City Council - Regular Meeting

Hello. Meeting call to order. Welcome to tonight's City Council meeting. Let's okay, we'll see just call to order. Let me also do the land acknowledgement. Land acknowledgement. We would like to acknowledge that the land we inhabit today was once known as Talvangar, the home of the Gabrielino Tongva people. We show our respect to the Gabrielino Tongva people, as well as all the indigenous people, past, present, and future, and honor their labor as original caretakers of this land. We commit to uplifting the Gabrielino Tongva people and invite you to acknowledge their history and join us in caring for this land. Next flag salute. Members and audience, please rise.

Please place your right hand over your heart. Present colors. Ready, begin.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice.

Prepare to close colors. Forward march.

Thank you, please be seated

Clerk, call the roll. Council Member Yang? Present. Council Member Goh? Present. Council Member Wong?

Present.

Mayor Pro Tem Sanchez?

Present.

Mayor Liu? Here. We have a quorum.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Pursuant to SB 707 and resolution number 2026 R23, rules for conducting legislative meeting remote participation via Zoom is available. Public comment for all agenda items will be accepted during the public comment period, item number seven, except for public hearing, which will be taken at the time each hearing is called. Please complete one yellow card only if you wish to make a comment on the non-public speaking items and a separate blue public hearing speaker card for each public hearing item. The time allotted for each speaker will be determined based on the total number of requests to speak, including those submitted by in-person attendees. Zoom participants using the raise hand feature and callers participating by phone by pressing star nine to join the speaker queue. Request to speak will be accepted until the beginning of the applicable public comment period to determine the speaker time limit. Five or fewer speakers, five minutes each. Six to 20 speakers, three minutes each. 21 to 40 speakers, two minutes each. 21 or 40 more speakers, one minute each. Live interpretation is available through the Wordly app and closed captioning is available on Zoom. Reminder. Any persons addressing the council who disrupts, disturbs, impedes, or otherwise renders infeasible the meeting's orderly conduct who, after request by the presiding officer, refuses to cease such behavior, may be removed from the city council chambers or remote participation platform. For more information, procedures, and instructions, visit the city's website agenda page. Okay. Moving on to see telecommunication announcements. They're not correct. Okay, thank you, city manager. Agenda revisions and additions. Council colleagues, in light of the received written communications regarding ALPR camera technology being used by the Meyer Park Police Department, I would like to request to amend the agenda and add an item to staff communications for the police department to provide a brief update. Is that all right? Okay, well, thank you, colleagues. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. You know, actually, in the interest of time, let's also do recognition of our department explorers. Is that all right? Okay. Well, it is our pleasure to recognize some fine Department of Fire Explorers who have provided their valuable time and focus to serving our community and our fire department. And so I'd like to, oh, thank you.

Okay. We have our battalion chief, John Jin, who's going to provide a little background, and then we'll go to the certificates.

All right. Uh, good evening. Uh, Mary low, uh, city council members, city staff and members of the public, uh, battalion chief John gin, uh, monitor park fire. Happy to be here tonight to, uh, present, uh, certificates to 5 of our explorers who helped out doing our sidewalk cpr events. Uh, uh, that's that we had over the last, uh, last month. reached out to about 75 members of the public here. We had two events, one in front of City Hall and another one at one of the local festivals here. And these five explorers stepped up to help teach the public the values of sidewalk CPR, which means hands-only CPR, which helps double or even triple life-saving efforts before we even get on scene. So it does make a difference. We have seen that ourselves going on these calls. So just wanted to take a moment. to thank them and then present them with these certificates. So we have these five members and I will present the names or introduce the names. So we have Demetrius Hernandez, Ryan Emerson, Nathan DeLeon, Jaden Romero, and Brandon Campos.

Colleagues, colleagues, if you'll follow me.

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

Perfect. Thank you.

Members, um, since we did add police department to staff communications, I'm going to invite them to make their presentation before we proceed with staff. I'm sorry, public comments. Okay. All right. Chief or police department, please.

