City Council Meeting — December 4, 2024

Thank you. It's all storage.

Every year, they get better age. That's right. It's sustainable.

Water-resistant.

I'm dying to know.

Thank you.

No. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

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

Thank you.

All right, good evening.

We'll get our meeting started.

Welcome, everyone, to our city council meeting for December 4th.

We'll start with our land acknowledgment.

We'd like to acknowledge that the land we inhabit today was once known as the Tovangaar,

home of the Gavaleo Tongva people.

We show our respect to the Gavaleo Tongva people, as well as all indigenous people, past, present, and future, and honor their labor as original caretakers of this land.

Commit to uplifting the Gavaleo Tongva people,

invite you to acknowledge the history, and join us in caring for this land.

With that, we will call in order.

Well, if you can all join me for the flag salute.

We don't have our explorers tonight, but the flags are already there.

If everyone can stand, release your right hand over your heart.

Ready to begin.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America

and to the republic for which it stands,

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

Thank you all.

Can I have the city clerk do the roll call?

Council Member Sanchez? Present.

Council Member Lo? Council member Yu? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Ngo? Present. Mayor Wong? I'm here. We have a quorum. Thank you.

All right. We'll move to any agenda items, additions, deletions, changes, or adoptions.

No changes. None from the council. We'll move on then to public communications.

Are there any public comments for items not on the agenda?

Any public comments for sorry yes, hold on first speaker Gina Garcia

It's easier to hear you at the microphone

Hello, guys. My name is Gina Garcia, and I'm a parent at Monterey Highlands Elementary, and I'm here today to advocate for better traffic safety conditions around the school. So basically, there are speed bumps going up Pat Carroll Way, which is the entrance to the elementary school. However, there are no speed bumps on the way down Pat Carroll Way where it's going downhill and a lot a lot of times there's parents that are in a hurry to get out of the drop-off line to get to work so they're rushing and speeding downhill when there's kids trying to cross and get to get to their class before 8 a.m so I was I'm not sure who's responsible for that I don't know if it's a district property or city property however I think it's city property. So I would just like to request your consideration to put speed bumps there. The second thing is at the exit of Pat Carroll Way. Like I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of families trying to cross. There's a four-way intersection right there at Kasuda, and I think it's, what is the street? Copaway. And there's also the exit. So there's a four-way stop. And families are having trouble crossing all of those crosswalks, including the cross area at the exit of Pat Carroll Way. And I've personally seen people drive into the driveway while children are trying to cross that driveway to get to school. and I would hate to see something tragic happen. So I would like to see what your thoughts are in terms of getting another crossing guard. I think it would really help. I know you guys put a no left-hand turn there, which is great. However, people are still breaking the law and they're still turning left when kids are in the crossing area. So I think it would be helpful to have a crossing guard at the minimum at the four-way stop at Copa and Casuda Drive. So that was something that I would like for you guys to consider. I realize that we already have another crossing guard on the other side of Casuda Canyon, but there's just so much traffic. There's a lot of pedestrians, and we don't just have like an elementary school. We have elementary and junior high. We have TK. That's a lot of students. We have 950-something students. That's 900 families coming in and out of the school every day. So please consider putting another crossing guard at the exit or at Casuda

and Copa. And then one other thing that I think would be helpful that we would think would be

helpful is that you could put better signage, school zone signage maybe perhaps, in the area along Casuda Canyon and Baranca as well, because people are speeding down Baranca to turn either left or right on Casuda Canyon. So that's another thing.

Let's see.

And then I did see at the very beginning of the school year, I did notice a very big presence of Monterey Park PD, which I was so grateful to see them there.

I feel like it really helped in terms of the behavior.

But I just hope that we can still continue to have them kind of like patrol the area

just to kind of slow folks down a little bit.

So that was one thing that I would like to request from Monterey Park PD.

And then I have one other subject that I was just curious about or hoping that you guys would take under consideration.

So we are a Alhambra Unified School District school, but we are located in the city of Monterey Park. And we don't have an after-school sports program for our kids, specifically the junior high kids. I know that the other schools that are actually located in Alhambra do have these benefits. So I know it's a complex issue because of the district versus the city and the location.

So I was hoping that you guys maybe would consider even just a pilot program. I think all schools deserve to have an after-school sports program for our youth. I think our youth, you know, deserve that. And so even if you were to consider maybe a pilot program where we see how it goes, maybe you guys subsidize an after-school program. Maybe PTA jumps in. Maybe district also jumps in. Some sort of partnership. I would just love it if you guys would consider that. That is all for now. Thank you. Thank you.

Next speaker, Erin Riches-Wong.

Hi.

I'm Erin Riches-Wong, and I live in District 1 in Monterey Park, just a couple of blocks away from Monterey Highlands Elementary. So last week I did write to Mayor Wong, since he is our council member for District 1. And also, like Gina, I expressed some concerns about traffic safety in and around the school. It's mainly in the morning, because that's when you have everybody arriving at the same time. The dismissal times are different, so it's not as bad in the afternoon. But the morning is when it's really tough. So I'm a parent who walks my child to school. She's in fifth grade, but I still do it because of the traffic safety issues. We live, we go, are on the opposite side of what Gina was talking about. We live on Verde Vista, so we're going through that intersection of Verde Vista and Casuta Canyon, where there is a crossing guard currently, and she does a great job. I really like her and I'm grateful for her every day. but there's just so much volume coming in the neighborhood because most parents do drive they're not walking that i think there's i still notice bad behavior even with the crossing guard because people i guess are frustrated because of the congestion the closer it gets to eight o'clock the worse it gets so but that intersection is usually okay but where we really struggle the

most is the entrance driveway. So it's Pat Carroll, the northern entrance to Pat Carroll, where you turn into Highlands Park and the tennis courts. There's the option state preschool also. So there's no crossing guard there. It's a really short crosswalk. You'd think it would be okay, but because of most parents are making a left turn into Pat Carroll, almost no one makes a right. They're making a left because they're coming from the north. So if you're on foot crossing, they are in your blind spot because you can't really see, especially if you're a kid. I notice that kids don't really look.

I mean, they check the crosswalk, but they don't look much. So when I'm with my daughter and there are other kids, then I look for those kids.

I've also started using my phone on mornings where I can manage it.

I actually record what's going on and I've noticed improved behavior in that instance.

But before I started doing that, I saw a lot of close calls similar to what Gina was talking

about where people were entering the crosswalk while pedestrians are still in it, which is really dangerous with kids. And that is such a huge pain point.

And I think the only way to really address it in the short term is to have a crossing

guard there, to have somebody there.

I know it would be hard to maybe fill that shift because it's just a morning shift like 7.30 to 8 is when they're needed but it would make all the difference in the world because I'm concerned that eventually

there is going to be an incident and somebody is going to get hit by a car

which would be terrible

so the other thing I wanted to mention was the jaywalking and earlier in the school year

like maybe about a month ago there was a fairly consistent police presence in the neighborhood in the mornings and I did watch some parents get

I did watch some parents get cited for jaywalking because it's common to park on the opposite side of Casuda Canyon like sort of the it winds around the north or west side of Casuda canyon opposite from the school.

! So people want to park there and then run across to drop off their kids in a hurry because it's a hassle to go back to go to go back to the four way stop and cross with the crossing the crossing. They easily can almost get hit by a car. So people are still doing that. So I think either. So people are still doing that. So I think either more police presence or maybe some very compelling signs urging people not to jaywalk.

I don't know. But it really is something that is just super dangerous.

I think that's all I wanted to say. I think the traffic has gotten worse in the morning in the past two years.

I think it's always been challenging in the morning, but the past two years, something has changed and it's gotten more challenging.

And I just feel like immediate action is needed. Thank you.

Any other speakers?

Last speaker? Goran Prieto-Vatana?

Good evening, everyone. My name is Goretti Prieto-Botana. I am a resident of Monterey Park.

Like Ms. Garcia and Ms. Wong, I too am a parent of a child at Monterey Highlands Elementary.

And the issue I'm bringing forth is one that Ms. Garcia has also brought up. It pertains to youth sports offerings, after school options, to be more precise.

and I think we all know that these are beneficial activities for children for a variety of reasons. They're fully documented. I don't think I need to, you know, rehash them.

So in the interest of time, I won't, but health benefits, you know, discipline, teamwork, all of those are there. They're fantastic things that we all want our children to have the possibility to partake in as they are growing up. for the sake of example I'll bring up something that I believe is known to everybody here that is that in the neighboring city of Alhambra by way of the city those schools who are within a USD and in the city of Alhambra are able to benefit from options such as basketball at the elementary school level and the request tonight would be to have all of you consider how it may be possible to offer that to AUSD schools that are in Monterey Park. I just heard Gina mention pilot programs, anything that the school or parents can do.

We have a very active PTA group at Monterey Highlands Elementary,

so please do talk to us, do communicate with us to convey how we may assist so that this is possible at some point. thank you no other speakers thank you very quickly I just want to respond quickly I know it's not on the agenda so Kyle's gonna stop me if I go on too

long but appreciate all the parents that came out from Highlands and appreciate you reaching out by email as well I know we've been in touch with city staff Diana's reached out and I believe those conversations are happening about a year A year or a plus ago, Mr. B. also reached out, and I know the school administration and our city staff also had conversations, which added some safety improvements. I live on Kasuta Canyon. I personally experience morning rush drop-off period. I do my best to avoid driving anywhere near Highlands at 8 or any time 15 minutes before 8 a.m., because it's a complete mess. I totally feel and understand what you're saying and the concerns that are being expressed. I know we're having these conversations about what we can do. I hope that you understand that we can't, there aren't unlimited resources and unlimited things that we can do. At the end of the day, if people are going to break rules, there are things we can do and should do, and I think we can look at exploring what else we can do as a city to address some of these concerns, but there's no perfect kind of situation that's going to alleviate I think everything that we're talking about at the end of the day there are a lot of bodies trying to get onto campus at the same time we have to figure out how we can work with the school to to see how we can if there are things we can be creative about adjusting addressing some of those concerns and helping us spread out the number of people kind of coming onto the campus

trying to get on the campus at the same time but I want to assure the parents that showed up that

we're very concerned about this as well we share this concern which is why we've had these conversations with the school site leadership and also a Harmon Unified School District will continue to reach out and work with them and hope that the parents that have shown up tonight and others in the PTA and everyone else that's been engaged on this issue in particular continues to work with city staff and would love to explore how we can be creative in deploying resources that we might be able to deploy to address some of these concerns in the in

the very short term as quickly as possible. So thank you.

And we're happy to continue this conversation offline. Any other comments

from Council? And I know it's not on agenda item, but if, for example, again, because I used to be a school board member, but if people are, like, say, double parking, we're issuing tickets, right? I mean, to parents or anyone that's

double parking or illegally parking, right? So

Mayor, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council,

So our police department does actively enforce, but yes, in the morning, all the schools are starting at the same time. So our resources are spread in the morning during that very narrow window of drop-off. We try to enforce at certain schools, and then we kind of rotate around. So correct, we're not at every school site every single morning. We try to spread ourselves out to the best that we can.

citations are

you know yes we does our police department use citations yes but often times do we do a combination of warnings and education

definitely

so but citations if the

behavior especially if it's a repetitive

behavior we're seeing the same drivers doing the same behavior over and over again yes citations will be issued and we know sometimes we get parents that will then call us with complaints about those citations as well. So we understand that there's, you know, we're trying to find a balance. Driver behavior in general, we are working back with the school district. We're working back with the principal. We're working back to try to offer some parent education to hopefully improve behavior. But ultimately, it is very difficult to engineer a perfect scenario when a human being is behind the wheel and in a rush oftentimes that's that's why you have these poor driving habits unfortunately but we will continue to have those conversations recently in the last two years we have done safety improvements around multiple schools highland school was one of them where it was analyzed and pedestrian push button crosswalk was installed and some signage improvements were made at that time as well. So we actively look at our school sites. We make modifications as we can, but we will continue to look at Highlands to see what we can do to try to make the situation a little bit better. Again, we think some parent education could be helpful because we're guessing the majority of the people in that area at that time are parents coming into that neighborhood to drop off their students.

And we'll work back with the schools to see.

We know in the afternoon the improvement is there because of the timing of let out for the students is staggered. So that could be a potential discussion point with us

with the school district as well.

Mayor, if I can just, I think I also heard from the comments about being involved with the PTA. if there's a way we can partner also and do some of that advocacy work through the PTA. I'm a parent as well, and I drop off my daughters every morning as well. I know how that can be, especially when everyone's dropping off their kids at the same time. But whatever we can do to reach out to parents and partner with the PTA to be able to do some of that parent education. I think at the end of the day, parents want their kids to be safe. I think we all want our kids to be safe in our city as well. So I think we all have the same mindset and the same idea. at hand so whatever we can do to help facilitate some of that and i think it's going to be it's going to be multi-faceted it can't just be district but whatever we can do to partner i think i think we we hear what your concerns are and we have the same concerns as well so thank you for

coming out tonight being civically engaged yet again thank you for coming out i'll throw in my

two cents i actually had the same conversation earlier today with the principal at uh hillcrest and one of the administrators at Garvey, who actually lives right next to Marri Vista. Same issue every school year.

