrative citations, which is a civil fine.

They can be reduced to public nuisances.

So there's a whole host of different types of penalties that would be invoked.

were these regulations, were they adopted to be enforced?

Thanks, that's helpful.

And then for this to be enforced on anyone, either some would have to report someone else who is not safely storing their guns, or this is an after-the-fact, right? We go find someone who's committed a gun crime or whatever. Someone's carrying a weapon now on City Hall property.

Right, so the City Hall property issue, that's one issue,

and the storage at home is a little bit trickier from a police enforcement standpoint

because most misdemeanors have to occur in front of the police officer in order for it to be verified.

So really this would occur. Well, I'll let you speak as to law enforcement for your scenarios.

A scenario where this would occur is, first, we would get called out to a residence because of a tragedy that's occurred with a firearm being stored in a house. We would apply that situation to the current California Penal Code, which requires any gun owner to store a firearm away from a child or from a prohibited person. Those are already statutes that are on the books, and they can be charged as a felony or a misdemeanor, depending on the severity of what's occurred. We would apply it to that based on the scenario. And if it didn't fail within those two guidelines, we could apply the municipal code to it, which would fall. Municipal codes can't be felonies, so it would be our fallback on those situations. But it would require us to be there pretty much for a lawful reason already,

or it would be subsequent to a search warrant or to a consent search.

that's why we would get into the house to be able to apply this section if we had to

all right so we'd have to have another reason essentially yes to be there uh i think in that right because of that right a lot of the impetus should be on how we uh right do outreach and education around this uh and i know you made the point uh all gun sales currently right have to come with a trigger lock or some sort of safe storage device already for new guns but i think I think the other point is that there are a lot of guns out there that were sold before that probably don't have safe storage, and others who also may have, if they purchase the gun legally and receive that, doesn't mean that they necessarily store it in a safe manner at home to the extent that we can help either if L.A. County is going to have this sort of education as part of their campaign in terms of safe storage or if there are other existing educational materials or campaigns around safe storage that we can help to promote as well in our community

as we adopt.

I assume we adopt this ordinance tonight. I think if we can direct staff to look at those and include that as we're looking to do outreach on the GVROs and other gun violence prevention efforts that the city can undertake and help residents understand what those steps are to include this as part of that campaign too. And then even look at, as I mentioned for the previous ordinance, maybe staff can bring back to the council a look at a budget or some sort of resourcing of both promotion and educational campaign, but also potentially safe giveaways in some contexts or other, and other things that we can do to help people actually store their guns safely going forward.

Absolutely.

And adding on to what the Mayor Pro Temp said, I'd like to see us partner with a lot of our local school districts in terms of disseminating some of this information and doing some of this education because it specifically addresses safe keeping of guns within the household, in particular with young kids and everything else that comes with that. So as part of our education, as we start to explore this, I'd like to see us partner with Montebello, Alhambra, Garvey.

Absolutely.

Alley USD. Thank you. So is there a motion?

So I'd like to, I'll move to pass this ordinance.

I'll second it.

Seconded by Council Member Lo, if we can please take a vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

So we'll go ahead and thank you, Carl. Thank you, Police Chief, for answering all of our questions

and for bringing this forward.

We look forward to some more.

Mr. Mayor, if I can, I would appreciate every council's action on this.

If staff or others see other actions, we can start to take both on curbing the use of legal guns and the misuse of legal guns, but also if there are actions we can and should be taking on addressing illegal guns in our community as well. I think we'd love to encourage staff to be on the lookout for those opportunities as well.

Great idea. Excellent.

So we'll go ahead and move on to consent calendar items number 3A and 3H. And I'd like to ask Council if there's any items we'd like to be pulled and if you can specify when you do, whether you want a brief or abbreviated report or a full-on report.

Mr. Mayor? Yes, Council Member Liu. Item 3C for discussion.

Which item?

Item 3C. 3C, okay.

Anyone else?

Report on 3E as in elephant.

3E. And anyone else?

Those are the items I wanted as well. I'll just note, Carl, for 3F, if I need to recuse, do I just need to note that before the vote?

That's correct. All right.

I'm recusing from item 3F as Southern California rest is my employer, and I cannot vote on that.

Thank you.

And is there a motion to pass the other items?

They include 3A, 3B, 3D, 3F, and 3G, and 3H.

So move.

Second.

Seconded. We can please take a vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you. So if we can have a report on item 3C.

So this is the city attorney night, I guess.

Most of it's in the staff report.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

In anticipation of some of the questions, yes, the city council has a prohibition on all cannabis within the city's jurisdiction and has had that for a number of years. yes it's in compliance with SB 1186 even if you do nothing and that's because of the words that were specifically put into the municipal code in 2019 which state that unless otherwise provided

by California law you're imposing these prohibitions in terms of the practical effects of

that if after January 1st a delivery center were to try to come into Monterey Park we would classify

and we would process that particular facility accordingly. And yes, I understand that the city council wants more than that.

So we are prepared to put together a draft ordinance for your consideration.

We'll route it through the planning commission and we will have it before you

before January 1st. Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you for that. Any questions or comments from council?

Council member Lo? Yes. So again, thank you for that. Thank you for that report, as well as the staff report. So just be clear that under the stipulations of 1186, a city can still adopt zoning requirements,

security of public health safety regulations,

as well as licensing requirements, right? We still have that, right?

That's correct. Okay, great.

One of the things that, at least upon looking at this legislation, I think what we should consider is making sure that there are provisions of such deliveries to, I think, places that I have concerns about safety would be schools, daycare centers, youth-oriented organizations or centers like the Boys and Girls Club, of course, all our parks and public buildings. I would even like to add maybe eating or drinking establishments. Actually, no, retail centers. I'm just curious, can we adopt such restrictions?

Let me commit this to the city council.

