City Council Meeting — April 16, 2025

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

I was doing this.

I don't know if you have any chance. Take a chill.

Call it. Call it.

And even then, everyone will be able to have a student to start to come.

That's a 6% of the time. And people that are on the next floor.

3%. 3%.

3%. 4%. 4%. 4%. 4%. I feel like I'm terrible.

It's just like.

What about the population?

Start, they're all small.

They focus on 16,000.

Including graduate students.

What about one in grade students?

Wow. That's a technique.

Half of the schools do we have 100. What? 50.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

very nice to see now. I think the reason they have to travel to school is MBA,

MD, the pay choice is very small. Very small. They, I would only go to the PhD, the faculty member is there. So, the doctor, the reason is not bad. That's what I'm gonna say. It's not bad. but it's very, no, no, no, it's not about that. Let's say, I think the field of the field, you know what everybody does? They're just like, you can do research as well, and you can do research on the top. At Harvard, you can have a faculty member in every single one of these, and all of them are doing research. At Dartmouth, you will have like three physics professors. Maybe, yeah, so they'll be number one in their field of research, but they're not. There's not gonna be, and they can, they do not acknowledge the public. There's just not as many. So the ratio is not as high as the students. Well, the student to faculty ratio is actually high. There's more. I mean like professors. Oh, I see. Yeah, the student to faculty ratio is actually better because there's less. There's less.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So there's actually more focus on your grads and students.

But at the time, like you saw the psychology. Even though the class was way more,

there's just less fields.

So I would agree to you. I'm just trying to say that. and they're even better.

We, we wanted to .

I had to tell him . And I told everybody .

I don't, I don't, like . Oh, . It's like .

So, so, like . This is a tragedy of saying,

they are being in this world,

and then they're learning, it's just that there's not enough of an atomic end.

So the digital . But there's just not a specific .

There's 20 .

I mean, that's what they do. there was a number of your assets. That's not what you just lost in your head. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine.

As far as like small.

It's like 30, 30 total. But in geophysics, which is an entirely separate program,

there was four. That's because of geophysics. I told you before. Geophysics is typically reserved for the graduate school.

Like I told you over summer, people ! Like I told you over summer, people may be major. !

For me, realistically, it's embarrassing that I can keep you in mind. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

No, no, no, Ontario is still in the middle. No, it is. Like in LA, I can go from airport to airport. Within the airplane, within 30 minutes.

What if the option is there? There is a lot of people.

OK. Then you break it. Because it's small, but it's busy.

Then they have 45 minutes.

So what's the ETA plan? Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

I have a place to catch, so the latest one, you hear it's a special.

Oh, yeah.

It shouldn't be a photo. I saw that on the- Were you flying? Yeah. I'm visiting a lot of microphones.

Oh, yeah. The traveling lights? Oh, yeah. Thank you. Wow. So that's the center. That's just- You just stay on the center.

I still have it. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Oh, my God. On your app. He just feels that it says Stanford. Yeah, I got it. Except that it's a good one.

No, no.

I said that. But now I've never done my copy. Yes. Yeah. That's a super.

I like them all for . Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you. So let me know. !

It's still great news because I know you're traveling so I don't think you're my way. !

!

City of Florida?

Or actually, the mayor. Oh, the venue. so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so

so so

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, you've got to have those great records that we have in social and physical systems.

But I think this must be a good tool.

It's right.

It's really not a good tool. Oh, my God. So I won't ask that word.

History of physical science. Oh, yeah. History of whatever, whatever.

And then one class, I really had to do that. I use, I guess, my mathematical language somewhere.

It's engineering learning, and it's problem solving. So it wasn't like I had to do .

Thank you.

Sorry.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm going to take it home. Call the meeting to order. It is 649.

Start first with the land acknowledgement. We would like to acknowledge that the land we inhibit today was once known as the Tavergur, the home of the Gabalino Tavergur people. We show our respect to the Gabalino Tavergur people as well as to all indigenous people past, present, and future, and honor the labor as original caretakers of this land. We commit to uplifting the Gabalino Tongva people, invite you to acknowledging the history, and join us in caring for this land.

Okay.

Call to order? Or actually, yeah, Civic Superstar Rehaster.

So let's do the Pledge of Allegiance. So we have a special guest tonight, Haley from Hillcrest School.

Everyone put your right hand over your heart. Ready, begin.

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

and to the republic for which it stands,

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

Thank you, Haley.

We're going to present a certificate for you, so wait there. Audience, you can have a seat.

Council members, if you can join me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

roll call please

council member Wong

here council member Sanchez

present council member Lo here mayor Yang mayor Ngo present

we have a quorum thank you

city manager do we have any agenda additions deletions and changes

Mr. Mayor members of the council we would like to request

to move item 1A before public communications and also item 3S before public communications. In addition, there was one additional addition to the agenda tonight, and I'll let our city attorney answer that one.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. Open session item 1A on the special meeting agenda. We recommend

that it be rolled over to the consent

item or as a

consent item on the consent calendar,

and that would be number three T as in T-ball.

Okay.

Okay, so the who's presenting?

Oh, we just

So we'll go to item 1A for Edison Scholar.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, City Council, staff, and audience. Marissa Castro Salvati. I'm one of the Government Relations Manager for Southern California Edison, and actually great to be back again. As most of you know, I am the Government Relations Manager on the interim for the city of Monterey Park, and this is my old city from the years back. So glad to be here. And today, this is one of my favorite times to do this presentation, and that is to introduce one of our Edison Scholars. Edison Scholars is one of our programs in Southern California Edison through Edison International, which is our parent company, where we have given over 790 students scholarships every year. We actually choose about 30 students each year, and it's a very competitive program that we have. We have been doing this program since 2006 and have given out $19.3 million to the students every year. And this year, and last year actually, it's a little special, we have increased the amount of award that we had given to each of our students. And one of the students actually is a resident of Monterey Park. He currently is going to Mark Keppel High School, and he is a senior at that, which is in Alhambra. But I thought I'd bring him over to the city of Monterey Park to introduce him. He is an amazing student. He is actually thinking of being a geophysicist. So it's something that I think we all need. maybe he'll be one of the next folks that will be doing all the earthquakes that we have and be a specialist on that he actually is currently not have decided on where he would like to go he has been accepted at Dartmouth, MIT and Stanford in fact he has to actually go to MIT to visit and that's why thank you again for allowing us to present him to council tonight. Matthew Wong is, as I said, resident of City of Monterey Park, and this year he is one of our Edison scholars who actually will be receiving $50,000 for the four years that he's going to whatever chosen university that he selects. So at this time, I'd like to actually bring him up and maybe say a few words on what he's planning to do

in the future. Yeah, so I got a brief introduction. For me, I'm really passionate about geophysics. Growing up in LA or Monterey Park, I've had my fair share of earthquakes, right? In middle school in elementary school, I've done a lot of like drop, stop, and hold drills where we prepare for earthquakes. And I never really understood why until we had the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake. Following this, I saw across the news how communities were devastated. And this really motivated me to pursue a path in earthquakes. I had conducted research in Caltech following this to really understand how and why earthquakes happen. And then I subsequently interned with both the city of Rosemead and Alhambra in their building and safety division to truly understand the building codes we have in place. Now, as I advance to college, I really want to actually tackle this issue. While I was an intern, I learned a major problem was that a lot of our residential buildings are underprepared for the big one. And a case study I like to use is in 1994, Cal State Northridge actually suffered the magnitude, I think it was a 6.4 Northridge earthquake. And three years prior, Cal State Northridge retrofitted their parking structure, but underneath the earthquake, it completely collapsed. So that shows us that even a retrofitted structure can still collapse. Now, what does that say about our many residential buildings against the big one, which is subject to be a magnitude 7.8, over 10 times stronger in terms of magnitude? Knock on wood. Yeah. And so I really want to tackle this issue, And I aim in college to create a startup that utilizes current advances in geophysics and

translates that into actual building plans and retrofits and really ensure the resilience of our communities

Thank you Matthew

I'm gonna pass the See if there's any council members who wants to recognize Matthew before we do the presentation

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

And it's my pleasure as well to congratulate Matthew.

If my day job had on,

help coordinate a little bit of this program for Edison as well. And so I was glad to see your name among the 30 scholars when it came across my desk and on my list. And I really wanted to make the actual surprise event at Keppel,

but I couldn't that day.

But I appreciate Marissa and the whole team

and my colleagues at Edison

for being able to present this scholarship. and I don't know why you interned in Alhambra and other places. It sounds like we may need to try to grab him for some of our work here, and I think we've been talking about some seismic retrofit ordinances and looking into that here in Monterey Park over the last few months as we've experienced a series of small earthquakes over the last few months.

lives here, so you're going to take care of Monary Berksdale. But don't forget about us. Looking forward to amazing things that you have going forward, and congratulations again. I look forward to celebrating you

in the future.

Thank you.

I also want to congratulate you, not just on your scholarship, but also the amazing feat of being able to get into some amazing schools. I'm a teacher here in this community, and my wife teaches at Keppel, so I'm really excited for you and your future prospects. I will echo some of the sentiments that Council Member Wong shared. Hopefully you'll come back to Monterey Park and

share a lot of what you've learned and make

our buildings safe for the

future quake, right? Hopefully not too

big. But also retrofit and like the Council Member said, remember that Monterey Park is your home so please come back and share all that you've learned with us. Thank you.

And congratulations.

You know, just listening to

your remarks and your passion for what you want to study, what you want to do,

remind me of one other person, and that's someone that we probably hear or see every time there's an earthquake,

and that's Dr. Lucy Jones.

And you remind me so much of Dr. Lucy Jones in terms of your passion, and I hope that one day, you know, when I turn on TV,

hopefully after a minor quake, it will be Dr. Matthew Wong.

Because Ms. Jones will have retired by that point,

and will say, I know that person, you know,

he is a version of my city. Congratulations. Thank you.

Marissa, you and I served on Asian Youth Center board together.

Great choice in selecting Matthew for this $50,000 scholarship. And Matthew, congratulations. I know how competitive it is nowadays to get into these top name Ivy League schools. So you've got a great future ahead of you. Really excited to see what you're creating. And are these your parents?

That's my mom and my brother-in-law.

Oh, okay.

Awesome. Well, you guys have a lot to be proud of, too.

So I hope you guys will come up and join the photo op.

Thank you. And Matthew, congratulations. I look forward to getting one of those texts. And it says, Dr. Matthew Wong, pre-warning.

Proud of you being an Aztec alumni. Go represent your school.

Go represent your community.

You can't go wrong with MIT, Dartmouth, and Stanford.

Go spread your wings.

Go tell them who we are, and then come back and make us more proud by being a local and growing up and contributing to our local community. So with that said, we're going to present you with a certificate.

So let's have council members can join me up front.

Thank you.

One, two. Yeah, right here. Grab them. What did you guys get? Get them all.

Okay, got it. Mayshall, you jumping in?

Okay, ready?

One, two, three. I'm having that.

You got that one. All right.

Thank you.

Okay, well, good luck on your flight.

And remember, we'll look for your name, Matthew. Next item is 3S.

Parks to Rec?

Okay.

Good evening, Mayor.

Mayor Pro Tem and City Councilmembers. It's my pleasure tonight to present the staff report for the Tree Memorial Program. In February this year, the Recreation and Community Services Department received nominations for the Tree Memorial Program. An ad hoc committee consisting of three community participation commissioners and two Rec and Park commissioners received the nominations, reviewed them, and voted unanimously to recommend Teresa Amador for a Tree Memorial.

