City Council Meeting — May 1, 2024

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Kathleen

Hi, Nina.

Nina, I'm doing a mic check.

Can you hear me?

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There was an accident last night. Where are you?

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you. All right. Apologies for the- Recording in progress.

Welcome to our May 1st council meeting. We'll start with the presentation of the colors. If everyone can join me in standing, and we'll go from there.

4 words are marked.

Present colors. please place your right hand over your heart ready to begin

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

one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all

prepare to pose colors forward march

All right, please be seated.

We'll call the meeting to order if the clerk can do the roll

Councilmember Sanchez

Councilmember Lo Councilmember Yu Mayor Pro Temgo

Mayor Wong We have a court

Any agenda additions, deletions, changes Council staff

Mr. Mayor and members of the City Council we'd like to request to move item 1A from the special meeting agenda under new business to the regular meeting agenda.

All right, just remind me when we get there.

Any other changes to the agenda?

Move that ahead of the staff communications if that's okay

All right No far

Okay, we'll move on to public communications. We'll open up for any public communication first speaker Randy King

I'm sorry I have to say this tonight, but good evening The first time I addressed the city council with concerns about collisions at Chandler and Hellman, at least three of you acknowledged issues at the intersection. You suggested interim measures until something more permanent could be implemented.

There were none.

It was suggested I address the traffic commission, and they both were disinterested and dismissive. After that first meeting, none of you have said a word at any of the other city council meetings where I address traffic safety concerns. You have been silenced by someone in your office. Remaining silent instead of stepping up and doing the right thing is a problem. When you're fortunate enough to get a good education, it's incumbent upon you to use that education not only to help yourself, but to rise to the occasion and help others should the right set of circumstances present themselves. Whether we're health care providers, teachers, politicians, or public servants, we need to act responsibly and with integrity. A close friend of mine jumped to her death from the top of a building years ago.

She was 42.

She had been hospitalized for depression with suicidal ideation a few days earlier. The doctor called me and said he was discharging her. I fought with him on the phone and begged him to keep her longer because I knew she was going to kill herself.

He refused.

After her death, I knew that for the rest of his life, perhaps not every day, but every so often, he would think of her death and the conversation he had with me on the phone and realize he missed an opportunity to save a life.

I'm sure that will haunt him forever. Should there be a fatal accident at Chandler and Helmut,

all of us will have to live with the fact that there was another missed opportunity.

because we educated about 1,500 people

regarding the dangers at this intersection and almost 1,000 people signed the petition

for Monteeway stop signs.

These particular people may now be more careful around this intersection.

The potential for a fatal accident, however, is still present. I was recently contacted by Sean and Public Works. I was informed that you, the City Council,

has little to do with the decisions made about the corner

and it's solely within the purview of public works. I understand nothing has to be run by you nor approved by you. I was informed the final report is not yet complete, but that little will be done except for a few signs and longer red zones. When Happy Day School is torn down, I'm almost certain another huge luxury high-rise condo building will replace it. With perhaps 300 units or so, 600 parking spaces in the building, and another 1,200 trips every day up and down Chandler, in addition to the traffic already using this street, there will be an even greater potential for traffic accidents at the corner. It's clear to the community that your priorities are constructing more residential units and attracting more business to Monterey Park. Public safety seems to be way down the list. There is absolutely no effort made by the police to do any kind of traffic enforcement, and you can put up 100 signs along Hellman and Chandler and paint all of Hellman red, but everyone here knows that the police do nothing for traffic enforcement, so they will continue to drive fast, ignore stoplights, park in red zones, do U-turns on Hellman, do burnouts in the middle of Chandler, and the results of all these things, of course, are accidents. Those of us living close by will continue to listen to car horns all day long. At the beginning of this journey, many residents told me that no matter what we did, the city would do nothing, and I refused to believe them.

Now I do.

Not one of the many people who ask us on the street every day about what's going to happen at the corner are surprised. It's easy to admit something is a problem. It's an entirely different thing to do something about it. Even getting a traffic study done and done correctly was a challenge. There are many creative things that can be done, even if the data indicates we might not have met criteria for a three-way stop. In addition, there is still nowhere for pedestrians to cross Helmand between Inez and Atlantic, and I suppose we will just have to continue to venture out into traffic lane to be able to see cross traffic as we take our chances and cross the street. How much better a crossing with flashing lights would be for those of us on foot? I will end with a short quote from Mark Twain. He said, quote, doing the right thing is never wrong. I would add that doing the right thing often takes great courage and integrity, end quote.

Thank you and good night.

Next speaker, Cesar Lopez.

Hello and good evening. I wanted to give this speech out to thank Mayor Sanchez, Monterey Park Fire Department, everyone involved in the city of Monterey Park. I have been an explorer for about this past year, and I just wanted to give a thank you for this opportunity of a lifetime. I have built a foundation thanks to the Mono Park Fire Department. They have built the foundation in me of discipline, leadership, and responsibility that will help me out in my next endeavor.

My next endeavor will be LEFD cadets as I got promoted, and that's not all. I will also be attending the California State University of Fullerton. I will be studying public health and hopes to get my bachelor's degree in the next four years. And I'll see where my next chapter will begin.

I hope one day to come back to do an internship, be a part of Monterey Park, and hopefully also to become a firefighter.

Thank you so much for this opportunity. Thank you. Thank you, Cesar.

Mr. Mayor, can we take a minute to maybe thank him, take a quick picture with him,

and before he leaves, we might be the last time we see for a while.

We can invite him back down.

And maybe the chief can join us down.

Yes, and all the firemen that are here supporting Cesar, thank you so much.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

FIRE DEPARTMENT AFTER YOUR ACADEMY.

THANK YOU. ANY OTHER SPEAKERS?

NO OTHER SPEAKERS.

ALL RIGHT. WE WILL MOVE ON TO

PRESENTATION ITEM 1A, CONCESSUMAN CHU'S ARTISIC DISCOVERY AWARD CEREMONY.

WE HAVE A FEW GUESTS JOINING US

TODAY, TONIGHT. AND I HAVE A LIST OF THEM. SUPERINTENDENT DENISE

her meal is here from the home reunified school district as well as assistant principal amy woo and art teacher jenny tang and we have two a few i think few council members uh were at the congresswoman's art contest annual art contest a few weeks ago and two of her top 10 i believe

correct me if i'm wrong two of her top 10 uh artists uh portrait paintings works uh were from

Monterey Park residents and we wanted to highlight them tonight as well and celebrate them here in the city and so we have both of them here tonight joining us and we're gonna highlight their artwork on the screens so Jocelyn Alvarez from Mark Keppel High School was the third place winner for her piece

Revisiting Memories and Tiffany Toh from Mark Keppel High School won first place

for Connorswomen Chu's contests for her piece Year of the Rabbit 2023 we want to thank them for their commitment to art and to competing in this contest as well. We want to, the whole council wants to honor our special residents here tonight for their artistic work and the recognition they've received from Congressman Chu's office and from the wider region as well. And we want to thank them for highlighting the stories that are so special here and particularly that are poignant for our community, especially in the last year and a half or so. And so we'll invite them and their families to join the council up front. I don't know if they want to say anything. You don't have to, but if you'd like to, we'd welcome you to say a few words about your pieces of work. I believe the first place winner is going to be on display, actually, in the U.S. Capitol.

But we'd love to bring that here.

Once that isn't out of the Capitol, we'd love to bring the other artwork here to see how we can display that at a city facility, but we'd love to bring both of them to display in the hometown where they were created. I don't know if council members have any quick comments they want to share as well before we invite them down to take a picture with us.

I think it would be great to hear from the artists

if they actually want to just describe the artwork and the inspiration for the artwork.

Can you come up and share a few words, just what inspired you with your art piece and any thoughts, artistic thoughts?

Hi, I'm Tiffany, and I drew, I painted the piece the Year of the Rabbit 2023. Thank you so much for this recognition. I wanted this piece to be dedicated to the friends and families of the people on my painting, as well as my city, Monterey Park. I spent a long time working on it, studying and researching about the dancers in my painting and the city streets itself.

I wanted to be able to capture all the happy and strong moments that our city has been known for because I don't want any of it to be forgotten. For their friends and family, I want them to know that the people in my painting are remembered for their happiness and love. I wanted this to be an opportunity for me to share that our community misses them a lot and continues to love them and remind everyone that the world should be kind and understanding,

especially when something tragic happens. Growing up in my city, I loved how sweet and kind our community was and still is,

and I'd hate for us to be held back or misunderstood. Our community is still very loving and very strong. I wouldn't want any other community to be known for something tragic when their true nature is happiness. This year I was able to see how lively and kind our community still is,

and I hope that the people on my painting are happy that we've stayed so strong for them.

I hope that they continue to dance and be the kindest, happiest, and strongest souls our city has ever known. Again, thank you so much for this recognition, and I hope that my painting continues to deliver kindness and love for each other. Thank you. Thanks, Tiffany. Really appreciate it.

Hi. So my drawing was Revisioning Memories, and that drawing is a picture of my grandma and me.

She ended up dying of cancer, but I wanted to honor her because I didn't just remember her of dying of cancer, but her as a wonderful woman. She played a major role in my life. She took care of me when I was younger, and I wanted her to be remembered for how amazing she was, not as her death. So that was what I did in the background. It had a bunch of displays of aprons and spoons because we loved cooking each other, and I wanted that to have a contrast in her one of her late stages and one of the last moments I was able to see her just to have that, just because it was sad at the moment, but I don't remember that sadness. I remember the happiest memories I had with her and I just wanted to play tribute to all the individuals who did die of cancer and that there's so much more than their illness but to remember them because they were loving and wonderful people.

Well, thank you both so much.

You guys can take a seat if you want really quick, but I want to open up if the council members have any comments they want to share. And if not, we can take the picture.

I'm okay with just taking a picture and having them go back home.

Monterey Park. It's finals week of exams and how much is going on. Well, congratulations, Tiffany and Jocelyn. We appreciate you highlighting the artistry that exists here in Monterey Park. If you can join us and if the family members would like to join us as well for a picture, we'd love to have that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sorry. Click. Other phone.

Got you.

Oh, good. All right. Thank you.

You're welcome. My permission. Get up on the AP, the final. The poster. Yeah.

I'll just put that over here. Where are you going?

Thank you.

Congratulations to both Jocelyn and Tiffany again.

We appreciate all that you do and what you've done for our community. We can follow up on making sure their art gets displayed somehow in the city.

If they're willing, that'd be great.

All right, we'll move on to staff communications.

Finance department is up first.

Good evening. Sorry. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, City Council, Laura Bourgeon, Finance Manager.

The City of Monterey Park has been putting on budget and fiscal stability workshops. We've completed five engagement workshops so far this month with two upcoming workshops. The next workshop is scheduled for Tuesday, May 7th, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Sierra Vista Park, folLod by another workshop on Monday, May 20th, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Brewer-Meyer Library. We encourage you to mark your calendars and join us at these workshops. Additional workshop times and locations will be updated periodically on the city's website.

Thank you. Thank you. Any questions?

If not, look forward to the remaining workshop. Next item, fire department.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and City Council. I'm Chris Thompson, interim fire chief. I wanted to share a few events hosted by the fire department that will be happening here in the month of May.

First of all, our spring CERT classes will be held at the EOC for the first three weeks of the month, starting Saturday, May 4th.

All participants in this CERT program will have signed up for the program. Next slide.

Monterey Park Fire Department and the American Red Cross will be hosting a blood drive here in the city on May 29th, 2024, at 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the service club.

Don't forget, donating blood helps save lives.

