City Council Meeting — January 17, 2024

Good evening and welcome to the Monterey Park City Council meeting. I want to go ahead and get us started here. I want to start by reading the mission statement. Well, first of all, by welcoming you here tonight and for taking the time to be here tonight.

Recording in progress.

I want to go ahead and start off by reading our mission statement. It is the mission of the city of Monterey Park to provide excellent services to enhance the quality of life for our entire community. And I also want to take this time to read our land acknowledgement. We would like to acknowledge that the land we inhabit today was once known as the Tom Van Gar, the home of the Gabriolino Tongva people.

We show our respect to the Gabriolino Tongva people, as well as all Indigenous people past, present, and future, and honor their labor as original caretakers of this land.

We commit to uplifting the Gabriolino Tongva people and invite you to acknowledge their history and join us in caring for this land.

I want to also share and just acknowledge my daughter who's sitting here next to me here tonight

because it relates to the next item which we're doing. It has been this past year one of the goals of our city council to promote civic engagement among our youth. We know that part of creating a vibrant and participatory democracy within our country is ensuring that our youth are not just part of our process but also involved. And that this be not just a one-time deal but a lifelong process. And so I invited my family here today. My daughter, Dolly, who's up here. My daughter, Mia, who's sitting in the audience of Wave Mia.

and my other daughter, Bella, who's up there,

along with my wife, Natalie, who's a teacher here in Monterey Park at Mark Keppel High School. Thank you for being here tonight. I want to go ahead and get us started with our flag salute,

so if I can ask you to please stand.

And I'd like to invite the Monterey Park Police Explorers

to please join us. okay okay

okay okay okay

okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay

okay okay okay okay okay okay

I'd like to at this time invite Mia Sanchez, who is a first grader from Brightwood Elementary School, who will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for

which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please be seated. Please be seated.

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Uh-oh, please. Dismiss.

At this point, I'd like to invite the city council to join me up in the front to present a certificate for Mia and her family.

Thank you.

Mia, thank you so much for meeting us, so much for meeting us in the flag saloon today. You made your daddy very proud today, and your mommy, and your sisters, and your whole family.

So on behalf of the City of La Harae Park and the City Council, we'd like to present you

with this certificate and acknowledge you as a civic superstar. Congratulations. Let's give her a round of applause.

Thank you very much.

very much very much very much very much very very very

City Clerk, if 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. Mayor Sanchez. Here. We've got our call. Thank you so much.

And city attorney, city manager, do we have any agenda additions, deletions, or changes?

One for me.

Mr. Mayor, I ask to move item 2B to the consent calendar.

Item 2B to the consent calendar.

And Mr. Mayor, members of the city council, there is a request also to move item 5B. to be heard after old business but before the consent calendar, if that's okay with council, as we have speakers in the audience for this item.

Okay, thank you.

Any objections?

If not, we'll consider the items moved and the agenda adjusted.

And we will move to

public communication.

Our speaker, Hyrule Alvarez.

Thank you. Can everyone hear me?

Hi, everyone. I hope you're all doing well, and thank you for the opportunity to speak. So I'm here to ask city council to protect the bicyclists and pedestrians of Potrero Grande Drive here in Monterey Park. So there are two public works projects that are coming up this year that can ensure that, you know, anyone that's biking or walking down the street will be safe and connected to the rest of the city. So if you haven't been on Potrero recently, you know, it's still not much has changed. Right. It's still a massive, you know, wide road with lots of cars that drive dangerously fast. on it. And just a few months ago, you know, a number of people tragically died on Potrero. And every day I see lots of people with kids or just folks walking and biking next to 60 plus mile an hour traffic, you know, with nothing separating them. And so there's two capital improvement projects, MATCYCLE 1, Potrero Grande Regional Project, and Potrero Grande Renovation, CIP 96038 and 96012 that are going to kick off this year. And I'm asking all of you to please make sure that those two projects together create fully protected bicycle lanes on Potrero Grande, not with paint, not with plastic, but actual real physical protection, you know, like planters, concrete, or metal bollards, or just barriers that will prevent cars from even having the opportunity to, you know, crash into families that are, you know, just enjoying a walk together or people that are biking to work. And by protecting Potrero, we can create a connection between all of the people. Excuse me, sorry. We can create a connection between all the people that are living in Southeast Monterey Park and all of our amazing local businesses on Garfield and beyond. And by protecting Potrero, we're going to help reduce our carbon footprint because more people will feel safe and want to bike along the street. And just simply by protecting Potrero, will make Monterey Park a better city. And so the last time that I checked with Public Works... Director of Public Works. Council Member. I was told that a request for proposal was going to be sent out soon for those two capital improvement projects. So there is still time for City Council to work with Public Works to make sure you know that these two projects will incorporate fully protected bicycle lanes on Potrero. I know that cost is always a consideration. But there are lots of ways to get Lor cost physical concrete or metal protection as well as just getting creative you know with combining the funds for both projects. um you know i i really believe that this can be done with the current budget and you know maybe uh there's other cities as well that can help um letting us bar equipment or things like that i don't know if you've seen santa monica has their own kind of concrete 3d printer maybe they're willing to lend a hand um but just you know generally council members i do ask that you please you know protect botrero we have the money and the projects kicking off to be able to do it mayor sanchez i know that you care a lot about creating a connected community and a network of bike lanes. So this would help with that. Mayor Pro Tem Wong and Council Member Yu.

This would help us get closer to our climate goals, which I know that both of you care deeply about. Council Member No, you mentioned in a debate that you grew up biking around here in this community, so you know how dangerous it can be, and I ask that you help us change that for everyone.

And Council Member Lo, you've been a long-time supporter of those who bicycle, and so protecting Potrera would help all of us tremendously. So thank you very much for your time.

And I would love to send you an email with some ideas and recommendations if possible. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have another speaker?

Next speaker, Lisa Dong and Brandon Wong.

Good evening, Mayor Jose Sanchez and city council members. My name is Lisa Duong, and I am the past president of the LAMP Optimist Club. LAMP stands for Los Angeles Monterey Park. So the LAMP Optimist Club was established in 1957. Our club's mission is to bring out the best in youth.

Over the years, we mentored and provided numerous volunteer opportunities to hundreds of students.

We also offer our local students opportunities to earn thousands of dollars in scholarships by organizing essay and oratorical contests.

The topic of this year's essay contest is optimism, how it connects us. So this contest is open to all students who are under the age of 19 as of October 2023.

The deadline to submit an entry is February 13, 2024. At the club level, we will give our medals to first, second, and third place winners. The first place winner will advance to the district level, were the first place winner and at the district level would win a $2,500 scholarship. A $2,500 scholarship. So last year, for the first time, the district also recognized and awarded second and third place winners

who happened to be two Monterey Park students, Kayla Kamei for second place and Christine Tsai for third place.

In addition to this essay contest, we also organized our annual oratorical contest. As with most local clubs, the pandemic has affected our club's resources and their ability to fundraise.

We do appreciate any donations or sponsorships so that we can continue to provide opportunities for our local students to gain valuable experience competing and to earn scholarships.

If there are any students who are interested in competing or any companies that would like to donate or sponsor, we will leave flyers at the City Hall Lobby. We will also have information and contest rules posted on our Facebook under Monterey Park Lamp Optimist Club and our Instagram page under Lamp underscore Optimist.

I would now like to introduce Brandon Vong, our student chair for the 2024 LAMP Optimist Essay Contest, to share a few words. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Sanchez, members of the City Council and City staff. My name is Brandon Vong, and I'm the student chair of the 2024 LAMP Optimist Club Level Essay Contest. I am also a sophomore at Marquepo High School.

In addition to the two Monterey Park students that were recognized by the Pacific Southeast Optimist District for second and third place last year, students from Mark Keppel High School

have also won first place at the district level and received the $2,500 scholarship in 2022 and 2017. This competition is an excellent opportunity to win a scholarship, and I would like to encourage students to participate. Deadline once again is on February 13, 2024. Please go to the LAMP Optimist's Facebook and Instagram page for contest rules and a link to the entry form. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next speaker, Amy Lee. City Click, did we get their contact information?

Yeah, we have it. We have their, okay, thank you.

Good evening. My name is Amy Lee, and I'm the city treasurer, but I'm also the

advisory for the Monterey Park Community Healing Fund. I just want to remind everyone that tomorrow we are having our gun violence restraining order training, so please come out

if you're interested. It's a great opportunity to see what laws are available to community members to protect themselves. So that's tomorrow. We're

going to have a Chinese interpreter available and it's also going to be videotaped, so if you can't make it tomorrow, it will be available through the city. We will have LA Superior Court Judge there, LA City

Attorney, and another person of the LA County Council. I just wanted to invite everyone and remind them that's tomorrow 6 p.m. in City Hall. Thank you very much. Thank you.

And these very chambers, right? Yes, right here. Okay. They might be in your seat.

Excellent. Thank you so much. No other speakers.

No other speakers. Okay, excellent. So we're going to go ahead and

jump to staff communications.

And we'll go ahead and start with the city manager's office.

thank you Mr. Mayor and members of the City Council

this evening just a few announcements that I would like to make I would like to take a moment to share with our community two well deserved appointments that were made over the holiday season so first if we can start with Kristen Oliveras Becerra if you can come up to the podium please Kristen has over 15 years experience in public libraries

she has previously served in various library positions

in the cities of Alhambra, Arcadia, Burbank, before coming to the Brighamire Library in 2016. Prior to her interim city librarian role, Kristen successfully led operations of the Children's Services Department, showcasing her passion for community engagement and library services. In addition to her work experience, Kristen also has a master's in library science. City Council, if you can please join me in welcoming us, Kristen Olivares Becerra, as our new city librarian. Congratulations.

Thank you so much, Kristen, for all that you're doing for our library. I know that replacing Diana Garcia is no easy task, but you've done it so wonderfully, and we're so glad and happy to have you at our library. I'd also like to invite the council to share any comments. We'll start with Council Member Lo.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

You know, I just want to say that our library has just had incredible momentum this past year. You know, it weathered the pandemic and still provided services. And this past year, it has been such an incredible resource for this community, especially in the aftermath of the January 21st shooting.

And we know it's because of leadership.

And so we know that momentum will continue under your leadership.

So congratulations.

Thank you very much.

I want to say congratulations. and we look forward to working closely with you.

We're proud of our library and happy to see the library has been transformed to a different entity.

We help mental health. We have different services, not only borrowing books, but we look forward to more transformations

from your leadership. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Ngo. Christine, congratulations.

I will say that now I get double the emails, first from Diane and now from you. In any case, congratulations. well deserved and we look forward to working with you and creating our library as a resource center for the city. So anything you need from us, just let us

know. I'm going to hold you to that. Thank you.

And just

adding my voice to add congratulations, Kristen. Well deserved. As the interim

librarian, we were very proud

to see you keep the ship going and proud that you're in the permanent position now and look forward to amazing content and programs coming out of the library for months and years to come.

Thank you so much, Kristen, and we look forward to working with you in the coming years.

Thank you.

Thank you all very much.

Next, we'd like to invite up Diana Garcia, our Assistant City Manager. So Diana Garcia has had a career in public service spanning over 20 years in city and county organizations as well as nonprofits. office. Diana has been with the City since 2009, where she joined our team as a senior library clerk. Throughout the year, she has taken on positions with increased responsibilities. Diana has recently served, obviously, as the interim assistant city manager since July of 2023. She has a master's of library and information science. And Diana has definitely showed us, and she has excelled as an assistant city manager. Her experience, education, and leadership will contribute to the continued success and growth of our city. City Council, if you can please join me in congratulating Diana Garcia as our Assistant City Manager.

