City Council - Regular Meeting

The time now is 2.15 on August 17th, 2022. I would like to reconvene the city council successor agency to the Westminster redevelopment agency meeting. The reason I said reconvene is because this meeting is supposed to be happening last Wednesday already, but because of the incident that we had on that day, we have to turn the meeting to today. So that's the reason. At this time, meeting call to order. Please take a group call, please.

Mayor Nguyen.

I'm here.

Vice Mayor Nguyen.

Here.

District 1, Councilwoman Fen West.

Fen West here.

District 2, Councilmember Monzo.

Here.

District 4, Councilmember Nguyen.

I'm here.

Mayor, you have a quorum with all members present.

Right, thank you very much. At this time, salute to the flag. Today is going to be Council Member Emily Fran West and invocation by Vice Mayor Mark Wayne. Please stand.

Please join me in salute the flag. 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.

Bishop in standing, Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to serve our community. Grant us wisdom in our decisions, respect our discussions, and integrity in all we do. May our work tonight benefit the residents of Westminster and honor the trust they have placed upon us. In your name we pray, amen.

Thank you to Council Member Amy Fang West and Vice Mayor Mark Nguyen. City Attorney, close question report please.

We did not have closed session, so we have nothing to report.

All right, thank you. It's part communication, including SB 1439 report when required. Is there anything from the dais? Seeing none, hearing none, so moving on with the City Club report, please.

Thank you, Mayor. Staff has requested to pull agenda item number 3.4 from the consent calendar for a presentation. And that concludes my report.

All right, thank you, 3.4, right, okay. Next is special presentation. Today we have item A, check. Oh, how come I mark? You already redo report, sorry about that. I mark one before that. So city manager report, please.

I just want to thank everyone for your patience and understanding last Wednesday.

It was a really difficult decision that we had to make to postpone this meeting till today. Obviously, public safety and safety of everyone in attendance was a concern with everything that was evolving. But we definitely want to thank our law enforcement and our partner agencies who helped resolve the situation. So with that, good to see everyone today. First off, we want to introduce our newest K9 team member, Roy, who is a German-Dutch shepherd mix. I think we have a wonderful photo that is not that at all. Anyway, he's a German-Dutch shepherd mix who was born on October 3, 2024, in Hungary, where he completed extensive foundational training before arriving to the U.S., Roy and his handler are currently enrolled in a six-week local training course to prepare for the official patrol certification. Their training includes advanced work, in obedience, agility, retrieval, apprehension, and protection. Once their certification is complete and are fully operational, the chief will arrange an in-person introduction to the city council at an upcoming meeting. So we're excited to meet him, and he obviously doesn't have a picture, so I apologize for that. Next, as our Star-Spangled Summer is nearing its end, there's still one summer concert remaining. Activities begin at 5.30 p.m. this Thursday, and the concert starts at 6.30 p.m. The band we'll be having is Kelly Boys Band, which is a country rock and pop band. And as the fall season approaches, the Fall Recreation Newsletter and Recreation Guide should be in your mailboxes now, so providing residents with seasonal information and updates. And then with hot summer days, the Sigler Park Splash Pad is the perfect place to cool off and have some fun. Located at 7200 Plaza Street, the Splash Pad is open daily through September 7th with free public hours from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. So bring the family, enjoy a refreshing break from the summer heat. We're really excited about this next announcement. The Sigler Box Art Program has officially launched. We're inviting Westminster artists to help transform traffic signal boxes across the city into public art. Individuals, groups, and school groups are welcome to apply, and selected artists will receive a $750 stipend to bring their design to life. So if you're ready to apply, check out the website and the application form, westminster-ca.gov slash news, or just Google it. Applications close on September 17 at 5 p.m. And then, of course, our signature event is just around the corner. Join us September 24th through the 27th for four exciting days of family fun at the Westminster Civic Center during this year's annual Fall Festival with a patriotic spin this year. Bring your friends and family and enjoy carnival rides for all ages, live entertainment, delicious food, unique vendors, and more. We're currently looking for sponsors, vendors, and entertainers, and applications can also be found on the city's website, or you can call Community Services at 714-895-2860. Now that concludes this portion of my report, but I do have a couple of other announcements as well, so if we can take down that lovely screen. So staff is also going to be pulling an item from the agenda today. Unfortunately our community services director could not change her day off today. And we'll be pulling item 5.5 from the agenda and moving that to the next meeting. So that is the discussion on the Parks and Recreation Facilities Master Plan. And then I do have a council member who was requesting to make comments about his item.

Right. Thank you, Christine. I'd like to withdraw item 9.1 since this item is going to affect the incoming council members. So I'd like to give them a chance to vote on this. Thank you.

He said 9.1, right? 9.1.

Can we still comment on it, Scott? It's on the agenda.

It's on the agenda.

It's posted. Sorry.

There's a question for you.

Well, I'm happy to answer any question from the Council. I'm hearing that you would like me to answer the question from the audience.

Is that what I'm hearing? The question is that for the item 9.1, we are going to pull it out from the agenda. Is this still?

It is on the agenda, on the listed agenda, so the public may speak on it during that item. Okay. The answer is there for you.

All right. You want some extra time since I did make a mistake? I didn't mean to do that. Anyway, all right, before we go into special presentation, this is a fun part, but I would like, on behalf of the city staff, City Council, welcome each and every one of you to take the time out of your afternoon to be here. So thank you for that. For a special presentation today, we have Czech presentation from the Westminster Police Department from the Posse Bar Foundation for Public Safety Initiative. So let me read that before we ask the Council to come to join me at the podium. The Posse Bar Foundation Foundation, a nonprofit organization, has been raising funds to support public safety initiatives within the community. The organization has offered to donate funds to the city for the purchase of drone equipment and to enhance the police department's operation capabilities. The drone equipment will be used to assist officers during emergency response, search and rescue operations, critical incident management, crime scene documentation, and other public safety functions. The equipment will be operated in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and local laws, as well as the city's policies governing unmanded operations. We appreciate you, John, and, you know, the possible foundations, general support, and the continued commitment to the public safety in our community. Thank you for that. So, okay, let's put your hands together and thank you. So at this point here, please join me in front of Dias at the podium exactly for acceptance of the check and the photo with the possible foundation. Please.

Good afternoon, everyone. All right. Good night.

All right.

Good afternoon, everyone. Today is a very proud moment for our foundation. When we started the Posse Bar Foundation, our goal was simple, to give back to the community and to our first responders who put their life on the line for ours. Through generous supporters, volunteers, and local businesses, our incredible community, the Posse Bar Foundation is honored to present the Westminster Police Department with a check for $15,000 towards the purchase of a new state-of-the-art police drone. This isn't just a piece of equipment, it's another set of eyes that can assist our officers when responding to the dangerous situations and hopefully bring them back safe to our families. Chief, on behalf of our entire Posse Bar Foundation and our community, it is our privilege to present you with this check for $15,000. Thank you, and God bless our first responders.

Thank you, John, and the Posse Foundation. On behalf of the city staff, city council, and for the citizens here, we would like to thank you for that. And may I ask the chief to come up here to receive the generous foundation from the Posse Foundation. Put your hand together. Thanks. All right. No, no, no. You're not running away. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Thank you. Thank you very much. It's not the first time that the foundation has actually came through for the police department. You did a few years back with our service dog, Thor, that's doing a fabulous job in our community. I can't tell you how wonderful that has worked out for us, and I know this is going to go to a good cause as well. So thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor.

All right, thank you very much.

Everyone lift your one, two, three. One, two, three. One more.

We do have one more, but I just be reminded that we can do it during our oral communication, which is I will ask Mr. Zachary from Senator Tony Strickland's office, he's here today, but not right now, that he's going to present the city with a certificate of appreciation for our efforts during the recent chemical emergency in Garden Grove. that greatly affected our city. So I want to thank you for taking the time to be here, but you will be first to present at the oral communication, okay? So talking about oral communication actually is come right next. At this time, I would like to open up for the oral communication, and this oral communication concerning agenda items only. This concern agenda item only, so can he present it at this time? Yes, okay, I see yes, so you are allowed. So city clerk, will you please go ahead and read the instruction for the record, please.

Thank you, Mayor. This is the time of the meeting that members of the public may address the City Council regarding any items on the agenda except public hearing items. Members of the public wishing to address public hearing items shall do so at the time of the public hearing, unless otherwise extended by a majority vote of the Council. Comments shall be limited to three minutes per speaker. Any person wishing to address the city council in person should complete a green speaker slip, which are provided at the entrance to council chambers. Submit the card to city clerk staff. When your name is called, please step to the podium at that time. State your name and city of residence for the record. Pursuant to Senate Bill 707, this meeting is being conducted with both in-person and teleconference participation. The city will accept public communications from both in-person and remote participation. Public comments will be taken first from those attending in person, followed by those participating remotely. Once all in-person comments have been completed, the city clerk staff will announce the names or last four numbers of the telephone number of the individuals who have requested to provide public comment remotely. Remote public commenters will receive the same time allotment as members of the public commenting in person. Zoom participants, if you'd like to speak at the time, please raise your hand or press star nine if you're participating by telephone. First speaker.

Would you please call from the office?

Zachariah.

so um the city manager and i just talked about it so technically this is not on the agenda i don't think that it's truly subject to the brown act but that being said just to be safe we've requested that the city council make a motion to add this item to the agenda and you would need to make two findings to be able to do this number one you would need to state that this came to the attention after the agenda has been posted we got the request in the last it was after the agenda was posted Number two, that there is need to take immediate action on this item. The reason is that we already have a representative here. Otherwise, he would have to go home and come back at a future meeting. So if there is a request, if there is an agreement from the City Council, I would request a motion to make those findings.

I motion.

Second.

I have a motion made by District 1, Councilwoman Fanwest. The seconder was? Mayor. Mayor. To, I'll go ahead and call, to add. You can go ahead and call roll. You can just call roll.

This will just be special presentation item B.

District 1, Councilwoman Fan West. Fan West, aye. District 2, Councilmember Monzo.

Yes.

District 4, Councilmember Nguyen.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Nguyen. Yes. Mayor Nguyen. Yes. Motion carried 5-0. Okay.

So now go ahead.

First speaker, Zachariah.

Good afternoon, everyone. Mayor, council members. My name is Zachariah Harge here on behalf of State Senator Tony Strickland. I am here just with the complete honor to go and recognize the Westminster Police Department with a resolution that we shipped all the way down from Sacramento. And just to honor them for the efforts that was put on by the city, the police department in conjunction to go and put on this year's National Night Out. I know that I was there for tabling and giving out some resources from our office. And I know that many others were there. And I heard nothing but incredible things. And I just want to give kudos to our police department, the chief, Deputy Chief Weber, just incredible work on their team and the city as well. So on behalf of the state senator, Tony Strickland, I have a resolution that I'd love to present the police department chief in the city. So yeah, if we can.

All right, at this time, I would like to invite our council members to join me at the podium, along with the police chief. Chief, this is the second time in a day for you, so here you are.

Well, thank you very much, and Senator Strickland, really appreciate it.

Our staff goes to great lengths to put on a really good and vibrant National Night Out. I'm going to hang this right next to the check I just got. Awesome, yeah. Just cash it first, yeah. Thank you, Mayor. All right.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

One, two, three. One, two, three.

All right, thank you. Next speaker, please.

Michael Varengia, followed by Donald Link.

Thank you, Mayor, Councilmembers. The first question I want to ask, what have you done to deserve a raise? What you want to do is you want to put it on the ballot. Let the residents of this city decide if you deserve a raise. That's the way to do it. You don't vote yourself in a raise. So I ask you, what have you done? Was it putting up the Charlie Kirk signs? Does that deserve a raise? That was a waste of money. He had nothing to do with Westminster. What about the museum takeover? They want land over by the museum for Vietnamese Cultural Center. How about the Rose Center? There's another one wanting a Vietnamese Cultural Center. Or what about the constant arguing on this panel between District One, District Four, the mayor? Does that deserve a raise? Or maybe it's how about missing excessive meetings, both closed session and open session meetings? The two biggest violators sit over here on the same side. How about that? Does that deserve a raise? Or how about making meetings drag on because you can't organize and run a smooth meeting and get it over within a couple of hours? You waste time. You talk it to death. Everything that's on here gets talked to death. There's so many things, even on the consent calendar, there's no reason to pull them off and talk them to death except what you're getting on the consent calendar. It's one vote. If you don't know what you're looking at, it means you didn't do your job ahead of time. So quite frankly, the answer to, do you deserve a raise, Not is it only no, it's hell no. And you have a lot of things that you need to ask the residents of this city about. Because there's an awful lot of pissed off people that read the papers, they go online, they get their news from there. And I mean, I hate to say it, but they go on Facebook and they probably get better news on Facebook than they do out of the newspapers. There's some independent newspapers in this county that cover politics that do a pretty good job of laying everything out about what's going on in the respective cities. So you guys really need to rethink this. If you really want more money, put it to the voters. That's supposed to be the measurement of how you're doing your job, just like being elected or reelected. That's also a measure of how you're doing your jobs. If you don't get reelected, that's pretty much the voters telling you to pack up and go somewhere else. Thank you.

Next speaker, Donald Link, followed by Terry Raines.