Teresa Amador has served the Monterey Park community for over 58 years. It's kind of hard to believe that she was only two years old when she started serving this community.

She served a term as our city clerk.

She also served on multiple city commissions, event committees.

She served the Monterey Park Lions Club, Friends of the Library, the Monterey Park Women's Club, and the list goes on and on.

Tonight, staff is recommending that City Council consider taking action to honor Teresa Amador with the tree memorial. It's my honor and privilege to complete my staff report and turn the floor over to you. I'm available for any questions, and Teresa is also with us tonight.

All right. Thank you.

So thank you, Robert. I'm going to see if there's any comments from my...

We're going to make a talk?

Yeah.

Okay.

Teresa, did you want to speak?

Okay, yes.

I was going to have the group here praise you first and then have you speak, but we'll do it the other way.

We'll have you speak.

We'll have you speak first.

Because we have a captive audience tonight.

So, yeah.

Mayor Ving, Mayor Pro Tem, City Council members, and wonderful friends, and City Manager Inez, and City Attorney Carl Becker. Thank you so much for this honor. Yes, I was a child. I was a child when I was a city clerk. They let me in the door early. But it's been a wonderful, wonderful experience to live in Monterey Park. the waterfall how we landed in Monterey Park is we're transplants from Sacramento

and my husband was driving down Atlantic Boulevard with his brother going to Pasadena and they were and he saw the waterfall and it was lit up so when he came home to Sacramento he said I know where we're going to move we're going to move to De La Fuente and we're going to move to Monterey Park because there's a beautiful waterfall. So that's how we ended up first on Monte Chico, and then we moved to De La Fuente. So it's my way of saying thank you. It's been a wonderful journey of, oh, I hate to think, 57 years or so. But being that in August I'm going to be 88, I guess the math adds up. But anyway, thank you, thank you so much for this beautiful honor and my opportunity to give back to the community that I love and all the many friends that I've made and the council members. You're a great bunch of council members. It's great how you work together, and you have a fabulous city attorney and city manager. And I don't really know the city clerk and the city treasurer, so I can't really address that. but it looks like they're doing a great job. So thank you so, so very much for the honor. Thank you.

Okay.

Well, now I'll pass on to you guys for comments.

I'll follow our honorees' lead and be short. I can't think of anyone.

I can think of very few people as deserving as Teresa. I really appreciate your many, many years, not that long ago, but many years of service to the community and the city, and you continue to serve and lead in the community, so we appreciate it. I look forward to seeing where you decide on your tree placement, and I know you work with Robert to make sure it's a good one.

Thank you.

I also want to thank you, Teresa, not just for being here tonight, but for the many years of public service that you gave to our community. You're an exemplary model of what civic engagement really looks like, so I appreciate all those years of service and still being able to come here tonight. and I can't think of, like Council Member Wong said, many people that should be honored tonight, but I'm really, really, really appreciative. You're, as you know, you're one of my personal heroes, so thank you so much for being here tonight,

and I'm very proud of you,

and thank you for all that you do for Monterey Park.

Thank you.

My only comment tonight is, why didn't we do it sooner?

We know it, but better than ever. Again, a well-deserved recognition,

but we know you don't do it for recognition. We know you do it because you love the community,

And I think that in itself is an incredible testament to your devotion to Monterey Park.

But again, congratulations.

Thank you.

You are so well deserving of this award at this tree memorial. You've done so much for the city in the last how many years? And the timing is perfect because Carol just got her tree memorial recently. So you're right after her.

Yes, we're a team.

Exactly, yes.

and even though you're not physically living in Monterey Park anymore, your heart is still with us because you continue coming back and serving on Monterey Park Women's Club, you know, in whatever capacity you can. So we treasure you so much, and congratulations.

Teresa, I'm just so happy and glad that I can call you a friend,

and I know you're long overdue, probably 40, 50 years overdue, but we're here,

and the age is a number, the service is a number, because you still continue to serve this community in many ways.

And we'll see you around. We continue to see you around.

So this is just a one-time event. We'll get the tree going, but we'll continue to celebrate you continuing to serve our community and being friends of Monterey Park.

So thank you so much.

Thank you. So as a final footnote, I would remiss if I didn't invite you all,

and I know some of you are planning to attend,

that the Monterey Park Women's Club is having their annual fashion show at the Quiet Cannon.

this coming on a couple of Saturdays from now on May the 3rd, and the tickets are $65.

And so if you're interested, contact Carol Sullivan. So thank you very much.

Great. I think you have an audience back there, so I would start selling tickets to them to get them because it's for a great cost for the Women's Club. I believe we all got tickets already.

So we'll see you there that day.

Thank you.

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

I think we need to make a motion, but I'm going to make a motion unless someone else.

I don't know. I don't remember who.

I'll make a motion.

Okay.

Motion by Pro Tem Yang and then second by Council Member Sanchez.

So no further discussion. Let's take a vote.

Approved unanimously.

Unanimous. Okay. Thank you. Okay.

Can we take a picture with her as the request?

Okay. Okay, well let's take a quick picture with her.

Thank you.

Can I take a picture? I'll take a picture. You're a team, she told me. She told me.

All right, over here, one, two, three. One, two, three.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, City Council members, City managers, City Attorney, elected officials and municipal leadership.

My name is Rick Ng.

I'm here representing OCA Greater Los Angeles chapter. We are a civil rights and advocacy organization founded in 1991 for the purposes of serving the social, cultural, and political welfare of Asian Pacific Americans. And I'm here to speak and basically thank the city of Monterey Park for supporting some of the events that we've held this past month. notably the Barnes Park community cleanup which was March 1st and also our community intergenerational Mahjong which took place at Langley Center so I do have some certificates

here to present to you

the first I will present to

the city council for their

participation in the cleanup and thanks again Mayor No for speaking at that and for Council Member Lo and Council Member Wong for being

there to help clean up some litter. Just a few notes here I wanted to, I thought I'd

mentioned. So this was partly sponsored by Clean California, which is a government initiative to actually eliminate litter and beautify cities. And one of the things that Clean California gave where I don't know if you remember seeing those scales where people got to weigh the trash that they collected.

And so in the end, I asked for what the total was, and I looked at the numbers and I thought, that looks too low. So I thought, oh, maybe I'll present it to you in kilograms,

and that looked too low too. So I'll just tell you what the numbers were. It was 104 pounds or 47 kilograms. Now, that might not seem a lot, but as you guys were there, you saw how much was collected, and thanks to the Recreation Community Services, when they had to haul it away, it was quite a lot of garbage. So because of that, we had, I believe, 60 volunteers divided up into different teams. We actually had our high schoolers from Mark Keppel, Gabrelino. We had representatives from Cal State LA and also from Southern California Gas. So we do appreciate giving us the opportunity to do that. The Clean California people were so very pleased at the outcome. They now contacted me to do two more. And so those will be upcoming. I believe one of the cities will be in the greater San Gabriel Valley, but the other one is they wanted us to do Chinatown, actually after the Golden Dragon Parade, but we lucked out on that one.

But anyway, so I would like to present the city council with a certificate and also with the, is Director Aguirre here?

Robert? Robert's here.

Oh, yeah, I have one for the recreation and community service because of your contributions to the cleanup. So do I just hand them to?

Well, go down and take a picture.

But before I do that, we collected over 100 pounds.

It may not sound heavy, but it was probably 50 plus bags because the way it comes in,

it's not like in your garden where you stuff everything and you can build it as big as you can because these are all coming from different groups of people. Teams of four, 15 people going up Garvey East to Atlantic. We started from Garfield and Garvey. 15 going south toward New Avenue

basically walked the loop back

15 going Garfield to Hellman the other one going toward the 60-feetway and then we all finished in two hours

and collected

a lot of rubbish. So thank you for your group

for helping with this. Oh no thank you

and you're right Mayor it doesn't seem like a lot

but you know it's not so much about weight but volume

because you know there is just lots of litter that we were

needing to get off the streets. We're glad to do it, and we'd be happy

to do it again. We need part two to that.

You can join me.

Okay.

This is to present to you, Robert. Thank you.

we thank you for your staff

I can't remember the guy's name but

he brought the van

oh Ruben oh yeah that's right so we hope we got him some food as well so

Thank you.

If you want to stay there. The second one was a very big event, very successful, as some of you have witnessed, was the intergenerational Mahjong game that we had at Langley. And we had five sessions there. And I like to, you know, praise the staff at Langley. They were incredibly supportive. Just a little bit of a story about how we got the funding for it. It was through the Monterey Park Community Healing Fund. And I had got to know a couple of the families that were, unfortunately, lost family members there. And it was at an event, and one of them said to me that, you know, what's more important than, in addition to us being able to get funding and resources to help the healing, is to help the community heal. And just remember, you've got to do something that's fun.

do something that brings everyone together. And so we started to realize that Mahjong is now kind of experienced a resurgence.

And so we were actually just incredibly blown away by the number of people that showed up. I would have to say anywhere between like 55 to maybe 90 people came to the event. Procession, yes. Yes. And it was a mixture. It was truly intergenerational,

although I think there were more younger people than there were some of the seniors, but a lot of the seniors that use Langley on a regular basis showed up. And because of that event, we also got asked by other cities to help them. So I'm actually working with the city of Santa Ana, so we're going to get them started next month.

But thanks to talking to Robert that we'll continue the program on a weekend,

because we've been getting a lot of calls, when are you going to start again? I said, you know, give us a break, and we'll probably resume in May

and serve as a recognition of API Heritage Month. So I'd like to present another certificate

to the City Council of Ma John. And... Sorry, I had... Oh, okay.

Yes, so, Robert, if you don't mind, this is for you and the staff at Bankley.

Very appreciative of their involvement. Absolutely.

I love the process. And then finally, one more, one more.

Just for full disclosure, as you know, I am part of the Monterey Park Community Healing Fund,

and thanks to the City Council for considering me to serve on that committee.

And it's been quite a rewarding experience because we get to be in contact with those that were trying to recover from the trauma and just looking at all the different programs that were coming to us for funding and how they would benefit the city. And I want to give kudos to the chair of that group, my friend Amy Lee. So I have a certificate for you.

Here we go.

Oh. Oh, okay.

Thank you.

month is, as you know, Asian Pacific Native Hawaiian, well, yeah, Pacific Islander Month. And OCA has a program that we're doing on Sunday, May 18th, at the NBC restaurant. And

it's entitled Honoring Generational Heroes and Courage in Extraordinary Times. And this

was appropriate for me to come here and talk about that and leave you with the flyers here, but I basically want to say that one of your own we are honoring with the Generational Hero Awards, and that's Henry Lo. Now, I've known Henry. Henry and I have been friends for a long time, as well as community colleagues, and so the one thing that, you know, of course, a lot of us acknowledge and remember his leadership in those dark days after the shooting. But there's a long line of achievements that he's accomplished with CACA, with OCA, Greater Los Angeles, and civic and community activism with civil rights and LGBTQ rights. And so it's a very well-deserved honor. And we're going to be doing this event on Sunday, May 18th. I have flyers here, so I'll give this to the city clerk, and there'll be more information about what else we'll be doing there. One of our other speakers is going to be Norman Wong, who is the great-grandson of Wong Kim Ark. And right now he's speaking over at the Chinese American Museum on Advancing Inquality. But we figured with today's atmosphere and the threats against Americans of all color and status in this country that we wanted to honor him because he's been very vocal. He's been speaking out about what the case that involved his great-grandfather meant and means to the community. So thank you very much.