Congratulations, Diana.

And I've already witnessed firsthand the amazing work that you're doing to help our city move forward and also in the process of healing as we approach our one-year anniversary. But thank you so much for all the work and all the countless hours that you put in for our city. It has not gone unnoticed.

Thank you so much.

And I want to invite the other council members to join in.

Council Member Lo.

You know, I'd like to say that, you know, sometimes the universe provides when the moment is needed, and they somehow always bring the right person for the position. And I think that, you know, the universe provided,

and so we are so pleased that you are our assistant city manager.

Thank you.

Hi, Diana. I remember I first met you three years ago.

we met. You were a librarian. You're happy to be a librarian. But I do see that you have great leaderships beyond your positions.

And I wanted to say I'm proud of you. Congratulations. And the woman power, you know, we have to take on heavy duty.

So thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. Council Member Ngo? Diana, congratulations.

I'll still get more emails from you. Definitely a lot more now.

but it's well worth reading it

because you're a leader and to me you're homegrown. You've been here 15 plus years.

My daughter remembers you going to the library and saying, I remember Diana. She's the librarian that did this and we volunteered with her.

So I think we're blessed to have homegrown people such as our city manager here and many of our staff here. So again, our city,

we're a family here. Keep up the good work

and there's a lot more opportunities.

Thank you.

Mayor Portem 1.

Just ditto everything everyone's already said.

Congratulations, Diana.

I appreciate you stepping into this role in this permanent position now and look forward to many years working together.

Thank you. I'm very honored to continue to contribute to the city

and looking forward to all the good work that we're going to get done.

Thank you so much.

I want to share one of my neighbors actually remembers Diana when she was a librarian

and I shared with her that she was now her assistant city manager.

She said, little Miss Diana, she's the assistant city manager.

Did little D say that?

The little D said that. She's smaller than I am.

I know.

But she said, and I quote, she's so boss.

So we appreciate all that you do.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

And fun fact.

And fun fact, I'm hoping that she will play the ukulele one day for us here at a city council meeting.

You play the ukulele?

I'm a little rusty. It's been a little while. Perhaps.

And we have one more announcement.

This is more on a little bit of a somber note. Fire Chief Matt Hollick, if you can come up, please. so Fire Chief Matt Hallock actually will be leaving the city of Monterey Park he accepted a position with another city even though we're sad to see him go we are definitely very appreciative of his 22 years of service

to the Monterey Park community

we're definitely proud of the last three years

serving as Fire Chief

we're proud of his accomplishment and leadership and the community is also invited to visit him at the fire station next Thursday January 25th at 4pm if they'd like to bid their farewells to Matt we wish him well and all his future endeavors and thank you Matt for your excellent leadership. City Council

Thank you so much Matt for everything that you've done

I can't imagine how it must feel

to leave an agency

after 22 years, this is my 22nd year teaching and I know how that must

feel so

we appreciate everything that

you've done

unnoticed. We really appreciate everything that you've done, and I don't think we would be here today and where

we're at at this moment if it weren't for you and

all of the firemen that are here today. So we appreciate everything that you

do, and we wish you luck in all your future endeavors.

Just know that

you'll always have a home here in Monterey Park.

Thank you.

Council Member Lo. Thank you.

Well, Chief Halleck, Matt,

Yeah, this is bittersweet.

I mean, congratulations, of course, but also bittersweet because, you know, for myself, you know, thinking about from being in my term, which is in 2020 to now, and everything in this community has gone through and experienced, and yet I think as a city, as a community, you know, we stood together strong. And a lot of it is attributed to the leadership at the top, which sets the tone. and in this case with the fire department, you know, you have just been exemplary and stellar in your leadership. And so, you know, again, especially this past year, our firefighters, our first responders just made us proud of the community. And so it is very sweet. But again, we wish you best of luck. And, you know, and yes, as our mayor so said, you know, I mean, always know that Amara Park will always be your home. and feel free to always come by and visit us.

Thank you. Council Member Yu?

Yes, hi, Matt.

Wow, I just bring back a lot of my memories. It seems like we were at the same battlefield during COVID. And also Matt Shitting, your first responder. So we have been together a lot.

And I really appreciate you're such a great leader. And I wanted to wish you all the best on the next phase.

and I'm sure that, yeah, I feel so bad.

How come all the, you know, good leaders are leaving us so soon? And so I hope, you know, yeah, you have the best future. Thank you.

Council Member Ngo?

Oh, Matt, nice knowing you. You know, we talked about this. Both our kids go to slow, and we talked about the opportunities for them, giving them the freedom and letting them grow, and I think this is part of your growth in your career We're really delighted you spent most of the time learning, growing, harnessing your leadership skills here, and then now spreading it to other cities. And I think what you did is noble in the sense that everyone from the city appreciated your help through the MassCash incident as well as many years of service here. So go spread your wings because that's how our city works.

like I said earlier, we're family,

and when our family members succeed, we all succeed.

So we are sad to see you go,

but we're happy that we've expanded our family out,

and we're growing. So congratulations. Thank you.

Mayor Pro Temp.

Echoing what everyone's already said,

thank you so much, Matt.

I appreciate your many years of service here in the city of Monterey Park. You are leaving the department and the city in a better place than, I think, when you came in. and we're blessed to have had this many years with you and with your leadership and know that wherever you're going next, they'll be pleased and proud to have you leading them as well. But as was already said, you'll always have a home in Monterey Park. You're welcome to come visit any time and shop here in Monterey Park and spend some money in the city, of course, to continue to support the fire department and our city services. but appreciate all that you've done for us here in the city your leadership especially in the last year and Best wishes on your next endeavor

Thank you We'd like to give you time to share some words. Yeah, I appreciate it. I wasn't planning to speak

I think we weren't even gonna announce this until just a handful of hours ago. So

you know your support over my tenure as fire chief is I

I don't think I would have been able to do what I've done or we have done without your support. So these four years, starting with COVID, you know, who knew that was going to grow into what it did. And so we navigated that together with council, with department heads, and, of course, with all the staff. And so I'm thankful for your support. And, of course, this last year navigating this shooting and what it did to our community brought us all together. And for that, I'm grateful for the guidance and the leadership and support that you've provided to the fire department. And, of course, the department heads that we've worked together with over the course of the last four years as fire chief.

I'll definitely miss those relationships.

I've built quite a few along the way. But I'll definitely miss everybody here.

And I know this is my home. You know, I've got my favorite restaurants. So I'll be back for sure. But I definitely want to thank you know the the group in the back

and we know without them and and their support and

it would not have been as rewarding as it has been for me to lead this department if it wasn't for them and you know coming up through the ranks and knowing Knowing them it that was a very difficult decision to to leave But it's one that's I think right at this time and you know my mom says all things for a reason and I believe that so So thank you for your support and this opportunity to speak and address everybody,

and thank you for my time here in Monterey Park. It's been quite a ride. And to you, I'll say, I watched your daughter because my young kids were here for promotional opportunities, and my daughter was that age probably pinning a badge on my chest, and I blinked,

and now she lives in Washington, D.C. My son's graduated from slow, and my youngest is in college. So enjoy it while they're that little because it went by super fast, and so did this ride. So thank you. Thank you.

And I'd like to invite the council to present a plaque to Chief Halleck.

So we have a plaque here for Matt Hallett and I'm not an elementary school teacher so I haven't mastered the art of reading this way.

It says in recognition and gratitude for your 22 years of service, exceptional leadership, and unconditional commitment to serving the Monterey Park community.

so we present this class to you and we again hope that you know that you have

a home here in Monarch Park so please join us in thanking Chief Halle

Okay.

We'll go ahead and jump to the next item.

Thank you, City Manager, for all of those updates. Fire Department.

While Chris Thompson makes his way down here this is Battalion Chief Chris Thompson just wanted to make another announcement that Chris will be serving as our interim fire chief

upon Matt's departure

so welcome Chris as our interim fire chief as Matt departs us and Chris has been with the department for over 20 years

so thank you Chris

Thank you, Mayor, Councilman. 30 years ago today, we had a great earthquake called the Northridge Earthquake of 1994. And the city of Monterey Park has always had the privilege and the honor to try to keep our community safe and try to build the resiliency.

February 24th, we're going to have another one of our community preparedness clinics.

And it's going to be an L.E. Park February 24th at 9 a.m. until 12. And we want to make sure that we have all our communities come out and try to make sure that they be a part of our preparedness for our community.

You'll learn different types of exit drills for your home, how to shut off utilities,

how to make sure that your home and your neighbors are all ready to go for a disaster.

We're going to make sure that we get all this information on social media before the day happens,

but we just wanted to make sure that we announced it for our community to be prepared.

Well, thank you so much, and I'm assuming this is going to be advertised on social media. Excellent.

Well, first of all, congratulations on your new appointment.

Thank you so much for taking this on.

I know it's not necessarily an easy task, but I know that your commitment to our fire department and to our city has not been unnoticed. And so that is why I'm assuming we appointed you. But thank you so much for everything that you're doing. I'd also like to offer Council a chance to say a few words.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Well, congratulations, Chief Thompson. We are looking forward to working with you. and just thank you for your commitment and your investment and tenure here in our community. So congratulations.

Council Member Yu?

Thank you, Chief Thompson, and look forward to partnering with you, and hopefully you will be our next model for the fashion show replacing Matt Hollett. But thank you. Looking forward to working.

Council Member Go? Chris, congrats. You've earned it.

I know you got big shoes, but you'll get there.

We believe in you. So it's time. It's time to step up. You'll do it. Thank you. Thank you.

All right.

Mayor Pro Temp.

Appreciate you, Chief Thompson, stepping into these shoes and this role,

and look forward to your leadership in the months and hopefully years to come, and appreciate all that you've done over the last few years, and especially my first year on the council, helping us get acquainted with the operations of the fire department and our emergency response kind of planning process and all that. So thank you so much for your many years of service to the city and look forward to many more. Thank you.

Thank you. And then just one last thing. As you're learning your new role and if there's anything that we can do to help you in that process

please reach out to us. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next staff communication is library.

All right. Good evening, Mayor and members of the council.

Kristen Oliver is a city librarian. I'd like to start by noting that her title may now be assistant city manager, but she's always going to be Miss Diana to us. This evening I'm here with a couple of exciting staff updates.

Next slide, please.

To begin, I'd like to introduce the two newest members of the library's management team, Leonie Jordan and Lauren Frazier. Leonie started with the library in November as the senior librarian overseeing adult reference and teen services. services. She hails from Australia and previously worked at the Auburn Library in Australia as the

children's and youth librarian. Some of you may know Lauren Frazier. Lauren actually worked part

time for the library from 2016 to 2018, then accepted a full-time position at Santa Clarita Public Library. They ultimately missed working for us so much though that they returned to Monterey Park in 2020 as a children's librarian, and we're promoted to children's senior librarian

this past December.

I am very excited to have Leonie and Lauren join our management team, which is also comprised

of Victor and Kathleen, who are here with us tonight. And I know that they will be excellent contributors to the success of the library.

Next slide, please.

Additionally, I'd like to recognize adult literacy coordinator Victor Castellanos, library technician Michael Lee, and library assistant Madison Traylor, who recently completed their master's degrees in library and information science. Victor and Michael completed San Jose State University's program, and Madison completed Syracuse University's program. They're all very bright and talented individuals,

and I look forward to watching them develop as library professionals.

With that, I'm going to toss it over to Lauren, who's going to share some updates about library services.

