City Council Meeting — August 21, 2024

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All right. All right, good evening. Welcome to our city council meeting. Appreciate everyone being here. Recording in progress.

We will start the meeting as usual with our land acknowledgement. We'd like to acknowledge that the land we inhabit today was once known as the Tovangaar,

the 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 in honor of their labor as original caretakers of this land. We commit to uplifting the Gamalimutangwa people,

invite you to acknowledge the history,

and join us in caring for this land. With that said, we'll call the meeting to order. Please join me as the explorers present the flags.

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Outward face. Outward face.

Present colors.

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. Order of color. Outward face. Forward march.

Old color.

All right.

Well, I want to please join me in thanking Vles and Nia Cervantes. Vles is from KIP Illuminar Academy in second grade, and Nia is in the fourth grade at West Ridge School, but they're both Marriott Park residents.

We're proud to have them.

Thank you so much for leading our pledge allegiance and being our civic superstars. If I can ask the council to join me out front to present the certificates.

if you are watching...

music Come in after this camera.

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Hey, you were looking.

Thank you.

All right.

Again, thank you to Vles and Nia.

We really appreciate you leading our flag salute today. Thanks for joining us tonight. Hopefully you guys get a treat when you go home with your mom.

Mr. Mayor, can I

me and Vales are my neighbors so I'm really proud of you for being here and for doing this

and to mom for

helping promote civic engagement we really appreciate it and for little Benny up there

we're looking forward to having you sometime soon. Thank you.

Alright, with that we'll go to the roll call. City clerk.

Council Member Sanchez? Present. Council Member Lo? Here. Council member Yu? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Go? Present. Mayor Wong? Here. We have a car. Thank you. Any agenda additions, deletions, changes, adoptions? No changes. Council? No. All right. We'll move on to public communications. Are there any public communications? We have two speakers. First speaker is R, Carol Sullivan, and Bob Gin.

Okay, I'm going to start, and it's a good evening, and I always say I'm not going to cry, but I do.

And, you know, I always came here with Larry, never by myself, and Larry can always just talk and say anything, but I always had to write it down and read it, so I will read.

Okay, first, as you know, I always come with Larry, like I said, and I just want to say hello to all of you, and I want to thank the city staff, the city council, our police, our fire, and all the support that Larry had during his time of illness and the years after and that you still do today for me. And I thank you for being there at his celebration of life. It meant a lot to me and to the family. And just thank you for, Larry loved the city so much and was so involved in so many things. I was thinking about it because I was trying to do something for Larry at the library, but I thought about it. He even did the first breast cancer walk at East L.A. He did the Special Olympics. He was all over the place. So there were many things other than just the library. And I thank you guys for loving him back, too. Okay. Now we're here actually for the library gala. But I have to mention one thing, because Larry was, even though he was a trustee, he was involved with the gala. He did a lot. When we went to get barbecues, Larry was there with me. Larry was there with me for everything. But I know Ving would say to Larry, yes, I bought my ticket. And being Larry, he would say, your ticket, didn't you buy a table? and Ving now buys a table and also does so much more for the library gala and we appreciate it. Okay, Bob. Oh, okay.

Mayor Wong and city council members and staff, just thank you for this time. We want to come here and talk about the Monterey Park Library Gala that we have once a year.

And so this event will be held on October 25th at Luminaris.

And this year's theme is Fall Classic.

So I'll leave it up to your imagination.

You know, come dress up as a ball player or come in players' jerseys or whatever.

But we plan to have a good time. We have sponsors on the back.

Tickets are $95. and we hope to have a lot of people. Last year we had about 330 people attend and we know a lot of people here attended and we just thank you for being a part of that gala and supporting our gala because all the money that we raise go back into the library. We're all volunteers who serve on the board of directors and we don't take any compensation of any type. So we do it because we love our library and I do it because somebody asked me to do it. But I enjoy doing it because it is something I remember when I was a kid in Monterey Park going down to the library to get library books

and that's the only way we got books or when we had the bookmobile. That's many years ago, so I'm dating myself. But we invite the city, we invite the city council, we invite our police department, the residents, the fire department, and any organization to be part of it. I'll tell you right now, we're very fortunate to have five sponsors

for the event at this time. So we have maybe 16 tables already. sold and so we hope to sell more. We need a minimum of 250 people but we're shooting for about

350. Thank you. Did you tell them to dress however they want?

Yes. And we'll have peanuts and popcorn too. And we'll do the wave. Question

for Bob and Carol. What is the capacity of the restaurant?

I think it's about 360.

They can do 350. 35 tables. Okay. Thank you.

We've had the high was 330. I think, or 340.

We should be able to get that. We'll push for it. Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Sorry, next speaker is me.

Hi, neighbors. This is Masha.

I'm speaking as a resident tonight.

no one no one is above the law

at least that's what Americans used to believe sadly these days it seems like people seem to think that it only pertains to them

when the law is in their favor if you don't like the election results

or you don't like what the voters approved in the general plan

or maybe you need a political favor from someone

it doesn't matter if they break the law

it's okay. You should go ahead and break it and do whatever you want

to get what you want. That old adage of what is right

is right and what is wrong is wrong. It doesn't mean anything

anymore. People have no problem looking away

making excuses, condoning and even

supporting illegal and bad behavior as a

means of getting whatever they want, win at all costs

take by whatever means necessary. What happened to us as a society? Is this what we want for our children and future generations? I get how scary it is to speak up and say something.

It's hard standing up here all alone, by myself, week after week, month after month.

but I feel like if I don't say something then I'm part of the problem too

and I know how exhausting it is because I'm so sick and tired of constantly it is because I'm so sick and tired of constantly having to remind these people leaving out information

! Facts omitting details telling half truth is the same exact thing as lying

! Cut this crap out! Stop it!

! Have respect for your constituents! ! Have respect for the people who pay your salaries! Have respect for the people who you're supposed to serve! And most importantly, have respect for yourself! have respect for yourself.

Any other speakers?

No other speakers.

I'll just respond really quickly to that Ms. Sheet. If you have specific allegations

you want to make, I think we'd be happy to review

that and look into what you're

talking about. Thank you.

With that, we'll move on to

staff communications

city clerk's office.

Good evening, mayors and members of the city council.

My name is Cindy.

I'm the deputy city clerk, and I just want to provide the council and the resident general information regarding the election.

So next slide, please.

So when is the election? That is November the 5th, 2024. Tuesday is coming up. and I just want to bring the attention to the council and the residents on key dates. On October 7th is the mailing of the vote-by-mail ballot. On the 15th of October is the mailing of the voter's guide. On October 21st is the last day for residents to register if they haven't registered already. If they have a change of address or if they want to change party affiliation, this is the time to do so as well, I mean prior to October 21st. On October 26th, that will be the first day where vote centers will be open for early voting. And, of course, November 5th is our election day.

Next slide, please. So what's on the ballot?

We have three council seats for District 2, 3, and 4 to serve a four-year term ending November 2028. There's also two ballot measures, Measure B, which is the business license tax, And then we also have a measure LG, which is the transient occupancy tax. To download the budget and fiscal stability workshop presentation, there's a QR, and then also there's the link there for residents or council if you need more information.

Next slide, please.

And then vote centers. So right now, the potential vote centers are located at the Garvey Ranch Park and the Langley Center. There may also be more vote centers. The county is currently working with private entity and also with the city to secure more vote centers in the city. There are two permanent vote-by-mail ballot drop-off boxes. It's located one in front of City Hall on Newmark, and then the other one is at Seal Vista Park.

Next slide, please. Resources.

So the city has a dedicated website for the election 2024. It's under the city clerk's office. Also, there's a QR there, and that will take you directly to the city clerk's page. To find the election information specific to an individual, they can visit the county. That's at www.lavote.gov, and they can provide their information on the website, and that will provide the information specific to the individual. And also, voters, if you prefer your election materials in a different language, which you can also visit the L.A. County for that information. And that concludes my presentation.

Next slide, please.

And that's the city's website, and that's our phone number at 626-307-1359, or please email us at mpclerk.martrypark.ca.gov. And that's also the QR, and we are here. I have the lanyard, and we provided one for the councils. If you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer them.

Thank you.

Any questions from Council?

Not so much questions, but thank you. I know this season gets pretty busy in the City Clerk's Office, so I appreciate all of the work the Clerk's Office is doing to handle a lot of this work, especially during this time period. So thank you so much, and thank you for the report.

Thank you. Again, thank you, Cindy, for that report as well.

Out of curiosity, I know it's still August, but how soon do you think the county will get back to us if there will be, for example, pop-up polling places or additional voting centers?

They're currently working on it.

I think we're also looking at Sierra Vista Park.

And out of curiosity, is the county asking us for assistance for locations?

They're trying to use some of the city's facilities as well as other public facilities. In previous years, they have used East Los Angeles College. the Union Church on New Avenue.

I remember in 2020 that there was a one-day pop-up at the Lincoln Hotel,

and it was only for one day.

But nonetheless, I was just curious, like, you know, is the county asking us for, I mean, besides the facilities,

like local businesses that are on busy boulevards that could be pop-ups as well?

They may have.

If they're working with the city for city facility or using even a pop-up at city facility, then they would contact the city.

I mean, would a supermarket be an odd place to do a polling place?

It is the presidential election, so.

Well, no, we have two routes, Rancho 99. I mean, again, if the county is looking, I think there will be great locations for pop-ups.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions? are we planning to put

I assume this is already all on the website are we planning to put this on in the Cascades

yes an article is prepared to be printed on the September edition

perfect and then any way

we can put a link to this if we're not already doing it for GoMPK and any other social media

yes it's all

in the works

perfect and then another idea

have we thought about

putting additional signage, maybe banners, utilizing our street banners to encourage people to vote over the next few months, too, or is that something we could explore?

