City Council Meeting — November 1, 2023

Good evening.

Good evening. Thank you for coming out tonight. I want to go ahead and start with our mission statement. 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 Tamangar, the home of the Gabrielino-Tongva people. We show our respect to the Gabrielino-Tongva people as well as all indigenous people, past, present, and future, and honor their labor as original caretakers of this land.

We commit to uplifting the Gabrielino-Tongva people,

and we invite you to acknowledge the history and join us in caring for this land as well. So I'm going to go ahead and get us started with our flag salute. and we for those who might have not been here before to the last couple council meetings it has been the goal of the city council to promote civic engagement and it's and one of the ways that we're doing so is actually by inviting local students from the many different schools that we have in our community to lead us in the flag salute and so tonight we have miss It's Lucy Cardenas Melendrez, who's going to be leading us in the flag salute. And we'll learn a little bit more about her, but let me go ahead and get the, if we can all stand.

And we can get the color guard. If we can all stand and we can get the color guard.

I would now like to invite Lucy to lead us in the flagship loop.

I'd now like to invite Lucy to lead us in the flag salute.

Place your right hand over your heart. Ready, begin.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Prepare to pose colors, forward march.

!

I would now like to invite the parents to come up and the city I would now like to invite

the parents to come up and the City Council to join me down here as we present a certificate

of appreciation to Lucy.

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

Thank you. When we get the picture, let's get it out.

When we get the pictures, that way we don't have the podium in the way.

I'd also like to share that Lucy is a second grader at Bella Vista Elementary School in my

district, so I'm very proud. And it's also where my wife went to school, so. So, and their, and

your mascot are the dragons, right? Yes, I see it every morning. Very good. So on behalf, Lucy,

thank you so much for being here. You did an amazing job leading us in the flag salute. We appreciate your parents for bringing you here tonight, but you are now a civic superstar.

So on behalf of the city of Monterey Park, we'd like to present you with this certificate of

appreciation, and now you can hold it up, and I'm sure Santa's going to bring you something nice this year I think thank you thank you yes of course well I maybe um just her alone oh Oh, with your- With the mayor, of course. Okay, that was great. Thank you so much. Congratulations. What's your name? Oh, Romeo. He goes to build his home. Thank you so much. We'll come back and we'll- Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Great job. as a teacher it's always so great to start a city council meeting this way

As a teacher, it's always so great to start a city council meeting this way. Thank you so much. And we'll go ahead and move to the roll call.

City Clerk.

Council Member Lo.

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

Thank you.

City Manager and Attorney, do we have any agenda additions, deletions, or changes?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of the City Council. Council, we have a request to move up item number 6A if possible. And then the other item we wanted to discuss is on the open session agenda that was scheduled at 530, item 1A, to be rolled into the consent calendar for this meeting.

Thank you.

And if it's okay with the council, I'd like to go ahead and move item 6A.

I'm sorry. 6A? 6A, yes.

6A up right before staff communications, but we'll go ahead and listen to public communications first.

City Clerk, do we have any public communications? Yes, we do.

First speakers, Carol Sullivan and Bob Gin of the Monterey Park Library Foundation.

Good evening, City Council, interim city manager, and city attorney. We're here just tonight to thank you for all your support for the library gala honoring our police and fire. It was really successful, and it meant a lot to us, and even our Mayor Jose went home with barbecues, you know, too.

And I did have one of our firemen, Charlie, come to my house and pick up his silent auction, which was a tool drill set. So it was very successful and we couldn't do it without the support of all of you. It does mean a lot to us. But while I'm here, I'm going to let you know about the Bonnery Park Women's Club fashion show.

The date is Saturday, May 4th. and our fire chief, Matt, has already given me a model for the show. In fact, he came up to me and told me, I have a model for you, Carol, and I wasn't even thinking about that until January, but anyhow, it is May 4th.

Thank you.

On behalf of the Monterey Park Library Foundation, I just want to thank the city council for their participation in our Monterey Park Library Foundation gala and the city of Monterey Park and all the residents and all those who participated. We had about 320 people attend. We raised a little over $40,000 that day. And I was trying to bid on the barbecue, but Mayor Sanchez's wife beat me out on it. So next time, and I told him, I said, if you invite me over to the house, I'll bring two Tomahawk steak over. We'll cook it, right? But, you know, the funds we use, we're a nonprofit, as everybody knows, to support the library and the programs and buying new furniture and computers for the library. And our next big project is really looking at purchasing possibly a bookmobile for the library in the future. So far we have set aside $10,000 towards the purchase of one. And with the money we fundraise at the gala, part of that money we'll probably put another $10,000 into putting that money aside to help purchase the bookmobile. But we're looking for sponsors for the bookmobile. so that anybody is willing to donate some funds. We're thinking about putting the sponsor's name on the side of the vehicle if possible, with a donation over $5,000. So I think the library can do more outreach in the community and use it for other activities in the city. but I just want to say thank you for the overwhelming support from the city of Monterey Park. Thank you.

And I have to say, I moved here in 1958 from Hawaii, and I've always been in Monterey Park. So obviously I love Monterey Park. I love our library. I love our fire and police. So we have signs all over the house, I love our library and our fire and police.

And it was a good move to move here to Monterey Park. It was different back then, and it was an adjustment for me being from Hawaii and being a mixed nationality. But things have, you know, so much changed, and it's a very, very nice place. And my kids went to school here, and my kids are, I mean, some of them are even retired, and my great-grandkids are now going to school, so that's how long I've been around.

Thank you. And I just want to add one more thing. All the people who serve on the board of directors and the foundation are not paid. we're all volunteers. So thank you very much.

Thank you so much for all the work that you do. And it's because of the work of people like you that we have the best library here in the San Gabriel Valley. So let's give them a round of applause for the work they did. Because all of the proceeds go through the amazing work we continue to do in the library.

Thank you.

And I got to go home with two girls.

So thank you.

Next speaker, Randy Kaye.

Good evening. I love Monterey Park too. I lived here before, now I live across the street in

Alhambra. But I'm here tonight to follow up on the intersection of Chandler and Hellman. It seems a traffic study has begun. A camera was placed by NDS in the morning of October 30th.

The purpose...

Director of the Studies to Examine the Movement of Traffic at this Intersection Under Normal Conditions. On that day and the next, school was not in session, so there were no school buses nor children at the corner to be picked up and dropped off. In addition, many parents either stayed home or worked from home in order to supervise their children. Traffic was lighter than usual. Chandlers in the process of being paved and the asphalt has been stripped. There are signs warning drivers of uneven pavement. People are using alternative routes to avoid these roadways. conditions and those using the road are slowing down as to not damage their cars. Speeds right now are sLor than usual. Construction signs are up prohibiting parking today November 1st and tomorrow November 2nd. There was no construction today and local residents obviously assumed that some work was going to be done on the road so they're parked elsewhere and are using other streets. The 106 bus has not been using this route as usual and Ralph's big rig trucks doing deliveries have also been missing the last couple of days. It would be helpful to choose a time for a traffic study when normal conditions are present, not when school is not in session and the road is in disrepair and construction is in process. Certainly, the results of this study are not going to be valid and the conclusions, therefore, are not useful. It should have been done after the road is paved when speeds will pick up and data will look quite different. The data from the camera that is up now will not generate conclusions upon which to introduce appropriate traffic remediation measures and safety will again be compromised. It would be great for police to be present more often.

I actually like the police.

Citations for traffic and parking infractions can be a source of revenue for the city. I have photos of the following types of infractions. Amazon trucks parking in the red zone on the south side of Hellman and the drivers leaving to do deliveries on foot. 18-wheeled big rigs including Gatorade, Coca-Cola, Energy coming north on Chandler and turning

onto Hellman.

There's a three-ton weight limit on Chandler that is not being enforced. School buses that have stopped to load children have their lights flashing and stop signs

extended from the bus.

However, impatient drivers just pull out from behind the buses and pass them going both northbound and southbound on Chandler even while the kids are boarding. Accidents are not being recorded accurately. There should be a better way to record the number and nature of accidents at this intersection. If drivers just share insurance information, there's no record of the accident. Your constituents would like you to figure out a better way to do this, and members of the community living close by are willing to help you with this, be it cameras or whatever. I attended the Traffic Commission meeting on October the 19th as suggested. It was disappointing. I presented a list of traffic safety problems at Chandler and Hellman, and I was permitted to speak for only three minutes. As a result, I would like to suggest the following,

that those meetings be videotaped,

that residents with a specific public safety issue have a maximum of five minutes to speak instead of three. If a member of the council suggests that a speaker present to another city committee or commission, it would be helpful to communicate that information to the other group. This kind of safety problem is complicated. we have a small team actively engaged to make this intersection safer. During the last week, we've had the opportunity to meet hundreds of residents of Monterey Park, Alhambra, and other local communities. These are people who use this route every day, sometimes multiple times a day, to get to work, come to school, shop at local businesses, or just to go for a walk in their neighbourhood. What they all have in common is that they have to deal with unsafe traffic conditions at this intersection. Invariably, residents have expressed their concern that nothing has been done to date. They are urging you to take some action now to ensure their safety. The community is showing strong support for three-way stop signs

and extending the red zones along Hellman. Thank you very much.

Do we have other speakers?

Next speaker, Nidal Oda.

Hello everyone.

Maybe I have an accent and I hope you understand what I'm saying.

Usually I do something silently, but when something goes over the roof, over my patient,

I make my voice hear widely.

During a few years, I noticed a lot of problems with the city, the police department, all the department and the director, the city manager office, and all of the following. What I'm going to read right now.

I was trying to get more time to speak, but the people they want me to speak to for them, they can't be available. So I have five minutes.

If I can't finish what I'm having right now, I have a lot more things to say.

I want you to give me your attention and time as a council member. We voted for you to be in this position.

Now I will try to start with. Hello, everyone. We the people.

I don't accept and I don't tolerate when any of the public servants do things wrong, especially when they are knowingly doing that wrong.

But they insist on doing that and try to hide, ignore, and behave in a manner against the Constitution and the rule of law.

We the people, we elected you as a council member, mayor, city clerk, and all of the

following hired in the city capacity of Montepal to serve us, the public, according to the

constitution and according to the rule of law, without exception.

the city manager the director human resources the chief of police the officer and the civilian at the police department and all other director of the older department all employees working in

the city of montry park to serve us respect us deal and treat with us nicely in a good faith

in a good manner. Never ever ignore us the people, delays and denied our services,

and answer our concern and request to the best of your knowledge without hesitation, hiding and covering up the truth for any reasons, and for the

benefit of their selves, bosses, or to get any kind of rewards and promotions.

The ones working or behave in a contract with the city of Monterey Park also

include in that. A few years ago, a Ford magazine published an article saying the city of Monterey Park in the state of California, one of the best and the safest

city in California to live in. I am not sure the magazine or their reporter even tried to ask the

city resident before they publish that report or that article. I think they just read the statistic

about that otherwise they will never have published that article at all if they knew the facts.

and the truth about what and took the resident opinion about that. And that's so much more important and more moral than the statistic.

The city workplace and elected officials should be open for the public, serve the public the best way they can.

So I am wondering why the chief of police, the human resources director of office, the city manager, they are not open for the public and it's not easy to make an appointment with them, discuss any concern and why they are afraid of meeting with the public who they are serving.

why it's not easy for the public to make an appointment with them they are always busy

they don't have time for us the public and they call themselves they are working for the public and they don't have time for them in the meantime they are busy hiding in their offices from the

public who they are serving in case they are afraid of the public they are serving they must

and they should quit, resign from their position, and let someone else do the job for the public.

Who are not afraid of the public, who have been hired to serve them.

Time finished. I have 10 pages, and I have another 50 pages.

You can submit your document to the city clerk if you'd like,

but we have to be respective of time.

It's okay, but I don't trust them regarding that.

I want to meet you personally because I have so many incidents.

It showed me that. Okay.

So if you submit your information to the city clerk, we can arrange something.

I don't because I request from her for two years, 10 cases with all the evidence and reports and they don't.

You want them to read it, right?

I'm talking with him. If he doesn't want it, it's okay.

But that's the conduit to give that to them. She's going to give that to them. But you've only got a certain amount of time.

Okay. You want to read it with me? It's okay. If you don't want it, it's okay too. I can take it. That's fine.

And, you know, you can also email me, sir.

You can also email me directly as well.

Do we have his contact information? Yes.

Okay.

Thank you, Chief. Do we have any more speakers?

Last speaker, Albert Liu of the San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District.

All right. Good evening, Mayor, City Council, City Representatives, City Staff, Mario Park Community. My name is Albert. I'm with the San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District. I know we've met a number of times in previous community events and meetings, but now that I've settled into my new position at the Water District as an external affairs specialist, albeit it's been a few months, I wanted to formally come out and introduce myself to everyone. So the San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District was formed in 1959

by the voters of Alhambra, Mario Parks, Sierra Madre, and Azusa. And we are the public agency that supplies supplemental water to the cities through the State Water Project. And if the City Council would like a presentation on water supply conditions in the future, we'd be happy to set that up with you and your staff. But tonight I wanted to highlight a couple of programs that we have for Moran Park residents. Firstly, rebates. I know a lot of people ask about rebates, and so the Water District offers rebates for Moran Park residents. So for residents who are looking to switch out to a more high-efficient toilet or urinals for businesses or clothes washing machines, we have rebates for that. All the information for that is on our website at sgvmwd.com. Additionally, we also have an irrigation controller retrofit program. So through that, we work with our partners, Ecotech Services. So for residents who have sprinkler systems, through Ecotech, they will come out to your residents and audit your sprinkler system and fix any minor repairs. So if a sprinkler is leaking, they'll replace a sprinkler head. On top of that, they will also replace your old spring irrigation controller with a new smart irrigation controller and walk you through the whole process and help you create an optimized schedule for watering your landscaping. Secondly, since 2017, we've offered a community grant program for nonprofits and educators in the community. Last year, we've given about $10,000 to teachers throughout Alhambra and Monterey Park for their Earth Day activities. and more recently we've been very excited to award the Monarch Park Bergemeier Library with $3,000 for their upcoming projects as well so we're very excited for that and of course these grant projects would not be possible without the folks who administer them so I want to acknowledge your interim city librarian Christine and your teen librarian Deborah for all their hard work in it and the junior friends as well since they've been like spearheading a lot of volunteer work for that as well so yeah and the we review applications for the community grant program on a rolling basis we encourage folks to take a look at it all of all the information our rebates and our grant program are all on our website at sgvmwd.com and if anyone has any questions or want to ask us about water water stuff in general all our contact information are on that website. We've left some rebate flyers here at the City Hall lobby a couple weeks ago as well. Folks need a physical copy of all their rebate information. But with that, I look forward to working with you all and continuing our working relationship. Thank you.

