City Council Meeting_ May 20_ 2026

Okay, good evening, everyone. We're going to call tonight's meeting to order. Recording in progress. We will start with our Land Acknowledgement Act. We would like to acknowledge that the land we inhabit today was once known as Tavangar, the home of the Gabrileño-Tamba people. We show our respect to the Gabrielino-Tongva people, as well as all indigenous people past, present, and future, and honor their labor as original caretakers of this land. We commit to uplifting the Gabrielino-Tongva people, invite you to acknowledge the history, and join us in caring for this land. Now let's invite the Monterey Park Police Explorers for our flag salute. Please rise.

Thank you.

Please 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.

Order colors. Upward face. Forward march.

Postcode.

About first. Dismissed.

Thank you. You may be seated.

Madam Clerk, may we get a roll call, please? Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Ngo? Present.

Council Member Wong? Present. Council Member Sanchez? Present. Mayor Pro Tem Lo? Present. And Mayor Wigang? Present.

All present. Thank you. Thank you. Any agenda revisions or additions?

Yes, Madam Mayor. We'd like to make a note that there was an item, item 9A, that we're requesting the council to consider adding to tonight's agenda. And it does require a four-fifths vote to add this to the agenda tonight. and we would also like to make one other change. Item number 10B, we'd like to remove this item from tonight's agenda. We'd like to bring it back at a future council agenda at the next meeting. We have a clarification that needs to be made, so we'd like to remove it and bring it back.

Thank you, and I understand that adding 9A requires a fourth-fifth vote. Does anyone want to make a motion to... Move for approval, adding item 9A to the agenda.

I'll second. All right, let's vote.

Approved financially.

All right, moving forward. So I understand there are several speakers this evening. I have a stack of public comment cards, and I think some of the speakers are discussing items that may not be on our agenda for tonight. I just want to remind attendees that the Brown Act does not allow the City Council to take action on any item, not on the agenda. The Council may, if they so choose, briefly respond to comments. And I know we have presentation and public comments after that. But if Council is okay, we can move public comments to before item 6B. so that so we'll do 6a have the mosquito presentation and then public comment and then 6b so the public commenters don't have to wait too long everyone good with that okay so let's do 6a and then we'll do public comments

good evening mayor council members staff and of course residents of Monterey Park my name is Joseph Leon I am resident the monitor park and also the city's representative on the St. Gabriel Valley Mosquito Vector Control Board. Today with me we have Ms. Diaz, who's Director of Communications. She'll be making a short presentation, just an update to the city of how the board works. And just so everybody knows, there is no issue with mosquitoes at the Staten Mountain Park, as I already got asked earlier today. Just a presentation, like an update. She's going to different cities, and we're fortunate enough that she's here today to do an update. And if there's any questions, of course, we'll stand by afterwards for any questions. Thank you. Without a delay because I only have a big agenda. Ms. Diaz. Thank you, Trustee Leon, for the introduction. Good evening and thank you to the Honorable Mayor, City Council members, and City Manager Alvarez for the opportunity to provide an update this evening. My name is My name is Anais Medina-Diaz. I'm the Director of Communications for the San Gabriel Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District. Thank you. The SGV Mosquito Vector Control District is a public health agency created under the California Health and Safety Code. Our mission is very simple. To protect the community from mosquitoes and other vectors that can spread disease. So for that means mosquitoes, Culex mosquitoes, Aedes mosquitoes, and black flies that recently made the news a few months ago. Next slide please. We are an independent special district, meaning we operate outside of the city in the county, and we were formed by residents to serve residents back in 1989. And the reason for that was because at that time there was an increase in St. Louis encephalitis, which was affecting public health at that moment. And so we were established then and continue to protect public health for San Gabriel Valley residents by providing specialized services, monitoring and controlling mosquito-borne diseases in the San Gabriel Valley. like West Nile virus and increasingly dengue fever. Next slide. We serve 26 cities and about 1.5 million residents, including Monterey Park, which is an important part of our service area. It's actually at the border of our service area. And what we do often is behind the scenes, but it directly impacts the health and quality of life for all of our residents. When most people think about mosquitoes, they think about nuisance biting, itchy bites. But really for us mosquitoes are a public health threat first They can transmit West Nile virus and st. Louis and symphylitis And now locally dengue is being transmitted every in the past couple years Next slide, please How we approach mosquito control is very Intentional we don't just go out and try to treat everything we really look at our surveillance data and how we collect that is through mosquito trapping, disease surveillance. We test our trap data, our trap samples. We also identify insects, and that really guides our efforts and where we want to control mosquitoes, what areas, what sources we target, and when we need to do treatments. That also informs that decision. Next slide, please. Our operations team really focuses on larval control because when we look at mosquitoes, it's a lot easier to get rid of or control mosquitoes when they're in their aquatic phase. We can kill hundreds of mosquitoes rather than a few flying mosquitoes. And what we look at our community sources, like at our parks, on our streets, the channels, street gutters. We also look at green swimming pools. We have a pretty robust swimming pool program that identifies green swimming pools across the SGV. And we work with residents to ensure that those are not breeding mosquitoes and spreading diseases. And underground storm drains actually act as a source even in the off season when it's nice and cool out here they go and hide underground. Next slide please. And at the heart of our program is a communications team which uses education and outreach as a core public health tool. So we try to keep our communities informed because they are the first line of a defense and we achieved this through many various ways including presentations but we also have a robust K through 12 education program that has NGSS aligned curriculum next slide please now lately we've been faced with many emergency response items so as conditions continue to change emergency response is becoming more important than ever extreme weather events and invasive mosquito species mean, we must be proactive and prepare to respond when conditions shift. And that includes responding to disease outbreaks like we had dengue in 2024 and environmental events like the Eaton Fire, which our district responded to by treating thousands of pools that were left behind, unmaintained and unmanageable in the Eaton area. Next slide, please. the next unfortunately the city of Monterey Park has a lot of West Nile virus year to year not this year so far but it is a hot spot for us and so we're very proactive about trying to control the sources that are known in the city and but often we see treatments happen in the specific community so I'll take you through some of the ways that we come to that decision right now we don't have any scheduled treatments but if the data shows that that is necessary then we'll go ahead and move forward with that. So I'll take you through this step. So first, if there is West Nile virus detection, Monterey Park usually has one every year, we notify our city trustee and our staff and we provide communication tools to be able to inform residents about the detection of West Nile virus in the community. Now West Nile virus is endemic, so we see it every year. It's not alarming, but it is good to know when it is actually in the community so you can take steps to protect yourself. Next slide, please. Now, let's say that West Nile virus continues to go detected in a specific community, and we also observe increased mosquito abundance, and that tells us we need to do extra work in that specific community. That's either identifying or treating known sources, searching for new sources and treating those. We observe if those efforts actually work and if we still don't see a decrease in mosquito risk or mosquito transmission risk then we have to take the next step which is a treatment process which typically happens in our in this community specifically but we see that data we have to move quickly we want to make sure that we're protecting public health and so we want to make sure that we're reducing the adult mosquito population that is accomplished through a treatment that both targets adult mosquitoes and juvenile mosquitoes. And so when that happens, we go ahead and notify the city, and the city has been a great partner to us in helping us inform its residents and providing information about these treatments. We'll develop and distribute a press release, and again, that is to inform residents in the area that this is happening. And, of course, we do our own outreach to the residents through digital platforms. We also post notification signs in the community that is directly being treated for that. Next slide, please. Now about these mosquito control treatments, again, we don't do these willy-nilly. They're not just like out of nowhere. We want to make sure that they are necessary because overuse of treatments will create resistance in mosquito populations. So that even goes for off-the-shelf pesticides. So when we detect that they have met certain thresholds, then we'll go quickly into trying to activate one of these treatments. They are conducted at night for specific reasons. This one only provides the environmental conditions needed for these treatments to work. So they're sensitive to light. So once sunlight comes out, they dissipate. And then also at night, beneficial insects are dormant. So they won't affect bees and butterflies. It's specific to mosquitoes. All of the products that we use are registered with the EPA, and products are suspended through water, and so they don't have any harm on any cars or home finishes. Residents don't have to take any extra steps in closing their windows or any of that. So that's a little bit about the treatments. Anytime that we do have one, we provide information about the products being specifically used. Next slide, please. Now, of course, those are all out-of-normal things. For our day-to-day, we're still here as a community resource. We provide property consultation so if folks are getting bid up and they can't find that source, please give us a call. Our services are paid through a benefit assessment. So all of our services are at no additional charge. We are here as a resource to your residents. Please give us a call. And we will provide a customized management plan for mosquitoes on your property. We can also provide mosquito fish at no additional charge. It's a great biological way to control mosquitoes. And of course, please sign up for reports and alerts, and that's the easiest way that you'll find information when we are doing a treatment. And then outside of mosquito control, I already spoke a little bit about the Eaton Fireburn area, but in the past couple years, our district has seen dengue activity, local dengue activity, and that's just, it's increasing risk for our area because of climate change, but also the more travel we see in the community, there's more opportunity for travel-related cases to come. And then lastly, Aedes mosquitoes are very difficult to control. They're invasive to our area. So we are exploring innovative mosquito control techniques like sterile insect technique. What that is is a mass release of male mosquitoes. Male mosquitoes do not bite. And so these sterilized males, when they mate with females, then their eggs do not hatch. And so that reduces mosquito populations over time. And again, this targets an invasive mosquito species that is not natural to our area. And with that, I wrap up. I hope I provided some context to where we do treatments. I know Monterey Park is typically one of the cities that we do. So please let me know if you have any questions. I'm more than happy to answer any of them. Actually, can I add something really quick just to clarify? because it's a great presentation, but I just want to make sure that people understand that we've had West Nile virus the last few years in Monterey Park, but only a very small section of Monterey Park. And unfortunately, it's a member of Sanchez's area. So it hasn't been throughout there because I'm sure some of the residents probably weren't there. I didn't get any notice. You only get notice if your area is affected. So for those sitting here, the residents, you didn't get notice because your area wasn't affected. Fortunately, it's only been a small section of Monterey Park and it's been a member of Sanchez's area. and everyone there has been notified prior to the treatment. That's all I want to share because people are probably wondering why I didn't know anything about it because your area wasn't affected by it. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, go ahead. Mayor Annalise, can you just share with us some of the things that we can do to kind of prevent the mosquitoes in a typical backyard? Yes, absolutely. So we have one key phrase.

I'm sorry I didn't mention it, but it's tip, toss, and protect. Tip out stagnant water, toss out unused containers, and protect using a repellent with one of the four active ingredients recommended by the CDC and the EPA, which are DEET, picaridin, IR3535, and oil-bloom eucalyptus. And I know that when we think of mosquito sources, we're thinking of large, like swimming pool sources, but really all it takes is a spoonful of water to grow hundreds of mosquitoes. So we have a lot of resources on our website, a checklist of things that you can find, common sources on your property. For sources that can't be removed, again, we offer mosquito fish, but you may also find they're called mosquito bits at your local store, and what they have is BTI. It's a natural-occurring bacteria that's often found in the products that we use. That can be placed there too. And then as far as repellents go, there's so many products out in the shelves. Just make sure that when you do buy a repellent, it has one of those four active ingredients. Essential oils, unfortunately, are very popular, but they don't have the key ingredient that you need for it to be an effective repellent. So we have a lot of information on our website. I invite your residents, and, of course, we can provide resources to the city to share this information. And if I may add, too, on repellents, I know a lot of people think, well, I don't want to spray this on me and put it on because it has chemicals. It may harm me, but my understanding is they're very harmless. In fact, they're supposed to be less harmless than santan lotion, my understanding. Yeah, so all of those ingredients that I mentioned have been approved by the EPA, and they've been robustly tested. And any one of those four will work. My personal favorite is picuridin just because it's not as smelly per se in the products that you'll find it, but they're all just as effective. The other thing to consider is the active ingredient percentage. So if you look at the bottle, it'll say how much percentage of the item is. the Lor the percentage the less longer it'll last so you'll have to reapply

any other questions

thank you so much for being here um i always get a lot of these questions because it is my district that usually is heavily impacted and actually one of the more common questions that i always get is why our district or why does it always happen in our area and maybe you can help uh you might or might not know why it is that particularly in my district in the southern part of Monterey Park we get a lot of this. That's a great question and I'm glad I talked to our technicians

about this beforehand because I wanted to provide you with an answer. And so often this area we can find a specific source that produces so many mosquitoes but our trap counts in this area are in the hundreds and two hundreds. And so anytime that a trap count goes over a threshold we'll go into the community, we'll assess all of those known sources, and then we'll search for more. Within the treatment area that usually takes place is ELAC, and so we have an East Los Angeles Community College, and so we'll often work with the school to also address any sources on that, but it's a combination of different sources, and there's many other possibilities as well. So like I mentioned, Monterey Park is on the border of our district. On the other side of Cesar Chavez, I believe, is Greater Los Angeles. So it also takes, you know, coordinating with that district to make sure that sources in that specific area are also addressed. So it's not a final answer, but essentially it's a combination of different sources and every time that we're out here we find new ones and they go into our database and so that's why we have a close eye. We know that this area gets really

our abundance levels usually spike up so we'll pay extra attention to it thank you for that and I know that my district borders or the southern part of Monterey Park borders east LA and borders Montebello and other cities what type of coordination does the SGV mosquito and vector control do with these communities especially if we're getting for example because we might not know if there's water that's you know or pools that might be potentially breeding a lot of these mosquitoes that might be coming into Monterey Park because of the close borders. Right, so mosquitoes don't follow borders. They're just all over the area. But we

have a really robust relationship with the neighboring district. In fact, we have established

Director of the MOU with all of the vector control district within the southern region to be able to share resources to respond. And we just enacted that MOU when we were responding to the Eaton Fire Mosquito Control. So to answer your question, we have an established relationship with them. If there is West Nile virus, if there is an increased risk to the community, then we're reaching out to them and asking them if they can do their part to look at sources in that neighboring community. Excellent. Thank you so much. And then I just have one last question because I saw that you have K to 12 education. educational materials, and I'm a teacher, so for teachers who are interested in some of your materials or perhaps your presentations, how would they get that information? Yes, I'm so happy I have you on this council. I would love to connect after. We have an EcoHealth Vector Education. Like I

mentioned, it's a K-12. We provide NGSS-aligned curriculum, so teachers will not lose out on teaching time if they book our services. So during the spring, we offer more traditional presentations, and that ranges for each and every grade level. But we gamify some of these curriculum items, so it's entertaining for the students. In the fall, we have our community science projects where our students, mostly middle school students, will use the tools that we use for surveillance and apply them in their communities and learn about vector control in that capacity. And so it's a really robust and great program. And you can go to our website. You can get my contacts from city staff, and I can definitely connect you with our education specialists.

