City Council Meeting — December 6, 2023

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Thank you. Good evening and welcome to the Monterey Park City Council meeting. Good evening and welcome to the Monterey Park City Council meeting. We'd like to call our meeting to order. I want to start off by reading our mission statement. It is the mission of the City of Monterey Park is to provide excellent services to enhance the quality of life for our entire community. And I also want to read our land acknowledgement. We would like to acknowledge that the land we inhabit today was once known as the Tom Van Garde, the home of the Gabriolino Tongva people, and we show our respect to the Gabriolino Tongva people as well as all Indigenous people past, present, and future in honor their labor as caretakers of this land.

We commit to uplifting the Gabriolino Tongva people, and we invite you to acknowledge their history

and join us in caring for this land. And we're going to go ahead and get started with our flag salute, And I'd like to invite the Monterey Park Fire Explorers to help us with the flags. But I'd also like to invite you to please stand.

And as they come in, for those who might not be familiar, every council meeting we invite as part of our civic engagement mission here in Monterey Park we invite a young student to come and lead us in the flag salute and tonight we have Nora Zeng from Monterey Highlands Elementary School who and her parents and her family here today that will lead us in the flag

Please stand, put your right hand over your heart, ready, begin.

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

Almost colors.

Lights are lit. About face. Forward march.

Thank you so much, John Monterey Park Firefighters,

and thank you to Nora Zhang for doing that.

I want to invite the council to come down with me. Let's give her a round of applause for the amazing job that she did.

Very courageous work.

Thank you, Nora, so much for leading us in the flag salute. And thank you to the parents. Hi.

We are so grateful for Nora being here tonight and lead us into the Fox salute.

A perfect example of what civic engagement looks like, especially at this young age. And I want to thank the parents for being here today as well. Thank you, Nora.

This certificate is for you on behalf of the city of Monterey Park and its residents.

I'm sure Santa is going to be very happy for you this fall and bring you something very nice, I hope.

So if we can all get together and take a quick picture with Nora.

Thank you so much. Can I take one picture with Nora?

Yes, all right. Thank you. I'm a teacher, so I have a soft spot for this. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you once again, Nora. Let's give her a round of applause. Thank you.

Excellent. City Clerk, we can do a roll call, please.

Council Member Lo.

Present.

Council Member Yu. Here. Council Member Ngo. Present. Mayor Pro Tem Wong.

Present.

Mayor Sanchez. Present. We have a quorum.

Thank you.

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

None from the City Manager's Office?

No, sir. There are no reportable actions from closed session.

Thank you for that. City Clerk, do we have any public communications?

Yes, we do. First Speaker, Randy Kay.

Good evening.

This is an update on the traffic problems at Chandler and Hellman for residents who are present and those who signed the petition. Mayor Pro Tem Wong met with our group on November 22nd. During the meeting, we learned that the traffic camera would be rescheduled after construction on Atlantic was complete. We were told that no action will be taken to remediate traffic problems until the study concludes. This includes three-way stop signs and extension of the red zones along Hellman. In an email sent to Pro Tem Mayor Wong, additional options to reduce accidents included making the exit from the parking structure at Atlantic Times Square onto Hellman left turn only. Watch for children or slow for children signs on the east side of Chandler near the corner and on both sides of the south side of Hellman at Chandler to alert drivers to the presence of children and school buses. Speed limit signs on both the east and west sides of Chandler to remind drivers that there is indeed a speed limit on that street. A request that someone from the city call Ralphs and instruct them to stop sending 18-wheel big rigs along Chandler because it's illegal. We ask that the police ticket speeding vehicles along Hellman. Posted speed limit is 30 miles an hour. Ticket big rigs for ignoring the three-ton weight limit on Chandler. the sign is posted, and give tickets for parking in the red zones right next to Chandler where Amazon and other delivery companies park and leave their vehicles. Monterey Park just received a $178,000 grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety. Part of this grant is targeted to, quote, enforcement operations focused on top violations that cause crashes, speeding, failure to yield, stop sign and a red light running, and improper turning or lane changes, end quote. Some of these issues are present at this intersection, and we expect that efforts will be made at this location to satisfy the grant funding. I am reiterating some of the issues brought up previously, since once the camera is taken down, some of these measures can be put into place without the results of the traffic study. And other than the traffic camera being rescheduled, we have had no communication from the city at all regarding any requests we have made. We would appreciate that on the day the camera is placed with the person coordinating that ensure that school is in session and children are being picked up and dropped off and is not during holidays. It would also be appreciated if it was not done on street sweeping days because on street sweeping days there's no parking on one side of the street so vehicle counts will be off. In the MUTCD guidelines for street signs, in particular multi-way stop signs,

left turn conflicts, the need to control vehicle pedestrian conflicts near locations that generate high pedestrian volumes, and locations where a road user, after stopping, cannot see conflicting traffic and is not able to negotiate the intersection unless conflicting cross traffic is also required to stop. Many near misses do not evolve into accidents because the cross traffic stops to permit a car to complete the east or westbound turn onto Hellman. Regarding accurate count of accidents at this intersection, a list of traffic accidents was compiled using information obtained from FOIA requests for the cities of Alhambra

and Monterey Park.

Our group has date-stamped photographs from two additional accidents at this intersection. Between 8.30.18 and 8.30.23, there was a total of 13 documented accidents.

Several of them included injuries.

Since we only had data from Alhambra for the last two years, another FOIA request was made on December 1st to determine if there were any additional accidents from 8.30, 18 to 8.8.21. We are anticipating that the correct accident count will be provided to NDS for the study. If anyone in the city would like to review the accident photographs we have,

they will be provided.

The dates of each of the 13 accidents have been provided to Mayor Pro Tem Wong.

Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any other speakers?

Next speaker, Thomas Meehan.

Good evening and happy holidays to all of you. I'd like to thank City Manager Inez Alvarez for her assistance in this matter so far,

and I'd like your assistance in the matter going forward. My name is Thomas Meehan.

I live on the west side of the city next to the Monterey Park golf course. This is the season of peace,

and I'm here to ask you to help me achieve the same peace in my home of 35 years,

Monterey Park, that you enjoy in your homes this evening.

Okay. Have you heard me so far? All right.

Last month, I was in my home meeting with a Los Angeles County Commissioner and a lawyer,

and we heard a noise that caused all of us to jump up.

It was a golf ball coming over the fence of the golf course and slamming into my automobile on the driveway. It scared all of us. It broke the windshield. the piece that I no longer enjoy is the assurance that the golf course will accept accountability for what happens from the golf course. My son went over to the golf course with the car the next day and showed it to them. I have pictures here and said, please, please mitigate this. And they basically said, no, you're on your own. Do it yourself. I waited. I went over there the next day. I asked for help. They said, we'll get back to you. The car sat on the driveway for 10 days. They still haven't gotten back to me. So I am here to ask you for some help. This golf ball came down with such velocity. I don't know if you know the story of David and Goliath, but David had a sling in his hand, and he hit a rock and killed a giant man. These golf balls travel at two or three times the velocity of that rock, and this rock came within 20 feet of the sidewalk where schoolchildren walk. If somebody gets hurt or killed or damaged, I believe this golf course will say you must you have to have insurance go to the go to the hospital take care of it yourself I don't think this is fair We used to have a problem with the golf course. I've been I've been in the city for 35 years does

The golf course accepted responsibility for every incident that happened

They I had my window broken in about 1990 and they were out the next day and fixed it

And they eventually, with the help of Judy Chu, they put up a gigantic fence. The fence was fine for many, many years. But now the golf course profits have taken the front burner, and they put up a second story on the driving range. And balls are coming over the fence. I have a box of golf balls that I'll be happy to bring to your offices to show you. that but the the worst part is i heard this noise i could be in my yard i've heard balls hit the roof

many times and i'm i'm at no peace in my yard so i'm asking you to mitigate these dangers by doing several several possible remedies i don't know if you have this paper in front of you one is to raise the fence of the golf course by the height that they raised that second floor to make more profits to indemnify the residents from damages and injuries from the operation of the golf course and golf balls.

They told me, you assumed a liability when you moved into the neighborhood. I honestly didn't know there was a golf course there when I bought the house. The bushes were so high, it was a fixer-upper. And I don't think that holds water.

Three, I'm asking them to permanently close the eastern half of the upper floor of the driving range that is closer to the houses on Ladera.

That these strong men can hit balls over that fence.

Number four, initiate a fee for every transaction at the golf course to fund an account to provide relief for businesses, relief for victims of their business operations.

Also ask them to replace my windshield, replace the money that I paid to put an interim windshield in,

and I ask you to provide a copy of the golf course contract

to allow a second set of eyes to look over it to focus on the future

towards safety of the residence and property in the future. I appreciate your attention to this matter. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments, and thank you for this information.

Do we have this contact information? Yes.

And I have photographs if you'd like to see them. Yes, if we can have those as well.

If you can give those to the city clerk, we would appreciate it.

Thank you.

Next comment is written communication that we received. It's from Jonathan Hawes. He served as the El Monte city clerk from 2013 to 2018. and since 2015 he informed us he has been trying to bring attention to a potential embezzlement

of the El Monte Promise Foundation Scholarship Fund.

He asked that the Monterey Park City Council to pass a resolution condemning these actions.

So you should have received this. We have no other comments. We did receive one request that item 4A be moved up after public comment if possible.

Could you repeat that? I'm sorry.

We received one request that if item 4A could be moved up to after public comment if possible.

Okay, we're going to actually move with staff communications.

If we can have library.

Are we done with public communications? There's no more public communications?

one more sorry

change of heart we'll talk now

change of heart

so one more speaker

good evening Randolph I guess there's some confusion over there but that's okay we'll overlook at that I'm here for all the communications for the serious reason of what happened here maybe about ten months ago with the murders right down the block here and And it's a tragedy that many people have already forgotten about. I mean, it's something that we can't forget. And I'll tell you why. Because I'm a murder victim and survivor as well. On December 29, 1997, my fiancée, Linda K. Hesse, was murdered by a gang member, Juan Carlos Ruiz of Lomas. I'm here certainly not to maybe gain any emotional attention or empathy that's long gone but it's really important that that sign up there pride in the past and faith in the future is addressed I'm a member of parents of murdered children which is a group that supports anybody who's had a murder doesn't matter if it's a kid or whatever mayor Sanchez you'll appreciate that Linda was a schoolteacher, first grade schoolteacher, shot in the face by this Juan Carlos Weitz, who also murdered two people in the city of Rosemead about 20 minutes before that time. But what I'm here for mainly is this. Like I said, I'm not going to get empathy, but I do want to let you know that it doesn't go away. The pain is there every single day of your life, and I hope that none of you ever have to walk in my shoes. On the other hand, as public servants, you need to know this. And I'm glad Michael Ang is back there. Judy Chu inflicted emotional distress on me from right here by implying to the citizens of Monterey Park that I was a murderer of my fiancé through false media coverage. now I know all of you know Judy Chu she's our congresswoman and to this day she's never even lifted a finger to apologize for what she did now Michael Ng when he was campaigning he knew about this I presented this to him and he said I'm sorry I told Michael it wasn't you it was Judy you need to know who this person is You know, she's out here with the murders, big-time media coverage. For me, she wanted to crush me. She inflicted intentional emotional distress.

I am pro-police. The police force here screwed everything up. Officer Cuevas wrote a bogus report saying I was running from the scene. He was holding me back, which was a big lie.

But Dawi, who was a fireman, yelled in my face, she's shot in the head and she's dead. Are these the kind of people that we want leading?

Contrast my situation will happen over here. That was done right.

Mine was done totally wrong.

To that end, I worked with a second set of detectives and we were able to find who the murderer was.

I'm not here to dump on you because none of you know this happened but I'm here to make you aware of the circumstance behind Congresswoman Judy Chu Police Chief Cross said he'd give me a big hug if I wasn't the murderer Chris Jeffers said I killed her for her insurance these are the disgraceful actions of city council elected officials

as well as people that are working here on the payroll.