So actually, our city clerk, Michelle, has suggested banners at the different parks, so we are working on that, maybe on the batting cage and that sort of thing, just to bring some awareness. The street banner, we used to have them, but it's so costly, and it was very bulky and really hard to store, and I'm not sure what happened to the one that we had before, but we can look into it.

Yeah. I think it's worth thinking about it, at least.

Great. No, I appreciate the update. Thanks so much.

If there are no other questions.

Thank you.

Thank you. We'll move on to finance.

Maybe they can find some money. Who knows?

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and Council. Laura Bourgeon, finance manager.

I'm here to present the staff communication for the finance department.

Next slide, please.

The City of Monterey Park Finance Department is pleased to announce that we have implemented our new online payment portal, Invoice Cloud. This implementation was divided into three phases. Phase 1 was implemented on July 8th to process permit payments to date nearly 200,000 and over 160 payments for permits have been processed online. Phase 2, which went live this morning at 12.01 a.m. for utility payment portal. And Phase 3 includes a miscellaneous payment portal that will go live by the end of October.

Next slide.

This is a fun graphic that shows how the site is compatible in different formats.

Next slide, please.

Invoice Cloud was implemented to help the city streamline transactions and reconciliations by reducing staff guesswork, saving hours per week through their standardized reconciliation processes across departments, decreasing delinquencies, aiding in enforcing shutoffs, and reducing inbound phone calls from payers through Invoice Cloud's state-of-the-art biller and payer portals that are intuitive. Eliminating payment-related calls by 30% to 50% while boosting auto-pay and paperless enrollment by automating the communication of new bills and implementing actionable alerts through Invoice Cloud's intelligent communications. and decreasing uncertainty in payers and standardizing the checkout experience, increasing online transaction by 40% or more,

and unifying multiple departments under a single payment engine. Next slide.

City staff has been diligent in its outreach efforts. We have prepared various flyers that were printed in English, Spanish, and Chinese and mailed to our customers and displayed at our front cameras. We've put information on our city's website. Messaging was added to the Pamentis portal. We published articles in the Cascades in all three languages in the months of June, July, and August. We printed messaging in utility bills, and we published a news release. In addition, staff has taken the time to help customers understand how to navigate the changes in person and over the phone. This concludes my presentation and I'm available to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. Any questions from Council?

First of all, thank you so much for the report and for all the work that you guys are doing.

I just had a quick question.

As we roll this out, what type of response have we gotten from the community in terms of transitioning and any help that they might still need?

uh we had so we have our front counter staff in and finance has received calls from confused

residents who believed that the transition or the implementation of this online portal meant that uh we were not taking in-person payments anymore which we've clarified we put out another flyer indicating that we will still be accepting payments in person by mail and through our drop box. So we have clarified some information for those customers. We've also signed up several customers. There was a concern because there's a new transaction fee for credit card and debit card payments and we have transitioned many of those customers that had concerns about that to ACH which is provided free of charge. Okay I could just imagine as we're transitioning also to

a new trash hauler and a new form of payment direct billing from from where that there can be some confusion as we're doing a lot of these things. So just to do whatever we can on our city the end to make sure that we share as much of that information and be able to provide as much help to our customers and our residents.

Definitely.

That information was also relayed on the news release. And on our website, we do have information with regards to the billing for wear and the

transition also for our refuse.

Yeah.

And I saw it on social media as well. So thank you for that.

That's it for me.

Thank you. Quick follow-up question. All of that is also accessible on the GoNPK app as well?

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, we can add a link to see what we can do is add a link back to the webpage that has this information.

So yes, we can add it to GoNPK.

It would be my suggestion.

Sure. Understood.

Any other questions? No? Thank you.

Appreciate the update on the transition to the new payment system. Do we know, or maybe this is a report back in six months or whatever, I'm curious how much time effort this might be saving for the finance team in terms of I assume the other payment system were transitioning away from that because it was clunkier and harder to manage and didn't have all the operational capabilities we have now. I'm just curious whether we now have kind of expectations for how much this is going to save us or maybe this is a look back six months from now in terms of how much better this is for us.

Right. We are tracking how many people we have converted to ACH,

which is also a time savings for front counter staff processing payments we are

also going to quantify how many people we are transitioning to e-billing and

paperless because that's one of our one of the items action items that we have

for sustainability plan as well so that is something that we are tracking and I

I'd love to get a report on this or an update maybe six months from now or something.

Will do.

Great. Thank you so much.

We appreciate the finance team. I know a lot probably had to go into making this transition happen. I look forward to getting past kind of the initial rough patches that always happen.

Thank you. I do want to give all the credit to the staff that helped implement our finance staff and also community development, public works.

and Fire. They worked diligently to get us to where we are now. No great great team effort really appreciate it. Definitely thank you. Thank you. We'll move on to police department. Mr. Mayor members City Council good evening Scott Wiese Chief of Police. Go ahead next slide. So I'm going to give you an update on July's net traffic. We've been through these a few times with Council so you kind of understand how the department's transitioning, how our homeless

situation is kind of going out now that we're in summer. So for July of 2024, we had 103 homeless contacts. It's up 27% annually. Our homeless criminal investigations, so where our detective assigned to the NET team has been involved in criminal investigations, either where homeless people are victims or suspects, we're down.

And that's annually across the board. We're down 18%. So to me, that's a win. We're getting the message out.

We're dealing with them on the street. Their trust for us, I think, is up, and we're seeing a decrease there.

Our repeat contacts are up 54% annually. So we had 78 in July of this year compared to 12 repeat contacts last year.

We're still analyzing that to see if that means our homeless population is increasing, but it is a significant increase.

Decline services is also something that's up 31% annually across the board. 49 in July of our contacts, people refused service as opposed to July of 2023 when we only had five. Housed for July, we housed 22 people. That's housed and sheltered. I think that's a win for us, as opposed to 10 back in 2023. And we're up 45%.

So the unsheltered, the homeless population, I think, is trusting us. They're allowing us to try to help them. And that's sheltering and long-term housing. Some of it's short-term, but we're getting them off the street. And that's our goal, is to get them turned around.

Mental health investigations are down, and those are follow-ups done by the NET team.

So any officer in the department that deals with mental health situation, the report that's generated is sent to the NET team for follow-up, and our clinician and our mental health staff follow up with that individual or the family and try to get them assistance, and we're down 26% for those.

Next slide, please. These are our calls for service. So these are all the calls and reports that come into the police department. Total calls for service for July were 4,691 calls, up 10% across the board. 911 calls were down 3%, 782 from 807 of last year. Not a significant decrease, but it could be that people are starting to figure out that maybe 911 is in this line they call when they have a barking dog or a loud party.

So they're using our business line.

And we've done a lot of outreach to try to educate the community on what's the appropriate number to use when they wanted to contact the police. Medical calls, these are the calls where we answer the call from Monterey Park residents, either 911 or regular calls. And they're medical related. We transfer them to Verdugo to the fire authority, and then the fire department's dispatched. We're up 8% on those calls, so I would imagine that the fire department's probably up in their calls for service also based on that. and then our homeless calls which you've been tracking now for about a year we had 186 homeless calls we're up 12 on those and those are calls that go out to every officer of the department

not just the net team so every patrol officer that works has to handle homeless situations people that are experiencing homelessness we've trained them they know what they're doing they go

out and they can offer services and outreach and things like that in fact with our host program and our PHLA money, two-thirds of our department have been trained how to deal with the homeless community, and they go out on their days off with the homeless team, with the NET team, to help deal with some of our homeless issues. So we're seeing a big impact there. And then animal control calls, we're up 57%. I attribute that to the fact that we added a second animal control officer. So now we have animal control seven days a week. So that's why you're seeing the increase in our animal control calls. Next slide, please. And this is a recap of the last fiscal year. This gives you an idea of the same calls and where we are in comparison to the previous fiscal year. 9-1-1 calls were down 6%, but we're up total calls by 9%. We're down just a little bit on medical. It's pretty straight across the board. Obviously, animal services were up quite a bit. And then the police reports that we generated were up 9% on police reports. So those are the actual reports that officers take. So in a year, we take 4,364 police reports.

Many of those end up becoming investigations that go to detectives.

So it's quite a bit of stuff. And then our citations stay pretty even across the board. So last year, we issued 2,921 citations for traffic violations. And you can see the stats for the previous year. July is the beginning of our fiscal, obviously. And that's where we'll kind of show you the recap of our year.

These increases, I think, are indicative of the amount of effort we put into the net team. The net team is very busy. We're adding another officer to the NET team within the next six weeks, I hope. So we'll have even more coverage. They're now hitting the street on bicycles, and that'll get them out there in the parks and get them out there to areas that maybe they can't normally contact in the cars. So we're starting to increase our outreach. And now the host program is back across the region. So you'll start to see periodically 19, 20 officers from outside agencies that rotate through our city to go out and do homeless outreach different days of the week, just like we go to their agencies to help them. You'll start to see that here. And those are the stats for NET and for patrol. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Chief. Any questions? Yes.

Thank you, Chief, for that report. It's always great to see the numbers. I did have a couple of questions. One is total calls for service. I know that it went up by 9%. What type of calls are we getting that have increased? I'm not sure if they're within a particular category or they're just...

They're just calls for service. We don't... Our current CAT or MS system doesn't have the capability of breaking them down in a manageable way.

that's why your the city council approved the new cat rms system to take us into the

to where a lot of this information can be can be accessed easily

i don't know the breakdown of calls they run the gamut from

a loud party to a drive-by shooting and they're they're all kind of lumped in together and

they vary across the board.

But typically, we put out six to seven officers a night and a day, and they stay pretty busy

with calls for service. We're averaging 4,000 calls a month. So if you break that down by day and by 24-hour, it's quite a few calls for service.