Okay. Okay. Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Donald Blanco, a Westminster resident, and I'm speaking in opposition of 9.1 and probably come back when you bring it back. Under this proposal, Council member compensation would increase from $850.50 to $1,900 per month, approximately 123% increase. The Mayor's compensation would increase from $950.50 to $2,500 a month. Approximately 162%. These extraordinary increases are not a cost of living adjustment, but more a doubling of elected officials' compensation. Now compare that with the recent approach to city revenue. Westminster's transit occupancy tax is currently 8%, Anaheim is 15%, Garden Grove is 14.5%, and Laguna Beach is 14%. Yet this council chose to place only a 12% rate before Westminster voters. A 14% rate was estimated to generate approximately 226,000 more than the 12% proposal. I find the contrast troubling. When considering additional revenue for the city services, this council took a cautious approach. But when considering its own compensation, increases of 123% and 162% are apparently reasonable. Where is the same fiscal caution now? Leadership means making difficult decisions for the community and holding oneself to the same fiscal standards you expect from everyone else. Mayor DeWin, supporting a 2,500% monthly salary for the mayor after supporting the more conservative 12% hotel tax proposal raises legitimate questions about fiscal judgment and leadership. I would describe that as dubious leadership. Westminster residents are dealing with higher costs for insurance, utilities, groceries, taxes, gas. They don't get a vote themselves 123% or 162% raise. Before approving these increases, show taxpayers how total compensation compares with neighboring cities and explain why dramatically increasing elected officials' compensation should be a priority. I respectfully ask this council to vote no on agenda .91 in the future. Mayor Nguyen, when you voted to place a 12% transient occupancy tax before voters, you explained that with a decision with the words, I say, after three minutes and seven seconds of contemplation, just like you do right now. For the sake of the city, not for the sake of the mayor, not for the sake of the council, but for the sake of the city. Vote no for 9.1, thank you.

Last speaker in person is Terry Raines.

Item 3.5, really hate seeing violent crime up 13%, especially aggravated assault up 22%, but at least property crime is down 15%. 3.6, these numbers are extremely low success rate, if you can call it that. 491 individuals contacted, only 13 service referrals, which is sad. Individuals with severe mental health and substance abuse issues lack capacity to want or seek treatment. Chief, when it says individuals, does that mean 491 unique people contacted or all engagements, including repeats? Five, three, after two years, rainy day almost, rainy day's 594,000 bid is 46% below the next lowest. The other two bids are within 4% of each other. Recognizing that individual bid items often vary greatly, their ceiling lighting and electrical line, for example, is still striking at 15,000 versus 52 and nearly 200,000 respectively. More importantly, on form CP6, Rainy Day reports only one year of experience on projects of this type. And why is the city installing new rooftop HVAC equipment before replacing the roof, considering coordination, damage, flashing, and warranty risk? Council don't award this contract until these concerns are satisfactorily addressed. 7.1, great to see our young people get involved. Why does staff interview the youth committee applicants and make recommendations for appointments to council, but no one interviews applicants for all of our other city commission and committees? Make it make sense. 9-1, completely tone deaf and pretty damn rich, coming from Nam Quan, the guy who requested it, with the worst attendance record of any council member ever, missing 34% of 2025 meeting time, for example, and most city events. But he wants 123% raise. The overall runner-up for the worst attendance, Amy, has actually surpassed Nam Quan this year, missing 30% of meeting time thus far. Yet they have the gall to run for re-election. Before demanding more than double pay, how about you show up and do your job that we're already paying you to do? I provided a complete Orange County city comparison of council member and mayor base pay for a complete picture that staff should have provided but didn't. Westminster's current $850.50 council pay is already the 13th highest countywide and the 6th highest among the 24 general law cities. This asinine proposal would increase council base pay to whopping 123% to $1,900 a month, the legal maximum, tied for second highest in the county and the highest among general law cities. The mayor would increase 162%, the third highest countywide. Listen up, council. You report to us, and we are your bosses, and we say no effing way. Government Code 356.16 requires the ordinance to contain specific findings demonstrating the need for increased compensation. The ordinance does no such thing. just that council is allowed to pay itself the maximum because it's been 18 years. Accordingly, Scott, please advise why no findings and address this noncompliance. I'm not saying no increase. I'm just saying it must be justified and reasonable. I suggest $1,100 a month, if at all, for council members and $1,250 for mayors, still a whopping 30% increase. But if you're going to demand higher pay, we, the taxpayers, are going to demand accountability and job performance. Show up and do your damn jobs or we're going to start charging you for our time.

The time is up.

Tim Hogan.

Good afternoon. Tim Hogan. I'm a little perplexed in all this. The 27th Amendment to the Constitution says that Congress can't vote itself a raise. It can vote a raise, but it doesn't take effect until the next Congress comes into play. Same thing with the city councils. You can probably come up with the number or the... number on that. But you can't vote a raise for yourself. If you want to wait until after the next election, then what you're going to be voting for then is for District 2 and District 3 to get a raise. You yourself will be unacceptable. You won't be able to get it. You'll have to wait four years until somebody else gets elected in there. So I just don't understand why you want to wait. Go ahead and try and justify that you can get this. I don't understand it. As some have said here, what in the world have you done? What have you done? At this point, well, at this point, I just don't see that you've done anything to justify it. And now you're showing that you don't even understand the rules under which you live. So thank you much.

Mayor, we have no further speakers in person. We do have one speaker via Zoom. Ben, can you press star six to unmute yourself?

Excuse me, can you hear me? I think it's working. Can you hear me?

It's pretty low.

How about now?

Can you hear, yeah, okay, yes, we can hear you.

Okay, thank you very much.

Good afternoon, my name is Ben Frank.

I'm one of the owners of Ice Realm Westminster Community Ice Skating Rink that has served the community for nearly 30 years. A little over two years ago, the rink was facing closure and the community rallied around it with some public media attention as well. And our ownership group stepped in and saved the rink and signed a new five-year lease.

As we understand, there's... Is it related to the agenda item? What agenda item number that you were talking about?

Oh, redevelopment item on the agenda. I'm sorry, this is my first time attending a meeting. I thought this was a time to be able to speak on any of the items.

Sir, if this item that you're talking about is not under agenda, I refer you to wait until the open oral communication. At this point here, we only accept the agendized item comments. All right, thank you. All right. Okay, we have no further speakers. All right, thank you very much. Let us move on to consent calendar. All matters listed under consent calendar are considered routine and may be approved by a single motion followed by a roll call vote. There will be no separate discussion of this item unless members of the City Council or staff request that specific item be removed from the consent calendar for separate action or discussions. I understand that stop asking to pull 3.4. Actually, not to pull, but to... Separate discussion. Yeah, okay, separate discussion. And I would like to pull 3.5 for a general discussion. Any others from the council?

3.6, Mr. Mayor.

Okay, 3.6. Okay, anything else? No. If not, is there a motion to approve the rest?

Motion to approve the remainder.

Second. All right. Motion and second. Approve the rest of the consent calendar except for 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6.

I have a motion made by District 2, Councilmember Monzo, seconded by Vice Mayor Nguyen to approve the consent calendar with agenda item number 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6 pulled for separate discussion. I'll go ahead and call roll. District 1, Councilwoman Fan West. Fen West, aye. District 2, Council Member Monzo?

Yes.

District 4, Council Member Nguyen?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Nguyen?

Yes.

Mayor Nguyen?

Yes.

Motion carried 5-0.

All right, 3.4, Westminster Adoption Group and Services Works Annual Report. And I believe that staff put us, so staff. Do you have any presentation on that?

Yes, so thank you, Mayor, members of the City Council. So this is a contract that we have with WAGS to provide animal shelter services through the police department. And so at this time, we are, as part of the agreement, there's an annual report. And so we have WAGS here to present that report.

All right, thank you very much. Please.

Hello, thank you. I am Michelle Rosillo, CEO of WAGS. You all have met me before, I think two years ago or a year ago. Thank you for having us. And we do have a PowerPoint that should be popping up soon. We're reviewing the services from 2025. It may creep into a little of 2026 just because we're in August of 2026. So thank you for having us and See if I have the clicker working right. Which button? The center one. To where? This one, okay. There we go. So just as a reminder, we have been servicing Westminster for 15 years this year, as of July 1st. These are the services that we provide to the city. Animal sheltering and care for the pets that are coming into us, either through relinquishment, stray, lost, through the citizens of Westminster, our folks have found pets in Westminster, and through animal control officers. We have a foster care program that helps pets get out of the shelter, freeing up some room for us in the shelter for the fact that shelters are now mostly over capacity, and we're one of them. And even in 2025, we were quite busy. We have return to owner and microchipping that happens for the city. We do adoption services. We work very hard to stay in the category of high save shelter, so what comes in, we want to be able to get it out the door into adoption pathways. We provide veterinary and spay and neuter care to the pets that are in our care, and then education and outreach to the local community here in Westminster. Last year, 2025, we brought in 2,861 pets, and out for adoptions or live release was 2,396, and that includes the category of adoption, return to owner, off to another transfer to a different rescue, or even spay and neuter programs that put community cats back to the community. And then I did note here that dogs taken in for stray and lost pets. Owner relinquishment was 810 for 2025. I note that because it is a higher number in the last couple of years than when we started out 15 years ago. The history has been probably 200 15 years ago would be the number for dogs coming in, and now it's up to 800. It's one of the concerns for the shelter, but it's part of our community policy issues happening here and around the United States. Let's see. For 2025 compared to 2024, you can see the stray intake stayed about the same. We had adoption returns, and that category just means that we didn't do the match just perfect or something changed in the person's life. They moved out of state or they moved and the new landlord won't let them have a pet. Or somebody moved into their home and they're allergic to the pet. So those become adoption returns to us, bringing that number of intakes back up. We have owner surrenders that are slowly creeping up. I suspect for 2026, owner surrenders will actually be higher than the 164 as well. We have pets that are born in care. Thankfully, that's a very low number. And then transferred in. Length of stay, this is what ends up being, other than the intake number for an animal shelter that can be overwhelming, a length of stay can also be what causes some stress within the shelter. That means the pet that's staying longer is taking up a kennel or a space or the care or care cost. And the longer that length of stay, the longer the cost of care is. So you can see 2024 and 2025, there was a slight decrease in the cats and the dogs. I will tell you I did pull 2026 current number, and it is actually back up to 56 to 64 days. And that is not unusual. Again, it's a problem across the United States, but for WAGs, It does affect the kennel care cost as well as kennel space, the amount of employees that we actually need to do the work and do it correctly and well. So that number creeps up. For large dogs, if that's anything over that 45, 50 pounds, it can be up to 90 days, and that's a normal number for them to sit in a shelter. It's really hard to place larger dogs. Because we're high-save, We don't euthanize for space and time. So pets can be with us up to a year, and it's not unusual to have four or five dogs in the shelter right now that are coming around their one-year anniversary as being shelter pets. So cat length of stay is probably around the same, about 46 to 50 days currently. The good thing is we get to market cats during kitten season. It's a big draw to bring people in, and that worked really well last year that at one point at the end of 2025, we only had 45 cats left in the shelter, and that was after processing over 2,000 cats for the entire year. So that was an incredible thing that we were able to get to. And you can see transfer partners. The reason that we don't have as much happening in the transferring, number one is that WAGS is a high-save shelter, so we're not the top shelter for any partner to come in and pull pets from. because they don't have to worry about the pet being euthanized for time and space. The second reason that we have a low transfer partner number is that all rescues are really crowded right now. They're not taking in other pets. So that number will actually be much lower in the next year, 2026. And then I have adoption returns again. For here, just to talk about some of the things that we did in 2025 that were, aligning to our community's needs. We had our Wags to Riches signature event. In another slide, it'll show you that we did raise $87,000 for that fundraiser that went right into cost of care for WAGs, which was great. We had microchipping events to help the citizens of Westminster get their pets returned if lost. So we did four different times this year, last year. We had attended the Stanton and Westminster Holiday Light Ceremonies. I know you care about Westminster, but both of them are in there. So we came to the Santa event here. We did community dog pop-up events at WAGs, as well as in different local stores around Westminster, trying to give dogs opportunities to be seen outside of the shelter and have a higher chance of adoption. We had our first ever float in 2026 of attending the Tet Parade. And in 2026, we also were the evacuation hub for 38 residents, 38 pets for Westminster during that emergency earlier this year. Other ways that we try to meet the community's needs is this year we went out to three different local Westminster elementary schools. What we did a couple years ago was take the logo that we have of Fuego and Marshmallow, cat is marshmallow, Fuego is a dog, put them into costume and have them go out to schools with Courtney and do animal welfare education to teach children about stray animals, animal handling, best pet, ideas to how to be a good pet owner, and then do any other questions and answers for them to help improve their skills in working with pets. So we did that three different times in Westminster and then some local communities as well. The other thing we did is that we had a social worker that was working with us on a grant in 2024 and 2025. And she started attending the food pantry that's in Westminster at the Lutheran Church, I believe on Milano Drive. And she was able to attend nine different times last year. And we were able to come up with some food donations for her to be able to bring to pet owners that couldn't afford food for their pets. This year, we have a grant from the Mars Food Company, and they're purchasing $5,000 worth of food pantry, pet food, and that Monica is using that money when she goes to the pantry, and they will reimburse WAG's pet adoption for the purchasing. So we will continue in Westminster first Friday of the month. We are at Lutheran Church. The other thing is that we always deal with hoarding cases, and thankfully 2025 was just guinea pigs, although most of those guinea pigs stayed with us for over the entire year before we could get them all adopted. But they are now all in homes. Things that we do to strengthen the shelter that happened last year is we continued our Reading to Cats program, which is bringing young children in to read to the cats weekdays and weekends. We do it for folks that are being homeschooled, as well as on the weekends when parents have time to bring their children in to do that program. We have youth events. In 2025, we had a grant program that paid for a mentor, and we were able to bring in students from Westminster to become volunteers, as well as shadow our veterinarians if they had interest in becoming a veterinarian or a registered vet tech. We put in a Zen Den for dogs, which was taking one of our smaller rooms and giving it a couch and space and music to have decompression happen for dogs because it is very stressful to be in the shelter, especially since our dog intake number stays somewhere between 70 and 90 at this point, whereas 15 years ago, we were lucky we had 14 dogs at the shelter. So life has changed quite a bit. We have increased our enrichment programs. We have an enrichment menu that went into place last year. And it is a large board that we sort out who and what dogs need what type of enrichment. And enrichment is really important for a shelter dog because it helps them to use their brain and their nose. And they're doing work that might be specific to their breed or just because they're a dog that helps relax them and appreciate the time that they have with us and not be so stressed by the noise, the smells, the sounds, the movement. So we do have a board which our staff work on every day, and dogs are out of their kennels more than they've ever been. And then we have play groups that we added in in 2025 that we have trained, not me, Courtney, who couldn't be here today. She has trained a few of our staff to be very strong in working with the behaviors of dogs and doing play pairs, play groups, The staff have gotten so strong that they can manage a group of dogs, that 12 dogs out in the play park in our backyard, and running three yards and having a really good time. And that helps them to relax, again, making them more adoptable, giving us opportunity to teach about their bios and teach information about them, and helps us to do better dog matching for people who would like to adopt, especially if they already have a dog, then we'll know if they have a tendency to want to play well or not have a companion dog with them. Just to answer any questions on revenue for 2025, the adoption revenue ranged around $200,000. We were able to get general donations that come through our Shelter Love program when people come into the shelter and are due an adoption or do a donation directly to our front desk at $100,000. As I said earlier, Wags to Riches brought in $87,000. We had a return to owner grant, which helped cover when a lost pet was being reclaimed by their owner. It covered the fees, the city fees, as well as Westminster WAGs fees. And that was $75,000, and that did get used up pretty quickly. It is always disappointing to the citizens of Westminster that they do have to pay fees to get their pet back, and that we don't have this grant any longer. We were lucky enough to have it for 2024 and 2025. It's not available anymore. We have other opportunities for grants. We had a spay and neuter that Pedigree donated, $25,000. And then we did an end-of-year fundraiser. And last year, thankfully, for 2025, we ended the books with $2,000 ahead, which was better than 2024 and 2023. Okay. Okay. Other things that we'd like to pay attention to while we're at WAGS is some long-term stability and investment in the care that we provide so that we can move dogs through to adoption pathways faster and cats. So last year we improved two of the dog yards, and this year we added shade to them. As I said earlier, we did a Zen Den enrichment room. We also got grants to purchase equipment. We bought an incubator, which is for the kittens that get brought in that have been a bottle baby and need some warmth and comfort before we can get them into a foster home. We have surgical unit that was brought in to do surgeries faster, more efficiently, and suction equipment to help during a surgery process if needed. That was all done by grant. As of last year, we were not able to get extra veterinary care, but this year we do have full seven-day coverage of a veterinarian on board. We have four surgery technicians available to us, so we are now running three spay and neuter days as of this week, which is the most that we've run. 2025 we ran it for about six weeks, but right now we consistently are running three surgery days. So we can process about 60 to 90 pets a week through spay and neuter, which is what we need to do when you're bringing in almost 3,000 animals. We have new care attendants that are part of our staff. And for the first time, 2026, we have insurance being offered to our full-time employees. First time in 15 years, which is fantastic. Currently, we do have Westminster's contract, Stanton, Seal Beach, and a temporary contract with Costa Mesa, which is helping to contribute to some of these newer aspects of WAGs. We have some continued partnerships that are helping us. Haas is one for education and information. Mars is providing us grant programs and a food voucher system for us purchasing their food at one-third of the cost to the marketplace, which has made a savings of about $15,000 for 2025, and it ends in 2026. That program will go away. We have an MOU that we started with Love Animal Hospital, and that helps so that animal control officers have a place to bring pets in case we don't have a veterinarian on property. And then we have, for the first time ever, two of our employees that are being funded to go to school to become registered veterinary technicians, which improves our skills at WAGS as well as gives them a career direction, and hopefully they'll stay within animal welfare and at WAGS. Some more stabilizing things that would happen for WAGs in the future is identifying more funding sources. Finding grants right now is really difficult. I do the grant writing, and I think we have only 5,000 for the 2026 year, which is really quite a decrease. We need to understand better what's happening with owner relinquishments, why pets are coming in the doors, particularly large dogs, medium dogs. And that's really key because it does match the need here in the city that renters can have a very difficult time holding onto their pets once they change where they're living. Landlords do get to make that decision of if a pet could live there or not, but if they could have some community programming that could help owners keep their pets when they move, and understanding that the animal-human bond is so important, and giving up your pet can actually destabilize you. Other things that happen is increasing some more options for us to save lives of pets. We're working on as many different medical ways that we can improve our care. We also want to prioritize that we know that Westminster is a working family neighborhood, and if we can provide any community services back, like the microchipping day, we want to be able to continue that. We continue to coordinate services with our animal control officers and enjoy working with them. and coming up with ways to help maybe reduce some of the animals coming in that are stray that may not be the city's responsibility. We will continue working on outreach efforts to bring in services that improve animal welfare as well as reduce pets coming in and stray animals coming forward and getting them back to their families faster than coming into the system. There are ways to do that. and maintaining our normal veterinary care and improving that, and being active in our community is actually one of our key goals all the time. WAGS really strives to be a community leader in animal welfare and being connected to our citizens. And that's it.