Thank you, Albert, and thank you for being here tonight. And please feel free to share those with us, and we can repost those and share those.

Thank you.

We're going to go ahead. I know we pushed. There's no more speakers?

No other speakers.

We pushed some items up and we want to be respective of, I know we have some dignitaries here today. I want to make sure that we get a chance to hear from them. But we're going to go ahead and move to item 6A,

which is the resolution.

We are going to move to item 6A, which is the resolution recognizing Native American heritage month.

! We have some guest speakers to speak to this resolution.

We are tribal-enrolled members of the San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians. My family is from the village known as Subabna, known today as San Gabriel. We are the first people of the Gur Los Angeles Basin, Orange County, and the fourth- We are the first people of the Great Los Angeles Basin, Orange County, and the Fondational Islands. We welcome you today to the land of Tovangaar, the home of the Gabriela Tongva people. We are known today as the Tongva, meaning people of the earth.

We honor and respect our elders, descendants, past, from the present and future. Our history is not well told and not understood by many. Our land, people, and history were impacted by the events that now require reconciliation, truth, and healing. In Native terms, we speak of all our relations. We relate to the land, water, plants, animals, people. We are all connected. Our ancestors lived in harmony with our relations on this land. Our people have lived here since time immemorial. We are here. When you speak about our tribe and people, please speak about us. about us in the present tense. We are grateful for this opportunity to welcome you to our land and to elevate our indigenous voices and provide visibility. Thank you to the council member of Monterey Park and the mayor and Robert Aguirre for the resolution of recognizing the month of November as Native American Heritage Month. We join you today celebrating tribal identity and awareness. We appreciate you vying us here today. We are here at Qashem.

Miha. My name is Mona Morales-Racalde. I'm an elected commissioner for the Native American Indian Commission,

and I'm here today as a tribal member of the San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians. Los Angeles is the home of the largest group of Native Americans, whether it be from Relocation Act, which was forced by choice, or whether this is their ancestral land, which is the case for Ellie and I. This resolution is very important to us because we view it as something that remembers the connection between our land, our ancestors, and to really think about it in terms of recognition of our visibility that we are still here. Many of our ancestors in our previous teachings taught us to work and act in balance with each other and Mother Nature, to act in connection with all of our relations and to be respectful of all beings to this place that we call home.

And that's why we view this resolution as something that's very important. We would like to thank Mayor Jose Sanchez and all of you for inviting us, as Ellie said. And we really view this as an opportunity for time of growth, enlightenment,

for our community at whole, and an opportunity to provide people with the education and awareness that we are still here.

And we look forward to this being the beginning of future partnerships in which our tribe and the city can work together to really increase our visibility and awareness of Native American Month and that we are still here. So thank you very much.

Thank you so much for being here.

in honor of Native American Heritage Month and today is actually the first day

November 1st we have a resolution before us council to declare

Native American Heritage Month here in the city of

Monterey Park

I would like to encourage us and I would like to move

that we pass this resolution

seconded by council member Ngo if we can please take a vote

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

And our mission as a city, if you look up here, it says pride in the past and faith in the future. Part of that pride has been acknowledging the peoples that lived here way before, and many of us were here, and that includes our Native people. So we, just a couple months ago, passed actually our land acknowledgement, which you guys helped us with and that we read earlier today, and now recognizing Native American Heritage Month. So thank you so much for being here today and for taking time. And I know we wanted to move you up because I know you have your daughter here and we wanted to be respectful of her time because I know she has to go to school tomorrow. But thank you so much for being here tonight.

And Mr. Mayor, I don't know if the city or recreation and community services department or library are already planning any programming around Native American Heritage Recognition. and if there's any opportunities to do that, if we can reach out to integrate that into existing programming this year and going forward as well, I think that'd be great.

Yes, thank you. Councilmember Lo?

Yes, and maybe we could also transmit the resolution to our state representatives because I know that for the office that support our legislature, they often promote different

AND GRAPHICS AND DIFFERENT THEMES.

AND SO I KNOW THAT, YOU KNOW, ONE OF THE THEMES FROM THE MEMBERS THAT WE DO ENCOURAGE ALSO IS NATIVE AMERICAN HERIDAGE MONTH. AND JUST LET THEM KNOW THAT CONSTITUENT CITY HAS ALSO PASSED THIS RESOLUTION.

THANK YOU FOR THAT SUGGESTION.

ANY OTHER COMMENTS FROM COUNCIL?

THANK YOU AGAIN. THANK YOU.

AND I'D LIKE TO ASK COUNCIL IF WE CAN MOVE UP SOME OF THE PRESENTATION PORTION OF OUR AGENDA just to be respectful of some of our dignitaries who are here today.

That's fine with you guys. Okay, excellent.

So I would like to next invite our State Senator, Susan Rubio, who's here in the audience with us today, to share some legislative updates.

Welcome.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members, distinguished audience members. I'm honored to be here. I'm always encouraged by what I learn and I hear when I come to the Council meeting, but I just want to thank you so much for everything you do out in the community. I have the privilege of being out in certain events here with you,

whether it was Pride Day or other events, and you do so much for your community,

so I just want to thank you for that. I don't get a lot of opportunities to come out since we're in session Monday through Thursday, and so today I just happened to be out, and I wanted to come and share some of the things that we're doing that a lot of the time members of the community don't get to see. Next slide, please. One of the things that I wanted to start off with, which, you know, it's quite sad for me, bittersweet, that a lot of you may not see me around as often as I'd like to be present.

However, a lot of members don't know that I no longer represent Monterey Park. I have decided to represent it unofficially for the next two years because I lost Monterey Park through redistricting last year. But this is where my heart is, so I really pleaded to continue to be alLod to represent, again, unofficially. You don't have a representative until 2024, but that's how much I love and appreciate this community,

that I still wanted to have it as long as, you know, that you would have me. So for community members that have welcomed me, and I've been your senator for the last five years, like I said, it gives me just great sadness to share that with you, but, you know, these are things that we don't have control over. There's a redistricting commission that decides how they move senators, and so Monterey Park will now belong to somebody else, the senator in the 25th district who you do not know yet, but in 2024 there's some elections, so you'll have a new representative. So today I wanted just to share some of the work that I've done in the last five years, specifically this year, but just generally share some of the things that I'm very proud of. I do have a PowerPoint up there. And since I'm taking over in 2018 as your representative, I have delivered over $130 million to the San Giro Valley. And there's been many different forums, but I just want to highlight some examples, not all, but some examples. One of the things that I'm extremely proud of projects is, you know, the San Giro Valley Housing Trust, which I've created the very first year that I became a senator. And what that did is it created a trust that now includes 23 cities, not just my cities, but the entire region, where I was able to put $36 million to support our local communities. As a former council member myself, for 13 years I know how frustrating it was to want to create affordable housing for our communities and be able to support housing. But we know funding is limited, so it's not always possible. So through the trust, cities can now have a project ready to go, and they're able to petition for funding. By way of example, I didn't represent Pomona, and Pomona has gotten $4 million from the housing trust to build two separate affordable housing units. And that was my goal, not necessarily my cities, but the entire region. I think we all win when we house people, and this housing trust has also helped build three small communities to house those that are unhoused on the streets. And as of today, we have transitioned over 75 homeless individuals into permanent apartments, permanent housing with job opportunities. So what we do is we take people right off the streets that are from our community and we feed them three times a day. We make sure that they get mental health services or whatever it is that they need to get well. And we ensure that through the process, not only do we help them get healthy, but also we train them. We give them an opportunity to be employed. I think we are successful if we're able to house them, but also give them the opportunity to be self-sustaining. And so the individuals that now have apartments, have jobs, we're hopeful that we put them on the right path so they no longer ever have to sleep on the streets. So thank you because I know that Monterey Park just joined the trust not so long ago, and so you'll have access to that funding. and next year we plan to, at least I'm going to fight for another $30 million, so there's enough funding there to continue to build housing. I know that California is big. I know that homeless and housing continues to be a challenge across our state, but at least I know that the San Diego Valley is doing what we can to take care of ourselves with this housing trust, and I'm happy to report that I just passed SB20, which is a bill that now will allow cities across the entire state to be able to model a housing trust over what we've done here. So that's how successful we've been that now cities across the state want to replicate that. And again, thank you to all the cities that participate because it's your work and your collaboration that makes this happen. So thank you to the COG, which you are a member of, that really has done a tremendous job in moving this forward. I also want to share that I've been able to bring $25 million for our community center. I brought $10 million to support teachers. You know that I've been a teacher for 20 years, and a lot of the teachers don't have a lot of funding to advance their careers or help with lesson planning and professional development. So those $10 million that I brought helps in particular those teachers that are struggling with second language learners to support them in what they do. I also wanted to ensure that we focus on the workforce development piece because housing is an issue, homelessness is an issue, but without the jobs, then we may not solve the problem. So I was able to bring $5 million. I divided the money into two pots of money. We created SGV Works with $1 million through the COG, where we put people that are struggling with either formerly incarcerated individuals, people that were formerly either homeless or at risk of being homeless, foster youth who are transitioning that don't have jobs. It's an 18-week program where they start with us and they go through that training, but the beauty is that they get paid a full salary while they're learning a skill. And so to me that was important because most people can't afford to go to school if they're not making any money. So again, the COG has been very generous to take on this program, and it's been successful. We just graduated the first class, so now we're in the second round of those individuals needing to be employed. The other pieces, the $4 million, I put it in SCAG. For those of you that don't know, SCAG is a Southern California Council of Governments. That's all the cities in Southern California. And they're doing some incredible work with that money to create opportunities, equity for women, and especially those disadvantaged. Can we go to the next slide, please? So today I'm just going to go really fast. You know, I've been lucky enough to work really hard, but, you know, have a great relationship with the Senate, at the assembly and the governor. I had 15 bills and the governor signed every single one of them. So this year I didn't have any vetoes. So I wanted to say thank you to everyone that helped locally. As you see at the top is the SANGU, I'm sorry, SB20, which is the Regional Housing Trust that I just shared with you. A lot of folks don't know, but I work a lot on cancer, cancer research, cancer funding. I created the first recycling program in the state of California. When people have cancer and sometimes the medication doesn't work for them or people have passed on. The family's left with boxes and boxes of unused medication, which is really expensive. And, you know, there was no law that would allow anybody to share the medication even though it was unused. And so the recycling program that I created now allows people to be able to take, doctors to take medication that's unused, unopened, and share it with other patients that cannot afford the medication. so I think it was so sad to see so much. A gentleman shared that he had, I think it was 13,000 worth of medication after his wife passed from cancer and he wanted to donate it to someone that needed the medication and he couldn't because we didn't have a law that would allow that and so I do a lot on cancer. Like I said, we just created a registry. One of the bills that I passed will help streamline it because there's so much research happening and sometimes these organizations don't talk to each other so I wanted to make sure that everyone's sharing the information so that we can make sure that we figure out how to tackle this hurtful disease that a lot of us have been touched by. So can we go to the next slide? I won't talk about all the bills because there's so much to share but I wanted you to know that I'm working really hard in making sure that we take care of our community. These are specific budget wins for this year that I wanted to share with you.

Monterey Park. appointeeskrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakra make sure that the entire region gets funding at least a little bit to help them with what they need. I do appreciate our police department, and I know that it's challenging what we have experienced recently with gun violence and crimes. And right now we're dealing with smashing graphs, which is happening across our country where people are just walking into stores and taking things.

And we need to support not only our community,

our small business owners that are really struggling with that issue, but also our police department that has to deal with also trying to figure out how to tackle that issue. I wanted to put a lot of attention into higher education this year. As I shared, I'm a teacher.

It's in my heart. It's what I do and what I still love to do. And so I wanted to focus on higher education. So I was able to bring $8.5 million this year because I wanted to build a college. I partnered with the University of Laverne to build a new college.

It's going to be named the College of Health and Community Wellbeing. What we wanted to do is create the next, you know,

the pipeline for the next generation of healthcare workers, mental health professionals.

But we wanted to put it in a place where higher education is not as accessible, even though it's going to be through the University of Laverne. We're putting the campus in Ontario, where Ontario and Pomona meet. There's a high need.

Not only is it a lot of students that can't afford higher education, but with the understanding and the commitment that Laverne will handle, we'll pay at least 70% of the tuition for those low-income families, so they walk away debt-free, and so they never have to worry about having their career and having to pay it back. So everything's going to be taken care of through the University of Laverne.

I also wanted to help my old alma mater. I don't know if you guys know, I went to East Los Angeles Community College,

college and is there anybody that went to East LA? Yes, so I went to East LA college many years ago

and I wanted to make sure that we supported our entrepreneurs and so they had already a pilot

program that they had started. It was called an incubator to help those that had great ideas, those that maybe had a business that didn't work out. Either way, the overhead is expensive. There's

so many people that lost their businesses during the pandemic. So we created with $2.5 million, they're not going to create a stable small business entrepreneurship center. So people that

want to be entrepreneurs and want to start their business, they can go to East Los Angeles Community

College, and they're going to have a space where they can just use their, you know, their fax,

their phones, the overhead, and they can just be creative and see we can make businesses work.

There was one gentleman that started a shoe company through the incubator, and he told me that he just got $25,000 order from China.

So they're growing their business, and they're doing great things. The other portion was that I wanted to, again, public safety, so I bought half a million dollars specifically to, we're trying a pilot program where we're doing a collaborative between different cities to see how we can use money together to tackle, again, you know, homeless, mental health issues on the street. And we want to create a center where it's almost like a dispatch center for all the cities.

So we're trying it out. It's a pilot program that I wanted to try out with the COG. And as soon as it gets going, I will come back and share how that went. Can we go to the next slide, please?