Good evening, Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem, City Council members. I'm Lauren Frazier, the new senior children's librarian. So I am here to provide some updates for the library as well as let you know some of the great programs we have coming up this month.

So a quick recap of some of our recent successful programs.

We had our first teen winter reading challenge, which was a success with 42 teens participating in the challenge who logged a total of 447 hours spent reading over the winter break.

Here you can see the lucky raffle winners with their prizes.

And also on the right here, we have our adult craft programs, craft...

200 people attended our Bluey party in the children's department. We played games, made crafts, did an obstacle course, and more.

So please join us next month for our Pokemon party on Friday, February 16th at 3.30 p.m. All right. We are very excited to begin accepting entries to our library card design contest.

So we are trying to design some new library cards based on the community's designs. So children ages 6 to 12 are invited to design a card that is just for kids, and then teens and adults are invited to design a card for adults.

So when creating your design, you may consider what you love about Monterey Park, what libraries mean to you, a beloved book, or how the library enhances community connections.

So winning designs will be selected based on creativity, artistic expression, and the message communicated. So we will be accepting both digital and paper entries until the end of the month.

So paper entry forms can be picked up at the library. And please visit our website for the complete guidelines and to access the digital design form.

Winners will be announced on April 7th to celebrate National Library Week. Next slide.

All right. So tax season is fast approaching, and so the VITA clinic is back. So individuals or families who qualify are invited to participate in Chinatown Service Center's free volunteer income tax assistance clinic.

So this program helps U.S. residents or legal green card holders prepare their 2023 federal and state income tax returns. sessions will be held from January 18th until April 11th on Mondays and Thursdays and to check eligibility requirements and to register please visit Chinatown Service Center's website or the

library website all right so we are starting a new teen program it's called speaking of English

and this is an English conversation club for teens who are English language learners or want to strengthen their spoken English skills by speaking to other teens in a comfortable environment. So the first meeting is this Friday at 4 30 p.m. Next slide please. All right we also have a small

business workshop coming up in the library. So Chinatown Service Center in partnership with Cathay Bank will offer a three-week entrepreneur training program. It is on Saturdays January 20th and 27th, and February 3rd. These workshops are designed to equip you with the essential knowledge

for running a thriving small business, and these workshops will be presented in Mandarin. So to

register, please call the number up on the slide, and there were still a couple spots left when I last checked. Next slide. All right, and of course we have our free legal assistant clinics. The next

one is on Tuesday, February 13th. So volunteer attorneys will be on hand to answer questions. It is sponsored by the Asian Pacific American Bar Association and Asian Americans Advancing Justice SoCal. So attorneys are available to answer questions about immigration, criminal law, civil matters, estate planning, government benefits, and more. So to register or for any questions about the program, just contact the library. Thank you. That concludes the library

presentation. Are there any questions from Council? Well, thank you so much for the presentation,

and once again, congratulations not just to the newly graduated members of the library, but also the newly promoted members of the library. Thank you so much for all the service

and all the amazing stuff that you do for our kids, for our teen readers, but also our community.

much appreciated. I always say that Monterey Park has the best library in the San Gabriel Valley, so thank you so much.

And all of that is attributed to you

and all that you do. Thank you so much. I'd also, just one quick question.

When was the Pokemon workshop?

The Pokemon party is on Friday, February 16th at 3.30pm.

I'm asking for three little girls that I know. Thank you so much. You don't want to miss it. It's going to be really good. I know I missed the Bluey party, so thank you.

I also want to give Council a chance to say a few words.

Council Member Lo? Mr. Mayor, I concur.

When people ask, why does Monterey Park have such an incredible library with its vast array of services, and I say it's because of the people who work there. I mean, they are the beating heart of the library, and you see before you these dedicated people. And so just thank you very much for all that you do for our community library, and congratulations to all of you.

I wanted to say if you were to thank the library

my mom actually got her passport renewed

from the library service so I'm proud of all the services that you provided

thank you

councilmember Ngo

I love our library

because it's been our resource for the community and congratulations to our senior staff

every one of you

looking to more things to do and more opportunities for our community So thank you and great job with the library.

And just echo what everyone has already said as well. Congratulations to the new graduates and everyone that is serving in different positions. I appreciate everyone stepping up to continue to serve the community. And it sounds like the library is off to a very busy, very active start to the year. Looking forward to much more to come with the library.

I appreciate everything.

And especially the partnerships with outside organizations to bring these services and resources to our community. and so much happens, so much goes on at the library. It really operates as a community center and a resource center for so many in our communities. Appreciate everything that the staff does to help bring those resources to our community.

Thanks.

Yes, thank you.

And to add to what the mayor pro tem said, I noticed that we have a lot of agencies outside and community agencies that are really helping out

our community through the library.

The Chinatown Service Center and Advancing Justice SoCal and the API Bar Association. Are there any members in the audience of any of these organizations here? Peter, okay, so I want to recognize the Chinatown Service Center. Thank you so much for partnering with us as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, so we're going to go ahead and jump to the presentation portion of our agenda.

Parks and Recreation.

Oh, that's right. I'm sorry. I'm skipping one. Parks and Rec. How could I miss that?

Good evening, Honorable Mayor Sanchez, Mayor Pro Tem Wong, and Council members. I'm Christina Alotori, Recreation Manager for the Recreation and Community Services Department.

Next slide.

So first, we'd like to thank everyone, all residents, all community members who attended our holiday events this season. The very first thing is Letters of Santa. So we, our department, received over 800 letters to Santa, and we helped, along with the library, get those letters to Santa and make sure that he responded to every person who wrote to him. In addition to that, we had our holiday snow village, and we gave out over 1,500 wristbands for snowplay. That included sledding, that included the snowplay area, and we had over 20 vendors in our vendor area for that event. Then on December 16th, we had our Santa's Jolly Journey, and that was in partnership with our police departments and fire departments. And we had over 1,200 people visit the Santa Tracker app. So that's how we were able to kind of put our finger on the pulse as to how many people were connected with this event. And then our holiday luncheon at the Langley Senior Center saw over 200 registrations. With that event, there was entertainment, dancing, and lunch was provided. In addition to that, Hilda Solis' office also helped sponsor that event just to be able to provide additional activities for that event.

and it helps subsidize a cost for meals. Next slide, please.

So our upcoming event is on January 21st,

and it is the Candlelight Vigil,

and that is to honor the victims of the mass shooting. We'd like to invite everyone to come out. This event is going to be held rain or shine. It will be at City Hall in the front lawn, and it will be from 6 to 8 p.m. There's additional information on the website if that is needed.

Next slide, please.

To honor our Lunar New Year, on Saturday, January 27th, and Sunday, January 28th,

in the downtown area of Monterey Park, we are having an event. There will be vendors, food vendors, live entertainment. So we are inviting all the community to come on out to the downtown area and celebrate the Lunar New Year.

Next slide, please.

Our Langley Senior Center is offering two seminars.

First is on January 18th, and that is a hepatitis B seminar that's from 9 to 10 a.m. at the Langley Center. In addition to that, in February, on February 15th, the Langley Center is offering a prevention scam seminar to assist those seniors to help protect them and give them more information about these workshops. And that will be held from 10 to 11 a.m. again at the Langley Center.

Next slide, please.

In partnership with the L.A. County Department of Mental Health, we are hosting at the Langley Center a youth mental health summit, and that will take place on Saturday, February 24th from 9.30 to 3 p.m.

This is absolutely free.

It's strongly encouraged that those young adults who would like to participate,

that they should register.

And this information, again, is available on our website, and it's available by scanning the QR code.

Next slide, please.

So we have had a ton of playground projects going on within our department.

We recently opened Sequoia Park, and that was a really great event.

We had a ton of community participation, but there's more. So if you have not had a chance to get out there and celebrate with us the new playgrounds, this Saturday at Bella Vista Park at 10 a.m., so January 20th, We are going to be celebrating the opening of our new playground structure there. And the theme is dragon themed, which goes along with the Bella Vista School mascot. So come on out. We're actually going to be giving out dragon cookies for those in attendance while supplies last. And in addition to that, over at Garvey Ranch Park, we've opened the smaller playground, which is baseball-themed because it looks over the baseball field. And if you just so happen to visit, one of the jerseys says Garvey on the back of it,

and that's for Richard Garvey.

And the jersey number on the back corresponds with the year, which is 1916, that the city was founded. So we're really trying to give our residents some destination playgrounds

to be able to travel throughout the city.

and give everyone a reason to get out and about in our parks.

Next slide, please.

So that is all I have for you.

I would be happy to answer any questions or if you have any comments for me.

Wow, thank you so much for all of that information

and for all of the work that Parks and Rec does for our city.

Extremely excited about the grand opening of another new park equipment at Bella Vista.

which is in my district. So we're excited.

I know my daughters are super excited. We'll definitely be there, not just for the slides,

but also for the dragon cookies.

And also, thank you so much for the amazing programming

at the Snow Village.

I still get tons of comments from community members and residents about the amazing job that Parks and Rec did with Snow Village and just the winter programming. So thank you so much to all the staff for everything that you do because I know it takes a lot of work

and a lot of effort.

So thank you again. And I want to give council an opportunity

to also share. Council Member Lo. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

And thank you for everyone in your department for a great, robust holiday season.

I think that, you know,

community really is appreciative to be able to celebrate the holidays that we did.

And again, especially, you know,

I think this past year, you know, again, we talked about upcoming vigil

and it has been one year and I think that often times people have asked

what was part of the healing

and I think it's because we

believed in our community and therefore we made sure that we continue to provide the quality programming

throughout this past year. So just thank you

for everyone in your department

and I for one am also looking forward to the opening of the second playground at Garvey Ranch because I live right around the corner when I park and every day when I walk my dog I see the

shuttle taking shape and the

Councilmember Yu? Just to remind everyone about the January 21st

candlelight visual. That would be a very big event and we'll just discuss about

the rundown. So hopefully to see all of you there. Thank you.

Councilmember Go? Christina and Parks and Rex

group. Robert back there as our memo. Congrats. You guys did a fabulous job with the snow village. There's no snow here but we had snow. So think about it. The kids enjoyed it. so thank you so much for that and just one quick shout out i thank the library staff but above and beyond the staff we also have our library trustee and i think we have one here lisa duong who also serves from trustee i want to give a shout out and say thank you for helping the strategic vision and ensuring that our city staff and our city's library services supports

the whole community so thank you and council member go i just want to mention again i know I mentioned it earlier in the presentation, but the library was very, very instrumental in ensuring that we got all of our letters out to Santa so that he got them back.

Because 800 letters is quite a bit to deliver to Santa.

And Mayor Brutem?

I appreciate everything the staff have done, programming through the holidays. There was no shortage of events and activities for the community to take part in. and appreciate being able to bring the community together and that the community did come together and come out to so many of these events to enjoy time together and in community. And our appreciation to all the staff. And I know that just like the library and other departments here at the city, we're off to a very busy, very active start to 2024.

I know that there's a lot more to come.

And with Lunar New Year just around the corner and this weekend with the vigil, WE'RE NOT STARTING SLOW HERE IN MONTERARY PARK. APPRECIATE EVERYTHING AND ALL THE WORK THAT GOES INTO PUTTING THESE ON AND MAKING SURE THEY GO OFF SAFELY. APPRECIATE ALL THE WORK THAT YOU'RE DOING TO LEAD THE

RECREATION FOLKS.

