Special City Council Mtg. Meeting — June 18, 2024

Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

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

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right.

All right. Good evening.

We're going to start our city council meeting for Tuesday, June 18th.

We'll start with the land acknowledgement.

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

With that said, we'll call a meeting to order,

and we'll begin with a flag salute. if anyone everyone can join me in standing for the presentation of the flag

please join me in the flag salute right hand over your heart ready if you can

Please join me in the flag salute. Right hand over your heart. Ready, begin.

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

Order colors.

Outward face.

Forward march. ! Hold it.

FolLod by the speech.

It's dismissed.

Please receive it.

Please proceed.

City Clerk, if you could do the roll call.

Council Member Sanchez. Present. Council Member Lo. Present. Council Member Yu. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Ngo. Present. Mayor Wong. Present. We have a quorum. Thank you.

Any agenda additions, deletions, changes, or adoptions from the Council stand?

No changes.

Council any do we want to move any items?

No, we do

All right, well, we'll move let's move a couple of items. I see some people here for I'm guessing some specific items

I

Believe item for a I think there are some speakers here City clerk, right? But if we can how many speakers are there a lot?

Did they note their position on the item or not?

Okay.

So, I mean, I'll just...

Okay.

So, for item 4A, and Carl is going to make sure I do this correctly. So, just to note for everyone, this is an item for the council to continue this item, actually, to a future council meeting. so we unless the council feels differently we actually will not be hearing this item today I don't know if we have to open the public hearing to open it up or if we can have a discussion on

this Mr. Mayor members of the council it has been noticed so if there are people that are here tonight that cannot show up at the recommended continuance date my recommendation would be to open the public hearing now take their testimony with the understanding to the folks that testified tonight we will not again be listening to testimony from the same individuals from the

continued public hearing. So just to reiterate what the city attorney just said, so we will open the public hearing tonight for item 4a. If those who, but the intention and the recommendation from staff is to continue this item. So not to actually take action on this item tonight, but to take action on item 4a for the Elhamer Avenue development on July 17th at our council meeting then. So for those who are here for that item specifically, if you would like to be heard and can come back on July 17th, that might be a better option for you because that's when the council intends to take action on this item. But if you want to speak tonight, you can, but you won't be alLod to speak at both meetings, so tonight and on July 17th. So just take note of that. If you'd like to withdraw your request for comment, you can do that with the clerk up here. If not, we will call you and you can come up and speak tonight. Note that if you speak tonight, you will not be able to speak on this item when we hear it again on July 17th. Mr. Mayor,

a point of clarification. If they do speak tonight, and I understand they will not be able to speak again at the continue, but can they still send correspondence to the city?

No. Yes?

Yes.

Okay, they can still send letters. Yes. Okay.

All right.

So, well, that's one item we'll move up.

And then I'd like to move up.

I'll move up item 6A for a resolution as well. Are there any other items council wants to adjust the order of?

Oh, and 5B?

Yeah, 5. Sorry.

Wait, Mr. Mayor, you said you're moving 6A up as well?

6A up.

I see. Oh, God, okay. And 5B.

All right.

Oh.

All right.

Just remind me, okay, so we'll take 6A up first,

and then we'll do...

4B and 5B.

Okay, 6A, then 4B.

I don't know.

All right.

Yeah, okay, 6A, then 4A, then 4B.

So what did I say?

6A, 5B, 4A, 4B.

All right. Any other changes?

If not, we will begin with those items before we go into the staff communications. We have to open for public communication, right, first?

General.

So we'll open it up for public communication, general public communication, city clerk.

I'm Gina Ruiz of the Monterey Park Pony Baseball and USA Softball.

Hello.

My name is Gina Ruiz. I'm from MPK Baseball and Softball Incorporated. Thank you, Mayor and Council members. I'm here to thank you for all your support that you've shown our league over the years.

To anyone that doesn't know us, we are a softball and baseball league based out of Monterey Park.

our home fields are Garvey Ranch Park. We were established in 2015 and we have over 300 children

boys and girls that play baseball and softball with our league. We wanted to express our thanks for all your recent improvements that you've done to our parks. Our community is very happy with all the improvements. I see plenty of cars parked at the park and children laughing and enjoying all of the new playground equipment. Parks and Rec have been doing a fabulous job of maintaining the fields despite weekend rains from the last season. But working with Rudy and working with Robert Aguirre, Rudy Venezuela, and Sean Igoe with Public Works, they've been doing a fabulous job in keeping our kids playing.

I'm here also to let you know, the community know, that our group of girls, our 12-year-old girls,

just recently won Northern District Championship representing Monterey Park.

And these girls worked really, really hard. They were undefeated in the entire tournament. They will be representing Monterey Park June 27th, the weekend of June 27th, at state championship.

So I just wanted to let the community know.

We also are having a fundraiser for these girls to fund the tournament fees, their hotel fees, at Shakey's Alhambra.

It will be this Thursday, June 20th, from 5.30 to 8. I know it is Barnes Park movie night, but we're hoping that people will grab a pizza and head to the park for the movie.

So if you could show your support, we'd really appreciate it. I just have here with me Vanessa Gavia. Yes, she's one of the coaches for the 12U All-Star.

And on the board.

And I have Wendy Taguchi. She is our secretary.

So thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. And congratulations.

a very quick staff report or anything?

If not, the resolution speaks for itself. Are there any comments

from Council? Are there speakers on this?

No? No speakers. Council? No? Is there a motion? I'll move. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion?

I just want to acknowledge the Boys and Girls Club members that are here. Appreciate them coming out to our last Council meeting to request

this.

Thank you to the Boys and Girls Club for all that you do for our community.

We were really appreciative of being able to partner on the Pride March and Festival just a few short weeks ago and know that you guys are going to be doing amazing things in the weeks and months and years to come. And thanks to Curtis for chaperoning some of the students here tonight.

There's a motion and a second.

If there's no further discussion, we'll call for the vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

Congratulations. Feel free to stay for the meeting as long as Curtis wants you.

And if you find anything interesting, I think any of the council members and staff are happy to chat some more if you want to stay until the end of the meeting or some other day too. But thanks for coming up tonight.

All right. We'll move to item 5B, right?

4A. Alright, 4A.

Public hearing to consider following applications tentative map number 84188, DRB,

development agreement between Commons of Murray Park of MBK LLC and City of Murray Park, including the mitigated navigative declaration for construction and subdivision for 338-410 South Elhambury Avenue. Is there a very quick staff report on this?

Good evening, Mayor, members of the Council. The project proposed is the 64-unit mixed... Sorry. Beth Chow Planning Manager.

The project proposed for you this evening is the 64-unit mixed market rate and affordable housing development.

At this time, staff is seeking a continuance to the July 17, 2024 City Council meeting

in order to allow for time to final negotiation terms for the development agreement.

At this time, staff is recommending Council consider continuing the public hearing

to that July 17, 2024 Council meeting and then taking additional action as may be desirable.

That concludes my staff report.

Thank you.

So I'll reiterate for those who have submitted speaker cards for this item in particular. We, I don't know, I assume, and it sounds like the council and the staff recommendation is to continue this item and the discussion and action on this item for this development to July 17th. So we will, I don't anticipate that we will be taking action on this item tonight. For those who have signed up to provide comment on this item, you can provide comment as I open the public hearing tonight, but if you choose to do so tonight, you will not be able to provide that comment on the 17th. You can provide written comments at any time and multiple times, but if you want to give comment as the council is deliberating and having this conversation, I would expect that to happen on the 17th and not tonight. So for those who have submitted comments, if you would like to give it tonight, or if This might be easier. If you'd like to withdraw your request to speak tonight, maybe raise your hand, and we can find the card for you to take out. If you'd like to speak tonight, though, we will go through the list as it is ordered now by the clerk, and you can come up to speak, and we will hear your comments. And if you'd like to, when your name is called, if you would like to withdraw at that time, Feel free to just let let let us know raise your hand just let us know you want to pass you can do that too

All right, so

City clerk, all right first speaker Hector Oh tone. Yes

Sorry, I probably butchered your last name Hector

Let's go to the next week

Yeah, if the clerk wants to call the next speaker just be next speaker is you and Chi Chi

Jones?

After him. To start. Okay, my name's Hector Otanias. I've lived in the city of Monterey Park most of my life, over 30 years. I'm going to make it brief. All you really have to do is go out to Alhambra Avenue and drive through there. There's absolutely zero parking on the street. for all the residents that are there it's very difficult for them to park i'm lucky i have a long driveway it doesn't affect me but it does in the sense that people that are looking for parking spots they block driveways i've literally had five vehicles towed by calling the police department over the last couple months i don't want to do it but they're blocking my access to get out and inside my property. If you guys allow this project to go through, Alhambra Avenue is going to be a freaking nightmare. It's going to be terrible. I just want you guys to take that into account. Thank you. Thank you.

Yun Chi Chang is next

and then folLod by Yan

Fang Situ.

Is that you?

No, no, no. No?

No, no, no, sorry. Yin Chi?

I'm not speaking English. Okay.

I'm not speaking English. I'm sorry.

And if you hear your name called as the next speaker, if you can...

I am so sorry.

I know we have a long list and a long night ahead of us. If the second speaker that's called by the city clerk can just be prepared to come up

and give comment, that would be helpful.

Yin Chi Chiang?

Oh, this Yang Chiang.

Huh? You said Yang Chiang? In Chi Chang first In Chi Chang no no if not go ahead go ahead because in Chi Chang did not come up

Are you in I

Am yin Chi I

Good evening council members mayor and All my neighbors and sitting here in the audience with me we are quite upset that this is a continuous problem for all of the neighbors here on alhambra we do not have any parking on the street with this building being built we are going to have a havoc on our street not only the safety will decrease to absolutely nothing we will also have many migrant just random people living here on the street without this project we already have a

a bunch of like problems on the street we have boarding houses we have like possible gambling houses we have like it's like our street is becoming like just a really bad street to live on it's not safe that all there's always strange people walking it's not safe to walk on the street anymore. And with the whole parking situation, I don't understand why the developer can just simply do a better plan of planning a good number of parking for his project.

Like 80 parking for a 64 unit with everybody have two or three cars. It's just impossible. Also, with this project on our street,

our property value is going to decrease by a solid 10%. And I feel like the developer does not consider that our livelihood on the street

doesn't care about our welfare. He doesn't care about, like, our actual community feel.

Constantly brings in this ugly, like, building that's just going to be erected, you know, in the middle of the street. And at the same time, we, our neighborhood,

it seems that like the developer does not thinks that we have like very little like

legal knowledge. But we do. Our neighbors are willing to fight for this and we want our street to be really safe with plenty of parking, not all the strange people walking all over the street and I hope that my neighbors stand with me tonight and have the city council really consider what kind of project this is and what it's really going to do to our neighborhood. We pride our street to be a clean, safe street with plenty of single-family homes, condos, but not an apartment. We are not Koreatown. We don't want the buses to come onto our street. We moved to Montreux Park because we want this kind of nice, neighborly-feel street. That's why we moved here. We don't want to live next to a huge apartment with a metropolitist kind of feel. That's not what a street is. So I really encourage the city council to consider this project, consider what it's really going to do to our street and the neighboring streets. Parking is going to be so bad. It's going to be so dangerous, and that's not something that the neighborhoods wants to see. Thank you.

