City Council Meeting — February 21, 2024

Thank you. Thank you.

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

wow it really works uh if you can take your seats we're going to start the meeting

recording in progress

thank you uh welcome to our meeting our regular Council meeting for February 21st. We'll start with a very quick land acknowledgement. We'd like to acknowledge that the land we inhabit today was once known as the Tovangaar, 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, invite you to

acknowledge the history and join us in caring for this land. We'll start with

we call order and then flag salute if we could invite if everyone could please

join me in standing and we'll welcome the police explorers to present the colors.

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f f f f f f

f f f f f

f f f

And we'll welcome a local student, Luma Pina, to the budget.

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

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,

and to the one who which ascends, one nation under God,

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

You may be seated.

Forward, hood.

Outward, face. Forward, march. Outward facing, forward march. !

Pulse colors. !

Thank you.

Thank you. Please be seated.

If the council can join me up front to present our civic superstar.

Thank you so much, Luna.

I appreciate you leading the Pledge of Allegiance today for our city council meeting. And, Luna, you're a student at Inez, is that right?

Repeto. What grade are you in? Second.

Second grade.

Wow. Thank you so much. Congratulations.

Thank you for joining us today and leading the pledge.

You did a great job.

We'd like to present on behalf of the city council, serving it as a civic superstar, and we'll join together to take a picture.

But if you want to take it.

One, two, three, big smiles. Wonderful. Awesome. One more. One more. Thank you.

Thank you so much. thank you

all right thank you we'll do the roll call All right. Thank you. We'll do the roll call. Councilmember Sanchez.

Here. Council Member Lo. Here. Council Member Yu. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Ngo. Present. Mayor Wong. I am here.

We have a quorum. Thank you. Any agenda items, additions, deletions, changes, or adoptions? Mr. Mayor,

members of the council, we would like to request to move item 1A to the March 6th council meeting. The Los Angeles County presenters were not available to present this item tonight.

That's the only change.

And that doesn't require a motion or anything, right?

No.

Are any other changes from the council? If not, we'll move on to public communications.

I'll look to the city clerk.

First speaker, Nadal Uda.

Thank you.

Hello, good evening, everyone. We request some information from the city of Montreux Park.

We receive answers from the city deputy city attorney, Justin Tamayo.

Even we check his name in the city list, we don't find that. But according to his memo or his information, he said if we have any more information we want, we can contact the city clerk. But in the meantime, when we contact the city clerk, the deputy city clerk said, I quote, we instructed not to answer any request regarding what you sent before. we ask her who give you that order or request she declined to answer now we ask you as a mayor and a city council member and a city attorney and city manager who give that order to the city clerk and at what rule of law or any constitution they did that

and suppose the city clerk will request something to give us all the information available

which is we know which information available because most of the requests we requested

we were present at the time of each incident

now we will follow up with the city clerk again

and we request the information to provide to us

completely with all what we requested

second we are the people we still we are the people

I'm going to talk tonight about one incident happened in 2022 where we were present at the time.

Report or file number 2022-00022059. what happened when the two police officers arrived at the scene of the incident? What they saw?

Why the guys who they are following fled the scene?

And why the two police officers, Chin and Lopiti,

I don't know if it's right or not, who arrived at the scene don't rush and run after the two guys who fled the scene.

and how the two police officers determined and concluded the person who was there at the time

responsible, and he was involved, and he is the one who bought and owned the illegal firearms

in 4th of July celebration, and why the police officer issued a citation to that man

who was doing the firecracker at the celebration of 4th of July

and why the two police officers don't follow and catch the two people

or two persons who fled the scene, who was involved in the incident and responsible for the firework at that scene.

Those two people, they fled the scene through the empty land lot when they collected and all the evidence, video or camera or whatever they have, the police,

they don't provide it to us.

How come all the police officers involved in that incident, they don't have body camera on?

And the police department policy to provide, when the police officer involved in any interaction with the people, to activate that body camera.

Now we want to know all the right information,

and we wait when we request it again to be provided to us

before taking any legal action against the city, against anyone involved.

Thank you. Have a good day. Thank you.

Mr. Bayer.

Chief, would you come up here for just a sec?

Thank you, sir.

I believe this speaker has been up here several times asking for various paperwork, and I know I have personally witnessed you give it to him here in the audience. Is there any additional information that he has requested that is outside what he's already

received?

No. We've given him everything that we possibly can in this case. we waived the fees so that we could get them to him.

I'm the one that talked to the clerk's office about sending him to us

because he would come in and get rather upset with them and they were a little intimidated. So every time he would come in, we would leave our office,

come down and answer any question he had,

make sure we had full transparency with him. We walked him through the investigation multiple times.

We were as frustrated as he was about not being able to catch the suspects, but our detectives worked tirelessly with all of their techniques to try to find these guys, and we could not find them.

And I believe he's been directed to talk to the watch commander or a specific liaison with the police department if he has any additional questions.

Yes. Is that accurate?

Captain Jimenez, who's at the back up here, is his liaison, and we're available to him whatever he needs.

So, sir, if you have any new requests beyond what you've already requested,

then please file them.

The chief is here.

Captain Jimenez is in the back. Otherwise, we consider the matter closed. Thank you very much.

Sir, this is the end of public comment, and you can talk to the captain who's talking to you right now.

All right, thank you. Next speaker.

Next speaker, Alex Lee.

Good evening, honorable council members. I would like to start with a congratulations to Mayor Wong and Mayor Pro Tem Ngo and a

new chapter to the city council.

You may recall you have heard from my wife last... You may recall you have heard from my wife last session and I would like to thank you for hearing her experience during our encounter at the new year. ! And thank you, Council Member Sanchez, for making the arrangement to connect with Monterey Park Parking Enforcement. However, I do not believe the discussion to have led to a satisfactory response. ццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццц I will start with a reminder of the chain of events that happened that evening. We parked my vehicle at the block of 200 North Lincoln Avenue on January 27, 2024, around 5 p.m. to attend the Luna New Year event. We exited my vehicle and did not observe any signage of applicable parking restrictions. There were no traffic posts on the sidewalk, and the entire block was parked with vehicles. We attended the event and left around 7.30 p.m., and as I was returning to my vehicle, we observed newly erected traffic posts and temporary parking restrictions along the sidewalks. I observed multiple vehicles and families were sighted as I was returning to my own vehicle. We returned to my vehicle to find my car was sighted at 7.09 p.m., approximately 20 minutes prior to me returning to my vehicle. against this newly erected traffic post and restrictions. Again, that did not exist when I left my vehicle. I observed a city utility truck and staff continuing to erect traffic posts and signs down the entire block. I did confront the staff, but understood that he was simply doing his job. So I took pictures as evidence with the intention to appeal.

So, it should be a pretty cut and dry case, appeal, if you will. And just really quickly, I know it's kind of hard to see.

And the truck with those traffic posts. And I can send those to you, members on the council. So, I folLod the appeal process, provided evidence of the initial appeal, and it was immediately denied. despite clear evidence of signs being placed after the fact. I've spoken with parking enforcement twice, who has never denied nor directly addressed the fact that signs were being erected and enforced improperly on the night of. The closest answer that I've gotten was that previously installed signs were removed by others. It is frankly not the responsibility of residents or visitors to ensure proper and sufficient signages are in place. I cannot believe I have to return to you to address such a trivial matter, to be honest. I am confident that members on the council, as an objective observer, can see the injustice in this situation. For the record, I have already paid my ticket and preserved my right to continue the appeal process. However, based on my experience so far, I have no faith that the administration review process will be fair and impartial. As mentioned previously, over 70% of the Monterey Park residents speak a second language at home. and five residents are over the age of 65, yet the parking ticket is solely in English. Even with the knowledge that I have to follow the process, even with the evidence that improper citation had taken place, I have had a very hard time challenging the decision through the proper channel. I encourage you to ask for data that evening and ask why would an entire block of cars be cited. I am going to conclude my comment by a call to action for you honorable members to motion. Consider a motion to dismiss all improper cited parking violations on the evening of January 27th. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Next speaker.

Next speaker, Jenny Chen.

Good evening. Mayor Wong, Mayor Potem-Gol, and Honourable City Council Members. You have heard the factual and emotional appeal.

Now please allow me to address the procedural error with the citation.

My vehicle was cited for violation of Code 10.48.160.

The code states, and I quote, 10.48.160, parking during certain times. Whenever, in the opinion of the City Council, the parking of vehicles in any area constitutes a traffic hazard during certain times or hours.

The City Council may, by resolution, designate the time as a hazard during such time or hours

and order signs to be erected in such area or along the curbing adjacent, thereto prohibiting parking in such area during such time or hours.

and parking thereafter in such area during such time or hours is prohibited.

We have reviewed the City Council meeting and Traffic Commission meeting records

all the way back to July 2023 and did not identify a single agenda item

pertaining to the required resolution for temporary parking restriction for the period of January 26, 2024, through January 29, 2024.

In addition, as stated in this code, parking restriction can only be enforced thereafter signs are erected.

My vehicle was already parked at the location and cannot and should not be cited against these signs placed there after the fact. I hereby request the City Council to consider a motion to dismiss all citations made during the time period of January 26, 2024 through January 29, 2024 under the Code 10.48.160 on the procedural ground for the lack of prerequisite resolutions.

Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker.

Next speaker is Linda Tang, who will have 10 minutes. Ki Huang, Harrison Tang, and Kathy Tian have all allocated their time to her.

Good evening. My name is Linda, and I've been a resident of Monterey Park for almost 30 years. I'm not even that old.

Today, I'm here to ask the city, I know nothing can be done today, I understand, it's just a hearsay and listen and hope for the best. to ask the city to consider limiting Airbnb or short-term lease to a minimum of 500 to 1,000 feet distance away from each other. Why Airbnb is bad for residential neighborhoods? We all know this is not a secret to anybody.

Airbnb have a huge impact on residential cohesion, reduce a sense of community, increase noise levels, safety concerns, increase traffics, and disruptive visitors, fighting legal parking access that supposedly made for residents.

Second, house affordability. Currently, Monterey Park have 31 listings of single home that are ready to be purchased. Of the 31, only nine are active. That means it's ready for sale. Others are pending or contingents and so on and so forth.

But yet, Monterey Park has over 1,000 Airbnbs.

listing of which I found through my sources half of them are not permitted that means they are not paying our local taxes

third, artificially inflating our property values

landlords are choosing to convert their long term rentals

into Airbnbs

this can make it very difficult for families

and for people to move into Monterey Park buying a home because there just isn't anyone available. And this, I feel, is very important. This next I'm about to mention is unfair competition to our hotel industries. Everybody here knows that we worked very hard to get these wonderful hotels into our city. Marriott, it's amazing. Soon to be Holiday Inn suites are soon. I'm sure it's going to be very amazing. Everybody works very, very hard. I see it for myself. I see it from the groundbreaking to the buildings up. I think we all put a very big effort into this. But yet, I'm sorry to say, but we are sabotaging their business. Hotels have overheads. They have staffs. They have securities. I could go on and on, but my precious 10 minutes. but Monterey Park, have to know, these Airbnbs have no overheads, so they will take money that are away from what these hotels are supposed to make. I would like to share, I did print out on the second page just a little key point of why Airbnbs are bad for the hotels. There are some key takeaways and some nearby cities that has downright banned Airbnb or strict restrictions towards Airbnb. I hope you guys have just take just a couple minutes to kind of glance through them so I won't read them out. And the reason why I brought this up, I had recently a personal experience. It has been, I'm hopefully, resolved through our wonderful city staffs, city code enforcements. I live on 764 Barnum Way. My next door neighbor, who we share our same retaining wall, 760 Barnum Way, is running a non-permitted Airbnb. It's ran to ran without the permission of the management or the owner. At least that's what the management told me. Since then, they have evicted them, and I hope they do leave. On February 10th, Chinese New Year's, over 10 cars were on Barnum Way. I've taken photos through my cameras to the best of my ability. I've enclosed the photos in the package. There were over 15 people having a party from 4 p.m. until 3 a.m. the host was contacted, the management was contacted. I've done everything in my power to limit the damage that's been doing to my family. They also have a bonfire, which I've also included in the package, the photo of the bonfire, which is within 15 feet away from structure and probably only 10 feet away from my window. My family was smoked like a bee. You can't even imagine, and they were smoking cigarettes, and anyways, that's beside the point. Finally, the police showed up at 12.30 a.m., which I am very grateful. Of course, the bonfire didn't stop. They didn't stop them from smoking, but I'm sure our officials did as much as they can under the circumstances. The host, Anita, of that Airbnb have 11 listings in Alhambra, in Monterey Park, in San Gabriel. Partners have both 29 and 23 Airbnbs. They are not owner-owned, and they are commercializing my neighborhood.

