Special City Council Mtg.: Fiscal Year 2024-25 Budget Meeting — May 22, 2024

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Thank you.

All right, good evening.

Thanks everyone for recording in progress.

All right. Welcome to our special council meeting.

We will start the meeting with, do we have a flag?

Okay. They're already there.

All right.

If you can join me in rising and we'll do the Pledge of Allegiance.

Right hand over your heart. Ready, begin.

I pledge allegiance to the Father 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.

All right. We'll start off also with our land acknowledgement.

We'd like to acknowledge that the land we inhabit today was once known as Tovangaar, the home of the Gabriolino Tongva people. We show our respect to the Gabriolino Tongva people as well as all indigenous people, past, present, and future, and honor their labor as original caretakers of this land. Commit to uplifting the Gabriolino Tongva people. invite you to acknowledge the history and join us in caring for this land. With that said, we'll go to the

city clerk for the roll call. Council Member Sanchez? Here.

Council Member Lo? Here. Council Member U? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Go? Mayor Wong?

Here. Thank you.

We'll move into agenda items.

Are there any changes to agenda items?

No? No changes. Nothing from the council.

So we'll start with public communication if there's any public comment.

None for oral.

All right.

We will move to staff communications then.

Update from Public Works Department.

Moving fast, Sean.

All right. Good evening, Honorable Mayor, Mayor of Pro Temp and City Council. Just a quick reminder that we have our open house tomorrow for Public Works. Again, you know, Public Works Week is this week, and we're just celebrating the achievements that Public Works has accomplished and showing what each of our divisions do. So, again, just inviting the public and all of you to attend our open house tomorrow

at our Public Works yard.

And, again, looking forward to just engaging with the public and providing comments and feedback to all the things we're accomplishing. With that, I'll take any questions.

Thank you, Sean. Any questions, comments from Council? If not, we're all looking forward to it. Hope to see the community there as well. Is there, there is going to be, you're grilling hot dogs?

Yes, hot dogs and hamburgers. Yes, that will be there.

Perfect. All right. Thank you.

All right. We'll move on to Recreation and Community Services.

Good evening to all. Robert Geary, Director of Recreation and Community Services.

A few quick slides from Recreation.

just really quickly want to thank everyone and remind everyone that the Highlands Playground is now open for play we've now successfully opened seven playgrounds in the last five months so want to invite everyone to visit all of the seven new playgrounds in the city of Monterey Park next slide please I also want to thank everyone that came out to the annual play days celebration massive crowds very successful all of our food dinners did our food vendors did tremendous This carnival was well attended, and all of the entertainment was well enjoyed.

See a few photos there, which I think both of those photos are from our AAPI Heritage Day.

That was the new addition to this year's event, and we had a really nice crowd during those performances.

Next slide, please.

I then wanted to remind everyone about the upcoming events. This next Monday, we have our Memorial Day ceremony. That's happening Monday, May 27th at 10 a.m., and that will be held at the American Legion post 397. Following the ceremony, there will be a flag retirement ceremony. So if you have an old tattered flag that you would like to be retired properly, the American Legion will be assisting with flag retirement. And then they will also have a complimentary lunch following the ceremony. So invite everyone to come out and remember those fallen soldiers on this Memorial Day.

also, so if you can go back please also want to remind everyone that the

4th annual San Gabriel Pride

this is the award winning San Gabriel

Pride event, is happening on Saturday June 1st, it starts at March Keppel with a march and then

continues with a

celebration festival at Barnes Park

we're going to have music resource booths, some

entertainment and some food

and so just inviting everyone to come out celebrate and support the LGBTQ plus community.

So I'm available for any questions.

All right. Thank you, Robert. Any questions, comments?

No questions, but thank you, Robert, and your staff for the great job with the play dates. I was able to go with my daughters and had a lot of fun, had play dates there, but it was very well attended. And of course, the ceremonies were all great. So thank you so much for all the effort that was put into doing this. And we're looking forward to the upcoming events.

Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Mayor? Yes. You know, Robert, I actually just want to share that I think there's been a lot of interest and attention because of the grand opening of the new playgrounds. And I've actually received some comments from people in the community who actually grew up in the area and said, oh, my goodness, it's like I have memories of, you know, playing at, well, in this case, playing in the Highlands area and to see a new playground come up. And I think that's probably something we hear from a lot of people. And I know that, you know, last weekend, some of us went to the Pony League clothing at Garvey Ranch Park. I mean, it's like there was probably, like, while the older kids are playing softball, I think the younger kids were over at the playground, the spaceport. And so it was definitely, it felt like it went to a theme park that weekend.

Very exciting stuff, yes, absolutely. Thank you. All right.

I'll add my appreciation for the Recreation Community Services Program for all the events.

Play Days was great.

It was great to integrate an AAPI Heritage celebration into some of the bands and performances on Sunday.

Really appreciate that. Absolutely.

And can you detail real quick on how the beer garden experience went, if you have any?

So no incidents.

I can actually report that speaking with staff that were monitoring the entry exit,

We didn't even have anyone try to exit the area with a drink.

I did speak with, I don't know the numbers as far as the Alhambra Educational Foundation, how much they were able to raise yet. I know they have a meeting coming up that I'm going to be attending. But speaking with their president, Steve Perry, they were very happy with how everything went

and would be interested in partnering in the future events.

Great. Good to hear it went off really well. Yeah, so any no question all right. Thank you. Thank you forward to the events that come especially pride month the pride margin festival All right, if there's nothing else we will move into consent calendar are there any items to move or a motion Well, there's one speaker for consent

Go ahead It's me hold on

I took my speaker card. Sorry, Cindy. Good evening, neighbors. This is Misha.

I am speaking as a resident on item 3C, forming a committee for the Saturn Park development.

What I wanted to say is,

while I understand the city's need for redevelopment in that area, I want to remind the council and staff there is a great deal of distrust between this particular community and the city. after the former city council and planning commission attempted to prove illegal development as a favor to a political campaign donor, which each and every one of you has benefited from

in some form of either campaign monies or political favors that has trickled down to each of you.

So please be mindful of this.

Involving community members in this committee is a good start.

However, I recommend at minimum we consider three members for the committee from the community

instead of the two that was proposed.

Also, as that in part sits directly behind my property,

I would like to be considered for this committee as well. But better yet, perhaps rather than allowing the council and our city management to select the community member participants, perhaps allow the community itself

to select who they want to represent them.

This will help minimize the perception that the members selected are controlled by the council

who appointed them,

as in the case with our commission members. Your careful consideration of my request

will be a true indicator of the city's real intentions

So I hope these intentions are good. Thank you. That's it

Thank you no other speakers all right any items to pull from consent

I'm gonna pull three C just for a very quick conversation You know suggestion on change, but any other items Not is there a motion for the remaining items to be moved? I'll move

Second.

Any further comment? If not, let's vote.

All right. Approved unanimously. Sorry.

Thank you.

Item 3C, unless other council members want the staff report, I think we can skip that. I just, for this, one to, I think, the commenter's point, I believe the way that it's been recommended is for the mayor, the pro tem, who serves the council district where Saturn Park is, and the city manager suggested to start this advisory kind of committee. And then they would appoint members of the public and the community to join them on this committee. And correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, Inez or Diana. And then the plan would be for that committee to essentially host public meetings and community meetings in that area to have a discussion About the future of Saturn Park and what it should look like and what the community wants to see there. So hopefully that Addresses some of those concerns my suggestion with this if the council is okay with this is to Have just some flexibility in terms of the number I know this staff report and the recommendation is for seven specifically seven total members. I think if we can just

have some

flexibility in terms of the number of appointees, I guess. I just don't know. I'd like to leave it to the initial kind of committee,

I guess, to decide if that

number should be a little bit bigger or a little smaller or something else to be

manageable. I mean, I think that's immutable.

I mean, especially given it's a sensitive topic or can be a sensitive topic, so I think

that the flexibility is important.

Mr. Mayor, if I may

just for clarification, the staff report did indicate that it would be four community members it would be each person each mayor, mayor pro tem appointing two community members for a total of four plus the two elected officials

two community members for a total of four and then plus the two elected officials plus the assistant city

! But definitely agree if council chooses to choose a different number that's fine.

! I think we can leave, I don't know, I'll look to Carl on this, but if we can leave the number open, ! In terms of the initial, I'm okay with the initial three there suggested right the mayor, ! The mayor pro tem and the assistant city manager to begin and then leave it up to those three to determine the number and appointing the other members, the community members. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, there's no magic formula. I think the g-pack was 13.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, there's no magic formula. I think the GPAC was 13. So however you want to do it, the only suggestion is that it be an odd number.

Yeah, for voting. All right.

So with that, it sounds like we're okay with leaving the number open-ended for the initial committee to determine. And then I assume we pass this tonight. I will schedule a meeting of the initial three to begin forming whatever this is going to be going forward with urgency. If that's the case, is there a motion on that?

Move. I'll second.

Move and second. Any further discussion?

Hearing none, we'll call for the vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

All right, moving on to new business, item 5A, discussion and direction regarding retail theft legislation. I don't know if we want to just start discussion or if we want to do a quick summary of this.

You know, I just want to thank Citi for bringing this forward because I think all of us probably have, through the course of our, either through our own community outreach or at community events or just communication with residents, you know, retail theft is a big concern. And I think it's important, especially with legislation that's being put forward with the hope of empowering local communities and local law enforcement that we also add our voice. In fact, at least in the Assembly, the retail theft package, which consists of seven bills, I think most of them have passed out of committee or the assembly, and I know there's been a commitment by the legislature to get these bills passed and hopefully signed by the governor, again, with the intent that it would hopefully provide resources to communities.

Do we want the staff report?

Um, I'm not necessarily I think most of us read it, but it would be useful if we can get a maybe a

Quick one very quick. I know we don't want your work to go to waste

Certainly as has been noted the the California legislature has recently introduced several retail theft measures

That are really intended to strengthen public safety protect shoppers and businesses and improve the quality of life throughout the state by addressing the the increase in recent

retail theft. The League of California Cities, of which were a member, recently requested that

member cities consider supporting some of these measures. Council may direct staff to send letters

of support for some or all of the measures, or may direct staff to send a letter to our

legislators asking them to support these in the legislature. We've given you quite a number of bills to consider here. I think there's probably about 20 or 30 that were supported by the League of California Cities, and so we're just looking for some direction on which ones you would like to support.

Thank you. I'll just start this off with a suggestion and we can hash this out among the council if that's okay. It's a lot of bills, and I know there's some that I think I understand a little better than others, but there are definitely bills in here that I don't understand the full context of and the potential kind of pros and cons and consequences of all of them. My suggestion would be, I think, to Councilor Lo's point, and I think the reason for bringing this to the council for potential action is that we do, as a city and council, want to take retail theft seriously and address that, but not having, I think, the capacity right now to weigh the pros and cons of each of these bills. I think maybe we can have and direct staff to draft a more broad letter to our legislative delegation Right our state senator state or something member as they parse through these bills and have to vote on these in the coming weeks to just reiterate kind of our our general points around retail theft and right calling for them to look at these bills and to consider these bills with urgency and seriousness, but balancing the need for public safety and addressing retail theft with some of the criminal justice reforms and other issues that we should be weighing as well,

not just locking everybody up.

And with those broad pencils in mind, encouraging them to weigh all of those things as they approach how they vote on all of these bills. And if that's something we want to do, I think that's something we can direct staff to draft a letter and send out to our legislative delegation directly as opposed to taking specific actions on each of these bills in support or opposition or neutral. And then maybe we can task our legislative or grant writing legislative consultant to at least track these bills and report back at future council meeting around how the bills are faring in terms of where they're passing or not and all that stuff

would track bills for us anyway.

I'd be fine with that. I would just add that there is a lot

of legislation

going through and I think probably what I would also direct is that

especially the bill that would be most impactful

to our law enforcement as well as our local retailers, I think those are ones probably we should be looking at as supporting.

Are there Go ahead.

Mr. Mayor, I completely agree.