I will make it as restrictive as legally possible. Oh, cool. Okay.

Remembering also that there's a practical enforcement issue.

Well, yes, of course.

But again, since this is being, I mean, you know, pushed on us by the state, nonetheless, you know, I mean, if we do have the tools at our disposal, I still, yes, I would like to, again, those are examples of sensitive errors, which I think we need to probably be clear about restrictions. And then one thing I also asked when I spoke to the city manager was, can we also require, you know, for example, like if there are a FedEx delivery, you have to make sure someone signs for it, such a delivery. And the reason why I bring up that analogy is because, well, another analogy is that But if you order something on Amazon, they can just leave it at the door.

And so I'm almost wondering, can we or should we require that anyone that makes the delivery,

number one, if they're registered with the city, number one, but number two, if they also are making delivery, that we require someone to sign off. And the reason why I say this is because I would be afraid of a situation where if someone just drops it off and it's intended and it could potentially go into the wrong hands. and that's where I almost am wondering if we're not restricted to we should require someone may have to require a signature at the

state, all that type of regulation would be superseded by the state of California.

So there already is something in state law that requires that?

Correct. Okay. So I will certainly bring those regulations in front of you when you consider the regulations

being adopted so you can see them in front of you and see what types of regulations affect

cannabis deliveries statewide.

But meanwhile, though, for example, we can, though, for example, besides public spaces and spaces for seniors and youth, but we can actually then say prohibit like all retail, like all retail centers from being also a place in which we cannot allow a delivery, right?

We can do that?

I will say cautiously maybe.

Okay. Because I want to come back and give you a robust report on this.

I just wanted to report on the direction from the city council

with regards to your discussion on August 2nd. Okay. I will certainly come back with whatever that the city can do

in terms of local control.

Remember, though, that one of the reasons that SB 1186 is in place

is because the state legislature believed that local control was undercutting the voters' desire on a state level

to deliver cannabis products to patients.

So this is really based upon a medicinal use of cannabis, not a recreational use of cannabis.

So that was the underlying rationale

when the California legislature adopted this particular piece of legislation.

Councilmember Ngo?

I understand that there are some possible loopholes to SB 1186 it is also an opportunity for us to make this a little bit tighter for

our local

residents who don't want drugs or cannabis in the city wholesale so this is an opportunity for us to make it a little

bit airtight. Again

Council, I know exactly what your sentiments are and I will do my utmost to try to get you there I think that

Mayor Portempo to Council Member Ngo's point I think one of those loopholes my understanding is and I want to make sure this is addressed when you bring it back and I appreciate that you will that one of the loopholes could be a delivery a medical cannabis delivery center opens and delivers to the sidewalk outside of their their storefront and so in effect They just have to walk outside and be retail, but they're not technically retail.

De facto dispensary is what you're talking about.

So making sure we address that in some way, shape, or form so that we don't de facto have retail cannabis in the city. My other question on this, I don't know if you know off the top of your head, Carl. if these delivery centers open, one, current, right, by state law, we're required to allow deliveries to be made to residents or businesses here in the city of Monterey Park. When those deliveries are made, how are they taxed? That's based on the point of sale or where the warehouse is?

Right, so as you know, Monterey Park, since it prohibits cannabis, does not have a cannabis tax at all.

so it is a point of sale but in addition to that the only tax that's being applied there is a sales tax in whatever cannabis tax might be from for example unincorporated county or whichever

jurisdiction that's being delivered from that would be the tax there one of the jurisdictions i represent does have a cannabis tax and does license cannabis facilities and so from that

perspective the local tax is applied to all of the

deliveries within that jurisdiction and that's a specific flat tax

that's applied. So I mean and that sounds like if these medical

delivery centers were to open in Monterey Park that we should look at some sort of tax structure if we're going to explore one before

one opens up. That is certainly a discussion that you may want to

half I that's that's a policy decision and we'll put it on as a as a possible

discussion topic when this comes back if we can direct staff to start looking

into what those taxed or a taxing structure and regulatory framework might look like for medical cannabis delivery stores that may be soon alLod that may be soon required to be alLod to be open in Monterey Park I think that would

be appropriate and I'll tell you the same thing that I told another

jurisdiction, which is, remember that Al Capone wasn't caught because of all the other crimes

that he did. He was caught because of not paying the tax. And so that other jurisdiction actually

adopted a cannabis tax without actually allowing cannabis within its jurisdiction. And the reason for that was you could go after all the cannabis that was happening, or deliveries, dispensaries, what have you, that were illegally open within the city, and also charge them a tax on top of

everything else. So that's certainly another enforcement technique that one can employ.

So let's definitely look into that.

So if we can bring this back for further discussion.

Thank you.

And the next item is item 3E, City Parks Playground Replacement Project.

We can have a report on this one.

Thank you.

Sure.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, City Council, Sean Igoe, Public Works Director. Tonight we have before you an item for an award of contract for city playground replacement equipment. As you recall, back on May 17, 2023, City Council approved the purchase and procurement of playground equipment for Sequoia Park, Garvey Ranch Park, Bella Vista Park, and Highlands Park. And since then, staff has prepared documents and went out to bid for the installation of this equipment. We received bids back and with that the city staff is looking at having City Council recommend and authorize the interim City Manager to execute the Public Works contract with RE Schultz Construction Inc. for the installation of this equipment. So with that I will take any questions.

Thank you. Any questions or comments? Councilmember Ngo?

Yeah, I just put it for discussion because I want to hear those parks again. and this is going to be epic I just wanted to say that so I'll make the

motion to move second it so if we can I'm a couple quick questions Sean sure

appreciate the work on this so and just for clarity sacred we already council already approved the purchase right we pre-purchased all the playground equipment this is the contract to approve actually constructing and

installing them right that's correct yes the the we've already been in works with procuring the items and so they're already being built.