I DON'T KNOW HOW WE GOT ALL THOSE LETTERS TO SANTA AND THEN THE RESPONSE IS BACK. FOR THE MAYOR ASKING IF WE CAN SHARE WHATEVER LINE OR DIRECT LINE WE HAVE TO SANTA, WE MAY NEED SOME HELP FOR some activities coming up this year too and I will just say for the the parade route or whatever for Santa's journey through Monterey Park Santa bore a slight resemblance to our mayor but he went by a little bit too fast but someone was saying hi to everyone sounded like our mayor as well so appreciate us bringing despite how busy Santa was during the holiday season answering all those requests and the letters they took some time to go around our city and saying hi to people who

want to come out to the sidewalk.

But look forward to many of those events coming up again

this year.

And thank you so much for all the work that goes into it.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

And for the record, I did ride with Santa.

That was a very magical, not just for me, but for my daughter who came along with me. So thank you so much.

And I know that we just had fourth graders here a couple days ago, and many of them raised their hand. They saw Santa going through their city. So thank you so much for that.

Thank you.

So we'll go ahead and now jump to the presentation portion of our agenda. And our first presentation is the Metropolitan Water District. And actually, before we get started, I did want to mention, you might have seen a comfort dog back there, Ruben, who has joined our council meeting. He will be here all week to help the community as we approach our one-year anniversary. But if you at some point feel like you need a break or are starting to get too anxious

and this agenda seems to keep going and going, feel free to go back there and talk to Ruben.

Mr. Mayor, members of the Council, the next presentation is going to be given by Sam Mouad. he's with our Garvey he's doing the Garvey Reservoir presentation he's with

MWD.

Good evening Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, council members and members of the community. Today I will be presenting information on the Garvey Reservoir Improvements Program. Next slide. In our program overview, I will present background information about Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Garvey Reservoir, program description, and project scope. Finally, I provide general information on the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, and the Environmental Impact Report. Next slide. Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the owner and operator of Garvey Reservoir, located here in Monterey Park, was established in 1928 as a water wholesaler comprised of 26 member agencies. Metropolitan delivers water to its member agencies, who serves approximately 19 million people in six

Southern California counties. Next slide. The main objectives of Garvey Reservoir Improvements

program are the following. Improve major Garvey Reservoir facilities, maintain Garvey Reservoir reliability, improve operation efficiency and maintenance, and enhance site security. Next slide. As you know, this is where Garvey Reservoir is located in your city. While Monterey Park is not a metropolitan member agency, we really appreciate the long history of collaboration with your city as we recently worked closely on several drainage and erosion improvements around the Garvey Reservoir property, which will

be shown in more details in the next slide. Next slide. Garvey Reservoir is a

treated water reservoir constructed in 1954 in the city of Monterey Park. The

reservoir has a capacity of 1,610 acre feet or 525 million gallons. Metropolitan's Middle Feeder North and Garvey Ascot Feeder bring water into the reservoir and water exits via the Middle Feeder South. The blue color shows the different reservoir components that will be rehabilitated under this project. Next slide.

The project includes improvements to several key components of the facility.

The floating cover and liner will be replaced. The outlet tower will be upgraded.

Then the electrical and water quality laboratory buildings will be renovated as well as replacing the facility standby power generator and perimeter fence.

Finally, the junction structure valves will be replaced.

Improving these existing facilities will ensure reservoir reliability, facilitate efficient operations and maintenance, and enhance site security. Next slide.

The California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, is primarily intended to achieve the following purposes as it relates to this project. identify potential impact to the environment, inform the public and decision makers about those potential environmental impacts, identify ways to avoid or reduce the potential environmental impacts, and also to develop the environmental documentation.

Next slide.

This graphic shows an overview of the CEQA process for an environmental impact report. The red star shows where we are as of tonight.

Metropolitan began circulating a notice of preparation today with the initial study.

We'll also prepare the draft EIR and we'll release it by the spring of 2024.

The draft EIR, with the notice of availability, will initiate the 45-day public review and comment period. We plan to return for a more detailed presentation after we complete the environmental studies. Next slide. This map shows the City of Monterey Park residents that will be receiving the Notice of Preparation, or the NOP. The area shown in orange represents residents that will be notified by mail and walk-in and what is required by CEQA for public noticing. And the area shown in green represents the additional residents that will be notified by walk-in and Metropolitan is voluntarily including in the public review process. Next slide. This concludes my presentation. I will be happy to answer any questions.

Excellent.

Thank you so much for the presentation and that information.

Any questions from Council? Council Member Lo?

And again, as we go through this process, so you said that notes will be sent out for the media area.

Are we talking about notes being mailed or residents being phone banked?

The orange one that you see, the one that butts against the property of the reservoir, will be mail and walk-in.

Okay.

And the green, which we're doing as additional, will be walk-in.

And Mitchell, it will be in multiple languages?

I don't think so.

It will only be in English?

Only in English, yes.

Well, shouldn't you have it in other languages,

given the linguistic diversity of our community?

I would suggest you do that,

and not just throw your hands while you're talking to me.

Okay. Okay, meaning we have to hire somebody who-

Mr. Mayor, members and the council, if I may,

we will work back with staff from Metropolitan Water District

to see what we can do to have translation available. We'll work back with staff from Metropolitan.

Okay.

Council member, you? Council member, Glew?

Mayor Portempoin?

Thank you, appreciate the opportunity. First, I would love to request a tour of the facility. I've actually, I grew up here, I know of the reservoir, but I've never actually been into the space to see it internally. I don't know if other counselors might be interested in staff as well. Maybe we can set something up and follow up.

We can arrange that. We will talk with the city manager and we can arrange that at any time.

We'd love to see.

And then in terms of the improvements, it sounds like most of it is just updating existing structures. You're not looking at capacity increase?

No, no capacity increase. It's just the cover, the lifespan is 25 years or 20 to 25 years.

It's time to renovate it, to replace it. And because we're replacing it, we're renovating everything else.

Okay.

And I know the city does have an emergency interconnection to the guarded reservoir. we're not touched that's not being adjusted there's no issues that's not that's okay and then uh but if they're with these improvements are is met looking at emptying the reservoir to do these

i mean if there are other but there is a uh the pipelines we have bypasses and and uh i'm i'm guessing when the city connection will be on the pipeline not on the reservoir itself so you will

not have cut off for that connection.

OK. Well, hopefully we don't need it. I'm just saying.

But usually we make sure that water is delivered all the time. And if we have a shutdown, we'll let you know. OK. And then if we have a period of no water, we'll let you know.

I'm just curious from an operational perspective for MET,

if you're emptying, how long are you for the improvements

and stuff?

I know the reservoir is used for balancing on the water system for delivery.

Well, yes, it delivers all the way to Palas Verdes,

meaning we have feeders that service connections that goes all the way down.

And it uses that to feed water, that power.

Yeah, and so if you're shutting down Garveyed Reservoir for a number of days or weeks or months, or you're not...

We're shutting down the reservoir, but we have bypass.

So the water will stay going to the member agencies.

Right.

So no operational impacts to those that do depend on Garvey Reservoir?

No.

But, of course, the construction is a kind of lengthy construction that will take probably between 12 to 18 months. Okay.

So once you have the EIR finalized, you're expecting a year or two of construction before everything.

Okay.

and then I know we have I mean if you're going to be emptying the reservoir and doing work if there is work on the city side that we need to look at with our emergency connection or other things in terms of rehabbing the hillside or anything else maybe we can collaborate and align some of those schedules if if there's any work we need to do on our end if this construction works going to

be happening anyway and then I know we've our city staff and met staff have

had at least some initial conversations about potential additional recreational uses for the existing met property around Garvey Reservoir. Already we have, I think some of our playing fields are in some of the potential flood areas for the reservoir. If there are potential opportunities to expand, if you're looking at adjusting the fence line or adjusting the fence fencing at all if there are opportunities to adjust the fence line to increase the available space for surrounding neighborhood and residents to make use of some recreational opportunities at the reservoir to increase public access to some of the space

take on to those activities, that would be, I would highly encourage that.

And I think this is an opportunity to explore that a little bit more substantively. Even a walking path or some other kind of opportunity there to expand uses for the neighborhood would be, if we can at least explore that, that would be great.

Yeah, we will look into that. We will work with the city.

Meaning while we're doing the final design and we're working on it,

we will make sure that the city is in our sites

and we let them know what we're doing and we will work with them on these things. Great.

And then I would just echo what Councilor Lo mentioned as well. If we can make sure that the notices for impacts and the IR are in language, especially for those in that surrounding neighborhood,

that would be great. I know staff will follow up on that,

but I think that would be important to do. and if we can assist in making that happen, I think let's do that.

Thank you so much. All right, thank you.

Thank you. And City Manager, if we can follow through with them.

And I am also interested in doing the tour of that facility.

But to Council Member Lo's point,

also ensure that the people who are being impacted are contacted in multiple languages to make sure that they are aware of what is happening in this area.

We will definitely work back. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next presentation is from the MPK Hope Resiliency Center.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, we have members from Chinatown Service Center. We have Peter Ng and Nina Locke.

Good evening, Mayor Sanchez, Brayne Poutine-Wang, and our council members. I am Peter Ng from Chinatown Service Center, and with me together is Nina Lok.

She is the director of our behavioral health department, as well as in charge of the Resiliency Center. We're very happy to be here to give you our first report of the latest development of the Resiliency Center, but I do want to take this opportunity to thank the city council, all the city staff during this difficult time since the mass shooting to help the community of the whole city. I mean, I'm a resident of 40 years in the city of Murray Park. I've never had anything on such big scale that happened to us and everyone is just so devastated, but yet everyone pulled together and overcome this great tragedy. And there are so many affected victims, and even the supporters, our first responders, they were impacted as well. So the work, it was just so tremendous that at time we didn't know where to begin. But with the support from the city, we were able to pull together little by little. And this resiliency center actually started in April. so we a group of non-profit and also community members they get together and figure out what we're going to do and with the city's help we were able to develop and from April till August we were able to transition from even the library we started out thanks to our library Diana Garcia helping out we were setting shop over there Then we move on to other facilities, and then the city gave us the opportunity to set up the center over at Sierra Vista Park until today. So I'm going to let Nina give all the detail to share with all of you over here, and hopefully that our city, all the citizens watching, to understand how great that we are in a city of love. And we're just one big family, like Council Member Ben said. We're all in one big family. Thank you.