But to that effect, I also think that as a city council, we need to start looking at ways that we can support our police officers within our own jurisdiction and also a lot of our businesses who are directly impacted by retail theft. And I wanted to ask the chief if he's willing to just share some feedback with us if he might help us understand this a little bit better. I know that a lot of businesses within Monterey Park and throughout the state are being directly impacted by retail theft. I had the opportunity to speak to the manager at the Ralphs on the north side of Monterey Park, and she shared that they have constantly people stealing food coming in. And I don't know if there's a way, and I know, City Manager, I spoke to you about this earlier, to be able to quantify in some way, shape, or form how much retail is being lost within our own municipality and what other ways perhaps the chief might know that other cities are dealing with this to be able to support small business but also be able to support police because we sometimes can't wait for legislation to pass in the state, And we're not sure what might pass, but regardless of what passes or doesn't pass, we want to make sure that we're supporting local business. Chief, do you know, are you aware of any ways we could support you or local businesses?

We're lucky in the city of Monterey Park that we do receive a lot of support from council, from the rest of the city and from our retail partners.

I pulled statistics for retail thefts, grand thefts, petty thefts, shoplifting, and commercial burglaries for the times just before COVID hit until present.

We show that we have quite a few prosecutions. We don't have a lot of DA rejects, so people that get arrested are being prosecuted. The numbers are pretty even in that during the end of the pandemic with shoplifting, it was relatively low, but it goes up and down depending on the season. These, there's so many points in these new legislative proposals. They want to roll back a lot of the petty theft increases that occurred over the last several years. In other words, petty theft is $900 or less. They want to roll that back to under $400 again to make it what it was prior to that. really it's a partnership between us the district attorney and these retail outlets we will still continue to arrest and prosecute everybody that the business wants to press charges on and our officers are very good and we have a really good outreach to these different retailers and it really for the larger ones it comes down to what their corporate leaders want them to do. A lot of the larger stores are, they've had enough, to put it bluntly. They've had enough of petty theft. They've had enough of people walking in and stealing things, and now they're prosecuting and they're pressing charges. We assist them with that by making the arrest, booking the person. We end up having to release them on a citation almost immediately, but they then are in the system. What comes of them later, it's really hard to say. If it's their first offense or it's a small amount, most of the times the DA will not file charges. And that's what some of this legislation we hope will change. We're going to look at all of these new sections because some of them affect how railroad departments, you know, do their prosecution. It doesn't really affect us here. There's so many. The California League of Cities came to the Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Association just recently and made presentations about these. LA County Chiefs is going to look at the legislation also and support the ones that really affect local law enforcement. So those ideas will be coming shortly, and I'll be able to share those with council as they come out. But we're in the middle of assessing all of these sections right now to give you a better understanding of which ones will affect the city, our city.

Thank you, Chief.

So what is the pleasure of the council? I think taking a position specific on each of these bills is a little much to ask for us at this point. I think a broad-based kind of letter emphasizing some of the points that we've been talking about in terms of the need and urgency for the legislature to address retail theft and to make resources available for cities like us to be able to address the growing concern in our community would be some of the points we would want to hit, and then urging our legislators to weigh the need to address this with the need for continuing to be humane and continuing to make sure that we keep in mind criminal justice reforms that we all want to see continue to not roll back completely everything that we've been working to do to address criminal justice reform in our communities. If that's clear enough for staff, if that's the direction we want to go in, I think we can do that. But if we want to take position on specific bills, I think we should discuss each of these bills,

those are the bills that we want to.

I would just make the suggestion that we'll just say generically yes to supporting these bills, and then if something comes back that's different, we'll have additional report, and then we'll be flexible at that point in time.

Just to be clear, not supporting these bills, but supporting the intent of many of these bills.

I'd be fine with that.

Again, I think probably to emphasize that, yeah, we are supporting legislation that actually does address retail theft, I mean, I know there are some bills that would increase felonies, and I suppose, as opposed to going through each bill, but I think generally supporting legislation that addresses the impact of theft on our local retailers, as well as the impact to also their safety, too, because I think some of this legislation also is addressing the impact of, I mean, not just the material economic impact, but also, you know, the impact of retail theft on employees who work in somebody's retail. I think there's also been a focus on that impact. And I think that's important to also address those who work in these places who themselves. So, again, it's not just economic damage, but it's also, you know, workplace hazards that I think we should be aware of as well.

I think that's easily integratable into the letter. if that's so if the this broader letter around the ideas and the discussion we're having now without taking a specific position on these bills is what we want to do if there's a motion for that i think we can entertain it sound like been motioned is there a second i'll second any

further discussion is that clear enough for sure i think i think i understand we'll draft a letter

that's balancing criminal justice reform concerns with needs of community and business members, we'll send that to our state legislators.

We'll send it to you first for review

and make sure that that meets your approval.

Perfect. All right.

Motion and a second.

Is there any further discussion? If not, we'll call the vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you. All right.

Moving on to our final item. Oh, there's a speaker for the final item, 5B.

One speaker. That's me.

I'll be right back.

I took it again. All right. Good evening. It's Michelle again.

I'm speaking as a resident.

Just another request.

Again, I'd like to request an update on the Grandview Project expenses and reimbursements.

I'd like to...

I would like to know where or if staff during this presentation can point out where exactly in the budget were these expenses reallocated. And if council could also ask the city attorney to provide us an update on the collection of those funds, the reimbursement of those funds from that project.

Thank you.

Very quickly to address that I think that's maybe something staff can follow up with the speaker on directly I think some of those questions can be answered

No other speakers

All right, so let's get started then. We'll hand it off to Inez or Martha to start off the presentation on our budget

Proposed budget for the next budget

Good evening mayor mayor pro tem council members Martha Garcia finance director

Today's presentation is the proposed fiscal year 24-25 citywide budget.

Laura Burgeon sitting next to me, our finance manager, and I will be doing the presentation.

We will present the summary slides first and stop for questions.

Afterwards, we will present all of the departments and leave time at the end for questions.

The published proposed budget is missing pages D3 to D6.

There are some hard copies in the back for the public if they wish to see what those are. But we are missing those three, those pages from the published budget.

Next slide, please.

For the overview of today's presentation, we will first discuss our budget background.

We will then discuss city financial plan, staffing changes. Next, we'll move on to general fund revenues and expenditures and reserves. We will then move on to new unfunded accrued liability from CalPERS, our debt service.

Then we'll move on. We'll stop at that point.

And then we'll move on to department presentations and capital improvement projects. And then at the end, we'll have more questions.

We'll be open for more questions.

The proposed city's budget for fiscal year 24-25 is $176 million, of which $65.7 million is from the general fund, and $860,000 is from ARPA. We have ran out of ARPA funds. They were one-time funds. We will be using the $860,000 for part-time salaries in this next budget.

And then once that is used up, we have used up all of our ARPA funds.

Next slide, please.

The slide you see in front of you is for the citywide financial plan. It's our proposed budget.

It's $176 million. It's about $3 million more than previous year. The general fund includes 37.

It's the biggest chunk of our budget.

It's 37.3% of our budget at $65.7 million.

And the next one that's high is our water, which is $39.8 million. And that includes revenue that we've received from our debt service, from our water revenue bond.

It also includes $5 million from the EPA settlement and our state department of toxin substances control.

And in reimbursements. The state reimburses for, we're expecting reimbursements of $5 million.

So the $39,000, $39 million, it includes our revenues have increased from Prop 218.

It's $14.4 million of water revenue bonds and $5 million from state reimbursements.

This next slide just shows you a pie chart of how the expenses are broken up.

As you'll see, the biggest chunk of our expenses are paid by general fund. The next chunk will be from our water funds and then so forth.

Martha, really quick, sorry for the going back two slides for the citywide financial plan. The amount for refuse, does that take into account our expected? Because we haven't done the 218 process yet, so I don't know.

So what we had a long conversations with our city manager and departments.

What we've done in this fiscal year, for next fiscal year, we're leaving at status quo.

and what we're going to do is once everything has settled,

we will ensure that we will come back to council and change that budget.

Right now it's status quo, making assumptions that nothing's going to change.

Okay.

Very likely.

Well, it's going to change, but we're going to come back and correct that.

Okay. Thank you. The next slide includes all our proposed staffing changes for fiscal year 24-25,

which is very minimal. we are going to

we are recommending reallocating

two firefighters two firefighter paramedics

we are also recommending hiring a GIS analyst

while it's going to

be housed in public works

it's going to serve city wide for all the departments this position will help all the departments

with their GIS system

and the third department

recreation and community services

is requesting a reallocation of one janitor position to a recreation specialist.

The total cost to the budget is $161,000 for next fiscal year.

Next slide.

So now we're going to move on to general fund revenues.

So our general fund revenues are anticipated to increase by about $2.7 million in fiscal year 2024-2025.

uh the this the 2425 budget includes the anticipated tot from the new holiday inn

it also includes about 8.7 million from measure mp we are anticipating to receive the same 8.7

million in this fiscal year 23 24 as of now we've we've received close to 7 million and we're

expecting three more payments. Our property and sales tax continue to be our highest generating general fund revenue.

Next slide.

Next is our general fund expenditures. Our general fund expenditures

have changed to about $5.9 million from the proposed $65.7 for fiscal year 24-25. Some of the bigger changes will be in police, you'll see that there's a difference of general fund of $3.2 million. And that includes IT services. IT services have increased by about $800,000 for the general fund. Salary and benefits increased by about $1.4 million. And keep in mind that in 23 and 24, we have quite a bit of ARPA money in there, about $5 million, whereas in 2024-25 we only have $860,000. We have no more ARPA money subsidizing our general fund.

In FHIR, it's about $1 million difference,

and that includes about half a million in salary and benefits,

and the other half a million is related to the increased costs in services and supplies.

recreation is about went up about half a million and that means that's really

all that it is is that in fiscal year 23 24 we had ARPA money for all their part-timers and now in 24 25 we only have ARPA money for half the year and the other half is going to be paid with general funds so that's how that why the general fund in the recreation increased so much or increased by half a million for admin general admin which includes city clerks city attorneys city managers finance HR we did it did increase about 700,000 and that includes the 250,000 for election election for our November elections and about half a million for services and supplies is what went up in our in our budget. The cost of services implies has gone up quite a bit.

I just want to remind everybody that it has increased because of our ARPA,

and we no longer have ARPA supplementing our general fund, except for the $860,000 that we have. Next slide, please.

So this is the general fund reserves summarized.

The full detail is in the budget book.

So we are anticipating closing this fiscal year with a surplus of $3.6 million.

And I expect to bring this back to council sometime in September or when we're about to close year-end

because we're going to recommend that if we do have that type of surplus,

we're going to recommend moving $2 million into our catastrophic.

And it will require a council vote to be able to do that.

again a reminder that we have run out of ARPA funds and so the the years to follow we are 100 percent using general fund we're no longer having funding to supplement it so that's why your surplus has dwindled down to the Lor amounts in do I want to say again our revenues include the

holiday inn includes the measure mp and a small conservative increase every year of other

revenues. Our expenditures includes

small increases including in most of the line

items anywhere from 1 to 3% increases in each line

item for cost of living raises or for

increment raises for cost for services and supplies as they

increase. So this is what we're looking at for future years if we were to pretty much stay status quo with what I've explained

tonight. The next slide is hopefully I can explain it well. So the first table indicates the required

normal payment the city must make towards employee retirement plans and the required amount to be

paid to the city for the new UAL. Percentages will drop in the future years as more PEPRA employees

are hired unless classic employees are on payroll so as you see in this uh table the top table the percentages are dropping and uh that's what the city must pay for normal payments for uh

our employees and eventually we're expected to continue to drop and pay less as more pepra

employees come on board and and uh classic employees retire the bottom table shows how the UAL is calculated by CalPERS. So I pulled this from CalPERS from their evaluation report so that I can explain it as to how we ended up with another $23 million in our UAL at

the end of June 22. So the injury age accrued liability. That means it's the earliest age

at which plan members begin to accrue benefits under a defined benefit pension plan

to the time they stop collecting. So that's the first line item.