Next speaker, Yan Feng Situ.

After that is Lai Wu.

As the speaker comes up, I'll just officially open public hearing on this item retroactively.

Yan Feng Situ is my mom. And she wanted me to inform the public that she is against this project because of the parking issue. and in conjunction with my own look at the codes is put in perspective the minimum requirement for

the municipal code requires this 65 unit project to have a minimum required parking 140 now I

understand the density bonus law might waive that but in perspective it's 140 spots that are supposed to be for the amount of bedrooms for these units and giving about 84 parking spots you're still short 50. That's 50 more potential cars that you're trying to fit into a street that's already filled. So with the parking issue and the traffic that this project might create, you know, my mom is against this project. Thank you. Thank you. Lai Wu. Lai Wu. Lai Wu. And then after Lai Wu, I Su Hu.

Lai Wu.

I see who is next.

I see who, if you would mind coming down. Okay. Is that lie or is that I?

I.

I. How about lie? No? No lie?

All right. No lie.

Sorry. Just translating. Yeah, you can get closer to the mic. Sorry about that.

So Ms. Lai, she just wanted to say she's against this project, and it's a big parking issue and safety issue.

Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker.

Next speaker. I see who?

The clerk can maybe call the next few

Just for them to be prepared

You guys are killing me with the handwriting And the names Zhu

Sun Shi

Zhu Shi Zhu Shi

Is there a Zhu Shi in the house?

No?

How do you spell the other person's name?

So Z-H-U-O-X-I-E is next.

Z-H-U-O-X-I-E is next.

My dad.

So she lives on the same street as my mom and that she's against this project as well.

All right. Thank you.

Can you call your dad?

Next speaker.

Okay, next speaker. Alan Chi. After Alan is Melanie.

My name is Alan. I'm a resident on South Alabama Street as well. I previously mentioned for my mom that it's a huge parking issue. You're supposed to have 140 parking spots and you're only providing 84, so there's like a 50-spot deficit. So you're expecting a street that doesn't have any street parking left to accommodate 50 additional spots.

I also want to comment on the ISMD itself. I have some disagreements with some of the findings.

such as a hazardous section 4.9 hazards and hazardous materials.

They say that there's no further studies done. No Significant Impact, but the phase one ESA report itself indicates that they didn't test for bestows and lead-based paint, oh, sorry, didn't, they mentioned it and test for bestows and their houses built before, before 1970, has a potential for bestows, yet, the recommendations did not indicate that they have to test for it, to see if there's any special disposal and a work plan in removing the bestows from demolishing existing buildings, and that also applies to the lead-based paint, that ESA, actually, didn't mention, lead-based paint at all, and that's, uh, That's a safety hazard.

And the Phase I ESA is not signed or certified.

There's no PE stamp identifying their certification or their expertise regarding that.

Regarding another Section 4.10, Hydrology and Water Quality, this project, the ISMD, has an LID plan that's also not signed, but it's also, I believe, it's incomplete because it doesn't include a master covenant and agreement and an operation and maintenance plan, meaning there's no agreement with the city identifying what the role is, what the property owners is, how they're maintaining the low-impact development, which is a water quality treatment structure, essentially. So there's no plan for that. There's also the operation and maintenance, how it's maintained. That plan is insufficient and lacking a lot of issues, and it kind of doesn't meet the MS4 permit requirement. So all water quality issues with the operation maintenance plan is insufficient. It doesn't talk about how they need to inspect it, what type of maintenance needs to be done, or even identify what type of soil for the bio-planter, like when it has to be replaced, what are things to look for, what landscapers are not alLod to do that might impact the infiltration rate for the low-impact development. So I have an issue with Section 4.16, transportation and traffic.

If you look at the traffic report, it says it's for a 65-unit senior housing. It's not even analyzed for the multifamily traffic situation. So that itself, the report needs to be revised. I don't know if this is cut and paste from a different project that's put into this, but for senior housing. This is not a senior housing project. It's a multifamily project with different traffic issues. Let's see.

And that's my comments. Thank you. Jing Zheng. Jing Zheng.

And then after that, it's Ying Jing Mao.

Zheng.

And after that, it's Ying Jing Mao. If you don't mind coming down.

Thank you.

I'm a resident of 527 South Alhambra Avenue.

I'm opposed of this project because this is a very bad safety issue.

I cannot walk out of my house at night.

My mother cannot go out and drive anymore.

And what kind of safety concerns 64 units are going to increase to our street? I strongly oppose this project. Thank you.

Z-H-A-N-G.

Z-H-A-N-G.

And then after that, it is Yu Ying-Li.

Yu Ying-Li. And then Louise Lin.

And if the following speakers can prepare.

Yes. And if you could state your name.

I'm also a resident of 527 South A. Halbron Avenue, My name is Lin Yueying.

I cannot go outside of my house anymore.

The cars on my street, there are so many cars.

And I'm so afraid when I go out, I cannot drive anymore.

This project, I am opposed of this project. And with the 64 unit built up, I cannot imagine what kind of access of driving that I'll have.

I'm already staying at home, and I cannot drive anymore. Thank you. Thank you. Louise Liu, and then after that it's Wen Hu. Louise Liu. Louise. Wen Hu. Pass.

Zong Li Jing.

Louise.

Are you Louise?

After Louise, it's Quang Wang.

Hi, I'm Louise. Hi, I'm Louise.

growing growing growing growing growing

growing growing

growing growing growing growing growing growing growing growing

growing growing growing

! So we have the停車

然後它只有八十幾個停車位 兩房 三房的units

只有一個半停車位 已經非常穩極 這個是不是不make sense

然後我們已經反對過一次了 現在又增加了64動 几年前 然后现在又改头换面 又来了一次这个计划 那我们想问一下 我们搬到Montra Park去 主要是因为这条

阿亨博街是Montra Park 最宽最漂亮的街 二三十年前 现在这条街 已经变得非常拥挤 根本就 没办法开车 车速也变得 It's very fast.

The car is too much. And there are no people here. They can't find a停車位. And I hope the city will be able to help us solve this problem.

Because this is not for our people who live in this area. It's a good idea.

My name is Lois Liu. I am at 420B South Alhambra Avenue. I'd like to share some additional thoughts and suggestions regarding the hearing on the South Alhambra Street 64-unit project, and I hope that are helpful to you. Everyone's likely aware that we are dealing with a very...

We're dealing with a real estate developer who exploits legal and systematic loopholes, equipped with a professional team and expert knowledge. The reasons they present tonight for changing property use zoning restrictions are provided by their professional legal team. Their sole purpose is to increase their huge profit by Loring the property values in our community. If their real estate project is successfully built, the value of each of our properties will drop by at least 10%. Therefore, our conflict with them is reconceivable. Their repeated entanglements aim to eventually defeat us, the individual residents who lack professional knowledge. We must be prepared for a long-term struggle, making a clear debt to the developer and relevant government departments that their repeated harassment severely disrupts and destroys our normal lives. We will never back down. If necessary, we'll raise funds to hire a professional team to fight against them if they continue to pressure us and entangle us endlessly. We'll establish a foundation to protect the residents' interest, raise funds, and hire a professional legal team to fight them, ensuring that this project never breaks ground. Meanwhile, we will thoroughly investigate any possible collusion or legal activities between... Okay, we don't know about that. We'll never back down. Thank you very much for your participation. Neighbors, let's work together, and we can definitely protect our homes and community. Thank you. City Clerk.

One, I want to remind people that are commenting tonight, and if you're providing translation for some of the Chinese speakers, one, please translate what they are saying. I do understand a little bit of Chinese. My Chinese is not great, but if you're just going to read something else off and it's not what they're saying, that's a different comment. So I'll just note that. Two, if I can defer to my council colleague Yifan Yu to maybe just provide the same announcement I did in English in Chinese for those that are here, just so there's understanding what is the proposed staff recommendation for this item tonight.

I think we will not do a decision. You can't say 7月17th. So if you want to keep it in mind, you don't want to say 7月17th.

That time will be more close to the decision. So I hope you can think,

if you don't want to say, you can leave 7月17th.

另外,市長還有第二個 comment,就是說,你們上來講的那些意見的話,請你如果做翻譯的時候,要外案去真正講的東西來去做翻譯,不要讀另外一套的,因為這樣子不是真正的翻譯的話就不對了。好,謝謝大家。

Again, what Council Member Yu was saying in Chinese, if you are able to come on July 17th, that might be a better opportunity to provide input and your comment on this specific item. The staff recommendation is to continue this item and the actual action on this item to the July 17th meeting. So we do not anticipate a vote on this item tonight other than to move the item to the 17th. So if she calls your name and you would prefer to speak on the 17th when we take action on this item,

just you can raise your hand very quickly

to tell her you want to defer to the next meeting. If Councilor Yu wants to say that again really quickly in Chinese, that would be very helpful.

市長剛剛講說,

如果你們今天不需要講的話,

你可以說舉手,

我就是要今天不講了,

請你告訴我們的前台, 我想要留到7月17號講. 或者是到叫你名字的時候,

那這個時間我覺得是更比較好

因為今天我們聽了

我們不會給你把那個發展的個案連在一起的話 你的意見就變成分開了 好 謝謝

總結

總結

總結 No 雲雯 雲雯 W-A-N-G 雯

Wang? No. Ricky Chow? No. Pei Ning? Next time. Jessica Wang?

You did that, boys. Come on. Next time. Okay. Next time.

Okay. Next time. Next time.

Xikian Yang Xikian

S-H-I-Q-I-N

Yang

All right

Gu Long Fan Next time Thank you

Xizia

Next time Thank you Oh goodness Jameson Jia

Next time All right. Shu San? Next time? Okay.

Ying Hu Kai?

C-A-I?

I think that's what you wrote. Cam?

Maybe an M?

Maybe an N?

I have a medical case. Wait, clerk, maybe you want to just spell them out.

But also...

I can't read the right word. Okay.

Well, it's...

or want to speak on the 17th

as opposed to tonight,

we'll just assume that that is the case and you can come back on the 17th.

If you want. On the 17th, yeah.

Yeah, if you want to speak tonight, you can come down and we can grab your card, make sure we grab it tonight. And then just to query those who may have submitted speaker requests for this item tonight, if there are any proponents for the project, just curious if you want to come up as well.

What is your name? Because my... I live in

because my English is not good so I ask you to translate for me. Thank you. Yeah.

I'm a croissant. I'm too緊張.

So because

every owner has received Lotus

Yes, thank you.