And we always love getting into new schools and teaching our students. That's great to hear, and I trust that Joseph will get us connected. Yeah, and also, if there's any events going on in the city, the city can always contact the board,

and they can be present at the different events and have different events or information for the children and adults, too. So not just the schools, but different events. We have it like Cherry Blossom, et cetera. just let them know ahead of time so they can make arrangements

thank you yeah thank you Joseph and obviously the work you and your staff do at the mosquito abatement district I'm kind of curious I know that some residents have commented and I think I feel it's feeling but would you say that this was a less wet cold winter and does that mean that if it is warm or if you will, spring, does that mean the mosquito season might start earlier? Or is that just feeling? It's actually based on observable data about the temperature. Yeah, no, that's a great question.

So we did have a very warm winter, and we saw the effects on that specifically with our blackfly population. So these are not your regular houseflies. They're biting blackflies. They stem from running water. So for us, it's San Gabriel River. But we did observe more anecdotally than trapped data that 80s or mosquito populations stick around through the winter months. So usually we get a break from biting pressure in the winter months, not this year. We definitely saw mosquito activity. So to answer your question, we're already in the season and and so we're going to start seeing more mosquito activity. We're really gonna start seeing disease activity once overnight lows stay above 60 degrees and so that's really any day now but yes the the warmer temperatures during the winter really just causes these mosquitoes to come right back up before it's due time so in February we had a heat waves like a little heat wave for about two weeks and we definitely saw mosquito activity at that point I guess the responses now sooner than later, right? Yes. So the other thing is that we often think that we have a mosquito season in our area, but because we have beautiful weather, we really don't. They just kind of hunker down until it's warm enough throughout the day. There's enough sunlight. And so really it's important for residents to have, you know, these mosquito control practices down throughout the year, take the spring to, you know, spring clean, reduce mosquito sources on their properties, clean out any of those things. We have, again, a lot of information, a whole different presentation on mosquito habitats and all that stuff.

But, yes, always tip, toss, and protect. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for the informative presentation. I don't have any questions, but if constituents ask me why didn't I get noticed, now I know count your lucky stars, it means your area wasn't affected. Yeah, and it's pretty amazing that the pesticides and the chemicals you use are as harmless as some block. Yes, thank you.

I really appreciate it. Thank you.

All right. Well, we're going to go into public comments now. So when I say your name, feel free to come up to the podium and make your remarks. So first speaker is Randy Kay.

Good evening. In the very near future, Happy Day School will become a part of the history of Monterey Park. Demolition of the school site and possibly the multi-unit development next to it will commence and construction will begin on a condo development with at least 32 units and possibly more. This will likely cause significant disruption to residents with noise and traffic problems being the primary issues. Not that long ago, we witnessed construction of the Holiday Inn, and due to construction issues and rerouted traffic, there were four accidents at Chandler and Hellman in six days. The traffic study done in 2023 recommended that another traffic study be done should the development be built because a three-way stop at Chandler and Hellman may be warranted due to the increased amount of traffic. Now, three blocks away from this site, a five-story, 48-unit apartment building is being proposed right on Hellman. I understand we need more housing, but not at this location. This location is right at a dangerous, accident-prone major intersection with a complicated freeway entrance to the 10, both east and west, with both on and off ramps. And in addition, the highway patrol pulls people over, coming west on Hellman every morning about 7.15. And I never cross those streets without holding my dog in my arms because I'm afraid that if we get killed, both of us will be killed, not only one of us. The entire Hellman corridor is a traffic nightmare with constant accidents. Most of those are not reported to the police nor included in the count for the traffic studies because many drivers just exchange information and no police report is taken. This leads to chronic underreporting of accidents and therefore a lack of preventative action in accident-prone areas. The issue with housing in this area is more complicated than just building more units. If you have no money or only a little, you can get a government-funded apartment. If you have a lot of money, you can pay the high rents in this area. Some apartments around here have many people living in them. Living rooms are partitioned off and residents are sleeping on mattresses on the floor. For those people who are alone or old, who fall in between having no money and a lot of money, there are no places to rent. It is just not affordable. But more units means more people and more cars. Even at Atlantic Times Square, right across the street from this proposed apartment building, the units didn't sell, many didn't get rented, and many are currently being used as Airbnbs. Both Monterey Park and Alhambra are losing long-time residents due to the cost of rent, not just the number of available units. I am opposed to the location of this building and would encourage both the city and the developer to move this proposal to Saturn Park instead. Thank you.

Thank you, Randy. Our next speaker is Dori Ho.

Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to hear our concerns. I apologize. I'm having a candy because I have asthma. Okay. I live in Alhambra for 40 years where my children are born and raised, and I get to the point that we are very concerned with Monterey Park planning to put a 48-unit appointment at my backyard. This corner is extremely dangerous. There were people that were being killed at that intersection and dragged five blocks, and that was not many years ago. At this time, the traffic from Fremont is pouring into Helmand, and many of us going into the intersection of the 10 East and West, you have to live there to feel it. When we get off work and go to work or go anywhere, from Hathaway to Helmand, it's very difficult to make a right turn because the traffic is nonstop. When you get off the freeway, when you come home, if you want to get into our area, our neighborhood, then from Helmand to Hathaway, people won't let you go and eventually you will also back up to Atlantic. I think housing is necessary, but that is really not the location. And it might be Monterey Park's decisions, but it affects us big time. We are negatively affected in our single-family home area where it used to be a country club, where we lived there for a long time. And gradually we see that it could get more commercialized. We're beyond our control. So we are urging Monterey Park to work with the respective parties to look into alternate locations to put those apartments elsewhere because 48 units, each house about two to three cars. Every morning you're pouring 150 more cars into that intersection is already very crowded where accidents happen, where people are killed. So please work with different entities and consider a better location for affordable housing. And we definitely do not really want project units in our apartment of 48 units. So many of us are very concerned, and we thank you for the opportunity to hear our concerns.

Thank you, Dori. Next is Caleb Kwok.

Good evening, Mayor Yang, council members, city officials and staff. My name is Caleb. I live at 618 Hathaway. I'm here to oppose the proposed 48 rental development at 824 and 816 West Helmand Avenue. First, I want to thank many Monterey Park and Alhambra neighbors who came tonight to express their concern. I especially want to thank the Alhambra neighbors who are standing with us. I also want to thank Alhambra Council Member Noya Wang, who was here, she is here, for being here to listen to the concerns of the residents. This project may be located in Monterey Park, but its impacts will also affect nearby Alhambra residents. I understand this project is not on tonight's agenda, so I'm not asking this council to take any actions tonight. In step, I am respectfully asking the council within the limits of the Brown Act to refer this matter to the city manager, city attorney, and planning staff for a full written review and to place this matter on a future agenda if appropriate. Tonight, I do not want to simply repeat all the negative impacts this project will bring. I have written this extensively on my email that I sent to you on May 13. Many neighbors will speak about parking, traffic, pedestrian safety, height, privacy, and neighborhood compatibility. Those concerns are very real. My main question is this. What can the city do to protect the existing residents who already live here? This project may bring future residents into Monterey Park, but the existing residents will live next to the construction, traffic, overflow parking, pedestrian safety risk, and daily impacts after the project is completed. I understand the city must comply with state housing laws, including density bonus laws, but the residents deserve a clear written explanation of how these 48 units project complies with Mallory Park zoning and state law. I'm not asking the city to ignore state law. I'm asking for transparency. please ask staff to provide the public with the base density, the exact density bonus calculation, the affordability level of the six affordable rental units, and every waiver, concessions, incentive parking reduction, height exception, or setback exception being requested. I also respectfully ask that each waiver or concessions be clearly justified, even if density bonus law applies, the developers should still show why each exception is legally required. This is especially important because the proposed building appears far larger and taller than the existing neighborhood. The city should carefully study traffic safety, pedestrian safety, parking overflow, emergency assets, infrastructure capacity, trash collection, deliveries, ride-share activities, and construction impacts before this project moves any further. We are not against housing. We are against developers exploiting housing laws at our neighborhood's expense. Again, I respectfully ask the city council within the limits of the law to direct this matter to city manager, city attorney, and planning staff, request a written report back, and use every lawful tool available to protect the residents who already live here. Thank you for listening.

thank you Caleb. Next is Dawn Rock.

Good evening, Mayor, Council members, and dedicated staff. My name is Dawn Rock, and I wasn't going to speak tonight, but this was just given to me, and I was asked to share it. It might be information that Robert or Inez already are aware of. However, I'd like to share it with all of you and the community. My apologies if the information is a little more disjointed than usual. Monterey Park has a unique window to leverage upcoming LA-28 Olympic opportunities to secure funding, temporary infrastructure, and public visibility for the Barnes Park Aquatic Center. By aligning the city's goals with the LA-28's Get in the Game initiative, Monterey Park can drive community-desired development, spotlight the Monterey Park Manta Ray swim team, and boost local businesses. While LA-28 is not directly sponsoring new permanent pool construction, major opportunities exist to secure temporary assets and procurement contracts, temporary pool and splash pad loans. LA-28 is loaning temporary pools to municipalities such as Inglewood and Long Beach. Monterey Park can petition to secure a temporary pool loan or a splash pad asset to showcase LA28's commitment to community engagement. LA22 Community Engagement and Events. Monterey Park can host official LA28-funded community celebration events such as fan zones, watch parties, torch relay local staging to draw widespread attention to our local aquatic needs. We can also partner with LA28 to host an international delegation country, a program fully funded by LA28 that will spotlight Monterey Park on a global scale. There are other public relations, ambassador campaign, and outreach to former Olympic athletes that are now LA28 board members. Looking forward to sharing more detailed information with all of you and having Monterey Park become once again an Olympic city with a heart. Regarding tonight's agenda item on the temporary ad hoc subcommittee to explore funding strategies for the Barnes Park Aquatic Center, it is my hope that two council members will be on the committee, and I look forward to sharing and working together on the multi-tiered financial funding strategy of political advocacy, community development block grants, and private philanthropy. As always, I am grateful for your time, consideration, and service to our community. Thank you.

Thank you, Dawn. Next up is Martha Yosselens.

Good evening, Council.

My name is Martha, and I live right off of Hellman Avenue on Olive Avenue in the city of Alhambra. I've been there over 23 years. and I'm speaking regarding many topics. I'll start with the number one. For the past six weeks, maybe seven, I guess the Marriott Hotel is having a Pokemon event and we have been impacted with that, with the traffic and our family can't even park and sometimes they're there from 9 o'clock in the morning until even 10 o'clock at night. So I hope the city can look at that matter and do something about the parking. Maybe the Marriott can offer valet parking. Or I know it's very deep. They have a lot of levels underneath the Marriott. But I understand it's very expensive also what they charge. Another matter is that I oppose that 48 unit. I understand there's one parking slot for each unit that they're going to build, so that's not enough parking for the people that are going to live, I'm sure, in that unit, maybe two or three people. So when there's an overflow and that corner of Olive, Hathaway, and Hellman, which is very dangerous and it's a blind spot. I would like for the city to look into the matter and maybe put a traffic light there right in the corner for the people that are going east and west. They fly. I mean, my husband and I coming here, we couldn't even make a left turn. So then now we have to go around towards Ramona Road, which is also impacted with the parking situation. And so I didn't write a speech or anything, but I just wanted to, you know, see if our city of Alhambra can work something out with the city of Monterey Park. You're welcome to be there anytime between 2.30 in the afternoon till about 7 o'clock to see all the line of cars. And basically our street, Olive, we've never had any problems. I love it there, and I would hate to move. But anyway, that's about it. Any questions? No? Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Martha. Next up, Bruce Mock.

Good evening. My name is Bruce Mark. I live on Hathaway Avenue in the middle of the street. Basically, I have two houses there, and I want to emphasize that we've been living there for almost 42 years. We only have four people living in a quarter and an acre. Okay? Most of the houses around my houses, most of the residents only have two, up to maybe three people per household. We are single-family homes.