Mr. Mayor, members of city council, staff, and the public, Scott Weese, police chief, Go ahead, first slide. I want to thank everybody for coming out to National Night Out last night. It was a huge success. We do it on an annual basis, and it's our way of kind of opening up our doors of community so they can see what our officers do. They can take a look at some of our equipment. They can ask questions. It was a huge success. We had a lot of vendors that were there assisting us, so I want to thank everybody publicly for coming out, and everybody here was there. So if you're in the audience, you were there. I appreciate you coming, and I hope you had a good time. Go ahead. Next Tuesday, we're going to have a public forum on our ALPR system. We recognize the fact that this is a contentious item. We don't want to shy away from that. In fact, we've been working very hard to make sure that we have complete transparency. I know that there will still be questions. I'm trying to do everything I can to answer those questions. We're trying to get it out to the entire public by putting on this forum, basically, where they'll get a chance to look into how we use it. They'll get to look at how we do searches. They'll look at how we get alerts and kind of understand how the system works. Just in a nutshell, ALPR systems, the flock system in particular that we use, captures license plate and vehicle descriptions. It does not capture images of people. The cameras we use are called Falcons. They are single image cameras. They are not video cameras. The system helps locate stolen vehicles. It helps our investigators identify vehicles that are wanted for crimes. And it helps identify missing persons. That's how we use the system here. Uh, data is protected strictly by California state law. California has an iron wall around this state, and there are several laws that protect the public from us sharing data with anybody that's outside the state of California. SB 34, SB 54 are both Amendments at the state capitol that protect us. We have a very strict department policy. We conduct audits We have a lot of safeguards in place to make sure that the system is not misused We have never had a complaint from the public about our system being used in a miss Guided way to hurt anybody We do not share data with ice this is a very contentious item I understand it We do not share our data with ice There's nothing in our search history that shows ICE has gained access to it. I'm gonna do everything I humanly possibly can to try to show that that's occurring. SB 54 is very strict. It's been around California for a long time. We do not cooperate with ICE. I've been a police officer now for almost 40 years. I've never, shared any information, nor have I asked for anybody's immigration status as long as I've been a police officer, because it never made any difference to us. Victims of crime are the most important thing. And we don't care where they come from. Our job is to protect them. We hold that dear. And it's unfortunate what's going on right now, but there's nothing I can do about that. Only our detectives and our 911 dispatchers have the ability to search ICE. I'm sorry, ability to search Flock. They're the only ones that have access to the system. Our patrol officers have the ability to receive alerts, but they cannot search the system. An investigator has to add information to the portal about the crime that he's investigating or she's investigating and a file number. We then can go back and audit those searches to make sure they're legitimate. If they break the rules, if they break the law, they get prosecuted. I know that there are officers around the country that are being caught doing this. I'm glad. That means their departments are doing their job and catching them breaking the rules. If I can catch them doing that here, they're going to have the same consequences. I've talked to the DA of Los Angeles County. He's not going to put up for it either. If we break the rules, there's going to be consequences. When we do our audits, we have an auditing supervisor, we have a captain and me. We are the three people in this audit chain. The audit is done on every detective and every dispatcher that does a search. We randomly select searches. We pull that case, we open it and determine why that search was made and if it was pertinent to the case. That audit gets then moved up to the division commander. They review it to make sure it's legitimate and then it comes to me and I review it. We've been doing this for a long time with our body-worn cameras. It's been very effective for us, and we feel it's effective for Flock also. We're going to do our best next week to get a lot of information out. I don't know if I can answer everybody's questions. I would love to be able to do that, and I'd love everybody to leave here satisfied that they're getting the answers that they want. I know that that'll never occur, but I'm going to do the best I can. I'm here for any questions you may have.

Thank you for that presentation, Chief. I do have some questions. I've been hearing that the cameras can capture kids on playgrounds or parks.

Our flock cameras are, they take individual photographs of vehicles only. We don't have any flock cameras in parks. We don't have any flock cameras. If you're walking down the street and you pass a flock camera, it doesn't capture your image. You're not a vehicle. So there's, if I could show you the searches, Tuesday night, we're gonna show searches. We can't even tell who's driving the car. It shows us a license plate and if the car, what the want is on the vehicle. Is it a missing person? Is it a stolen plate? Is it a stolen car? The only way that those are uploaded into the system is through the state vehicle, the theft system. So when your car gets stolen, they fill out a report, that report gets uploaded to the state system and it automatically populates flock. If your car that's stolen passes a camera, it alerts our dispatchers that a stolen car just passed a camera. It also alerts the officers and then we have to go to the area. If we find your car, the officers have to run your plate through the system to verify that it's stolen. We don't depend on Flock to tell us that we can arrest somebody. We don't depend on Flock to tell us that that car's stolen. We have to verify it through the stolen vehicle system of the state of California.

