Special City Council Mtg. Meeting — August 5, 2024

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Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Recording in progress. Recording in progress.

Welcome to our city council meeting, our special meeting on Monday, August 5th. We'll start off with our land acknowledgement. We'd like to acknowledge that the land we inhabit today is once known as the Tovan Gar. home of the Gabalino Tongva people. We show our respect to the Gabalino Tongva people as well as all indigenous people, past, present, and future, and honor their labor as original caretakers of this land. We commit to uplifting the Gabalino Tongva people,

invite you to acknowledge the history,

and join us in caring for this land. With that said, we'll move to open our meeting.

Oh, Mr. Mayor, oh, sorry. A point of information.

You'll be on, since you just mentioned the Latin acknowledgement, today actually was the first day that the legislature resumed, And today just happened the Assembly path resolution acknowledging to Native American Day as well.

Thank you.

Maybe we can find some of that language and adopt it.

Yeah, sure.

Yes, yes. At the next council meet.

So we'll call the meeting in order. And we don't have a flag.

Okay.

No civic superstar tonight. If you will join me in the flag salute, please stand.

Place your hand over your heart. Flags already in place. Ready, begin.

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

All right, we'll go to the roll call if the clerk can do the roll.

Councilmember Sanchez?

Present. Councilmember Lo? Present. Councilmember Yu? Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Ngo?

Present.

Mayor Wong. I'm here. All present. Thank you. Any agenda changes, auditions, deletions, adoptions? No changes. Any from the council? No. No. All right. So we'll move on to public communications.

Are there any public comments? There are no registered speakers. All right. We'll move

then to staff communications, city manager's office.

thank you very much good evening mayor and council my name is diana garcia i'm the assistant city manager uh this evening we wanted to share with you two events we've got coming up the city of monterey park will be holding two resource fairs during the next month to connect our residents with important support and services.

On Saturday, August 17th, from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. at 171 East Garvey, that's the parking lot at the intersection of Lincoln and Garvey, and again on Saturday, September 7th, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Langley Center,

we invite all of our residents to join us for a day of free health services, vaccinations, benefits enrollments, food giveaways, legal information, and more.

During the September 7th Fair, we will also be offering legal consultations on immigration, family law, and other topics.

This will be by appointment only. Please call the number on the slide to make your appointment and bring your family and friends and neighbors for a healthier neighborhood.

I do want to acknowledge that these events are being put on in partnership with many community partners, including those on the slides here, AJ SoCal, Chinatown Service Center, the County of Los Angeles Public Health Department, Labor Community Services, Neighborhood Legal Services LA, and TICE CDC, just to name a few.

We're looking forward to a great turnout at these events, and we hope the community can join us. Thank you.

Thank you. Is that it?

Thank you. Any questions or comments

from Council?

No? If not, appreciate staff's work on putting

this together. Appreciate our partners, of course, in putting these resource fairs on for members of our community that are in need.

Look forward to,

I know we're promoting this on social media and other avenues and channels that we have

and I assume

we have already asked our partners to help to spread the word about these opportunities through their channels and language.

Sounds like, yes.

Yes.

So appreciate that and look forward to having more of these partnership opportunities to provide services that are, and connect members of our community that need services. And I know some of these efforts have actually been ongoing already with some of these partner organizations for the last few months, if not years.

Yes, absolutely. And this is all going out in Chinese, English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, and...

at least those languages, if not more, on social media and also ethnic print and radio as well.

Great. Thank you.

Look forward to, I imagine there will be a very good turnout, and look forward to seeing how we can continue to support the community. If there are no questions, we'll move on to the next presentation, community development.

Yes. Good evening, Mayor Wong, Mayor Pro Tem, Go, and members of the City Council. My name is Jessica Serrano, your community development director,

and I will be providing you with information about upcoming events that are organized by our department.

First, next slide. Starting with our Monterey Park Small Business Expo and networking event,

we invite all Monterey Park businesses to our very first Small Business Expo,

which will be held this Thursday, August 8th at 6 p.m.

It will be held at the Holiday Inn and Suites, who is also our principal sponsor for this event.

There will be raffle prizes, translators will be available, and we hope to see you all there. Next slide.

I also want to invite the community members to attend our SPARK community workshops to share thoughts about potential land uses at Saturn Park.

We held our very first workshop on July 29th.

We had approximately 30 attendees who shared ideas for the area.

And our next workshop will be on Monday, August 12th at 6 p.m. at Barnes Park Service Clubhouse.

For more information, please visit our SPARK website as shown on the slide.

And that concludes my presentation. I'm available for any questions.

Thank you. Any questions from Council?

Well, first off, thank you so much for the presentation, and then also a lot of the events that your department has been doing in relation to businesses. We really appreciate the positive personas that you provide for our businesses here in Monterey Park, but also featuring them. I know we also feature a lot of new businesses, a lot of older businesses on social media, and then also I had an opportunity to attend the SPARK event, which was very well attended, so thank you for hosting that, and also to our mayor and our mayor pro tem, who ran that meeting. But it was great to see a lot of community input. So thank you so much for the hard work you guys are doing.

Thank you.

Any other comments, questions?

If not, I'll add my appreciation to the staff, and I know a lot went into the SPARK process and kicking that off, and we just want to publicly appreciate the members of the community, particularly from the neighborhood, that showed up to engage in that process. Looking forward to the next few meetings as well. I know we're taking a break kind of this week, but August 12th, I encourage members of the community to show up and to engage in this process about what the future of the Saturn Park,

Macau's and Business Park can be. And we really want as much community input and feedback

about what that future can and should be. So invite everyone to come participate in this. If there's nothing else, thank you.

Actually, Mr.

Go ahead.

Actually, I also want to thank members of the SPARC committee, including yourself and Mayor Pro Tem, for being able to answer questions that came from the audience. And I think it was very important to set the tone and the framework and the direction. I think that that was a very good meeting, and I give my credit to everyone who is on the Spark Committee for, you know, especially laying the facts out for those who did.

Thank you.

Any other comments, questions?

If not, thank you.

Jessica, I appreciate it.

We'll move on to next staff communication from the library.

Good evening, Mayor Long.

Mayor Pro Tem Ngo and council members, Kristen Olivera is city librarian. And tonight I'm here to share with you some events we have upcoming this month at the library. But first, I'd like to start by highlighting our summer reading program, which ran June 1st through July 31st. We just wrapped up. And I have some of our final numbers here to share with you. For our children's program, which is ages 0 to 12, we had 677 children registered, and they read 11,598 hours. The teen program for ages 12 through 18 had 129 registered, 1,864 hours read, and our adult program for ages 18 and up had 275 people registered with 4,023 hours read. Next slide, please. During our summer reading program, we wrapped up July with our final performer of the summer. We had four performers at the Langley Center for families, and our final performer was Christopher T. Magician. For the four performances that we had, we have over 700 kids and their caregivers attend those summer performances at Langley Center. The picture just below that is from our Adulting 101 series for our teens, and this program here focused on skin care. In the top center there, you have our Super Smash Bros. tournament,

which is for all ages.

We had prizes for those winners. And in the bottom right-hand corner, we had a bird talk presented by the Pasadena Audubon Society.

Next.

Now looking ahead, this Saturday, August 10th at 2 o'clock, adults are invited to a conversation with Monterey Park-born author Justinian Wong. and Madeline Nakamura. Justinian's first novel, The Emperor and the Endless Palace, is a genre-bending romantic thriller that challenges everything we think we know about true love. Books will be available for purchase.

Next slide.

On Wednesday, August 14th, from 2 to 4 p.m., Chinatown Service Center will offer 30-minute one-on-one appointments to help write resumes, cover letters, and or offer job-seeking tips. Participants can bring a copy of their resume or cover letter to their appointment, and help is available in Mandarin and in English. You can register by visiting our website.

Next slide.

On Tuesday, August 13th at 6 p.m., volunteer attorneys will be on hand to answer questions at the free legal clinic sponsored by APABA and AJ SoCal. Attorneys will answer questions about immigration, criminal law, civil matters, estate planning, government benefits, labor and employment,

registration.

Monterey Park. Registration is required and you can register by contacting the reference desk at 626-307-1368. Next slide. On Friday, August 16th at 10 a.m., caregivers and their children are invited to our first caregiver meetup where they will connect with other families and learn hands-only infant CPR with the Monterey Park Fire Department. Next slide. The library also offers free 3D printing to anyone with a valid Monterey Park Brighamire Library card. Community members may submit one design per month to be printed for free by library staff. If you want to learn how to make your own 3D print designs, visit the library on Saturday August 17th at

2 p.m. to learn how to use Tinkercad. And lastly, registration for the fall

semester of ESL and citizenship classes is now open. English as a second language classes, conversation groups, and citizenship prep classes are free, and advanced students can meet one-on-one with a trained tutor. All students must complete a pre-test before joining and must have proper personal identification. Classes will begin next week, and for more information, you can visit our website or contact our literacy department at 626-307-1251. That concludes my presentation, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

thank you any questions from council

no real questions just more commending you for all the hours of literacy and all that the library does so important in our community to have literacy especially in the summer months when kids are off so very appreciative of that and thank you for all that the library does not just with the literacy but also the amazing program that you do thank you

I just want to add again just what

council member Sanchez said

great job in getting the children not so much the teen because I kind of did an average. The teens were about 10 hours the whole month versus the children, 17 plus hours and a lot more of them. So maybe next year we'll do a little bit more focus on the teens

to get them to read a little bit more. But good job on doing all that.

Thank you.

Any other comments, questions?

If not, I'll just ditto what was said.

Appreciate everything the library is doing and the staff for promoting literacy and getting all in our community engaged in summer reading. I look forward to the fall reading campaign, too,

if we're going to put that together.

Thank you so much. We'll move on to Public Works.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor, Mayor Pro Temp and City Council, Sean Igoe, Public Works Director.

Tonight I'm excited to share we have our community cleanup event

located at Highlands Park.

This is 400 Kasuda Canyon. This is going to be from 8 to 10 a.m. and we're going to be accepting bulky items and also electronic waste, but no hazardous materials. So with that, I will take any questions.

Any questions, comments?

Yeah, I'm sorry. Can you repeat the date and time again?

It's going to be August 10th.

August 10th.

Oh, okay. This Saturday. Okay.

At Highlands Park.

Perfect. Yep. Thank you so much. Yep, so we will look forward to seeing everyone there any any other questions comments

All right. Thank you, Sean. Appreciate it. Thank you so much to the cleanup Moving on to recreation and community services

Good evening mayor and members of the City Council My name is memo Chavez recreation supervisor with the recreation and community services department

Thank you for having me here tonight to share these program updates with you.

First, we want to thank everyone who came out and supported three recent events. Next slide, please.

On Thursday, July 18th, the City of Monterey Park and the West San Gabriel Valley Boys and Girls Club unveiled a community art pop-up exhibition at the Vincent Price Museum. The portraits were an intergenerational collaboration which featured self-portraits done by 18 seniors at the Langley Center and 18 teens from the Boys and Girls Club. We also want to thank the Vincent Price Museum for having the paintings featured at their museum. Next slide, please. Thank you to those. Oh, sorry. We also want to thank those who came out to the July 23rd Country Line Dance hosted by the Langley Center. Over 100 seniors enjoyed a live band, dancing, socializing, and good food. Next slide, please. And thank you to those who came out for the Parks Master Plan Open House on Sunday, July 28th. It was a great turnout, and the city received plenty of useful feedback. Thank you to those who completed the online survey. It was just reported that we received 1,900 surveys online. Next slide, please. The City of Monterey Park will offer the last summer movie in the park this Thursday, August 8th. The movie shown will be Barbie and will begin at sunset. We also want to thank Sky 111 for providing nail painting at the event. Next slide, please. The City of Monterey Park's extended day after school program is now accepting registration. Limited space is available. the program is open for ages 5 to 12, and dates of the program are August 13th through May 30th, 2025. Register by calling 626-307-1451. Next slide, please. The Langley Center's next social theme dance will be called the Langley Luau Hawaiian Party on Tuesday, August 20th. The event is from 1 to 3 and offered to those ages 50 and up. The event is currently sold out with 150 participants registered. The Langley Center will be showing the iconic 1980 movie Back to the Future on Wednesday, August 14th, beginning at 1 p.m. Adults 50 and over are welcome. Registration is not required, and snacks will be provided. And last, the Langley Center will host two health seminars in August provided by the Garfield Health Center. The first is on August 15th will be on cardiovascular health, and the second on August 26th is a blood glucose and cholesterol screening. For more information, contact the Langley Center at 626-307-1395. Next slide, please. And thank you, and remember to follow the Recreation Department on social media at Monterey Park Rec. Thank you, and that concludes my presentation.