You need to know what happened in the past to take care of the future. This will come up with a water deal too. I'm not going to digress on the water because that's important too. But you need to know this. And it's December 29th, it's coming very soon. And it's a miserable day. It's the most miserable day of 365 days a year. but the other 364 are nearly as miserable. So perhaps this city council will have the courage to look into this and make a public statement and maybe not apologize to me but apologize to a number of the citizens who are still wondering, well, what happened? You were the murderer. And just as a footnote, I ran into somebody recently who said, oh, yeah, you're the guy who murdered, it's still 26, you're the one who murdered the fiancé. shopping center, Albertsons. Still there. They only got bits and pieces of the story. So hopefully the city council could step to the plate, look into it authentically, and realize that this school teacher, beautiful lady, beautiful, shot in the face by this monster. So I bring it to your attention, again perhaps one of you or maybe the city manager or maybe through the direction of the city attorney will have you look into this

and maybe make a public statement about it and maybe apologize to the citizens of Monterey Park for the lack of work and the lack of decorum from some of our elected officials. Thank you.

No more speakers.

Okay.

If we can move on to staff communications library.

Good evening, Mayor Sanchez, Mayor Pro Tem, and members of City Council. My name is Victor Castellanos, and I am the adult literacy coordinator at the Brueggemeyer Public Library. So first, I'm excited to announce that on Wednesday, December 13 at 3.30 is our Dog Man Party. Join us for a super epic scavenger hunt around the library and other Dog Man themed fun and games for kids of all ages. Next, on Friday, December 15 is our Winter Traditions Around the World program, where participants will explore unique customs and festivities of the winter season.

Discover the beauty of the holidays.

in the reading challenge by tracking their reading goals for a chance to win a shark-hooded blanket, books, or a snack box. You can sign up and register on the library website. Also, please join us on Saturday, December 9, at 10.30 for Understanding Alzheimer's and Dementia Workshop. Learn about the detection, risk factors, and treatment of Alzheimer's disease with the Alzheimer's Association California Southland Chapter. Then, later in the month, for the little ones, is the STEAM train. STEAM is STEM plus art, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. On December 22nd, children ages 3 to 5 will explore shapes and engineering by building snowflakes with craft materials. and at the end of the month for the teens is our last minute holiday gifts workshop forgot to get a gift for a friend or a loved one don't worry teens are invited to stop by the friend's room on december 22nd and make a gift that is both unique and free and then last for the entire month of december the friends of the library bookstore is having a holiday sale curated gift sets are available for $5 each

and remember

books don't need to be assembled

or need batteries

books are easy to wrap and mail books never come in the wrong size or color and never go out of style

thank you

thank you so much for your report and all the amazing programming

can you go back to the first slide on Dogman Just because my daughter is really into that right now,

and she's going to be very excited,

and I want to make sure I jot down the details here.

Wednesday, December 13 at 3.30.

Excellent. Thank you so much.

Any questions or comments from Council?

Are people alLod to bring their own dogs to the Dogland Party? It's not that type of dog.

Sure. Oh, okay.

No questions. Just thank you. I appreciate all the programming, the libraries, too,

I was asking the mayor who Dogman was. I obviously don't have kids I'm not familiar with Dogman,

but I am expecting someone from Parks and Recreation

and Community Services at some point to dress up as Dogman.

So add that to the lineup.

My daughter's really into it right now, so I appreciate that.

Definitely count on us to be there. Thank you so much. Any other questions or comments? Thank you.

and if we can have a report from the finance department

good evening mayor mayor pro tem council members martha garcia finance director

At the last council meeting on November 15th, council authorized the open market bond repurchase of a portion of outstanding taxable pension obligation bonds.

Move to the next slide, please. Thank you.

The pension fund is estimated to have in reserves about $4.4 million, and Council gave authority to the Treasury Committee to either invest in Chandler or buy back a portion of the pension obligation bonds.

so we spoke with chandler and chandler prepared this graph that if we would have invested four million 20 years ago because remember we can't forecast future but if we ever invested four

million 20 years ago we would have earned 1.5 million and we'd have a value of 5.9 so it's four plus the $1.9 million.

So then we went back to the finance team and we discussed the buyback.

The current rate today is $75.5. And if we buy back,

we would be potentially saving the city

a net of $3.7 because we're spending the $4 million.

So the Treasury Committee unanimously agreed to do the buyback.

The buyback went into market today.

We haven't had any results.

We might have the full $4 million sold. We might only have a million.

We are just waiting to see what happens.

And as more information comes, I will be bringing it back to Council

to let everyone know if we were successful or not. And that ends my presentation.

Thank you, Martha, for that report.

Are there any questions or comments from Council?

Thank you, Martha. Council Member Logue. Quick update from the last Council meeting.

How soon do you think you'll be able to come back to us?

I mean, I know you just sold the bonds today, but how soon do you think we'll get in the report?

We haven't bought them back. They just went.

The finance teams are brokers in the market right now trying to buy them back.

I see, I see.

I'm hoping within the next three months we should be able to come back.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Ngo?

Yeah, did we get any indication that people are willing to sell those bonds at a discount?

I don't know. Today we just went in. We don't know until we get back.

Correct. Mayor Patel Wong?

So depending on what the response is for purchasing the bonds back, If we don't get interest for the full $4 million we authorize, we can put the rest, we are planning to put the rest into Chandler or.

That's correct, yes.

And then we would appreciate the report back and hope that as soon as there is something to report on the potential buyback and what ultimately happens to the $4 million that's set aside, if we can just get another report back, that'd be great.

We will definitely, as soon as, if we are lucky, If we are successful in selling them and buying them back, we'll come back right away.

And if it takes longer, then it will take a little bit longer to come back.

Thank you, Martha, for that.

Thank you.

Our next staff communication is Recreation and Recreation Services Department.

And we have our rec team here. Like the shirt. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor. and Mayor Pro Tem and members of the City Council. My name is Memo Chavez, Recreation Supervisor

with the Recreation and Community Services Department.

Thank you for having me this evening to share some program updates with you.

Before we share those program updates,

I want to go over a few activities and events that took place in the month of November.

First, on Saturday, November 11th, the annual Veterans Day event took place at the American Legion Post 397. Thank you to those that came out to honor and recognize those who served. And thank you to the American Legion for once again hosting the event.

Next slide. Still on the same day, on November 11th, the city's third annual pickleball tournament took place at Barnes Park. Ninety-six pickleball players enjoyed a day of fun-filled competition. The tournament featured a men and women's bracket. The divisions were separated by beginner, intermediate, and advanced. We also want to thank our sponsors, Tennis Point, Gearbox Pickleball, and Core Pickleball for sponsoring this year's event.

Next slide, please.

On Wednesday, November 22nd, the Langley Center hosted their Thanksgiving luncheon. Over 200 participants took part in the event.

food for the event included turkey, sweet yams, green beans, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and a sweet roll.

We want to also thank L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis for her monetary donation to help fund the event.

And lastly, thank you to Asian Pacific Islander Forward Movement, who partnered with the Langley Center on Tuesday, November 21st,

to offer a food drive and hand out 160 bags of fresh produce to participants.

Next slide. And I believe we have a special guest today. There you go. All right.

How's it going? I just came to make a few announcements. I wanted to assist Memo Chavez here.

I wanted to come to one of my favorite cities, City of Monterey Park.

I come here every single year and announce some of the upcoming events we have coming. For any children out there who want to know, you can still send a letter to Santa. Your last day is tomorrow at the Snow Village event.

So make sure we go ahead and bring our letters to Santa. One last day, Snow Village event is tomorrow night, Thursday, December 7th.

and it is at 4 p.m to 8 p.m so make sure we bring those letters i will also be there so we could take pictures with me for anybody who would like to take pictures okay and then we have santa's

jolly journey coming up i will be riding around with the city of monterey park fire department and the police department waving around all through the city of monterey park so make sure we're out there seeing me on december 16th 6 p.m to what time let me know what's the schedule I need to know. I'm a busy man.

Till 7. So one hour. Only one hour. Okay? Then we have the holiday luncheon for all you seniors out there at the Langley Senior Center,

December 19th, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Okay?

So make sure all the seniors out there get a lunch going, take some pictures with Santa as well. I will be at all of these events.

Like I said, City of Monterey Park is one of my favorite cities to visit.

thank you everybody thank you santa thank you

next slide please and christmas did come early so i do want to thank santa

uh we did just get notification that the united way is going to be giving the recreation and community services department on behalf of langley center fifteen thousand dollars so we got a grant uh through the united way it's going to help fund some upgrades inside of the lobby area. We're actually going to be upgrading with some new furniture and also some secure charging stations. So seniors will be able to charge their phones while they're doing activities and these will be behind secure lockers. So we are excited about that grant. We just got a notification so wanted to share that with council tonight. So thank you Santa for helping Christmas come early for our seniors at Langley Center. Next slide please. And just last We wanted to close with some of our project updates. So Barnes Park Amphitheater is just in its final stages.

There's a few seats that still need to be added,

but we're on track to finish it by the end of this year. So we're excited to get the amphitheater back open so we can host graduations and concerts and events and promotions in 2024. As you all know, Edison Trails Park Playground opened yesterday.

Lots of kids came out, lots of adults as well,

but some council even went down the slide.

So very excited about that.

There's still more to come at that park. There's still grass that, as you saw, still grass that needs to be put in.

There's some trees that are going to be added

as well as some benches.

So still more to come at that park,

but definitely excited to see all the kiddos, excited to get on all of the equipment there

at Edison Trails Park. And then, as you know, coming up very soon here,

Sequoia Park is in the works. We've started to see it actually kind of come together,

and it's starting to look more and more like that treehouse theme, that nature theme, so we're excited, and we'll be continuing to update and hopefully be doing a ribbon-cutting ceremony for Sequoia Park very, very soon here.

And then last slide, please.

And just as a reminder, always an easy way to keep up to date with all of the activities, programs, the events that are going on in the Recreation Community Services Department is to follow us on social media at Monterey Park Rec. And we are all available for some questions,

except for I think Santa got to get back to, he's a very busy man, as he said.

Well, if Santa can stick around for a minute,

just so- Does Council want to get a picture of Santa before he goes? Yeah, so Council can take an opportunity

to take a picture,

but also offer their wish list to Santa before he leaves.

If you want to join me down. Yeah.

Thank you.

I'll give everyone a thumbs up. Awesome.

Yes, we'll see you tomorrow. It's the holiday. Thank you.

I'm going to do one selfie with Santa,

because otherwise my daughter would be saying that Santa.

Thank you, Santa. Thank you, everybody.

Thank you so much, Robert. Thank you so much for the Parks and Rec Department, for all the amazing programming you do.

You got me so excited with the parks and Santa here.

I'm at a loss of words here.

But thank you so much for yesterday. The ribbon cutting was amazing. So great to see so many kids out there.

for those who...

And also, you know, our public works department has done to try to update our parks.

It's a team effort.

I appreciate all of the work that everyone has put forward to do this. And I'm looking forward to all of the programming that's coming up, including tomorrow, if the public's listening.

Tomorrow, make sure you come out to the Snow Village. I know my daughter's really excited. In fact, tomorrow's her birthday.

I did want to add one thing.

So we did add a special new element to tomorrow's event. So if you are out at Snow Village tomorrow, look for some special elves. if you see an elf to snap a photo with the elf and you might win a prize. So there's going to be five elf on the shelves out there. They're missing and they might be found in Barnes Park.

So look for the elves.

And the event starts at 4 o'clock? 4 o'clock, yeah. Excellent. Any questions or comments from Council?

Council Member Ngo.

So great job yesterday, Robert and Public Works, Parks and Rec and Public Works for putting the ribbon cutting. If we can go back to the picture real quick of Edison Trails,

There was a picture right there. Okay. So I know the work is not done. No.

I believe you can confirm this, or maybe you can provide more details. We can't do shading because it's by the power utility lines.

Yeah.

But we are fixing the fencing in the front so that the kits will be protected from the traffic.