And earlier you mentioned that we use single image cameras called Falcons. Yes. That's part of the flock and then Falcon?

Falcon is the model of camera we use. It looks like a birdhouse.

You're going to see it on some of their posters.

It looks like a little birdhouse. It has a solar panel above it. It takes a single image. It doesn't take video.

Does Flock have any cameras that take videos?

They do. They're called condor cameras. We don't have any condors. And I don't think any of the cities around us have condor cameras. It's a pan, tilt, zoom camera. We typically have seen them on, you know those trailers you see in a parking lot of... A business and they've had a lot of theft so they have the camera with the big pole on it and the blue lights that flash. Some of those may be condor cameras. They take video images of everybody. We don't have any in our city. The police department, the city doesn't have any and I don't believe any of the businesses in town have any either. And we don't plan on getting them.

So I'm hearing from some residents that ICE does get data from these flock cameras, but you're saying that our department doesn't share data with ICE. So where's the mismatch?

I would love to see that empirically. I would love to see the fact. I would love to see that search. I really would. I really would. I'd love to see that. Federal agencies that have a legitimate law enforcement purpose, but when Flock started, had access. If the FBI is looking for your kidnapped child, they had access to Flock. They're not looking for immigration. It's the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They're looking for a kidnapped kid. There are a lot of success stories. And if you look at our portal, we've been uploading success stories. Two of them that are super important to us. One of them is the 2023 Star Ballroom. We were able to put that vehicle into the AOPAR system once we found a plate in the middle of the night. It pinged in Torrance. Torrance PD found that van, even though he had changed the plate out, because of the picture of the car. We didn't know who was driving it, we had no picture of him, but we intercepted him before he went to the third location to kill them. The other one was, and we just today, the city, the police department in particular, one of our officers was murdered in 2023. He was off duty, he was going to the gym, he was carjacked and he was murdered. The suspects that killed him, got sentenced today. Our officers were there in court when they got sentenced. The shooter got sentenced to life without parole. AOPR is the only way that they found that vehicle. There are a lot of success stories, and I'll tell you, we haven't been good at sharing them. We haven't. Police departments typically kind of stay in the background. Ours in particular. We don't stand up and say, ooh, look at us, how great we are. But we're going to start sharing those stories so that the public can see where the system works. It's going to be on our public portal.

Thank you. Go ahead.

uh thank you chief appreciate the quick overview i want to reiterate the invitation to this community meeting next tuesday for folks who are interested seems like there are a number of people here tonight that are here for uh i hope i see him i honestly do i hope you all join uh next week as well i assume many of you will still come up for public comment look forward to that uh if the comments uh That we've received in writing through email are reflective of what I think we will hear tonight as well, I just want to say, I think everyone on this day is in our. Police officers and our city staff share a lot of the same concerns block cameras and LPR and that's why we put in a lot of these. These restrictions and these right guardrails in terms of how these are operated, I look forward to really diving into some of these concerns I share still share some of these concerns around privacy. and write some of these impacts on our communities and look forward to diving into some of the details next tuesday it's not agendized tonight as the mayor will point out we cannot take action because it's not not on the agenda tonight And the very reason we set up this, my understanding is we set up this special meeting, this community meeting next Tuesday for the specific purpose of making sure we have a full meeting dedicated to this. We do have a lot of other things on this agenda as well, but appreciate the many people that have shown up tonight to engage on this very, very important issue and hope that you will come on Tuesday to really get into a more robust conversation around automated license plate readers, block cameras, and public safety in our communities.

Thank you, Chief, for a brief report. I know you're going to go into a lot more detail on Tuesday's meeting next week, so I want to encourage everyone to attend. And I do want to thank everyone who did come out because civic engagement is very important, especially here in Monterey Park. So I want to thank you for coming out tonight. Just, I guess, for people who might not make it tomorrow, or just for people to hear tonight, what types of protocols, I know you spoke to it already a little bit in terms of what we do as a department, as a city, to try to make sure that our flock cameras are not being misused or in any way, shape, or form, and you've already said that they haven't. So just to kind of reiterate a little bit and share, what do we do in terms of protocol in terms of making sure that doesn't happen?