Okay, so this resident said they all receive letter

as a property owner but then they wanted to know how many letters that being opposed that we receive, that the resident receive, sorry, we receive. And also they want to know if they can hire a lawyer to represent them.

So, well, we don't, we're not hearing the item.

Only yes or no.

I only want to ask a lawyer to be no because this is

我想问现在你们知道 Ahampla每天晚上停多少车吗 Yes or no 太专业了 你只需要回答Yes or no 我觉得 还有现在就是

你们发出来是 多少个owner收到了Lotus 2 我们所说的只是一个停车

这个信 然后你们收到的 回复的信有多少 反对的信有多少 但是我没有看到数据

I want to use the data to give us the answer Not that every one Because we have eight units

Eight units all of them are opposed But today we have eight units Not all of them are opposed to But you see now that people are not supposed to be the answer

So when the data is not right I think that the problem is too professional I think that we are a ordinary owner If we say that it is too professional We don't have any questions That we can't find a lawyer

So I'll just reiterate for those, and the city attorney is going to correct me in my interpretations. So for public comment, we can take your comment. Everyone has up to five minutes to speak, but it's not a back and forth, and we're not here to answer questions that way. So we appreciate your questions. Council Member Yu will take those in for us, translate very quickly maybe. So we know what was said so that everyone knows what was said, but we're not in a position We're not gonna be providing answers directly to your questions that way

Mr. Mayor members of the council Jim. Do you want to raise your hand? Yeah, perhaps you have another client

All right

Hey, I was just trying to help

you're here so

council for you if you want to translate real quick

you know actually let me translate what she said first and then I would just actually she said there's two professional other terms so they don't really understand and they wanted to know how many car parks on the street and also the safety issues and also how many opposing letter that we receive so in order to gather all the data and can they hire a lawyer So she kind of repeated the second half.

And our manager said, because you're here today, we won't answer your question. This is just, we'll give you five minutes. It's just you can't give your thoughts. So we're not a way to answer your question. We're just listening to your thoughts. So we won't answer any questions. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We're here. We're here.

Sir, yeah. Yeah.

Only one question. We can ask a lawyer to be asked or no. Yes or no. Only this yes or no. Yeah.

Well, residents can do hire whoever they want to speak for them however they want. If you want, yes.

But that's up to you.

And we're not in a position to give you any legal advice.

Okay. Thank you. All right. Next speaker. Yeah, I already finished. Thank you.

Is there anyone else interested in speaking tonight?

What is your name?

Gary.

Gary, you're speaking on this item, Alham Avenue?

Yes. Okay.

I'll make it quick.

I'm sorry, what? Thanks, man. Thanks.

I know I understand there's a housing shortage and we need more housing and

especially more affordable housing and I'm no problem with new development and

I'm a free market believer I don't have a problem with the developer trying to make a profit the market would dictate the results but however 64 units at that

location it's very dense highly dense for that area so number of these units

are two bedrooms three bedrooms so you do a simple math right how many occupants for the entire complex with two and three bedrooms spread out and then you

only have what the 63 parking spaces or something or 83 I don't remember what 83 parking spaces, I think it was. So it's not going to suffice. And the parking situation in the neighborhood is already dense because

the city of Monterey Park allows for 24-hour parking. So a ton of people already park on the street. So you're not going to have much parking at all in that area. We don't have much parking at all right now, as is. So

and I suspect

that a number of the buyers are investors

and

you know I don't have obviously this is before the project completes and all but I suspect that a number of the owners

will probably rent out some rooms, use as boarding

place and partition some of the rooms if they have a three or two bedroom. So it's

going to be even a higher occupancy than what's alLod.

So I And for this type of project, I think it's more appropriate if it's located on the main thoroughfare,

like Garvey, Atlantic, Garfield, where we have a bunch of apartments and hotels, but not in that particular location where it's mainly residential and a single family.

And if they want to build PDUs in that location, it's fine.

It's even better. and I think that's more appropriate than the number of units that they want to

plan to build. And I echo what a lot of the previous speakers said. So that's my two cents on it. Thank you.

Any other speakers?

Okay. I am going to detail the written comments if somebody can translate for her because I know she did answer that. we received several comments two agency comments 37 opposition 22 emails 9 letters, 3 form letters a fax email for a total of 37 letters opposing the project one comment undecided and 31 letters or emails in support of the project

that is your total

thank you

just to check again

if anyone who submitted a card tonight wants to speak tonight, please raise your hand or come forward, and we can pull your name from the card. If not, we will go to council comments on this. I don't know if the proponents want to speak or you guys.

The applicants, no?

All right. Go ahead.

I will ask you to come to the front.

If you don't have a question today, then you can sit in the front.

Thank you.

because staff still has to do the report. But may I ask, this project, did it go through the planning commission?

Councilmember Lo, this project did not appear before our planning commission.

For a project this size, would it normally, though, require, well, okay, I'd require or out of prudence go through the planning commission?

because the city council is the final deciding body on this type of project

one of our strategies within our municipal code to allow for streamlining of projects

allows for this project to be heard before you okay which which i understand again because again

we're talking about you know economic development but i'm going to suggest that given the proposed

size of the project and given

some of the comments, I actually think

this should go to the Planning Commission. You know, again,

go to the Planning Commission. Again,

the people we appoint, many people are

planning backgrounds, and I think it would help us as a governing board to also hear from suggestions by the Planning Commission as well as give an opportunity to weigh in on this project proposed as well.

It's our prerogative as a council so that's a motion. I don't know if there are other comments from council members in terms of how they feel about this. I'd look to Carl if there are any legal requirements on this.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. Just to expound upon staff's comments on this. The municipal code provides that any time there's a legislative decision made that the city council itself acts as the city's planning agency. There's no requirement in fact the municipal code specifically states that it's the City Council that makes the final decision with regard to it Without Planning Commission input that said the council can certainly remand this to the Planning Commission to be heard and ask for it to come back with

recommendations

Okay, so then do I make a motion requesting that it go to Planning Commission?

Yes, the motion if that's what's desirable would be to remand the matter to the Planning Commission to be heard at the first opportunity

Okay. I mean, well, unless someone else wants to make some comments, but nonetheless, I mean, if not.

I agree with Council Member Lo. In particular, two of the items that were brought up by residents dealt with traffic safety and parking issues. So I think that if we do decide as a governing body to send this back to the Planning Commission, that we particularly address those two major issues, which seem to be more concern of the residents. So I think it would also help us to be able to hear from planning commissioners and also give residents an opportunity to hear from the planning commission and be able to voice their opinions there as well.

And so it would, especially since there's a lot of concerns about traffic and parking.

I would also like to see this maybe perhaps sent back to Planning Commission with further recommendations.

Sounded like a second for that motion.

I guess I'm making a motion that this item be remanded to the City's Planning Commission.

Okay.

I'll second.

Any additional comments from Council members?

I want to ask, when will our Planning Commission meet next time?

Staff is going to check on those dates.

In the meantime, it will also need to be noticed.

So there's going to be a noticing period for the Planning Commission. So even if there's a meeting in between, we have to meet the noticing requirement.

So they're counting the days to make sure that we can meet the noticing requirement and then the next.

THE NEXT AVAILABLE MEETING WHERE WE CAN MEET NOTICING REQUIREMENTS WOULD LIKELY BE JULY 23.

ANY OTHER COMMENTS, DISCUSSION FROM COUNCIL ON THIS? THERE IS A MOTION TO REMAIN THIS TO PLANNING COMMISSION TO TAKE ON. so we're not going to continue this public hearing to July we'll wait for the Plans Commission to discuss this and provide

recommendation for action to the council at a future date

so that said, any other

discussion? If not, we'll call for the vote on moving this to the planning

I'll just make a quick comment

we're hearing one group and I'm sure there's another group that's on the opposite end because we have

received 30

something emails in support of. The bottom line is this. Let's get

this, if we're going to decide to get this to the

Planning Commission, let's make sure we get everyone in the same room so that they can speak quickly,

efficiently, and effectively. So the faster we get this thing

in discussion, the better it is for the city because stalling one way or the other is not going to help one group or the other. Our role as the city council is to make sure we get things done.

So please

make sure we get that calendar so they can get to the Commission and get through

this as quick as possible. Thank you. All right there's a motion in a second. Mr. City Attorney do I need to close the public hearing or how over the Mr. Mayor members the council the public

hearing at such as it is the comments will be transmitted to this to the Planning Commission just as part of the record but this public hearing before the city council will simply be discontinued and you're remanding it back to the Planning Commission. At least that's the way I'm reading the room, although you haven't taken the vote.

All right. Whatever you said.

All right. We'll call for the vote.

All right.

And I don't know if maybe, Councilman, you can just very quickly interpret for those who speak Chinese here what action we just took.

Okay. Okay, today we just talked about this project, we brought back to our planning commission group.

Next time we will be in 7th of July. So, we hope you will be aware of the information.

We will not talk about 7th of July.

We will have our planning commission group.

We will talk about this project. Thank you.

I don't know if staff can take some of these questions in the side room.

A few of them.

All right. We'll move back.

We'll move ahead to item 4B, resolution updating the master schedule of fees and charges.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

We're going to get going on item four, if the council can return.

I think we're missing somebody. He's coming.

He's coming. He's coming.

Item 4B.

We'll start with this.

Is this a public hearing item?

It is.

and we'll open the public hearing on IM4B.

We'll start with the staff report.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members. My name is Patricia Cruz, financial analyst in the Finance Department.

Tonight, I'd like to present for your consideration the citywide master's schedule of fees and charges.

the city's master schedule of fees and charges says fees for various services the city provides

the city's master schedule of fees is reviewed and updated annually as part of the adoption process changes to the master schedule of fees are done through adoption at a city council meeting

during a public hearing new fees are carefully calculated and current fees are annually adjusted based on the consumer price index. The current schedule was adopted back in June of 2022.

The city contracted with Wildem Financial Services to prepare a detailed cost of service user fee study. The last fee study was conducted in 2013.

The scope of the user fee includes a review and calculation of the user's fees listed in the existing master schedule of fees

charged by all our departments.

The primary objective of the user fee study is to determine the reasonable full cost of providing the service.

The following data was used to derive at an appropriate proposed fee.

Expenditure data, city staffing structures, central services overhead cost, productive bill of hours, time estimate to complete tasks, and city department input and policies.

This flow chart outlines the various phases of the study

Model development, cost analysis, set cost recovery Fee study report and updated fee adoption

This formula was used to arrive at a full cost recovery fee

The formula was basically the hourly rate of staff providing the service

times the time required to provide the service,

arriving at the cost of service, which would be the maximum fee amount we may charge.

To adjust the master schedule of fees, the city must hold at least one public hearing. The notice for this public hearing was published in the Monterey Park Press on May, June 3, 2024.

The law requires a reasonable relationship between the cost of service and the fee amount.

The law also requires that the City Council adopt fees by either ordinance or resolution.

This proposed resolution includes new fees, which are highlighted in yellow, and you would see them in your Exhibit A.