Next speaker, Lauren Hill of the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Good evening, Mayor, Council Members, City Attorney, City Manager, City Clerk, and City Treasurer. My name is Lauren Hill, and I am a Public Information Officer with the United States Small Business Administration. And you may have seen us out in the community before, but we are currently out here due to the recent fires at Eaton and Palisades that have devastated many within the Los Angeles County community. And so I want to share just some of the disaster response resources that we have with you all just in case someone you know was impacted physically or the businesses in your area may have been impacted economically. So we have, you think of small business administration, you think of business loans and business support, but we do offer disaster loans for individuals and renters too. So some may have been, you know, sheltering here after the fires. So we just want to make sure we get that information out. But individual renters can qualify for up to $100,000 in disaster loans from the SBA. Individual homeowners can qualify for up to $500,000. And that $500,000 can be used to replace personal property damage. The renter 100,000 is only for like per well I'm

sorry the homeowners can replace their actual home the renters can replace their car or personal property that they may have lost. Separate from that

businesses can also apply for the disaster loans businesses can apply for up to two million dollars.

to be within our declared county, which is Los Angeles County. So I've left some flyers over here

with my show, as well as a couple of my business cards so that you all can reach out if anyone does

have questions. We also do have a disaster recovery center in Altadena on Woodbury. It's 540 Woodbury

Drive. So anyone can walk in and just speak to one of our customer service representatives and

get their questions answered and get support if they need it. So just wanted to make sure that information is out to you all. Thank you. Thank you, Lauren.

Do we have comments? Just a quick comment for staff. I think we're already promoting some of this information right through our channels. I just want to make sure we're doing that and if we can continue to do that. Great. And I also had

a great conversation with Janice and Phillip earlier just around the Economic Development

Committee side. So if you guys need anything else, we are here

to support how we can. Is there a deadline or no deadline? There is.

So for physical disaster loans, the deadline is May the 30th.

For economic injury, it's a little bit longer because it takes a while to sometimes see what the economic impact is. So the deadline for that is October 8th. Thank you. You're welcome.

Next speaker.

Next speaker, Mike Greenspan.

Mike Greenspan. Hey, I actually umpired a game years ago at Keppel. Anyway, oh, and by the way, whoever mentioned the person about the Mahjong, I guess I grew up with my mom always hosting Mahjong games, and it was so prevalent that my mom and grandmother were to bingo at the American Legion in Florida, and my grandmother got a bingo, and she hollered, Maj! That's how I'm used to. They were playing Maj. I've never played, but I know of many Mahjong players.

Now, something happened in the previous meeting. Item 2C, Conference with Labor Negotiators Pursuant to California Government Code 54957.6. And there's about eight different groups. I'm going to read them.

Confidential Employees Association, Firefighters Association, Mid-Management Association, Police Captains Association, Police Officers Association, Police Officers Mid-Management Association, Professional Chief Officers Association, and Service Employees International Union Local 721.

Now, I hope that your treasurer, Amy Lee, is in good financial shape because right now we're going to be going through a big inflationary spiral. Everybody's going to want more money. I hope you're ready to open up your purses and walls and pay more taxes on your property and sales taxes and everything else because if you're going to be generous, you're going to look like L.A.

What do I mean by that? Well, L.A. is now going to be, I've had herd estimates of $350 million to $558 million in debt. this fiscal year, next fiscal year that starts July 1st, they're going to be a billion in debt, and they still haven't paid their pension fund.

Yes, their pension fund is due, according to their city controller, and they don't have the money. And they exhausted all the reserves last year. As one of the former council members, Mitch Englander, always said during Jewish Heritage Month, that Jews control the city shekels. And obviously, I don't want to be a Joe Biden and plagiarize anybody. I'll give it credit to the council member, former council member who went to prison.

Guess what, folks? There's no money left.

And everybody does the same thing. Your city, other cities, if you don't have your financial house in order, you go to Sacramento with a gruel cup. And what was last year's budget? $73 billion in debt. So you're not going to get much money from them. And you're going to keep wanting to go up to higher levels. and they're not going to give it to you. So I hope with these negotiations, you're being very, very, how would I put it, financially sensible. Otherwise, it's going to run away on you. And one of these stands out, SEIU 721. I call them the purple shirters. I call them the carbon footprint union.

Because back in 2022, they stuffed my mailbox.

And I mean stuff my mailbox every day with one to two leaflets from their, what was it called, an independent expenditure committee for some guy named Bob Hertzberg.

They tried to shove him down our throat.

And I kept warning people, folks, he's a slimy Jewish lawyer who would say anything to get a vote. Nobody even knew, very few people even knew Lindsey Horvath. But when it came to the runoff, second place Lindsey Horvath overtook Hertzberg.

We used to have a saying when he ran for mayor of L.A., Hertzberg for mayor, morals aren't everything. And he hangs around with some people. He was a roommate of a guy named Tony Villar,

who was Speaker of the Assembly before him. Yes, the former mayor of L.A., running for governor, who's not fit to be governor. How can I say it? He's soft on crime. His boy, Jimmy Blackman, gave to that crooked council member, Mitchell Englander. And all I can say about people like that, you don't want them. And, oh, by the way, that SEIU 721, one of the purple shirts told me in L.A. and told everybody they have 98,000 members, but we still voted against their candidate. They tried to shove down our throat, killing millions of trees. If the candidate is so great, why don't you just do your e-mail stuff and e-mail it to people? It doesn't kill trees.

My mailbox got stuffed with a worthless candidate I would never vote for. I wouldn't vote for him with a dog as my proxy. That's how bad he is. And that's how much he's really messed up California.

He actually wanted to deny bail to people. And he's, thank God, the Bail Association. But he wanted to give no bail to criminals and innocent people, deny them bail. So as I tell you about this union, yeah, have fun. They'll bankrupt if you let them. Thank you.

Next speaker, Ms. LGBT Voice.

Good morning. so first of all I want to talk about the the council meeting I have been to other different school board

I have been to three different college school board meeting

and then they all have some waters, snacks put either somewhere at the doorway it definitely provide a

much more welcoming and a friendly environment to encourage participation in the council meeting and then

I just asked several employees right here. They said there's not any.

So I feel if any council member are interested, we can learn from those board meetings. Number two is I'm a little bit concerned about the 145% tariff. As a customer, I don't know what I'm going to be dealing with in the coming month.

Right now, I'm already suffering because the price of the eggs is already almost doubled,

but obviously my income doesn't change much.

If not, my hours were cut and my hours were reduced. My income were decreased. So I just don't know, am I going to be expecting a 145% increase in the living expenses? I don't know.

And then for the business side, I don't know how many business owners in Monterey Park rely on supplies from China or from any of those countries that was listed on Trump's tariffs list.

So again, I don't know how are they going to survive when we have a 145% tariff.

And I recommend the city, maybe if you should have some certain tax relief program to help the people who have a hard time to survive. Next, I want to talk about the LASA, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. on the news I think it's two weeks ago Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors decided

they want to quit this LASA program anymore so they are no longer participating with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority anymore

so that makes me concerned because when the Los Angeles County part of the LASA the services

are pretty terrible according to according to seven people die on the street every single day, every single night, according to the continued increase homeless population in Los Angeles County.

But right now, when the county quitting the Lhasa, I don't know,

I assume, I expect the homeless services will be even worse, especially the current Trump administration are saying that

I'm not going to fund all of the sanctuary city.

So as a homeless individual, I'm assuming the situation is even worse and worse.

I don't know if there's anything the city can do to help. And then I lived in San Francisco for about one year and a half, and I went to the San Francisco meetings on a regular monthly basis. And the one thing they do I wish that Monterey Park can learn from the San Francisco is they do have a free meal program that community members, actually, there's no eligibility.

Anyone, any human being, the only eligibility is as long as you are a human, that you can get a weekly free meal. I believe during the time I was there, your eligibility is two free meals per week.

And then the reason why that is important is that during one of the reports from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, which is the one in charge of the food stamp program called CalFresh, they are losing a lot of money from the federal funding because President Trump does not want to continue to fund the food stamp.

So, again, I am assuming, I'm expecting I will lose a lot of food stamp benefit in the coming month, possibly in the coming years.

And then maybe there's a continue to medical services cut, maybe other social services cut because of what I read on the news.

So, you know, right now having a free meal is more important than ever before. So, again, I do not know if the city has any intention, if the city has ever had any discussion regarding a free meal program.

But I think San Francisco did it.

It's not the best. It's still not perfect, but it's better than nothing like Monterey Park.

So I hope we can have some discussion in this program.

Next speaker, Christine Wong.

Good evening, Mayor. Good evening, Council Members. City Attorney, City Manager, and city clerk, treasurer, and officials, and everyone here.

My name is Christine Wong. I have been a resident of Monterey Park since 1978, 48 years. My husband and I ran a small business for 38 of those years. We grew our family of three children, and now we have five grandchildren. children. I'm here today on behalf of the Barnes Park Pool. The Barnes Park Pool seems to have a stubborn recycle of problems that comes across the city council chamber every so many years. I don't understand that, but anyway.

Barnes Park Pool was erected in 1948 by Mr. B.S. Barnes,

who is a local resident through park acquisitions of 11 acres developed and built.

Along with the Barnes Park Pool, a community center, a basketball gym, an amphitheater slash memorial bowl, public pavilion, Olympic-sized pool, 50 meters, softball field, tennis courts, et cetera, was implemented.

Now, Barnes Park Pool is a very unique structure. Mr. Barnes has the foresight to see that a 50-meter length is implemented. This probably was contributed by the fact that an official Olympic pool does have 50 meters in length, but a preferred competition pool will have 25 yards in width. And this is also in... Excuse me, I'm a little bit nervous. I'm not a common return speaker here. In 1896, the Olympic...

another. Utilities is always badgering the city of city management, posing them tremendous of financial problems. But nonetheless, it's sustained. And nonetheless, it served the community. I had, my family had the opportunity to enjoy Barnes Park Pool. My children learned to swim in Barnes Park Pool, and between the age of 8 to 12 is when children come off of classes, learning how to swim, toddlers with mommy and me classes. 8 to 12 is a very prime time for children to enroll in novice or competition swimming, which brings me to a point of Monterey Park manta rays that have existed for so many years and have embraced so much talent in our community. When our high school redistricted in 1999, sending majority of our residents to one high school, the depth of our program at Mark Keppel for aquatics was very infantile. At that time, Mark Keppel... Is that my time? Oh, okay. At that time, Marqueppo High School Director for Athletics, Mrs. Del Torrio, was a huge support for implementing this program and supporting it, and ultimately brought Ish Perez, the coach, on deck as a full-time coach at Marqueppo High School. Through his 25 years, we've developed from Division III CIF winners back-to-back into a higher level, which we are now at Division I. And that is the top of the CIF division. And that is something this community should be proud of, really proud of. Other than scholastic achievements, athletic achievement is well endowed. Okay. A community pool boosts local economy through events and tourism. I'm going to have to read this because I can't remember it all. It improves community health and safety. It fosters social interaction. It promotes community pride. It Lors costs of having to install a pool personally.

so Ms. Wong we're going to ask you to wrap it up because your time is up because we have other speakers if you can just wrap it up in 20-30 seconds

thank you a competition pool of 50 meters and 25 yards

should be on your mind

to improve our pool

and keep our pool

I'm jumping forward so I have to recollect here

recently I've got involved and I was asked to sit on various

meetings I don't think the pool should be competing against any other sport number one the pool is a structure

of its own which involves water everything pertains to

water sports is for water use

only. It should not be put on the auction block against any other land use activities. It should be just

for water. The most important thing is we need to make sure

that our local swim team, our local residents have access and our high school has support. I'll leave it at that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next speaker, Robert Ogawa-Monroe.