Yeah, so there's a fence along Garfield. But, yeah, the placement of the playground, it's really the only place in the park that we can be due to the power lines and what's called drip distance. So the playground has to be a certain distance from the power lines.

It's a safety feature.

So even the playground itself is grounded. That way, if there were any incidents for safety, we won't.

Yeah.

And then you also mentioned we're going to build more benches so that the families can be around. And then we're going to plant some trees.

Absolutely.

I mean, of course, it can't be tall trees because of the drip line.

yeah so things like greenery the grass trees those all help to cool parks so they parks essentially create their own ecosystem within with with trees and grass and stuff like that so when we can't put that shade we definitely want to add additional trees so i will say this

is a thousand percent better than what it was a few years ago in a little teeny corner tiny tiny corner uh outdated playground so good job and getting definitely and it's probably be six times

the size of what the old playground was. So it's a definite upgrade and so excited to see all the kids out there playing. Yesterday was one of those days when we really see the WeWork so that you can play and I was really excited. I got to go home with a huge smile on my face. Just really proud of what we're doing as a city for the community here.

Thank you.

Thank you. Mayor Portemont?

I know the amphitheater's

almost there. Any plans for the first concert or

event that will break around? I haven't started planning yet. I like to get those things done. That way I know we can start planning. But what we're going to do is once it's complete,

we'll start. We actually want to start marketing the amphitheater. I think it's an underutilized space. And I think there's a lot of local agencies as well as surrounding city and organizations that can utilize that large space. It has a great large number of seats that I think is unique to what other amphitheaters in this area may be.

So I think there's a lot of opportunities for

different usages. What is the seating? I believe it's

375 I believe it's the seating.

Cool.

Thank you. Well thank you so much Robert. And I did want to go as you, it was so great. I mean the event

yesterday and opening up parks that we even had some of our board

members from the San Gabriel Valley Water Municipal District come down like Albert Liu and Mr. Miking and I want to acknowledge that they're

in the audience. So thank you so much for coming out as well yesterday.

Thank you, Robert. Thank you.

We're going to go ahead and jump to consent calendar items 3A to 3D. And, Council, are there any items you would like pulled for either

brief report or discussion?

I'll just pull 3A. I just have a couple of questions, but no need for a

staff report. Okay. 3A, Council Members?

No? Okay. So we're just pulling 3A, so is there a motion to...

Motion to move for the rest of the items. Second.

Seconded by... Oh, but Council Member, are you? Okay. If we can take a vote, please.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

And is there someone that can answer Council Member... I'm sorry, Mayor Potem Wong's questions on Item 3A.

Thank you.

Thank you to staff for putting the report together on the development fee, impact fees. Quick question on these fees.

Have we included these?

I know we've been looking at comparing our fee and fee structure to other cities and communities to make sure we're in line. Have we, has this, have our development impact fees been included in that analysis or comparison at all?

They are currently not part of the fee study.

However, we plan on contracting with an analyst to come and do the analysis again.

The last analysis was done back in May of 2016, and it carried us through July of 2021.

So we plan on going out to do another analysis of our development impact fees.

Great.

I hope that we will and would want to make sure that we're competitive and in line with our surrounding communities. Don't want to disincentivize any development by having fees that are out of line. And then I just had a quick kind of question on page 12, the water distribution revenues and expenditures. some of the funds from the development impact fees for water distribution are set aside for a specific capital expenditure. I don't know. I'm just curious what a PLC upgrade is. I'm assuming that's part of the water treatment facility, but I'm just curious.

Our public works director

Sean Iger will answer that question. He's coming down.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor, and Pro Tem City Council.

So that is programmable lodge controllers.

So that has to do with our SCADA system.

That's what we use to monitor not only our treatment system, but also to help monitor our pump stations and wells.

So set aside for that.

Great. Thank you. That's all I have.

I will make the motion to adopt item 3A.

Is there a second?

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

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

We'll go ahead and jump to our public hearing on item 4A,

Consideration and Possible Action to Adopt Ordinances, Establishing Water and Wastewater Sewer Rates.

I'm going to go ahead and open the public hearing.

Are there any public comments?

Yes, there are. First speaker, Carlos Garcia. Can you tell me how many public comments we have for this item?

Six. 6. 6? Okay.

I'm going to go ahead and ask that we do a presentation first.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor. Mayor Pro Tem, Councilmembers, Martha Garcia, Finance Director. Can you start the slides, please?

So today we're going to be going over the background and infrastructure.

I need the background, what God is here today.

Rate-making objectives, considerations, the rate study process.

Rick Simonson from HF&H will be discussing the sewer rates and the water rates.

So, pursuant to Article 13D, Section 6 of the California Constitution,

added by voters via Proposition 218

before imposing new or increasing existing property-related rates for water,

wastewater, or solid waste,

the city must provide notice by mail of a public hearing for considering such rates. The notice must be provided at least 45 days

before the date of the public hearing on the proposed fees.

In 2014, the City Council adopted Resolution No. 11647, establishing procedures for increasing maximum rates for property-related fees in accordance with the requirements of Proposition 218.

These procedures require the City Council to approve the Proposition 218 notice, which contains the proposed monthly rates for residential and commercial water and wastewater services, and the date upon which the rates would become effective if approved. On October 4th, City Council approved the Proposition 218 notice for the proposed water and sewer rates.

On October 16th, 2023, the Proposition 218 notices were mailed via United States Postal Service to the address of each parcel number in Monterey Park, as well as the owner's address of each parcel in Monterey Park and tenants residing in Monterey Park.

The Proposition 218 notice is provided notice of the December 6th today, public hearing date, included proposed rates, disclosed that if the proposed rates are approved, they may be effective January 1st.

It'll be a different date that I'll get to in a second.

And contained the official ballot for property owners or authorized representatives wishing to protest the proposed rates.

Notices were mailed out in English, Spanish, and Chinese.

In addition to mailing the Proposition 218 notices, a public notice was published in the Monterey Press on November 13, 2023.

Something noteworthy is that the notices rates would not become effective until 30 days after the proposed ordinances were adopted,

assuming an adoption date of December 20th will be coming back, if desired by Council on December 20th.

The effective date of the rates would be January 19th, 2024, and the new rates would be present in invoices starting February 1st, 2024.

Next, on November 15th, 2023, Council approved to take action necessary to finance water facilities and improvements to the city's water system.

Staff has identified $20 million in water improvements that are highly priority

and that could be implemented within the next three years. Financing the $20 million in projects would allow rate increases to set at 26%, 8%, 8%, 7%, 7%.

instead of the original proposed higher rates of 32%, 8%, 8%, 7%, 8%

from fiscal year 23-24 through fiscal year 27-28. Out of 17,492 parcels in Monterey Park,

8,747 valid protests are needed to stop the rate increase by the voters.

At the time of this writing this staff report, the city clerk's office had received fewer than 700,

I believe we're about 800 right now, documents regarding this item.

Based upon this response, it is recommended that the city council find that fewer than 8747 protests were submitted

without need for further validation by the city clerk.

So Section 8C6 of Resolution No. 11647 requires that the water and wastewater rates be adopted by ordinance.

Accordingly, if Council agrees, we would be coming back with the second reading on December 20th. to adopt the rates on January 19, 2024.

Next slide, please.

Next I want to show some infrastructure,

and I believe we have some infrastructure here also.

Our water meter infrastructure is projected to be a $9 million project, and right now we have water meters that are failing. They're not properly documenting the water usage

and so we are looking at replacing all the water meters in the city. The next one is some water infrastructure that's failing. We have quite a bit of old infrastructure

and we are having to do emerge.

Instead of doing being proactive, to, we're doing emergency maintenance

of our, or replacing of our water infrastructure.

Here's a couple of pictures of some flooding in the city because of our failing infrastructure for water. And then

sewer is also, we have, since we're also looking at sewer rates

sewer, we have quite a bit of aging sewer infrastructure as well.

And here are some pictures of our aging, failing sewer infrastructure.

So next we're going to discuss the rate-making objectives and considerations.

The rate-making objectives and considerations included revenue sufficiency and financial stability

to fund the projected operating expenses and capital infrastructure.

The revenue generated from current rates are inadequate to pay for the current Select the Selective Select Select

current debt at about a million per year. Other objective and considerations included operating

and capital reserves. The city's policy is to maintain operating reserves at a middle of two

months as recommended by the Government Finance Officers Association, GFOA. The city's policy for

capital assets is for its assets to be at a level adequate to protect the city's capital

infrastructure and to minimize future maintenance and replacement costs.

The proposed revenue increases affect each customer and customer class differently, which will be discussed later by Rick from HFNH. Each customer within each class pays their proportionate share of expense,

which will be further explained in the next slides. Next slide, please.

Next we looked at the rate study process. Step one is to determine the revenue required for projections.

To determine whether additional water and sewer rate revenue is required,

projected operating and capital expenses are compared with projected revenue from current rates.

Annual surpluses and deficits are then applied to the reserve funds. Rates are then increased so that the expenses are covered and the operating capital reserves are maintained.

Step two is to determine cost of service allocations. How much revenue should come from fixed and how much should come from variable costs for each customer class,

ensuring appropriate proportions to the cost of providing services.

And then step three is to rate design and bill impacts.

balanced rate-making objectives from the prior slide, maintaining prior rate payer equity.

Sorry, maintaining rate payer equity.

Staff also evaluated impacts of proposed rates

on average customers' bills,

and thus recommending coming back to council on November 15,

we recommended and council approved us to move forward a $20 million water infrastructure bond.

The financing of $20 million is projected to Lor the rate from 32% the first year to 26%.

And then the following years, it'll be 8, 8, 7, and 7, whereas before it was going to be 8, 8, 7, and 8. next slide please nope went too far where's my sheet

oh wait okay so the next one is our historical revenue expenses so I wanted to show council and the public what we you know how we got here

in 1617 fiscal year 1617 we were having a surplus of about 6 million and then in 17-18 it was 5 million and then we had 18-19 that it was went down to 2 million and we had um we back in 18-19 that took us into 1920 we reverted back to old rates as uh that were of August 31st, 2017. That was fiscal year 17-18, which then impacted our revenues in fiscal year 19-20. If you look at column 18-19, fiscal year 18-19, it says revenues.

and you look at column 1920 in revenues, you see a $3.3 million drop in revenues,

and that was because we reverted back to old rates at that time.

And then we came pretty consistently throughout the next few years.

The year in 22-23, which was last fiscal year, we have a drop because we've been waiting on grant funds from the WQA,

and we have it in accounts receivable, but the funds haven't come to the city.

We are several quarters behind from receiving funds.

You can also look that we haven't been, we've been trying to maintain our services,

so we haven't been investing in capital projects to the level that we should.

So we are looking again to increase our revenue so that we can start investing in our infrastructure.

So you could see that third line item is our capital that we've been investing in the last few years.

So when you get to back to 1920, it dropped to $1.2 million, rounded up.

And then in 2021, we only had a surplus of $7,789.

But then you get to year 2223, which brings us to here now.

we use from reserves $5.6 million to pay our bills.

We are estimating that in fiscal year 23-24,

we're going to be using about $3.9 million in reserves

if we move forward with the current rates.

And I will now pass it on to Rick Simonson from HFNH,

and he will finish the presentation.

Rick, your audio is off.

Can you turn it on?

We can't hear you, Rick, but let me see if there's anything else we can do on our end.

We can't hear you.

We're checking to see if it's at our end.

Yes, we can hear you now.

No.

Can you hear me now?

Yes. Yes, we can hear you, Rick.

Testing?

Testing? Testing, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you, Rick.

I don't know if you can hear us.

Nothing yet?

Thank you.

Okay, we are ready. Sorry about the technical difficulties.

My apologies. So good evening. Again, I'm Rick Simonson, Senior Vice President with HFNH Consultants.