It's when they enter the plan and when they stop collecting. The second line item is market value of assets.

And the market value of assets is the price of an asset at the marketplace

based on the prices buyers are willing to pay

and what the sellers are willing to accept. And that's what makes up our UAL of $23 million at the end of 2023.

So what happens is CalPERS is three years behind.

They do their analysis from information from three years prior.

So this analysis is for fiscal year 24-25,

but their analysis is based on a point in time,

which is in this case June 30, 2022.

So again, CalPERS used. So then we are anticipating to,

we do have a city policy for unfunded pension. We do have an unfunded pension policy.

We do have, and we do plan to use it. In this case, we are required per our policy

to pay the $23 million in a period of 15 years. So we're going to work on making sure

that we pay that $23 million in a period of 15 years.

Also, what I wanted to make note, it's very noteworthy,

is that our funded ratio, which is what we've paid off, is over 90%.

For the safety, we've paid off 95% of our pension obligation,

and for miscellaneous, we've paid off 93.87.

Another thing I want to say is that this is a very fluid, that UAL is very fluid.

It changes based on the market value. So I'm very cautiously optimistic that when they close for June 30, 2023, and they bring our numbers for 25, 26, I'm really hoping and cautiously optimistic that there will be a credit

and that 23 million hopefully will drop.

Next slide, please.

Before we move on from that one on the PERS, so I mean the growing unfunded liability is based on essentially CalPERS returns?

Yes, it's in the market.

It's the market value, yes.

It's not our book value.

Because they're not meeting their assumed rate of return, 6.5 or whatever.

We're at 6.8 right now, yes.

And they're?

6.8 right now yes and they're expecting to go continue to go down until

! They're not know I was reading up on some of their information they had a good year so ! I'm hoping that they give us a credit because they do give credit so I'm hoping that they ! this next year when I come back that 23 will be much Lor

! Crossing fingers yeah!

! We did the right thing!

! Issuing the bond was the right thing to do!

! But this is a very fluid amount a number that is going to keep going up and down depending

is going to keep going up and down depending on the market.

Thank you. Mr. Mayor, quick question.

Again, thank you for really presenting this so succinctly and also explaining it very well to us. Out of curiosity, I know you may not necessarily do comparisons, but given that our funded ratio is above 90%, how do you think we compare it to our neighboring cities?

I don't have that information,

but I'll do some research of our other cities and then I'll give it to our city manager to provide to our city council.

Thank you.

Okay, next slide.

So this is our debt service for fiscal year 24-25.

Pretty much our debts are status quo, with the exception that we now have a water revenue payment of $1.2 million

for next fiscal year.

And we also have $400,000 that we're expecting to start paying FOR OUR $4 MILLION LOAN THAT WE RECEIVE FROM SAN GABRIEL VALLEY MUNICIPAL WATER DISTRICT. THOSE TWO ARE ADDED IN NEXT FISCAL YEAR. WE ALSO WANTED TO POINT OUT THAT WE HAVE PAID OFF OUR FIRE LADDER ENGINE TRUCK SO WE'VE PAID IT OFF IN THIS FISCAL YEAR SO THAT'S WE FULLY OWN IN 100% AND WE NO LONGER HAVE ANY MORE PAYMENTS ON IT.

NEXT SLIDE. CAN YOU REMIND ME HOW MUCH WE WENT OUT FOR THE WATER

bond? It's $20.6 million.

So next fiscal year we're only programming 14 of that?

14.4.

And then we would plan to execute the rest of that

following future fiscal years.

Okay. And I'm done with the summary if you have any questions.

Are we...

Any questions on the summary? If not, let's keep going.

Good evening, Council Mayor and Council. Laura Bojan, Finance Manager. I will start off the departmental presentations with City Council. For fiscal year 2425, the proposed budget for the City Council Department is $223,315.

The 23-24 major accomplishments for the City Council is developing a fiscal year 24-25 strategic plan listing prioritized goals and objectives. They adopted a firearm safety ordinances and added new chapters to the Monterey Park Municipal Code to protect the community from violence resulting from firearms.

Lastly, you've worked with the MPK Community Healing Fund to host a gun violence restraining order training.

The City Council Fiscal Year 2425 goals and objectives are to coordinate and implement the 2425 strategic plan goals and objectives.

to establish a committee to recommend and propose a permanent memorial honoring the victims of the January 21st mass shooting incident,

and to spearhead efforts to form a business alliance to support local businesses.

The city manager's budget for fiscal year 2425 is $4.8 million.

The city manager's major accomplishments for 23-24 include coordinated response efforts resulting from the January 21st shooting incident, implemented an online California public records request tracking portal to promote transparency and access to the public and improve efficiency in response time,

and under the Media Production Division, assisted in creating unique and customer service-focused web portals,

collaborated with the MP Green Team to develop messaging to increase awareness and participation in sustainability.

And then for goals and objectives for 24 and 25, it includes implement and execute the City Council Fiscal Year 24-25 strategic plan, coordinate efforts to update citywide mission statement, as well as create vision and values for the organization, develop and execute community outreach programs to educate residents on the upcoming election

and to encourage civic engagement in the democratic process.

Under the media production, increase staffing to enhance and improve public communication

and update the City Council Chamber video projection system.

The City Clerk Department fiscal year 2425 proposed budget is $11,635. The City Treasurer budget is $11,885. And the City Attorney's Office proposed budget is $761,212.

FINANCE DEPARTMENT. FINANCE DEPARTMENT BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 24-25 IS 6.3 MILLION.

FINANCE DEPARTMENT MAJOR COMPLIMENTS INCLUDES RECEIVED AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE FROM GFOA

FOR THE CITY'S 22-23 ANNUAL BUDGET AND RECEIVED ALSO THE GFOA AWARD FOR ACFER for fiscal year ending 21-22. And I would like to take this time to this opportunity to thank Amy Lee,

our city treasurer, for her guidance and support in updating the investment policy.

This is the first year our city has earned the CMTA certificate from our California Municipal Treasury Association.

So thank you, Amy.

And then our other accomplishments include accomplishments.

Include issued water revenue bonds for water infrastructure projects, implemented new utility rates to enhance city water and sewer infrastructure, and completed the transition from bi-monthly to monthly utility billing. Our goals and objectives for next fiscal year include Upgrade and combine the city's online payment system to a single more robust payment platform and promote paperless billing. Review and modernize city revenue sources. Assess cost recovery strategies including a user fee study of the city services. And complete segmentation of network and upgrade all remote connections, all remote connection routers. and complete our phone system upgrade for the city facilities.

The Human Resources and Risk Management Department has a proposed budget of $1.6 million. Their fiscal year 23-24 major accomplishments include completing negotiations with eight associations. They hired 32 full-time and 31 part-time employees and promoted 27 employees. For a fiscal year that should say 24-25, their goals and objectives include preparing for negotiations with memorandum of understanding agreements that expire June 30, 2025. Evaluate the city's employee evaluation form. evaluate third-party administrator for general liability claims,

and evaluate the safety committee.

The community development budget for fiscal year 2425 is $3.6 million rounded up. Community development 2324 major accomplishments include received certification for the city's housing element, launched our city our planned zoning code update, spearheaded the Going Green campaign in adoption of the sustainability plan, technology upgrades to cities permit management software, and launch development of new five-year economic development strategic plan.

Goals for next fiscal year include continue to enhance plan submission

and permit insurance process.

Economic Development Division will promote vitality in the downtown district through a retail development strategic to expand entertainment, dining, retail, and tourism to create a sense of place.

The Police Department proposed budget for fiscal year 24-25 is $32.2 million.

The fiscal year 23-24 major accomplishments include establishing new protocols to ensure the police department is compliant with the reporting requirements outlined in Senate Bill 2. Successfully implemented a seven-member bicycle patrol program and increasing the Animal Services Bureau services to seven days a week.

their fiscal year 24-25 goals and objectives include continuing to research and implement

new technologies that increase organizational efficiency transparency to the public and effectiveness and research and implement innovative approaches to recruit and retain personnel using social media platforms and community outreach emphasizing the recruitment which reflects our unique community dynamics.

My turn.

The fire department's fiscal year 24-25 budget is for $20.9 million. Accomplishments for 23-24 include the hiring of three new firefighters and promoted six fire captains and five fire engineers, received $3.5 million in local and federal grants for the four Fire Station 61 upgrades and demolition rebuild of Fire Station 63, successfully secured funding and ordered two new rescue ambulances to improve emergency response capabilities, and conducted community outreach meetings for the city's local hazard mitigation plan.

Goals for the fire department for next fiscal year include research and apply for grant funding to enhance public safety services and equipment in the community and region.

Digitize fire prevention plans and records management.

Evaluate, update, and train employees on the city's emergency process and procedures, which include emergency operations plan and local hazard mitigation plan.

and continue to educate the community on quality of life issues and code compliance matters.

The Library Department 2425 proposed budget is $3.3 million. The fiscal year 2324 major accomplishments include expanding open hours to six days per week.

They completed story time room renovations and installed the stained glass windows from the original 1929 library, redesigned the library's website for ease of use, and they launched the scan and save digitization station, which allows residents to digitize personal photo documents and VHS tapes.

The fiscal year 24-25 goals and objectives are to work with community partners to enhance career readiness and employment skills.

Coordinate with local businesses to offer library card sign-up events and promote relevant services to understand and hard-to-reach residents.

partners, partner with community organizations to provide programming that meets the evolving

needs of English language learners and to provide targeted programming for new adults, 18 to 30-year-olds.

The fiscal year budget 24-25 for recreation community development is 4.3 million rounded

up.

Their major accomplishments for this fiscal year 23-24 include enhanced park amenities by working with Public Works Department to complete the replacement of seven playgrounds. The United Way awarded a grant to enhance the lobby seating area at the Langley Center and assisted with bridging the gap in resources available to those at risk of becoming unhoused. implemented the Civic Superstar Program at the City Council meetings to increase civic engagement opportunities for the youth, and received the Better Together Award from the California Parks and Recreation Society, District 13, for the positive impact and collaboration effort of the SGV Pride Parade and Festival event.

GOALS AND OBJECTS FOR NEXT FISCAL YEAR INCLUDE RENOVATE THE BARNES PARK GYMNASIUM, REBUILD THREE PICNIC

PAVILIONS AT GARVEY RANCH PARK, DEVELOP A COMPREHENSIVE LIST OF AVAILABLE MENTAL HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES.

The public works department is lengthy and it was split into two slides.

The year 24-25 budget is $49.9 million.

Their 23-24 major accomplishments include replacing 25 HVAC units as part of the city's Phase 1 of the citywide HVAC replacement project.

Replacements include City Hall, Fire Station 1, and the Bruggemeier Library.

Completed street resurfacing and rehabilitation improvements at various locations throughout the city as recommended by the pavement management study.

Start up of the centralized groundwater treatment system, the CGTS, and began production of water to the Monterey Park community.

Fiscal year 2425 goals and objectives include to ensure a successful completion of a new solid waste franchise agreement or agreements.

Initiate a meter reading system for the change out of automated meter reading or AMR to advance metering infrastructure meters.

Development and completion of the Vision Zero Plan using SS4A grant funding.

The non-departmental function accounts for costs that are not generally associated with a specific department.

This program includes general liability, post-employment, and workers' compensation.

The fiscal year 24-25 proposed budget is for $25 million.

Before I head forward, I wanted to go back to the public works budget.

So there's a water fund in we are actually going to come back on the June 18th when we adopt the budget.

We need to increase the cost which was left off on your copies.

There's a $1.2 million cost.

Oh, I'm sorry.

My apologies. That belongs in CIP.

It's in your next page.

Disregard.

So the capital improvement program.

The preliminary budget is 23.1 million.

And it will be increased by 1.5 million for a total of 24.6 million.

So the proposed budget to be presented, Council, on June 18th will include an

additional $1.5 million of CIP expense, bringing the total citywide budget from $175.9 million

to $177.4 million.