It's the same problem.

You know, we send a police patrol. People behave, and then they tend to forget the holiday rush. We'll continue to kind of monitor the situation. The parents, your active role is speak with the other parents,

go to the PTA meetings,

and tell parents that you need to behave as well because you're really setting an example for the children.

If you're rushing through, if you're coming in late, it's always the late parents.

I mean, we'll look around, it's always the late parents. I'm guilty of one because I was a late parent at one point. But over time, you just have to figure out how to fix it because the moment you send police, there's going to be tickets, there's going to be issues.

We always get through this. And I think one thing I heard earlier was that

there are 950 students at Highlands. That's a big school for an elementary school. So let us talk to the Hanborough Unified folks to figure out, is that number maybe too big for that campus? Because certain schools have certain size, and if it gets too big, then maybe that's part of the issue.

So give us some time. We'll talk to the school district. Thank you.

Thanks.

Thanks. And just on the after school sports activities, I know we're not agendized, but I would love to explore opportunities for that.

I know that came up in one of the town hall meetings I had at Highlands maybe a year or so ago. If we can follow up on that on the staff level to begin conversations and explore.

Quickly just respond, Mr. Mayor, to the council. Earlier this year, we have had conversations with Alhambra Unified about a pilot program in the schools that are in Monterey Park. Utilized in a partnership, definitely we understand as city staff, we've struggled with part-time staff in general. So recruiting and maintaining part-time staff in today's society is not easy. but we have reached out to another sports,

youth sports organization to help partner

to see if there's a way that they could help provide some staffing in conjunction with the city,

working with providing some equipment and then working back with the schools

to have that kind of partnership. So we'll follow up with the school district to see where they got in those conversations, but we are still evaluating an after-school youth program.

Carl's going to cut us off here.

So it sounds like we can have these conversations, and staff is already having some of these conversations with Elham Unified. Let's continue that, and if the staff can keep the council apprised on these conversations. I'd also just take an opportunity to plug our parks system master plan, which is ongoing. I think Robert's in the back.

We can connect you.

would love to make sure that that idea for youth sports is part of the Parks Master Plan and as we work on programming and all that stuff. So if we can make sure we're getting that input into the plan process, I think that would be great. With that, if there's no further comments from Council, we'll move on from Public Communication. Move to Staff Communications, City Manager's Office.

Alright. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Council. just wanted to give a quick pitch and invite the public to next week's Monterey Park City Council

reorganization and installation ceremony. That's going to be taking place Tuesday, December 10th

at 6 p.m. right here in City Hall. It should be a big party. We're going to be swearing in

Mayor Pro Temgo as mayor. We will be swearing in our council members for District 2, 3, and 4.

District 2 Council Member Elect Elizabeth Yang will be coming in

as Mayor Pro Tem and we will be saying goodbye

to Council Member Yvonne Yu

so everybody is invited to join

this is free, it's open to the public it should be a lot of fun and we will have refreshments following

so please come out

if you're not able to come in person

this will also be streamed and you can watch it at home

thank you

is that it? All right. Thank you for the update. Any questions for City Manager's Office?

If not, looking forward to next Tuesday, 6 o'clock here.

Finance Department, Communications.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor, Pro Tem, Council Members.

Martha Garcia, Finance Director. We are in the process of developing the 2025-2029 plan to identify the top needs for affordable housing, community development, and supportive services for low and moderate low-income Monterey Park residents. The five-year consolidated plan is a planning document required by the Housing and Urban Development, we know as HUD, as a condition of receiving...

funds may be used to meet the short and long-term needs of our community. Residents can join our workshops on Monday, December 9th at 6 p.m. here at the community room or January 28th at 6 p.m.

also at the community room. And we also have a survey online and there's a QR code or you can

go on to our city website uh the the housing um housing program website our city overall website

and we also have it in the cascades the same information and i also have priscilla davila

davila on just in case there's a question thank you martha any questions for finance department

Really quick on this.

So these are in-person meetings planned. Are there any other outreach opportunities that are planned to help put together the five-year plan?

We have the survey on, so anybody can go and take the survey.

And then the five-year draft plan will come to council?

It will definitely come to council.

and then

Have we done any targeted outreach to existing affordable housing providers here in the city like link? I don't know if they still operate the housing across the street or Union station homeless services that provides some services in the area

And others to invite them. No, no we have not but we can yeah

I think if we can that we good if not at least send them the link for the survey so that we can get there and put if there are other

existing

service providers or homeless or not homeless but affordable housing developers I think we did a roundtable for them a couple months ago maybe we can solicit some input from them as well in terms of ideas for how to utilize or program the CDBG and home funds okay all right thank you if nothing

else. Thank you. We'll move on to Fire Department.

Good evening, everyone. Captain David Goetz from the Fire Department and here to talk to you about some holiday safety tips.

with the holidays coming up and people are starting to decorate their houses outside and in

one of the things that we can do is make sure that everyone is safe that can be Christmas trees so to kind of grab your attention with just how dangerous Christmas trees can be and how quickly a Christmas tree fire can spread we have a little video for you

3, 2, 1, ignition.

So that's at 45 seconds right there. So that's 45 seconds right there.

Should a Christmas tree catch fire, that's not even going to give time for the number one fire department in the area that you guys have

Monterey Park fire

give us time to get there and put it out

we're not even that good

so 70% of Christmas tree fires are December and January

I know you think when how come it's not 100

because some people do miss the cut off and don't always throw them away

and they end up kind of being around the house.

And we'll kind of get back to that, circle around.

Some of the leading causes for Christmas tree fires are that electrical failures.

You know, throughout the year we store our Christmas lights in attics and sheds,

and they're not, you know, properly stored.

Rats or, you know, possums, raccoons may get to them, kind of chew.

take a look at your electrical lights before you put them up in your tree so that if those

cords aren't, you know, all the way 100%, don't put them in a tree. That could burn up that quickly. The other leading cause 20% of the time is that there's a heating source that's too close. Maybe you put it too close to a fireplace or you have a space heater that's too close to your Christmas tree. It's starting to get pretty cold, and if you have those heating sources on, that could ignite your Christmas tree. Some of the other things you can do to help prevent, make sure that when you

buy your Christmas tree, don't buy the one that's on sale that looks a little old. Spend the extra

money and buy the green one that's fresh, all right? Safety is no thing to skimp on, okay?

Okay, make sure you water it every day.

I think you would be really surprised how much water even a dead Christmas tree will continue to soak up day after day.

If you go three days and you kind of fill inside the basin for your Christmas tree,

it could have soaked up and taken all the water that was in there. So make sure daily you're adding water to that Christmas tree. If it gets too long without it, it will start to dry up.

And the first thing to go are those needles, and that is going to lead to a quick fire spread.

And make sure you don't have any candles. So where do we put our Christmas trees? You know, along the wall and corners. Also along those walls, we like to put decorative candles, and those can be leading causes to fires.

Other things to do to stay safe, you know, when we're leaving the house, make sure that we're turning the lights that are in our tree off.

When we go to bed, turn our lights off, whether we're setting up a timer or whether we're just doing it ourselves automatically. One, let's be a little frugal and save on our electric bill.

And two, let's also be safe.

and then circling back to like I said that 30 percent I'm sorry next slide the 30 percent of

the the Christmas tree fires that are actually outside of December and January people that miss

the window of when to dispose of Christmas trees that is going to be from Christmas on to the third

Saturday in January when your regular trash pickup day is you can put your Christmas tree out with

your trash. If it's over six feet tall, you're going to have to cut the tree in half. If it has

any flocking or fire retardants on the Christmas tree, unfortunately, the wear is not going to

accept the Christmas tree. You need to put it in with your green waste, but not, and take all the

ornaments off. I know, like I need to tell you, like you were going to be throwing away those

things anyways but do you know take it all the the lights and ornaments off and tinsel as well

and then last slide coming up two Saturdays from now the 14th up at Sequoia Park we are going to be having our next quarterly community preparedness clinic we do have these come on out we have our our CERT trailer, which has all of our sample utilities, so like our gas shut off, our water shut off, our electrical shut off, so in case of an emergency like an earthquake or, you know,

if there was a mudslide or, you know, like a little wildfire kind of if you're, you know,

by the hillsides, we can kind of teach you how to be prepared, what to do in case of emergency.

We have some disaster preparedness, kind of like cash kits.

Not cash as in money. I wish we had those. Cash as in supplies.

So things that you are going to want to have on hand.

We have just some things that you can kind of look to take back and ideas

so that you have that prepared at the house,

so that you and your family, should there ever be an emergency, you're prepared. And then things also to think about

like exit drills in case of a fire and other things.

So bring your family out. Again, that's going to be at Sequoia Park. We're going to be from 9 to noon

Saturday, December 14th. And that's Sequoia Park at 750

Ridgecrest Avenue. Look forward to seeing you there.

Any questions? Thank you. Any questions from Council?

well first of all thank you for all of this information because I know that every year we get a Christmas tree and I think a lot of residents in Monterey Park do the same thing and sometimes we maybe are unaware of some of the safety things that we should be doing within our home in terms of keeping our families and homes and neighbors safe so thank you for a lot of that information I hope that there's a way we can disseminate some of this information out to the community so they are doing whatever it is they need to do to keep their families safe during these months and getting rid of trees early, right, and holding on to them for months

so they can burn down their homes?

I do know that the tree removal was out in our Cascades. The information also does go out on the fire department's Instagram.

We have information that goes out, tips, whether it's PSA videos

and also just slides and kind of information that goes out.

We try and get information out to try and help keep the public safe as well as entertaining,

which is fun little videos of cooking and fires and other things to keep people. Thank you so much.

I know we have some Monterey Highlands parents, so I hope that was informative for you guys to share with your fellow parents as well in Monterey Highlands.

Thank you so much.

Again, thank you very much also for that great presentation. I think it always brings it home when you see a video of how fast these fires spread. I'm kind of curious, I mean, like from, say, last year, did we see a spike in home fires, not just during Christmas but also, like, during Thanksgiving? You know, I know a lot of people, often they dip their turkey into those oil fires.

So when it comes to cooking fires, Thanksgiving is the number one day, the day for the most amount of cooking fires.

The second and third day for the most amount of cooking fires is Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

When it comes to deep frying turkeys and having the turkey not all the way thawed out can lead to a deep fry fire.

those occurrences have gone down

with just the amount of PSAs and knowledge that has gone out repeatedly.

Thankfully, we haven't, at least as far as I know,

haven't seen it. Christmas tree fires have been on

the decline. Thankfully, hopefully, our efforts of getting the word out on safety has proved fruitful.

I have a question then do you recommend us to use the plastic Christmas tree I mean that would be way better

to avoid fire

you know

whatever is your personal choice I can't say if nostalgia and smell or what

if the proper safety is taken that either one is going to be just as safe

as long as you're safe about it.

But if safety isn't taken in mind, then I guess a plastic one could be safer

if you're just going to neglect it.

Thank you.

Well, Scott, I really appreciate the video. I've seen it in the past, but it's just amazing how quickly fire kind of gobbles up that place. So not to try to be funny here, but you really can kind of do a PSA and say not gone in 30 seconds, but gone in 45. And that's how quickly the tree in the house will be gone. So let's continue to spread that message so that we all be living safely through the holidays.

Thank you. Absolutely.

And just so everyone knows, that was a reference to a movie that was also a remake for those who may not be familiar.

More of a house protector.

But no, thank you to the fire department. I appreciate the updates.

And I know that we're helping to spread the word and continue to utilize our channels to help remind people about some of these safety tips.

So I appreciate that.

I think we're good unless there are any questions.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Have a good night.

Thank you.

And we do feel safe with the best fire department in the area.

We'll move on to library updates.

And you'll have to top that, sorry.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Portem, and City Council. My name is L.V. Frazier, and I'm the Senior Children's Librarian at the Monterey Park Bruggemeier Library.

So I'm here to let you know all the cool programs we have going on during the month of December. So first up, we have our Books and Blankets Winter Reading Program that is taking place from December 16th to January 4th. So kids, teens, and adults can register online on Beanstack and log their time spent reading during the winter for a chance.