Wow. Good evening, everyone. I'm going to skip and move straight forward to our presentation. I couldn't have said it any better than Peter, so I want to give you all some information in regards to the MPK Hope Residency Center. So the operation is being led by Chinatown Service Center, but it's a collaborative effort with many other partner organizations to ensure that we do have a comprehensive service to meet the needs in the community. So here are some partner organizations such as AJ SoCal, Tsuji Buddhist Foundation, Special Service for Group, the Silver Division, and the APCTC Division. The Silver Division focuses direct, they're a DMH contracted agency serving the API population for the older adult, specifically serving the older adult and then the APCTC is also a DMH contracted partner serving mainly the family and youth population. All in all we the purpose or services in the residency center is to provide trauma related healing and it includes like individual counseling support group, workshop, linkages, and system navigation. It's different forms of healing depending on what individual's needs are. All of these are tailored towards what we're hearing, learning from the community as they share with us as they come through our door, letting us know their experience. So like Peter mentioned, we started. Since day one, we were asked to respond. 2D mass violence and we were at the Langley Center providing translation and interpretation services because we are known we have been in the community for so many years 20 plus years where we have count counselor case management that does provide language support 2D service so we were asked to be there since day one. And the service never stopped since then. And definitely thank you to the support of the city. After about a week or so, two weeks or so, where we pivoted to continue to service at the library. And the reason being is that we understand Langley is one location, but at the same time, other location might be more accessible and more comfortable of an environment for an individual to come by and ask for service. And it was more like a check-in, a walk-in and step-in, check-in, wellness check-in. We had case manager, counselor there, where as we're talking to them, we're also providing assessment of their well-being. And if needed, we also had a room in the back, so really thank you to the library, where we were able to walk them to the back to talk to them individually. Here are some statistics. Since January, we have served over 672 individuals at the library. We're just talking about the library right here. 92 visits from us to the library. And in terms of hours, 600 hours, our current schedule were there three days a week. Initially, it was every single day for about a month and a half or so. And then we lessened it three times a week and then two times a week. Since we're now closer to the one-year mark, we have increased our visibility at the library again. Moving on to the next slide. So here at the Residency Center, we started physically at this Sierra Vista location in August. From August to now, actually from August to December, 1015, so 1515 touchpoint individual has been at the Residency Center.

an average of about 300 attendees at the Residency Center

and a total of 238 workshop events. And these workshops are inclusive of cultural activities, qigong, mindfulness activities. And these activities are really tailored towards collective healing. We understand individual counseling are very beneficial, but at the same time we work with a population that are geared towards more collectiveness. So it has been very well receptive. Majority of the visitors are seniors, 60 and above, and we have served about 30% of those are receiving individual counseling due to the New Year tragedy.

and most of our pictures, we do take pictures

but we do blur out their face just for confidentiality reason and moving on to the next slide which is our ballroom dance and it has been very well receptive, our first one was end of November I really do want to share how the creation of this ballroom was developed and what we created. It wasn't something that our staff have come up with.

It was actually a collective work with the direct victims,

with the survivor, with the participant of the residency center. They let us know what they want to see in a ballroom dance workshop setting. So from that process, it was really recreating the narrative for them. So it's their healing process is how this ballroom dance has been created. And it has been very beneficial for those that really were able to open up to share with us

what kind of music they want to hear, how they want their environment to be. So the first one, we had 80 participants,

and the first feedback was, you need a bigger space. So working with the City Recreation Center, Robert Langley Center was the spot. so we had our second one early December and it was there were 240 participants and then we had our third one end of December and it was about 200 participants so all in all about 500 participants from three workshops they come out all dressed up make up everything really ready to dance and it's beautiful because it's their way and you can see their healing process from this experience we're going to continue with this ballroom dance on a monthly basis.

And so, next slide, please.

As you could see, ballroom dance continue, but at the same time, partnership, collaborative work,

what many others are also very necessary because we understand there are so many other needs. So throughout the year, these are some of the collaborative. there's many more that have not been listed here.

We continue to work with the community, and we learn from them, learning from the city too, letting us know what you guys are hearing and what we can provide to the community.

And moving forward to the next slide. So these are just some future planning. We really want to bring more resources and collaborative opportunity, creating more social connection with the community and social connection opportunity for anybody coming together. It's a form of not just healing, but then the connection helps with mental wellness, being able to talk to each other and just build connection. And, of course, Ballroom Dance. We're also working on our permanent space, and it's identified. It's on Atlantic Boulevard, 883 North, South Atlantic.

I'm so sorry. It's next to the dialysis. It's in the same building as the dialysis building, the Vida.

Yeah, so, and then donation for supports such as refreshment and light snacks are always needed because those are items that tend to be difficult to come by via, like, city, county, or grants of any sorts. so we really appreciate if there's any donations for refreshment and light snacks just for audience workshop and dance workshop that we have for the community that's that's the last lights any questions or concern we can help answer well first of all thank you so much for being here

tonight and for all of the amazing work that Chinatown Service Center and the Resiliency Center is also doing. You've been an amazing partner this

last year since

the shooting, and we really appreciate everything that you've done. I had the opportunity to visit the Resiliency Center, and I know we were making

lanterns for the upcoming

vigil, and I could tell and sense from the community there that just very excited to be

there, and that they're

almost second home.

And as a

matter of fact one of your employees is a former student of mine so really appreciate all the work that you're doing here in the community for people who haven't had a chance to visit the Resiliency Center or even see the list of all of the amazing workshops that are provided they're there even

So thank you so much.

You've been an amazing partner. We thank you.

It's very, very, very blessed to have you. I'm going to go ahead and give Council a chance to also speak. Council Member Lo? Sure.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Peter, Nina, and to everyone at CSC, you know, this community just also did a gratitude for just your partnership and your support, you know, during what has been a very challenging time for this community. And I think you definitely give meaning to, you know, resiliency.

I do have a question.

And first of all, we're glad to hear that you're looking and it sounds like you've found a permanent location. So let us know how we in our capacity can help support that. But as you continue to offer a way of services and you're working with the community in terms of talking to them, having a space for them to process all that they are feeling and thinking, is there anything that stands out in terms of needs or services?

Something that we need to try and double our efforts?

And it could be more than one issue, but, you know, again,

you know, when we talk about healing from, you know,

something like the tragedy we had experienced on January 21st, you know, healing, you know, is a process that can take a while.

And I'm just very curious, are there anything that you hear that we need to do a better job of? I wouldn't say a better job in any way

because I think all of us were never really prepared for a situation like this, and I think we're all doing the best that we could.

From what I'm learning and also seeing, I understand that many still don't understand what is trauma. They don't understand the effect of trauma,

and not that they feel like they don't recognize within their body

the physical signs, but then they're able to express the physical symptoms

but they're not able to relate oh it was due to some traumatic experience like these trauma cues that it's actually

hitting them so now that it's one year mark I think some of them are actually expressing some of their getting more headache or they're getting stomach they're feeling like uneasiness in chest they're cute but they're not realizing that it's because we're closer, we're getting closer to the one-year

mark. And it's very natural to be having some sort of anxiety-related feeling. Yeah. I see.

Well, I do want to thank the council members and some of our city staff,

the manager of also joined us last Thursday, thanks to the receiving fund, to

subsidize, to sponsor the dinner. And then, as you can see, all the guests they came, many of them were victims. And the city councilman

and everybody went up the stage and engaged and really bring up the joy from them. But I do want to say that at that moment, you see everybody's happy, but some of them, when they go home, they will reflect back. And these are something that we will have to talk to them and counsel them one-on-one on a private sector environment.

But the engagement of the city support is just invaluable.

That really helped to bring them back much quicker than what it should be.

Council Member Yu?

I wanted to greatly appreciate Chinatown Service Center. You're the one that, you know, stand up for us,

and we have the mental booth in the library within out of the box to help people

and also Resilience Center. I wanted to say we can see what you have done to our community.

You have a very good heart. We can all see your heart.

Don't get discouraged by a lot of different comments from everywhere, but we see that, you know, what you have done for us.

You have done a lot, and the community did benefits from your service.

So don't get discouraged. I wanted to salute to you and keep up the good work. Thank you.

Council Member Ngo.

Well, I say this to Peter and Nina almost every time we meet or every time we have a meeting.

I'm just so blessed.

You guys are leaders in your organization. And the center, CSC center overall, has provided so much relief and support to our community. and kudos to you guys for shepherding the team and making the community a lot better

thanks to you too you are our chair of csc

and thank you so much to csc and all the partners that have been working to bring these services and resources to our community but especially csc for really leading the effort in helping to organize and get everyone going in the same direction. And immediately after in the aftermath of the shooting, you were on the ground right away with our staff and county and everyone else to make sure that our community was provided the resources that they need and appreciate the long-term commitment that CSC is making both in your regular day-to-day business of running health services and other services to the community and that you have been for many decades now, but also in the response to the shooting, knowing that you're taking the lead on the Resilacine Center and their commitment with the permit space and knowing, as you've mentioned, that the trauma from the shooting will be many years long in terms of processing and bringing healing. I appreciate you just, one, providing these services and these activities for our community to be able to come together and build and rebuild that sense of community and safety here in Monterey Park, but also just providing a space for the community to be community, right, and to build trust with service providers and help to break the stigma of seeking help around mental health and behavioral health issues that for not just in the Asian American community, but many communities is often hard for many people to get over. I know it's a long-term commitment and changing culture and people's behaviors and approaches to these things IT'S NOT AN EASY TASK, SO I APPRECIATE CSC PARTNERING WITH SO MANY TO BRING THESE RESOURCES AND TO HELP ADDRESS THIS ISSUE HERE IN MONTERARY PARK AND KNOW THAT THIS IS A LONG-TERM COMMENT ON YOUR PART AND THE PARTNERS IN THIS EFFORT AND COUNT ON THE CONTINUE TO COUNT ON THE CITY TO BE A STEADFAST AND ACTIVE PARTNER IN THIS WORK IN THE YEARS TO COME. AND LOOKING FORWARD TO HOPEFULLY THE RIBBON-CUTTING FOR THE PERMANENT CENTER, But know that any of our facilities if there's still need and I think I imagine there will be for other kind of pop-up services Please count the city in for any of that and please look to us as a partner and resource as well

Thank you so much

Thank you

We're gonna go ahead and jump to item 1c

recreation staff recognition

Yes, Mr. Mayor and members of the council, I'd like to do this presentation. So during the holiday season on Friday, December 22nd, at about 10, 20 a.m. at Langley Center, we had an 80-year-old male community member who had collapsed.

Staff noticed the gentleman lying on the floor and quickly realized that the gentleman was nonresponsive.

Tonight we would like to recognize two recreation staff, Chan Lim and Michelle Chan, for immediately stepping in and administering first aid and calling 911 for medical assistance.

They performed CPR and used the AED machine while waiting for paramedics to respond. We are extremely proud of their response.

And later that day, the paramedics returned to Langley Center to share that the community member was doing well

and let staff know that their quick action was definitely very helpful

to ensure that this person was able to be revived. And from my understanding, the community member has already returned

and is participating again at Langley Center.

So tonight, unfortunately, Michelle Chen was not able to join us tonight, but we do have Chen Lim with us tonight from the recreation staff.

we'd like to ask him to come up please for recognition from our City Council. Thank you.

If we haven't mentioned it before this is part of what what makes our Parks and Rec Department so amazing. If I can ask Council to join me up here to recognize.

Thank you.

We appreciate you. You're part of what makes Monterey Park an amazing community. Let's give him one more round of applause.

On behalf of our city, we have a certificate.

Certificate for you. Thank you.

You want to get it? Thank you. Hold again.

Thank you. Thank you.

I realize we didn't give you, Mr. Lim, a chance to speak or say a few words if you wanted to. No? Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

we're going to go ahead and jump to

to yeah old business

and we have item 2A I did want to mention that we moved

item 2B

to the regular consent

calendar item so we just have items 2A and 2C

So we'll go ahead and start with item 2A, discussion of findings on the city's inclusionary housing ordinance visibility fee study. And I believe we have a presentation, right? And there are some public comments, right?

We'll go ahead and do the public comments first.

First speaker, Jerry Garner.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Temp, and City Council members. My name is Jerry Garner.

I'm with Arc Development Real Estate.

I'm a development consultant, and I'm working with a developer group in the city of Monterey

Park that's looking at doing a large mixed-use apartment or condominium project here.

And I'd like to make a few comments related to the city's inclusionary housing ordinance.

I guess the city adopted, I know this has probably been in effect for a while.

You've been working with this issue, and the city adopted this housing criteria late in the last development cycle. So development runs in cycles.

As we came out of COVID, things started picking up, but then so did inflation, so did the interest rate,

and that sort of dampened down the development cycle.

So I think right now what's going on with your inclusive housing is it's kind of a hindrance.

