City Council Meeting — October 18, 2023

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raciónración Recording in progress. Recording in progress.

Good evening and welcome to our Monterey Park City Council meeting. Great to see a lot of people here today. I want to go ahead and start off by reading our mission statement for our 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 Gabriolino Tongva people. We show our respect to the Gabriolino 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 we invite you to acknowledge the history and join us in caring for this land. We'll go ahead and start with the flag salute. And before we do, I wanted to introduce and actually speak a little bit to it for people in the audience who might not know. But this city council has made civic engagement a priority. and one of the things we do now as we begin our city council meeting is we invite a student from within Monterey Park to come and lead us in the flag salute as part of our dedication to civic engagement. And I'd like to invite Brian Kwok to come up.

He is a third grader from Monterey Highlands Elementary School.

And it's so fitting that we actually have our superintendent of the Old Hamburg Unified School District in the audience. so I want to acknowledge Ms. Denise Jaramillo to witness this.

So if I can ask you to please stand.

And we'll do color guard first. And we'll do color guard first

Upward pace Upward, pace.

Okay, Brian, you ready to lead us? Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. 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.

You may now be seated.

Forward, forward, face.

Forward, march.

Both colors.

Oh, I'll fix it.

Dismissed.

At this time, I'd like to invite the City Council, but also the family of Brian Kwok to come up. We have a certificate for Brian, but this is a great opportunity to take a picture as well.

Let's give Brian a round of applause.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We have a certificate for Brian, which reads civic superstar.

We have a certificate for Brian which reads Civic Superstar and it says the Monterey Park City Council hereby extends our sincere appreciation for leading the Pledge of Allegiance at the Monterey Park City Council meeting held on October 18, 2023. We thank you for being part of the city's Civic Superstar Program. We applaud your enthusiasm and dedication to civic engagement, and we are pleased to recognize your involvement in tonight's City Council meeting the City Council. Further, it sends our best wishes for continued success in all your future endeavors. Congratulations, Frank. our best wishes of continued success in all your future endeavors. Congratulations Frank.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. We'll go ahead and move on with our agenda.

If we can, City Clerk, if we do a roll call, please.

Council Member Lo. Present.

Council Member Yu here. Councilmember Ngo Mayor Pro Tem Wong Mayor Sanchez

We have a quorum

City Manager, City Attorney

Do we have any agenda additions, deletions, or changes or adoptions?

Yes, Mr. Mayor We would like to add

City Manager's Office under Staff Communications, please

Thank you so much None from me, sir

Thank you

Then we'll go ahead and start with Public Communications

City clerk do we have any staff comments? We I'm sorry in the public. I'm sorry. Yeah, we have two comments

Oh three one minute. Um first speaker Joseph Leong

You want to wait good okay, just suddenly on with that

Okay, okay, what am I everybody you're stuck with me

just to request my daughter and her schoolmate and her schoolmate's parents ask that I come and ask you to look at the public transit spirit bus there is some difficulty with the consistency and so my daughter is a student at Mark Keppel and so So this transportation is very important to those students who are trying to get home and have no other access or means of getting home besides the bus. And so reliable and consistent transportation is necessary.

Sean, the app is not working.

And so it's very frightening for the children because it will say the bus is coming in maybe one or two minutes. And then all of a sudden it says there is no vehicle en route. And then sometimes it says the bus is going to take an hour and 45 minutes to get there. So as a child with no other means of getting home, it's very, very, very scary. So please, if you could look into the app and see what's going on, it would be greatly appreciated. One other request, please look into the sewer. My neighbors informed me that there was an issue with another contractor who accidentally punctured several of our sewer main lines,

causing a lot of issues for a lot of homeowners

whose homes were impacted by that damage that was caused by the contractor. So knowing that we are going for water and sewer rate increases, it's very nice if we make sure that that contractor is held accountable because I don't think a lot of people are aware of that issue and I think I even me as a homeowner was probably impacted by that so who knows how much more line might have accidentally been damaged so before we put that cost on our residents let's make sure that that contractor is held liable for the damage that

they might have caused. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other comments?

Any other public comments? No. Sorry. Yes. One more written comment. There is one comment from Claire. She wrote into the city council, Claire Simonich. She is the associate director of Vera, California, a local initiative of the Vera Institute of Justice, also known

as Vera.

It advances policies and practices that will make California a model for ending mass incarceration, promoting community safety, and advancing racial justice. She is writing to share information regarding the Superior Court's new bail policy, the

pre-arraignment release protocols, PARP, which is a step forward towards a more fair, just,

and safe pretrial system. She states the PARP policy rightfully shifts away from money bail and recommends administrative release for people charged with misdemeanors and low-level felonies.

She adds extensive research demonstrates that reforms like the PARP policy are good for public

safety. The council should not be swayed by critics' fear-mongering and misleading claims. And she states, ultimately, more pretrial detention will not benefit public safety nor justice. She asks that the Monterey Park City Council speak out in support of the Superior Court's new bail policy, educate the public about its public safety benefits, and encourage the court to monitor and share data analysis on implementation and encourage the court to monitor and share data analysis on implementation at regular intervals.

! That's it.

! No other speakers.

! Thank you.

! We're going to go ahead and jump into staff communications, but knowing that we have several ! presentations tonight. We're just going to do fire department for now. And then we'll come back to public works in the interest of time.

!

So, fire department. And we have our chief here. and we have our chief here

good evening mayor and members of the council a couple of announcements tonight from the fire department just a reminder a couple sessions ago got it I should know that by now a couple sessions ago we talked about the great California shakeout so tomorrow at October 19th at 1019 we will all be participating in the Great California ShakeOut. This event has been around since 2008 and the intent behind the Great California ShakeOut is for individuals and business owners to be aware of the potential for an earthquake and how to act in the preparation for an earthquake. So we participate here in the city, we evacuate City Hall, we go through all the steps, duck cover and

hold and we want to encourage all of our residents and our business community to do the same. Over 10 million people have registered for the great shakeout and it continues to

increase every year and it just shows that as I mentioned before a chance favors the prepared individual so the more we prepare the better off we'll be after that earthquake because we know it's coming it's just a matter of when it will be here so just a reminder to duck cover and hold tomorrow at 10 19. With that I'd like to turn over to our Fire Marshal Jessica Estrella with some

comments. Hello, good evening. I wanted to provide an update to the fire prevention and

domino partnership that we conducted on October 8th. If we could play our little montage.

Oh my gosh.

All right, so personally, this is the first time that I've actually been involved with anything like this. And so NFPA has actually been doing this for 16 years, but nothing out this way, like ever. We don't even know about the region itself. I talked to Domino's, and they didn't know anything about it either, so it was pretty fun for us. And like you can see, Domino's actually had a good time with us too, which was always great. We had a successful program. So in one of the locations, you could see all the smoke alarms actually functioned. So it's a great time for us to teach kids, yes, it's loud, it is what it is, but also know the sound, how to get out, have the information ready. um so we tested five smoke alarms and all were functioning you could see the kids were super excited to run around the fire department and test all their smokes we also you know say continue to do this monthly weekly uh we talked to fire safety with them and then we also handed out fire prevention week bags which we actually got donated this year so and their um order was free from Domino's. So they were super excited about that as well. We also went to another location that they had one smoke alarm in the hallway and it didn't function. So that's all they had. Basically, they had zero smoke detection in their entire house. So we were able to put one in every bedroom and one in the common hallway. And we left there. They are completely covered and have smoke alarms everywhere they need to. We also, you know, explained fire safety to them as well and gave them fire prevention bags for their nieces and nephews.

So that was also fun.

Once this was actually on social media, I had a couple colleagues reach out to me and see how they could participate for next year. So everybody was pretty excited about it. It's a great concept. It's a lot of fun. honestly we owe a lot to the crews themselves for you know saying yes and agreeing upon it and taking the time out of their day to come along with us as well and then from the obviously the fire chief and council for allowing us to to do this and try something new and i hope that next year we could do bigger and better and i was surprised we didn't get any calls from you that

you wanted some pizza.

Yes, I was going to take advantage of the situation and feed a hungry family. My girls at home. Thank you so much.

I had some questions.

How many homes did we visit on that day?

We actually only visited two. It was kind of funny. We couldn't do apartments,

and we couldn't do takeout orders. It's kind of specific.

Then we did call before we went,

so we didn't just show up to somebody's house.

That's what we're hoping next year

it'll be a little bit more that we can actually maybe put it out on our social media, that that is going to be something that we will do to kind of, again, right, it helps Domino's. It promotes their food in general. And then for us, it promotes our fire safety program.

So, yeah.

That sounds great. Thank you so much.

And then hopefully next year we can include more families and more homes.

Exactly.

And share the pizza.

Yeah. And actually Domino's provided pizzas for, well, we'll see everybody as quick as you can get back there.

So they provided pizzas from tonight to also say thank you. They were very happy that they were able to participate in this program with us as well.

Thank you so much.

And we will have a little break later, and we can enjoy the pizza all together.

Perfect.

So stick around. Yes. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Have a good night.

We're going to go ahead and jump to the presentation portion of our agenda and we have item 1A, San Gabriel Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District.

Good evening, Mayor, Council members, residents, and of course, our Parks staff.

Joseph Leon, I am the city's representative on the San Gabriel Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District.

It is my pleasure to introduce District Manager Jason Farned who is going to make a presentation and we'll be here to answer any questions.

All right, good evening everyone. Thank you Trustee Leon for the introduction, Mr. Mayor and Council for this opportunity to give you an update tonight. Tonight I want to talk about mosquitoes and we can advance the slide there. Mosquito is the most deadliest creature and that's not an exaggeration. Mosquitoes cause over 1 million human deaths every year due to the transmission of mosquito-borne disease, diseases like malaria, West Nile virus, dengue, and Zika. Here in Southern California, the threat of mosquito-borne disease is not as high as in some places in the world,

but the mosquitoes here still can spread disease,

and it only takes the bite of one infected mosquito to cause a local outbreak. Next slide.

There are a lot of different types of mosquitoes in California, and different mosquitoes spread different diseases. And so let's talk specifically tonight about the mosquitoes here in Monterey Park that create a risk of disease. On the left, we have Culex mosquitoes. These are the most common mosquitoes in our area.

They are active at dusk and dawn, and they are capable of transmitting West Nile virus.

West Nile virus is the most predominant mosquito-borne disease in California,

and it's endemic in the state, which means that it's always present in the environment and it's not going away.

West Nile virus presents flu-like symptoms for one in five people infected. Less than 1% infected will experience severe neurological symptoms, resulting in hospitalization and sometimes death.

And we'll talk a little bit more about West Nile virus in just a minute.

On the right side of the slide here, we have Aedes mosquitoes. And these mosquitoes are invasive to California, and they first arrived in 2011. And they are extremely aggressive biters. They bite aggressively throughout the day, and they're now responsible for most of our biting nuisance.

So if you've all experienced a lot more mosquito bites recently, it's really because of these guys.

They are also capable of spreading diseases that historically California has not had to worry about,

tropical diseases like dengue fever, Zika, and chikungunya.

And so the good news is that at this time, there is no local transmission of any Aedes-born disease, meaning that our local population of mosquitoes are not infected. Next slide. But local transmission will occur when an infected traveler picks up the virus somewhere else and brings it here, exposing our local mosquitoes. And so the district routinely tests Aedes mosquitoes for these diseases, and we work closely with state and county health departments who share information about infected travelers. And this will help us quickly identify local transmission and work to prevent widespread infection. So now let's talk a little bit more about West Nile virus. As I mentioned, it is the most predominant mosquito-borne disease in California that we face, and each summer we detect it throughout our entire region. And so here are some data for context. In 2022, California reported that over 3,000 mosquito samples tested positive for the virus. In our district alone, we found 165 positive mosquito samples throughout the region. And this year, to date, in 2023, we've reported over 247 samples.

So this year, we have quite a few, we have a lot more virus in the environment than we did last year.