We were selected to assist the city

with both the sewer rate study as well as water rate study. I'm here to present the rates for adoption tonight for your consideration. I'd like to start the presentation first with sewer and then I'll walk through the water rate study as well. To set the historical background for where your rates are now, I have prepared this slide to show how you're currently being charged. For sewer rates, it is a fixed service charge per account. It's billed according according to customer class and the size of the meter connected to that particular parcel. And as Ms. Garcia mentioned earlier, the current rates have been in effect since September 1st of 2019. However, that did reflect a rollback to September 2016 rates. So I provided both those rates on the right hand side to give you an idea of where rates are now, that first

current monthly column set of rates, and how they compare to the rates just before the

rollback, which is depicted there in the second column of numbers at the September 2018 rate. It reflects a 32% increase over those two years before it was rolled back. So 32% more revenue would have generated about $1.05 million per year. And since the rollback four years ago, that has saved rate payers $4.2 million. What that is also saying is the rates that you are currently paying have not kept up with the increase in costs since 2019. Next slide, please.

And here we're depicting the costs from our 10-year projections. So again tonight we're looking for the adoption of just five years worth of rates. What we see with the stacked bars are your salaries and benefits in the blue over the next 10-year period, your operations in the green, and then lastly the capital projects depicted in the purple. Costs are increasing substantially over the next 10 years, in particular additional capital projects to maintain your system and correct those failing infrastructure. We've also depicted here the revenue at current rates. That's the solid black line. You can see that is not enough to cover the increasing costs over the next 10 year period. So we know some sort of rate adjustment is necessary moving forward. And that can be done with a combination of rate increases as well as the use of reserves. So if we go to the next slide, you'll see that we are using a combination of reserves in the first few years. As you see on the graph on the right-hand side, the solid green line depicts the projected reserves, assuming the rate increases are adopted over the next five-year period, which are depicted on the left hand side shaded in green. This is an overall rate revenue increase for each of the years. A little more information on the chart on the right. Again, this is depicting the projected fund balance with the rate increases that we are recommending in the solid green line. Without those increases, that's depicted with the dotted green line is on a steep decline if you do nothing and maintain your current rates. Reserves will be depleted before the end of fiscal year 24-25 if no action is taken. In addition, on the right-hand side, you see the red solid line. That depicts the minimum reserve balance we would like to see. This is just to cover operations for your day-to-day cash flow. In addition, you should maintain a reasonable reserve for capital projects, and that is depicted in the solid blue line. So during the rate study process, the goal was to remain revenue stable and to utilize reserves in the first few years,

and then begin to build back up those reserves, never dip below the red line, and approach the blue line by the end of this 10-year fiscal projection.

So again, on the left-hand side are the overall rate revenue increases that we are recommending that were included in the Prop 218 notice. Next slide. slide. This slide is the current and proposed rates over the next five year period. Under the fiscal year 23-24 column, you'll notice the increase of 40% in overall revenue is not borne equally by all rate payers. These rates reflect the realignment with the cost of service. So there are various impacts depending on which customer class and which size meter you currently subscribe to. There forward, the percent increases are borne equally by all rates as the rates have been realigned to the cost. Director of Public Service in the first year. Next slide. These next three slides depict the increases for the three customer classes just for the upcoming first increase. Later in the presentation after I go through water I will show a five year outlook of the combined bills for both water and sewer. So as you see here just over a five dollar increase for this first increase that would be effective in mid-Jay. January for single family customers. We've also shown here with multifamily customers, it does depend on the size meter that each customer has, as well as the number of dwell units within those complexes. So this is a very common size and meter size of a multifamily customer within the city. will see a slight decrease with this first realignment to the cost of service. Next slide. Commercial one inch meter, your most common commercial meter size, will again see about a $5 increase in their sewer, monthly sewer bill with this first rate increase. Next slide. So on to the water rate study. Similarly to sewer, we're depicting here your current monthly rate and also the rate before the rollback. For water rates, there are two components on customer bills, and this is billed bimonthly, and we're showing the monthly rates to the side. There is a fixed service charge, which is dependent on your meter size, regardless of customer class. This covers the fixed costs of the system. Consumption charges in addition to the fixed service charge for actual water use as that is different for each customer. Currently single family customers have a three tiered rate structure as you see on the right hand side. There are three tiers depending on how much water you used within that bi-monthly period, what I'm depicting to the right is the monthly equivalent. 0 to 6 units of water are billed at $2.89. 7 to 12 units of water are then billed at $3.15. And when you exceed 13 HCF, that's at $3.37. For all other non-single family residential customers, they pay a uniform rate per 100 cubic foot. And I'll note a unit of water of 100 cubic feet is the equivalent of 748 gallons. Similar to sewer, the water rates were rolled back in 2019 to the 2016 rates. And I'm showing those also on the right hand side in the graph. Those two years of increases that were negated with the rollback would have generated $4.6 million per year. And so over the last four year period, that has saved ratepayers $18.6 million. Next slide. Similar to sewer, we've prepared this bar chart to illustrate the annual costs of maintaining the water system and also depict the revenue at current rates with the solid black line. So again, similar to sewer, we're seeing revenues are not meeting current or projected expenses over time. Next slide. To make up the gap of those shortfalls moving forward, we are recommending the overall rate revenue increases to the left and this as a reminder does include the issuance of the $20 million bond to fund capital projects. So these are the Lor increases compared to what was provided in the Prop 218 notice. Again, the goal in the rate setting was to maintain a reasonable level of reserves. So by the end that we're projecting over this 10 year period, reserve should meet the target balance for both operating and capital reserves. Next slide.

The impact two rates. First, I'll show the monthly service charges.

This is a fixed charge based on the meter size connected to the property.

And it does not differ between customer classes.

Again, the first column, fiscal year 23-24, is a realignment to the cost of service.

So there are different impacts depending on what size meter you currently have.

Thereafter, the 8, 8, 7, and 7% increases are applied uniformly to all meter sizes. Next slide.

The water consumption rates, similarly, we have a realignment to the cost of service as depicted in the fiscal year 23-24 column, where the tiered rates are increasing for single family residential and for all other customers for all their consumption. I will note for the single family residential tiers, we are maintaining the three-tier structure.

and though the rates are increasing,

so are the tiers, how much water you're allotted within that tier. So currently, once you use more than six units of water, you move into tier two. That is changing with the realignment to the cost of service. The first tier will be for water use from zero up to 10 HCF, and then you'll move into the next tier. Next slide.

Again, we have a comparison of your most common single-family customer has a three-quarter-inch meter,

and that is 82% of your single-family residents have a three-quarter-inch meter.

That rate will be increasing from $56.32 per month to $57.12.

We've included on this chart also a comparison to if you were to not bond fund the $20 million in projects

and instead go on a pay-as-you-go basis cash funding.

And this is what was included in the Prop 218 notice. that rate prior to the authorization to bond fund would have increased to $61.33.

Next slide. Another example of a multifamily customer bill, again, assuming a 10-unit complex that has a 2-inch meter,

those rates, the bill for that customer would increase with the proposed new bond scenario, though that is Lor than it was previously proposed and included in the Prop 218 notice.

Next slide. Lastly, a sample of a commercial, your most common one-inch meter,

we'll see an increase for water with the proposed bond-funded scenario. And this, again, is less than what was in the Prop 218 notice without bond funding.

So now I'd like to, I know there's a lot of information on this slide, but we know this is not just the immediate rate increase come January, but there's a series of five increases. We wanted to demonstrate the overall impact on the utility bill for water and sewer for an average customer. This represents your average single family customer, which has a three-quarter inch meter and uses, on average, 10 units of water each month. and 10 units of water equates to about 249 gallons per day. You'll see the water bill increase just slightly for the first year, about 80 cents, then increasing over $4 per month the next four years. Sewer rates have a similar increase, $5 in the first year, and then slowly Lor over the next five-year period. And we also show at the very bottom the increase to the monthly bill of the combined impact to the bill. On the right-hand side, we're comparing this to the previous proposal without the bond funding. So you see the overall impact has been reduced for the fact that you will bond fund some projects to reduce the immediate impact to ratepayers.

Next slide. We have done this on the next couple of slides.

sides. First for multifamily, again with their average multifamily customer of a 10 unit complex with a two inch meter and at average water use, which is about nine units of water per dwelling unit or 90 overall for the complex. The first year would be about a, or the first increase in January would be about a $10 increase per dwelling unit with subsequent increases thereafter. Again, we compare this to what was included in the Prop 218 notice. If you PAYGO funded all your capital projects, we have reduced the impacts to the multifamily

the customers from that decision. Lastly, the commercial comparison. Again, we show both

the impact of the water and sewer. And again, this is just one such customer with a one-inch meter that's using an average of 53 units or about 1,321 gallons per day. We're seeing the largest increase in the first year, about $48 per month, and subsequently thereafter

down to about $24 per month by the fifth year. Again, on the right-hand side, we compare this to what was provided in the Prop 218 notice, assuming PAYGO funding of those capital projects. And if you did PAYGO fund those projects, the rate impacts would be greater. Next slide, please. With that, I'll turn it back over to Martha to finish out the presentation.

Thank you, Rick.

So I want to talk a little bit about our utility billing assistance.

If individuals or our water, our utility users are having difficult paying their monthly bills,

They can contact the finance department at 626-307-1342 to set up a payment plan.

We do allow for payment plans for our customers that are struggling to pay.

We also offer the Lifeline discount program. The Lifeline discount program provides assistance to low-income individuals.

I don't have the website on there. If you call also the 626-307-1342 number,

we can also direct you to the website to provide so you can fill out the application for the Lifeline program. The Lifeline program offers a $12 discount per month for water services, if qualified. And we are currently analyzing our fees that we can use to help our residents that are low income so that maybe we can increase our discount rates for those individuals. The state of California also continues to have a program for low-income households for water and sewer assistance.

you may go to this website to apply and they do give you a it's a lump sum money

that they give you to one time but they do help with quite a bit and we have had several of our

utility low-income families getting this grant to pay help them pay their bills

so you can also go to Chinatown services now we don't offer gas so utilities but there is a

phone number that you can find on our website where you can contact to get some assistance for your gas services. Next slide, please.

So this concludes our presentation.

Staff recommends that City Council consider determining whether there is a majority protest

against the proposed rate increases.

If no majority protest exists, the City Council introduce and waive first reading of the ordinance, setting the amount of the water rates and changes as in Exhibit 1, Attachment 1, if no majority board exists, that the City Council introduce and waive the first reading of the ordinance setting the amount of wastewater, sewer rates, and charges as noted in Attachment 2,

and take such additional related action that may be desired.

And I just want to note again that we will be coming back on December 20th to do the second reading of the ordinance.

And if approved, if passes, we will then, the rates will be effective January 19th.

And our utility users will notice it, the first utility users receiving their bill.

Thank you Martha for that report.

I'm going to go ahead and open it up for public comment. I know we have six speakers.

First speaker, Carlos Garcia.

Carlos Garcia. Sorry.

Good evening, City Council and all our fellow could-be property owners or renters.

I know that you got a new city of Monterey Park system that you purchased I don't know a few years ago

but three years ago I requested an annual report on the sewer fee

on the expenditures and I did receive it

nowhere in your new system do you show expenditures for the sewer fee

I called two people from City Hall and none of them could give me a response

what I read and what I saw and I had other co-worker

said to me look, they're investing the sewer fund you're making money on it am I right the lady that was reading all this information on my left over here

you do invest the sewer fee money and there were millions.

Is that correct?

What is your question?

Oh, I'm not paying attention. I said that you invest the surplus of sewer fee and you're making interest on it. Am I correct?

That is correct. Okay. Now let me finish.

You approximately get $4 million a year on the sewer fee.

And I calculated within, from 2014, you went from $2, you went to 2015 to 52. 2019, you went to 72. So within the time frame of approximately nine years, you collected between $25 and $28 million.

That should be more than enough money to do whatever repairs you have to do with the sewer fee. But just to show pictures, if you did not use that money properly, I would like to see the expenditures for the SOAR fee like you gave me three years ago. Very simple. You do show me that, then I will agree to increase.