All right. Thank you very much. Thanks. That's it. No, not yet. Before I open up for council comments, I would like to ask staff, Is it, there's the presentation today in lieu of the report for mid-year, mid-year report from WACS. The reason I ask that question is at the time that we award these projects last time, I understand that I requested to have the mid-year report. Is it, because I don't see it in the staff report, that's why I want to make sure that this is in lieu of that.

Yeah, I don't think this is in lieu of that. This is just the annual report that's part of the agreement. So there will be a mid-year at some point. It's just an odd time.

Okay. I would like for you to review that because I know that a request at the time when we award the contract.

Yes, yes.

All right. All right, at this time, yes, Council Members.

Thank you. I have a few questions. So I'm looking at the report here on the screen. I don't remember where, but it has a 2024 and 2025 statistic. Can you go back to that? Okay, thank you. So I understand that the mayor did request with the majority of the council that we get an annual yearly report on what's happening. Now, I don't see anything in 2026 here, but you did mention there is an increase, but I don't see it here. Now, you also mentioned that you recently took on Costa Mesa animal, includes stray and sick. Is that a Is that correct?

Yeah, we've picked up their animal control contract for seven months to step in during an emergency. The reason 2025, 2026 is not on here is that this was supposed to be presented in February and it would have been reflective of services only in 2025. So I added in some 2026 pieces of information because we're in August.

Right. Now, I know this is supposed to be in February, but now it's August. Do you have other information, a comparison with 2026 as well? Because we don't have the number here. And I agree with the mayor, if we can go revisit and present the 2026 information would be great. Now, I do have a question regarding the Costa Mesa that we took up. I know that we did renew the contract with you guys for more years with us. We appreciate all the work that you guys do to care for the animals in our city and neighboring cities. Now, it is important. We do... We all are animal lovers here, and we love animals. Now, we do have a concern. I know that you take on Costa Mesa right now. How many animals are you taking on for the next 11 months until they have a contract? It's seven months.

Oh, seven months. And so far we have brought in, I think, about 85 animals. I will say they're redemption animals. which is when there's a stray pet coming through Costa Mesa, most of their pets go back to their owners. They come immediately down and take them back. So our number of what has been brought in and what is still on property is actually very low. I believe the only reason we have pets from Costa Mesa on property right now is it was a... the case where it was the pets living in the car. So it would be the 501c3 that really wasn't a 501c3 hoarding case. So we had 24 pets brought in from there. And I believe we still have maybe 12 left.

Okay. You did mention that 2026, it increased days that the pet stay at your shelter is between 56 to 64 days. Correct. So it increased from 2024, as we see here. It basically increased more than 2024. 2025, it did decrease. You did amazing with that. Now, 2026, is it because you're taking on COSME, so that's why it's to 64 days?

Actually, they will bring the numbers down. They're numbers of either adoption or pickup by owners draws down that number. This is related to Westminster Stanton.

Okay. Now, I know that you mentioned the capacity.

Mm-hmm.

And taking on 80 something more animals, you say 87? Over a period of time, that's not all in one day. Okay. So 87 more animals, would that impact the service for Westminster and other contracts you have with other neighboring cities?

It could. It hasn't been an extreme number. It's not something that at this point I have enough information. It's only been since June 9th. So that's put us in about two months' worth of data. It's been a small increase that we definitely have felt, and mostly because of the hoarding case. But outside of that, it hasn't been the impact that we have that's directly related to Westminster stray animals coming in. That's the biggest number that impacts us all the time. We could be taking in five dogs that were lost in Westminster in one day, whereas Costa Mesa could bring two dogs in two weeks.

Now, the thing is that you said service-wise. Now, you do service for our pets and whatnot. Now, would that affect the services level by any mean?

Well, it doesn't because we increased staffing so that the staffing level was we had four full-time, and now we have nine full-time staff. So we improved our services through staffing and veterinary care. So we just moved everything up to be able to service all of our dogs, cats, animals, to do it well.

All right, Council Member West, I can ask you to refrain your questions, so if the Council Member can ask. Any other Council Member have any questions?

I just want to, yes. Council Member Meza. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to say thank you for all your staff's hard work. I know it's not easy. do you know this is a lot of motions to come into play so thank you very much and i'm glad to see that you're able to offer the benefits to your full-time employees that's a very big plus as well so thank you for that as well so and a good report and i look forward to seeing and hearing more of the all the hard work you guys are doing thank you thank you thank you appreciate it our staff appreciate it any other questions from a council member i'll go back to the customer but let's see if you have

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Appreciate that. I know that you mentioned it doesn't affect the services. As you know, our city is about 89,000 people population-wise. Costa Mesa is about 110,000. It's much more than ours. And that's 25% larger in population. So help me to understand, how can bringing in larger city not impact the service to the city of Westminster?

I believe At this point, again, I only have two months worth of data. It's related to ownership of your pet and how much you maintain control of that ownership. So Westminster citizens or pets being lost in the city of Westminster draws in a large number of pets. Whereas Costa Mesa, if there's a stray pet, people are actually driving around the neighborhoods trying to find its owner. That was just from last night when I was reading A Lost Dog, that the gentleman drove it around until he found the owner. And within an hour, the post that he had found a golden retriever said reunited to owner. So there is a different level of commitment to ownership.

Okay, I understand that you're saying Costa Mesa are doing that, but I understand the people in our city are animal lovers as well. And we do search. I see signs, hey, if you find my dog, please report. We're willing to give a little tip if you find our pet. You know what I mean? I see it on all the light poles and different signs of like, hey, please, if you find our pet, call us. So by saying that, it diminished the value of ownership in the city of Westminster resident.

Well, I think what happens in a high save shelter is that pets get lost in the city more so, not because of the citizens of the city, but because we're a high save shelter. There is a tendency to have an impact that your number will go up as opposed to wanting to bring it to a shelter that's a high kill shelter.

Okay, so help me understand again, as of right now, how many animals have you taken in from Costa Mesa?

I'd say about 82, I think. I did not run that number this morning.

Okay, 82. Thank you.

You're welcome. All right. Well, again, thank you very much for the detailed report, but I do have questions for staff still. Misa, what I asked you earlier, I saw that in the report, the background and you said that Michelle Rocha from CEO and President of WACS will present an overview of the shelter's accomplishment and progress over the past six months. But we are in August now, and I saw that 2024 and 2025, and we're starting to 26 in the past six months. I don't know the progress from this past six months. I don't see it.

I was asked to do 2025. Yes, Mayor.

So per contract is your services fund.

So do we have the annual report? Do we have another one this year or no? This is considered annual report. Okay, the annual report, but then there's something we have to change here, but they say that present the progress over the past six months.

Right, we combine two, put it into one for an annual report. Okay.

So when is the next one that we expect to have?

It would be after the first of the year, so we have a full six months mid-year report. Okay.

Which will include all of 26, I think is your question, because this report only shows 24, 25, and it doesn't show the first six months of 26, which is essentially what you guys were asking for at a point.

Mr. Mayor, I have a question tagging on what you're saying, Mr. Mayor. I think... You know, it's every six months, right, that we requested for the report. Yet we did have, you know, budget study all those summer long of May, June, you know, and July was closed. But what I'm saying is that we cannot wait for update another, pretty much another year for 2026 information. So if it's, If it's hurting our resident and the pets in our city, we need to know those information because we have a contract and we're using taxpayers' money to pay for that. And as a council, it's our responsibility to at least get an update on that. So I don't mind, Mr. Mayor, if she can come back with information just from this year, 2026, maybe in November or something, gives you time to come up with that. That would be great. Would that be okay? Okay.

To me, I'm fine with if they come back in January time frame because, you know, this is a set time for annual report already. So a couple more months is not going to kill us. So I think January should be okay. So if you don't mind, let's wait until January. Sure.