Next slide. Our annual fire service day will be held May 18th, 2024 at Station One at 350 West Newmark from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. We'll have pancake breakfast for sale. We will have refreshments, activities for the family. We'll have demonstrations and we'll also have a photo booth and more. So please come out. Next slide. This year is a very special year. It's our 100-year anniversary of us providing a service to the city of Monterey Park. The Monterey Park Fire Department is established in July of 1924, so at our Fire Service Day event, we will have some special things, including cake and some goodies for the Fire Service Day to celebrate, so please come out. Next slide. Lastly, I wanted to make an announcement of amazing recognition of our fire department from the state. I just want to say how super proud I am to the guys. Not only did they do an outstanding job on this specific incident, but the everyday professionalism and class that they'd show during the entire group day for the supporting of each other in the fire department. I have Captain Gomery and Captain Brewer here to talk a little bit more about the recognition.

good evening mayor Wong and distinguished members of the council thank you for the time tonight next to me is captain Van Gomery he's a he's a major part of this recognition that we'll be

receiving so he'll be up here as well my name is Justin Burrell I currently have the privilege of serving the community as a fire captain for the Monterey Park Fire Department along with also serving as an executive board member for the monterey park firefighters association first i want to start by saying our hearts and prayers remain with the victims their families

and all those who lost their lives during that very tragic event that took place the night of january 21st 2023 at 10 25 pm the night of january 21st 2023 proved as the largest mass

shooting recorded in Los Angeles County history. Your professional Monterey Park firefighters responded and acted quickly to triage, treatment, and transport for those in need of immediate advanced life support. After careful review of the incident and the services your Monterey Park firefighters provided that night, the State of California Emergency Medical Services Authority has recognized your Monterey Park firefighters for the meritorious service medal. which also had over 180 applicants for that specific medal.

The 2023 State of California EMS Awards will take place on May 8th in St. Helena, California. All firefighters that responded to the incident are invited to be recognized for their efforts and receive the Meritorious Service Medal. Fire Captain Ben Gomery, again standing next to me, also serves as our paramedic coordinator, who was instrumental in forwarding the incident information to the EMS authority as requested for this review and recognition.

We as the Monterey Park Firefighters Association want to give a special thanks to Captain Gomery

for his efforts and support.

The work he does behind the scenes as our paramedic coordinator should not go unnoticed. So thank you, Ben.

We as firefighters are very hesitant to receive recognition for doing our job

and our main concern will always be with the victims and those who lost their lives that night.

We also are still very focused on the ongoing mental health recovery for our firefighters

as they continue to work through that process.

Courageous, committed, ready, and dependable. These words characterize the 86,000 licensed or certified EMS providers in the state of California. These individuals exemplify these traits on a daily basis by rendering aid, rendering assistance when it's most crucial, and diligently upholding the efficiency of the EMS system. Nevertheless, each year, specific individuals among this group shine the brightest, either due to exceptional circumstances or their extraordinary dedication and effort.

The Meritorious Service Medal.

This distinction is conferred upon an individual in recognition of their outstanding service or exceptional contributions to the field of EMS.

The award also honors an EMT or paramedic who has displayed extraordinary dedication and gone above and beyond the call of duty during a specific EMS emergency or event.

On January 21, 2023, at approximately 10.25 p.m., your Monterey Park firefighters swiftly responded to a reported gunshot wound at 122 West Garvey Avenue,

discovering a mass casualty incident with 10 deceased, 6 immediate patients, and 3 delayed patients. The coordinated efforts of Engine 61, Quint 61, Engine 62, Engine 63, Rescue Ambulance 61, Rescue Ambulance 62, and Battalion 6, along with outside agencies, proved very instrumental. Quint 61 initiated triage while Engine 61 led treatment efforts. Battalion 6 assumed command and set up a command post.

Despite the profound mental impact of the responders, their dedicated and flawlessly executed actions contributed to the successful treatment and survival of the majority of victims, prompting this nomination for the Meritorious Service Medal in recognition for their heroic efforts.

Monterey Park firefighters that responded to this incident are as follows.

Ryan Andrews, Justin Burrell, Robbie Blake, Corey Calloway, John Chang, Dominic Garcia, Benjamin Gomery, Matthew Hart, Scott Kelly, Mark Kyle, Corey Kilburn, David Lawson, Mario Ianni, Travis McGee, Frank Padilla, Andrew Rispicio, Justin Trejo, and Ralph Weisenberger.

in closing we also want to recognize the amazing ongoing support shown by our fellow firefighters

and their fire and their family members we also appreciate all the support from our monterey park

community and its residents along with our city manager the daily service your professional firefighters provide to this community is truly the makings of a class one department all members embody excellence service and community

our fire family also includes los angeles county firefighters association local 1014

who were very instrumental in providing critical peer support and other recovery resources to our

firefighters post incident this work is still ongoing today and will continue to be ongoing

and we are very grateful for the partnership we hold with la county fire department and its union Local 1014. We will have several members listed receiving the Meritorious Service Medal be present in St. Helena as requested by the State of California EMS Authority.

However, we are unable to send all recipients named due to other logistical circumstances.

And with that, on behalf of the Monterey Park Firefighters Association, Local 1014,

and the Monterey Park Fire Department, we want to thank you for your time

And appreciate letting us come up here and talk about the award. Thank you. No, thank you and congratulations to our

Department and all the responding firefighters. I don't know if there are any comments or questions from

Council well first off

Congratulations. I mean what an amazing recognition to have and I can't think of a better deserving

organization or group

To get this recognition that our very own Monterey Park Fire Department. I think that and we've said this countless times our community and our city is hugely indebted to your service and we thank you for doing everything that you could that night to preserve life and to instill a sense of safety in our community. So thank you so much for everything that you do and continue to do and this recognition is just a reminder of how great you guys are. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you.

I want to echo a sentiment of my colleague, but, you know, I've said it before, I'll say it again, that I think this community is blessed to have probably one of the best first responder personnel in the region.

And you know, this recognition is deserved, and I think probably many more, for the courage

and valor and leadership shown that night and also every day for our community.

So again, well deserved.

We are not just saying that you're at the top group, but we do it back by data. There's a lot of polling

that keeps showing that firefighters in our community, you are

actually at the top rank

community group. So really appreciate

all your support and sacrifices. Thank you. Thank you.

I'll keep it simple.

So Chris, Justin, and Ben, congratulations to the entire team. I know you represent the entire team here. Bring back the congratulations to the team, and we're blessed to have you guys. Look forward to the pancake breakfast.

Just ditto everything. We really appreciate our firefighters.

We're so proud of our department and all our personnel and the staff and all that you do on a daily basis. So well-deserved and looking forward to celebrating with you next week. But thank you so much for the presentation.

I don't know if Chief Tom.

questions on what Chief Thompson was talking to. Cool. Well, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Next up for staff communication is the library.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and City Council. My name is Victor Castellanos, and I'm the Adult Literacy Coordinator. So I first want to begin with a special thank you to everyone who attended last night's Storytime Room ribbon-cutting ceremony. The Storytime Room is renovated and revamped, and we're all excited to utilize this new wide-open space. So thank you again to the council members, to city staff and library guests for attending. It was great to see all of you last night. So May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. So visit our online library catalog and check out our AAPI Heritage Month book lists, full of amazing reads for people of all ages. And with your library card, you can also enjoy a curated list of AAPI films through Canopy, a video streaming service free for all Monterey Park library card holders. May is also National Mental Health Month, and there are some fantastic mental health events coming soon. First, on the 13th, is the Mental Health and Stigma Workshop. This workshop is offered by the L.A. County United Mental Health Promoters Program, and it will be presented twice in English and in Mandarin. Then, on the 18th, is the Mental Health and Wellness Fair at the Barnes Park Gym. Mental health activities for all ages will be provided by the Chinatown Service Center, and attendees can meet representatives from other community organizations. Free food truck lunches will also be available for the first 150 attendees provided by the L.A. County Department of Mental Health. Also in May for the adults is our intro to cosplay and comics and games day at the library. So please come and learn about dressing up as your favorite characters from books, video games, movies, and then stay afterwards to play some board games with us. Then on May 11th, it's our first ever Teen K Prom. So teens 14 to 18 are invited to dress in their fanciest outfits and head to the library for snacks, games, K-pop, and a photo booth, all while enjoying boba and chicken box dinners kindly donated by Chick-fil-A. Sign-ups are required and waivers are available at the reference desk. Also on May 11th is the citizenship workshop where immigration attorneys from Asian Americans Advancing Justice will provide free confidential legal consultation, application assistance, and provide help with application fee waivers. Appointments are required and spaces fill up quickly. Later in the month of May is our Fix-It-Yourself workshop. So visit the library and learn about basic repair skills, DIY projects, and how to keep repair costs low by fixing things yourself. And then lastly, jumping ahead a whole month in advance, Save the Date for the Monterey Park Summer Reading Program. Our theme this year is community reads. And we'll have a whole slew events and programs for all ages through June and July. For more information about all of our other upcoming library events and programs, please visit our library website.

Thank you.

Thank you, Victor.

Any questions or comments from Council?

No questions.

Just very thankful for all the programming that you do. And also, I might stop by and just check out the K-Prom.

Do I need to bring a waiver, though?

You'll have to sign. Oh, I'll have to sign. Okay.

I think he's a teacher, so I think he wants to know if you need chaperones.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Congratulations again for the ribbon-cutting of the refurbished children's story time. I know several of us, actually all of us up here, were able to stop by. And for those who haven't, please check out the new Storytime Room. I mean, it's great what's been done. And I think it just represents a continued investment by this community to our public resources like our library.

And so congratulations.

And it's a great new addition, improvement to what is already a great library in the region.

Thank you.

Any other comments, questions?

Again, amazing work. I'm just going to give you seven because the number eight was in June. So that's plenty of events for this month.

Great job.

Thank you, Victor. Appreciate it. Great job.

Public Works?

I only have one event, so I apologize. Good evening, Honorable Mayor, Mayor Pro Temp and City Council. Sean Igoe, Public Works Director. Public Works Week is May 19th through 25th. National Public Works Week is sponsored by American Public Works Association. And this year's theme is Advancing Quality of Life for All. As you know, our public works team operates and maintains the city's infrastructure, including water, sewer, storm drains, parks, trees, facilities, streets, and so much more. Our public works team is dedicated to their craft and to the advancing of quality of life for all

within the city of Monterey Park.

with that to get a glimpse of what our team does you and all of the community are invited to open to our Public Works open house located at the Public Works Yard at 751 South Alhambra Drive on Thursday May 23rd from 11 a.m. to 1 30 p.m. each division will have a booth talking about their specific operations in addition to vendors and food we look forward to seeing everyone on the 23rd

With that, any questions?

No questions.

Just thank you so much for letting us know about this event.

I'll definitely try to swing by around my lunchtime.

But thank you so much for everything that Public Works does. And I'm always very amazed at all the events that we go to. And sometimes we might be invited by the Parks and Rec Department or by the library. But a lot of the work that happens behind the scenes is happening by our Public Works

Department.

and so in some ways you're kind of like the unsung hero but in many ways you are the hero so thank you so much for everything that you do to make a lot of these projects that we throw at you guys possible

so thank you so much Sean

Thank you

Again, thank you Sean for always being able to present and be informative to this council and community the only thing I would say to the audience in the chamber or listening is that come to the open house if you haven't

It's a great opportunity to meet the men and women who work on the infrastructure of the city every day.

Thank you.

I'm going to throw in the free lunch.

Yes.

Because I was there last year, and there were a lot of people there. So part of the free lunch is also understanding the city yard, how big it is, what we do there for the city, and what you guys do there as staff, as well as the information booth that lines up. So it'll be a lot of fun.

Agreed. Right.

No, kudos to Public Works.

Really appreciate all the underappreciated work that Public Works does and how it connects all of us, right, in terms of all the streets and the sewer and the water and everything. So appreciate all the work that the team does.

I had a quick question.

I saw that they were tearing up some of the sidewalk and doing concrete work at Monterey

Highlands today.

Is that what they're doing or is that emergency repair or is that the school?

Monterey and Highlands? I don't know. playground equipment

oh yeah they're still working on the playground equipment the large playground

yep thank you

and Recreation Community Services

good evening to all

Robert Aguirre Director of Recreation and Community Services so just first off I want to thank everyone that came out to our Garvey Ranch

Park ribbon cutting for the

long awaited space themed playground we had lots of folks out there and just want to thank everyone and remind everyone that the Garvey Ranch Park Playground is now open for play.

Get out there.

Get on the space shuttles. Definitely watch your speed on some of those slides.

I went down one pretty fast, but a lot of fun, and it's really exciting.