The proposed master schedule of fees and charges will allow the city to adequately recover the cost of the services that it provides.

staff recommends opening the public hearing to consider proposed updates to the master schedule of fees adopting a resolution approving the updates to the master schedule of fees

and taking such additional related action that may be desirable this concludes my presentation

staff is available to answer any questions you may have and pretty patel from wielding

financial services is also available via zoom thank you thank you I will

actually open up the public hearing now are there any public comments on this

item no public comments all right we will close the public hearing council

comments any council comments all right I have a couple once I find them since We're going out of order.

B.

318.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I was just trying to find my notes. .

. . .

.

Should number my notes

Um

There is oh, I haven't found it but there is a fee that we set for concealed carry permits

I'm not sure what page it is.

On page 318 of the staff report, that currently notes that a suggested subsidy for CCW permits. I'd like to propose adjusting that so that there is not a subsidy for concealed carry permit applicants. If there is consensus or thoughts on the council for that, I'd like to ask for support on that item.

line item. Okay.

Question, Chief, how many of those do we have again?

I've recalled there about 20 from the

city. We've got about 35 permits right now. Scott Weiss, Chief of Police. We have about 35

permits. I don't, we may have two or three in the process

right now. Our staff worked with the

with finance to determine the amount of staff time that's put into each one of those permits.

And then we follow state law that limits how much we can charge based on what the actual time that's put in by staff.

And that's everybody from me down to the initial taker of the permit.

All right.

Are there any questions, comments on that item that I'm suggesting for CCW permit fees?

I'm sorry, are you saying it's be Lored or just?

So currently on page 318 of the packet, right,

there's an item for concealed weapons permit, CCW,

and CCW permit amendments and renewals.

So right now the full cost is determined by this rate study, right,

the burdened cost for processing the concealed carry permits for the city

is estimated at $601.36. cents. The suggested fee is $528.14, so the city would be subsidizing the costs of producing the permit for applicants by 12%. I would like to not provide a subsidy for those who wish to carry a concealed carry weapon in the city. If that's amenable to the council, we will direct the staff to adjust the fee for that as proposed to the full cost. So it's just $100 more

Okay, I have no objection to that or 80 set $70 more. I'm bad at math

All right, I'm trying to find if I have any other I don't think I had any other notes on this. Thanks chief lease

Oh, and then I was gonna point out so on page 308 There is a line item for bingo permit

so I guess we charge a fee for those who wish to

host games of bingo in the city

I know in my discussions with city manager it seems like we don't have an active bingo

kind of community currently but we have had one in the past if the city manager can just address that really quick

good evening Mr. Mayor members of the council that is correct We, previous to the pandemic, we did have bingo operations that were held over at Langley Center through a nonprofit organization.

And that is correct.

We did have that organization, because they operated bingo, pull a permit.

But since then, some of our nonprofit organizations, we haven't seen them come back after COVID.

So, So we have not had any requests for any bingo at this time.

All right. Any, any other comments? Mr. Mayor? Oh, thank you. On page 317 regarding animal services, I questioned and whether this is within our scope, but I know that and I, and I understand why, but for those who have pets that are unsterilized, they haven't been spayed or neutered. We do charge more, and I understand, again, because we're trying to minimize the issue of, I guess, stray pets. But would it be within our scope if we... Because I realize also that it can be expensive to spay or neuter, but do we provide information about any county services that might offer, or even non-profit offer, like any subsidized if the issue is that they are trying to have their pets bait or new, but there could be a cost issue?

Scott Weiss, Chief of Police again, and Animal Services is under my department.

We, a while back, adopted the county's ordinances when it comes to Animal Services.

So whatever the county fee and how they apply it based on the status of the animal

is what we adopt here for our city.

So if they have a fee that goes up based on their surveys, we follow that. In regards, Mr. Mayor, members of the council, in regards to educating the residents for,

I think you're asking about educating the residents

about programs that maybe Lor income residents could qualify for,

we can definitely look in to see if there's programs available and then advertise those through our website,

our e-newsletter, the Cascades, so that people know that there's opportunities out there.

I believe the county does have services that are right down that path also. And thank you.

And in that regard, yeah, I think if we could maybe just let the public also know about that so that, again, I understand why we charge more for unsterilized. But at the same time, if cost is an issue, let's see if we can make sure that those who are low-income are aware that there are opportunities to have affordable sterilization of their pets.

All right. Any other comments on the master fee schedule? If not, is there a motion to adopt with the one change for the CCW permits?

Move for approval. Is there a second?

I'll second.

All right. It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none, call for the vote.

Approved unanimously.

I did close the public comment here.

All right.

All right, moving on to item 5B, Spirit Bus Fixed Route Transit Service.

All right, two speakers.

Go ahead.

First speaker, Bill Lamb.

Oh, there was no presentation or?

He's asking if there was if there's going to be a presentation there will be but we can

take your comment now.

Hold on, hold on.

So, yes, so this is Bill Lam, a longtime resident of Murray Park, and I currently attend Cal State Norfolk. So when I look at these conceptual service improvement strategies, there's going to be a lot of worse impacts in the Brightwood neighborhood where I currently live.

Well, it's closer to Elac, Monterey Highlands, and the area around Garvey Reservoir.

on the southeast.

One of the main concerns is that

I don't like cutting bus service into Brightwood, Highlands, and the area

around

the Garvey Reservoir. When making routes

one and two going

bi-directional,

it would be nice, it would have been better if it was like swapped over so that route two could

focus on bi-directional service on Atlantic and one on Garfield because on the because on Route one it went on Garfield first before Atlantic and then Route two went on Atlantic before Garfield so

well and I had to add that the Route two should if Route two goes bi-directional it should have

been going into that Brightwood neighborhood. That includes like adding a stop at Sequoia Park rather than walking from a barrier cliff.

You know, when I heard that Route 4 is going to be cutting service, not just the Highlands

neighborhood, but the entire line, which makes really concerning to me because how are they

going to catch a bus even if they're elementary students from Highlands for Route 4, Brightwood

Route 2, and Hillcrest Elementary for Route 3? They would have to walk very far to go all the way

down to catch the nearby bus routes, alternate routes, I would say. And the comments I give to you, those are my proposed suggestions. I also included the map coloring, the line coloring,

and the bus stop location. So when you release those conceptual service improvement strategies,

I don't understand why you would rush this to approve the route of change without gathering public input.

When you look at brighter blue, big blue buses in Santa Monica, transportation development plan in Santa Clarita, as well as the short-range transit plan for Pasadena Transit, well, Pasadena Transit hasn't released the proposed bus routes yet. But the thing is, if you like approve the route change now, then how will people know?

They're not even aware.

They're not even aware about the route change once you approve it. There has to be a public input on these proposed route changes.

because when Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus,

Bright Blue BBB project released the proposed changes,

what did they do? They take public hearings first

before they forward all of these to their council,

same as Santa Clarita's transit development plan. Once they released the proposed plan,

they take comments from input

and then they send it to their own council.

So you see, this is the reason why we cannot approve this conceptual service improvement strategies, because we need more public input, more comments on why these strategies are good or not.

So in closing, don't approve the route changes under this conceptual service improvement strategies yet. Let the public speak for itself whether they like it or not. And yes, trying to gather my thoughts here, but yes, don't approve the route changes yet because people are not aware about this and they have no idea how this proposed service change plan appears on it yet.

So that's all my comments. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Next is a written comment from Marcel Wendt. The Spirit Bus is a fast and efficient form of transportation in the city of Monterey Park. I'm able to take care of shopping and my business in a short amount of time with one or two buses. Being able to go to the bus stop without having to make a reservation is freedom for all the people that live and travel through the city of Monterey Park. The tap card readers have not worked for many years and no count of passengers has been done for a long time So no accurate count of riders for months. I would like the bus to go to the Home Depot store in the future Please keep the current routes. Thank you No other speakers. Thank you

All right, if there are no other speakers on this item. I don't believe it's a public hearing item with another hand up

someone has had an audience.

Did you want to speak? You can submit a card.

What? Go ahead. You can come ahead.

Oh, it's okay. So, hi, everyone. So, I at first, I have to say, like, I will be affected after the changes, but the reason why I came and I want to say something is like I'm actually trying to use the surface for to to come meal for around I think two months after the surface recovered from COVID and then I have a thought that like the reason why is two months is because it doesn't work I always got like the last bus of the surface I take that one but like it already not showing up or have like almost like 40 minutes late. So a reason why I want to come here, I know even though we are not trying to have a conversation, but I would like to ask, like, what's the purpose? Are we still doing it?

What are we, why are we doing it? Because especially when we're paying that much,

who is the person, who is the, like, like a group of people we're trying to serve?

on the proposal we have some changes but it didn't mention something changes after covid especially when the metro they actually changes bus surface inside moderate park there is some

rapid bus line already downgrade become a local bus have all totally duplicate surface with all all we have and then we have the montebello bus also have some duplicate are we still using money to on those route or not do we have purpose to hope that because like them now we are

saying that bus service actually to less people less people using it we're actually losing money or if we change it to that route surface it was saving some money so our is getting money or

earning money is a goal that we are doing and like um the reading reading uh comment saying like We have a new business area, Costco, Home Depot, that recently built, but the changes didn't show anything that those transportation will have a reliable service to serve those areas.

If we have something that for people who cannot drive but serving those areas,

we have more sales tax income somehow because we have attract more people using those facilities. about buying things over there.

And then last but not least,

like when we decided like which service we should keep, which service we shouldn't keep,

those proposals didn't mention that how those people affected will be able to like something they can be substituted or something they can take.

It only mentioned saying like, oh, the route one or two, Atlantic or Garfield, they have the most people.

But it didn't mention that they actually can also take the metro, Montebello. They have so many choices. But it also didn't mention, like, if I change to dire wild surface,

how long I will need to spend extra every ride,

or, like, how the surface will affect it if those people are living in those areas.

I remember before COVID, we have another changes proposal that at that time actually have even more detail saying like how they want to do it, why they want to do it. Right now, the whole proposal is almost like empty. It didn't even provide our detailed number that how many people will be affected, how they're going to affect it. So, yeah, I'm not saying like against or I don't like the proposal because somehow it didn't work for me. So that, but I, as living in Mori Park, I don't want the money spent on something that Metro or Montebello already spent. I want the money to help the whole community. People who cannot drive or who have disabled, they have something reliable. They can go to the supermarket. They can go to Costco or wherever, not like just wasting the money and taking like few people every trip.

Thank you. Thank you.

Is that the final speaker?

No other speakers. All right.

Let's, if the council's okay, maybe we have the staff report and then we'll go to comments from council.

All right. Good evening, honorable mayor, mayor, pro tem, and city council. Sean Igoe, public works director.