I guess what I was trying to get at is, is there a way to categorize these when we get calls that's not so labor intensive so that we are able to look at data and say, okay, we're getting a lot of these types of calls. Maybe that's something maybe we can work on as a... We're hoping to do that with the new

system. I don't think we can do it with the current system. It depends on how we categorize them, and it depends on how the computer allows us to search them. So it's kind of nuanced, but

I know this is one of the questions I had was, if I'm having a big problem with, we were talking

about TOT tax and the taxes for parties. I want to be able to search the system for loud parties.

I can't really do that right now because they're categorized differently. Loud party, 415 party,

there's different tags. With the new system, I'll be able to search it much better and get a much

better result. I can probably break it down into sections now based on the crime, and I'll try to do that so I can get that information back to council. But it's not going to be as easy as it will be with a new system. That'll be up and running in about eight months. Okay. And then

the increase in calls, have any of them been related to homelessness? Well, a lot of them are.

I don't know what the percentage would be if you broke down the 50,000 calls, how many they would

break into homelessness. A significant number. And some of them end up with a component of

homelessness built into them, even though we don't categorize that call as a homeless-related call.

The officer gets there, and their intuition, their investigation leads to them having to deal

with someone who's experiencing homelessness who's potentially causing a problem.

I see. And then just one last question.

Thank you, Chief, for the responses.

Sure.

How has been the transition as kids head back to schools?

any um we did a lot of outreach this year we spent a lot of time talking to the schools and the ptas and getting information out the schools are very good about getting information out

alhambra's you know obviously back um we have parents that panic they they run in late they're

not used you know they're they're they're going to a different school a different grade they're not planning their mornings properly, so they're rushed. We've tried to do a lot of engineering at

the schools in the summertime to make it safer for the parents and safer for the kids. Some of

that's working. We know that right now it's a hectic time. It'll calm down. We're doing a lot of outreach. We have all of our officers that are on a shift dedicated to the schools in the morning

for drop-off and in the afternoons for pickup. So we're saturating those areas, and we're doing a lot of outreach. We're not writing as many tickets right now. We're just trying to educate the public on alternatives to

dropping their kid off and having them run across the street as an example that we experience at some of our schools. It's dangerous.

Thank you so much for that.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Chief, again,

for that very comprehensive

update. I also want to commend the NET team. I think they should be commended. In fact,

That's probably why they received an award a few years ago because of their hard work and, I think, innovative thinking.

But I'm kind of curious, because we've been working really hard to identify some of the homeless individuals

to make sure, again, that they also have access to services. But do we also communicate with, like, surrounding jurisdictions, like the county, like Sheriff's Department or county or even City of L.A.? In other words, like to make sure that, you know, if one day they're in our jurisdictions, but they go to another so that, again, there are multiple points of contact to try and get them help.

Yes. So we were the first outside agency that was alLod access to the L.A. City Homeless Tracking System. And we achieved that because we hired one of their employees to the city of Monterey Park. I offered her a better job and she came over. and with that came the expertise of the system. But I have to admit, initially there was a little bit of the city of L.A. is not, their housing group is not housed or run by police officers. The police aren't really part of that system. So there was some trust issues we had to gain. We built that trust in with the city of L.A., and now our ability to check somebody through that system is seamless. so it's really helped us focus services for our clients so we can tell we'll make contact with a homeless individual and they'll give us their name and we'll ask him are you in the are you currently receiving services yes i am i'm i'm waiting for this well we can immediately go into that system and verify that they're waiting for that and then we can make contact with their social worker and say, hey, that person's in Monterey Park now. We're helping them with this. Can we help coordinate with this? So it's really, it's gone well for us, but that's what we're doing that. And it's working very well.

No, it's wonderful. I'm glad to hear that.

And actually, also, I'm really pleased that, again, my compliments to the NET team, especially in their effort to build a relationship with the city of Los Angeles.

Yeah, thank you. Our new homeless, I mean, our new CATRMS system, we're also building in our own portal. So any patrol officer who contacts someone at, say, 3 o'clock in the morning when the net team's not on can put their name into the CATRMS system, and it will pull out the services we're offering them, the services they've had, all the nuanced stuff that goes along with our case package that deals with them. So we're building that into our system. So we'll start to put together a database to be able to help our clients even more get services. Thank you.

Hi. Just a quick question about the homeless that you house. I think that's the previous page. I see that the number actually increased dramatically.

Yeah, the house and shelter. Yes. Right, so up 45% compared to the previous year. What's the reason why?

I think it's trust, honestly. The NET team is really good at accessing services. We don't have a homeless shelter in Monterey Park, and quite honestly, we don't have a homeless shelter in our spa, our area of San Gabriel Valley. So the NET team is really good at finding resources outside of our area. That team is really good at finding resources outside of our area and politicking those private entities and government agencies to try to get our homeless sheltered. ! The other thing is we provide wraparound services. ! So where you may get the county team or other city that says, we have a lot of the homeless shelter. If you go to the homeless facility in Whittier, they'll take you. Well, what we do here is we take them there. We help inboard them into the facility. We've established that relationship with them. relationship with them. And that's why I think the success is there because they trust us. Now, once they get there, there's a lot of reasons why a lot of times they don't stay and they end up homeless again back on the street. But it doesn't deter us. We get right back in and roll up our sleeves and try to get them housed again. Our ultimate goal is to get them to a point in their lives where they're not addicted to drugs. Maybe we're dealing with their mental health issues and we can find a permanent solution to get them off the street. We have had some successes with that, but it's an uphill climb. I wanted to say good job that we have tour with you. Last time I see

that you guys have the system that get the real-time vacancy of the shelter. So good job.

Thank you so much. Chief, I had two comments actually because I think everything is within inflationary numbers so we're not going to look at that the two that popped out was house or sheltered homelessness and you just walked through the explanation so great job in housing 66 more homeless this year compared to last year the second one that popped out was animal i think that was up depending on which chart you looked at it was up next slide 57 or 48 so is that more

coyote calls or is that more lost pets? What I think it is is because before we offered our

animal services four days a week, we only had one animal services officer. The calls on the weekend would hold or we would send them over to LA County. The cost to use LA County Animal Control is significant. It's between $700 and $900 for a call for service that they charge the city. When we hired on our other full-time animal services officer and were able to expand service to seven days a week, we don't have to use the county other than for sheltering purposes. So we have a vet contract. We have everything we need within the city. We just don't have an animal shelter of our own, nor do we want one. So we use the county facility, Downey, to house our pets. That's the increase I think you see. is we did a lot of outreach. We're very accessible to the city. And our citizens in town know that they can call dispatch

and that our animal services officers come out, find the pet. They post it on Facebook. They try to find the owner. We keep them here at the station. We do outreach. We don't just throw them in a truck and drive them to Downey and say, hey, you may never get your dog back.

We do a lot of outreach. So I think people trust us. And there are coyote calls, and we focus on that a lot. Both animal services officers are trained by Fish and Wildlife to deal with coyotes.

Thanks, Chief.

Appreciate the update and really appreciate everything the police department and all the officers are doing in the field.

I know it's not, and it may be difficult to separate out, but I believe we have to report part one crimes anyway to the FBI.

Yes.

Can you just, from a very broad, high-level narrative perspective, are we seeing Part 1 crimes and then petty crimes, have we seen that from last fiscal year and the fiscal year before?

Are we about even? Is that increasing, decreasing? How does that look?

For us, Part 1 crimes include robberies, burglaries, rapes, assaults.

There's a group of eight.

when the federal government transitioned from the

one crime stat platform to NIBRS it increased part one crimes from 8 to 40

and it breaks out way differently now. What we're starting to see is our petty thefts, our vandalisms, our

felony thefts that don't include violence, those are on the increase.

our violent crimes are plateaued. And we're not sure yet because NIBRS is so new to California.

For example, we'll have, in the old system, we had one incident. And if there was one crime associated with it, but there are multiple victims, then that would be one incident. Now with NIBRS, like our shooting, for example,

That would reflect 80 different stats out of that one incident. So it throws off the curve a little bit. So we're still, all of us in California are trying to learn what the parallels are. But for part one crimes, we're seeing kind of a plateau. They haven't increased that much, maybe 1% or 2%. But our theft crimes, vehicle theft, vehicle from, or theft from motor vehicle, petty theft, commercial theft, All of those are up by double digits. That's helpful. Thank you.

And then I'm really, I'll reiterate,

as we did when the council approved the transition of the new system, once we are able to integrate that, I think it would be great to, not only for the council to get these updates more regularly, but the public to be able to access to these statistics in more real time. Looking forward to that.

Oh, yeah. I'm geeking out a little bit on it. It's a really cool system. Yeah. No, I'm looking forward to it.

Whittier would love to go to it. I know Claremont's going to it. But we're the first city in L.A. County to go to it, and we're really excited. Yeah.

And as soon as we're ready to go live, I think it'd be great to have a demonstration. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Quick question kind of from a policy perspective. I'm just confirming

given the relatively recent Supreme Court decision on grants pass overturning the grants pass decision

we have not changed

Police Department and that team has not changed our engagement and our posture on addressing and engaging our homeless population

here. Not at all. We were we were one of the agencies that looked at the Boise decision and made the decision that we had to be able to provide wraparound services to be able to enforce our local ordinances.

So we reimagined a group of police officers in the department, and that became the NET team. We added mental health to that. We added the ability to move them into shelter,

to store their personal property, to provide outreach. That's what Boise talked about.

So we've always done it. Part of the reason you don't see the encampments, you don't see all those things that you may see in other jurisdictions here in Monterey Park, is because from the kickoff, we addressed them at the moment they were occurring.

Other cities are starting to play catch-up. And you'll start to see, I think, a net team style format coming out for these agencies

to be able to deal with the current climate of homeless enforcement, if you will.

We don't look at it as enforcement. We do very little actual enforcement. We get compliance.