We're already getting tons of great feedback from the community members that have been able to get out there and visit, so just wanted to highlight that.

Next slide, please.

please. Also, just kind of echoing what Councilmember Sanchez had said, definitely wanted to thank not only our massive thanks to our Cherry Blossom Committee, who's a volunteer committee that helps put on this event every year, but also to the city staff. Definitely, when you see this many people coming into our city, we had thousands of people out there at Cherry Blossom this weekend, beautiful weather. It's not just my department that's helping put that on. We lean on fire, PD, public works, finance even. I mean getting those checks ready for performers and stuff like that. So it really takes an entire city to put on those large events and I really want to echo thanks to all the city staff that helped to make that successful. We had an amazing event, 24th annual Cherry Blossom. I saw all your faces out there. You got a chance to eat and shop and enjoy some of the entertainment. So really I just want to thank everyone that came out and continues to support that event and make it a huge huge success it's definitely one of those events that we're the city's known for and not just here in Monterey Park but throughout the region in Southern California so thanks for coming out next slide please and a few things I want to highlight so we definitely know the sun's coming out in springs here and so I want to share that we now have a new system for reserving our picnic shelters

So we've tried to streamline the process. So you can actually go into rec.montereypark.ca.gov,

and you can reserve a picnic shelter in a matter of minutes.

It's almost as streamlined as you would do, like, into booking an Airbnb. You get into the system, you're able to book it in.

I'm serious.

I challenge you to go in there and use the system. It's very quick.

You can do it right from your phone.

It's very user-friendly, and we're getting tons of great feedback. It's also been able to save staff time on a number of back-and-forth phone calls of,

hey, is it available this day or is it available that day?

Now people can go online and see what's available, what days they can look forward into the future, and see what sites they can get pictures of the different parks and some of the amenities. And so I definitely invite you all to take a look at the site, play around with it, maybe even book your next celebration at one of our local parks. I also wanted to highlight that swimming lessons are coming up. We will be having registration on Tuesday, May 14th. So if you're looking to get some swim lessons in, maybe it's your first time, or maybe you just want to brush up on your skills, we will be having swim lessons this summer. We are trying to offer more classes this year and also a variety of different ways to do classes where we used to have maybe five days a week. We understand that for some parents or children, maybe they can only do two days a week. So we're offering different varieties of classes where maybe it's Monday, Wednesday, or Tuesday, Thursday.

also some Saturday classes, and also some adult classes.

So we're trying to offer a little more variety this year.

Next slide, please.

Definitely want to highlight our next week. It's right around the corner, right after Sherry Boston.

We always have our Happy Birthday Monterey Park Play Days Carnival.

Massive event. There's going to be tons of rides out there, lots of food, and amazing entertainment.

I know Gibby back there always looks forward to our entertainment every year.

So just want to highlight that on Thursday, we do have our tribute to Cinco de Mayo.

We will have a mariachi out there.

We also have a salsa merengue and cumbia band that's going to be playing.

So if you like to dance, definitely come out on Thursday. On Friday, we are doing a tribute to 80s.

So we'll have an 80s band that'll be playing.

And then on Saturday, we do have some performers that'll be joining us from the Boys and Girls Club.

And we also have a top 40s.

40s, it's actually the band that played at our 4th of July. So if anyone came to our Independence Day celebration last year, we loved them so much that we were like, we got to bring them back for Play Days. And so Caitlin and New Frontier will be playing on Saturday. And then on Sunday, we have a variety of AAPI Heritage Month.

It'll be an AAPI Heritage Month celebration.

So we have a variety of Asian American entertainment. So we have some Taiwanese dancers, some K-pop groups, and a different variety of entertainment on Sunday.

There will be food trucks throughout the weekend.

And then also, for those that enjoy adult beverages, this will be the first year we do have a beer and wine garden

that will be provided by Alhambra Educational Foundation.

All the funds raised at the beer garden and wine garden will go back to their organization

and help fund and support programs in the Alhambra Unified School District.

I think I covered all of it on Play Days.

Oh, also, you can get police sale tickets, all you can ride wristbands.

currently online, visit our website. If you purchase them now before the event, up until May 9th, you can save $5 per wristband,

so that's a huge savings. I definitely encourage people to get pre-sale

while you can ride wristbands in advance. This year, we are doing a no-cash on-site, so there won't be a ticket booth like in previous years. It'll actually be a much more streamlined system

where it'll be a kiosk.

People can go up, purchase their wristbands on-site. It'll be a much faster process.

We'll avoid the long lines

and be able to get folks right onto the rides right away.

So we want people having fun.

Also coming up, mark your calendars,

June 1st, Saturday, June 1st,

is our fourth annual Pride Parade and Festival. We'll be starting off at Mark Keppel High School

with lineup at 8 a.m.

And the parade will actually begin at 9. That parade travels down from Mark Keppel High School

It's kind of crazy.

After the last meeting when I mentioned Dodger tickets, they started flying.

Right now on the website, there's still some tickets left, and we're going to look at it.

We're actually reaching out to the Dodgers to see if we can get more

because we understand the game's not until August,

and some people probably thought, oh, I have plenty of time to get tickets.

I'm looking at you.

And so, you know, we're going to try and see if we can get some additional tickets, because we're starting to run low.

I checked it earlier today. I think we're at, like, 19 that were left. So we're going to try and get more up on there.

And once we update the amount of tickets, we'll make sure we put something out to the public. So the game is on August 9th versus the Pittsburgh Pirates. Also, we just released tickets for our annual Hollywood Bowl trip with the Community Participation Commission. That's going to be on July the 13th, and that is with John Williams, the composer. So this event sells out every year.

Transportation is provided. We do have a pre-trip reception over at Langley's Centers.

We provide some finger foods and such before we go, and then we take charter buses over to the Hollywood Bowl. You enjoy a magical evening at the Hollywood Bowl, and then we bring you back with a smile on your face. And you get a good night's sleep because you come back pretty late.

Next slide, please. And then finally, you're going to hear about this constantly.

And up until people are blue in the face and said, oh, yeah, I've already taken the survey. We definitely have already crushed our goal for the amount of surveys we wanted to do.

In fact, we're probably about twice as many as what we originally expected.

We're aiming to double that again. So we want to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to engage in the first part of the process of our Parks System Master Plan. So if you haven't taken it already, please, please, please take the survey.

Don't wait. Don't think that, oh, I have some time.

We want to make sure everyone gets their voice heard.

The information that's taken from that survey will then be compiled, and we'll start looking at how we can prioritize and have some additional community meetings.

So I want to just stress the importance of getting engaged, sharing your voice, and providing your input for the Park System Master Plan.

And I believe that's the last slide.

But I do want to point out that the Play Days event is really kind of four events in one. So, you know, for events, count over there.

Thank you, Robert. Any comments, questions from Council?

Hi, Robert.

Well, thank you so much for putting me on blast, but also for – I know I had some ticket situations last year, so we're trying to avoid those, I know. But thank you so much for all of the amazing programming.

I did have some questions.

For people who wish to, if we can go back to the slide that had the picnic

shelter reservations.

For people who make a reservation for a picnic shelter, what is the follow-up in terms of Parks and Rec staff? Do they go out and put a sign on there?

Yeah, so we actually, so anytime we have reservations, our staff, well, public works staff actually assist us with making sure that the space is clean before anyone arrives. And then our staff actually goes out again that day to put signs on. And so we put signs on all of the reserved locations. And then that way, if there is locations that aren't reserved, then it is first come, first serve.

So people can identify.

or if someone has rented one space and there's a space next to it that they didn't reserve and they realize it's not reserved they can actually now expand their space to two and our staff will go out and check on that and then also that morning then our staff does make rounds to make sure one that the parties are going well and two to make sure that there's nothing going on that shouldn't be going on you know say a large canopies are put up or there's music is too loud there's amplified sound maybe that's disturbing we want everyone to be able to enjoy the park the park so there's if there's multiple like barnes park sometimes there's six parties going on at once we want to make sure everyone has a good time so we try to make sure that everyone's you know music is at a good level um and places clean sinks are operating all those good things

oh cool and then the reservation is for the entire day it's for the entire day yeah yeah okay great

um thank you for that i i know that we have a lot of amazing parks in fact i just had my daughter's birthday party at one of our parks yeah so thank you for for that uh appreciated all of that help and then um i had another question regarding the hollywood bowl um event is that

uh open to everyone in the community it's open to everyone in the community we do only sell 90

uh sorry 100 tickets every year um so it is limited we do two buses every year and it does sell out usually pretty quick.

Okay. Those are the details.

If it's something you're interested in experiencing,

get your tickets now. Get them quick because I think we're already at like 80 tickets left. It just went live.

And it went live today. It purchased online as well.

It purchased online, yeah.

Thank you so much.

Robert, again, thank you for

an epic presentation.

I have a question.

actually it folLod to the picnic shelter

rentals

is that available on the GoNPK app if you want to make a reservation or do you have to

go to

we can link it on there but I don't think it's currently on there but it's definitely something we can put on there

just a thought because I'm looking at the app right now and I know that because

as my colleague said

we're very blessed to have 13 parks and great resources but

yeah maybe we could add

some of the links to apply to the app.

Absolutely. Thank you.

I just want to say there's 19 tickets available.

19 tickets.

For Dodgers or for the Hollywood Bowl? For Dodger night. For Dodgers, yeah.

Hollywood Bowl, I think there's like 84 left or something.

I also have questions about the picnic shelf to rentals.

So when I look on the website, it said $110 for residents.

and $113 for non-resident.

So it's the same price for all the parks, all the rentals.

Yeah, every park that – so we have a couple of parks that are reservable on the site. If you're a resident, then you get the rate of $110, and if you're a non-resident, it's $130.

So is that based on statistics, some of the parks that may be more popular than the other?

So the pricing – are we first introduced the pricing,

or is that already introduced for a long time?

Do we actually get statistics about, you know, what parks?

You know, so surprisingly, the parks are all pretty popular.

People enjoy each park for different reasons. I find that, I'll use an example, Sunny Slope Park, which people really enjoy because they get the three spots that are there.

They're very close to a playground as well as they're very, very close to a restroom.

And so they like that it's kind of situated in a little neighborhood. Then there's other folks that really like Barnes Park because they can have a larger party there. It's also very close to a restroom and playground. Elder Park as well, it kind of sits by itself. And so they can also add additional canopies around, bring their own tables, make it a bigger space. So each park kind of has its own unique, something special about it that different parties like that park for different reasons. And so they all get booked pretty often. Yeah, our picnic shelters are very, very popular, especially once the weather starts getting better. I mean, they've been popular during the winter even, but definitely spring and summer we get booked out. And we do look at statistics as far as like residents and non-residents, and we get a lot of folks that do come from neighboring cities. And I think that's a combination of I think we're fairly fair priced, and I think that people know that we have really safe and beautiful parks.

Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, Robert.

I think the library has more events this month.

This month. Not last month, but this month. You got a lot of stuff going forward.

I think you're missing one other event on May 11th, which is the AAPI Heritage Month

at the Service Clubhouse.

We're still finalizing stuff with the group there. But yes, there is going to be To Climb a Mountain.

It's a film that's going to be shown. I'm blanking on the name of the organization. I have it on my thing.

It's the L.A. County Asian American Employee Association.

There you go. The film is To Climb a Gold Mountain. To Climb a Gold Mountain.

It's kind of like a documentary that's won an award. And there will be a panel that follows up after that with the producer, Dr. Azmi, I think that's his name,

along with former

Assemblyman, former Mayor Mike Ying and also Dr.

Gay Yun.

That will be on Saturday, May the 11th

at 11 a.m. At the service club. It's open to the public.

Good job. We're still finalizing all that but I didn't want to bring it on tonight.

A link and a flyer will go out soon for that.

I'm sorry. I'm trying to put it in my calendar.

but no thank you Robert if you can for Dodger night if you can get Shohei Ohtani to come give

us a personal read if you see him go like that that's that's for Monterey Park that's that's

what I told him I told him do what if you can make it happen there's a personal bonus in it

for you so I told him at least get one hit for us all right and they better hopefully they win

that night but I bought my tickets already I know most of the council members already did as well encourage everyone to get and we can get more tickets I think yeah we're working on that

Yeah, absolutely.