As you can tell, there's a lot to share. But I am the chair of the insurance committee on the Senate side, and so I wanted you to know that we've been working very diligently. So many of our families are being non-renewed.

They're being dropped from their insurance companies. And so this year I partner with the insurance commissioner, the governor,

and my Senate colleagues to figure out how do we bring back the insurers that are leaving our state. I think we found a good solution, but we may not see the results for a couple of months. but it's too intricate to explain. If anybody wants to understand it more, please call me. Like I said, it's very detailed and it takes a lot of time to explain. But I wanted our constituents to know we're working really hard on that issue. In fact, I just got a letter today saying that I've been dropped and non-renewed, so I get it. And so we want to make sure it's affordable, it's accessible,

and that it's available because people are struggling.

And the next focus, can we go to the next slide? This is where I've spent a lot of my time this year as well.

Those of you that know me know that I work really hard on keeping our families safe

from violence, supporting domestic violence victims, and I work a lot with families, mothers of murdered children.

So this year we really try to tackle that issue. One of our biggest successes this year is Peaky's Law.

If you haven't heard of Peaky's Law,

it was named after a five-year-old little boy named Peaky

who was murdered by his father in 2017 here in the Sangro Valley. And, you know, the court made a wrong decision,

gave the perpetrator, the abuser, the child, and the father suffocated Piki. And so Ana Estevez, Piki's mom, and myself, we spent three years trying to pass this bill. So the governor just signed it 15 days ago, so we're very proud of this.

And what this means is that we are going to now encourage judges

to have training as it pertains to domestic violence cases, child custody cases. I work with about 15 mothers who lost their children because their parents were going through a divorce, and in order to hurt the other, you know, the parent that was walking away from the marriage,

they ended up killing their children. And the stories go on and on. Last year we had three little girls shot by their father in Sacramento. He had a restraining order, and he should never have had those three little girls in his custody and he shot all three, shot himself, shot the chaperone. As you can tell, these are very heavy issues that I deal with, but it's necessary and so this bill is going to save lives

and we're so proud that we finally got it through.

Another bill that I'm very proud of is SB 14.

It will surprise some of you that sex trafficking a minor,

selling a child for sex is not a serious felony in the state of California. thanks to my bill SB 14 in collaboration with another colleague. The governor just signed it this last month, and so now it is,

and that is going to protect our children from being exploited, sold, you know, in the black market, and hopefully it sends a signal that California cares about your children. We will not tolerate anybody hurting our children, especially when it comes to sex trafficking.

And like I said, there's so many other ones that I have that I wanted to highlight,

but I know that it's really difficult because I want to be respectful of your time. But let's go to the next slide, please. And I want to talk about the transportation. Just know that we're bringing millions and millions of dollars for transportation.

I'm the chair of the Singer Valley Caucus,

and my job is to make sure that we're advocating for our region, making sure that we bring funding for infrastructure projects, transportation. And I'll continue to advocate.

so I just wanted to highlight some of the things that we've bought for this region as it pertains to funding. Can we go to the next slide, please? And so I don't need to tell you what we're dealing with when it comes to gun violence

because I was here with you the entire time we were suffering the loss of those 11 souls that we lost to a random act of gun violence. And so this year I do belong to a committee of very dedicated legislators. It's called the Legislative Gun Violence Working Group, and what we do is we focus on trying to pass legislation that respects their Second Amendment right, but also makes sure that people that are suffering with mental health issues or are violent already don't have a gun in their fingertips where, you know, they can easily harm others.

And so, again, we've been working hard.

We passed SB2, which will be important because it will ensure that we take guns away from dangerous people. We also passed AB28, which will fund school safety and violence prevention programs across our state.

Again, we understand and we need to respect the Constitution and those folks that have the right to have arms.

But we have to make sure that we are not exposing our community, as we know here,

our tragic day where we all were that day earlier. That day, it could have been any of us. We were all together that day to celebrate the Lunar New Year, and it happened to us, and it's happening across our nation as we see it all the time. And the second part I wanted to highlight is, you know, I continue to work on women's issues.

Again, I've been really diligent about working with children,

mothers, women's, you know, rights. And so one of the things that I'm very proud of, I'm a co-author to SCA 10, which enshrine women's rights in our California constitution. So they could never take that away. I also co-authored a bill which we don't think much about, which is SB 848.

So many families are struggling with miscarriages.

Sometimes, you know, there's families that don't want to have children the traditional way.

So they tried to adopt and it fails a few times or IVF treatments where fertility treatments where it fails once again. And we never recognize the trauma that a family experiences because they're going through this. I know a mother who had five miscarriages in a row. So what this does, it will protect their job if they decide that they need five days to heal, to take a moment just to grieve the loss of that potential family member, and also their family can also take time off.

Again, it's unpaid, but it gives them that time to heal. I'm also a co-author to SB 729, which is mandates that help plans pay for fertility treatments and freezing of the eggs.

The reason that's important because a lot of victims, I'm sorry, a lot of patients with cancer, now we see young women as young as 22, 23 having breast cancer and they have to go through these treatments. Chemotherapy, that's very aggressive and they end up not being able to have children. So for in this case, you know, the health plans should be able to help them not only freeze their eggs, but be able to help them conceive after they've completed their treatments and after they're healthy, because we all know that everyone should have the privilege of having a family,

and cancer should not be a barrier.

So I'm happy to report that it's moving forward. We haven't passed it, but it's moving forward. Next, please.

and again I'm going to generalize it because we're running out of time

but I've been really aggressive on addressing climate change you know two years ago I admit it's a bond but it's not a bond I'm sorry

it's $12 million that I directly gave the Rivers and Mountain Conservancy to address climate change we wanted to put that

money into water conservation projects

water treatments clean up we had the fire that really damaged a lot of the ecosystem and not only that but our air had poor quality after the fire so the 12 million dollars was meant to address all of that and also give families grants to retrofit their homes to make sure that they're fire resilient and that they have defensible space so the when the fires are coming down the hills so you know at least there's a

space between so their home doesn't burn down so I'm very proud of that funding right now I'm working on SB 867 with some of my colleagues, and it is a clean energy bond act. If we happen to pass

this, the Sanguero Valley will get $75 million directly dedicated to our region for climate

change, open space, and everything that we need to keep our families healthy. And so I will just

leave it at that. I want to thank you. I know there's a lot that I put on your plate right now, but again, I don't get you very often, so I wanted to share a lot of things that I've been working on, and I will continue to be an advocate for you. As I share with you, when I work with the COG and some other projects, I don't do it for my cities only. I do it for the entire region. So I'm honored to still serve as your unofficial senator for another year. But please call on me. I'm here to support you in whatever you need. For our community members, if you have any questions, if you ever want to reach out to me and have your questions answered, please know that we're here to serve. Can we go to the next slide? Only because I wanted you to know that I have two offices. One is in West Covina, and the other one is Ontario. I do have my capital office, but that's in Sacramento. But feel free to reach out any time, and I'm so happy to have served you and collaborated with you, and I'm so honored to have stood by you when we had that tragedy. You know, Mayor at the time, Henry Lo, and the entire council, and now Mr. Sanchez, you kind of carried the torch a little bit after that. Thank you for your work, for taking care of our community, for being there, being present, and making sure that your families, our families felt safe and taken care of.

So thank you for your time.

Thank you so much for that legislative update and for all the work that you're doing for our communities here in the San Gabriel Valley. Appreciate your time and for being here tonight.

Thank you. Mr. Mayor.

Senators, thank you for coming. Will we get a copy of that presentation if we wanted to?

Yeah, you guys have it. Okay, great. Yes, absolutely. And like I said, there's a lot, but, you know, legislation is not sexy,

It might be boring for some of our community members listening,

but, you know, there's so much more to share, and please reach out to me. I'll be happy to share more. Thank you. And I think any other questions?

Thank you, Senator, for the update.

Really appreciate it.

I just wanted a note for staff. I think you guys are taking notes too. There's been a there, I think, for the COG for homelessness outreach. Maybe we can look into whether that can offset some of our costs for homelessness outreach or how that fund is going to be administered. And then the fund for East Silly College's entrepreneurship program and incubator maybe we can follow up and see if they can assist some of our small businesses and if we can facilitate maybe some help for the businesses there they're being incubated to potentially move into storefronts and brick and mortar stores here in the city and how we can

Monterey Park. appointeeskrakrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkrautkra

enroll so there's people that want to participate.

Just look out for the dates when they start the new class and they're able to enroll. Thank you so very much. Have a good evening. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next presentation is from East L.A.

College, which I happen to live two blocks away from you.

So happy to see you here today.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council, City staff, distinguished members of the public. My name is Michael Pasquale.

I'm the Vice President of Administrative Services for East L.A. College,

and thank you very much for having us present to you all this evening.

We're here to present on all of the latest happenings and wonderful work

that we've been doing at East L.A. College. And to kick us off on our presentation,

I'm going to have our Vice President of Instructions, Dr. Christina Tafoya, to kick us off.

Good evening. So if I could have the next slide, please. You may be thinking, hey, I know East L.A. College or ELAC. Well, really, who are we besides a community college? I bet you didn't know all of these things. We have 77 years of history, and we provide higher education opportunities in both Monterey Park and Southgate. And we have a distinguished honor of being rated number one for Hispanic Outlook on Education Magazine for serving Hispanic and Latinx students. We have awarded over 8,100 associate degree for transfers over the past two years, which if you're not sure what that means, that's a special program that gets you on the fast track to a bachelor's degree. We've also been able to have four Jack Kent Cook Scholars that we've fostered in the last four years. I'm sorry, last two years. And we have a wonderful Vincent Price Art Museum and the museum certificate program that goes along with it, which is the first for community colleges. Plus, we have a long history of leadership and political, civic, and student activity. Next slide, please. So who are our students? And you may think you know. So you can look up on the slide and you can see who are the majority of our students.

What are their demographics? I'm going to point out to you we're 61% female, 77% Latinx,

over 60 or about 68% of our students are between the ages of 18 and 29 years old.

And most report that their first language is either English or Spanish, but we also have Chinese and other first language students. Next slide, please.

So the most important question is why would you attend ELAC? We were so happy to hear that many of the audience has attended ELAC. But really, it's a community college, first of all. It's for this community. It has affordable tuition and often is free because of financial aid packages.

We offer flexible classes, schedules, and modalities for students, including things like using state-of-the-art high-flex classrooms, which is taking advantage of what we learned in the pandemic about giving students flexibility for online classes, in face-to-face classes, and being able to transition between those.

We have innovative programs such as things like the Pathway to Law, our STEM programs, our police and fire academies, which includes public safety, and our Central American Studies degree. We also have lots of key partnerships and programs and education to career pathways, and we serve over 100 fields of study. Plus, we have wonderful, amazing, dedicated staff. And then we're really happy to say that we have given almost $200,000 in scholarship to our students through our foundation. And now it is my honor to introduce Dr. Miguel Duenas, who is our Vice President of Student Services.

Thank you, Dr. Rortofoya. Good afternoon, everyone. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for having us here.

Next slide, please. I want to continue with some of the opportunities that East Los Angeles College has and that we've offered in our community Dual enrollment how many of you familiar with the term dual enrollment? Excellent. Dual enrollment means when a student is in a K-12 program is able to take on college courses for free

And in the partnership that we have we have with Alhambra Unified School District with Harvey School District as well And providing opportunities for our students in K-12 to take on dual enrollment courses

some for credit, some non-credit, but giving our students early exposure to college, which is important for our students. Some of our students come from first-generation families where the families might not have that collegiate capital to be able to guide their children through the process of college. This gives us an opportunity to ensure that we are invested in our community early on, guiding them through the process, exposing them, and all in a safe environment. This is brought to the schools. We bring our professors, we bring our administrators to the school sets to do all the offerings there. Safe environment for the schools, for the students, and families. These courses that we offer range in different disciplines, but they are UC and CSU transferable. So as our students are going through a program like in Alhambra Unified, they had students that graduated with AA degrees. We had 19 students that graduated with AA degrees. Every year now we're focusing on the IGETC, meaning other GE requirements as they're going through their programs from grade 9 to 12. our students benefit from elac services as they're going through this process and this is exclusive again to our high schools and some of our middle schools that we have here we bring it to them and I say that and I reiterate that because of the importance of it we want to ensure that our students are learning and we're removing the social anxiety when a student has to go to the university or college setting they have to adapt to that setting we are removing those barriers to ensure that they are focused on the academics and learning and our data shows that our students that are participating in dual enrollment have higher success rates than our traditional typical college student. So it's a great advantage to have in our community. Next slide, please. Within this, as our students are transitioning through the K-12 program and if they wish to continue their program at East Los Angeles College or any community college in general, there's first-year experience programs that incorporate the College Promise. The College Promise is the program that is in our state that allows our students, if they meet the requirements, typically of being a full-time student and above a 2.0, they'll have two years of college programming free. Now, the bill and the law have changed. Initially, it was high school graduates and having consistent two years. Now, the law allows us to offer it to any student that has not met the two-year mark, meaning if a student started 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and they wish to return, they're able to do so and still be considered a college-promised student, meaning they'll be able to apply for financial aid, and it's not tapped into this, but it provides them the free tuition to obtain those two years of education. A great incentive for our community members that are thinking about returning to school or our current students that may be taking a break and they want to return. Again, a lot of opportunities come with this, and priority registration to get a head start and be able to register for their classes early on. coaching. We have peer coaches that we hire our students that have left ELAC and bring them back to connect with our students. Typically when they see Miguel Doñas coming out, yes sir, no sir, but when they see another peer that had gone through this just recently, they have a stronger connection. And those are some of the work that we're doing even with our high school students, bringing, hiring some of our recently graduated high school students to work for ELAC and going back to their home school and being a mentor to other upcoming students that wish to participate in our programs. Next slide please. And as we're thinking about the times they have changed our student demographic is it looks the same on paper but our student needs have changed drastically. We we had to consider housing needs through our students that are coming through our campus. Food insecurity have they ate are they hungry if we think of Maslow's hierarchy needs we need to at the core foundation, established and secure. If our students are hungry or they're tired, they're not going to have a place to sleep, are they going to be successful students? And this is where we're investing a lot of our funding into, supporting our students through technological needs as well, assisting them when they're needed with the technology of computer, hotspots, or any other support. Physical and mental health needs. This is where we really want to expand our work. And working with local health care providers, we have found ourselves to help our students even more, going beyond just the typical academic counseling to now really looking at social-emotional needs that our students have and how do we support them and guide them through their process as a student. Transportation. We have the tap cards for our students. They come in, they get a tap card, and they're able to utilize public transportation as they're transitioning to and from home to school. Also, employment and financial aid needs. Supporting them through their needs fiscally and trying to find opportunities for them to work either on campus or through other programs that we have, like the college course that gives a student an opportunity to earn a $10,000 stipend when they're doing an internship in an industry sector that they're studying in. So these are some of the opportunities that we're bringing to our students and our community at East Los Angeles College. And with that, I will transition over to VP Pascual to continue.