In 2022, there were 221 cases reported statewide, human cases reported, resulting in 15 fatalities. And so West Nile virus has been detected this year in mosquitoes here in Monterey Park. And this means that the virus is active in the environment between birds and mosquitoes. And so the risk for human infection is elevated, and so residents should be mindful that when they're spending time outdoors and take precautions to prevent mosquito bites. Next slide. One of the most important things to remember is that mosquitoes grow in water. In fact, if there's one thing I'd like you to take away from this presentation today, it's this, that mosquitoes need standing water to lay their eggs and grow. And so if we eliminate the sources of standing water they need to survive, we can significantly reduce the population. As you can see in this slide, a bottle cap is enough water to attract and grow mosquitoes. So getting rid of standing water is a shared responsibility, and the district counts on residents and business owners and community leaders to all do their part. Next slide. For our part, the district uses an integrated vector management program to ultimately reduce mosquito populations and prevent disease. So integrated vector management is data-driven, multi-pronged approach that includes surveillance, public education, and control strategies. So our surveillance department is made up of scientists and field entomologists that collect mosquitoes from over 80 traps throughout the district. They measure abundance and test samples for the presence of disease. They also analyze critical data that they provide to our other departments to ensure the most effective use of our resources. Our communications department is made up of credentialed educators, content creators, and outreach specialists who participate in community events and fairs and provide essential information to residents and conduct curriculum-based classroom programs for students. And then our operations team works in the field to find and eliminate standing water, consult residents about mosquito exclusion and bite prevention, and perform chemical and biological control treatments. Next slide. We also have some innovative technologies on the horizon, specifically in the field of sterile insect technique or SIT, and these methods use sterile male mosquitoes to crash local populations. So SITs have been used in the United States and around the world since the 1950s to control insects. It's been used here in California since the 1990s to control the Mediterranean fruit fly. And there are three different methods to produce sterile male mosquitoes in the lab, irradiation, a bacteria called Robocchia, and gene editing. And all three of these methods are currently being developed and tested throughout the United States and around the world. And as the technology becomes more accessible, we will be considering these tools for our toolbox.

Next slide.

So in the meantime, mosquito repellent remains the most effective way to prevent mosquito bites and protect yourself from mosquito-borne disease. It's very important, so I will repeat that. Mosquito repellent remains the most effective way to prevent bites and reduce disease. So we encourage residents to repel mosquito bites safely and effectively using a repellent with one of the four CDC-recommended EPA-registered active ingredients. Oil of Lemon Eucalyptus, DEET, picaridin, or IR3535. And you can find these active ingredients on the front of the bottle. And so in conclusion, we remind everyone to tip, toss, and protect. Tip stagnant water from containers weekly. Toss unwanted and unused containers so they don't fill with water. And protect yourself from mosquito bites using EPA-approved insect repellent.

If residents would like to get more involved with their own neighborhoods, engage their neighbors, We have a neighborhood watch type program called the Bite Back Champions, and you can find more information at bitebackchampion.org. And for more general information and resources, please go to our website at sgvmosquito.org.

And in the next couple of weeks, we're hoping that temperatures will fall quite dramatically, and so hopefully that will take care of the mosquito problem for this summer. We're expecting the season to wrap up in the next month or so, so hopefully your residents will be seeing some relief very soon. Thank you very much, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you so much for that presentation.

It's definitely been a very hard season for mosquitoes. But any questions from Council?

Council Member Lo? Yes.

Typically, is the peak mosquito season around summertime to fall? I mean, right now it's October, but it's still pretty warm.

So is around, like, July to now peak mosquito season typically?

Yeah, so our culex generally peak in June and July, and then the 80s mosquitoes, which is the problem you're probably most seeing now, generally peaks in August and September.

So the different species kind of peak at different times of the year. But lately, like over the...

to see them well into October and November, which is, you know, different than from a decade ago or

so when it was much shorter. And does it make a difference if it's like a wet year versus a dry year? Like, you know, everyone, you know, this year doesn't lack observation and commentary that this is a wetter year than past year. And is there a correlation between mosquito spikes and the

weather? Yeah, that definitely plays a part. The biggest impact is temperature. So we're looking at nighttime temperatures below 60 degrees don't really support mosquitoes. So once we see the nighttime temperatures drop below 60 degrees consistently night after night, the mosquitoes have a harder time to survive. But once the temperatures reach over 60 degrees during the night, the more water there is, the more mosquitoes there will be. And so not only the really wet spring helps contribute to our mosquito season this year, but we've also had quite a few summer thunderstorms periodically throughout the summer that are just adding just enough water to keep

those populations high. Thank you. Any other questions from Council? Mayor Portempoin?

We'll appreciate the update on this. I just want to make sure, I think we did, for staff, we included some of this information in the Cascades and in other avenues, right, and as we prepare for next season, in a few months, hopefully not too soon, to make sure we continue to do that and in language as well.

Thank you so much. And I did have one last question. The Bite Back Champion Program, do we have any already in place in Monterey Park that you know of?

Oh, I'm not sure off the top of my head. I can look that up and get back to you. But yeah, if any resident wants to head that up, they would reach out to us and we would give them all the materials and resources to reach out to their neighbors and they host something at their home or at

neighborhood park and they can rally their neighbors. We find that when the residents do it, their neighbors and their community is much more receptive than

we reach out. So it's been a very successful program so far. And I'll get back to you with the participation from this city. Okay, excellent. And then the information

that is shared for the Bike Back Champion program is the similar information that you presented to us? Yes. Yep. Excellent. Thank you

so much for that information. Thank you for being here tonight. You're welcome. Thank you all. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, just to note, we did do a press release on this item. The information is listed on our website. And we did add a link on our GoMPK app. So under the applet section, it's the first item right now currently because we understand it's a hot topic.

So thank you for that.

And we do have it on our website for more information.

Thank you.

Thank you for that. Mayor Portem.

with one of our superintendents here for one of the school districts that served I don't know, I wonder if we have shared this or if they are already sharing this kind of information with students through their packets that go to families. If we can connect those if that's

not already kind of a connection. Noted.

Thank you. Thank you.

We'll go ahead and jump to

item 1B which is the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments

update. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening. Hi, everybody. My name is Mackenzie Bolger, and I'm a senior management analyst at the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments. We're also sometimes called the COG, so I'll be using that name throughout my presentation. I want to just take a couple moments of your time this evening, and thank you so much for that time, to share a little bit more about what we do at the COG and how we can be of service to the city of Monterey Park. So the San

San Gabriel Valley COG is a regional government agency that's comprised of the 31 cities in the San Gabriel Valley, as well as the unincorporated communities in the supervisorial districts of 1 and 5, and then three water districts as well. I am so sorry. We can go to the next slide. Thank you. So the work we do at the COG can be encapsulated into four main priorities, which are meeting common needs, providing local answers, improving quality of life, and putting neighbors first. So I'll go into a bit more of these in the following slides. Next slide, please. All right. So while each city in the COG is certainly unique, many issues and concerns are the same, whether that be addressing affordable housing needs, complying with state laws relating to edible food recovery, or managing our natural resources. We've been glad to work with the city of Monterey Park on our food recovery program, both supporting compliance with Senate Bill 1383 and with helping recover extra edible food to redistribute to food and secure community members across the San Gabriel Valley. Monterey Park has also been participating in the Affordable Housing Incubator Program through the San Gabriel Valley Regional Housing Trust, and we're glad to have Mayor Pro Tem Wong serving as an alternate on the trust. Next slide, please. At the COG, we work to secure state and federal funding to support local projects and programs to address specific community needs. So some of these projects include our safe, clean water program, scientific studies, and the transit feasibility study, both which Monterey Park has been participating in. Next slide. We're also highly committed to enhancing the quality of life in the San Gabriel Valley through focusing on health, safety, and community well-being. Monterey Park partners with us on our GoSGV electric bike share program and our home and public energy efficiency programs, public agency energy efficiency programs through the Southern California Regional Energy Network, which helps residents in the community save energy and money at home. We do a lot of work to improve transportation safety and efficiency as well and are glad that Councilmember Lo is participating on our transportation committee to support these initiatives. Next slide. Finally, we really believe in prioritizing our most vulnerable residents in the San Gabriel Valley and supporting access to homes and jobs. And so some of these programs include our tiny homes, bridge housing, and our revolving loan fund. And we also have a workforce development program called SGV Works and have recently launched a broadband needs assessment to support the needs of workers in the San Gabriel Valley with Internet access. last slide or next slide no it's not the last slide next slide um we're also really excited to share that one of our biggest accomplishments in 2022-2023 was securing 74 million dollars to support projects and programs in the san gabriel valley so that's 74 million dollars to support the health well-being and vitality of san gabriel valley communities next slide So using those funds, we accomplished a lot of different projects with exciting outcomes, some of which include serving 2,800 clients through our homelessness programs, breaking ground on the 5760 Interchange Improvement Project, and developing 105 tiny home units for families and individuals experiencing homelessness. Next slide. So looking ahead, we have some more capital improvement projects planned in Turnbull Canyon and in Montebello, and we aim to complete our transit feasibility study. We're also piloting our food recovery hubs in Montebello, Pomona, and Monrovia, and Monterey Park has been really helpful in supporting these efforts as well. Next slide. Also looking ahead, we're hoping to surpass some of our goals around energy efficiency for residents and also completing construction of the Diamond Bar golf course projects. We have some exciting things coming up. All right, now the last slide. Okay, so hopefully that's been helpful in sharing some of what we do at the COG. We're here to assist and advocate for the cities in the beautiful San Gabriel Valley, including Monterey Park. My email is here on the slide, but I'm also happy to answer any questions now or at a later

time if that works for you. Thank you. Thank you so much for that presentation and for sharing a lot of the projects that you already doing. I know later tonight we're going to be honoring a local here, a teacher who actually is working to start a food pantry. So we'd love to see how we can connect you two together to make some of that happen at one of our local elementary schools.

Absolutely. Any questions or comments from Council? Sure, Mr. Mayor.

McKinsey, good to see you.

And again, just thank you for all the work that the COG does. You know, I recall when I was representing Monterey Park on the COG when I was an alternate for then Councilman Peter Chan was a regular member. but I participated in a lot of meetings, and especially that year when we were doing redistricting,

regionally as well as locally, you did a phenomenal job in helping us navigate,

understand the process and also the impact of the census. And also just thank you for continuing to do the trying the feasibility studies. I know this city last year, especially when Metro was vetting different busway and light rail alternatives,

you know, I mean, we were interested.

I was hoping that one of the proposals that ran through my product would have gone through us, but I know ultimately Metro chose a valley boulevard alignment. But nonetheless, we are an important hub in the region given our proximity to several Metrolink, Metro, E-Line, as well as bus routes, bus that run through Carvey and definitely we want to stay engaged. And finally, the picture of the tiny home, was that the Baldwin Park, tiny home village in the slide?

It might be. It would either be Baldwin Park or Montebello.

Okay, okay.

Okay. Well, myself, I had the opportunity to actually stay in a tiny home that when it was before the grand opening when they wanted people in the community to just see what it's like to stay in a tiny home as well as learn about the investment and what is necessary if we're going to really provide, you know, bridge housing for those who are homeless.

And so just thank you for working with Barnes Park and Montebello and, you know, making sure that we have a voice in the county regarding this important issue of homelessness.

Great. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Any other questions from Council? Mayor Portempoise?

No real questions. Just wanted to thank you and appreciate everything the COG is doing. I know Ricky Choi, who's the Director of Government Relations for the COG, is in the audience as well, and the Monterey Park resident. appreciate everything the Cog does so much to help bring the 20-something odd cities in the San Diego Valley together to really work together and to find efficiencies and to coordinate all of our efforts so appreciate the role that the Cog brings and does to make sure that we're doing the work that we need to do from a regional perspective to address these regional problems but also wanted to thank the Cog for assisting us in partnering with the city on our inclusion housing ordinance analysis that's going on so looking forward to the results of that coming back and just a small example of the resources that COG brings to the cities that are members so appreciate that and look forward to serving went to my first board meeting as an alternate for the Regional Housing Trust looking forward to more of that to come in terms of building and addressing the housing crisis that we're experiencing here in the region so thank you so much for all your work and please pass it on to the rest of the staff look

for a strong partnership going forward. Thank you. Yes, I'll definitely relay that back.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Good evening.

We're going to go ahead and jump to item 1C, which is the Latin Restaurant Association and the Southern California Gas Company micro-grant presentation.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and Council Members.

This is your Economic Development Manager, Joe Torres. I stand before you with great pride to introduce two exceptional organizations that share the goal of strengthening our communities and supporting our local businesses, the Southern California Gas Company and the Latin Restaurant Association. The Southern California Gas Company cares deeply about the health and livelihood of our communities, and one of its missions is the commitment to provide small business grant programs that address the unique needs of our neighborhoods and help bridge the equity gaps that often exist with minority-owned businesses. The Latin Restaurant Association is a nonprofit organization that supports and promotes restaurateurs, small businesses, and the entire Latino restaurant community to ensure that equitable economic growth of the Latino sector while providing a global, all-inclusive platform. And thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Thomas Wong, for connecting us with these two wonderful organizations. These two remarkable organizations have teamed up to create the Micro Grants for Restaurants program, which provides $2,500 grants to small restaurants struggling and needing help across the Southern California region during these difficult economic times. I'm proud to announce that these two community-driven organizations will present $2,500 grants to three of Monterey Park's local restaurants tonight. Please allow me to introduce Lili Rocha, the Latin Restaurant Association Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director, and Julia Emerson, Senior Public Affairs Manager for SoCal Gas.