757, 30 walking feet away from 760, is also an Airbnb. it's owner-rand. She has a permit. She's paying her taxes.

Her restrictions are out the window because she does care.

She's lived there for 25 years.

She knows how much our neighbors does get affected by it.

She has a five-night minimum. I could go on and on.

I'm just hoping somebody would, I don't know where I'm going to go from this, I'm hoping to speak to the planned commission meetings. I would do everything in my power. We do have a very strong neighborhood watch. We have a group text.

I was nominated, maybe because I'm the loudest.

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the proof that they are Airbnbs, the parkings,

the trash that they created. It was left there practically all week.

Since then, a little conclusion, a little bit of good news. I've also contacted Airbnb. I believe their listing availability has been taken off.

Our code enforcement was there Tuesday at 9.20 a.m. Two officers were there. I'm not really sure what was done, but hopefully this chapter in my life of having an Airbnb next door has been closed.

But I am still here to speak to everyone because it's not just personally my issue. This could be happening to any one of everybody here right next door to you. and Monterey Park should make sure all of them are permitted, pay the proper 12% local tax that they're supposed to be paying to KOTORs, trash collecting, police officers. We all have our share. So I don't know what's next in my pursuit of trying to limit Airbnb

and Monterey Park.

this has actually prompted me to be a volunteer of the city I figure if we don't speak up, nothing can be done if you just stay home and be angry, really nothing can be done so I've asked Council Yvonne, which is my district we love her very much, she's wonderful I know all the commissions are taken I believe Environmental Commission are open still for Chair 2 if I could possibly ask for a nomination I have to start somewhere. I can't just let this go. And it seems like either they have permit or not permitted. Nobody's doing really not much about it. If I could, if I have the power to look at every single listing and to find out if they're all permitted, guess what? That could probably be a really good revenue for the city. At least to let them know that, hey, there's rules here in Monterey Park. we can't just let you do whatever you want and have chickens in your backyard and be completely okay thank you for listening

I really appreciate it, I appreciate your time I appreciate your effort and I just ask that if you guys could please spend a little time read this, it was a night of horror I had my water hose ready I thought my house was going to burn down and then if I'll email Yvonne again

if there's that nomination that's still available, I would definitely take that and I'm trying to make a difference. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

No other speakers.

I don't know.

Yeah, can I ask staff to give us a presentation maybe next time or put it in a calendar to kind of give us what I would say what are the city's rules or permitting process or co-guidance regarding Airbnb? So we have a better understanding of this. And then from there, we can take the next steps.

I would support that too.

Understood.

City Council, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council, we did adopt some short-term rental regulations in 2020,

but understood that not everybody was on council during that time.

So we can definitely do a presentation and provide an update on where we are. Definitely information like this where neighbors are telling us that there's incidents helpful for us we do go out and enforce we try to get all the airbnb locations registered and there is a permit process for that that's done through our community development department but we will schedule for a presentation great thank you thank you and

and mr mayor and i know the speaker is a constituent of councilman you but can we make sure that she knows where to get application if she does want to be a commissioner

Oh, wonderful. Okay.

We can do that.

Okay. Well, perfecto. Thank you.

Thank you. And I believe on the short-term rentals,

LA County just adopted moments,

adding some restrictions on unincorporated areas. Maybe that's something we can look over when the item is brought back to council to see what their,

what restrictions they've added to short-term rentals and unincorporated areas.

All right. Sorry, I forgot I was mayor. I've got to go to the next item.

Moving on to the consent calendar. Oh, sorry. So, sorry.

Staff communications, police department.

Chief.

Mr. Mayor, members of City Council. I'm here tonight to introduce the NET team.

I know that I love to talk, but I'm not going to talk tonight.

So for city staff, they'll probably get through this a lot quicker than if I'm up here talking.

But they're going to give you an update on some of our current operations within the NET team, and they're going to talk primarily about the homeless count that just occurred.

So first, who's going first?

Randy. Sergeant Randy Esparza, he's our supervisor who runs the NET team. Go ahead, Randy.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor, City Council. My name is Randy Esparza. I'm the sergeant for NET.

So tonight I brought with me a couple of subject matter experts.

One, Corporal Lizzie Flores is our senior net officer, housing outreach coordinator Shadeen Womack,

and Department of Mental Health clinician Gabby Sanchez. So depending on the order of the PowerPoint tonight, we'll dictate who goes first.

So go ahead with the first slide. Okay, so first will be Shadeen Womack.

Good evening. My name is Shadeen Womack. I am the Outreach and Housing Navigation Coordinator for the city. This year we had 29 volunteers.

Five of them were LASA employees. Fourteen were residents that signed up through LASA to register to vote.

That means not to vote, sorry.

To count. Seven sworn officers, including five of our net officers. and four unsworn city employees, including Mayor Duong,

sorry, Council Member Lo and Council Member Sanchez and myself. Next slide.

So these are the point and count of our city,

starting from 2016 all the way to 2023. So last year, we're still waiting on the full official numbers to come out, but roughly right now we're looking at about 85. Next slide.

And this is what LASA provided for us. This is their breakdown. I know it's very small.

The breakdown of how they decided to calculate each.

There were 39 individuals that were unhoused,

and then they went based on the dwellings of each area. So cars, vehicles, vans, RVs, tents, and makeshift shelters, they had their own formulas that they decided to create with USC, and that's how they got the rough amount, about $85 total amount. Next slide.

So these are not our official count, but this is what I observed on the board that was given to me.

So we had about 44 individuals that are over 24.

One individual that is between the ages of 18 to 24. 14 vehicles that are being used as being slept in.

Vans and SGVs, 13. RVs or campers, four. Nine makeshift shelters, six tents. And in total amount is supposed to be about 91.

That number may go up depending on how LASA and USC or HUD are going to depend on their formula calculations. Next slide.

And this is how our net team's overall numbers from this year of January 2024 to last year's comparison. So we had 91 contacts, 24 criminal investigation, homeless and criminal investigation, 43 repeats, so meaning they're the consistent ones that we've had been working with or meaning recontacting every day. 32 have declined services, 19 have accepted services and are being housed, and nine of them have a mental health evaluation

or have been folLod up with Gabby, who is our mental health clinician.

And then if you're comparing it to last year's numbers, the only thing that went down was our mental health investigation,

but that's because we didn't have a met clinician. Gabby came in mid-January, so that's why. Next slide.

So I'm going to have Corporal Izzy Flores come up next and give you some current trends that we're experiencing here in the city regarding our homeless and our mental health outreach.

Evening, Mr. Mayor. Evening, Council Members. Just a couple things that we've been noticing regarding the trends of the homeless population in the city of Monterey Park. One of the things, obviously, regarding the count specifically was inclement weather. It was very cold. It's at nighttime usually. A lot of times we do see people, especially when we come in the early morning hours,

when they're kind of coming out of their encampment areas. They could be in underground parking structures.

They could be behind buildings. Places not usually accessible from the public street. So a lot of times the count may be off slightly because we don't actually see them. And obviously the volunteers don't know exactly where to go look. So we do see that sometimes. Another thing that we do, we see a lot of homeless people actually come to the area because they believe that they will get better housing options. Many of them do come from the downtown Los Angeles Skid Row area. So them sort of fleeing that area, a lot of times we're at the whim of the county, of what's available as far as shelter, as far as placements, as far as resources,

and unfortunately a lot of that goes back to those areas in Skid Row, Union Station, et cetera. So all we have is to offer is the place that they literally just left. A lot of times they do cut the client because they've been there already, and that's what they're actually trying to get away from. Some other things that we've noticed is we actually have been getting an increased number of homeless people coming from out of state. I personally have contacted people that come from Florida, from Texas. Recently, we had a couple come from New York. We actually had an elderly woman who came from Chicago because she was told by her friends that if you come to California, you'll get a free house. And so that is kind of the trend we're seeing. And a lot of times people that do come, especially from back east, they get here, the weather's nicer. And I'll be honest, California does offer a lot more resources than other states will. But some of the challenges that we encounter with that is obviously to get many of the resources here in L.A. County or in the state in general, you have to have a state ID. That's usually a challenge for them. usually if they've never had a california id before or any id at all and they're required to have certain documents just like your birth certificate if all that was left back home or if there's something documents that they were left behind it's a real struggle to get them into these services another thing that we've noticed is i've had it several times sold to me personally we ask i always ask the question you know why monterey park why of all places would you come to monterey park understandably we do have some people that have ties here either grew up in the city, have family, used to work here, etc. But a lot of times we get people that have never heard of Monterey Park in their life and we ask them why. And like because it's safe here. A lot of times they go out and about during the day and at night they feel safe to come to Monterey Park because they know they're not going to get assaulted, their stuff's not going to get stolen. And to be honest we have a very generous community. It's not a bad thing but that is somewhat of a hindrance because when they do come here and we either have citizens or business owners that allow them to stay on property, that do give them food for free, that do give them the same services that groups like LASA or La Cata would provide them. I mean, when we show up and offer them things, they're like, why? We're getting it now. Why would we want to go anywhere else? We're getting everything that we need right here, right now. So again, you know, we understand that the citizens and the businesses of the city have big hearts. We're not saying that that's a bad thing, but it does become a hindrance for some of these people who are experiencing homelessness because they don't see a reason why they should leave and then another thing is that our team is basically a wraparound service we provide all types of resources to them it doesn't have to just be homelessness or a shelter it could be mental health services where we have the clinician it could also be things that connect into drug counseling alcohol we also offer services to not just the individuals but also to families to people that may have disabilities obviously people that maybe english isn't their first

language, we're able to connect them to different resources that maybe they won't be able to get in other cities because they just don't know the community. Another thing, and I'll mention it,

it may sound silly, but food. A lot of times when they go to shelters in other cities, they don't like the food that they're served. So we have housed people many times and they come

back to the city because they want to eat. And then they realize, I mean, I'm coming here every day. What's the point of going back to the shelter? Again, I get everything I want here.

So those are just some of the challenges that we've been encountering lately. Any questions from anybody?

Yes. Thank you very much. !

First of all, I want to just commend the NET team and the police department for doing a very stellar !

! Because you're essentially playing the role of a social worker.

I know when then Mayor Sanchez and I participated in the homeless count and even we rode with the NET team, it was clear to me that not just the NET team but I think probably our entire

PD, they make an effort to know and identify who these people are, build that rapport just

and identify who these people are, you know, build that rapport just so they can have that personal connection, an opportunity to offer assistance.

And I think that that's something that we as a community should be commended for.

I remember what I was asking even that night, and which I'm going to ask again,

is that, you know, we're only one city out of 88 cities, now it's a mission of county.

Where is it, what as a community can we do to, Do you feel that loss of the county agency is giving us enough support,

or are there issues in which we as a community should be lobbying the county to do better?