Thank you, Dr. Duanez. At East LA College, it's all about the students. But we also want to highlight some of the programs that we offer our students. Next slide, please. So Guided Pathways, CAPS. Guided Pathways is a program for which if a student enrolls and enters the program under a guided pathway, they are guaranteed at the end of the program to earn a certificate. The whole idea of the Guided Pathway program is to get students into those programs, get them completed the program, and get them into great jobs that will offer living wage. But aside from the Guided Pathway program, we also have our academic and degree programs,

administration of justice and public safety, business administration, law, and information technology.

We have, by the way, the pre-law program. It's one of our biggest enrollment in our campus.

We have explorations and preparation programs, health sciences, our nursing program and allied health, language and communications, social behavioral sciences, STEM programs. That's one of our biggest enrollments as well. And then finally, we have arts, media, and design.

We also offer flexible schedules. Most of our students are either working families, working students, part-time or full-time students.

We provide, we offer in-person classes including synchronous or live meetings and asynchronous where there's no meetings at all.

And a blended mix of these two different modalities. We also offer hybrid courses meeting both in-person and online.

We have short-term classes, six weeks, five weeks, eight weeks, ten weeks, twelve weeks. We also have a unique two-for-one program. You can now register for two semesters at one time.

Finally, we have our public safety academies. This is our partnership with our public safety agencies.

PSA is an educational collaboration between East LA College and law enforcement and fire services

that provide employees with college-level units for state-mandated training.

These college credits are over initial academic training and all regular training that is done daily by employees of the agency and courses for their required work.

These trainers are also considered ELAC students, and they receive all of the advantages of ELAC students. That will lead to an educational course and success. With that, I'm going to introduce our next presenter, Dean Erica Mayorga.

Good evening. So as you see, we have talked about an array of different offerings with modalities.

On the credit side, I'll speak shortly about our non-credit. If I could get the next side, please.

So our non-credit and continuing education, as you see the sign here, it says never stop learning. And at East Los Angeles College, we pride ourselves on that. We believe in access and equity, and that includes all students. So we no longer think of what is a traditional college student, but everyone in our community, as a community college, should come to East. And if they're not prepared on the credit side, we offer various non-credit courses. So some of the strategies we have used recently is we offer courses in both Mandarin and English.

We also have Saturday courses. And we've done some things with workforce preparation academies to prepare students for the workforce. And it is on the non-credit side. We work also in cases where we're trying to do early education academies, remedial courses.

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Thank you. Let's see the next slides. And with closing, we show you some pictures of our students as they come through our campus. and really for us it's important to acknowledge and honor our students because they've made that journey to become part of our campus become a husky and we want them to feel welcomed whether it's at the monterey park campus south east campus or at williams school where we have our a lot of our programming as well uh next slide please our students come through and they receive the support that they need and our goals are to send them off uh with with a structured wealth structured

found as they transition to their four-year university or professions they're prepared to

take on the world. Next slide, please. And you see here some of our graduates, our students that come through and actually complete and go on. A lot of them do like to come back and say, you know, we had a great time at ELAC, always the Husky, and they volunteer their times. They become some of our staff, some of our faculty members, which is something that for myself, I'm one of those. I Went through ELAC in 1994 to 1996. Came back as associate dean and worked my way up. And I love being here. Our community is one that cares for our students. Really is a home for them as they come through. And we're doing our best to continue the partnership with our partners, like Monterey Park and a lot of the endeavors that we have together at East L.A. College or in the community. And this is the reason we wanted to come out. Say, hey, we're still here. We're doing great things. And we're here to help and to partner. So thank you very much. And we actually have opportunities for questions. if there are any. Well, first off, thank you so much for being here tonight and giving this update.

I'm very amazed by the programming that you do, but I'm also very aware of it. I'm a teacher in the O'Hambra Unified School, well, O'Hambra High School, so I know a lot of my students go through ELAC, and like I said, I only live two blocks from you, so we walk through your campus daily, and a lot of my family has gone through ELAC, and I actually took several courses at the Southgate campus when I was an undergrad, so thank you so much for all of the amazing work that you do and continue to do and we obviously want to continue to see how we can continue to partner with that's one of the things that I'm very proud of you know of Monterey Park is just that we have you know East LA College here in our own backyard so we appreciate all of the effort that you guys do to you know serve our students and our community so appreciate that but I want to give council a chance to also say remarks or ask questions. Sure thank you Mr. Mayor well I just

want to thank ELAC for coming here and giving that wonderful presentation. You know, I think from my own personal experiences with the ELAC family, I've always been just impressed by the community-mindedness as well as really the initiative which everyone who works there to make sure that ELAC is, you know, not some, you know, institution to help but is part of the community. And I know you touched upon the Williams campus and, you know, I was at the time on the Garvey School Board when we had that initial conversation with Jules Benavides as well as Armida Arnelas. And from that conversation, which, my goodness, now probably 15 years ago, it resulted in what we now call the Williams Campus, which was continued on by the school district. And also, you know, when President Roman became president, I remember the first thing he did was to reach out to Monterey Park, and we appreciate the partnership.

And from your education foundation to your outreach programs, and again, just some individuals, I can think of acknowledging.

In fact, I know you touched upon the percentage of international students, And I know that Dr. Robert Liu with the Languages Department, you know, has always made a point to, at least my understanding is that because there are students who come from abroad and because behind the campus are many apartments that Dr. Liu, it's my understanding that he will actually knock on the doors if there's a front sign and ask, can you hold on to that if you're not in rush for, we have students. and really also speaks to the housing. And so not to mention the Vincent Price Museum, which I tell people, you know, that's a museum in our community. And it's free to the community and it showcases student art as well as it's partnership with LACMA. And so I think we're very lucky to have such a wonderful institution. And certainly we want to make sure that we support all your endeavors, all your initiatives, all your programming in the community as well.

Thank you, Council Member Nell. Any other? Council Member Ngo?

I just also want to thank the representatives from ELAC. And I know it's ELAC, but you're literally across the street. And you support many of our residents, myself included, many years back as I attended part of the summer program there for dual enrollment. So thank you for continuing on the support. And I can tell you the campus is beautiful. It's grown significantly in the last just 20 years.

Right.

right so keep up the good work I think a lot more residents in the same Gabriel Valley will continue to enjoy that thank you

thank you I would just echo how much of a Treasury Selle College is here in Monterey Park and for for the wider region as well appreciate all the programs and the services that the campus provides to so many and please continue to partner with us I you mentioned the police Academy I don't I DON'T KNOW THE CHIEF AND WE'RE ALREADY IN TOUCH WITH EAST LA COLLEGE AND THAT PROGRAM

TO POTENTIALLY RECRUIT.

WE'D BE MORE THAN HAPPY TO CONNECT AND PROVIDE SOME OF THE INFORMATION THAT WE HAVE WITH THE TRAININGS.

DEFINITELY.

I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE WE CONNECT ON THAT OR WE HAVE, SCOTT'S GOING TO CONNECT ON THAT. AND AS I MENTIONED WHEN SENATOR RUBIO WAS PRESENTING THE SMALL BUSINESS INCUBATOR AND THE ENTREPRENEURSHIP PROGRAM, WOULD LOVE TO SEE HOW WE CAN SUPPORT THAT PROGRAM OURSELVES and how we can help to support businesses coming into Monterey Park and setting up here. We'd love to see how we can help entrepreneurs kind of get their start going. As traditionally here in Monterey Park and our region, so many, including many, some of our parents and our families have benefited and be able to pursue their dreams by starting small businesses for that resource to be offered here in our own city by UCLA College is just wonderful and would love to see how we can support that as a city.

I have a question.

I was meeting, I was trying to make, so LACCD had a housing forum on potential student housing options to pursue, including potentially with or in coordination with East L.A. College and in the surrounding neighborhoods. I wasn't able to make the town hall meeting. I know that that was kind of meant for feedback from the communities as well.

Right.

But I'm curious to see if the campus is looking at potential student housing options

and how the city can help.

So we're currently in partnership with some of the local businesses that provide

Joveness, L.A. Room and Board, some of the other organizations that provide housing for our students.

So this is, given the geographical limitations that we have, this is what we have available for us.

But definitely there are opportunities.

I believe we could connect with our president to have some conversations to see what may arise from a partnership.

Yeah, because as you know, as you may know, and as the council is well aware, the state is requiring every city, including ours, to build a significant amount of, or at least to help facilitate the building of a significant amount of housing units in every city,

across the state, to address the housing crisis.

And what are our full opportunity? Some of the funds that the voters in LA Community College District, including here in Mallory Park, voted for the last college bond was some of that money set aside for potential student housing options and to see how we can have a win-win-win here for the community, for the city, for the college.

And our VP of Advent Services here, we could definitely establish a meeting to connect with our president.

Yes, thank you for the comment. Yeah, absolutely.

So we are always looking to partner, especially with the community, on how we can provide student housing for that.

So I don't have a particular immediate project that we're working on specifically for ELAC.

LACCD, which is nine campuses, we are working in collaboration with the other campuses. But we would welcome the conversation with the city of Monterey Park.

Yeah, I'm looking at our director of community development and our city manager and interim city manager. maybe we can swap information to start a conversation to see and explore potential opportunities. I can imagine, I don't know what it's called now, L-Line, Gold Line Station, I'll just keep calling it the Gold Line, in East L.A., just south of the city's borders, but within walking distance of the campus, being a huge opportunity to help connect the campus, which draws thousands of students and faculty and staff and others from throughout the region here to park on a daily basis. utilizing the public transit opportunities that the Gold Line L Line provides just out the campus, helping to provide more interesting pedestrian linkages and safer kind of passage from that station to East L.A. College. And we have a transit center at East L.A. College already for buses. How do we make use of the resources and the opportunities that are already there and potential housing in that area for students and for the community

and see how we can do this. I think it would be a great opportunity.

We would love to start the conversation.

Yeah.

Well, I'll look to staff to kick off some sort of conversation. All right.

Thank you so much for being here tonight. And I echo a lot of the comments that the mayor said. We look forward to partnering with you, not just on housing, but many other issues as well. Thank you so much for being here tonight for the presentation.

We next have item 1C, City Development Updates.

It's a nice segue.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and members of the City Council. The development updates will be provided by Joe Torres, Economic Development Manager.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of the Council. it is my pleasure again to stand before you to present an update on the city's major development projects.

I know we can all agree that land development is essential for our city's success and imperative for our community's prosperity.

These development projects generate more jobs, bring desired curb appeal, unite community members, and maintain or increase home values.

not to mention additional revenue opportunities for the city.

Next slide, please. Before I begin my presentation, I'd like to take a moment to acquaint council and members of our audience

on the city's project development process, which can vary depending on the specific nature of the project. So this is more of a general overview of the process from start to finish. The process begins when a developer submits a formal application for entitlements and permits. This application typically includes detailed project plans, environmental documentation, and any required fees. This is called the entitlement process. The next step is the design review. In most cases, a design review process is conducted to ensure the project's aesthetic and compatibility with the surrounding area. Once entitlements are granted, the project proceeds to permitting phase where building permits, grading permits, and other specific approvals are sought. As part of the permitting phase, Plan Check ensures the development meets the City's building, safety, and fire requirements. With more complicated projects, Plan Check could take six months or more to complete. Construction can begin once the necessary permits are issued. However, regular inspections are conducted during the construction phase to ensure compliance with building codes and safety standards. Then finally, after construction is complete and all inspections are passed, a final inspection is conducted and, if applicable, a certificate of occupancy is issued. The development is now ready for occupancy in operation.

Next slide, please.

Beginning from the north end of Atlantic Boulevard, just a quarter miles south of the 10 Freeway on 420 North Atlantic,

is the site of the new Holiday Inn Suites mixed use.

Currently under construction with 136 hotel rooms, 84 apartment units, and more than 5,000 square feet of retail space. We just heard today they're looking to finish the construction on the Atlantic Street side by the end of November. Please note that the hotel's residential piece on Chandler Avenue behind the hotel has been completed and is now in operation.

Next slide, please.

On 130 South Chandler is a 40-unit senior housing project. The city has approved the tentative map, and the project is currently in plan check.

Next slide, please.

In its entitlement phase is a multifamily condominium complex on 338-410 South Alhambra with 65 residential units, including affordable housing. However, they may be going through a redesign and are working with staff to meet code.

Next slide, please.

Also in its entitlement phase is another multifamily condominium on 816-824 South Alhambra with 30 residential units, and it also includes affordable housing. The developer is looking at the feasibility of adding more affordable units to the project.

Next slide, please.

A1 self-storage is a 108,000 square foot multi-story self-storage that will occupy the corner lot on Davidson and Monterey Pass Road, which had been empty for years. The project is now nearing the end of plan check, and the developer is planning to begin work sometime in 2024.