Now, the water fee that you're trying to increase, where I live, they've done that for my boy. We went over it.

you're getting a double increase. You're raising the water rates

and you're going over to tier one, tier two, tier three. Hey, just keep what you have right now.

Summertime you use more, wintertime you use less.

Everybody has been conserving water for years now.

There's no reason to increase it. You're getting an increase by every year, a water increase. You don't need Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3.

Very simple.

I want to see the expenditures on the water rates. You say you need it for X. But how is it being used? How is it being spent? If you can produce that for me, especially with the sewer fee, then I will agree on it. And I'm sure all these people can look at the bills and see.

you weren't aware that 2014 you were paying $2.02. Were you aware of that? Can anybody answer that for me? Were you aware of it? Anybody here can say yes or no?

I don't hear nobody talking right now. 2014 was $2.02. 2015, it went to $52.58. And 2019, $72.53.

So there's something wrong when you cannot produce a report on expenditures on the sewer fee.

And I'd like to come back a week later. I will go to the city clerk and see if that's available. So thank you so much.

Next speaker.

Next speaker, Andy Islas.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council, staff.

It's very confusing when you start to look at charts that don't completely include everything. you haven't combined the cost of fixed, variable, and sewer rates added completely

so that people get the real cost effect that they'll have. It is confusing.

A lot of people don't know what the real cost effect will be.

And it's even more confusing to come here tonight and find out that sewer money,

those revenues are being invested and that there's millions and you're still going back to the public to the residents of this city

many of whom are seniors on fixed incomes having to choose between food and medicine already $12 a month rebate is not going to help much you have to consider a lot of things before you do a rate And then there's something else in the charts.

When you looked at the fixed cost of people's expense for water at this point, and you go from a one-inch meter to a two-inch meter, it's very disproportionate. I know it has a lot to do with volume of water and other things, but it's many times more when you look at the chart. So review it and look at it. Mr. Wong, you know a lot about water, So this might be something that you would be familiar with. So it's variable, fixed, and sewer, which we understand maybe has a lot of surplus of money. Maybe you should consider putting this on a ballot, on a regular scheduled election,

and having seminars to educate the people so that they know exactly what they're going to be putting out of their pocket.

and letting them make a choice then on whether they want a water increase or to replace city council. Thank you.

Next speaker, Armand Sebastian.

Good evening, council. I just wanted to implore you to please consider the impact of this rate, sewer and water rate on senior citizens and people who are on fixed income and Lor income. I know we have to fix the pipes, but please, when you look at the increase, please at least moderate the level of the rate of increase.

CPI is about 3.2%

and increased annually last 12 months. So if you can stay within that or Lor than that, less than that, it would really appreciate

and it would affect positively some of the Lor income and senior citizens. And another item I wanted to mention is the, someone brought that to my attention, that 2022, the sales tax measure that were passed. It says that the 10.25% sales tax, part of it was to, quote, protect local drinking water and prepare for the drought. Why not use that money for fixing the water? It says protect local drinking water. So I was wondering if you can also consider that as well. Thank you very much.

Next speaker, Teresa Rial Sebastian.

Good evening and happy holidays. I'm Teresa. and I want to thank the presentation. Thank you for pointing out and doing the presentation first. First, I understand we have infrastructure that's old. I get that. We need to fix it, et cetera, et cetera. But I have several concerns. First of all, the rates that are being discussed

today are not the same rates that came in my 218 notice. They're totally different.

So I did a little spreadsheet, and I was going to give this to you to share with you, and it's totally off. So where is the transparency here? Totally different, number one. I'm totally off. Secondly, we talk about Prop 218 notices being submitted. They were done in English, Chinese, and Spanish, and I'm circulating them. Did you notice if there were any errors in the Chinese notice?

And would you be alarmed if there was? Because it seems nobody looked at the one in Spanish because my neighbors were confused.

And I'd like to know how many protest notices did you receive in Spanish? Because in Spanish here it says, de agua, and that's water. And in the protest section, you'll see on the bottom, it says, tarifa de alcantarillado. That's sewer. Huh. And then you look at the protest notice for sewer. On the top it says Alcantarillado. And on the bottom it's Alcantarillado. So they got two protest notices for sewer, none for water. Who was checking? Did staff check? Marta, did you check? Was this our consultant that did it? or does nobody care about our Spanish-speaking residents? This is called disenfranchisement. They were confused. They didn't understand. They wanted to protest it, but they said, I didn't get a protest little voucher for Spanish people. It's agua. So I think you need to throw this out and redo it again. The other thing is the staff report, Oh, I talked about the lack of transparency. And I wanted to clarify. The reason why, and if we go back to that diagram of why the rates went back down in, you know, 2017 or so, is if you all recall, there was a drought mandate. Remember, Thomas, you came and spoke about it and how we had to conserve water. So what happened is we implemented these rates, but all of a sudden, boom, all of us had to conserve water. We could only water a certain number of days between a certain number of hours. And if not, even the city was educating people. So what happened? Water consumption plummeted and the income to the city also plummeted. Not only our city, every city. And so that's what happened. So I wanted to clarify that. So I want to ask you what's going to happen the next time Sacramento issues another drought regulation restriction. Our rates are also going to plummet. Have we considered that?

So again, I understand that it does need to be adjusted. I understand things need to be fixed. Our city is over 100 years old. We get that. We understand that speech. But when you're looking at increases of 8% each year, look, it isn't the residents' fault.

staff didn't do anything back in 2019 or 2020. Remember, 2020, you had a brand new council,

and we had that lovely pandemic. Remember? And a lot of things weren't being done. I get it. But ease people back in. You have the power to do that. You don't need to follow what they say. You can say, thank you so much, but you know what? Right now, we have a recession. There's inflation. I mean, look at the cost of gas, the cost of everything else. So bear in mind these residents and what they're trying to do. And a lot of them were really confused because this wasn't exactly transparent. When it says it's $26.40, I couldn't bloody figure out my water bill. And so I called staff and I said, explain it to me because here there's no calculation. Edison has it. Thank you, Thomas. They tell you what your rate is and how it's calculated. Monterey Park, we don't have any such things. So I do want to thank Hua Nguyen from our finance department. She's amazing. She needs to be promoted because she's been available to people.

Martha, I did call you several times. Your extension went to voicemail, and that was kind of unfortunate. But I got to speak to Ms. Nguyen.

Fabulous, fabulous person in your finance department. So please, again, you have the ability to adjust this. Yes, we have a person that came and told us it should be this. but you know Monterey Park. Help the residents right now. Thank you.

Next speaker, Weng Long.

Hi, good evening. Mayor, attorney, council.

the paper, it tells you you need to put the account number, but there's no account number at the bottom

of the ballot to put on.

And also the word

sewage and water is so small and also they look identical.

I have asked some

neighbor to fill in the form. They only give me back one. They said

the same thing. I said, no, look carefully. Another thing is

I agree with her saying we need a transparency on the cost,

why we increase so much, what we spend.

And also, when I look at the numbers, this year and four years from now, we would pay about 50% more money every time you get a bill. So that sounds like a lot of money.

I understand many things of cost, but I have no idea how that comes and goes. So I would really want to say we received a ballot,

but I'm trying to understand the ballot thing, everything is set up really intelligently in a way to get it passed. The reason, because first of all, we have no idea how many percent people have to protest in order to pass it or fail it. And that's misleading in a way to me because I just heard majority. Well, what does that majority mean?

And the ballot is something, if you don't say anything,

it's like a consent. But that doesn't mean the patient knows about it because some people say, I don't even see the paper.

I don't know where the letter we received or we have no idea what it means or we forgot about it. So in other words, automatically,

the system set up is to make a pass because the people may not know what to do with it. Because it means you object, you can object, but it doesn't say how many people should do in order to pass it. Or you don't give the people a choice of yes and no.

So I really want to say the system should have something to be changed for the future, to be fair to the people because we need to understand what to do better because I talk to so many people they have no idea what I talk about until I explain to them. Thank you.

Last speaker is me.

The other one said it was for Carmen. No, it said you gave me seven minutes. Two more minutes for this one. Me and another one. We have two. I gave you two.

Wait, wait, sorry. This is the last speaker. Thank you. That's according to our city clerk. I gave you four to you. During Carmen?

Do you have another one?

During?

Excuse me, excuse me. Thank you.

He spoke during oral in regards to a different topic.

You should be alLod to speak now on this topic.

It's a different topic.

Go ahead, Michelle.

And we'll let the other speaker go. Okay.

Without a doubt, our infrastructure is aging, and we need to do something about it. There's no question about it. I think what I do want to say, like the other gentleman said, I was deeply concerned when I heard there was no sewer plan. That is not acceptable that you come with your hand out to the residents asking for more money with no plan as to how you're going to spend it.

You should not be asking for an increase and saying we're going to use that increase to devise the plan.

You should already know what you're going to spend it on. So prior to any approval of these rate increases, we should have that transparency. This is what we're looking at.

These are our priorities. This is how we select the projects.

All of that information should be transparent and given to the public so that they can decide whether or not that is something that we should support. So that information should be given. So prior to any decision to be made, please demand that that information be given to you so that you can make a proper decision and as well as to the public so that they can support that decision as well. Thank you.

Last speaker, Randolph Reyes.

In two minutes.

Yes, good evening once again. water increases are abusive they're outrageous and they're crushing senior citizens that somebody mentioned back here

you're weaponizing the water and this has been going on not only with this council but with

my years and years of other councils

doesn't work

now these increases are freakishly high I mean, they are freakishly high. I'll give you an example.

If someone uses 12 units of water today, their bill would be $104.78, including the abusive water treatment tax of 37.5%. In 27, and I'm using the numbers that were mailed to us, not these numbers up here, it would be $173.27, which is a total of 65.36% increase. But the worst part is this. It's not transparent because that 37.5% water treatment tax is on the water. But it gets worse.

You're using monthly usage. Our bills are not monthly. They are bimonthly. It is a collective.

So when somebody says they use 10 units and you use one more unit the next month, you're at 11.

Or let's say you use zero units one month, and you go with a new proposal to 11.

You're going to be kicked up based on these tables over here. The solution is pretty simple.

It's what I suggested many times before.

If you have a project, be specific.

What you've got to do is you have to go back on every resource that you have

to go back and look at who uses how much water. So you have East L.A. College, you have multifamily residents, commercial,

but you have the information there.

You can go back and say this resident will be allocated X amount of dollars. But let me just give you a simple solution. Using the 13,325, I guess, billing customers, and you had a $20 million need to fix infrastructure,

if you pushed that infrastructure over a five-year period, you would bill every unit $25 a month without touching the water rates, a separate line for the sewer line down Atlantic Boulevard, a separate line for whatever it's going to be.

Don't weaponize the water. Water is a necessity. It's not a discretionary thing. It's a necessity. Some homes have larger yards.

Others don't have as many square feet to worry about.

So you got my mom back here, 95 years old, and her property is 9,650 square feet. It's almost a quarter acre. I hand water for her. We've been doing this for years. We do everything we can to conserve water.

but to abuse her little increase in social security to give it to Monterey Park,

which based on the numbers you do, is going to be $1,000 more a year. Forget about it. This is wrong. Now, maybe you guys have the resources to do it. A lot of people don't. And where we live, there's a lot of seniors around there, and unfortunately some have died. Many have died.

But you need to look at this much closer.

this idea of water projects, this has been going on over and over again. I've got two more minutes.

Thank you. It's been going on over and over again since Frank Venti and Michael Ng,

especially that water treatment charge. And I said, once you let the hat out of the bag, the cat out of the bag, you're never going to put it back in there. And this has just been going on and on and on. It is ruthless.

Final example is this. If somebody uses nine units per month, which would be a total of 18 units, today that person is going to be paying $136.20.

$27 is going to be $357.16. Why? Because the water is collective.

If you bill us monthly, then someone is going to get billed at nine units, and they're going to be at $4.50 in 27 or 28, not $11.47.

so start billing monthly that'll save us some money still don't like the rates but at least it's not going to be collective

so you think about that you look at it hard and just because you bring a consultant

you know they're going to tell you what you want to hear

think outside the box that's what you got to do think outside the box applause

no more speakers

Thank you. All right.