I just I'm totally fine with January. But my concern is for this year, because on this report, I don't see anything of 2026 like you see, Mr. Mayor. And I do have the same concern as you do. And I think with the taxpayers' money, our responsibility is annually, so we need to see the 2026 as well. I think it's important. So then in that way, we can address where it needs to be fixed, but also to be responsible for our taxpayers' money. But Mayor, if you think January is good, I'm okay with that. I can second you in that.

Okay, let's move on with that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. With that, I believe that I move on. I move to receive and file this item. I move on to receive and file this item. Is there a second? Second.

Second.

Okay.

I have a motion made by Mayor Nguyen, seconded by District 2, Council Member Monzo. to receive and file the Westminster Adoption Group and Services WAG's annual report. I'll go ahead and call roll. OK, so I thought we're

Also saying that we're going to put this on record, but also attach to it that they come back in January.

They said they come back in January. Thank you.

Can we note it in this vote? Because in that way, it goes along with the WAGs.

I believe that the plan, right? I believe the chief said that on January. I don't question him on that.

Are they coming back in June?

Yes, Mayor, I would say, you know, January, February, maybe. We are in the business of statistics also, and sometimes you need the year to end to compile everything. So I wouldn't say, okay, as soon as the year ends now. They've got a lot of data. They're in the thousands, you know, but maybe February.

So, Councilmember West, I wanted to thank you for your understanding, and if you agree with us, you know, A month or so is not going to kill us, so let's leave it at that. Another thing is that if we, I understand your concern, if we have to renew the contract, then that is something that we have to consider. We need to see the result in order for us to make the right decision, right? But I don't know whether we are going to, it's up for renewal, contract renewal at the time yet. So, you know, I don't think that's a problem. So, yes, we have motion by me and second by Council Member Manzo. Roll call vote, please.

District 1, Councilwoman Fenwest. Fenwest, aye. District 2, Council Member Monzo. Yes. District 4, Council Member Nguyen.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Nguyen. Yes. Mayor Nguyen. Yes. Motion carried 5-0.

all right and next is the item 3.5 seat of washington crime statistic uh comparison between the 2025 2026 second quarter may ask the chief for a report please good afternoon again mayor council as she gets the uh chart up i'll say there's some good news and there's some not so good news the good news is for

the city experienced an overall decrease in crime of more than 11%. That is consistent with the half a dozen or so agencies that we polled in Orange County to see if our statistics were trending in similar directions, and they are. The not so bad news, or not so good news, was violent crime was up. And you can see, it is up, you can see that Violent crime was up 12.88. Rape was up 5.56, which was just one additional rape in this quarter. And then aggravated assault had a significant increase at a little over 22%. I do want to say that these statistics for quarter two is inclusive of quarter one as well, both for last year and this year. and I'm available to answer any questions.

I do have the same questions as every time. I understand that some of the area that we can control when the crime is up, like we have mentioned that in the three areas there, but do we take any precaution for that or we do anything differently to change it if we can?

So we are reactive to any of the crime data we find. If we have a higher crime area than another, we will direct patrols into those areas. We have a briefing every day to go over the prior day's crime and watch commanders address that and officers are aware of where that's occurring. There's things, like you said, we just do not have control over, and that's why you will see national, state, and county averages sometimes all not perfectly mimic, but the trajectory is the same, because it's related also to the economy and things like that. I would say that in the violent crime, domestic violence was the highest number. So it's hard for us to really, you know, with constitutional protections, it's hard for us to go into people's homes and tell them, stop fighting. Right. I'd like to, but they don't let me.

Thank you very much. We all understand public safety is the most important thing for all of us here, and I would like to thank you and congratulations, and thank you for the national night out. It was a successful day that evening. that we get together and you'd have done a lot for the residents here on that day. So on behalf of the city council, city staff, I want to thank you and your man for all the dedications there. And I would like to thank for your effort, your leadership in getting to correct these you know, increases so that we can do better public safety.

Thank you, Mayor. I do want to say team effort, you know, we combine with the city and I think Vanessa's here, but Vanessa took a large part of that to make it a success, and the city manager, assistant city manager, all the support we get, and definitely the members of my department that made that a huge success.

Again, thank you very much. All right, open for any questions from the press.

mr mayor yes please so uh uh first i want to echo with the mayor saying chief and law enforcement thank you for all you guys do uh and you know westminster overall crime is down by 11 in 2026 that's phenomenal it is very encouraging but on the other side it says violent crime has increased by 13 what the mayor was talking on what specific type of violent crimes are driving that increase, and where are we seeing the greatest concentration area? And what strategy is Westminster PD implementing to reverse that trend for 2020, the next quarter?

Okay, so there's a lot of questions there. So I'll try to address it the best I can. I was hoping our crime analyst would be here. She couldn't make it when the date was moved. So on some of these, I'm not far enough in the weeds to answer them. um but something we can get answered for you uh when our crime analyst is around or we can respond in an email or memo form or something like that um so violent crimes uh consist of homicide rape robbery aggravated assault uh that's the category so those are the ones that are that are up um as far as areas go uh I'm not sure what you're looking for there. I'm not sure.

A concentrated area that usually.

We do have some areas, but like domestic violence is all over the city. There's not like one neighborhood that has.

No, I mean violent crimes.

Domestic violence is a violent crime. It's part of it. There's certain parks that are. I don't know if we want to alarm residents by me talking about certain parks and those kind of things. And I would actually need our crime analyst there to. to actually pinpoint which ones have more than others? Are you looking for street names?

Well, I think if there's area in the city there's concentration of those crimes, violent crimes, I think it's important for the resident to kind of know, to stay clear, especially when we have kids, you know what I mean? We don't want a woman running around, jogging around, get raped or something, right? We just want to be careful, right, to stay clear of it. Like, for example, there's an incident in Westminster on Wednesday. We canceled the meeting. It's because there was a man with a weapon. So, therefore, we told the public do not come into this area and the streets for a reason because it's dangerous. So, likewise, as a council member, I feel responsible for my constituent. If it's in my district, I want to know.

um you know i would say what i can do is make a crime map available and perfect we'll just have the violent crime on there and we'll have that out by uh before the next council meeting perfect thank you chief i appreciate that that's it mr mayor

Anything else from... No, just... Thank you, Mayor.

You answered my question when you gave those examples of what constitutes a violent crime opposed to an aggravated assault. So you answered my question. So just thank you again for your team's hard work. And I appreciate the fact that you're keeping tabs on the areas that are... where it's more increasing crime, and the team is adjusting accordingly to those data reports. So that's really important, so thank you very much for that as well. Thank you.

All right, anything else from the Vice Mayor?

Yeah, thank you, Chief, for the nice report, and as always, thank you to your leadership and PD for keeping our city safe.

Thank you. Okay, motion to approve the receiving file of this item.

Second.

I have a motion made by Mayor Nguyen, seconded by District 2, Council Member Monzo, to receive and file the Westminster Police Department's second quarter crime statistics report for 2025 and 2026. District 1, Councilwoman Fan West? Fan West, aye. District 2, Council Member Monzo? Yes. District 4, Council Member Nguyen?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Nguyen?

Yes.

Mayor Nguyen? Yes. Motion carried 5-0.

3.6, EDF Westminster Homelessness Outreach 2026 Second Quarter Report, please. Council Member West, you're the one who put this in the file.

Yes, thank you. I really appreciate that. Chief, can you start briefly on that? 5.6.

Sure, this is our Homeless Outreach 2026 second quarter report. Overall, 491 individuals were contacted by our Homeless Liaison Unit, which is comprised of four specially trained homeless liaison officers. We call them HLOs. They also have two caseworkers assigned to them full time. And in fact, we have our commander of that unit for that period of time that's here tonight, this afternoon, and also both of our sergeant-at-arms are HLOs. So in their spare time, they are also sergeant-at-arms. In addition to the 491 homeless contacted, they had 13 successful street exits where we got individuals into shelters. They made 146 arrests after services were offered. That is something consistent that we're seeing throughout the state. is most individuals do decline services and enforcement action is taken. Six businesses were contacted, 100 encampments were cleared. We had one care court case, that's a court that's specifically for homeless, there's very rigid requirements to get an individual into that. They have to be diagnosed schizophrenia or other severe mental disorder to even qualify. They have to meet with a social worker eight to 10 times before they're even allowed to ask the court to get into that program. We did have one case, which doesn't seem like a lot, but when you look at the requirements, and I just named a few, it's a good number that we're getting individuals in there. And I want to note that all Westminster beds at the Central Cities Navigation Center are full for Westminster.

Okay, can I ask a question? Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. So of those outreach contacts that you guys done, that you presented those numbers, how many resulted in a successful transition off the streets, and what is our current capacity to provide shelter, housing, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment to those who are willing to accept their assistance?

Bill, are you able to take that question?

I'm going to have our commander of that unit, who's a lot more closer to those topics, come up and answer those questions.

Thank you.

Can we put the PowerPoint slide back up there, please? Afternoon, Mr. Mayor and Council. Could you please repeat the question again, ma'am?

Absolutely. So out of the number of the outreach contacts, how many results in a successful transition off the streets, and what is our current capacity to provide shelter, housing, mental illness services, and substance abuse treatments to those who are willing to accept assistance?

Out of that 491 that we have, I would say... Out of 100%, there's a significant percentage that refuse the services that we offer. The beauty in that is that our HLO team, our outreach case workers do continually recontact these folks repetitively. And it might be the second or the third time that we contact them that they accept the services. It might not be till the hundredth time that we contact them, but that's the beauty of the program overall, is the more that we continue to contact them, the more likely they are. So to directly answer your question, out of that 491, there would be a very small handful that would accept those services, and those numbers are indicative of the number of beds that we currently have full at the shelter in conjunction with all of the other services that you see up there, including the The care court that the chief had mentioned as well.

Yeah, thank you so much. I appreciate that. And one thing I want to mention and say is that I'm so proud of our Westminster PD and all the jobs you guys do, especially dealing with the homeless situation in our city. You, at the same time, firm but compassionate. And you do help them to get to their family members in the city, whatever is closest to them. And then to get help if they don't have any family members, you bring them to a shelter that's closest to their family. And it's really nice. And I witnessed that on the ground with you guys. And you guys do a phenomenal job. And so I just want to praise you for that and give you guys the credit where credit's due.

These guys are the ones that are out there. doing all of that boots on the ground work, them and our outreach workers, so I'll definitely convey that message to them, thank you.

Thank you. I would like to follow up with, are you done with that? Okay, I would like to follow up with that, our 146 arrests made, how many times that you put one person that you have, is that, what's the maximum number that you have to repeat per person? Is there any person that you have to arrest twice or a number of times because of their discrepancies?

There are some repeat offenders, if you will. Typically what happens when they start having multiple arrests like that is they will be more inclined to view the services that we're offering as a benefit versus going to jail. So the first thing that our team does once they get out there is they offer them the services. If that doesn't work, then, you know, that there's other prongs in that multifaceted approach that we have to help get them off the street. The short of it is they get tired of going to jail and they realize that, you know, that we're sincere about offering those services. They then take them and then we ultimately get them off the street at some point.

Okay, so can you help us to understand after the arrest, what are their procedures and is it effective to put them in jail or is it making the difference at all?

I think it does make a difference because like I said, they just get tired of going to jail essentially and then every single time that they get contacted, like I said, whether it's the second time or whether it's the hundredth time, the first thing that they're offered is those services and they keep throwing those services at them and the benefits of them and explaining it over and over and sooner or later they get it in conjunction with all of the other outreach and the resources that we have. Some don't, but a good number of them do. So I hope that answers your question.

Very good. Thank you very much for your effort and everything there. Any questions from the council?

I have some more, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Commander. Thank you, Chief, for your reports. Are the 13 street exits compared to the last quarter, are they up or are they down?

I'd have to look at the slide from the last quarter.

We don't know if they're up or down. You can let me know later. Thank you.

They're probably pretty consistent, though. Consistent? All right. I believe so.

And the care court, you spoke about the difficulties of that. Who sets those requirements to be able to get help?

That would be the county.

The county? That's the county? Do you know what are they used? I mean, why did they set something so difficult?

The confusing part about that, I think, is that once the mental health caseworker comes out and makes those eight to ten contacts and builds that case and goes to present it to the judge, everything's at will. So they ultimately decide, if the case qualifies, if it checks all of the boxes or whatever the litany of criteria is that they have. At the end of the day though, even if they decide that it does meet the criteria and that they're willing to put the time, effort, and money into this case, the individual has to ultimately accept those services as well. They can spend, it takes approximately about a year for that process to take place. they can go through that entire year and decide that it does meet the criteria and they really want to help this person, but if they don't want the services, they don't mandate it. Unless there's a conservatorship in place, which, as the Chief alluded to, we do have one ongoing case that wasn't initiated in this quarter. It's an older case, but because there's a process that takes a good amount of time to go through, This person's been in the hospital and is so in need of these services that a care court is in the process of establishing a conservatorship on that individual to help her. That's the only, I guess, for lack of better terms, mandatable part of it.

They just make the criteria, is it funding is what the issue is, what they don't want to expend the funds if they don't feel it's going to be successful? Is that what it is?

I'm not sure what their... budget looks like with care court. We don't, as far to my knowledge, we don't invest anything in that. The only investment that we have in that is our team that's the boots on the ground out there kind of establishing the initial part of that case. Okay.

All right. And then we have our anti-encampment ordinance in place. Are there any numbers as far as arrests for that particular ordinance?

The illegal camping? Yes. For this particular quarter, there was a total of 180. Okay.