Next slide, please. on 505 Monterey Pass Road is Go Store It

another self-storage facility with three stories and 75,000 square feet. It's about to complete its construction phase and is scheduled to have its grand opening and ribbon cutting on November 13, 12 days from today. Next slide please Whitmore Villas is a two-story townhome with 63 units on 2.7 acres. It was officially entitled in August 2021. I'm happy to report the project broke ground last weekend and construction should

be underway once permits are issued. Next slide, please. Five new single-family homes are slated

to be built on the corner of Orange and Pepper and is now in design review. The next step is for

them to submit plans for the plan check process. Next slide, please. A downtown project we've been

very excited about is the Celadon Mixed Use on Garvey and Garfield. This transformative project

will take place in the heart of downtown, occupying a piece of prime property that's been vacant for

over 20 years. It's a six-story commercial residential mixed use with 151 apartment units. However, this project is experiencing delays in their start or groundbreaking because of unforeseen increases in materials and labor costs, high interest rates, and other prevailing economic headwinds. Therefore, the developer is working on securing the necessary additional

financial resources. Next slide, please. And just like developers, small business entrepreneurs

and startups also often face economic challenges, including high interest rates, material and labor costs and a tight lending market for capital. However, the decision to start a new business is influenced by a complex interplay of factors, and some entrepreneurs are still willing to take the plunge, even in adverse economic conditions. Before you are eight brave entrepreneurs who took the plunge despite these prevailing economic headwinds and opened their businesses in Monterey Park between August and October. However, rest assured that your economic development team is working to create an environment in our community that reduces these economic barriers to entrepreneurship and provides support to foster small business growth, even in challenging times. However, encouraging entrepreneurship in adverse economic conditions is a long-term endeavor, and it requires a combination of policies, resources, and community support.

Next slide, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Council members.

That concludes the development projects update, and I'm happy to answer questions.

Thank you, Joe, for that detailed report and for the update on all of those different projects. I did have just one question regarding the Celadon project. I know you mentioned some items regarding increased costs in terms of labor and construction costs, but do we have any idea when they are planning to get their second wave of financing and when this project might kick off?

I can go ahead and answer that.

Jessica Serrano, Community Development Director.

Based on our latest conversations with them,

they're considering redesign to Lor construction costs for the project, but to date we haven't received any additional updates.

Redesign and downscaling the project?

Yes.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments from Council Member Lo?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Again, thank you for that updated presentation. I'm kind of curious.

Again, thank you for the updates on some of the housing projects as well as some of the retail. But, you know, aside from, you know, external financing issues, but as far as with the city, you know, have they, you know, expressed to us ways in which we could streamline the process?

I just want to make sure that if anyone has approached us as a city that we're able to

get them to stay the course and make sure that we also provide the resources and tools

they need to move along their projects.

And I'm just curious, in your interactions, have you observed any common issues or themes that you think would be helpful to the city council to consider,

especially moving forward in making policy? Sure. Thank you for that comment. We definitely did when, you know, a couple years back, we were having quite a bit of complaints about our business license process just being cumbersome, lengthy, and, you know, businesses wanted to open their doors quicker than what our process alLod. In the last year and a half, we've made substantial updates to the process to streamline it significantly. We have received positive feedback about that. Our economic development team was at the forefront of streamlining that and getting all the parties involved in order to be able to complete that process. And we're still refining it and making it better. You know, in other areas that we've also improved upon is the city council during COVID also removed certain processes and streamlined certain processes through code updates. And that has reduced the amount of public hearings, for example, that are required for certain projects. Internally, we're also, you know, constantly working to refine and update our processes. one area has been like through our city attorney's office working on streamlining some of the you know reimbursement agreements you know creating templates and things like that that will speed up the process for those processes so we certainly are constantly learning and looking at ways to refine our processes we have received some positive feedback from the business community saying that they like the new system with our business license process. Great. And then, thank you very much.

And then for another follow-up question, and again, thank you for presenting the timeline of project, you know, entitlement to plan check, but typically also, and I know it may vary by project, but, like, typically what is the average time for somebody to go through entitlement and plan check and then, you know, groundbreaking? I know it varies, but is there, like, an average?

yeah it's hard to say i mean i would say that uh the entitlement process could vary from as quick as six months to over a year depending on you know how many redesigns you know i'd say like at least both two of the projects that are entitlement have redesigned their projects at least a couple times so i think that length is lengthens the process uh for us to get them to public hearing, for example. Once they get through the process of getting City Council approval for certain projects, and then they get to the plan check process, that would probably take another year just to get their plans approved and start construction.

I see. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from Council? Mayor Patan Wong?

uh thanks i appreciate this update uh it's very helpful and i would love to get this update on a more regular basis uh maybe on a monthly basis uh just to i don't know if there's it makes sense the dashboard this or whatever just to have a list of major projects development projects in the city and just a status on a regular basis just i get questions from community members who are wondering when something's going to come when it's going to open when the traffic's going to stop from construction and all that stuff it would just be helpful to have this just regularly at kind of easy access with that being said if there's anything as some others have noted already if there's anything else the city I know the staff are working hard to streamline our processes and and always improve and do better if there's anything else we can do to continue to improve our processes for this to help streamline where it makes sense and to help make this process easier to help make sure that we're able to attract the kind of development we want and the kind of businesses we want to start up here and to thrive here whatever we can do to continue to do that if there are resources that are needed to augment some of those needs please I for one on the council would love to support those kind of opportunities well thank you for

that mr. Mary pro tem as I mentioned before encouraging entrepreneurship especially in adverse economic conditions really is a long-term endeavor and it does require a combination of policies and procedures, resources

and of course community support. But I think we're all working together

to achieve that goal

and knowing that we have full support of council really is very heartening to know. Thank you.

Council Member Lo?

Yes, one quick follow-up.

So that slide you have right there, which has a chart of the project development process, is that available online for the public to see?

We actually just put this together for the slide for tonight's presentation,

but we're happy to post this on our website.

I think it would be helpful to residents as well, because as Mayor Pro Tem and probably my colleagues will attest to, yeah, we often do get stopped by residents either at our town hall or our one-on-one meetings asking,

yeah, where is this project?

And sometimes, you know, we may know the jargon of plan check entitlement, but again, I know too, rather than that, that may seem, like I said, jargon.

And so I think having a chart like that actually might be helpful to the public as well

so that they understand, because I know some of these projects are listed on our website, but again, it would probably help them also understand our processes as well as where each project is so that they can be more informed about where these projects are at and so that they can also have an opinion as well about these projects.

And just, I don't know if, I mean, it's still relatively new,

but I don't know if we've gotten any feedback.

I know some of our projects that you've listed are in the entitlement process or in design. I don't know if we've heard any anecdotal feedback on where financing and the markets and banks are at and what conditions, if we expect other of these projects and other potential proposed near-term future projects, development projects, what impacts they might be feeling from where the banking sector is and lending rates and all that stuff. if we're hearing any of that kind of feedback or any or um

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There's a tight lending standards nowadays, and the cost of borrowing money has risen, you know, as you know, quite tremendously. As a matter of fact, they were discontinuing some of their projects in other cities,

but they have chosen and they have assured us that their project here in Monterey Park will continue to proceed.

Are you hearing any other, are we hearing any other feedback on other headwinds, right, other issues that might hold up development projects that we might want to see in the city

besides financing um it's mostly the high cost of labor and materials and sometimes the supply chain has been a a challenge for some of our developers as well i know that there there was

some time that copper was in short supply although that has been um fixed nowadays But those types of supply chain issues are just many of the several factors that really play a role in some of these developers either delaying or sometimes scrapping their projects.

And just one more to add is land, just availability of land and cost of land. That just driving development cost very high because, as you may know, land in this area is very expensive. And so developers are grappling with high cost of land and whether it's going to pencil out for them to develop the property.

yeah I know there's a community development update under staff communication but I mean it's the same issue here but the I know I know we're waiting on the we've we're engaged with the cog on our inclusionary housing ordinance analysis I mean this is leading me to suspect that that analysis is going to go back and say that probably inclusionary housing at this point with where the market is might be might might make it tougher right even tougher for some of these products we're having a hard time now making it affordable so I'm looking forward to that study analysis coming back and informing some of our decisions on how we need to if we want to see any products that all come into the Mario Park in the next few years if we need to make adjustments to

any of our programs and our requirements thank you and if we can go back to the

slide that has the new businesses. I'm wondering as we look at some of these, thank you for pointing out and making a list of all of the new businesses that we've had come here since August. I see some of them, and I'm thinking in particular also within my district, I think in South Atlantic,

I see a couple, Lily Beauty Shop and Soul to Soul Foot Reflexology, right? Whatever we can do to

not just make sure that their transition and their opening went well, whether it's as simple as, you know, ribbon cutting, but also following up with them and see what we can do to try to encourage new businesses. I know I represent a district that includes South Atlantic, and I know a lot of my neighbors and a lot of the people in my district have a lot of concerns about a lot of the empty businesses that are currently in that area. So whatever we can do to encourage business, to try to bring more business in those areas,

especially those that are empty would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Joe. And on that slide,

too, I know we're listing new businesses, which I would love to see. I mean, I think this kind of regular report would be great on any new businesses and new business license they're issued. Also, it would be informative if I don't know if we get a notice when a business ceases operations, if there's a way to note that as well. I think it would be informative for us to see, for the council at least to see what businesses are closing and and kind of see if there's any trends there and what we need to do if there's any action the council in the city could take to assist businesses as we look at that data and

I think to add on to what the mayor pro tem what the mayor for Tim said I'm not sure if we have any type of like exit survey for businesses that leave either the particular site or leave the city so we can kind of be able to find some trends in terms of why they're leaving and why that's happening. Just so that we are not just aware within our city, but also find ways to be able to support them within our city.

Yeah, we can certainly start that process. Right now, your economic development team is working with our economic development partners in terms of business retention efforts.

Not only business attraction, but also business retention.

We're also working with LAEDC in terms of their layover version program.

What we do is when a business starts showing some flags and signals that they may either be closing or laying off a workforce,

then we alert our economic development partners like LAEDC or PACE, and then they come together and reach out to these businesses

and try to see if they can connect them with the resources that they need,

whether it's access to funding, access to capital, or additional upskill training for their employees,

or just simply helping them elevate their business skills in order for them to come up with strategies to deal with their challenges.

Just to let them know that they may be on their own business, but they're not alone,

and that the city is behind them, the county is behind them. We have a lot of nonprofit resources.

In fact, on our website, in our community development, economic development website,

we have this section called Help Your Business Succeed. And in that section lists all the resources that a small business can tap into,

all the way from free training that's provided by the state

to paying for the first three months of wages for their employees

because they may be having a difficult time meeting payroll

up to actually lending them some low-interest loans

if they're behind their rent. So there's plenty of resources.

We just need to make sure that our business community is aware of them,

and that's what your economic development team is trying to do, is to make sure that we're connecting them with these resources.

Yeah, and to that point, I'd love to encourage, I think one thank you to the team for one collecting those resources and two helping to make some of our businesses aware I think it'd be great to see how we can and I would imagine there is a need to add additional resources to do more outreach to our businesses in the city is particularly smaller family businesses right restaurants that don't have time to go out to some of these workshops or to look up these resources or they're limited English proficient when most of these resources are available primarily in English. If there's a need to or an opportunity to, right, with our CDBG grant funds or other opportunities that we have, we can provide some potential funding for other nonprofits like PACE. I know we've partnered with their Chinatown Service Center and others that are doing some of this outreach already to businesses on other issues. So maybe add some of this work there for them to help assist the city with outreach on some of these programs and resources that are available both from the city and from outside the city for grants, other financial assistance, loans, continuing some of the SBA outreach that came out of the tragedy earlier this year. I know they're still continuing outreach on their low-interest loans for business that were impacted by the shooting, but there are a whole host of other resources that I think a lot of small businesses are not aware of, even as we try to promote them. If we can do more of that outreach, I think that'd be great.

Absolutely. And we plan to do that in the coming months.

We also have coming up our economic development strategic

plan development process. And we've put together an economic development

plan or strategic plan task force of which one of the task force members is one of the deans from ELAC.

So that'll be a big component when we put together the education

element of that plan. Yeah, and before I forget,

because I forgot right now when I was talking, if we can get, I would love to see a report on not just what we've talked about today, but you mentioned business assistance, business retention, what LADC and other groups are doing to help with businesses, to see just when those things occur and when some of those supports come in for some of those services, to the extent that the city is aware of some of these these things happening I would love to know what's going on too certainly thank

you so much Joe and I know we have a meeting coming up with the SBA so maybe bringing some of these issues and see how they we can we can partner with I mean we've already partnered with them but continue to partner with them to find some ways to be able to support small businesses thank you so much and

questions of councilmember just one more update some of the locations the retail in particular is work with our

MyPortGo app. Also, if you

check with BDAC, I think they're all within the vicinity of BDAC. We also have some type. I don't think there's a

South Garvey. It's either east or west.

I think just correct that and help spotlight some of those businesses.

Thank you. On that note, I think

if we're going to be reporting new business openings in the city, maybe that's something, a section we can integrate into the Cascades going forward just to highlight new businesses that are opening in the city every

month or every two months. Right. As a matter of fact, beginning next month, Economic Development

is launching a monthly electronic newsletter named Business Connect. This will showcase our various economic development initiatives, better practices for small business success, and other useful information, and one of which would include new business openings. And, you know, one of those perhaps story behind warm and fuzzy stories about a particular business to promote that business. So I think you'll be very pleased with what you see. So in addition to that e-newsletter we're going to capture that and have a the same kind of a business connect corner on Cascades where we will

use some of those content to migrate over the print edition. Yeah maybe we

could also explore a partnership with the World Journal and San Diego Valley Tribune or other local media outlets

see if we can get

some earned media out of some of the announcements of some of these new businesses and other opportunities

that are available.

Absolutely. Lots of opportunities to explore.

Yes. Thank you so much, Joe, for that

report. My pleasure.

We're going to go ahead and jump

to our staff communications. Sorry, today we're going completely out of order here to accommodate some people, but

we'll go ahead and jump to community development.

Hello, good evening, everybody. My name is Olivia Williams. I'm a Civic Spark Fellow serving the community development department working on our sustainability plan. And I'm just here to give you a super quick update on where we are at with that. Next slide, please.

So we have decided to postpone the public release of the draft sustainability plan,

which is going to allow us to conduct some more community engagement and do some outreach.

We have a couple of workshops scheduled. We don't have a concrete date yet for the public release of the draft,

but we are anticipating early next year. and we have adjusted our timeline in accordance. So a little bit longer, but I think we're going to get some really good feedback from our community. Next slide, please.

So we do have two workshops coming up. The first one will be next Monday. That is going to be online at 6 o'clock,

and all of the details are available on the Going Green website,

which I will hand out a little flyer to you so you have the QR code and all of that information.

We will also be having an in-person workshop on Thursday, November 16th at 5 p.m.

That's going to be held at Robert Hill Lane Elementary School Library.