It hasn't been helpful.

It hasn't alleviated your housing shortage.

And it's missing what we call it's missing the middle zone. the middle zone being young newlyweds new families that need a starter home or a starter condo and they're looking to move into this city and pay in the range of 600 to 850,000 a lot of the information I'm getting is coming out of your report that this consultant group did and I'll

I'll bring that up in a minute. When the state talks about affordable housing, they're talking about charging someone 30% of what the market rate is.

So, you know, if the market rate on it is $800,000, you know, you're basically even you're building housing that this group can't afford.

As you know, your city's affordable housing mandate is 40% of that

That has to be low income, very low income, and extremely low income people or groups. But you've got to increase, you know this, if you put in affordable housing, you've got to increase the other units that are not affordable. So if you're losing money on 15% of your units, you've got to raise the cost on the remaining 85%. What that does is that drives up the remaining costs, and in this instance, it's driving it out of the market, the target market, that we're trying to hit.

So then the state comes back, and the state says, we'll subsidize this.

We'll give you incentives. If you include affordable housing, we'll allow you to build more units.

Monterey Park. The problem is that they're saying that since you lose money on the affordable units, we'll give you more, and the income stream off of the more units will offset the loss on the inclusionary units. But in this case, we're a development group, or I work with a development group. We've used the city's general plan. You have a really good, well-worked out general plan. plan. It's the law. It's an ordinance. It's the law. It's like the building code. We've maxed out the FAR. We've maxed out the building height. And we've, you know, we're using the

setbacks that are in the code. So we've come up with a project that's got about 50,000

square feet of retail, and it's going to be really nice retail, and 412 apartment or condominium units. We haven't decided which way we're going to go yet. But I think that the added cost to, well, because we're maxed out, having extra units, we can't, it doesn't do us any good. We can't build extra units. Plus, building the extra units actually

increased the cost per unit even more. So we'd like to do a really nice project, but right now we're stymied and so we think that what's going on with affordable housing requirements need to be put on a pause for some time this is a complicated issue it's it's hard to work out

everybody's grappling with it and i think there's ways to work it out but i i think just super

implosing this on these projects like our project we just can't do the project with this kind of criteria put on top of it. I think I'm out of time. I don't know if there's any

questions.

No questions.

Thank you. Do you have a question? Yes. This project you were discussing, where

is it?

You know, we haven't

presented it to the city yet. I'm a little reluctant to say where it is.

I don't know if the... We haven't presented it. We've talked to the planning staff about it, but we have not presented it to the city i see i leave that up to the city manager mr mayor members of

the council um the developer um property owner it's a conceptual um plan at this time so there's not a formal project that has been discussed with staff so that's why they're not sharing that

location at this time but believe me we're serious about it i mean we've hired uh an arc a really well-known architect it's a gorgeous project we've done the performa we want to do the project and we want to do it right away but we can't do it with this affordable housing if you look at your if you look at your inclusionary report your development feasibility study on page 22 of the study it shows that your consultant it shows the types of housing projects he's

Okay, Council Member, did he answer your question?

Okay, so we can't discuss this project just yet anymore, but thank you for your comment and the time.

Okay. Thank you.

Are there any other comments? Next speaker, Oliver Chen.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem, Council members, and city staff. My name is Oliver Chen.

I'm from Team Rice, a real estate investment and development company.

As an experienced real estate team, we've earned honor and success in past decades.

However, the increasing costs combined with affordable housing requirements has highly delayed our investment and development cases.

Development costs consist of four main factors.

One, construction materials. Two, loan interest. Three, construction labor.

Four, government fee. Due to the scarcity of materials and the inflation, loss of construction materials has doubled or even tripled compared to 2019.

The fat rate has risen to 5.5% from 0.25%.

The construction labor's compensation has gone up around 80% to 120%.

Since the market is replacing only one new construction labor for every seven construction laborers that retire or leave.

Although the government could bring incentives to minimize the government fee, we still need to deal with a series of increases in other factors.

Hence, most of the large developers have paused their development and small-scale developers have chosen to develop in a cheaper environment. Based on our research, the new development projects in the Inland Empire are way more than Los Angeles County. It indicated that developers can't make profit and the dilemma requires the government's attention to fix.

Southern California has faced a serious housing shortage for years and the situation got worse after the pandemic. To alleviate the shortage,

the state government established density bonus law to encourage the developers to build more affordable units in their projects by providing specific incentives to the developers. In addition, the city government established inclusionary housing regulations to ask the developer to provide a specific percentage of the project as affordable housing. The intention of these inquirements is to encourage the developers to provide more houses that the people could afford.

However, the incentives cannot even compensate for the increased cost after COVID-19. In addition, the house mortgage in pandemic times has the Lost interest rates. The owners will not be willing to sell their houses by comparing the current rates.

As a principle of economy, given a stable demand, when there is less supply, the higher the price.

We have to let the developers have more confidence to build in order to turn around this situation. The city government still has some flexibility under the state density bonus law.

To encourage new developments, some cities are given the highest criteria under the Defensity Bonus Law.

For example, Pasadena will give a 50% FAR increase compared to Monterey Park's 25% increase.

Therefore, not only for developers, but also for the people, the Inclusionary Housing Act needs to be postponed.

By postponing the act, developers could focus on dealing with the market cost factors and proceed with their development projects. After a few years, the house market will be gradually saturated and that will be the best time for publishing the act. As a matter of fact, Monterey Park is a lovely city that carries lots of memories of first generation immigrants. It has the greatest location in Los Angeles County. We wish the city could be better and we will do our best to contribute to the Monterey Park community not only because of business but also because we love the city. Please consider our situation.

Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other speakers? Next speaker, Selena Zong.

Okay, good evening, mayors and all council members.

I just resident here in Mantra Park, so I will share a little of my thoughts.

Actually, I live in Mantra Park for several years, and also I have a lot of friends live in the same area as I stay. And you know, as I think, there's not too much entertainment places as I live in other cities. When I graduated from my university, I stayed in an urban area and maybe in the city of downtown. I found a lot of entertainment places for fun, for food, and for marketing and for shopping, plaza, big plaza,

but compared with Montreux Park, I think we are lack of these entertainment places.

I know that local policy is good for our residents, which will not attract the developer.

So I think the economy is not that good at the moment.

I think our city could have more good policies to attract more developers to come first and to bring more good plazas and entertainment, supporting entertainment places.

Then we implement the local policy in the future. So I think this is the best for for a resident here in the Monterey Park. Thank you

Thank you. Do we have another speaker? No other speakers. Okay. Thank you. So we'll go ahead and move on to the presentation portion now

Yes, good evening mayor Mayor pro-tem members of the planning. I'm sorry of the City Council. I'm Jessica Serrano your community development director and and this item is a discussion of findings on the city's inclusionary housing ordinance feasibility study. On September 6, 2023, the city council adopted an inclusionary housing ordinance, which we'll reference as IHO, and an IHO in lieu fee formula. As part of this action, the council also directed staff to conduct a feasibility study to evaluate whether the IHO is financially feasible. Based on the council's direction, the city participated in a San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments program in which the city was partnered with a firm called Economic and Planning Services, EPS, to conduct an inclusionary housing feasibility study tailored to Monterey Park. Tonight we have two representatives from EPS who will be presenting the findings of the study, including Julie Cooper, who's seated to my right, and also Chinmay Demley, and he's also in the audience to support this presentation. At this point, I'm going to turn it over to Julie, and she'll begin the presentation.

Thank you, Jessica. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of the City Council. My name is Julie Cooper. I'm a principal with Economic and Planning Systems, EPS. If we can go a couple of slides. Two more. One, two. Just trying to be quick. So this is just repeating some information that Jessica just provided, so I won't repeat it. Just a reminder about the city's existing inclusionary housing ordinance. Next slide. So EPS, we're a land use and economics consulting firm working mainly in the state of California, but also across the country. and we have a very deep and long practice area in affordable housing policies including inclusionary housing policies. And we have been engaged by the San Gabriel Valley COG to conduct inclusionary housing feasibility studies for several cities in the San Gabriel Valley over the past 18 months. And that includes this study that we have just completed for Monterey Park. Next slide. So just very quickly, part of our study, the first step is to understand the housing needs in the city of Monterey Park. This is some information that I'm sure you're all very familiar with on your regional housing needs allocation and showing both the amount of additional housing that the city is zoned to add. It's about 25% increase over existing inventory and the spread of affordability levels that the city is expected to meet for different households at different income levels. Next slide. We do see that there is a need for affordable housing in Monterey Park, as there is in all communities across the state and really the country. based on the median household income and average household size in the city of Monterey Park, we would estimate that the typical household here could afford a single-family home of about $400,000 or rent of about $1,700 per month. This is far below what we see units in the city rent or sell for under current market conditions. So certainly a need for housing that's affordable to a range of income levels in your community. Next slide. the city's had about 100 had about 100 units completed in 2022 mostly multi-family units and there's about 700 more units in the pipeline in various stages of concept in terms of being built we do know that the city has targeted the kind of downtown northeast area of the city with its MU zoning as an area that is expected to see a lot of the new housing development into the future. And this certainly...

Prince���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� significant capital investment and there's lots of places where investors can invest money or developers can invest money and so a project needs to be competitive from that perspective

in order for a developer to make a go decision to pursue it. So when we talk about financially feasible we're talking about a development that is achieving that sufficient return on investment

that would incentivize a developer to go ahead and look for investors and go ahead with the project. For the purposes of our analysis, we used two industry standard metrics

to define what we would consider to be a sufficient return.

For rental projects, we used a metric called yield on cost.

This is the net operating income of a project, so that's rental revenue minus operating expenses,

and that's divided by the cost of the development.

And in the Southern California market, under current market conditions, a developer would be looking to achieve at least a 5.5% yield on cost to move forward with a rental project.

On the for sale side, we look at a metric called profit margin, which is profit divided by cost. And again, we're looking to achieve, in this case, a 15% profit margin for a for sale project. Next slide. So why do we conduct feasibility analysis for inclusionary housing programs?

Inclusionary housing does represent a cost on development.

It's either a cost in the fact that developers are building units that cost a certain amount to build,

but they're having to be sold or rented at a below market rate, so there is a cost to them in terms of their revenue stream,

or if they pay an in-lieu fee, that's another line item on the cost side of their ledger.

In either case, it is a cost and it does affect overall return.

And anything that's affecting overall return, particularly for a project that might kind of be on the margin from a feasibility standpoint, could potentially push a project into infeasibility

and a developer can't move forward with it.

So because inclusionary housing programs require that market rate development happen in order to get affordable units to also be developed, we want to help cities understand what are the implications for market rate projects with the adoption of an inclusionary housing requirement.

Next slide.

So in order to conduct our feasibility analysis, we developed several financial models or pro forma models of a range of residential prototype products that reflect what the city is sort of expecting to see in terms of future development in different parts of the city. So these prototypes fell into two buckets. One were a set of prototypes that reflect zoning, that sort of generally citywide zoning requirements.

So this included a prototype at 20 units an acre, which is kind of your single-family attached townhome type of unit that's owner-occupied. And then two multifamily types of projects at 30 units an acre, one that's owner-occupied, so a condominium, and one that would be renter-occupied.

So this reflects, I believe, your R2 and R3 zones in the city. Next slide.

We also, as we mentioned earlier, we know a lot of new housing is expected to be developed in the MU zones.

So we developed a number of prototypes that conform to the zoning in the MU zone. So again, looking at owner-occupied condominiums at 30 units an acre, but with a Lor parking ratio.