Good afternoon, City Council. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here. My name is Lily Rocha. I am the executive director of the Latino Restaurant Association. Mayor Pro Tem Thomas Wong, finally, so happy to finally meet you in person again. Yes, we are an organization that is not only open to Latino restaurants, but it is open to everyone. Thus, our partnerships with the Thai Restaurant Association and also Korean Association, Korean owners of restaurants. Monterey Park. And so, very excited to be here. We are, we have partnered with SoCal Gas and Julie Emerson will tell you a little bit more about that. Again, we hope to partner in the future with the City of Monterey Park with regard to these grants. This was a special program that we did this year and just went phenomenal. Thank you very much for putting it out to your residents and issuing a press release. That was very helpful. And we hope to partner with the city of Monterey Park. again in the future with the city of Monterey Park. Thank you so much. And I'm introducing Julia Emerson from SoCal Gas. Thank you.

I'm very glad to be here. I am indeed Julia Emerson and I am your new Helen Romero Shaw. Oh. Okay. Helen Romero. Oh, she gets a hand. She gets a hand. She was our representative here

for I think 41 years and I do not plan to equal her record but I will do everything I can to be almost as good. And so thank you very much. I'm very happy to be here in Monterey Park today, especially because it is a city known for such fine restaurants. And, you know, when you think of a good place, where are we going to go on Saturday night for a great restaurant? Let's go to Monterey Park. That's what I would say. I want to thank the Latino Restaurant Association. They've been such great partners on this program. And this is part of a much larger effort of the Southern California Gas Company and utilities in California, restaurant associations in California, part of a much larger effort to help our small restaurants especially. And, of course, Monterey Park has three winners that will be receiving a giant plastic check tonight. I also want to before I call up our first winner I would like to also thank your city staff Mr. Joe Torres your economic development manager and others have been wonderful to work with and we're very privileged to get to be able to do this so now I would like to call up our first restaurant winner if the giant plastic check could be made available please now don't use it in an ATM

I'd like to call up Michael Kim of Kokoro Japanese Restaurant. Is Michael Kim with us tonight?

Here he comes.

Would the council members care to join us?

If the council can join us.

And we have a certificate of our own that we'd like to present to Kokoro Restaurant.

Okay. Am I doing this and you're acceptable? I didn't know there was this.

I'm going to be a nice one. Oh, yes! I'm going to call it. Thank you. Thank you.

the city to the Coral Japanese Restaurant.

And I wanted to share actually that, thank you, I wanted to share that this is actually

one of my favorite spots of my family and I go to.

It's really close by our home.

So I just wanted to share, we almost go on a weekly basis, and I see Diana up there. She's always there serving with a happy smile, so I appreciate you being here as well. But we have a certificate on behalf of our city as well. It reads, the Monterey Park City Council hereby extends our sincere congratulations as a recipient of the Latin Restaurant Association and Southern California Gas

Microgrants for Restaurants Program.

The generous grant of $2,500 will help provide you with the resources needed

to thrive and grow.

And we thank you for opening here in Monterey Park.

Thank you so much. Thank you very much.

Yeah, if we can take just a quick picture, yeah.

Yeah. Oh, the check is quite more. I know.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

And then you want to do your next one? Oh, you have yours. We can put a council if you stay on this side, yeah.

And now we have our second winner. Don't go too far away.

We'll do some photos at the end with all.

And now I'd like to call up Kulian G from the Midojo Dumpling House.

This is at 306 North Garfield. This is on Garfield.

More bright colors. It's a good sign.

Thank you, thank you.

Oh, let me grab the other certificate.

Thank you.

We have one more certificate on behalf of the city.

And it reads, the Monterey Park City Council hereby extends our sincere congratulations as a recipient of the Latin Restaurant Association in Southern California Gas Microgrants for

Restaurant Program. Thank you so much for opening here in Monterey Park, and we wish you so much luck.

Here's our certificate of appreciation. Thank you so much for being here tonight.

Please mute.

Congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you so much. Oops.

Put it back in.

Thank you. Thank you. We have one more.

All right. Last one.

Thank you. And now I'd like to call up our third and final winner

from Monterey Park, Mondullo Restaurant, Jenny Kim. Can you join us down here, please?

Mondullo Restaurant is at 1975 Portrero Grande Drive.

Thank you. And our city also has a certificate here for you of appreciation for Manduyo.

It's also one of our favorite restaurants, Korean food.

It's also in San Gabriel at the Blossom Market, if you haven't had it.

but come to the one in Monterey Park

thank you congratulations thank you

thank you this has been a lot of joy it's been a lovely evening do we want to have all three come

up or is it time yeah and actually we also have uh certificates of appreciation for socal gas

and for the latin restaurant association uh who let latino latino restaurant association uh for

their um work with micro grants to help restaurants not just in monterey park but throughout this area so we appreciate you and we thank you and we have certificates of appreciation if councilmember you can help me out here and

mayor pro tem wall can help me as well

let's switch them thank you so much

Thank you so much.

Let's give a round of applause to the Latino Restaurant Association and SoCal Gas, and also the restaurants who are here.

Thank you, Manduyo and Cocoro. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and Council Members,

we come to the best part of the presentation in appreciation, as a token of appreciation, of all three restaurants to our city and to our city council members. They would like to offer a sample of their menu to each of the council members from all three restaurants.

Thank you.

Wow, thank you.

Janice, which is this from? Where is this from?

Oh, every one of them combined.

Okay.

We're going to do it during the break, I think.

So enjoy. And again, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Any questions or comments from Council?

Mayor Potemwong?

I just wanted to express my appreciation for the Latino Restaurant Association, SoCal Gas, and our staff for helping to facilitate this program. Congratulations again to the three winners. I hope that this program will continue and appreciate the several years now of this program supporting local restaurants throughout the region, particularly during the pandemic when many were hit very, very hard when they couldn't serve people in their restaurants. so this has been a lifeline this kind of program and this program in particular has been a lifeline for a lot of restaurants throughout the state so appreciate the work that went into this the funding that comes out of this and best wishes to the three restaurants and all the other restaurants in Mario Park that really make our city place a destination for many people who want to come

Oh, actually I have a question

before Helen retired

I know we also did a presentation to

the restaurant next to the store of Baltimore Is it the same program, then, that we made the presentation?

Okay, great.

Well, again, thank you so much, as well as supporting all of our businesses.

Thank you.

Thank you, and we look forward to partnering with you in the coming years so we can continue to honor and also help a lot of the restaurants

that are in need here in Monterey Park.

Thank you so much for being here tonight. And we have one more presentation, jumping to item 1D, Inez Elementary School Food Pantry.

we have a certificate of appreciation for Tammy Scorsese

but I'd like to invite Tammy and her principal as well and we have our superintendent here as well if they would come up and in particular I'd like to ask Ms. Scorsese if she would share a little bit about her grant and her plans

in terms of what she plans to do tonight.

Good evening. Thank you for this wonderful recognition. It's a surprise and it's very much appreciated. So those of you who know me know that my passion is service to others and making sure nobody goes hungry, no matter of their status as far as immigration status or their socioeconomic ability. So with Alhambra Teachers Association finalizing their food pantry after almost three years due to sustainability, I was really looking to grow and have this at a local area and so I'm a teacher at Inez and we have a lot of students a lot of families in need and as well as we do in the district so when the opportunity came up for the UCLA grant and I was shocked to get the $3,500 you know based on wanting to start a food pantry so for those of you don't know Inez Elementary is one of six community schools in Alhambra Unified School District. And so we're definitely looking for partners. I know people from the city have already reached out. We have our first community schools meeting at the site at Inez on Thursday, and we're going to just work with all of our partners to help grow. And I know Monterey Park has always been a gracious partner in everything we do. So I'm just really excited about it. So thank you.

Well, thank you so much for doing this and for applying for the grant. We look forward to working and partnering with you. And as Elementary School and Elhampton Unified has already been an amazing partner, but the service and the food insecurities are a reality, not just in Monterey Park, but in many of our communities. So we appreciate the work that you're doing to try to meet that need and to service a lot of our families here who are suffering from food insecurity. So I know that a lot of us feel the same way. So, you know, we'd love to help and partner with you. I know our city's already reached out, and in some ways we can help, and also through perhaps the COG, be able to find some ways and maybe funds to be able to support.

Well, COG has been amazing.

I know they were a huge.

College Partner for the Alhambra Teachers Association Food Pantry. They helped keep that going for the past year. So, yeah. So, I'm excited. There's a lot of opportunities. So. Thank you. Thank you so much. And we invite the council to come down and we have a certificate of appreciation.

I'd like to invite Superintendent Haramio and principal.

Dr. Janis Van. I'd like to invite them. We have a certificate of appreciation for Ms. Scorsia,

with teachers just here at Inez Elementary down the street.

So great to have you here in Monterey Park. We have a lot of amazing teachers here in Monterey Park. But it reads, the Monterey Park City Council hereby extends our congratulations for being recognized as an extra yard teacher by the University of California, Los Angeles, for your exceptional work as an educator at Inez Elementary.

And we look forward to partnering with you and working with you on your food pantry. Thank you so much, Tammy.

Let's give her a round of applause. Yes, she deserves it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And we're going to take a quick break to give people a chance to try out some of the pizza,

maybe a 10-minute break, and then we will resume in about 10 minutes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I wish I could say this first thing I did later. I wish I could say this. You know it's not because I'm not.

No but I trip and I'm not.

I'm supposed to be in some of you waiting now. I just want to put it on.

So it's pretty good. I'm not going to put it on.

I don't want to put it on. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank God.

Yeah, yeah, you don't have to be.

Yeah, just stand up. So they can see you can share support

if you guys are here.

Hopefully you can come in. No, no, I'd rather you can go back. And then we, and then I'll be going to hope for some people to come in. I'll just be, if I have to come in. Yeah, we can, thank you so much for joining us. We're going to say thought, though. college

college college college

college college college college

college college college college

college college college college college I didn't want to miss this.

college college college college

college college

college college college college college college college

college college college college college college

college college

college

college college college college college college college Do you want to do it? Yes.

I used to do it. It was very basic in California. Oh, okay.

Just to meet your face. We're just standing on the corner there. See it?

I think it. When you're quite all in the corner, you're going to point them with everybody. Okay.

I'll just show them my ankle. I don't know what to do. Just hold on. Yeah.

You don't care about them.

And then they'll go to work, right? Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Please enjoy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I mean, I don't know what that's going to happen.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We're going to get started in one more minute.

Let's give people a chance to chew and swallow.

Thank you.

and thank you to Joe Torres for helping arrange this and city staff. I think we need to start featuring a lot more restaurants during our council meetings, I think. Great success. Thank you, Joe.

We're going to go ahead and jump back to staff communications,

and we'll go ahead and start with Public Works.

Thank you, Sean.

Yeah, he still has pizza. It's okay. It's okay. I think I got it all off. Take your time.

I think we're good.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor, Mayor, Pro Tem, and City Council. Sean Igoe Public Works Director.

Tonight I have a presentation on our roadway rehabilitation projects. So next slide, please.

So this image depicts all of the work that we've done over the past five years. This is not just a bond measure, but this also includes SB1, gas tax, and various other measures, such as Measure R, Measure M. So as you can see, we've taken on a significant amount of work to get our roadways back in better shape.

Next slide, please.

This slide here depicts specifically what roadways were depicted in the bond measure. So as you can see here, the items that are here in blue are the ones that will or have been completed as part of the bond. Unfortunately, the items that are depicted in green will not be completed as part of the bond measure. Because costs went up significantly after the bond measure was taken out, we couldn't complete all the roadways that were part of the bond. So, however, hopefully over the next year or two, we're going to start continuing to work on rehabilitating these streets, whether it's done through repaving or slurry work, to continue to improve our roadways throughout the city. And again, we'll use those other measures that I talked about, such as Measure R, Measure M, Gas Tax, SB1. We'll continue to use those funds as they become available to continue to improve our roadways here in the city. So with that, I will take any questions.

Thank you, Sean, for that. Any questions or comments? Council Member Lo? Yes. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Again, Sean, first of all, thank you and your team for just all the efforts and work.