And again, I say this because, again, I mean, to the audience that's listening, I mean, our net team does a superb job. But again, this is a – because homelessness knows no boundaries, and so people throughout the county may, you know, come and go through this community. So I'm just curious, what can we do more to help your efforts?

Well, we do get supplemental services from LASA. Is it sufficient? It is not.

Okay.

We could always use more. However, there's no housing in our service provider area, which is known as Spa 3. There's no housing virtually here in this area.

It's always back in Skid Row, as far as Lancaster, as far south as Long Beach. So we don't have housing here. bottom line in our spa we are part of spa three monterey park is in spa three and just the other

spa means service provider area right so that's the way county so we're in what's called service provider area three i'm kind of curious though i mean do we know if other spa other service provider areas are also experiencing issues or is is it somehow unique to this particular

part of the county similar issues however we have the fewest spa three has the fewest

housing opportunities for unsheltered individuals and there are more in all the other spa areas.

Any other questions? I have a follow-up question. That's okay with the mayor.

I noticed that the numbers went down from the previous year from 110 I believe it was to 85. Why do you think those numbers decreased from the previous year?

It's a variable count, sir. So it is a point in time. So it just varies every year to year.

As you can see, there's a year that, oh, sorry, it was 101. Yeah. COVID-21 is not there because of COVID.

2020 was fairly low.

Because of COVID. So every year, it is what it is. It's a point in time. So at that point in time, what we saw is what we saw.

And like my colleague here mentioned, the volunteers don't know where to go like we know where to go. You know, we know the underground parking and volunteers don't know that.

Because I thought in the last year we had been talking about how homelessness had actually increased in our city, and particularly in the area that I represent in District 3, which is closer to the city and the gold line.

So I just had questions about why the count was low. And I do want to commend you because I know that Councilmember Lo and I both went with Officer Wynn and Womack when we did the homeless count. And we did, I believe, a pretty thorough run through our area of the city.

But I'm just curious about why those numbers were Lor than the previous year.

Your comment is the same one that we've heard from all the other cities that have to deal with this. Chief, you can use the mic for anyone. That's one point in time, and it's one night. If we could do it over a period of time and show more of a level, it would probably be better. But the way LASA and the way that USC does this now is they pick one night, it's in the wintertime, it's in the evening, and that's the night that they get the numbers from. we can show across a period of time how it kind of ebbs and flows but i don't think you get a complete visual of what homelessness looks like in our community with a one night it could be raining it could be cold i remember going out with a homeless count in 2020 and it was 40 mile an hour winds and it was freezing cold that affects the homeless count that night so i agree with you we look at it more over a period of time than the one single night but the county looks at it as one single night in time so and it's flawed so chief if i had to ask you if you had to

amend the way we do our homeless count to get a more accurate picture or count of the real homeless situation happening within our city what would you recommend or how would you change how we

did the count or how we do the count? The true homeless count that's done called the homeless count is done by USC through LASA. We can't change the way they do it. What we will look at is trying to figure out a more accurate way of determining the day-to-day homeless in our community, but it'll be different. There'll be people that we know, and they can tell you of people that are here all the time, that are repeat customers, that we know by name, we know by look, we know by area. There are those, they're clients that they deal with every day. Then there are the transient ones that come in. They come into Monterey Park. We see them for a day or a few days. We talk to them. We try to get them services. We do enforcement on them for trespassing and things like that when they don't want to follow the rules. And then we don't see them anymore because they leave and go someplace where they're not going to be talked to by the police on a daily basis. I don't think we'll ever be able to get you an accurate count of how many we have, but we'll be able to tell you this is our normal clientele, and this is what we kind of see as an average of the transient population that comes in. And we'll start putting that together. I don't have the numbers for you right now. It's something that we'll have to work on over a period of time.

I think what I'm trying to get at is I think in the last year we've talked about just some of the issues that we've had with LASA in terms of being able to get the proper resources you said and being able to provide a true perhaps count

or

visual of what's really happening within our city

so that we can be

better able to communicate those to LASA and say this is a one night count and perhaps it's not ideal the way we're doing it and this is the real picture of what it looks like in Monterey Park, and these are the resources we still direly need within our city and our community. So I guess that's what I was trying to get at. And I think we might have talked about this before in terms of trying to be able to communicate these concerns with Lhasa and being able to share those. And I think part of that is sharing a true vision, a true picture of what homelessness looks like, not just within Monterey Park, but I'm sure in other communities that surround us as well.

Yeah, this count is done nationwide. it's done primarily because back east it's colder so guess what the numbers are going to show they're down because everybody's tucked away and that's the facts that we have to deal with

oh sir i'm sorry oh i'm sorry yes please yeah please sorry all right actually i have a follow-up

question to ask so on the number that it shows 2023 we have 85 homeless but also on your report saying on 2023 we house 42 uh homeless so does that mean um it's supposed to be 127 or is that mean now it's 43 so um i just wanted to see how your house did it and what the number

reflected would be so when we usually do those numbers and we show that someone's housed again that could be someone that we've um encountered several times and we're able to finally get them housing or resources. That could be someone who maybe came here on the train, on the bus, on an ambulance, et cetera, that we were able to house immediately. The way we do the stats, though, however, is, again, like we've had individuals where we've housed them for up to a year. And then due to circumstances, sometimes the shelters close, especially during COVID, you know, like Project Roomkey and a lot of those things went away for funding. So now they're homeless again and they come back and we're able to house them another time so we will still count them as being housed even though it may be the same individual um so a lot of them are repeat contacts or some of them i should say not every single one of them so those numbers reflect the count that we were able to get that night so as we were saying the the numbers can change depending um especially during the time of night even i've encountered individuals that i won't see until maybe past midnight because that's when they come to the city to go to sleep. Or we see other ones that because they're in their vehicles and maybe it doesn't look like anyone's sleeping in there, we won't count that because we don't know that anyone's living in there. They'll tuck away behind businesses, closed businesses. Some businesses even allow them to stay on property, especially when it's cold or when it's raining. Again, they're very generous, but again, it affects us. Another thing I want to point out too that when we do the homeless count, especially for volunteers for safety reasons they're basically told to kind of stick to the public areas they're not really encouraged to go into underground lots into vacant areas due to safety concerns which which is understandable we wouldn't want them to put themselves in harm's way but that's the difference between say like me or one of my partners who we do this every day we kind of already know where to look but depending on which map we get or which area to check you know, that's what we have to look at. So if a volunteer gets one that may have a higher amount of homeless individuals, but they just can't find them. So again, there's really no certain way unless we were to do this repeatedly over a set period of time and maybe get an average, that would probably be the only way we

would be able to do that. Yeah, I just want to say kudos for you guys because

It's the 47 that was housed. That don't happen overnight. That doesn't happen in a week, sometimes in a month. Sometimes to get the trust and understanding of the unsheltered person, it takes years in the making, the connection. So thank you for your service. And one-person housed means that much more to our community, helping those who need help. So thank you for doing that.

This is our January 2024 stats.

So this is for the month of January. This isn't part of the homeless count. This is the last slide that's up.

And it reflects what we did this year in January and then compared to last year's January and then kind of the overall pictures year to date and the percentages we're seeing increases and decreases.

There's an increase across the board except where we're seeing criminal investigations and mental health follow-ups.

we're not quite sure what that reflects but we have a detective assigned to the net team and their job is to investigate crimes either where homeless people are the suspects or the

victims they specifically deal with that because they're trained to deal with those issues with

with the unhoused so that detective has special training to deal with it that's what we keep them

within the unit but that will change every time you see me back i'll do this on a monthly basis you'll see those numbers change as we move through the year, but we'll continue to show the progress either positive or negative based on the statistics that we put together. Appreciate that, Chief. Any other questions?

Chief or Sergeant, the housing and sheltered number, what's the proportion of that? Because I know my understanding is we do some, right, we coordinate with ASA. when they don't have capacity, sometimes we'll, out of our own budget and grant funding, we might have provide shelter or voucher to residents.

We do at times. There are certain case-by-cases we vet. Shadeen will vet the families. In fact, she has one in the queue right now.

So we don't just want to spend just to spend because everybody has a story,

and everybody's story is different. So she does a great job of vetting, and we do house people as needed.

Do you know, I mean, of the number for the housed and sheltered individuals,

roughly what the percentage is of those housed through the LASA and their shelter network versus any of ours that are funded directly with our funding?

In January, we had two sets of families. So one was a family of six and one was a family of five.

So out of that 11, we housed through our funding through the city.

And then the eight were by either Lhasa or Lakata. So that's our estimate of that 19.

Is that pretty typical for us to take close to half?

It's pretty typical, but again, it just depends on what's available at that moment.

And because of the fact that, for instance, the weather was bad last week,

so a lot of them may have went into shelter but not by us or not by Lakota maybe by somebody else

but we don't get that information from so like the Department of Mental Health may have an outreach team so they probably house them in a different area but we don't get that information until later

all right and then do we if we house them directly with our funding do we report that to LASA or is

their central no we have a i have a data we have a i have access to the database which is the

homeless information management system which is hmis is what lasa uses or anybody and

is working in homeless services uses so for them to keep track of how what services is being

provided to that individual so that it's kind of prevents duplication of services so if let's say the family that I worked with, once those families are out of our ghost

ццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццц how that works.

But what I'm hearing generally

is that data on homeless individuals and families, it's very hard, right? There's no good real central source of data.

There's a lot of different systems going on that have their own data

collection, and it's imperfect even collecting data, right? The point in time count is one day out of 365 days this year, 366 days. And the population

can fluctuate a lot, and it's not

not always accurate to base services and resourcing off of one night's count.

Just one thing, Mr. Mayor, just to kind of clarify some things and to kind of also touch on the trends that we're seeing. The reason why it's such a benefit to have someone like Shadeen that have access to that system is because a lot of times when you hear that we vet people, it's because sometimes we will get individuals that sort of kind of double dip. You know, they may be receiving services or maybe they even have housing, but due to a slew of reasons, they may not want to be there. So they'll come and they'll ask for a hotel voucher, et cetera. And so that's the benefit of having her have access to that system because we can see like, well, no, you're already receiving services. We're not going to get you a hotel just because that's what you want when you have a place. Another issue or trend that we run into is because of COVID, because of the housing crisis,

and that we had a lot of individuals going to hotels, a lot of our private vendors or local businesses with hotels won't accept anyone, even if we house them.

So another important thing and why it's a benefit to have Shadeen is because she usually is good about talking with them, explaining, like, no, these are people that we've encountered, that we've vetted, that we are willing to basically, you know, come to bat for to say, look, not only are we going to pay for it, we're taking some responsibility for them and to make sure that they don't cause any difficulties and that they do have a set period of time where you're not gonna have issues of them maybe not wanting to leave or maybe inviting other people that we essentially didn't authorize. So things like that, just understand that's another trend that we're kind of seeing. And again, I understand private business, they kind of took a hit as well. So they got away the pros and cons of it. Great.

Now, I think this presentation is very helpful. The data updates are very helpful. I appreciate the chief committing to bring this to us regularly. And just to echo, I think, what some of the other council members said, I was literally on the phone today talking to a LASA commissioner about something else. But if there are, right, this kind of information is really helpful because I think a number of us are in conversations with LASA commissioners, LA County supervisors, and folks that are part of the decision-making for the homeless kind of resourcing and services. so it's helpful for us to know so that we can make sure we're advocating properly about what we need to see and what our community and other surrounding communities need to see in terms of changes and resources. I believe the L.A. County Homeless Initiative, whatever it's called, is having a listening session next week that I believe we're going to tune into. I believe we're going to be present, as will, I'm sure, a number of other agencies and cities from throughout L.A. County. they're doing listening sessions to answer some of these very questions right

how do we yes next Thursday the team will be there yeah how do we rethink from a

county and regional perspective resourcing this and really tackling because I think the numbers continue to grow we'll see what the when we get the numbers next year with this year's numbers are for local communities but I

suspect it won't be a drastic improvement final numbers won't be ready in

approximately until about August. Yeah. So appreciate the update. I don't know if there are any final questions or other questions from the council. If not, thank you so much. Thank you. We'll move on to

recreation and community services.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Portem, City Council members. Here to share a few updates on upcoming recreation programs and also some of the things that just recently passed.