Cool.

No, appreciate all the events and the activities that the department is putting on. Just ditto everything everyone said. Looking forward to a very, very active month and a half plus to come.

Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you.

Robert, one final request.

Can we get the mayor to do the first pitch of the game? Can you make that happen?

Let's see what I can do. All right. Thank you. Do your best.

We already have to buy more tickets. Yeah

Alright, thank you. Thank you. All right. We will I think that was it

We'll move on to the other presentation items 1b Marley Park Community Healing Fund

Good evening mayor mayor Wong mayor pro-tem council for council people

On behalf of the Monterey Park Community Healing Fund, I wanted to give you an update. Our balance right now is 45,251.

We have three members right now. We have a couple more members that are interested in joining, and we will be voting this week to add a couple of members. So our next update, I'll give you the new members that will be joining. So that will be an update probably in the next couple of weeks.

So far, we've issued several grants, including the Boys and Girls Club, the Monary Park Fire Relief Fund, Asian Youth Center, the Anti-Asian Hate Coalition.

We've supported the one-year memorial event with Monary Park. We've also supported the support groups for the victims. In terms of grants, we've also provided small grants to over 50 individuals. Do you have any questions? Any questions?

Thank you, Amy, for the report.

I just had a few questions.

And then thank you for all the work that you do on the healing fund. I have two questions.

How often do you – are you guys still meeting regularly, or how often do you guys meet?

We were meeting very regularly, but it got too regular.

So right now, since we have a smaller group, we're meeting maybe once a month.

Oh, okay. Thank you. And I have one other question. For the grants, how many more or newer grants did we give out since your last, I'm not sure if you have that number.

We just issued one recently.

Just one recently. And then are you guys taking applications from different groups or just?

Yes, the applications, we are still taking them. I've invited several groups to apply.

If you do know any groups that are interested in applying, we are looking for groups that are interested in providing programs

that will support the city, either through supporting programs

that support mental health programs or supporting the city

that will really heal our community.

So please share the information. Let me know. I'll reach out to them. but we haven't had too many applicants. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Amy, for that report.

Out of curiosity, I know certainly last year, of course, there was a lot of interest in supporting the fund because it was still relatively recent, the incident of January 21st.

But I'm just curious, have we, has there continued to be revenue coming in

or has the pace sLod?

sLod or I'm just curious how that evolved in the last few months.

I would have to check with the California fund because they're in charge of the money that comes in. Okay. I don't have the day-to-day accounting for that. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah, I had a very similar question in terms of, you know, we're now a year plus out, and I was thinking most of that fund has, it came in and then it kind of sLod down, and then we had that big pledge from a non-profit that donated to us, and then we funded most of that out. You know, the purpose of the healing fund was to kind of get everything back.

sunsetting this group because at one point in time we're moving forward we're recovering and sometimes we want to move forward the I guess the next thing here

is on discussion which is the where is the words on the calendar 2a2 which is

the next item, the ad hoc committee for the creation of a memorial committee. So I think we can utilize the members of this fund to roll into the next one, and we'll have a discussion on that.

I think that's something that I look forward to,

to kind of making this a permanent memorial, meaning we've kind of moved on from where we are now.

I could discuss that with the current members.

We did talk about bringing the fund to a close,

but they did vote to continue it.

Thanks. And kind of along those lines, I think as we roll into this conversation around permanent memorial for the victims and the incident, I think there might be some room in there once we have an idea of where the fund balance is for the healing fund to potentially seed some of the efforts around planning and design and all that stuff for permanent memorial if that's how we want to choose to move forward. So maybe we can keep in touch on that with the committee once you have the new committee members settled in and all that stuff. And we can have a conversation as we get going on the.

Yes, definitely. We could have a Zoom meeting and invite all the council to join us.

But again, reiterate our appreciation for you and the other committee members for all the work that everyone's put in for over a year now. I really appreciate your leadership of that group. I know it's not an easy, hasn't been easy over the course of the last year plus. I appreciate everyone putting in the effort to help bring the community together and appreciate again the committee for Being out at the cherry blossom festival this past weekend is as well to help Provide an opportunity for the community to do some reflection too. We were out there. Yes

We were again out there this year We were able to teach I'll reach out to the community let them know that we're still out there

Just talk to them and see what how they felt about the city and what they thought would be helpful. So it was a

Good opportunity to reach out to them. Thank you

Thank you. I'm sorry.

Sorry.

Actually, I'm curious, since, again, thank you for being out there. Was there any, compared to last year, would you say that the community needs, the feedback has also evolved or has been consistent, like compared to last year?

A lot of the people that came by were not from Maroney Park, which was they did not even know about the shooting.

So it was very new to them. Interesting.

Interesting.

And they got the information.

They asked more questions about what had happened. So I think it was enlightening to them. And they wanted to know how they can help out too. Good.

Which definitely then speaks to the need to make sure people don't forget.

But we did get some community members that were interested in joining the committee.

Okay, so that was also very good. Okay great

Any further questions any any names if not, thank you Amy appreciate it We'll move to the final presentation on street rehab update

Good evening again, I'll will mayor mayor pro temp City Council Sean I go public works director tonight

I'll be giving an overview of the road work rehabilitation program that we've been working on for the past several years I'm excited to highlight a recent project that one of our interns has been working on, Russell. He's done a fantastic job on getting this. So this is called story mapping. This is all done through our ESRI GIS platform.

This will be available to the public once it's completed.

We're still making some tweaks here and there. So just wanted to kind of highlight some new stuff that we're going to be using within GIS.

So it starts off with some just general introductions about what the project does and what we're doing.

So I want to give you some statistics on what we completed thus far. So far we have completed 25 miles of street overlay work, 13 miles of slurry work, 331 curb ramps, 22 bus pads, and nearly 37,000 square feet of sidewalk improvements.

We have an additional 2.8 miles of street overlay work, 4.5 miles of slurry work, and

And .2 miles of alleyway work rehabilitation is scheduled for the upcoming fiscal year.

So we're excited about those things.

So this first map is a very interactive process, which is unique that you don't see a lot of. But if you scroll down, you can kind of see how we can zoom in. And the areas in blue highlighted are for the street overlay projects.

The areas in red are going to be our slurry work.

and if you click on one of these segments it'll actually pop up what the project was when it was constructed in the street moratorium timeline so we have a five-year moratorium on our roadways so that it hopefully maintains the the roadway condition so if someone comes in and decides to do work after we've completed the work within that timeline they're required to resurface that roadway with it within the limits that we designed so again the idea is to to maintain our streets in a good condition.

So again, you can click on anywhere in this map, on any of this blue and red,

and it'll give you a detailed overview of that project.

And as you continue to scroll down,

you can see on the left that we have before,

and then if you scroll down further,

you'll have after shots of the roadway work

that's been completed.

So again, exciting to see what we've completed.

This one, there's a lot of information on here, kind of a lot of little dots,

but this one highlights a lot of our concrete work that was completed. So you can see here that we have a lot of our items in here. They're going to be our curb ramps that have been completed, our curb and gutter that's been replaced, our sidewalks that have been replaced. So, again, you can click on some of these segments, and it'll pop up what was completed there and the location. So this is an ADA curb ramp that was redone. You can click on the green one here. curb and gutter that was repaired so again very interactive process if you really want to know what's being done right down the street from where you're living so and again send me on the left scroll down you can see before and after photos of the work that we've completed and again now you go through it and it gives you a kind of an overview of what we're accomplishing this map here will depict some of the work that we have scheduled for the upcoming year so this is going to be in the the south end of town the areas that are depicted in blue Blue are going to be the resurfacing projects. The areas in green are going to be slurry. And the red is going to be the alleyway work. So this is going to be our focus down the bottom. We also have Monterey Pass Road. We're going to have this segment that's going to be repaved. And then also Petraria Grande. So over the next year, you're going to see a lot of work on those streets as well.

Continue to stroll down.

And this is the final map that we have on this story mapping. So this gives a highlight of everything that we've done in the past couple of years, including what we have projected for next year. So again we're excited to show this to the community, show you what we've completed. As you know Public Works has been hard at work trying to get our roadways in better condition and this really highlights what we've accomplished. So with that I will take questions.

Thanks Sean. Any questions? Just more you know gratitude Sean. It's very noticeable a lot of the work that we've been doing out on the roads and we definitely get a lot of comments from people about thanking us I think I might afforded an email to our city manager and yourself about just a random resident thanking us for making his neighborhood a lot you know safer and just you know updating the streets so it's very noticeable and so thank you so much for all of the work and effort that goes to putting this together and looking forward to seeing what other projects we can take on especially in the

next year. Thank you again. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Sean, again, this is very pleasing to

see progress we've made. I know that when I was elected in 2020, a lot of the residents' feedback

was about the state of our roads, and it's really great to see the city making this investment in the last four years. I know on the city's website, you know, under a project, you can see the different phases, but are those maps also on the city's website, or will it be?

They will be. Yes, these will be made available soon. We've still got some tweaks to it.

So there's actually a couple streets that we've recently completed that we'll be adding to this,

so we've done some additional work.

So again, we'll kind of clean this up, and then we'll make it live for the public to interact with.

And a follow-up question.

I know I've asked you this before, but I know that we also have some streets that I'm assuming

has not been done yet because of other utility work,

and will those streets also be included in the upcoming projects?

Because I know people are going to ask,

those who live on the streets know that, again,

there's other work being done, but they also have a follow-up question to ask,

when will my street be paved over?

Yeah, so obviously we can't do them all at once, and so some of the streets that might be questioned,

they can definitely reach out to the public works,

and we can give them general guidelines on what we have projected over the next couple of years. So typically we do delay work when utility work is anticipated. We actually had internal work scheduled for Garfield Avenue, so we delayed a paving project we had originally scheduled. So we try to work with our fellow utilities. We have utility coordination meetings once a quarter to work with the utilities to make sure that we don't step on their toes, they don't step on our toes. They understand where our moratoriums are. But, you know, they're more than if you have residents are more than welcome to call us and we can give them an update on where we're at with certain paving projects. So, I mean, the rest of the city, you know, probably the next five to ten years will be continuing to evaluate how we tackle that. We still have a lot of work to do, but we have completed a significant amount of work.

Very great. Thank you.

Just a question. How many percentage of the project that's already done?

Out of the entire city? We're probably about 40 percent. Yeah, it seems like more, but it's about 40%. When you start getting into the smaller streets, there's quite a few small streets that we still have to focus on,

but we're about 40% or so.

So 40% done in the last, actually, two years?

See, this is going to be about the past four years. Past four years.

So when will you expect the next 60% to be done?

Probably the next 5 to 10, yeah.

Okay, thank you.

This is actually very amazing because you can click on it and see what it looked like just a year ago versus now, especially if you go back to last January, February, March, and even parts of April when you had heavy rain, all we saw was a lot of complaints,

challenges about potholes.

Now we don't hear any of that or we hear very little of that. Now, I granted some streets still have that because of heavy traffic. The one street that I wanted to kind of focus on, if you can zoom in, is the red along, call it McCaslin Park and Petro Grande. It looks like it's red right there.

Yep.

When is that scheduled?

Hopefully next fiscal year.

So that's the anticipation. We've still got some work to do with some other agencies because this is a combined effort. We're looking at doing bike lanes and other items along that section of road.

But it is anticipated to start next year.

Okay, when you say other agencies, the reason for that being?

So this is a continuation of a bike lane. So we have Montebello that's going to be involved, LA County that's involved.

So the other agencies that we're coordinating this effort through.

Okay, so it just takes time.

It does.

Just be patient, takes time. And when it's done, it'll look real nice.

It does, just like Monterey Pass.

So Monterey Pass, again, we're doing some work there. We just had a meeting with Caltrans yesterday, and working on getting funding with them to get some work, that paving work done on Monterey Pass.

Thank you, Sean. Thank you.

Thanks, Sean.

I appreciate Public Works' progress

on a lot of these street projects.