Right now, while we were talking about, earlier somebody had mentioned about Happy Days. Happy Days, my daughter used to go there. It's a much, much bigger lot than the one proposed here in the 824 West Helmand. And you're talking about that place is going to only build 32 condos. Now you're talking about 48 for a smaller lot, higher structure, more traffic. Today at 4 o'clock, I tried to cross Helmand. there's so much traffic you know they don't stop and then almost I put my foot out supposedly they're supposed to stop and let pedestrians cross and nobody you somebody like somebody mentioned before one person an older gentleman got killed and dragged a couple blocks from that location a couple years ago this is real okay and then a lot of people right even right now with the hotel all the parties and conference that they have they park all the way into my area two days ago before in and out burger burger webs on our sidewalk okay this is happening drinks half filled half full half finished left on the on the side of the driveway that's not you know acceptable we have been it has been a very quiet neighborhood and all of a sudden you're talking about 48 plus two at times two or more and then you're gonna have a lot more cars coming in. It's hard to make a right turn on Hathaway or going left turn on the Helmand onto my street. Thank you, you guys, for putting in the left turn signal, turning lane onto Atlantic. I appreciate it when the hotel, you know, was first proposed. the hotel before we were told that they're not going to have most of their parking will be underneath it's not going to be impacting our local streets that's not true it's impacting us already with this major housing project that you're going to put there it's going to make it even worse and worse and more people might be getting into a traffic accident or you know burglaries A lot of strangers are going to be visiting our neighborhood. That's not nice. Noise will be a problem. Trash, I mentioned before. And then security is our main concern. Like a lot of older senior citizens, or at least my age, live there. And we need the protection. I hope you guys can, you know, put that in your decision making. Again, housing is important, but you need to look at our immediate neighborhood. We are mostly single-family homes, and I hope you will consider moving that project somewhere else or modify and Lor the density. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. So next is Nancy Nguyen.

Hello, Mayor and City Council. My name is Nancy and I'm here for the zoning that the city changed my property. I am the owner of the Vegabond property. The reason I'm here today is because the city changed the zoning of my land from residential to commercial without my notice. In addition, I spent more than two years working on an architecture plan to build a home for my family. and the project had already reached to the final stage of approval. Now, because the zoning was changed to commercial, I can no longer build a residential home on my property. Recently, I met with the city director and a city manager to ask for help to change the zoning back to residential. However, I was informed that I would need to pay application and processing fee again, which could cost more than $100,000. I respectfully ask the mayor and the city council to please reconsider this situation and support housing opportunity in the city of Monterey Park by allowing the director to authorize changing my property zoning back to residential zone as soon as possible. I could appreciate hearing your response, and thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you, Nancy. And next speaker is Paul Lamb.

Good evening, everybody. My name is Paul Lam. I'm living in El Hamba. Close next street is Hathaway.

the headway the helmet is this helmet is very busy even you don't think that after office hour 2.30 or 3 o'clock p.m. so when you exit to right turn to the Atlantic

my property is go to the Curtis and then turn to the right next block is Hathaway. So that block is very busy. Even the Mary Lock Hotel, 555 Hotel is very busy and the car is exit from there. Even you build the corner, 48 multi-unit on the corner property on the Hathaway, it's very, very busy and very dangerous. Hathaway is...

telling you before it's on the 3 o'clock, 2.30 to 3 o'clock, and 4 o'clock, 5 o'clock p.m. Because it's all the people from the downtown, on the 10th view is traffic. They exit to the Helmand.

The Helmand is so busy, nonstop. So even no chance to right turn on the Atlantic. So you need to think about the traffic on the helmet.

And also, when you build a 40 multi-unit on that, the car is more than 48 cars because it's not only one people living in there. Maybe two family, three family living in one house. So you have to think about maybe two cars for one family or three cars in one family. So very busy. is not very good. It's very dangerous because even on that point, when we go to the exit to the Atlantic, the traffic light, four-way stop traffic light, the traffic light is where you, because it's when you turn, the Mary Lock, right now the Mary Lock, the car is turn, not turn to the left side, turn to pass another line, go to 10 feet way. That point is a non-stop to fast and the helmet, the car. So easy to hit. It's very easy to hit. Even I tried to pass the Atlantic, go to the Helmand, and the one police car from the stop sign, they have a stop sign. The police car, they non-stop, they just go through. I stand on the helmet the police car is turned left right away I I stop very very good time on the good time the police car stop telling me what did they tell me he don't stop on the stop side he don't stop he just turn right right away and then telling me telling me I should be slowly he don't slowly and then telling me slowly because I'm I have right to on the right on the helmet slowly to go through that's my point it's very dangerous even the policeman yeah that's my point because is that stoplight and then you you you have to tell how many car how many a minute to turn to turn to the 10th view and go through to helmet okay thank you

Thank You Paul all right and council may briefly respond at this point to any of the public comments. Well, thank you, Mayor. First of all,

I wanted to say thank you. This is not an agenda, so we can't have a full discussion, but thank you for the residents, both Marley Park and the friendly neighbors in the Hampton for coming by to let us know about the concerns. What we will do, and what we can do, is I'm going to ask the city manager and staff to kind of look into this, because usually something like this, it gets kind of walked through the planning commission, so I'm just going to have staff look into this and make sure the planning commission and staff can look into the concerns and how to mitigate the concerns for traffic, safety, and parking. I'm sure there will be updated reports along the way just to keep the residents, both sides of the city, involved here so that they know what's going on from a transparency standpoint. Thank you.

I echo appreciation for folks that showed up today to express questions and concerns. In regards to the Hellman-Hathaway project, I know that staff are already working on that. And I know some of the speakers noted that it's not on the agenda. It's not on the agenda. It's not here for us to approve or deny or take any action on that specific item. when it is I hope that when and if it is hope that folks will continue to engage in that project I know the developer or poser there has had a community meeting encourage them to continue some outreach and engagement with their their neighbors because their existing property owners and I believe long-time existing property owners and so hope that they will engage with with you if any of them if any of their representatives are here would want to make sure that they are talking to you. But appreciate that you're expressing these concerns. It sounds like many of these concerns are existing concerns, not dealing with this specific proposal. So I think we can clear the direction for staff to do what we can to talk to neighbors, and particularly the hotel there, about how we can potentially address some of the concerns around parking and some of the traffic issues there. I definitely want to make sure we're working to address those, particularly given that that's my council district. I want to see what we can do to encourage the courtyard by Marriott to be better neighbors, to their neighbors existing there. And in order to the specific proposal, the development that's being proposed there, that will have to come to the city for approval. There is, I believe, ongoing conversations, and nothing is set in its own. So we encourage you to continue to engage there. Some of you noted that we would prefer this development or this kind of development to go in other places. I encourage you to. We are looking at other places, but we don't control. The city does not control where development goes. We don't own the property there, and we don't control specifics in terms of telling one person who wants to develop something on their property here. to have to go somewhere else. So there are certain things that are not within the power of the city and the city council to do. But given that, we want to make sure that you're continuing to engage with us. We're open to engaging and want to have this conversation and recognize some of these concerns are very real ones and want to see what we can do to address the existing concerns too. On the vagabond property, I know the speaker was here previously at a previous council meeting as well. I understand the concern the rezoning I believe happened back in 2020 so this is a long ongoing drama

unless Carl knows otherwise my reading of the law is we would have to go back to the voters to make that kind of adjustment so that's something we'd have to discuss the council doesn't have that power to address that directly so I know you're in conversation with the city staff on that let's continue that conversation And then Don, I know, brought up the pool in LA28 and opportunities there in a host delegation. I believe Robert and our staff are already working on engaging LA28 and are going to some of these regular convenings for the LA area cities to see how we can continue to be part of that conversation, what we can do to potentially host events, watch events, and participate in the wider regional celebration that is going to be the Olympics. I'd love for us to be able to host a delegation. If anyone has contacts with countries that are looking for host cities, please share that with us. I think we'd be happy to be connected to some of those folks to explore that kind of conversation. And I know Robert and our city team are working on how we can do that, and we're definitely trying to leverage the world's eyes coming into the L.A. area and the San Diego Valley, which has a number of venues to host Olympic events to see what we can do to attract investment and grants and other funding opportunities for our own athletic facilities here. So encourage our continued engagement with the community and others who have ideas, who have contacts, please do share them. We do want to leverage those and make the most of them in the next few years.

All right. Thank you so much. I'm going to echo some of the items that the council members have already spoken. I teach civics in Alhambra, So I'm happy to see Alhambra taking a lot of civic action and being engaged in your community. I hope as this project and other projects come up that have shared interest between both our communities come up, that you'll continue to come to our council meetings and also to Alhambra council meetings as well. I know I met some of theirs as well every once in a while. But thank you for coming out today as a civics teacher, which, you know, brings me, it warms my heart that people are still very civically engaged. but this project that I think as it comes to us and as we continue it's as a developer continues to you know progress with this project that we continue to share information with the community and also share this information with the developers so they are aware of what the concerns are from not just all hamper residents but also Monterey Park residents as well and I want to thank Don also for coming and sharing that information if you haven't shared it directly with Robert or Inez or any of us, if you can please share that information directly so we can be able to look into that. It seems like a lot of very interesting opportunities to have fan-fest areas here in our city for LA20. But also, Robert, I know that we're doing, I saw on our agenda, a watch party for FIFA World Cup. But I know there's fan-fest areas happening and being hosted throughout LA for the FIFA World Cup, which is very, very short, very, very close, actually, right? That would be for us to be able to take advantage of a lot of the stuff that's happening here in Los Angeles and bring those eyes and a lot of those tax dollars here into our city as well. Anyhow, and to Alhambra as well, actually, because I know a lot of Alhambra renters will come out and watch those as well. Wanted to thank you for coming out tonight, and hopefully we will continue to see you as this development progresses. Thank you.

Madam Mayor, I've just actually just question to staff. The project still has to go before the Planning Commission, right? Or has it already gone to the Planning Commission?

The project still needs to go in front of the Planning Commission. That is correct. Okay. Okay. I just want to clarify.

So thank you. Mayor, I just have one more question also for city staff. One of the concerns that was brought up was a lot of the overflow parking coming from the courtyard. Have we, as a city, started communicating with the courtyard and their staff about this overflow of parking that a lot of our residents are complaining about?

Madam Mayor, members of the council, we recently had heard from residents at the community engagement meeting that was hosted at the Hellman site that this was a concern. So staff is working back to reach out with the Marriott to figure out if there's a way that we could make improvements around parking in that space. In addition, we could evaluate if there's other opportunities for permitted parking as an option that the city could investigate to see if that's a viable option. Staff could look at that as well. But, yes, we are engaging with the Courtyard Marriott to just see if we could make sure that we understand how they're utilizing their parking on site. We definitely understand that there is paid parking. And so if that seems to be a deterrent for individuals not utilizing that parking space on site, then we'll definitely have follow-up conversations with the Marriott to see if we can make that any better.

i think that if um if this continues to be an issue i think this also presents itself with a good opportunity for both our city and the city of alhambra to collaborate on finding ways to be able to protect some of this parking which is very limited uh so that it's available for residents both who are living within alhambra and monterey park um so that when they come home they have available parking for them to or have the guests over and it's not an overflow parking for for the courtyard. Thank you. Actually, thank you for bringing that up,

Council Member. Just for my clarification, right now in Alhambra, if there's any overnight parking, it requires a permit, correct?

Madam Mayor, members

of the Council, yes.

If the, I don't know if Sean knows the times off the top of his head, but I believe that in Alhambra the overnight parking restrictions start from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. is that oh 6 a.m. thank you for that clarification so correct um if residents park alhambra residents could park in alhambra um with a permit but if they don't have a permit then correct overnight parking is not alLod and then Back in our city, a couple years now, we've had required permit parking for the neighborhood surrounding East LA College to address some of the parking zones over there, right? Correct. There is several areas in the city that have permitted parking. Some of them are different variations of times. And some, I believe the one around Elac College in that neighborhood is enforced 24-7, if I'm not mistaken.

I just think that maybe perhaps for the city in the future, especially projects in particular that may have considerable impact, I think that's something we may want to consider implementing wherever it seems relevant and useful.

Madam Mayor, if the council is interested in us and staff bringing back an item for discussion,

evaluating parking on the northern border, we can definitely look at that if that's something that the council is interested in doing.

Yeah, it seems like that. Well, I wanted to thank everyone who came out, taking your time out of your busy evening, Alhambra and Monterey Park residents. And so, yeah, like my colleagues said, I think we do want a direct staff to look more into this and then, like per Caleb's request, do a full written review, bring it back on the agenda back to us. I know that the developer is here too, so it shows that they're also interested in learning and hearing about what residents have to say. And I believe the developer is going to host an additional public input meeting so that more questions and feedback can be shared. And when the item does come before the Planning Commission in the future and before Council for consideration, all the residents within the immediate area will receive notice, and all the agendas are also published on the city's website as well. So that will be coming. And also Council Member Noya from Alhambra, she's here, so that shows her support for the Alhambra residents too. She did reach out to me personally yesterday, and we communicated about this item. So you have support from both Alhambra and Monterey Park communicating. Council Member Wong, you wanted to add something. Yeah, I just wanted to clarify.

So if for parking districts, our parking district regulation, right, doesn't – it would be up to the neighbors to vote that in and set the boundaries for that. And then they can also set, do we have restrictions on what time the parking permit would be required, or could it be daytime, or is that something we'd have to address?

I'm going to ask Sean Igar, our public works director, to come down and chat about the permit parking application process. There is a process for that. And so, yes, it is usually initiated by the residents in the community. Sean is more familiar with that program. Good evening, Mayor and Mayor of Pro Temp and City Council.

Sean Igoe, Public Works Director. Yes, there is a formal process that residents would have to go through. It's a petition process that they would have to get their neighbors to sign. There's also a cost associated with this. I don't remember what the cost is, but it's a few thousand dollars to get that process started because there is staff time that goes into this. And then after that, then they would actually have to pay for the permit annually. So there is an ongoing cost for the residents to have this permit.