Next slide, please.

So definitely want to thank everyone that came out to our Lunar New Year celebration that we hosted along with the Department of Mental Health at the Langley Senior Center. I want to also thank the Department of Mental Health for helping sponsor that event. Not only was it a celebration for the Lunar New Year, but it was also celebrating one

year of a program that was put on by the Department of Mental Health as a result of

the January 21st tragedy. So they put together a program called Tea Time, and this was to meet

with seniors at Langley Center every Tuesday and Thursday and to provide free tea. And this was a way to kind of knock down that barrier, create a comfortable environment where seniors maybe,

you know, kind of get comfortable, be able to speak about their feelings, and maybe engage in

some mental health resources. And so this program has been going on for a year. It's been very successful. We see lots of seniors engaging with the Department of Mental Health each Tuesday and Thursday, and it's a program that's going to continue. I was also notified at the event that it's been so successful that it looks like it's going to become a model for other programs, and it's going to be replicated at other facilities. So I want to thank the Department of Mental Health for that. I also want to thank the YWCA. Staff's done a great job of working with outside resources. And YWCA actually provided a workshop on preventing scams. And this workshop

was actually done completely in Mandarin. And we had over a hundred. So just to back up,

the Lunar New Year celebration, we had over 200 folks that signed up for that. We even had an

appearance by some of our council members. Former Mayor Jose Sanchez arrived. And then we were

blessed with Council Member Yu got on stage and sang for us at the event. So I wanted to highlight

like that. But also at the YWCA preventing scams, over 170 seniors attended that. Then that workshop

was done completely in Mandarin. So great attendance on both of those events. Next slide, please.

I just want to share some quick project or program updates. So the show the love, this was a program

that was started during COVID as a way for community members to kind of show the love to

their neighbors, loved ones. And this was where we put together care packages and those would get

delivered out to community members. It was for a small fee, and staff this year delivered over 100 Show the Love grams, and so we're proud of that program just because it's something since COVID that's been very successful and well-received, especially our seniors. They love sending it to their neighbors or loved ones that are within Monterey Park. The Silverback Club, so this is a completely new program. We recognize that at Langley Center, we have all this new gym equipment, And although it's getting heavily used by our seniors, especially in the evenings on Tuesdays and Thursdays, some of our younger seniors, we know some of the seniors are shy away.

They may not understand how to utilize the equipment properly. So this is a new program.

Every Thursday, staff gets in there, and they work with the seniors and walk through different muscle groups, how to use the equipment.

We understand that there's pictures on some of the equipment, but sometimes that can be intimidating. and so we want to build that confidence and we're trying to build a community of Silverback,

you know, the Silverback Club. That name was chosen specifically because the Silverback

Gorilla is the, you know, the strongest but then also, you know, some of our seniors have known to

have a little silver in their hair so we thought it'd be fitting to, you know, as we kind of create

these stronger resilient seniors. So we're excited about that program and it's been very successful.

It's going on its third week and I showed up the second week for it and it was amazing to see

how many of the seniors were excited to get in there and what they were going to learn that day.

So I'm very happy with that. Next slide, please. So upcoming, I know we've talked about it a few

times and may have seen it on social media. This weekend on Saturday, we do have a youth

mental health summit. That's in partnership with the LA County Violence Prevention Division.

And so I spoke with them today.

It looks like we have over 160 youth that are registered for that program. Registration will be right up until the event. So if there's any teens or youth that want to participate in this event, in this summit, lots of great resources, workshops, going to be some hands-on stuff.

It's completely free. Show up. You're going to get a T-shirt. You're going to get a fed lunch. I'm sorry, breakfast, lunch.

And if you're there the entire time, you're even going to receive a gift card. So they really want to make sure that our youth are getting those resources and understanding that mental health is something that they can start attacking at an early age. I know that everyone's really excited about our upcoming Park System Master Plan. So if you see today, we've got our first post going out on Instagram.

We are kicking off our Park System Master Plan.

Currently, we're asking for those folks that are interested in receiving more information as we go through this process.

You can sign up on a survey. That survey is available in Spanish, Chinese, and in English. So sign up, and you'll start to get those information on upcoming meetings, other surveys,

other information about the process of our Park System Master Plan.

It is centered around the campaign of grow. So we're looking to plant that seed, grow towards the future, and grow together, grow strong. And so we're just really looking to grow.

Next slide, please.

and then uh so we're we are reaching out for volunteers and this is a new program we're doing at Langley Center and it's our here to help volunteer team and what we're doing is we're creating a team of of translators those that can assist us with verbal translation so I'm very proud to say that 100% of our full-time staff at Langley Center actually are bilingual 30% of those speak Mandarin or Cantonese. But we understand that sometimes staff may not be available. There may be, the staff that speak the language may not be on site. And so we're putting together a team of volunteers that are dedicated to assisting our staff with a verbal translation. So if you're available during the weekdays and you speak English and also Mandarin or Cantonese, we'd love for your help. We're going to do some exciting things with this program to get volunteers involved. And so if you're interested, reach out to Langley Center and we'd love to get

you connected. Next slide, please. And then finally, just want to remind everyone to mark

your calendars. We have our upcoming spring egg hunt in March. I'll make sure I bring the bunny

by sometime next week and give him a little visit. We're doing some exciting things this year.

There's going to be some changes that kind of make sure that our kiddos have the maximum amount

of fun. So we do have an area dedicated to our zero to three, that age group where the parents

want to make sure they get their pictures in and they don't get trampled by other adults.

And then we'll have our other large age kind of area where it will be exclusively for the youth

and they won't have to worry about overzealous parents. It'll be a really epic event and also

it'll be in conjunction with our farmer's market. We'll have additional food booths, game booths and activities out there for the kiddos completely free and that's on March 28th

from 4 to 7 and then also one of my favorite events I'm never afraid to share that with the

community because I this is one of my I love to see the taiko drums love the Japanese food that's

our cherry blossom event on the April the 27th and 28th here in Barnes Park so hopefully everyone will come out and join us for that delicious food lots of great entertainment and it's always

is just a wonderful event.

And typically we get amazing weather. So hopefully we get the same this year. Next slide, please.

And then finally, just a reminder,

best way to stay in touch with the department and stay up to date with all of our upcoming programs, events, follow us on social media at Monterey Park Rec. That completes my, I'm here for any questions.

Thank you. Any questions or comments from council members?

Yeah. Thank you, Robert, again, for all the amazing programming that Parks and Rec does. I'm a big fan of you.

It just makes me, as a parent, have to plan a little bit less to be able to join on all these amazing events. Also, special kudos to you and your staff for the Lunar New Year event that both Councilmember, you and I, were able to attend. I was really amazed by the amount of people that were there, just how festive it was, everyone enjoying their lunches and all that. So thank you so much for that. That was really great. In fact, we had our L.A. district attorney there, too, as well, Gascon. And then I did have a question, if we can go back to the slide, regarding the volunteers.

I know that the majority, at least from what I witnessed when I was there, the majority of the participants that were there were of Chinese background and probably... So my question is, how often do we require and need translation services at Langley? And for that case, I guess, just for Langley for now, so that we can be able to communicate with our residents at Langley?

So fortunately, I have three full-time staff that are on-site at Langley Center, the majority of the time, that can assist with translation. So it doesn't happen very often that there is a need. but what we have found is that there's a few different mechanisms we can utilize. So a lot of times we do have, kind of like with this volunteer program, we have seniors that are already on site that can maybe assist. I have encountered that myself when I'm at the center where I know someone that I know speaks the language I don't and so I pull them in quickly because my job is to create the best customer service experience I can. And then staff has also been really good and we're also noticing that our seniors are also very good about utilizing technology. So there are tools, and we actually witnessed this last week. We had someone that was visiting here from Taiwan, and they quickly pulled out their phone and used Google Translate. They knew our staff didn't know language, and they were able to have a full conversation very quickly and get their needs met through utilizing technology. So it does happen from time to time, but we're trying to basically minimize the amounts of impact so that we can provide the best experience for anyone attending Langley Center or any of our events or any

activities.

ц.ццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццц help translate as well. If you need me in Spanish, I can be there too. But thank you for that. And if we can go back to the last slide.

Very thankful for the

spring egg hunt. I know my daughters are already asking me just because every time we go to the stores, they're already seeing the baskets and the eggs and everything. So they think it's like this weekend, they keep asking me. But thank you so much for all of the planning that goes to doing all this, especially also the Cherry Blossom Festival, which I agree is it's one of our along with our lunar new year events are one of our biggest events so thank

you so much for all the time it goes there thank you thank you thank you mr mayor um i'm just my

compliments for this youth summit um on mental health is this our first time doing such an event this is our first time yeah great you know no i agree and i hope that's a good turnout um do you know i know it's also in partnership um with organizations do you know that if we also reached

out to the local school districts to make sure yes we did oh good yeah we reached out to all the

superintendents make sure that the students are aware of it we've also reached out to all of our local non-profit organizations youth organizations so that they're aware of it as well great great

yeah thank you any other counts comments uh if not i'll add my excitement to the parks system master plan process that's kicking off i hope and encourage everyone to participate and let us and let the city know, right, what our priorities need to be for investing in our facilities at parks and what we need to prioritize in terms of fixing and maintaining and upgrading and doing better. Absolutely. Because we want to make sure we're serving the needs that are in the community. We need to hear that to be

able to do that. Absolutely. I do want to add, I know we didn't have a slide up and usually I add a project update slide, so I do want to share that I know everyone's very excited about the upcoming playground at Garvey Ranch Park, the space, and then also the Highlands Playground, which is our fire station. They are a bit delayed, not due to staff or contractor.

Weather has not been our friend.

And so it does delay some of the upcoming work that has to be done. The ground does have to be dry for a significant amount of time. And so until we get some dry period here, we won't be able to proceed.

So it is a bit of a delay.

I can't provide any dates on that yet because as we get dry, then we get rain again. So as soon as we have another update, I'll be sure to come back and get everyone excited about hopefully some upcoming ribbon cuttings.

Very, very much looking forward to it.

Me too.

Hopefully we get a break in the rain enough to get these things done.

Absolutely. Any final comments?

Just a quick follow-up, Robert, for the Youth Mental Health Summit, I think you mentioned that it's still open to register.

When's the deadline? We'll actually take registration up day of.

So if day of someone decides they want to tag along with a friend or a sibling,

they'll take registration. Oh, excellent. That's good to know. Thank you. Absolutely.

Are adults alLod into this summit or only youth? Youth.

So council members should not. Not youth at heart. Thank you.

Best wishes for a great event. And I think that's it for staff communication. We'll move into our consent calendar.

Are there any items council members wish to pull or adjust?

Mr. Mayor?

Yes.

Yes, I'd like to pull 3i just for a quick staff report. If there is, and also, yeah.

3i? 3i. anything else

I will pull item 3B for a report

and 3C for just a question unless others want to have the report

yeah

and then I WILL ALSO PULL 3K FOR DISCUSSION.

AND, VIN, DID YOU WANT TO...