So any questions or comments from Council?

Yes, Mr. Mayor?

Yes.

Council Member Lo? Yes.

Martha, I know the first speaker had asked a question about the sewer rate expenditures

or the revenue that's collected, and I think you were starting to answer that question. But as far as revenue that's been collected previously, how has that been spent or invested?

So all revenue and all expenditures are reported and can be seen by the public through our transparency module.

They just have to go to the finance department.

Excuse me.

Excuse me. We gave you guys an opportunity to speak. Please allow the council to speak.

Thank you. Sorry.

And can be found on the transparency module.

It's based, you can see whose vendors are getting paid

and what funds are being used by the number, not the name, but the number. The names can be found on your budget book. You'll see what number corresponds to what fund. As to investing, we have our investment portfolio, and any surplus goes into our investment portfolio.

But with that said, earnings earned for the sewer, go to the sewer.

Earnings earned for the water, go to the water.

Those are your interest earnings that are reported also at budget and in the ACFER.

And I'd like to respond to the millions and 20-plus million in the sewer.

We don't have our audited numbers just for fiscal year 23.

But in 22, we had unrestricted funds in sewer of about $7 million.

And in 23-24, this fiscal year, we've budgeted 3.8 of that for sewer projects.

So it's dwindling. It will go down.

So we don't have the millions and millions of dollars in our sewer surplus reserves.

And why are they dwindling?

Because the funding is not, the revenue is not meeting the needs of the city. It's not meeting the operations.

Well, it can meet the operations, but it's not sufficient to cover all the infrastructure that needs to be replaced in the city.

I see. And what is, I mean, I know it may vary, but what has been the, is there an annual, like, do you have a percentage of annual increases of those costs?

Oh, the costs? Yes. I, it's the, our, our HFNH determined that we have an average and it, and it's, I agree, it's about a three to four percent average increase every year for, you know, for salary benefits, services, supplies, for all those types of expenditures.

There is, there is an average three to four percent increase each year in costs.

I see.

Any other questions? Council Member Ngo?

Going back to, so the account balance is roughly $7 million.

Yes.

So the investments, I guess the gentleman was asking how much did we make a year on that account, and I think the number I heard was $4 million. But it can't be $4 million if we only have $7 million.

So what is the amount that we earn?

I don't have that number.

I'd have to go into our software to give you, but it can be found.

Actually, let me see if I have it in our...

Did I show it?

Well, I mean, it would probably be...

In fiscal year 23, keeping in mind that we had a negative mark to market,

it was $8,358 that was recorded as interest earned for the sewer fund.

So we make roughly... I'm just going to round it off. we make roughly less than $10,000 a year in the investments of the school fees that's in the account. So I just wanted to make sure that's clear.

That's correct, yes. Mayor Pro Temuang.

Director of Public Works. Council Member. Council Member. Council Member. Council Member. I have a second question. Go ahead. So my separate question is this. On the sewer. I'm sorry. On the water. Let's go. Let's go to water. On the water. We had a shortfall deficit last year. If I remember correctly. Somewhere in the range of 5.6 million. Is that the right. Right. Ballpark. Okay. Right. So what that means. Confirm it. Is that last year. Water is supposed to be an enterprise. price, meaning whatever we collect, we pay. Because the city doesn't own the water.

The city is kind of like a purveyor. We're basically a middle person.

Whatever it costs to us, we pass it on to the users.

Correct.

Last year, we were short by roughly $5.6 million. Is that a correct statement?

Yes. I'm going to go back to that one's PowerPoint.

It was $5.6 or $5.9?

How much was it?

Oh, right there. It was $5.6. $5.63.

okay i just run into 5.6 million okay which means the city is in a way you can call it reallocating or subsidizing we're basically paying for the residents and part of that reasoning is if you go back to our water rates we've kind of held the same water rate since 2016 since september uh we

On August 31st, 2019, we reverted back to the September 2016 rates.

So at one point, the rates were going up, and I agree with the gentleman. I believe he's also a finance person. CPI has been 3% or more a year because that's just cost has gone up. During the pandemic, the last two years, CPI has gone up significantly more. But if you go back, roll back 10 years, it's been 3% a year.

So if you take back 2016, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, in eight years, 3% a year is 24%.

We've been charging back to 2016 rates. So the city's been losing money or been not losing money, but the city's been covering money for the residents. And I think that's part of the discussion we have today.

It's because we've been covering through the agreement or through the prior city council members.

They decided that that was the step to take. And today, we as a group here, we need to decide, do we want to go back and do the same thing that they did back in 2016-17 and continue to cover $5 million a year in reallocation or shortage or gaps, gap money to fund enterprise water.

One, can we do that? Two, do we want to do that? Or three, do we want to make it normalized, meaning people should be paying the water bills that is costing us. So, for example, if I went to Rosemead, Hambers, and Gabriel, they're paying a dollar. City of Mario Park, we should be paying a dollar. I mean, it's been great the last seven, eight years. Our residents have been paying 65 cents, 70 cents on the dollar. If we have money, I'd love for residents to do that. But it gets to a point where we need to do something. And we're only talking about the cost of the water. We're not even talking about those pipes. Now this city's been around for over 120 years. What about the infrastructure? Because every time you have a leak, you have a break, it's costing the city money. And that, unfortunately, that cost to those breakages, we're talking about hundreds of millions of water that's leaked, where does that get passed to? Well, it's the collective, the entire city,

it gets passed to everyone.

So I think we need to do something here. which is, I agree with the bond because the bond is the first step. The bond will, one, set aside about, is it $10 million?

$9 million.

It's setting aside $9 million to fix the pipes for the entire city, which is a necessity. It's no longer a want, it's a necessity. And then the other $11 million, really it's to bridge the gap between what we were paying in 2016 rates to today's rates, without doubling or tripling. Is that a fair assessment?

The $9 million is for the meters. Okay.

And the $11 million is for a few other projects that we believe that we can definitely do in three years, and it's going to reduce rates for our...

It's going to bridge the grant gap and reduce our rates.

So the $20 million is all going to water.

It's all going to go...

So there's no money reallocated to reduce the cost, but what we believe is if you fix the meters, If you fix the system, you don't lose the water. You don't have water wasting so that the overall rate would be closer to where we are today.

Correct, yes.

Perhaps we need to think about increasing that bond.

That's another option.

I mean, it's going to cost us more money to pay back in debt service, but increasing that bond will help.

I get it.

I think a lot of residents are low-income, senior citizens. We need to figure a way to bridge that. Look, the reality is we had it good for seven, eight years because the city was subsidizing. So if we don't subsidize at all, everyone's going to feel the cost. And not only that, because of the increase, we're going to pay a lot more.

the residents will pay a lot more.

If you increase the bond, maybe you pay more, but not significantly more.

We can't bond for more than the 20 because we can only bond.

Whatever we borrow, we have to use within three years.

And Public Works believes that the projects they've identified,

it's going to take them the three years to complete.

so bonding for more would

not work would probably not be approved

okay so it's kind of like a

multi bond issuance issue where this council will put it on the table and say

we will bond 20

and that the recommendation is that come through years from now we'll probably have to do more because that's the reality otherwise the rate would significantly go up beyond what we're thinking today because that's the reality

We could do that.

Okay, so that's an option as well.

We could come back in three years, yes. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

Mayor Portemont.

Thank you, and thank you, Martha, and to the team for the work. This is not the first time the Council's hearing this. I think we've been talking about this for several months now, and I appreciate all the work in answering our questions over the course of the last few months up to this point. Just a couple of clarifying questions on the tiers.

I think the last speaker public speaker asked this question and I think his under

I just want to make sure we have the same understanding of this. The tiers that customers would hit are on a monthly basis right? They're not

accumulated like he was saying

since we do bill every

two months. It's a monthly basis

but we bill by week

we bill by monthly so the first 20

would be at the first

tier and then afterwards it would hit the next tier because we bill bimonthly.

I mean, would it be if someone uses 12 units one month and 8 units the other, it wouldn't be per month?

Our program would not allow for that.

So our system, our billing system, it's going to bill for, because they've only did a 12 and an 8,

it's still going to be at the Lor rate because it's cumulative for the two months.

That is what my staff told me today.

Because of the programming, we are currently working on making our billing system up to date

with current processes in our billing system.

if that changes with the updates that we're doing I'll come back to council and let them know

and then I mean on that point we are with with the meter changeouts to AMI advanced meter

infrastructure right that would enable us to begin the process of getting to potentially

monthly billing to have more accurate yes and then I believe that with this new system it'll

be real time so our customers will be able to see their water usage as well yeah and I would

echo I think that I think I think this was a comment from the speaker to get to monthly billing

for all of our utilities going forward in the future month monthly billing I believe a few

years back they did an analysis and it is more costly to the city but we can definitely look into that and bring it back to to let council know what the cost would be to move to monthly

billing great now I would love to explore that option uh if it makes sense right um in terms of I think some of the concerns that were expressed around capital projects and not knowing. We do plan for our capital projects, and we have a capital improvement plan for all of our funds, enterprise funds included, as part of the annual budgeting process, right?

Correct.

And we also worked with our HF&H consultant. We showed a five- or ten-year plan on water and sewer projects that needed to be done. So it's in the analysis.

Good evening, Mayor.

Mayor, Mayor Pro Temp and City Council. I just want to jump in here real quick. So we do plan out at least five years into our capital program. Some of the projects we've already identified include reservoir rehabilitations, pipeline replacements, the AMI project for water meters. So we have a significant amount of projects and to the earlier points, we can only do so much, right? So we not only have our water projects, we have sewer projects, we have streets projects. We have a significant amount of projects. We have a limited amount of staffing to do that. So we have to prioritize accordingly. So $20 million is kind of that sweet spot. but to you know again to the point we do invest into our infrastructure we plan out as far as we can sometimes we have to ship projects around if emergencies come up and things like that but again we've identified several projects that we can complete the next couple years we plan out at least five if not ten if we can because again these are significant dollar projects want to make sure that we are not only budgeting appropriately but we're preparing for those projects specifically and then also to the ami point for meters not only are they going to have real-time data but then people can get alerts if they have a leak well they should get an alert if they sign up either via text or via email however they wish to be notified they can get that which again that can help them reduce their bills if they have a toilet leak or a sprinkler leak that they don't know about it can help reduce those bills so just want to jump in tell you that

thank you and sean since we have you up here i was hoping you could maybe speak to some of the um aging pipes that are up here just so that the audience understands just the necessity in terms of why we're doing some of these capital projects and why they're so important.

Yeah, absolutely.

So the display we have up here, these are typically our water services that we have. So we have three-quarter, one-inch, and two-inch lines that we have here. These obviously have failed in the course of their service, and so that's why we pulled them out. They've been replaced with newer infrastructure, whether it's copper or plastic. So that's what you have displayed here. Again, just showing the age of our infrastructure. Out in the foyer area, we have some of the displays we've had before, which are larger pipelines, which, again, just show the age of our infrastructure. This stuff, you mean like to the other points, it's been in here for 80 years in some of these cases. And so unfortunately, we need to be replaced. If we continue to neglect our system, it's going to become more and more expensive, not only to repair, but in addition to replacing in the future. So if we don't replace it now, it's going to cost us more in the future. Look at what we've seen over the past couple of years as far as inflation costs. Imagine if that happens again and again over the next couple of years. So we're just kicking that can down the road and we're gonna spend a lot of money to replace this infrastructure if we can instead of replacing it today

Thank you for mentioning that and every time that a pipe breaks, we're just fixing the problem

We're not necessarily the immediate which is just a band-aid right?

We're not actually fixing the overall problem that exists right?

Typically, that's what we're doing so you can see on one of these water water services We actually have a clamp on it when it was leaking, but unfortunately it broke further down so we had to replace it out in the foyer we have our larger mains where we have clamps to go around them. Sometimes if that doesn't work, then yes, we have to cut out a small section of pipe and put a new section, but that just fixed maybe a couple of feet of pipe. You still have maybe a mile worth of pipe that still is, you know, the same age, the same condition that still needs to replace at some date and time.