And then two multifamily rental projects at 70 units an acre, and also with two different parking ratios, reflecting the Lor parking requirements in the MU zone and the higher density allowances.

Next slide.

slide. So as you can see, so using our some research on development costs in the region

and then as you saw the achievable rents and sale prices for new units that were on the previous two slides, we calculated these return metrics for all of the prototypes. So on the

city-wide set of prototypes what this slide is showing is that for the single-family attached townhome the owner-occupied townhome project these products we would estimate on average

are achieving enough of a return that not only are they feasible to build but they likely can bear

the cost of an inclusionary requirement and this is a common thing that we're seeing across our studies and really reflects that this is a product that is being built in a lot of parts

of the Southern California region right now. On the flip side of that, the multifamily projects or prototypes that we modeled are not achieving even at 100% market rates, even the feasibility thresholds that would suggest

that on average they are financially feasible.

So these types of projects are likely to be financially challenged even without the inclusion of affordable units. Next slide.

In the MU zone, you can see that the return metrics improve quite a bit with the addition of more density and a Lor parking requirement. However, we're still seeing that on average, these projects appear to be financially challenged in terms of meeting these feasibility thresholds. So again, even at 100% market rate, there are challenges to building these, and then that's without the inclusion of affordable units as well.

So I'm going to put sort of a pin in those findings and come back to what we would say they mean for the IHO.

And I'm going to jump to our calculations of an in-lufee, which was another part of our scope for the city of Monterey Park. So as Jessica mentioned, you adopted a resolution. in August regarding the calculation of an in-lieu fee that would go along with your inclusionary

housing ordinance. And this is a requirement actually for inclusionary housing ordinances

that you provide an alternative means of compliance besides providing units on site. And so the in-lieu fee would be that alternative means of compliance. The city included a formula

in their resolution where the in-lufi was calculated as the value of the unit at a market

rate minus the value of a unit at an affordable rent or sale price. This is certainly a valid way

to calculate an in-lufi. However, what EPS has found to be an approach that we think more directly

reflects the direct costs to developers for providing affordable units on site is the cost

of the unit minus the unit value at affordable rates. And what this reflects is that usually at

the rents or sale prices that are affordable to different income levels, covering the cost of the

unit. So there's a subsidy that's being provided to even cover the cost of building the unit. And

so this is why, for instance, in 100% affordable projects, there is a whole stack of different financing sources that are utilized to support those developments because the revenue streams do not make up for the cost.

And so what we are suggesting here is that by using this approach, you're showing that either a developer is providing that subsidy on-site by having the affordable units on-site,

or they pay that same subsidy to the city who can then provide it to a developer who's building affordable units elsewhere.

Next slide. slide. So this slide just shows some examples of how this fee is calculated. So these are

the development cost per unit for a few of the prototypes and then minus what the value

would be at affordable rents or sale prices. And so you can see sort of the range of subsidy

that's typically needed or that would be needed to make these to help cover the gap between

between the cost of building the unit and the value of the unit. Next slide.

So this slide's a lot of numbers.

But overall this is showing what the in-lieu fee would be for the range, the six prototypes that we modeled.

So what we're showing here is that it's sort of best practice to charge the in-lieu fee as either per market rate unit or per market rate square foot.

And so that's what this is showing.

And so in terms of the per market rate square foot, you can see that the fee ranges anywhere from about $14 per square foot to $50 per square foot, depending on the prototype.

And this reflects the kind of range of costs and values that go along with each type of unit.

So it's likely that however you would adopt your in lieu fee, there would be probably a range in what the fee was for different prototypes. And just to provide some context, on the next slide, we did some research on what fees are being charged in a variety of other communities, both in the San Gabriel Valley, in Southern California, and even a few cities in Northern California. And so, again, you can see the range is very wide, from $0.33 a square foot in Pomona to almost $80 a square foot in Pasadena.

So what we've calculated for Monterey Park is certainly in this range, but there's a lot of variation. The one note that I'll make here that I'll mention again in a few slides is that the city doesn't have to adopt their fee to match the financial gap. Some cities make a policy decision to adopt a fee that's Lor than the actual gap that's associated with their inclusionary requirements.

And so on this slide you can see the example here is Yoruba Valley in the Inland Empire.

They charge an in-lieu fee of $2.50 a square foot, which is much Lor than what the associated financial gap is with their on-site inclusionary requirements.

Next slide. slide. Next slide. Okay, so just wrapping up here. So this slide is bringing together all

of the analysis so you can see again the financial feasibility threshold for each product type.

The return that we calculated each prototype is achieving at 100% market rate. And then the return that it achieves when we include either the on-site inclusionary requirement or the payment of the fee. And what we hope to convey here is that there is like a noticeable

difference in the return when you include the affordable units. So this is not an insignificant

cost that developers will bear by having to include these units or pay a fee. There is

definitely an impact on return that we can see in the data. Next slide. So two quick caveats or sort

of notes I'd like to make on these findings. One is that this analysis is not meant to be determinative of the type of development that the city is going to see in the next year, in the next five years, in the next 10 years. This analysis is a point in time evaluation of current average

market conditions. So we can only reflect sort of the average project. And every development project is unique. Some projects are able to achieve Lor costs. Some projects are able to achieve higher rents, higher sale prices. And so just because we are suggesting here that on average certain types of projects are not feasible doesn't mean you won't see those projects

come across the desk here. It just means that on average there are financial challenges and

particularly in the current market, which was alluded to by some of the speakers,

in developing housing in Southern California, and that is reflected in this data here.

The other thing just to mention is the prototypes that we developed for the MU area reflect

recent projects that have been presented to the city, but the MU area actually doesn't have a

density limit or a parking requirement. And so what we would expect is that in the coming

sort of months or years that you may start to see projects in this zone where developers are sort of

pushing the envelope on both sides, both on density and parking, to achieve a feasible project.

I think one of your speakers alluded to the fact that they have a project where they're maxing out as much as they can in terms of what the city allows. So we think that that's one way where,

particularly in the MU zone, you're going to see how you're going to see projects happen.

And then finally, in terms of what we would suggest the city consider in terms of next steps as it relates to the IHO, one is to consider a temporary pause on the inclusionary housing requirements

and a monitoring of market trends over the next one to two years,

and then a reconsideration of sort of bringing it back when market conditions change.

We've seen many cities do this.

This was actually a common thing that cities did during the recession in the mid-2000s,

so certainly not without precedent.

A related approach you could take is to phase in the inclusionary requirements over several years

so that the market can sort of slowly adapt to the requirements.

One example of this is the City of Long Beach, which phased in their inclusionary requirements

over a three-year period. So every year the requirement...

Prince���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� city made perhaps a small tweak to their requirements, maybe 10% low, 5% moderate, then any project that's meeting your requirements would also automatically be able to get a density bonus through the state, which not only includes more density, but also other types of concessions that can help the cost side of the equation. And then the final suggestion or consideration is what I alluded to before, which is that you could adopt an in-lieu fee that's Lor than the associated subsidy that goes along with your inclusionary requirements on site. And in this case, you would be incentivizing developers, most developers, to pay the fee, but the city would still be getting some benefit, some money that you could use towards other housing initiatives, while lessening the cost overall to developers to comply with the requirements. These strategies are not mutually exclusive and they could be pursued in some combination. And while they're not going to change the market conditions that we're under, again they can have an impact on reducing costs associated with affordable units. And with that I will conclude my remarks and happy to take any questions or look forward to the discussion. Thank you for your time.

Thank you so much for that thorough report. Questions? Comments? Councilmember Lo?

Yes, thank you. Again, thank you for everyone who participated in this conversation from speakers to those who presented. I'm kind of curious because the list of communities

that you use as your reference, and not to mention probably communities in this area who adopted their IHOs before we did,

do you or your counterparts or colleagues

see any movements to suspend or to revisit them, especially in light of current conditions in the marketplace?

I'm not aware of any recently adopted programs that are now being considered for kind of a pause.

I do think some of these programs are pretty new, and so there might be a sense of kind of waiting to see what happens.

But we do know, for instance, there are cities that adopted their inclusionary policies, you know, many years ago that then did make a pause. Two examples in the region are City of Whittier and City of Duarte,

and both of them took that step. Again, that was more recession-driven,

but under kind of similar market pressures, market pressures that aren't terribly dissimilar to what we're dealing with today. I see.

And I realize when you prepare this,

I don't know if this is including your analysis,

but I know this past year the state,

well, this past year and probably multiple years,

Whereas the state has passed a whole series of legislation which in its totality is supposed to address the affordability issue. And I'm just curious. Yes, there are more conditions that are just reality. But at the same time, you know, I'm assuming at some point we'll go down or else the holiday market may correct itself as well.

But do you believe that with the whole slew of legislation that has passed, probably in the past five, maybe even ten years,

combined with, say, a community's IHO, that it represents a mix of policies and a regulatory environment that would encourage more of that mix of housing that was our intent in adopting an IHO?

I think it's hard to say because the legislation that's been passed, a lot of it has kind of, some of it is more, creates more restrictions, some of it creates less restrictions. I would say that we do see that the state density bonus, which continues to become more and more generous every year, is being used by many developers in the region, including some of the local developers that we talked to in Monterey Park. So it is a very powerful tool that many developers are using, and there are affordable units that come along with that. Some other, I think, legislation that's relevant in this case is, for instance, AB 2097, which gets rid of parking minimums in certain zones that are well served by transit. And parking is one of the largest cost items in a pro forma.

And so anything that can be done to reduce that cost typically is helping in terms of housing production.

But a lot of these factors are bigger than what state or local policy can kind of, you know, there are ways that you can make things easier and reduce certain costs. but one of your speakers talked about the cost of materials, the cost of labor. These are big macroeconomic forces that while, you know, you have an opportunity to reduce fees, reduce costs around the time that it takes to go through pre-development, those are smaller factors related to these larger market factors that are going to take some time to cycle through.

So I do think over time, yes, we're going to see that the combination of legislation that helps to reduce kind of regulation or requirements on development with the market cycle will hopefully result in more housing and housing at various income levels. But it's a little hard to say at this point.

And as you say, it all depends on market conditions. And as you say, I mean, there is a finite supply globally.

And I imagine that probably even pre-pandemic, you know,

there was a time where probably we were competing with other countries

for materials and supplies, right?

Yes, but certainly the pandemic exacerbated a lot of supply chain issues. Okay.

But again, as we sift our way through all of this, you know, and I remember when I was a school board member, this is now probably 10, 12 years ago, that when we had passed a bond measure, what we were told by our construction management firm at the time

was that, because yes, even back then,

the materials for school construction was going up. And I remember the CM firm said, because at the time, China was preparing for the 2008 Olympics, and that drove up the cost of materials worldwide. So fast forward to now, again, if I read papers, and if it's true that China may go through a recession this year, Does that also mean, though, that that could then also mean supplies of materials may become more readily available? Again, I know you may not, but I guess there's hypotheticals I'm just saying.

I think any of those factors are, again, in the macroeconomic perspective, any of those factors can have an impact on just overall housing costs. And it is true the cost of materials has been rising at a pretty steady clip even before the pandemic. If you look at the construction cost index, for instance, it has kind of been going up at a pretty steady high pace over the last many years. So I can't say for sure, but I think, again, the market is cyclical. And we, you know, two, three, five years from now, we may see conditions be slightly more favorable to the development of residential and just real estate projects in general.

Okay. Council Member, you?