AND I WILL, I AM, FOR ITEM 3I,

SINCE IT WAS PULLED OFF CONSENT CALENDAR, FOR THAT ITEM, WHEN WE GET TO IT, I AM ON THE BOARD FOR THE ALHEMER EDUCATION FOUNDATION. I KNOW WE HAVE TWO BOARD MEMBERS FROM AEF HERE TONIGHT TO ADDRESS THE ITEM TONIGHT. SO I WILL RECUSE MYSELF AS A BOARD MEMBER TO AVOID THE APPEARANCE OF A CONFLICT OF INTEREST. So for that item, we'll hand it over to the mayor pro tem to to lead the discussion. Any other items to pull from consent?

If not, is there a motion for the room?

I'll make a motion to move the rest of the items.

Is there a second?

Second by Council Member Yu.

Any further discussion? If not, we'll call the vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you. We'll start with item 3B.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Brotem, and Council.

Laura Bourgeon, Finance Manager.

Tonight we have a presentation of our Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, or ACFER.

We will be going over our audit and our financial or ACFER report, our general fund revenues general fund expenditures and general fund fund

balance this is our first year with our new independent auditor the Poon group

they are one of the nation's leading CPA firms they completed our app the audit OF THE CITY'S FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR FISCAL YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 2023.

THEY PROVIDED US AN UNMODIFIED OR CLEAN OPINION.

WHAT THAT MEANS IS THAT THEY CAN PROVIDE A,

OR THEY PROVIDED A REASONABLE LEVEL OF ASSURANCE FROM THE AUDITOR THAT THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS PRESENTED A TRUE AND FAIR REFLECTION

OF THE CITY'S REPORTED PERIOD.

Additionally, we received the GFOA Certificate of Achievement of Excellence in Financial

Reporting for 34 consecutive years, and we expect that the 22-23 will be the 35th.

I'm sorry.

Did you have a question? Okay. Next.

Next slide.

We're going to review our general fund revenues. We received $56.4 million in total revenues of that, of general fund revenues.

I apologize.

$2.6 million of that was TOT or hotels tax. $11.6 million was received from sales tax.

And $22.8 million of property tax.

Next slide. Our general fund expenditures totaled $53.7 million. We had $3.1 million in transfers or expense transfers out to CURE Fund 105 in comparison to the $56.4 million in revenues. Next slide. Our general fund balance for fiscal year ending 2023 was $28.9 million.

Up sorry up from 28.5 million from the previous fiscal year

and

That concludes my presentation if you have any questions

We're here to answer. Thank you any questions from council members

if not I

will apologize in advance for my disjointed

questions, but Try my best to get through them

efficiently if I can find them well first thank you appreciate staff's work I

know the audit and they act for is a huge endeavor for staff to get together and to get going and appreciate the unmodified opinion from which is a clean

NOT IT RIGHT FOR FOR OUR FISCAL FINANCIAL CONTROLS INTERNAL

CONTROLS AND IN ACCURATE STATEMENT OF OUR CURRENT

FINANCES FOR THE ACK FOR FOR THE MANAGEMENT DISCUSSION AND

analysis. Page 7 talks about decrease in government-wide

financial analysis of looking at all our funds. The last paragraph there I highlighted in my document. Decrease primarily attributed to $49 million

decrease in net pension assets

for our combined assets for government and business activities. Can you talk through what that

means and why we showed that? Just for clarification, that's page 37? Yes. Page 7 of the ACFA.

So it showed for June 30, combined assets for government business activities was $258.8 million, which is a decrease from the previous year. And the next sentence says the decrease is attributed primarily to a $49 million decrease in net pension assets. Can you describe or just explain what that means?

Okay.

We're looking at our tables. If you can give us a second.

Sure.

Change our nose. change her

Thank you. Thank you.

It's.

If needed, we can go to other questions. We can circle back on that one.

It does look like we did do quite, since we changed auditors, there was a lot of reclassifications. I am looking at a table, the table on number page eight. There is a reclassification in between fiscal year 22 and 23 of the 49 million under other. so we will go back and review where that other is and we can come back and we can report it.

I'm just curious. I don't know if that meant that downturn in the market

resulted in reduction. It wouldn't have been its pension.

It wouldn't have been that. It's most likely reclassification of our inflows and outflows. Our market value is our mark to market and that one actually did not cause a negative. And we also have a trust with our OPEB, and that did not cause a reduction either. So this is most likely a reclassification of our pension assets.

Okay, so it's just semantics, pretty much.

We will find where our auditors mapped the other, and we will get back to you.

Okay. Further up from on page 7 still or page 37 of this full packet on the financial highlights the fourth bullet city kept residential trash rates at the same level as 21 22 however service contract costs for the trash provider was adjusted by CPI per the contractual agreement.

this is essentially saying the cost of picking up people's trash everyone's trash in the city went up but we kept the actual rate we charged a monthly bill we charged for all customers the

same so we're essentially operating at a deficit right correct um oh good we're still breaking out

even but we do need to quickly do a prop 218 and we are in the process of doing that so we're still not in the red, but we do increase their payment by the CPI, but we don't increase the refuse without a Prop 218 process.

All right, so we are going out for a new trash contract.

And then it will also be part of the Prop 218 will be...

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RDA funds, how much are we still kind of receiving through dissolution of RDA assets?

It's over $2 million. It's about $2.4 million.

We still have two major bonds that we're paying,

and I believe the last one is paid in fiscal year 28, ending 28.

But we are still receiving a little bit over $2 million a year.

Okay, and we think we should expect that for the future years?

into fiscal year 28.

Going further down to one of the statement activities tables, I'm on page 39 of 576.

For comparison between June 30, 22 and June 30, 23, total expenses was up significantly, I think $14 million.

Can you just explain that?

Was that a lot of the one-time costs for the pandemic that we spent? Or what was the driver of some of these costs? I see that a significant portion of that, I think $7 million or so, is in the public safety line.

And then one and a half or so in highways. And then general government went from $5.7 million to $13.2 million.

my guess is this is a lot of that driver of

costs. Expenditures that year was

a lot of one-time costs and ramping up of some capital costs for streets and public works, but I'm just curious if that's the case. Since this is all governmental, this is also

the street bonds. That's also the gas tax measure and measure. So because we did quite a bit of street pavement we did a lot of CI piece with with our special revenues that's related to most of our CI piece it's in a general government so now we have the CI so it's it's got to be you give me a second I will go to that more

detailed page. If you go to the detail page on page 30 and 31, it'll provide you more

detail on the expenditures for government. We had it was good general

government had that was general government that would be city manager's office that's all admin staff city managers the city clerk's office finance department HR contract services other items like that our grants included 2 million so that could have been the beginning of the some of the ARPA funds when we started working on the parks and started building some of them some of the playground equipment and then we

had some of them and then we had we didn't really have any in that line item we didn't have a lot of

capital outlay. Your capital outlay comes

right here, streets. No, this is capital outlay. We did have $8.3 million in that year.

You can see the detail in here of how much we expense for each individual item by our governmental funds.

Okay. So most of it sounds like

a lot of one-time costs due to tied to ARPA funds.

Sorry, running around on page 43 of 576.

The table there references sales tax revenue bonds. Is that our street bonds?

43 sales tax revenue bonds, yes.

Which one? It's on page 43.

Yes.

Yeah, page 43 sales tax revenue bonds in that table up on the top

No, that is our street bonds the street bonds are coming from sales tax It's measure image are and prop C are all from sales tax. Okay. I was just curious

Sorry back to the trash cost so in our I know this is not

dealing directly with the ACFER, but I don't know if this is a question for future meeting, but when the new trash contract is initiated, or even our current trash contract, is there a mechanism for pass-through of costs if they go up

for the contractor? That'll be negotiated in the contract. That'll have to be included as part of the negotiations of the contract. So I'll just highlight for our city manager to make sure as we negotiate the final contract

with whoever our trash contractor or contractors are to see how we can make sure that there is a mechanism for pass-through costs so that we aren't operating a deficit

if it gets to it.

All right.

Further down in the ACFER,

I don't know if you have this history off the top of your head.

This is more out of my curiosity. On page 207 of 576,

starting to show some of the 10 year

numbers for the last 10 years

there's a good amount of fluctuation

on the public safety line for

expenditures from 2018 through

2023, 41, 46, 41 33 40

can you I don't know if you know off the top of your head

or can I'm just curious what explanation is for the kind of fluctuation expenditures so if that's personnel or

when I went from the 32 to the 40

is that what you're meant yeah I mean if you look at

2019 2020 it was 46 million down to 2021 21, 22, 33 million. That's a pretty significant fluctuation. I'm just curious if a lot of that's just one-time equipment costs or what happened?

Yes.

So I'm looking at this, and again, I'm going to bring it back to you.

I'm new auditors, new categorizing. I'm wondering, and I will go back and look. I'm wondering if some of these were moved like code enforcement, hypothetically. I'm wondering if our previous auditors put code enforcement with public safety, and then they got moved over to general services. So I will go back and find that information and inform you. That could have happened.

It caused some of these changes.

In 22-23, there could have been quite a bit of overtime related. There were a lot of vehicles purchased. those were ARPA purchases for there was about almost $2 million worth of purchases for the police department in vehicles this is probably related to that as well and then just increases in salary and benefits and other items like that

I'm just curious

going down to page 216 or back there's a chart there for

property tax rates

there's a

line for Monterey Park general obligation bonds do you know what that bond

is paying for

it's right under the basic

levy 1%

I believe that is our pension obligation That's our POBs.

It's paying for our POBs, but it's our property tax pension money.

I got it, yeah. All right.

Helpful.

And then on page 229, I don't know if this is a misstatement

or just a misprint on my report.

It shows fiscal year population, personal income per capita, a personal income unemployment rate,

but the personal income,

I don't know, these numbers seem off to me. We go from 2016, 2017, $593 million,

and then 2017, 18, 18, 19,

we're dropping down to $2.5 million.

I don't know if that's just a misstatement

or a misprint on this, I'm just curious. I was reading this very late at night, too, so maybe I'm reading this wrong too.

So there is a note at the bottom that says start from fiscal year 17-18,

personnel income and per capita personnel income are the data shown for the California from Bureau of Economic Analysis. So it was changed. So because we can't collect data that far back, we have to use what was in the prior CAFRs. So as time goes on and we're able to continue to collect the data from the California Department of economic analysis, those other ones will start to drop.

Okay.

It's this information from prior years from the other finance department staff that was here.

Okay.

So, I mean, it sounds like the per capita personal income is accurate.

We're taking that from Bureau of Economic Analysis, but the personal income numbers may be off. Okay.

I mean, unless this is a requirement to post this, I don't know. If the numbers are off, we can maybe not include them if it's not accurate data.

It is a requirement to have 10 years' worth of data in order for us to receive the GFA award.

Okay. Understood. Statistical data.

And because we can't verify it either way, we have to maintain whatever it was in the previous ACFERS. ACFERS. Maybe we can add another footnote

on the data.

And we can. For the next year we can add

a footnote.

Alright and then this is I think my, well maybe my second last question. Page 233.

Employees by function. Are these just, I mean I know it says

these are full time equivalent positions. Do these numbers include part-time employees?

These are just the full-time approved?

Yes, full-time equivalent includes the part-timers.

Okay.

But these are approved positions, not the number of approved positions and budgeted positions?

Per budget, yes.

Okay.

This doesn't reflect the vacancies?

No, it includes vacancies. It does include vacancies.

So the total number is reflecting how many employees were in positions, not the number of positions?

It reflects how many positions were budgeted. Okay, just the budgeted positions. Yes. And then I know this is not a finance question necessarily,

but we do list data for water use.

So on page 238. Yes.

Last 10 years of millions of gallons of water used.