This program is generously sponsored by Friends of the Library and Library Foundation. This program is sponsored by Friends of the Library and Library Foundation. session will also cover discrimination and harassment as well as human trafficking in the workplace and what immigration relief may be available to trafficking survivors. This workshop will be presented in both English and Mandarin. Next slide. Coming up this Saturday at 2 p.m. in

the Friends Room, we have a National Letter Writing Day celebration with Editor Sue Hodson as she

discusses her latest book, I Promise You I'll Be Home, a collection of letters from the then 21-year-old LA Times columnist Al Martinez to his bride during the Korean War. Next slide, please.

Also on Saturday at 10 a.m. in the friend's room, we will be welcoming a local art school, Arts for

All, to present a free kids art workshop for ages 5 to 14. Arts for All specializes in teaching

drawing, sketching, and painting to kids of all ages. All right, and coming up a little bit later in the month, on Thursday, December 19th at 2 p.m., teens are invited to a gift wrapping workshop, so they will learn various methods to turn their wrapping disasters into works of art.

Okay. And last, our literacy office is working hard this winter to provide winter workshops and English conversation classes while learners wait for the spring semester. So registration for January workshops is still open, so you can visit our LAMP office on the

second floor to register for our January workshops. Follow us on social media. That's all I have.

Thank you. Any questions, comments? No real questions. I just wanted to thank you for the

presentation and all of the amazing programming. And again, I'm glad there's parents here so you can see a lot of the amazing programming happening at the library. Bring your kids to. Happening throughout the month of December. So I want to share I auto-renewed my books today.

Thank you. Awesome.

I appreciate all the programming from the library. If there are, I know the library does host immigration and the LAMP program also helps to support some of those folks that are seeking citizenship status and there are other citizenship resources and programs. If we look at other opportunities to help continue to promote those and expand some of those offerings in the coming months, I think

that would be great to explore. Definitely. We're looking

into that. Thank you. If there's no other questions, thank you to the library. We'll go on to police department, Chief Lease.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, City Council, Scott Weiss, Chief of Police. I'm here today to talk to you a little bit about the upcoming holiday safety tips that we typically put out.

I'm going to talk first about some holiday shopping tips for people that are going out not shopping from home on the computer.

I will talk about that. But this is where you're physically going out to a shopping center.

a lot of this is common sense and common sense kind of leads the day with not only

safety but with some of the traffic issues we were discussing earlier with public comment a lot of it has to do with common sense

but first off and this is number one and I tell my wife and kids this on a regular basis they need to be aware of their surroundings and everybody needs to be aware of their surroundings when they're out shopping don't have your face buried in your phone

Concentrate on where you are. Look at what's going on around you. Look at who's watching you walking to and from businesses in the bank. It's all very, very important.

We had a robbery today of a lady who left the bank and was folLod and was not paying attention to what was going on around her, and they stole her purse.

It happens. You have to kind of disengage from social media and from your phone and pay attention to what's going on around you. common sense also park in a well-lit parking lot most of our shopping centers here in town are well lit there's a lot of traffic there's security park someplace where you've got a lot of lighting

and you can see and people can see you don't leave valuables in your car where they can be seen

that goes hand in hand with if you are parking your car and then you get out and you take your expensive items and put them in the trunk of your car where everybody can see you do that, it kind of defeats the purpose also. So try to plan before you travel to go shopping so that if you look inside the car, there's no Louis Vuitton purse sitting there. There's no laptop. There's no anything that's sitting there. Common sense. Lock your vehicle. You'd be surprised how many people do not lock their vehicle. It's the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor. All of the rules that were in place under the old administration at the DA's office were repealed today. We're back to prosecuting people for crimes. We're back to people going to jail for drugs. We're back to people going to jail for stealing and for burglary and for all those things that we weren't getting prosecutions for. All of those rules got repealed today. So we don't want to encourage criminals, but a lot of common sense. lock your car. The same goes at home at night. If your car's unlocked and they open your car, it's a petty theft. If your car is locked and they break in, it's a felony. It's a burglary. Avoid carrying large amounts of cash. This goes hand in hand with knowing your surroundings, being aware of what's going on. If you are walking out of the bank and you're counting your stack of money as you're walking to your car, that's probably not a good thing to do. You would be surprised how many people do that. They carry it in their hand to the car. They walk out, and as they're walking out, they're putting it in their purse. Criminals look for those kind of things. So a lot of that has to do with common sense when we're shopping. Next slide, please. Home delivery. I know that very few people in the United States actually have products delivered to their home. There's this new company called Amazon out there that is just starting off. We don't know if they're going to survive or not, but they will because my wife invests most of my paycheck in Amazon.

You can have packages delivered to a safe delivery location.

Amazon partners with other businesses in the community, and they have lockers. You can have Amazon deliver your product to an Amazon locker and go and take it from that locker for safe delivery.

You can utilize a post office box. You can utilize a neighbor if they're willing to cooperate.

There's a lot of places you can get stuff delivered safely to where it's not sitting on your porch.

You can arrange for those, but also remove items from your porch after they've been delivered.

Most of you know when something's going to be delivered. Now the process is so easy, you can track it. If you know the item's going to end up on your front porch, Don't let it sit there for two days until you bring it inside. I know it sounds like I'm exaggerating. I'm not. People will say, oh, I just didn't have time to go out and get it. I forgot it was there. I got sidetracked. And then it disappears. If you know it's going to be delivered, plan on bringing it inside after it gets delivered.

Very, very important. Install a motion camera on your porch if you can. We talked a little bit about, and I think the slide's still in here from last time, we talked about the ring camera and how versatile it is, not just for on your front door, but that ring camera is almost like a portable burglary suppression system for your house. You can set it up inside your house, turn it on, connect it to the Wi-Fi, connect it to your phone. When you have movement on your phone, if you're out at dinner, don't just ignore it. Look at your phone and go,

oh my gosh, there's people inside my house. I need to call the police. So set up a motion camera on your front porch. It's super important. Most importantly, and this is one of the things we

talk about with Neighborhood Watch, you know your neighborhood better than I do. Now, some of my police officers are very astute at knowing what neighborhoods are all about because they work the same beat every day. For six months, officers will work the same area a lot of times. They get to know the people that live there. They get to know the cars that belong there. They get to know the ins and outs of the neighborhood. But it's a big city. There's a lot of mileage of streets here. There's a lot of people in this town. You know your neighborhood better than most of my officers

will know it on a regular basis. If you see something suspicious, call the police. That's what it comes down to. You see somebody in your neighborhood you don't recognize that's

walking around looking kind of hinky. You see a car that you don't recognize. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up a little bit. Call us. Call the dispatchers and say, listen,

there's someone suspicious in my neighborhood. I don't know what they're doing, but this is the activity I see. This is what they're dressed like. This is the car they're in. This is the

direction of travel they're going. We'll send officers out to contact them. It may be a new

neighbor. My officers know how to talk to people. They'll figure out who it is. If they're there for nefarious reasons, then we'll do something about it. But we want you to let us know when there's suspicious people in your neighborhood. It's important. Go ahead. Next slide.

Internet fraud. We're starting to see more and more internet fraud.

I received internet fraud, and it was very interesting, and I'll explain it, and I found out later that it not only affected myself, but it affected

households and people all through Southern California to the point where one law enforcement agency, decided to try to figure out where this was coming from because some of their more prominent residents were also the victims.

The internet, I got an email and the email said, we have broken into your computer and we see that there's all this activity.

We know where you live. We know what your address is. And if you don't give us whatever Bitcoin they wanted, we're going to release this out

to the public and you're going to be embarrassed by it.

And we don't want to be embarrassed by it, so you better pay us. And they had a picture of my house. Pretty sobering. Until I went on the internet myself and did a Google search of my house and pulled up the street view and it's the same street view.

You can find anybody on the internet.

I deleted it. Just like I've been trained to do. I deleted that email. I received probably 20 more over the next two weeks. I deleted every single one. I didn't respond to them. I didn't reply back. I just deleted them. I don't get them anymore. That's how you deal with those kind of phishing expeditions. Delete the emails. If you get a receipt in the email saying,

hey, thank you for the PayPal purchase of $450 for this thing that you bought. And you're like, I didn't buy that. Oh my God, I need to figure out what's going on. The moment you click on that link, now there's spyware on your computer. Delete the email. If you know you didn't buy that product and they're sending you a receipt for it or they want to arrange for payment,

it's a phishing expedition. Delete it. Get rid of it.

Most of the email providers now are getting better at spam email, but you still have to be cognizant

of what kind of emails are coming in. The other thing I want to really emphasize is

pay attention to what your elderly family members and parents are doing

because they receive different kinds of phishing emails. Again, this affected my family. A family member who was living in South Pasadena, she received a phone call saying that her niece or her granddaughter

was in jail somewhere somewhere and that the police department was trying to arrange bail to get her out, to pay her fine, and that they needed grandma to go down to the bank and arrange to transfer money into this account. So she was worried. So she went down to the bank and transferred $15,000 out of her

savings until my sister called me and said, oh my God, what can you do? Well, I called the bank and

they physically stopped her from doing it. And she was convinced that she had to do this to get her granddaughter out of jail. It was a fishing expedition.

We've had probably the most I've ever seen as a victim here in Monterey Park, an older gentleman who gave over $100,000 over a period of time to win the lottery

in a foreign country. He was guaranteed by this foreign country that he had won the lottery and he just needed to move some money around so he could get paid. No matter what we did, to show him that it was fraud, he still was a victim of that. We've had cases where we intercept cash in the mail that FedEx and UPS find because people are being told to send this money in the mail or through those services.

We intercept it. We do a controlled delivery. We take the money and we get it back to them. These victims are from all over the country. Our detectives have worked cases of over $200,000 or $300,000 cumulative. Police officers, politicians, teachers, you name it, these are the victims. And they're sending cash to get out from under something that they think is there, that really is just fraud. So all those things you have to be cognizant of. This time of year, everybody's looking at it, but delete those emails.

Don't get sucked into those phishing expeditions.

It's really, really important. And pay attention to your elderly family members to see if they're starting to move money around like that. stop them. Next slide.

Again, the ring camera, I can't emphasize it enough. It really is an easy way to deal with intruders on your property or in your house. It's inexpensive. Everybody has Wi-Fi. It's really a smart way to do it. County. Council Member Frisk. It's very, very simple and you don't have to have a camera set up all the time. You can set it up when you leave and you can take it with you on vacation. Set up in your hotel room. So it works no matter where you where you want to use it. It's a really, really good way to do it. And at that I'll take any questions you may have. I think that was the last slide. Thank you, Chief. Any questions, comments, Council? I know it was kind of doom and gloom. I'm sorry about that. Yeah, give us a lot to think about, Chief. Yeah, yeah.

But thank you for that, because it's very informative, I think, for a lot of us.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chief, again.

I know, again, a lot of the focus of the holidays. And I'm kind of curious, do we also see a spike around Lunar New Year when we see also similar scams during that time as well?

The reporting is different.

Unfortunately, if there is an increase that targets the Lunar New Year, sometimes we won't see those come through us. They don't know they've been victims or they just accept the fact that they were victims and they don't report it to us for whatever reason.

We do have partners in the federal government that will help us investigate these crimes overseas. The Secret Service is primarily the investigative agency.

But we've had cases that we've literally been on the phone with the internet provider that controlled the fishing expedition in New Zealand.

And the guy has told us on the phone, I'm not going to cooperate with you. And there's nothing you can do because I'm in another country. You're not going to get a search warrant in New Zealand. Tough. Have a nice day. And he hangs up on us. and we reached out and there's really not a lot we can do.

Most of these are coming from overseas.

Most of them are coming from overseas. I'm not going to speculate on if they're state-sponsored or not,

but they're very, very, very organized.

Yeah, I wanted to learn more about the internet fraud. Do you have maybe, can we put together like a meeting, presentation,

and let us know what kind of, you know, cases that you receive. You can hide their name, but we want to learn more,

especially what the updates are. Absolutely. So we want to alert the people what to look for.

I have a detective that specializes in this, so I'll bring that detective in and give, during staff communication,

I'll have them debrief a couple of cases and some of the trials and tribulations we run into that deal specifically with this Internet fraud that we're starting to see more and more of.

Chief, I've been to a couple of the neighborhood watch programs, and I don't think they go into the details that you went into, maybe because it's the holiday season. Love to see you expand that into the neighborhood watch programs when they have the neighborhood just to expand on this.

If we give them too much at one time, then we kind of burn them out.

So we break it out over multiple sessions.

One of them has to deal specifically with these topics,

but I'll make sure that the curriculum is up to date and everything, and we're still doing it in the pieces we do.

I'd echo that.

If there are opportunities to help utilize and leverage our existing Neighbor Watch programs and the Business Watch programs as well to get the word out and spread the word out.

We partner with the FBI to do some of the Business Watch stuff, and they come in and they have in the past put on really good presentation

when it comes to deal with the fraud portion of this,

especially the actors from out of the country.