No, I appreciate that and appreciate that we our posture and our Way of engaging is not changing at all and appreciate that we're

That that is how we're moving ahead. The city attorney's office has been very

Helpful kind of interpreting that new section and when we find that we're being able to handle most everything the same way

We've always done it. We haven't changed our posturing at all great. Well, it's great to hear

Any other questions for council if not thank you, thank you We'll move on to presentation items although I saw someone came in with the comic car. I don't know if that was meant for public Presentation will bring up where for an update on their transition or Sean

Good evening all mayor mayor pro tem and city council Sean I go public works director

tonight we have an update from the where team Lee and Martin are here to give an update on where things are at with the residential trash hauling

transition so with that I will turn it over to the where team

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Leah. I'm the VP of Public Relations for Ware Disposal. I also have my colleague Martin, who's the contract manager, with me. I want to express my appreciation for the ribbon-cutting and the press release that we had on August 19th. Thank you all. It was very successful, and now our customer care center is fully open and operating to handle customer requests. We have three different sets of cards on display in our office. We have the 96-gallon and the 64-gallons and the 32-gallons on display

for customers to come into our center and to see what size difference

and what meets their requirements that they need at home. We are currently handling the changes of increasing and decreasing the container sizes.

For decreasing size services, we are prioritizing senior citizens,

disabled and handicapped customers first.

they are able to immediately change their sizes of the containers starting of our service,

which is September 1st, but it's going to be September 3rd because of the holiday.

for all other customers we are waiting until December 1st

of 2024 to start requesting changes

in different size levels and carts will be exchanged

by January 1st, 2025 for the first billing cycle

it's September and October is our first billing cycle and the second one will be November and December.

We are mailing out the first invoice on August 26th

and everybody should be receiving them by September 3rd or September 4th.

For the grace period, for late fees, we talked about it last time when we were here

and where we'll be working with customers doing the first billing cycle to help them

because we understand that the customers may have difficulties having the new way of setting up

their either auto pay or any other type of payments.

and we will review the accounts and waive late fees as needed based on different customer circumstances. And for education, for outreach customers, customers have visited our office, have been asking about recycling because that's new to them, and we are providing our customers with flyers, brochures, and any educational materials

to help them understand the new sorting requirements.

We are also in contact with Landly Center, the senior center, and we're reaching out to them to see if we can set multiple dates that we can come in person and talk to the seniors maybe doing lunchtime and just to get it's a little bit easier for them to understand in person and if they have any questions that they have for us that we're able to answer them right there and then. Hopefully that will clear up a lot of questions that they may have.

and we are also going to reach out to the library next to see we're going to do the same thing as

the as the land lease center just to see because there's so many people in and out of the library

every day so we want to see if we can also go in there and and i'll reach and talk to them in person

to see if we can answer all the questions there as well.

And for residential carts and for outreach,

I will have my colleague Martin update you. Good evening. Just a quick update on the carts and the trucks. So we are 99% done with cart deliveries, so we are ahead of schedule. We project to be done by this Friday, August 23rd, And as far as the bins for multifamily properties, we are still on schedule.

We had some delays due to space issues and special containers that certain properties required due to trash rooms or trash chutes. And so we are expecting to get those done by next week, by the 26th. Once Athens does start removing their bins, we will be delivering our containers to these properties.

As far as our trucks, all of our trucks are ready. Our drivers are trained. They're ready to go. We will be doing a dry run the week of the 26th next week for all of our routes, Monday through Friday.

So our drivers will go on each daily route and basically do the right. So our drivers will go on each day daily route and basically do the route as they would be doing it start September 3rd.

! As far as our outreach we've melt out a welcome packet all over the residents seem to have already received it which is also posted on our website.

! We are planning on sending another Miller which will have a list of basically the items that can go into each cart that is going out to tomorrow. And will be in residents mailboxes starting possibly Monday of next week.

We are planning on doing a fourth Miller which will be

We are planning on doing a fourth mailer, which will be a sorting brochure that will give them a more detailed explanation on what material goes into each cart. The third mailer that we did send out, which is the concise educational material with recycling, trash, and green waste, that went out through EDDM, which is Every Door Direct Mail. basically will hit every single unit in a multifamily residential apartment building,

townhomes, and stuff like that.

It doesn't go directly to an address. It goes into every single mailbox. So that should be going out tomorrow, which should be hitting mailboxes starting on Monday.

And we just want to remind our residents that Labor Day is September 2nd. Services will be delayed by one day. Cart removal starts next week by Athens, and so most of our customers already have their carts. And then we're also going to be sending out a robocall announcement on September 2nd that will announce the holiday and the delays for all the residents in Monterey Park. Okay? We open it to any questions that you guys might have for us. Thank you.

Really appreciate the update. Any questions from Council? Just a few.

Thank you so much for being here and for the update. Great to hear that you are ahead of schedule. That's always great to hear. And thank you so much for delivery of the trucks, I'm sorry, the bins and trash bins

I should say. I saw them all over the city. I saw you guys assembling them.

I really do like the idea of having some type of community outreach or meeting where you can address any potential concerns or questions from community members so if there's any way that our city can help coordinate some of these whether it's at the library the Langley Center or any other place I think that's a great way for people who might be ruminating or discussing and other social media platforms to be able to express their concerns or questions that they might have and helps alleviate a lot of the questions that people might have. So thank you for actually offering that and I think we might take you up on that offer. Just, you know, to make sure that residents' concerns are addressed and stuff like that. Also, thank you for, if I can get a little more clarification, I know at the last meeting we talked about having some type of grace period for people who might be having trouble either transitioning and paying. I know it's a big move and a lot of change happening here in Monterey park um can you explain a little bit more what this grace period would look like in terms of um if if you know in terms of late fees or anything like that yeah yeah so as far as the

late fees um we are going to be taking them by case case by case as customers are coming to us

and they're addressing their concerns we understand that not all customers will receive

or there might be some issues with the invoicing them having them receiving it so we're open to

working with the customer if we do need to if payment is not received by the due date and it's received by the end of the month or possibly the next month we'll

work with the customer and waive that and leave you okay so you'll be working on a

case-by-case basis right okay that's it for me thank you so I so thank you for

being here a follow-up to that question because I think with the transition but the billing cycle, your bill comes once, your services is every week, the bill comes every

two months.

And for example, I'm going to be very specific here, so for example, your services actually start September 1st, I know it's the 3rd but we'll say the 1st, so the bill will say, your bill invoice will say your payment is due for the month of September, 1st to the 30th and then October 1st to the 31st your bill is due payable in 30 days typically that's how it is right 30 days so technically someone who's paying the bill says well I have 30 days to pay the bill and with systems issues someone may pay the bill on October 1st so what you're telling me is you're gonna work with the client the customer on a case-by-case basis or someone who pays on October 2nd October 3rd because technically it's late but you'll work with them for this time to basically review the file and say there may be some technical issues

is that my understanding that is correct okay yes thank you I just want to clarify that so it's more

specific and thank you for working with our residents because it's a big thing for the entire

city right well again thank you for the all the work and I know a lot has gone into this in terms of helping to communicate to the community. It sounds like there's more communications to come, so looking forward to that. Appreciate the team's work on opening the office.

Happy to be there. Was it yesterday? Yes, two days ago? Two days ago.

To open up the office, and I know people have already been, customers have already been coming in and calling with questions about the carts and sorting and everything, so appreciate the team's efforts on that, and I assume that will probably be for probably a couple more weeks.

Question for Sean.

Do we know if Athens plans to send out a reminder about leaving out the bins for pickup?

Or what's that process going to look like?

I don't know. I don't know if Becky has any info. No.

Well, if we can just check in with them about that, I think I know I am not one of them, but I know there are overzealous people that as soon as the trash truck comes and picks up their trash,

they take their bins back in.

Probably helpful to have a reminder for them to leave their bins out to be picked up

And then to start to use the wear bins we can also look up push pushing something on social media as well

That's an easy one for us. Yeah, whatever we can do so we don't have to

Have Athens trucks go several times to pick up all their bins And continue to make this transition as smooth as possible. I think would be helpful And whatever we can do to continue over communicate to the commute I know we're getting calls, but it sounds like we're getting a lot of calls. But I appreciate their meeting at the moment as far as we can tell from now.

But really appreciate it.

Looking forward to a few more weeks of at least the initial transition, and we'll see how things go in the next few weeks.

for

one of the earlier points that was made by council too in terms of

potentially

having I know

where team is showing up to city events if I don't know if you're already planning or thinking about having pop-ups or maybe even virtual kind of Q&A sessions that we could help promote as well to residents who may be interested even

telephone town halls or whatever

I don't know if that would be helpful or if you're already getting inundated with calls anyway but just ideas to put out there potentially virtual telephone, Zoom or even in person kind of pop-ups I think we could host at Langley or others during lunch service or something else if people have questions besides the city events that I know you guys are going to continue to table at to help get the word out about what's going on. I think whatever else we can do these next few weeks would be helpful. And I know you guys have seen and are paying attention to some of the social media posts around the assembling of some of the bins and other kind of issues and a lot of questions. Appreciate that those are being answered as much as possible.

Look forward to that

continuing to happen. And if there's anything else we can do or that pops up in the next

couple weeks, we'll look forward to

partnering with WHERE on making sure we answer as many of our residents' questions as possible in

due time.

AND IF THERE ARE NO OTHER QUESTIONS, I APPRECIATE THE UPDATE.

I LOOK FORWARD TO THE NEXT FEW WEEKS.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

ALL RIGHT.

MOVING TO CONSENT CALENDAR, ARE THERE ANY ITEMS WE COUNCIL WISHED TO PULL FROM CONSENT? OR THERE IS A SPEAKER FOR CONSENT?

3D.

3D, AS IN DOG.

Well, I was planning to pull the item, so we could save it for that, or I don't know if other council members want to hear that before.

All right, we're going to pull 3D, 3F. Any other items?