How much, in terms of the street bond that the city issued a few years ago, how much of that funding remains

in terms of meeting the remaining 60%?

How much of it? This is, everything has been spent out of the bond.

So everything you see here will be the completion of the bond. Okay, so we're

Completing all the funds or we have depleted all the funds essentially that we bonded for for upfront street infrastructure

Going forward for the remaining five or ten years of work. We know that we need

We're going to be talking about that during budget or are we any preliminary kind of Talk about what how we're going to resource through the next the remaining phases of work that need to be done

That's correct. Yeah, we'll be using our local resources, gas tax, Measure R, Measure M, and then obviously tackling grants to try to get additional road work done. But yeah, we have exhausted the bond. We're literally just wrapping that work up now. The streets have been paved, but we're just working on the striping and last-minute items. So yeah, I mean, we did our best to parse out some of this work. So typically when you do some of this work, you're going to combine concrete and asphalt work. We parsed that out to get better rates. So we did larger concrete work and then larger asphalt work to get better bang for our buck. So we've really done a great job in trying to use our resources efficiently and effectively. So unfortunately, when we got the bond, prices were good. And then, you know, as we know that during the pandemic, prices increased significantly, and we saw that. And so we weren't able to get as much as we wanted to done, but we did do the best that we could to spread our dollars the best we could.

Yeah, I know that construction costs, inflation hit us too. I mean, it was great to issue the bond that we did during the interest rate environment,

but we also hit cost inflation on construction.

We did.

Like everyone else. Of course. So in terms of, I know we'll get into this probably.

new sources of funding it'll probably our pace of street infrastructure replacement and maintenance is probably going to slow down that's correct yeah

and again we you know we try to think out of the box and we try to do things

the best we can so you can see up in the north or northern northern I'll just zoom in here so this portion here around Emerson Alhambra Nicholson so what we did is we had a water main project that was scheduled on the same time so we did is we use some of those resources because they took up the street. We use some of those resources to allow through the repaving. So again, we stress our dollars a little bit more. So we try to bring those common projects together where we're already doing street work to spread those dollars. So again, we just have to think outside the box as opposed to just saying, hey, we do street work, we do utility work. It all comes together and we try to do efficient work nowadays. So we'll continue to do that as we move forward. But yeah, we're not going to be tackling as much road work as we have been over the past couple of years.

No, I appreciate that.

And appreciate all the efforts that Public Works and many of the city staff had to go through

to make sure we were coordinating with other utilities

and everyone else that was doing work

to find these efficiencies and save where we can and do additional work where we could.

I would love to see us tell this story more.

I don't know if that's teeing up a story that covers the bonds and the positive impacts for the street infrastructure replacement in the Cascades in an article or something else to highlight before and after and kind of showcase throughout the city what we got accomplished and how much all the statistics that you threw out at us during this presentation. of miles of roads repaved and slurried and all that stuff and sidewalk repairs and everything. I would love to tell this story because I think people know a little bit if they see in front of their house and if they're driving in certain areas. But I think what we have been able to accomplish as a city and the staff in particular to replace this amount of street infrastructure in just the last two years

would be great to help review that for residents in the community

to highlight all the hard work that the city put in and also to help make the case for why we need to continue this work

and how it's not finished, too.

Yeah, absolutely. We can definitely do that. Once this is live and ready to go,

then we can definitely put an article in the Cascades and put a QR code they can scan and hopefully get to this and really see the work that we've accomplished. But thank you again, and really thank you for the council for trusting us to do this amount of work in such a short period of time.

Great.

I have one more question Hellman from New Avenue to Garfield is there a timeline for that because I know that's a joint city thing

it borders

it is and yeah so we don't have anything on the books as of yet but yeah that is a joint effort and usually we try to work with other cities we worked with Rosemead on a repaving project along new so we try to combine efforts the best that we can but we don't have anything on the books just yet

okay because if we do that we have to figure out summer months because just asking for a friend who has a

spouse who works at capital yeah we which we try to work so we've done some

of the work we've done we try to actually coordinate the schools we do weekend work so we don't impact the schools as much so we try to be creative

but it doesn't always work out the best that we hope and can you remind us how

much the street bond with the value of the street bond was I don't I think it

I think it was almost 30 million, I believe.

I think it was almost 30. I don't recall off the top of my head. Yeah, that was before my time.

We just kind of implemented the work that we could

over the past couple of years.

Well, I mean, I look forward to the Cascades article

summarizing all the bond work coming out

to help everyone remember.

Yep, absolutely.

If there are no other comments, we'll move on to items.

Thank you, Sean. Thank you.

Item 2A, establishing an ad hoc subcommittee of the City Council to discuss the creation of an independent memorial committee for the January 21st, 2023 mass casualty incident.

Is there a brief staff report? Diane.

Good evening, Mayor and Council, Diana Garcia, Assistant City Librarian. This evening, before you for your discussion, is the establishment of an ad hoc committee,

subcommittee of two City Council members. This ad hoc subcommittee will be tasked with appointing members to a January 21st permanent memorial committee and providing initial direction on the roles and responsibilities of the memorial committee, as well as the method and frequency by which the committee should report to the City Council on its progress. This evening, we've also invited a speaker. Her name is Tenille Pereira. She's on Zoom to discuss her experience and advice for the ad hoc committee.

Tenille is the director of the Resiliency and Justice Center in Las Vegas, Nevada and the chair of the 1 October Memorial Committee. She currently serves as a board member of the nonprofit Vegas Strong to assist in the fundraising and construction of the permanent 1 October Memorial Committee, sorry, Memorial, and is an advisory member on the UNLV Memorial Committee.

So after my staff report, we're going to introduce her and she's going to do a brief presentation

for you. On January 21, 2023, the city of Monterey Park suffered a mass casualty incident at

the Star Ballroom dance studio that resulted in the loss of 11 lives, injured 9 individuals,

and left the community deeply affected. The city recognizes the need to honor the memory

of the victims and create a space for healing and remembrance for the entire community.

Communities that have been affected by similar tragedies often establish committees consisting

of a diverse group of community members and stakeholders, which then consider fundraising,

location, community input, and planning for permanent memorials. Because each committee

has its own unique set of circumstances, each memorial committee has different factors,

considerations, and issues to consider as it plans for a permanent memorial space. In addition, committee members will need to be advised that the completion of a memorial project

can take several years, as many factors must be taken into consideration when establishing a memorial.

At the September 6, 2023 meeting, City Council was provided with research on six different memorial committees,

their composition, methods of community input, responsibilities, timelines, and budgets.

The staff report and research is included as attachment one to the staff report.

So in order to begin exploring the creation of a permanent memorial

to honor the victims and survivors of the January 21st, 2023 mass shooting,

the City Council may consider forming a temporary subcommittee comprised of two City Council members.

As mentioned, the subcommittee's purpose will be to select individuals for the Memorial Committee

and to offer them some initial guidance on their duties and functions.

The ad hoc subcommittee may wish to consider some broad issues of composition,

Roles and objectives and reporting frequency as it establishes the committee

And we plan to dive deeper into those topics with the ad hoc committee as they begin to contemplate and make decisions about a permanent

committee

I'm going to go ahead and bring up

Tenille and her presentation

Tenille are you with us?

I am good evening and thank you for having me

Wonderful let me just share your screen so that we can see

your slides. Just one second.

Okay.

Okay, there we go. Thank you. Sure. So, as she said, my name is Tinelle Pereira.

I'm the director of the Resiliency and Justice Center, which was just recently renamed from

the Vegas Strong Resiliency Center, which was established in the wake of the 1 October

shooting in Las Vegas in 2017. Next slide, please.

So I wanted to just discuss briefly a few things on things that you should consider while you're getting ready to set up this committee. A memorial process itself is very important, and it can be a piece of the healing for a community that's been impacted by mass violence. It is an often overlooked opportunity for healing. It gives acknowledgement and validation to all those that were impacted, and in particular, those who have lost someone. It creates a connection between the different groups that are impacted.

It gives an opportunity for a voice for all of those that are impacted to express how they were impacted and share their stories. It gives people a chance to process what they've been through, what the community has been through, and also kind of the journey of it. We always want to make sure that we don't just memorialize an awful thing, but also the journey of the healing for the community as well. It also gives an assurance to those that have lost loved ones that it won't be forgotten. A lot of people that go through a mass violence incident have a lot of trauma that they deal with and can often feel very isolated. Those that have lost loved ones through this, one of their biggest concerns that they always express to me is they just don't want their loved ones to be forgotten. And so not forgetting is always a big piece to a memorial.

Permanent memorials, again, should capture the healing journey as well as the tragedy. Next slide, please. So one of the main things that you're going to want to consider as you go into setting up this committee is to establish a foundation of trust with the impacted community. You're going to really want to know the dynamics of the community and how each group was kind of impacted. you're going to want to identify appropriate committee members that are in a good place in their healing and able to commit. This is going to be a very emotional experience. It can take quite some time. And sometimes when people go into this, they're thinking this is kind of a short process and they'll attend a few meetings and it is much more involved than that. So you want to make sure people are in a really good place. You don't want to have to change them, you know, in the middle of the process. You want to have committee members that are reflective of the impacted community. So you want to always make sure that you have family members represented that lost someone. You want to make sure that you have, if you have injured individuals, you know, someone that represents them, someone that represents the larger impacted community. And then, of course, professionals as well, because at the end of the day, the family members and the other impacted individuals, this is not something that is going to be something that we're trained for. And you want to make sure that after you go through this process, the end of the day, you also have, you know, a world-class memorial that can stand the test of time as a permanent memorial. And then, of course, inclusivity, looking at all the different impacted groups. One of the other things, too, I really want to stress here is you don't want people on the committee that could possibly have some other personal agenda or political agenda because that will destroy that foundation of trust with the impact of community and they just will not engage. And it won't end up being the healing process that you're really hoping for as you go through this. Um, ensuring transparency is going to be vital for establishing that trust. Um, you're going to want to look at, you know, what are the meeting venues? Um, is it going to be accessible? Um, can we have them online? Can we play them over Facebook, YouTube, um, open meeting laws, all of those pieces? you know having a website or a way for people to communicate that can't attend the meetings you know can they send an email with their thoughts you know making sure that at every step of the way that you're being transparent to the impacted community you know they may not always like the the decisions or or what is being said but if there is a high degree of transparency they at least know that, you know, that what they're being told is the truth and you're being honest with them and they'll stay in the journey along with you. You're going to want to identify committee goals and a mission. So that was...

you know, what is our mission and what are our goals to help us keep moving forward.

And then, you know, as you're setting up the committee, you want to make sure before you

kind of put them out there in front of the community that you give them a chance to kind

of establish some trust with one another so that before they go out there, they can, you know,

rely on one another because it is a very challenging experience to go through.

Next slide, please.

So I can't stress this enough. If you have integrity, nothing else matters. And if you don't have integrity, nothing else matters.

So just being forthright and honest with the community every step of the way,

you know, it isn't always what they want to hear.

And sometimes what they had feedback to tell us wasn't always what we wanted to hear.

But we were always honest back and forth. And they respected us for that.

And they knew that at least when we were saying something, that it was the truth. So next slide, please.

so um when you do get a panel together some of the things you're going to want to think about to get them really set up is to train them on being what it what it means to be trauma informed and the specifics about your particular impacted community there's going to be a certain verbiage that they're going to want to avoid or there's going to be verbiage that your particular impacted community really wants included. One example is my community in regards to my community leadership, they say one October, but the impacted community says Route 91. And so when we were in our meetings and we would say one October, it really bothered them. So we would be, you know,

have to be careful to use the terminology that they identified with. You know, being trauma

informed and understanding how trauma impacts others and that sometimes that trauma comes out

in anger or other ways. So kind of understanding that, you know, providing a safe space for all

perspectives. That inclusivity piece is so important because this really is intended as a memorial for everyone that was impacted. And so we really encouraged all perspectives to be

shared with us. That's that voice piece. That's that healing piece. So that's always important.