Thank you. Any questions, comments from Council?

Thank you so much for, as always, Parks and Rec Department for having such amazing programming for our city and also for our elders at the Langley Center. Great to see a lot of upcoming events for them as well. And I think this, did you say that you're sold out already for the luau?

For the luau, yes.

Wow.

I mean, it goes to show just how great that, I mean, you know, just how interested the community is on these events. So thank you so much for all the programming that you do.

Thank you. Mr. Mayor.

Again, I want to just echo my colleague's sentiments, but I particularly want to just my compliments to the wonderful art exhibition at East Delay College, specifically at the Vincent Price Museum. You know, I would invite the community to visit.

Again, this is a jewel in our community, a museum in a community college that's in our city,

but also because this is an example of where we are collaborating with partners, again,

for quality programming

and I think that's something we should be very proud of ourselves for doing. So again, my compliments to all the staff.

Thank you.

So Memo, while on that topic, these paintings, artwork, are now at Langley?

They're at Langley. We haven't put them up yet.

We're going to offer

a small event for the Langley

and the teens at Langley Center and kind of do a

grand opening,

I guess you can say, and they'll be featured at Langley Center. So they'll be up on the walls at Langley Center, hopefully in the near future.

Right, because I believe a lot of the people who are in the painting actually go to Langley.

Yes.

And that's where they hang out. Just one more update on the Barbie movie. I want to congratulate you guys. You know, the movie in the park, this is the last one. This is number 404. I've attended all three prior ones. I'm not going to miss this one. It's been a blast, just the number of people who come out. Before 6, I know the movie starts closer to 8.15 because it's still light, but a lot of the community members come out. They enjoy the farmer's market. They hang out, and then there's free popcorn. They get to learn about the park, talk to other family members. so I think you guys are putting on a great show to get the residents to come in and enjoy the park and the movie

so good job on that

I would just echo what was said

on the East LA College

Langley Center Boys and Girls Club

collaboration on the art

I thought turned out amazing

and I'm looking

whoever taught them how to paint I'm going to need to take some lessons

because they all ended up

painting really really well I'd love to see us expand on that program and continue to leverage that I know this council has talked a lot about More art in public spaces and more art in in even our city facilities and how do we engage and I thought this was a great great Opportunity that we took advantage of from the staff side and the city Collaborating with an organization the boys and girls club that's right across the street And to really help provide an opportunity for youth and seniors and the community to really come together and create amazing art out of it and it's great to see that we're going to host it more permanently at Lang Senior Center look forward to many more opportunities let's keep you build on this we need to build some funding in this into our budget I know we are approved for next year but if there's funding that we need to think about setting aside to help to fund more projects like this I would be in support of that and would love to see us grow this program with organizations like the boys and others that want to make our city more beautiful and in the process help bring the community closer together. So really a great example of our collaboration and our work with

the community and other community groups

to beautify our city. And just thank you to the department and the staff for all the programming that's been going on. I will not feel, I will be out of town and will miss the Barbie show out on the lawn, but I know Mayor Pro Time Go will enjoy the movie for all of us that might miss it

and

and miss getting my nails painted, so I'm expecting someone to help me out

at some point.

But thank you so much. And also, I don't know

if I missed this, I apologize. We also did the tree memorial dedications, three of them

over the last couple weeks. I appreciate recreation and community services and our public works department for helping to get those together, being able to honor some

tremendously great individuals that have contributed

to our community over the years, over many years of service, including former Mayor Louie Chen, former Mayor Hans Young, and his wife, Lonnie,

and former Mayor Mitchell Ling.

So thank you so much to the staff for all those efforts.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Mr. Mayor, if I can just ask one more question. If we could go back to the park slide.

Oh, yeah.

I had an opportunity to attend this event, but I just wanted to thank staff for hosting

this event.

It was great to see a lot of people out. my question was more how are we planning to share the data that that was collected on this day Robert has the answer to that okay but it was great to see a lot of community members out there and sharing their feedback on what they want to see with our parks in the future yeah no it was

definitely I'm sorry Robert Gary director of recreation community services uh no it was definitely amazing to see the amount of of residency that came out that day we know that over 150 people actually signed in. We estimated we had about 250 residents in attendance that day. The consultant is currently tabulating all that information and putting it in usable form for us, and then we'll be later sharing that on the city's website on the Parks Master Plan page. So we'll continue to update that page as more information is available, and also once all of the survey results is also tabulated, we'll be sharing that as well. As Ian mentioned, we had close to 1900 people that had contributed to that survey, which is awesome because for a statistically valid survey, the goal of the consultant was actually 500 entries. So we up four times that.

Pretty amazing.

That's great to hear.

Looking forward to hearing the reports and the results of this.

Thank you. Absolutely. So are we. Yeah, we're excited.

While you're on the topic,

can you remind us of the timeline for the Park System Master Plan, what kind of the next steps are?

Next steps, so we will have some other more focus group meetings, as well as we will have another open house type meeting

where it gets more opportunities for the community to be involved.

And then there's some more research that's done. We're looking at completing the entire project sometime, I think it's July of next summer.

So we've still got some process to do,

but definitely it's been exciting to see the amount of residents engaged and really participating, and it just kind of speaks volumes about how much they care about their green spaces and their parks

and the future of the parks here in Monterey Park. So it's been exciting.

Yeah, it's great to see so many people engaging and giving us their ideas about what the future of our parks should look like and the programs that they want us to be able to offer. So looking forward to that all being put together into the report and look forward to being able to finalize that over the next year. But I just want to point out, I thought, like was already mentioned by the other council members, the format for the open house was really great and great for, I think, a lot of attendees and participants in that process. I appreciate being able to engage in a more dynamic way as opposed to a more formal kind of setting.

Absolutely.

And I think if we can continue to take that kind of template for all our other engagement processes and

Director of Community Services Robert Aguirre. Vice President Trump. As we're looking for engagement and feedback and input from the community to start to duplicate that kind of method of achieving engagement and feedback from the community. Let's just keep that in mind. Thank you. Anything else? If not, thank you. We'll move on to a presentation item. 1A. Sangaroo Valley Mosquito Vector Control District for an update.

Good evening, Mayor, Council Members, staff, and of course residents of Monier Park. My name is Joseph Leon, I'm a resident here at Monier Park. I'm also the city rep on the San Gabriel Valley Mosquito and Vector Control Board. Today we have the district manager to make a presentation. It's actually very timely. As I reminded the last council meeting I was here to make sure you don't have no stagnant water around your house. Unfortunately, since my last presentation, they had a spray in a certain area down in Monterey Park because of too many mosquitoes, and recently they found a mosquito and a bird. No humans have been affected, but they are getting close, so we need to really make sure to keep an eye for any stagnant water. Also, if you bring any plants, you know, the eggs hatch in the dirt. So make sure if you bring any plants from any other city, you know, be careful. And anyway, our director, our manager, Jason Farnett, will make a presentation, and then we can answer any questions after. Sorry, I don't want to take up your time.

Thank you very much, Trustee Leone, for the introduction. I'd also like to acknowledge Anais Medina-Diaz, our director of communication. She's here joining us as well. So good evening, everyone. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council, for giving me the time for this update. My name is Jason Farnett. I serve as the district manager for the San Gabriel Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District.

Slide, please.

And so, as you know, I'm here to talk about mosquitoes. They are the world's deadliest animals, and you know it's not an exaggeration. Mosquitoes kill up to a million people every year through the transmission of mosquito-borne disease, diseases like West Nile virus, dengue fever, and malaria. Slide.

There are a lot of different types of mosquitoes in California, and different mosquitoes spread different diseases. And so let's talk specifically about the mosquitoes that we have here in Monterey Park that create risk of disease.

So quickly going through this, on the left we have our native species called Culex, and that's the most abundant mosquitoes that we have in our area. And it spreads West Nile virus, which is endemic in California. It's a virus that Trustee Leon just mentioned. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in a bit. On the right we have Aedes mosquitoes, which are invasive, and they are extremely aggressive.

Most of our biting nuisance is caused by these guys, and they can spread some tropical diseases that California hasn't had to worry about before now, dengue fever, Zika, and chikungunya.

And at this time, there's no local transmission of any of these diseases, meaning that our local mosquito population isn't infected. But local transmission will occur when an infected traveler picks up the virus somewhere else and brings it back here, exposing our local mosquitoes. Slide. So let's talk a little bit more about West Nile virus. As I mentioned, it's the most predominant mosquito-borne disease that we face in California,

and by the end of every summer, we've generally found it in mosquitoes, birds, and or humans throughout the entire region. And so here's some data for context. In 2023, California reported over 4,500 mosquito samples tested positive for the virus. In our district alone, we found 266 positive mosquito samples throughout the region. This year to date, we have reported six samples so far, which is typical for this time of year. In 2023, there were 433 human cases reported statewide, resulting in 19 fatalities. And this slide is a little bit outdated. Just of this morning, West Nile virus has been confirmed here in Monterey Park, which means that the virus is actively circulating in this area.

And so we always let the city and residents know not because there needs to be any big worry or panic, but just to remind people that West Nile virus is circulating in the environment and people should take care to prevent mosquito bites by wearing mosquito repellent and protective clothing. Slide, please.

So mosquitoes need standing water to grow and lay their eggs. And if we eliminate the sources of standing water that they need to survive, we can significantly reduce the population. And so getting rid of the standing water is a shared responsibility, and the district counts on residents and business owners and community leaders to spread the word and to all do their part. Slide. For our part, the district uses an integrated vector management program to ultimately reduce mosquito populations and prevent disease. And so our surveillance department is made up of scientists and field entomologists that collect mosquitoes from over 80 static trap sites throughout the district. They measure abundance and test samples for the presence of disease. They also analyze critical data that they provide to our other departments to ensure the most effective use of our resources. Our communications department is made up of credentialed educators, content creators, and outreach specialists who participate in community events and fairs and provide essential information to residents and conduct curriculum-based classroom programs for students. And then our operations team works in the field to find and eliminate standing water, consult residents about mosquito exclusion and bite prevention, and perform chemical and biological control treatments. Slide. In addition, I would like to mention a new initiative. It's called the Bite Mosquitoes Program. It stands for Building Infrastructure to Eliminate Mosquitoes, and this initiative was created as a resource for cities to help identify failing or faulty infrastructure that presents a public health risk by holding water and creating mosquito habitat. Slide. So every year, the district will provide a list of 10 sites that contribute to the mosquito population in your city. The list can be used to help prioritize infrastructure repairs with an additional consideration on public health. Sites are evaluated based on historical mosquito breeding, disease prevalence, and frequency of pesticide treatments, all linked to the presence of standing water. And so by working together to permanently eliminate chronic mosquito breeding sites, We're confident that this program will improve public health, reduce the risk of pesticides, and further maximize tax dollars. Slide. And so if not already, city staff will soon receive a letter explaining the program along with the first bite list, which will include curb and gutter sites supported by photos illustrating how damage and ineffective infrastructure poses a public health risk. And we hope that this initiative will provide valuable information while the city prioritizes their infrastructure repairs,

and we look forward to supporting the city any way we can. Slide.