Yeah, and I know we were in touch with some of the PTs, at least. I see one at the Highlands folks are still here. There are opportunities to help to share some of these out there with some of the parents' groups and other existing community-based organizations and gatherings that exist in the city.

The more we can do to help.

We're open to just about any meeting, anywhere, anytime. We do work with Alhambra Unified. They have a staff member at district office that's their safety coordinator,

and our traffic bureau and our investigative bureau have basically 24-hour back-and-forth communications with that unit within Alhambra.

So we share a lot of information, and I know that they have a meeting set up with the district office,

our traffic bureau, and Monterey Highland School to deal with and talk about some of the traffic issues that we're experiencing there. I think it was addressed pretty appropriately by council and by the city manager.

But we will continue to target the situations there.

I find myself up there in the mornings a lot of times.

So some of those people are lucky enough to get a ticket from the chief of police, which I think is kind of unique. You know, not a lot of cities do that.

I sign it with a big flourish and everything.

It sounds like they want you there more often, chief.

I'm the only guy with gray hair in the city so you'll know

but no, appreciate it whatever else we can do whether that's trying to recruit

from the Highlands situation in particular, if there's opportunities to recruit Citizen Patrol and other kind of our volunteers to maybe do some morning shifts out along the

schools too, if we're not able to

deploy police officers, at least I think the presence will also be helpful too

and then are we

translating any of these tips to Chinese and Spanish to be able to help disseminate out?

When we put out our flyers and we put out our information, we try to hit the languages.

I have enough staff that have the ability to translate that, that when we put out our

tips and flyers and things like that, we are hitting those languages.

Yeah, I'm wondering if both the fire and the public safety, these public safety tips, This might be something worth the press release to some of the Chinese language media to help maybe garner an article around some of these tips in the coming weeks.

We have an officer assigned as a liaison to the Chinese news organizations,

and he meets with them on a regular basis, and we share a lot of them.

We're very transparent with those news organizations.

We get a lot of information to them, and I'd be more than happy to have FIRE join us on that.

It's a joint venture.

I'm not as good at cooking as the firemen are on Wednesdays, but, you know, maybe we'll add something, you know, different kinds of donut shops. I don't know. We'll figure something out.

I'm sure they'd be happy to teach you.

I've used some of their recipes, so I'm not going to throw them under the bus.

Appreciate that.

And I'll just note, I appreciate you sharing your experience as well.

In my family group chat, my dad sends us snapshots of people, strangers messaging him. He'll ask us if he needs to reply back and we tell him no.

You don't know that person. But see, that's a great example of having that communication

between your parent and you. There's so many times that we investigate these cases where there isn't that communication. They don't know that their parent is getting those on their phone

until the bank account is drained. There's no money. And the parent asks, oh, is it okay? hey, does Johnny get out of jail? And the parents are like, what are you talking about? Johnny's in, he's in eighth grade.

Well, I got a call. He was in jail in North Carolina, and I thought, you know, I should release him. Oh, mom.

So that's good that you have that relationship. I encourage that with everybody so that there's a back and forth.

Yeah, and I know I'm looking at Henry,

but I know some of the legislators also host regular kind of scam stopper events

and workshops.

It's a very robust, there's a lot of information out there, but at every level we try to push it out

so that people get the information. Yeah, if we can reach out to our legislative delegation, we have a new state senator, but also Assemblymember Fong's office, maybe we can see about coordinating some scams.

I think if I can add to it that oftentimes they look for partners, and perhaps, you know, if we do reach out, we can offer venues for them to invite the consumer protection agencies that can provide a much more deeper information about how to avoid being scammed.

Yeah, I think you'd be great to organize something at Langley and other venues.

Absolutely. Cool.

If there are no other questions, comments, appreciate it.

Thank you.

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

I don't know that I want to follow that act, but I'll do my best. Good evening, Honorable Mayor, Mayor of Pro Temp and City Council, Sean Igoe, Public Works Director. Tonight I have an update on our water and sewer programs. As you're aware, we did some water rate adjustments recently, and so I just want to give an overview of what we did last year, what we have currently going on and projected for this fiscal year.

So next slide, please.

So on this slide, you can see a couple of different colors. We have everything in water in blue and everything for sewer in brown.

I'm sure you guys are surprised by some of those colors,

But at the end of the day, I just want to say, you know, we've done a lot of work over the past two years. So last year we were able to replace almost 15, actually just over 15,000 linear feet of water line. This included water lines in the Northeast Water Main Project replacement, which is Alhambra and North Nicholson. And then also our Monterey Pass Emergency Water Main Replacement. We also were able to complete or nearly complete our centralized groundwater treatment facility. So that was a major accomplishment for us with a state-of-the-art water treatment facility. All those projects in total were about $23 million last year just for our water system. And then for our sewer system, we did our cured-in-place pipe, or CIPP, which is lining. So instead of replacing and doing open trench work, we're actually relining the sewer lines so we don't have to do as much open trench work. So with that, we did about 20,000 linear feet of replacement. We also did manhole rehabilitations in several locations and then did minor repairs of other locations throughout the city. That was about $3.5 million worth of sewer work last year.

Next slide, please.

Currently on the table for the 24-25 fiscal year, we have several water main replacement projects going on that are in the works. We have Garfield, Atlantic, and Garvey. Those are our major ones. The Garvey and North Garfield one, those are focusing on getting projects done before we do our 710 work along Garvey.

So we want to get that.

We move that up actually a year so that we can hopefully progress in our 710 work along Garvey. So you'll see a lot of work going on on those streets. And we also have a Russell Reservoir project currently going on. We started the lining and the replacement of the interior coating of that project. So that's in the works.

There are contractors up there doing work right now.

So not right now, right now, but they're actively working during the day. And then we also have our water meter replacement project going on. That's going to be a total of about $19 million this current fiscal year that we're spending just on the water system.

And then for the sewer system, we have our Emerson parallel line.

So this is going to be a capacity improvement. So basically we're adding a secondary line alongside the current line to allow for additional capacity for the sewer system. And then we have additional CIPP lining going on, which will be about 500 feet of sewer lining. and then we also have our normal spot repairs and manhole rehabilitations and then we also have a little bit of work on Atlantic where we're doing some sewer line replacement which is going to be open trench and this can be for about seven million dollars for a sewer system so again in total we've invested quite a bit of money in both our water and sewer system and we'll continue to do that but again just want to provide you with a quick update so with that next slide and I'll take any

questions thank you Sean any questions comments from council just great to see that we're updating

in a lot of our infrastructure that I know is direly needed, not just within our city but throughout the country. But thank you so much for the update, Sean.

No problem.

Mr. Chair. Sean, thank you again.

And I'm glad to hear that we've moved up to the priority and making sure that we are able to program the 710 funding,

especially for Garvey Avenue.

I think that's something that we all favor. And also I just want to say more broadly, you know,

since I've been on the city council,

So I think that this probably has, in the past four years, we've been very productive. I think it's important for the public to know that because if you go to our website or even open houses, in terms of not just what was reported today but in terms of our road repaving program, I know before I got on council, people often complained about our crumbling roads, and it's amazing how much we've been able to do throughout the city. I mean, of course, it's always never enough, but I think what we've done in the last four years probably has been incredibly productive more so than probably prior years.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Truly, I cannot take hardly any other credit. We do have a great team in public works. We have great leadership. And so, again, I just appreciate all the support. And again, we have a great team that continues to push out a great deal of work throughout the year. So thank you.

thank you so much for your presentation and thank you so much for answering the request from one of the residents my good friend that i request this information and i wanted to ask you

is this considered a massive update or do you foresee that um it will be you know after certain

years then will be a massive update uh a repair compared to this or it will be annually no we

We will continue to do annual replacements. It might not be this magnitude every single year,

but yes, we've invested quite a bit over the past couple of years.

Again, to Council Member Lo's point,

we've kind of progressed a lot in the past couple of years in getting our projects backed up to speed,

so we'll start tapering off a little bit.

We'll be getting in a better groove of being more consistent with annual sewer lining, annual water main replacements, but you will have some years where we have larger projects, like our reservoir replacement or rehabilitation we're doing. You're gonna have some of those come up every once in a while, but we'll continue to invest in our infrastructure. Thank you

Thanks, Sean appreciate the update kudos to the team I know you can't take credit but kudos please pass on our appreciation And do take some credit, but please pass on our appreciation all the work of the public works teams in our Contractors also that have been doing this work and getting getting this all done over the last year or so We'll do. Thank you. Looking forward to a lot of work still to come. I know the swept some of the bond money to spend on the water infrastructure in the coming year or two. Yes. And looking for other opportunities that can you do.

And looking for other opportunities to continue to do.

! There's still a lot more to do on the streets, sewers, and water infrastructure. ! I appreciate the maps and I know we've been doing a better job of helping to highlight some of the

! completed projects.

I would encourage us to see if we can take pictures of crews in action and pipes in place

!

Before after pictures to help publicize this as well.

I think that helps,

for me at least helps visualize it even better than and complements the maps really well. And I think to Councilmember Lo's point, I think we need to do, I think we owe it to the community and the I think we owe it to the community and the taxpayers in particular who have paid for these improvements to show our work and show the work that their taxpayer money is going to pay for and is paying for in terms of infrastructure improvements in their own community and their neighborhoods. and it's helpful to remind the community about these investments, especially the infrastructure that people don't see every day, right? Pipes and water pipes in the sewer go under the street, and as soon as the work is done, people are relieved that their traffic is better,

but they don't remember. It's hard, right?

People don't really click in terms of the infrastructure that tends to be transparent and invisible to them on a day-to-day basis. So the more we can do to highlight the incredible work that the city staff and the teams are doing would be good to remind people

Of the investments that they're making there They're currently working on an overhaul on our website

So we have a lot of that listed but we're going to clean that up and to your point add those before and after pictures Have our GIS map a little more interactive. So we're working on that and hopefully being able to roll out soon

Yeah, no, thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you All right, we'll move to recreation and community services

no costuming it looks like

it made me nervous

good evening Mayor, Mayor Portem, City Council

Members, Robert Aguirre Director of Recreation and Community Services here to share some of what's been going on and also some things that are coming up

next slide, so just wanted to share

some of the recent collaborations that we've been engaging with, recently we've done a collaboration focused on

mental health with the Department of mental health in Los Angeles County.

We have a couple more workshops coming up,

one on emotional intelligence

and another on stress management over at the Langley Senior Center.

So we know these are very important,

especially during the holidays.

Some of our seniors experience loneliness and some other issues with mental health.

So we're definitely trying to address that.

We also have a recent collaboration.

This is actually really exciting. We got approached by one of the clubs

at Mark Keppel High School.

They're named the Love for Our Elders, a very cute name. And what they did is actually came out to Langley Senior Center and played some just general board games, card games, loteria, did some fun stuff with our seniors. So about 50 of our seniors engaged with these high school students and had a great afternoon just engaging with intergenerational programming. So just wanted to highlight these ongoing collaborations because I think it's just really important that our staff is really working with the community and trying to provide new programming and new ideas for our seniors. Just today, we actually had, in partnership with Dr. Ed Wong and also with the Rotary Club, a Qigong workshop, which was this morning at 10 a.m., and then there's actually going to be another free workshop next Wednesday at 10 a.m. at the Langley Senior Center.

So we had about 35 seniors participate this morning.

They had a really great time. I've actually had Dr. Wong show me some of the Qigong exercises, and I can tell you my quads are burning right now from doing all these air squats. So it definitely does have some effect for sure.

Next slide, please.

And then, oh, this is what the prop was for.

So I had to bring the hat. So I only get to wear this hat once a year.

So I wanted to make sure I wore it tonight. Just remind everyone that Letters to Santa, that's going to be ending this week. So make sure you get your letters into Santa over to the special mailbox at Langley Senior Center.

We'll also have that mailbox out at the Holiday Snow Village event tomorrow night.

So if you come by tomorrow, Thursday, here at Barnes Park from 4 to 8 p.m.,

we have over 1,500 children pre-registered for the snow activities.

If you didn't pre-register for snow activities, still come out. There's lots of other free activities.

Our farmer's market will still be going on. We have an additional 20 vendors doing activities, crafts.

You can come get your picture with Santa Claus. There's also a free trackless train. There's a snowball fight area.

So there's lots of stuff to do. Come on out. It's completely free. So I hope to see everyone there tomorrow night.

Also wanted to plug and make sure we thank our sponsors for this event and help you make it possible.

Biggest sponsor was the Monterey Park Marketplace and then also Raising Canes and Wear Disposal.

So they helped make this event possible.

And then also wanted to highlight, this will be our second year of Santa's Jolly Journey.

Santa will be driving around being escorted by our police and fire department on Sunday, December the 15th. He'll start at 6 p.m. at Station 61, and they'll be traveling through all of the five districts along a fixed route. You can find that route on our city's website at montereypark.ca.gov backslash Santa's Jolly Journey.