People need to feel that they can show up and they can share their truth and how they were impacted. Provide opportunities for community engagement. I can't stress this enough. We had so many avenues for community engagement because we wanted everyone that wanted the opportunity to have that opportunity. At the end of the day, if you end up with a beautiful memorial, but nobody got to participate, then you didn't get the benefit of that. and they won't feel as attached to it or find that healing in it as they would have.

So ensuring that transparency, access to meetings, utilizing outreach professionals, and, you know, get some help crafting the message and pushing out at all those different channels. Listen and validate. So we would have a lot of people show up at our meetings. and, you know, it was really important that they knew that we listened to them and that we heard

them. I would go every time on our Facebook and read all the comments that they said during the

live meetings, not because it was easy to read all of those comments. Sometimes it wasn't

super easy, but then we were able to go back into our next meeting, acknowledge what we heard and and validate that so that they knew we were listening. Um, and then that they could trust us. Um, and it ended up being a really good thing. Um, accommodating whenever possible. Sometimes it's simple things that they want, like our, uh, branding colors. We came out, they were red and blue. Um, and we heard loud and clear after the meeting that they should have been orange and

purple. Well, you know what, we can change that. So we accommodated, you know, whenever you can, Yeah. Vulnerability is a superpower. You know, being honest, being real, being a human. It's not about when I was up there, it wasn't about my leadership role with the Resiliency Center. It wasn't about, you know, that I, any of us as individuals, we were there as just another impacted community member.

And allowing yourself to be vulnerable really alLod us to connect with the larger community. Leaving, you know, your ego out of it. Don't rush it.

This is a long process. And I know sometimes this is really hard for community leaders to hear because they want to have something to show their community, which I understand because that is a healing piece. But the process itself can bring, I sometimes feel even more healing than the end result.

So, you know, don't rush it and really trust the process and allow it to play out. Next slide, please.

So this was our 1 October Memorial Committee. These are the phases that we worked in. And I just realized that the second one was combined with the first. But you can see there how the phases worked out. That first phase was really about figuring out how our meetings would work, getting our committee members together, establishing that trust between committee members,

rolling that committee out to the community, making sure we had our, you know, best foot forward and that we were prepared, had the staff and support that we needed, and then really started

educating ourselves and building a process. But from beginning to end, so our first, we were requested to be on a committee in summer of 2019. We announced the final winning design last September, so September of 2023. So it is quite a process. And I'm not saying you guys will

be as long as that, but just kind of be prepared. It can be a long process. Next slide.

This was our mission and goals. And again, I'm really grateful to Clark County here in Las Vegas

for establishing the mission and goals for us before we showed up so that we had an anchor

place to start with and then to always come back to. That really helped us stay focused.

Next slide, please.

So these are some images from our winning design proposal. The winning design is entitled Forever Won. It is an amazing design. When you get some time, go ahead and go onto our website. Just Google One October Memorial. There's an extensive website with Clark County. But I wanted to just point out a few things that you saw the process work. As this design, you could go through it and every aspect of the design, I could recall a time of hearing a comment in a meeting, hearing an idea voiced in a focus group. the survey results like all of this community engagement and feedback we saw play out in this design and it was amazing as all of the design proposals were rolled out hearing the comments and and the thoughts of the impacted community and how touched they were to they they could see

themselves in this memorial and it just was a really amazing process next slide

which I think is my last slide yeah so any questions I'm happy to take any

questions thank you so much to me all Dan I don't know if you had anything I

had before we had a question or we'll open up to any council questions no real

questions, but thank you so much for giving us a lot of items to discuss and think about as we

form our own committee. I can imagine it's such a big endeavor and task to do something like this, and I think we're kind of in the same shoes that you probably were many years ago in doing this project. So thank you so much for your time to be here tonight and help us with the guidance as we

move forward with this. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Murray. Tenille, again, thank you

so much for taking the time to present to us this evening as the City Council. Let's see, my first question is

for the committee that was composed

to advise and to ultimately make the recommendation for the memorial, what were their backgrounds? I'm just curious

for your committee. Yeah, so we really did

combine impacted community members that were laypersons with professionals. So I was there as the Resiliency Center director. We had a family member that had lost her sister. We had a survivor who had been severely injured. We had a first responder who was responsible for the full investigation. She led that investigation. and then we had a professional artist who has been in Las Vegas community for decades. We had a well-respected, longtime Las Vegas architect. We had a public arts administrator as well. So it really combined the professional viewpoint with kind of the emotional viewpoint. And sometimes we didn't always see eye to eye, but it was amazing to see how we were able to take those two different pieces and build them together and create a process that is quite unique and actually been, you know, inquired all across the country on how we came up with it.

So it was pretty interesting. Great. That's been very helpful.

And then as a follow-up question, in addition to the conversation, the community conversations about what the monument should look like, was also funding part of the conversations of the committee for the memorial, like fundraising, or was there already a dedicated fund like budgeting as well?

there was not a dedicated fund one of the goals that we were tasked with was to recommend how it should be funded what we decided in the end is that it should be funded through

a non-profit which allows more healing through donations and contributions so we're going out there as the board now that is doing the fundraising and we're getting like the

big, big donors, so those, but all the way down to the smallest donors so that people can feel

that they have, you know, a level of ownership also through their donations in this. And then

once it's built, it will transition back to the county who will maintain it.

I see. Okay. Sorry. One more question. Sorry. When I was in Vegas with my colleagues for a conference last year, I had a chance to actually stop by with my colleague, Mayor Wong, the Vegas Hope and Healing Center, but also close by the Community Healing Garden. Was the community healing garden also a result of the same committee that was tasked with the memorial? Because I know, I understand, again, based on your presentation, the time and the effort and the engagement to get it right. But, you know, the community healing garden, it was already up and running. So I was curious, what was the story behind the community healing garden, I guess is my question.

so the las vegas healing garden is an amazing project that actually cropped up right after

the event so a landscape architect with a friend sat down at a diner and they wanted to do

something and they mapped out on a napkin a a healing garden and they contacted mayor goodman They said, we have this idea. Do you have a piece of property? And she said, yes, absolutely. There's this lot. We don't have any plans for it. You can take it. So they put out a call on social

media. I mean, it was within a week or two after the incident. And people just showed up with

donations of plants and materials and people to do labor with, you know, tools. And they built this beautiful

is also a spontaneous memorial. You have the ones at the site, right, with the fLors and the teddy bears. And those are just, you know, the ones right after. But people need somewhere to go. And the Healing Garden really filled that space for our community. And it has been very organic. And it's a beautiful place. But the one thing is, is it's not built as a permanent memorial. um not meaning that we have any intention of taking it down um we've had people all over the world we have people from other you know mass shootings that come and they say they feel an attachment to it because they don't have anywhere to go like that um so you know we plan on keeping it but at the end of the day it is an organic garden um it's not built to let you know to last

the test of time. And so the permanent one will be, you know, a permanent memorial and each piece

very well thought out. But the Las Vegas Healing Garden is another kind of piece of our story.

Well, thank you very much. And again, I definitely would say it had a profound effect when I paid a visit to the garden. And so it, again, it's amazing that it went up so fast.

Thank you. You're welcome.

Mr. Mayor, if I may.

Mr. Mayor, members of the Council, just wanted to explain also that Tenille has agreed after the ad hoc subcommittee is formed, she's willing to work back with that subcommittee to answer any further questions, walk us through the process. Her, as well as another representative that we've been working with,

her name is Anita.

She's with the Federal Office for Victims of Crimes. So both of them have offered, if the council decides to, choose to create an ad hoc subcommittee to come back and work with those two council members to further answer any questions but make sure that we have guidance since they've been through this process and really help kind of, if there's anything further that we need assistance with. So just wanted to make sure that I mentioned that.

And just to be clear on what we're discussing tonight, right, tonight we're talking about the potential for designating two council members to have these conversations so that we're not in a council meeting, right, in a public forum having these detailed conversations, but to have two council members, essentially former subcommittee, to have conversations with others, outside experts, and city staff to begin outlining what a full committee might look like and what that process should look like in terms of appointing a committee if we want to move forward that way and then start to outline a process right for for what if we want to move forward on a permanent memorial and how and take lessons from some of the other cities and communities that have begun that process. It's not to establish the committee right the actual permanent memorial committee tonight and to make those appointments tonight. That's not what we're talking about. This is just to begin the long process and the intentional process of having the conversation Outline what that process should look like so a very early step But I know there's a lot of information I think all of us as counselors want to dig into in terms of how other cities have handled this and what their processes look like And I think the hope is not to have this conversation have to have this conversation in an open public meeting that is more formal, but to be able to have more organic conversations around this and dig deeper into some of the details through a subcommittee, and then that would report back to the council for its blessing for a process moving forward.

Thank you so much. I have three short questions. First of all, how long did it take from forming the committee to making the final decision on the design of the memorial?

So we got appointed in summer of 2019 and then September of 2024 or 2023, we announced the final design.

So it was just a couple months over four years.

And the second question, how much did you expect to fundraise for the whole memorial?

it's going to be in the tens of millions.

Okay. Our last question would be, how many people in the committee?

There were seven.

Seven members.

Thank you.

Neil, thank you for joining us. So just as a follow-up, the seven initial people that joined your committee, they stayed the entire time or you had some people coming in and going out? Because it is a long process, long dedication, horizon, timeline here.

Yeah, it really is a long process. And that's why I say, you know, making sure people are really in a good place and are committed. We only had one person who changed out. And that was only because he was the first first responder was appointed and then he was moved up to undersheriff. and so he needed to be replaced. But then we had the lead investigator of the investigation jump right in, and she had been following it because she was before that over that gentleman. So that was the only person that changed out. Everyone was really, really committed to the process.

Thank you. Thanks again. Just a few quick questions as well.

in terms of the funding for the process of the committee and going through designs and the design RFP and all that stuff, was that put up by Clark County or the city?

I'm just curious how that worked. Yeah, the county put up the money because their thought process was when people are donating to the memorial, they are probably not thinking they're going to be donating to administration. you know, administrative costs. So the county put up the money for that. And we did a request for qualifications and then had them, the five winning teams there did a design proposal, which we know is a very expensive process. And so they paid each one of those teams, I want to say it was $25,000, which I know didn't even cover their costs when you look at the extensive design proposals that they put together. So they put that up, and then our staff was provided to us through the county. So the county PIO helped with our messaging and our branding. We had somebody from Parks and Recs who, you know, did all of our agendas, things like that. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you.

And for the public meetings that the committee hosted and the input that was gathered, was that staffed and resourced by those staffers you mentioned,

or was an outside facilitator brought in?

I'm just curious how that process worked.

So they actually did bring in a facilitator to help them get the committee kind of laying that foundation. And she ran four workshops that were out of the, you know, the eye of the community to kind of help the committee get to know one another, be trained on what it means to be trauma informed, be educated on the impact of community, be educated on the resources that the community had, like the libraries, the things that had been collected and preserved and those types of things. and also be educated on the mental health impact of being on a committee like this. So different workshops like that, she facilitated those and then helped us get started with the meetings and then her contract expired and that we were by that point well on our way. Okay, that's good to know. Any other questions from council members?

Well, we appreciate it. We appreciate the insight you provide to us,

and I know we'll be reaching out.

I appreciate your offer to continue to advise and provide some input and insight into the process for Las Vegas, and we will be calling on that help soon, I imagine.

With that, I don't know, Diane,

if there's anything else on the sign before we have discussion.

No.

so council members if there's any discussion on how we want to move forward on this item

we're open to that now okay well I'm in favor of setting up a committee and I know that we're all we're just looking for two council members I think it would be useful to have maybe the mayor and the

Two, correct.

Two to avoid.

Correct, yes.

But it's really up to Council's decision who the two could be.

So, I mean, I'm okay either way.

But I think it would, right, we're talking about starting to outline a process, right, so just probably the next few months of putting this together, and then the formal process and approvals for moving forward formally would be come back to the full council for action, right?

Do we need to decide who the two council members need to be tonight?

or just that we

agree that there's going to be two council members

and we can decide who the two

will be later

we can bring the item back we have to bring the item back

we have to decide who the two are at some point to start those conversations

but I mean

it could be any two of us I don't know that it has to be anyone.

If we haven't, I don't know.