I'm just going to pull 3G for a quick overview.

All right, if not, is there a motion for the remaining items?

SO MOVED? IS THERE A SECOND? MOVED AND SECOND. ANY FURTHER DISCUSSION?

BEFORE WE VOTE, I'M GOING TO COMMENT ON 3C REAL QUICK.

WHATEVER WE CAN DO TO GET THAT PROJECT ACCELERATED. SEAN AND CHRIS.

IN TERMS OF RENOVATIONS AT THE FIRE STATION 61 HERE.

WHATEVER WE CAN DO TO GET THAT GOING FASTER I THINK WOULD BE

GREAT.

AND LOOK FORWARD TO GETTING THE DESIGN BEFORE COUNCIL AT SOME POINT SOON.

ALL RIGHT. MOTION SECOND.

ALL MEMBERS PLEASE VOTE.

APPROVED UNANIMOUSLY.

MOVING TO ITEM 3D.

IS THERE A STAFF?

THERE IS A PUBLIC COMMENT. WE START WITH A COMMENT.

FOR SPEAKER, HIRO.

Hello, members of council. I'll try to keep this pretty short. So yeah, item 3D, economic development strategic plan. Big supporter of this. I'm glad that the city is working on this and just trying to figure out ways to make the community and all of our businesses successful here in the city. One thing I wanted to highlight is on page 21, this focus area around placemaking and strategic land use. I'm not sure if everyone's reviewed it yet. I'm sure the team is going to present it now. but I did want to highlight one of the recommendations which is the last bullet point around you know kind of rethinking downtown and having a real strategy for how we can make Garvey and just downtown a destination right and up in a place that our community where community can congregate and where it's not just a car sewer you know where cars just drive fast through the city but where people stop and congregate and build community. And so the final bullet point you can see on page 21 there where it says, consider other ways to attract more people to the downtown,

including dedicated bus and bike lanes, widening sidewalks to allow for outdoor dining or business display space, and incentivizing vertical mixed-use development, for example,

housing on top of ground floor commercial space. Love this recommendation. would highly encourage, well, I encourage the city council to adopt this plan. But then as we kind of move forward, I've heard lots of talk about projects on Garvey in downtown, the parking structure, or just kind of like piecemeal things that are being done. But I think if we can kind of build a cohesive plan and one that really focuses on creating this walkable community space where we have outdoor dining, where we have dedicated bus, bike, infrastructure, etc., would be super beneficial to the city. So we definitely highly encourage us as we move forward with this and hopefully adopt it that this stays top of mind for everyone as we continue to do this thing. So thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Any other speakers? No other speakers.

Thank you. All right. We'll go to the staff report.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and Council members. This is your Economic Development Manager, Joe Torres. I am honored to be here today to present the final draft of the new City of Monterey Park Economic Development Strategic Plan for City Council adoption.

As you know, this plan represents a significant milestone in our city's journey toward a more vibrant, prosperous, and sustainable future.

It is the culmination of a collaborative process that involves extensive community engagement, stakeholder input, and expert analysis. To provide a deeper dive into the development process and the resulting strategic plan, please allow me to introduce Mr. Roger Dale, Principal at the Nadel Zendale Consulting Group.

Good evening, Mayor Wong and members of the City Council. I'm really honored to be here this evening to present the culmination of about a year-long process of working with your community and your staff and the council as well to prepare an economic development strategic plan that will, we hope, guide the city's economic development program for the next five or ten years.

Next slide, please.

So as I mentioned, this has been about a year-long process and has included a substantial amount of stakeholder outreach.

City staff did a great job of pulling together an economic development task force,

representing various sectors of the business community and other institutional partners of the city, and they were a really effective...

and a community feedback meeting at that time to receive comments, as well as an opportunity for members of the public to submit written comments, which a number did, and we were able to incorporate most of those ideas into the final document. Next slide, please. Some pictures of our stakeholder outreach, the Economic Development Task Force, as well as one of the community workshops. Next slide. So there are several work products associated with this effort. The primary document is the Public Economic Development Strategic Plan, or EDSP, and that lays out a broad vision for the economic development strategies that are outlined, and I'll talk about the nine areas of focus that it includes. There's also a separate document that we're calling an action plan, which provides more detailed potential steps for implementation of the recommendations. That's intended really as an internal document for city staff. And the recommendations there are really presented as ideas for the staff's consideration. and they will be working to integrate that into their work program and moving forward with those recommendations as they implement the plan. Next slide, please. I'd like to just highlight the nine focus areas that are included in the document. I know that each of you is already familiar with this process. We've had the privilege of meeting with you several times, so I won't talk about them in great detail, but would be certainly happy to answer any questions you might have about the details. Focused area one is marketing and branding, and it's really a specific marketing effort for the city's economic development function, focused on business outreach, business attraction, and also promoting the community as a destination for increased visitation and tourism. Next slide. Focus area two is development friendliness, looking at ways that the city's functions for approving and permitting development and new businesses can be as friendly as possible and really put out a message to the business community that Monterey Park is open for new businesses of the types that we're targeting in this strategy. Next slide. Next slide. Focus area three, pardon me, is focusing on retention and expansion of your existing businesses. And again, a significant focus on outreach to your business community to make them aware of the various resources that the city already provides, either directly or through various partners that city staff works closely with in other agencies that are outside the city.

Next slide.

Focus area four relates to placemaking and strategic land use, and there are several focus areas within the city where this might apply. I think a high priority that we've heard about throughout this process is your downtown area and the gentleman that spoke earlier with a public comment that was directly, his ideas were part of what came out of the public review process and some great ideas that we were happy to be able to include in the final document.

Next slide, please.

Focus Area 5 is focusing on reinvigorating your retail shopping centers, which is a challenge that just about every community in the United States faces right now as that industry grows through a tremendous transition. And we've outlined some potential strategies there to encourage reinvestment, retenanting of spaces that are not fully utilized, and to keep them vibrant into the future. Next slide, please. Focus Area 6 is related to workforce development. We're calling it talent retention and attraction. And these are mostly functions that the city would undertake with partnerships, through partnerships with other organizations, school district, workforce development organizations, to create job opportunities and worker skills that are a good fit for the types of industries that we hope will grow here in the future. Next slide. In addition to focusing on retaining and expanding existing businesses, we think that Monterey Park is especially well-suited as an area or an environment for entrepreneurial startups. And again, these are some activities that the city could continue to undertake, mostly through partnerships with other organizations that have resources to support business startups. Next slide.

We know that Monterey Park does not have unlimited capacity in terms of land and buildings for new businesses,

but we do see opportunities for focused attraction of new firms that would create higher paying jobs and create new tax base for the city.

and we've outlined some potential target industries in the document that would be the focus of that effort.

Next slide.

And finally, focus area nine involves international business development, both from the standpoint of international trade as well as potentially expanding the city's status as a destination for international visitors.

We know that the city has longstanding ties to both of those areas, and we think that there are expanding opportunities to expand those in the future through an economic development effort focused in that direction.

Next slide. So at this point, I would be glad to answer any questions. I want to thank you for the privilege of working with this great community and with each of you individually. Staff has been tremendously supportive and engaged in this process. And we believe that we are presenting you with a document that will create a new vision for reinvigorating the local economy and really bringing together the many stakeholders in the community that have shown an interest and an excitement for this as partners in that process. So thank you very much. Thank you.

We'll open up to council for comments and questions.

First off, thank you so much for putting this together. I know that you met with all of us separately, and we had a chance to kind of share our vision.

I'm really excited.

I think I feel like we're a lot of what we're doing, especially through this, is being able to kind of look forward in how we can change a lot of our business and how we can attract new businesses, especially given what residents are asking for. I know that for myself and who have families, we're looking for stuff where we can take our families and people can have a good time here. We talk about work and play, right? But I'm really excited about what this could mean for Monterey Park, attracting newer businesses that we don't currently have so that a lot of our Monterey Park residents can stay within Monterey Park. So I'm really excited to see how this can happen. And in particular, I know the gentleman spoke earlier, all of us are really excited to see how we can reinvigorate, but also redesign and in some ways redo our downtown district so that it's a lot more addressing a lot of the different things that residents really want to see, not getting too specific. But thank you so much, and that's it for me.

Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Mayor

Again I really was excited to read the document And I think it's a good solid blueprint

And I want to thank everyone who's involved

In input and also for crafting

My only thought is that

Again I appreciate especially the Recommendation about creating Opportunities for outdoor dining in the downtown area The only thing I would add is that And, you know, I think we should, if not already, you know, look at where else we can maybe also expand opportunities for outdoor dining. You know, I mean, in some cases it happens organically, like in you go down to what we call Garfield Village, you know, Brew Kitchen. I mean, during the pandemic, they used the parking lot because of pandemic for dining. But even after pandemic left, they decided to keep the parking for dining. And I think that that is something we would like to encourage. and also other opportunities around the city to encourage outdoor dining?

Because we have several commercial corridors.

I think that's something that we should look at.

Well, I think you're right. We have spoken a lot about the downtown as an obvious target for that type of use and that type of activity, but we certainly don't mean to limit it to that.

And I think it could be a part of the solution.

When I talked about the strategy that deals with reinventing or reinvigorating retail,

I think there are a number of locations in the city where you might think about reimagining how a particular shopping center, for example, is laid out

and incorporating other types of placemaking treatments in that, which could include outdoor dining as one of the strategies. So I appreciate that comment.

And in your experience, too, are there certain tools or policies a city needs to adopt to encourage greater interest in outdoor dining?