And then do you know, I know you listed the parks that the equipment will go into, do you know offhand or is there a schedule for when they would be completed?

So tentatively we're working, so the contractor has 90 days to complete the work. So once the equipment is received, we're looking at November, December when it will all be received and they have 90 days to actually complete the installation, 90 working days. So we're looking at sometime around March and that's pending any weather or other anomalies

we may run into.

I'd love to suggest and request of staff to have some sort of ribbon cutting or some sort of ceremony once the playgrounds are ready for people to play on. Hopefully right in time for spring.

Yes.

But yeah, I know there's a motion and a second.

Yes, and yesterday I know we were at Sierra Vista Park

and Bella Vista, sorry, Bella Vista Park and my daughter had me look up, took me a while, but had to look up all the pictures. She wanted to see how the parks would look like.

So we're really, really looking forward to these. So if we could please take a vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you. Okay.

So we're going to go ahead and head into the public hearing section of our agenda. and we're going to start with item 4A, a continued public hearing to consider introduction and first reading of zoning code amendment number 22-01 an ordinance adding the Monterey Park Municipal Code Chapter 21.9 entitled Inclusionary Housing to Implement the Monterey Park Housing Element. So I'm going to go ahead and open and we have one speaker.

We have one speaker, Ziyu Chen.

Come on down.

I've opened the...

Good evening, Mayor Sanchez and Council members. My name is Yuchen. I'm here to represent the ACEMIOC,

a real estate development company.

We currently hold lands in the central area of Monterey Park, and we are considering to develop an excited mixed-use project. We are willing to contribute to the community in Monterey Park, especially in this special period. We need to stimulate the economy for our city and community. Similar to other developers, we would like to refresh the community just like St. Gabriel and Orhambra.

However, as a development company, we have to measure the risk of developing such a huge project.

I know developers are often related to greedy in people's point of view but in

fact developers are just like everybody else. Developers could lose money from a

failed development project as well. As we all know the construction cost has risen at least 80% compared to the time before COVID. If the inclusionary housing passes it means we'll have no way to develop under the current construction cost not even worth for a try. A project like this will bring a much better quality of life for the community members. It could produce hundreds of job positions in the neighborhood and attract young people to stay and make local economy better. I know it's very important to have regulations to protect people in different classes in order to create a more inclusive community, but the community has to think carefully about the trade-off and the balance. I believe mandatory inclusionary regulation will not help the housing crisis. The best way is to make certain exact incentives to encourage developers to provide affordable housing. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other speakers? No other speakers.

Mayor Sanchez if I can ask a quick question I don't know if staff are we in contact with this developer at all okay

Thank you

Thank you Good evening Mayor Sanchez members of the City Council This item is an amendment to title 21 of the Monterey Park municipal code to add chapter 21.19 entitled inclusionary housing to implement the Monterey Park housing element. This item is being brought before you because the city's housing element includes a program to research and develop inclusionary housing ordinance. This slide provides a timeline of various actions the City Council and Planning Commission have taken related to an inclusionary housing ordinance.

Beginning with September of 2022, the City Council had a discussion about inclusionary housing standards and directed staff to prepare an ordinance for Planning Commission consideration.

In that same month, the Planning Commission considered a draft ordinance.

And in November of 2022, the City Council considered the draft ordinance.

and they directed staff to add a land dedication option as an alternative means to meeting the regulations

and also wanted to know more about incentives.

As a result, Planning Commission staff prepared amendments to the inclusionary housing ordinance as well as amendments to our density bonus ordinance,

which were presented to Planning Commission for consideration on May 3rd of this year.

At that meeting, the Planning Commission recommended City Council approval

of both the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance and Density Bonus Ordinance.

On June 7th of this year, City Council reconsidered the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance

and Density Bonus Ordinance. At that meeting, you approved the Density Bonus Ordinance and requested additional research on inclusionary housing regulations and continued the item, the public hearing to this meeting today.

What is inclusionary housing? If the city adopts an inclusionary housing ordinance,

housing developers will be required to include a percentage of units

for affordable households or pay an in-lieu fee.

The images depict what this looks like. With a new housing development, some units must be affordable, while the remaining units can remain market rate.

If a developer prefers to pay an in-lieu fee, the fees will go into a housing fund and will be used to create affordable housing elsewhere in the city. The overarching goal of the inclusionary housing ordinance is to produce more affordable units than the market would have created otherwise.

There are options for projects that do not provide onsite affordable units. One option is that a developer can provide offsite units.

As you can see in the bottom left,

project A is a new housing project with five or more units, but no affordable units.

That same developer could propose a project B,

a housing project with affordable units

that have enough units to accommodate those that would be that would have been required in project a

can be used to leverage affordable housing in other parts in the city. We provided a summary of the Planning Commission's discussion from back in September 27th of 2022. They had a very robust discussion at that time, and they had a lot of comments, excellent discussion about how they can focus on providing more Lor income categories for the affordable units. One commissioner even suggested eliminating the median income and just strictly focusing on the Lor income. At the end, the commission decided they weren't in favor of that. They actually felt like the median income is also Hasn't we have a need in our community for that type of housing as well, so they kept that

requirement They also talked about maintaining a competitive edge and talked about Loring the percentage

requirement the draft says a 15% must be provided and They they discussed that rather than 15% they

they thought it should be between 10 to 14% so that we maintain a competitive edge. Also, they wanted to find ways to encourage on-site units rather than having developers pay the in-loo fee. And they also suggested that the fees be rounded up to provide a whole unit rather than a percentage when they're paying an in-luffy.

At this point, I'm going to turn it over to Beth Chow, Senior Planner, or Interim Planning Manager. I apologize.

Good evening, Mayor, members of the Council. I'll be reviewing the steps that staff has taken since the meeting in June related to the Council comments.