All right, so over the last several weeks, our surveillance department has been monitoring elevated mosquito activity in the area around Avenida Cesar Chavez and Atlantic Boulevard here in Monterey Park. Mosquito levels there are roughly six times the district average, and after weeks of enhanced investigation to try and locate the primary source of the problem, the district performed two area-wide adulticide treatments on July 9th and 10th. Next slide. So these treatments are performed by a team driving a truck-mounted ULV spray unit. ULV stands for ultra-low volume, referring to the very small amount of pesticides or active ingredient needed to perform the treatment. The machine creates an ultrafine mist that contains one ounce of pesticide mixed with water for every acre treated. So that's about a teaspoon of water-soluble pesticide for an area the size of a football field. And this method is effective and can be used for larvicide treatments targeting immature mosquitoes or adulticide treatments targeting adult mosquitoes. So I think it's important to note that everything that you need to know about these truck-mounted treatments is on our website. We make it very easy for residents and city partners to easily access treatment schedules, treatment records, FAQs, pesticide information, and safety guidelines. And so I know there were some questions about safety and the impact of the treatment on humans and pets, beneficial insects, and home gardens. So I can tell you that all of our pesticides that we use to control mosquitoes are registered with the EPA and highly regulated by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation and the L.A. County Agricultural Commissioner. Furthermore, the materials that we use are chosen specifically based on their ability to be effective against mosquitoes while also being safe for humans and pets and posing minimal risk to the environment. Information about the pesticides use in these treatments is always made available on our website, as you can see here on the right side of the screen. Pesticides products use a signal word on their label to indicate the acute toxicity of the material. And this is something you can see at Home Depot if you go down the pesticide or the chemical aisle. On every single label, there is a signal word, danger, warning, or caution. danger being the most toxic and caution being the least. And all of the products that we use at the district are labeled caution, being the least toxic. Again, chosen specifically to have minimal impact on humans and pets. And so products targeting adult mosquitoes can be toxic to other insects, however, including bees. And for this reason, we perform treatments during the night when bees are not active to minimize contact. and the product is water-soluble and evaporates very quickly, leaving no residue or residual effect on hard surfaces, and that includes home gardens, fruits and vegetables, lawn furniture, lawn toys, and equipment. And so we appreciate the concerns for safety, and that's why these treatments are not common and reserved for unique situations in which there is an increased risk to public health. They are very effective at quickly reducing the mosquito population and or interrupting active disease transmission. and the decision to conduct these treatments is data-driven and extremely time-sensitive. So when the surveillance data is received that tells us there is an increased risk and conditions warrant this type of response, the treatment is performed between three and seven days later, and a lot of care and work goes into notifying residents and stakeholders with a focus on safety and transparency, but time is of the essence. And so once a decision is made, things happen very quickly in response to the real-time data. A date is usually set between five and seven days. Our surveillance department immediately sets traps for pre- and post-treatment data collection. Our operation department prepares the equipment. And as soon as the details are confirmed, our communication department develops customized notification materials, treatment maps, and drafts a press release if necessary.

Slide.

So as you can see here, this is our notification process. We notify...

Next slide.

Yeah. As soon as we can, we notify the trustees and the city staff. Slide. 48 to 70 hours prior to the event, we update the website, we email stakeholders, and if necessary, put out a press release. Slide. We also put out paid digital ads with treatment information and post-treatment notification at street level within the treatment area.

Next slide. And part of, one more slide.

There we go. part of our city communication also includes social media toolkit that includes verbiage and graphics for social media posts. Posts are created in English, Chinese, and Spanish and are formatted for all the major social media platforms. Next slide. And your city staff were amazing partners throughout this entire process. They were very receptive to our communication and quick to respond with questions. They helped us share this information with the police department and with residents. They utilized our social media toolkit and posted information on your platforms in multiple languages. The treatment was conducted successfully for some short-term relief, but the district is still working in the area to find all of the potential mosquito sources to reduce the population permanently or long-term. Next slide. And so in the meantime, mosquito repellent remains the most effective way to prevent mosquito bites and protect yourself from mosquito-borne disease. We encourage residents to repel mosquito bites safely and effectively using a repellent with one of four CDC and EPA-registered active ingredients, either oil of lemon eucalyptus, DEET, picaridin, or IR3535. And you can find active ingredients on the front of the bottle. So in conclusion, we remind everyone to tip, toss, and protect. Tip standing water from containers weekly. Toss unwanted and unused containers. and protect yourself from mosquito bites by using EPA-approved insect repellent and protective clothing. And that concludes my presentation. I'm available for questions if you have any.

Thank you. Questions, comments from Council? Yes.

First of all, I wanted to thank you for acting so quickly. The area that you sprayed is the area that I represent in the southern part of Monterey Park. And so I have a few questions in regards to the decision that was made to spray in this area. First of all, data collection. I think I heard you talk about data collection. Do you guys have post-data that you've collected in terms of whether mosquito counts have gone down?

Since the treatment? Since the treatment, yes. So mosquito populations did reduce after the treatment, but they quickly rebound. And so part of the reason with this adult or part of the consideration with these adult treatments is that they're not a long-term solution. So when we see conditions, either active disease transmission or extremely high populations where it could potentially turn into a disease outbreak, then we use these adulticide treatments as kind of a short-term measure to get things a little bit under control until we can kind of figure out what's going on more long-term. And so that's what happened with this case. It brought mosquito numbers down for a couple of weeks. They've since rebounded, and we're still in the area trying to find out exactly where these mosquitoes are coming from, because until we find the source, we won't be able to permanently remove them. So we've already ruled out all of the public spaces and infrastructure, and now we're going door-to-door to residents asking if we can inspect their properties to try to find if there's some sort of private property source that might be contributing to the problem. Okay, great.

That was going to be my follow-up question, just where exactly the source was coming from. In your review of our city and in particular that area, did you happen to find any infrastructure that you felt might be compromised that could potentially qualify for your BITE program?

Yeah, we do have a list, and unfortunately I don't have that information in front of me right now.

The city, I think they went out today, so I can follow up with the city with that list.

And so I know that all the cities throughout San Gabriel Valley have curbs and gutters and infrastructure issues. And so you're...

Thank you.

And then, I don't know, this is more of a question for the city, if it might be useful not just to share on social media, but also maybe if this is a continuing issue, especially in this area of Monterey Park, that maybe we have a community meeting of some type to kind of at least allow you guys, if you guys are willing to come out, to share a lot of this information with residents so they're also aware of what might cause mosquitoes to grow in this proportion, at least in this area, might be useful as well. But that was it, and thank you so much for acting so quickly. I did see those and immediately started getting messages from neighbors

about why this was happening.

And then my last question just deals with West Nile.

Was West Nile, which you mentioned, was it West Nile you mentioned, was this found particularly in this area of Monterey Park?

It is very close. It's about a half a mile away from our treatment area.

and so close enough to be concerning, but we're not close enough to be directly related yet.

So we're hoping to contain both population and the spread of the virus.

Perfect. Thank you. That's it for me, Mr. Mayor.

Mr. Mayor, a question. Again, actually, thank you for answering a lot of my colleagues' questions, but I have a curious follow-up question. Because it was a particularly wet year earlier this year, would you say that that meant that mosquito season also started earlier? Or does it matter?

That definitely does have an impact. This year we had a relatively cool spring, and so mosquito populations were at or below our five-year average,

and they've remained there. There's no indication to say how that will forecast the rest of the season. We have a couple more months left. But right now we're right about average. I see, I see.

And then I don't know if you also projected next year, but if it's a drier year,

does that also mean the mosquito season might start earlier than if it's a drier year or warmer year?

The temperature, the weather and the temperature definitely impact mosquito sources.

But here in these suburban environments, we have so much microclimates. Most of our mosquito problems come from backyards and water infrastructure, which are year-round.

And so a cool or very wet spring will actually kind of push mosquitoes back further into the summer, so we won't see a big population peak until later in the summer.

Yeah, when we have a warmer, drier spring, we actually have mosquitoes developing a lot sooner because they're developing in backyards where sprinklers and urban runoff is contributing to their growth. Thank you.

Yeah.

So, Jason, thank you for the presentation.

Just a couple of questions. I want to make sure we understand.

So the duration of the breeding season for mosquitoes is spring till fall-ish?

Yeah, so we generally start around April, May, and we go through October.

The invasive 80s mosquitoes, they are a lot later, so we don't start to see them until June,

and then they'll breed usually all the way through October, whereas our native mosquitoes start a little bit earlier and then they're done by the end of summer.

Right, and then earlier you mentioned the treatment that we had, in particular by ELAC area. That's really a temporary fix until you find a permanent resource. And I guess does the heat actually kill the mosquitoes or it doesn't? I know the cold does, but we're up with the heat.

So the heat will reduce the population. So when it gets too hot, high 90s, triple digits, the mosquitoes get stressed out, they rest a lot more, so they're a lot less active.

So mosquito larvae, the mosquitoes grow in water. The mosquito larvae love the warm water. So as the

water temperatures heat up, they grow faster and emerge faster from the water. But then as adults,

they're stressed by the heat and they're not as active. So we actually see populations and

disease transmission go down when it's really hot. Okay. All right. So in a way, we love the

hot summers and cold winters. Yeah. In a way. In this situation, it helps. That's right.

All right. Any other comments? Appreciate the update. And it sounds like we are, and I know we are, helping to promote some of these posts and getting this information out. The more we can over the next few months, I think would be even more helpful. I'm sure we're already

planning that. And it sounds like Diana. Yeah, I was just going to chime in. As Jason mentioned,

We do push the information on social media, and we're working with NIS to have the Vector Control District come out to some of our upcoming events to share this information with residents.

Great. Look forward to it. Maybe tomorrow night at National Night Out. I don't know. No. All right. Future events.

Thank you. Appreciate the update.

Thank you, Trustee Leon, for making this happen. I appreciate all the district's work in helping to prevent disease transmission in our community. Look trust that we'll get another update maybe towards the end of the season or In the next few months if there's anything to update us on. Thank you. Thank you All right, we will move to old business to a solid waste update I don't I think there's a staff report to kick this off and then we'll

Have we're good evening again, Honorable Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and City Council Sean Igoe, Public Works Director. Tonight you have before you an item just to provide you an update with where we're at with the transition plan. As you know we're well in the midst of our transition for solid waste for residential and so tonight you have Jay from Ware who will be giving an update and kind of going into some of the details on where they're at with the process, some of the equipment and the items that are going to be important for the transition. So with

that I will turn it over to Jay. Thank you. I don't know if there's some opening remarks you

have otherwise I think there's some questions from from Council but we can have you sir.

Sure absolutely. Good evening Mayor and Council Members. Tonight with me I wanted to introduce you to your the Vice President of Where Disposals Community Relations which will be Leah Ding. She is one of the gonna be one of my senior members here should be running the office up here in Monterey Park and with me I brought along a slew of staff that will be also They're also in training now, and they'll be also working out of the Monterey Park office when us stand up there Derek and Travis and Vanessa first three of them. There's a few more that are weren't able to make it tonight But at least we have we'll be ready to transition starting Tuesday and the 13th and so with that I'll kind of lead you off and let me give you some updates just so you're familiar with what's happening and what we've been doing with staff and working within the city and then there's anything that you feel needs to be translated into Mandarin Leah is fluent in Mandarin so she'll be able to speak to that if we need to identify anything

that might be important. With that said, again, my name is Jay Ware with Ware Disposal Company. So currently we're on track to start services on September 3rd. We will begin delivering carts next Monday, the 12th and 13th. The current service provider is going to be starting to remove carts on August 26th.

Effective September 3rd, we will start servicing the carts. It is important for the residents to understand that that is Labor Day week.

We will be delayed by one service day.

Service days for all residents will not change.

So your current service day that you have today, if you're a Monday service, getting

service on Monday, you'll still get your service on Monday. However, that week, you're going to be delayed by one day.

Cart resizing.

September 3rd, we will start accepting cart resizing for all disabled and handicapped customers.

And we will be able to, and if anybody has any questions about that, they'll be able to visit the office to see what those cart sizes look like compared to the carts that they'll be delivered.

Then after that, all customers will then get cart resizing done. and they'll be able to get an order in for December 1st. We have sent out a mailer. It's been posted up there on the board, and there will be a second mailer going out with more details coming this week for all residents. There will be flyers provided also on our website, and we're continuously updating the website along with providing out flyers for SB 1383 and AB 341. all of them are available in English Spanish and Chinese. Monterey Park team is going to be attending the National Night Out on August 6th. All the welcome packages will be available and giveaways for customers. All the customer service representatives will be on site for that night to answer any questions that anybody may have. We'll also be at the Business Expo on August 8th and we will be able to provide any information at that time to anyone that has questions. And then we're also going to be attending the cleanup event which will be able to answer any questions, provide handouts to any customers, and provide outreach and education materials. Our website has got plenty of information on it.

It will have the hours for our customer care center. All the outreach and education flyers and brochures can be found on our website, which is www.wharedisposal.com. It has a welcome package. It explains the process for bulky item collection. And for rollout services, there is a form that needs to be filled out. If you don't currently have the rollout service and you request it, you can fill out a form to request it.

and then it'll also provide the service map. We also have real-time customer support.

We also have the chat available and we have full translation services available for anyone who needs that. Our representatives are going to be capable of answering questions in English, Spanish, and Chinese. Our office hours will be 8 to 5 and 8 to 12, 8 to 5 Monday through Friday, 8 to 12 on Saturday.