Councilor Embelow wants to be in,

I'd be happy to sit out and let him take a role in this.

I don't have a problem.

I think ultimately we're all trying to do this to make it work.

Oh, your mic, your mic.

if council member low wants to kind of help take the lead in this i'd be happy to nominate him and with the mayor i think that's i'm fine with that at the end of the day someone here needs to help get it done and we'll start with two of us i mean we can't do three so

yeah i don't have an issue with that uh i think right just to emphasize this is to just begin starting in the learning process for how other processes around morals have gone and then to essentially bring back a recommendation for how we should lay out our process

For the full council going forward from there. I think that's I think it's a great idea. And I know Henry was

our mayor when when the shooting happened and I know that I Know that feeling that you know Must be going through him in terms of being directly connected to this mass casualty incident And so I think it would behoove us to allow him. So thank you to Vin to withdrawing to Council Member Lo to participate. And I'll second his motion if that was.

Make the motion.

All right.

Motion and second to appoint the mayor and Council Member Lo, right, just to clarify what the motion was, to the subcommittee to begin this conversation and bring back for a formal recommendation to the full council for proceeding on a process for the permanent memorial.

Right, Vin?

yes yes that was the motion any any further questions or comments if not

we'll call for the vote

approved unanimously all right mr. mayor members of the council if you don't mind

moving up new business which is the the item from the special meeting agenda yes mr. Camp is here to give a presentation and answer any of your questions mr. Camp and lives in San Diego, so I wanted to make sure that he was able to get out of here on time.

Yeah. I'm a taskmaster. What can I tell you?

Thank you.

Mayor Wong, Mayor Pro Tem, and Council Members, good evening. I am Assistant City Attorney Tim Camp, and I'm here to present on a resolution regarding authorization for legislative subpoenas concerning property located at 122 North Lincoln Avenue. By way of background, this property is an apartment complex of 26 units, two stories with two buildings facing each other in a common courtyard in the middle. You can see here it's located obviously on Lincoln Avenue just north of Garvey and across street from Ding Fatty Square which is a well-known landing spot for people newly arriving to the United States. commission. And something of a launching point for beginning their time here. This is simply a street view. If you're not familiar with the property taken from the public parking lot city parking lot directly across the street. In May of, by the way, the property is owned by an LLC known as Newmark 809.

The principal of that LLC has a number of LLCs and owns and manages quite a number of multifamily properties in the San Gabriel Valley.

In May of last year, Code Compliance received a complaint through the GOMPK system indicating that there was substantial overcrowding in the property

and that it was being used as a boarding hotel.

The individual disclosed that individuals would rent single beds

at a rate of $15 per night, paid in cash on a daily basis.

The individual further indicated less than habitable conditions

and various other issues regarding maintenance and safety concerns.

Perhaps not uncoincidentally, less than a week and a half later, Code Compliance received a report from one of the fire captains who had a call for service at the property and indicated that the property or the unit they went to was overcrowded, had beds all over the common areas.

the primary egress at the front door was blocked with bed and other items due to the overcrowding

and commented that it presented an immediate and substantial threat to public safety.

This got code enforcement officers inspecting the property from the common areas, being

able to see inside some units, windows, maybe open doors, things of that nature, and verifying there appeared to be quite a number of beds in the living room area.

By way of reference, these are one and two-story apart, sorry, one and two-bedroom apartments

that have a single living room area and kitchen and one bathroom.

On, after being able to substantiate, at least as to some units, the reports that had been received,

We assembled a nice team involving primarily code enforcement, fire department, police department, and building and safety to coordinate an effort for the execution of an inspection warrant.

That was done on August 8th of last year.

A great deal of planning and effort went into coordinating that to make sure that not only did we have all the right people from the city there, but we also brought in various resources.

Knowing that this was going to result, at least we strongly suspected, the end result was going to be eliminating the overcrowding and the obvious dangers to those residing. Um, so we did have various resources to provide means of people accessing places to live and

so forth, though, nobody was kicked out on that day. That wasn't the purpose. The purpose was to gather information. Code enforcement officers, um, after being, uh, each unit was cleared by the police were able to examine every single space of every single unit and every single room of the entire property, all areas inside, all areas outside.

What they learned is that among the 26 units, 24 were being used, were experiencing extreme overcrowding. They counted 232 beds among the 24 units for an average of over nine and a half beds per unit.

These beds were filling up the bedrooms that were available. Sometimes there were bunk beds, sometimes there weren't.

but most notably there were beds completely occupying and taking up the common living space in the living room. This is an example.

It's a little hard to see, but this is an example of standing essentially in sort of the kitchen area. The kitchen begins to the left. If you look straight, if the lighting was a little better, you'd be able to see that there are nine beds in this picture.

The far right corner that you can see there is where the front door is. There's a bed there.

There's actually three beds lengthwise from the bottom of the photograph to the top of the photograph on the right.

There are four more beds in the middle that are being propped up as basically pieces of plywood with mattresses on top of five-gallon buckets.

And then there are two more beds on the far left wall. There were more beds in the bedroom. Some units had beds in the kitchen.

This is another unit, a different unit, but looking from the opposite direction, where you're basically standing in kind of the front door area looking towards the kitchen,

showing a representation of the conditions.

Most front doors were blocked by beds.

And the reason being is the act of swinging a front door open takes up space. By not opening that door, you can put an extra bed in there.

And so the main egress and ingress for almost all the units was the sliding glass door.

This creates a problem of reducing the ways of escaping the unit, but also is a problem for first responders who may be trying to get into the unit.

If they had to, if the front door was blocked, that means breaking the glass of a sliding glass door would be the way of entering in the case of emergency, which is certainly something to be avoided.

in addition to these obvious conditions bathrooms were

overused and overcrowded this is an interesting example of you might see something white there in the shower that is a washing machine for clothes

it's a little hard to see but you might be able to notice

that there is a cord wrapped around the top of that shower door

That's an extension cord that ends at the top inside part of the right side of that door to which the washing machine is plugged into.

This is not something, a washing machine, that's moved when people take a shower. It was essentially a permanent fixture there.

Electrical outlets were completely overdrawn with extension cords leading to junction boxes and more extension cords such that every bed could have its own supply of electricity to charge phones and what have you. There were hot plates in bedrooms, reports that many of the electric ovens and stoves did not work, requiring feeds off of regular outlets for heating appliances. Some had propane burners.

and this was especially concerning considering the ownership states that there are no gas appliances or gas uses, not even heating water. We've not been able to verify that yet, and we

intend to, but because of that, there are no carbon monoxide detectors. So in addition to the smoke detectors, none of which were functioning, none of the fire extinguishers were up to date, if they existed at all where they were supposed to, and no carbon monoxide detectors, especially where you had at least one or more units using indoor propane, created additional safety hazards.

Various other physical conditions were present that are not necessarily relevant to this presentation,

But suffice to say that the living conditions in these 24 units were certainly substandard.

Immediately following the execution of the inspection warrant, an immediate demand that certain issues be abated was served on the owner. This included things like not overloading electrical systems, making sure that the fire extinguishers and smoke detectors were all working, not having any propane or any kind of gas implements inside, and clearing the upper second-story walkways. There's common balconies that access all the upstairs units with either three or four stairwells, depending on which building, different sizes. And you can see here why that was necessary. Because of the overcrowding, living spaces went to the outside. There simply wasn't enough space for everyone to reside comfortably. And so furniture and personal items were stored on the outside. This is the upstairs. And what this had the effect of doing is making it so each unit only had one stairwell to be able to exit or escape, if you will, from the second stories. And this is consistent on both sides. And so clearing this was an immediate requirement for ownership. We also warned ownership that they were going to have to limit, we're going to impose a limit of no more than four occupants per unit, and that they need to start making those arrangements now. We're also aware of the allegations of being used as a de facto hotel, and by all indications, that's what it appeared to be happening. We further informed initially the ownership and then in September provided a comprehensive and very detailed notice of public nuisance with corrective actions of everything that needed to be done with time frames in which to get them done. The good news is that the various physical aspects of the property have essentially been addressed. This includes the presence of mold in virtually all the bathrooms. Overloading of electrical systems has been taken care of. The common area lights, fire extinguishers, smoke detectors have been remedied and a variety of other physical and maintenance conditions. However, every indication and further investigation and inspections on at least a monthly, if not every week or two, from the common areas and consensual inspections of various units based on permissions provided by residents indicate that the use as a de facto hotel of spending $15 a night is still going on. This is primarily done through advertising, including across the street. There are light posts and so forth that constantly have new signs taped up offering things from places to sleep for $15 a night, work opportunities, and various other resources to those in need

and primarily geared towards those who have recently arrived and may not be familiar with how to navigate various systems and resources.

We even had one of our own folks call one of the numbers that was found across the street. And eventually the person on the other side eventually mentioned and disclosed that it was for this property. And that was in December of last year after we executed the warrant, after we provided several notices, written notices and verbal notices to ownership. It continues. It continues to this day. We have statements of current residents saying that the $15 a night system is still in place. Whether it's 24 units still is unknown. But we know it's continuing.

The way that it appears to work, and this is a picture of a very recent picture, and what they're doing now is to avoid detection by these inspections of the common area, we

can look into windows and open doorways and not see beds anymore, it looks fairly clear in the common living room areas.

However, what's happening is mattresses are stacked up out of sight.

Sometimes mattresses like you see here, we stacked on the floor with a sheet or blanket over to look like one bed,

when in fact it's five or six or seven beds that when nighttime comes and inspections aren't happening,

the mattresses are put on the floor and strewn about the common living areas,

essentially recreating the exact same issue, just masking it more effectively.

The way, based on investigation by both myself and code enforcement officers, it indicates that the system of $15 a night indeed seems to be substantiated. Some units offer for an extra $5 one or more meals a day. are offered. It appears that the system is that individual, what I will refer to as leaseholders, these would be individuals who have a direct relationship with management and the ownership, who lease the unit, will then get individuals to come and stay at the rate of $15 a night, maybe more if they have food plans. And this is a form of income for those leasing the individual units. It is not clear whether management or ownership is getting any percentage of the nightly $15 rentals. What we do know, however, is that there is an on-site property manager, and the on-site property manager has a lot of...

or the property manager herself who lives on site does this in her unit and does it for a unit directly above hers.

There's another individual who rents two units and does this

as income for two units. And that is still happening

to this day and that's been confirmed through statements both of residents and leaseholders.

The property, the principal of the LLC that owns it has been advised verbally by code enforcement officer, senior code enforcement officer Ray Lozano on a number of occasions. It's been part of our formal notices from my office.

And I've been engaging with the owner's attorney. for the last month or two regarding gaining compliance.

I won't get into the details of that. Suffice to say that despite our insistence of stopping the practice and eliminating the overcrowding, it does continue, and it is continuing to this day. Legislative subpoenas is an important tool for fact-gathering. It will allow the city attorney's office and code compliance fire department, police department to gather valuable information through compelling the production of documents and sworn testimony in the form of essentially depositions to understand the full scope of how this works from bottom up and top down, to understand who all is involved, the extent of knowledge of all people involved, to substantiate what we already suspect is the case, but need hard proof. We believe that the use of legislative subpoenas will allow us to do that. And in doing so and understanding the full scope of what is happening and how it works will allow us to come up with the best means of response for both enforcement and, most importantly, to protect public safety and those that are living under these conditions.

There's a second element in use for legislative subpoenas, and that has to do with transient occupancy taxes. As you know, there's a 12% tax on rents for short-term stays in the city. This means any kind of stay that's less, for an agreement of less than 30 nights. This applies to hotels, motels, Airbnbs, and so on. Even though a property may not be operating lawfully for short-term rentals, that does not mean they don't have an obligation to remit transient occupancy taxes for short-term stays. This would apply in this case because the stays for everyone but the leaseholders is contingent on paying that $15 a night. This is a one-night, night-to-night rental arrangement. We have no understanding or expectation or belief that anyone other than the leaseholders have anything longer than a nightly arrangement. Even if they've been there for months, it's still based on a nightly rental arrangement. In trying to determine the potential scope of unpaid TOT, we used a formula of assuming 200 such short-term beds being rented out at $15 a night over a period of three years, which is statute of limitations for collecting unpaid TOT. and do that based on 24 units, well, 200 beds. And using, with the help of the city's finance department, in factoring in the various penalties of nonpayment and a 25% penalty for fraud, which would be knowingly withholding TOT, and compounding interest as alLod under the municipal code, the finance department estimated that the last three years would amount to approximately $1.3 million in unpaid TOT to the city. I did provide a demand for a little under $300,000 of unpaid TOT. If that was remitted, then the city would not consider going back as far as three years. The indication that I was provided was that the property owner would fight any effort by the city to collect transient occupancy taxes for this property.