And then the other question is I've been noticing that I've been out, not because I want to, but past dark, and that's when I see the majority of folks are out in the streets in the p.m., especially late p.m. So we don't have our HLOs serving at that particular time of the night, do we?

The hours kind of fluctuate. I do know that their normal day-to-day activities are predominantly during the daytime, but because of different things that come up, if there's a particular time of night, for example, they might adjust schedules. There might be different type of outreach times that they would go out. But we also partnership very well with our patrol division, and a lot of that information is conveyed to our patrol commanders and our patrol sergeants who we utilize the night shift officers to kind of help with those those problem areas as well.

Yeah, because I see that there, I mean, from what I understand that during the day they sleep because they feel safer. And when they're out and about is at nighttime because they have their possessions and they want to make sure they don't get stolen. So they're out at night. I see that they're out more at night than they are during the day. So I think, I don't know if that's something that we could adjust to.

I appreciate the observation. Officer Gonzalez, who is an HLO and out there on the street several days a week doing that, do you mind coming up and just telling us your observations on the hours that the homeless are active or not active?

Hi. So we do see a fluctuation of homeless individuals throughout the city at any time of the day. So our team starts at 6 in the morning. We go out there. It's a two-person team plus a coordinator. We don't have any overlap at the moment, but there's coverage for seven days a week. We're here from 6 in the morning up until 5.30 p.m. Again, once we leave, we do put it on patrol and say, hey, there's a big issue in this area at this time at night. That's when we let the patrol commanders know, like, there's an issue at this certain area, and we're able to actually send units out there during the time so we can get rid of that problem.

So then those officers are keeping an eye on that area that you reported during the course of their, what do you call it, their service hours?

Yes.

Okay.

So once we leave, we still, again, the areas that we're seeing a problem at night or we come in at 6 in the morning, we'll send officers out there and say, hey, we came in at 6. There is a huge problem at this area when we came in, meaning that they're probably staying there at night. Can you guys do some extra patrol checks at night during these hours so that when we come in, they're not there?

Okay. Yeah, I just have been out, and it's just like, wow. They all come out. It just seems like it's so, you know, a lot. You know, it just seems like it's a lot.

And it could be problematic. I mean, if we were to move our HLO teams to the evenings, and they're all not in their encampments, they're going to the encampments. And keep in mind, we can't profile. So we can't drive down the street and go, that man looks homeless, and then contact them. So that would create some probably bad policing if we were to move the hours like that. And then the resources that we're dealing with, county resources in particular, they work nine to five jobs. And we wouldn't be able to, our caseworkers and our HLOs would not be able to

match up the individual that might want resources with that resource if they're closed so we we live in a nine to five world yeah yeah but if there's if there's ever an incident where at the pm hours you encounter somebody that needs wanted services you would take that information our officers not our hlos would take that information and then report it back to you guys during your shift and then you would follow up with that individual

Yeah, we let patrol officers know if anybody's out there actually wanting resources to write their name down, and then we have them come to the front counter of the PE the next morning. So as early as 6.30, 7, when the doors open, we make sure that they're there, and if they're there, we're able to help them out that way.

Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, I have one question piggyback on the homeless.

Before I call, do I have any other question from the council members? Okay.

Mr. Mayor, so you know the Garden Grove, the new pathway on Garden Grove? Between, I guess, is it Melanie? And there's a little ramp up there. And then there's single homes. So you pass the apartment, the single homes right there, but there's that little ramp up there. And my resident in District One are saying when they try to walk along that way, they're so scared because there's tons of homeless up there in that kind of.

You talking about the freeway underpass, ma'am? So it would be the Springdale. You know. Springdale.

No, not that area. There is that one too, but there's the one off of Garden Grove.

The one that's just east of the Ice Palace parking lot? I think I know what you're talking about.

So you pass that to go east, right? And then there is a street. Let me pull this up if you don't mind. Do you know the street I'm talking about, the first street into the single homes? Yes. So there is the apartment. You pass the apartment. then you pass ice skating rink, and then there's that area where there's a ledge, and the homeless are up there, and then the single homes is that next street.

I know what you're talking about, yes.

Okay, so if you guys can do extra patrol on there and take a look. Absolutely. It's just the resident or a fray, especially a woman walking. Absolutely. Thank you.

All right, thank you very much. Is there any motion to approve this item?

Motion to receive and file. I second it.

I have a motion made by District 2, Council Member Monzo, seconded by District 1, Council Member Wynn, I'm sorry, District 1, Councilwoman Fan West, to receive and file the City of Westminster Homeless Outreach 2026 Second Quarter Report. District 1, Councilwoman Fan West. Fan West, aye. District 2, Councilmember Monzo.

Yes.

District 4, Councilmember Nguyen. Yes. Vice Mayor Nguyen. Yes. Mayor Nguyen. Yes. Motion carried 5-0.

Now, let us move into the regular business. 5.1, streetlight pole banner hanging, request from Gunrose University School District. This is, I believe that the request, they request this every year, right? Okay. I don't see any difference, so I move to approve.

Second.

Motion and second on the floor. Full call vote, please.

Sorry, are you approving option A or option B? There's...

The approved written request for A and B, both.

So in the past, there were concerns about allowing them to be able to have an approval for an entire year. So there was a modified action that we've been taking the last few times where you allow them at 90-day increments. And then if we don't get any other requests, then we just automatically extend it basically for the whole year. And that's what we've been doing. So that would be option B. If you want to just approve for the whole year, that's option A.

And I think that we haven't, whenever we have any requests in addition to that, right? We've not had any requests. So basically, just to go ahead and approve for a year, for one year.

Option A. I second it. We have a motion to second.

Yeah, we have a motion to second on the floor.

I have a motion made by Mayor Nguyen, seconded by Vice Mayor Nguyen, to approve the written request from Garden Grove Unified School District

Vice Mayor. No, Vice Mayor. She's right.

to approve the written request from Garden Grove Unified School District to hang streetlight pole banners along Bouchard Street between Hazard Avenue and Bolsa Avenue along Brookhurst Street between Hazard Avenue and McFadden Avenue from September 1st, 2026 through September 1st, 2027. I'll go ahead and call roll. District one, Councilwoman Fan West. Fan West, aye. District two, Councilmember Monzo. Yes. District four, Councilmember Nguyen. Yes. Vice Mayor Nguyen? Yes. Mayor Nguyen? Yes. Motion carried, 5-0.

All right. This is approval for A and B too, right? A and B. Because I know that you read the A, but did you read the B portion of it?

No, you approved the first option. Okay. Yes.

All right. Yeah, okay. Got it. Sorry. 5.2, award of contract 2026, 2025 to 2026 citywide residential overlay project plan number P.2673. May I ask for a stop report, please?

Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council Member. This is the citywide residential overlay project. This project was approved part of the fiscal year 25-26 CIP. And on June 24th of 2026, the Mayor and the Council approved the plan and specification for this project. So we had a bid opening on June 23rd, and we received eight bids. The scope of work is including removal and replacement of the concrete, handicapped ramps, curb and gutter, driveway approaches, cross gutter, sidewalk, and we will grind and overlay with the rubberized asphalt for those streets, and we'll adjust the manhole and water valve and striping. So the project will improve eight residential street segments and one quota sect. The project is funded by Measure M2, Street Improvement Grant Fund, and General Fund. The staff recommend awarding the contract to Armican Asphalt, who is the lowest and responsible bidder, in the amount of $2 million, $942,000, $27.75, and authorize a 10% contingency for potential change orders. Armican, as far as a good contractor, they have been done so many projects with us in the past. So that concludes the staff report.

Yes, I just wanted to have a follow-up question on this. From the first beater and second beater, it's not that much different. And understand as for American effort working with us, you know, for a long time, and we trust them. But do we see the significant difference between our American effort compared to the second one? What is that significant?

Yeah, it's not that significant. And, you know, Armican Asphalt, they do have their own staff on a certain area. I think they only use two subcontractors. So mostly going to be their in-house staff. So that's the reason why they're pricing very competitive. But they're not that far away from the second bidder.

Okay. Any questions from the press? No, so I move.

Yeah, so with All-American Asphalt, is it because, have they done work with the city before?

Yes, they have done a lot of project with the city.

Okay, and do you like their project?

They, one of their smoother pavers, if you call it, there's a good paving contractor.

Okay, that's good. Thank you, I appreciate that.

I move to approve the item.

I second it. I have a motion made by Mayor Nguyen, seconded by District 1, Councilwoman Fan West. to approve the award of contract to the lowest and responsible bidder, All American Asphalt Inc., in the amount of $2,942,027.75 and reject all other bids, authorize a 10% contingency for potential change orders in the amount of $294,202.78, and authorize the city manager to execute the contract on behalf of the city in a form approved by the city attorney. I'll go ahead and call roll. District 1, Councilwoman Van West. Van West, aye. District 2, Councilmember Monzo. Yes. District 4, Councilmember Nguyen. Yes. Vice Mayor Nguyen. Yes. Mayor Nguyen. Yes. Motion carried 5-0.

So next item is 5.3, award of contract for the roof replacement project at the city hall building, project plan number P-2678. Any question on this?

Yeah, I have a question, Mayor. Okay. Thank you, Jake. So what's the status of the HVAC project?

So the contractor started a project, I would say more than almost two months now. They've been doing some internal ducting inside the Cedar Hall building already. Currently they're working on the roof sheeting, just trying to build a flat forms and start doing opening. So technically the HVAC project should go prior to the roofing project. So I think they are probably maybe almost to the halfway, did they call it a phase one? And then they'll flip the area of the city hall and do the phase two so we can continue having the HVAC system running inside the building.

So right now they haven't touched the roof yet as far as...

They have done some, I would say, blocking, building the form for the new HVAC units.

No waterproofing? No waterproofing? Not yet. Okay. And then that's when the roof is going to be doing that part?

Correct. There's a roofing contractor will come in and do waterproofing and basically seal all the joints and gaps.

And the type of roofing, the style that's going to be implemented is different from the current gravel system that we have.

Absolutely. So the roofing system, the architect recommend is called Weather Weld. roofing materials. This is basically the application for this type of the city hall building, the gravel, they call it gravel surface building, tile roofing. So it will get into all the area, all the, you know, instead of just a layer, they roll it into multiple layers. And this particular material, they have a 40 years warranty.

In the old system, there's not even in use no more.

I don't think they've been used at all.

Okay. All right. And the time frame? Maybe I missed it here.

The time frame, that's the reason why we have to coordinate it with the HVAC project. So we're looking at probably the end of September. When they're done with all the work on the roof, they still have to do the internal ducting inside. So when they're done with the roof, the roofer will come in and start with their project.

And how long would that take?

When we talk to them, it probably maybe take about, I believe, four to six weeks. But they still have to build a parapet wall as well. So we're trying to aim to get it done before the year ends.

Okay. Thank you.

I have a question.

Yes. Customer West.

Thank you, Ms. Mayor. So this is the funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, is that correct? Yes. Okay, that's great. And do you know how much more we have in that funding?

I believe we still have, I don't have the number in my head. I might come back for that. Because there's several savings from previous project that staff will bring back to the council in the future meetings to basically allocate those into this project here. But I don't have the number right now.

All right. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you clarifying that. Thank you.

Move to approve.

Second.

I have a motion made by Mayor Nguyen, seconded by Vice Mayor Nguyen, to approve the award of contract to the lowest and responsible bidder, Rainy Day Roofing Inc., in the amount of $594 and reject all other bids, authorize a 10% contingency for potential change orders in the amount of $59,400, and authorize the city manager to execute the contract on behalf of the city in a form approved by the city attorney. District one, Councilwoman Fan West. Fan West, aye. District two, Councilmember Monzo. Yes. District four, Councilmember Nguyen. Yes. Vice Mayor Nguyen. Yes. Mayor Nguyen.

Yes.

Motion carried 5-0.

All right, 5.4, strategic plan, goal number one, achieve financial stability. And the strategic plan objective is update the city council on the economic development. So staff, please.

Yes, I'll just preface the conversation real quick. So economic development's been one of those really important critical points that we've been trying to focus on for the last couple of years. And so we, this is our new economic development manager, Karina Campos, who is trying to work her PowerPoint right now. She's been with us for several months now, and so we're excited to have her here. So we'll start with that presentation.