I guess this is not as much of a question as it is a statement. you can see if you're looking at it,

much of our, well, one, I do have a question actually on, I don't know if you know this, Martha,

fiscal year 27-18 on the government water use line, we see a spike from the year before in a dramatic reduction, right? In 2016-2017, government used 45.7 million gallons. 27, 2018, 98.

Sorry, my note is blocking it, but 98 million.

And then 2018, 19, back down to 48.8 million gallons. I don't know if anyone knows what was the cause of the significant spike in water use for government that year, or if that's just a reporting error.

When were we filling the barns pool?

Was that the year?

No, I don't know.

So I don't know that we know that exact information. We can go back and take a look.

Definitely we know that we have had hotter years,

and so we might have used additional irrigation,

but I understand that that is a significant increase,

so we'll have to take a look. I'm not sure. I'm just very curious if there was a very bad leak that year

that seems to have been addressed.

The pool was in operation, yes.

Partially to make the point, Okay.

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you can see the response in the community in terms of reducing water usage during those drought years through 2022. But you also see, we also see in 2022-23 uptick back to almost 2014-2015 levels again just this last year,

2022-23. So we've lost a lot of

the gains in terms of water efficiency and water conservation that we saw during the

droughts and we're back to using a lot of almost back to where we were in 2013, 2014, 2015

using the same amount of water as a community. So whatever we can do to continue to address that, I don't know if Sean's back there, but yeah, he is. Whatever we can do to continue to push on water conservation, it's clearly we're backsliding on some of this and I know that the state's requirements or for cities and water utilities to achieve permanent water conservation savings

and water use efficiency standards.

And if we're sliding back now, it's going to be even harder to reach those mandates in the next few years. With that, I don't have any further questions. If there is a motion for the ACFER to be approved.

So, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council, just on that note, when Monterey Park initiated our stage two drought, we're still at that stage. So we are still requesting our residents, requiring our residents to only water two days a week. We understand that we've gotten significant rain, but for conservation purpose, we had kept that ordinance. So we're at stage two, and we're still asking residents not to water more than two days a week.

Great. Is there a motion or any other questions or motion?

I'll move.

Is there a second?

Who wants it? I'll second.

All right. Motion and second. Any further discussion?

If not, we'll call the vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

We'll move on to 3C.

I don't, or maybe we have a very abbreviated staff report on this.

And my only, I don't have as much of a question on this.

I understand the need to initiate, well I don't know if other council members had anything for once. I understand the need to initiate the water rate increases

that we have already approved,

and the need to get that started. Martha, do you have an update on the timeline for when we might have data back on issuing the bond

and what that timeline might look like for impacts to what our rates need to be?

We do have our finance team here.

If we have any questions for them, we are looking to bring it back in March, probably the second meeting in March.

Great.

And so if we can complete or to the best of our ability do an analysis on, And I assume if we approve the rate increases as staff is recommending today, those increases will go into effect starting March 1st. And then we're going to hear data back on the bond and potential impacts, how we might adjust the rates again going forward.

We would like to have council, we would like to recommend that council approve the rates of 28, 28, 8776 today, making assumptions that if we bring the bond back, council may

approve it.

And if council doesn't approve the bond, then we would come back and ask for the cap. But if council approves the bond, then we would stay with the rates that council adopts

today for March 1st.

Okay.

And then as previously scheduled, July 1st rate increases would continue to, that's the plan.

Right. Correct.

My only, my concern that I want to express is just to the extent possible, not going back and forth, not having to adjust rates like month to month. If we get data back on the bond, that requires a change to our rate schedule. if the terms come back more favorable and we can reduce the amount of rate increase or whatever to the extent possible if we can minimize the changes we have to do to rates and to bills. I know we've already initiated or are in the process of initiating monthly billing going from every other month billing. So I assume there, I would imagine there will be some confusion among our residents and businesses and customers around receiving bills on a monthly basis now going forward.

and some education effort around that and lean and see if people are confused.

But also, as the rate increase they're hitting, just to minimize any likely confusion around bills and rates and all that, let's do our best to minimize the number of changes we need to make to the rates going forward.

And we have.

We've been receiving quite a bit of calls, and staff have been very patient patient and been very uh have been explaining to the callers what the new pro what the new processes and explaining the bills to them explaining that they'll be getting the bill

every month right and have we seen initially any spike in terms of um requests for the water bill

the lifeline water rate program or any water bill no there's no spike in and requests no all right

And if there are, well, can we report back as we're implementing these rate increases in the next couple months, if staff can report back to the council on if we are seeing, whether we are seeing or not increases in those requests?

Yes.

Great.

If there are no other questions, is there a motion to approve the item?

Move. Is there a second?

I'll second.

Move and second. Any further discussion? If not, we'll call the vote.

Thank you. Moving on to... Can you vote again?

All right, vote again.

Approved unanimously.

All right, thank you.

We will go to item 3K then.

We'll come back to 3i. I did.

We're going to come back to 3i.

Oh, okay, okay, got it.

And if we can, we'll start with the staff report.

Mr. Mayor, members of City Council, Scott Weiss, Chief of Police. What we have in front of us here is the Monterey Park bail schedule for different offenses within the municipal code. We do this on a regular basis and amend the bail schedule based on either additions or subtractions from the bail schedule. Basically, it establishes a set bail per California Penal Code,

which allows us to then submit violations of the municipal code to the court system for processing by a judge,

either with the city attorney's office, which we're doing now, or in the past through the district attorney's office. We're transitioning over and having the city attorney do all of our prosecutions for municipal code violations

due to the fact that the DA's office has refused to process any of our requests over the last several years.

The bail procedure is pretty simple and it's required that we submit a bail schedule to the court system, which then is approved by the California Judicial Council, and that allows us to be able to take these items to court. I'm welcome to answer any questions.

Thank you. Any questions from Council Members?

All right. Thank you, Chief. Appreciate this. And this might be a question for the City Attorney's Office. have we or do we prosecute any of these misleaders at this point? Or have we in the past?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. We have not prosecuted criminally any cases. That's both a philosophical issue and a resource issue. Per the Chief's observation, the District Attorney's Office has been loath to prosecute penal code violations that are substantially similar to the municipal code violations, which has transitioned us to where we are now. And in conversations with the chief's office, we think that this may be a path forward in order to prosecute substantially similar violations under the municipal code that aren't being prosecuted under the penal code. And just not to get too wonky about it, the city attorney's office doesn't have authority to prosecute penal code violations. We only have authority to prosecute municipal code violations criminally.

Thank you.

So, right, given the resource constraint,

the staff report notes that this may be, there may be some fiscal impact in terms of city attorney's office time for showing up to court to litigate some of these issues. But I'm assuming and kind of asking, but also stating, I guess, that this would be only for extreme cases and we're not, right, the city attorney's office, the city isn't looking to prosecute every single last misdemeanor that's listed on this?

I think I would classify the items that we've discussed as quality of life types of prosecutions. The one that is prompting the rapid advancement of this particular item has to do with an incident that occurred, what was it, in December?

November, December? Yes. Involving a gunshot wound.

And as the council knows, one of the regulations that the council adopted that was added to the municipal code was the negligent discharge of firearms within the home if they were improperly stored. And so in order for us to prosecute that particular case, we need a bail schedule in place in order to do that. So to answer your question, that's an example of sort of an extreme thing that the city council has already indicated it wants to have prosecuted under the regulations that have been adopted in the past year. I don't imagine that we're prosecuting zoning violations. As a philosophical matter, I don't think that it achieves what the city wants in general. Additionally, when we prosecute with criminal prosecutions for violations of the municipal code, we're unable to recover any costs associated with that. It is generally more expensive to prosecute from a criminal basis than it is from a civil one.

That's very helpful.

My question, and this may be, pardon me for, I'm not a lawyer so I don't understand this.

So the bail amounts that are set, this is, is this essentially the fine amount for if we prosecute these specific instances of violations?

Well, I'll let the chief explain more if he wants to. But in general, it is what is released, what the bail amounts are to be released based upon those.

Right, so in the case of the firearm discharged in the home, if we were to prosecute them, they would essentially be arrested, charged with this misdemeanor?

So if we were to, just hypothetically speaking, because I don't want to speak about any particular case, but every violation of the municipal code constitutes a misdemeanor. Under state law, a misdemeanor results in a penalty of up to $1,000 per violation and six months in jail. Now, I'll tell you that in my career, I've been able to imprison somebody twice, and those involve fairly egregious situations. In general, the courts don't want to see municipal kid violations prosecuted criminally.

But in this instance, we're going to try this as a first step toward trying to make sure that our violations,

and the morale of law enforcement officers

and the intent of the city are fulfilled by prosecuting some of these things criminally.

Great.

I don't know if there are other questions. My request to staff would be if,

well, one, is there a requirement

for the city attorney to report back

to counsel on when we do pursue these actions

and if there isn't, I would like to have the city attorney's office report out just regularly if and when we are taking actions like these.

So to answer the question succinctly, when I act in a prosecutorial role, I'm actually prohibited by law to keep you up to date about particular cases. That said, we can certainly provide the council with statistics in terms of how many cases are being prosecuted, what the general nature of those are, and what the general outcome of those cases are. Additionally, if we continue going down this path and we find that there is some success with criminal prosecutions, I would come back to the council and ask for basically a legislative direction in terms of what priority, quality of life types of things should be prosecuted as criminal cases as opposed to civil cases. and that's something that I would very much want to have the city council weigh in on. One of the other reasons that I do most of enforcement civilly is I can talk to the city council about it because I would seek initiation of litigation authority and then I can provide regular updates to the city council either in confidential communications or in closed session. I cannot do that criminally.

Understood. I would just express that my concern, I agree with where we're going.

City Attorneyц小 becoming something that we are overextending ourselves on

and going overboard with. And so to the extent we can get reports back to the council

on how this tool is being used and when, and the data that makes sense to report back to council and direction as you need it for pursuing litigation in specific instances, that would be, I think, appropriate.

at. But with that, I don't know if I've opened up.

Oh, quick, quick, quick. I was just going to observe

that I implement the Spiderman philosophy on that, which is with great power comes great responsibility. So I try to avoid having an overboard type of approach to those types of things.

Sure. Thank you. And again, I think the only reason why this is even being presented to us as a policy is because, as the chief mentioned, is because currently the DA will not.

So that could even change in a few weeks

depending on the outcome of some elections, right,

with the DA's office? I wouldn't speculate. Sure, of course.

All right. Is there a motion? Move. Is there a second?

Motion and second. Any further discussion?

If not, we will call for the vote.

Approved unanimously.

All right.

So we'll move to our remaining consent calendar item. I will recuse myself, and I'll hand it over to Mayor Pro Tem Ngo for item 3A.

Well, make sure he gets into the private room first.

should we ask for a report because I believe we have folks at the I have Reducation Foundation here Mr. John Nunez, do you want to do a quick presentation?

I'll do the presentation

Good evening Mayor Pro Tem, City Council Members Robert Aguirre, Director of Recreation and Community Services

So each year we have our annual Play Days Carnival, which provides four days of ride,

food trucks, games, live entertainment, and a celebration of the city's birthday. This year's event will once again feature a tribute to Cinco de Mayo on Thursday night,

an 80s night on Friday night.

On Saturday we'll be having a top 40s band, some variety of entertainment. And then on Sunday we'll be doing an AAPI Heritage Month celebration all Sunday. At the November City Council meeting, there was an interest from City Council on pursuing a beer garden for the 2024 event.

And so staff has been in communication with the Alhambra Educational Foundation about providing a beer garden at this year's event.

The Alhambra Educational Foundation does have experience with past events and was excited at the opportunity to be able to raise some additional funds to help support the educational programs in the Alhambra Unified School District.