Mr. Mayor, Pro Tem, and Council Members,

my family has ties back to Monterey Park for over 45 years

and myself have been here for 15 years

my kids have gone through Mark Keppel High School and none of them were a part of the aquatics program which is what I'm here to speak to you now about

however

However, as I had events in my life that caused various health issues, I was put in a position where I was needing a walker or I was needing a wheelchair. And one of the programs that helped me through that was the adult aquatics program here.

And specifically the water aerobics program.

When you're in the water, your spine isn't subject to the regular gravity, and you can exercise in ways that some people simply cannot do on land.

You can see I'm not in a wheelchair.

That's good news.

But part of my recovery was being able to use the surfaces of Monterey Park.

and

something that I want to

highlight is that

we have two pools here

and I still consider Barnes Park to be the second pool

there may be many people

tonight who may be representing

Markeppel

swim team and the mat race. They all need, have need for a 50 meter Olympic size pool. That is basically what you have to have that for a

competition pool. For

the Elder Park pool, it's a 40 yard pool. It is not a competition pool. Something that will need to eventually be addressed there is that there is rust forming in the deck around that pool. The cement is starting to delaminate. That pool is going to need to be closed and refurbished. I don't know the timescale, but it's something that is on the horizon. When that occurs, your backup pool that has been used for those swim teams over at Delver Park won't be available.

Okay?

From my perspective, from the adult classes,

is that according to the United States Water Fitness Association,

there are recommended temperatures for different water activities. And that is something that some of the other people here may not stop to think about.

And I think in general, it might be something that's very much overlooked by people who are not involved in the aquatics programs.

When you're sitting up, making decisions, and planning for what are we going to do with this piece of property over here.

So to give you an idea, there's basically three different ranges of water temperature that they recommend.

and in one case it probably doesn't apply, and it's cut off on my paper. For certain types of therapy pools, you're looking at 90 to 92 degree water. That's not what we're talking about here. But for the Elder Park pool, the temperature used to be several degrees higher, And that was more appropriate for the programs for older people or just adults and for the children's classes. And the ideal range for those programs is 86 to 80 degree water. However, what is needed for the competitive swim programs, such as what is needed by the high school and by the matter rays, is a much cooler temperature. it tends to be around 72 degrees

never higher than

74 degrees some prefer even 70 degree water and so currently one pool

doesn't fit

all the needs of the community And when you have the elder park pool that is beginning to show signs of decay, making a short-sighted decision on the future of Barnes Park Pool could be very detrimental to all of our community programs dealing with water.

Thank you.

Next speaker, Tracy Sy.

Good evening, Councilman. My name is Tracy.

I'm a resident of Mario Park for seven, eight years.

And my experience in Mario Park is great.

I love Mario Park.

Everywhere is closed in proximity. The food is great. The people are friendly.

But one thing is I'm here to talk about the pool. So the pool situation is, I heard that they are demoing the pool and closing it. So I feel the city shouldn't be doing that because our community need it, our school need it. Our kids that are in the swim team, Mark Keppel, need to use that pool, the 50-meter pool. So it's such a waste to close it because our community need it. And the concern is the city doesn't have money to fund the building of the pool.

But I came across this minutes.

There's like a line item that said that the city has $91 million that are in reserve. So my question is, is there any way the city can think about releasing it and use that money to fund for the pool remodeling?

Thank you.

Next speaker is me.

Good evening, neighbors. My name is Misha. I'm speaking as a resident.

Tonight I was asked to read a statement by another neighbor, Alyssa Vantron. She's written to state that she's been a part of the Monterey Park community for over 30 years. Monterey Park is her hometown, and the Barnes Park pool is the heartbeat of the community. She details how the Barnes Park pool has been a part of her life. She learned to swim at the age of five at Barnes Park. She also swam with the Manta Race Club team as well as the Mark Keppel swim team as a teenager and served as an intern with the city of Monterey Park.

The way the Barnes Park pool has cultivated personal leadership skills, creating healthy lifelong habits, community involvement, and networking skills is invaluable.

The Barnes Park pool isn't just for swim lessons. It brings the community together. It also brings other people from other cities to Monterey Park because it is such a big pool. More programs are offered, which brings more business to the city of Monterey Park. She said there is a demand for both of the pools to be open, not only one. And she asked that we please find a way to push the project through.

She has also reached out to Senator Adam Schiff and Congresswoman Judy Chu, asking them for their support for this project as well.

She strongly believes that if the city writes grants, uses crowdsourcing platforms, and asks for sponsors, the city of Monterey Park can achieve the funding for this project. The outcome of this investment will serve the city of Monterey Park for generations to come. On a side note, I'd like to add, you know, one of the biggest issues that you see your neighbors out here upset about this issue is because they were led on.

I have spoken at this podium so many times about the importance of transparency and honesty.

And all of you knew that this pool was going to be filled,

and yet you continue to lead on these neighbors, these residents,

the people that you're supposed to serve, pretending like their opinion mattered,

encouraging them to go and participate in the parks master plan,

when you already knew what you were going to do. If you already...

If you believe in your decision and you think it's the...

known like at least probably a year.

It's been budgeted. You already knew you were going to fill

the pool. Why do you keep lying to these

people? Just cut it out, please.

Mr. Mayor, if I can

interject real quick. I know this is not agendized, so we can't

have a discussion about this, but I would just note that

there is definitely

misinformation going on on this item, and it is not coming from this council and this staff. I know for a fact that there have been conversations about what is actually happening here. I'm happy to host a town hall meeting.

I think other council members as well.

Maybe we can direct staff to have a meeting about this for those who are interested in discussing what is actually happening with the pool currently for safety reasons. And that the city has not abandoned what I think we are talking about. I think we all share the same concerns.

Let's get through the rest of the public communication and we'll have a wrap up on this.

next speaker Damien Jowa

good evening mayor council department heads and city staff the issue that I'll be addressing is the swimming pool at Barnes Park. Barnes Park pool has been built since approximately 1950s. A few years ago when the issue and matter was addressed regarding the pool, the existing condition of the pool is primarily the construction and operation. It's dilapidated, damages and cracks on the pool, leaking areas of the water, and also the inefficient and high cost to maintain the equipment, the pump and the heat. The swimming pool at Barnes, back then when it was proposed to what the cost and budget proposal for keeping it operating was in the millions of dollars. And at this point, I think it's what I've heard recently updated costs is approximately $15 to $20 million. I'm not sure to renovate or rebuild. Back then, I proposed right now, as I currently propose, for example, in Monterey Park Life, there was a discussion about the pool. And I propose if there's, regarding the Barnes Park complex pool area, would not just be another reconstruction of another pool, but a multifunction, multi-use facility that would also accommodate not only regular-sized pools, but also minor pools, meeting rooms, function rooms, social rooms. So the whole Barnes Park complex area would be reconstructed for a new facility. That's my proposal. Of course, that's years down the road at this point. But the current situation with our pool is also it needs to be, what was addressed was to be filled up with temporary dirt. the reason is because of collection of water stagnant water or moisture would breed harmful mosquitoes and other insects and pests as well so that's one of the items regarding why it needs to be filled up with dirt

thank you

Next speaker, David Wilson.

Hello, Mayor. Hello, Mayor of City Council.

I am a Monterey Park dad, and I have a prepared statement from a family in Monterey Park.

Dear esteemed members of Monterey Park City Council, by a way of introduction, my name is Chris Liu. I am an alum of Mark Kippel High School.

I am writing my voice to voice my strong support preserving and investing our community in a swimming pool at Barnes Park.

This facility represents far more than just a place to swim. It is a vital and shared resource that both supports public health, youth development, community connection, and economic opportunities.

Growing up a few short blocks away from Barnes Park, I have seen my first hand how the swimming pool has functioned as a pillar and as a cross section of our community.

It is where young children first learn about water safety. It is where teens develop discipline and teamwork through swimming and aquatic programs or even a part time job. It is where working adults can find time to decompress and stay active.

It is where seniors have a low impact absolutely necessary for aging populations to form exercise that are not otherwise possible.

Accessible way to maintain their health and mobility, as we've heard before. For many, it is one of the few affordable and inclusive spaces that welcomes people from all walks of life. I have a deep personal connection to this pool. It is where I first learned to swim and train daily for over a decade. an experience that ignited a lifelong passion and ultimately helped me earn an admission to college

where I had the honor of serving as captain of the varsity swimming team at Yale University, all while representing Monterey Park. My mother, who still lives a few blocks from Barnes, was a regular participant in the morning lap swim sessions.

As aging joints made her high-impact activities like running and biking more difficult, the pool provided one of the few accessible and effective ways for her to stay active and healthy. Beyond physical health, the swimming pool has also functioned as a place to support her and her sense of community and routine as well. There is also a compelling case to be made that the pool has a long-term economic asset

with programs to attract not only locals but visitors in nearby cities. I appreciate your time and consideration and for your continued service for our beloved Monterey Park community, the Lou family of Grand Ridge Avenue.

Yeah, I'm a dad. I've been here. Thank you. My daughter is in the swim at George Elder. She loves it. She loves having a pool with her school friends. I love Barnes Park. It is a part of us. we have been celebrating the library and the park ever since she was born I'd love to see more effort go into the pool it is kind of an eyesore it is half filled with dirt and it'd be great to have something that she can look forward to when she's still a kid so for me, I'm a young parent it'd be great to be able to do something to get that to happen while she's still a child so thank you applause applause

Next speaker, Margaret Leung.

Hi, good evening, city council members and city staff. I just would like to talk about the pool at the Barnes Park.

And it's our legacy. It's the city's legacy.

It's a place where my son learned how to swim and where he made friends.

I remember Robert, when we started the Mommy and Me program, it was a wonderful program. it really served the city well

and I don't know anybody that came to this

speech that has really seen

the estimate or the assessment of this pool, the condition of the pool

because the parents and the residents has asked for that assessment. I'm not sure if it's available

if somebody has done the assessment of this swimming pool that is going to cause that huge amount of money to restore, we should talk about

it. We could look at it. Is the swimming pool has all the bells and whistles on it? Maybe we could

cut back. We just like to have an informed decision here. We have an individual that came up to talk

about how much this swimming pool is going to cost us to build. We looked into it. We asked

contractor, a basic standard Olympic-sized swimming pool, causes somewhere between $2.5 million to $5 million to build.

Brand spanking new.

Now, we want to start adding facility. We could go up to $10 million or maybe $100 million.

But when I started the Mommy and Me program in Monterey Park,

The vision was to build a stand on the side for the parent.

So when the Olympics come back to Monterey Park, we could be there to watch our kids swim.

And I just feel like we're so let down, disappointed.

I'm really disappointed.