The audit system we think is really good. We're trying to figure out, I know some of the comments, and I'm gonna let the council know that I have big ears, and when people ask questions, I listen, I write them down, and I try to get answers. because they're asking a legitimate question, and they need a legitimate answer, and I'm doing the best I can. And there was people that talked about publicly sharing the audits. We're trying to figure out if we can do that. There's a lot of information in that audit that's internal that's specific to open cases. There are times where we cannot share that while the case is being adjudicated. Typically, because the data's only there for 30 days, we have to do a 30-day audit. We can't go past that. A lot of times, the case doesn't make it to court in that time period. So we're trying to figure out how we can share that, because the judicial system is not going to be very happy with us if we're sharing that kind of information outside of the law. So we're trying to figure that out right now. The audits have worked for us. There's an algorithm built into the system that also will track anomalies. We use it. If everybody can kind of remember, I know they've talked about it, the Georgia officers that were caught misusing the system. That was the flock algorithm that caught them. That was the internal built-in mechanism to catch them if they started using the system unlawfully. And it caught them. It worked. We have it on in ours. It will catch our people if they're breaking the rules. It has not. We've done everything we can to make sure. We've limited the access. We've created, really, we think, a very good policy. We have state law. We have audits. We have the algorithm. We have a lot of things in place to do checks and balances on it. Great.

Thank you for sharing that. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot more of that information on Tuesday next week. Thank you, Chief.

sorry thank you chief for uh your presentation and for answering council's questions and i know you'll be here for most of the evening and so in the audience who wishes to speak to uh chief weiss um you know uh i'm sure he's available to uh have a conversation with you and um let me just say that you know concerns have been raised regarding privacy and civil liberties are appreciated and they are important considerations that deserve thoughtful discussion alongside the city's responsibility to support public safety. And so again, I have my colleagues said, I encourage everyone to attend the event on the 11th. Um, and I think that it's a good opportunity to also just talk to your neighbors as well as, as well as the men and women who serve our community day in, day out, um, for our public safety needs. And again, congratulations on a successful national night out. Thank you. Okay. And let's see now. OK. OK. OK. Let's do public comment. OK.

Okay.

Okay, let's see. Okay. So we will hear comments from in-person speakers first, followed by remote participants. Madam City Clerk, how many in-person speakers and how many remote speakers we have and what is the speaker time it will be?

There are 40 in-person speakers and zero speakers participating remotely by phone or Zoom for a total of 40 speakers. Each speaker is limited to two minutes each.

okay two minutes each okay very good well then let us proceed okey dokey okay thank you okay that's thank you of course okay okay let's see first person up and if i do um mispronounce your name forgive me um and okay first speaker up bosco

All right, forgive me, I'm gonna go really fast. Residents nationwide have voiced our opposition to the unchecked power of wealthy corporations to construct massive polluting data centers. Similarly, we've seen people come together to oppose these flocked security cameras. These tools of the surveillance state These are tools of the surveillance state. The ACLU explains that if there are flock cameras in your city, they collect your make, model, vehicle, make, model, color, license plate, date, time, location, all in a searchable record without a warrant. When a flock camera detects a vehicle, the information is stored in a flock data center and can be searched by any participating law enforcement agency anywhere. not just your own town or state, but any agency with a FLOC contract. They scan over 20 billion license plate across 6,000 communities. These systems have also been abused. In Milwaukee, an officer was sentenced to 12 months probation after using FLOC to track his ex-girlfriend and her new partner, reportedly searching for her more than 120 times. Let's see, I gotta go faster. In California, they have been accused of illegally sharing ALPR data with ICE and Border Patrol. We'll bring those facts Tuesday. There are efforts now in Congress to crack down on these systems. Representative Thomas Massey of Kentucky has pledged to introduce legislation that would withhold federal funding from cities and police departments that deploy Flock and similar surveillance cameras. As Massey put it, the Constitution requires probable cause and reasonable suspicion to spy on people. You cannot just spy on everybody. The backlash against Flock is growing across the country Residents have shown up at town halls just like this to oppose spending taxpayer dollars on these cameras, and it's working. More than 55 cities and towns and counties have ended their contracts this year alone.

Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Well, why don't you, Colin, line up. And next, Caleb Swires, followed by Stephen Kung. Barbara Nye, Jesse Damon.