So that's just an option for the neighbors to consider in terms of there's no restriction on it. It sounds like there's parking issues in terms of the hotel during the daytime. I know most of the parking districts are more overnight parking. So they could initiate something like this if they want, if the neighborhood wanted to for daytime to address some of the daytime parking issues. But we're going to work. It sounds like we're going to work with the hotel to see what we can do to encourage them to be better neighbors. but everything that I think Caleb and others brought up in terms of concerns those will all be addressed in the proposal from the developer right in turn they have to do their own traffic study they have to do all these things those are things that are going to be fact-checked by city staff and that will go through a public hearing process through the Planning Commission just confirm for those that are attending here today that there is a process to go through all this and there are studies that are required for folks that are proposing development projects, especially of the scale, to address their impacts. Thanks.

Yeah, and I actually spoke with representatives at the Marriott yesterday, Jennifer Huang and Veronica, and they told me that the Pokemon card trading convention, that's one of those events that's caused a lot of traffic, they had their very last one last week. So that's not happening anymore in the future. They do have one bigger event for Father's Day weekend. So Father's Day weekend might be a little busy, but other than that, they understand that that convention trading event is too big for their hotel. So at least what they've told me is they're not going to do those kind of events anymore.

And then thank you, Dawn, for coming to share about the pool opportunities with us. And then for Nancy and the Vagabond, I know that staff is already in communication. I know I believe the $100,000 money amount that you mentioned that's if you were to conduct an entire election by yourself which you know but if you tag on to like another election in November then you don't have to worry about the entire cost of an election so staff can continue to work with you on that. All right. Well that's not really brief comments. but did you want to say something?

Madam Mayor, members of the council, I did want to point out, appreciate the comments tonight. The city is on several different Olympic planning committees and learning more about opportunities. If community members have these types of opportunities, we would definitely like to learn more about them. Our public safety, police and fire are attending public safety committee, committee, Olympic committee planning meetings. Our economic development staff is attending business opportunities, ways that we can engage and make sure that our city is thriving during the Olympic process. So we're attending those types of meetings. And then the recreation staff definitely is involved in Torch Run and Fan Fest to learn more. But if there's anything else that you have, please share it with us. We'd love to make sure that we're evaluating all opportunities for the city of Monterey Park. Thank you. Thank you. All right.

Thanks, everyone, for coming. We're going to continue with our presentations. Item 6B is citywide communication survey results. Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the council.

This evening presenting will be Lale Tejeda. She is our Civic Spark fellow who's been helping the city manager's office with communications.

We recently ran a survey, which you're aware of, and she's going to present some of the findings and takeaways from that survey. Sitlali? Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Sitlali Tejeta, and I am the city's communication fellow. Part of my role as a fellow is to expand and refine the city's outreach efforts to enhance communication between the city and its residents. So we're going to begin with an overview of the survey. So the survey was designed to capture multiple dimensions of the city's communication efforts, and it was broken up into three sections. Sources of information, communication effectiveness, and content priorities. The sample size was just above 200 responses. The survey was open for six weeks and was available in three languages. the survey um I'm sorry and I'm excited to go over the findings of the survey with you guys tonight okay next slide so the key findings from the survey are the residents primarily receive information through Instagram the Cascades and the city website the next key finding was residents value clear accessible information and residents express strong interest in understanding city projects and decision-making processes. So the key findings that we're going to go through are going to reflect these in the data. So to begin, respondents were asked which channel of communication they received city information from. I do want to note that the respondents were alLod to select multiple options for this question, and this figure shows the top communication channels that were picked. And so we could see that the top one was the Cascades, folLod by Instagram, the city website, and then city banners, printed flyers, and Facebook. On average, respondents pick three communication channels. So that goes to show that residents are relying on multiple channels of communication, which goes to show how it's important that we are producing content that's going on all of these channels and that the content is consistent across all channels. Moving on to the next slide. The survey asked which channel was most frequently checked. For this question, survey respondents were only alLod to pick one channel of communication, and we can see that it's the same three that were on top. It was Instagram folLod by the Cascades and then the website. So these two findings go to show that these are the three main communication channels that residents are using when it comes to getting their city information. So it's Instagram, the Cascades, and the city website. So moving on, residents value clear and accessible communication. So this was part of the next part of the survey, which was basically respondents were given 10 statements and they were supposed to pick whether they agree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree on each of the following 10 statements. The 10 statements were basically designed to evaluate different aspects of the city's communication efforts and this first figure shows the four statements with the highest level of agreement. So people had to either click I agree or I strongly agree. And so the top four were 78% agree translations of city information are important. 69% agree they are aware of community events. 58% agree the city communicates information clearly. And 56% agree that city council meetings serve as a source of information. So this goes to show how the city has been successfully advertising community events and has been communicating information in a clear manner. Now, in this next slide, we have the four statements with the highest level of disagreement. So respondents either click that they disagree with this statement or strongly disagree. And for this presentation, I want to highlight the top two. So more than a third of respondents disagree with the statement that they hear about city updates in time to act on them. And about a third of respondents disagree with the statement that they hear about city opportunities in time to act on them. So this kind of ties back to the idea that residents value clear and accessible communication, but they also value timely communication. So they want to have enough time to act on these updates and opportunities. Now for the next slide, the last part of the survey was content priorities. And this part of the survey asked the respondents about which topics they are most interested in. And this figure shows the top six topics that residents were interested in. And they are community events, city budget, recreation services and events, public works projects, city council meetings, and news releases. so this finding goes to show that respondents are expressing strong interest in understanding city projects and decision-making processes now in this last slide we have implementation and areas for further research so as the communication fellow one of the things i'm going to be working on is implementing these findings into our communication strategies by posting updates and opportunities on all channels multiple times and in a timely manner, developing more content where there is interest, and for further research, we'd like to conduct focus groups specifically on populations that this survey may not have reached because this survey was distributed through digital media, print media, and in-person at community outreach events. And that is it. Are there any questions?

Thank you. Appreciate the work that goes in this. I know we do this every year and appreciate that there's a lot of consistency in terms of how people are, how residents are getting some of their information, although I think Cascades went up a little because banners used to be even higher on how people, how our residents and community are informed about some community events. So that's cool. I appreciate that we're going to do additional follow-up and outreach and engagement here, particularly with focus groups, because there are people that do regularly read the Cascades, and some maybe from one end to the other, some less so, and are connected through Instagram and some of these other channels. but there are thousands of people in the city that aren't connected at all and despite our mailing, the Cascades to Every Household and all these other opportunities for people engaged, still don't hear about a lot of things that are going on at the city, not only things that the council are looking at but even city events, things like that. We'd love to learn and see what we can do and how we can be more innovative in reaching out to them and really building a better connection with more people in the community so that even that one-third, that says that they hear about things too late sometimes. I would love for that not to be a reason or an excuse anymore. But I don't want that to take away from how much I appreciate. Council. Council appreciates the staff and all the work that we've done, especially in the last few years, to do a lot more, redouble our efforts with community engagement, particularly our different departments. We just had the Public Works Day earlier this week. Police Fire Department had an event this weekend. Police are always open, having events with the community, and we're doing a lot, and all of the departments across the board are doing a lot to really just be more accessible and more engaged. with the community and we're doing a lot I think on the communication side to be more transparent and more engaged more accessible for people and what are we going to continue in that work would be great and if there are new ideas other things other cities and even other companies and organizations are looking at to engage with customers and people who are looking for information would love to explore what else we can do to get the word out about things happening I get the city good news and things we want feedback on as well. And appreciate the work that went into this and the continued work to continue to improve. So thanks so much.

Thank you very much for that presentation.

I'm going to care, so, because given that one platform that's offered by Meta, Instagram seems to have higher response than Facebook. with the other Meta platform, and I'm just curious for, say, staff, especially when it comes to using these tools for Meta as far as either to survey, marketing. Have we ever thought about, again, especially when it comes to saying surveying, say, community issues or concerns, have we ever considered doing a paid digital ad on Meta which would then be we would utilize the platform for both Facebook and Instagram that are both meta and then using their analytics to see, you know, what age groups are responding, what zip code, or even, you know, although our events are pretty successful, but, you know, for example, if we're trying to, say, promote maybe watch programs or other programs, to consider maybe even doing some programmatic branding, again, utilizing meta-ads. And I keep a mistake if I think these ads, depending on how many days and how expensive, they can range from between $10 a day to $40 a day. That's just a thought and suggestion.

Thank you. That's something we can certainly take a look at.

It's been one of our goals in the city manager's office to improve our communications. Sitlali has certainly helped immensely with that so far. And as you know, one of the things that we're going to be doing in the next couple months,

we'll be bringing on a communications manager for the city that will help us look into all of these different ways of communicating. I think one thing to note in City of Monterey Park is that we're still highly analog, I would say more so than many other cities. I think that's why the Cascades newspaper ranks so highly and why our banners rank so highly. So I think some other opportunities that we could look into would be, and we already deliver information to schools, but posting it visibly, physically in locations that people frequent. We've done it before at our parks. Some of them have bulletin boards. We've put up our library programs, our cascades, et cetera. Perhaps places like laundromats or grocery stores where we can get in and post some information would be helpful as well. Thank you. I just have a follow-up question. Thank you.

Our e-newsletter that we also send out, I'm kind of curious to, is, like, the click rate consistent, or do we see, like, drops, like, unsubscribes? I guess what I'm also wondering, too, is that given that, you know, yes, aside from issues like language barriers or access to the Internet, none of that think by now a large segment of our population probably consumes electronically their information. I'm kind of curious have we ever also looked at the analytics of our newsletter and how, if possible, are there ways to improve upon it? or even if there are certain months in which our newsletter gets higher traffic than others, and if so, why is that? I'm just curious. I feel like the newsletter perhaps is an opportunity to really up the consumption of the newsletter. That's a great idea. We'll take a look at the analytics.

We certainly can look at some of those statistics on the back end for that. As you know, this goes out twice monthly on the Thursdays after our city council meeting, so it not only highlights some of the actions the council has taken, but it advertises for upcoming events and opportunities. I imagine what we might see is that when more people attend council meetings or there are perhaps more interesting topics on that that we may have a higher click rate. But it's something we could analyze to see if there are trends

and opportunities that we could take advantage of. To add on to that, I think one thing we can do to implement into our communication strategy is letting people know that this newsletter exists because it was one of the Lor-ranking ones for people when they select where they get their city information from. So I think it's important to get people to know that this is a resource that is there. And we have been looking into analytics for the website and for the Instagram account, and I think looking into the newsletter would be a good route too. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I can ask you a follow-up question.

Right now, how do we enroll? Do people sign up, or do we look at, say, the voter roll and just kind of automatically enroll them into the newsletter? I'm just curious. People do have to sign up for that. We want to make sure that we're not spamming anybody so that we've got consent,

so we're not taking your e-mail addresses from anywhere else and plugging them in. I'm just curious. Madam Mayor, members of the council, if I may, I do know I think the rec department has used some paid ads from time to time for special events, but I think it's definitely something we could look into expanding to other departments or if we want to look at potentially boosting attendance at a specific program. So I appreciate the comment. I did want to share also based on the survey. So we have had different types of surveys, And so definitely when we have had polling surveys or random scientific surveys that are being done by consultants, it's a little different than this type of survey. This one is just available to anybody to take. So even nonresidents could potentially have been participating in the survey. Definitely one of the other strategies as we continue to try to enhance communications is our Cascades newsletter is a 10-month newsletter. And so what we're looking at, so July and August and December and January, those additions have traditionally been combined. So instead of having 12 months, we've only mailed out 10 months worth of additions of Cascades. So this next year we're looking at adding one more addition. So instead of 10 months, we're looking to expand that to 11 months so that there'll be one more month of mailing that will go out through the cascade so we can get more regular information out to the public.

Question. The survey, how was it sent to residents? Was it via text or email or on paper? It was available online, and we kind of did outreach a lot through social media.

We also sent little book slips in water bills. There was printed flyers throughout City Hall. I was at in-person events asking people to fill out the survey, but that is one thing that we did not do. We didn't have physically printed surveys, and for our further research, we do want to do focus groups with people that the survey didn't exactly reach.

For example, maybe someone didn't have access to a phone or a computer to take this survey because it was only available digitally. Yeah, I'm wondering if the results are skewed because of the way that the survey was provided.

We did also have it in the Cascades, correct? Yes. Yes, so it's on the Cascades as well. Yes, got it.

Okay. Well, thank you for the presentation. That was very informative. Thank you, guys. All right. Next up, we have development projects updates from our community development department.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members, Joe Torres, your Economic Development Manager. I am pleased to present an update on the city's major development projects. we can all agree that land development is essential for our city's success and imperative for our community's prosperity. These development projects generate more jobs, bring desired curb appeal, unite community members, maintain or increase home values, and provide additional revenue to the city. Next slide please. Before I present the development projects I'd like to take a moment to familiarize the City Council and members of our audience with the City's project development process which can vary depending on the specific nature of the project so this is more of a general overview from start to finish the process begins when a developer submits a formal application for entitlements and permits this is called the entitlement or zoning clearance process A design review may be conducted, if applicable, which ensures the project's aesthetics and compatibility with the surrounding areas. The next step is a plan check, which ensures the development meets the city's building, safety, and fire requirements. Once we complete these three steps, the project proceeds to the permitting phase, where building permits and other specific approvals are issued. However, construction can only begin once all the necessary permits are issued. Regular inspections are conducted during construction to ensure compliance with building codes and safety standards. After construction, the city conducts the final inspection, and if applicable, a certificate of occupancy is issued. The development is now ready for occupancy and operation and ready to serve our community. Now, using these steps and these milestones as our roadmap, let me guide you through the progress of our major project developments. Next slide, please. We are all excited that Monterey Park's third Starbucks location on 1969 South Atlantic is now open for business. This location features the new 2026 Starbucks prototype, which balances a spacious, cozy atmosphere inside with a state-of-the-art drive-through outside. This store is a perfect example of Monterey Park's economic vision, balancing modern innovation with a deep commitment to smart growth. Next slide.