Tonight they are asking for an alcohol consumption permit and also a fee waiver.

the Monterey Park Municipal Code

does allow for the sell and consumption of alcohol on public property

if approved by City Council so staff tonight is recommending

that City Council approve the alcohol

consumption permit and also fee waiver

allowing the Alhambra Educational Foundation the opportunity to sell beer and wine

during the 2024 Play Days

Carnival

that completes my staff report and as mentioned we do have two members of the

Alhandva Educational Foundation and we can all answer any questions.

Do you have any questions or comments from

Council? Thank you Mr. Mayor Pro Tem. And again thank you Robert for the report as well as the staff report that was prepared. Just, and I know it's already in the background of the report, so the area that we would be designated with is currently our

tennis court, right? Yeah, so it would be in the tennis court area which is completely fenced stuff that does enable us to provide a secure area. And then that's also the area where we do have food trucks and we have our live music. So it does also provide an entertainment area where folks can enjoy a beverage and also some entertainment and some food.

And again, because it's also where we have food trucks, so I'm assuming that in that designated area, someone will also be watching.

Right.

Right, so staff will not, the Alhambra educational foundation will have to make sure that anyone that is purchasing or consuming alcohol will have a specific wristband.

It will be different for each day.

And then also anyone that is entering or exiting, staff will be on site to help make sure that alcohol is not being taken out of or consumed outside of that designated area.

Okay, great.

And as stated in the report, so the foundation will be required to provide general liability insurance,

but they'll also be, will be insured as well? Correct. Yeah.

Any contractor or person that the city works with, we always require that they provide liability insurance as well as the additionally insure the city on that policy.

Okay. Okay. Great.

I have a couple questions.

Is this the first time we run a beer garden?

I can speak to it.

So many years ago, we attempted to do a beer garden at our concerts in the park.

And so that was by 2015, 2016, probably sometime around there,

where we had a small beer garden at the Ampeteer area.

And that was staff or city run?

Yes, that was staff run. And then there was another...

It was a night market where it was an area behind the daycare,

that kind of fenced area behind Barnes Park or Barnes Community Center.

Okay.

And how did we handle at that time, I'm not sure if you recall or remember, or how we handled security? I know that one of the things that we always worry about when we have a beer garden or anything related with alcohol is just, you know, making sure that we have the appropriate security, but also either police on hand or anything like that in case we have any rowdy.

Absolutely.

So both staff on site as well as our police department. And then we do make sure that everything complies with ABC rules and regulations.

I mean, I know the jail is really close to the beer garden, so I'm not too scared of that.

But I'm just kidding. But also.

I don't think Chief is going to talk about Bell again.

No. Chief, can you speak a little bit to that? Thank you. Yeah, no problem.

So what we would require is for them to get a single-use ABC permit from the office in Arcadia, which is standard procedure. They go in and pay a fee. ABC then issues them their license for a single day or two days. It limits what kind of alcohol they can serve.

I imagine it will be beer and wine only.

And we'll have sworn personnel on site to be able to mitigate any questions about IDs or ages. and then we'll actively patrol that area to make sure we don't have anybody that's over-served.

Just to add, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem and members of the council,

so definitely the ID would require anybody consuming alcohol to wear a wristband,

so that's very clear on who's actually having alcohol. And secondly, we hadn't had any incidents with the previous alcohol events that we did. It's just some of those events weren't well attended, and so there wasn't a lot of consumption of alcohol anyways.

So that's really that thought process.

So it wasn't that we had any bad experiences. So I think based on council's request to kind of take a look at this, this is why this item is being brought forward tonight.

And I know that we have two members of the Alhambra Educational Board members

from the Alhambra Educational Foundation,

and I wanted to invite them to just kind of maybe explain to us a little bit about how that beer garden is going to be working and how that process will work, and either whether you're running it or maybe you have an outside vendor running it for you.

No, thank you for the opportunity to do fundraising. It's very important for us to do these kind of things like we do at the pumpkin run at Alhambra. It's really we've done it for the last past five years. We've never had any incidents in those five years. We will provide you with the ABC permit so that we can do that during those four days. And the idea is to get as much money as we can to help the children that go to the Alhambra Unified School District.

We want to make sure that we provide services because we do help the district on special things like band equipment. We've actually fundraised for the Pasadena Rose Parade tournament.

So we've done a lot of things in the community. We want to continue to do that, and we want to continue to support the community with little extras that the schools can't do. And that's how my presentation, we didn't really have a presentation. We're here to answer any questions you might have.

And so.

Can you just share, I'm not sure if you have this information, but can you share a little bit about how your garden is going to work on those nights?

Yeah, what we do is we have volunteers set up to serve the vendors. We put a van on them, so on the wrist van on them. And then we, I usually am the keeper of the gate, me and another colleague of mine, that we, you know, if they're, if they look under 30, we may ask you for ID. We want to make sure that we don't have anybody in there. And we are very careful not to, we don't even allow strollers in there. So if a parent has a child in a stroller and comes in, we won't let them come in there. We won't let them, we won't let anybody under 21 in that area. And the fact that there's high fences around the tennis courts makes it even easier to control. unless my colleague has anything else to say I think that's all we need to say

Martin did you bring a menu how it's going to look that night now?

Sangria and beer

the only thing I wanted to add is that John is our gatekeeper he does check IDs regardless of how they look

young or old. He did mention

under 30, but we ask everyone for their IDs to make sure that

they are who they are and they're of age to drink. And that's all I have to add.

Okay, thank you.

And we thank you for the opportunity through this fundraising. Yeah, and thank you.

I think it's for a good cause, I believe. So I think if there are any

questions I'd like to move so no other questions thank you John and Martin for presenting for the I hammer Education Foundation we have a motion is there a

second I'll second it okay no other discussions and please vote

Approved unanimously.

All right. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Now I know what we're doing in Maine.

Thank you.

Our work cut out. Thank you.

I believe that was it for items on the consent.

I'll just note really quickly I'm looking for, I heard, I could hear through the thin walls.

that the Sunday of the play days will be API Heritage Month.

I really appreciate staff putting that together.

Looking forward to it. Thanks, Robert.

We'll move on to our final item,

City Communications, Item 6A,

Resolution for the Council in the City of Mario Park, declaring and recognizing March 2nd through 6th

as Read Across America Week. Council Member Sanchez,

if you want to make some comments on this.

Yes, absolutely.

I requested this be brought just to kind of help not just forge our relationships with our local schools that we've been doing so greatly in the last year especially, but also because it helps send a message to our community of the importance of reading and encouraging the love of reading, especially since we have an amazing library in our city. It also helps instill the love for reading in young people and encourages young people to come out and vote, not just young people, but everyone to come out and vote. It helps promote literacy and also literacy rates. And I know that many of our schools in our area here in Monterey Park will be having Read Across America events. I know that Read Across America Day is March 1st. I know many of us have been invited to read in some local classrooms. so I think that's a great message to be able to send to our community about the importance of reading and the importance of literacy and as a parent and as a teacher couldn't find a better other reason than to help promote Read Across America week here in the city of Monterey Park. So with that I'd like to make a motion to approve the resolution.

Motion and there's a second by Council Member Yu. Any further discussion from Council Members? If not, we'll call for the vote. Approved unanimously. Thank you. And thank you Council Member Sanchez for bringing the resolution to our attention. With that we'll move on to future agenda items and city communications from the Council. If there are other communications we'll just go to the next. down the line and any future items if you want to bring that to the agenda.

Councilor Sanchez. Yeah, in terms of future items, I did want to bring two items to our attention.

There is currently a Senate bill, SB

1094, which would expand the civic education in our Lor schools, in other words, in our elementary and middle schools. Currently, if you're not aware or familiar, civics education is only taught in 12th grade. So as students are graduating, that is when they are taught how to vote, how elections work, that whole amazing process that we practice here almost on a daily basis. And so what this bill would do was actually promote civic engagement and also civic activities would require school districts to come up with these types of activities so that they're not just in the 12th grade, but they're at the elementary and middle school level. It also helps advance our strategic plan goal of civic engagement. So what I'm hoping is that we can help endorse, perhaps, and maybe bring back and be able to kind of have a discussion maybe perhaps about how we can help endorse or push the Senate bill because it would help us tremendously, not just within Monterey Park, but in our entire state and our nation, especially in California, sorry, to be able to promote civic engagement at all levels. And the second item deals more with gun control issues. Assemblymember Mike Fong introduced an Assembly Bill 2979, which is called the Income Taxation Exclusive Victims Compensation.

What it would do is for people who qualified for compensation under the Victims Compensation Fund,

it would allow them not to be taxed on that particular compensation. I think given what happened in our city in the last year, some of the victims' families may have received compensation through the California Victims Compensation Fund. I think it's an interesting bill to bring back for discussion to perhaps endorse, to give victims an opportunity to be able to not get taxed on those types of compensations.

Those are the only two items for new agenda items perhaps in the future.

No, if there's if there aren't objections, I think that I believe we have towns and public affairs on tap to do some potential advocacy for us in Sacramento. Maybe this is these are items we can have them provide a report out on. And those particular two particular bills can be brought back for specific position from the council at a future meeting.

Yes, if that's the council's direction, yes, we can bring it back.

Yes. Yes, here.

We can wrap in future agenda items. Yes, that's fine.

And any report outs on events attended if you want to do that.

Oh, yes.

And I just want to report a couple of items. Council Member Ngo and I were able to, along with Robert Aguirre, and were able to attend the Sister Cities Ad Hoc Committee meeting to be able to kind of discuss a little bit more about how we want to move forward with our Sister Cities. And so it was a great first discussion. So thank you to Robert and our Mayor Pro Tem for being there and also for the discussion that we had with a lot of our community members about the future of our Sister Cities program. I also got the opportunity, I shared earlier, to attend the Lunar New Year celebration at the Langley Center. Very well attended. Had an opportunity to meet a lot of new people, but also just great to see so many of our senior citizens out there having a lot of fun. Thank you to the Parks and Rec Department for doing that. This past Saturday, I got an opportunity along with many of our council members to attend the City of San Gabriel's Lunar New Year Festival, which happened this weekend, Saturday and Sunday. And we were able to present a city certificate and thank them for continuing their work. I know that last year, after the shooting that we had here in Monterey Park, A lot of cities were thinking really hard about whether they wanted to host Lunar New Year. I know the city of San Gabriel went ahead, and they were one of the first ones after, if you need to actually continue with the Lunar New Year celebration.

I appreciated that.

And then later that afternoon, got an opportunity to attend the Police Explorer Banquet at Luminarias. Great to see so many young people who are committed to public service and who are considering careers in law enforcement. I know the mayor was there and Council Member, you and many others. So thank you to our police department for continuing to run that program and for all of the amazing work that you do with our youth. It's very inspiring to see so many of them that come from our schools here in Monterey Park and also throughout the San Gabriel Valley.

So very appreciative of that.

In particular, I saw the NET team there and Officer Wynn, who does an amazing work with them. And lastly, if you didn't hear it yesterday so many times, it's such an exciting but also very busy time period for me. My academic decathlon team at Alhambra High School won the county championship for the first time in Alhambra High School history, and we defeat a couple. And so anyhow, they are heading to the state competition. next month. So they are very, very excited. But because all the scores have already been released, they are currently ranked number three in the state. But we still have the state competition to do. So they are pretty excited at their chances of possibly making the national, going to national, which is in Pittsburgh. But anyhow, that is it for me. Thank you very much. And I just want to send a congratulatory message to our new mayor and our new mayor pro tem.

congratulations

yes thank you Mr. Mayor for a future agenda item can we get an update

I'd be curious since the city is on record passing a complete streets

and vision zero resolution

and certainly I know in the past few months

either individually

as council members or at our town halls

traffic safety does come up and I'd be curious

I'm sure so with the community, but, you know, what the city we've been doing to make sure that we meet the goals of a Vision Zero and Complete Streets policy.