So the enterprise capital projects total water projects equals 16.6 million and total sewer

projects equals 3 million.

$3 million. Total street construction capital projects is $1.5 million.

Pavement improvements capital project expenditures to be increased by $1.5 million using road

maintenance rehabilitation SB1 funds. So the total will be $3 million when we bring back the budget on June 18th.

The community capital improvement project subtotal is $2 million.

So our total budget when we bring it back to Council on June 18th will be $177.4 million. We're going to be receiving SB1 revenue of $1.5 million rounded up. And we are going to add it to our capital projects for our streets. So we will be increasing our budget and bringing it to council for a request for adoption with that additional 1.5 SB money Allocated to our budget so that we can spend it on our streets and this concludes our presentation and we're ready for any questions

All right

Anyone sir, no, I mean Should I go through each department or just we're gonna have more detail for each tomorrow?

No, that's it. Yeah.

We left the time for whatever question we have. Yeah. Maybe we can start one department at a time.

Maybe we can start with City Council if there are any comments on that one. Okay. If not.

Wait, so we're going to move it one department at a time or?

Yeah, let's do one department at a time and the department heads can come appropriately.

Okay.

City Council, if there are, I mean, I'll just go through each of these as presented

and the binder we can start with city council if there are okay all right that's fine that's fine

okay if not on if we're good with city council we can move on to the next one

any comments on city council no all right i have questions on the beginning before the department

sure more generic okay um under sales tax i thought i heard 8.7 million received from measure mp

year-to-date? Is that? No, it's $7 million. We've received year-to-date. How much? $7 million. $7 million. Okay.

Thank you. We're still expecting three months, the month of June, and then we do accruals. So our July and August will also be included in this fiscal year. Okay.

That's a good number. Wow. Something we didn't have the year before.

And good timing in terms of the ARPA funds starting to dry up in terms of transitioning over uh martha just higher level um in terms of vacancy staff vacancies we currently have in the year i mean we're i don't think anyone has ever fully staffed ever but i don't generally how are we doing in terms of vacancies i don't know the

number of vacancies but i can tell you at the budget we do budget for all vacancies but uh

our hr director can answer how many vacancies we currently so our approach is to assume we assume

Yeah, we budget for all our positions.

And then I don't know if you know this off the top. I'm just curious from a general perspective. When we do experience vacancies, especially some of the technical vacancies that we do have and have had for a little while now, we have to bring in consultants to still get the work done. Is that generally costing us more than having in terms of going out to consultants and contractors? Or would it be?

Right.

My question is, right, is it more expensive from our budget perspective to have consultants filling these roles as opposed to staff, or are we experiencing any budget savings from some of these vacancies?

If the position is held vacant with no consultant or part-time or somebody coming in, there is salary savings. But if the position is we need somebody to come in because it's such an important position for the city, we normally move money from transfer money from our salaries over to professional services to cover that cost. Under no circumstances that I'm aware of, do we ever go above what we've budgeted for our permanent position?

Okay.

Okay. So my other kind of related question is we're projecting a smallish surplus for this fiscal year. Is any of that attributable to vacancies or how much of that is generally ballpark?

I don't know exactly, but I'll go back and look at our numbers and tell you where I think it's coming from. I do can tell you that, well, one of the things that I've been doing this fiscal year is our ARPA money, as we use it to pay some of our services and supplies that we budget it for. If they are not with SAM.gov, we do because we had a finding last year.

We do swap it out for public safety money.

So that is an allowable expense.

So you might see a drop also because we're subsidizing you with ARPA.

But I'll get more, I'll get you, I'll provide you a better answer, give it to our city manager and let you know.

Thank you.

And let me take a step back and express my appreciation to staff, Martha, and the team for putting this budget together. And I know a lot of work had to go through, had to happen from the departments and the analysts and everyone up to the finance team to package this together for us. and appreciate all the work that went into this and know that we will have questions on some of these departments and the budgets going forward and appreciate that a lot of thought went into this and work from staff to make sure that we presented a balanced budget and I think we're in a special place compared to some of our neighboring jurisdictions in terms of having a balanced budget without requiring cuts and even a relatively small surplus this year at least and looking forward, things look decent. Not great in terms of having a lot of money to do everything we need to do in terms of capital projects that I think we want to see happen in the next few years. So still some work to do there in terms of making sure we can meet those needs

for the community going forward.

But knowing that the City of L.A., the State of California, and other jurisdictions are looking at serious cuts to their budget and financial instability in that sense for us to be able and for the staff to be presenting a well-balanced budget and strong financial and fiscal situation for the city and for the foreseeable future is a huge positive. I appreciate staff, city manager on down, all the work that went into making sure that we're budgeting conservatively and that we're making the best use of our taxpayer and residents' money and that we're doing and getting work done for the community in a financially, economically sustainable way. But back to my question, I think where I was leading also with the vacancies.

Right.

Sounds like the cap for what we would do, what we would spend on consultants to fill the role of some of these vacant positions is the existing budgeted amount.

That's correct.

I would imagine some of these cases, if there's a need both in the budget and as we head into next year, labor negotiations for the next contract for the labor unions, our labor partners here at City Hall. If there need to be adjustments, then I hope that we are, and I think we will be looking at doing another comp survey to help us and support us in these negotiations for pay adjustments

in the next contract.

But if we need to adjust and look at adjusting our budget in our Pay ranges for some of these positions that are harder to fill I would hate for us to get to a position where we're paying having to pay a consultant or someone a contractor to come in to fill a position That's going to cost us more over time

than to

Just adjust the pay range for some of these second highly technical hard to find and fill positions And so if we can make sure that I'm guessing that's already our mindset and our thinking but want to make sure that we're emphasizing that We don't want to be penny wise and pound foolish on some of these where can't find someone but if we just the the pay range for some of these and Get closer to whatever market is to make sure we're filling these with qualified people that that might be more cost effective as a strategy than filling it with a vacancy or consultant temporarily that over time might cost us more. With that said, appreciate the balanced budget. If there are no comments on the city council portion of this budget,

we can move on to.

I have one more question.

Under the retirement fund, so it looks like today,

or as of now we the revenues are 9.1 million but we have to appropriate out

or pay out 13.13 million so essentially we're short about 3.8 million of that

3.5 million is from retirement fund reserves so basically we're short 300,000 which is not a big number.

What page are you looking at?

This is A5 general fund. Page A5 general fund, retirement fund.

Okay.

So essentially we're short about $300,000 a year, which we can make up with general fund.

We do.

But it sounds like the retirement issue is not going away and it's going to get bigger and bigger. So I guess my question is, and looking back into our pension obligation funds, that number is going to keep consistent because we have a bond there. What do we need to do to meet the gap here so that it doesn't get too big and get blown out of proportion?

Well, we're going to work to, first of all, that I'm cautiously optimistic that it's not going to grow, that hopefully, and it fluctuates.

It's going to flood. Hopefully next year we'll see it Lored. So that's one thing. We are going to start paying higher the recommended amount so that we paid off in the 15 years the current amount. And I'm really hoping, like I said, that it doesn't change so drastically anymore. ! The only time I can see it drastically change it if they reduce our points, our discount rate. ! Right now it dropped in 21 from 7 to 6.8 which kind of triggered that.

! ! With the market being the way it was.

It triggered our UAL to be that high.

So I'm looking.

I'm expecting to pay this off in the 15 years that our policy says.

To the gap. to the gap right now

the general fund does subsidize it we do have that extra 4 million in there

that we have now

with our

investment committee

treasury committee has voted to move 5 million over to Chandler so we moved 5 million over to Chandler

and that will increase our

revenue and then we'll have more funding in our

pension fund

to maybe use that towards paying. The pension levy money that comes in, it's voter approved.

It would be a voter approved item.

I have a question.

I have a question about the other post-employment benefits, OPEC funding.

So on the page A9, I understand that when we discussed about it a few years ago,

our OPEC has about $20 million, and now is also $21.7 million.

I believe that you have been paying down the balance every year for about $1 million? So what we're doing with OPEC is a little bit different than that.

What happens is we have actual, we're paying, we in our budget, we are paying for current retirees medical.

We pay the actual.

The idea of this trust fund where we pay that $1 million into every year is to eventually put enough money in there where it will be self-sustainable and that trust will pay for the million that we're paying. It was 1.2, I think, that we pay currently for our retiring medical. So eventually we'll have put enough money into this trust that we won't have to be paying out of pocket.

The trust will pay for all of the costs that are current costs.

I see so um I remember a few years ago we were thinking about also doing the the bond for OPEC so because you were setting up the trust and paying a million so you are not thinking about

doing it in the future right we have a we have a good hold on the OPEC and our financial analyst

our advisor financial advisor Michael Bush did not recommend that we do a bond for this, it's much more complicated

and it's not cost effective. So I think

we have a good plan to put a million into the trust every year and eventually

it'll pay for itself. Okay, thank you.

And the trust, the OCA trust is held at PERS? Yes. And they're investing in that work?

We can tell them how to invest our money and what rate and what risk we want. So we have more control, or we have control over this, whereas we don't with the pension.

Okay. Appreciate that.

Kind of general point on this, too.

I know we talked about if the surplus we expect for this fiscal year materializes,

putting $2 million into our catastrophic events reserve fund, if there are additional funds, which hopefully there are, uh paying down either some of our debt right would there be interest savings on that if we if there are there opportunities to pay down additional our existing some of a debt load

we could use the money to um i mean there is a lot of things that we could do we also have to play with timing of it uh we if we move the money to commit it that's good but if we actually make a payment you're not going to see it till this fiscal year until next fiscal year because of

where the payment is.

So there's a lot of moving around. Right now, the best we could do is move it to committed, and the rest will just sit in an assigned or unassigned. And then you can then pull from it for fiscal year 24, 25. We can come back, and when we come back, we can tell you what we're believing.

It's going to be the unaudited number.

And then we can determine if we want to add more money to CIPs or we want to pay off one of our debt service. We can you know we can make some changes to counsel and then you can determine which direction you want us to go in But um, but you'll but it'll be a drawdown from the pension because it'll be a drawdown from reserves in fiscal year

2425

That makes sense because of the accounting piece of it

All right. No, I if right the Fed starts to make adjustments to its rate rate, which we'll see downward interest rate earnings on interest earnings on money that's sitting there in our reserves right so if there are opportunities uh that make sense financially to either pay down debt or look at capital projects to assign some of our surplus to i think to your point would love to make sure we're programming that into the next fiscal year and not if if the money don't want money to just sit there idle especially if it's not earning very much an interest at that point

So what we'll do when we come back, and I'm thinking it's probably going to be around the end of September, we should have a good unaudited number by then, we'll bring back what our estimated surplus is going to be, and then we can provide some discussion items for Council to determine where to move the rest of the money to or what to use the rest of the money for.

Perfect.

Hopefully economic conditions continue good and we have a surplus to actually talk about.

Any other broad questions?

If not, I'll just start moving through these tabs. So City Council, we're good, I think. We'll move to City Manager if there are any questions or comments on that part of the budget.

If not, City Treasurer or City Clerk, anything?

Just a brief comment. I wanted to thank Amy Lee, our City Treasurer, for the work that you did. Obviously it was recognized and was award winning so thank you for all your efforts in that.

I'll ditto that. Thank you.

Any other comments for these other items? If not, city attorney, any comments on the city attorney's budget? Other than telling them to spend less money but I don't know.

I'm curious, Martha, if there's a way to, I guess, split this up in terms of,

I'm curious what we spend on litigation in terms of claims and all that stuff versus day-to-day city attorney work. I don't know if that's something we already do in terms of the billings. That's just to satisfy my curiosity.

It is split, but I don't know if it's confidential or not, and it can be provided to you in a confidential email from Carl,

former city attorney.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, roughly, since I didn't do the budget, but roughly, the retainer arrangement is arranged so that most of the city attorney work, the so-called transactional work, the bulk of the work that we do, is fit into a retainer agreement whereby the city, 450 hours a month, It pays approximately, was it 23?