I know the street near my home, which also is a street that people in my district have complained about, Alhambra Avenue. It's great to see the road work done this past week.

So thank you so much.

Out of curiosity, do you think staff will at some point come back to council,

maybe doing another street bond to try and finish the other work given that we know there's a high

demand to get these streets we paved. I mean I think since I've been on council I think that this has probably been the most activity we've seen in probably a decade and it's something that

our residents all have been clamoring for us to do. Yeah no we can definitely evaluate what that

would look like to take out another bond. As you're aware we're looking at another bond for our water projects as well. So we have to evaluate from a financial aspect. But as I mentioned, we will continue to use our other funding sources that we get every year, such as Measure R, Measure M, Gas Tax, and SB1, to continue with our roadway rehabilitation projects.

Thank you. Councilmember Ngo?

Sean, thank you for all the hard work. So I look at a lot of the greens and the blues, and what I will say is for about 10 years since I've been running in the neighborhood, I hear little scatters of the street is bad, the street is bad. I hear all the complaints. So now I'm hearing, oh, they're paving the street. We can't drive here, they're paving the street. So I'm at ease by basically going up to them and telling them, I'd rather hear you saying that we're paving the streets than you're complaining that the streets were bad and were unpaved for the last 10 years. And then they realize, oh, it's just a little bit of patient. Let's just drive safely. Let's make sure we allow time for Public Works to get the work done, and then you're going to get new streets.

Easy work.

So thank you for your team, and thank you for all the work for getting all the streets paved.

Thank you.

We do have a great team here, and I will point out that although we did see some increase in cost, because of the team that we have, they were able to parse out some of the work to get better rates so that we could do more work with the amount of money we had. So we do have a really good team here in Public Works.

Thank you. Council Member, you?

Yeah, actually I wanted to reiterate the street bonds. We did the street bonds at the same time with the pension

obligation bonds. I think at the time it was

the Lost interest rate ever. So we'll be able to actually pay a very low interest

in order to repair all the streets almost all at once within like a few years. But when Council Member Lo mentioned about having another street bond, I think now is not the right

time because interest rate has increased so much so that we may actually wait until maybe another wave or another period of time. But I think

now it's good that at least we can repair most of the street with the street bonds and at the Lost interest rate. And in the future, we can just maintain it. We don't have to repair all the way. So thank you so much for the hard work. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Sean. I appreciate everything the Public Works Department has been doing and on my way here from work in Rosemead was encountering some of the traffic, but from, as to Council Member Ngo's point, from the rehabilitation of some of the streets along the way back here from Rosemead.

I'm seeing it. I know that there are parts of Highlands that are going to be next.

In fact, my aunt texted me before this meeting,

hey, I ran into,

I see the streets are finally being repaved.

Good job. I was like, oh, yeah, okay.

So hopefully this Thanksgiving and Christmas

as the family comes over,

and we gather there will be fewer complaints about uh road conditions in monterey park as they drive through uh because that's what i heard all last uh last time last year so i appreciate your your on a personal level appreciate the work sean that you and the public works part are doing streets in particular on on getting these street repairs done um and i know that there's still more to do look forward to being innovative and opportunities to uh identify other sources of funding to accelerate additional projects that would need to be done in terms of street repairs and maintenance but kudos to the team and I in my old age can't see all the streets here I don't know if staff can share this with the council members just take a closer look on the streets that are going to be repaired and which ones are going to be left out until other funding is identified absolutely oh it's really quick sorry and I know other one of the public comments was on some public works issues. I trust that those will be addressed in terms of the spirit bus routes and schedule and

I believe the...

Sewer laterals. Thank you.

Thank you, Sean, again for that. And I wanted to echo what

Council Member Ngo said that sometimes we just get the complaints and the emails. But I wanted to share with you because I did have a resident that emailed

me and asked

quote, he said, when will the city complete work on the corner of Baltimore and Hellman. The corner has been torn up and barricaded for a week as a senior citizen is extremely difficult to step around the block area and into the street in order to cross. Hopefully it will be repaired soon. I emailed him that same day and he responded back the next day and he said, thanks for the quick response, Mayor, regarding work at Hellman and Baltimore. The barriers have since been removed, allowing for pedestrian accidents. My compliments to you and your city workers for making Monterey Park a great place to live.

Thank you so much.

It's a testament to the great work that you guys are doing within the city.

It's very noticeable. We appreciate it. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Our next staff communication is Recreation and Community Services.

Hi.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor, Pro Tem, and members of the City Council. My name is Alejandra Spinoza, and I'm a Recreation Coordinator for the Recreation and Community

Services Department.

I have a few events that I would like to present tonight. Starting off with Electric Park, we would like to thank everyone for coming out.

It was widely successful.

We had lots of positive feedback from our residents, and even from our internal end, it's always a joy to work that event as well. So with that, we'd like to move on and present some of our upcoming events. Starting off with our Dia de los Muertos community altar from now to November 2nd, we have a community altar at Langley Center. We welcome everyone of the community to bring pictures of their loved ones, and those can be emailed or dropped off at Langley Center. We'll be happy to present them. We have had some community members bring them over, and it is presented on the beautiful display. For those that also don't want to bring by a picture, we also have a section where you can put your name of your loved one, and it's also presented on the altar. Coming up tomorrow is Monster Mash from 4 to 7 p.m. We would like everyone to come join us.

performances by Dave's scale so that one's always like I said widely successful we would like to have families come and join us for the fun. Next slide please. Coming up on October 28th from 9 to 1 we will be having our Monterey Park Health Fair. This is no health insurance is required we will be having a variety of different health scare screenings, prizes, health education, workshops, screenings from anywhere from mammograms to cholesterol screenings, vision screening. So we have a lot of services to offer and again it's free of cost. On October 31st at 1 o'clock we will be having our horrifying HalLoen party at Langley Center for adults 50 and over. We encourage costumes, there will be food, raffles, live entertainment. Again for our seniors we like to have our monthly dances for them. So for this month it will be our HalLoen themed. And lastly on November 11th we would like to welcome everyone to come join us in honoring all those that served. We will be partnering with the American Legion at 11 o'clock for our Veterans Day celebration. Other than that, that concludes our upcoming events. If anyone

has any questions, I'll be happy to answer. Thank you so much for that report and for

all the amazing programming that you do. I happen to go with my family to the dance and not only it was what I really enjoyed about it was just that it was a very family-friendly event so I was very impressed with all of the families that were a lot of the families that were there compared to previous years I'm enjoying the event but also a lot of the new vendors that we had I was a great event and you guys did an amazing job so just wanted to point that out but I'll there anyone else has any questions or comments councilmember go I have a

comment and and I I'm actually gonna call out the library because I've been a

very big fan of the library because we do a lot of community events but what I just saw right now is that Langley has five different events between now and the end of HalLoen so that is a competition and I'm glad I live in the city where we have community centers at Langley and at the library that's serving not only the folks residents in our city but the surroundings cities as well because I know Langley we host a lot of the residents or seniors outside the city they come in they enjoy our city and then they go home and rest but that that is just

awesome news for our city actually council member lou you know i think probably one word uh best

characterizes all that we do at all of the our programs and departments which was coined by our

chief of police it's epic everything we do is epic here at monterey park including our breaks during

Council meetings. Any other questions or comments from Council? Thank you so much. And we look forward to participating in more of these events. Thank you. In fact, I'll be there tomorrow with my daughters. They're all going to be dressed up for HalLoen.

So thank you for putting that up. Thank you.

Before we move on to consent calendar items, yes, we have a report from the City Manager. And actually before we do that and we hear from Carl, I wanted to recognize that Carl's mom is in the audience.

Ms. Karen, if you can wave at us. Yes, so let's give her a round of applause for being here tonight.

Carl assured me that he was not in trouble.

And also to me, Barger, right?

Thank you so much for being here tonight as well.

Thank you.

Okay, City Manager.

Floor's yours.

We actually, thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council, we're actually going to have an update by Diana Garcia, our Interim Assistant City Manager.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Council, Diana Garcia, Interim Assistant City Manager.

I'm before you this evening with some fantastic news to share.

The library earlier this year applied for a capital improvements grant from the California State Library.

and I'm very happy to announce that we received notification late last week

that we received a grant of $1.4 million for improvements to the library. That is big money for the library. So we're very, very grateful to the California State Library,

to Assemblymember Fong, who wrote a letter of support for our application,

and to the Public Works Department, who we've been working with hand-in-hand on this application.

This $1.4 million is going to go towards four projects in the library.

We've got our elevator replacement to ensure accessibility in the building.

Believe it or not, that elevator is coming up on about 20 years old, so it's time to replace it. So we're going to be doing that.

We are also going to be adding an emergency generator to the library.

We know that the library serves as a cooling center many days in the summer.

So we want to make sure that that building is accessible to everybody at a reasonable temperature in the summer with an emergency generator.

We're also replacing some HVAC units that have reached the end of their useful life.

And then we're going to be repainting the outside of the building.

And that is to improve cooling costs so it's special energy efficient paint.

So these projects are going to take place between the beginning of next year and June 30th, 2027. So very excited to share that news and very appreciative of our staff who have helped out with the grant so far

and who will continue to do work over the next few years on these projects.

Thank you so much for that amazing news. And I'm assuming at some point we're going to have some type of big check again, right, presentation. where we can get that $1.4 million. But great news to hear that we're using a lot of that money to update our library. And I'm sure more questions will come up as the time comes. But I know that's something that some council members and I take very seriously. Just as we look at generators, we try to see if we can find some energy.

Yeah, zero emission.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's something we can take a look at.

Thank you.

AND THEN ANY OTHER QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS?

COUNCIL MEMBER Lo? YES, MR. MAYOR. AGAIN, THANK YOU AND CONGRATULATIONS TO THE LIBRARY. THAT IS EPIC.

QUESTION, IS THE LIBRARY REALLY 20 YEARS OLD NOW, THE LIBRARY?

THE BUILDING WAS REOPENED IN 2006, SO WE'RE ALMOST IN 2024, SO WE'RE ABOUT 18 YEARS OLD.

BECAUSE I REMEMBER I WAS AT THE RIBBON CUTTING FOR THE THEN NEW LIBRARY, SO WHEN YOU SAID IT WAS 20 YEARS, I'M LIKE, WOW.

Believe it or not, time flies.

Yeah.

Are there questions or comments? Mayor Pro Temo?

Just adding my congratulations and appreciation to the staff for pursuing this grant. I believe there is a requirement for a local match or local funds to be part of the grant. That will come up, I assume, for budget.

Correct.

When we need to do that. and then just to echo what the mayor said and mentioned around energy efficient and green options for backup generation and HVAC, if we can make sure we look at, in line with our pending soon-to-be-here sustainability plan, to make sure that we look at backup battery and electric technologies for HVAC And other zero emission options to the extent possible and look to our utility partners and others who might have funding available

To supplement some of those costs as well. Yeah, we'll definitely be considering that a big aim of this grant was making buildings accessible and

Sustainable so that will be something that we're looking at very cool

And I'm great to hear we're already looking at paints that are more reflective to help keep the building cooler and reduce the the need for or the load that's needed for the HVAC system to keep the building cool. And as you noted, the library along with Langley Center and some other facilities in our city and our community really serve as community centers, particularly when emergencies like extreme heat hit in the summer. And so appreciate us thinking in that way to make sure that this space continues to be able to serve our community in those kind of emergency situations.

So kudos to the staff.

Thank you. Thank you.

And I guess this goes back to what Council Member Gose said.

We've got $1.4 million.

Yeah, a lot more to do. Thank you so much, Dana. Thank you.

We'll go ahead and jump into consent calendar items 3A to 3J. Council, are there any items you would like pulled,

and if you can specify if you need just an abbreviated report

so that staff knows what to present? Any items pulled?

I'll pull 3C for discussion, 3D for a very abbreviated staff report and some questions, 3F, 3H.

That's it. Okay.

Any other items?

All right. Thank you. So if we can have a motion to, I see we pulled 3C, 3D, 3F, and 3H.

If we can have a motion to approve the other items.

So moved.

Okay. Seconded by Council Member Yu. And if we can take a quick vote.

Approved unanimously. Thank you.

So we do, first item pulled, item 3C, professional services agreement, for a quick discussion.

Is there a report?

Good evening, Mayor Potem and Council Members. Martha Garcia, Finance Director. Next slide, please.

At the September 6, 2023 Council meeting, the City Treasurer and City staff brought to Council a recommendation to award a contract to Chandler Asset Management to provide investment management and advisory services.

During that meeting, Council directed staff to return in October for further discussion, which we're here today. Next slide, please.