Yeah, I see you're excited about that. But this is going to be a really good opportunity for us to connect with community members

that may not have had an opportunity to attend our first round of workshops, which were a lot more centrally located. So we're kind of branching out, and hopefully we'll get some good responses.

I encourage you all to join us or promote these workshops within your networks. But, yeah, I'll take any questions if you have any.

Well, very appreciative of the work that you guys are doing in our Going Green campaign here.

But questions from Council? Council Member Lo? Thank you.

How can you, I know you're planning additional workshops, but I'm just curious, how has been the feedback so far?

So we have received a lot of really great feedback during our first round of workshops

and when we had our community survey. We received over 600 responses, which was excellent.

And I'm happy to say that a lot of them had written comments as well. So as we've been developing this plan, we've been using that kind of as a foundation to

build the strategies that we've been developing to ensure that we're really incorporating all of the community's ideas.

And those 600, they're mostly residents who have been responding?

That's correct.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Mayor Portemau.

Thanks, Olivia. I really appreciate this,

and I appreciate that we're going back out to do some additional outreach before finalizing a draft for the sustainability plan. I hope that we'll also plan some additional outreach...

building in the next 20-something years if we're setting the 24-5 goal in line with the state.

So I appreciate this opportunity. I want to encourage this.

We're planning for once the draft is published and to a final stage of coming back to the council eventually for adoption and implementation to make sure that we do outreach once the draft is available as well with draft, right, suggested tentative action items for actually implementing sustainability measures in the city so appreciate that I'd also I would also see I know the team hosted joint planning and environmental Commission meeting to go over the sustainability plan and ask for feedback I think that would it would be appropriate to do I know I think last year before I got on council the city and staff held a joint all commissions

meeting on the need for revenue enhancements for the city.

On other issues, I think this would be a great opportunity. I think we could look at both this sustainability plan, also the economic development strategic plan as that gets underway and hopefully in a draft form in the next year or so, and the parks master plan to take advantage in convene put or at least consider convening all the commissioners together for the city because race the same believe isn't just the planning and the varel cushion I think and we want to just as we're involving every department in the city on going green and sustainability plan all of our Commission should be involved and I want them whether they're on a different commission or not or on the planning environment cushion or a different Commission they all have a stake and have all stepped up in the leadership in the city and I think it's helpful for them to know that they have some responsibility implementing a sustainability plan to in their area of responsibility and would love to invite their direct feedback as commissioners and maybe we that's something we can consider hosting down the line once we're into kind of a draft or something further down the line for this and for for the other kind of strategic plan and master plans that we're looking at for the city I think it'd be great to get all the commissioners involved in that kind of process and also utilize their networks to spread the word about the need to get engaged and provide feedback on these plans as they get

underway. Thank you. Any other comments from Council? Thank you so much. Mr. Mayor, members of

the Council, I just wanted to mention the adjustment in the timeline was really based on City Council's comments that wanted more opportunities for engagement. We went through an extensive round of community engagement earlier in the year, but we understand that at these workshops we were planning to report back what those findings were, give the community a hint of what the draft plan will look like, but definitely understood we will continue to make adjustments to the timeline for the sustainability plan as additional requests

are being made for additional outreach.

So that's not a problem on our part at all. and we also heard the comments from council about trying to move meetings to other locations in the city. Jessica and her team reached out to Robert Hill Lane School and so we're excited. We haven't been able to really host a meeting there and so we're excited to be down in that part of town.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And since we had ELAC here earlier, maybe ELAC as well would be a good place.

Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you so much. So we're going to go ahead and jump. We have library next.

Good evening, Mayor Sanchez and members of the Council. I'm Kathleen Boley, a senior librarian. This evening I'm here to talk about some of the programs coming up in November.

And the first is Junior Friendsgiving. Teens are invited to join us in preparation for the holiday by getting together for some celebratory pizza

and making a gratitude jar to help them memorialize what they're thankful for.

And that's this Friday. That's November 3rd. In the Friends Room at 430.

I'm wondering if it's just for teens or if council members are...

Just for teens. Yeah.

The mission of Nature for All is to ensure that everyone in the Los Angeles area

has equitable access to the wide range of benefits that nature provides.

And so they will be giving a talk about California's native plants

on Saturday, November 4th at 11 o'clock in the Friends Room.

On Tuesday, November 14th at 6 in the Friends Room, the lawyers from the Asian Pacific American Bar Association

and Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California

will be on hand to assist with legal questions.

Reservations are required for that, so please just call the reference desk to make a reservation.

And the Alzheimer's Association California Southland Chapter

will be presenting healthy living tips on November 11th at 10.30 in the Friends Room. And this talk is in Mandarin, and offers information on lifestyle choices for the brain and body as we age.

For the families with young children, there's an early learning resource fair

on Saturday the 18th at 11 in the Friends Room.

Local preschools and community organizations will be on hand to talk about

the many early education options and resources that are available to families.

every Monday at one o'clock the library offers a quiet space to spend some time with others

and practice mindfulness with coloring mindfulness is about focusing and staying

in the moment to give you the opportunity to disconnect from stressful thoughts

in and outs cover to cover reading program for children is happening now until November 18th

The kids ages 4 through 12, they can read five books to earn a free burger,

and registration is on Beanstack, and you can get there through our website.

Our Scan and Save Memory Station is up and running. It's a new service we're offering where community members can use our scanners

to digitize photos, slides, negatives, and documents and save them to their flash drives or memory devices. Call to make appointments, which are available Thursdays 2 to 4 or 4 to 6.

And we just received a wonderful handwritten note from our first customer,

our first patron to use the scan and save, and she was so grateful,

a long-time resident. It was very touching that she really appreciated the service.

lastly parks packs are available now to check out and thanks to funding from the california

state library they include handy hiking gear for folks to use to explore our state parks

and beyond and for more information about any of these programs please visit our website

follow us on social media or give us a call thank you thank you so much for that update and for all

obviously all the amazing programming that the library does for our patrons here in Monterey

Park. Any questions or comments from Council? Yes, Mr. Councilmember Lo. Yes, thank you as always,

you know, just a great example of the library bringing it a valuable resource. I'm curious, for the legal clinic, which we've now been doing monthly, do you have an estimate about what has been the turnout monthly? It may vary, I know, but I'm just curious, because I know you mentioned

it's by appointment only and is it because there's a lot of demand?

Because the demand is huge. We are booked up well in advance. It would be difficult to get in that very same month but they do sometimes take drop-ins only if they happen to have time people sometimes are quite anxious to get in there and get seen. And so they do their best to cover it, to cover everybody that's got a need. But yeah, it's quite busy, quite crowded.

Good to know. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from Council? Mayor Pro Tem, Wong?

Again, thank you.

I echo Councilman Rillo's appreciation for, and every time we get a presentation from the library, I appreciate all the services and programs that are provided. I appreciate all the staff for all the time and effort that goes into being thoughtful and pursuing these partnerships as well to make sure these programs are successful. I'm just wondering if we can bring in our partners on the legal clinic in particular. Maybe we could present some appreciation to them since they've been upping their programming and they do this on a volunteer basis. So maybe we can schedule a certificate of some sort for them down the line. And for CSC as well for the other services they're providing through the library.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And I also wanted to thank the library staff. I know that we had a lot of our Alhambra Unified School District students go through and we did, I think, our first major tour of the libraries from students from Alhambra, Marcaple, and San Gabriel go through the libraries. I appreciate the time and effort that was put into that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next staff communication is Police Department.

And we have the chief here. Mr. Mayor, members of council. So I'm here to give you an update on the police department's website,

specifically about our firearms information portion of the website.

Go ahead with the second slide.

One of the groups we partnered with is called Project Child Safe. They're a national organization and they provide outreach, training, and free gun locks to anybody who wants them.

We have a supply of those here at the station now. You've seen them at some of your town hall events. We have those available to anybody in the community that would like one.

Some of the older owners of firearms may not have gun locks. All firearms in California for the last 10 years cannot leave the gun store without a gun lock, so everybody gets one when they buy one. But we have those available, and it's through this program right here. And there's a link on the website to the Child Safe Program also. Next slide, please.

These are the topics on the police department's website when it deals with firearms. First one is firearm safety.

That links you to the Department of Justice firearm safety portal. A lot of great information about different organizations and different types of firearm safety, and it's directly from the California Attorney General's office. Next one is a disposal. It talks about the procedure for which you can turn in a firearm to the police department. Obviously, we don't want you walking into the front counter with your 12-gauge shotgun on your shoulder, and there's a procedure for that. So we list that in there and how people can turn in their firearms. We can come to their house. They can come to the station. But there's a procedure for that. Also a link to California firearms laws, again, through the California Department of Justice. They're the people that we call when we have questions. And the firearms unit with DOJ is the one that manages all the firearms licenses for the state of California. The QR code is a direct link to our website and the firearms section.

We have a part in there about how to recover firearms that have been taken. We impound firearms for many different reasons. Some of those, they'll never get their guns back, but there's other reasons that they can petition a judge, and a judge can allow them to have a firearm returned to them.

There's a procedure for that, and we explain that in there about what kind of legal procedure they'll have to go through to get that gun back. The gun violence restraining order link,

it links you directly to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Gun Violence Restraining Order Unit. They are the ones that manage the gun violent restraining orders in Los Angeles County. It's a very well-done website, and it's the one that all the cities are using when people have questions and they want to go through the process of getting a gun violence restraining order. It lists everything in there you would ever want to know and links to how to do it and the people to talk to to do it through the court system. And then we added a section on private property signage. If you go to the next slide, please. The state of California, unlike other states that have firearms, CCW laws, we do not have a state mandated sign in the state of California. I don't know if they're going to have a state mandated sign. Other states do. We do not. Now, if you want to put a sign up in your business or private property that says you cannot carry a firearm here, we put a link in there to a company that makes signs. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of signs. This is one that we looked at, that we produced. We like it. We put it on the website. It's easy for a business to click on it, print it, and put it in the window of their business. It's that simple. The signs that we're going to put up with our city parks and the city buildings are going to have to have a few more nuances to them to make them legal.

But we're in the process of producing those signs right now. And when we get those done, we'll bring them to council and show you before we put them up in the different nodes of the city where they're going to apply.

Carrying concealed firearms on private property is not illegal, but it can be restricted by the owners. So in other words, the owner has to know that you're carrying the firearm to tell you you cannot carry it there. If you carry it there, trespassing laws apply.

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and be able to get all the information they would ever want, phone numbers to talk to, emails, anything they need about firearms-related questions, both in the city of Monterey Park and anywhere in Los Angeles County or the state for that matter. I welcome any questions. Well, thank you, Chief, for that report.

and for the work that you're doing and putting some of these items up. I did have a question about the signage for private property. Is this already up on the website?

Yes.

Okay, and then what are we doing to, and this might be also a question for the economic development team, but to distribute this or to at least make businesses aware that this is available for them to download and print?

We haven't started a campaign yet. There are probably several different portals for us to be able to get out there with that. SB2 is a state ordinance, a statewide ordinance that will affect more businesses and more private property owners. It becomes law January 1st, but it is going to be tied up in litigation, we're sure. We have already sent out a multi-page legal update to our CCW holders. explaining the city ordinance, explaining SB2, but we'll find a portal to be able to get that out to the business owners. We want it to be effective. We're still looking at how we're

going to do that. It'll be multifaceted. It won't just be one. It'll be cascades. It'll be social media. It'll be through the BIDAC. It'll be through a lot of different organizations.

We're just trying to bring all those partners together in one room and kind of get ready for that campaign. Excellent. So keep us updated

in terms of how that's playing out and how we can help propagate this. But I'll take questions, comments from Council Member Lo.

Thank you, Mr. Moran. Again, thank you for making these resources available to the community. A follow-up question regarding the private property signage.

The signage, are they available in other languages too?

um there it's a deep i mean there are dozens and dozens and dozens and they are customizable

they're inexpensive there are so many out there that you can get them in any language you like the companies that that i've seen them you can buy them on amazon they're really easy to get

We didn't, we made it simple so that someone could take this and translate it into any language they would like, but we didn't do it here. But it is possible.

We're going to make them available to people, but it's really their choice to put them up. and until the law is a little more restrictive,

perhaps private property owners have the right. In fact, there is a counter sign that says

we encourage concealed carry in our business and you can buy those too. The same organization or the same company sells them. So it really comes down to the private property owner, but it absolutely can be, and we can do it for them if they need us to, but most of the business are pretty handy when it comes to that. So it can be put into any language.

All of our CCW holders speak English and read English. We haven't run into any translation issues with our CCW holders.

We only have 19 of them, not counting the ones the sheriffs have previously issued. But all of them meet with me personally at the end of the process, and they're all English speakers.

okay okay i mean it's good to know i mean i realize there probably is a lot out there but i mean i'm just thinking about also some of these businesses and you know clientele that may come

through their businesses and that's why the question about if there's some some states only

have the circle with a line through it with a gun arizona for example that's it there's no verbiage

There's no language on there. It's just no guns.

That's the state approved sign. Tennessee is different. Georgia is different. All the states have little different nuanced signs.

Any other questions? Mayor Patelmo?

Thanks, Chief.

I appreciate that we put these resources on the webpage. If we can, as you know, it sounds like you're preparing to do campaign.

Outreach, yes. And do outreach.

if we can make sure we're, as you already noted, reaching out to our BIDAC and the Chamber and other business organizations, maybe Chinatown Service Center, PACE, and others who are doing outreach with Joseph

on our academic development team,

any outreach with our business community, if we can help steer them to some of these resources

that are available.

On the GVRO outreach, I don't know if we know yet where the county's going with their thinking about a campaign on on helping to raise awareness about tvros in the process to pursue that uh if we can track that and just when they're ready to go with some sort of campaign whatever that is if we can figure out how we can tie into that and make sure that there there's going to be a component in there that's in language for chinese and spanish at least for our community um i think that'd be great um i think for us on the i know our gvro page sounds like uh links to the yes

DA's office. Because they're the ones that handle it.

I would imagine that there will be some people that

will have a hard time

navigating that process. I would guess, but I don't know. If there is a need to provide assistance, if we can just gather some of that feedback, if there is any, so that we can, maybe that's a topic of conversation for us to talk with other cities or surrounding neighbors about what a shared resource might be to provide some more direct assistance, maybe that's bringing in CBOs that have more in language and cultural competency and already have links to community members to help with that outreach and education effort in the community?