We have additional offices that will be able to handle heavy call volumes.

They've all been cross-trained in the event that there are heavy call volumes.

Customer care service is almost ready.

We're anticipating opening by, I believe, August 16th.

And we will post that on our website when it is up and available.

That office will be able to, customers will be able to come in and see cart sizes, change

services, ask questions about accounting and billing, make payments, and then receive any additional information and training.

We will be doing billing at the end of August.

That will be a bi-monthly billing, so customers will see an invoice coming from where disposal

rather than it coming from the city.

Those should be coming out around the 26th of August.

As far as carts and trucks, we are ahead of schedule currently.

We have received over 90% of our carts, and we have received all of our containers for multifamily.

all of the trucks have been delivered and they're all

being fueled and ready to go to go into service on our service start date and with that I don't have any

further updates we will be back in two weeks with

a larger presentation but we will be

we just wanted to give the public some information and kind of stay in front of it as council had asked

thank you mr we're uh we'll start off with questions well first off thank you for being

here tonight and uh for sharing uh where you guys are at and and and a lot of that information is also for being at a lot of our events starting tomorrow at our national night out i think community is very eager to hear and see you guys um as we transition um from athens to where um so I'm very happy to hear that you are that your carts are ready and that your trucks are ready for this day. I think that's always very it's good to hear that we're on track and that there won't be any issues but thank you so much for that update. We look forward to hearing more updates as we get closer and closer to this date. If by any chance you have been to I'm not sure if you've shared the you said you're sending out a second mailer to the community has this been shared with city staff already i'm not sure if it's possible to share with when appropriate with um with our

residents as well i'll let sean answer that but from my understanding we have seen the draft and

uh translation that's correct yes we have seen those items and they will be going out shortly

Okay, great. And then for the office, you said it's going to be open soon?

August 16th.

August 16th. And then are we planning to do any type of, I don't know, ribbon-cutting event or anything like that to kind of help also community know about this? Might be a useful or good idea to do something like that to get the community, so they also know where you're off.

uh useful or good idea to do something like that uh get the community so they also know where your office is at ! yes as we transition

! if we transition

! if we transition ! if we transition

if we transition ! Mr. Mayor, members of the council, if we transition ! if we transition

coordinating that we can assist with ribbon cutting if the council would like us to do that and where's interested we can help them do that

thank you

thank you and i think it'd be worth uh on that note maybe i mean i think definitely a press release or some sort of thing for

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a press release or some sort of thing for

leveraged

ethnic and local media to help get the word out as well to the community and anything else we can do to continue

to amplify some of that messaging would

be great. I don't know if there are other questions.

I still have a lot more, but we'll go to that.

Actually, I do. So

perhaps also a suggestion when we also do our ribbon

cutting when we coordinate, and again, it doesn't have to be the only event. Maybe even talk to where about doing

open house, but I think it's also important besides residents, but also make sure that our community-based organizations that are based in the city are also part of any invitation to ribbon-cutting or some type of outreach event because I think

given that werewolf

for now be our trash hauler, I think

it's important that also community-based organizations

Recording in progress.

Oh, okay. That they also get to know better and the staff and also

your presence as well.

I also have a question. So can you, do you have a number of how many percentage of the bin that you receive so far?

Yes, we have currently we have 90% of all of our trash carts

which are the residential carts and we have 100% of the dumpsters which are for multifamily for the multifamily units that are using dumpsters.

Oh, okay. So they are all at the Corporate Center Drive right now.

They are. And if you actually, if you drive up to Corporate Center Drive or if you're passing by there, there is a yard to the left there and you can drive in there. It's quite a sight at the moment.

Okay, so 90% and 100%. So, wow.

So almost, yeah, we're ready. And we still have another three weeks.

Yes, we have another three weeks. and carts are continuously being delivered. Large trucks are being continually delivered. But to see over 50,000 carts in one yard is kind of an impressive look.

Wow, we better go there and take pictures. And also I have questions about when will you deliver to the residents?

So we start on Tuesday of next week, August 13th.

I believe that's the correct date, right? Oh, Tuesday of next week. The 12th, sorry about that. We start on the 12th, which will be Monday. and so customers will start to see their new carts and they're not to use them till the last

week of the month okay and so so for our residents at the same time we will have maybe two bin one

from athens one from that's correct that is correct for a couple of weeks there will be some customers will have two carts for a couple of weeks so um so let me ask you a question since

you're here. If, for example, people mixed up, you know, on September 2nd, they mixed up and still put out Athens Bind, will you take care of them? No, we will not be picking Athens carts

need to be placed out the last week of the month of August, and they will be removing their carts starting on the 26th of August. The last week of the month, August 26th, they will be able to utilize our carts um but we're we're not going but they won't service our carts and we won't be servicing their carts each company has their own carts to service so we really want to make sure that the customers understand just to place their carts out the last week of the month and then not bring them back in leave them out at the curb so they can pick them up i see okay yeah there's still

we need more communications and this also for august 16 it will be good for us is that possible

to put together maybe a press conference that with the media that be able to also spread the

words out to the community? Yeah, so we're going to be doing another mailer and then what we'll do is we'll work with, I'll work with my team and we'll see what other ways that we can communicate and try to get the word out. Our website has it. I know that the city's been working with us. We've been, I think we have three huge or large events here in the city over the next week and a half which i think will be really good um and uh what we'll we'll try to get with the um cable tv i think you have a cable dvd channel we're going to work with that to see if we can get that completed and then we'll be visiting the council one more time before the uh start of transit or

the start of service oh great and um i want to say so far the communication has been doing well i received your mailer we're happy with different languages so um yes i think just mixed up with

the bin and we want more communications on that but other than that I think you

did a good job thank you thank you thank you thank you for coming and and

presenting and sharing with a lot of I had I had a few questions I think you answer some of them you know my question very similar was how many how many cars she said 90% the last 10% I'm gonna take your word that you're gonna get it between now and next week because you only have until next week because you you've got to deliver it by the 12th and 13th. Got questions on the trucks, which you said they're all delivered, so I'll take your word for it.

I'm not going to see it.

I do have some concerns, and my concern is I saw the first mailer.

Great.

Second mailer is going to be helpful because a lot of people just kind of looked at the first one. What's the holdup on opening up the office on August 16th versus, I think the last time I asked you guys, it was supposed to be August 1st or end of July?

It's not. We've had, we've been.

I know you've been working.

We've been putting on and putting in the technology and training the staff.

So we wanted to make sure that the traffic was trained in other areas before we started to open up the office.

and there were some delays from different people having holidays

and other things that they had scheduled, and when we got the contract, we had to push things forward and backwards.

And so we're almost ready to go.

They're putting together everything now.

I visited the office before the meeting, and we're about 90% of the way there.

We have a couple more things to do. and we should be good to go.

Okay, so I guess my question for you is that the office opening between the 16th, which is still 11 days from now, versus opening tomorrow, that holdup or that, call it 11 days, is that because you don't have the people to do it or because the office is technically not ready from an infrastructure standpoint?

All of the above.

All of the above, okay.

We will be ready.

we're working to make it the 16th but we have all of the phones all the

communication is available I just don't have the office we're just not prepared

to staff the office the way it is at the moment we're still waiting on a couple

of items so technically if somebody called the office before the 16th they

will get a service line oh yes absolutely okay all right that that's

really important and the reason why I'm picking on you a little bit on the 16th is because technically the cards are going to be delivered on the 12th and 13th. Because I can just imagine 15,000 residents calling you on the 12th and saying, I didn't get the letter or I threw the letter away. Or what the heck is this?

I got a new card. Who am I supposed to contact?

And they see an office. They either go to the office or they call the number and nothing goes on. I think I can just see that frantic play out until the 16th because that's when your office is open, then you're going to get bombarded with so many people saying,

what's going on?

And I think the council member, you, brings up a good point in terms of, you know, we may have some confusion with the two different cards, different names, but that will take care of itself because technically you deliver on the 12th and 13th your communication to tell people, don't put anything in here yet because you're supposed to be using the old Athens band probably two more weeks until the 26th. That's your last pickup. And then at that point, Athens will pick up those bins on the 26th, 27th, 28th. And then you don't have a choice because there's only one bin left with one logo, and that's starting September 2nd, 3rd, 4th. So I encourage you to figure out a way to get that office open faster or get the communication line set up because you will see social media buzz. You'll see Monterey Park life. You'll see anything basically saying what's going on with rubbish protocol and logistics.

Right. My apologies. I may have misspoke or maybe I was misunderstood. The offices will not be open to the public yet.

However, our communication lines, our phone lines, my staff is fully prepared to answer calls

and be able to assist all residents within the city of Monterey Park, regardless of the 16th. We have already opened our lines. We are fully capable of handling all of the phone calls right now. That office is just not ready to open to the public to visit us.

However, if there's a phone call or a chat or an email, we're fully capable of answering it at this time. Okay, well, that's good. That's good news.

and then the invoices. You're going to process that later on after, well, you said here, I wrote down, end of August. So your billing cycle, and it's bimonthly, so technically when would I pick up the first bill?

You'll be receiving your first bill right around September 1st. September 1st, okay.

So technically you'll be servicing before I make the payment to the bill.

That's correct. But you're not going to wait.

I'm not going to wait because you know where I live. You just pile the other bins to my property if I don't pay.

So I get that. Okay.

Well, you know, best of luck.

We need it.

We all need it because, you know, the city can't go without a week or two without the service.

It's critical. It's for health reasons.

So we're rooting for you guys. Let's just keep the dialogue going. you have five people here who is just five of 60,000 residents and the other 59,995 folks are going to say what's going on, keep me posted Spanish, Chinese

English

and then we have many many dialects in the community and I'm sure you guys will get that experience as you start filming people tomorrow night you'll see a lot of people

because of National Night Out so you'll get

a pre-warning of people who will be asking you a lot of questions and then the business fair will be a smaller venue so that will be just a couple hundred people and trust me you're going to get phone calls

let the

city folks know let staff know what we can do to help because we're all in this together we got to get it right

you can't

miss a week I can assure you we've got this right

thank you

Mr. Mayor if I can ask a follow-up question regarding a billing with which councilmember go brought up Can you talk can you walk us through a little bit about how billings gonna work? To our residents. I'm assuming you're gonna mail

The bill is that correct? Invoice for that. That's correct. You're gonna so the mailing the billing is gonna come out

At the end of August it will be for September and October services and so it'll be what we call bimonthly invoicing and it'll be direct to the

resident and then the resident would then have different options to pay their bill they can pay with a check they can pay with a credit card they can do

automatic payment they can also do an ACH payment or they can come to the

office make a payment with either cash check or credit card however they feel comfortable, they'll have a two-month window to pay their bill.

That's great. That's good information.

And then also, I know that a lot of our residents are used to, correct me if I'm wrong, coming to the city and paying their bills, right, particularly because it was attached to them. But is there a way either when residents, because I'm sure the confusion will happen, where they're going to come in to the city and say, I'm here to pay my trash bill, and They might think they get paid in the city, but if there's a way to work something out where we can either inform residents at the billing payment with information, this is where you pay if you're planning to pay in person and it's at the corporate center, or if there's some way to have a drop box where they can just drop off their check or their bill, and then someone from your staff can come and pick it up. I'm not sure the logistics of that or how that might work. just as we transition or at least to give multiple ways for residents to be able to pay their bills. And for the September-October 1st bill, do you guys have, I'm not sure if you know this off the top of your head, when that would be due for them, for residents?

I don't, what is it?

It'll be due October 31st, but I need to check that because it would be for September and October.

so it will be

it should be due September 1st it's due in the rarest you pay first and then you get the service you're not collecting it yet

I need to look into as soon as you can share that with us and residents I've got to look at the agreement I apologize

as soon as you can share that information with us so that we are also able to share with residents I feel like to Councilmember Ngo's point and to all of the Councilmembers the more information we share with residents. Director of Public Works Shawnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahn

that the due date on it is going to be September 30th.

But I will verify that and I will get back to these.

I will get back and we'll make sure that it's in the communication packages to all the residents.

Excellent. And then just one more follow-up.

Will residents have the option to receive paperless billing?

Yes, that is correct. They can receive paperless billing and they'll be able to sign up for it.

They get a special code and then they can go online and also pay their bill through

a direct payment to their account as well.

They'll also have online access to all their accounts.

Okay, that was going to be my last one. Okay, excellent. Thank you.