This costs us a lot of money over time and in the future if we don't invest in these projects.

Significantly, yes.

Monterey Pass is a perfect example of that. That was on the agenda for emergencies. That's millions of dollars that had to be invested in a short period of time as opposed to planning that out over time and replacing it section by section. We had to replace a large section of pipe in a short amount of time.

Thank you for sharing that.

I'm a homeowner here as well, and I've got kids. I don't want to pass this problem on to my kids. If we can fix these problems and issues, I think the sooner we can, the cheaper it will be for our city and for our residents to be able to handle some of these problems. but I'm going to hand it back to the mayor because I think he still has some questions here.

Yeah, thank you, mayor.

On bill design, I think one point was made by one of the speakers too, which I actually share as well. But unfortunately, I mean, fortunately or unfortunately, I live in a multi-unit dwelling, right? Most apartment dwellers and condo dwellers, townhouse dwellers, typically won't see a water bill because they're on a master meter for multiple units

and they just share that in the HOA,

or it's covered in the rent and they don't have a sub-meter or their own meter. But a lot of people still do get their bills and would like to see information.

I actually have not looked at a water bill in a while,

but would like to see as we're moving towards, as we hopefully approve this tonight and at least have the funding to move forward on meter change-outs to AMI, that we can look at bill design as well to make sure that that's we're providing information that's useful for residents and businesses and customers in terms of water usage and what the calculation is what tiers they're hitting every month and ways that we can encourage them to encourage all of our customers to save water

as part of this process. I think that would be great. Another kind of point or question on this would be, too, as a reminder, I think, to residents and others who might be paying attention, the 218 process is setting the ceiling for where the city can set water rates. As we move forward on this, wherever this ends up, that's just the max. If we come back a few years from now or between now and the end of the five-year term that we're alLod to adjust the maximum rates, and we're getting lots of grant money, which we will go after, right, and looking for other sources of funding, potentially offset existing costs for infrastructure and operations and maintenance, if we somehow come into other revenue streams or whatever or our expenses go down for some reason, one can hope. but we can make adjustments and we will and should make adjustments to our rates and bill and revenue generation going forward. And I hope that we can, I know that staff and I'll provide this direction now, if we're seeing that in the, we will see that in the annual budget process, but if we are seeing that kind of in the interim period to make sure that we're bringing to council the option and the analysis to adjust rates accordingly so that we're not impacting our customers where we don't need to. And there are opportunities out there for potential offset, right, potential additional outside sources of revenue to come in, like Watermaster or other potential sources of funding that can come in for offsetting costs for water quality, water treatment facilities. We have someone here from the water district that has provided some financing for us for our water treatment facility over the last few years, which is about to come online. And so that's helped us to save funding that otherwise we would have had to finance or finance ourselves. That would have cost us lost interest earnings. so as we pursue one hope that and expect that we will pursue those revenue outside revenue opportunities aggressively and I know that we're already on top of that and I appreciate the staff for doing that but want to make sure that we are intentional as well about keeping an eye on if we don't need to raise these rates the levels that we've put out in this 218 process then we should bring that to council to make sure we're making those adjustments

properly. If I may, we'll be able to see that and council will be able to see that twice. Once during the budget workshop and another time when we bring the financials to ACFRA back to

council. And then we can definitely, council can at any time request that we come back to reduce

rates. Great. And then a final point to make is, I know Martha, you touched on the utility bill assistance kind of programs. We have an existing lifeline rate program for low-income customers who may be having difficulty affording their current bills. My guess is that we'll probably have more interest in bill assistance as these rates go into effect, whatever their increases are, going in the future. And given a lot of the pandemic and other financial assistance that we saw the last few years is expiring and going away, more and more people will probably are already feeling the pinch, not just for these kind of rates, but across the board with inflation. I know we are working to identify additional funding sources to bolster and enhance our ability to provide bill assistance to customers. Can you talk just a little bit about how that looks and how that might look?

Right now, we use our late fee charges to subsidize the Lifeline program. It's $12 a month for water. So we've been analyzing other cities.

We've been reviewing what other cities do.

We have some options to come back to council,

but we're waiting to see what our fees are coming in at

to see if we can reduce and provide a bigger discount. We just barely, back in June of this year,

we reinstated the late fees.

So we need to collect a few months of it

to see where we're at and we're definitely going to be to council to

discuss the possibility of providing a bigger discount for our for our low income residents.

Great and I know we're doing the work

when ready. Would love to hear and get an update from staff on where we are in that process and knowing that demand for bill assistance will probably start to increase early next year given where we are to the extent that we can expeditiously kind of come back with that. And then just once we're ready, even the existing program, if we can see how we can bolster awareness of Lifeline and water bill assistance, I know we already, when customers call and are saying they're having difficulty, We have bill payment arrangements where we can kind of stretch out payments or give them some sort of other assistance in that way and help them delay payments if we need. We can set them up on payment plans and others. If we can help to do additional outreach, especially as this first bill, once increases go into effect, hit customers, see how we can do additional outreach and marketing of our lifeline rate assistance program and other bill assistance programs that might be available for those who might be experiencing difficulty. I think that would be great, making sure we're promoting that in the Cascades. Bill inserts, if people are reading their bills. I don't know if this is already in the GoMPK app, but maybe we can put that up on one of the top listed resources for GOMPK and the website and any other ways that we can help get the word out about bill assistance and maybe we can partner with SoCal Gas, Edison, the other utilities as they kind of make their pitches about

assistance programs and just combine them all in the cascades and other avenues to get the word out. I think that would be great.

Council Member, you?

I want to say when I first learned about the increase of water rate, I said, oh, no. It's not easy for all of us, especially as seniors with living on fixed income. And plus the inflation is high and everything increases in price. So living expense increased dramatically. I know it's not easy for everyone. With this water rate increase, it adds more stress to everyone. But after knowing the situations and also knowing the city financial situations, we did not increase our rate for the last eight years, and we came to a point where the city cannot afford the fee that keep subsidizing for all the residents. As you can see the chart, you know, we are losing $5 million last year,

and we cannot afford to do that for a longer run.

The next question I ask is, is there anything we can do for the resident at this time?

So the staff suggests that we only afford the $20 million reductions by issuing a bond to ease the stress.

I'm excited. I'm excited about that. And at least it's something that we can do. and I can reduce the rate.

I told the resident, I said hopefully to reduce the one-third, but actually after the calculation we can only reduce about 25%. But then I really hope that the resident can understand that this is not much we can do

and that we have already done our best. So thank you so much.

Mr. Mayor?

Council Member Logue, go ahead.

I have a question. So regarding the application for the water lifeline program, my understanding is that the income requirements, you know, they're set by the PUC, but are we able to adjust them on our own?

The rates?

No, the income requirements. So for example, if you look at the, well, I'm actually looking right now, but unless this is an updated application, but it says income requirements source California PUC alternative rates for energy care program. And it says, excuse me, number of persons living in a home, one to two, and it lists maximum total gross household income from all sources, $34,480. For residents of three living in a home, $43,440.

For number of persons living in a home, four, it's $52,400.

Five people living in a home, $61,360. Six people living in a home, $70,320. And it says, for each additional person, add $8,960. And there's an asterisk that says, according to the asterisk, income is defined as all revenues,

including but not limited to wages, salaries, benefits, interests, spousal and child support,

social security, public assistance payments, pensions, rental income for self-employment.

Well, you know, for example, if I'm not mistaken, the Social Security system is going to have a slight augmentation, again, probably because of inflation.

But given those adjustments, for example, and because inflation is an issue, are we able to also adjust the maximum gross household income as well?

Mr. Mayor, members of the Council, I'll take this one. At first, there's no legal requirement that you have a lifeline opportunity for rates. That's something that the city council decided to do. And in 2020, the city council adopted an ordinance which slightly amended the municipal code to make clearer what the link was between household income and the ability to qualify for one of the lifeline rates. And what the city council did at that point was simply identify particular programs that were already in existence from the state of California, which is why you see those particular household incomes listed on the webpage, because they are simply a rendition of what's already available from the state.

That's the household income.

That's not something that the city came up with. We just linked it into whatever the state provides. To answer your question, you can do what you would like. You could do away with the lifeline.

You could reduce, increase, whatever you want to do.

Again, there's no legal requirement that you even have it. The only legal requirement is that the funds that are made available to subsidize that lifeline rate can only come from the enterprise fund and it can only be based upon the income generated from interest off of the funds that are currently invested with the state of California. So those are the only legal limitations with regard to the lifeline rate.

Okay.

I mean, well, thank you for that clarification. But having heard that, I mean, what I would like to also suggest is that if we're going to look at option, you know, going this direction is also to look at how we can adjust and update the lifeline program as well. And again, I understand that we can to the extent that we're able to with revenues that come in from enterprise funds,

but I think that's something we should want to look at as well.

And Mr. Mayor, members of the council, I believe Ms. Garcia was talking about that earlier, which is one of the revenue sources that can also be used are late fees coming in from other areas because those are reinvested. And so that's added to the pot, if you will. So I think she was going to wait until early quarter one to come back to the city council with recommendations with regard to lifeline rate based upon the revenue streams

that are coming in from since June of 2023.

Okay.

And then a follow-up question. So right now, the city has been also investing in cleanup of its water system, I guess the PFAS system, right? Because of the PFAS contamination in our water system, we've had to also pay for cleanup of that system.

Is that correct?

Yes. We do get... You want to do it?

Yes, okay.

Yes, so the new system that we have coming online that will help treat for PFAS.

So there's additional costs with that.

This is the first of its kind in California, so process-wise. And so there is additional expenses that typical systems don't see. And so this is a new constituent that the state identified. And so unfortunately, there is a significant expense to treating that water.

And what has been the expense?

I mean I know that's well just here would you know what they what the

estimate is I off the top of my head I don't okay so there's significant dollars in electricity there's carbon the process that we use to do that there's different things that do we have we use ultraviolet light to help the disinfection process and also for the removal process there's lots of different things that we have to do to help remove that constituent so

Unfortunately, it's very expensive.

And again, it's to clean up our water supply that residents get.

That is correct.

Now, currently, if I'm not mistaken, we actually borrowed, right?

We took our loan from the San Diego Valley Municipal Water District, did we not?

We did. We borrowed $4 million from them. $4 million.

Okay. That's correct. And to cover part of the cost.

Now, up until now, or when do we pay back that loan, what would be the source of revenue that we'll be paying for what we borrow or those expenses for the water treatment?

That would be the water revenue that we're collecting.

Okay, okay. And the loan that we are, I think it's a zero interest loan, but nonetheless, will that also be coming out of...

Director of Water Revenue or that coming out of General Fund, you know, because it's debt servicing? Water, water revenues. Water revenue, okay. Mr. Mayor, members of the Council, if I could just tag team on that discussion. As first of all, remember the numbers that are projected here tonight are the worst case scenario. And what has also been discussed is if there are additional sources of revenue that will help offset the costs and particularly with regard to PFAS, which is I'm going to get to you in a minute. I'd staff will come back to the council and make a determination of whether or not to implement the next stage of the proposed rates and one of the key factors is specifically with regard to pfas and just for the public's understanding what pfas is it's a substance that you most frequently would see in household items such as teflon different types of carpeting if you saw the the movie black water that talks about the pfas pofas problem and one of the issues is it's also in firefighting types of equipment, foam, and has made itself present into the potable water sources, which requires us to treat those water sources in order to take those

compounds out.