There will be a map there. There's also going to be a link to our Santa Tracker, where you can actually GPS track Santa on your phone.

And last year, I think we had over 1,200 folks that used the Santa Tracker. So hopefully we'll get that number up, and more people will be able to wave and say hi to Santa as he goes through the city.

Next slide, please. And then a few other upcoming events.

I actually just found out this afternoon our holiday bus trip for seniors to go see Elvis is actually sold out. So we have 50 seniors that are going to go see Elvis this Sunday at the La Mirada Theater.

Do want to highlight that we are offering a winter break day camp.

So if there's any parents out there that need some daycare during the holiday season,

that the students are out but parents still need to work, we do have a winter day camp. The first week will be December the 23rd. And then also, I mean, we do have Christmas Eve and Christmas.

We will not be there, but we will be there for the 26th and 27th.

And then week two, December the 30th, and then January 2nd and 3rd. You can sign up with our Recreation and Community Service Department at the Langley Center.

And then we're going to be hosting a holiday luncheon celebration at the Langley Senior Center on December the 17th,

and that's also free for our seniors.

Next slide, please. And then just lastly, wanted to make sure and get it on everyone's calendar. our massive Lunar New Year Festival will be taking place.

I know it's already coming around into the year. We'll be rolling into 2025. So please mark your calendar. January the 18th and 19th along Garvey Avenue. This is the largest outdoor

Lunar New Year Festival around. So please come out. Have a great time. Lots of cultural and food, entertainment, activities. It's always a huge, massive event. So let's slide.

last slide and then just as always uh please continue to follow us and like all of our stuff

on social media at monterey park rec and i'm available for any questions thank you any questions comments from council yeah well first of all robert thank you for the

for the report and always so great to see so many events happening uh in our city i'm really excited for the snow village tomorrow. I know my daughter is really excited. Last year it happened to fall on her birthday. So she always thinks that this is happening because of her. But the excitement is always because of seeing Santa. So she's very excited to see Santa. And obviously asked, you know,

stuff for her birthday and for Christmas.

So anyhow, thank you so much. I know that she's already asking me about, you know,

going down the snow. Oh, absolutely.

So we'll figure something out. But also, there's still a couple days, two days left for the letter to Santa, right?

Two days left for letters to Santa.

So make sure you get them out.

Those of you guys who haven't written your letter to Santa. And there's no age limit to that one, right?

No age limit.

So you can go ahead and get all your wishes in. And yeah, so up until this Friday.

And then the mailbox gets closed down.

That way Santa and his elves have plenty of time to respond to all the letters. And Santa makes sure he responds to every single letter as long as they submit their name and a return address. So we want to emphasize how important it is to make sure you include your name and a return address. You don't have to include a stamp, but do make sure you include an address. That way Santa knows where to send the letter back to.

And then Santa's Jolly Ride was obviously a big hit. I know we got a lot of residents that were really excited about that and are still pretty excited about that.

Awesome.

I'm glad we're continuing with that and that we're making sure that Santa's going out to Monterey Park, especially to all those people who've been good this year.

Good, yes.

Anyhow, thank you so much, Robert. No problem. Thank you.

Yes, I echo sentiments.

I remember last year Santa graced my street by a drive-by to Spirit Holiday Cheer, and hopefully people at Mooney Drive will see Santa again.

Awesome.

yeah i wanted to greatly appreciate the um every time that the snow um the snow

village okay yeah um i want to say those um um fake um yeah snowball uh-huh oh those are fun

i had so much time yes you know playing all this with my kids in the last two years so you will

have that we'll have another snowball area yeah for folks that throw snowballs at each other so they're not they're not it's an actual snow it's like uh foam and plastic balls so it creates a

snowball area outside of the snow area it's not cold so yeah yeah thank you so much

well i'm excited for tomorrow um i i know they're setting up right now for the snow village so i'm excited to come back come back tomorrow uh lots of things 10 things i mean i'm not keeping track but that's a little bit more than the library this year but i'm sure the library will keep up and and come back with more events next year. I love seeing Santa coming back. So this is, you know, obviously council's been nice this year for Santa to come back.

Absolutely.

Keep it up, love what the staff's doing,

keep the community engaged. Thank you so much for all you do. Thank you.

Thanks Robert.

Kudos to the team looking forward to the winter events

that are coming up.

And I really, really appreciate the intergenerational with youth and senior kind of engagement

and opportunity to see that.

I know we're building on the Boys and Girls Club activity and the art project that we had. It's great to hear. We'd love to see that if that's already kind of going to be a regular thing.

That's something that will be ongoing. That's something that we want to continue.

That's super cool.

It's great to see and great to see that that happened organically.

It's great to see that the students really want to engage with our seniors.

So that's the magic of it.

Yeah, whatever we can do to continue to encourage that.

I know we have a high school teacher here too.

If Alhama High School wants to send some people in the Langley And engage with some of the seniors here in my park and other parts of the community. I think we I would love to encourage that I know one of the kind of separate thought moving on to a separate thought I know the Highlands parents left, but if there are I don't know if we have any After school sports programs currently at any parks or sites

I'm just curious. No, no, but we as same and I mentioned we are in active conversations with the district and also a partner on seeing how we might be able to make some type of pilot program get that going.

Would love to see us explore that and other opportunities to help integrate library, parks activities and others for after school activities. Wherever we can, I think let's explore. Would love to be innovative and encourage that thinking on the public art like I know it wasn't part of your presentation but what we can do to continue encourage public art as well in public spaces I

know we're still working on the greetings tour we're currently working

on the greetings tour in the meantime actually I don't know if anyone's been been by the front of the Barnes Park building actually one of our staff recently one of our regulators painted the doors on our daycare so we wanted to kind of make you know when the kids show up every day instead of just looking at a plain door. They now have

a mural that's up there on those doors that one of our staff members did. So it's some

animals. So it gives them something to come and smile to

every day. Makes me smile every day when I go to my

office, though. Well, that's great. I think that's great. I would love to encourage us to think about more of those

opportunities, especially in city

facilities that I think can be a little bare.

and it's great to see that we're starting to integrate from the mural at Elder Gym and now other places. We'd love to see that and other,

I know we already have public works, but the utility boxes, I don't know if we can figure out

how we can bring back some of the utility box art and other streetscape art projects and that's another opportunity I think to link youth and other artists that are from the community

to have these opportunities

to provide a canvas for them to present their art.

Great. Thank you.

If there's nothing else, thank you. It seems like everyone wanted to get in their updates for the holidays. So appreciate all the work that staff and the departments are doing.

We'll move on.

There's no presentation items, and there's no old business, so we'll move to a consent calendar, items 3A to 3K. Are there any items to pull from consent?

No? I'll call on Carl real quick.

I think there needs to be a disclaimer if we're not pulling 3F.

Correct.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, at the top of the consent calendar, I should note that with regard to 3F, this is the reintroduction of the speed limits that the council considered. They last or meeting before last. Everyone has a conflict on this particular item.

on this particular item. ! And along those lines,

it is a regulation of state-wide,

! or not state-wide,

city-wide application, and so the public generally generally exception would apply

to those conflicts. ! And with that notation, ! unless it's being pulled from the consent, you can vote on it.

Great. So we'll keep that on consent if no one's removing it with that disclaimer,

clearing conflicts.

I'm going to pull 3B,

our annual conference financial report for

presentation. uh i have a quick question just on 3c the development impact fees i don't need the staff report unless someone else does um

and that's it if there's nothing else if there i so i'll pull those two and then if there's a motion for the remaining items on consent i'll move through the

I move.

Henry second.

He second, yes. All right.

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

Approved unanimously.

All right.

We'll go to item 3B, our annual conference of financial report.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Potem, and Council members. Today's presentation is going to be done by Laura Bourgeon, our finance manager, and she'll be doing it via Zoom.

Laura? Hi, good evening. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council, Laura Bourgeon, Finance Manager.

It's my privilege to present the annual comprehensive financial report for fiscal year 2324.

Next slide, please.

This presentation will include an overview of the annual comprehensive financial statement and audit, as well as the general fund revenues, expenditures, and fund balance. Next slide, please. The city received an unmodified or clean opinion, which provides reasonable level of assurance from our auditor that the financial statements present a true and fair reflection of the results reported. I'm proud to report that the city received no findings this year. The city has received a certificate of achievement of excellence in financial reporting from the government finance officers association or GFOA for 35 consecutive years. We're confident that the fiscal year 2324 report will be the 36th. Next slide, please. General fund revenues were 70.2 million, of which 23.8 million were from property tax. This came in about $1 million higher than anticipated. $18.6 million were from sales tax, of which approximately $9 million was from Measure MP, and $3.8 million was from TOT, or a hotel tax. Next slide, please. General fund expenditures were at $54 million. operating expenditures came in at 97% of original budgeted appropriations. The capital outlay came in at about 30%. The city completed all its playground projects, and we allocated funding for several general fund projects that due to staff capacity were not completed in fiscal year 23-24. Unspent funds were carried over to fiscal year 24-25 for completion of projects. Next slide, please. General fund balance at June 30, 2024 was $41.9 million. The $13 million increase over fiscal year 2022-23 was due to increased tax and investment interest revenue and unspent appropriations mostly for CIPs. Next slide.

This concludes my presentation. Staff is available to answer any questions. And our auditor,

Mark Hu from Poon Group is also available to answer any technical questions regarding the auditor at first.

Thank you, Laura.

Any questions from Council?

Comments? Thank you. I'm sure you'll probably ask this question as well.

But I am kind of curious, do we have any estimates of how much we think will also be coming in now that voters passed the two other ballot measures regarding, you know, TOT and business licensing fees. I'm just curious, do we have an idea how much we might anticipate to be receiving?

I can answer that, Laura.

We haven't, it's not going to be effective until, if council approves, we're going to come back on December 18th to make it effective January 1st of 2025, so those revenues won't be coming in until after the new year.

I have a question. So I see that the general fund revenue has been increasing quite well, especially in the last two years.

And then you also mentioned that there's $1 million higher than you expected.

So why do you see that it has been increasing?

I know that property tax and also sales tax may not be increased that well in other cities. So can you explain more about that?

as far as the property tax um the property values have increased significantly um in

los angeles county so uh we budgeted conservatively about three percent increase

in property tax and it actually came in about five percent so uh we are going to be taking um

or bringing back at midyear,

we're going to adjust our anticipated revenues for property tax to make that adjustment.

Sales tax, I believe we're doing pretty well with sales tax,

probably because of Measure MP.

Thank you.

Thanks, Laura.

So kudos, appreciate the clean audit.

Thank you to the PUN Group.

I know this is the second year in our contract

with PUN Group. I know last year we had some challenges

with the transition from our previous auditor

to our new auditor. So appreciate that. We've cleaned a lot of those issues up

and appreciate the clean audit. I know a lot has to go into this effort both with our auditor and internal staff to make sure the documentation is all provided

and everything's squared away. So congratulations.

looking forward to the 36th year of the GFOA recognition. My question is less on the audit, more on kind of what the numbers show. Great in appreciation to the residents of Mare Park for the revenues kind of exceeding our projections in the last fiscal year. And I appreciate that we're going to be making some adjustments to the mid-year, during the mid-year budget kind of review for this fiscal year as well. My question's on the expenditure side too. We also came in under budget, both on some of the operations side, I assume some of that based on some of the vacancies we still have in personnel, but also notice on the capital expenditures that we came in under budget and we're rolling some of that over, I assume rolling some of that over into the next year. Wondering if you can kind of just address, my concern there is not that we're under budget,

but that we might be a lot of capital projects

that the council continues to approve

and is looking forward to in the coming years. I know this might not be Martha, it might be Sean,

but I'm worried about bottlenecking more and more capital projects.

We continue to ask and task the city staff to do more and deploy more of the capital projects that we won't have capacity and how can we address some of that.

Just because we didn't spend it this year

doesn't mean that work doesn't need to happen, especially on the capital deployment side so if we can kind of talk through some of the

thinking around that laura i'll answer that one laura uh well for finance and i'm hoping sean can come down here to explain capacity of staff for finance uh we had to spend the arpa money right away we had until december of 26 to 26 or 25 december of 25 to spend the money no it was it's the end of this fiscal year. Yeah, it's this month. They would have been until the end of this month to spend the money, so I made sure that they first spent the ARPA money. The next thing is the CDBG that we've allocated to the Langley bathrooms and the Barnes bathrooms. That needs to be spent because right now we're rating low with HUD, and we need to quickly start turning those projects out. So they're working on those because they have certain requirements and rules to follow, but now that we're spending that money, we can

start talking about general fund and here's Sean. All right. Yes. So to add to that, um,

yeah, under understanding the bottlenecking capacities, we completely understand that. Um, we are continuing to work on hiring our engineering staff. We have a couple of people in the queue, um, in addition to working as diligently as we can, um, on being as proactive with combining projects to where we not only spread our dollars further, but we can accomplish a lot more with our dollars. So we're very mindful of how we manage our projects and we do our best to keep our bandwidth within our bandwidth. Understanding that projects are going to come our way, we're going to have emergencies, but at the end of the day we do the best that we can with our finances. Martha keeps me pretty well in line with making sure that I'm spending the finances as they should in the time they need to be spent.