Legislative subpoenas would allow us to have access to financial records. Understand where the cash flow is going for this property. Understand what the lease arrangements are. Whether there are lease documents and how that works. Understand how the property management system works.

Whether the funds collected by the property manager are simply rents collected or whether they are cuts of the $15 per night.

that's remitted, whether the property manager is remitting any of those funds above any base rents back to the ownership or not. We also have indications that the property owner is charging higher than market rates, understanding that this de facto hotel operation is being carried out by the individual leaseholders. And so in order to understand exactly how this works and the full scope of this, legislative subpoenas will give us access to these documentations, records, and ability to compel testimony under oath.

Gathering this information will help inform the city council and the city on the best means of pursuing

any available transient occupancy taxes under the circumstances, which could be, and we believe it to be, substantial.

At the end of the day, the goal is to bring this property into compliance with the municipal code, state law, and federal law as may be applicable. We believe that access to the use of legislative subpoenas in this regard will also be the best means of ensuring how to protect public safety.

with that senior code enforcement officer Ray Lozano is here Jessica Estrella the fire marshal is here and she was an integral part of the inspections at the inspection warrant execution and further beyond that and is also intimately aware of the conditions found at the property and the effect it has on public safety they are here to answer any questions as am I of any questions you may have on this issue

Mr. Mayor and members of the council if I could just tag team on Mr. Campon's

remarks

part of the approach is obviously it's a tax

recovery approach part of that has to do with what is the best

means at our disposal in order to try to shut down illegal activity at this particular property and what we call that internally is the Capone approach toward trying to get enforcement and that refers back to Al Capone in Chicago which he was eventually brought down through taxes and not through other means. So based upon what code enforcement has seen and you've seen from the pictures from executed inspection warrants from the courts it's obvious that there are things going on at this particular property and since the property owner seems to be uncooperative with voluntary compliance the leverage that the city has is to try to understand more about the financial arrangements as Mr. Campon explained it so as Mr. Campon indicated

he's happy to answer any questions as am I thank you any questions from council yes Mr. Mayor

Again, thank you for that presentation.

So currently, right now, so it's still operating then as an illegal hotel, meaning that it's overcrowded and their people's lives are probably at jeopardy right now?

Councilmember Lo, yes. While some of the issues such as overloading electrical systems and having fire extinguishers and smoke detectors have been remedied, clearly there's still overcrowding happening in quite a number of units, many of the units. We don't know exactly how many without another inspection warrant, but multiple units are still engaging in this. And we have statements as recently as just last week that the $15 night arrangement is still happening to this day.

I see. And the owner of this property, does this person live in the city or somewhere close by?

Lives in the San Gabriel Valley area and is a fairly well-known manager of multifamily properties such as this.

Meaning that it could be happening elsewhere as well?

Well, we know that the general concept of this $15 a night is happening in many locations throughout the city, both in multifamily units and in single family homes. And I'm informed that at this point, there are more of these sort of boarding house, hotel investigations going on at this point, far more at this point than there were all of last year. So this is a real issue. Whether this particular owner is engaging in this behavior with other properties, I cannot comment on that. I don't know.

I see. Okay. And then my next question, and again, anyone can answer, but, you know, a few council meetings ago, we had someone from the county discussing, you know, work with us to possibly open a migrant center.

And I'm just curious, again, you know, from what I can conclude from the situation is that I think someone is exploiting people who are probably newly arrivals or maybe in the margins.

And I'm wondering, is there also an effort to make sure that if there are any social support or social services that these resources are at least made known to these residents?

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, definitely understood we were concerned about each individual that is staying in these types of circumstances. Code Compliance has put together a resource sheet, and they do work with nonprofit agencies to bring in resources to make sure that they're understanding that there might be other opportunities for them to seek shelter, food, work opportunities through these nonprofit groups. They also help us with translation services. So definitely we've been using those nonprofits to make sure that we are gaining the trust of the individuals that are living on site as well. the nonprofit groups are helpful for us and been able to provide different resources. In addition, we are working back with L.A. County, sharing what we're seeing in the city more recently, and the county is also offering to provide additional services. We're working with them to see what kind of resources they can provide, but definitely the conversation continues.

We understand that dealing with the property is one issue.

Dealing with the property owner is an issue. But ensuring that these people have a place to go is also important. And we don't want to have them living on the streets. We understand that we need to create those connections for them. So definitely our code compliance division is very aware to make sure that we bring resources with us when we're doing these inspections.

Thank you for that update.

And maybe this is already touched upon in your presentation, but is this the first time we're hearing about this, or has this building in the past been subject of similar concerns or complaints?

um councilmember low i i can say that as far as understanding the scope of uh how the property

is being used um that probably did not really occur until the complaint was first made last may

though the issue of enforcing boarding homes in both single-family homes and multi-family

residences is something that has been well known to code compliance for years.

And on a classic complaint, were these coming from people living in that building?

Or I'm just curious. Yeah, I'm just curious.

The original complaint came from an individual who was paying $15 a night and was, shall

we say, taken back by the horrendous conditions and reported it to the city.

I see. All right, thank you.

I have a question, Mr. Campton. So what you're asking from us today is to approve legislative subpoenas so that you can do more fact gathering?

Is that what we're tasked with today?

Yes. The legislative subpoenas, effectively, logistically how it works is we would create a legislative subpoena.

we'd present it to the mayor who would review it and if appropriate and agree to it would sign it

which authorizes effectively through the statutory authority as approved by the resolution

probably me would then be able to question individuals under oath with a court reporter there to take down all the testimony as part of the evidence

gathering process.

And just to tag team on Mr.

Campin's observation,

this is a fact gathering phase. Any decision to move forward with a civil lawsuit would be up to the city

council.

We'd bring back that back for a city council decision based upon the facts

that were gathered.

Part of the strategy, though, is to help encourage voluntary compliance and voluntary disgorgement of the TOTs that are owed to the city. And as Mr. Campin indicated as part of his presentation, we had already made an offer to reduce the amount of TOTs that we calculated from $1.3 million to $300,000. And that we received the kind thanks but no thanks response to.

Okay. And then I guess my question is also, I'm just thinking in my head, it seems like there's like multiple things happening here. And so I guess my biggest concern to echo Council Member Lo's comment is just the safety of the people living here. And when we proceed, whether it's with legislative subpoenas and whatever comes after that, whether they become compliant or not, I'm just worried about what might potentially happen to the people that are currently living in those buildings, whether they will have the support systems in place to ensure that they don't become homeless or are just plainly transferred to a different hotel or boarding home within the city or within the San Gabriel Valley. I guess what I'm trying to say is to whatever capacity that we can through the legislative subpoenas and through our authority as a city to ensure that we are providing the proper supports for the people who are living within these hotels but also ensuring that we're shutting down as many of these types of places

I'm very shocked by

a lot of the pictures that I saw

So Mr. Campin during his presentation

mentioned the NICE team

the NICE team was established by separate City Council resolution several years ago and provides all the delegation of authority necessary for the city manager to engage in various contracting requirements and what have you to allow for the relocation of

anybody that would be displaced the code compliance professionals are here to

answer any questions with regard to immediate concerns on health and safety and I think that based upon my understanding of the current situation

as of tonight, for example, that they're in substantial compliance,

well, they're in tolerable compliance, let's put it that way,

of minimum health and safety requirements with regard to people that are residing there. But we're trying to help improve that situation and also make sure that it does not go back to the situation

that the photos depicted from 2023.

Well, I, for one, support the legislative subpoenas and moving forward with this. because this also borders on just human rights issues, as we saw. So whatever expediency we need to move forward with this, I'm all in favor of that.

I think this is a no-brainer that we should move forward with the legislative Supreme because we don't want to encourage that from happening.

But at the same time, I agree with, echo with the two council members

that think about the homeless, potential homeless issue.

Hopefully we will have people supporting those people. Thank you. I agree with my council members.

Number one, this is illegal activity. So behind the surface here, there's probably some exploitation,

trafficking, illegal trafficking of people, which we haven't scratched the surface of. which we may find out, and then the health and safety issue, you just think about just one plug, one spark, and that whole building's going down. And it's not the 26 units, typically three per unit, if it's one or two bedroom, 75 members. You don't want to see any lives lost, but you're looking at potentially 250 people there.

so and

from what we gathered

doors blocked access ways

closed off, stairways blocked off to prevent people from

escaping or better utilizing

what their illegal activity is I have no toleration for this

Thank you for

the report, I believe the written report and the backup documents were even more detailed with additional findings. And I think there were clear instances

of actual exploitation of the residents,

documented in terms of people being locked and not able to exit rooms and makeshift toilets in portions part of the property as well and just issues that stem from overcrowding. but also lack of proper management of the property and the ownership allowing the decline of the physical property to occur. All of these, I mean, in full agreement, we should move ahead on these legislative subpoenas, and I would fully support that and vote for that. Whatever else we can do to, well, one, my question is, I know we've made these notices, and obviously the ownership group and Kurt, the managing director, whatever, is aware of our actions on this. It sounded like he was there when we executed the inspection warrant. And it's been well aware of the conditions at this site for years at least. It troubles me to know that we know from what we can see from outside some of these facilities is that they're really just hiding the conditions better, not actually resolving any of the underlying issues. So whatever else we need to do as we gather additional facts as we execute these subpoenas and continue kind of this investigation, whatever else we can do to make sure that we're bringing the whole facility in line and addressing these unsafe conditions in other parts of the city, knowing that we want to balance not exacerbating the homelessness issue and concerns in our own community, but knowing that we have to balance that with making sure all of our residents are living in safe living conditions. What else we can do that's within our power and authority and the resources that are available for the city, but also I think to city staff's point earlier around continuing to amplify our call for the county to bring in resources and to accelerate and make sure that there's a greater sense of urgency around making sure resources are deployed here to the city and to the region to address this growing issue.

I think we caught a break,

if there is any silver lining to the pandemic, of the borders being shut down. And I think we saw the issue of residential

kind of boarding motels Lor, I think,

during the pandemic.

And I think as things have kind of come back and the economy in China has gotten tougher

in the last year or so,

we're seeing a spike in these kind of migrants and folks that are coming in and taking advantage of,

we're trying to take advantage

and leverage these kind of situations. and we are seeing people in those dire economic situations

being exploited already, right,

just in the living conditions at this one facility that we know about. And if this is what we know about here, I think it's safe to assume it's happening a lot more than we know. And so what else we can do to address the other underlying concerns around this and this growing problem that I think is starting to get a little bit more attention as some of these problems start to spill out

into the immediate neighborhood,

and there's, I think, growing awareness, particularly in Chinese media, Chinese language media, around some of these concerns

continuing to grow in the community.

I think we need to address this with greater urgency and find and bring in our regional partners and making sure we're resourcing this in the proper way before it gets even worse, and how do we address this at a root cost level as well. so with that I think

I think there's a motion

I don't know if someone has made one yet

wait did somebody make a motion

I'll second that then

alright there's a motion and a second

any further discussion on the legislative subpoenas if not please vote

approved unanimously

thank you thank you

Look forward to, or if you already have my signature for this purpose, let me know. And then please report back to council on immediate next steps. And I don't know if there are any representatives to the ownership group here.

I don't think so.

But I would hope that they would address these concerns with urgency as well. And I hope that we'll see some action on their end soon.

Mr. Mayor, thank you.

and safe drive back to San Diego.

The traffic's not too heavy at this point of night.

That's a $15 for bed.

Not at that one, though.

We'll move on to, I believe, consent calendar.