Tonight we're going to give you a brief overview of the study that's been we conducted this goes back Well over a year ago on this process and again We just want to provide an update on where we're at and the recommendations that have come out of that study

So I'm going to hand it over

Director of the City Council. Sochi Tipan. She's our Administrative Manager within Public Works and oversees this program. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and members of the City Council. Sochi Tipan Administrative Manager with the Public Works Department. The City of Monterey Park currently operates a fixed route service, Spirit Bus. Bus service was temporarily suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic and resumed in July of 2022. Since the time, City staff has been working with Arcadis IBI consultants to evaluate the system and identify areas for

improvement. A review of ridership pre and post pandemic has revealed that ridership has

significantly decreased in the last years. When Spirit Bus returned to service in July of 2022, It was operating with modified service hours. During that time, we saw an 80% decline in ridership levels. This was not something that was just unique to Monterey Park. Other agencies locally and nationwide also saw a decrease in ridership levels after the pandemic. Montebello bus line who operates a service here in Monterey Park as well saw about a 58 percent decline in ridership for the line that they operate here in the city. For this fiscal year

we have resumed services for extended hours similar to pre-pandemic levels however even with

the increase in hours, the increase of ridership has not returned to pre-pandemic levels.

In addition to a decrease in ridership, we have seen an increase in cost for operating the service. Currently, the city contracts with First Transit for Spirit Bus operations and maintenance. So due to an increase in salaries and also increase in cost for bus maintenance, the hourly rate for operating the buses has increased in the most recent years. For this upcoming fiscal year, 24-25, the proposed hourly rate is about $108.66. Based on the hours that each route operates, the estimated annual cost to operate a single route in a current system is about $325,980. Comparably, the city does have its own dial-a-ride program, and to operate the entire program a year is about $643,000. So the table on the slide here shows the increase in cost per passenger boarding. Before the pandemic in 2019, the city also contracted with First Transit for bus operations

and had a vehicle service hourly rate of $59.31.

Based on the boardings at that time, the cost per passenger boarding was $4.39. Now, this last fiscal year in 2023, the vehicle service hourly rate increased to $104.01, and based on the decline in ridership, the cost per boarding per passenger has been about $57.82. sense. In addition to reviewing ridership and costs for the system, the study also included community outreach in which the city distributed a community survey, a student survey. We held in-person and virtual workshops. We engaged with the business community to receive feedback on the current transportation program that the city operates and also ideas for types of improvements that they would like to see. Some of the key takeaways that we heard from the community about why they're not using the Spirit Bus included infrequent service, bus stops not close enough to their home or desired destinations, the need to transfer multiple buses to get to their destination, the buses taking too long

or not knowing what bus to take. In addition to that,

we also heard of different types of improvements that they wanted to see with the system, like better information, a mobile phone app to see real-time information, weekend service, early morning service, and on-demand ride-hailing service. One of the items that we did address earlier last year was the implementation of a mobile phone app. So we implemented Passio Go, which provides riders real-time information about routes and bus arrival times. Additionally, it collects data for the bus system. so passenger counts and other performance data that the city can use to assess the effectiveness of the system.

So IBI worked with the community outreach feedback that they received, the existing service conditions including cost, ridership levels, to develop recommended service improvement strategies. So these service improvement strategies want to address the current issues found in the system, which was designed a long time ago when some key attractors like the marketplace or other areas in the city were not built yet, and wanted to provide strategies that will provide maximum coverage with existing bus service or on-demand service as well. so one of the recommendations is to restructure routes one and two for bidirectional travel currently these two routes operate on a loop basis which causes some confusion regarding the direction of the buses throughout the day so the recommendation is for route one to travel on a

linear route along atlantic and provide service on that side of the city and then also have route

Route 2 provide linear travel along Garfield.

So these two routes would not be eliminated.

They would just be restructured to address where ridership levels are higher or where usage is higher.

For Route 3, the recommendation is to restructure it by eliminating service south of Graves to Garvey Ranch and extending the route east towards Atlantic.

Currently, the route services a loop around Garvey Reservoir.

However, that segment has the Lost ridership of the route. So instead of continuing a fixed route service in this area, the recommendation is to eliminate it and provide on-demand service

to provide coverage for the area that would be displaced.

For Route 4, the recommendation is to eliminate it completely and provide coverage to the service area through on-demand service. So this route has the Lost ridership from all of the routes. It hasn't seen a bounce back after the pandemic where, you know, the other routes did experience an increase in ridership. So instead of continuing with the fixed route stops or long Monterey Pass Road or corporate center, the proposal is to have two on-demand transportation zones. to cover the east and the west side of the city.

So this will allow that riders who would typically take Route 4

to still get transportation service through on-demand hailing ride service, and then also those who would have previously taken Route 3 around the Garvey Reservoir to also have transportation resources through the on-demand service.

lastly for route 5 the recommendations to restructure the route to expand service to connect with metro e-line station at atlantic and pomona and provide additional coverage through

on-demand service along riggan road including service to the monterey park marketplace shopping

Center. So again, the route would remain in place. It would still service Cal State LA, and also would service Atlantic and Pomona Metro Line Station.

At this time, staff recommends moving forward with the development, further development of the

strategies in a pilot program in which the Spirit Bus system would continue to operate

four routes in a fixed route system and then have two potential on-demand service zones

where residents can continue to get public transportation, just not in a fixed route mode. They would be able to get on-demand service.

That concludes my presentation, and we do have our consultants on the line for any questions or comments.

Thank you.

We'll open up to council comments if there are any.

Thank you for that report.

I did have some questions, but I was also pretty amazed by the increase in cost also per ridership. but when you say that we will be replacing a route with on-demand, can you specify what you mean by that?

So the two zones that you see here on the east and west side of the city, what the recommendation is to provide on-demand service, so similar to dial-a-ride service or micro-transit service in which a person can schedule the ride as opposed to having a bus operate specific bus stops in that area.

Okay, so that means that the routes will be replaced through a dial-a-ride service?

It could be potentially dial-a-ride service, or we could explore other options in regards to having that on demand. And some contractors like First Transit or other transportation companies also offer on-demand service. We would just need to explore which option is best for the city.

Okay.

And do we anticipate how much more, not dial rate, but right services we would need? Do we anticipate there might be, I don't know, $100 or $200? and what that cost might look like compared to replacing the road? I know the route, like you said, was about, was it $320,000?

That's quite a bit.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is would this be an equal amount? Would this be more of a savings for the city?

Do we note some of those numbers?

So based on the cost analysis and the current cost for Spirit Bus, there would be potential savings in operating and on-demand service in these areas just because the ridership is so low currently with our system.

Okay.

And then this is just a pilot, which means that we're just testing this out.

Correct.

So the recommendation is to implement the strategies as a pilot so the city would continue to work with Arcata's IBI to further develop the pilot program, to finalize what the route restructuring would be, identify what the on-demand service would be, and then also developing a marketing and communication tool and plan to notify the community about the proposed changes.

Okay.

That was going to be my follow-up question, just what other methods and ways are we going to try to inform the community about the route changes and be able to get some of their input to make sure that they are not just aware of the route changes but also have a chance to provide some input in some type of public forum. In particular, I'm thinking also students. As a teacher, I know that students make a lot of use of public transport because a lot of them don't have cars or just not eligible to have a driver's license. So I would love to get student input on this as well in terms of possible routes or areas that we might not be covering. And just also, I know that one of the speakers talked about some of our elementary schools at Hillcrest and Brightwood and Monterey Highlands, but making sure that even if we are potentially removing routes that are impacting those schools, that they know and are aware of what other services might be provided to supplement some of those routes as well.

Yeah, so tonight what we're asking for is really for two things. One is to recommend the extension of First Transits contract because we need more time

to evaluate this pilot.

In addition to, we need to bring this back to council to really provide more input, get the community to provide input. So tonight, again, our main focus is one, two, because in the contract for first rent, so we can really evaluate what a pilot looks like, does on-demand service make sense, what those costs are, and come back to council. Again, this study's been going on for some time. We've gathered a lot of data from the community on what they felt was working, what they felt wasn't working, recommendations.

We've implemented some of those things.

We want to continue to work with the community and really figure out what makes the most sense. I mean, you've heard from a couple of speakers tonight. You know, someone changes some, you know, think that, you know, we need to look more regionally. So I think that we really need to evaluate the system, continue to evaluate the system as a whole, and what makes sense from a pilot program perspective, if that makes sense.

And I do like that we connected the Metro line on our spirit bus. I think that's something that ELAC leadership had recommended and suggested in terms of connecting also our schools, ELAC and Cal City of LA, which is one of our neighbors. So do appreciate that we're doing that to be able to connect a lot of our student residents to a lot of those campuses.

So thank you.

Council Member. Yes, Mr. Mayor.

Question.

Actually, it might be some follow-up questions to what Council Member Planchis asked. so help you understand so under this um on-demand pilot program are we talking about something similar to say if i were to use a comparative like an uber lyft but only

it that it be eliminated. And then in the pink area, you would provide coverage for those who would have otherwise taken Route 3, and then also extending service along Riggin and making

your way to the marketplace. Which means that they would still be paying whatever the rate they would have been paying had they boarded a Spirit Bus. Would it be the same fees?

So that would be part of the pilot evaluation to determine what those fees are, how that process works. Again, what we're presenting tonight is what has been evaluated by IBI and we want to make sure that we present this to the council to understand the direction they want to provide us moving forward. Again, this is conceptual ideas. We can take this and we can mold this into whatever the council so desires but again, the idea is this is what industry professionals have recommended based off of their evaluation on other agencies in addition to evaluating what

our residents and businesses have provided feedback on okay thank you just a quick clarifying question

on councilman Rolo's question so for the proposed or the idea for the on-demand services so to only be from one point to another within that colored service area or can they go from somewhere there

to somewhere else in the city.

Yeah, so again, that would be part of the pilot. So it's a multifaceted approach, right? And so we're trying to figure out what makes the most sense for our community, right? We're trying to make sure we keep things within the city. When you start traveling outside of the city, you bring a whole different dynamic into transportation. So I don't think the focus is going to be within those areas, but rather that those individuals would be available to participate in that program, I guess you say. And again, if the council wishes to expand that, the thing that council needs to understand is that there's additional cost to that and again, we can do whatever the council desires, but just understand there's there's going to be an additional cost associated to providing on-demand services beyond what we're presenting tonight.

All right, okay.

Hi, Sean. Thank you for some of those comments. I just want to make sure I heard a couple of things correctly. We have been going through this for at least a year now in terms of remapping, resizing, because that's all I remember about March of last year we started this thing. And I think the answer is yes because I

We've been at it for almost a year now in terms of rerouting planning so yes yes yes over here Yes, we I also heard that it confirmed this that we actually survey students

seniors

Basically every rider there is in the city. Yes. We surveyed several people. We actually extended our survey duration to get more feedback When I first got here, we actually were at Monster Mash, and we were actively, I won't say hunting down people, but we were actively reaching out to people and finding out, did they ride the Spirit Bus? What's their feedback? If they didn't ride the Spirit Bus, why not? If they were given an opportunity, what would that look like? Because, again, not everyone rides public transportation. So we really did as much as we could to get the entire community involved. And Monster Mash is a huge event the city throws on. So you have a very dynamic group that we were able to reach that event.