23.

It's around $25,000 for approximately 150 hours worth of transactional work. The rest of it, so if you do the calculation, that amounts to whatever that is, roughly 400, 300, whatever it is per year. The rest of it has to do with code enforcement, which is billed at an hourly rate, but it's far Lor than our usual litigation rate. Litigation is on top of everything else based upon an hourly rate.

That's civil litigation.

And then there are some special projects that are billed specifically to, for example, solid waste, which hopefully the city gets reimbursed for once the franchise agreements are executed. There are other special arrangements whereby developers, for example, will reimburse the city for all city attorney's fees. so those aren't really I don't think counted as part of the budget but that's an additional not really a cost to the city but the city is reimbursed for the all of those costs to the extent that we can we try to get reimbursed for all of our costs that's sort of it in a nutshell and honestly I'm not sure whether our budget includes special counsel that isn't paid directly to the city attorneys or not. There's a whole, obviously, litigation provision where the city's joint powers insurance authority will reimburse after a certain threshold. So once we reach our self-insured retention amount, which is a million bucks, that million dollars includes litigation costs, settlement costs, what have you, then the additional money will kick in

from PRISM which is our insurance authority. So the city is reimbursed for that amount.

That is a very rough thumbnail of the city attorney's office.

I guess my question, not that I'm suggesting that we do this if it's not already done, right? It sounds like some of the work that's in the city attorney budget is actually for other departments. I don't know if that's a GAAP measure or GASB measure in terms of ASSIGNING IT TO THE ACCOUNT OR THE FUND, LIKE IF HE'S DOING WORK FOR, IF THE CITY ATTORNEY'S OFFICE IS DOING WORK FOR THE TRASH CONTRACT OR WATER OR WHATEVER, IF THAT SHOULD BE ASSIGNED TO CITY ATTORNEY VERSUS THE ACTUAL FUND.

SO OUR CITY ATTORNEY'S OFFICE IS VERY GOOD AT PROVIDING US WHAT FUND THEY'VE BEEN WORKING ON AND THEN WE ASSIGN IT, WE ASSIGN THOSE COSTS TO THAT FUND.

So it operates as an internal service fund?

Yeah, definitely, yes.

We actually generate new billing codes for specific projects, so that can be more specifically charged to whatever fund it needs to be charged to. As I said, we try to be as cost-effective as possible.

But all the costs are born here in the budget item for the city attorney?

Or are any of them showing up?

The developer deposits are not.

The developer deposit is a liability to the city that sits in your ACFER, in your financial reporting, but not in the budget. Because it's not a budgeted amount as developers come in, they sign a contract with their city, they leave a deposit, and then we charge to that deposit the services we're providing to that developer. So you won't see that in the budget.

But you will see it in the ACFER.

So as an example, there's a recent example right now that you're all familiar with. So with regard to the TRC land use development, for example, TRC deposited $50,000. Our time is charged against that particular account. It doesn't go to the city.

Yeah, and it wouldn't show up in this budget, right?

No, but you can, again, it is, we are very, it is an ACFER, so it can be shown in the ACFER what our liability is and where it comes, it does come out of the ACFER.

But we expect to draw down on most of those things pretty, in good time.

ANY OTHER ANY COMMENTS QUESTIONS ON CITY ATTORNEY IF NOT ALL RIGHT WE'LL MOVE TO FINANCE DEPARTMENT

ANY COMMENTS QUESTIONS

ALL RIGHT UH REALLY QUICK ON THE HOUSE I KNOW I UH CAN YOU JUST DETAIL A LITTLE BIT SOME OF THE THOUGHT PROCESS I KNOW YOU'VE MENTIONED THIS BEFORE MARTHA ALREADY IN TERMS OF THE CDBG AND HOME FUNDS AND POTENTIAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRANT PROGRAM FOR

businesses, particularly in the downtown area in terms of facade improvements and others. Can you just talk about what we're initially thinking? I know it sounds like we were going to come back later and not necessarily, the program itself isn't built into the budget. The funds are there, but can you talk about what we're initially thinking about potential grant programs out of these funds?

So what we work with our consultants, what we're initially thinking is we're going to split the CDBG money. The home money is for home repairs and improvements. But CDBG money, it's a little bit more flexible in the sense that we can use it for our businesses. So we have a need for a couple of things, and we had to, like, share the money. Public work was needing money for ADA compliance sidewalks. So we're going to use some of that money for our ADA compliance on our sidewalks.

And then we're going to split it.

So we're going to be recommending $250,000 go to Public Works, and we're going to start a seed money with the business program. It's going to be $200,000. If it's very popular, then we can talk about increasing it for the following year. But right now we're going to recommend starting with $200,000, and it's going to be ran by economic development. Right now they just have the shell of it. They haven't built the whole program. And once it gets running, we'll try to invest more money into it.

So that would be redirecting $200,000 of the CDBG grant money we get from the federal government to do facade improvements for small businesses in the city.

For businesses that qualify.

Qualifying business. Okay.

And they're working on the potential qualifications, right, in the list in the program.

Right.

So I very much look forward to seeing the outline and the details of this program and having it roll out as soon as we can. I know the businesses in the city need a lot of help, and we'd love to pour some resources into, particularly the downtown area, where there are vacancies to help clean up some of the facades and provide some assistance to some of the businesses that are struggling to be able to do that, right, to attract more business so they can become more financially sustainable themselves and start to reinvest in their own business as well. So I think kudos for starting to work up this program. Appreciate the thought going into making sure we're budgeting. Thank you guys for starting to work up this program. Appreciate the thought going into making sure we're budgeting for something like that I think 200,000 is a great start and hope that business will start to work.

!

I'm going to go to Council to find some more funding to grow this program and do more as much as we can and even more for the businesses in the community. So appreciate the thinking around that and look forward to the details of that program coming to the Council in the coming months.

On the home funds, I know right over the last few years at least we've been funding some

the last few years at least we've been funding some right income qualified single-family home retrofits or maintenance to make sure they continue to be livable so you don't fall off the market it sounds like we are committed to doing that going forward or is there any thought I'd love to see us if there's room to explore another grant program as well there with some of the home funds or other funds to do additional retrofits for multi-family, existing multi-family affordable housing units in the city, particularly in our city, we have a lot of existing senior affordable housing that probably need some facade improvements as well and common area improvements and maybe some appliance upgrades for energy efficiency, water efficiency that can also save the residents money that they need to replace, potentially a rebate program or something for some of those appliances as well. Maybe that's something I would love to see us explore, building something like that out as well. If there's money in there that's not allocated to specific projects

for affordable housing, I guess maintenance,

I would love to, if we can start exploring that, I don't know if there are any initial thoughts on that. I think my worry is that as a lot of these senior affordable and existing affordable units start to and continue to age, that they'll, as they get closer and closer to their 55-year or whatever covenants, that they're going to convert to market rate to be able to capitalize and find the money to renovate and keep in safe condition and upgrade in the right condition. And they're going to fall off the market as affordable units. I'd hate for that to happen. If there's a way for the city to find funding to help keep these units in good repair, in a state of good repair, and keep them as affordable units, whatever we can do to keep affordable units that are existing in the city already from falling off and becoming market rate, I think we should explore.

All right. Thank you. We will.

On building, I don't know if this is you guys versus Public Works and Water, all that. but on building I think I read in this I don't remember because there are a lot of pages

the updated building system I've gone to monthly

for all the water bills and trash and all that and we're building out or we have already rolled out or we have already existing online building but we're starting to shift more away we're at least having the option for customers, city customers and residents to move away from paper billing and start to shift to online billing. Can you talk about that and the potential cost savings that might

come along with that? Laura Spear headed that program so she's going to talk about it.

So we're looking at a vendor. We are in

agreement with a vendor and we are implementing

a biller payment presentment and bill payment portal.

And what they are proposing is that with every employee or every resident who converts to paperless,

they anticipated a cost savings of about $0.60 per resident. And if you take a look at that, the per, I think it's 16,000 bills that we send out.

I didn't do the math, but if you do the math, it comes out to a significant cost savings.

Great.

But I would encourage whatever we can do to make that transition happen as smoothly as possible for residents and customers. including business customers that have water accounts.

So not just residents.

And then if there are additional ways to integrate or find efficiencies as we migrate to newer technologies, more efficient technologies, hopefully integrate where it makes sense, automation and AI tools and others that can help streamline some of these processes and particularly for water as we move to hopefully, we've passed the bond to upgrade the water meters to AMI

and so how do we integrate usage right statistics for water and other things

for customers to see their usage and make adjustments to their behavior more quickly than on the two-month cycle and all that stuff but also how do we if we can integrate other tools to help just customers and the city as well to manage our use of resources like water that can help with savings across the board I I think we should definitely explore that. And if those are things that require costs up front that will eventually result in savings long-term, I want to definitely encourage us to look into those opportunities.

Definitely.

Any other comments or questions on finance? If not, HR and risk management?

No.

Good.

All right.

Really quick on HR, on J8, the liability claims and workers' comp claims.

It looks like, at least from the last two, three years, in terms of workers' comp claims,

those are going down.

Liability claims seem about even. I know these aren't associated with specific amounts in terms of claims and liabilities, in terms of the costs of the budget. but I know if we can start looking at what we can do more proactively to address some of these claims particularly on buying both on workers compound and liability in terms of residents and visitors that are right essentially these are some of these in terms of the public works I assume are trip and falls and other things on sidewalks if we can see how we can institute more proactive kind of inspections for existing city facilities and public right-of-ways where we are responsible and are incurring costs for liability for injuries that happen on these places. Maybe we can identify some cost savings there long-term as we make some of these repairs more proactively to our infrastructure.

We are hiring a GIS analyst that's going to support this function and help us throughout to build our GIS system and maintain it so that we can ensure that we are proactive

in making sure that all our streets and sidewalks are safe.

Yeah, I don't know if this exists.

I don't know if you guys know, but if there are existing contractors or consultants that do, like, I don't know, that use drones or whatever that can do inspections for sidewalks and and a shelter, city infrastructure, that could kind of do a citywide kind of survey. I know we count on some of our meter readers or other public work staff, when they go out to do a repair, they'll report things,

if we can maybe even look at a campaign

through Go and Be Kapp, or some sort of citizen kind of involved, and resident involved, right, walk about town or their neighborhood to report repairs that need to be made.

It would be great to have a more proactive kind of approach

to inspecting existing city facilities to prevent injuries and also to reduce liabilities and exposure to risk for trip and falls and other issues that happen at our city facilities. If we can start just the thought process on how we might be able to implement a program like that

and think through it. I think that would be great.

Thank you. We will. Thank you.

If no other comments,

We'll move on to community development.

Mr. Mayor? Yes. Jose, you want to?

I'm sorry.

I had a couple of questions. First, I wanted to commend the community development department, a lot of our, especially in the last year, a lot of adapting to work with like the small business administration, helping small businesses that were impacted due to the mass shooting that happened here in Monterey Park. and then also just being able to host workshops for for small businesses I wanted to make sure that that we continue to support small businesses in whatever shape or capacity that we can whether that's workshops that help with like ADA compliance with their work with their websites I really like the new social media posts that community development department has been doing on highlighting different businesses I think that's really amazing and something that we need to continue to do and continuously work with a lot of our local businesses to make sure that we're highlighting a lot of these businesses but also promoting them and making sure that they the people in our community know that these businesses exist so whatever and whatever capacity that we can do other than social media having a larger presence would be amazing I think that it would also be great I know that we do a really good job of meeting with organizations throughout Monterey Park, including schools. It would be great if there was some way or shape or form to create some type of small business roundtable where we can regularly meet with businesses and hear them out in terms of what issues they are dealing with within our community, what type of help they might need in terms of making sure that they're staying afloat, that they are getting businesses, and that we're not losing them. And I know that sometimes we hear about businesses leaving or moving to different shopping centers, and sometimes a lot of it is speculation. Some of it is really not known. But I feel like if we have like a quarterly roundtable where we can dedicate funds and provide those types of supports so that we know what businesses are going through, what type of supports they might need, and then also help cater some of those workshops that we might be thinking about doing, I think that would really help small businesses, but I think it would really help us as a city in terms of making sure that our businesses stay afloat and that they're generating tax revenue for our city as well.