I think well first of all I think most most business owners restaurant owners see the opportunity there so I think it's a question of working with that community to understand what policies the city could put in place to encourage that to the extent particular restaurant owners are interested I think there are also ways to support that through other placemaking like landscaping and streetscaping that supports a pedestrian-friendly, outdoor-friendly environment. And then finally, there's just opportunities to promote events and promote, attract people to

come and enjoy this as a destination, a place where Monterey Park could be a destination for those types of activities if there's enough concentration of it and there's enough messaging of that to the regional visitor community that this is a place where that

can happen. So I think there are a lot of ways that the community can work with the city, could

work with property owners, could also work with the business improvement district, could be a leader in this. And we've got specific recommendations in the plan for rethinking or potentially expanding the role of the business improvement district and the geographic scope of the business improvement district. Those could all be players in creating those types of

opportunities. Okay, thank you. And then a follow-up question, this is directed to Joe. You know, I remember during the pandemic, and again, yes, out of necessity of the pandemic, but a lot of our restaurants, like NBC, I think the barbecue place on Casuda Canyon, I mean, they had outdoor dining. And now, of course, once it was safer, they went back inside. But I'm just curious, as a council, we decided to make, which was at the time, I guess, exempting some of our ordinances to codify and to encourage basically more outdoor dining, yet most restaurants opt to just go back to indoor dining. So

I'm just curious, have we asked some of these restaurants what was the reason why you decided to forego outdoor dining? I mean, or is there some way that we can encourage any restaurants in the future to consider outdoor dining like the way we had some restaurants during the pandemic.

Council Member Lo, if I may, Jessica Serrano, Community Development Director. Yes, you're correct. We did adopt an outdoor

dining ordinance earlier last year, early last year and, you know, we haven't gotten a lot of

traction with that, but we certainly could do a better job at promoting it. You know, Joe and his team, they go out and do business visits and talk to business owners quite often.

So definitely informing them about that program will be important

if we're trying to promote that type of environment.

Sure, okay. Yeah, I'd be interested in seeing that. Yes, thank you.

I wanted to add a comment from the previous topic.

And for outdoor dining, I talked to some of the restaurant owners that they don't want to give up their parking lots.

And also the way that they service the clients is a little bit further

compared to getting out the food to indoor compared to outdoor.

So I do talk to a few restaurant owners that unless it's pandemic,

then otherwise they're not in favor of having outdoor dining. So it's just some of the feedback that I hear. Thank you.

Roger, thank you for putting together the report and getting input from the community. I think at the end of the day, what I see is a very vibrant blueprint, as Councilmember Lo mentioned, blueprint for a city for the next 5, 15, 25 years. It's really a generation blueprint on what we can do. You look at the cities around us, they're all building, they're all adding, because that's growth. Because if you don't grow, you stay stagnant, you're a step behind. and you look at some of the retails that we have, vacancies, you look at some of our offices, we have vacancies. If we have the blueprint and if we continue to reinvigorate and reimagine our city, then people will come because the economic cycles come around every 7, 11 years. But you've got to set the blueprint to attract the businesses who want to come to the city, and that's what this does. So thank you for the seven or nine, I think it was 10 or 11 parts, right?

a lot of the community engagement that went into bringing out a lot of this feedback that has made its way into this plan and the process by which this, the sustainability plan and our parks master plan, which is hopefully will be finalized sometime early next year, the way in which the city is really prioritizing engagement with the community and in a very substantive way gathering feedback and ideas from the community about what we need to prioritize and how we should be implementing and how we can implement a lot of these ideas and programs.

I really appreciate that.

That is our approach and I want to continue to encourage that approach as we continue to do our work at City Hall. I appreciate that there's a lot here and a lot put down on paper and in the action plan as well. My interest, well, first, I fully support this, really appreciate this, I'm very, very excited and looking forward to adopting this tonight and really kind of giving permission to staff to make sure that we're starting direct resources to implementing this plan. I know some of these elements already we've already been talking about internally, and the team is ready to get going on a few of these elements already, and some of these are listed as year one items that I would love to see a year from now success in terms of beginning implementation and seeing really the fruits of some of this start

to come to bear.

I'm also excited about the game changer kind of items in each of these focus areas and looking forward to the discussion about how we properly resource these items. My ultimate hope is that this plan and the implementation plan and the action items here, this doesn't just sit on a shelf as another plan. that we put a lot of time and effort into. I know staff and the city and everyone is very committed to making sure that it is not the case. My hope is that we'll set up six-month or one-year kind of check-ins with the city council on a regular basis to see and check in on progress and make sure we do that on the sustainability plan.

I know we're planning to do that, Niska.

So just want to make sure we're tracking progress

and we can pour it out to the community. This is all your feedback in this plan, and this is how we're making progress every six months, every year on the St. Billy Plan and the Economic Development Strategic Plan that I assume will be adopted tonight and look forward to the conversations about how we make sure we're resourcing this and I know that this is part of the conversation already internally about how we

are mighty, very, very mighty

team of two and a half or three in the Economic Development team here internally can handle a lot but it can't do all of these things AND SO WHETHER WE'RE LOOKING AT EXTERNAL RESOURCES, OTHER CONSULTANTS THAT COME TO HELP US IMPLEMENT THESE ITEMS, I KNOW SOME OF THAT IS BUDGETED AND SOME OF IT WE NEED TO BRING BACK TO THE COUNCIL AS WE WORK ON IMPLEMENTING THIS PLAN.

I LOOK FORWARD TO THAT DISCUSSION.

I WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT YOU, THE TEAM, OUR TEAM, OUR CITY STAFF ARE FEELING THE PERMISSION AND THE EXCITEMENT FROM THE COUNCIL THAT WE'RE ADOPTING THIS PLAN

AND THAT WE WANT TO SEE IT IMPLEMENTED AND THAT YOU HAVE PERMISSION TO BE CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE AND TO PUSH AGGRESSIVELY ON MAKING SURE THAT THE ACTION ITEMS IN THIS ECONOMIC ADMINISTRATION PLAN ARE PRIORITIES FOR YOU AND FOR THE WHOLE CITY AND FOR THE STAFF TO MAKE SURE THAT WE ARE IMPLOMENTING THIS AND THAT WE'RE SERIOUS ABOUT GETTING THIS GOING AND GETTING ALL THESE ITEMS TO THE EXTENT POSSIBLE AS PRIORITIES FOR THE CITY. SO I WANT TO MAKE SURE YOU HEAR THAT.

I know you hear that internally at our meetings,

and I think all of us on the council

have expressed vocal support for a lot of these items

over the last few years at least. We want to make this happen. Let us know how the council can play a role in making sure that these items are a resource properly. I look forward to continuing to invest in and partner with our business community to build a more vibrant local economy here in Monterey Park. So really I'm just saying let's get going. I'm really excited about this With that said if there are no other questions or comments, we'll open it up to a motion on this item

Move for approval

Second, do it to councilman Ryu

Move in second any further discussion hearing none. Please vote

Approved unanimously.

Thank you. We appreciate the work.

Thank you.

And my small request is that we, if I, I don't know if the other council members are interested,

I'd love to get a printed bound copy of the, just as a physical, like tchotchke on this, similar to the other strategic plans.

I'd just love a copy myself.

We're working down, Mr. Mayor, council members. And thank you for your support.

and we look forward to providing you with updates

as we make progress on this very exciting roadmap that we have now. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. All right, we'll move on to item 3F.

There's a quick staff report.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor, Mayor, Pro Tem and City Council.

Sean Igoe, Public Works Director.

Tonight you have before you an item to enter an agreement with wear disposal for collection of solid waste

generated at city facilities and city right-of-ways such as the downtown area and bus stops. We had two proposals from our two haulers, Athens at $38,000 and wear at $14,000 per month,

and so the recommendation is to use wear disposal at this point. So with that, I will take any questions.

All right, any questions?

Yeah, I just wanted to ask for the line item that went, I think on page 120.

So I know that we're picking the $14,000 a month. So there is a line item, let's say, is $3,810 from, I think, the corporation yard. What kind of trash is that?

For our corporate yard, it's various different items.

So we pick up our bulky items, and we will take those to that facility. we have street sweeping which is disposed there we have waste that's generated from the city yard some of the bus stops we take there our park facilities so various locations that we dispose

of trash there right it said the 30 yard refuse row off yeah 30 yard 30 yard bins large large bins i see so that means it's like a big yes very large bins and um there is also another item that the first one the street cans we have 150 of them I mean that the price is good only $39 per month but but we have 150 of them is there any way that we can reduce that in the future that can bring

down the cost we can evaluate that okay okay thank you and so just to clarify for that the 30 yard

refuse those bins. That's essentially construction equipment and wet yard right from all the parks and all that stuff? Yeah, parks,

bulky item pickups, it's various locations.

Big things? Generally speaking, yeah, but again, we have small things even come in like just trash bags, things like that.

Is there a motion or any other questions? Is there a second? Second. If no other comments, please vote.

Approved unanimously.

All right. Moving on to item 3G.

If there's a quick staff report.

Yep.

So good evening again, Honorable Mayor, Mayor of the City Council, Sean Igoe, Public Works

Director.

We have been diligently working on an adaptive traffic response control system with Advantech on signalization improvements. This will focus on the Garvey, Atlantic, and Garfield corridors. The project will help improve various items including communication of each location and between signals to improve timing Retro reflective plates around signals pedestrian signal improvements and more This project ties in vision zero elements and is utilizing Metro 710 fundings We also have John Dorado here from Advantech to assist with any questions. So with that I will take any questions

Any questions?

So just really quick Sean for this project

This is just the next phase of design for traffic signal synchronization along Atlantic Garfield and Garvey.

That's correct.

The next step after that design would be actual physical work to connect them all and synchronize and all that stuff.

That's correct.

What's the typical kind of timeline for design and then typical timeline once we have the design for, I know some of it will depend on the design, but how long?

The goal to complete all this is 25-26.