So thus, the mapping, the zoning, the proposal is based on the surveys, the research, and the professional consultant who came up with the ideas after doing all the diligence.

That's correct.

I have one separate question, and that is, out of curiosity, because I remember when the Spirit Bus came around 30 years ago, and I was riding it as a fifth grader, sixth grader, I cannot imagine my kids in elementary school riding the Spirit Bus by themselves.

Do we still have that?

Is that something that, in terms of survey, are we still seeing that? Or basically it's middle schoolers and high schoolers who are riding Spirit Bus.

So the community outreach survey and the student survey did include questions about safety and whether riders felt safe on the buses. So I don't have the data on me, but it was something that was collected and analyzed by the consultants.

Well, I think it's safe.

I mean, I took it. I believe I would take it. But I'm just kind of questioning in terms of, as a parent, would I allow my 8-year-old kid to go on the Spirit bus by themselves?

That's the question.

I think it goes back to, I think the speaker was asking about making it available for school-age children. I understand that, but I guess my reasoning is are the parents actually allowing their school-age children, let's say up to fifth grade,

ride that alone on themselves?

And my personal belief is probably not. I wouldn't allow my kids to do that.

I drive them everywhere.

That would be my interpretation. Now, for the middle school kids and the high school kids who need the access to get home from school, from the park, I see that as part of the service and if you can follow up on me let me know on those surveys if we actually have probably school age 13 and up if we take surveys on those kids.

Yeah, we can definitely look at that.

I just had a quick follow up question on something Council Member Ngo said. Is there an age limit for use on the

Spirit Bus? No, there's no age limits. So technically any

age kid could potentially use that right and forgets might not have a parent who can drive them around a spare jumping on a spare but might be the only form of

transportation other than walking or potentially yes that's for writing their

bikes on dangerous streets but it but anyhow okay just wanted to make sure but but a lot of our elementaries as well serve as middle schools right so having access to those to those specific school sites is important thank you

uh for the so this plant right you're looking for direction from the council on what are the proceed with starting to initiate changes to the routes not immediately making those changes that's

correct yeah where we are not making so council we are not asking council to recommend approving these changes that's correct we are we are asking for two things from tonight one is to approve the extension of the first transit contract to give us further time to evaluate this pilot come back to council prior to their contract expiring to again propose what this looks like because what we're looking at providing to council and looking at this pilot will impact how we go out to RFP for the next transportation survey or services so again we want to make sure that when we go out to RFP we understand what we're going to be providing what the route are going to be and is it going to be fixed route on demand a combination of all of that so again we'll come back to council with what a pilot would look like and then from that point then we know what the RFP process would look like and then in between we can actually at council's direction can actually implement some sort of pilot so we better understand what we need to be going out to bid for

that's helpful thank you so one up front right I very much support the direction that we're

heading in with the staff recognition the report and appreciate all the work from the consultant and the staff and the outreach that was done to many residents and stakeholders in our community to look at what we need to do to change our local right transit system our spirit bus system and DALL RIGHT AS WELL TO MEET THE NEEDS OF THE COMMUNITY RIGHT NOW AND IN THE FUTURE. IT'S CLEAR THAT THE NEEDS OF THE COMMUNITY HAVE CHANGED SIGNIFICANTLY AND THAT'S I THINK VERY CLEAR FROM THE DATA IN TERMS OF RIDERS AND USAGE PLUS COSTS AND THE COST PER BOARDING

WHICH HAVE GONE UP ASTRONOMICALLY. SO IT'S CLEAR TO ME WE NEED TO RETHINK AND REIMAGINE

WHAT A LOCAL TRANSIT SYSTEM FOR OUR RESIDENTS AND STAKEHOLDERS AND THOSE THAT ARE SPENDING MONEY HERE WHAT A USEFUL AND EFFECTIVE TRANSIT SYSTEM LOCALLY SHOULD BE AND CAN BE SO TOTALLY SUPPORT MOVING IN THAT DIRECTION AND GIVING DIRECTION TO THE STAFF TO PROCEED ON STARTING TO REDESIGN THE ROUTE POTENTIALLY FOR FIXED ROUTE AND TO INTEGRATE AND OR TO INTEGRATE ON DEMAND more on-demand services, expanding beyond dial ride

primarily for seniors. So absolutely, we want to move in that direction,

and we need to get to a point where we're utilizing

both general fund and Prop A, Prop C,

and other transportation-related funding that we have available from a revenue perspective and deploy that in a more effective way,

taking input that we've gotten both tonight

and over the last year from the community to redesign what the system should be.

So, one, I'm in total support of extending this contract to make sure we have time. And just to be clear, we're spending, if I read this right, $2.6 million or so on both the existing Spirit Bus system and the dial-a-ride system as currently designed a year to provide services for a few thousand people, a few thousand rides, which on a per ride basis is an astronomical cost.

Yes, that's correct.

And I also want to kind of throw this out there for Council to also be thinking about as we come back is our current fleet, just specifically when it comes to this program, is reaching its end of life. And so these vehicles are going to need to be replaced at some point in the near future, in the next several years. And those costs are also going to be significant as we make this decision to move forward

because those buses are owned by the city.

First Transit uses them, but the city actually owns these vehicles. Now, again, we will be evaluating what EV looks like. And these are currently CNG. We'll evaluate what EV looks like. But, again, keep in mind, these are going to be significant costs to replace these vehicles, and that should be part of this decision that we move forward with this whole transit program.

And we do end.

So the current recommendation is to extend this for six months plus month-to-month for up to a year from, or into the full fiscal year, right?

That's correct.

Is that enough time for us to, we're confident that's enough time to redesign?

Absolutely.

Yeah, I mean, again, we have the foundation here. So we already have a foundation to start from, and we'll be working with, you know, First Transit and looking at other partners. We've already started meeting with our partners that can provide these, you know, other transit services. So, again, we want to make sure that we do our due diligence.

We've already started that process. We already have the data.

But, yeah, we will have enough time to work through this in the next six months to even 12 months at most.

Yeah, I would be very frustrated, right, to get to the point where our buses maybe break down while we're trying to figure this out.

And if we take longer than we need to, we might have a lapse in service.

Yeah.

Would not be a pleasant thing for, I think, a lot of people. Have we looked at, I know we're talking about on-demand services. I know some other cities in the area have explored, I don't know how successful they have been,

potential partnerships with for-profit ride share companies like Lyft and Uber

or other nonprofit kind of operators along those lines in terms of partnering with cities and utilizing some of our funds for those kind of things. Are we thinking through that at all?

We have not started that that I'm aware, but we can start having those conversations to see what that looks like as well Again, we can you know evaluate that as part of the pilot and bring back our recommendations based off of what we find

Thank you. And then

My understanding is that right before I think all of us were on council our previous council members actually committed through an MOU or MOU with the city of Rosemead to begin exploring a more regional approach to some of the local transit options just as we're talking about now. I think we should reintegrate into some more of that thinking and approach some of our neighboring communities to explore that concept in full and with some urgency. There are people I would imagine that there are people that would utilize a local service to go from Monterey Park to Rosemead or Monterey Park to Alhambra and from Alhambra to come here to do some shopping, to eat at restaurants, as opposed to going from one point in Monterey Park to another.

And that may be a strategy, that should be a strategy that we explore in terms of increasing ridership

and making this system more useful for residents and others who want to spend money here or want to get from here to somewhere else to do errands and do other things and get them out of their personal vehicles and provide something that's efficient and effective and convenient for them to be able to do those in immediately neighboring communities. So maybe we can take these opportunities. We're going forward on rethinking what our local transit system should look like to maybe get our other neighboring communities to see if there's opportunities to design routes that go from our community and connects to others where people are going to run errands and to do some shopping and to do some eating. and to bring people from those other communities into our community as well.

Absolutely.

So if we can integrate at least some visioning and thinking in terms of a more regional approach for local transit, I think that would be great as we're doing this anyway.

With that said, Mr. Mayor?

Yeah.

If I could also just add to what you just said. And if memory serves, if I'm not mistaken, a few months ago, we also had, if I'm not mistaken, from the COG who approached us about studying a BRT proposal as well. I'd like to just also throw out there that depending on how far along that concept

I think probably what you're hearing from council is that we want to see greater connectivity. I mean, on one hand, we actually want to be able to have residents be able to circulate within the city, but if the goal is also trying to reduce congestion and also pollution, I think that I would also be interested in making sure that we also explore with COG and with Metro to see how we can encourage greater inter-system connectivity. If you're not already thinking about it, but then certainly I just remember that presentation the call gave a few months ago.

Yeah, I understood.

To some of the points we brought earlier, we have some duplication of stops. There's a reason for that, but is there a way that we can do a more regional approach with our other transportation partners that are residing within Monterey Park?

Absolutely.

We'll start having those conversations and see what we can do.

Okay, thank you.

If I can just ask one more question.

Sean, simple questions, I promise you.

You said earlier that our buses are reaching their end of lifespan.

How many, how large is our fleet? Go ahead.

So we have eight buses in our system. And with our current service, First Transit does operate one spare bus to provide coverage in case there's our breakdown. So we own eight buses.

Okay.

Okay. And so I'm assuming to the mayor's point and Councilmember Lo's point, we are starting to look at what those costs would look like in the future of replacing these, including EV vehicles, but also the savings that potentially would come from EV from, you know, fuel costs and stuff like that as well. I just had another comment in regards to regional connectivity that deals and connects more with schools. We serve four different school districts in our city, and I know that a lot of our students, for example, who go to Montebello or attend Montebello schools go to Shure High School in Montebello. So providing some type of connectivity between Monterey Park and Montebello would be amazing. Same thing with Monterey Park and Alhambra. Same thing with our Garvey students with Rosemead. And then to some extent also, who am I missing here?

I thought about it.

Yeah, LAUSD, yeah. And the East LA area with Garfield, yeah, would be amazing. And any way we can extend those lines. I know you said earlier we have to be mindful of costs, of course. But that would be amazing.

Yeah, we definitely evaluate that.

It's a balance because we try to focus here within our city for these transportation services But we also understand there's needs outside of our city and so I think that's without regional partnership will will be a benefit

Yeah, and whatever we can do to partner with cog or Metro to help offset some of these costs would be

amazing absolutely

Was that a motion council member Sanchez? Yes, there second

I'll second.

All right.

And just to clarify, the motion and the second is to support staff recommendation in terms of extending the contract for first transit.

I have the name right. Hopefully.

The contractor to continue operation of the spirit bus and dial ride, I believe, for six months with month to month. And then to direct staff to begin designing and redesigning the fixed route and dial ride on-demand services.

And my apologies. There's one more. There's IBI in there the extension of their contract and we're mentioning there. We're amending their contract

That's the company that's been working on this for us. Okay, is that clear call?