I personally support temporary pause, the IHL requirement for a year. The reason why is, first of all, we know that we are closer to recession, but hopefully not. Now development is in a tough situation. It's hard to finance.

and secondly we have the housing units additional 5,200 in the next few years so we need to meet that requirement and in order to temporarily pause that for a year we can speed up the developer choosing Monterey Park hopefully we'll have some more application within that year and we will take the jump start compared to other cities I think bottom line is we want more jobs to create for our people So that's my two cents. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Ngo?

Yeah, Ms. Cooper, thank you for being here.

Great report. Just a couple of questions.

I mean, I think Council Member Lo asked you about the macro stuff. Let's kind of dive into the local stuff here. I guess you do a lot of these reports?

Yes, we've done probably about 10 of these over the last couple of years just in Southern California.

And it's all infill locations?

Not all of them. We did do reports for four other cities in the San Gabriel Valley,

and those are all pretty much infill cities that are looking at infill.

But we have done some studies in the city of Riverside, for instance,

where we're seeing a bit more greenfield development.

And that's just in our L.A. office. We have an office in Oakland,

and they're also doing these studies all over Northern California. So across the range of city types.

So the infields in the San Gabriel Valley, how many of the cities would you say don't have an IHO at this point?

Very few cities have an IHO.

The only cities, actually, can you go towards the end?

Oh, no, sorry, in the appendix, we have a list.

So this is a list of cities in Southern California specifically that have recently adopted IHOs.

So you can see it's not a lot. There are several of them that are in the San Gabriel Valley, Pasadena, Alhambra, South Pasadena. but it's

more common that a city doesn't have an inclusionary housing ordinance than that they do in this region

A couple of questions to the barriers to entry for building I think we have a couple of developers in the room so I think I'm going to give them kudos for talking about the for cost, construction, labor

Loring interest

and also government fees. So if I had to kind of peg those four, which is the prime factor for not allowing you to bill as a developer?

Well, construction and labor are definitely your largest cost factors by far.

The one category that I think was alluded to

but not maybe kind of specifically called out is what we call sort of soft costs or indirect costs. So that's government fees are in there, but also just all the costs around pre-development work,

consultants, you know, architects, all of those things.

So those represent a certain percentage of costs. And then the financing, you know, the loans and the financing terms are cost.

But I would say, based on our pro formas, we typically see that construction and labor are the big cost items, the major cost items.

So not to speak for you, government fees is probably the Lost factor in all of those.

Yes. I would say, on average, government fees probably represent anywhere from 2% to 5%.

That's just on average. Some places, it's more. One-time costs. One-time costs.

usually one-time cost yeah although um in some cases there is other ongoing uh requirements but

yes one-time costs about maybe two to five percent of the total cost of a unit and those fees are

pretty consistent throughout the majority of the cities i mean there it's if it's a dollar here it's a dollar there it's not a dollar here and ten dollars there it's uh it's pretty i mean it's a

pretty wide range i have to say like if you go i mean it depends what geography you're looking at But if you go from Santa Monica to Riverside, like you're looking at a, there can be a very wide range.

Well, let's just say San Gabriel Valley because we're sitting in the San Gabriel Valley. Oh, yeah.

In the San Gabriel Valley, I would say, you know, some cities we do see slightly higher fees. But in general, yeah, I would say you're all in the same kind of ballpark.

So if I was trying to build something, I would say I can build in Monterey Park, Alhambra, St. Gabriel, Roast Meat. My fee is about the same. Certain cities have inclusionary housing, certain don't.

But it's probably safe to say that a lot of cities are developing that program because of the need for affordable housing or the need to build more units.

So there's an imbalance here.

I mean, it's a state issue. Actually, it's a national issue, affordability for housing. You go back to the Great Recession we had. We built too many homes.

What happens?

Then you didn't build for a while, and now you're building again. But it's probably safe to save in the last 12, 15 years.

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have a background in real estate lending so they asked for my input and I assured and I think from my view inclusionary housing is something that has been thought out with our city, with our commissions for a few years. It's finally put into effect and then going back to the decisions we made in this group here back in September we ultimately decided that this was probably a good starting point. Now that we agree that everything was going to be set in stone, no. But we agree that it was something that was a starting point where we would provide some additional help for folks who can buy the units where they can afford and help the growing families in their community, the moderate income level. We're not even talking about the low income level because it doesn't work. That's just a statewide issue. Unless you get affordable units, that's a different animal and I really think there's a balance here ultimately it's a supply and demand issue if we have plenty land they'll build plenty units if the cost is low they'll build more if the cost is high they'll weed out some of the builders who don't have the capital because land will cost more. So what I'm trying to say here is we started something here to help our community grow, to help make it more affordable to those who can't afford it. Now are we going to make everything $3 million units? No, because then you kind of move to the extreme of the other side, too high of an income.

So I think this report is good in the sense that it gives us some statistics.

It gives us just some discussion points.

But at the end of the day, it's really the council having to kind of talk to your constituents and decide, are we ready for this? Are we ready to have IHO? Just like some of the communities or neighbors who kind of took the chance and did it before

us.

and now we've kind of folLod step to that. So thank you for your report.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you. I appreciate the report.

I want to quickly express appreciation of the COG for,

I believe they provide the funding for this analysis, so appreciate that our partnership with the COG and their work on doing this. On the other studies you've done for cities in the Sangria Valley, the findings, were they similar in terms of feasibility for IHOs in those other cities?

Can you describe that?

Yes. So the findings were very similar, and we had similar, well, those were cities that hadn't yet adopted an ordinance.

And so our general kind of conclusions for those cities was that this was not maybe the most advantageous time for them to adopt an inclusionary housing ordinance.

Are they all at this point not moving forward then within IHO?

We, to my knowledge, none of them are, but we, our contract with the COG is sort of coming to a close, so it's possible they may pursue it separate from that.

But none of them have indicated to us that they're looking to pursue an IHO at this time.

Great. No, I appreciate that.

I mean, it's clear to me, and you've looked through the report and the analysis, one, I appreciate the analysis and being able to be guided by this kind of data and analysis. and I hope that as we go forward, not just on planning and development issues, but across the city, to the extent possible and every time possible, I hope that we'll be guided by data and analysis as much as we can. And ideally, in the timeline of this, we would have this analysis before we adopt an ordinance like an IHO for the city. So hopefully we'll make sure that that's standard practice going forward. but it's clear to me looking through this report that right even market rate without affordability affordable unit components developments in the city do

not pencil out is it that's correct on average sort of your average

hypothetical project yes we would say doesn't look like it pencils out just

again given those average assumptions yeah and given the caveats you gave in

the report right the market can change and these are a point in time kind of analyses and assumptions. Correct. But generally, I don't think market conditions have changed that

much at all, right, much from what we analyzed in the report. That's correct. And so again, just

what I mentioned before is that we can only reflect sort of average costs, average rents,

and so different projects may have different kind of conditions that they're dealing with. Maybe

it's they already had the land, so the land cost, which is one of the cost categories I didn't mentioned might be much Lor. So then, you know, that's not a factor. That's just one example.

So that's just to say that, yes, it looks like projects in general are probably financially

challenged, but it doesn't mean that no project can work. And so just, again, to caveat that.

Yeah, no, I, uh, knowing where there's, there's not a lot of certainty or you can't answer,

right.

There's no certain answers to every development is unique.

Every situation is a little bit, right. Understanding that.

But generally this analysis says to me that the IHO will not get us to where we want to go at this point, given marking conditions.

Yes. And again, we are seeing just generally development is challenged right now.

You know, there are projects that have been in the pipeline that are being built that developers are still moving forward with.

But in terms of new starts, we are generally seeing that the volume of new starts for projects is slowing down.

Again, between the costs and then the sort of interest rate factors,

there is many developers that are taking a pause on moving forward with a new project at this moment.

So I mean back when a few months ago when this council right adopted the IHO and we're having this conversation I really pushed for us to make sure we did this analysis as well in parallel and the result I made clear I hope at that point that the analysis and whatever it came back to us would guide decision making on going forward How we want to implement the IHO and if we want to make any changes It's clear to me with this report and this analysis that we've asked for that the IHO generally is not, with current market conditions, isn't working the way we want it to work. I would support a suspension and it looks like your recommendations for at least a year.

And in the meantime,

I would hope to direct staff and hope that staff will work on some of the recommended changes

to the IHO through the report

to implement those when we're ready. But also to, before we, if this council supports the suspension today of the IHO, the existing IHO, to take advantage of the time that we have between now and whenever

we look at this again.

To continue and conduct an analysis, we need to adjust the budget to make sure we have the resources for that to adjust and make some changes to the IHO to make sure it addresses some of the recommendations for changes to make it qualify for state density bonuses

and others to align there.

and if we need to adjust the in-lieu fee calculation and I think bring back to the council for a policy discussion on how, when, and where, right?

We want to adopt an IHO for the city kind of going forward a year from now

or whenever I would support a year.

I don't see market conditions changing dramatically 12 months from now, right? We don't know, but I think that will give time for staff to to conduct additional thinking looking at other cities and what we're doing

and do another analysis along these lines to make sure that the niho will work in our community to

bring their four units we know we need to have and build in the city but without freezing development

where we get absolutely nothing and right freezing the pipeline for a year freezes the pipeline for

development for many years right so I want to be very cautious and to I think

Councilmember Ngo's point right we're trying to strike a balance here I think

inappropriate balance would be to suspend I would support suspension of the IHO as draft as we've implemented now and direct staff to take the time and the admit and take advantage of the time to do some additional analysis and some homework on what other cities are doing on I chose continue to watch more CONDITIONS AND COME BACK TO COUNCIL WITH SOME PROPOSALS FOR ADOPTING OR POTENTIAL CHANGES THE I HAD SHOW AND WHEN WE ARE READY TO READOPT OR UNDO THE PAUSE AND MAKE SURE IT'S IMPLEMENTED IN THE PROPER WAY TO TO GET TO WHERE WE NEED TO GO ON ON THE RENA NUMBERS AND MAKING SURE WE'RE GETTING THE THE HOUSING AND DEVELOPMENT WE WANT AND NEED IN THE CITY AT DIFFERENT LEVELS OF AFFORDABILITY THAT'S ALL I GOT

Thank you.

Thank you for the report. I think that it was very useful for us to hear the results of that report in terms of how we move forward. It still doesn't change the fact that we desperately need affordable housing, not just in our community but throughout the state. I teach, and I've been teaching in this community for 22 years.

and one of the schools are microcosms of what,

and you see what types of societal issues are happening.

And we know for a fact,

and we work closely with our school districts

and the community,

we know for a fact that families are leaving.

And the number one factor

why families are leaving these communities

is because it's not affordable.

When I started teaching at Alhambra High School, our biggest issue we had was we didn't have enough classroom space

because we had so many students.

We almost had 4,000 students at O'Hambra High School.

Today we have barely 2,000.

So where have those 2,000 students gone?

They have either left the state

or they moved to different parts of the state where it's cheaper to live. And a lot of that has to do with families,

and you shared some of those numbers.

What can our community afford? and that $1,700 a month that you shared, I don't know if you can find a unit in the city at that cost. And so we know we also have to strike a balance here, but I do want to say that whether we decide today to suspend the IHO, it doesn't end the fact that we have a desperate housing crisis, not just in our community, but in the entire nation, And to Councilmember Ngo's point, it's really a supply and demand issue.

We desperately need more housing. There's no doubt about it.

We need more housing.

But we also need affordable housing. Because if we're just building million-dollar condos throughout the state, I don't know many families who can afford that.

right so

I also want to speak to council member Ngo's point about also making sure that we're engaging our community because

we do have a

community members that have been working on this for years and I think that

they their input should