I also wanted to mention in terms of the services that we could potentially provide for small businesses,

I know that we, through our library, provide legal services for residents who might need help with immigration to filing their taxes. But I think that small businesses sometimes, especially mom and pop-run businesses, sometimes struggle with finding legal support or aid. if there's any way, shape, or form where we can partner with any of our legal services that can provide, perhaps once a month or quarterly, a legal aid clinic, that maybe businesses can come by and if they have questions, they can bring them. Maybe they have a letter they don't understand. But I'm just thinking with a lot of our businesses, I know that a lot of businesses struggle. A lot of them don't know what to do or where to find resources. So I do want to commend the work that we're currently doing, and I hope that we continue to do a lot more for a lot of our smaller businesses within the city. I also wanted to commend the Community Development Department for the Going Green campaign that we did last year. I think that we heard a lot from residents and from people about the importance of Going Green, so I want to definitely commend our Community Development Department for leading that effort, and I look forward to hearing more about how we can continue to implement our Going Green campaign, especially as we look at ways that our city, the way that our city operates, especially with cars and fuel use, so that we can start looking into when we start to replace a lot of our vehicles, vehicles, whether it's police vehicles or just city facility vehicles that we're replacing them with perhaps electric vehicles or EV vehicles and then also EV charging stations

within our city.

And not just that EV charging stations that are city run but also that are to find ways that where we can work with businesses to make sure that they are installing EV charging stations when they are within their businesses. I think that a lot of that needs to happen, and I think sometimes cities need to help lead the way, but also help provide the supports that businesses and municipalities need.

And that is it for me. But thank you so much.

Council Member Lillard? Thank you very much. Question.

So regarding when we look at the expenditure report for community development, I'm kind of curious.

I know for the business improvement area, we had projected any amount of $89,539, but the budget actually is $73,950.

I'm just curious, how do we account for that disparity?

I believe the difference was in janitorial services. I noticed that it was budgeted at a slightly less amount than in this fiscal year for janitorial services.

Is it because the BID asking for less janitorial services, or I'm just curious?

Our director will answer that.

Good evening, Council Member Lo and the rest of the City Council. This is Jessica Serrano, your Community Development Director. Hello. I'm happy to answer that question.

What we did this year was we based the projected budget based on the annual report that was approved by City Council for the Director of the Bid. And so this more closely aligns with what the Council approved rather than in prior years when we budgeted it was more based on what the anticipated revenue was that was going to be generated. This year we based it more based on the annual budget plus a slight increase based on potential increases to services. But as our finance director indicated there was a savings because janitorial services went down to the budget.

down based on us consolidating our contract for the bid together with the city services. So there was some savings there as well. I see.

So again, it's just that we are just doing it more efficiently. It's not because we're doing less janitorial in that area.

Okay.

It's the same service. Okay.

It's just at a Lor cost. Okay, good.

Can it say we said then for economic development because it's also the projected and the actual

is also because we are streamlining that program or doing more for less.

Are you looking at the economic development budget?

Yes. Yes, it's slightly Lor.

Part of that is internal services,

and I think maybe finance might be able to explain that better than I can.

If I may, it may be from my understanding,

and Martha could look into it a little bit while I'm chatting here,

but I think the other item that we've had previous,

we did budget our app. The rewards?

Yes, the rewards program, the app.

And so we discontinued that program.

But if Council remembers that, that program cost the city quite a bit to fund.

And so we're adjusting that this year

to not include that service fee for that app. Correct.

I see.

Which is great.

But I'm just curious, too, what we saved, is that being reused and is it being repurposed elsewhere in economic development?

It wasn't added to the budget. It was subtracted.

Okay. Okay.

I only bring it up only because, and again, it's only because I know that there's a lot of interest in seeing how we can further enhance economic development and although build a saving because we decided to phase out the Go, the Shop MBK app. But I guess my question to your department is that are there ways in which it can be reused in some other way to enhance economic development? In other words, if we were to keep it at the proposed level before, is there some more other ways that you can use it? Because if so, then certainly I would support putting some money back.

Absolutely. There definitely are ways. But there are going to be opportunities for the city council to provide additional guidance and support.

Because we are going to be bringing the economic development strategic plan to the city council in the next few months.

approximately in July. And at that point, you can take a harder look

at what programs are being recommended

and dig into whether additional funding would be needed or staffing would be needed at that point.

Okay. Okay.

And if I may, the other, so when funds are not allocated, it does go back to the general fund. And just as a reminder, so our budget, even after it's, this is the draft version, even after we bring it back on June 18th to Council for adoption consideration.

It's a living document.

So as Jessica just explained, if additional allocations need to be made for programs that the Council is interested in funding, we can definitely bring those back as needed throughout the year. So definitely in this situation, just wanted to point out that economic development in the year 22-23, that year was also, it was 432. And so, yes, in 23 it increased, but we added that fund specifically for the app, and so that's why we were reducing it slightly back down.

Okay. Good to know.

And then another question. Actually, Jessica could answer, but in terms of our housing element or implementation of our housing element, and again, I know this is a limited document, and perhaps we can revisit if we need more resources, But one of the things that I had forwarded to the city manager a few weeks or a few months back was that the Sangam Valley COG had approved a list of, like, pre-approved designs for ADUs.

And I don't know if that's something we're looking at, but I'm just curious, you know, especially if residential comments are that, you know, the plan check, the approval process may take longer.

And I'm wondering, would that help us if we were to, on our own, or maybe even adopt what the COG has recommended? Like, would that actually help us meet our housing element goals, not to mention residential goals, to have ADUs if we had a list of pre-approved designs?

That could potentially help. I think what makes it a little challenging with a program like that for our city is the fact that we have a lot of hills in our community.

You know, a lot of our lots are like perfect rectangles.

And so there would still need to be some customization of those plans. I see.

But there may be some savings and cost and time for some of those ADU projects. And we can certainly look into it further.

And out of curiosity, since actually that's a good point, depending on topography and our housing stock. But so far, has the ADU applications we've received, have they been, as you said, someone wants to build a standalone structure in their backyard? Or have they been like garage conversions? I'm just curious what has been the interest so far.

Definitely the garage conversions are more typical, being that they're more cost efficient.

You already have the building, and they're just redesigning, adding walls and kitchens, bathrooms to the interior.

so those are probably the most popular type of ADU projects

but we do have some standalone new construction for ADUs as well

so what you're saying though is that even if we were to adopt pre-approved plans

there would have to be some degree of customization due to the topography of the city

yes okay I mean is there a way to even streamline that

I mean knowing full well that if we have unique topography

is there a way to streamline that even?

Sure, there's always ways to streamline,

and we are actively looking at that. You know, with the payment enhancement

that Laura Bourjon spoke about tonight, that's going to help streamline all development projects,

including ADUs.

Okay, okay, good to know.

I just bring it up because, again, I know that on one hand, you know, there's been a lot of talk about maintaining, you know, the housing stack of affordable housing, but also making sure that we also are able to meet some of our RITA numbers as well.

So, yeah.

That's it. Yes, that's it. Yes, that's it.

I have a quick question because it sounds like we are becoming more efficient with the SELA program, which is basically a payment program where they can pay online. This has to do with permits and building permits. software building and all that,

and also streamlining the process for construction-related.

Do we know how much faster that is?

Do we have an idea?

As of the last time I checked,

right now we've reduced the review time by 30%.

The goal is 50, 70, right? But I think we've made some good progress.

It's been a year since we implemented the new one-stop building permit center.

And so I think in a year, 30% progress is good. We do have more work to do in that regard.

Thank you.

I mean, on that note, right, if there are other opportunities to help streamline processes, integrate online tools, self-service, even AI kind of based tools to help with processing times for billing permits or other permits, everything else that community development and planning have to deal with to help streamline and make it easier for staff as well in terms of reducing the amount of staff time for some of these reviews to speed up some of these processes. I think I would encourage us to bring those to council for funding and for us to integrate that into our operations. And not just for community development, but across the board, if there are opportunities to make it easier for residents and customers to come in to get approvals and permits for anything. I know for Parks and Recreation, we're looking at online reservation system for the picnic shelters and other park uses and things like that, integrating more of that that saves staff time to free them

to do other things that are higher value,

I think would be great to explore for community development and other opportunities as well. I'd also echo what Councilor Merleau mentioned

in terms of economic development.

Totally understand we're waiting for what comes out of the economic development strategic plan in terms of programming funding for some of those action items and follow-up that are going to come out of that, but would encourage us to make sure we're keeping an eye on what we want to fund and look forward to that conversation about what the city and the city council wants to prioritize in terms of ideas and opportunities and programs that come out of the economic development strategic plan to make sure that we're implementing it. I would be hugely frustrated and disappointed if we just let that plan sit on the shelf after over a year of engagement with the business community

and with the council engaged.

We need to support our businesses and we need to focus on economic development. We look forward to the findings and the takeaways coming to the Council from that sooner, in the coming months, and we look forward to making sure we're resourcing those takeaways properly.

On this, I know similarly the sustainability plan will be, the implementation will be borne out through all the departments. in terms of the budget. We encourage not just you, but finance, everyone else, all the departments, as we're looking at fleet transition and all these other items that have been detailed in the sustainability plan, that we're looking to see how we can work that under the budget for making sure these things actually happen and we can implement them successfully and properly. Also, back to Mayor Prokerm Ngo's point, if there's a way at the end of the fiscal year or an annual basis to look at the metrics of processing time for some of these permits. Would love to be able to show off to the community and the business community in particular, we did decrease processing times on average this year, 30%, 50%. If we can kind of highlight those either through this process or another process that might make better sense, I would love to do one of my business meetups through the town halls and those kind of meetings and be able to say, yeah, we've cut the average turnaround time for building permit applications or business license applications from two weeks to two days or one day or whatever that is. Would love to be able to show that off and show off all the work that the community development team is working on.

On the bid budget, I know this is something that comes to the council for approval anyway, But I know with as councilman Rouleau mentioned right we found some savings for them for their budget by reducing costs on the janitorial cleanup of the bid area I don't know if the bid Act is already thinking through potential uses for the funding that's been freed up I know it's not a large amount of money but maybe that's something that We can use this up supplement the program we're talking about in terms of facade improvements in the downtown area at least and if there are other I know we're doing outreach to businesses to hear what they need I think there's a lot of we can probably very many times

oversubscribe the existing savings

we've already identified in the bid budget for the businesses there but would look forward to seeing how we can

program that

amount of money right that budget that exists in the bid to support the businesses in downtown Murray Park and also to Councilman

Lo's point on the

Shop Local app, I forgot what it's called now already.

MBK Rewards.

Yeah, MBK Rewards.

I know that there will, I'm very certain, right, there will be a bunch of ideas that come out of the Economic Strategic Plan. Just want to make sure

we figure out

how we integrate that into the budget

right after. Sounds like it'll be

after we approve this next fiscal year's budget in June, but

making sure that we're keeping an eye out for

and not over committing potential surplus or existing funds to other things without having funding available for implementing the economic development strategic plan. I don't know if this is community development versus recreation and community services, but it mentioned district bid area beautification.

We mentioned facade improvements.

I would also love to explore resources pending in art and public art funds in the city. I know Parks and Recreation and Community Services are looking at murals for different walls in the city and how to integrate more public art into some of our city facilities and walls that are very bare. But if there's a way to, I don't know if it's already integrated into the budget for Recreation and Community Services, would love to see how we can integrate that in terms of beautification also beyond the bid that's listed here, but to explore potentially funding those kind of art projects, art in public spaces projects, and also integrate more community engagement through those efforts through programs like the Boys and Girls Club or Marquette High School and other student groups.

through programs like the boys and girls club or mark Keppel high school and other student groups

! and service clubs in the city to provide opportunities for service and beautify the city

! as well at the same time

!

all these things cost money !