Fiscal year 26. Yeah. Okay.

if there's any way we can do this faster to accelerate this,

obviously I'm open to that. We'd love to see that happen. I think whatever we can do to improve traffic flows

and improve pedestrian safety

and start to implement the 710 Metro funds on this project and other projects that we have planned for Garvey

and the city of Monterey Park, whatever we can do to accelerate those, that would be great.

We have given staff direction to try to accelerate THESE AS QUICK AS WE POSSIBLY CAN.

SAFELY AND ALL THAT.

CORRECT. ALL RIGHT. THAT'S IT. IF THERE'S A MOTION.

MOVE FOR APPROVAL.

SECOND.

MOVE AND SECOND. ANY FURTHER DISCUSSION? HEARING NONE. CALL FOR THE VOTE.

APPROVED UNANIMOUSLY.

ALL RIGHT. I BELIEVE THAT'S ALL OUR CONSENT ITEMS.

WE'LL MOVE TO PUBLIC HEARING.

ITEM 4A, HEARING TO CONSIDER INTRODUCTION FOR ZONING CODE AMENDMENT OR AMENDING THE MOVERN PARK MUNICAL CODE TO IMPLINT THE HOUSING ELEMENT TO THE GENERAL PLAN. IF THERE IS A REPORT.

Good evening, Mayor Wong, Mayor Pro Tem Ngo, and members of the City Council. My name is Jessica Serrano, Community Development Director, and this public hearing is for a zoning code amendment related to the implementation of our general plan. On July 23rd, 2024, the Planning Commission reviewed this ordinance and recommended that City Council adopt it with a 4-0 vote.

Just to provide some background for this item, the general plan land use element was approved by Measure JJ in November of 2020. Subsequently, the City Council approved an update to the general plan when they adopted the housing element in January of 2022.

As part of the general plan implementation efforts, the city initiated Our City, Our Plan in August 2023 to create consistency between the city's zoning regulations and the general plan. The work that is being done to update the zoning regulations will be phased out throughout the year upcoming year. Next slide.

To implement the housing element program seven, the proposed ordinance removes mention of densities in the zoning code to allow densities to default to the ones listed in the general plan land use element.

This slide outlines the densities contained in our general plan.

The image on the right best depicts it.

As you can see, the top image shows the multi-unit apartments or condominiums.

Those are at a density that portrays what a density of 16 to 30 dwelling units per acre looks like. It's generally two to four stories high.

The next image shows an image of potential townhomes at 8 to 16 dwelling units per acre. And this is typically a one to two story tall building. And then the image at the bottom, the single family residential, is up to eight dwelling units per acre.

And generally one to two stories. Next slide.

This next slide shows the portion of the zoning code amendments that implements program five, which is flexible parking standards.

And the proposed ordinance is implementing also state law limiting the city's ability to impose minimum parking requirements on developments within half a mile of high quality transit. Additionally, it provides flexible parking requirements for multifamily dwellings by not requiring covered parking.

It also reduces parking ratios for multifamily residential units with two or less bedrooms from two enclosed spaces to one space.

It also reduces guest parking from one guest parking space per unit to one guest parking space per four units. Next slide.

The zoning code amendments also implement program four of the housing element and these

proposed changes include updates to development and operational standards for emergency shelters

and supportive housing to comply with state law and these include allowing supportive

housing and emergency shelters in the OP office professional, the non-McCaslin Park Zone and and the R3, high-density multifamily residential zones.

It also establishes procedures stating that these uses must be approved ministerially, meaning at the staff level, if it complies with city standards. Additional development and operation...

includes operational standards for emergency shelters. At this time, it is recommended that City Council consider opening the public hearing

and taking testimonial and documentary evidence. After closing the public hearing, considering evidence, submitted and introducing and waiving

first reading of the ordinance amending Monterey Park Municipal Code to implement the housing

element under zoning code amendment 24-01 and taking any such additional action that

may be desired. I'm happy to respond to any questions at this point.

Thank you.

We will open up the public hearing.

And I believe there's one comment.

We received one written comment from Linda Ting.

She believes the city should start encouraging and facilitating viable opportunities for affordable housing development on city-owned properties.

In particular, the city should begin the process of prioritizing the following city-owned sites for the development of affordable homes for Lor-income families in our city. She specifically cites three locations, APN 5255-008, 900, 901, and 902. She states city-owned sites should be prioritized and developed exclusively for affordable housing

in which 100% of the units are affordable to low, very low, and extremely low-income families

and recommends the city sell or lease city-owned properties on a long-term basis

to housing developers in exchange for a long-term commitment to maintain all or

a portion of units as affordable housing. You should have received a copy of this

in your files. No other comments. Thank you. No public speakers? No public

speakers. All right we will close the public hearing and we'll open up to

council comments if there are any more questions. All right just to reiterate

WHAT WAS IN YOUR SLIDES, THE PARKING, THE REDUCTION FOR THE PARKING MINIMUMS IS, WE'RE JUST CONFORMING WITH WHAT THE STATE REQUIREMENTS ARE.

WE'RE NOT GOING FURTHER THAN THAT, RIGHT?

YES, THE STATE REQUIRES THAT THE CITY EVALUATE THE PARKING STANDARDS AND REDUCE ANY BARRIERS TO AFFORDABLE HOUSING.

SO THAT'S WHAT THIS IS ACHIEVING.

I KNOW THE ALHAMBORAY AVENUE DEVELOPMENT, THERE WERE CONCERNS EXPRESSED FROM THAT NEIGHBORHOOD COMMUNITY MEMBERS WHEN THAT PROJECT CAME TO COUNCIL OR WAS PRESENTED AT COUNCIL RECENTLY AROUND SOME OF THE PARKING.

just in general, just want to reiterate for anyone that may be watching, a lot of these requirements are what the state are, we're just required to implement what the state is mandating for cities to implement in terms of reducing parking minimums and addressing parking issues that have access where there is access to high quality transit, which includes bus stops.

That's correct.

All right, if there's no other comments or questions, I'll take we'll open up for a motion. I move there a second

I'll second. All right motion and second any further discussion hearing none call for the vote

Approved unanimously

MOVING TO ITEM 5A, CONSIDERATION AND POSSIBLE ACTION TO INTRODUCE AN WAVE FIRST READING OF ORDINCE

ADOPTING ENGINEERING TRAFFIC SURVEY FOR HELMAN BETWEEN ATLANIC AND NEW AVENUE REDUCING SPEED LIMIT ON HELMAN BETWEEN GARFIELD AND NEW.

TAKE IT AWAY, SEAN. GOOD EVENING AGAIN, HONORED MAYOR, MAYOR,

MAYOR, PRO TEM, AND CITY COUNCIL. SEAN IGOW, PUBLIC WORKS DIRECTOR. TONIGHT YOU HAVE FOR YOU AN ITEM TO CONSIDER AND POSSIBLE ACTION TO INTRODUCE AN WAVE FIRST READING OF AN ORDINANCE adopting an engineering and traffic survey for Helmut Avenue between Atlantic Boulevard and New Avenue and reduce the speed limit on Helmut Avenue between Garfield Avenue and New Avenue from 35 miles per hour to 30 miles per hour. As you're aware, the city completed a traffic study along Helmut Avenue, which led to the completion of several items, including replacement of all signage, updating of striping and pavement legends, painting of red curve for site visibility, new signs specifically for schools, and other items. Since then, the City of Alhambra initiated an engineering and traffic survey, or speed survey. We partnered with them on this item to evaluate the stretch of Hellman on the City of Monterey Parkside. The study reviewed the entire stretch of Hellman Avenue from Atlantic Avenue to New Avenue.

The proposed action would allow the consistency along the full stretch of Hellman to 30 miles per hour.

It is recommended the City Council open a public hearing and take such additional actions.

With that, I will take the questions. Thank you. So we do need a public hearing for this. All right. So are there any public comments?

No public comments.

I'll open it for public comment. It doesn't sound like there's any. No public comments. No. Close the public hearing. Open up to any council comments.

I have a question for Sean.

So what I'm looking at from New to Garfield, there's a high school there.

So that's student.

Isn't that typically 25 or that's 25 when school is present?

Correct.

So this is outside of that time zone, going to 30 instead of 35.

Correct. Okay.

Mr. Mayor? Yes.

Again, thank you for presenting this to see council. And again, I know that for those who represent that segment of Monarch Park, you know, one of the things we do here is about speeding.

And so what kind of measures will we be implementing?

or if I'm, I don't know if I'm jumping ahead myself to, again, to encourage people to slow down like, you know, flashing speed signals or even those, how do I say, the little bumps that make a noise when you are, I know like on Javon, when you go downhill, you know, you go down and you hit those bumps and you know, you hear those bumps.

I'm just curious, what are some of the measures we envision to encourage people to slow down?

So that was done as part of the initial traffic study that we did several months ago. And at that time, it wasn't recommended to put any additional measures in. So we can still evaluate that and see if there's a need to put in speed feedback signs. The rumble strips that we have on orange, that was more along the lines to let people know they're coming to a downhill and speed could potentially increase. But typically with normal traffic, we're going to do our speed limit signs. but if you want us to evaluate speed feedback signs, we can do that.

I would like to encourage some speed feedback measures only because, well, I think we have people come before us regarding Helmand but also because I think what happens too is that, again, just my observation is that especially if you are commuting either to work or home that oftentimes people use Hellman as a way to bypass either Garvey Avenue or the 10 freeway or because it is adjacent to if you're going north to Hambra or if you're going east to Rosemead. And I think that some speed or feedback, whatever you want to call it,

I think those measures are something we should look at.

Yeah, we can evaluate that.

We'll be evaluating on our side. We can talk to Alhambra and see if they're willing to do that as well, but on our side we'll evaluate that. Okay, thank you

I would just

second what council member hello said in terms of Exploring other options like speed effect signs and anything else we can potentially implement. Obviously It's a more complicated process since we share The street essentially with Alhambra whatever we can do to coordinate on both sides of Hellman to make sure that we're doing what we can to address safety issues

on that stretch of road. First, I fully support changing so that the speed limit is consistent

the whole way through the city. I appreciate that we're doing that. If there are other things that we can look at potentially implementing to help slow down traffic and make sure that people are traveling at the speed limit, like speed to evac signs or other potential design measures that maybe low cost to implement or quick to implement.