Some of you may have read about the headlines with major settlements that occurred in the past month with 3M and DuPont, which were the two biggest manufacturers of this particular product, and those settlements amount to around $1.7 to $2 billion. The city has applied and the city council authorized the city to apply for a portion of those settlement funds. And the early estimates are that the city qualifies. I want to say qualifies because that doesn't mean that we get these funds. The city qualifies for up to $26 million in settlement funds from those particular funds. If it turns out that the city indeed will get a portion of those settlement funds, whatever the portion that is, It will offset some of the costs that mr. I go was talking about with regard to treatment and what have you Those funds have to be specifically used for PFAS POFAS So it's not like it could go have a uniform application to all of the rates, but certainly Whatever it is that the millions of dollars that the city has already expended to try to treat those costs Will be applied and will hopefully either reduce or stabilize the rates that are being discussed tonight

Okay

Thank you. Any other questions or comments?

I just wanted to say a couple things. Actually, Martha, I had just one quick question regarding the language issue.

Did we get any comments, questions, emails over the phone regarding lack of understanding from the ballot, whether it was in Mandarin or Spanish?

I did not. City Clerk, did we get any?

As far as

As lack of understanding of the ballot or maybe confusion or anything like that?

Well, if a customer does come over to our office and they have questions regarding the ballot and the process, we do direct them over to the finance, the cashier, so one of the Martha's staff can come out and explain the process to them.

So any potential resident who might have had a question or concern regarding the ballot could have received, if they called or came in, assistance with that?

Correct. And we did receive some, but they were all in English or in Chinese.

We didn't have any Spanish-speaking individuals that had questions.

Okay.

And then just to reiterate some of the stuff that was said, but, you know, for me as a parent and as a resident and a teacher, it kind of scares me to see this aging infrastructure because I know it's not healthy for us.

It's not healthy for my family.

So I am personally very eager to see us update this equipment. I don't personally see it as a cost. I see it as an investment that we are investing in our infrastructure, investing in our future and in our health, because I don't know what potential contaminants might be in a lot of this aging pipes, right? So on that aspect, I think that it's very important. I also think that our water meters, when we talk about them being aged or not properly working, that's also not fair for us as residents it's also not fair for the city because we are not

properly monitoring and collecting the amount of actual water usage that is being used i could

potentially be using a lot of water that's probably not even being measured and it might be incorrectly being might be undercharged actually um or maybe even overcharged i don't know but the point is those need to be updated um and i think that this will allow us for for some of that to happen. And I think that most of us have lived in the city long enough or have homes that have been here. My home was built in 1950, and I'm just starting to replace a lot of those pipes that

are starting to now show its age. And it's not cheap. It's actually quite expensive. And when I

call a plumber, I always have to ask them, like, how much is this pipe going to cost me? And when they tell me, well, you have to actually replace all these other pipes, too. I have to kind of do it step by step because I realize that it's so expensive to do that. And I can only imagine how that looks like for a large city like ours that has such an aging infrastructure. And so I, one, appreciate all the work that city staff and you, Martha, have done in Public Works to try to identify a lot of these projects. I know that it's not always convenient when

we have to invest in our city to be able to update a lot of our infrastructure, but it's

definitely necessary. And I personally would rather be on that side of the tailwind in terms of making sure that we are updating a lot of the infrastructure to ensure that everyone has updated pipes, but also that they are also healthy for us to be able to use. I don't want to pass this problem on to my kids. I don't want to pass this problem on to anyone else. Plus, it's only going to become a lot more expensive. So that said, though, I know there's a serious concern from some of our council members, including myself, about making sure that this lifeline program works for those residents that cannot afford an increase in rates. I'd also like to not just explore possibilities in terms of finding other types of fundings that can help offset not just the costs of updating our infrastructure, but also in terms of helping our most vulnerable residents, which are not just our elderly seniors, but also families that are on fixed incomes. Families are also suffering and hurting right now because of inflation and because of rising costs and just costs of living in general with housing. So I would also like to see if there's a way we can partner with some of our state elected officials, like our assembly, to try to find other sources of funding within our state to be able to help offset some of those costs, not just with our infrastructure, but also with helping our most vulnerable residents. But that said, I understand how important it is to move forward with this project and to be able to update our infrastructure for our residents.

Oh, and we have a comment from Mayor Patel.

A question?

No, I really appreciate and very much echo what the mayor is saying as well. And at one point, I just want to highlight that Councilman Rouleau, I think, was making, too, on the water. I know staff is going to bring back analysis and some work on the lifeline and bill assistance programs. I just want to make sure we are looking at both potential revenue sources to enhance that, but also program design and eligibility for eligibility and what amounts are available and what the lifeline rate is going to be. If we can kind of take a whole look at the whole program and what kind of full scope of items and programs that we can put together to provide assistance, as the mayor was saying, those are the more vulnerable and they're going to feel the impact more directly in our communities. if we bring that back at the soonest possible point right hopefully first as early as we can in first quarter of next year to make sure that these are programs are available in to meet the needs that are probably going to be there as these whatever increases kind of go forward and yeah I just want to echo I think what everyone else has already said and many of the public comment that we've heard as well I as a council member and I don't think anyone else here is taking this lightly in any way shape or form we have been studying this issue for a number of months now and I think we've asked a lot of questions and appreciate staff for answering all these questions along the way including my repeated questions when I forget the answer that we already answered some of these questions but appreciate all the work that went into

this. I do not take this lightly. We are all paying these bills too.

In terms of the intention on the Lifeline program, making sure that the vulnerable parts of our community are being intentional about making sure that their needs are met going forward as we move forward on this. And that the design of this and helping to

educate folks that still have questions that probably still will have questions

once the they get their first bills with the increase that were available and resourcing that properly but knowing that and I think it was acknowledged by just about every speaker that came up to that there the need is very clear about the need for these investments in our infrastructure and to the point that was made by many council members up here already not making these investments and kicking the can down the road means we actually paid more to make these fixes down the line. And so I'm not willing, as the mayor said, to kick this down the road and to have other people have to take care of this and pay even more to make these improvements and investments that we need to make in our infrastructure,

essential infrastructure.

None of us can live without water, and this is our source of water and our source of life for the community. and so with that I don't know if others have anything else to add but I'm happy to make a motion to adopt the rates as proposed for both water and sewer. I don't know if we have to close the public hearing if we already did that or not and to take some action on this but knowing that we're going to report staff will be reporting back as we've requested on some of these items particularly the lifeline rate program and other assistance programs and education programs on moving forward. I think the city

manager had a question or comment just a quick comment um thank you mr mayor members of the

city council i wanted to re-emphasize that staff are actively actively looking for grant opportunities we are actively looking for potential um zero percent interest loans so that there won't be additional debt service that's going to be impacted to the water funds enterprise so definitely actively looking for those types of opportunities um and just to remind council that if those opportunities become available, we could always come back, update council, and in future years have rate adjustments based on some of those other opportunities that we see. So actively, actively

looking, requesting, asking for support to try to help ease the burden to our rate payers, absolutely.

And I just wanted to mention, we were one of the last cities to reinstate our late fees. So we just did that this past May of 2023, which went into effect June of 2023. So we understood that some of our residents could have been burdened during the pandemic, and so we were one of the last cities to reinstate late fees. So thank you again. We have notes here, definitely about outreach to community members about bill assistance, and making sure that if they have questions about

billing. We are available, staff are available to walk through

the billing so that all our residents understand.

Thank you so much. Thank you for that. And our City Attorney?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. If the Council is ready to move forward, there are some housekeeping items that you need to do before making any motions. One would be to verify how many documents the City Clerk's Office has received with regard to

this matter. 937.

And just to verify, we need 8,747 protest ballots would be needed in order to prevent a rate increase. So I would recommend that the City Council find that no majority protests exist as one motion. And then if the Council wishes to move forward with the proposed rates in the staff report, remember again that the water rates are Lor than were put out in the notice simply because the council chose to issue the bond. If the council wishes to move forward with the rates that are proposed for both water and wastewater in the staff report and attach to the proposed ordinances, then you do those as two separate motions, one for the water ordinance and one for the wastewater ordinance.

Thank you for the clarification. Do you want to redo your motion? Mayor Portempo? Oh, is there a question?

Go ahead. A quick clarifying question on the—

I know the rates proposed as we're moving forward on a bond are Lor, right? Correct.

But the bond, we haven't floated the bond yet, and we don't know what the—

We're working on it right now, and we will be coming back.

We're tentatively in January—no, the first council meeting is in February

to get final approval to go out to market. and get issued debt.

Do we know, until we have the financing conditions and the terms, do we know what the actual rate impact is going to be?

We won't know.

We'll bring it back on that council meeting because they keep changing.

So should we just adopt the 218 notice rates?

That's certainly something that the city council can choose to do and can later readjust Lor.

just throughout the year.

Yeah, so for maximum flexibility, since we don't know what the financing and the terms will be for the bond, it could be a little higher than the proposed rates, right?

The last time I spoke to the team,

they were talking about maybe a 4.5 interest rate,

which is fairly low, because we do have a AA rating.

So that's where the last time they looked,

but rates have been fluctuating.

Okay. Well, so I'll make the motion. I don't know, the several motions to find the number of protests lodged on this item or on both the sewer and water rate items to fall below the threshold needed and then to adopt the Prop 218 proposed rates for water and sewer, or do those have to be separate?

I prefer having three separate motions one about the majority the second introducing and waving first reading on each one of the ordinances and the reason for that is because the health and safety could require a two-thirds vote to introduce and adopt the ordinances second reading will be scheduled for December 20th if the council moves forward with introduction and first reading with the ordinances tonight so if you could do three motions I would appreciate it.

Do you want to do the first one?

I'll start with the motion to find that no majority protest exists for water and sewer rates.

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

Approved unanimously.

Vin, you want to do the second? Vin, do you want to help us with the second one?

The bond, right? Yes. No, no, no.

The bond is not on tonight's agenda. THE OTHER TWO ITEMS ARE SIMPLY THE ORDINANCES. YOU CAN PICK WHICH ONE TO DO FIRST, THE WATER OR THE WASTEWATER. AND THE MOTION WOULD BE TO INTRODUCE THE FIRST READING OF AN ORDINANCE TO SET WATER OR WASTEWATER RATES IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE DRAFT ORDINANCE.

DO YOU WANT TO GET THAT?

I'LL MAKE THE MOTION TO WAVE FIRST READING AND ADOPT THE ORDINANCE FOR THE WATER RATES AS POSED IN THE 218 NOTICES.

City Attorney, I believe Mayor Potempo is saying that he wants to use the original 32-88-78 and not what's in the staff report.

But that's not what his motion was.

So, well, okay, I will clarify my motion then.

The motion is to authorize staff, right, to wafer streeting, authorize staff to move ahead on the originally noticed 218 rates for water rates.

I'll second that. Seconded by Council Member Gove if we can take a vote. Approved unanimously. And then I'll make the motion to adopt

the wafer street and adopt the rates as proposed on the 218 notices for the wastewater sewer rates.

If there's a second. I'll second that. Seconded by Council Member Loewe if we can take a vote. Oh sorry. If we can take a vote again.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

And just as a reminder, the staff, Martha, staff will be bringing back to us once we have the conditions for the financing of the bond for water rates. That will come to Council if we need to make adjustments to the rates, we will make that

adjustment at that time.

Yes, we'll be bringing the second reading of the ordinance on the 20th and then the first Council meeting in February we will be bringing the bond.

Great. Thank you.

All right. So I'll go ahead and close public hearing now.

And we'll go ahead and jump to city communications.

And I wanted to jump to item 6A first, which was a resolution that I brought forward that hopefully you guys will support,

which is a resolution of the City Council, Monterey Park,

declaring the month of December as Human Rights Month in commemoration of the 75th anniversary anniversary of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And I just wanted to mention, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I'm just going to mention because I know you guys already read it.

But I just wanted to mention one item from here, which is, it says Human Rights Day will capture all the moments, sorry,

seeks to increase knowledge on the universality of indivisibility of human rights,

especially among young people.

It will inspire people to create a movement of shared humanity while empowering them to fight for the rights of others and act. So in honor, and then on December 10th, it is, let me see here, just so you can mark it on your calendar, is the anniversary. So it will be actually Human Rights Day. So make sure on Sunday you find a way to promote human rights.

Okay.

So I will go ahead and make the motion to approve if I can have a second.

I'll second. Thank you.