Constantly meeting with them to untangle what they're tangling.

My team meets weekly on CIP projects, on updates where we're at, and we recently incorporated bringing in finance, so finance is part of those conversations every single week to make sure that we're all on the same page where we're at not only the financial side but where we're at in the project

process. And like I said we have to spend certain monies faster than other money so that's why you're seeing more general fund because we needed to get the

ARPA and the CDBG done first. Great. I appreciate that. Do you know how

are we, I know we're filling vacancies, we're always going to have some vacancies no matter what, that's just how life is. Even in the

best of times. How much

I mean, is the bulk of our Lor-than-budgeted expenditures capital versus personnel, or how much of it is?

In our operating, it's our personnel that comes in higher. Like for this fiscal year, I think we were just general fund was close to $38 million on salary and benefits and about $20 million on capital, I want to say. so um we our salary and benefits are always going to be higher than what our what we're spending on our capital and it's really based on also capacity of our staff of the public but the bulk of the our our i guess of the carryovers oh it's definitely definitely it's at least eight million

of uh at least eight million to cip i martha if you could help explain um in our operating

budget what was expended from our operating budget in a percentage so if you go if you go to page um

i actually put a little thing on it if you go to page 119 it shows what our original budget was adopted uh the final budget uh i would be uh more cautious about looking at the final budget column because that includes carryovers from prior years and includes other things and then our actual so So I looked at our actuals operating, and like Laura said in her presentation, we spent 97% in our operating from what we came to council and asked versus what we spent. So we spent 97% of what we requested. Everything else is related to our carryovers that we have that we're paying on different things

and that we're paying on CIPs.

If you also look at the column where this says variance with final budget,

it's there's 8 million there uh for uh capital projects i also have 1.7 million because at the

time we were going to pay off the motorola loan at the beginning of the fiscal year but we were we our cash flow was and i had concerns about our investments because it dropped quite a bit and our cash flow was not quite as robust as i was expecting it so we didn't pay that So this 1.7 went right back into our reserves.

Yeah, so I know this is more on the mid-year budget item,

but if we can bring back,

and I assume it sounds like you're already thinking about it, but if we do have some additional funds in our,

I don't want to call it surplus,

but in our general fund that's available for use, I think it would make sense to pay down some existing loans that are on the docket, that if there are ways to find savings there, and we've got money there and the returns that we're seeing in the market for WAIF and interest rates and all that stuff continue I imagine will continue to go down if it might make sense to pay down some some of our outstanding loans early with some of this funding as opposed

to putting into the market to hold definitely we'll bring some suggestions and recommendations

to council but yeah Sean I appreciate that we are thinking through how we can make sure that we Aren't bottlenecking capital projects because I hope and expect that we will be asking for even more in the coming years We've got a parks master plan that we're in the process of and I think that I imagine that will come up with a number Another list of capital projects that we'll want to prioritize in the coming years I just don't want us to get stuck not being able to deploy some of these things even if we have the money if we can't get kind of the

personnel to

execute some of these contracts going if we can continue to think through how we can be innovative and deploying some of this capital these capital projects in

the coming years would be great absolutely

Laura and and Martha I know that the ACFER details some of the PERS our pension liabilities and our open liabilities can you just quickly do a

quick rundown of the change from last fiscal year this last this previous THIS IMMEDIATE PREVIOUS FISCAL YEAR, MY UNDERSTANDING FROM THE READING, AND I COULD BE WRONG, SO PLEASE CORRECT ME, AS OUR LIABILITIES CONTINUE TO GROW ON BOTH FRONTS, CAN YOU JUST TALK THROUGH WHAT'S GOING ON THERE AND HOW WORRIED OR NOT WE SHOULD BE ABOUT THE GROWTH IN THE

UNFUNDED LIABILITIES THERE?

LAURA, DO YOU WANT TO TAKE THAT?

Council Member Mary- You want me to take it? Um, you can go ahead. Okay, so we have, there's two pension, one's OPEB and one's our pension pension, which is the monthly, uh, um, paycheck that comes in. So, uh, our pension liability, which is our, uh, the one that they both come from CalPERS. The pension liability is the one that our council had asked for, uh, uh, pension obligation bonds and we paid that down significantly. So we are currently, oh, and I don't have the exact percentage, but we own more than 90 percent. And our colleagues in other cities and our financial analysts, as long as we're owing more than 90 percent, we're in good shape. So we're in good shape with that pension.

CalPERS is two years behind.

so we went to a conference a couple of months ago and this year they're gonna they're saying that they're increasing our credit our discount rate and so we might see some instead of a deficit that they'll add to the ual we might be seeing a surplus so we're waiting for that because we're always working on two years behind information that's the pension side with the

the check, I won't say paycheck, but it's not paycheck.

That's the check that comes in monthly for our retirees. The other one is our medical, our medical retiree. So the medical retiree, we, according to this, we owed $18 million. But again, they're always behind. So they look at the 22, 23 numbers. But I looked before because I was expecting some type of these questions, and I looked, and as of according, based on this, We had about, I want to say, $13 million in OPEB at the end of the 23 in our trust fund. $13 million in our trust fund. We actually gained quite a bit, and at end of June of 24, we had close to $17 million.

So that would drop our liability even more.

But we have, I have no concerns of OPEB because we are paying for that current active individuals that are using the medical retiree.

And we're also have a council approving through budget.

We have, we also contribute a million a year to the trust. So eventually that trust will be whole that we won't have to use our operating money to pay for that portion. So we've got a plan set up so that eventually it's going to pay for itself.

No, I appreciate that. That's very helpful to know and remind everyone.

And very much appreciate and recognize that we're in better shape with our PERS and OPEB liabilities than many of our surrounding cities. And partly thanks to the previous council or even current council members approving the pension allocation bond when rates were as low as they were historically. So taking advantage of that, yeah, my question, and you answered it with the delay in the CalPERS. We've seen CalPERS returns exceed their assumed rate of return the last few years, and so I was wondering why the liabilities continue to grow despite their exceeding their return targets, but that answers my question in terms of the delay for their reporting out. So it looks like we should be, that gap should be narrowing, and we should be getting to an even healthier place as CalPERS updates.

We already received the 25, 26 information, actual reports,

and that's still showing the negative.

So it's not going to catch up to the following. Then we should see a flat or a surplus.

That's great. I appreciate that.

It's good to know that our city employees and retirees' benefits

AND THEIR OBLIGATIONS TO THEM ARE IN A HEALTHY STATE.

SO I APPRECIATE THAT. THERE IS A LIST IN THE AUDIT

IN THE AUDIT ON THE LIST OF A FEW IN OUR HOUSING FUND. LOANS OUTSTANDING FROM OUR HOUSING AUTHORITY, I GUESS. CAN YOU DETAIL REAL QUICK WHAT THOSE ARE?

ARE YOU REFERRING TO PAGE 65?

THE PACIFIC HOUSING LOAN?

Pacific Housing and I think there are a few other loans from our housing department that have been long outstanding.

So this is before my time. So I did some research and the Pacific Housing loan is for an address on three at three 22 East Newmark Avenue. And that's all for for low income residents. The Pacific Bridge loan is for the address at 500 South McFerrin Avenue. And again, those are, and these are loans that if the individuals are, these are loans that eventually are forgiven after 30 years,

but the individuals that are staying in those homes have to be low income.

And then for the first-time homebuyers, I checked, it's various,

and we currently still have 10 buyers with a balance, too. For a critical maintenance, we only have one loan out, and the Abajo del Sol is that 100 Abajo del Sol address.

I appreciate that.

So as long as those properties remain affordable with their covenants, we won't see, the housing authority for the city of Murray Park won't see those funds returned back from the loan, right?

We might not ever see them because, again, they have certain criteria that if they meet after 30 years, it's a forgiven loan.

so some we do see back and some we won't great uh and we currently don't have any funding to give

out from our housing we have uh the 200 000 we've vetted a couple of uh we went through the list we had a list that was 30 plus about 30 people and our new uh our new consultant we have a new consultant uh through the priscilla davila contract our new consultant has been reaching out to um to the list and a lot of them have been not responding so we're just moving down the list and uh we are going to offer some funding at these community uh events and we're going to probably do some um some outreach and some uh some um you know social media to say there's some funding available for more housing it's more difficult to do a building because with the building you have to if you walk you go in with HUD money you have to do the whole building so we have some money available we have at least the two million two hundred thousand for this year so we can help at least two homes this year but i said like we already are vetting at least one and i think there's a second one that's going to be vetted for this year and then we do have some money in our fund that we can also bring in more more uh offer more loans to our residents so these

this is home home funding that we're allocating to our housing fund to you for the home retrofit

Right, correct. Our CDBG is going to our Housing Rights Center, and then we'll be doing some workshops for those. And then it's going to some ADA compliance for our sidewalks, and it's going to go to businesses eventually. I know our community development, I saw the application today. They're working on it, and they'll be bringing it to council.

Great. Now, looking forward to that. I don't know if Jessica's here,

but looking forward to that coming out and being able to support some of the businesses

to apply for some of the grant funding. So no, appreciate that. And good reminder that we don't have

a regular source of funding to be able to leverage out of our housing fund to provide for more affordable housing.

But this will link to,

I believe we're coming back with the inclusion housing ordinance analysis to see when it might be the right time to reinstitute our IHO and potentially utilize that as a source for funding for our housing fund in the future. If there are other opportunities to identify funding for the housing fund, I think that would be great to revitalize the activity that was going on to help provide financing for affordable housing development in the city.

That's all I have. I appreciate the attention to this.

And I'm encouraged by our financial situation as presented by the ACFER. I look forward to another great update for the next fiscal year.

I'd also note, right, the ACFER shows that our general fund balance has grown over the last fiscal year

and assume we'll continue to grow at least a little bit this year, this fiscal year. But I would note for everyone, right, as we go into mid-year budget and start planning for next fiscal year's budget as well.

That's not just money that's sitting around.

We've got a long list of capital projects, facilities, infrastructure in the city that still needs a lot of work, and that's where a lot of that money will be going towards. I'd like to just pitch as we are preparing mid-year budget and next year's budget as well for capital improvements to see how we can maybe, with the funding that I'm seeing here in the ACFER kind of money in the general fund, maybe we can prioritize our fire stations since there is state funding and federal funding available for both of those,

but not enough to complete those projects.

Maybe these are projects we can prioritize to really just get going a little bit faster and accelerate in terms of capital investments

into the next year or so.

Mr. Mayor, I have a follow-up question.

Well, again, thank you, Martha, for just,

I mean, that was a great presentation for the public. I hope that they appreciate that. I mean, Monoparco is fiscally in a very good situation right now, and certainly a lot of it has to do with, of course, your support for things like Measure MP. I'm curious to ask, and I don't know if this sounds abstract, but I just came back from Sacramento, and I know that at least at state level, there's a lot of concern about with the incoming federal administration at the White House whether or not we might see hits on, for example, unused state monies that could be perhaps taken back or even programs that will be scaled back. And I'm curious, have we, at least the thought exercise,

like, for example, the HOME program and other federal funding we get

either directly from the feds or from the state. Do we have any concerns, or should we, maybe also as an ounce of precaution, that if there is anticipated rollbacks or takebacks of unused federal dollars, is that something that could have an adverse impact and punch a hole into our future fiscal outlook?

So our home and CDBG are federal. Right.

come through HUD. We don't budget unless, until we know what's going to be, what we've been entitled to. It's an entitlement. So we don't, we don't, we get that information before we come to our budget workshop, and then it's included in our budget. So we don't budget over. We budget what we're being, what we were told we're going to get. So we're, we're okay there. It's not going to cause a restraint to our budget that we can lose money from for our residents and to support our residents so i haven't heard anything from hud that it's there's going to be um uh uh you know a decrease but we have been seeing decreases already without you know without the change of leadership so we haven't seen decreases so there could be more i just don't have that answer but i I can tell you that we're, as the city itself and our finances, we're safe because we will know what we're going to get before we do the budget for the following year.

And under curiosity, do we also know how many, if any, like state funding that we get that's also tied to federal funding that could possibly also be something we should be watching out for?