Tenant improvements have been completed at the 1800 West Garvey Building at Casuda Canyon, and it is now operating as Varsity Jiu-Jitsu School, Staff is working with the school to schedule a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Next slide. The Whitmore Villas, a development featuring 63 townhomes on 2.74 acres, now looks more like its initial conceptual design and it's nearing completion. This project is adding valuable housing stock to our city. Next slide, please. The 5,000-square-foot commercial building at 283 East Garvey is also near completion, with exterior and interior finishing work currently in progress. This new commercial space will soon be ready to welcome a retail market. Next slide. Work is also in progress at the downtown Lincoln Plaza Shopping Center at 100 to 120 North Garfield. As you can see, much of the facade work is near completion. Businesses have been opened during construction, including ABC Cafe, which was located nearest to the fire damage. Next slide.

At the 110,000-square-foot A1 self-storage site on 2500 Davidson Drive, progress is being made with the building construction, signifying significant steps forward for this project. Next slide, please. Thumbling Dumpling Restaurant is bringing its popular culinary offerings to Monterey Park and has signed the lease at the former Caros Restaurant. The building permit for tenant improvements was issued in March 2026, and work is very well underway. Next slide, please. Fire significantly damaged the building located at 601 West Garvey a number of years ago. The renovation finally began in July 2025, and as you can see, there has been much progress with the new facade. However, construction has stalled recently due to expired permits. Next slide. The elite restaurant on 700 South Atlantic Boulevard also sustained significant fire damage about a year and a half ago. Work began shortly thereafter with the goal of rebuilding and subdividing the building for two-tenant occupancy instead of one. However, construction work has stalled. Next slide, please. This 40-unit condominium project on 188 South Chandler Avenue will provide much-needed housing options for our senior community. The council granted a project...

for that extension. I'm very disappointed that they haven't even started construction when permits were issued over a year ago. Noted.

All right, next slide, please. The developer for the Celadon mixed-use project on 114 East Garvey in the downtown district has submitted a revised project design changing into a seven-story mixed-use project with 169 units and 16,822 square feet of commercial space. City staff is currently reviewing the revised design. Next slide. A proposed 48-unit apartment complex will replace these two residential homes on 816, 824 Hellman Avenue. City staff is currently reviewing the application. Next slide, please. The city has also received a conceptual plan submitted for the Deerfield Plaza mixed-use project. This significant development will address both housing and commercial needs, with 369 residential units, 20,745 square feet of commercial space, and 674 parking spaces. It is now in its entitlement phase and currently under review. Next slide. The city has received an application for the Park City Project, a six-story mixed-use project with 120 residential units and 5,150 square feet of commercial space. The proposed project will be built on the downtown lot currently occupied by TS Emporium and other business establishments. It is currently in entitlement and is under city review. Next slide. Next slide. The developer has submitted a revised application for this 34-unit townhome development on 507 North Chandler. City staff is currently reviewing the project, which will bring new housing opportunities to the neighborhood. Next slide.

Next slide.

which was the last time I stood in front of you to present the previous development project, to April 2025, the city has issued 131 new business licenses signaling robust economic growth and welcomed new businesses that align with the city's commercial corridors and market demand, including La Diosa de los Moles Mexican Restaurant, A Sayori Made Cafe, Yehui Coffee, Reworkme Fitness Center, and Swank Hair Salon. And on the horizon, coming soon to Monterey Park are the Melt and the Veen Coffee, among others. Madam Mayor, members of the City Council, that concludes the development project updates.

I'm happy to answer questions.

Joel, that is a great report. shows a lot of effort in what you guys do. Also shows what developers and builders want to invest in our city. I mean, some of the stuff on the list we know, it's ongoing. It's not overnight. It takes a while to get through these things. But just knowing that there's continuing work, I mean, what impressed me was the 131 new business permits or licenses. in the last, I'm going to call it, nine months. I mean, I think we all see the empty storefronts, the retail, not only in our city but everywhere else. But that's a good sign that we have new permits. That means they're filling those spots and they're coming back to the city. So we really appreciate the report. Thank you.

I'll just echo those comments as well. Great to see these updates and developments and some of these things actually coming to fruition from the previous Development pipeline updates. I would love to make sure we're having these maybe every six months or so I'm curious that I think the rest of the council is also just eager because we get Inquiries from residents all the time about updates about some of these projects I know some of them have hosted community meetings recently It would just be helpful to just have some of the information more frequently and I know a lot of people left but there was a crowd earlier about one of the even specific developments that were in the pipeline that you presented about. I think there's eagerness in the community to just hear more about how we're helping to facilitate vacancies being filled and then development projects in the city as well. If we can also invite some of the other, I know the Charles Company's proposal and some others have not had any community meetings lately or are not in a place where they maybe are comfortable with the community meeting, but I think it would be good to invite them to come back as well to the council to present an update. It would be good to hear what's going on, particularly with some of those developments that have been in the works for more than a year. Years. Yeah, years. I'm trying to be nice. But it would be great to really just express a sense of urgency and also just partnership with some of these folks, the property owners and developers, to see what we can do. But really appreciate Joe, the team, the economic development team, and the whole department and everyone on staff that have been working on helping existing property owners fill vacancies. I think Times Square, even since last July, has come a long way, filling a lot of vacancies. the north part of the city in North Atlantic. I know, and we've been talking about South Atlantic as well, and a lot of, I think there are things in the pipeline. Hopefully those come to fruition soon as well, and hopefully this year in terms of filling some of those vacancies and being able to do some more ribbon cuttings there. But understanding that across the board, not just in Mario Park, but throughout California, Southern California, L.A., It's a tough retail environment, continues to be a tough retail environment for a lot of people. And the economy, from a lot of the signals that we watch and just generally if you listen to the news, people are starting to cut back on some of their spending, and it's going to be a harder time for a lot of retailers, including many here in Monterey Park. And so I look forward to seeing what we can do on the city level and from the community to continue to support our small businesses here in the city and help keep our vacancy rate Lor than it otherwise would be. And whatever other programs, I know we have in our programs to provide support and resources for businesses here in the city. If we need to look at other additional work or rethink some of those existing programs to help our businesses and our entrepreneurs, I'm all ears and very eager to see what we can do to act on some of that. But thanks so much, Joe. I appreciate the update.

Joe, I just, I have, well, first of all, thank you for the report. I'm always very excited to hear what new businesses are coming. I just have a couple questions that Davian Coffee, where is that one opening up? It's where the fitness center is mid-Wiltshire is,

mid-Wiltshire, mid-Atlantic Boulevard. Mid-Wiltshire. Mid-Atlantic Boulevard near almost close to NBC Seafood.

That same complex. Where Honey Boba used to be. Exactly. It's a perfect fit for them.

I'm excited all the new coffee shops that are coming. Someone here is a big fan of

the Bean Coffee and she couldn't wait until they opened shop. Yes, yes, I agree.

And I don't know if for the other coffee shop, the $10,000, if we're planning to do a ribbon cutting for them. Definitely. We've approached them for a ribbon cutting.

We're still working on getting some of their permits completed. Once that's done, the next would be a ribbon cutting ceremony. Okay, great.

And then to echo what Council Member Wong said, I I think there it might be of interest to reach out to the Charles company let them know about these other big developments coming to Garvey and add some pressure but I think I want to say and I'm trying to be nice like council member Wong but I do remember four years ago when I was mayor and we met with the Charles company and they were talking about how much they wanted to develop that area but four years later it's still undeveloped and I'm not sure what's going on there. So it might be time to add some pressure. Noted. Thank you.

Mayor, thank you. Thank you, Joseph, for that presentation. Since we're talking about, you know, inviting developers, or I guess even owners of an existing complex, I would actually like to add and suggest that perhaps one day we invite the owners of 111 North Atlantic to come before us because, let's be honest, that That is a blighted shopping center. And I mean, when I would like to see Kung Fu, at least there's a restaurant. It is now empty. And I don't know what our communications are, but in my opinion, it has become blight. And I think that if the owner is not being cooperative with us, then we need to then ask ourselves, well, are there kind of carrots and sticks we need to employ? Because that is a very important corner. And on the one hand, yes, we are talking about upcoming development, but we have existing retail spaces, which at least that in particular, I could be wrong. But all the time that I used to go there for a Korean barbecue place, the bookstore, there was a shaved ice place. And to me, it just seems like a wasted opportunity and a disservice to our residents, who probably some of them remember when I opened like 40 years ago. And I have to say that I really want some type of report about what are we doing to address what I, again, call blight right now at 111 North Atlantic. Duly noted, Mayor Pro Tem. But I'm just curious, have we had any recent communications with the owners of 111? Have we?

Not recently from my department, Mayor Pro Tem. Okay. Madam Mayor, I'm representing the council.

I believe there has been code enforcement working back with that management of the property. We can definitely – I don't know if they'd be interested in coming and providing an update per se, but we can definitely ask them and see if they'd be interested in coming. Or can we demand? Sure.

We could definitely put it out there. And if you need the council to, again, employ better sticks and carrots and sticks. Again, with all due respect, I mean, again, as the resident of the city, I am just shocked to see how it's declined so much in the past few years. And frankly, I think that it demonstrates that perhaps this owner of a company doesn't care. And if this person doesn't care, then I think we owe it to our residents to take stronger action.

We can definitely schedule that for a future agenda item if the council is interested. Thank you.

well thank you Joe for the great presentation I'm always so excited when you come and present all the updates to our council because it's really fascinating to see all the progress in our city so thanks for coming there's just a lot of new businesses and some other businesses I wanted to shout out to and mention I just recently dined at a new restaurant called Yum Long they're right next to the AMC theater and my husband's a very harsh food critic and he says the soup dumplings there are better than Ding Tai Fung. Yeah, so that one's really popular and then I know Nandao opened on a corner of Garvey and Garfield and people are saying that their Hainan chicken is better than Savoy. So I'm going there for lunch tomorrow and then I just went to a restaurant called Xiang Yu. They're right next to Yihui Coffee and they've been open since November. I didn't go there until this week, and that's a really great restaurant, too, if we want to do a ribbon-cutting for them. Mongolian Pie also open at Atlantic Times Square, and they might be interested in a ribbon-cutting, too. And I just recently heard from a resident there's a Mojie Noodle house that just opened. So I think that's near the Lincoln Plaza on Garvey and Garfield. That one I haven't been to yet, but I'm planning on trying that out, too. And I know Fika Fika is coming probably next month. Mountain House is coming soon, too, to Atlantic Times Square. And at the 111 North Atlantic, I know that the owner, they just finished their permits for a karaoke place downstairs. So that one's opening, at least something. But then there are some restaurants that close. I know Sushi Sai recently closed. I think the owner, the building has a new owner, so hopefully something new comes in that space. and then meat fresh clothes, so don't know what's coming there. And I think something's coming to Phoenix, Phoenix and Atlantic Times Square. I'm not sure which restaurant's going there, but, yeah, lots of new businesses. And then I had posted Byron's presentation on Atlantic Square from our last meeting, and that was really popular. From the comments I got from...

wanted to say mayor i think what the mayor was trying to say is maybe we need like some type of culinary tour going on here in the city of monterey park there's a lot of uh interest i at least for me from hearing the mayor of a lot of amazing restaurants that are not just within our city but they're just opened in our city i think would be very useful to do kind of like we did in in the past but would be great to be able to highlight some of these restaurants especially as la 28 is coming around the corner thank you joe sounds like a great idea we'll definitely look

into it. Thank you. Thank you. All right. That's all for our presentation. So now we move on to staff communications starting with our police department.

Madam Mayor, members of city council, Scott Weiss, police chief. Good to see everybody tonight. I'm The first one's gonna be on our Neighborhood Watch program. Here's our updated numbers. We continue to push out Neighborhood Watch to the different areas in town. Let's not fight over the numbers. We're doing our best. I know how it gets in here. Go ahead, next slide, please. I wanted to give you kind of an idea of how the program works. There's a lot of different leads that go out. We go out through Instagram, we go out through Cascades. We push the program out to the community and every different platform that we can. We typically then connect up with one of the residents. We try to establish a location for the meeting for that neighborhood, and we keep it within a manageable space. We don't want 100 people at a meeting. We try to keep it to that neighborhood, and that's where the Neighborhood Watch program kind of came to be. We want the neighbors to start to learn who lives next door and who lives down the street. They exchange phone numbers. They create texting apps, all the different things that keep the community connected. And that little small community of maybe 10 or 12 houses, they have micro issues in their neighborhood that we like to address. We set up the first meeting. We do the outreach to the community. We bring the speakers to the location, and then we help them plan future meetings. We'll come to those future meetings and provide them with whatever they need as far as police resources. And that's kind of how the program works over the long term. We've had very good success. Sometimes we do it in people's houses. Sometimes we do it on driveways. We did one recently over at the park at Monterey Highland School. And that's what that neighborhood wanted. So we're able to kind of accommodate whatever their needs are. Anybody who's interested in the program can call our Community Engagement Bureau. There's different ways to access them. The phone number's up here on the screen, 626-307-1215. There's a link on our webpage, and those are the best ways to get a hold of us, and we'll set up the meeting from that point on. Next slide, please. Our Detective Bureau update. Next one. This is our April statistics. It's very interesting, and this is kind of across a lot of different communities in Southern California. Our robberies are down by 31% from this year to last year. I think that's a great statistic. Our burglaries are down 29% from this year to last year. Another great statistic. And those kind of reflect across the region. uh theft is everything other than a burglary that's a lot of different crimes you can see there's a it's a lot higher number but it's down five percent and that could be anything from petty theft from a store somebody stealing something off a porch a bicycle being stolen any of those different things grand theft auto is down eight percent stealing cars what is up is fraud. People are using the internet to conduct fraud. People are using different methods to conduct fraud. We have a detective that works nothing but fraud investigations, and they work with their other agencies around us, the county, they work with the state of California's DOJ, and they work with the federal government because the Secret Service is responsible for fraud investigations that go across state lines. So we work with all those partners to try to deal with the different frauds that are occurring. But the stats are really good, and we'll continue to address these issues. Next page is our NIBRS stats. NIBRS is the system by which all police departments in the country give information to the FBI on crime statistics. And it's a very robust system, but I took the three separate areas, crimes against persons, crimes against property, and then crimes against society. Crimes against society are advice, narcotics, pornography, those kind of offenses. Crimes against persons are very obvious. Crimes against property, obviously obvious. We saw against, and crimes percent, crimes against persons, about a 1% increase from 2005, 25 to 2026. 59% of those crimes have been cleared. So that's a pretty good clearance rate for Monterey Park. The national average is in the 20s. Those crimes, crimes against persons, typically occur and you know the suspect. You've been battered by someone that you know. We're able to kind of link our suspects through those. Our crimes against property is a decrease of 11% from 2025 to 2026, and 10% of those crimes have been cleared. Much Lor clearance rate because that includes you come home and you find out that the package on your porch has been stolen. We don't know who did it. There's not a lot of leads in those cases, so it's a much Lor clearance rate. And the last one is, like I said, there's a 74% increase. That reflected in the frauds. These are crimes that recently, for about four years in Southern California, were not prosecuted. Narcotics violations, prostitution, none of those crimes were prosecuted in California, in Southern California. The DA refused to file charges on narcotics-related crimes. That has changed, and we're starting to see an uptick in those. But those are our national statistics. We continue to address all the issues. Today there was a very robust investigation we were doing in the city. We made some headway dealing with some of the crimes against society that are occurring in Monterey Park. We're targeting those with our special investigations unit. But we continue to address all the issues as they come up. The Detective Bureau, the Police Department is very dedicated to solving these crimes. So I'm here for any questions.