And as previously stated before you tonight as a presentation to give you an update on the economic development strategic plan as it was requested at the last citywide strategic plan workshop back in April. And I'm happy to report that we're making progress. So strategic goal number one is to achieve financial stability. And as you recall, our economic development strategic plan was identified as a strategic objective. Before I jump into our update on our project, I wanted to give a little bit of context in terms of the guiding documents and why we're doing EDSP for short. So first off, I just want to bring back attention to our general plan. Our general plan actually includes an economic development element. And this element is a strategy that will help us implement our general plan. And within this element, there are key outcomes that were identified that were going to guide our economic development efforts moving forward. And so our economic development efforts will be guided by quality of life, improvements in the quality of life in Westminster, expansion and diversification of local tax base, expanded job opportunities in Westminster, and increases in real wages and household wealth for Westminster residents, and an economic development program. And of course, our citywide three year strategic plan, achieve financial stability goal number one. And so I like to look at these documents as our parent documents, and they're going to be what's going to guide us as we move forward in our development of our EDSP. And so when we think about our EDSP, the purpose of the Economic Development Strategic Plan is to identify priorities and strategies that are going to help us cultivate a thriving business environment. They're going to help us attract investment. They're going to help us improve the community's quality of life and, of course, support the city's long-term financial stability. And so, as you can see, we see those key outcomes reflected in the purpose of this EDSP. And so to start off, if you recall, back in September of 2025, the city awarded a professional service agreement to RSG, who is our consultant that we've retained to develop the city's first economic development strategic plan. A month after, an in-person kickoff meeting was held. And the consultant's scope of work includes the completion of six task items. And so once we complete these items, we will have a final EDSP. And it's anticipated that the whole process is going to take about a year. And so today I'm here to provide you an update to the first two, which are economic and demographic analysis, and the stakeholder and community engagement, which have been the two tasks that we've been working on. As we continue our work, we'll continue working on task item three, which is to develop a strength, weaknesses, opportunities, or threat analysis and competitive assessment, a strategic goal setting, develop a business engagement plan, and of course, task number six, implementation and performance measures of how we're gonna implement our EDSP. And so with that, I'll start off by giving you an update on task one. This task has been completed. Our economic and demographic analysis is intended to provide a snapshot of the city, kind of like the picture of where we're at. And so in order to do that, we asked our consultant to do two things under this task item. The first one was to review documents, and the second one was to collect data. And so we asked them to take a look at existing documents, so that included our general plan, our economic development element, our three-year strategic plan that we have, our city's specific plans as well as related studies, our existing marketing collateral, as well as other documents that were published by other agencies like the Orange County Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, which is in essence the economic development strategy for the county. And so this was really important because we wanted to make sure that our plan was gonna be supported by other existing documents so that they can work together and position the city for better opportunities. So that was completed. Then we asked them to collect information on demographic trends, what were those industries that are within the city, our businesses, our types, the sizes, and as well as a retail gap analysis. And so task one has been completed. Before I move on to task item number two, I just wanted to give some key changes that happened that impacted our project. So late in 2025, economic development had some unplanned vacancies. The city lost the economic development manager. RSG, our consultant, also had their project manager for this project leave the company. And so this really left a gap within the project, which was going to make it very difficult to carry forth, ensuring that the quality wasn't compromised. And so the city strategically paused EDSP until these vacancies were going to be filled. And so a new economic development manager was hired, as Christine mentioned. I was brought on in late April. RSG as well replaced their staff and so now we had a complete team and so we resumed the project in May. We held a kickoff meeting and really picked up the work where it had left off. And so up until this point, documents remained in draft form. And so moving on to task two, which includes our stakeholder and community engagement. The purpose of this task is to outline a plan of how we're going to engage with our community and what methods we were going to use. We developed an outreach and engagement strategy which was completed in how we're gonna communicate with our residents, businesses, and our community stakeholders. And we're gonna do that through a community survey, a business survey. We're gonna host stakeholder virtual interviews. We're gonna host focus groups. We're gonna have a business workshop and partner agency virtual interviews. And so today I'm gonna provide you an update with the first three methods, which is what we've been working on for the last couple months. So as mentioned, we developed our community survey and we developed our business survey. So the actual documents have been completed. We wanted to be intentional with the questions we included in these surveys to ensure that they reflected the community's priorities as well as the business priorities. For our community survey, we had a focus on quality of life. What makes Westminster a great place to live, work, shop, dine, visit, and do business? These are the things that we wanted to understand. On the business survey side, we wanted to make sure we were cultivating a thriving business environment. So how are we gonna do this? So we're serving our businesses to get this information. And so those have been completed. And so we are now kicking off our community engagement. Early on in this process, our city council was interviewed. And this was so that the team at the time could understand city council priorities and what their desired outcomes were as part of this plan. And so that has been completed. And I'm happy to report that we are now administering our community survey and our business survey. What we have done, we've created a specific page for our strategic plan, which is hosted on the Economic Development webpage. And this is what the button looks like. And it takes you to this page where our residents or businesses can find more information on our plan. We do include this yellow button up the top to encourage our community to take our surveys. If they do click on the button, it takes you right to the section where our community and business surveys are located. Our surveys are available in English, Vietnamese, and Spanish. They are available online, but if we do have a community residence or businesses who wish to take it in paper form, they can do so by downloading a PDF, printing it, and submitting it to us, or they can pick up a hard copy at City Hall, our Community Services Department, our Family Resource Center, as well as our Senior Center. And so this is what that looks like. Here's a little sneak peek to the front page of our surveys. And then here, just further down on the web page, you can download those PDFs if anybody wanted to access those. And so I'm happy to report that at the National Night Out, we actually had a soft launch for our surveys, which was really successful. I was pleased with the turnout and people's willingness to take our surveys. We had a total of 54 surveys completed at this event, which was really great. I was really happy to see that. 39 of those were done on paper, and then 15 were done online. And then just this morning, I did get an update from our consultant, and cumulative between the paper surveys and the online surveys, we're at 100 surveys, which I'm really proud of. It's great to see our community participation. So next steps. So what are we working on now? We are going to continue to promote and administer both our community and business survey from now into October. And then we're going to start up our stakeholder venture interviews, which are tentatively scheduled to take place between October to November. So those are the immediate next steps that we'll be working on. And this snapshot on the screen is of our home page on our website. So if anybody goes onto our web page, they can click on that, and it'll take them directly to where our surveys are at. So from now until the end of the year, we'll continue working on our community engagement, which will consist on hosting up to three virtual focus groups. And those will take place more or less between October to December, which will then be followed by an in-person business workshop tentatively scheduled for November. And then our engagement will conclude with up to six partner agency interviews from November to January. And like I said, these will take place from now until the end of the year. And some of these may overlap and happen, you know, where they overlap from now until then. And with that, so in summary, our scope of work includes these six task items. Roughly the project will take about a year. We're done with task item one, and now we're working on task item two. And so once we're completed with our engagement, we will come back to the city council with a presentation with our preliminary findings on our community engagement. And so with that, that concludes my presentation. I encourage our residents, our business owners to take our survey. If they have questions, feel free to contact me. If they need a hard copy, printed copy of our surveys, I'm happy to get that to them as well.

All right, thank you very much for the hard work that you put in there. Any questions from the council? I have a couple questions. Yeah, Council Member Armanza.

Thank you. You mentioned a year, is that a year from today, the time frame?

A year from today, let me do my math, no, no. I'm tentatively scheduled to finish well before August, no, no, yes, before August of 2027, yes.

Before August? Before, yes. And then what's the outreach, what's gonna be the outreach for the survey?

Sure, good question. So I plan on going out to other community events. I plan on participating at the Fall Festival, attending any community meetings, collaborating with my partners in other departments through their newsletters. I spoke to our community improvement, and they have offered to help assist going out and talking to our residents, our businesses, to encourage them to take the surveys. So those are some of the things that I plan on doing. communicating with our external partners like the school district and their community groups as well.

And anything for, I'm assuming you might do some social media posts to encourage the survey as well?

Absolutely. So we will do some social media posting, Facebook, Instagram, and I actually encourage anybody that follows the city to like and repost our post because that will give us additional engagement and additional views. So yes.

All right. And then also another question, as far as while you're doing this, is there other efforts by you and your team, if you have a team, I'm not sure if you do, to, you know, other economic development that we need, you know, trying to attract, you know, more businesses or maybe some box stores or something in conjunction, kind of as you're doing this as well?

Yes, absolutely. So in addition to this EDSP, my efforts have been focused on learning the community, connecting with our real estate partners that are in the community, figuring out who our property owners are. I've been working with our community development department, identifying some opportunity sites. that we can continue to market. Additionally, looking for ways to continue to support our small businesses, not only by providing them resources and programs, but a shop local program where our own residents can support our businesses as well. Yes, and thank you. So another effort that we participated last May was actually ICSC. So we had the opportunity to go out there and meet with developers, talk to them about what's going on in the city, get them excited and connected with them as well there.

Any good connections made at this year's ICSC?

Any good connections? Of course, there's always good connections. We've actually had follow-up conversations with them in the future, looking to bring them back and tour the city so that they can actually see what we shared with them.

Yeah, because I know that the community is desperate to have some new exciting stores that we've been talking about for a few years now, like Trader Joe's or something like that nature.

Yeah, so actually that's one of our survey questions. I wanted to have an understanding where our residents are shopping. Are they shopping in the city or are they shopping outside the city? And if they're shopping outside, what is it that they're shopping? You know, what kind of services, businesses, things do they want to see? And so that is part of our community survey so that we can then work that with the rest of our work.

All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. All right.

Oh, quick question, Mr. Mayor. Okay, so regarding, you know, with the plans, financial stability, we did have $1 million to come in to help with our small businesses. Do we still have any more funding from that resources to help businesses, or is it depleted? You know the one million that we got grant from the Fed and then we got some for the senior center and law enforcement. Now with the one million for businesses, do we still have any more funding for that or it's depleted already? The grants?

Are you referring to like when we got ARPA funds and we designated money toward it or?

No, the grant that we recently got from Congressman Derek Tran, the Fed, to help with the senior center, the business community.

that had nothing to do with the business community. It was all senior center related.

And the law enforcement as well, remember how they did a report of seeking funding from different categories, and one of them was to help our business community.

Well, so we're all, I mean, so legislative offices are always asking us to provide, you know, ideas on what we would like funding for. The only thing that we've actually received, you know, a confirmation that we're receiving funds for is the community services senior center building, right? So that's the only thing. As far as what we've... asked for, we haven't received any confirmation or denial on any of the other asks. So there's nothing there. Yeah, the million dollars was for specifically the senior center.

Okay. Do we have any funding to help our businesses right now? Do we have any right now?

So we have funds that are within an economic development account, and that was essentially created from the time that one of the properties, the city property, was sold back in 2017 or so, right? So there's some funding that's left in there. It's very minimal. But as far as additional funding to help, the opportunity to designate funds for maybe business assistance would have been with some of our CDBG funding. That could have helped with some of that. The ARPA funds that we had, that was an opportunity in which the council did designate funds to help with business assistance programs. But other than that, there isn't anything designated unless council decides that you want to reallocate funding from one program to business programs. But that's a much bigger conversation.

Okay, so as of right now, the CBG that we help with funding, allocate some money for business, is that already depleted?

Yeah, well, no. So we didn't, so the council did not designate any funding, any assistance for business, any funding for business assistance.

Okay. Yeah. So then we have to revisit in the next.

So next, yeah. So next year when it comes up again and we talk about what kind of funding, you know, you would want to allocate, what kind of program you would like to allocate the funding to, that would be the time. So next year. Okay, perfect. Thank you.

Okay. Move to approve. I second it. Receive and file.

I have a motion made by Mayor Nguyen, seconded by District 1, Councilwoman Fan West, to receive and file the report. I'll go ahead and call roll. District 1, Councilwoman Fan West. Fan West, aye. District 2, Councilmember Monzo. Yes. District 4, Councilmember Nguyen. Yes. Vice Mayor Nguyen. Yes. Mayor Nguyen.

Yes.

Motion carried 5-0.

5.5, strategic plan, goal number five, enhance quality of life and beautification throughout the city. Strategic plan objective provide an update on the status of the parks and recreation facilities master plan.

So that is the one that we're actually moving to the next meeting because Vanessa couldn't be here today. Yes.

Okay. Yes. So this is, right? Okay. Well, then we skip that one. We'll go to 5.6. Authorization to transmit letter from CDO to County Supervisor Nguyen regarding to allocation of healthy discretionary funding. For this one, staff, can you give us an update on that? No, no update? Who requests to put this item?

So this is that continued item from the last meeting in July, and it had to do with, yes, so it was Councilwoman Fan West's request to direct staff to send a letter to County Supervisor Nguyen regarding monies related to the recovered funds from former Supervisor Doe. The three million.

So, Mr. Mayor, may I start? Yes, okay, thank you so I did request that and I thought we did vote on as the majority of the Council to have direct staff to write a letter craft to supervisor Janet when. And you guys all voted for that when I.

The only item that there was a vote to discuss it today. So this item is on the agenda and you have the option to issue that directive or not.

Okay, because for my directive, when I asked the council that day at the end of the meeting was, may we request with the $3 million that is coming to District 1, can we direct staff to craft something to ask if we can get some money for District 1 to the city of Westminster?

Well, staff and city attorney, I believe that she wasn't here last time. When we reconsidered this item, there was a reason for it, and so why don't we remind her on that, and so that she can go ahead and request it again.

So the short answer is currently before you is the question, should we send a letter? That's the sole item. The background on how we got here is that there was a request to reconsider it and essentially say, no, let's not have it on the agenda. Ultimately, that was not approved. And the city council said, no, let's discuss it. Doesn't mean this council is in favor of it or against it. Simply, the question is, it's now on the agenda. So now you have the right to discuss whether you should do it or not. So that's the question.

Yeah, if you insist on that, then you can also request it again.

Okay, so since that's the case, my request, I would like today if we can direct staff, because you know that $3 million, she still have it, and I think the city of Westminster and the resident can benefit, and our staff could benefit some money from it. like a law enforcement, the homeless liaison to our senior center, businesses that we mentioned earlier that we can get some money. And even the ARCH or whatever it might be, we can use some money to help and benefit the city and the resident of Westminster. So I asked staff, I asked the council if it's okay tonight for, to direct staff to write a letter, and maybe they can bring it back to us, or if you don't want to, they can write it and send it directly to Supervisor Janet Nguyen to request if we can have some funding for the City of Westminster.

okay any question any discussion of this yes council member manzo i have a question thank you mayor um question to uh city manager uh do we typically what's it what's what do we typically do with our representatives at the county state or federal that's something typically we do uh have an ask is that something typical i'm assuming

Well, we usually have a conversation first. So usually we, you know, if there's a council desire to, you know for something like this for example if there's an ask or there's an issue whatever the case is our first step is to contact their staff to try to you know have a meeting about what it is that we're trying to do and before you know before anything else happens so the conversation comes first but the the ask comes from council directive or is it isn't staff doesn't have meetings prior So there are several ways of going about, right? So like, for example, if there is a particular ask, we don't normally ask county for funding, per se, like in the direct way that we ask our state officials. You know, our assembly members or our congresspeople, because they have a very different structure on how we ask them for money. And as far as county, when it comes to funding for specific needs, it usually comes from a place where we've identified a particular need and we would just ask them. Usually council's not in that picture. If council is in that picture, it's because it's a larger It's a larger request that you guys have, but a request to the county supervisor doesn't always come from the council as a whole. That's not the norm.