The first item Council requested was to specify how to calculate the numbers of units that will be required of the inclusionary housing ordinance. As Planning Commission had recommended, they recommended that when the percentage resulted in fractional units, rounding up would be required for units that are being provided

on-site as well as for in-lieu fees.

However, during the June discussion from Council, Council requested that when calculating for on-site units rounding up would occur when the fraction was equal to or greater than 0.5 and rounding down when fractions resulted in less than 0.5 for the creation of on-site affordable units. For in-loop fees, developers would be then permitted to pay for fractional amounts.

So the slide before you this evening gives you a picture of what those two scenarios look like on a 28-unit residential complex. Under the Planning Commission's recommendation, a project would have been required to have five units provided on site

because of the rounding that went up at 4.2 to the next whole number at 5.

In lieu fees would also have to be paid at a factor of 5 as applied to the fees. So under the council's proposal, since the fraction is .2, we would round down on-site units to be provided are four units. And in terms of in-lieu fee calculations, a factor of 4.2 would be applied. Next, please.

So in the next few slides, we'll be looking at additional research that staff conducted related to several categories of issues that the council had discussed. These slides will report the results of our research conducted related to comparable community benefits, the economic effects of an IHO, what in lieu fees may be used for, and incentives developers can leverage. Lastly, we'll look at the logistics of implementing, monitoring, and evaluating IHO should the council seek to enact the proposed ordinance. As presented, the IHO includes

an exemption for projects from the IHO if they are able to provide a comparable community benefit. Through the development agreement process, larger projects that yield 10 or more units can opt to provide a comparable community benefit. These types of benefits may be prioritized by the city, and examples of these benefits include but are not limited to park improvements, infrastructure improvements, land dedication, and even public art. The comparable benefits generally enhance the quality of life in the city and for its residents, but the council has that final decision-making capability under the development agreement portion. Next, please.

The council also asked staff to look at studies related to IHO and staff reviewed literature

that looked at the IHO on a more national level as well as more local level. The general takeaway from the research was that the effectiveness of an IHO on the creation of affordable units can only be measured with time.

So time will tell its success in terms of implementation of an IHO.

In the shorter term, studies that staff reviewed indicated that when a city has an inclusionary housing policy in place,

they may be at a competitive disadvantage when cities within the same geographic region do not have a similar policy.

However, a review of area cities indicated that IHOs are in place across the San Gabriel Valley, currently in such cities as Alhambra, Doherty, South Pasadena, Pasadena, and Pomona. Additionally, as part of the last housing element cycle, other nearby cities included programs for inclusionary housing within their housing element, such as San Gabriel, who considered an IHO.

Recording in progress.

And tabled the item earlier this summer.

Montebello, who also has a program within their housing element, has yet to consider an IHO.

One of the best measurements of whether an IHO will be successful is a feasibility study

that is customized for a city. As part of regional efforts by the San Gabriel Valley COG, feasibility studies were conducted

for four cities in the San Gabriel Valley over the last year. Since the publication of this agenda, staff has been in contact with the COG to get a general sense or understanding of study outcomes. Based on communications with COG staff, in most instances, the IHOs were not found feasible,

although in some cases where cities were focusing on specific plan areas where higher density

and Lor parking standards are available for development, there may be some feasibility. At this point, reports have not yet been formally released by the COG, and there is no public review of these reports as of yet.

Thanks, please.

At the last council meeting, there was also discussion of what in lieu fees could be used for. In looking at other cities, the uses for fees varied, but activities that lead to or facilitate the creation of affordable units is the key factor when deeming how fees can be used. if the direct creation of units is not possible. In-lieu fees can also be used for programs to maintain affordability or aid in acquisition of affordable housing

or acquisition of housing at affordable rates and sponsor programs such as first-time homebuyer programs.

Other activities that can facilitate the creation of affordable units include infrastructure improvements

And on the administrative end, in lieu fees can supplement the administration of programs,

such as funding expedited processing for housing projects.

Another topic that was of interest to the council included incentives for developers to create affordable units.

Currently, the city has in place several incentives, of which include a density bonus and unlimited density within the city's mixed-use land use designations.

These two incentives allow for developers to gain more units and thereby maximize on their investment while subsidizing affordable units.

The last incentive is our membership within the San Gabriel Valley Regional Housing Trust, and this opens up the doors for possible funding from the housing trust to be applied to any affordable units.

Potential incentives that can be explored include expediting of processing for either entitlements or building plan check or funding incentive programs such as tax increment financing.

as council considers moving forward with the IHO questions related to the implementation and monitoring of the program arose based on current staffing levels the implementation and monitoring will likely be through the work of consultants who bring very specialized knowledge about the housing market and affordable housing in general however as As an IHO program expands, additional permanent staff may be necessary, which can be considered during an overall review of the IHO. In looking at evaluating an IHO, staff can bring forward annual development trend reports to the council. However, a programmatic review of the IHO would likely occur three to five years from implementation. This is the general cycle of developments and projects that allow for entitlement, construction, and operation, which will give a better picture of IHO's success. Next, please. So at this point, staff recommends that the city council introduce and waive the first reading of an ordinance, adding Chapter 21.9, Inclusionary Housing, to the Monterey Park Municipal Code, Title 21, Zoning, to implement the Monterey Park housing element and take such additional related action that may be desirable. Please note that Item B, the next item related to Inclusionary Housing ordinance fees, is largely dependent on the outcome of this item. This concludes my presentation. Staff is available for any comments or questions. Okay. Thank you for that report.

Are there any questions or comments from Council?

Let's start with Council Member Lo.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

And thank you again for that presentation. I'd be curious.

So in your presentation, you mentioned that the COG,

they have provided,

it was something like a technical feasibility study of, say,

that are considering an IHO?

Correct.

Okay.