I would imagine now if we came across somebody who was attempting to get a gun violence restraining order

and was having some kind of issue getting it,

we would assist them through our partnerships that we have established already.

I don't know of any that we've run into those issues. Most of the time, it's a legal requirement of a domestic violence case that automatically receives a restraining order as part of the process that it includes firearms.

Firearms. And we are then notified automatically if we haven't handled it in the front end, we are notified in the back end that that's occurred. And that's how most of them happen.

From personal experience from my wife, knowing that this is how it works, domestic violent cases get domestic violence restraining orders that include firearms.

So it's a it's an automatic thing. But if we ended up having that for any reason now We would absolutely jump on that and make sure the person is completely satisfied that we help them through the process now

I appreciate that and appreciate that we are jump. We're doing our best to be as quick in no stone unturned for something like that as possible I think the the challenge for us in our community and not just our community but a lot of communities is that right outside of DVROs and DV incidents, right, the mental health episodes that precede some of these gun violence mass shooting incidents, not just here but throughout the country, right, there's not a level of awareness even close to where DV, kind of DVROs are for community members who want to pursue that opportunity to remove guns from people that probably should not have them. I know the counties right campaign is to help they're thinking about how they can help raise awareness about this tool to help remove guns from people who are in mental health or other kind of issues that where people should not have guns and there's an ability in a tool to take those guns away from them at least temporarily the more we can do to help raise awareness in our own community around this tool that's available I think the better be and if we can one keep watch on what the county's doing see how we can write track with that and align and and participate in that campaign and also encourage that campaign to move more quickly and the more we can do to amplify any of that messaging even now before the county gets underway right even even writing up a quick article or whatever in Cascades and translating that into Chinese as well and doing that on a regular basis on our resources, including GBRO access right through the DA's office, helping making those resources available and helping to encourage people to at least know that this resource and this tool is available for them because I think that, one, helps to break down the stigma around, right, there's stigma around mental health issues and gun issues and gun violence, but also, too, helps a lot of community members know that there's something they can do if they think someone's going to be a danger and they have potential access to guns, that they can and should report that and that this is something that's widely accepted societally here in Monterey Park and beyond.

And the process, we help them with their application, but it's a judicial officer that makes the final decision,

and that's based on obviously a lot of different components.

but the process is in place and it does work. Ultimately, it has to go to a judge, and they're the ones that make the final decision. We don't take the firearm away. The judge orders it, and then it's a surrendering process, things like that.

But we absolutely believe in the process

and are 100% behind helping people get through it, and we'll come up with some robust ways of getting it out to the community and helping them manage the system.

Yeah, I'm reading Cascades articles.

There's a ton of different ways to do it, absolutely.

We're going to utilize all of them. Great.

And let us know when that's going to get underway. I personally would love to amplify any of that messaging and communication and work that into whatever following I might have.

Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks.

Mr. Mayor and members of the council, the website, we wanted to provide an update that we have been working on it just to make sure that we have places to direct our community when we do have articles in the Cascades and other additional outreach, but we wanted to make sure that we had information on the landing page on the city's website, so this is kind of the starting point. In addition, the LA County websites that we have linked to the webpage actually have videos. We'll reach out to LA County's office to see if they're going to plan to have some of those videos translated. If not, maybe that's something that we could take on, but the video walks people through the GVRO process, and so the video is kind of a little easier to navigate when you're listening to what the process is if you have a family member or friend having a mental health crisis or something else that they're fearful of them hurting themselves. So this is a starting point, but we just wanted to circle back. We'll continue to give updates to

council thank you and uh i have question and requests i don't know if we if the city's i remember from a long time ago we used to have kind of an inventory of existing community-based organizations in the city that provide services i don't know if we have kept that up or if there is a way to do an inventory of existing cbo's that are in the city i know we i'm sure we have a list of ones we do a lot of work with already but if i know there are other cbo's that maybe don't have a lot of engagement with city hall if we can maybe this might be a good reason an excuse for us to do some initial outreach and build rebuild a robust list of cbo's in the community uh as a way to write this this is information you want all of you who are serving residents and community members here at monterey park uh to know that these resources available this is a way to direct them and this is a way for you to provide and connect resources that the city is trying to could actually do with your service.

We have that list. I've seen it.

I know the PD has one that we use through our net team.

We're going to utilize that as part of our campaign also. So that's a great idea. Thank you. Thank you, Chief.

All right.

Our next presentation is recreation and community services.

No lights or music this time?

Fireworks? Better, yeah, you brought staff.

Next slide. So, good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and City Council members.

Robert Aguirre, Director of Recreation and Community Services. And with me tonight, I'm proud to introduce you to, if you haven't met her before, Shannon Rodriguez. Shannon's actually been with the City for 13 years. Three years as a recreation leader, and then 10 years as a childcare teacher in our daycare program. So, Shannon worked directly with Marjorie. Marcy Vasquez, who retired after 30 years, and I'm proud to announce that we've recently promoted Shannon. And Shannon is our new program coordinator, and she oversees our Tiny Tots programs, our daycare after school program, and also our summer camps.

And so we're very excited to continue to work with Shannon in a new capacity.

She is young, enthusiastic, and has lots of ideas, and we're looking to expand our youth programs. And so just wanted to come tonight and introduce...

Monterey Park.krakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakra

And so she's full of great ideas, and we're definitely very excited to promote her and get her onto that next step.

So, and then I'm going to pass it off to, or did you have a question for her?

Oh, no, I just wanted to congratulate you on your new position and give her an opportunity to share.

Thank you. So, as Robert mentioned, I have been working with the city for 13 years,

and I've enjoyed working with the city thus far

and I am excited to see our program grow.

I'm excited for us to expand

and serve the families in our community. So thank you.

Welcome aboard. Thank you so much.

Yes, and thank you for choosing this path

in terms of career

and very noble to be working with a lot of our young kids parents entrust you with their care. So I appreciate the work that you guys are doing. And we're looking forward to see some of the new ideas that you have as we expand.

And she is a resident. She's close by. Excellent. Even better.

And then I'm going to turn it over to Recreation Supervisor Orlando Moore who's going to take through some of the additional upcoming programs.

Thank you. Thank you. I know it's past Shannon's bedtime as it's a school night.

But I'd like to start off with a thank you to everybody that participated in our community altar. We had a lot of photos submitted, and it gave the staff an opportunity to create a beautiful altar.

We are excited to extend the viewing of the altar until next Monday, November 6th. So if you haven't seen it, please pass by Langley Center. It's an amazing altar. Staff did a great job putting it together. So we thank staff for that.

We want to also thank everybody that came out to Monster Mash, all of the departments, the community organizations that came out to provide candy activities for all the community out here.

It was a very great, it was a very successful event. I think we counted over 1,500 children out there trick-or-treating, probably even more. We had a great turnout even with the farmer's market. Food trucks were happy. The activities that were there, and, of course, our magic show, if you stayed for that magic show, Dave Scales did a great job. So we want to thank everybody for coming out for that event.

Now thank you to the Asian Pacific Health Corp at UCLA for helping us provide a free Monterey Park health fair. We had over 100 people come by for information to get screened. So we really want to thank our Asian Pacific Health Care for coming out and providing their free services to our community as well. And for those that

attended yesterday's horrifying HalLoen dance party at Langley Center. It was a successful event. We had over 150 costumes and dancers out there that were dancing their night away to the

DJ. So that was at Langley Center. So if you're 50 and over, you were able to participate. We hope

you enjoyed your time. Upcoming events in November, we do have our Veterans Day on November 11th at

11 a.m. This is going to be helped out with American Legion. It'll be right across the street.

They're going to have, similar to the same way they did it last year, more of a celebration

in honoring all that have served. There'll be dancing, food for veterans that will be attending.

There's also going to be some great speeches. So if you're available, please make your way across the street to help celebrate everybody that has served. The exact same day, we will also have our pickleball tournament this is going to be our third annual pickleball tournament it'll be from 8 to 4 p.m we have three different divisions i if i'm if i was told correctly i think our men's

division advance has already been sold out but again uh come out support come out check out all

these pickleballers uh from beginners to ending it's a great it's always a great day to see the excitement in everybody's uh eyes and paddles and see who wins that championship

and at the end of November on November 22nd Langley Center will be having their Thanksgiving lunch for all the seniors 50 and over make sure you register in advance because food is limited and it is five dollars and for December save the date winter is coming today we started letters with Santa and it'll be going all the way through December 1st so for all the children out there that want to write a letter to Santa please make your way to Langley Center as we do have our mailbox that will make its way to North Pole within that time and in hopes that Santa Claus could read it, check it twice, and rewrite them back a little letter. On December 7th, we'll have our annual holiday snow village. That will be also in conjunction with our farmer's market. That will be a new location. The new location will be brought back to Barnes Park out in the outfield so please make sure that you guys make that note our snow and our sleigh our snow play and sleigh area is registration only and that will start on november 6th so for those that

want to register for that there is times four time slots so make sure we register early to

capture capture your spot we will also have some new activities a train ride that will be providing free rides to the children or the community here as well.

And we're going to have also some art vendors distributing their, you know, showing off their art. So please make your way on December 7th to our Holiday Snow Village.

And our new Santa's Jolly Journey will be on December 16th. This will start at 6 p.m. Santa will be escorted by our Monterey Park Police and Fire on a designated route that will be provided through social media and post it on our website as that route is finalized.

So make sure if you guys are around, look at that route and get over there to wave at Santa.

And finally, our holiday luncheon at Langley Center will be on December 19th, and this is once again for seniors 50 and over at 11 a.m. It will be $5, and once again, lunch is limited. So please, as that registration opens up, take advantage and sign up.

Oh, sorry. Next slides I'm going to take.

So I just want to provide some project updates. I know folks see some of the dirt moving out in the community, and so they sparked some questions. So our Barnes Park Amphitheater project is going on.

That's to replace all of the seating.

We currently, if you go out there and visit, you'll see some of the conduit being run, all of the new concrete's about to get poured on all the steps. and then we're expecting the seating to get installed sometime in the beginning of December. So there will be an update on that and I'm sure we'll be letting you know about a ribbon cutting for that event. That project is funded by Prop 68. It's completely grant funded. So we'll let you know when we can celebrate the new edition of the amphitheater. The next project is Edison Trails. I know lots of folks drive down Garfield. They see the playgrounds getting in. Everyone starts to get excited, ready to slide down the slides. That project is still ongoing. There is some additional concrete work that's going to be done there. A lot of the walkways needed to be redone. If you visited that park, you know they were kind of off-roady. And then also there's a fence that's going to be installed along Garfield Avenue as well that separates the playground from the sidewalk.

So I know everyone's really excited. They think it's ready to go.

The pour and play hasn't been done yet, so the surface is not in. The concrete work still needs to go. So we've still got a few more weeks before that project is complete. And, again, everyone will know as soon as that's ready to go because we'll be celebrating with another ribbon cutting. And then finally, I drove by today and happy to announce that Sequoia Park, we have started demolition and site prep. That's for the other six playgrounds that that will start. Sequoia Park will actually be the first of the series of those final six playgrounds. So just happy to announce that dirt has moved. We've some of the demos started and site prep for that, and then that'll kick off the other six playgrounds.

Next slide, please.

And then finally, just to mark your calendar, I know the end of the year is coming up,

and so I just wanted folks to put it on their calendar.

We will be hosting a candlelight visual on January the 21st, Day of Remembrance. More details to come for both of these events, but I did want to make sure that it was on everyone's calendar. Also, the following week is our Lunar New Year celebration. That's on January the 27th and 28th. So I just want to get both of those dates on everyone's calendars. That way the community, council, and all our elected officials are aware of those upcoming events.

More details to follow as we continue to plan both those activities.

Next slide, please.

And just as a reminder, the best ways to continue to keep updated, obviously Cascades is a great resource, but if you're out on the fly and don't have your paper near you, our social media is a great way to keep up to date with all the ongoing details. We also try to respond to any comments, any posts, any messages to us. Try to stay engaged with the community as much as possible. So follow us on social media at Monterey Park Rec. And available for any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for all of that programming. I mean, the Snow Village on December 7th, I don't have to plan a birthday party for my daughter anymore.

That's actually her birthday.

I already planned it for me.

So thank you so much.

And then the updates on the parks.

Thank you.

I almost threw my daughter over the fence when we drove by. We pulled over twice already.

She wanted to go in and play.

I think we have to ask Robert first.

Yeah, please. Everyone in the community, please don't find me. I'm just kidding.

Anyhow, thank you so much for all of that program.

And a lot of new programming, the Santa.

Yeah, we're really excited about that. Just so folks can understand, that's with police and fire.

We're planning out a route that will actually hit all five districts. Santa on December the 16th will drive around through all of the districts on the planned route. That way he can kind of wave to all of those in the community.

So we'll put out the map early.

That way folks can know where they can be along that route to wave to Santa.

So something new, something different.

Just wanted to kind of add something to the holiday season and keep everyone's spirits up.

Yeah, thank you so much.

And I did have a chance to stop by and check out the health fair at the Langley Center. Very well done. I got a chance to speak to both of the co-directors. But even I got to do some eye check. I did my eye check and my hearing test while I was there.

So thank you so much.

Yeah, I know Orlando had mentioned, I think it was around, but it was actually probably close to like 350.

What's great about that organization,

we've actually been partnering with them, I think, over 20 years. So every year they help us with that health fair. great group to work with a bunch of enthusiastic students and really they look forward to helping the community

thank you and thank you for extending the deadline on the altar as well I told my students they could go by and check it out I even offered them extra credit

so thank you for extending

great job on that thank you any questions or comments from council

real quick again thank you as always

so everything is already posted on the website like including the

visual for next year that's already posted The visual has not been posted on the website. When will it be posted?

Do you know we know?

We can get that posted probably this week. Okay, great.

Okay, thanks. Good to know. Thank you. Yeah, I know there's an article that's going to go out as well, some other information as well. Okay. The details are available. All right.

Council Member Ngo? I just want to share that. I'm really impressed because you guys are actually competing very well with the library.

So the challenge gauntlet goes back to the library. However, I will say you guys actually projected, planned it out until next year.

so it's all about teamwork. Almost epic. It's all about teamwork. There's no competition.