All right

Motion in a second any further discussion hearing none we'll call for the vote

Approved unanimously all right and just be clear staff will be bringing back a proposal for a

redesign of the routes before they go into effect.

That is correct.

Whatever they might be. That's correct. Thank you.

All right, we will go back to regular order of the agenda. Going to... All right, let's do the presentation items. Not regular order, I guess. Presentation item 1A, Metropolitan Water District update

on their reservoir renovations.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Council members, and members of the community. Today, I will be presenting information on the Garvey Reservoir Improvement Project. Next slide.

In our project overview, I will present background information about the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Garvey Reservoir, project description and scope.

Finally, I'll provide general information on the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, and the draft Environmental Impact Report, EIR, as it relates to our project.

Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the owner and operator of Garvey Reservoir, located here in Monterey Park, was established in 1928 as a water wholesaler,

compromise of 26 member agencies, Metropolitan delivers water to its member agencies,

which serve approximately 19 million people in six Southern California counties.

The main objectives of the Garvey Reservoir Improvements Project are the following.

Improve major Garvey Reservoir facilities. Maintain Garvey Reservoir reliability.

Enhance site security.

improve operations efficiency and maintenance.

Garvey Reservoir is located just southeast of City Hall,

and we have been here for over 70 years

and appreciate the long history of collaboration with your city.

As we recently worked closely on several drainage improvements around the Garvey Reservoir property

and are also in the process of updating the groundwater monitoring system around the facility.

Garvey Reservoir is a treated water reservoir constructed in 1954.

The reservoir has a capacity of 1,610 acre-feet, which is equivalent to 525 million gallons.

Metropolitan treated water pipelines from Laverne and Granada Hills bring water into the reservoir,

and water exits via a pipeline going south to serve multiple communities.

The blue callout shows the different reservoir components that will be rehabilitated under this project.

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

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

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

Finally, the valve structure valves will be replaced.

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

The California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, is primarily intended to achieve the following purposes as it relates to the project.

Identify potential impacts to the environment.

Inform the public and decision makers about those potential environmental impacts.

identify ways to avoid or reduce the potential environmental impacts, and the development of environmental documentation.

This figure shows an overview of the Environmental Impact Report process in compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA.

The notice of preparation and initial study for the project was sent to approximately 400 area residents in both English and Mandarin.

The red star shows where we are as of tonight.

Metropolitan began circulating the draft EIR on June 12.

The notice of availability of the draft EIR was distributed in both English and Mandarin and has initiated the 45-day public review and comment period. This map shows the City of Monterey Park resident that will be receiving the Notice of Availability, or the NOA.

The area shown in orange represents resident that will be notified by certified mail as required by CEQA for public noticing.

And the area shown in green represents the additional residents that will be notified by mail

and which Metropolitan has voluntarily included in the public review process. The draft EIR 45-day public review period started on June 12 and will end on July 29.

Additionally, the City Berkmeyer Library also received a notice and a hard copy of the draft EIR. Five resource categories from the proposed project were analyzed in the EIR.

Four were determined to be less than significant with no required mitigation,

and one category, air quality, has mitigated associated with it.

The air quality category is outlined in further detail in the next slide.

The project air quality analysis determined that emission generated from equipment during construction could conflict with air quality plan and exceed established thresholds. This analysis is for construction only. Following construction, reservoir operations will continue as previous, including the frequency of staff visit and there will be no construction equipment present. In order to medicate construction-related air quality impacts, Metropolitan is proposing that all diesel-powered construction equipment be rated as T4 under the Federal Environmental Protection Agency. EPA T4 equipment means construction equipment such as excavator, motor graders, and loaders will have more efficient cleaner burning engines. Other medication proposed is the use of electrically powered equipment and on-site electricity where available. implementation of these medication measures would reduce potential impacts to less than significant levels. Next slide. Here's the current plan for the design and construction schedule. The final design will be completed by mid-next year, and the construction will be complete by the end of 2027.

This concludes my presentation. I will be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Any questions from Council?

Well, first of all, thank you for the presentation and also thank you and Metropolitan for the tour that we did of the Garvey Reservoir. I, for one, knew that the reservoir was there but didn't realize that there was a cover on the reservoir. So that was very informative for us to be able to see and And know how the reservoir works and operates within our city But thank you for updating for keeping us updated on the project and for that opportunity to be there and I know I had a lot of questions just because Learning a lot about this with my students currently my academic decathlon students who are studying how water works at the moment But I appreciate all those comments and then also the answers from staff. I appreciate them

That's it for me. Thank you.

And yet also just ditto.

I mean, thank you again for giving us all a tour of the project.

Remind me again as well as the audience, but once these improvements are made, how long will they last?

I'm sorry?

Once these improvements are made, how long, I mean, like the new cover, how long will they last?

Usually the floating cover is the driving force in this, and the floating cover usually lasts 25 years.

45 years? 25 years. Oh, 25 years. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Approximately 25 years. I don't know what that means. Oh, yeah, that's okay. It all depends. Any other questions?

I just want to thank Metropolitan Water, Basar, and May for showing us the site. And it was a hot day, but we got through it, and it was good to see what the facility looked like and the work you guys put behind it. So thank you, and thank you for the presentation.

No problem.

I'll add my appreciation for the tour. I was raised here knew about the reservoir on the hill but had never been up there to see It before so really appreciate being able to see kind of behind the fence I appreciate that's proactive efforts here to re

write to

do these renovations to make sure that the reservoir continues to operate in Good working order and some of this maintenance. I believe is proactive in a sense So appreciate all that met is doing there On the fence, I don't know if you guys already have design or materials picked out for the publicly facing parts of the fence for the property. Are you thinking or is Matt thinking of just replacing with chain link?

No, we're thinking about replacing it with a road iron fence.

Great. No, I appreciate that.

I would love to have a better design that's a little bit more interesting than chain link.

This is going to be along Orange Avenue.

Yeah, great. You read my mind already. I don't know how.

But I would appreciate efforts like that.

interesting and pleasing materials and designs into our public spaces so appreciate that effort and if there are ways to make it nicer prettier in other parts of your renovation I think that'd be great to integrate into the project

too all right thank you any other questions if not appreciate the update

and look forward to seeing would love to revisit the the site when renovations

are maybe underway to kind of check it out too sure thank you so much all right

All right, we'll move on to presentation 1B, where disposal transition update.

I'll go ahead and get started.

So good evening, Honorable Mayor and Mayor of Pro Tem, City Council, Sean Igoe, Public Works Director again. I'm accompanied by Sochi Tapan again. So we're going to be just giving a quick update on where we're at with the transition for the new solid waste hauler. And again, this is going to be a high-level update where we're currently at where we're going We also have the hall right here to provide any Additional updates or if they want to answer any questions that council may have so with that I'll pass it over to soji

Good evening mayor mayor pro tem members of the city council so cheat upon on March 26 City Council awarded an exclusive franchise to wear disposal for residential trash collection and and a non-exclusive franchise to both Weyer Disposal and Athens Services for commercial trash collection. At this time, the franchise agreements with both haulers have been executed. We are working with the haulers for a smooth transition of services, specifically for residential customers in the city. Weyer Disposal has provided staff with a transition plan, which includes key dates and information for this transition.

Part of that is the cart rollout process where we'll start delivery of containers the week of August 12th

to all residential properties, and Athens will pick up their containers starting August 26th. So during this time, residents will be told to not use the new containers until September, until Ware Disposal will be servicing them. During that transition, they will have two containers on their property, but they will get it picked up by Athens Services. One key point for the start of services is that the franchise agreements go into effect on September 1st. However, that is a Saturday folLod by the Labor Day holiday on a Monday. so residents won't get actual trash collection from Ware Disposal until Tuesday, September 3rd, the Tuesday after that Labor Day holiday, and they will see a one-day delay in services of the regular scheduled pickup. In addition to that, Ware Disposal has secured a local office. It's located at 1111 Corporate Center, Suite 206. There will be additional information regarding business hours, contact information, and services to be provided to residential customers and commercial customers from where disposal.

Part of the residential program will include the continuation of key services, which includes curbside collection of trash, recycling, and organics, free bulky item pickup throughout the year, and this is an unlimited services for residential customers, electronic waste pickup four times a year, and also free rollout services for eligible customers. So currently, customers who are medically or physically unable to put their containers out, they can apply for free rollout services. So we will be continuing the service where where Disposal will be accepting applications for new customers who want to enroll in the program, and anybody existing in the program will continue with that service. In addition, we'll continue to hold quarterly cleanup events. So we have, for the last several years, held bulky item pickup where residents can come drop off bulky items and e-waste. In the last year, we also partnered with Salvation Army to collect some of those items as donations. So where disposal, we'll be working with the city to scheduling those events per quarter. one important change to note regarding the residential trash services is that billing service will be provided by wear disposal currently the city bills customers residential customers for trash with their water bill but starting in September residents should expect to get an invoice from wear disposal and not

the city for the commercial side both business both haulers wear

Weard Disposal and Athens Services can provide service to businesses in the city. So businesses will have the opportunity to select who they want to subscribe with. That's Weard Disposal or Athens for the collection of trash, recycling, and organics as required by law. Recent legislation added new requirements for businesses to collect organics, provide additional educational material in their businesses as well. And so the city currently has a waiver process for businesses who are eligible to be exempt from organic waste requirements that will continue to be in place. And so businesses can work with the city or either hauler that they subscribe to to determine if they're eligible for an exemption and apply for a waiver. So in the coming months, haulers will contact commercial customers regarding rates and services that they offer, and businesses can then select who they want to subscribe with.

During this transition, the city will continue to provide updates and do community outreach to inform residents and businesses of the upcoming changes. We have published some articles in the most recent Cascades newsletters to cover some of the upcoming changes. And as new information is available and, you know, just will be distributed to the community through social media, our city website, there will be some customer letters that will also go out notifying them of key dates or important changes. and Weyer Disposal is also working on updating their website to provide a dedicated page for Monterey Park customers.

That concludes my presentation and we do have Weyer Disposal in Athens here for any questions or comments as well.

Thank you. Any questions? Who wants to kick off questions from the council?

Well, thank you for the presentation and I'm glad that we have some dates now set in stone that residents can be aware of and be informed in terms of when the transitioning plan is going to happen. So thank you for staff and we're for making those available and hopefully it's a smooth transition, right?

But that's it for me.

Thank you, Ms. Mayor.

And again, thank you for the presentation.

so I'm here and I don't worry communication with where so

as far as I'm acquiring the bins to be ready that's happening on

schedule

Hi good evening Mayor, Council Members, City Manager, City Attorney, Jay Ware with where disposal yes

Council Member the containers and the bins are all on schedule to be ready and be prepared. We've secured land and we'll have all the containers ready to go for the transition to start on I think it was August 13th.

Great. And when do you expect to deliver all the bins? Are they already here? Are they on their way?

They will be here and they will all be delivered prior to August 1st.

Oh, okay. Thank you.