I'd be curious, too, like, is it also,

the program that's provided by the COG, is it also available to help do evaluations of existing,

like, say we were to adopt an IHO, like, say, tonight, Right. Would the same COG staff be able to also then maybe help guide us in terms of implementation or even evaluate as we move forward its effectiveness so that we can make adjustments?

So related to the COG studies that have been conducted over the last year, that was funded through REAP funding, state funding,

that has an end date of expenditures of next year.

And so as we move forward and get close to that deadline,

the window of feasibility studies may be dwindling or closing.

When we reached out to the COG initially, they mentioned there are additional dollars, but due to time constraints and budget constraints, we're not sure whether or not they could fully help us fund a feasibility study.

So, Mr. Mayor and members of the council, if I may, I think the question that you're posing,

Councilmember Lo, is if we were to adopt the IHO, could a feasibility study be done as to how the ordinance is operating in our community. So I think definitely staff could reach out to the COG. The feasibility studies, from our understanding,

that were conducted were feasibility in the current market, right?

So not really looking at a specific ordinance.

They're not comparing an ordinance,

but staff can definitely reach out to the COG and see if that consultant would be available to do what you're requesting.

So we can definitely look into it if that's what Council is interested in doing.

Okay.

Any other questions or comments? Mayor Patel Wong? Yeah, thank you.

And on Councilman Rouleau's comments, and thank you, Inez, for that. I would appreciate being able to see some sort of economic or feasibility analysis

to help guide RIHO.

I do have some concerns and I think from our June meeting expressed some of those as well in terms of not wanting to deter all development in the city going for especially major development which we still want to attract if the IHL given current conditions and likely future conditions in terms of the financing environment and all that for projects and developments if it gets to a point where the IHL adds the straw

that breaks the camel's back and

makes it unfeasible, infeasible, whatever the term is, for these developments to have... ! for these developments to happen at all, ! then we lose out on any affordable development as well. ! So wanting to be, I would love for our implementation of IHO and adoption of IHO ! to be guided by as much data as possible, knowing that conditions change and

! everything will change.

! But, at least knowing, right, if we adopt this, !

and it's going to make every major project just not work out, not pencil out. Given the current environment, that will be helpful for us to know because I don't think it's anyone's intention on this council to not have any development in the city. With that said, I also think, and my personal view on this is not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It would be helpful, I think, to have something on the books and to start proceeding forward to show that we support this, and especially as project developers and landowners are looking at developing projects, they at least have some certainty about what conditions they should work into their financial analysis and their own project feasibility kind of studies that they want to do if they want to proceed with development. So do they accept POSL? We want to make sure we're signaling with as much certainty as we can that something like this NICO is going to move forward. so I'm just struggling and I have some procedural and more administrative questions as well to go through with the IHO but my general approach to this is that I'm struggling with the fact that I know that our IHO as the draft IHO has presented is based on what some other surrounding cities and neighboring cities have adopted and it seems to be going okay in those cities but also understanding our city and our economics can be very unique and different from the others, and it would be helpful to have more data that's really more Monterey Park-specific, and if there's opportunity to pursue funding from the COG to do that kind of study, or even looking at a budget amendment for our own budget to resource that properly so that we know that this is something, if we adopt, will work for our city and in our city to actually produce affordable units along with other market rate units, because otherwise we don't see anything. I think that would be helpful. but on a number just quick questions and sorry if this is kind of scattered it's just it was my notes as I was reading this staff report in the draft ordinance if if the city right we are first reading tonight if we pass it after second reading when would with the IHO then be in effect as soon as the

second reading center is there some sort of gap period mr. mayor members the

It takes effect 30 days after second reading. Okay.

And I know you noted in the staff report in your presentation that if we adopt this inclusionary housing allowance, there will be a need for resourcing enforcement of the IHO for developers and then going forward, especially for rental units and for resale of existing units, to make sure that they are continuing to abide by those restrictions for affordability. I know this is probably a very basic question but one I didn't quite understand so when we're talking about these inclusionary units when there's income restrictions on them is that applied to

the sale price

that it has to be in the affordable 30% or whatever of income for the purchaser of the property or is it someone that is it based on the price of the property and the rent or is it based on the income, right? Someone who's within the income threshold can purchase or rent that property.

How, I don't know if that makes sense towards distinguishing, but in my mind, there's a difference.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, I think you're asking how are the categories calculated?

Is that my understanding?

So, well, I don't know. I don't know if this helps,

But so, right, if someone, say my parents, say my income currently qualifies me for low income, I make whatever that income is, but my parents give me whatever, the down payment for a house that allows me to afford something that I otherwise wouldn't be able to afford on my own. And income qualifies me to purchase that as a low income person. but the price of the unit can still be market rate.

How does that work?

Let me back up and hopefully answer your question with a background

on how affordable housing categories are calculated.

So the calculation for households, and households are defined as,

well, there are different definitions based upon the number of people within the household,

But the different categories of affordable housing are based upon a household income.

Recording in progress.

And depending on where one lives, that geographical region will each have a different type of income category.

So you see this slide up at the moment.

For Los Angeles County, Los Angeles County calculation is going to be different than the city and county of San Francisco.

So the household income here for extremely low, for example, is about $39,000. But in San Francisco, it's going to be more around $99,000, $100,000, because the price of housing is so much out of proportion with Los Angeles County, for example, that the income categories that qualify one for certain categories of affordable housing will differ throughout the state. So in San Bernardino County, it's going to be Lor than that, for example. So to answer your question, so this is based upon a four-person household.

You're talking, your hypothetical is a single person.

So depending on what one's income level is as a single person and where you fit within this category, all these regulations are looking at is your personal income based upon a household.

If you get money for paying for a down payment on that affordable housing, that's fine.

That doesn't factor into this calculation on whether or not you can afford that particular category of affordable housing.