Good evening. Thanks for pronouncing my name correctly. I appreciate it. Firstly, my issue is with flock and ALPR devices, not with the city or the police department, because flock infringes on everyone's right to privacy. And I appreciate the chief giving that presentation earlier. And I thank you for putting up the new portal. It does suggest to me that the city does realize these cameras are dangerous because the portal mainly focuses on the safeguards the police department has implemented to protect us from phlox invasive technology. And I do appreciate that. At the same time, there's virtually nothing demonstrating Flock's effectiveness at solving or reducing crime, and that is the whole point of the cameras. If it's invasive but doesn't do anything, a better safeguard is to just get rid of them. Three points why the cameras are dangerous. First, Flock has a non-exclusive and perpetual rights to the data Flock collects. Flock can do whatever they want with the data. Essentially a backdoor to the police department safeguards. Number two, Flock is just a motion sensor camera, as outlined by this... Document the camera spec sheet from the 2019 contract that the city signed So it doesn't just read license plate, it reads motion. We can't know if the data is ever deleted because the images live on flock services, so we're gambling our privacy on the word of a big tech company. So without solid verifiable evidence that these cameras are making the community safer, we end up just giving $100,000 to a big tech company and then wasting more resources protecting ourselves from their services. I'd rather spend that money on more night outs. Please end the contract and remove the cameras, thank you.

Hi, I'm Stephen Kung, District 5. 234 agencies already have access to all the Flock cameras in Monterey Park. Not just our police. I trust our police. I do not trust the other people in the broader network who have used Flock to stalk and harass their exes. There are at least 50 documented cases of that happening. The scary thing is that our police is physically and legally unable to stop Flock from abusing the system because Flock owns all of our information. They can do whatever they want with it, including sell it. And Flock lies. Flock's chief information security officer lied to the Oshkosh City Council when he said that the APR IALPR system didn't create vehicle movement heat maps. It does. Flock lied when they advertised that the ACLU had endorsed their surveillance. They did not. And that was a really dumb lie, too. Jonathan Paz, a former Flock public relations exec, claimed that Flock lied to their own employees about what the system was capable of. So yeah, Flock claims that they don't work with ICE, but given their track record, I bet that Flock is also lying to us. After the big data center win, Monterey Park is a city on the move. Why are we embracing the liability and PR nightmare that is Flock? Flock is not who we are as a city. It uses AI data centers and you know how 88% of the people of Monterey Park feels about data centers. Council members, this is another opportunity for us to show the SGB who we are as a people and where our values lie. Monterey Park should take the lead because as we saw with banning the data center, being the leader looks good on us if we deflock i guarantee monterey park will make headlines again it'll be one more thing we can brag about now let's tell flock to get the out of our city

Good evening, Council. Jesse Damon, Monterey Park resident. Thank you for the chance to speak. I am addressing my comments around flock data access and protections. Flock is a powerful tool precisely because it enables data sharing across agencies. This access has been exploited repeatedly by bad faith actors, as we've heard and we will continue to discuss, most notably by federal immigration enforcement. I understand Monterey Park's police department is bound by state law and by their own policies to not share data outside of California, and yet Flock's data ownership terms leave significant ambiguity and potential for abuse. For example, Flock retains worldwide perpetual and royalty-free access, their terms, to customer service and the ability to disclose customer data, including footage, to law enforcement in perpetuity. It would appear that Flock prevents local sovereignty over data. I've had only positive experiences with Monterey Park PD, and I want our city to have effective tools to ensure public safety. I'm very grateful for the presentation tonight, Chief. If you look at the scientific research though, there's a concerning lack of evidence for effectiveness of ALPRs to actually address safety, which is what they are meant to do. Data show limited and inconsistent impacts on arrests and minimal impacts on clearances, which is actually solving cases. I have no doubt that our local law enforcement has used ALPR data effectively and responsibly. But flocked data ownership terms, as well as documented violations by other California agencies, limit our city's ability to prevent abuses of this system. If there's a lack of robust evidence of effectiveness and legitimate concerns around data protections, shouldn't we allocate these funds towards something that actually protects us instead of tools that provide the illusion of safety for some while clearly jeopardizing safety for some of our most vulnerable residents? Monterey Park's groundswell of community engagement has thrust our city into the national spotlight, and we have a chance to lead again. Let's meet that moment.

And while Barbara gets ready, let me also call up another. OK, thank you. Jeremy Fisher, Emily Chu, ,, sorry, Dave Jones. OK, OK, all right. OK.