So our police department uses ARPA coronavirus money through HUD. They use it for homeless. But we, again, we got a little bit over a million dollars, and we have until 2030 to spend it. But as soon as our staff monthly, as soon as our police staff use it, because they allocate some of their time to it, my staff, my accountants, quickly go into ITIS and to the federal portal and draw down that money. So if we ever, again, if we were to lose it, we would just stop using it, and our police would go back to the general fund. But we would not, you know, we monitor our budget. We also have PLHA money. It's something I think Council Member Lo had recommended,

and we applied and we brought it,

we actually received the money in advance. And again, our net team uses it to buy supplies and other items for our homeless. But the money that we've already received.

And we spent it already?

No, it's been spent, but it hasn't all been spent.

Okay. Again, I know it's not abstract,

but I think there is a lot of concern about any unspent money. and I realize maybe we're jumping ahead of ourselves,

it could possibly be taken away or taken back.

It can happen, but I haven't heard anything yet from the individuals that I'm connected to from the different

agencies. Mr. Mayor, members of the council,

staff is also engaged with our Townsend legislative representative, and they have indicated that if they hear words, whether it's federal or state, about programs or funding cuts, they're going to share that information with us immediately. I don't think we've heard anything specific just yet,

but we understand that there may be reductions to

grant funding, but of course, as Martha mentioned, we wouldn't anticipate spending that, and that is sometimes one-time monies. So we will share that information as soon as we hear about those types of situations. but we are following it. We understand.

The finance staff really appreciate the hard work that went into this. Item 3C, development impact fees for fiscal year 23-24.

I don't need the report.

I just want to note if we can, in the next year, this next year, 2025, maybe we can, my understanding is we have not done an analysis on our development impact fees and comparing it to our neighboring cities in probably eight years or so. Maybe that's something I think it's time maybe we do an analysis and maybe we can figure out we can budget that into The next year's activities to do an analysis. I'd love to make sure that we are competitive So for Lor than some of our other cities, maybe that's something we need to adjust And if we are higher than maybe we should make some adjustments to some of these development pack fees

Laura did some research you want to talk about it Laura sure um so I did it really quick

her audio is out now development impact fees um online for two of our neighboring cities one was city of rosemead and the other was city of san gabriel and city of rosemead uh their last time they updated their fees was back in 2015 so much like ours it's a little outdated uh theirs though were significantly less than ours. And it's really difficult to compare

because of the way that they are structured. Because the way that they structure their fees and they don't separate the fee types

like we do here in Marri Park. But if we were to compare, say, single family residential to the city of Monterey Park were about twice as much as Rosemead, kind of across the board for single-family residential, multifamily, and non-residential, commercial, what have you. City of San Gabriel has recently updated their development impact fees. They did a study in 2023, and we are a couple of thousand less than theirs for, say, single-family residential and whatnot. So I would say that it is time to probably do another study to update our fees.

Great. No, I appreciate that. And I agree and concur. Maybe let's see how we can make some adjustments and do some analysis around our neighboring cities to make sure we're competitive in the San Diego Valley wider kind of region.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, just as a reminder, what our neighbors do is not relevant for the impact fees for the city of Monterey Park. It's an interesting comparison from an optics standpoint, but from a legal standpoint, all that matters is what our costs are and how the city council decides to impose impact fees for this particular jurisdiction.

Do we have to go through a 218 process to impose these fees?

No, not for impact fees.

Impact fees are different.

They're regulated by the Mitigation Fee Act. That said, there's a newer Supreme Court case from the U.S. Supreme Court with regard to fees that we need to pay attention to when we go through and do the studies again. That just came out this year, she's versus City of El Dorado. And so that needs extra scrutiny when we're going through and calculating the impact fees.

Great.

Not withstanding, I think it is an appropriate time over the next year or so

to maybe do an analysis and see how, I mean, these are not adjusted for inflation over the last eight years or so. I think that's, at the very least, I would imagine some of these need to be adjusted for that,

and maybe we can see how we can.

We will work through our city manager and add it as a recommendation to our next year budget, and then council can make a determination if we move forward with it.

Great. Thank you. With that, is there, there are no other questions.

Is there a motion to adopt, receive and file the

fulfillment of the fees? Move for approval. Is there a second?

Second by Council Member U. If there are no further

questions or discussion, we'll call for the vote.

Approved unanimously. All right. I think that was all our consent calendar items, so we'll move

to item 4A, public hearing, to consider introduction and first reading of zone change number ZC2403, ordinance rezone certain properties within the city to be consistent with the general plan land use and urban design element.

Call or I don't remember if there were conflicts on this.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, this is a statewide application and it's a general plan so I don't think there are any conflicts and if there were any apparent conflicts those would be superseded by the public generally

exception sounds good all right we will open the public hearing if there are public comments I

believe there is one one speaker that's me don't worry this is easy hi good evening neighbors this

This is Michelle. I'm speaking as a resident. I'm just following up. I apologize, Inez. I never folLod with you. I was trying to get the answer to this question, and I just wanted to ask in this public forum before I forget. I'll write it again so that you'll be able to give me a written response.

I apologize.

I still don't understand the ability to kind of designate any type of use. beyond the land use element. And so I believe if I understand what you're saying correctly is that the city council can interpret the land use element however they want. So if they see innovation and technology,

if they believe that includes housing, they can interpret that however they like.

It doesn't have to follow what the land use element document states. So that's the part that confuses me because if that's the truth that they can interpret the use however they want, or the overlay or whatever you want to call it, however they want, I just don't understand why the public votes on it. And the way that this relates to this particular issue is that one question that I repeatedly ask and that I note is that there is an error in the land use element in regards to distilleries and breweries being permitted in the Saturn Park area because the land use element, if you read the verbiage, it does not include it in that area. But I think the reason that nobody answers my question ever in regards to that discrepancy is because it doesn't matter because the city council, I guess, can interpret or designate the use however they want. They don't have to stick to what the document says, the general plan says. But I'll put this in writing. Hopefully you can clarify that for me later, but I just wanted to state that out loud so that my question is documented properly. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, Ms. Serrano, how many times has the Saturn Park matter been in front of the city council?

At least three times. And I think there were staff reports

attached to every time that they were in front of the city council? Yes. Explaining exactly what the measure stated and specific to Saturn Park?

Yes. I encourage you to go read those.

I believe I got an I remember getting an email on this item too I don't know if

they have that comment from the OII.

Oh yes are you ready? Yes.

I'm not alLod to talk back, so sorry.

I just had to be quiet.

Next comment came in as a written communication.

It's from the law office of Cynthia Bell.

She represents the Operating Industries, Inc., the site custodial trust, which is the owner of the Superfund site located along the 60 freeway. She writes with concerns regarding the proposed zone changes in the area

from the current zoning OP being rezoned to OS, open space.

She warns the uses alLod in an open space zoning area are incompatible with the alLod use of the site. The site has ongoing operations and maintenance for the remedial systems installed in this landfill that are to protect present or future human health and safety of the environment as a result of the presence of hazardous materials.

She states Section 4.01 of the restrictive covenant prohibits certain uses, and Section 4.02 of the restrictive covenant prohibits certain activities on the site.

As such, there are no open space zone activities that could be alLod at or on the site. Also, the site has no public access that would allow any open space zone activities since the only access is through a security gate. She would like to discuss the matter further with you. No other comments

All right, any further public comments if there are any in the room if not I will I can close the public hearing right?

All right close the public hearing. We'll look to staff for the staff

Good evening mayor Wong mayor pro tem and members of the City Council My name is Jessica Serrano Community Development Director. I'm here together with Beth Chow planning manager who will be presenting

Good evening, Mayor, members of the Council. Again, Beth Chow, Planning Manager. The item before you is a city-initiated zone change for certain properties within the city to bring consistency to the general plan, land use, and urban design element,

and zoning map and zoning districts. Next, please. As background for this item, the general plan, land use, and urban design element was approved by the voters through Measure JJ in November of 2020. A subsequent update by the City Council adopted the newest housing element, which was done in January of 2022. As part of the general plan implementation effort, the City R Plan campaign in August of 2023

to create consistency between the city's zoning regulations and the general plan. The work that's being done to update the zoning regulations will continue into the upcoming year. The changes proposed this evening are the second set of zone changes that have been brought before the council for consideration, and we anticipate additional zone changes in the coming year as well. Next, please.

As part of zone change 2403, there are various areas within the city where zone changes are proposed to occur.

This slide shows a map of this city where the zone change areas are indicated or circled

in red with red hash patterns where the individual properties will be affected.

A total of 267 properties are affected by this zone change effort, and staff notified all the affected property owners of the proposed action.

A detailed map and listing were made part of the ordinance and posted on the city's website as well for the public's review.

The land use designations of this zone change that are being affected are from the categories of the commercial innovation technology, open space, low, medium, and high density residential land uses. We're making the changes to the zoning map to match the zoning that corresponds with the land use district. in the table as shown, you can see on the left the land use designations and their corresponding zoning districts that we are making changes to.

So for example, if there was a residentially developed property that's residentially zoned, however, the land use designation was noted as commercial, we would then be either changing it to the commercial professional zone or the commercial services zone as shown in that first row.

or the second row, I should say, in this table. It is important to note that the zone change will impact future development and uses of these properties. However, existing uses can continue operating and existing structures can remain. In the future, at such time where properties are ready for redevelopment, they must then meet the rules and regulations of the new zone. However, in many of the cases, the land uses and the zones already match with the existing development patterns. So after examining the inconsistencies between the general plan, land use designations, and the zoning map, the staff is bringing forward the proposed changes. Next, please. At this time, staff is recommending that the city council consider this item.

already having opened and closed the public hearing we'd ask that you you would introduce and waive first reading of the ordinance amending the zoning

map for certain properties for consistency with the general plan

the landfill site.

So the land you sell already explicitly states that

that area in the land

you sell is going to be open space. So there's no

flexibility in terms of the

zoning that we're going to be alLod to put there.

That's correct.

But they are legal law conforming. It's not like anything's going to change there anytime soon. So in that sense there's not a lot to do.

Right. That's correct. they're doing remediation at that property but have we reached out to

Hawaii or have we had a conversation since they sent that letter just to

clarify I I had a conversation with Cynthia Bell who sent the letter in they were informed that this was a action to make our general plan consistent

or excuse me our zoning consistent with our general plan and that we recognize

there's no current development being proposed at this time.

And even as we speak, the uses there,

the landfill with the remediation is a nonconforming use at that site. The change in the zone to open space does not affect that nonconformity.

It's essentially nonconforming today. It will be nonconforming once this zone change is enacted.

Right.

yeah there's nothing to do there i think we can do other than changing the land use element again uh my questions to carl i guess on the land use element how does every city have to go to a city wide vote to adopt a land use someone is that unique relatively to monterey park and a few other jurisdictions or is that i'm actually not sure i'm curious uh mr mayor members of the council

So it's actually very unique to Monterey Park. Out of the 30 or so jurisdictions I've represented in my career, I can't think of a single one that has a land use element approved by voters. This is something that developed in this city in the 80s, and you've seen the consequences of that, the repercussions throughout that period of time after the 80s. But in this particular instance, actually, this measure gives far more flexibility than any previous ones did. And so, but to your point about OII, land use element designates it as such. We're just trying to bring the zoning into conformance with the general plan, which is required by state law. It doesn't really affect anything with regard to that particular property. And so, to me, I think I understand the need to put it into the record that there's an issue, But the reality practical and legal reality is nothing will really change out there

Yeah, unless they actually remediate everything and try to do something there, but that's I think decades that may not be in our lifetimes. Yeah So there's time for a new land use element if they're interested in exploring other uses there

so my broader question there to follow up is

if we wanted

if the city needed the same flexibility that other cities have in terms of adopting land use elements and revising land use elements we'd have to go to a citywide vote to repeal the ballot measure that required citywide vote for land use elements

you would need voter approval to delegate authority back to the City Council with regard to the land use element. This particular measure does delegate authority directly to the City Council to make changes in accordance with the land use element to implement it. And remember, the general plan or the land use element to the general plan is really the land use constitution for the city. And as has been explained before, you don't see every law in the U.S. Constitution or the California Constitution. It's up for the legislature or the Congress to establish laws that implements that particular constitution. And that same concept is here with the land use element.

To answer your question, though, yes, if you wanted to get voter approval for giving the city council back all of its land use authority,

you would need a city-wide vote for that.

And then to reiterate what you're saying, right, the land use element, as approved by voters here in Monterey Park, So that's the broad strokes of what can happen in different neighborhoods, different parts of the city. Within what is designated a land use element, the city council has the authority in terms of zoning. Within the adopted land use element, there is flexibility, as you're noting, for the council to adopt specific kind of measures for those neighborhoods.

That's correct.

Okay, appreciate that.

And then really quick, I know there's a noticing requirement,

So just confirming that we've noticed all the potentially impacted properties with the zone changes, and we haven't received any other feedback or concerns from other property owners.