So I'm going to try to go as brief as possible about the background of why we're here today.

On September 15, 2021, at a council meeting, council directed the Treasury Committee to analyze external investment management services.

Accordingly, the Treasury Committee requested presentations of three external investment management services. It was PFM, PTA, and Chandler Asset Management.

The presentation requirements included, I'm not going to go through all of them because they're in the staff report, but I'll mention a couple. The historical performance for firms' investment strategies, benefits and hurdles of pooled investment, list of other municipalities served by the firm, and the 10-year growth of initial investment over local agency investment fund, LAF, net of the proposed fee.

There are a few others, but I don't want to make this presentation very long. The next thing we looked at was the minimum qualifications for consideration.

That included, again, there's quite a bit, but I'm going to just go through a few.

The familiarity with all applicable California government codes regarding qualified investments for public entities.

registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission under the Investment Advisors Act of 1940,

financially solvent and appropriately capitalized to fund to provide service for the duration of the contract, and errors, omissions, insurance coverage of at least $10 million, and fidelity bond coverage of at least $10 million.

The Treasury Committee used the following criteria to evaluate the three providers.

Their responsiveness and understanding of the scope of project, the firm experience approach and long-term performance, assigned personnel experience, client reference and overall client satisfaction, and investment returns.

After careful consideration, the Treasury Committee selected Chandler Asset Management to provide external investment management services for the city.

The most significant factors considered in recommending Chandler were Chandler provided the most similar and neighboring clients as references.

Chandler manages over $33.3 billion in assets under management, including over $11 billion for 76 California cities.

They demonstrated significant understanding of the city's investment policy, portfolio, recommendations, requirements, and objectives.

Chandler provided outstanding references.

and Chandler has an A high allocation to U.S. Treasuries,

which have the full backing of the U.S. government and federal agencies.

Next page.

The proposal to award Chandler a contract to provide investment management and advisory service was brought to Council on November 17, 2021,

at which time it was determined that the investment at the time, it was not prudent to invest at the time due to low interest rates.

Next slide, please. So at the time we put it on hold, and then on August 26, 2023, Chandler's analysis of the city's existing portfolio was reintroduced to the new Treasury Committee. The evaluation criteria remain the same as previously mentioned in the presentation.

Given that interest rates are now at an all-time high, the timing for diversifying and investing with an external investment company is opportune.

award the contract to Chandler Asset Management, which brings us to today that we were brought

it back for further discussion. Next slide, please. This slide shows a return on investment for $25 million.

So if you look at the chart, if we were to have invested the $25 million 20 years ago

under the one to three year treasury index,

we would have earned another 734,000 more than we did because it was in LEIF. Had we invested under the one to five year U.S. Treasury Agency Index, the city would have earned in that 20 years an additional 2.9 million more

than we did because we were in LEIF. next slide please

therefore at this time the city treasurer and city staff are recommending an initial investment of $20 million and as CDs mature funds released from the CDs will be invested with Chandler this concludes my presentation Amy Lee our city treasurer

and Mia Correll from Chandler are here for any questions as well

thank you for that any questions or comments from Council regarding this item? I know Mayor Pro Tem pulled this. Council Member Ngo?

Yeah, I guess my question is, how many of those CDs we have that's not maturing but we expect to mature,

but they're based on,

they basically have low interest rates, so these are probably stuff that was done a year ago that we booked a little longer?

They were done about a year ago. We were doing two-year terms. Okay.

I think we just recently matured two.

this in september but those are with preferred bank and it's a local bank and we want to continue

partnering with our local bank it's uh the next one i believe matures uh in march of 2024 i don't remember which one that is but uh it is a Lor interest rate and we plan to move that 245

thousand to chandler yeah if i recall correctly i think all of our stuff is less than 250 000 because of the FDIC insurance issue. But I guess my point is this in terms of guidance. If those CDs have low interest rates, if they're less than 1% or even 1 and a quarter, you can actually just break them. You just don't earn it. You just lose the 1.5%. If you think, and if we did the math correctly based on Chandler's investment strategy, you're going to get more of them back today than if you waited three months.

to get that 1%.

So it's just something for you guys to think about. And I think with Chandler's help, we can get there. But I do know that we have a lot of CDs more recently, which were done vintage this year. We're looking at 3.5%, 4%, 5%. I mean, those probably worthwhile to keep until it mature because you're going to reap some good returns on those.

Correct.

Thank you.

Any other comments? Mayor Potemban?

I would just echo that and make sure we do an analysis for what might make sense. Financially for for a reserve fund. I I understand the Right the the value in having an asset manager for our vital funds It sounds like we did an analysis and 20 million is what we're comfortable with and then as C's mature

I think we have about 10 million and 7.8 million 7 million CD

So as those mature in the next few years that would potentially go into this fund as well Would that have to come back are we authorizing tonight just the 20 million or we're authorizing the contract?

And once the contract has been approved, the Treasury Committee can then, with the three-to-one vote, move money between funds.

And then the status of our funds and where they all are would be reported on the monthly financial plan.

Correct.

Do we...

And I was just noticing, right, $20 million based off of our current... I know in the staff report notes, as of June, we had about $80 million in idle funds. Maybe a little over a million but our current idle funds is closer to 60 I know we've spent some money on infrastructure The last few months it was I'm just wondering if there was any rationale to the two I know that's Lor than the 25. We were talking about a month ago But if there's any concerns on cash flow or other issues if our idle funds are currently much Lor

where our idle funds are

Not the 60 we have 61 million in our portfolio as of the end of this past month 7.8 of that is not idle funds it's it's invested in CDs and the remainder is between LA County and LAF we feel comfortable with the amount of CIPs that we're doing we feel comfortable that we with 20 million and we worked it out with Chandler to to allow us to invest the 20 million and bring it up to the 25 as the

CD's matured because we want to ensure our cash flow is sufficient to cover all of our CIP projects.

So is $25 million the minimum for Chandler?

$25 million is a minimum, but we worked it out with Chandler and they agreed for $20 million.

So what happens, what are the consequences if we go below the $25 million or the minimum threshold?

I will pass that question to

We invite you to come up and

answer some of these questions. Thank you for being here tonight

It's my pleasure to be here. So good evening, honorary mayor and members of the city council and city staff. So there are no consequences. We would essentially have a conversation with Martha I have spoken to management. They are very eager, quite frankly to earn the business of the city of Monterey Park. We believe the additional income added to your portfolio will also grow that asset base. And we can do a break-even analysis on the certificates of deposit. Our initial observation might be just to allow those to mature, and then as those funds mature, they can be swept into the portfolio. But we can certainly do a break-even analysis if we're engaged at the onset of the contract.

Thank you. Thanks. And then Martha for so if we take this action tonight it would be to authorize staff to enter into a contract. Is there a term to the contract or is this just the initial term is three years and then moving forward it'll be two to five years depending on their their services and their standing with the city.

Are there any?

All of our attorney-approved contracts have a no-reason clause that we can at any time terminate the contract.

As do ours with written notice.

What is the written notice requirement?

It's a written notice, and it's a 30-day clause to terminate.

Okay.

And then I would ask, I'm supportive of this, I would ask that at the one-year mark, we do an analysis on the returns that Chandler, the funds that Chandler manages, and just do a comparison with what it would have been if we stayed in LAFE and LACIP and just see how well we're doing compared to not joining Chandler.

We'd be happy to come back in the air and present to Council, Kara and I.

Thank you. Council Member Ngo?

As for me, I just want to understand. So the way the contract is written up, it's basically a one-time waiver from 25 to 20, or it's just a permanent waiver that it's 20 and then it stays for 20. It doesn't have to get to 25 for whatever reason.

We're not going to include a minimum amount.

Good. Thank you. One more question from Council Member Yu.

Just a quick question. So you said the term is about three years. So if we need money in the meantime, can we just take money out in and out?

Well, certainly all of the securities, all of the bonds are marketable, so we can always sell should funds need to be raised and have those to you typically within the next day.

Okay, thank you. Any other questions?

I'm happy to make a motion with the additional, make sure we do an analysis and evaluation of year end.

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

Thank you.

Thank you very much and have a good evening.

Thank you for being here.

We'll go ahead and jump to item 3D and I think we requested an abbreviated report.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members. My name is Stanley Arden. I'm the IT manager for the city.

I will be presenting the contract for the VoIP phone service system.

And I also brought Intellisys.

If they want to come up, want to come up to the podium. They're the vendor, and they're going to be here for answering questions for you guys, if you guys have anything.

We posted RFP 837 for a VoIP telecommunication service for the city on the city website for public information. We also emailed the RFP to eight known vendors who provided telecommunication services. The city received two proposals in total. As part of the selection process, we put together a selection committee composed of various members of different departments. The two vendors who submitted proposals had an opportunity to present to the selection committee. The vendors were able to showcase their product, including services, software, and hardware. based on what was presented the selection committee selected in Telesis as the vendor of choice.

Here in the city, our phone system is currently outdated and unsupported. Our current phone system is over 20 years old and is no longer supported by practically almost any vendor.

Finding replacement parts is only available as used if we could even find those parts. The void system proposed is a leading-edge system, state-of-the-art.

The city will also upgrade the data network switches and infrastructure with power over Ethernet and quality of service features.

IntelliSys will install the programs, networks, switches, battery backups,

and will help us change anything that we need on the network in order to make our phone system work.

We are looking at a, for our first year, we're looking at a cost savings of about $23,000 to $24,000.

And every following year, we're looking at a savings of about $92,000 to $93,000.

Some of the benefits of this would be, includes upgrading a lot of our public safety features, which we currently don't have.

It's going to be a full integration with our cell phones and desktop applications.

The users can basically go mobile on the system from the phone, onto cell phones, on the fly, back and forth.

And, of course, this also will include all the common features such as caller ID, call recording, voice to text, and many more features.

Any questions?

Any questions from Council? Mayor Potempo?

Thanks, Stanley. Appreciate the effort.

It sounds like it was a very complex endeavor. You kind of touched on in your staff report how some of the comparisons to our current system. It sounds like we are saving,

we would, transitioning to the system would save us money on an annual basis, which is great.

And I appreciate that information.

Can you just talk very briefly,

I understand our current telephone system is outdated and very old. what the new system in terms of benefits, in terms of operability and those functions will be for staff?

Basically, our current system, basically, it's only for making phone calls. It doesn't have a caller ID. It doesn't have any new features. The new system would be greatly used, for example, for law enforcement. Our detectors are able to make recordings. Something as basic as caller ID could be used if someone causes a bomb threat We'd be able to see who called right now. We cannot do that and then of course the cost savings is also a big benefit and And I don't know if they would like to add anything of some of the features that the system would bring on

Good evening, thank you for allowing us to be here. We appreciate it so the system is very versatile and gives the city staff the ability to be mobile if needed and have a mobile EOC if needed if for whatever reason this any of the city buildings were unavailable staff could move to any other site in the city and still make and receive phone calls as if they were sitting at their desk it gives people the ability with a laptop or other computer to have the exact same experience at home or at another site as they do at their desk. It has state-of-the-art E911 features for alerting and other safety for first responders, as well as the ability for them to stay mobile and be on the phone system in the field. Thank you.

I'm not even able to access, say, the phone system to check voice messages, things like that.

I can't even do that under the current system?

That is correct.

If you want to do that, you have to be on site to do that. Oh, really? Yes, sir. Wow. Huh.

So does that mean during the pandemic when a lot of, well, say staff were working remotely, then that meant that they had to come into City Hall to hear messages from constituents or customers who had questions then

or were seeking services.

Our city didn't work remotely for very long. I think we tried for the first six weeks but came back. At the time, Stanley wasn't employed here, but I was here.

We were able to have our water line, for example,

to go to a separate phone, but other than that we didn't have the capability.

So basically what this will do is allow, I mean should there be an emergency or perhaps someone from Public Works has to check on say a sewer line that's broken, they would be able to remotely then access phone messages or even remotely access the server for files

or any programming.

That is correct. With this system they would be able to do that. They would be even able to if someone calls their office line they could pick it up on their cell phone.

Which we can do now. Correct. Right now everything has to be on site and that's if our base mail is operational because as of right now, only a certain amount of people can check their voicemail at the same time,

if not the system does go down.

I'm surprised we didn't do this sooner. That's correct.

Any other questions? Mayor Portemont?

No, I appreciate that.

This is very enlightening, and I think to Councilman Rouleau's point, it sounds like we probably could have used this functionality a few years ago, at least.