So does that answer your question by giving me background?

Sort of.

But, I mean, I don't know how likely or not this scenario would be. So if a developer builds large development and is subject to the IHO, decides to build affordable units there, is the IHO, in terms of income restrictions, so that would apply both to how the unit would be priced?

Yes, correct. So based upon what category of affordable housing was being either offered up or imposed upon that particular development, that would also determine the difference between market rate and the affordable housing. So, for example, there's moderate, low, very low, extremely low. Basically, nobody builds extremely low because the ability to – the construction costs always usually are substantially more than what can come back, even with subsidies, even with attractive financing. no developer development that i've seen in years has provided extremely low categories of of of housing the very low ones are challenging and usually the developers that provide very low

housing are specialized developers that specialize in that type of housing they know how to put

together the grant monies needed to to provide that housing what have you what realistically

what we're talking about with IHO is between low and moderate type of affordable housing

that would be interspersed within development. That's realistically what's going to be offered. Even if the developer were to take advantage of the density bonus regulations that the council

adopted a couple months ago, you still have the reality of construction costs, even with all the subsidies available and what have you. It only starts to, quote unquote, everybody likes using the term pencil out. Everyone but only starts doing that if you get to at least a low income category.

So to answer your question, what the city wants to do, that's really up to the city council. What types of things do you want in each development for purposes of inclusionary housing, and how does that translate into A, are you turning away developers?

B, how are you calculating an in-lieu fee for purposes of accepting money rather than the units? And then how do the market rate units in that particular development,

how do the prices for those units adjust based upon how many affordable housing units are being provided by the developer? Because, of course, that's going to have an impact on those market rates, right?

Because in order to make up the delta between the affordable units and the market units,

the market units are probably going to go up in order to pay for the affordable units.

That's a lot of stuff, and I don't know if that helps. I mean, it sounds like it's both, right?

It's both on the price of the property, the unit that's for sale, and the person that would be eligible to purchase or rent would have to qualify for the income rate.

Correct.

Yeah, just in layman's terms, it's the price of the units. if say there's 100 units, 85 of them are priced at a million dollars.

That's market.

15 of them will be priced at $500,000. And people who are buying it, for those who are buying the 15 units, which is your IHO, they have to qualify within that income means in order to get it. And in that unit, those 15 units, they stay perpetual for whatever the ordinance is, 25, 35, or 45. I don't know what the number is, but they stay at the 500,000 incrementally CPI for a few years. Versus the million-dollar units, they could be worth a million dollars today. Let's just say five years from now, the market flips, and then that unit is now $2 million. Anybody can get a $2 million, but then those 500,000 units stay perpetual.

That's the covenant.

I hope that's more layman.

That's helpful. My other question on this to follow up is

for income qualification, if someone is in one of these IHO units for rent and their income goes up, they get a new job at some point, they have to do annual income verification

or something like that.

How does that work? Would they be required to pay market rent or are they forced to move to a different unit?

What would happen there?

Council Member Wong, I'll go ahead and address the question. Our ordinance does have safeguards in there that address that situation.

If it's an apartment, the apartment owner would be required to provide annual reporting to the city, and we would then verify and make sure that all the people living in those affordable units

are still income qualifying. And for sale properties, every time it changes ownership,

they would need to, the new owner would have to be verified and approved by the city.

And if I can just tag team on what Jessica is talking about,

the city didn't make up these regulations.

These are federal regulations, which are used under HUD in order to make sure,

for example, CDBG-funded housing, what have you, is maintained. So this is not a reinvention of the wheel. This is something that simply the city would be implementing for purposes of the IHO. But it applies equally to any affordable housing project.

And the same with the years. So the years, the 55 years for rental, that comes from state law.

and the 45 years for sale, that comes from state law as well. Each time there's a subsequent purchaser for the for sale properties

that are within those affordable housing categories,

that household has to qualify to be an affordable household

in order to purchase that particular property.

I will put an asterisk next to everything, of course, which I usually do, which is there's always an enforcement issue. I can't tell you how many cases that have come to a city attorney's office

with regard to discovering three years after the sale has occurred that the household that bought

the property didn't qualify as a household for purposes of these regulations. And so there is

a cost associated with enforcing these types of things as well, which I think the presentation

also discussed with regard to the use of in-lieu fees. If one were to collect in-lieu fees, part of those fees could be used to help administer those types of programs and pay for them.

That's helpful. So I mean I understand the need for enforcement and we would have to resource properly in terms of the annual income verification and purchaser and all that stuff. To be able to enforce we have to collect that data and require reporting of that data. But I don't know, Carl, if this is where you were going with the kind of federal restrictions and guidelines and requirements. But when someone does get a new job and their household moves into the higher income tier.

I don't know if you have an answer on that one.

To answer your original question, what happens if their income goes up

and they're no longer fitting within that category?

Recording in progress. So there is a...

Every time I talk, there's a recording in progress.

There is a time period within which...

There's basically a grace period within which those individuals can remain within that household.

But to answer your ultimate question, yes.

they'll have to vacate if they no longer meet the qualifications for an affordable household.

And that also means for the for sale units that they're going to have to divest themselves of that through a sale

or reimburse the city for all of the subsidies that have been provided for that particular housing. Okay.

So for sale, I thought it was only when the ownership changes hand, but I don't know.

Is that an annual?

I believe we do the annual thing on the home ownership

for rental and for for sale in fact was it the villa garfield i forget which housing development

we had here in town but we had a huge lawsuit about seven years ago with regard to this very

issue which was that houses had been turned over and the new households coming in had not qualified

for purposes of affordable housing and it was quite a gordian's knot that we had to cut through

yeah I mean on that point I think one there's obvious need for us because there are existing affordable units in the city where enforcement is delayed and oversight I think is sLor than I think we would like and need so I think if we can have provide direction to staff to start figuring out how to resource that properly now since it's not waiting for the IHO to be passing for IHO units to start coming online for us to be able to enforce and start to even educate owners on this. But two, yeah, on the IHO,

my answer is very helpful. Gives me some pause in terms of

we do want to encourage people if they can get a better job, we don't want to all of a sudden make their costs go up again that they're not able to get ahead. So I don't know what there is to do in terms of that grace period to adjust if there is any.