So it would be abnormal to ask?

In this particular capacity, I mean, there's usually a conversation that starts. That's how it goes. That's how we build relationships is we start with a conversation. I get a feeling for what you guys would like to accomplish or what some of your concerns are, and it's generally just a conversation that starts off first.

So it wouldn't be abnormal. It's not something that hasn't happened in the past.

No, I mean, for something like this, if and the reason why this is, you know, if this is something that the council would like to do, staff is going to need some kind of direction, you know, as far as what you want us to ask for, because this is not, you know, there there are things that we don't normally ask the county supervisor for. Right. There's a there's definitely a fine line for, you know, for different things. Usually they're project based or it's like support based, for example, like, for example, CalOptima Street Medicine program or something. That would be something where we would ask for a supervisor's support, per se, but it's not necessarily like a monetary support.

We need to have a specific item that we're asking for.

Well, you guys, yes, you definitely, you would all need to let us know what it is that you would like us to ask for. Sure. per se. We're always in communication with our elected officials in all realms so that they're aware of all the things that we need. So like our concerns of homelessness or our concerns about law enforcement or concerns regarding some of the state mandates that are passed regarding housing, for example. Those are all things that we we talk about and depending on the level of the elected official the conversation um is you know is uh is structured toward what they're capable of of having influence over but um but it all it always just starts from conversation so then we need to have a conversation of a specific item that we would need help from before we send the letter is what i'm hearing Yeah, for something like this that's very broad, and that's the thing that we know too about our electives is they don't like broad requests, so they would like specific targeted requests as far as if there's a particular project that we're working on that we think they could support, or we have an event, for example, that We think that they would be able to provide some support, but no elected official, no higher elected official can really work with broad requests.

So you recommend that we have a discussion of a specific item before that we send the letter?

You would definitely need to provide us some specifics, some specific direction.

It sounds like we'll have to have another... More like a study session. Yeah, a study session, something that we can come to a conclusion of, a consensus of what that help would be for.

Yes, that you all have a majority consensus on, yes.

Okay.

Any other questions from Councilman West?

Okay, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I understand that it is very important, staff, you know, to make that contact with our elected official. Number one, I do not want the City of Westminster to miss out on any money that District 1 has for the City of Westminster supervisor. I want us to tap into that because that is actually our tax dollars anyway. And I think due diligence for the council and staff is to have that dialogue. Of course, that's always happened in every relationship, you know, from state supervisor to, I mean, state and federal level as well. We always have that conversation. Now, the main reason I want to bring this up last time was I don't want the city of Westminster to miss out on any funding. I know we've done many studies in the past, right? We've done study and we have interests of like, we need help in this area of funding because we don't have enough funding, right? Now, I know in the city of Westminster, just one example is our business community. We have a lot of small business in our community and they always talk to me and they say, Do you guys have any program to help us or any funding to help us kind of market or help us, you know, kind of beautify the area a little bit to bring in traffic or help us with marketing? Right. So I am. I mean, let me ask you this question, staff. Now, the City of Garden Grove, which is in District 1, have they get any funding yet from the supervisor recently?

Well, so recently they received funding for the GCAN incident. I don't remember off the top of my head how much that is. Okay. But they did receive some recovery funds from that. Now, whether it's from the $3 million or just from regular discretionary funds, I don't know. But they did receive some funding. Okay.

Now, maybe what, I guess that's not really important of the $3 million or the general fund of the county, but I know that the county has money because they just give themselves a raise, right? Recently, we all know. It's in the news. Now, the thing is that they do have funding, and it's important for the city of Westminster. So if the mayor and councils are okay to have staff to contact, either through email, phone call, or a letter, however it might be, to contact the office of supervisor Janet Nguyen and ask, you know, these are some of our concerns in the city, and staff know what we need, because we've been doing studies, right? And you know the areas that we need, like law enforcement, to homeless, to senior center, to business community that we've been working on. You know that, so I trust staff to craft a letter or an email, phone call, to say, hey, can we set up a time to meet with Supervisor Janet Nguyen and here are some of the things we have in our city that we want to bring before Supervisor Janet Nguyen in hope that we can get some funding and some help and some relief from our Supervisor Janet Nguyen for the city of Westminster. And that's all I'm asking.

All right, thank you, Council Member West. I understand your concern and your caring to get additional funding for the City of Westminster. Our up to $3.7 million that we get back to the District 1. I appreciate for that, and I appreciate that you recommended to bring forth with the letter to Supervisor Nguyen. But at the same time, I was thinking that out of courtesy and out of the process, I think that, you know, especially that letter is signed by me to her, and I think that it's better for our staff to go ahead and make initial contact with them and then see what's going on. If they request to have a letter from us formally to get it to them, then we are more than happy to do that. So at this time here, I think that my motion is to direct staff to go ahead and make the initial contact, out of courtesy to the Office of Supervisor Nguyen, to see what, you know, what can we do, or do they have any options for us?

We can contact them, sure.

Is that okay with the? Yeah, we can certainly. Okay. I second that.

So the first thing is to just make a phone call. Do you, as a local agency, do we send an email to ask for a time to meet? I mean, you guys meet?

Well, I know that we establish the relationship by, you know, talking to each other, you know. That way we can... We can work with each other more, you know, closely instead of, you know, everything going through the correspondence.

Okay.

So I think that is better. Do you feel that this is a way?

Lynn will contact their office. They're in contact all the time anyway because we have events. Yeah. We have, you know, things that, issues. So, yeah, we can certainly just make that contact. Okay.

We have motion.

So I want to second that. but I just want to make sure that we don't miss out on any money.

That's all. I believe that Council Member Manzo seconded that already. Okay. Okay. So, roll call vote, please.

I have a motion made by Mayor Nguyen, seconded by District 2, Council Member Manzo, to direct staff to contact the Orange County Supervisor, Janet Nguyen, regarding the allocation of, regarding the funds. I'll go ahead and call roll. District 1, Councilwoman Fan West. Fan West, aye. District 2, Councilmember Monzo.

Yes.

District 4, Councilmember Nguyen.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Nguyen. Yes. Mayor Nguyen.

Yes.

Motion carried 5-0.

Okay, let us go into 6.1, resolution reaffirming proclamation 2026-01 and resolution number 5348, which declared the existence of a local emergency. I believe that this is, we have to do it every year, right?

Yes, so this is the local emergency declaration that we proclaimed for the GKN hazardous incident. And so every 60 days we have to adopt a new resolution. At this time we would like to continue adopting this resolution as we're still trying to find ways to recover funds. Half of the cities that were involved, three out of the six cities have removed their local emergency, but the other two cities and ourselves that were the most affected, we're continuing to adopt the local emergency resolution.

Okay.

I have a question.

Yes, Mayor.

What efforts are being made in communication with GKN as far as trying to recover some funding?

So as far as funds recovery, there are a couple of different avenues here. So I do want to make it known that, you know, unfortunately, Cal OES has denied our claim for fund recovery. And at this time, we hear that Garden Grove is the only city that is receiving funds with that. But we are in contact with a representative that is working on behalf of GCAN in terms of what GCAN is doing. There was a very quick press release that GCAN issued last week in which they are committed to providing recovery funds. But unfortunately at this time, we don't know what that looks like. We don't know all the details. We don't know how much, et cetera. But that is still in the works. But that there is a recovery effort on GKN's part. As far as other funding sources, we're looking to see what we could do as well. But unfortunately, the news from the state governor's office was not good.

Did they give you a reason why there was the denial from Cal OES?

No, unfortunately no. But, you know, I will say that we are working with some of the other cities to kind of determine if we can find out why that was the case with the other cities that were also denied as well. Clearly, you know, we were the third most impacted city of the six cities. And so this came as a very disappointing piece of news for us.

Is there a way, can you try to find out?

Yeah, we're still working. As things are evolving, we're still trying to figure out. This Cal OES news was literally over the weekend.

Okay. All right.

Well, I see that with the recommendation from staff to adopt this resolution and from their... from the stop report, I saw there's a conclusion very strong to recommendation. Westminster's number of evacuees was the third highest among the six cities impacted. Adopting the resolution will help in the instance that any available resources, including funding and reimbursement related to incident, become available. If the city council choose not to ratify the local emergency, the city may have access to resources, funding, or any other assistance that is related to this incident. And all costs incurred may not be eligible for reimbursement if funds become available. I think it's very important for us to consider that. So with that, I move to approve. Second.

I have a motion made by Mayor Nguyen, seconded by District 2 Councilmember Monzo, to adopt a resolution entitled A Resolution of the Mayor and City Council of the City of Westminster, California, reaffirming Proclamation Number 2026-01 and Resolution Number 5348, which declared the existence of a local emergency arising from the hazardous chemical incident at 12122 Western Avenue, Garden Grove, and authorizing emergency protective actions. District 1, Councilwoman Fan West.

You know, before we vote, I understand that you mentioned that our request was denied. But then with this, is to, I mean, would this help with what we're doing today to...

So there's state funding, there's federal funding, but essentially us having a resolution out there just basically shows that we're still in a quote-unquote state of a local emergency. We're still trying to figure out reimbursement efforts. We're still trying to figure out if there are ways to get the residents who are impacted some kind of funding, but by... By not adopting this resolution, it, you know, in a lot of ways, basically says that we're no longer in that state of local emergency, and that's really not true. We're in that recovery phase, and, you know, local emergencies take quite some time to get out of it. Okay.

Thank you. With that, I have an aye vote.

District 2, Council Member Monzo? Yes. District 4, Council Member Nguyen? Yes. Vice Mayor Nguyen? Yes. Mayor Nguyen? Yes. Motion carried 5-0.

All right, moving on to saving point one. appointment of members to the youth committees. I reviewed the staff report and I see that we have, first of all, I want to thank you all the co-members submitted application for reappointment, you know, that show how dedicated they are. So we appreciate their continued effort in serving the youth committees. At the same time, I know that the committee reviews those applicants put in, we have like 15 of them. It's very encouraging to have the young people to join and, you know, and volunteers for, you know, to help with the youth committees. Although we, I know staff recommended to, We select six or seven of the people who are current members, which I think is very important to help them to continue to lead with the young people to come in. So that make the total of 13. So with seven plus 15, we have 22 people. And we only elect 13 of them. So nearly half of them. I mean 15, 22, 26 of we basically there. Just a little bit over half. tend to agree and approve with the committee's recommendation. However, my encouragement is to have the committee look into different areas that we can appoint these young people to so they can help out. I am very discouraged to turn them away. because this is really, really hard to get the young people to help out nowadays. So I will move to approve as recommended, but at the same time, I would like to ask for you to consider for those who are not in the board, more of a recommendation to work on different areas. So that's my motion. I have a question.

Yeah, please. Can we amend the number of members to the youth committee?

Yes, you would do that by amending the bylaws for the youth committee. Keep in mind, we did have X amount of members before, and then we had some alternates as well, and then the alternate system was kind of wonky. So we just have straight regular members now with no alternates. You can certainly... You can certainly change the number of members if you'd like, but just keep in mind, the more you have on your committee, sometimes it makes it difficult for them to make decisions as well, much the same as any board. But certainly there are opportunities for those who don't make it onto the committee. If there are other volunteer opportunities, those are... Those are always welcome. They would just be on an opportunity basis. They just wouldn't be technically a committee board member per se.

Because is there times where the 13, maybe a few are not available for a certain event or a certain thing where it would have been nice if you had the full 13?

Absolutely. So we're so our our youth committee has has always been strong, but it's really been growing as far as interest, I would say, like in the last 10 years or so. So it's really encouraging, but it's definitely an opportunity, I would say right now, because the new year starting and, you know, and and you've got a very enthusiastic, you know, group of kids coming on. But it's a really good opportunity for them to offshoot into subcommittees, which is something that, for example, student councils do all the time, right? So you have your main student council, but then you have each grade, you have a subcommittee. That's certainly something we can look at encouraging the the new youth committee members to do as well, to, again, get them involved. The alternate thing is a little bit, like I said, it's a little bit complicated sometimes, but certainly we're never short, really, the number of youth committee members at a meeting for a quorum, per se, but we can certainly invite more to join in on the activities.

I would like to see the 15, I mean, two more. I mean, I think that's something that we shouldn't discourage. Sure. we shouldn't have given bad news that you didn't make it you know yeah it's it's no i think it's more than three that you're talking about because we have the total of 23 uh 22. yeah but there's only like 13 so 12 more um well here's this 15 we're interviewing yeah 15 interviews these were reappointed that we appointed to that yeah yeah yeah so yeah 13 total so

I kind of agree with Council Member Manzo that maybe we can have it as alternate, you know, and so, you know, Of course, some of them cannot make it because of school or something, you know, they can always join. And plus, that we can get them started. So, you know, they can...