But I appreciate that we're doing this now.

on, right, since the phones going forward will work over Internet

as opposed to actual regular phone lines, are there, I assume there are additional cybersecurity concerns

with operating this kind of system, and I assume we have thought through those and will be thinking through those.

Can you just talk about how those are addressed with this technology?

So the system does have state-of-the-art encryption.

So it usually comes down to, with most cybersecurity, the end user,

keeping a strong password for their system.

But as far as accessibility to the system, it is fully encrypted. Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

So if there's a motion.

I'll make a motion to approve.

Is there a second? I'll second it. Seconded by Council Member Lo, if we can take a vote.

Approved unanimously. Thank you so much.

And thank you for being here tonight and for fielding our questions.

Thank you. You have a good night. We'll go ahead and jump to item 3F.

Very abbreviated.

Abbreviated report, Ms. Serrano. Thank you.

Will do. Good evening. I'm Jessica Serrano, Community Development Director,

and with me is Joe Torres, our Economic Development Manager,

who will be providing a brief presentation.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and members of the Council.

Again, this is your Economic Development Manager, Joe Torres.

Tonight, I stand before you to present the 2024

for downtown business improvement district or bid budget planned initiatives and annual report this report signifies the culmination of diligent efforts from the bid advisory committee and or bid act in our downtown businesses we have here tonight our the vice chair of the bid act

mr jean chang the bid act commissioners develop and approve the 2024 planned initiatives

annual report and bid budget on September 19, 2023.

The BIDAC commissioners then presented this budget

and annual report to the downtown business owners

at a members-at-large meeting held at El Encanto

on October 3, 2023,

during which the budget received unanimous approval. This transparent process reflects BIDAC's commitment to inclusive and community-driven decision-making. This budget has been carefully crafted to balance the diverse needs and interests of our downtown businesses, and it reflects the priorities expressed by our BIDAC commissioners and downtown businesses. As we move forward, we on behalf of the BIDAC commissioners kindly request the City Council to schedule a public hearing at the November 15, 2023 Council meeting. This will allow our citizens and stakeholders to voice their opinions and concerns regarding the 2024 bid budget before the Council approves it for implementation. In closing, I'd like to express my gratitude to the BID Act Commissioners and everyone involved in this collaborative effort. The 2024 bid budget represents a shared vision for our downtown district's future, which is prosperous, safe, and welcoming to all. We look forward to engaging with our community at the upcoming public hearing, and we are confident that together we can continue to make our city a better place to live, work, and visit. Thank you for your attention, and I'm open to any questions you may have.

Thank you, Mr. Torres, for that.

Any questions or comments from Council? Council Member Lo?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. And again, thank you, Joseph.

I know all of us are probably looking forward to hearing because especially I know for me when we had the meeting, the town hall meeting of our town, our plan, I know I was approached by some businesses about cleanliness along Garvey. And I know that's part of the BE Act's job. And certainly I think that's something that is important to our community. I'm curious and I don't know if this is the right moment or to wait to hearing but

let's just say hypothetically we wanted to extend that VDAC

to beyond its boundaries but beyond Garvey what would be the plus for that? Again I don't know if this is the right time to ask or at a hearing

but I would defer that to our city attorney

Thank you Mr. Mayor

members of the council so the question with regard to expanding boundaries of course requires a vote in a process okay first of all it requires a engineering report which will calculate what the special benefits are for each of the new parcels that would come into the bid back and then it requires a proceeding much like a prop to a team proceeding in order to approve the assessments so in the past I think most have been reluctant to try to either introduce new assessment districts or expand existing ones for a couple of reasons, not least of which is they're unlikely to be approved, but it has happened. My guesstimate in terms of the overall cost for doing that, both in terms of having the report for consideration by the proposed new territory in terms of the new members that would be within the territory plus the overall cost for the election would be in the $50,000 to $60,000 range

to be able to do that.

Okay. I mean,

I bring it up

because

I've recently met

with some business owners who are beyond the boundaries

and I think

what seems to be a common theme is

trash pickup along the streets and

whether or not that's something that the city can look into doing

or whether or not it entails possibly extending the VDAX so that these businesses can assess themselves and also funding services. But again, that's what prompted the question.

Thank you, Council Member Long. Any other questions or comments? Council Member Ngo?

I'm just going to give a shout-out to Mr. Gene Zhang here for being a volunteer for the city for many years and also for serving as the vice chair. I think it's the proper term of the BDAC. So thank you for being here and good seeing you.

Thank you.

Mayor Potem Wong.

Thanks, Joe. Appreciate the report on this.

And I might support moving ahead.

The item tonight is just to approve the future public hearing

to hear from residents and businesses around this item.

But I just had a couple questions on on the budget and the activities of the business improvement districts I know that we

Renegotiator went with a new vendor that is helping to save money in terms of cleanup of the bid area So appreciate staff and the bid and the bid act And moving ahead on that to free up some funds to do other things to help promote businesses and support businesses in the business improvement district downtown down. I noticed in the budget, the estimated budget for next year, there's funding set aside, I assume, from some of the savings from the cleanup service for bid promotion and items there for holiday decorations and other things. But just wanted to see if you could talk about some ideas. I know they're not approved yet, but ideas or opportunities potentially for what bid promotion

could be? Absolutely. That number for bid promotion really is a moving target. At this

point, the commissioners will get together right after the budget is approved, roll up their sleeves and discuss and develop those promotion incentive programs. Some of each

are planning on doing bid wall plaques and window decounts for bid members so that they

can proudly display those as bid members. They're also talking about sidewalk planters enhancements along with bid town hall meetings. They'd like to be more engaged with the bid members this coming calendar year. Also, they were talking about doing a taste of downtown and coffee and donuts with bid commissioners so that we can, again, we can have the commissioners

be more engaged and connected with the business owners.

They talked about beautification grants to businesses and many others.

So that's why, again, it's a moving target. They're not sure if they're going to need all that money, but at least it's there.

Yeah.

No, I appreciate that and appreciate that the bid and the bid act members are working to be innovative in their use of these funds. I know these funds are limited right in terms of what they can accomplish if there's a need and I as one council member would be interested in supplementing some of these activities if it makes sense that I led fund To just help promote the businesses that are in the the downtown area Whether than the bid or not, but the fuller wider to councilman relo's point There's a much larger downtown area that I think needs a lot of support still and if there's opportunities for if there's a need to come to the council to find some additional funding in the budget to support this kind of effort I think I would be for one would be very open to that and then would urge the the bid act members to do as much outreach as possible with member businesses that are members of the bid and beyond if they want maybe join some efforts with the Economic Development Advisory Committee as well to do some work with the businesses in the downtown area and the rest of the city to gather some feedback on what they need and what resources they need and things that might be helpful for them to continue to succeed and find success in our community and to bring some of those ideas and thoughts and feedback back to the council too as we in a few months get into budgeting for next fiscal year as well to make sure that we're working to support the economic growth and vitality of the community and our businesses and our small businesses in particular would love to have that feedback especially as we get into the public hearing to approve this the assessments for the next year and the budget for the bid act or the bid into next year so we just want to encourage innovativeness and and just whatever we can to think outside the box to help support our businesses and to help make sure that our small business community here

is thriving. And then

along those lines, some of the things that you mentioned,

if there are other opportunities to do, go beyond,

I know this takes more funding, but other facade improvements, walkability improvements, and making sure that the downtown business community is integrated into our sustainability plan, because that will have things to do with sidewalks and driving and all that stuff, and our our economic development master plan strategic plan as well and everything else just to make sure that we have an engaged business community as all these other plans are working out in the the city to

leverage the bid act and the edac and the members of the bid to participate in those fully

well duly noted um mayor pro tem wong um and on behalf of our vice chair jean jang um we kindly Thank you and accept your kind offer of support.

We know for sure that our bid commissioners are not the shy type, so they will come to

you when they do need help and support.

We are very fortunate to have our vice chairperson and our new chairperson.

We have a combination of commissioners.

we have some fresh young blood that have new ideas, fresh ideas, fresh perspectives,

and together I think they're a winning combination.

Council Member Yu?

I just wanted to thank you, Torres, for your information. I read the report very detailed, and then they have done quite a lot in a year.

and so I'm very impressed with all the work that they have done all the holiday decorations on the janitorial service

and also I wanted to recognize our friend Elizabeth Yang, the chairperson which is I think everybody knows her and also Jing Tang, the vice chair

and also Josephine Lui and Jesse Lee

and Shin Hu, I mean those are all the board so I wanted to recognize all of them thank you so much for the hard work, thank you

Thank you. Councilmember Lo?

I also want to commend my recent appointee, Zen Wu, who represents Guaylan Needles,

which is the restaurant next to the store ballroom. And I want to thank him and his family for letting him participate. Mr. Wu actually grew up in Monterey Park and went to school here, and his family lives here,

and they own the business, which is Guaylan Needles.

And again, a great example of a local small town family that also has its business here. And certainly we hope that we can be partners to help our business corridor thrive.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments?

I'm happy to make a motion to adopt staff recommendation to approve the noticing for a public hearing in November.

Is there a second? Second. A second of a council member go. If we can please take a vote.

Approved unanimously. Thank you.

So we'll go ahead and jump to the last item that was pulled, which is item 3H,

the California Office of Traffic Safety, OTS, Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety.

I just have questions, so I don't know if we...

Maybe Chief King gives a very abbreviated report.

That's good, because I have answers. Good.

Oh, yes, if you want to just answer questions.

I can explain it real quick if you'd like. Yes, that would be great.

Thank you. Okay. So basically what this is, the City of Monterey Park has a deep history of utilizing available traffic safety grants through the Office of Traffic Safety, a California organization. This is one of our new ones for this year. This is an OTS grant for bicycle safety and pedestrian safety. And what it does is it helps us update our Safe Moves presentation, which is a presentation we take to elementary schools. It teaches elementary age kids about bicycle and pedestrian safety. It also helps us purchase bicycle helmets, which we then issue or give to those kids so that they have a proper helmet.

You probably see a lot of kids riding around without helmets on, and we try to push that because bicycle helmets save lives.

We do that at school presentations, special events throughout the city, and basically that's what this grant is designed for, is to help provide funding for those programs.

Thank you, Chief.

And any questions or comments regarding item 3H?

Mayor Potemois?

All right. Thank you, Chief.

I know we approved the previous item as well, but just had comments that kind of linked both. But for this item, right, the staff report notes, last year we experienced 559 traffic collisions, two fatalities, and that seems like it's a trend and continuing trend upward

from the last few years.

So appreciate the police department going to apply for these two grants to address traffic safety and pedestrian safety and bike safety in the city so I understand and I know you noted in the staff report notes some actions that will be taking if awarded these grant funds which I expect hopefully and hope that we will but I know the city also right prior to my time on the council adopted a vision zero or resolution to right set that vision of zero fatalities zero accidents and a much safer pedestrian and bicycle friendly environment uh physical environment in the city uh for our residents and others that are traveling through just want to see if what other thoughts and ideas there might be that the police part might be thinking through uh besides what's listed here is there anything else we need to do or are there other opportunities we need to take advantage of or things that we can do to help get to that vision

right of of much safer pedestrian environment vision zero is a it's a collective effort and not just from the police department but uh from all aspects of the city especially public works who works with us to help look at safer ways to create an environment where bicycle pedestrian safety is is paramount if you've noticed a lot of construction around the city that has to do with the pedestrian aprons that come on the street from the sidewalk. That has a lot to do with safety. A lot of the traffic signals along Hellman that have been amended to add left turn signals will obviously help us with our traffic safety issues. It comes down to increased enforcement, increased education.

It's a huge project that we've taken on many, many years ago when I was in traffic Like, we were considered the most dangerous city in the state of California for our size for pedestrian over 65 fatalities. We were number one for many years. We worked very, very hard as a city, not just a police department, but as a city to bring those numbers down. Vision Zero is a great program, and we strive every day.

I don't know if we'll get to that point in my lifetime. I hope so. I was the victim of a pretty horrific crash myself, so I understand what people go through after they've been struck by a vehicle. It's something we work on every day, and it's a collaborative effort of all the different aspects of the city.

Thanks, Chief. Appreciate that.