I love Monterey Park. I moved here because of family reason. Obligation to be here.

so I just want to say please reconsider

be transparent if you guys have quotes that is different than the numbers I have share them

let's talk about it

we don't need 24 karat gold inlay

beautiful tiles we just need something basic that works thank you applause

next speaker is Paul Isisaki He will be given 10 minutes.

He was also yielded, Debbie Yamamoto and Mindy Romo have yielded their time to him.

City manager, city council, but especially you, young parents that bought a house in Monterey Park for about a million dollars or even more than a million dollars. I think you better listen and tell your people to come and listen to what Paul Isazaki has to say. Hey, Monterey Park is just an average city. We're nothing special.

Let's make that clear.

We are a very good community. The strength of this city are the people. The homeowners, hey, the kids that go to Marquette will go to school. You know, the people of Monterey Park are very good people. Hardworking, trying hard.

Pretty honest, too.

But we're still just an average city.

Do you know what? I'm going to talk about the positives first.

Because I've lived in this city for 70 years, all my life. I know what's going on here.

I mean, I see it.

My eyes are open.

Hey, we have a great police department. They're on it.

They're in touch with the community. When we were getting robbed in the Highlands, they took care of business and they got the group.

But, of course, with home robberies, another group, another individual comes and robs.

The fire department. We've got a good fire department.

Whenever there's an emergency, they're there.

And especially if it's a health emergency, you know you appreciate that fire department.

I'm on the Aging Commission and Langley is great Langley Senior Citizen is probably the best

senior citizen place in San Gabriel Valley and you should be proud of it

and you could tell just by driving by and seeing the parking lot is full but the programs that Memo's running, great the library, I think she's gone, running all kinds of programs, especially for the kids. Another good program. And not counting the special events we run here at Monterey Park. We just ran a great one with Cherry Blossom. So we're doing

good things. But we got problems, people. What do you come off for an average city? Well, you know

what? Let's go with home values. I look at the home values and I see Alhambra, medium price over Monterey Park. You look at areas like Fremont and their houses are the same price of Monterey Park.

Of course, north of Alhambra by San Marino, much higher. Come on. Now, money talks. People are

saying, I'd rather spend more money in Alhambra than live here. That sends a message. Hell, even the Chinese food here. We used to be known as Monterey Park, the home of Chinese food. Well, not anymore, people. I'm talking reality here. You want to go good Chinese, go to Hombra.

Fine dining. Go to San Gabriel.

And if you want to go better, go to Arcadia. We don't have the best Chinese food here.

We have cheap Chinese food. We have sloppy places.

Our city's kind of dirty, people. We're kind of like a Chinese ghetto.

And I'm not scared to say it.

I'm just trying to tell you the truth.

You know, part of the problem, and it's not you specifically, city councilman or city manager, it's the history.

You just came into this job. How?

You want to talk the history of Monterey Park? Let's go to the very beginning. We don't even have a school district. Our city council couldn't even put a school district in here to call it Monterey Park School District. We belong to four different school districts.

You see, it's not that this city council has done a bad job. It's the history of the city council. They just had no vision. And they're not willing to work to make something happen.

They're doing an average job, making sure that we're paying the bills, not in debt.

I heard the man talk about L.A. City.

Sure, billion-dollar debt. No, we're doing okay that way.

I know that you guys got a big budget on personnel and pensions coming up.

Inez, every city manager before you I've known, been friends with, I'll tell you a story.

When Alhambra had to redistrict their school zone, that's Alhambra Unified School District, and they put all the kids in Monterey Park in Mark Keppel High School. A city councilman came to me and said,

we will give you the land that Mark Keppel High School is on.

They were going to give us the land of Alhambra to the city of Monterey Park. The mayor of Monterey Park put me into the office and said,

Paul, we can't do it.

We don't have the money. Have you ever heard that one before?

We don't have the money. The infrastructure, the public works, it's going to cost us too much money. We don't have it.

Let Alhambra keep Mark Keppel and Alhambra.

Sad. Sad. Because you know why?

If my son or daughter was to get arrested at Mark Keppel,

the Alhambra police will come and get him and take him to Alhambra Police Department and book him.

I want my kid to get arrested and be brought to Monterey Park, where I feel more comfortable with the belongings.

You see?

So, you know, something's wrong.

Something's wrong. We're not working here.

I'm going to tell you what's the problem, and probably all of you are going to be, you know, you're not the problem now, but when you're done with your term, looking back as city manager, as city councilman, you tell me if you're not part of the problem afterwards.

You have no vision. This city has no vision.

And I'll tell you the two visions that I saw this city do and change the city.

And it starts with Mark Keppel.

If you know, if you know that Alhambra Unified had to redistrict because they lost San Gabriel citizens to San Gabriel High School. All of San Gabriel public schools, they left San Gabriel High School to go to Gabriolino, leaving a big void and someone had to go to San Gabriel, so they had to redistrict. Well, we came up with the conclusion that Mark Keppel will be Monterey Park High School.

Mark Keppel was in terrible physical condition, built during the Depression, public works, 1938.

38, never fixed up. Always the second-hand child to Alhambra. In fact, if you ask the sports team, sometimes they got the second-hand equipment from Alhambra

given to Mark Keppel.

Brought in an alley unified principal to stop the gang fighting of Lomas versus the Wachings. It wasn't about education.

It was about safety. We had to change that school.

So a group of Monterey Park parents started the Mark Keppel Alliance, and look at what Mark Keppel became now. Second in the city, in the academic decathlon with Alhambra winning. And by the way, Alhambra Unified has improved since the Mark Keppel Alliance took over that Mark Keppel High School. We had principals fired. We had teachers fired. We had new programs brought in.

Boy, look at Mark Keppel.

It wasn't like that before.

Go do your history.

It wasn't like that before because some people had a vision and they were willing to work hard for it.

Get money. The other vision.

And I hope one day you guys honor Frank Fenty.

Nothing political.

You need to go honor Frank Fenty. I've seen Frank Fenty campaign. We need American businesses here in Monterey Park. No more of this Chinese stuff. He said, we need to remodel Garfield and Garvey. And look where it is, still in the same place. We need to bring American businesses in with his own money and his own time. And Frank Venti, I hope they honor you because he went to conventions for building shopping centers and malls. And he told me in Vegas, I got a contractor that's interested. Now, that piece of property where the Monterey Park marketplace was not no piece of beautiful land to build on.

We had a dump he had to deal with.

No access they had to deal with. But Frank Venti got it done. And look at the marketplace today. Before that marketplace, our main tax revenue was El Camino Chevrolet on First and Atlantic. But now I'm sure it's Costco and Home Depot. pool, look at what he built. He had a vision and he worked hard for it. Now you got a swimming pool. And you know, Thomas and I swim. I swim every day. Thomas comes when he can. On Sundays when I feel like swimming, I go to outer. My friends from Hawaii would say, outer, junk. Outer is junk. And you know what? Anyone who talks about swimming in outer, it's junk. You can't even do a flip turn on the short side of the pool. The showers are filthy. You know, I'm talking, I use the pool.

And is that going to be our main pool? Pride? Pride? Monterey Park? Our Pride swimming pool is

outer? I'm not trying to say that we have to build it, because Inez, you and I talked right when you said the pool wasn't going to, it's going to have to be, the plumbing was bad, the infrastructure, the pool was bad. And we talked about grants, and I know you tried. you know I know you gave it a shot and and you know we're running out of you I'm not saying to build barns I'm not a city councilman otherwise I'd be up there but what I'm saying is hey we're an average city and and we can't even solve this swimming pool if you even dare say that we got elder park it's terrible but I will say this people if you're over 60 you could go to Belvedere park from 6 to 9 o'clock and you can swim for free and they even have water aerobics so it's a great situation over there you know what the bottom line is I think we should change the name of Monterey Park

from Monterey Park to Mediocre Park

thank you very much applause

applause applause applause I don't know if they have more comments

one more speaker One more speaker.

I'm going to quick, real quick.

Paul, we can work on the slip terms. I can help you on the pool, but happy to do that.

But we can wait for the next.

Last speaker, Cindy Yee, who also has 10 minutes. Both Arlene Rodriguez and Shirley Wong have given her their time.

Mr. Mayor and members of the City Council,

So thank you, Inez and Robert, wherever you disappeared off to, for a meeting that we had a few weeks ago regarding the pool.

My husband and I are 50-plus year residents of Monterey Park. I would like to know why AUSD and this city have ignored the residents, particularly children who have achieved academic success, giving credit to growing and thriving growing up in Monterey Park.

The children are treated like stepchildren by AUSD and this city.

And I have a long track record of providing these comments to you tonight.

In 1983, I joined the School Site Council,

And during that summer, I solely obtained $1.7 million from the state of California with the major assistance from State Assemblyman Charles Calderon with Leroy Green funds.

when AUSD restricted the high school boundaries, redistricted the high school boundaries, forcing Brightwood and Highlands to attend Mark Keppel High School, once known as the gang school that was built in 1939,

works project, and ignored until five parents from both schools

formed Mark Keppel Alliance in my living room.

In 1994, we took it upon ourselves to overturn a remarkable challenge towards our children's education.

I challenged the city council and Monterey Park residents to watch and listen to the Mark Keppel Alliance story, an 18-minute video that was on VHS that is now uploaded to YouTube,

where we filmed seniors who spoke freely and shared their experience at Kippel, parents and teachers who volunteered their time, and we included city sites. The teachers' union eventually used footage from Mark Kippel as their poster child. More parents, like Paul Lee Sasaki, worked with the district and our community to pass a bond measure that has made Keppel High School what it is today. Swimming athletes had a pull to travel to using city transportation

or merely walking. Today, parents are forced to drive and travel distances juggling six outside pool centers to practice diving, long-distance 50-meter workouts,

and fundraise for additional money to rent those facilities.

Our city is too weak. We only have two board members representing four of our big elementary schools, and our city is forced into five city districts that represent our city with four school districts, like Paul said.

above you hangs the city motto pride in the past, faith in the future there is much pride in the past documented in our historical society but the future is bleak especially for the new homeowners who have purchased homes in Monterey Park due to its location and their perception of city without studying its internal makeup. We can be on three major freeways in two minutes. The majority of our students do well. Our shopping and beautification are non-existent. In fact, it's embarrassing. Our future needs a great deal of work and this city council and staff have the golden opportunity of achieving a brighter future, first, do not destroy the hidden gem of a swimming pool that's only feet from here, which played a role in the 84 Olympics. As you enter our borders, our city's legal signage and city hall proudly display that history in time. The Parks and Rec Department conducted a study last year, and they hired a consultant from Long Beach who did these beautiful charts that hung shortly at Saturday's Cherry Blossom Festival from a survey study of around 1,700 residents from a population of over 60,000. Is that fair assessment or comparison of what our city needs to be successful in the future? It's a criminal act for this city to bury a 50-meter pool. For this reason, I call for a moratorium and a referendum and allow us stakeholders who invested in Monterey Park to vote on whether to save Barnes' pool. I know tonight that you five city council cannot do anything. However, two of you are avid swimmers, and one of you is an educator. One of you has children who goes to South Pasadena School District. I beg you to stop and take on this leadership as a future for our Monterey Park. We can put a plaque with all five of your names, just like I have it at Highlands School for the New Buildings. There are monies out there for corporations to get a tax break.

We need to find them. Maybe an ex-campo graduate. Who knows?