We'd love to make sure we're exploring that.

If those need to be brought back to council for action, I'm very open to that. With that, if there's no further questions or comments,

we'll open up for a motion.

Move for approval. Second.

Moved and second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, call for the vote.

Approved unanimously.

All right.

that's our final action item we'll move to city communications future agenda items

council members anything to announce

yes a couple things

this month's been pretty busy I think the summer's been pretty busy

as a teacher

thought I'd had some time off

but it was a lot of different stuff going on.

I just wanted to hit a point on two items.

Thank you to Parks and Rec and city staff

for the organization of Monterey Park Dodger Night.

It was a lot of fun. I know we still have a lot of games

being open for the idea of a second Dodger Night.

Had a lot of fun. Great seeing a lot of Monterey Park residents out there as well.

and had a lot of fun with all of the other council members as well. I also wanted to thank our police department. All of us had the opportunity to attend the promotion ceremonies, but also a lot of our retirees who were recognized that evening and to see a lot of new blood also coming in. So thank you so much to our police department and everything you do to keep our community safe. Obviously, the calls of the report you did today, you are our first resource and our first call to action whenever we are in trouble so we really appreciate everything that you do within our community you are definitely not only very valued but very important component within our community so appreciate all that you do

lastly I just wanted to say two things first and this is just for staff I wanted to say

how appreciative as a council member, as a parent, and as an educator I am of all the work that you do within our city. I know that sometimes a lot of work goes underappreciated, and so I wanted to say deeply how heartfelt I am, and just I want you to know, and I'm speaking to you that we really appreciate everything that you do. And there's never been a better moment to say that than tonight. I also would be remiss if I didn't address something.

Today, some accusations were made that were baseless. It's easy sometimes to come up to this podium

and to make these accusations that are baseless. It's easy to come up here and attack staff and employees when we know that there's never been a better time and a more important time to praise the work that you do, especially in a climate when we have job shortages and hard time filling a lot of these vacancies.

It's easy to come up here on this podium and to paint a picture of corruption that denigrates our staff and the work that you do, claiming that it's not transparent when we know that all documents are posted online, that all reports are online, and that everything is a matter of public information. It's easy to come up here and spill a lot of this rhetoric, but we know that this type

of dialogue and this type of language has no place and no home here in Monterey Park.

We all know very well that lies and fear tactics may be prevalent in different parts of the

country, but they have no place here. We also know that these types of tactics

don't work because what connects all of us is truth, transparency, and love. And as a parent, as a teacher, a civics teacher, and as a council member, that was elected here, I encourage everyone who's listening and everyone who was listening earlier

to do your own research, to read staff reports, to come up with your own conclusions,

and don't let anyone else tell you what to think.

And don't take these false accusations at face value.

And in the Christian faith and thought, remember that light will always overcome darkness.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any comments?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll be brief.

done by the work of the staff who take time out of their own families. And I know all of us commend you. I know especially the events that are outdoors. I know parks and recs are always there. In fact, when I went to the resource fair at the tail end, there was our staff out there just making sure that people were safe and also giving out information to residents. And so, again, thank you so much to the staff for all that you do and to being accessible to our community.

Thank you very much.

I attend the Small Business Expo and networking events. Thank you so much for our economic development team. At the new Holiday Inn Hotel, it was a wonderful event for people who ask questions, meet new friends, and do business. I suggest you do it periodically and have a theme of certain type of business, doing it at a certain day like, you know, home decor and improvement or professional services so that people can attend depending on their needs. So something to think about maybe in the future. We also attend the Where is a Disposal Office grant opening on Monday, seeing the brand-new garbage truck that they are ready to roll and the new trash bins that we received in the last two weeks, I feel relief. We are excited to see the new team in the office that they put together, and it is good progress. I wanted to echo the Council Member Sanchez just mentioned here.

As council, we work very well as a team. I have zero tolerance of corruption.

I don't know where the comments come from, but money cannot buy me. So I want to make sure that so far I work very well. I see the good teamwork here as council. I see staff. I can tell you I really, really have zero tolerance. If I see anything that's not right, I will speak up, and I would not be a teammate to partner with someone that corrupted. Because, yeah, if you know me, then, yeah, check my history, check all my voting. And nothing, money cannot buy me. So thank you.

I want to just shout out, like, for example, all the events that I went through, I looked at it, 95% of that is parks and recs. So Robert and your team, thumbs up. And then PD was the other one. So just rehashing what we went through, National Night Out, that was PD and Parks and Rec. Small Business Expo was our business development

at the Holiday Inn.

Barbie Night, the movie, that was Parks and Rec. Dodger Night, Parks and Rec. And I think we had over 200 people show up to the Dodger game. And that's a great event for a city, for people to get to know the neighbors and collaborate and talk to your neighbors to see what we're doing as a city. Then we had MPPD, the promotion retirement ceremony, and I'm pretty sure Parks and Rec had to do with that too

because it was coordinating the amputator.

Then the Mario Park Resource Fair, that was just this past weekend, providing assistance to those who really need it, and that was out by Ting Plaza or ABC Plaza. and I saw parks and recs, I saw a library, I saw everyone in the city department out there trying to help residents who need help.

And I missed one here.

This is actually in the city of Hambra, but really it was for the AAEDE economic job fair and opportunity. So the mayor and I got an opportunity to speak to probably 2,000 people that day over the entire Manson Court area. just showcasing the St. Gabriel Valley and in particular Hamlin Marry Park where jobs are and how day meaning entry level jobs to mid-level management, how people can actually look for jobs in the St. Gabriel Valley. It was a good job for that we host with AADE who's actually office in our city. They host it once a year and they have other events throughout the year. So that is my report.

Thank you.

Thank you. Attended many of the same events.

Appreciate staff, all the work that goes into putting together all of these events. I also want to appreciate staff and the whole team for a lot of the, right, we just stopped at the economic development strategic plan. That was many, many months of intense, very strategic engagement with community members, community leaders to arrive to the point of having a draft plan and having something for us to adopt today and i hope that we will continue to engage the many stakeholders that were part of that process as he worked to implement uh the specific action items in that plan i also appreciate everyone for the parks master plan process continues uh i want to encourage everyone to continue to make your feedback known i think we're closing this the survey's closed officially it's

CLOSE.

BUT ROBERT IS STILL HAPPY TO TAKE INPUT FROM ANYONE WHO MAY HAVE BEEN LEFT OUT. AND THERE WILL BE PLENTY OF OPPORTUNITIES WHEN THE DRAFT PLAN COMES AND OTHER ELEMENTS OF THE PLAN COME TO COUNCIL DOWN THE LINE. AND I THINK THERE ARE ELEMENTS FOR THE COMMUNITY TO CONTINUE TO ENGAGE WITH ON THE PLAN AS IT GETS FINALIZED OVER THE NEXT FEW MONTHS. BUT ALSO WANT TO APPRECIATE EVERYONE THAT'S BEEN SHOWING UP TO THE SANTERN PARK ADVISOR

REVIEW COMMITTEE MEETINGS. We've had three meetings. We have our final one.

Next Thursday, hope people will show up 6 p.m. across the park at the service clubhouse. Been great to see residents from the community and other stakeholders turn out for this process and turn out to help the community and help the city provide a vision for what's happening and what's going to happen and what can happen in the Saturn Park area. appreciate everyone being part of that process and looking forward to the final meeting coming up where we'll have I anticipate a very substantive discussion about what recommendation will come out of that for the council to

discuss itself

hand something here but I guess this might

be an action I'm Carl may stop me but But with the Olympics, the Paris Olympics over, all attention is starting to turn to Los Angeles Center of Preparedness.

And it's not just the city of Los Angeles.

Much of the wider region is actually hosting events and going to be hosting guests. And a lot of the many, many tens and hundreds of thousands of people that are going to come for the Olympics. I think it's right we got four short years make sure we're prepared as a region and a state as a state for the world turning its eyes on our area Back in 1984 of course the city of Monterey Park hosted an Olympic event field hockey at East LA College I know we're not currently no one's reached out to us about potentially hosting an event here in Monterey Park And I know that they're finalizing a lot of the venues already but I'd love to see how we can well one, make sure the city of Murray Park is part of planning for receiving so many thousands and tens and hundreds of thousands of tourists that are going to be coming into the city to make sure we're leveraged. We just passed our

economic distribution plan for events

like that and the World Cup and others that are coming to the region. Make sure we're taking as much advantage of those economic opportunities and tourist opportunities and hospitality opportunities here in the city. We have a new hotel the Holiday Inn that just opened up, and a lot of opportunities to make sure we're leveraging our small businesses, our restaurants, and our hospitality industry here at Maori Park for those events for tourism that we know will come. So whatever we can do to kind of make sure we're perceiving those conversations from a regional level, let's make sure we're doing that. But also maybe we could tee up a letter to the LA28 Organizing Committee to express our openness and support for welcoming an event. If there is a need for a venue, East LA College or something else in the city that might make sense for any of those potential events. We'd love to be able to explore the opportunity to bring athletes in some sort of more direct activity from the Olympics to our city again just as we did in 1984. If that's a possibility, we'd love to make sure we're approaching that and strategically working to potentially bring that opportunity to bear. If there's openness to the council on that, maybe we could have staff draft up a letter to the LA28 committee or staff there to express our interest and our openness in partnering with them.

All right, got some nods. All right, let's do that.

And it would be great to continue

our city Olympic tradition in 2028.

With that, if there's no further comments or questions,

we'll adjourn the meeting at 8.40 p.m.

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