And if there are other, right, I know this grant would fund specific items. One, I would love to encourage, I know you mentioned bicycle helmets and workshops to teach safety to kids and students. If there are ways to, or if there are opportunities to do that as well for seniors and others, particularly in language, because I think there are, I mean, from anecdotal experience, there are a lot of immigrant seniors, not just seniors, but a lot of immigrants in our community that don't understand, right, come from places where the laws are different and the socialization of what safe pedestrian actions and bicycle actions are different than they are here. If there are opportunities that we can take to help them understand how to bike around the city and walk around the city safely to follow traffic laws and crosswalk, use crosswalk safely and that kind of stuff through the Langley Center or other, some of the existing senior housing senior housing complexes maybe we can reach out to them to to host public safety events or workshops and things like that in language as well I think those are opportunities I would love to encourage us to consider I know those aren't may not be funded in this grant but if they're there to the point I made on the other for the bid act I think if there is a need for additional funding out of the general fund for this I would entertain would love to entertain an opportunity to work that in the budget going into the next year to make sure that we're doing more and stepping up in terms of what else we can do proactively to help educate the community and to prepare them for making sure that they're acting safely

in the community as they walk around and bike around and do their thing.

Another thing that kind of stood out to me in the staff report, I just kind of separate from this grant in particular, but it was mentioned in the application.

Does the police department currently have quotas for traffic stops or any of our kind of actions?

No. Our police department hasn't had a quota in the 35 years that I've been here.

It's illegal to have quotas. If a police department does have a quota, their officers will be the first ones to tell them to stop, and we've never had quotas in our city. Citations are something that are pretty easy to find.

I'm not in the traffic business anymore myself personally, but I carry a citation book with me, and I've been known to write a ticket or two when I'm out on the street. So enforcement is one part of Loring the number of accidents and fatalities, but it's just one part.

Your previous question about rolling this out to seniors and other portions of the community other than schools, this grant and the other grants absolutely cover that. And we do offer a driver safety class monthly at Langley,

and we will roll out pedestrian safety classes also, which we've done in the past, because we do have a history of that in our city.

So it is a big part of the education process is reaching our senior community, and we do understand that we need to do that in a language that they understand.

Appreciate that sensitivity and would encourage us to continue that and see how we can bolster some of those efforts, because I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like a lot of people forgot how to drive and walk even in the community during the pandemic. It's not just you. So the more we can do to help right with that education effort and remind those kinds of reminders. I think that would be helpful. And then kind of to your point when we do these kinds of pedestrian and

traffic safety enforcement operations, operations uh do we we typically the approach is to do a warning in education before we cite right

yes just confirming that and we want to we want to change behavior so the officers they're they're they want to change that behavior and there's several ways to do it and it really depends on the individual if you make a traffic stop and the person doesn't want to listen to the explanation of why they're being stopped and the safety involved in stopping for a pedestrian crossing the street or for a school bus that has its stop sign out or for it obeying the the stop sign of a crossing guard and they aren't willing to listen to that back and forth of the officer then maybe a citation is appropriate because that that will kind of help them understand but each operation we do is based on us trying to modify that behavior and a lot

of times that's done through warnings thanks I appreciate that approach that

we're following that approach and then I would just ask that we look if right for some of these operations and education efforts if we can look to there are now emerging nonprofits like active SGV and even API forward movement that are doing work to help educate people about biking safety and biking, being safe while biking, and could partner with us on doing this kind of education effort in language and in culturally competent

ways.

If we look at those specific community organizations that do that kind of work already in the area, and if there are others that we can partner with, even Chinatown Service Center and others, already provide other types of services to at least harder to reach parts of our community to see if we can tack on this kind of pedestrian and bike and traffic safety education

into some of their programming too. I think that'd be great. Absolutely.

But with that, I'm happy to make a motion.

I'm sorry, I do have, sorry. Council Member Lo, go ahead. Thank you.

And again, thank you for that very thorough report, Chief. And again, as someone who voted to implement Complete Streets and Vision Zero, this is something that I think falls in line

with our goals. goals, worthy goals.

I know it's not the scope in this item but certainly I think just a thought into the future especially as we are the council adopting to extend our current bike lane system and

hopefully one day one day one that will be larger and more robust and integrated to the

regional bike lane system.

But I think that probably I've heard comments about it's one thing to have bike lanes but it's another thing to not address some of the safety concerns. And I think that probably something I'd like to see as our policy is that as we are seeking

to extend bike lanes is also how do we implement safety measures.

And again, I know it's always about funding and certainly if we as a council need to look for ways of funding but for example like in communities like neighboring communities where there are bike lanes I see actually modified traffic lights where in addition to crossing for better streams there's also a light for bicycles. And then this way the bicyclist or scooter is also considered when you are programming traffic signals.

And also, I'm having barriers and again, I know costs are always an issue.

And again, if this is something this council should seek funding from Metro or the county or even our own general fund. But, you know, I've seen examples where either some cities have put planters or maybe it's more cost effective. Like I know it's like in downtown LA where I work is that like plastic pylons or plastic poles that, again, you know, I mean, they're not meant to probably to stop a vehicle. but if they're visually so you know if you're driving then to not go into that lane because it is reserved for someone on a bicycle or a scooter. I mean, just something that I think we should probably address because I know even here in the past when we previously voted to extend proposals

because of Metro funding for bike lanes.

TO TRY TO CREATE A SAFER ENVIRONMENT FOR PEDESTRIANS AND BICYCLISTS IN THE CITY.

THANK YOU, CHIEF. THANK YOU FOR APPLYING FOR THESE GRANTS AND BRINGING THESE FORWARD TO HELP MAKE OUR COMMUNITY, PEDESTRIANS AND BICYCLISTS A LOT SAFER IN THE CITY.

IS THERE A MOTION? SO MOVED. I'LL MOVE. SECONDED BY.

OKAY. SECONDED BY COUNCIL MEMBER, I'M SORRY, MAYOR POTENO.

If we could please take a vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you. So that takes care of consent calendar items. So go ahead and jump to there's no public hearings.

To new business, item 5A, the release of requests for qualifications for residential and commercial franchise agreements. Is there a report?

Good evening, Honorable Mayor, Mayor of Pro Tem and City Council, Sean Igoe, Public Works Director. Tonight you have a four-unitem on our solar waste RFQ process. So I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Solvichik Tupan, our Administrative Manager, to give you a brief overview about our solid waste process.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and members of the City Council. Xochitlpan, Administrative Manager with the Public Works Department.

In March 2011, voters approved Measure BB, which adopted an ordinance mandating the City Council award solid waste franchises using a competitive bid process. This ordinance added Chapter 6.09 to the Municipal Code that outlined certain requirements for this process.

Per the Municipal Code, the City Council must award solid waste franchises for residential and commercial services on a competitive basis with contracts not to exceed seven years. The franchises must be awarded based on the Lost proposed monthly rates to the customers. Additionally, the City Council must award the residential solid waste franchise to a single franchisee, but at its discretion may award the commercial solid waste franchise to up to three franchisees. Currently, the City has an exclusive franchise agreement with Athens Services for residential customers, and it has a non-exclusive franchise agreement with both Athens Services and Ware Disposal for the commercial sector.

These agreements are set to expire on August 31, 2024, and with the assistance of HF&H consultants, the City has begun the process for awarding new franchise agreements for both residential and commercial sectors.

The bidding will be a multi-step process beginning with the release for qualifications, or RFQ. Interested companies will have an opportunity to respond to the RFQ by submitting a statement of qualifications The city will then review the submittals and develop a list of qualified waste haulers Qualified companies will then be invited to submit proposals for the city's request for applications or RFA

The city will review submitted proposals based on the RFAs criteria

criteria and Loew's proposed bid and make a recommendation to Council

for an award of contract. Staff anticipates

making a recommendation

to City Council in March

2024 for the start of new agreements in September 1st, 2024.

This concludes my presentation and I'm open for any questions.

Thank you for that. And are there any questions? Council Member

Thank you so much for that presentation. Can you walk us through what would be, as far as you develop, what are we considering as qualified to even apply in terms of a waste disposal firm? Are we talking about experience or coverage of municipal contracts in the area? What is the criteria that we're even developing for a company to even apply if they want to be considered?

So the RFQ does list several criteria for companies to respond to, including the years of service that the company has been in business, other cities or similar franchise agreements that the company already has for similar services. It also has questions about the company's financial status. So there's different items to consider for the company to be deemed eligible or qualified to provide service here in the city.

Does that also include their record in terms of recycling as well as minimizing landfill disposal?

So it has questions or it asks questions about, you know, noncompliance issues with other cities or any lawsuits or things like that or any failures to meet like state regulations, certain questions like that.

Okay.

Thank you, Council Member Lo. Are there any other questions? Council Member Ngo?

Yeah, I just have a very basic question.

So this is pretty much standard protocol because we do this every so many years. And the companies that are involved in this bid process, this is very normal for them in terms of business, right?

Mr. Members of the Council, I'll try to address that particular question.

Just as a matter of history, these regulations were put into place by the voters pursuant to Major BB. So the city council doesn't have the ability to change these regulations. Frequently and historically in this city and other cities all up and down the state, solid waste franchisers, companies, waste haulers, have been successful in having long-term franchises in various jurisdictions. That's a combination of protections under state law and also just for purposes of convenience. The law has evolved certainly in the past 10 years in California, and many cities are going to a more competitive type of arrangement. But Monterey Park was one of the first certainly to have that for voter-approved competitive bid process. And the solid waste franchisees at the time were not happy. and in fact there is a published case on record from 2012 where in the city of Monterey Park was the defendant in one of those lawsuits which challenged these particular competitive regulations. So that's a long winded way of answering your question which is conceivably yes but certainly in Monterey Park yes.

I wanted to follow up just on what Council Member Ngo said

But so is seven-year contracts pretty standard for most cities,

or is the range, or is there just like a range depending on cities?

Historically, some cities have had franchises for 40 years.

40 years?

They've just continued on renewing the contracts and allowing it to go on and what have you, which is why I note that certainly within the past 10 years,

the law, not only on a state level, but also on local levels, has evolved.

But I'm sure many, if not most of you, have been contacted by representatives of various haulers

that are interested in simply continuing on with the current arrangement and franchise.

And that's just part of the business. It's not a surprise to me.

It happens in every jurisdiction.

and first I would caution you to engage in any discussion with those franchisees, but also I point out that that's a common practice because historically speaking there has been this traditional simply extension of the franchise agreement

because that's just historically the way things have happened.

And this city, as I said, was at the leading edge in terms of getting voter approval

approval for this particular competitive type of arrangement. And along those same lines,

how long have we been with the current waste hauler that we're with, contracted with?

This is the extension on the franchises that were originally approved in 2016, right?

So the current agreement for residential services and commercial services is for seven years, and it started back in 2017.

So I was off by a year. Yeah.

Prior to that, we did also contract with Athens Services for residential services as well, and I think the contract was for about 15 years or so.

So we've been with Athens for about 15 years, you said?

Or longer? Longer than that, yes.

Okay.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you. I appreciate the work on this, Sochi and Sean,

in the public works department um so just to confirm this so this rfq is only for trash collection

street sweeping is a separate will be a separate rfb street sweeping is a separate agreement yes

when's the timeline for that rfb or are we planning to have that award at the same time

so the street sweeping is not part of the competitive process solid waste hauling is we actually do have a separate agreement with regard to street sweeping i think athens still has that particular agreement, but it's not a franchise. It is a municipal service that's provided by the city that we're required to provide under state law.

Do you know offhand when our agreement with Athens for Street Sweeping,

what the term on that is?

If I'm not mistaken, 2025, August 2025.

Okay, so that will come in a year or two.

Yes.

On the trash contract, so if firms that want to be on the qualified list to submit an application there are they required to submit both for commercial and residential or can they only submit is there an option to submit for just one

so if they want to be considered for both they would need to submit for both services but though they do have the option to just submit for one if that's what they seek to propose for okay uh and

And then to kind of following on Councilman Rouleau's question on the qualifications

for firms, when I read through the staff report, basically the only real basic qualification

for anyone who's interested is that they have to have three franchises and are operating

pretty much in good standing in the state of California.

Three existing franchises in the state of California.

Is that right?

Are there other very basic qualifications for a firm to be qualified?

So that is one of the criteria, but once we receive the proposals, we would be evaluating the responses to all of the information that they're providing, including financial history, performance with other jurisdictions, and things like that.

And then the so I think you answered this but I wasn't sure so the current contract with Athens and with where for commercial

those were both awarded under the existing measure BB requirements that that was the first time a franchise was awarded under measure BB right?

Correct.

Okay so they they both went through this process already.

Yes. Okay.

into like the qualifications I guess

for I know we've kind of talked through some of the organic waste diversion and other diversion requirements that the states come in right those mandates are starting to hit very soon in the next few years and will hit in this next contract Sean or so she can you talk about how meeting those requirements and

releasing the city of liability if the state does come down, if we don't meet those, or if that's worked into this at all, or what the thinking is on how we're going to address meeting the diversion requirements that the state's mandating?