Just real quick, going back to your comment about bills being accepted. So we've already notified our residents that we'll be transitioning over from us billing outside, but again, you're right, there will be some confusion, so we'll make sure to communicate that not only on our website, but also at the window. So we will be working with residents and visitors to make sure we communicate that the best

we can.

And just one thing, and I guess as we transition with this confusion that might potentially happen, will there be any leeway in terms of late fees for residents, at least in these first, as we transition, maybe first couple of months or whatever?

I would imagine we'll be able to take that on a special circumstance when you're asking for leeway.

They're getting a bill that's going to be for two months. There should be within that two months there. we'll be able to figure this out, I would imagine.

I would recommend that you do just, as we transition, you can imagine having once a hauler for a very long period of time. I'm sure there's going to be some confusion with that. So we would definitely appreciate it on behalf of our residents.

We're going to do everything we can to limit those phone calls.

All right, thank you.

So just following up on the billing,

It sounds like we're sticking with every two months billing, right?

Are there any plans?

I don't know if this was on our end, but to go to monthly billing, I know we're shifting our other utilities to monthly billing.

We're not. So I can chime in real quick.

So typically haulers, they usually do a three-month billing. So we ask them to meet us in the middle because we're transitioning to one month,

that they do a two-month.

So that was our request because they do it usually three months.

Okay. And then, so, okay. On the whole one, thank you. Appreciate this update. Sounds like a lot of the materials and the ordering and all that stuff, the logistics seem to be coming together. I'm trusting that our staff is verifying to make sure everything's in place. I'm going to ask a little bit later about how we, if there's contingency planning for if anything's going to be, if things are missing or if we're not all there or if the trucks aren't there or if the route gets messed up or whatever, how we're thinking and planning for any of that. But on the communication part, the last few council meetings that you have presented at, and I appreciate that this first mailer went out, I will say I live in a condo complex and in an HOA. I have not received that HOA.

It's not your fault.

It's partially at least the fault of the HOA manager who is not passing on information to the members of the HOA about this new trash service. So not completely your fault, but still I think I want to put it on you and on us collectively to see what else we can do because there are probably hundreds if not thousands of HOA members in the city of Mario Park that have not received formal notice that they're going to get new bins and they're going to be transitioning the residential trust service to another hauler and they're going to have to figure out who to put all these bins for two weeks and how to transition to a three-bin system. My ask is I know we're planning another, I'm hoping it's not too late, but I know we're planning another mailer out to residential customers coming up right now. I don't know if we can provide from the city perspective provide maybe the mailing list for the Cascades as opposed to the billing list Since that's a wider list. I know that is probably At least a small additional cost to go to more households But I will say I have not gotten the notice And my joy is not sent that to me. I'm on the City Council And I know I should ask for my joy to send that to me but there are probably hundreds of people not watching this meeting that do not know to even ask for it and probably have not gotten it.

So just a quick question, Mayor. I apologize, but just out of curiosity, do you know in your HOA, are you utilizing dumpster service or do you have carts?

We have carts.

Okay.

So do you know if your HOA pays for those carts separately than you do?

Because if they are paying for it, then, you know, obviously they're managing it, So you're just paying the HOA for services?

Yeah, so we're paying the HOA to pay right now Athens for our cart service.

Right.

They should, I understand the responsibilities on my HOA management company to tell me that I'm going to get three new carts in the next week, but they have not told me that, and that's my concern. There are hundreds of people living in HOAs that probably have not gotten notice, or their HOA companies are not doing their job and are not passing on this information to their residents. and I'm asking to see how we can rectify that because I would not like to get to a situation where there are going to be hundreds of people wondering why there's three new carts who are not paying attention to these council meetings at all and don't know what to ask about them and they're going to call the city to complain so I'm trying to figure out what we can do between now and even next week when they're going to get these carts what else we can do to help notify probably hundreds of people and residential customers in the city that aren't getting this notice and that aren't reading the Cascades. And I'll caveat all this as well, saying I know we have sent out these notices and we've included these in the Cascades. We can do, I think, everything right under the sun and double that, and still people will be confused and not know what's going on. And understanding people are busy, have other things to do, and are figuring out the rest of their lives and trash is the last thing on their mind. they will ignore these notices and they will still be confused even if you tell them five times that this is happening they're still going to call and complain about getting these new bins understanding that knowing that we can do everything perfectly people are still going to complain but my hope is to mitigate that to the extent possible and have as little of that as possible I know there will always be complaints and always be missed things but on this specific opportunity I don't know if there's something we can kind of find a a way to at least solve for this a little bit.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, so for the Cascades,

correct, we don't actually use

addresses, right? So where's using addresses, billing addresses currently to get information out? I think we can work back with where. When we do the Cascades, we're using bulk mail service, and that's based on mail routes. So we can work back with where to ensure that, and I don't know, the whole packet going out in a bulk mail service may be a challenge. However, we can work back with where to see if a postcard indicating that service is changing and then referring them back to websites or other information could be a quicker way to get information out immediately because then you're not sending out larger mail packets but like a postcard or some kind of other quick mail, which, correct, I understand what you're saying, that residents living in communities that have HOAs might not be getting that information. We will definitely ensure to have information in the September edition of the Cascades. Understand that that's when the service is starting. We did put it in July and August edition. We are updating the city's website consistently. we are working back with where based on their customer calls already. Information that we considered frequently asked questions is being updated on our website so as repeated questions keep coming up we're trying to provide that clarified information on the website. But yes we will work back with where to see if there's something immediate that they can get out in a bulk mail. That way it's a larger canvassing of our city.

Let's exercise as many tools as we can and let's be creative in that. I hope that we will be. I know we're running a little bit late. I would just say I'm a little disappointed in that the last few meetings where I've asked for us to overthink this and very much overdo this. I would love to get complaints from residents that they're being spammed about this transition and that they're being over-informed that we need to stop sending them so much information about this. That would make me feel much more comfortable about this transition happening, and I would say that that's not the case. But whatever we can do to get closer to that as opposed to, and I know we're doing things, and I know there's a lot to do, but whatever we can do to get closer to kind of that situation, I would very much appreciate it. I think the residents of the city would be in much better shape once the renew bins each residence starts to show up in the next week or so because right I guarantee you there's a lot of people that have no idea this transition is happening and three bins are gonna show up and they're not gonna know what to do with it I don't know if people are already calling I'm curious on the city side and on your side too if if we've gotten what let what volume of outreach from the community we've gotten already about this transition or a trash service I'm just curious kind of offhand on that but if there are answers to that I'm very curious if if that's still kind of a low level I imagine that's going to surge significantly as soon as three random bins show up for a lot of people who

are not paying attention to this again mayor there's going to be a large package of mailing going out this week there is the social media website that they can follow they also have the city's site both have been consistently updated and then when the carts are delivered that particular brochure that was placed will also be on their cart with what to do with each cart so that'll be they'll be getting two more additional pieces of paper it is your particular instance is a little peculiar because you're utilizing your association to pay for your cart so you're not getting the information because the only address that's been given is the Homeowners Association address. But it'll be something that we're going to look into with the city, and I think that's something we can rectify within the next week or two, and we'll try to get those out to the residents. A lot of residents in your situation may be using bin service or association CURTS, so that could be the reason why you're not getting the information that maybe a single-family resident is getting.

Yeah, no, it sounds like single-family residents and other more traditional residential situations are getting, at least have gotten the first notice.

I would have hoped that they would get more than a first notice at this point, because I imagine at least half of those were probably tossed away and not looked at. And I know there's no way to force people to, like, look at this stuff, and you're never going to get every one. and even, not to put my parents on the spot,

but you can mail them 10 times

and they'll say they missed it and never saw it. And so what else can we do to make sure that,

one, residents to the least extent possible

can use the excuse that they didn't hear about this

and don't know what they're doing

with three new bins that show up. What else can we do as part of this outreach plan to get the word out. I would love to get my parents to complain to me

that they need to stop getting these notices

and notifications about this transition

and what to do with the three bins that are going to show up next week.

So let's aim for that. Whatever we can do and add to our existing plan over the next week or two, I think let's explore those options.

But I am curious if we've gotten

any initial kind of questions or complaints or anything yet from residents on the transition.

We've got a few calls and questions regarding the transition, but I wouldn't say that it's anything to be concerned about at this point. I think that, to your point, come next week, as we start working on the rollout, I think we're probably going to receive a lot more calls.

All right.

On that, what are – are there plans – I'm looking for reassurance. Are there plans for where to step up or surge kind of resources in terms of the call, the phone number for service in the office or even in the community to have more people and resources available? I expect a lot of these calls are going to come in wondering why they got three bins.

Yes, I have multiple offices. They're all cross-trained.

We're prepared to take those calls in the event that there's a surge in phone calls.

We anticipate that there will be a surge in calls.

The phone calls we've gotten have been very simple, very easy to answer, and there's nothing to be concerned about.

We're fully prepared and fully ready to begin the transition.

Thank you.

But have we thought through any contingencies in terms of things not going according to plan? It sounds like all the bins are here and all the carts are here and the trucks are ready to go. So if, I mean, help me think through, I don't know if you've thought through any other scenarios that might interrupt the transition or delay things or make things a little bit harder. Have we thought through any of those potential situations or scenarios?

No, Mayor, I have not. I'm ready to go, and we're prepared to move forward. We don't need a contingency plan. It's unnecessary at this time.

I have full staff ready to go. I have four yards with enough drivers to be able to service the city and

I want to make sure that the city understands we are fully prepared ! We are fully prepared to move forward with the transition ! And that there should be little concern about

! Any issues ! If there are any hot spots come up ! We'll have enough drivers ! And operations managers ! We'll be ready to move !

So the first couple of !

ahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahn Sounds like we're not changing service routes or the days of service, right?

Correct. We're not changing any service days for the residents at all.

The only week that residents will have to remember is Labor Day week.

Everybody is delayed by one day because of the holiday.

Which is what would be the case no matter what.

Correct. Our existing service.

but if someone forgets something

or whatever

someone had signed up for a disabled individual or household had signed up for their carts to be moved out by

whatever that service is called and they forgot or whatever

or forgot to sign up or transition that service where will we be ready to respond to that phone call or that email

from that customer or from the city

as an intermediary to that day go out and help and assist and make sure we're getting that customer's trash picked up.

Exactly. Yes, Mayor. Exactly.

Leah's going to run out to their house and pull the carts out to the street, get them ready for the trash truck.

Good to know.

On our side, in terms of potential billing issues, address changes, customer accounts, I can imagine new people, new residents moving in during this transition period. if there's anything, I know billing is transitioning over to you, but have we thought through any of what we need to do if people fall through the cracks during this transition period in terms of starting a new service, transitioning to this new billing system, billing system is ready to go? Just help reassure me that we've thought through all this.

We are utilizing the same billing program and the same customer service program that your current service provider is using.

and they've been using it for however long they've been in here and the city hasn't had any issue with it. We'll be utilizing that same exact programming.

It is a waste accounting management software.

It's a stout program. It's backed up. It's mirrored to other states. So, therefore, there's no lack of information that can't be retrieved very easily in the event that there's some cyber attack before the beginning of services. We have everything backed up. We have enough Excel spreadsheets to go from here to New York at this point. We are, like I said, fully prepared to move forward with services. And if we were – we have more trucks than necessary. We have more drivers than are necessary. We have a multitude of operations managers and people that will be on site during the course of the transition. And as a transition starts up, it'll be, and we start services, there is, you know, any issues that'll be, all issues will be addressed as they come up.

And within a short amount of time, it'll start to wind down and it'll be service as normal.

It'll be a little bit challenging in the first couple of weeks because there'll be a multitude of carts on customers properties and we will bring that to the We'll all work together to try to reduce that amount of stress

That will be the biggest stress on most customers. Yeah, I imagine the this first few weeks of the transition are going to be

Extraordinarily exciting for all of us

And so look forward to on all of our ends

RESOURCING THIS TO PROPERLY SURGE FOR, I THINK, WHATEVER MULTITUDE OF ISSUES MAY OR MAY NOT POP UP. HOPEFULLY THEY'RE MINIMAL, AND I'M VERY HOPEFUL OF THAT. BUT I WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT ON THE WHERE SIDE, ON THE CITY SIDE, THAT WE ARE AS PREPARED AS POSSIBLE TO MEET WHATEVER CHALLENGES, I CAN MANAGE A LOT OF CHALLENGES COMING UP, ESPECIALLY THOSE FIRST FEW WEEKS, EVEN IF WE DO EVERYTHING

RIGHT.