And I know I had a question here on leasing, subleasing and rental units and things like that. I know it's addressed here in terms of requiring city approval, which would need someone to be able to review that and to approve and to enforce. Other question on the IHO, especially for rental units, If someone, say, would the IHO apply to, say, large apartment buildings if a new owner comes in and does a major retrofit if the IHO is in place, does that also count, or is the IHO only in place for new construction?

The IHO would apply to the rental, the entire building that's for rent,

even if it changes hands or they do a retrofit.

it must remain affordable for 55 years

as shown on the slide and for sale it would be 45 years

yeah I understand that my question is on like existing if someone were to buy a large apartment building right now that exists in the city

and the I chose it's for new development just for new development so not

if someone's redoing an apartment

I did want to just clarify something these requirements with regard to 55 years and 45 years in the affordable housing

and all the household income and what have you,

that applies regardless of the IHO. Anytime that the city reviews or approves affordable housing,

whether it's through density bonus, whether it's using federal funds or state funds or what have you,

in order to make sure that there's affordable housing available

for those households that qualify, these same rules apply. So I just wanted to clarify that adopting the IHO doesn't suddenly impose these types of rules. These rules exist today under the Health and Safety Code and under the HUD regulations.

With that point, Carl, I will reiterate my point on the need for the city to resource and staff.

I got you.

I just wanted to make sure that everyone understood that these rules are already in effect.

Yeah, and I'm sure there's probably some education and reminders for current owners and operators of affordable units to be reminded of these restrictions. and also to, I think, I know we do some tenant education events by contract with, I think, I forgot who, but some of those probably need to be buffed up as well in terms of helping to educate residents and tenants of affordable units currently about their rights as well

and the need for not only their rights but also their requirements

So abide by affordability restrictions in terms of leasing and subleasing and purchase and sale.

Other question, I know we kind of talked about this last time in June.

I see that for this, we stayed at the five-unit projects being the threshold for the IHO applying.

I don't know. I'm on the fence on this.

Five-units seem small to me in terms of a project being subject to this. I also understand, right, if a project is 10 units or more, it's already required for a development agreement.

And so it's, right, that sweet spot is somewhere between five and 10

in terms of making the IHO applicable for projects.

I still feel like five is a little small,

but I don't know that there's a substantive difference

between five and seven and 10,

so I don't know where to go with this, but I don't know if others have questions on that

or want to discuss that some more. and I know

right back to my earlier point on a feasibility or economic analysis to guide our decision making on this I think if the council is going to move forward on approving this ordinance for first reading tonight and going towards second I would encourage and want to include in that approval moving ahead for staff to do an economy economic analysis, whether we have funding or not from the COG or other sources to bring back expediently to the council to begin an economic or feasibility analysis process for us as well, so that within a reasonable timeframe, hopefully a year, we can have that analysis back to make adjustments

as needed to our IHO, so that we make sure it does work for our community.

And then my final point here before,

I think I relinquish the mic for now,

is I know when we surveyed some of the other cities and their IHOs, right, Pasadena and others, offer additional, and I know part of our density bonus was to offer additional subsidies and support for affordable projects,

especially 100% affordable projects.

I'd love to see if there are other opportunities or other things we can do to support 100% affordable developments in the city.

I think it was noted in some other cities that they, and I don't know if we do, allow for faster permitting and streamlining other processes at the city in terms of approvals for 100%.

If there are other benefits we can provide to incentivize 100% affordable developments, I would love to see that proposed for the council to consider as well.

Council Member Goon?

Council Member Lo?

It's just a quick question. So we've already reached out to the COG then to see whether or not there's a possibility of them providing some kind of analysis then?

We've already reached out to them? Yes.

Council Member Lo, yes, we contacted the COG. They indicated that there is

some funding still available, but as Beth mentioned, there are constraints as far as the timing. We must spend it by early next year.

So there may or may not be an opportunity to do a study through the COG. We can certainly, you know, based on your direction tonight, we can certainly reach out to them. Sure.

I would still like it possible to reach out. I mean, when we say early next year, do you mean like January, February? I mean, I get that there is probably

a time requirement. I mean, I know it's now August, but I'm just curious, within the time we have,

as far as the window that COG has, even if it's not a robust one-year study, but even if it's just provide some analysis, I think that's what would be helpful. Because I think what we've all discussed now in June is that, you know, again, we don't find the right balance between making sure that, you know, our commitment to providing equitable, accessible housing is there, but also at the same time not deterring development.

And I think what I'm hearing is that a lot of cities that have adopted these did it without analysis.

And certainly I think it would help if we had some analysis, if possible.

certainly we can look into it thank you and council member go yeah i just want to reflect

on a couple of things here um if you kind of go back in the housing for the state and for the county you go back about 30 years ago it affordability became an issue there were not enough houses it became too expensive and you go back to our city and you look back some of the surveys we took from the residents go back two few years now and it clearly was in the survey this time right affordability housing costs was in the top three items so i i think the city going back to september of last year actually was in that planning meeting i provided some feedback based on my background and i mean jessica did a good job in terms of walking through the commission and preparing the commission to give some guidance which came to council and then it went back to the commission so it looks like there's multiple eyes staff and commission looking at this and i think at the end of the day this is an equitable solution it's not a perfect solution because if you ask the builders they want to build two million dollar homes because in $2 million homes, you make $100 million. You ask the people who want to buy homes, you want to buy the $200,000 homes because then you can afford it. But it doesn't work both ways, so you need something that's equitable. And 15% is an equitable number based on the surveys, based on the estimates within the

greater LA County.