Thank you so much for the presentation and thank you so much for your service. And I saw that you opened up a new corporate office in Monterey Park. And so can you tell us a little bit about the office and what kind of services that you provided?

So the office that will be in Monterey Park will be available for residents and businesses to come and be able to pay their bills, ask questions. They'll also be able to see the size of carts, if they desire to look at the different sizes of our carts. We'll have information there available for education with regards to what can be recycled, what will be acceptable for recycling. We're also going to have an education center for organics and how people can do home composting, which will assist them with growth in their own yards, you know, for plants and vegetable gardens and so on and so forth. The hope is to get that up and operating so that we can also do an education center and actually have a miniature sort line where children can come and learn about recycling as well. and we'll be able to open that up to like an education center for teachers to be able to come and share that with their classes and so on and so forth.

Great. And then is that ready now or when will that be ready?

We are in the process of we're just about to staff the office. We just finished with the electronics and communications. Everything is ready to go. We are just getting ready to open the doors for that. We're anticipating that to be open around the 1st of July.

Okay, first of July. So it's coming up? Yes. Okay. And so if we wanted to know what the size is and if we want to order more bin and change your service, can we just come to your office and set it up?

You'll be able to set it up. It's also available online as well that you can see the size of carts. But probably starting around, we won't be doing cart changes necessarily unless somebody comes to the office that needs to order smaller carts. So those changes will probably take place sometime in November after we do the initial transition.

Okay. Thank you.

All right, Jay.

Thanks for coming here and giving us an update. So it looks like there's a couple of things moving. Just to follow up from what I had asked before, I mentioned the city has more than 65% of our residents are non-English speakers. In fact, it's probably higher than that. And we talked, last time we talked about getting translation services either on your website or getting customer services and it looks like you're staffing your office. Hopefully you'll staff bilingual speakers to help with our residents who are probably going to have lots of questions.

Yes. So we have, we're working with translation services. We'll also have my office staffed with

multi-bilingual speakers and

we are also putting out all of the

paperwork that will be distributed to residents

as well as our website in all three languages. Good.

We talked about the carts. I guess my other question is the fleet and

the trucks. Status on them?

Trucks are all in process. They should all be delivered by the end of June.

We're currently we've been working hard to Get our ev fleet which will be our ancillary fleet that'll be

Providing the ancillary services here in the city. You'll be the first city that and the first area that we be running these Multiple ev units throughout the city, so we're very excited about that. I think that'll be a real fantastic for you

And so those should be visible sometime by mid-july so you'll be able to

see what those like are like we actually did come to the city and met with the

city staff and showed the staff one of our EV units that's already been built and it was here on site so they were able to get a look at it for the smaller tighter areas that we're going to be servicing in the residential communities

so out of curiosity those EV does it go the entire day or do you need to charge

them somewhere in the middle. We're planning on running them the entire day. Wow.

See here I got about

language. We talked about that. I'm actually looking forward to when the office opens I'd like to pay a visit and ask questions and make sure because whatever questions I have, believe me, Our residents are going to have 10 times those questions. So I want to make sure we have this smooth transition, and we're going to thank Hattons because they're still going to be involved in the city on the commercial aspect. We can all play nice because that's the world we live in. Just want to make sure our residents get the smooth transition, and we have a way of working through this in the next year or two because I know there's going to be a lot of changes, and people are not used to changes.

Absolutely, absolutely and we're planning on you know working with Athens and trying to make this as smooth as possible and

we work together in other cities and other communities and

so that'll be the goal of our team is to work as

And to try to make it as simple and smooth as possible. Okay, thank you Thanks, thanks Jay for being here

I appreciate the update on the transition from staff and appreciate all the work that staff has put in so far and Companies as well and putting together the transition plan. I'm really hopeful for as smooth a transition as possible I won't say a smooth transition because no matter what you do someone will always complain so anticipating that are you in Are you planning to staff up a little bit at least in the initial months of the transition period? Here in Monterey Park to make sure that they're in language speakers for people who might want to share

you approach or are you thinking through how you might have or we might have additional just resources that are going to be available for people who are going to have a lot of questions

yes we have we're working with a transition team that will be doing the delivery of the carts and then my team will be in-house will be dedicated to answering customer questions and being able to deal with the customer any customer issues that may arise we're also staffing up the office here in Monterey Park it does have an office does have space for six to eight different people but we also have an office in downtown Los Angeles very close by with very seasoned personnel and along with our other offices so everybody will be on board and and everybody will be ready to handle any calls and issues that may arise but we're gonna cross our fingers and believe that we're going to be able to do this fairly smooth. And communication is the key, and that's really where we're going to be starting to focus come these next couple of weeks is communicating to the residents. So there isn't the questions that could have been provided to them prior to that.

As it was stated, we are transitioning on the Labor Day weekend. It's very important residents understand that when we do transition, And services for that week are going to be delayed by one day. So if your service is on Monday currently, you will be picked up on Tuesday. And if your services are on Tuesday, you'll be picked up on Wednesday, Wednesday to Thursday, Thursday to Friday. Friday customers will be picked up on Saturday for that week.

So it's very important we just make sure that customers understand that for that week.

That will be where most of the questions come from, to be honest with you.

Also, the last week of August, customers will want to leave their carts out for Athens so they can remove them off their property.

So the plan is that Athens is going to be removing existing residential bins that last week of August?

That is the plan, yes.

After their last service on that day, they will pick up their carts.

Okay.

And then the customers will use our carts, which will then be picked up the first week of September.

Okay, and then the so there will be a few days where they might have both sets of carts

Is that we said or no customers could have the customers could have two sets of carts for three weeks

So I

Know this is you're already thinking through this but to the extent we can and To double that whatever we can do to over communicate. I think we should lean towards the

bothering people

and annoying them with information about this transition as opposed to the opposite of people saying they didn't hear about it and don't know what to do with two sets of carts and don't know why they have three different carts or three different bins now and all that stuff. To the extent we can, and that is practical financially, we should over-communicate with customers, residents, and businesses here in the city around this transition. It's been decades, I want to say. Many many decades since we've had since anyone in the city has dealt with transitioning their trash Oh, no, I'll learn going and going from even from a two-bin system to a three-bin system is going to be very confusing to people Even if you've told them ten times They will still not understand what's going on. So to the extent we can do as much as possible in the run-up to this and Right. I know we're gonna mail and do more

stories in the

cascades and everything and emails and whatever

essentially double whatever we were thinking of doing and do

whatever community events are coming up as well I know where it's been out at community events but what are we going to do more proactively as well to engage residents about this transition to let them know that it's happening and how it's going to work

let's err on the side of I would be

very happy if we I got complaints that people got too many communications about this. That would be very reassuring to me in the next couple of months. And so if we can do that to the extent possible, let's do that, please. On some of the operations, one, applaud that we're going to transition the fleet to zero emission electric as soon as practical. It sounds like some of that's going to happen at the start of the contract. I think that's something worth showing off and celebrating. I don't know how many jurisdictions have transitioned their trash hauling fleets to zero emission already. I can't imagine it's very many. So that's something I think we should definitely celebrate and show off.

So just real quick, I want to make sure that we're clear.

So it's not all of the fleet is going to be EV.

So just want to make sure that we're clear on that.

So there are auxiliary vehicles. So, you know, Jake can get into the details. But they're still using CNG, which is still alternative fuel, which is pretty much the industry standard. But, yes, we are transitioning as much as we can to EV, and we can definitely communicate that to our residents.

Great.

And then through our billing system, right, we're going to communicate through the bills as well in terms of the transition?

Yes.

Finance has already been working on that, on how they're notifying residents of the bill transfer. We'll also partner with them on letting them know about this process, important dates. Again, to your point, over-communicate the best that we can to make sure the residents are getting as much information. Again, when we put information in the Cascades, when we're going to be putting information on mailers, we're trying to push people to our website because that's going to be the most up-to-date and accurate information. There's going to be a QR code on there that they can scan and get the most up-to-date and accurate information because, again, this transition period is somewhat evolving, right?

We're getting new dates.

Where is opening up their new office? Those dates haven't been locked down so we want to make sure that we're telling our residents hey This is the range but once they're open we can say this is open So again, we can't communicate that all the time via paper But we can communicate that via our website so we want residents to really be looking our website for the most up-to-date and accurate information

Thank you on the

On the commercial side I guess so are we transitioning? billing are we keeping billing for the city by the city for the commercial accounts or is that transitioning the haulers to they've already been paying

okay they've already yeah that that that transition that that's not that we're transitioning anything there that's currently going on now okay and then so

when just for my I'm not a commercial account holder so for my edification for a business here that has a commercial account for trash are they going to receive a notice with both of the rates, both sets of rates from the two competitors in

the run-up to the transition?

Or how does that, can someone walk me through how that's going to work?

Yeah, the haulers are going to be reaching out to the businesses independently. So it's really up to the haulers.

So think about it this way.

The reality is that technically nothing has to change for that commercial side. They can keep where? They can keep Athens if either business or either company decides they don't want to service those those businesses They have that option, but again nothing technically has a change for those businesses up to them if they want to change So those businesses if they get the new rates from these these from the haulers They can make the decision to change, but there's no obligation for them to change

any time yeah, no, I understand the

Options for haulers has not changed, but their rates are going to change yes, I think making sure that the

Businesses in the city understand that yeah, they will be they were provided information from the haulers

That's correct and we can provide that information as well on our website But the information technically is coming from the haulers, okay, and again they can adjust those rates That's up to them as a hauler. They just cannot exceed the highest rate and

Do we have to do a 2 18 process for both the commercial rates and that is correct?

We'll be coming back to council for that process as well. So are they We will do the 2 18 process before this transition takes that is the plan yes, so we're gonna see it pretty soon

Yes. Okay.

And then, yeah, to the extent we can, I don't know if you guys, if this transition plan calls for kind of presentations with existing groups and organizations that have, like the Women's Club and Langley Center and others, if we can do kind of a road show, I think that might be helpful, too, with especially some of the seniors and other populations that aren't all. online for a lot of the stuff and maybe aren't reading the Cascades where we have opportunities

to do that.

Maybe we can invite where, I'm looking at Robert or.

Yeah, we can work internally with that.

I mean, we have economic development that can help us reach some of the business partners. We can work with Robert and his team to reach out some of the senior groups. Yeah, we can definitely work with them and, you know, work with Jay and his team to see

if they can come out.

If not, again, we can take that on internally with the city.

Great.

I would love to have my parents tell me that they've gotten this notice or this information a hundred times and they want me to stop. That will be a sign of success. With that, I don't know if there are any other comments or questions from Council.

Just a recommendation, once your office is open, we'd maybe have a public meeting. I, for one, would love to check out your EV fleet, and I know many residents would as well.

Absolutely.

Yeah, and I also ask if you can come back for a week between now and September 3rd. You're only looking at two more months. If you can come back more regularly, we've got probably four council meetings between now and then. Maybe come every other one just to give us an update. Again, this is part of your briefing to the community.