EVEN IF WE DO EVERYTHING RIGHT, THERE'S ALWAYS GOING TO BE CHALLENGES, BUT WE'RE PREPARED TO HANDLE THEM, AND WE'LL

address them as quickly and as responsibly as possible.

You mentioned cart resizing opens for specific customers only that first week of service.

That's correct.

Can you talk about that and when it would open up for all customers?

Cart resizing is going to be available for the disabled and handicapped customers that

need to downsize the size of their carts.

on September 3rd they'll be able to call in and request a smaller cart the smaller cart services on December 1st then all other customers that want to downsize will be

able to request it at that time once the office opens up to the public which will be approximately August 16th customers will be able to come to the office and see what those

smaller cart sizes will be available to them

so they can get a real sense of what size those carts look like when there's a set of three.

Because they're going to be going from two carts to three carts. So we want customers

to be able to see what the differences in sizes are if they decide to downsize. I appreciate that. On the resizing of carts

so I mean one thing I can imagine right my dad gardens a lot and generates he fills up his green bin every week I know that the default size right because we're going from two bins to three bins as you mentioned all three bin each of the bins going from two to three the three each of them are smaller than the two currently right as a default size going

from 96 to 64 or something the default size for residents will be 95 gallon

carts. For all three? For all three. So is that that's the same size currently?

Correct. For all three? Yes. All two? Okay. All right. That's helpful. All right. Good.

So I just want to make sure I can still imagine, right, people

if they have more, I mean, I'm curious what our current situation is when residential customers generate more green waste than fits in their bin what they do now

they just have to call for an extra pickup or no they they can you can get an additional bin um they can request that from any hauler um they have to pay for that additional bin but they can get an additional bin if not then they have to hold that over until the next

yeah leave it in a pile and then wait for empty and then put in but i'm i'm a little bit concerned about the right non-disabled customers having to wait three months or whatever to be able to request if they have traditionally had two green wispens or whatever or three or whatever that they have to wait three months essentially to to size up or to add a bin or can they request that immediately no the waiting

period is to resize the containers to add a container somebody like your

father wants to add a green waste container can call and add a green waste container that's not

part of resizing resizing is going to be going from a 95 gallon cart to a 32 gallon cart or a

35 gallon cart dropping down in size my apologies i said 32 i meant 35 gallon so right now everyone's

going to get 95 gallon carts everyone's going to have additional an additional 95 gallons from what they currently have today.

So the only thing that might be different is somebody wants an additional green waste cart or maybe an additional recycling cart or an additional trash cart.

As far as downsizing to the smaller carts, that will be available to any handicapped

or disabled resident at this time immediately.

So that way they can downsize immediately so they're not having to deal with the big

carts. And then on December 1st, anyone else that wants to downsize can.

But we want to get the carts delivered out and let everybody adjust to the new cart sizes before we start downsizing.

Appreciate that. And I would just echo what Councilmember

Sanchez mentioned as well in terms

of looking at

potentially and how to institute a grace period during the first month or two of the transition. I imagine a lot of people will still be confused about what's going on. There will probably be some customers still that receive their bill from Ware and don't know what Ware is and are still expecting an Athens bill or a city bill for Athens

trash service.

Whatever we can do to be graceful in this very hectic, I guess, transition period on Ware's part,

I'd ask that to be at least

considered. And if we're seeing significant, I'm hoping that

the need

for that is minimal. if we're seeing significant activity that requires other actions I want to make sure staff and and where we're going to be in close communication about that and what we need to do if we need to take any action to alleviate any of those issues the first during this trend that early transition period we're going to

continue to work with staff and the city like I said we've been working on mailers for the residents and we're going to be over the next couple weeks transitioning into what we call robotic calls to remind residents when to put their carts out, that there's a holiday, to make sure that they leave their carts out as that one additional day of service, and we'll get those approved by the city. So there'll be a continuous communication. If customers don't pay their bill by the proper time, they'll get a robotic call that'll say, you know, this is a reminder that, you know, your waste services haven't been paid for. please visit the site. If you lost your bill, please call or please email us. There's a lot of different communication tools that we will use to continuously remind the residents. We understand what you're asking for and our goal is to try to make sure that the transition is as smooth for the residents as it is for the council. Thank you. You talked about robocalls. Are we planning

to do in-language robocalls as well?

Yes, yes, we will.

All right. And then on the topic of notifications again,

where delivers the new carts to customers in the next week or so? Is there going to be any physical notification that goes along with the carts?

Are we planning on that?

Yes, that same flyer that you saw up there will also be attached to the carts

with recycling information on the back of it of what goes in each cart.

The carts are also labeled, the carts also have the lids are also labeled on what can be placed in those carts.

Not always a guarantee, not your fault, but not always a guarantee that people will follow directions even if it's right in front of their face, but appreciate that that is there.

And it's in three different languages on the cart lids.

Thank you. No, I appreciate that.

Any other questions from Council? Mr. Mayor, yes.

Actually, a question directed at our staff. I know, Sean and Inez, in your responses to the questioning, that on our end we know we'll be doing things like updating our website, and I'm asking when will the website itself for the city be updated regarding this news?

Mr. Mayor, members of the Council, the city's website is up to date.

May I make a suggestion, though? Sure.

I'm looking at the website right now on my laptop.

Okay.

When you go to the landing page, again, it's a lot of information, but given how important this is, may I make a suggestion that maybe we put a red bar on top? In other words, on websites, when there's breaking news or important news, there's a red bar, so alert. Also, under news and events, again, a lot of great programming that we're doing, for example, the library reading this weekend, at the library, but is there a way that we could put, again, maybe under news or events, or even on top, like, again, something in red, like flashing, something that, in other words, it illustrates that it is important, because this is the clearinghouse for information, so whenever anyone gets something on social media or email, they will go to the website,

the clearinghouse.

It's just that right now, I'm looking at the landing page, I see nothing that says, oh, by the way, we are positioning our franchise.

Again, I'm sure it's in there, but it doesn't jump out is what I'm saying.

Understood.

What we can do is definitely during COVID, we had a bar across the top of the website that, yes, alerted you that there was information there. So understand what you're asking for. The information that has been going out to the residents on the flyers has a QR code that takes you directly to the page. but I definitely, it's very well noted, understood that on our landing page, you are correct. It's not, there's not like a button there or a notification. So we'll work back with our team to put that on our city website so that it's more noticeable if you're just going to the landing page.

Thank you.

And then just even listening to one of the questions tonight, is it possible, I mean, again, I know all the information is kind of floating out there, but is it possible for us to have, as part of repurposing or reprogramming the website, the landing page to make sure that residents know about this big news, but can we also have an FAQ section?

Yes.

Currently on the trash recycling webpage, there is a link directly to the frequently asked questions list, and there's more information there, correct?

Again, I would just ask that we make, again, that also part of that, when you see the red bar, that FAQ, it's easily accessible.

Understood, yes, we can do that.

Okay, thank you.

Can I also make a couple requests, both of the city and where? Just on our MPK Go app, I'm on here as well, to Councilmember Lo's point. I love that it has all of these informational tabs, of stuff that's happening, like new picnic shelter reservations, right? Director of Public Works Shawnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahn

that's a pretty quick fix. We can do that probably tonight. Okay, great. And then also,

just to help you guys out, but also to kind of create awareness of what's going on, it would be great if we had a, maybe in the city lobby, where residents have come in and out daily, if we had maybe a couple of your bins out there with information posted, would be great for residents to be able to visually see how the bins look like, what's coming with information, maybe by the bulletin board perhaps would be useful and maybe not just within the city lobby but also maybe different parts of the city. And I'm thinking just off the top of my head maybe during the farmer's market in terms of having the bins out as well but also having a booth there with information as we, I mean there's only about two or three weeks left

before this happens.

So as much exposure as possible. I know you're already going to be at our national night out But we do get a huge or a large amount of people that come out to the farmers market as well It's a great way to get visibility but also be able to share a lot of that information and as many bins as we can see around the city I know you said you had 50 some thousand out in the your out in the you know Your corporate center, but would be great if we can actually visually see them throughout the city so people can start getting used to those Yeah

No, that's a fantastic idea as long as the city is okay with it

We can always drop off a set or two at City Hall

Obviously, you know, we'll get the city's approval or talk to staff about it and we'll address that immediately. That's a great idea

Yeah, I mean just harp on that point

I think it would be great to display the bins right here and the lobby also maybe Langley senior center and other community spaces that might make sense I don't know that like out in the open in a park makes sense but other facilities that might make sense and just literally just blowing up that information sheet into a big poster or whatever to put behind the bins and people can see it and read it. Let's think about what else we can do like that to just help more people get the word out. I got one more question for you guys.

So I believe I know the answer, but I think this is good for you to explain it. So speaking for a friend, I've got a family of

four who use, family of five, who uses

probably the 65 gallon.

That's a set price.

I've got also a family of one and he wants to downsize. He wants to go to the 32 gallon.

It doesn't matter.

It's still the same price, correct?

I apologize. I'm not understanding the question.

So the cost for the billing cycle

is $30 a month?

I think what he's asking is

the prices are Lor if they downsize the carts, right?

The pricing is Lor if they downsize the carts to a smaller size. And they have to downsize the entire set of carts.

The entire set of carts, then the pricing is Lor. And I got another friend who wants the double green bins because they do a lot of gardening. So that price goes up because they got double bin.

They'll request an extra container for green waste.

Then there would be a, that cart will cost extra money per month.

That's what I believe.

Okay, so now we can explain it to people. It's not the same price for everyone. It depends on your usage.

Okay.

Oh, actually, one quick question for Sean.

I still think the confusing week will be the week of the 25th or 26th that week

because technically that's Athens' last week. I'm supposed to put the Athens bin out.

They pick it up.

well they take they take the rubbish out you know technically we would take them back in the house so we got coordinated so that they know when to take up is it the same day is it you pick up the trash in the morning you take the bin away in the afternoon or you leave it out there for one more day they pick it up and then for these guys the next week it's i think everyone in the city can figure this out by now if the holidays on monday you pick up on tuesday everything's delayed but i I think it's easier for you guys because they only have your bins left if everything is done accordingly. So there shouldn't be a confusion where you're picking up the Athens bins or you're saying, wait, it's the wrong bin.

The most important is that on the last week, the old haulers' waste carts,

they just need to leave them out on the street and not bring them back in.

It doesn't matter what day they get picked up. Just leave them out on the street so the other hauler can remove them.

You're not really familiar with the city of Monterey Park because if that bin goes out there half a day early, five hours earlier or five hours later, the neighbors on Murray Park Life are complaining. Why are you leaving your bin out there?

Am I right?

They're all shaking their head. Okay, thanks, Jay. Okay.

A little bit on that note,

I think, and this is a joint request,

I think, for aware and for staff,

I can imagine a lot of questions coming up once everyone starts getting their new bins next week and then potential confusion, probably not just potential, but a lot of confusion about when to put out their old bins and then transition service and all that. I imagine Mario Park Life and other social media, a lot of questions are going to come up, not just through the phone calls, but I don't know if we can, or if we're already planning this, if we can put together pre-made FAQs for social media posting to answer some of these questions as they come up. And Carl's going to stop us if we can't do this. But I don't think the council members can do this, but the city can post in response to some of these questions, right, a pre-approved, already existing fact sheet or FAQ that answers questions like that and concerns like that.

Yes, we could work back to create those social medias. We will definitely post on our social media, so definitely we use Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. Oftentimes, residents will grab it and repost, but correct, if we don't see them being posted on places like Monterey Park Live, we could go ahead and post those. Just the same post that we would post on our website, correct?

Or, sorry, on our social media pages.

Yeah, whatever we can do to just be ready to respond quickly because I imagine people are going to be complaining on Money Park Life and Nextdoor and everything else when they have to hold five bins for a couple weeks and then they're going to be confused about what to do with each of the bins. So where we can have ready to answer what we know will be some of these basic questions, just post up very quickly so that there's no lag time between, as little lag time as possible between when these questions pop up and when we can answer them so that people don't get more upset that no one's answering their questions.

We'll work with the city staff this week, and we'll do the same on ours,

and then we'll also start posting on our social media sites the same to help address those concerns.

Yeah, and I don't know if you or where has been more successful to get onto Chinese kind of social media, WeChat, Weibo, and others. I know we have struggled a little bit more on the city side. If there's an opportunity for where to assist on helping to get the word out in Chinese, in Chinese language, ethnic, and social media, I think that would be very, very helpful too.