We have a professional back here who volunteered to help you later. And I know there's many professionals in our community who could give some of their time to invest in the city that they chose to live in. The first woman mayor, Louise Davis, had eight children, half of whom attended Yanez and Highlands, created the city model. It was fun back then.

It can provide for future generations. And Frank Venti is not the only one. He's a hero, all right, bringing in the commercial property. But it was also Jabin. There was CVJ. Two, Venti, and Jabin. They built those homes on Barnum Way, Natchee Way, J-Tree. Those large homes brought in a lot of money for property tax, and they went to Brightwood Elementary School. CVJ even offered, when the school district tried to look for another high school, they offered only $4 million. That's that gated community for a high school in Monterey Park, and Alhambra School District turned them down.

I could write a book on Mark Keppel High School and Alhambra,

but I would like you guys to look at it as a legacy for you five because I've never, I don't remember another five council people who could do that. I don't see a plaque, oh, maybe there is one over there by Barnes.

behind the pool somewhere over by that pavilion. But let me tell you, Barnes Pool deserves another look. And Thomas, thank you for considering a town hall meeting. But it should be in all the districts because Barnes is used throughout the city. Thank you for your time.

No other speakers.

Okay, so let me just be clear.

This is not on the agenda, so this is typically and technically not a discussion item, but we can do comments. If you guys have comments, you can direct something to the city attorney, city manager for a next agenda item.

So we can call.

We're clear to do that, right? Okay.

I'll just say I welcome the strong sentiments and the support from the community for the pool and ask staff to follow up and see if we can schedule uh telling me to have an actual discussion and if there are others if if it's combined we can figure out the logistics of how to do that properly um but i would welcome this discussion and welcome uh the people who are interested in learning more about what is actually happening at barnes park pool and uh all of our parks and the parks master plan i hope i know it was mentioned earlier but just a pitch for the parks master plan process that is still ongoing uh to make sure that you you make your voices heard through that process as well, but would welcome a discussion on this and happy to have staff

follow up on that.

I echo the same sentiments, and I just want to thank people who came out tonight. It's great to have a lot of people come out. It's part of civic engagement. It's how we learn what residents want. So I echo the same sentiments in terms of making sure that we have some type of forum where residents can come, and we can also share where we're at. in the near future.

Just a clarification, but as far as

on the timeline for the Parks Master Plan,

just for the public's information, what is our timeline for the plan?

Mr. Mayor, members of the Council,

I believe our time frame for the Parks Master Plan, it has been quite a lengthy process. We do have quite a few parks and amenities to evaluate during that process, But we're hoping to complete complete the parks master plan by the end of summer We're hoping to have it completed even sooner, but by the end of summer for sure it'll be brought back to council for councils consideration

And again

Just as also information and once we have a plan again the intention of it is to be a blueprint as well on as far as the city You know based on that plan as far as them how we can also look for resources to make that plan a reality correct?

Correct. Based on City Council's direction, staff had embarked on a parks master plan project to evaluate what the community's requests are for our parks and recreation programs and facilities. During this process, that plan is, it is a visioning process to be looked at for potentially 10 years of what our community would like to see in Monterey Park. So we've heard lots of feedback from different stakeholders in our community about not only amenities but programs, and the point of the plan is exactly that for a visioning tool. Correct, there will have to be further conversations on the outcome of that plan, what gets funded, the priorities, and the like. There has to be follow-up conversation because the plan is a document that will help guide us, But exactly as council members have mentioned we will have to continue to work together to figure out Funding sources for those items

We've never done before And therefore we've never given up to me for the community to again share their visioning of what they want to see in the community

Correct. Correct. Thank you. I

Also wanted to echo my colleague sentiments Thank you everybody for taking the time to come out here to speak with us about the pool I wanted you guys to know that you guys are Preaching to the choir because I personally am a big supporter of the Barnes Park pool myself and would be Definitely open to hearing any ideas from the public about how to save her pool and you know happy to do a town hall like Councilman long said open to all the districts so that we can all put our heads together and see how we can save her pool And also I'm personally available for one-on-one discussion as well during the short few months that I've served. I've had a lot of residents come to me

for one-on-one meetings,

and I've never turned down a single meeting. So if anyone wants to have a back-and-forth discussion, happy to, you're welcome to reach out to me, because I know since this is not on the agenda, we can't do a back-and-forth discussion tonight.

Thank you.

And I, too, shared the sentiments of city council members here, because I've been in this city for 45, 46 years now, I just want to clarify a couple of items that I heard, and I want to make sure for my benefit that I understand. There was a comment that the city was running a $91 million surplus, or there was money of $91 million sitting on the side. If the city's maybe treasurer or city manager, if you guys can explain that number.

City treasurer, would you like to?

I think that the agenda item tonight, we had a monthly investment report item that reflected $91 million, and I'm not sure if that's the item that the resident may be alluding to.

That is correct. There is $91 million in reserves, and it is invested at this time.

Just to clarify, it's not a surplus.

It's money that's spoken for but kept for investment purposes.

That is correct.

Okay. So I just want to be clear. That's not surplus.

That's not extra money that you can say, I'll take that $91 million and I'll go buy a new building tomorrow. No, that's money that runs the city through the annual budget. There was another comment about the approximate cost of building a pool.

Now, I know that there was a cost estimate, based on what I heard, that was done roughly in 2021.

and I also understand that there was a meeting that the city manager had recently. I think Cindy spoke about this because she met with the group. And maybe, is it Robert or Inez, one of you, if you can kind of give us the update of what the cost was back in 2021 and what the reasonable cost is today, just so we can have clarity.

Sure. Correct.

myself and Robert Aguirre the director of recreation and community services was requested to to meet with a few community members who had questions about the swimming pool and so yes we provided some background information correct the city has multiple times applied for grant funding for a renovation of the pool unfortunately we have been unsuccessful and some of the comments that we received back from the agencies that are overseeing the grant programs is we have we have at the time when we were applying for the grants we have two pools and so we we weren't scoring very well when we're being scored against other communities for amenities that maybe they don't have not all of the grant applications are specifically just for pools they're for recreation facilities but because we had two polls, we didn't score well. The other item is

we're also, there's lots of factors

and we can go into that if we schedule a follow-up meeting. I think that could be beneficial to share out with the community because it's not on the agenda tonight. I just wanted to explain that we did have an estimate, but the estimate is outdated and we haven't had, we don't have funds for a new project, so we don't have updated estimates. we will share that we shared with some of the community members that asked us to meet is there is other projects in the region that have renovation projects going, and those have been approximately in the $30 million range. That is not to say that a pool project here in Monterey Park is going to be the same cost. It's going to be dependent on what is being proposed. but we wanted to share examples of similar renovations for competitive size swimming pools and the other thing with that is we also as a city have to pay prevailing wages so that also increases costs when we're building projects um I'm sorry did I miss the other question okay yeah

that was the question about that okay then there was another comp there's another comment about

transparency on the closure of the pool. I mean, this pool was closed when?

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, the pool was closed in summer of 2021. So the last summer that we used this swimming pool was in 2021. So there's many different reasons for the closure of the pool. One main reason is Barnes Park Pool, old infrastructure leaks. There's no recirculation system in the pool. So any water loss is lost and chemicals are lost, TIDA is lost. And so we have to refill the pool every single day. So thousands of gallons of water loss. That was the main reason. And so the locker facilities also need renovation. And so if you're going to make an improvement to a public project. You have to improve the entire facility. In this situation, it's not just maintenance. It's actually a renovation, and so it triggers other items. The backfilling of the pool, I want to make sure that we clearly clarify that we're adding dirt to the pool. It's to cover the hole, right, and limit the liability to anybody getting hurt with that hole. The rest of the infrastructure around the pool is all going to remain. It's simply a liability concern. Also, I understand residents have talked about standing water and what we do for mosquito concerns. So there's a lot of factors, but the primary factor to the city is liability concerns that if somebody gets hurt because we didn't cover the hole. That is the main reason. So it's the intention to just keep that space, keep that facility as safe as possible right now. That is the main, the light standards, the fencing, the locker facility, none of it is being touched. It's refilling the dirt with,

the pool with dirt. Okay. And that was back in summer of 2021. I can say from a transparency standpoint the majority if not most of us not all of us weren't even here during that time so I just want to make sure from a transparency standpoint we're telling you what we know that was before our time we weren't even here to know but we will continue to press on this issue based on tonight's comment so what I like to propose and you guys chime in here is we'll open up this discussion to see what we can do along with the parks master plan which should get like a final tally by the summer I heard there were about 1800 people on this or 1800 surveys taken out of 60,000 people I understand that's not a great target number but we've been

running the survey for about a year and a half oh the the process for how long

the parks master plan sorry robert aguirre director of recreation community services the survey ran for a number of months then following the survey we've done three open houses since then we've done park audits we've also done a number of focus group meetings so the parks master plan process has been a little over a year and we should be wrapping up this

summer right and it tells you we need more people to come take that survey to fill out the information or to be at the meetings because we're here to serve you guys and if you guys are here tonight every time we have one

committee form a group to kind of have discussions to figure out where we want to go with the Barnes pool and then we'll have further discussions from very similar tonight and have the direction come from the parks group if

I

because this is not a discussion item that we can't talk about but if it comes from one of the commissions, that's the proper channel that we have to go by. There are laws and rules that we have to follow by, and that is an example of what, that's my request to see if

the City Council is in support of that. Mr. Mayor, members

of the Council, so if I'm hearing, we can agendize an item on a Community Participation Commission or on Parks and Recreation Commission Parks and Recreation has a commission as well but we can schedule an item on a commission agenda and do a presentation so that there's some history background about the pool and the different grants that we tried to fund and then hear feedback is that is that appropriate that it would serve as a place to hear all feedback.

Mr. Mayor, I think having a town hall meeting,

even if it's virtual,

would probably answer a lot of the questions and concerns that we've heard tonight. I think we start there. I hesitate to push this to commissions to talk about the pool specifically because there's still the Parks Master Plan process going on for all of our facilities at the parks I don't want to shortchange that through the Commission process on a specific item that should be coming through that but I think we can start with some conversation that we can actually have a conversation we can't have a conversation here tonight maybe we can have staff just begin the conversation with some town hall or some

sort of forum outside of the council you know I agree with counter mom because

Because, again, I think, again, it's not a general item, but the fact is we need to be able to, I think, through a town hall form to, again, more in detail, go through the challenges we've had in trying to get Barnes Park any resources it needs, as well as any misinformation out there regarding the state's intentions regarding Barnes Pool.

So understood Mr. Mayor members of the council it sounds like their consensus of the council would like to schedule a town hall meeting specifically about the pool. So understood.

Sounds like that's yes.

Okay.

Next up on the item is the staff communication. We have a library first.

Hi, good evening Mr Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council members and City staff. My name is Leonie Jordan and I'm the Senior Librarian for Adult and Teen Services at Monterey Park Brighamire Library. Okay, I've got a number of programs that are coming up over the next few weeks to tell you about. The first of them, our Play Days Read and Ride program. Children ages 0 to 13 can participate in the Read and Ride reading program. Children who read for four hours earn a free ride ticket to be used at the Monterey Park Play Days Carnival on May 8 to 11. To register, they can simply visit the Beanstack website and the Read and Ride program runs from April 7 to May 7.

Next slide, please.