I can take it. So the city is working with HF&H consultants, so they're experts in the solid waste industry and so they're helping develop the RFP to make sure that we're meeting SB 1383 requirements so the new contract will include components to meet all of the different regulations for organics recycling and existing state

regulations just in diversion and recycling so those requirements we

worked in under the contract yes and then the I know in the staff report in the RFQ document, it talks about getting zero emission and getting or near zero emission trucks

and equipment for trash haulers to the extent possible

that we can work that in given the feasibility as soon as technology is feasible and available for trash haulers and the other equipment that's necessary for executing these contracts and these services, is there a way to work in that language into this contract to make sure that we are we are that the services for those servicing the city for trash hauling that those trucks and equipment are as sustainable and green as possible yeah we can

during this part of the contract for seven years with that size of a vehicle so we will definitely

evaluate that as part of the rfq process and the approval process thank you and then on page 304

right there's a chart of the current uh diversion rates for the different carriers and the different

is class of customer and class of material. And I noticed that it looks like wear disposal

for their commercial accounts

is doing a better job of diverting waste than Athens is.

I don't know if there's any explanation for that or any rhyme or reason.

Sure.

So the data that is included in the RFQ is for calendar year 2022. The city has been working with both haulers to increase diversion rates and more closely with Athens services. So as of February of this year, they implemented some program changes to increase their monthly diversion rates. So the numbers that are more current from 2023 definitely show higher diversion between 40 to 50 percent for each month by sector.

That's good to hear.

And remind me, the state's diversion requirements are 50% for most of these categories.

Is that right?

So the state's diversion rates for the city are calculated a little differently.

They're per capita.

And so the 50% diversion rate that you see within the RFQ is actually one that the city implemented in its contracts to be able to meet that per capita diversion rate. and we've been able to meet it for the last years.

And then we expect the diversion requirement to become Lor, right, in the coming years?

Or we have to meet a higher rate in the next few years, or are we meeting the state's mandate and probably in the clear

if we continue with our current level for the term of this contract?

So with the current monthly diversion rate, We have been able to meet the CalRecycles or the state's per capita rate, but like they're implementing more regulations on organics recycling and diverting as much waste as possible from landfills, we should expect to have higher diversions in upcoming years.

Okay.

I think that's all I have right now.

I have a quick question regarding customer satisfaction. Is there a way we measure or, if at all, the customer satisfaction in terms of our current contracts with Athens?

So we do.

Part of our contract does require for the waste haulers to keep a complaints log that's accessible to the city if we request it. we do also get you know complaints or calls or inquiries to the city regarding both haulers so it is something that we actually track on a monthly basis regarding complaints i'm wondering

if there's a way for the city because i know that we collect waste management dues right within our city is that correct is there a way we can also just to kind of help inform us but also help inform Athens or any future contractors in terms of customer satisfaction within the year even in a simple survey just to kind of also inform us how services are being provided to our residents other than just complaints or whatever you know.

Yeah we can definitely look at how we can do a survey and maybe incorporate it into the city survey to see how our haulers are doing but again to Sotchi's point we do take that in we do communicate with our haulers on a regular basis to ensure that we aren't having an over an abundance of concerns from our residents so but i think for the most part of all the things that i've heard on the both hauler side they are doing a great job at what they do so um you know what can we can evaluate what that would look like to

do a sort of survey for services for our owners i think that would also be helpful for us to just

know and also maybe even helpful for athens or any other um you know haulers to know how residents and businesses feel about their services, especially when it comes to every seven years, when it comes to time to do a new RFQ, that we're looking at customer satisfaction rates

and stuff like that. Yeah, absolutely. Are there any other questions?

Just some quick questions.

So for our parks and city facilities, are those picked up by Athens or where?

So currently, civic facilities are included in our residential contract, which is serviced by Athens.

And then I remember reading that part of this franchise agreement

would be continuing that service for parks on a regular, right,

every day or five days a week or something like that, right?

So the RFP will also include services for city facilities as well.

And then do we charge?

My guess is that we, right, So once we get the RF the applications and it's awarded to the Lost cost bidder Then we would go out to an R or to a 218 process to adjust our trash rates to reflect the new costs for the next seven years, right?

Yes, and then do we charge?

well one do we build in an administrative fee for?

Right managing the billing and the the contract in the franchise or is there?

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, if I can just jump in for a minute with regard to the Prop 218 process. These are private haulers, so these rates are not being imposed by the city, although we will go through a Prop 218 proceeding for purposes of the franchise fee and also to ensure that any of the rate increases requested by the franchise's disease if the city is expected to enforce those against the customers, that will go through a Prop 218 process. This is part of the change in the landscape of the law, and certainly in the past several years. In 2022, there was a California Supreme Court case

which completely flipped upon its head

the method of calculating franchise fees for solid waste franchises. So that is going to be a challenge to the city to be able to calculate what the franchise fee is going to be charged to customers. And that's one of the things that the consultant is looking at right now with regard to how that franchise fee will be structured. Traditionally and historically, every single city and local agency in California has simply applied, for example, a 10% fee as a franchise fee without any real analysis of how that fee should be applied. And the California Supreme Court has said, no, you can't do that. under Prop 218, you actually have to have actual costs associated with it. So to your second part of your question, is there going to be an analysis with regard to the administrative costs associated with administering the franchises and the solid waste haulers? The answer to that is definitely yes, because that's the only way we're going to be able to recover any of our costs.

And I assume the franchise fee calculation will include wear and tear on our streets for trucks.

We're throwing everything in there that is reasonably associated with any of the solid waste haulers, including, for example, compliance with state and federal law with regard to solid waste hauling and processing.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Any other questions? Council Member Yu? I think just a quick comment.

I think I listened it wrong that you mentioned about the Athens service expire on August 31st, 2024, right?

Not 2025. Right, 2024.

So actually the RFP was started October 19th, which is tomorrow, right? We'll send it out.

So if approved, we would be releasing the request for qualifications tomorrow. You are correct. The franchise agreements with both Ware and Athens expire in August 31st, 2024, but it does take several months to go through the RFP process, and then there's also a phase for implementation. For the new contract, should we change haulers? Then they need some time to get everything up to speed to be up in service by September 1st. Thank you. Just a clarification. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions?

I'm happy to make a motion to improve staff recommendation on the RFQ.

I'll second. And if we can take a quick vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you. And so we'll go ahead and jump to city communications, and we'll start with Council Member Lo.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm happy to report that, let's see,

on October 7th, Saturday,

I attended the Pink Patch Car Show put on by our police department.

And yes, it was epic.

But also, you know, it was really great to see a good community turnout

to support the Pink Patch program

to raise awareness for breast cancer

as well as come, you know,

come enjoy what was a great day, a sunny day.

I know there was also a pickleball tournament next door,

and I think some of our colleagues went over, and I know our colleague Vingo played. Good for you.

And then on the 8th, I attended, also with some of my colleagues, the Cambodian-Chinese Association Autumn Moon Festival

because this past month was the autumn moon,

and so I was happy to see, especially post-pandemic, to see these associations again, being able to gather and invite the community to enjoy these cultural celebrations.

also on the Friday 13th, which was also the day of our library gala for our library foundation. And, you know, as was stated at the program that night, it had been three years since we were able to gather for such a gala. And I think that it was great to see the strong outpouring of support for our libraries, not to mention our honorees, our first responders, placing fire, and it just shows how much appreciation the community has for the library and also the people who serve this community. And then earlier today, I and all my colleagues also joined a similar Mike Fong, who presented a $2 million check at Fire Station 63, and we want to thank Assemblyman Fong for fighting to get this appropriation for our city. He represents nine cities in the 49th district, and so anytime, you can imagine all cities are always competing for attention and for funding, and so I understand that this $2 million is actually the largest appropriation the Assemblymember was able to get out of all his cities in the 49th AD this year. And again, just for the audience, remember that our Assemblymember is one of 80 in the City Assembly. So for anyone to be able to get any money, there's no small feat. And so we just want to thank Assemblymember Fong for believing in our city, our fire, and for investing $2 million in our community.

Thank you, Councilmember Lo. Councilmember Yu. Yes, I just wanted to copy a lot of Councilmember Lo's activities.

So we just attend the fire stations. Yeah, assembly. Greatly appreciate Assemblyman Mike Fong, you know, obtained the $2 million check from the states for our fire station 63 remodeling project. As you know, nowadays it's really hard to get funding, so I'm sure Assemblyman Fong has done a lot of work behind the scenes,

especially a lot of paperwork, I imagine. And $2 million can get us started with the design and planning, according to our public works director. I talked to him for quite some time before the event. And we need a total of $6 million or maybe even more because we have the inflations and all the construction costs went up quite a lot. And in order to do the remodeling job by 2027, which is I think we have to comply with the safety requirement. And so we need to work hard to solicit more funding.

Last Friday was our library fundraiser, the gallery. And library fundraiser and also our Women's Club fashion show,

I think the two biggest events in our community. This time we honor our fire and police. And I think this is a very difficult year to them and to all of us with the mass shooting in the beginning of the year and with all the healing in the community. so they have done exceptional jobs

and thank you so much for their service thank you, that's all for me

Thank you, Council Member Yu Council Member Go

I'll just add a couple more things

I think

Council Member Lo missed out

he was there because I know you were there

I saw you there you just forgot to mention some of the events

so the Pink Patch Project

with the cars and then we have Pickleball and Taco on the 7th

On the 8th, in the morning, we did 1010 in Chinatown for the TVA, which is the Taiwan Independence Day. And then in the evening, we had the Mid-Ollum Festival, a late Mid-Ollum Festival for the Cambodian ethnic group, who is actually located in the city of Mai Park. Now on the 12th, we had the Advancing Justice 40th Gala at the... in downtown St. Vivianas. And then I came back and then we also had the U.S. Vietnam General Chamber of Commerce. Oh, that's right. Which took place at the NBC restaurants. Yeah, that's right. On the 13th, of course, we were all there. The library celebration. And thank you to our first responders, fire and police. Great gathering. And you guys were all in uniform. So what else can you say about offices in uniform? Let's see here. On the 14th, we had Electric Park, and I was there in the early evening. I know that when it gets dark, the lights get going, the musics get louder, so I didn't stay as long, but I know a couple of the council members were there in the wee hours. And, of course, today we were blessed to have the California Secretary of Government Operations, Amy Tong, as well as the executive officer of the California Victims Compensation Board attend the Resiliency Center at Service to Park. So I was there with a couple of our council members to host a small tour of the Resiliency Center. And then, of course, this evening, again, kudos and thank you to Assemblymember Fong for always thinking of and being an advocate for a city. $2 million and then it turns out it was another $1.4 million in a recommendation letter I told him point blank earlier

the $2 million

was just the first deposit check we

expect more

so we'll work on it and he's a great guy we'll continue to work with the assemblyman he's done a lot for this community we're really glad to have him here

that's it for me

thank you council member Ngo Mayor Potemwine

Thank you. Attended many of the same events. So don't need to really go over too many of them.

Appreciate just very much appreciation for Assemblymember Mike Fong and his support for getting us funding for the fire station project. Looking forward to closing the gap to make sure we have and can move forward on the full implementation of changing out the fire station on Monterey Pass Road in the coming years.

sooner the better I'm telling the library foundation library

Foundation board appreciate all that they do to help raise funds for the library and it looks like we'll have Some more things for them to just support as well going forward And I know that they were trying to raise money for the bookmobile and other projects the library is prioritizing so Look forward to hopefully additional grant and other revenue coming in to support these other projects that are critical to

delivering services to the rest of the community like other council members attended both the

CCBA and the Taiwan Benevolent Association 1010 ceremonies on back-to-back days on October 7th

and 8th on October 7th they were here at Barnes Park I just want to pass along appreciation to the Parks and Recreation Department and city staff for helping to facilitate that they usually host that celebration event in the amphitheater, but amphitheater is currently undergoing renovations

for seat replacements.

So they were able to move to the grass area

next to the amphitheater,

and they were very appreciative of our staff

being so accommodating to them to make sure that they continue to stay here in Monterey Park and at Barnes Park

because everyone's been going to Barnes Park

for that specific event for, I think, like 30 years or something, so they didn't want to move it.

So kudos to the staff for appreciation. A couple of things I just want to follow up on. I know I asked for a couple of things at the last meeting as well, but I just want to follow up since we approved, the council approved some of the gun ordinances, gun violence prevention ordinances, including banning the concealed carry of guns and firearms on city-owned property.

I just wanted to see if we could get a status report from staff

on implementing signage for city facilities.