I know Martha is going to find it for us

! she's got a money tree going !

that's all

I've got any other comments on community development? thank you

Thank you. Thank you. We'll move on to police.

Any comments on the police budget?

I have some questions.

Chief, I just had a quick question regarding page L2 with the increase in burglary to 51%.

maybe you could just just for the public to notice why there's been in the last year at least an

increase in burglary if i knew the actual reason i could probably market it and and sell it um you could tell that it's a combination of a lot of things it's a combination of covid being over

people going back to work. So residences where COVID numbers were down because people were home all the time. We got back from COVID. People were still telecommuting a lot. So people were home. Now people have returned to work. A lot of businesses have returned to in-person business. So the residences are open a lot during the day. There aren't people around. we're seeing a lot more residential burglars are coming in from out of our area and making it more of a business if you will there's actually burglary tourism that's taking place where people are coming in from central and south america for the purposes of committing residential burglaries up here in the united states the the commercial burglary task force and the residential Burglary Task Force is tracking groups of that right now. It's a target of opportunity for a lot of people, and basically when your houses are not, when aren't people home, and there isn't an alarm system, there isn't a dog, there's a lot of reasons why people target those houses. We're trying to get that outreach to the public, but I don't have an absolute, this is why burglaries are up. But it's up across the board. It's not just here in Monterey Park. it's up throughout the region.

Okay, thank you for that and for sharing that. And I think that kind of leads into my next question with community engagement. I'm glad to see that our community engagement budget has increased from 1.8 to 2.5 million dollars. And I want to emphasize the importance of community engagement. You guys are doing an amazing job of engaging the community. being president most of, if not all, of our events, hosting your own events. So would love to explore different ways to engage the community, especially I know we've talked before about Neighborhood Watch and implementing Neighborhood Watch. I'm assuming that would probably help with a lot of the burglaries that are happening.

It will. Captain Amenez will be here on the 5th for the council meeting, and he's doing all the research on Neighborhood Watch right now. He's going to have a pretty complete guide of where we were and where we are today with our engagement groups. We're always looking for different ways to engage with the community. And as a department, we emphasize community engagement from all aspects. So I encourage all of my officers, all of my professional staff, to build those relationships with the public.

Get out of their cars, talk to people, wave, say hi. That's how that's built up.

We do a lot of outreach as it is now, and we're always looking for better ways and more innovative ways to reach the public and make them more comfortable with us. I'm all about transparency, and as we push forward into this next fiscal year and into the years going forward, we're looking at new innovative ways to increase that transparency and to increase the access of the public to the police department. And that's through NUCATRMS, through GIS, through different programs that are just becoming more prevalent here in Monterey Park.

I would love to see also, thank you for sharing that, and as part of our community engagement, I'd love to see us. I know we are already very present at a lot of our schools in Monterey Park. I'd love for us to continue to explore that and find ways to be able to partner with our schools and different types of programs that either we create together. But I think that that's a great way of working with young kids to be able to share what the department does, but also let kids know as they grow up and become residents here in Monterey Park that police are here to help and they feel more of a connection with our police. It's a great way to engage her. I know my daughter goes to Brightwood Elementary, and she's always commenting about how police officers are there. She's very happy to come home and share with me which officer she met. So really appreciate the presence that's happening in our schools. Would love to see more of that happening.

I think my staff gets frustrated because I don't know how to say no to different schools. We never say no to any outreach programs, any invites, anything in our schools.

And our officers are present there just about every day.

Sometimes it's meeting the parent through the driver's window of the car.

Other times it's out playing basketball on the campus with the kids. It just depends on the circumstance for which we're there.

But we do a lot of outreach at the schools, and we're open to any outreach any of the schools have for us in any district.

Great.

And thank you for that. And, you know, like I said, just love to explore that.

One last question.

Dealing with animal services. I know that we have, and I think I saw an increase of, not dramatic, but of animal-related services that we're providing in the community. And I saw that some of the goals that relate to animal services include, let me see here.

Sorry, I'm trying to find the page here. Oh, here we go.

It says develop a wildlife coyote management program. I know that in my district and I'm sure all of us might face

some of these issues that might be closer

to hills but I know I get a lot of comments from residents that

coyotes are present they're not sure what to do

a lot of this also relates to pets that they might have so whatever we can do to engage our community as part of community engagement provide workshops and find people we can partner with to provide some of that would be appreciated

We increased our animal services to seven days a week. We hired another full-time animal services officer. You've met her. With that comes more community outreach. We partner with the county of Los Angeles Weights and Measures, who manages coyote issues for the county of Los Angeles. And what we're trying to do is increase our officers' capabilities, our animal services officers, to be able to handle troubled coyotes,

troublesome coyotes instead of having to call in a third party vendor to do it we want to be able

to do it ourselves and our animal concern our animal control officers are very efficient they

they understand the the process by which to go through for dealing with coyotes but coyotes are everywhere there could be one in this council chambers for all we know right now but i'm just saying they're they're everywhere they're indigenous to southern california so you got to be careful sometimes they sneak up on you they're very quiet but they are everywhere we have a pretty robust

outreach program and we try to get that information out regularly we also try to do abatement when we

have to from for problem coyotes in our area but we we put that out through cascades we put it out

through our app we put it out through social media on a regular basis and we target it if we've had an incident that's occurred or we have an incident that we've heard about, we'll push out that information pretty regularly. But it's a Southern California issue. It's not just Monterey

Park. There's no city that's immune to coyotes. A couple years ago, I saw coyotes on the beach on Hankton Beach. I grew up on Hankton Beach. I never thought I would see a coyote running down the beach. It bit a little girl on the beach in Cunnington. There are coyotes everywhere.

Well, thank you for that. And just whatever, I'm not sure if we have currently a page on our city website dedicated just for residents in terms of resources like what do I do if I see coyote like how do I keep safe from coyotes all those different types of

things our animal services website on the police department website will link them to services

about coyotes and we have a lot of information there about coyotes excellent and I just had

one question I saw there was an increase in dead animals from 300 to 400 compared to last year

I don't have an answer for that. I don't. We're one of the only cities that has its own animal services. Everybody else uses the county. There was an increase in cost for animal services. We do have to contract shelter services with the county of Los Angeles. They increased those costs this year.

We don't have a choice. We can't open an animal, a shelter here in Monterey Park.

I don't know why there's an increase. I assume it's because we've eliminated the county from coming out and handling those

because they charge us $2,000 a trip to come out and handle a dead animal. We do it ourselves.

And I've increased animal services to seven days a week instead of just the original four.

So with that increase and the overlap on one of the days, that's probably why we're impounding more deceased animals because we have more services available. We're on the street seven days a week providing that service.

That's great to hear. And I know that I had an incident in my neighborhood, so it was really great to see a Monterey Park officer come down and fix that problem. So thank you so much for your department and everything that you guys do.

That's it in terms of questions.

Thank you. Actually, I have a follow-up question regarding the line of question regarding animal services.

And thank you, Chief, for being present.

um currently in terms of animal shelter services is the county the most cost effective

partner that's out there they're all about the same um the county probably is the least expensive but other sheltering services are not offering their services they're not expanding pomona valley

humane out in pomona handles a lot of the east part of san gabor valley i don't believe that

they're looking for more partners right now. Pasadena Humane is not someone that we are willing to contract with because of the cost. There was a shelter in San Gabriel, but they

aren't certified any longer, we believe. Oh, not certified since when? Oh. We've talked about this. There are really nobody else out there that we can market this with

other than LA County. The Downey Shelter is who we primarily use.

Okay.

I can have our animal services expert come in on one of the other council meetings and kind of get into the weeds with you if you'd like. I think it'll be interesting. I'll have Will come in because I'll have Will talk about coyotes and some of the other stuff we're doing. It's probably good that he comes in, and I'll bring Laura with him so she can experience this also. Okay. Okay.

Wonderful. Well, great. Okay. I'll bring a coyote for you if you like. All right. Thank you. I have a question. Enough about animals.

Can you give us an update on the new neighborhood watch program? We kind of skipped it a little bit during COVID. Now that we're back open, we reinstituted new and improved program.

Yes. Next, on the 5th, we're going to have all of our stats available to you and show in which election district we have our block captains, how we've increased our program, what the program was like before, what it is now, what it's going to be in the future.

Basically, what we do is we do outreach to anybody who communicates to us that they're interested. We do it through our public meetings. We do it through our detective bureau. if they make contact with a burglary victim and they feel that that victim is open, they talk to them about the idea of neighborhood watch in their area and if they would be willing to sponsor the first meeting. At that point, our Community Relations Bureau makes contact with that person and we do everything to set up the meeting for them. All we need is a location. In some cases, depending on the neighborhood, we'll do it in the middle of the street. We come out with all the resources. We go and knock on all the doors. We get all the paperwork ready. And the idea is that we get this program started, and then the neighborhood continues with the program. And our idea is that we want to bring all these people together. A lot of the communities in Southern California, you don't really know your neighbor. You see them pull in and leave to go to work, and maybe you see their kids or whatever it is, but you don't really have a relationship with them anymore like you did years ago. So our job is to try to bring those people together, exchange some phone numbers, now with cell phones, set up a text group so that they can look out for each other. The neighborhood I live in, we text each other. If I'm going to be out of town for the weekend, I'll text the group and say, hey, I'm going to be out of town. And they'll say, yeah, no problem. We'll keep an eye on the place. It's that simple. And that's kind of what Neighborhood Watch is. What we do then is we'll come in periodically with their meetings. We'll check on their progress. And that what we do is we provide them with whatever resources they want. If they want to learn about, you know, certain kind of crime, if they want to learn about coyotes, we'll bring those resources into them and we'll talk to the community about that. And that's the idea is to get those blocks working together and then kind of send them on their own. As parents, we kind of send them off to school and hope they do well.

Thanks, Chief, in finance.

uh these will be disjointed questions but uh on the coyote

know that you're going to see more coyotes.

There's going to be pups. There's going to be pups in dens. Mother's going to be out hunting.

So you're going to see that happen more often. We'll get that information out to as many people as we can as that season approaches. And then we look at potential abatement that needs to be done as problems occur. And we do those a couple times a year to try to thin the coyote herd,

if you will. The only area that we don't do any kind of enforcement or abatement in is up at the reservoir. That's controlled by Metropolitan Water District, and they contract with the County of Los Angeles to do their own abatement up there. We don't go up into that area. It's a little bit of a coyote sanctuary, if you live around that area, because it's the biggest, largest open area in the city that isn't molested by cars and people, things like that, so they thrive up there. But that's typically how we do it is based on the breeding season. Just for my edification, the difference, definition between robbery

and burglary is robbery is the victim is there.

Robbery is the taking of someone's personal property from their person

or immediate presence by force or fear, and burglary is dwelling with the intent to commit grand or petty larceny or any other felony.

Those are the exact definitions of both. So your house when you're not home is a

burglary. The liquor store that's open for business, guy comes in with a gun, that's a robbery.

If someone walks up and says, give me your wallet with a gun, that's a robbery.

If someone breaks into your car when you're not there, that's a burglary.

Helpful. Thank you. I know on L3, looking back about 10 years of part one crimes and traffic fatalities. I know you're starting to report this out more regularly on a quarterly basis. Yes. So we'd love to see that report regularly in terms of breakdown of Part 1 crimes

and trends for the city. My goal is with the new CATRMS system and with GIS, I won't need to come to you and do a presentation. You could go to your phone and pull it up and look at all the stats as they are immediately entered. The new CATRMS system will do it seamlessly. So anybody in the city could pull up their address using GIS and CATRMS, automatically look at their address and look at any layer they're interested in for any crime that's occurred in their area. That's going to happen. I guarantee you that's going to happen. We're not there yet, so I will continue to come and give those stats.

Yeah, no, I'd love to get that in operation. Oh, I would too. That's on the next page.

And the staff would too, because then I wouldn't have to stand up here and talk as much as I do.