Calling all cat mums, dads and fans. Join us at the library on Saturday, April 19, from 2 to 4pm for National Cat Lady Day, which is a real thing. Teens and adults are invited to share photos of their cats, watch videos, and create cute cat toys, like the one that you can see pictured there, while connecting with their fellow

cat lovers. Next slide, please.

Have you been curious about the library's 3D printers but are not sure how to get started? Then come along to our next 3D printing workshop on Saturday, April 26 at 2pm in the computer lab. You'll learn how to use the 3D printing program Tinkercad to design or find objects to print. With their library card, patrons get one free 3D print job per month.

Next slide, please.

On Saturday, May 3rd at 11am, adult library patrons can join the organisation through peace to learn how to stand up for their rights and to oppose all forms of discrimination. Attendees will gain confidence in reporting hate crimes and fighting for justice. The program will be presented in English and Mandarin, and a lunch of Korean kimbap will be provided.

Thank you. Are there any questions?

No. Questions or comments?

I just have one quick question. Can we go back to the last slide?

Are we hosting that, or is that...

It's an organization called Through Peace.

Oh, okay.

So the speaker is Esther Lim, who has delivered workshops like this previously.

Oh, okay. Excellent. Thank you.

The cat lady workshop seems very interesting.

I think that'll be a fun one.

Sadly, no cats.

Great. Thank you so much. Thank you very much.

Then we have police.

PD? PD?

Mr. Mayor, members of City Council, Scott Weiss, Chief of Police. I want to talk tonight about a couple items that are coming up for the police department. One of them is going to be our community town hall meeting. It's going to be at Bella Vista Elementary School on Monday, May 5th at 6 p.m. Some of the topics we'll talk about will be local crime trends,

our homeless issues that we may be having, and our kind of revamping our neighborhood watch program. We're starting to get some feedback on that, and we're looking at a new design for our neighborhood watch program

that kind of is more toward police department-sponsored local meetings that we host that we kind of manage ourselves. We're finding that it's difficult to get access into people's homes, especially in today after COVID.

So we're trying to kind of reimagine that. I think that's happening across the board for most departments.

But I welcome everybody from the public to come to these meetings and get any information they need from us. We're very open with what we discussed there, and we'll be doing those throughout the city.

Next is our new Citizens Academy for us. We've got the first one that's going to come up is on May 17th.

We've changed the format for that also to make it more attractive to the community. We're doing it all in one day. So basically it'll be a Saturday, and they'll still get the same topics. They'll still get the same information,

but we're trying to do it so that we don't spread it out over multiple weeks. It'll be during one day. We're going to do in English, we're going to do a Spanish, and we're going to do also one in Chinese.

So those are planned throughout the summer, but our first one will be on May 17th. And if you have any questions, I'm here to answer those. Questions, comments?

Yes, can we go back to the town hall?

Oh, yes, very good.

Thank you so much for doing these. I think today was testament of the importance of doing town halls, and I know that police has been doing a lot of them recently, so I appreciate it, and also for doing it at Bella Vista Elementary in my district.

So thank you.

It's a great way for us to get information out to the public and to have that back and forth. We look forward to it.

Thank you.

And I'll just add to that again. I know you're doing a series of these town halls throughout each council district And again, thank you for you know being available and accessible to our residents

Hey, okay, thank you chief

Next up is Parks and Rec Rec recreation parks

Poor buddy

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor of Pro Tem, City Councilmembers.

I've got a friend with me tonight.

Before you get into what this guy is here for, I did want to mention and thank everyone that came out this weekend for our 25th anniversary Cherry Boston Festival. For those that came out, you definitely saw that it was one of our best years. I want to commend the committee for the Cherry Boston Committee for all the hard work that they did. And then also our recreation staff that also worked really hard this weekend. I also wanted to highlight that this weekend we had our Community Participation Commission participating with their youth members, doing origami during the festival, so it's also trying to add some cultural elements that the commission is now in charge of. And I just wanted to also thank some of our major sponsors for that event, which were Control Air, Cathay Bank, and then Travis Kuya and Thomas Wong.

So I wanted to highlight that.

So just thank you again for everyone that came out this past weekend, made it a much memorable cherry blossom event, and one that I know we'll remember for a long time. Next, the whole reason this gentleman is here tonight is tomorrow is our annual spring egg hunt.

We're all very excited.

This year we're going to have 20,000 eggs out there. So come down to Barnes Park between 4 and 7 p.m. There's going to be free activities. The farmer's market is back in full swing, so come out, get your dinner. There's going to be lots of booths, games going on, and also the egg hunt. Also, you can get a picture with this wonderful character here. And I wanted to highlight some of our major sponsors that have helped make this event possible. Raising canes, freeway towing, and exact orthodontics. So come out tomorrow at Barnes Park from 4 to 7 p.m. and have a good time.

And hopefully you get lots and lots of eggs. So we did double the number. Last year we had 10,000.

We realized that we have a lot of kids that come out for this event. And so we went for 20,000 this year. And so we're really excited to see all the kiddos out there having a good time with their families.

Next slide, please.

Next slide, I just want to highlight a few activities that are coming up at the Langley Senior Center.

There's a dance coming up, the rock and roll dance on April the 24th.

And then also our Cinco de Mayo celebration in May. These dances are only $3, and they're also hosted in conjunction with the Monterey Park Hope Resiliency Center. So we do monthly themed dances. Come down, dress up, because lots of our seniors get full regalia for all of our themed activities.

So stop on by. Next slide, please.

And for those that don't know, our Barnes Park Gymnasium is now open. This past weekend, our elected officials had an opportunity to visit the Barnes Park gymnasium and shoot some hoops and hit some pickleballs. Tonight is actually the first night we had some indoor pickleball open play. So every Wednesday from 7 to 10 p.m. we'll have open pickleball. And then the rest of the week, we actually have a lot of our youth leagues that have been sharing the court very patiently, waiting for this renovation to be complete over at Elder. They're now practicing at Barnes Park. I also want to share that we did redo the lobby entry area, as well as the restrooms that are completely renovated. I think those restrooms hadn't been renovated since the building was built in the 50s. And so it's great to see, you know, it's interesting to get excited about restrooms, right? But we're definitely excited about restrooms.

Next slide, please.

And then mark your calendars. So our 109th Monterey Park birthday is coming up.

So from May the 8th through the 11th, we have our Play Days Carnival here in Barnes Park. I want to highlight a few activities for that. On May the 8th, which is our Cinco de Mayo celebration, we do have a mariachi.

We also have the band Cold Duck.

So those that know the band Cold Duck, they're an awesome band.

You'll have a great time.

On that Friday, May the 9th, we have a 90s band that will play all 90s music.

and then on Saturday it will be all 80s,

and then we'll finish out the celebration with our AAPI Heritage Month celebration on Sunday. A few performers I want to highlight for that Sunday will actually be our Langley Center Tycho group. So we have a Tycho class that's participating and learning at Langley Center, so they'll be performing. We also have the Inez Lion Dance group. So Inez Elementary School has a lion dance performance group,

so they'll be performing.

and then we also have Tyco projects as well as some other AAPI Heritage Month acts.

And then lastly, just wanted to put everyone on everyone's calendar,

our annual Memorial Day Remembrance Ceremony over at the American Legion. That's on May the 26th at 10 a.m. Hopefully you can stop by and remember those fallen heroes and join our American Legion in remembering them. That completes my time and I am available for any questions

or pictures. I'm sure we want... I see you lighting up.

I already took one earlier. I already sent it to my girls.

Questions, comments?

Really quickly, appreciate everyone and the staff and the Cherry Blossom Committee and everyone. Great event, great turnout for the weekend. I don't know

if this is our best yet, but pretty good.

Director of the Community. Council Member. It was really, really, really good. It was really hard to keep attendance on an open event, but definitely was majorly attended both days. We had amazing weather and the committee put together just an amazing, amazing event with lots of great performances. You know. Yeah. Great vendors. 100 plus vendors. So it was awesome. Yeah. Awesome event. Look forward to next year being even better. Of course. Absolutely. A great way to celebrate 25 years of the Cherry Blossom Festival here at Monterey Park. I know ABC 7 and others covered it as well. So kudos our Recreation and Community

services and all the staff that helped to make this event possible and the cherry plasm committee i know we had a lot of local businesses highlighted as well so great great job um i was gonna ask another question but i forgot but oh so for the barnes park gym uh great job as well thank you to public works and everyone who managed the renovation project uh notice that at some point if we can add to the cip once we get in a budget conversation maybe a new coat of paint for the inside and outside of the gym too that would really help make it even better but

really appreciate yeah that's the thing with projects you start with one thing and then you

start noticing every yeah so but also a shout out for our parks master plan to a lot of things we

got update in the city but appreciate all the work thank you yeah i want to share and echo the same

sentiments i i was there with my daughters on saturday and then they enjoyed it they didn't want to leave ended up sitting uh down with them and watched a lot of the shows and we saw a lot of their friends performing but great job i know that behind any successful event there's a lot of different groups so want to also thank um all of the other groups that were out there i know i saw a lot of police fire and whole staff uh lights a library out there so thank you uh for everyone who made the event possible looking forward to the easter egg hunt and all the other events that that we have coming up. Hard to compete with the Cat Lady event

at the library, though,

but we'll make it work.

Thank you, Robert. Sounds good.

Thank you.

You know, I think probably why the Trade Blossom Festival

is so popular is also because, and again, you know,

my compliments to just the whole city staff

for just coming together

for a good event,

but also, you know, for making sure that there is good programming.

And I know that an example of that was

some of us were here on Sunday

in this very chamber to watch

the local the local maids from the cafe that is over at Lime Times Square

perform. I have to say I have never seen

a chamber packed standing room

and people cheering.

That was actually pretty impressive.

We should invite the maids to come and do

Pledge of Allegiance next time.

Yeah, Cherry Blossom Festival was amazing this past weekend. I haven't seen that many vendors and people show up, so that was awesome. And the indoor pickleball courts, basketball courts, the restrooms. Yeah, we're celebrating about restrooms, but they really look amazing. And then also the Monterey Paraca Transit Express that got kicked off. So it's free until September for people who don't know yet, and then $2 after. So it's rise all around the city. And super excited for the Easter Bunny tomorrow, 20,000 eggs. I'm like, where are you guys storing all the eggs tonight?

All right, so I share the same sentiments. It was a roaring success this weekend with the cherry blossom, and I'm sure 20,000 eggs, and that means there's probably 20,000 pieces of candies in those eggs, the Easter bunny, and all our little friends in the community are going to be hypered and not going to sleep until the weekend. But it's always a fun event, so we look forward to celebrating Easter with the community.

Thank you, Robert. Thank you.

Okay, we're going to go now to Old Business.

Okay, Old Business. 2A.

I'm going to give Robert Aguirre just a second.

Yeah, while we pull up the presentation here for item 2A. This is a Recreation Department report.

report.

Good evening Mayor and Mayor Potem, City Council Members, Robert Aguirre, Director of Recreation and Community Services. Tonight I'm happy to share the art concept for the Greetings Tour Mural Project. This project began in September of 2024 when City Council authorized an agreement with artist Victor Ving for a Greetings Tour Mural. Following the execution of that agreement, the Community Participation

Commission met and recommended the mural be placed on private

property located at 153 East Garvey Avenue. City staff has worked with the Chung family, owners of the property, to execute a facade easement agreement to host a mural at this property. In January of 2025, the Community Participation Commission again met to discuss recommendations on lettering style.