So we'll have to bring back the bylaws in order to do that. That would be the first step. And I think the second step, too, is, you know, we've been fortunate that our youth committee members who've applied are stellar members of our community, right? Like, they are enthusiastic, ambitious, etc., I can't say that all are the same or have the same level of responsibility and commitment, and that's something that we do consider and take into consideration when we're interviewing them as well. So we can certainly bring back the bylaws if that's something you'd like to look at, but certainly appoint the ones that are recommended for this meeting, but the rest, we'll have to reconsider that when the council approves new bylaws.

Okay, sounds good.

So I think it's a good recommendation, Council Member Manso. So with that, I will have them approve the recommendation of the current list of 13 members to the Youth Committee, and we'll consider the option for .

I have a motion made by Mayor Nguyen, seconded by District 2, Council Member Monzo, to reappoint and appoint 13 members to serve on the Youth Committee for a term expiring June 30th, 2027. I'll go ahead and call roll. District 1, Councilwoman Fan West. Fan West, aye. District 2, Council Member Monzo. Yes. District 4, Council Member Nguyen.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Nguyen. Yes. Mayor Nguyen. Yes. Motion carried 5-0.

All right, at this time, we are open up for the oral communication concerning non-agenda items. So, City Clerk, would you please go ahead and read the instruction for the record.

This is the time of the meeting that members of the public may address the City Council regarding any non-agenda items that are within the subject matter jurisdiction. Unless otherwise extended by a majority vote of the City Council, comments shall be limited to three minutes per speaker. Any person wishing to address the City Council in person should complete a yellow speaker slip which are provided at the entrance to council chambers, submit the card to city clerk staff. When your name is called, please step to the podium at that time, state your name and city of residence for the record. Pursuant to Senate Bill 707, this meeting's being conducted with both in-person and teleconference participation. The city will accept public communications from both in-person and remote participation. Public comments will be taken first from those attending in-person, followed by those participating remotely. Once all in-person comments have been completed, the city clerk staff will announce the names or last four numbers of the telephone number of the individual who has requested to provide public comment remotely. Remote public commenters will receive the same time allotment as members of the public commenting in person.

In person, we have three speakers.

First speaker is Donald Lank, followed by Jean. Donald Lank. Jean. Is there a Jean? Terry Raines.

Bye, Charlie. Terry Raines, court reporter on August 4th. The court granted all three city motions, including sanctions against Amy, grossly reduced from almost eight grand to just over two. Payment was ordered within 30 days. Have you paid them or your new attorney yet, Amy? I provided copies of the ruling. Looks like Amy's legal expense GoFundMe was removed, likely because her FPPC registered legal defense fund prohibits crowdfunding. In Amy's criminal bribery case, the OCDA filed a brief July 30th opposing a completion of diversion and urging the court to reinstate criminal proceedings. I have provided copies of it. It's pretty juicy, covering alleged pet parade and in-office campaigning and campaign messaging on official city letterhead, which the city attorney apparently sent to outside counsel for potential charges. The DA quotes the judge's October admonishments, then several egregious statements Amy made since, like, you know, this is a jungle-like court. Judge said I didn't find any crime committed, comparing her case to what they're doing to Trump. And also Amy's statements that implicated her own defense counsel and OCDA, Todd Spitzer, in partisan collusion in the handling of her case. Key parts of the DA's conclusion, the people respectfully asked the court to revoke the defendant's misdemeanor diversion and reinstate criminal proceedings. When taken together, the above information makes it clear that the defendant did not substantially comply with her diversion terms. Despite completing the ethics course, she continued making inappropriate, inaccurate, and egregious public comments about her case to portray herself as someone vindicated, not someone taken accountability. Moreover, she has engaged in multiple activities that could constitute new law violations of sections specifically written to prohibit public officials from abusing their position for personal gain. The brief ends, the court should act accordingly, and we agree. On August 26th, the court will consider the brief, any opposition filed, and possibly sworn testament before deciding the outcome the same day as your next council meeting. Nam Quan is losing in court, too, in Texas. Our lawmakers are blatant lawbreakers. We have 12 candidates running for mayor, District 1 and District 4, but do they live here? No. A thorough analysis of nomination papers is underway. Early optics. Charlie, again, found and helped two decoy white candidates, Shoup and Fenton, pull and file on the final day to pull votes from Carlos and David, since Kimberly is pulling Vietnamese votes from him. What a corrupt piece you are, Charlie. Your own words. So far, the papers reveal extraordinary overlap. Nine of Shipp's 30 signers, 30%, also signed Fenton's, and 12 consecutive Fenton signers also signed for Shipp, or Charlie, including four members of Charlie's household. Most striking, Charlie's wife was Fenton's 20th final qualifying signature. Remarkably, about 60% of Shipp's and 62% of Fenton's signers were Vietnamese. Look for a full analysis to be published soon. We all know you're running another dirty campaign, Charlie, but this time the public and the authorities will have the last word. You can bank on that. Vote for Carlos, Luan, and Dave.

Next speaker, Luan Nguyen.

Okay, so my name is Luan Nguyen. and you all know me, I live in Westminster. I am here today to ask Major Charlie Nguyen about his involvement in the protest against a singer from Vietnam. I heard on the street that Major Charlie was involved and had issued a notice of violation to the restaurant, so I am here to ask Chief Charlie to clarify for us if you were involved. If you were involved, that's against the law, that's against the First Amendment, so Please answer the question because the words on the street and it's all over the news and people are still talking about it, that Chief Charlie was involved. And we don't want a representative from our city to be involved in something that's not legal. Thank you.

Mayor, we have no further speakers in person. We do have one speaker on Zoom. Ben, can you press star six to unmute yourself?

Can you hear better?

Yes. Give me one moment to start the timer.

It's really low. It's low? Yeah.

Can you get closer or speak a little louder?

Is that better?

Yes.

Okay. I had to take my camera off. Thank you very much. Good evening. My name is Ben Frank. I'm one of the owners of Ice Realm Westminster. The ice rink has served the community for nearly 30 years. And a little over two years ago, it was facing closure as the ducts were closing, the previous owners were closing the facility. we were able to step in and save the rink and start a new five-year lease. Today, thousands of kids and families use the facility for hockey and figure skating and other fundraisers and school and community programs. We offer free hockey programs and free tri skating programs. And as we understand, as part of the new redevelopment, the whole property is potentially going to be sold and rezoned for redevelopment. which we are not opposed to, but we are just asking for city support to help keep the rink a long-term part of the Westminster community. So I'm just asking for the opportunity or the next steps to sit down with city leadership and explore how Ice Realm Westminster and City of Westminster can work together to either maintain the rink where it is, be part of the redevelopment plan and or even look at future opportunities as part of the facilities and parks and recreation plan, long-term plan for City of Westminster. We do have experience operating several sports facilities and would love to be a part of that long-term plan working alongside the City of Westminster.

Thank you for your comment. We have no further speakers via Zoom.

All right. Thank you very much. I am going to move on to the comments and request for agenda item from the City Council, agency members, including AB 1234 report when required. Let's start out with Council Member West.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate that. You know, I hope everyone had a great summer, spending with your family and loved ones. Summer is an amazing time to... relax, kick back, and just enjoy the people that are closest to you. Our family got a chance to do that, to visit cousins and family reunions and whatnot. As we're heading into the school years, I know that there's many program around the city to help kids with backpacks and whatnot, and I know that Assemblyman Trita has set up that event, I think his office would give 150 backpacks, pencils, supplies for kids who come. It doesn't matter if you're a knee or not, but if you need one, you're willing to come to do that. So I know every city is doing that to help kids get back to school program. Now, I know that... This month is August. It's everyone getting back on track. I want to first thank our law enforcement and our fire department for all you guys do while we're in the black. You know what I mean? And I want to thank your staff. for all you guys do as well to help us, our city, moving our city forward. I know that you guys know the ins and outs because as a council on the dais here in Mayer, it is like a revolving door that every season you have new council members. But for staff, you guys are here, you guys work here, you guys know the ins and outs, and we really appreciate your professionalism. And I am so honored to be able to continue to serve the people in my district one and continue to help the small businesses, but also the resident and to keep the value of the homes intact as well. And I do look forward to get feedback from District 1 to see what else they need moving forward for the end of this year. And with that, I want to thank you, Council, for all you guys do to help move the city forward as well. It takes five of us to make the decision. So thank you for that, for working together. So with that, I yield back, Mr. Mayor. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Council Member West. Next is Council Member Nam Quang Nguyen.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Upon hearing the report from Police Department, I'm very happy that everything is under control, even though the crime rate at a certain point go up a little bit, but I think for the entire report, the percentage of criminal cases in our city is going down. And for the homelessness program that the city council put in place, helping to hire more homeless liaisons. What is the word? Homeless liaisons, okay. So I think it's working. It works really well. I even mentioned that in one of our event lately that compared to other cities around us. Westminster is doing really good. But in the meantime, I still see some of homeless activities around the city. Not much, but I think they tend to... together at Brookhurst and McFarland at the little corner of Saigon City supermarket. You should take a look into that. So overall, you guys are doing a good job. Awesome. Thank you. And thank you, staff, for doing all the cool events that I enjoy. I enjoy so much. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Council Member Manquan Nguyen. And next is Council Member Meza.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Yes, it's good to be back. I'm glad that we had a little bit of break there in July. I think we all needed it. I think staff needed it as well. Hopefully you guys were able to get out there and take a little vacation, those of you who had the opportunity. But maybe when you're on vacation, it just seems like it's so quick. It's over so quick. And then when you're working, it seems that week is so long. So I just hope you got to breathe a little bit. So again, I want to thank you for your hard work. And we had this summer, we had our movies in the park. We had a concert in the park. And I invite everybody to come out for our last concert in the park this Thursday and enjoy some music, some food, some fun. And also, I also want to thank staff for putting in the effort for our Cherry Street, you know, I don't know, what are we calling it? Cherry Street Block Party, whatever we want to call it. That is also good. I mean, I think when something's new, it takes a little bit of time to build it up, and people get to know it, and the word gets out. And so I want to definitely see that continue, because they will get, because I've spoke to a lot of people that I didn't even know, so now... Now they're looking forward to the next time we have it. So I'm really glad that we're making efforts. Staff is making efforts. The Cherry Street block party was the brainchild of our fearless leader, Christine Cordon. So thank you very much for that. Trying to do something, create something out of nothing. So that was a... Good effort on your part, so thank you. And, you know, Chief, your staff, great night, national night out. It was a lot of fun. good demonstrations, had a good time. So glad to be back, and hopefully the kids get out there. I know getting back to school the first day is probably hard to get up, but some kids are excited to get back out there and see their friends and talk about the summers they had. So glad to be back at work, so thank you. That's all I got, Mayor.

All right, thank you, Council Member Meza. Next is Vice Mayor Monwin.

Thank you, Mayor. First, thank you, Fire Department, city employees and staff, especially during the long hours. I know you guys put in a lot of hours last Wednesday during the incident. I kind of do miss our Wednesday meeting. It's just kind of, I feel like it's a special meeting since it's on a Monday. But I wish everyone a great rest of the summer. I know we have one last concert left this Thursday, so please join us. And happy back to school for everyone. Thank you.

All right. Thank you very much. Same as everyone. I'm very, very pleased with the progress that we have done in the last four years. I want to thank you staff and, you know, and City Castle for much of the effort that you put in and your dedication and everything that you do to move this city forward. And as of today, I would like to say that I'm very appreciative for for everything that you do and for every effort that you put in. And I want to thank, especially for the council, for working together. I think we have a very, very good meeting tonight, I mean this afternoon. I wouldn't ask for anything else than working together to move the city forward, to move the city up to the next level. And specifically, I want to thank Council Member West for working with us. And I know that I have a conversation with you, and you expressed that you want to work with the city council. You realize that it was... It was chaos for the last couple years, but now you understand that we need to work together to move the city again forward for the betterment of the residents here in the city of Westminster. With that, and I promised myself when I voted for the item that back in... Sorry about that here. Back in February 25th, 26th, we actually, after the event, the TED event on BOSA, and it was unfortunate that you didn't accept that there was a mishap, that you actually... quote unquote campaign during the event. That's why the council trying to put the item to prevent you from speaking to the public. But by talking to you and by with you willing to admit that this is a mishap, I am going to agendize item. This item was motion that carries 311 at the time to prevent Council Member West to speak at the public. Now I would like to remove that, to reverse that, so that she can also join us at any of the public event that host by the city. So that's my motion to put that on the agenda. Is there a second to that?

I'll second it, Mayor, but you don't actually need a second.

I understand, but that's when I bring it here, so we need to have a second. Yeah, go ahead. I'll second it. Thank you. Thank you for your second. So with that, we have motion and second on the floor. That's the item that I would like to agendize.

I have a motion made by Mayor Nguyen, seconded by District 2, Councilmember Monzo, to agendize, to discuss. Councilwoman Fan West attending to reconsider.

All right. So it's to agendize an item to remove the restriction on Councilwoman Fan West from speaking at the city's events.

Exactly.

Thank you.

Thank you.

For refacing it.

District 1, Councilwoman Fan West. Fan West, aye. District 2, Councilmember Monzo. Yes. District 4, Council Member Nguyen?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Nguyen? Yes. Mayor Nguyen? Yes. Motion carried 5-0.

All right, with that, I would like to thank everyone for attending the meeting until this time. It is now 5-15. I would like to adjourn the meeting. The next meeting is going to be on the 26th of August. So meeting adjourned.

Thank you. Thank you. you