And then as for, you know, so yeah, that's a future agenda I'm suggesting.

And then as far as my outreach, yes, I attended a lot of similar events that former Mayor Jose Sanchez attended, including San Gabriel's Lunar New Year Festival. And, you know, what I often tell people is that traditionally Monterey Park always kicks off the season. And certainly, you know, we had a great turnout at Arden. It's just great to see our sister cities in the area also continue that tradition. And so I, this week, was able to attend the St. Gabriel Lunar New Year event, as well as on Sunday, stop by the Alhambra Lunar New Year event. And it was great to see just the community out in celebration. Also attended the Mario Park Explorers luncheon with some of my colleagues here. And, you know, as Mr. Sanchez said, it's just great to see people who, I know one individual was so excited. He had been explored for four years and said, I cannot wait to become a Mario Park police officer. And I just thought that is what we want to hear. You know, it's, again, that pipeline and just encouraging young people who want to serve our community.

And let's see, that's actually it for me. So thank you very much.

Council Member, you? I think I attend a lot of the events with them, so I don't want to repeat all this. But I want to, like the last Saturday, my honor to attend the Police Explorer program ceremony. I think this is pretty unique to me. There are about 11 high school students participate in the program, and I receive very good feedback from their parents. And they have never seen their kids being so excited to attend the program. They woke up at 4 a.m. and they shined their shoes the night before. And I always look forward to the next meeting. I remember when I was in choir at high school and college, I was so excited to all the practice sessions. So I can imagine, you know, it must be a very good program. So I think we should consider expanding it and hope we can get more funding and have more students participating in it. So, yeah, hopefully maybe we can look into it further. and I didn't get a chance to really congratulate all the outgoing and incoming so I wanted to take some time to acknowledge them and I wanted to follow the draft prank, assess the draft prank that Jose Sanchez should have a longer recognition

because he has done so much in last year and then Tom should be a little bit shorter and Vin will be short so I actually write it in two different paragraphs

So for our outgoing Mayor Jose, having been working for you over the past two years, and I'm very impressed with your compassion, leadership, and commitment to serve our community. Your resilience shines through. You become a mayor actually just a few days after our mass shooting. It was not easy, and it's tough, but you still navigate challenges with very positive attitudes. So we can all see, you know, your leadership in that. And I feel that we owe you a big time because you're the only one that not having any installation. Remember, you will swan in.

We didn't even participate because the mass shooting, we don't want to celebrate. So even me and Henry had a Zoom meeting. So you don't get to maybe, yeah, I'm sure you'll have next time.

Yeah. So your dedication also truly impressive, despite the demand of your role as educator and also the family commitment.

You consistently prioritize at our events and meetings. Your ability to balance the responsibility, really impressive. And now at least you can relax and go home a little bit early, right? Keep up the excellent work.

So for Mayor Wong, after working with Thomas for two years, you're very hardworking and very detail-oriented and caring. So during council meeting, I'd like to hear Thomas made a question first, because after your questions, we really have no question.

But that's good.

That's good. You're well-connected with community.

You know, as you can see, yesterday we have a very big turnout.

And I was talking to Henry, and we were both jealous about

we were missing those parties during the pandemic, right, when we were a mayor. So we look forward to a successful year under your leadership.

And for Vin, I think you're a rising star, for Vin.

You're the best event emcee, you know, I've ever seen.

And we have similar business background. I'm proud of your willingness to step into the public space.

It's not easy to start sacrifice from your demanding private sector job.

So I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you all.

All right. I guess it's my turn.

So with Lunar New Year, that just happened about 10, 11 days ago. We've been celebrating around the city. and that started the prior weekend with the local visits to our temple. We have many temples in our city, so it went to a number of them. And then February the 12th, U.S. Chow San Chamber of Commerce, which actually is – their office is actually in Mario Park, if you guys know.

They have a branch here.

We were able to get about 400 people in a celebration at Capital Seafood. So for me, it was great to bring in new tax dollars. That's something that we'll continue to do for our city. February 16th was the Marley Park Hope Resiliency Center Lunar New Year celebration. I think there were about 250 people over time. And that was at service to park. The 17th, many of us, I think all of us, went to the St. Gabriel Lunar New Year Festival. And then that afternoon, I was invited to the Golden Dragon Parade in Chinatown. and that was easily 750,000 people lined up on the streets along Hill and Broadway. On the 18th, many of us also attended the Taiko, the Taiwanese Cultural Center Lunar New Year celebration. And then in the afternoon, we were at the Shuji Buddhist Foundation.

We were at that meeting. Of course, last night, we were at the mayoral installation.

And I'm just going to keep it simple with Jose, very proud, articulately involved in the community.

And of course, Mayor Wong, please continue the leadership, which I know you will.

We got your back. And then just earlier today, I actually came from a B of A employee, the Asian Leadership Network. We actually brought 450 guests into our city to do a celebration.

That's tonight.

ц.ццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццццц Larry Sullivan on the 12th of last week, last Monday, and I'd like to request we close a

meeting in memorial for Larry.

Just a couple of things Larry's done in the neighborhood. The Sullivans have been here for 50 plus years. Larry most recently served on the Library Trustee Board for many years. He's a member of the AUSD Bond Oversight Committee. he was a docent to our Mario Park Historical Museum active member with the Mario Park Lions Club he actually also served as the Mario Park Planning Commissioner for seven years the Traffic Commission the Personnel Board among many

many things

Larry, you're in a better place

God bless

we will miss you

thank you Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Attended many of the same events as my council colleagues.

I'll just note a few others.

On February 12th, attended the sustainability plan workshop that was held at El Encanto. Thank you to the staff, Jessica. I see you there for hosting that. I know a few members of the community came out to, one, learn more about the draft plan and get engaged and provide, we're able to provide some input. but I know we have a virtual meeting coming up.

Hopefully I didn't miss that. Coming up for that,

looking forward to continued feedback from the community and really engagement from the community

on implementation of the plan once we finalize that,

hopefully in the next,

I believe in March, we'll be coming to the council

for the sustainability plan.

Wrapping up, many of my council colleagues mentioned

Lunar New Year festivities also on the 13th,

the Boys and Girls Club across the street

had their Lunar New Year drive-through. I know a few of us attended that as well. We're, I think, starting to finally round out

some of the Lunar New Year celebrations.

I feel like we've gone to 100 of them in the last few weeks, but they're all fun. Also stopped by the Alhama Lunar New Year Festival this past Sunday, along with Teco's Lunar New Year. And I know we forgot this yesterday,

and he's not here today,

but we neglected to mention that the Director General of the Taiwan Economic Cultural Office actually attended last night, so we just want to quickly acknowledge his presence and support and partnership with our community and so many communities throughout Southern California on exchanging cultural and economic ties. So we appreciate that opportunity and his attending our ceremony last night.

And then, yeah, I appreciated being able to join

the Police Explorers at the lunch. I know my council colleagues mentioned this already, but just my additional kudos to the team in the police store that helps run the police explorers program. I know the kids and the families get a lot out of that, and we get a lot out of that, and I mentioned this at the luncheon. It's so critical to make sure that we're restoring and making sure that we are helping to put out a positive image of civil service and working for cities, including in our public safety positions like the police department and that these are honorable professions and that we need people and we need a strong pipeline for people to go into these lines of work because they are critical to keeping our community safe. So I want to continue to encourage that. I'd love to see, as I think Councilman Ryu mentioned, how we can continue to build on programs like this to engage our community or neighbors around programs like this to help them enlighten them about what city hall staff civil servants do on a day-to-day basis and how critical all of your roles i'm looking to the staff up there and the departments in our city hall and city staff all do on a day-to-day basis to make sure our community runs and our city runs

and that our community members can do what they need to do and and uh they are blessed and we are

blessed as a community when they don't have to worry right about what what's happening and so much that goes on in the background to enable them to go about with their lives. So appreciate the staff and particularly the police explorers and the team that helps to put that off. And

looking forward to the fire explorers luncheon banquet at some point too. But again, I'll just

close off my comments by thanking the city staff and my council colleagues won for last night, the ceremony here in this council chamber. I appreciate the trust that the council has placed in me as mayor over the next nine and a half months or so. Thank you so much to the city staff who helped coordinate and put everything together.

I really appreciate it.

We all appreciated this first in-person celebration in four plus years to bring the community together to celebrate this transition, but really to celebrate the leadership and the legacy of leadership of so many here before us, right? The three former mayors that are sitting to my left and there, they had to transition virtually and in this chamber is quietly without anyone else around. But they, despite that, right, led through the pandemic, the shooting, and the healing and all the efforts that had to happen after that. And so appreciate their leadership. I'm stepping into their shoes in the path that has been laid before by so many other trailblazers and leaders. So I appreciate the trust that they're placing in me and look forward to a very productive year for nine and a half months at least. But really 2024 ahead with my council colleagues and the city staff who are so dedicated and committed to making this community a better place.

So thank you so much. I appreciate that.

And I know we have, I don't know if Andrew has an announcement before we adjourn.

Just a quick announcement, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. Just as a follow-up, the sustainability workshop, the virtual workshop, is going to be held tomorrow at 6 p.m.

We have that information.

There's some flyers in the back here, but online the link will be available there, the meeting ID number. And also, community members, if they cannot join us tomorrow for the virtual meeting, they can always submit their public comment through the end of February, through February 29th.

We'll take those.

They can email any kind of comments that they like. that information is also on our website. Thank you.

Thanks. Really quick, I forgot to mention one thing.

I did take a tour of the Mercy on North Channel, their facilities. They are looking to continue to partner with the city. I know we had a very strong relationship between the city and Mercy before the pandemic. And as with a lot of things, some things fell through the cracks over the last few years. And their new executive director came here, I think, a few months ago. to introduce herself i know where staff is connecting with her and her staff and looking at opportunities for us to partner and support their efforts to continue to serve portions of the community so want to encourage that and appreciate staff following up on some of those items but they're a great asset to the community and potential there's a lot of potential for us to partner with them on on a lot of things so looking forward to hearing back on some of those

um councilman low oh yeah thank you mr mayor and and and let me just also say i think as the way we've been using a lot the ceremony was epic so thank you very much and i think actually um definitely again just another uh sign that you know we're moving forward um from the past few years you know uh with um all that's happened so again i think it's a great start to your term And lastly, and I forgot to say this during my remarks, but I just realized that by the time we meet at the next council meeting, it will be after the March 5th primaries. And so what I want to say to everyone watching at home, in the audience, or will be watching a video recording is that please vote. Please remember to vote because, you know, there are a lot of items in this primary election, as there always are usually in a place like L.A. County in California,

and your vote is your voice.

And so please encourage your friends, your neighbors to send in their ballots. I believe we still have the Dropbox by the county outside of City Hall.

And so everyone just please remember to vote and exercise your voice. Thank you. Actually, on that note,

I don't know if staff were already planning to do this. I don't believe this would be an issue, but Carl's going to stop us if it is.

Okay.

But I don't know if we can post information about the vote centers that will be activated

and the drop boxes.

Maybe we can tee up some social media for that on our channels in the coming weeks.

Yes, we can post information about, yes, where they can drop off their ballots

in vote centers, correct?

Perfect. Great. That'd be great. And in language, too? Yes.

All right.

If there are no final comments,

it sounds like Councilman Rago

has a motion to adjourn in memory of Larry Sullivan.

And is there a second?

All right. Councilman, where are you? Thank you. All right. Motion.

And we are adjourned. All right.

Unless there is an objection to that.

We're adjourning the meeting in honor and in memorial of Larry Sullivan.

All right. Thank you. I don't think we need a motion, but yeah.

We're just adjourned, I guess. Sorry.

Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Have a good night.

Here, here, here, here. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.