They voted to recommend the cursive greetings from in a stacked Monterey Park as a lettering style.

Subsequently, we, so this is the lettering style that the CPC commission had selected. And then after, we launched a community engagement campaign on the Greetings Tour website.

The Greetings Tour community engagement campaign ran from February 17th to March 17th to gather votes

and to raise awareness through social media campaign, the Cascades newspaper, email blast,

and postcards that were distributed at community centers. Based on the feedback, the artist had developed,

sorry, the artist developed,

this is kind of hard to see that, but the, sorry. So based on the feedback, the artist developed concepts reflecting various city aspects. There was a lot to include, so artist Victor Ving aimed to combine multiple elements in each scene. And then also, one thing Victor was really important to him was also deciding to collaborate with local artists from Monterey Park. So Jaime Reyes is actually a Monterey Park resident. So he contributed to the letters N and T. And then also one of the selections was for consideration to work with Tongva artist River Garza on the A.

So I'm going to go back to a few of this previous slide.

So some of the selections that came from the community engagement was the Cascades Waterfall,

the Lunar New Year Celebration, Cherry Blossom Festival, the Tongva Gabriolino Heritage,

Cinco de Mayo, and highlighting the Mexican heritage locally, and then also the Garvey Ranch Observatory.

from those selections Victor Ving

developed this concept

along with the two artists that I previously

mentioned and this

tonight is the artist concept for consideration by city council myself and artist

Victor Ving are available for any

questions that completes my staff report

questions comments

thank you Robert and Victor really appreciate getting to this point and excited to see the artwork that's being presented and how it's going to be presented and looking forward to this becoming a reality and not far away from here right just a few minute walk from this location and appreciate the collaboration with local artists as well and bring this reality to life I'm looking forward to it I'm happy to support this quick question on kind of the artwork and how this typically works so if I don't know if the city has partial ownership of the artwork that stays with you as the artist in terms of like just if we wanted to print these kind of postcards or things like that for the city or things like that would we be able to do that are we under a license agreement just curious how that works typically

like postcards and things like prints is okay but I try to avoid like merchandising it so that it stays

as true art rather than a product at the end of the day.

We could work something out if you want to.

A lot of people always ask for shirts all the time, but it's really tough to fit all that content in a little space.

I would love to make sure we're looking for opportunities and exploring opportunities to leverage the artwork once it's final and there, and we can make sure to see how we can utilize that for

things.

I'm going to jump in because I love

I mean it looks like a postcard. I love the postcard where somebody comes to the city they can get this. The city can give them as a souvenir to mail back to wherever and that's the city of Mario Park and that's a postcard from the city.

Yeah one thing that was highlighted in the community engagement was that anyone that participated in the community engagement will actually get a postcard.

So they'll get one of the first postcards of the mural.

I think the design looks amazing

I love how it captures all the elements

in the survey and it really captures

the heart of Monterey Park so I'm really excited

for this mural

and also just a note it's kind of a digital layout so it will look

in my opinion much better when painted on the wall

I know in my presentation I kind of highlighted some of Victor's

he took some opportunities to try to incorporate multiple elements into the letter.

So I know when I mentioned about cherry blossom, I just want to point out like the P, we were just talking about Cherry Blossom Festival. So there are cherry blossoms there, but he also, if you look really closely,

you'll notice that that is Sequoia's Nachi Garden.

That is also highlighted in that.

And then you also know some like Tai Chi folks

in the E letter there.

And there's some other things that I know Victor is looking at adding some potential Easter eggs or some things that maybe we don't see currently,

but that'll be added at a later time.

So I'm very excited about that. I'm not an artist, but I like it.

And I know it's going to be subjective for a lot of people, but I commend your work for getting it out. I think it looks great from a postcard standpoint. You can look at that postcard and say, hey, that's Mario Park. And you can look at each letter and say, I saw that in the city. Well, that will be now what you want to do

when you come to the city. Where do I find these things? And it's all there.

to kind of like get out of their cars

and experience it in person rather than just drive by. So it's like the bigger piece and then there's multiple murals

within the larger mural essentially.

Okay, any question or comments?

Stack going in, postcard looks great. Looking forward to the mural going up and I think a lot of community members are going to be very excited about it. And I think staffer and Robert for leading the charge on this. I know that we, as a council, have been asking for more forms of public art in our city. So I'm glad that, you know, excited that we're here in this process and can't wait to see it go up.

So just a question for Robert.

This was already unanimously voted on,

blessed by the commission.

And then this is for city council.

It's for consideration tonight, yeah. Okay. And then timeline-wise, because I know that may be another question.

I know we were hoping to get on the agenda tonight, so that's why Victor worked very diligently to get the art ready, and then we're hoping to get started on paint in May because then the summer months get very hot and a little bit more difficult to paint.

Paint dry is quick when it gets wet.

Well, I'm happy to make the motion to support this and look forward to the calendar item I'm popping up on my calendar for the unveiling of the finishing of this.

All right.

So motion by Council Member Wong, second by Council Member Sanchez.

Let's take a vote.

Approved unanimously.

All right.

I'll just, if I can, Mr. Mayor, close with the comment, too. Robert, let's get on the next art piece, too, and let's just keep going.

Thank you. Great. Thank you. Okay. A consent agenda.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, sorry to interrupt.

Just a quick note, notation here. Item 3K, page 154. There was a small typo.

The mayor's name was misspelled, so we do have that correction.

Just wanted to make a note of it.

Right. Okay.

And then we had already, 3S is already done, right? We had that earlier, so.

Mr. Mayor, before we go into consent, I just have a quick question. for our city attorney to very quickly clarify the comp. I know few of us have properties in proximity to, if you can delineate the 500,000 foot rule just quickly for our, our reminder context.

Very quickly.

So the FPPC rules are anything within 500 feet of a property interest is

presumed to have a conflict of interest.

Anything between 500 and a thousand feet,

there are,

there are seven criteria that have to be true. one of seven criteria that have to be triggered in order for you to have a conflict i have reviewed those particular instances and i do not see an apparent conflict based upon the information that i have if you have different information then please let me know one of them is for example an increase or a decrease in traffic which would cause there to be a different valuation in your property of one cent or more so i have i think initially there was some consternation that there might not be a quorum for 3p I think it was but it does appear that there is a quorum only two of you have a conflict because there's a property interest within 500 feet and all the rest are are between 500 and a thousand feet okay so

the conflict on 3p is myself and pro tem yang yes and I also have a conflict on

3E and 3Q.

So I'll recuse myself from those.

So as long as those conflicts are declared at the beginning of the consent calendar, nothing is taken off the consent calendar.

potential project moves forward do the council members have to not are they not alLod to engage in that process for community engagement providing feedback and all that that's correct then you're

completely recused from any part of the process okay good else we'll know and but there are

potential opportunities to if it's a city-wide project or see what impact there are potential

carve-outs or exemptions yes those are called the public generally exceptions

so maybe that's something we can explore for council members who may be

interested in trying to correct and we have done that before it requires a little bit more effort on behalf of our GIS simply because we have to count the number of parcels that are similarly affected but that's certainly a doable

thing I just want to make sure we put that out there as an option because these is a huge project that I think many council all of the council members would probably be interested if they're able to engage on that but with that I'd like to pull item 3 in for a quick comment and question but i don't need the staff report but otherwise i i'm happy to move the remaining consent calendar items

we have speakers okay

oh do we have a motion yeah i'll move for the remaining items i'll pull pull three in but

remove the remaining arms.

3 and 3 and 3 and

So let's go through public comment for

3 She's on the consent

public comment for the consent calendar.

Okay.

I think I lost my other speakers but let's just make sure. Let me just announce it.

Mike Greenspan Nope.

and Miss LGBT Voice. I think they both left.

Next speaker is me.

Good evening, neighbors.

I'm Michelle, and I'm speaking tonight, actually, as your city clerk. Each May, the nation celebrates Professional Municipal Clerks Week, an honor and recognition of the municipal clerk profession, which is a vital part of our local government. Our city clerk's office serves as the guardians of city records, the cornerstone of our council, and the information center for you, the public. In working with the county and overseeing election activities, their work is incredibly important. Now, as the integrity of our democracy is challenged and laws are proposed that hinder voter registration for marginalized communities and discourages others with limited resources from voting, the city's clerk's office safeguards our election process for all. So please join me in celebrating the hard work of our dedicated city clerk's office, including Cindy Trang, Helen Cho, Michelle Martinez, and Gabby Cerda, by adopting this resolution declaring May 4th through May 10th, 2025, Professional Municipal Clerk's Week.

Thank you.

No more speakers. Okay.

So we have a motion for the consent calendar by Council Member Wong.

A second. Second by Council Member Sanchez. Let's take a vote.

Approved unanimously.

Okay.

Now let's go to the item that was pulled by Council Member Wong.

That was 3N.

3N, yeah. 3N. Okay.

Yeah, I don't need staff report. I just want to, well, I don't need to say that before, but one, really excited to see this, and I want to note every time I drive by both the charging station, the single charging station, fast charger here at City Hall and the fast chargers outside Ralph's, there's typically a line or people waiting to charge. The need for more EV charging options and chargers in the city by our residents and visitors and businesses that are trying to attract more visitors to the city has never been more evident. And so applaud this effort. My question on this is if we move forward on this, which I fully support, what would be the next steps, and would this include kind of developing a master plan for EV charging at city facilities and also at other non-city-owned sites? Or just if you can help me delineate that real quick.

Good evening, all mayor mayor pro temp and City Council Sean I go public works director So the next steps would be to enter into a PDA with a consultant and then evaluate

the

Locations throughout the city What's gonna be the best options for solar EV charging battery storage?

So that's gonna be the next process the next steps in the process and how long do you I know?

I'm not gonna hold you to it

But how long does that process typically take?

How much longer do you think we would have to wait for more EV charge to start showing up and solar and all that stuff?

Before all of it starts showing up, probably the better part of a year. Because, you know, not only do we have to evaluate the locations, we have to evaluate finances. We have to evaluate, you know, infrastructure needs, all those different components coming to play.

So probably the better part of a year.

So whatever we can do to obviously get these in faster I think would be great. also whatever we can do to beat whatever cost inflation that is likely to happen in the next couple months and years would be great and there's a need for this in our community how you support this appreciate staff bringing this to us whatever we can do to accelerate and expand on these plans I fully support and would want us would love to see more I'll make the motion to approve the

Okay, that was motion by Council Member Wong.

I'll second.

Second by Council Member Sanchez. Please take a vote.

Approved unanimously.

Okay.

Moving on to public hearing, none. New business, none.

Resolution.

This is a resolution for the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Council Member Wang, you want to?

I think the resolution speaks for itself.

I would ask my colleagues to adopt the resolution and support it, to recognize May 6, as with every year, as the day of inclusion in recognition of the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act. So I hope that we can commemorate that, and I know we're planning programming for May for Asia-American Pacific Islander Heritage Month that will touch probably on some of the history of this.

And I'll make the motion.

All right. So motion by Council Member Wong. Second.

Second by Council Member Lo.

Let's take a vote.

Approved unanimously.

Okay.

Moving on to 6B. Pro Tem Yang, do you want to speak about the sign-up?

Sure. Just really quickly,

This was a request by the National Arab American Heritage Month Committee of the Arab America Foundation. Their President, Nadir Fawani, requested this. So I'll make a motion to pass this resolution.