Thanks, Chief. I like that crime overall is down. I mean, most of them are like 30% on robbery and burglary. And then the big one, Grand Theft Auto, is down, too, about 8%. So I get why fraud is up 7%. I mean, if you kind of figure that number out in the community at large, that's probably a low number because fraud is everywhere. Everywhere. I hear it. I see it. It's all over the news. So just please continue to just engage the community. And I know we do a lot of the presentations in the senior centers. That's where the fraud is kind of prevalent now, in the senior centers and even at the library, to help people safeguard what is fraud, what is not fraud, and how to help people be aware of avoiding how to be scammed. So thanks for all that.

I echo comments in terms of appreciation for the police department and all the city staff that have been helping to facilitate this Lor crime rate. And appreciate all the efforts, the PD town halls and the neighborhood watch programs and groups that we've been able to stand up in just the last few years. and a lot of the work the police department and the officers on the ground have been doing to improve and strengthen relationships with neighborhood community members, people that are interested in engaging more directly with the police department and helping keep our neighborhoods safe. So we really appreciate all that work. On the fraud numbers, really quick, that's really very likely an undercount, right, because that's the only reported fraud cases. Some people get defrauded. It's not very much. They just move on. So they're probably a huge undercount in terms of how much fraud

is actually happening? A lot of fraud is you're being compensated back by your credit card companies. So some people don't report those. We've worked with the credit bureaus and the credit card companies to help. They help us investigate these crimes. But most of the suspects are overseas. They're offshore. It's very difficult once we get out of the United States to do

anything with suspects when they're in Nigeria or wherever they're at. It's very hard to find them. I appreciate that. And I know we do some messaging and communications out to the residents through the Cascades. I don't know if we do through the Cascades. I assume we do, but also online around fraud prevention and just being able to spot that. Whatever we can do to help redouble those efforts or increase what we do, especially for seniors who are more prone to some of these scams and frauds and even not seniors that fall for some of these things all the time, phishing attempts. If we can think about what else we can do to educate community members, residents, about some of these things, and then businesses as well. I know we have a business watch program going on. Yes. We have a really good relationship with World Journal, and our officers on a regular basis communicate through the World Journal and try to get the word out to that community. We've been pretty successful there, and we're going to ratchet up that with World Journal and get their cooperation even more to get some of this information out. Yeah, no, I would love to do that, and I think, right, I don't anticipate the incidence of fraud going down anytime soon. I think it's only going to proliferate more, especially with AI and people being able to pretend like there are other people much more easily going forward and people doing more things online. Whatever we can do to help and obviously work with other regional partners, but whatever we can do to help our residents be better prepared for this new reality, I think would love to see us continue to do. I don't think you touched on violent crime very much in your stats. I assume that's because the numbers are very low. We throw violent crime into, I think the term violent crime comes through the media for the most part.

Crimes against persons for us is where the violent crimes would kind of fall. the NIBRS systems indicates and it identifies 26 to 28 different crimes against person it's a very unique way of tracking we used to do it with just eight sections now we do it with over 40 but that's where that statistic would fall we I gave you the overalls my statistics that I get every month are broken down into individual categories. And a lot of the categories have zeros in them.

Arsons. There's a lot of subcategories that we don't have a lot of incidents that occur there. But that's where it would fall is within that crimes against person breakdown. That's where the violent crime would fall.

Aggravated assaults, assault of a deadly weapon, murders, attempted murders, all those different things. I just want to confirm that those numbers are also... They're very low. Yeah, they're very, very low. The biggest section of violent crime is robbery.

And that doesn't qualify as a crimes against person as a violent crime unless someone's hurt. So it's... California was reluctant to join the NIBR system because it muddies the water when it comes to looking at the statistics overall. It's very hard to kind of break it down. The old system we thought worked great. Southern California in particular was the last group in the country to switch over to the NIBRS system. The other states were 10 years ahead of us doing it. So it's been a learning process for us with the new NIBRS statistics. I appreciate it. Thanks.

Thank you, Chief, for this information. Can we go to the slide with the – yes, that one. Great to see that robbery and burglary is down. I think if we think about about a year ago when we were doing a lot of the community engagement meetings, especially in the Monterey Highlands area, Brightwood areas, people were very scared about all the burglaries that were happening. What would you say is the reason why burglaries gone down? And robberies, yeah.

It's probably multi-layered. One of them is when the new DA came into office, prosecutions went up. And law enforcement in Southern California made it very clear that we were going to prosecute the crimes that for a long time did not get prosecuted. So that's a deterrent. You saw on the news the retail theft task forces that went out. You saw people being arrested and put in jail. You saw the DA get up there at the press conferences and saying, I'm going to prosecute these people for these crimes. That did have an effect. A lot of people said, oh, that's not going to change things. Obviously, it did have an effect. The other side of it is the public has become more aware.

There weren't as many burglaries as everybody thought. I think that was part of it, too. There was this epidemic of burglaries happening. One house, they said, had nine burglaries in it. There was one. But that's just the way it goes. The other part of it is our detectives are very good at what they do, and they cooperate and share information with the agencies around us. Burglars don't have borders. They're like mosquitoes. I learned that tonight. They're like mosquitoes. They don't have borders. So the burglar that hits Monterey Park is also the burglar that's hitting Alhambra, and he's hitting up in the valley, and they're hitting down in Orange County. We saw from that Highlands group, they hit us. We worked the case. We broke the case for the other agencies. The surveillance went on that crew, and they were arrested up in the San Fernando Valley after committing a burglary. So that's why I think you're seeing the numbers go down. It's us not becoming victims anymore. And I say us, the non-criminals in society have decided they don't want to be victims anymore. And we're a community that has its own police department, that can respond to calls, that cares about what happens in this community. I'm not saying anything bad about L.A., but you see the burglaries up in the valley in L.A. It's a manpower issue. It's a huge populated area, and they just don't have enough cops to respond and deal with the problem. We have resources here, and we deploy our resources accordingly to solve problems. That's what it is. Bottom line, we evaluate it every single day to make sure that our resources are targeting the things we need to target. That's why our numbers are down.

They'll continue to go down. I think these numbers are great for people who are not just residents, but people who are interested in buying a home here, businesses. I think this is really great. 100%. Yeah. So thank you for sharing that information. I'm interested to see how these numbers break down by district.

You guys are friends, right? Okay. Yes. Of course we are. I'll see if I can do that. Okay. Our new RIM system, I might be able to do that. Okay.

Thank you, Chief. Uh-huh. Again, thank you very much for a very thorough presentation. I am curious because I know there's been several questions about the fraud of statistics. And I'm curious, like when we see fraud broken down, are we talking about like in-person solicitations or by phone or by even email? I'm just curious, like what is the nature of some of these fraud cases? All of those. I see. Credit card fraud, phishing websites, telephone fraud.

There are a lot of different organizations that go out there. They may target 1,000 people a day. They only get five people to bite, but those five people, they get to give them $1,000 each. That's a pretty good day's work. And that's kind of how they're targeting this. We saw for many years frauds were, hey, you've won the lottery in Africa, and this prince has got this money for you, but you need to deposit $5,000 in this account to free it up to give the money here. We've seen that. We don't see it as much anymore because a lot of it now is done over the Internet. And a lot of that fraud is not reported, unfortunately. People just, they're embarrassed. We worked a major fraud investigation where we had money being delivered to a location here in town. I don't know if any of you remember those cases, but we recovered $100,000. People that were sending money to Monterey Park in cash because of fraud. One of them was a police officer from New York. When we called him back, we're like, how did you become a victim? He sent $25,000. He goes, I thought it was legit. It's like sending money in pages of newspapers you think is legit? And he ended up getting his cash back, but it affects everybody. A family member gave $25,000 to a guy because she thought she was bailing her granddaughter out of jail. And the only reason we stopped it is because a bank manager in South Pasadena was like, you shouldn't be sending this money. so a phone call was made and we got it stopped but she was convinced that she was helping her granddaughter get out of jail

they're very convincing I'm kind of curious given what we have seen and the increased sophistication would it then perhaps doing more like

how we do town halls especially at a time when, you know, like last year or two years ago, you know, like in Highlands. But I'm wondering if it's something that we may want to start doing like a cyber fraud town hall. If that is – Absolutely. I mean, perhaps we can even invite the DA or AG's office. Again, it just sounds like that seems to be the new frontier of where these frauds are happening. Absolutely, we can do that. We're also working with the credit card companies.

So if you activate, if you call in to activate a credit card now or an ATM card or a gift card, part of the conversation or part of the recording that you hear is them telling you, just so you know, government agencies do not ask you to pay bills or pay fines using gift cards. We did it last night at home for a gift card for my daughter's graduation from high school. And right on the recording, it said, if this is to pay a debt for a government agency, it's fraud. Do not do it. So the credit card companies are starting to help with that. We saw a lot of those. Someone would call saying they're the court saying, we need $1,000 in Apple gift cards to get rid of the parking tickets you have. And people are like, oh, my God, I've got to go get Apple gift cards. And they literally would do it. Interesting. So we will absolutely target that in our town halls. That's a great idea.

And we'll start rolling those out. Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Chief, for the great presentation. I'm always super impressed by our PD. You guys do such a great job. And I know we talked about the incident on my street already, but I just wanted to do a public acknowledgement. I had a neighbor who was on our street, and they saw a vacant home with squatters inside. So he was originally afraid to call the police, but we called the police together, reported it. Police monitored it at odd hours and ended up arresting two people within a few days for burglary. Yeah, so they're, like, super fast on top of it. I know some of our residents like my neighbor could be scared to call the police for whatever reason so I think when people call maybe have dispatchers thank them for calling so that encourages our residents to call more. I will pass that on. Thank you. Yeah I know like we've had an uptick in homeless people near my office and my staff continues to call and police are really fast to respond and communicate with the folks and offer services so thanks for the rapid response this will be the last time you'll see me up here because city staff right now is

throwing me under the bus for talking so long so just I want to pass that to you if they had a hook I'd be out of here by now so thank you very much thank you all right fire department

yeah police already used up your time so

all good good evening madam mayor mayor pro tem members of the city council city executive team city staff and members of our community i should say time me because we'll make this quick my name is ryan weddell deputy chief for the monterey park fire department i'd like to briefly highlight our upcoming sidewalk cpr event taking place on saturday june 6th right behind you in the front lawn of City Hall from 9 a.m. to 12. This event is part of a coordinated Los Angeles County initiative bringing cities and fire departments together with one common goal improving cardiac arrest survival through community education and immediate action. Cardiac arrest remains one of the leading medical emergencies nationwide and survival often depends on what happens before firefighters or paramedics arrive. Hands-only CPR is simple, effective, and something anyone can learn in just a few minutes. During this event, participants will learn how to recognize cardiac arrest, activate 911 quickly, and provide high-quality chest compressions until emergency responders arrive. Data has shown that immediate bystander CPR can significantly improve survival outcomes and truly has the potential to save lives within our community. Events like this also reinforce the partnership between the fire department and the residents we serve. Public safety is the strongest when the community is prepared and engaged. We encourage all residents to attend, participate, and help us continue building a safer and more resilient Monterey Park community. Thank you, and I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

no no questions no I appreciate kudos for the open house and the pancakes yes this past weekend really great to see so many in the community really excited not only for the pancakes but for all the equipment and being able to show off everything the fire department really does serve the community and keep us all safe appreciate that I know the community is eager for the next one too. I saw a lot of kids and great people really having a lot of time, having a lot of fun playing with the hose and all that stuff going on. Really great job to the fire department and really seeing the community come together there on the weekend. I appreciate this, bring more skills and training and engagement into of the community and look forward to more of these kind of events. I know the CERT program has been great and a great success to getting people engaged. Really enjoy and appreciate seeing these kind of more bite-sized opportunities for people to learn and upskill their public safety skill sets. Thanks.