Yes, Council Member, you?

I wanted to say I'm very impressed with all the poster that you guys designed. It looked like movie posters. I will share.

A lot of that's actually this gentleman here.

He does a lot of our design in-house.

We used to do a lot of outside design. Now we've been able to keep that in-house

and utilize the talent that we have in the department.

So our staff does a great job with coming up with flashy Q design.

So, yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Very impressive. Thank you.

And Mayor Potemac?

No, thank you.

I would echo appreciation for all the programming the department does. I appreciate that we're planning ahead as well.

Great teamwork.

I'm curious how you're going to get Santa from here, or how are you going to get all the letters from here to the North Pole and back?

So we have a magical mailbox that will be at Langley Center.

People can just drop by.

As you saw, the two children in the photo, you can come by, drop your letter in there. We take letters up until December the 1st. We also do have an emergency, in case you forgot. We do have the mailbox available at Snow Village. We do encourage people to start getting those letters in now. That way Santa has plenty of time to write back. so that mailbox is available and please get those letters in before December the 1st.

Yeah, I'm sure your hand and wrists are going to be tired after that.

Santa, that's not my job. Santa and the elves.

On the social media,

I know we've had efforts to get into some of the Chinese language social media. I'm wondering if we can try to revisit that. I know we've had stops and starts for reasons beyond our control, but a lot of these programs, particularly language center kind of programs, I know they are already, I'm sure they already shared that among their own network, but maybe that's an opportunity for us to explore how we can get back or get onto some of these networks like Weibo and others to help promote, and WeChat to promote some of our programming that Chinese language residents of the city and the region would want to take part in a lot of these programs too, I'm sure.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. All right, have a good evening.

And looking forward to the Parks Master Plan kickoff meetings.

Application is with the county right now.

I'm looking forward to Santa driving by my house.

Dropping off some gifts.

And by the way, I am testament to my daughters do the letters every year, and Santa writes back to them every year, so thank you.

Thank you for arranging that.

Monterey Park School.krakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakra

plus 1A from

closed session.

Special meeting, sorry. And Mr. Mayor?

Yes. Can we pull 3D for just a quick 3D? Yes, yes, for a presentation? Yes.

3D for presentation.

And I'll pull 3A.

I don't need the report. I just

wanted to

ask a question. Okay, 3A

just for abbreviated

CLARIFICATION FOR 3A AND QUESTIONS.

IS THERE A MOTION TO PASS ITEMS 3?

3E, I DON'T NEED A REPORT EITHER.

I JUST HAVE A QUESTION ON THE STAFF REPORT.

POOL 3E FOR A QUESTION? YES. EXCELLENT.

So is there a motion to pass items 3B, 3C, 3F, and 1A?

Move for approval.

Second.

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

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

So if we can go ahead and get item 3A.

and I think we have Mr. Leon here. Just for quick questions and clarification. Welcome. Good evening, Mayor, Council Members, and of course, Residence of Mountain Park, Joseph Leon, and the current representative for the city

on the San Gabriel Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District.

I've been honored to serve on the district

for the last, I don't know how many years, but it's been a couple of years, and it'll be a pleasure to serve again,

and of course if there are any questions I'd be happy to answer. Thank you for being here and

questions and I know that there was two questions we'll start with council member Ngo. Yeah just

maybe the interim city manager can address this but I guess we need clarification here because

it's either two years or four years so let's if we can just give the definition of that and I think

I'll be okay with that. Correct. City council could determine if they would like to appoint

Mr. Leon again and the term would be either a two-year term or a four-year term correct so we

just need clarification from council on direction so it's up to the council two or four correct and not three or whatever it's two or four not correct or in between correct yes two or four right you

can't pick three or something else yes two or four and I'm happy to support this and make the motion

for two years and I don't know if Mr. Leone wants to revisit I just would like to revisit this on both ends in a shorter period than four but I'm happy to move for two years it sounds like Mr. Leone is interested in continuing to serve I'll just note I keep getting mosquito bites so I hope that and I encourage Mr. Leone to bring that back to the board and make sure that they continue to do their job well into the fall but with that I'm happy to make a motion for two years a two-year appointment. I'll second that.

I think two-year is actually a very good number because we do have an election coming up and as much as we'd love for you to serve on this perpetual, we need other voices to

support that. So I'll

second that motion.

Okay. So there is

a motion and it's been seconded by Council Member Ngo. If we can

please take a vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And just to echo some comments, my council member, I'm sorry, by Mayor Pro Tem Wong, it was a pretty bad year for mosquitoes. And so whatever we could do to help mitigate that problem. Maybe next time, I don't know if we're doing a campaign, because I know the last time we spoke, you guys did a presentation, you spoke about the only real preventative measure was spraying, right?

Spray and make sure there's no water laying anywhere around your residence. That brings the mosquitoes in. That's how they multiply. But the good news is, you know, Minor Park hasn't had any West Nile virus cases, which is great. Other cities have been spraying because they've had West Nile. We haven't sprayed.

If we have to spray here, I'll be the first one to let everyone know that we have an issue.

But right now, the city of Minor Park is very safe. Well, thank you. I think those mosquitoes are hanged by.

Thank you for serving the Institute of Bapen Board.

I believe Bobby Bruch is also on the board as well. Is Bobby Bruch also serving on the board as well still?

Or maybe that was before? It was before. Okay.

Well, thank you so much, and thank you for your willingness to continue to serve.

Thank you. It's my pleasure. Thank you.

Thank you. The next item that was pulled was item 3D for a presentation.

Okay. Yay.

I'm wearing mine already.

I got a permanent.

Come on up.

Okay. Before you tonight is, I'm sorry, Mayor, members of the Council, before you is resolution declaring the month of November 2023 as Movember, Mo being the Australian slang term for mustache. The Movember Foundation, founded in 2003, challenges men to grow mustaches during Movember, formerly known as November, to spark conversations and raise vital funds for men's health programs. The mustaches are a symbol to promote awareness regarding men's health issues and to encourage annual checkups regarding prostate and testicular cancer. The growth of a new mustache, or the addition of a fake one, prompts a conversation which in turn generates awareness and educates people on the health issues men face. The vision of the Movember Foundation is to have an everlasting impact on the face of men's health. and also in addition to the month being

November the Monterey Park Firefighters Association Relief Fund is selling their world famous November t-shirts they'll be available on November 7th and they're $25 and you can purchase those at the fire station next door so with that we'd all be happy to answer any questions you might have

Mr. Mayor I think there was a request to take a picture

a group picture with everybody's mustache Yes.

Looking good. We can meet here and film today. What?

This just grew a few minutes ago.

And by the way, I was, the council, we were challenged, and I think I actually was a winner. If you can believe that.

Although this year I will probably have a competition. You guys can sit.

We'll come stand behind you.

Makes it easier. No, not me, though. No, no, no. I'll take the picture.

Okay.

Oh, I can't see you. Okay, there you go.

One, two, three.

Okay, sorry. One moment. Another phone.

Perfect.

Thank you for the effort to bring awareness on this issue, male issues. And are there any questions or comments from the council or a motion?

If there's no question, I will say move for approval.

Okay. I'll second.

and I was a participant in this many years ago, but it's good to see it back mainstream.

Yes. Well, like I said, last year at the council, we did challenge ourselves,

and I think by default I was the winner, although I haven't been this year with the current city council makeup.

I probably will not be the winner.

Your mustache looks well. Yes, yes, thank you. Keep it going. I'll guess.

All right, so there is a motion

and seconded by council member Ngo. If we can please take a vote on item 3D.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

And if we can pull item 3E for a quick question.

Thanks, Sean.

I appreciate all the work that went into this. I just had a question on page 22 of the packet. There's a table that lists the different capital projects under this item. I was just curious in terms of if I'm reading this correctly, are these the final balances in terms of the full cost for all these projects already, or are these just to date? Or are there additional costs that are going to come in for some of these?

Yeah, so those costs that are in that table, the balance that's there, there's a couple of different caveats to that. So with all the projects in general, there were some deviations in the projects because of scope

or because of price increases.

So we finished out what we could and what we'll end up doing,

especially for like the sewer projects

and then the year one rehabilitation for streets, those ones exceeded the allotment that we had within our budget. So we're going to have to come back to council for the sewer projects, for the street rehabilitation ones. Because it's tied to the bond, the bond money just rolls over. So for year one specifically, originally we thought the budget was going to be, let's see here,

$4.5 million, ended up being over $7 million.

So we ended up lumping year one and year two together,

and that's where that quote-unquote balance you see there it's actually a savings from year one and two combined which is actually an overage so again we like we've talked about you know over the past several months about the the bond money the money that we had is not going to complete all the projects so this was our rollover from year one and two combined so we're actually still

short from year one and two so does that make sense yeah so it's not in a

positive reading this if at first glance right it's like oh we did really well because we did came in under budget for these projects which is not so that's not an accurate reading of this that's what i thought of savings to balance all right uh so the balance meaning that's there's additional costs to these projects that we're gonna have to find some of them yes for sewer

sewer one specifically and then the year one rehabilitation um for the hsip that one is the

actual quote unquote savings that we had um and that one is you know part of a grant so again

And the remainder of these monies will go toward the completion of the projects in the future, especially for the roadway rehabilitations.

Anecdotally and broadly generalizing, in terms of these capital projects and the budgets, how much of the costs coming in above budget, how much of that was just, I mean, we do our best engineering estimate when we go into these, and then it's just cost escalation. And what are the drivers of the cost escalation for these projects?

So for the sewer ones specifically, those are scope changes.

So, you know, sometimes when you dig into the streets,

unfortunately you end up finding things you don't want to find.

And so for the Atlantic project specifically, that one, whenever I first came on board, that one had already come to a completion because we need to go back to council at some point to not only redesign the project, but then ask for additional funding. for the street rehabilitation one, that specifically was for cost escalations. So that one, there was nothing that we can do. We saw a significant cost increase with material. And even with the current contractor that's doing the work, All-American, there's nothing they could do with it. And they actually produced their own asphalt. So, again, those things they have no control over.

We have no control over.

But like I've said before, we have a great team that really evaluates how we can combine projects to get the best bang for our buck when it comes to money.

And I assume we're working our experience with some of these cost escalations on labor and material costs into our thinking for other future capital projects and then the water and sewer rate study and the rates that are going to be baked into hopefully that increase as we look at capital projects under those.

It's a holistic view of CIPA.

when it comes to capital projects, we take a holistic approach, not just for streets, but for water, sewer, parks, all of those different things. If you look at even like the playground projects that we're working on right now, instead of doing one at a time, we lump those together to get a better rate.

Great. I appreciate to the extent possible we are doing what we can to find efficiencies and to save on some of these costs and reduce the escalation on some of these costs where we can and trying to make the most of what we have. On the Garfield Avenue traffic signal improvements,

that sounded like from the staff report,

that was just replacing equipment, mostly we're not talking traffic light synchronization.

That's correct. We're working on it.

We're hoping that the next council meeting you'll actually see some agreements with Metro

that'll deal with the synchronizations.

Is that for Garfield and Atlantic or just Garfield?

You'll see for sure Garvey and also Atlantic.

Oh, great. Perfect. Thank you. I'm happy to

Monterey Park School.krakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakrakra

Public comments there was one speaker Dora dela Cruz, but I believe she left

She did leave yes, she did she just she passed along to me that she was in support of the

The parking restrictions. Okay. Did she happen to leave her contact information? She did okay excellent

Thank you zero report for this

Yes, we can do a report

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

Tonight you have before you night, preferential parking for First Street. First, I'd like to provide a quick overview of preferential parking areas throughout the city.

Next slide, please. As you can see here, we have a few select areas throughout the city that have preferential parking, with the majority being around East Los Angeles College or ELAC.

Next slide, please. This area around Wandering Drive and El Rapeto are restricted 24 hours of parking.

per day, seven days per week. Next slide, please. The shame restrictions apply here to Everett, south of Garvey.

Next slide, please. The next two slides

along Hellman Avenue from Alhambra Avenue going east and around

Monterey Park Hospital both have areas of restrictions from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Next slide. And this is the area around Monterey Park Hospital. Next slide, please. As mentioned earlier,

Here, the majority of our preferential parking is around ELAC. Everything in blue is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and areas in purple are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. That item you have before you night is depicted in orange along 1st Street. It is unknown at this time why the area was left, except the residents that lived there at that time may have wanted to be excluded from the original preferential parking process. Preferential parking is now being requested and being evaluated and has been evaluated by staff. This item was additionally presented to Traffic Commission on August 17th and is now before City Council. If approved, the restrictions would be from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday.

And with that, I'll answer any questions.

Thank you for that report, Sean.

Any questions or comments from Council?

Mr. Mayor? Yes, Council Member Lo. Thank you, Sean, for that presentation.

just for the public information can you walk us again through the process in which we create a preferential parking zone because I know for me you know that's something I've been asked by my own constituents in the district but if you could maybe just walk us through the process just for

the record sure so it's all for this one specifically you know the residents there

there's approximately four residents that are within this area so they requested to have pressure on your parking because they saw an influx not only from the college there but also from businesses that were parking in front of their homes and then they could not park there.

So that's part of the evaluation process is to evaluate if

cars that are there, that are parked there, are from outside of the area or are they residents. So we evaluate that process. We evaluate times, days. We do overnight parking as well to view if there's parking overnight issues. And then they have to take that to the traffic commission. They also need a petition process. So they have to get the majority of the residents along those streets to agree to have pressure on your parking. If they can't get the majority in that area, then that really ultimately avoids that process. So that's generally a process in a nutshell,

and then again, it goes to the commission, then it comes to city council.

So would it be best to initiate the process

to go to your department first? Yes, that would be correct.

Yes. And then we're also evaluating the process

to make it more efficient because it currently goes to the traffic commission

to evaluate and then recommend to go to council.

Sometimes the commission doesn't meet consistently, so that can delay the process of this. So the goal is to make it more efficient and allow council to make the decision, and then we just give an overview to the traffic commission on what has happened. So, again, the idea is to make sure we're accommodating our residents the best we can and making things as efficient as possible to get this permit parking in place.

And currently, how many zones do we have throughout the city?

I believe there's three, I'll call it, zones in this city.