And you look at some of the cities that have inclusionary housing, as the survey demonstrated, we're on that path now is this the perfect solution i don't know so i'm with pro tem here in terms of we need to figure out if this is the right solution for our city because every city is different now saying that we don't have an inclusion uh inclusionary housing ordinance in our city so what do you do well you got to get started with one and you got to start with something and this is the first step you take the step and you provide some feedback you'll have a continuation of two three years and we will put that on staff to review to make sure these analysis done going forward make sense for a city if it does great everyone's happy if it doesn't we'll come back it'll go back to city council the planning commission as well as staff to say we We need to tweak this to make it viable so that the equity stays kind of close to the middle. It doesn't benefit too much on the developer side or the resident side, right? It's got to be somewhere in the middle. So that's kind of where I wanted to kind of just give some background feedback on this. I'd be happy to make a motion on this if there's no other comments. And I support Pro Tem Wong's analysis to have staff further do a review of this in the next one year, two year, to make sure this is tracking to what we want to do as a council.

Thank you. And Council Member Yu?

I have something to say not quite related, but two years ago a lady come over and asked me.

She's making a decision of my buying a home.

one is regular home and another one is affordable housing and she said the regular one you know is

a little bit more expensive smaller but the affordable one is wow a lot less expensive but more spacious and which one should i buy and i told her you if you can afford both you buy the

regular one because the appreciation and but oh no but then you know there's a lot smaller

i said why don't you just buy it and rent it out and you can just rent the affordable housing if you can afford if you can actually qualify and so that you will make a higher rent and get the appreciated regular house and you're living in a spacious one with Lor rent so yeah that's the

solutions that I asked her and I provided to her. So just some kind of thought of nowadays the market and how people can pursue with this affordable housing solution. Thank you.

Any other mayor pro tem? I'll

second Councilman Rogo's motion with and reiterate

the desire for staff to pursue quickly

financial

economic feasibility study to proceed with that as soon as we can and to bring that to council to make adjustments to the IHO as soon as we can, hopefully within a year, but not putting a hard timeline. I don't know how long that study takes. Thank you. If we could please take a vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, a question. I know we've just passed this,

but is, so now the staff, in terms of next steps, staff will go towards calculating proposed in lieu fees for this based off of the ordinance we just adopted.

Is that right?

That's correct.

And do you know when we might expect that to come back?

The item next on this agenda pertains to the inclusionary housing and lieu fee calculation.

We are requesting that you continue that item to the following public hearing or City Council available date.

I don't know. I have a question for Inez.

I don't know if it needs to be a public hearing or if this is something that we can take up as a study session item.

I don't know.

So, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council, the next item is

either give direction or adopt it, whatever you want to do, and then we can continue it to a date certain if you want to continue that and get additional information.

The reason for having a date certain is so that we don't have to re-notice the public hearing. We can just continue it to a date certain.

If I may add, the feasibility study serves two purposes.

One is to understand our market and understand the impacts of inclusionary housing ordinance.

And the second purpose is also to help with the development of an inclusionary housing fee that is appropriate for our city, given our market conditions.

Yeah, I think that being guided by data and analysis would be very, very helpful and hope that not just for this, but for other major and even non-major issues that come from the council. To the extent that we can bring data that helps guide shaping of these kind of policies would be very helpful.

Noted.

Okay. Thank you.

And so now we're going on to item 4B, which is a public hearing to consider adopting a resolution establishing citywide related, sorry, citywide fees related to the inclusionary housing ordinance.

I'll make a motion to adopt staff recommendation.

I'll second. I'll second. If we can please take a vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

And there are no new business items, so before we jump into city communications, there is a resolution that actually I brought forward of the denouncing anti-Semitism. There is a rise of anti-Semitism and hate crimes just in general, so I wanted to go ahead and bring this up for council's consideration. And so there is a resolution. I'll read portions of it only because I know it's already been a long night. But anyhow, it reads, the city of Monterey Park is committed to inclusion and advancement of diversity and equity for people of all races, ethnicities, national origins, religions, ages, genders, and backgrounds. The city of Monterey Park takes pride in diversity and respect for all people and the Jewish community is an integral part of the city's fabric, recognizing our diversity as a vital strength for the city and our character. The city of Monterey Park supports efforts to eradicate anti-Semitism in all forms of hatred and supports expanded education programs, including Holocaust programs, to counter intolerance and discrimination. The city of Monterey Park condemns anti-Semitism in all its forms, including hatred and prejudice directed towards Jewish community members, stereotypes or conspiracy theories about Jews, Holocaust denial or distortion, and extremist indoctrination or recruitment related to any form of anti-Semitism. And I'm just going to go ahead and jump to the last part. So, sorry. Any victims of anti-Semitism, the city of Monterey Park urged to report any incidents so that local law enforcement can respond, track such incidents, and bring perpetrators to justice. The City of Monterey Park on behalf of its citizens and supporters and allies of our Jewish community do hereby proclaim the City of Monterey Park's condemnation of anti-Semitism. The City of Monterey Park firmly stands against hate bias and violence against, sorry, or violence based on identity and remains committed to non-discrimination and human rights. The City of Monterey Park will continue to work alongside the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the United States Conference of Mayors, and the Jewish Federation of the greater San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys to combat and denounce anti-Semitism. And lastly, the city of Monterey Park is committed to protecting all residents. Every person in Monterey Park deserves to be treated fairly, with dignity, and to have their humanity, existence, history, and contributions

valued. Any questions or comments from Council? I'll move to pass and don't want a second.

I'll second it.

All right. Thank you. If we can please take a vote.

I'm approved unanimously.

Thank you.