I also wanted to echo the appreciation for the pancake breakfast the other day. My daughter still keeps talking about how great the pancakes were. I told them I was going to drop them off every morning to you guys for breakfast. Sure. I wasn't sure if you guys made pancakes, but now I know that you do. So, all right. And then this is actually, is this happening on the same day as the Pride Parade, right? Yes. So after they're done with the parade, they can walk over and learn how to do CPR. Correct. Excellent. I think that's great. Thank you so much for hosting those events. And then we should do the, according to my daughter, pancake breakfast at least three times or four times a year. Sure. Thanks.

Again, echoing my colleagues, their compliments to the open house, congratulations. And again, just to highlight, actually, people I know who live in neighboring cities came over. So, you know, that speaks volumes, that it's not just our residents, but people who live in the surrounding area like to come and just, you know, enjoy Pancake Company and also see the demonstrations.

Yeah, and I think it's cool that you guys left that totaled car outside for a couple days so that committee members can be like, oh, what's going on here? Yes. But the demos are very interesting, and I think there's a lot of social media about it. I did see on social media recently that firefighters in other cities are fighting flames with sound waves. I don't know if you guys have seen that yet. Yes, we it's an innovative

attempt to To find different alternative solutions to firefighting so I know that the San Bernardino County Fire Department has highlighted that in their social media But it's not something that we've looked into fully yet

Got it. We are aware of that. Yes, okay sounds good. Yeah, just an option to look into it looked really interesting but yeah thanks for this presentation it looks like a really great CPR event yeah we got all new training mannequins for this event

so this will be the inaugural use of those and to everyone's point and on behalf of the fire department thank you for all attending we appreciate your support of the fire department and we look forward to seeing you at this event sounds good thank you

next up recreation and community services All right, let's see if I can beat both of those guys.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and City Councilmembers. Robert Aguirre, Director of Recreation and Community Services, to give you some quick updates on recreation programming. Just really quick, I want to highlight and thank the community that came out and made this a very, very successful Play Days Carnival this year, celebrating the city's 110th birthday. So I just want to highlight that event and thank everyone for coming out and enjoying four days of carnival, live entertainment, games, delicious food, and just overall great fun for the community. So thanks everyone for coming out. Next slide, please. I want to highlight two events that are coming up this weekend. First is going to be this Friday. We're starting a new series with the ELAC Ceramics and Art Club. It's a group of students. And so what I'm working with the ELAC on doing is going to be working on art shows, highlighting student art at the El Encanto facility. So starting this Friday will be our first show, and it'll be, the open reception will be from 6 to 8 p.m. at El Encanto. There will be other opportunities to view the art, which will be Saturday and Sunday of that.

opportunity to show their work in a studio-type setting. So we're excited about that, and we hope the community will come out and support those student artists. And then also next Monday is our annual Memorial Day ceremony, where we'll honor those that have given the ultimate sacrifice over at the American Legion Post 397. They'll actually be hosting that event indoors this year. Post has done a significant amount of cleaning and sprucing up of their facility, and they're really interested in showing off the indoor space. And so they're taking a much more leadership role in this year's ceremony. And so we're excited to partner with them on Memorial Day ceremony and look forward to seeing everyone there on Memorial Day at 10 a.m. Also want to share that following the ceremony, they will be providing a free lunch for everyone in attendance. So please come out and join us. Next slide, please.

Some other things that are coming up.

We do have our annual Monterey Park Health Fair. That's a partnership that we do with the UCLA Health Corps. I think we've been partnering with them for over 20 years. There's no insurance required for this. Folks can just drop in to Langley Center between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. There's a bunch of different health screenings, health resources. Stop on by. All ages are welcome. No insurance required. A really great opportunity first from folks to get some information and also some checkups. and then our award winning San Gabriel Valley Pride Parade and Festival is coming up on June the 6th you just heard it on the same day as the sidewalk CPR join us for that event we'll be kicking it off over at Mark Keppel High School at 9 a.m. marching down Garfield Avenue to Barnes Park where we'll be having our annual festival here in Barnes Park we do have some live entertainment some youth bands that will be performing as well as Mark Keppel Theater Company will be doing the performance as well and some other youth performances. So we're excited about another year. As I mentioned, this is an award-winning event through the CPRS California Parks and Recreation Society. And so we're very proud of this partnership with the Alhambra Teachers Association and the West Anguille Valley Boys and Girls Club. Next slide, please. And so just want to highlight some events to save the date for. I know earlier we were talking about the Olympics and also FIFA is coming up with the World Cup. We will be hosting a watch party on June the 25th. What's exciting about this is before the watch party, we'll actually be hosting a free soccer clinic from 445 to 645. That's completely free. You can register online through the recreation website. And then following the clinic, there will be the USA versus Turkey game that will be shown on a large LED screen here in Barnes Park. We'll be partnering with our farmer's market, so you don't have to bring your snacks out. There will be plenty of food there at the farmer's market so you can enjoy some good food and hopefully watch USA beat Turkey in game three there. And then also I want to highlight our upcoming Independence Day celebration on June the 27th. That will be here at Barnes Park at the amphitheater. Festivities will kick off at 4 o'clock with our food trucks and some entertainment. And then we'll have our band at 7 o'clock and fireworks at 9 p.m. Completely free, come on out and join us and celebrate 250 years of independence for our country. And then lastly, just want to share an upcoming and very exciting opportunity that we've engaged in. We have a pilot program that we're going to be doing with our Dial-A-Ride program and also the MPK Transit Express. So very soon we'll be launching that. This will allow us to expand transportation options for our seniors. They will be completely free from the hours of 8 to 4, our Dial-A-Ride hours. but it will also expand access to our seniors from 6.30 a.m. or after hours all the way to 7.30 p.m. for just $1. So this will give us opportunities to serve more seniors and really get them to all of their destinations that they're interested in. So we're very excited, and that will be launching very, very soon. It will also enable our seniors to start tracking where drivers are at and know that someone's on their way to get them. So we're very excited about that. That completes my presentation. As always, continue to follow us on social media at Monterey Park Rec and keep up to date with all of our exciting activities. Thank you. May I? Robert, that is so awesome.

There's so many events here, and I'm glad library is not coming up because then there will be program overload, right? Because I know they've got a bunch of events coming up for the summer that I've kind of had a discussion with the librarians. But this is plenty, and I just wanted to give you a shout-out for epic play day that we just had. We celebrated Sing of the Mount at Asian Heritage Month. Really two different components, but really what our community is based on. You look at our diversity, our population, so I'm really, really happy that we had those things over the weekend. And everyone in the community came. And it was hot the last two days, but people still made it out. Absolutely. And then you've got all these other events. I'm just going to wait until we go to them and then report to them afterwards. So thanks, Robert. Thank you. I'll just add my kudos.

Appreciate everything Parks and Recreation Community Services are doing and have done. Play Days was a lot of fun, as usual. I noticed there were more rides than the last few years, so I appreciate that. My niece appreciated that as well, although she got a little scared on one of them and started crying, and it was unpleasant for a little while. Builds character. Yeah, it does. That's what has to happen. But, no, I appreciate it. Great work and great work bringing the community together. Thank you. Thank you, Robert.

I'm very excited for the Let's Kick It event. Yeah. Thomas was asking me if AEF was going to be there for the beer garden.

Okay. Maybe he forgot himself. Anyhow, but really cool that we're celebrating and getting in tune with the FIFA World Cup as well. I also went to the play days I had a lot of fun we were there pretty late actually on Thursday I had to leave really quickly because I had a final exam that day but got to enjoy the mariachi before I left so thank you for all of that great to see a lot of people out there saw a lot of students out there too taking advantage and they also were commenting about how many more rides there were this time compared to last year so looked very busy So thank you for that, and looking forward to all of the upcoming events. Thank you. Thank you.

I would just note that both of us are wondering if there's going to be a beer garden at any of these events coming up.

Not any of the upcoming events, no.

Great event, yes. And no, I definitely was just, I want to thank the community as well for coming out to our place at the event and just supporting the incredible work of our Parks and Recs Department. And although this was from the last month or last meeting, but again, congratulations for your hard work in securing the funds from the state for the Barnes Park Pool. Again, that is, as I keep telling people that, you know, these are very competitive grants, and it took a lot of effort on the part of city staff to get the funding. And so, again, congratulations for your effort, for all of your effort, you know, in not just securing the funding, but also for, you know, working with the community and being accessible and presenting, you know, presenting a Parks Master Plan and how also soliciting input. Again, it's something that I just want to emphasize the incredible work of our city step and especially in the Parks and Rec department. Thanks so much.

Yeah, always great events. Looking forward to the Independence Day fireworks show. And I'm also looking forward to getting old so I can utilize those dial-a-ride benefits and all the benefits in our city that we offer to the seniors.

You don't have to be old. It's only 50 and over. So to be a senior, to go to the Langley Center, all the great programming is available 50 and over at Langley Center. All right. Thanks so much.

All right, thank you. All right, that's all for staff communication. So now we go on to the item we added, 9A, old business.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, members of the council.

9A is an item that was added, as you know, by unanimous vote tonight. we were informed yesterday that preliminary or a title insurance for the South El Monte property was issued and we also were informed yes late yesterday that the broker asked that we accelerate the process to confirm on the record that the city manager has the signature authority to execute the purchase and sale agreement for that property most of this is recapped in your staff report but Just for purposes of a reminder for whomever may be watching, especially Mr. Weiss, the chief is very interested in this particular item, and I'd invite him to come down and talk to us about it. In any event, this is to recover part of the GAP nuisance abatement debt that is owed by CII with regard to the 1688 Garvey site. It's for $2.5 million, and once escrow closes and we receive that check, it will be applied to that debt, which will leave a substantial amount, but we will deal with that in due time. Happy to answer any questions.

Appreciate the staff report because I don't think we've – a lot of these conversations happen in closed session just because of negotiations, so appreciate that we've gotten to this point.

Very excited is not the right word, but really relieved to really get to this point. I know real estate transactions, we were having some potential issues here that we had to work through, and I appreciate that we've gotten to this point and have a willing and able buyer here for this property and be able to recover some of these costs that the city has borne and has carried for a number of years now to make the hillside safe off of Garvey. And knowing that this will go back to our reserves, we've got a number of capital projects, including our fire station, public safety projects, fire station, pool, many other things that this funding will likely be able to help with, at least a little bit of. So much needed, and I know there's still a gap there in terms of funding, recovering the full funding that the city had to expend to make safe the hillside there. But would be interested, I don't know when timing would be appropriate, if there has been any interest on the gap property for sale and any update on that at a timely, when it's timely, would appreciate an update on that as well.

I'll give you a – well, first I want to give kudos to my team. As you know, the city council authorized our office to file litigation with regard to quiet title. We were able to avoid that necessity and handle it through channels other than litigation. So that would save the city also some additional money. With regard to the actual 1688 West Garvey, as you know, we've had several updates from the broker with regard to the next steps on that. And we should have some items come to the city council for consideration probably next month with regard to some additional land use changes that need to be made in order to make that more saleable. Great. I appreciate that.

I had a question. I forgot, so I'll pass it on.

No questions, but appreciate the report. Happy to move to pass this item.

And I'm happy to second, unless there are questions. But, again, also just to echo the sentiments, again, thank you, Carl, for your team. And also, you know, just to emphasize, too, that, you know, at the core of the issue is that, you know, the city is looking out for the safety of its residents, which is why we took action. And I just want to always emphasize that this has always been an issue of public safety to residents, not only living here, but also those who are in proximity to that gap project.

Yeah, no questions here, but thank you to Carl and your team for all your behind-the-scenes efforts. on getting this done. So we have a motion. We have a second. Let's vote.

Approve unanimously. All right. Thank you. Moving on to our consent calendar.

Does anyone want to pull any items or make a motion?

I'm happy to move all of the items if anyone is not pulling any items. I'll second. I'll second.

All right. Let's vote.

Approve unanimously.

All right. Thank you. Moving on, let's open the public hearing to hear item 11A, the one item on our public hearing agenda.

Good evening, Mayor. Mayor Potem and Council Members. Martha Garcia, Finance Director, and I'm here with Tim and Anais.

action plan implements the consolidated plan goals and prioritizes by allocating CDBG and home resources to a variety of eligible projects and programs it also serves as the city's application to HUD for these grants while the city conducts its own process to identify community needs the programs all expenditures of these grant funds must comply with HUD guidelines For CDBG, we are anticipating $571,332. That's divided between CDBG Planning Administration for $114,000, public improvements for $297,000, and that includes ADA compliance for city sidewalks and public restrooms. It also includes $135,000 for the business grant program, and that's the current program that we have with community development. We're going to augment it by $135,000 in fiscal year 26-27 to continue with that program. And we also contract with a housing rights center, and they come and do several workshops during the year with us for the total of $571,000. For the home plan funds for fiscal year 26-27, $30,000 is for administration and planning. We have $45,000 for the community housing development organization. And we have $226,000 for the multifamily rehabilitation program. The city is nearing, and that's for $226,000 for a total of $302,097 for fiscal year 2627. Talking a little bit about the rehabilitation program, the city is nearing completion of the single family rehabilitation program with only one participant remaining. The project is substantially complete. the city is also in its early stages of developing a multifamily rehabilitation program to ensure that the limited home funds received will benefit multiple low-income residents and maximize community impact. And this concludes my presentation. I've got Priscilla Davila, our HUD consultant on Zoom, if you have any questions for her. And then we have community development here as well if you have any questions for them.

any speakers any public non-register all right I do have questions I don't know if we close the

public hearing before we go into questions yeah let's close the public hearing and then thank thank you and thank thank you to the staff I know a lot goes into putting this annual kind of budget in the report together as well. Martha, I know you high-level detailed some of the expected expenditures of the way we're going to expend the CDBG and home funds. For the public works project, you said most that will be set aside for curb ramp cutouts and ADA compliance for curb ramps. I assume that's not that we're going to have additional funding in public works for capital improved projects. This amount will not cover everything we're doing in the city, right? That's correct, and that's not covering everything.