As part of our noticing efforts, we did notify all affected property owners. There was one other inquiry, but it was for a clarification.

Great. So everyone had a chance.

I'm not hearing any other specific concerns from property owners that may be impacted by a zone change that's proposed here in this ordinance. I'm good with this. I don't know if there's others. If not, if there are no further questions or comments, we'll open it up to a motion.

I'll move. I'll second.

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

Approved unanimously.

All right, we'll move to item 6A, City Communication,

Resolution of the City Council, City of Monterey Park, California,

reaffirming the city's adherence to Resolution 11895, affirming the city's commitment to complying with California State Law, SB54,

California Values Act, regarding immigration enforcement

and affirming that the policies of the Monterey Park Police Department, including Policy 413, are consistent with SB54. So I'll ask that the language of this resolution is in the packet I Encourage and ask my fellow council members given our conversation at the last council meeting asking staff to bring this back

for council consideration the language and resolution

Simply reiterates what city policy and state policy already is in terms of immigration given our conversation last meeting around some of our concerns based on the rhetoric that's been expressed very vocally from the incoming federal administration. I'm personally concerned, I know many of us are concerned in this community around potential immigration crackdowns in the coming months and years

and other issues that are going to highlight potential concerns

in our own community that is made up of a lot of immigrants,

particularly from AAPI and Latino communities.

that helped have for generations come and made Monterey Park their home our home and so I would ask the council to adopt this resolution to reiterate our values here in the city of Monterey Park a city full of immigrants and immigrant dreams that are made real to reiterate our values and to reiterate our policies in in terms of SB 54, which does not allow cities, jurisdictions in the state of California to expend local resources for federal immigration enforcement and to cooperate in those ways

and to only cooperate where we're required by law

to do so for criminal acts and other things that are explicitly stated in SB 54 that are already policy here in the city of Monterey Park.

So

Can have a discussion around this if not and if we're not sure that we can obviously take a motion to adopt this resolution to

I'll make the motion if there's a second

Thank you my council were you before we take a vote. I'll just ask council or less staff as well if there are opportunities to help Reiterate that the existing policy the city of morning Park to help reassure many in our community, particularly immigrants and non-English speaking immigrants in our community around the city's policies and to continue to encourage our city, the city functions, require that immigrants continue and others who may be worried about some of the rhetoric coming out of the incoming administration. We need people to continue to engage, both our police department, our city services. we don't check immigration status

when we're delivering

city events and other things I want to continue to encourage full participation by everyone in our community in our city programs and our services

that are offered

and not to be afraid to continue to come out to spend time

in the city and to do things in the city and to do things with the city

so with that call for the vote on this resolution

Approved unanimously.

Thank you.

And whatever we can do from staff's end to help to reiterate this in language and with our partners in the community, with CBOs like Chinatown Service Center and others through the Langley Center and other channels to help promote this and help others understand that this is how the city is going to continue to approach our engagement with everyone in our community, I think that would be very appreciated.

With that, that was the final item.

We'll go to any closing comments from Council members.

Okay.

I'm very proud that we passed this resolution. I want to thank the mayor for bringing this forward. I think as we start to, as the new administration is inaugurated next year, that we stay vigilant as much as we can, not just so we're protecting residents, but also, like the mayor said, provide reassurance that in our community, our city is protecting our most vulnerable populations. So thank you for that. I know we just came back from Thanksgiving break.

There's a lot to be thankful for regardless.

I know that we just had an election. We had two city measures that were passed, and I know that I think today is technically Council Member Yu's last official council meeting, so I wanted to thank her. I got an opportunity to work with her for the last two years, and so I'm sure you've got other stuff going on. I hear a lot of traveling in your future, but I wanted to officially thank you and thank you for your service to Monterey Park and everything you've done for our city. So I wanted to thank you officially for that. I know there will be opportunity for that, I think, on Tuesday. But just wanted to make sure that everyone knew that today is technically her last full council meeting.

So I know you're going to miss us. but so anyhow

thank you for that and I'm looking forward very much so I think like council member

Go said to tomorrow's

snow village so I wanted to do a quick plug for that I know it's going to be pretty packed and a lot of exciting stuff happening and I know as the Christmas holidays are coming all of us are getting very busy but just wanted to say very appreciative of staff all the work even though holidays are coming we're still working really hard and today a lot of the stuff that we heard in terms of not just the activities that are happening but also a lot of the work that we've been doing in our city from public works from housing so much to be proud of here in the city of Monterey Park so a lot of this I know could not have happened without a lot of the hard work that city staff does behind the scenes to make this happen it's just not something that happens overnight and I know there's a lot of hard work happening in fact I know a lot of hard work is happening right now setting up the snow village So I want to really appreciate all of the work that you do and all of the staff and everything that happens to make all of this happen for our residents.

So I appreciate you. I wanted to wish you well for the holidays.

I know we'll see each other again before the holidays, but I just wanted to make sure that I reiterate that. And I know just a second ago, Council Member Ngo and I were just at Assemblymember Mike Fong's toy drive. Yeah, so when opportunities arise to give back to your community, make sure you do. I think there's a toy box outside here in the city hall. So make sure that you donate as well. And I think that's it for me.

Thank you. Thank you.

And certainly I want to echo sentiments to my colleague who we both ran in 2020. And we've been to colleagues for four years and certainly it has been exciting, exhilarating past four years, hasn't it?

But again, I know we'll continue the accolade at the next council meeting.

You know, for me, I'll try to be brief, but in my professional capacity, this past week

I was in Sacramento for the start of the new Lids Live session, which began on Monday, December 2nd.

But it was an exciting time because this year, because of the system of term limits we have in California, 23 new Assembly members began their public service to the state of California, and with also a large number in the state Senate. I had an opportunity to, of course, stop by and say hello to our Assembly member, Mike Fong, who is also now the incoming chair of the API Legislative Caucus, as well as other Assembly members whom I think many of us may...

120 illicitors are women, and that is actually a milestone for the state. But at the same time, you know, there was also a lot of talk, which I think we've been talking in the past few items about, you know,

what does the New Year also hold in store in terms of the impact of the administration

that will be coming into the White House, what it means to our communities, not just programmatically, you know, such as possibly funding cuts,

but also just the rhetoric.

And I think that that's where I think we do need to work closely with not just our state representatives in the Assembly and Senate, but also, again, you know, our other allies that we may have in the legislature to really make sure that we are, I think, in lockstep in terms of protecting our communities, protecting our programs, and safeguarding the resources we have in the state.

and with that I'll leave it I'll leave it at that thank you thank you thank you all today is not just my last meeting I think it's also the last Mayor Wong the official meeting and good job Mayor Wong I really enjoyed being with all of you

so this four years and actually nine months it's almost five years really opened my eyes to politics I've never took that many pictures

before in my life and I moved from the second youngest from the previous council to now the oldest in the current

council. Although Mayor Protenko said his real age is older than me but I think he's just trying to comfort me. I want to take this opportunity to thank every one of you for your support and love.

I want to say we have the best city staff here, police, fire, at least we did not get on the newspaper headline, right, on our internal politics, so it's a good thing. We have good leaders. I want to appreciate, first of all, our city manager, the INS, for being such a wonderful leader. Ron Bo is great, and whoever he recommended is better.

I trust Ron. So INS is not just a leader, but a good team player, a good listener, and at the same time, and she takes immediate actions and send us updates on time. Really enjoy her updates. We're very thankful to have you as

a city manager. And I also want to say I also admire Carl, our city attorney. He always stands with the city best interest. I respect all his decisions. I had two lawsuits at the same time for two years before. So I know the difference

of being a good lawyer and a bad lawyer.

So we are so lucky to have such a wonderful lawyer fighting for our city. And thank you, Cara, and keep up the good work. And I also want to thank your mom for her support. And I also want to thank Police Fire Clerk Michelle and Cindy Helen and Churcher Amy to Diana. you know who you are, Robert, Sean, Christina, Jessica, and Kristen. Among all the stuff, I especially want to thank Martha, our finance manager,

the finance director, and Joseph Torres, our economics development director, since I've been working closely with you two.

And I'm very impressed with all of your passions, hard work, and professional knowledge. and I want to thank my colleague Mayor Wong, Mayor Pro Tem Gold, Councilmember Lo and Councilmember Sanchez. We work very well as a team, very professional and we have no fight, not even argument. So our meeting is always fun and full of laughter. I'm so proud of our team and really enjoy working with all of you. So as all of you know that I have finance background,

and that's really my passion is to educate people to be financial savvy. So my goal is to, you know, I started a nonprofit organization a few months ago and called Financial Literacy to the American Dreams Foundation.

So I will be promoting that after my council duty. I know it is boring, you know, for financial knowledge. I know people, they're not good in numbers, but I try to use more interesting topics and short videos to educate people. And hopefully more people, especially women, minorities, will learn to achieve their American dreams. So last but not least, I want to thank my husband and my mom for their love and support. I will not be speaking much next week, but hopefully I want to thank everyone that I want to do at our staff here. So thank you and I will miss you all. Thank you.

All right. So just having come back from Thanksgiving, as Councilmember Sanchez said, we have a lot to thankful for before the final push for the holidays with all the events and all the activities starting with Snow Village tomorrow. So I am thankful that our city has done a great job in supporting our community and allowing for not just our community but the neighboring and surrounding community to come and enjoy the holidays. The last two weeks I also went to a number of events. Went to a overseas students recognition program for a lot of international students who are actually domiciled or staying in the U.S. Got a chance to talk to them in San Gabriel. this past weekend spent time at the Southern California Council of Chinese Schools. Many may not know this, but there are 38 different Chinese schools in Southern California, and they had a fall award ceremony where they handed roughly 200 awards from K to high school of all the different participations and events in the Chinese culture curriculum, from calligraphy to speeches to writing poetry to basically learning Chinese in different schools. So I was impressed in how big that organization has become. Just last night, fellow council members, Yvonne Yu and also Mayor Wang and I went and attended the Arcadia City Council installation. Good to keep in touch and stay intact with our neighboring cities and wishing them well. And then as Council Member Sanchez mentioned, we were at Assembly Member Fong's Holiday Toy Drive. There are a lot of giving in the community, and we will have that as well. So let's join the holiday spirit and continue to give. And lastly, I want to thank Council Member Yu for her dedication and time, which is very important to many of us. in fact if not all of us in serving our community and being a a major player in this community i will have more to say next week so i'll hold that off again i just want to say thank you for from the bottom of my heart for the work you've done

uh i want to just echo that and in the spirit of thanksgiving as well i really appreciate all the work uh that staff continue to do and i know we still have more through the end of the year but thank you so much. We get to sit up here. I talk a lot and ask a lot of questions, but it's all the staff here that has to do all the work and make sure everything actually gets done on a day-to-day basis. So really appreciate everyone that works for the city doing the hard work day in, day out to provide excellent services to all of our residents and visitors every day. And we'll definitely miss Council Member U. I totally agree. I think we get along really well. We may have some disagreements here and there, but we work as a team and work really well together, both as a council team, but also with the staff. And I think it's been super pleasant to be able to work together and work with you over these last two years,

at least, that I've been on council with you and looking forward.

I'll say more at the ceremony next Tuesday, but probably a lot of the same words, but really appreciate, Councilman Ryu, your service to the city,

and appreciate how you've really cared for and invested in our community.

A couple of items that I wanted to just highlight. I know L.A. County Board of Supervisors, their meeting, I think, last week, talked about increasing resources for immigrants as well in L.A. County. I don't know if we can have staff reach out to Supervisor Solis' office or someone in the Office of Immigrant Affairs at LA County to see what resources exactly they are going to ramp up and make sure that they are going to be able to provide some of those. And if we can link to some of those resources for Monterey Park,

that would be great to do.

One of our local restaurants, Hong Coffee and Bakery, was highlighted by the LA Times for their high-end chicken, which I can personally attest is excellent. I go there relatively regularly, not often enough.

But maybe that's a good thing.

But highlighted in the LA Times, I haven't taken a look at the new 101 top restaurants list. I don't know if anyone, I know our former togu fried chicken is still on that list, but I don't know if anyone else from Barnes Park made that list, so I'll take a look at that. But if there is anything else to highlight from the Times or other news outlets, I think that would be great to help amplify in our own channels. But Honk Coffee and Breaker, we got a nice shout-out from the LA Times for their Hainan chicken,

but they have excellent other dishes as well.

On the other end for the LA Times, they had an article come out a week or two ago on earthquake safety retrofits that cities are doing,

namely the city of Los Angeles,

maybe about 10 years ago under Mayor Corsetti, initiated a mandatory retrofit program in the city for soft story and other buildings that are highly susceptible to damage from earthquakes. I know we don't currently have an ordinance that does that requirement I think if we can ask staff to if there's interest among the council I think a good start would be for us to explore doing an