Yeah, we're actually currently working on WeChat and Weibo, so we will get that information out as soon as possible.

Perfect, yeah.

All right, any other?

I'm sorry, yes.

And I know my colleague, Alfred, you had asked this in the beginning, but are we planning or are you planning some type of media event?

Again, a presser, especially given that we have multilingual media, are you planning to do some type of press event?

I know we were going to work with the City Cable TV show.

We're going to be able to utilize that for maybe some training of recycling. With the help of Leah and her team, I think with being able to do it in Mandarin might be super helpful to be able to kind of retrain the clientele that is out. It's probably been many, many years since the residents have been trained and taught and educated on all the different items that can be recycled, how to recycle, what to recycle.

We need to explain food waste recycling to the residents. And so there will be a lot of things that we're going to be able to use the media, different media for.

And then talking about doing some sort of groundbreaking or some sort of grand opening might be great.

We can have a couple of new pieces of equipment up there, show the public the electric vehicles that are going to be operating throughout your city.

and then they'll be able to see cart sizes and so on and so forth up there

and then we'll be able to answer a lot of the questions if any public comes to that event as well.

Okay, thank you. Actually, I have a question for Leah.

Do you currently have at your disposal a current list of, for example, Chinese language media in this area?

Chinese social media?

No, Chinese language media, like newspaper, television. do you have a directory at your disposal?

Not yet.

But you are planning one because, again,

I think given the large population we have, I would prove you to, again, consider doing, for example, a Chinese language presser. And that's why I think it would be very helpful if you did consider doing such an event.

And, again, if you have, or if it sounds like you're putting together

a list of media contacts in this area.

We can definitely start doing that right now.

Well, you should have done it sooner.

I wanted to say I can help to contact all the Chinese media. If you need my help, you can contact me.

That would be awesome. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Any other questions, comments? I appreciate the update.

I'll just reiterate on what you were just saying as well in terms of continued outreach and my earlier point around I would consider this, the outreach campaign a success if my parents or someone else from the community start to complain about how many notices they're getting. So you've got a couple weeks to meet that metric. And I hope that you will, because I think I'd really rather get those complaints than complaints about people not knowing and not reading their notices and being very confused about the carts. And we're not just talking about a transition from one trash haul to another. It's also a huge transition from a two-cart system to a three-cart system that a lot of people, to what you just noted earlier, are going to be very confused about and need a lot of education around. not just the transition initially to make sure they take in the three new carts and then put out their old carts and then get used to using this new cart system. So I would implore you and hope that part of the transition plan is a sustained education campaign around how to use this three-cart system properly and what goes in what bin, even though I know it's printed on three languages on the tops of each of the trash bins. but whatever else we can do let's think through not just for the initial transition but an ongoing education campaign about how to utilize the three card systems that we are as required by the state actually meeting our diversion requirements for recycle recyclable goods in organic waste diversion and

trash reduction and all that stuff

absolutely absolutely great great great suggestions thank you

appreciate you being here

for this very substantive conversation. I and I think all of us are looking forward to the next few weeks with both some dread and excitement maybe, but really looking forward to, and I'm very hopeful and optimistic

about as minimally disruptive transition as possible,

and I'm hoping that all of us are going to work together to make sure that that is the case

to the extent possible.

And a successful transition would be great for where and great for the city and great for our residents. So whatever else we can continue to do based off of some of the comments here and whatever other ideas, I want to encourage us to not just be limited

to what we've talked about today,

but if there are other ideas for what we can do, both the city and where, and other partners in the community to make sure that this transition happens as smoothly as possible, let's exercise those in the next few months and we're getting into the crunch time and we've got a lot to do and I'm hoping we're bracing ourselves for being able to respond to I think some of the challenges I'm sure will pop up but also looking forward to getting past the initial kind of rough period of a transition

that's going to be natural anyway

but hoping that there's no permanent long-term kind of issues

that we've got to deal with. Thank you. We'll see you back in two weeks

but we're putting out more campaign material, but we're confident,

and we're working to make this as smooth as possible for the residents and for the city, and we appreciate it.

Thank you.

Between now and then, city manager, if we can share with where all of our city events, public events, and I would recommend that you try to go to as many of those as possible bring your bins if you can share your Monterey Park staff so that you become aware or so that residents have an opportunity to meet you but also you can share a lot of that information as well and I know that Monterey Park has a lot of events that we host

that information as well and I know that Monterey Park has a lot of events that we host and throughout

! our city would be you to attend a lot of those and share a lot of those a lot of that information

! Thank you thank you thank you thank you all right if if nothing else from the council appreciate ! this update!

look forward to tomorrow night at National Night Out and looking forward to seeing you too much of you the next few weeks at least so thank you so much!

ahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahn So thank you so much. I mean Leah. Thank you. Leah and her team. Thank you very much. You guys have a good evening. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. We'll move on to our old, well, sorry, our consent calendar.

Are there items to be pulled from consent?

Mr. Mayor? A 3A. 3A.

Okay.

Any other items to be pulled?

I'm gonna pull 3d just for 3d for a quick overview presentation if that's okay

anything else if not all right is there a motion for the remaining items on

consent so move for the remaining items there second move in second any further

Any other discussion? Hearing none, call for the vote.

Approved unanimously.

I know we just passed the consent calendar items.

I'll just note for item 3C, I know the chief's back there,

but the software, I know it spotted that there's talk about once we have this in place,

an ability for a community interface. looking forward to that and hope that the police department will update the council on that once it's ready to be kind of launched would be great to have the community and the council be able access this kind of data in real time in

ways that would be helpful as we transition to the new program I'll make sure that we keep the council update on the maps and all the other portals that we'll be able to put out to the public it's a great system you're gonna really

like it. That's great. Looking forward to it. Okay. And then on 3F, I know we passed the item,

but maybe this is an item for a future presentation on food recovery, just based off our conversation right now on trash hauling, the organic waste diversion requirements for the state. I know this program is one part of how the city is going to meet our organic waste diversion requirements. if we can maybe think about how we can integrate and continue with our education efforts around this program in particular, too, in that stead. With that, we'll take up Item 3A, if there's a staff report.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members.

Martha Garcia, Finance Director.

The city's retirement tax was authorized by the Monterey voters in an election held in 1946 and in 1952. The proposed tax rate for the fiscal year 24-25 is .091175 per $100 of assessed valuation. This is the same rate used since 1983 and 84, and it is also the maximum rate alLod by AB-13.

The estimated revenue to be generated from this tax is $9.5 million for fiscal year 2425.

The city is required to submit the attached resolution establishing the 2425 retirement tax rate to the county,

and it's why we are here today.

Thank you.

Thank you, Martha. Just a quick question.

So when was the last time we adjusted this rate?

since 1952

so it has not been adjusted

for over half a century

oh my goodness okay

actually that was just my question but thank you for answering it no further questions

alright any other questions

alright if not is there a motion

move for approval

is there a second second

we'll do that to council member you

Any further discussion hearing none call for the vote

Approved unanimously all right moving on to item 3d safety water program fund transfer agreement

Good evening, I'm a mayor mayor pro-tem and City Council Sean I go public works director Tonight you have before you an item for the safe clean water transfer agreement. And so just for some quick background, this measure was passed back in November 2018 as a voter initiated special tax, parcel tax. This fund is managed by LA County and is intended to be used for stormwater

regional and local programs and projects. Over the past few years, the city of

Monterey Park has used these funds to pay for the East Los Angeles Sustainable medium project and this was done in partnership with the city of Montebello and LA County along with a few other state partners. This project was approved by city council in August of 2019 for a regional stormwater capture project to improve stormwater quality for both the city of Monterey Park, city of Montebello and then unincorporated areas of east Los Angeles. The project location is at Northside Drive and Garfield Avenue and has several community benefits including jogging paths,

drought-tolerant landscape, and educational interpretive signs.

The project was completed in 2021 and was inaugurated by Supervisor Hilda Solis and Public Works

on May 18th of 2022. This is

an overview of the medium project as I described it and again has a lot of community benefits and again was done in cooperation with the city of Montebello and LA County Public Works. The total cost of the project was over $36 million and of our portion was about $2.4 million, which again we used our Safe Clean Water Measure W funding for. We also use some of these fundings for our catch basins.

Next slide please.

This is not the greatest of pictures, but this is a catch basin trash capture device. So we use these devices in our storm drains to capture trash and leaves and sediment from

entering the storm drain.

So again these items, we use the funding to also pay for these. We've done several hundred of these over the past couple years and we tend to do more of these installs to again, it's part of our National pollutant discharge program that's enacted by the state and federal government And so we are required to keep pollutants from going into the storm drain

And this is one of those measures that we use to capture that that debris

So with that I will take any questions

Thank you, Sean. Any questions from Council? All right. I just well I fully support this obviously we the products already been done we want the funding to backfill the money we put up front. But I wanted to pull this item one to get kind of pictures and a better idea of what funding this is going towards. I'll also note this is Measure W plays a special, has a special place in my heart. I helped campaign and supported Measure W in 2018 and very much appreciate that a lot of the funding that is being generated by taxpayers in LA County for this kind of infrastructure is starting to roll out into infrastructure like this in our own community. I know the East LA median is not in the city of Monterey Park boundaries, but the benefits do accrue to Monterey Park and the surrounding communities

around the East LA median project.

And the design and designs that were integrated into the East LA median are designs I think we want to are proving as great examples and case studies for integrating some of those designs into our own streets and medians and public spaces. I know we're taking lessons from that, along with many other neighborhoods, about how to redesign and rethink what our public green spaces can and can be, not just as pretty things to look at, but also in terms of tremendous water quality and water supply benefits, and a whole host of other issues to help with cooling of the community

and all that thought.

We'd love to see how we continue

to integrate those principles

into our designs and our thinking as we're looking at Garvey, Monterey Pass, Atlantic, and other street redesigns and rethinking and re-envisioning some of that.

I know we are already integrating that

into some of our thinking, but wanted to highlight this for the community. And I also wanted to keep harping on this point

because we still don't do enough of this

to continue to to write our successes with infrastructure investments I know it's not always and in many cases not a sexy thing but it's it's very important right these these kind of infrastructure improvements including the significant infrastructure improvements for our water and sewer system there will be

coming up in the next few years we should be telling the community that is paying

for these projects what is happening with their their funding and we need to I I think, and I want to encourage us to do more and do a better job of highlighting these successes and the infrastructure investments that are being made to improve the lives of our community and our businesses and our basic infrastructure that makes and enables all of that to happen.

And so projects like this, we'd love to see projects that are invested like this in our community

in Monterey Park highlighted in Cascades and other things, and would love to see how we can do more to help the public in our community know that these investments are happening and this is what they're paying for when they voted for this or when the Prop 218 notice came by to increase their rates and everyone was worried about why they had to pay more. Well, this is why, and these are shining examples of how we got this stuff done and how it's improving, right, water quality and our public spaces and our open spaces and our parks and all sorts of things, benefits to the community. So let's keep looking at how we can do that.

Will do. Yes, thank you. Since we're highlighting things really quick, we do do this within our daily work whenever we look at projects, but also just here at City Hall, we did that on our own. Our public works team did an amazing job by doing that work in front of City Hall. We had a couple parking spaces but we added that drought-tonic landscape and some of that stormwater capture so we we have this embedded in our dna we do look at it from all our projects but even when we take on projects internally um that project typically is done by a contractor our team did an amazing job putting that together and again emphasizing the things that we're doing but also looking at how

we add those components of stormwater capture to it as well absolutely no and even the it reminded

me for the parking lot we did right out here adding the bow soils and the design to cap allow capture of stormwater and all that and cleaning stormwater when it does rain and pulls over there but also we're taking care of the mosquitoes so make sure that that doesn't become an issue there but we should be telling that story more right about and talking about the design elements there and it's a great educational opportunity for the community people who are looking to redesign their front yards, their backyards. Hey, this is what we did, and these are things that we integrated into the design

here outside

City Hall. How do we help tell more residents and businesses and property owners about some of these principles that they can integrate into their

own designs as they're thinking about renovating

their front lawns or whatever

in their parking lots? We are looking

at doing that as part of the Environmental Commission

and Earth Day to

try to do something like that around this area, things that not only we have done, but also talking about the state of sustainability plan and how this facility, how we're looking at energy efficient products. So we're trying to tie a lot together. And I think you'll see that in the next year or so on how we have small displays where

we can talk about that with the community.