And this amount is already included in the CIP project that was presented to council at the budget workshop. Okay.

And then the $135,000 for the business grant program, you said it was going to supplement our existing money. Can we get, when we're ready, can we get a report on the existing $200,000 you put in, how much of that has been expended, how much of that still remains, any interim or status report on the businesses that have received funding and any outcomes from that would be great as we look to finalize the budget for next year, but particularly this set aside. But I appreciate that we're looking at this and would reiterate my hope that we look at converting the grant program to a revolving loan fund of some sort just so that we can, and the annual CDBG and our budget reserves continue to shrink, and the ability to fund these kind of programs going forward, I think it would be prudent for us to look at some sort of loan fund as opposed to a grant program, because I think these funds are just going to kind of run out in the next few years, and we won't have the ability to re-up on these, especially as things get more expensive to rehab or to supplement in terms of businesses getting assistance. And so I think looking at our loan program where capital can be returned at least over time to the program to re-grant out or to re-issue out to the community for businesses to have to support them would be more ideal use of our funding, especially if it continues the new funding opportunities continue to shrink.

on the home funds

can you talk about what

the CHDO set aside that $45,000 can you just talk a little bit about what that actually funds Priscilla can you answer that question

sure good evening Mayor and members of the City Council the CHOTO set aside funds, it is required by HUD that the home funds, we allocate a minimum of at least 15%. So that's where the $45,000 and some change comes into. Currently, the city does not have a current CHOTO that it works with, just because nowadays, the cost of developing affordable housing is so high up there that the $45,000 really doesn't get us very far. So what HUD has alLod cities to do in the past is that if you're not able to commit those funds in two years, it'll come back to entitlement funds. So these are 2026 funds. So in 2028, we can request that HUD move those back

into regular entitlement money, and it can be used for any home eligible activity. Okay. So this funding would be for if there is a new affordable housing development proposed in the city, we could utilize that for that affordable housing developer to offset some of those costs? We could, but to be classified as a CHOTO is very restrictive, and there's some guidelines

that go along with it. Your board composition has to have low and moderate income people that represents the city, and you also need different type of nonprofits involved in it,

so it's a little bit more restrictive on who you can partner with. Okay. Understood. And then the, well, hopefully we will have some of these products, but if it doesn't, it sounds like the money will come back. It's just delayed in terms of when we can spend it, right? Correct. Correct. And then the multifamily rehab program. So I know we're ending the single family rehab program. Are there any initial thoughts on how this multifamily rehab program will be rolled out and how we're actually going to implement this? I'm just very excited and curious. We're actually in the process of looking at this and developing policies and procedures.

We were going to wait until after the 30-day review period just to see if the residents of Monterey Park are on board on that. And then we're going to City Council on July 1st for the second public hearing and for approval of the action plan. So at that time, I think we'll have a little better understanding.

It will be for units with four or more units on the property, but we still have not detailed any of the guidance yet on that. Okay. So for multifamily rehab, I know we have to work through the details on how that would work, but that would be providing a subsidy or incentive to the property owner, not tenants, right? So this is still with property owners. It's with the property owners, but the tenants must be low and moderate income tenants. All right. So this would qualify, for example, a lot of the existing senior housing, senior affordable housing that's owner occupied would qualify for this funding? Yes. Cool. Now, I look forward to working out the details. I think this would be a great opportunity. there's a lot of existing affordable housing units in the city that I think are coming to a point and an age that need a lot of rehab and don't have the same kind of opportunities to tap into equity that some of the single-family homes I think do and I think some of our limited funding here from the home program could go a lot further for multi-family housing to rehab and to provide more more livable conditions for low-income folks that are in these kind of housing units versus single-family homes. So I appreciate that we're moving in this, pivoting to this direction. I think the money will be, our limited funds here can go a lot further through multifamily. So look forward to working out the details. I know it sounds like staff are working and starting, I think, through what the details might be and what might make sense for still this limited, even at this $200,000 or so, it's not going to go that far for a lot of units either. But thank you.

Any other questions? No? If not, I'll make the motion to adopt staff recommendation. All right. Council Member Wong moves.

I'll second. All right. Let's vote.

Approved unanimously. Okay. Thank you, staff.

Next, moving on to new business, 12A, establishing a temporary ad hoc subcommittee to explore funding strategies for the Barnes Park Aquatic Center.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Potem, City Councilmembers, Robert Aguirre, Director of Recreation and Community Services. As you all are aware, we recently received or were awarded two grants for the Barnes Park Aquatic Center. But as you are also aware, this project is quite expensive, and we are still exploring additional funding mechanisms to complete this project. So, you know, unfortunately, we've got to continue to look for funding opportunities. And so tonight, staff is seeking direction from city council to establish an ad hoc committee that would be comprised of two city council members. I know at the last meeting, Council Member Wong did express interest in being part of this committee. And the committee would essentially evaluate potential funding opportunities, provide strategic guidance, and also help identify strategic community partners. So this committee would also be a temporary committee and would essentially dissolve once the project is completed. So this would be a temporary meeting. So tonight's staff is recommending that City Council establishes an ad hoc committee to assist staff in exploring funding opportunities and strategic partnerships and to appoint two council members, one of those being Councilmember Wong, to a temporary ad hoc committee. That completes my staff report and I'm available for any questions or discussion. Thank you. Thank you.

Any questions? Robert, quick question. The Land and Water Conservation Fund grant, what's the timeline for when we would have to expend those funds? Approximately three years, yeah. So we are on the-

Currently we are not on the- So currently it's still pending, so it's still moving forward through federal approvals. So it has a federal award and we're still dealing with environmental stuff. So the timeline hasn't started just yet for that. But, yes, we still are on the clock and still looking for additional ways to fund the project.

Yeah, I understand that and just want to, I mean, no one's here. But I want to make clear there's a certain amount of time, and there are only so many opportunities to fill the financing gap for this potential project. And it's important if we don't want to lose out on this funding and also get impacted by construction cost escalation, inflation, that's going to happen. even if we wait longer and longer, we really want to get this done. I appreciate the staff bringing this back and really forming this subcommittee. I fully support it and am interested in serving on it because the times of the essence if we want to get this thing going and take advantage of the grant. Absolutely. Sorry, Robert.

I'll go back for a question. So the three year time period hasn't started officially. Correct. Because they have to finalize that. What we have to do from the city standpoint, remind me again for clarification, we need to at least match the $3 million to the $6 million. Correct. And then the final number for the pool, it's never a final number because it's not done yet, but it's somewhere between $25 to $28, or is it stretching to $30?

$28 to $30 is the conceptual estimate, correct. Okay. that's today's dollars

which means you've got to bring cushion contingency in there and then we're set on is it the second

option B was what was voted and approved okay

I just want to make sure I have all that information yeah the next step would be going out to RFP which we

are actively going out to RFP right now and for pool design and construction design and then working through that process will that which is what will be happening

a swimmer too, I think.

Oh, I don't know. Are you?

I mean, if that's the pleasure of the council, fine. But again, for the record, I am not a very good swimmer. Yeah, I know. Yeah. We build a pool. It's a great opportunity.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks. Everyone's a swimmer. That's fine. Yeah, sure. Okay, cool.

I would like to nominate my friend and colleague, Henry Lo to serve as our second council member on this committee.

I will second Henry Lo and Thomas Wong. All right, let's vote.

Approve unanimously. Thank you. You're strong, Tim. All right, and that's all for our agenda. City Communications.

Okay, let me just kind of... Just a couple of days ago, we had our Public Works Open House. I call it Open House, and this is probably the first time I remember that it happened in the evening. So well attended. I thought we had a good stretch of different people coming at a different time. It was busy between 4 to 5, and then the second group came between 6 and 7. So it alleviated part of the parking. At least when I got there at 6, the parking was available. So that helped. Again, I want to reemphasize Fire Service Day, the chief and fire department, great event. Not only was there the pancake sponsored by the Lions Club, which is a great partner to the city and to the fire department. I think there were cotton candy, dunk a fire person with the ball, among other stuff. And I think the presentation, the Jaws of Life or the Rescue, that was primetime TV for a lot of folks who really got to see what it was like or what it could be like in an emergency situation. Many of us also attended the Murray Highlands School Council Reception last week. then we also had the ribbon cutting for the new starbucks on atlantic across from atlantic square i was also i also participated in the mother's day luncheon at langley center and then i think we mentioned about how play days how epic it was so again thank you to parks and rec and i and not just parks and rec but i think the whole city came together to basically put play day to celebrate our 110th year birthday for the city. Well attended. I know it was hot, but well attended. Lots of people, not only from our community, but from across other communities came and attended the events there. So that's my report.

Okay. Okay.

Just a couple of updates. on the 14th we had the vision zero safety workshop at the Langley Center I thought was pretty well attended probably because they were providing free boba but but there was a lot of people out there sharing their thoughts about safety but also transportation so I saw Sean there Sean can can attest that there was pretty well attended people very very active so glad to see a lot of people engaging we already talked about the fire service day also very well attended and I love the Public Works open house in the evening I think this is the first time we've that I've seen that we've done it in the evening also very well attended my daughters really like the hot dogs thank you Robert and the chief and everyone else who was out there grilling appreciate you guys doing that and a lot of the got to meet a lot of the a lot of the people that we contract with Kim Lee Horn was there a lot of our a lot of the companies that we contract with that do a lot of our projects here great to see a lot of them out there but thank you for doing it in the evening especially for families who make you know coming in the morning might be a little bit more difficult. I did have some very quick Metro updates because we did have a Metro meeting and just wanted to share a couple cool stuff that as we near the Olympics, I'm sorry, the FIFA World Cup, but we're always talking about the Olympics too. But for those of you guys who are really excited, like myself, about the FIFA World Cup, we have eight games that are going to be here in LA, all at SoFi. And believe it or not, Metro has purchased and contracted just for FIFA World Cup over 200 buses that are going to be used so that they don't interrupt regular service so that they're shuttling people back and forth. It's going to be pretty crazy but for those of you guys who are going out to any World Cup games highly recommend you use public transport plus they have a new app that you can use. You can download it now actually for those of you guys who use public transport You can use the app to pay for your rides. You can upload funds, and you can tap everywhere, and it's now digital and electronic. But you can also purchase new tap cards for the World Cup commemorative tap cards, and some of them are pretty cool design. Other ones are just country cards. So if you have a favorite country that you're trained for, like the U.S. or Turkey or any other country, Belgium. I'm going to the Belgium game, Belgium versus Iran game. um you can purchase you know any of those tap cards as well you can also buy them for those of you guys who would think you have to run everywhere and find them like pokemon at at the at the um courtyard uh it's not like that you can buy all of them together as a set believe it or not um but there is a really strong urgency to also push forward a lot of metro projects before the 2020 Olympics. The El Monte Station, which is really close to us, if you remember a lot of us talking about the 70 line, the BRT that we're talking with the COG, they are updating the El Monte Station because that's going to be a hub for transportation for the Olympics, but also for FIFA World Cup this year. So I just wanted to share that. And then also they are going to, my understanding, is trying to break ground on the Metro E-Line, which ends here on Atlantic, right next to our Monterey Park. And they're going to be adding four new stations, extending all the way eventually to Whittier. So they are hoping, my understanding, to add these four new stations before the Olympics. That is a crazy, well, not crazy, but that is a very ambitious task. But my understanding is also that they are planning to do, according to the renderings, the Atlantic Station will be underground. So they're planning to have the underground Atlantic Station. And one of the stops will be the Citadel, actually, the mall that you can take. So anyhow, a lot of stuff happening with Metro, as you know, if you follow them on Instagram. Tomorrow, you can bike for free, any metro bike. They want to encourage biking. I hope that we can encourage metro bikes in our city to be able to connect our Atlantic Station to ELOC. But that's all I have. Thank you. And last thing, school year is almost over. So I don't know if any kids are listening or teachers. Very appreciative of all the school year and all the effort. and I know people are very eager for the summer to start, including this teacher here. Yay!

I did also a lot of the same events that my colleagues attended, and as I've also mentioned to Robert again, congratulations to Play Days, our fire department for our open house. I guess my only message is I believe our next council meeting will be after Election Day, correct? So, therefore, I'd like to make a friendly reminder for everyone to go vote. A lot of things on the ballot, locally and statewide and countywide. And so remember to accept your right to vote. Thank you. All right.

In addition to the events my colleagues mentioned already, last Friday morning, many of us also went to the Southern California Edison AAPI event at their Irwindale location. And also there was a Boys and Girls Club breakfast that I know a lot of staff went to. I saw Fire Chief Jason Heen there and Robert was there and other staff members. They were recognizing some of their supporters. And Saturday, mentioned the fire service day. Mercy Rotary Club had an epic day of service where they painted one of their walls. And Monterey Park Pony had their closing ceremony. at Garvey Ranch Park. And Bodhi Meditation had a very successful meditation festival at their location on Monterey Pass Road. Oh, and thank you, staff, for hosting my final meetup with the mayor at Marie Callender's last Tuesday. That ended my series. And coming up this coming Friday, Garfield Medical Center is having a stroke awareness where you can learn about warning signs of stroke, risk factors, prevention, and treatment. So that's this Friday from 10 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. at the Garfield Medical Center. And I think that's it.

All right. Anything else?

Nope. All right. Then that concludes your meeting. meeting adjourned at 941.

Thank you.