I don't think that will stop you.

Because I'm chastised a lot for the way I talk. So I'm just letting you know. It's okay. There's a lot of pressure on me right now to not talk. I try to keep it light, but.

We know you can handle it.

Thank you.

Please don't bully the chief.

Yeah. You heard him.

To your point, would love to see us how, and I know it's built into the budget and some of the narrative here, in terms of how we, there's a lot of data, right, handled by the police department, right, body horn camera footage.

Yes.

Data points in terms of crimes and traffic fatalities, traffic incidents, encounters, calls for service that are continuing to go up, I think more than 50,000 this year. A lot of data points I think that would be helpful to help parse through and make sense of for the council as well to make sure that we're integrating that into our thinking in terms of budget?

I think that there is a lot of data.

As I said before, transparency is my middle name, but it's also overwhelming, just so everybody understands. There's a lot of information, and the way that we look at it now through our NIBRS system, it takes a little bit of sitting down and kind of analyzing the numbers. and unfortunately we've only had NIBRS for not even a year yet. So there's very little, it's hard to look at data from now and data from before because we basically stopped using the old system. The whole United States did. So now we're starting from scratch. But I'm starting to understand what you want

and I'm trying to provide that information as we go forward without trying to have you drink from a fire hose. so I'm trying to give you the information you guys need in a systematic way so it's easier to understand because it's a lot of information.

It really is. I had to go to a class to learn how to read it. It's a lot.

But I'll be getting whatever information you need, I can provide it pretty seamlessly. I just didn't want to put a three-ring binder on your desk every day.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. and i appreciate that your work and the department is working on making sure that we're able to present data in a useful fashion for the council and city manager decision makers and it would be helpful right the to reiterate it would be helpful to see kind of some of these trends in terms of crimes and absolutely encounters in the community right even to to this data point on l2 right burglaries going up 51 percent in the city year to year but even being able to track that month to month in terms of, right, we are seeing a spike in coyote sightings.

And that would be one of the layers with the new system.

You could literally look at how many coyote calls and what the areas are on a pin map with the new GIS system. It's that cool.

Yeah.

No, I would love to start using the tool when we're ready to integrate that.

In the interim, I'll get the information. It'll be more statistical than it will be visual. Yeah.

But I'll start getting it for you.

It would be super helpful, especially, I think, as we talk to members of the public and they complain about this issue or that issue to be able to see with data backing it whether how not that it's not significant for that person.

Oh, I understand.

But knowing if it's a real trend in terms of increase or uptake or not, or it's actually Lor than it was last year or the last few years in terms of actual incidents in the city. And how do we prioritize our allocation of resources in terms of addressing some of these issues in the city? but thank you thank you're welcome and no one will bully you thank you the data

and taking classes on L 10 right some of the accomplishments from the last year

in terms of social media presence for the police part really appreciate that I see it a lot and I know the community appreciates a lot of that just wondering how our thinking is in terms of figuring out how we integrate into Chinese language or other language, kind of social media and other outreach and language to the community as well. If we've given additional thought, I know we've had some challenges there.

I've actually spoken to vendors that assist departments with social media. Some of the ones that you'll see in agencies, these really cool and, you know, kind of sexy social media posts that they do,

these departments do. I've talked to those vendors and they don't have right now the ability to

translate what they do into Chinese, but they're working on it, they say. It's a constant question that we ask. It's rolled into every part of dealing with a vendor. that's a significant question that we ask. Can we translate this into these languages? With GIS and all this stuff coming forward, we're asking them, can this be done? Will we be able to do this seamlessly? And they're working on that. But it's a challenge that they're willing to take on, but it is a challenge for them.

They usually just provide one kind of service and that's it, and then you're on your own to figure out how to translate it. We're trying to get them to do it for us.

Yeah. Now, the more we can advocate, and I don't know if we're already doing this, but reaching out to the other cities that also would like to see some of these tools in language for their populations as well to band together. And that might, from an economic perspective, might make it more achievable for some of these vendors.

And we've tried to break into WeChat and these other things that are already out there. It's very difficult.

They don't welcome us with open arms.

Yeah, you just can't wear their uniform, Scott.

Yeah, we've tried. I've tried everything, really have.

And it's very difficult to break into those organizations don't want to have any part of us. Yeah.

And if there's, I mean, to the point, my earlier points in terms of the neighborhood watch programs, if there are ways, I would imagine, and I'm looking forward to the report, but I would imagine most of the Neighborhood Watch programs in groups that have reconstituted in the last year or so are primarily English-speaking. The more we can do and think about how we can be intentional about reaching out to the Chinese-speaking and even Spanish-speaking neighborhoods in the community to integrate them into Neighborhood Watch and even Business Watch for some of the in-language kind of business owners and operators and managers.

One of our big goals. We have the ability to do it as far as provide the program.

It's a matter of getting them to trust us to want to do it,

to opening up their homes, quite honestly, to their neighbors. There's a lot of reluctance for that. Yeah.

No, I appreciate all the efforts the staff and the police department have been working on to rebuild and build those trust bridges and relationships with the community that everyone had a hard time during the pandemic,

and a lot of those relationships were severed.

but I know I appreciate the police department, fire, and everyone else, the many efforts that have gone into reestablishing trust

and building trust.

On L13, right, we list some accomplishments from this fiscal year in terms of grants that we received from the state. I don't know if we or anyone else might know in terms of what the risk is for, with the state budget cutbacks, what the outlook looks like for some of these grant opportunities.

We're in the beginning of OTS season. We have not seen a significant decrease in the OTS grants that are going to be available. We're one of the landmark agencies, cities in the state of California for utilization of OTS grants. In Southern California, we're the department that the OTS, that the Office of Traffic Safety actually sends other departments to to get trained on because we're so good at it. We've been doing it for so long. we have the ability to kind of look at the grants that are out there,

but a lot of the larger grants are organized, if you will.

A city isn't alLod to just put in law enforcement by themselves. The money comes into a region, and that regional money is then distributed based on a committee. With UASI, which we are a UASI member, Urban Area Security Initiative, we get a lot of funding, both police and fire, from UASI. that's a board that is controlled by the city of los angeles but we utilize that on an annual basis both chris and i do to supplement our budgets and to help get some of the things we need

we're constantly looking for grants small ones large ones it really doesn't matter wellness grants we're looking at those we're we're constantly on the lookout both through our grant vendor that we use for the city for all of us but also individually as a department we're

constantly looking for those grants. We have not seen a decrease yet. And we have not heard the ones coming from our partners at the state level. But I watch the news just like you do. I hear them say that we're down, so we don't know if it's going to hit us or not.

I think for, especially these public safety grants, to the extent, if we start

to

get the sense that some of these funds may be at risk going forward. That's something I think the council should be made aware of so that we can advocate and the city needs to advocate to our legislature around, especially these critical.

The League of Cities gave us kind of an update a couple months ago of the LA County Chiefs,

and they didn't indicate any decreases, but they are also on top of that too because it affects all

of them. So they're also working with us to be able to get that information out if it starts to occur.

Great. On fleet transition, I know I keep harping on this and others as well.

I know our parking enforcement fleet is all electric now, and we've got some chargers set up on the parking area for them. Any, and this might be for Sean, but any thoughts or initial kind of feelings on how quickly or not we might start to see transition of our police fleet and vehicles?

I don't want to break your heart.

It's a lot.

And right now, the cities that are doing it are the test beds for all of us

to see if it's going to work on a long-term basis.

Some cities like Anaheim and some cities in Orange County are starting to do it on a small basis, but everybody's really watching South Pasadena to see if they can sustain it or not.

In speaking to their council member that came in here and talked to us about the transition, and to their police chief and to the sergeant that ran the program,

we have to have a robust infrastructure already in place and already running,

one, to support police vehicles or city vehicles, not for the public access,

but to support city vehicles before we purchase those cars.

Currently, the police fleet is operating at 90-plus percent right now.

an all-electric Chevy Tahoe. The other one is an all-electric Chevy Blazer police car. I physically sat in that car as a police car.

They're in pre-production, mass production now.

What Pal South Pass did was they took a civilian car

and they turned it into a police car. What Chevy's trying to do is take a purpose-built police vehicle and market it to cities. So I think all of us are waiting

to see how that's going to go. Instead of trying to substitute, we want to see something that's built specifically for law enforcement, because there are a lot of special needs that we have. But I know from GM that that is coming. So hopefully by the time it gets here, we can have

maybe a more robust infrastructure in place. But Sean is the expert on that. I defer to him

for all those things. I can't push forward with anything until the vehicles are present, and we have the infrastructure to build it out.

Yeah, we'll get public works down the line soon. Sorry, back to the neighborhood watch and the business watch person. Can you talk a little bit about our organizing efforts around business watch for business owners?

Virtually business watch is the same thing. We try to hit either individual businesses that have been like perhaps a victim of a crime. We come in there and try to help them recover from that and prevent from happening in the future. A lot of those businesses are within a partnership area.

and what we try to do is then bring those partnership areas together, talk to the property management people, because a lot of the businesses don't own the physical property, and with that kind of collaborative effort,

we look at things that can help them increase the security for that area.

For example, the NBC restaurant South Area with LA Fitness.

We met with them after they were the victim of some vandalism and some burglaries and tried to work with the businesses as well as the property owner to increase some of the security measures there so they wouldn't be the victims in the future. And that's really, Business Watch is tailored the same way, it's just focused in a little bit different direction because the businesses tend to know each other, especially in these shopping centers. It's just a matter of kind of getting the property owner on the same sheet of music with them.

Have we, for the Business Watch efforts, have we worked with Joe and the economic development team to do more intentional outreach to the businesses to figure out how they can help them and encourage them to organize more?

We include them into whenever we see an issue, we'll reach out to Joe and say, hey, do you know these people? Do you know these owners? Or Jessica, do you know, who do we talk to here? And then they kind of conduct us up with those people. They'll bridge that gap for us if we need to have some introductions made. And then we encourage them, we want to set up the meeting. We'll run the meeting. We'll be there. We'll knock on doors. We'll do the things you need. We just want you to come. Just physically be present. Listen to what everybody has to say. It worked very well for us over at the marketplace.

They had a lot of issues, even with each other. And it took us kind of wrapping our arms around the whole complex and bringing them all together for one big meeting to where everybody started to understand what the other person's problem was.

And we've worked that out.

But we're really good at facilitating those things. and we do use all of our partners. The executive team here is very close and if I have an issue or I have something I can't solve, I reach out to my partners over here, the rest of the family, and they help me solve that problem, which is very unique to us as a city. But yeah, I don't ever go into things by myself.

Yeah, whatever we can do,

it if there are ways to integrate right the business watch and other pd programs into our economic i think they're very related uh and it's an opportunity to get the businesses to show up who otherwise might not show up right if they're talking about public safety and and helping offer resources and tools for them to prevent vandalism and theft and other issues in their businesses i

think that'd be a great opportunity to integrate we do it as a group on a regular basis without

thinking of doing it. It's automatic. It's part of

the way we were brought up, quite honestly.

On L19,

one of the bullets is 15 additional FLOC safety LPR cameras throughout the city. Do you know how many, I don't know if you know the exact number, I'm okay with just generally how many cameras are we operating?

We have eight cameras right now we're operating, and we are increasing our cameras by another 15 in this budget year.

To give you an idea, what I thought this statistic kind of surprised me, the city of San Marino has 40 cameras for the city of San Marino.

Alhambra, 50 cameras, block system cameras.

You can't enter those cities or exit them without getting your license plate picked up if you're a criminal.

So we're going to increase ours by 15 cameras, and that will give us the ability to track criminal activity and catch criminals better.

I go back, and I've done this on a national level at different conferences. the shooting we had was

solved based on camera systems we were able to track our suspect and figure out where he was

based on the camera systems, the FLOC and ALPR camera systems

so I'm a big advocate for these, they are a public safety bonanza and we use them on a regular basis every single day

any stolen vehicle that enters our city that crosses a camera we are told about it immediately.