So as they're walking around, because this park is highly used. So how they walk around this park, they can see those elements and they can read about

what we're doing.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Let's do more.

Let's make sure we're building an ethic around outreach and education and showing off what investments are being made and how they're benefiting our community. But thank you

so much. If there's a motion on this, I'll take that to approve

Item 3D.

I'll move.

Second. I move and second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. Please vote.

Approved unanimously.

All right. Moving on to

Item 5A, emergency repair of Water Main on Brightwood Street.

Good evening again, Honorable Mayor, Mayor Pro Temp and City Council, Sean Igo, Public Works Director. Tonight you have before you an item for emergency water main repairs on Brightwood Street. This is a 14-inch water main that has been identified as a leak that is beyond staff's capabilities for repair. So we brought in a contractor to look at doing this. Again, this is beyond our capabilities, and so we're bringing in the experts that can deal with welding and also deal with these large line repairs. So with that, I'll take any questions.

All right. Any questions from Council?

No questions, but, you know, thank you for bringing this forward and for bringing this. I know that this stuff like this happens, so appreciate the city's work to try to fix this issue on Brightwood Street.

That was it.

Any other comments?

No?

All right. Again, right, just the same point. I'll keep saying it.

maybe if there's a before and after picture of the repair of this pipe, I think that'd be great to show off some way, shape or form to the community,

particularly that neighborhood. I think we'd appreciate that we're, right, this is an emergency repair,

but it helped to showcase the state of our current infrastructure

and why, right,

helped to explain why we needed to raise rates to do these kind of repairs in a proactive way

for a lot of our infrastructure and to help show off, right,

how aged some of our infrastructure is and the need for those investments.

Yep, when we close this project out, we'll bring this back and give some updates.

And I think Robert's going to volunteer

to jump in the hole and take pictures, so.

All right. Is there a motion on item 5A?

Move for approval.

Is there a second?

Second. Move and second.

Director of Public Works. Council Member Vizio. Mayor Redmond. Any further discussion? Hearing none. Call for the vote. Mayor Redmond. Approved unanimously. Mayor Redmond. All right. That's all our items. We'll move to city communications and future agenda items. We'll start with Council Member Sanchez.

Mayor Redmond. This was a busy month so I know a lot of us went to a lot of the same events. I did want to mention one thing I know which was discussed earlier. Very appreciative of the art installation that was done in collaboration with the Vincent Price Museum

and ELOC.

It was really amazing to see young people working with older residents from the Langley Center and to see them collaborate and paint something so amazing and then seeing their art displayed in a museum shows just the collaborative effort and I think the more we can do with ELOC and the Vincent Price Museum the better. So I want to thank everyone in city staff for making that happen. I think it was a very powerful moment. And so again, highlighting those moments, I think that was a very amazing event. I even had, I think, like two students there. But anyhow, it was very well attended. So thank you so much for that. I wanted to make sure to bring that. And just in terms of future events or just some questions but then also future events but heat advisories I know this is a really hot month and so the more we can do to advertise where our cooling centers are at you know I think most people already know that they can go to the Langley Center and they can go to the library but I know it's going to be very hot this month and next month as well so let's make sure that we We are advertising these to our community to make sure that they know that they have places to go. And even outside of our community for residents who might be actually closer to ELAC or other parts of the city would be great as well. I know it's also National Back to School Month this month. We service in the city a lot of students from four different school districts that all start at different times during this month. and I know some students at Elhampton Unified, for example, start next week on Tuesday on the 13th. Others start later, including Montebello, LAUSD, and Garvey. So if we can bring back a resolution, just a back-to-school month resolution to declare Monterey Park and also to thank nothing, but to encourage our students to have a successful school year as we start the new year, the new school year at least, for our next council meeting. And then I just wanted to mention we don't have to do anything with this,

but this week is actually National Farmers Market Week.

So tomorrow, Thursday,

go out and go to the farmers market. That's where I get all of our strawberries.

And if I get them from the market,

my daughter always reminds me that we need to get them from the farmers market. So go out and get your produce from the farmers market. And then I just plug for Councilmember Lo and I who have dogs on the 26th, Robert, it's National Dog Day. And Henry and I want to be able to put up our pictures and share where we take them to walk around the city and park in our parks as well.

The mayor had the dog too.

That's right.

I just haven't seen his dog yet. But anyhow, three council members have dogs, and I'm sure there's plenty of city staff. And then when I was at the event on Sunday, there was a lot of residents who were asking for a dog park. I'm not trying to say that, but I'm just saying we love to take our dogs out.

So anyhow, I'll send you my pictures, Robert.

Henry and I will send you, and Thomas, anyhow. That is it for me. Thank you.

Nothing against cats, just to be clear.

Thank you.

I would just echo the report from my colleague that it has been a busy past month, but certainly a time of celebration for our community. I just want to thank our Parks and Recreation Department for the tree memorial ceremony we did for two former mayors, actually three former mayors of our city and their families for volunteering for our community.

It's very special.

So also I want to commend the city staff and our mayor for a very successful meeting with the mayor at the Venice Room. Again, it's always nice to showcase our local businesses. And I think, as always, we mix, you know, mix and mingling with important business. And I think it was a lot of good questions being asked by those who attended about what we're doing in the city.

and then in that same week attended the grand opening of Holiday Inn

we had our Meat Fresh grand opening

as well as the Delta Plan again our commitment to the environment

and to growing our businesses

as well as also

the most last week that we had another grand opening of a business at the Evergreen Center

huh? Yeah, Bun Bao and

And I think it's always a joy to welcome new businesses. But also, I think afterwards, some of us also went in store to a hair salon that actually is opened by a local resident. And I think that's the type of business we want to encourage, like local businesses to open, shop here for business, but also to help contribute to the economy. And, yeah, I'm looking forward to tomorrow's national night out and the Thursday movie night as well.

I also attend a lot of similar events, so I don't want to repeat that. But I would like to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about the stock market. For those who invest in the stock market, know that our stock market Dow Jones index dropped 5% in a week. and it dropped back to six months ago. So I wanted to tell a little bit reason behind it because I found quite interesting that if most of you don't know, on July 31st, Bank of Japan, BOJ, announced the increased interest rate. And this decision led to crash in both U.S. market and the Japan market. And I anticipate that happen. What's the reason why? Because a lot of investors, they borrow Japanese yen at a very, very low interest rate, almost cost them nothing. But in turn, they invest into the stock market in U.S. and Japan. So that drive up both markets. When things are getting too hot and yen being depreciated so low, Bank of Japan decides to increase the rate. that makes all the investors panic and they all want to return the yen, not willing to pay higher interest rate for their loan. And that's why you see a major sell-off starting August 1st. If you know what is going on out there, you can get prepared not only to avoid big loss, and you can make profits by buying Japanese yen, which went up 12% last month and 8% last week.

I wanted to say I personally sold most of my holding and bought into Japanese yen a few weeks ago.

I'm not a fortune teller or trying to show off my investment decision.

I just don't want to see people losing money by not knowing what happened.

I want to say learning finance and investments will help to avoid loss

and build up your saving and retirement fund. So I hope to bring out the awareness of the importance of finance education. Thank you.

On that similar note, save, save, save. The more you save as you start working, the more that money works for you when you turn 50, 60, 65.

So save, save, save.

I attended a lot of the same events. So the arts work, the painting generations at ELAC, I'm just going to call it the tree recognition because all three members of prior council members are still alive and kicking and they're still doing a lot of stuff in the community. So glad that we can pay tribute for our pride in the past for serving our community. Had a number of grand openings, as mentioned earlier, the Holiday Inn Hotel, the Meat Fresh, Delta Water Treatment Plant, and then Bun Bao, which is a bread place off of Garvey and Atlantic. In addition, we were also at the SPARK meeting. I think we had close to 40 folks from the community who came out and shared their input, voiced their concerns, gave us ideas. The key thing is to give us ideas on what we can do to improve the Saturn Business Park area. Also attended with many of the council members here, the League of California city installation for Michael Kow, who is the mayor of the city of Arcadia. And then I also this weekend attended the U.S. Fujian Chamber of Commerce. Many of those members actually are located in the city of Martin Park. they have an office in the city, thus the invitation to support them.

That is it for me. All right. Yeah, it's been a busy July,

or July and beginning of August. I appreciate a lot of the community events, of course, that the city has helped to host and put on. Thank you to all the staff that play a part in many of those events.

on some events that I wanted to report on I wrote them but appreciate particularly that

the tree memorials I know I mentioned this earlier there in the recreation community services update but got to appreciate three former mayors and council members and their families for all their working contributions to the city and looking forward to that to more celebrations to come great to welcome officially cut the ribbon for the Holiday Inn and meet fresh to that are going to provide some economic opportunities and economic activity in the city to support other businesses well in their area and in TP Ben Ball the consulting groundwater treatment system great I know this is a years-long very many years long effort to get to this point but really appreciate diligence in the commitment of city staff particularly public works and helping to get us past the finish line with the regulatory permitting and all that stuff that took a long time after we even finished construction on the groundwater treatment system. But we now have, we are one of the leaders in the state in integrating and implementing a system like this. And so I know many other communities are going to be already asking questions and trying to learn more about our system here that we just cut the ribbon for officially.

for future items

a couple other events I know some staff were there as well but South Pastina, City of South Pastina Police Department unveiled their all electric police fleet, I think it's 20 some odd vehicles that they transitioned to electric

so I know

Chief is looking at lessons from there and other departments and cities across the region are looking to that example to learn from how we can begin to transition our fleet, not just for the police department, but all of our city hall fleet, and as part of our sustainability plan, how we can help and encourage residents and everyone in our community to begin to make that transition as well. So look forward to lessons learned from that effort. And I'll congratulate Arcadia, Mayor Michael Cowell. Many of us I think all of us were there at the League of California cities LA division dinner for his installation as a new president for our region For the League of California cities and looking forward to his leadership

there

I just want to ask staff well one for a future agenda item if there's concurrence among the council members

I'd love to tee up

Maybe a slightly open-ended conversation, but maybe one that staff can also look into

filling out some

potential actions to consider as well, a development or

a

vacant parcel kind of actions that the council can begin to take, particularly key vacant parcels and underutilized parcels that exist in the city. I know we're doing this right now in the Saturn Park, McCaslin Business Park area, but I would love for us to tee up in the next few months, sooner than later,

a conversation

among this council about what other kind of tools that might be in the toolkit that we can begin to exercise, both incentives and potentially sticks,

that we can take action on parcel property owners

that are currently not doing anything with vacant property that is prime for development that we may want to target as a city and a city council, what actions and kind of things we can start to put together

into a toolkit to both incentivize and to prod action on some of these parcels.

And I'm thinking particularly, right, Garvey Garfield, the Pumpkin Patch Lot, and even 111 North Atlantic, which is a hugely underutilized shopping center, right under a lot of empty, vacant space in that shopping center right now. The Seven Leaves property on that corner as well. that even though the sign says that they're coming soon, it's been several months and have not seen any progress inside that facility. Would love to explore what else we can do as a council and as a... Director of the City to make sure that those properties don't continue to be be eyesores and that we can start to take some more even more proactive action to make sure that those become assets as opposed to liabilities for the community. So maybe we can tee that up and I know staff and the particular development staff and planning staff are actually working on a lot of things, but I think we can at least start to tee up this conversation about what tools we can start to be able to exercise a little bit more proactively.

With that, I'll just echo what some of the other council members mentioned.

Today, I think, was the hottest day of the year so far, and we're expecting as we get deeper and deeper into summer,

more and more high heat days.

I don't know if we activated our cooling centers today. I know it got over 95 degrees, I think, at the high, but if we can continue to be proactive about messaging around When we do activate our cooling centers automatically and just look for other opportunities to provide those kind of opportunities and services for the community as as the Heat of summer becomes more and more of an issue for many in our community

With that if there are no other

questions or comments I'll just encourage again members of the public to join the spark conversations I think the next one's August 12th will be at the service clubhouse across the way here encourage every member of the community not just those that live in that neighborhood although we really want people that live around the Bacalus business park to attend but that that area belongs to all of us in the city of Monterey Park would encourage everyone who's interested in what that proper or that that area of the city can be into the future and what those uses could be and encourage everyone in the community to take part in that conversation. So with that we will adjourn the meeting. Appreciate everyone and thank you to the staff for getting all this work done.

Thank you.

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Thank you.

Thank you.