Hi, my name is Barbara Ngai. I'm an SGV resident, and I'm here to talk about the flock cameras. These cameras are a part of a larger system of surveillance and profiling. First, they'll be our license plates, then it's our faces, our conversations, dating habits, beliefs, There's really no limit on what broad surveillance can learn about us. There's nothing stopping the people who operate them from generating a profile on every person in the U.S., and I doubt any of us desire to be treated as though we're a wanted criminal. Abuse is not hypothetical. It is foreseeable. The USA is known for freedom and liberty. This technology is against the soul of our nation. We as a people want something more than to feel the watching eye of Big Brother judging our every move at all times. Thank you.

Hello, Jeremy Fisher, District 3. Did everyone get a copy of this, How to Speak to City Councils About Public Safety Technology? If you could all turn to page 10. Well, no one's pulling out a copy, but this is actually a leaked document from 404 Media. They found, Flock sent this to police departments, and it's just PR speak. It's just waste for... to get ahead of narratives that communities may be having issues with flock cameras. This is great for redirecting the conversation, moving the conversation from surveillance to governance. Let's see, the strongest council presentations spend less time describing technology capabilities and more time explaining the policies that surround them. They show how searches are tied to legitimate investigations. It's all just marketing. This is just a marketing document provided by a tech company for a subscription service. This is all this is. It's not selling you Netflix. It's not selling you even a Ring camera. This is for invasive technology that is supposed to help us, but all they're trying to do here is not give you facts and figures. It's trying to change the narrative. So I think that if anyone else is familiar with LAPD, obviously we're not in LA City, but they recently didn't renew their FOC contract. So I'm curious as to why Monterey Park thinks that they are different than the LA police force. What did they see that was concerning that we don't see here? So I would be really interested in hearing on why we made a different choice than the LAPD. So thank you.

Good evening council members. My name is Emily and I'm a resident of Monterey Park. I'm here to ask you to not renew our Flock contract. I want to be clear, public safety is important, but the numbers show that Flock does not effectively prevent crime. In fact, Flock is a company with a terrible track record. They've been caught enabling illegal data sharing with ICE and lying about it. And this issue is systemic because flock data is designed to be shared across its network. It is not a problem that we can solve by adjusting some settings for our city or focusing on how we use it. Here's an example. Los Altos found out that their flock settings allowed federal agencies to illegally access their cameras. Despite this, they decided to keep the contracts with amendments. The city manager said that they have to just blindly trust that Flock is following the new guardrails because they quote, cannot independently corroborate Flock's internal system logs. As a reminder, our contract with FLOC says that we, quote, own the data and also that FLOC has the right to access, use, preserve, and store the data. We are essentially giving our residents data to them for perpetual use. Additionally, 234 agencies across California currently have access to live feeds from our cameras, and we have zero control over how any individual in any of those agencies handle that data. We do not need to make the same mistakes as Los Altos. Flock is not a trustworthy company. The potential for misuse of our data is high and it is not hypothetical. Our police budget is better spent on tools that actually increase public safety. I urge you to listen to the community and end our contract. Thank you.

Hi Mayor Lowe, council members, I'm Harag, I'm a resident. I'm here to ask you to not renew the FLOC contract. In 2023, when this council approved data centers at Marketplace, I don't think you fully understood the dangers and the harm that these facilities could cause. And again, maybe not in 2024 with Saturn Park. But once you learned the facts, you acted. And that took courage. That was leadership. I'm asking you to bring that same leadership to flock. 34 cameras scanning nearly a million unique license plates a month in Monterey Park. Surveillance of any resident without a warrant. Data shared across a network where local control is incomplete. a company that has misrepresented who has access to that data and has collaborated with ICE, and a technology with no compelling evidence that it actually does what it says it does. These aren't my opinions. These are facts, facts now getting national attention. I urge you to investigate. I urge you to investigate Flock for yourselves. Don't take my word for it. Please look it up. You showed us what kind of city we can be when you, our council, stood up on data centers. Flock deserves that same kind of scrutiny, and our residents deserve that same leadership. Also, I'm waiting on some public records that are very late, and I hope they can be delivered very soon, because I would love to look at it. Thank you.

And while Mr. Jones is coming out, let me call another list of people. Okay, Jaya Bocanegra, Matthew, ooh, forgive me, I mispronounced the last, Ed, Ed, Ed, Edmond? I'm sorry, I'm sorry about that, whoops, sorry. Deb Simone. Clotilde Jang. Oh, oh, okay, sorry. Joyce Vega? All right, thank you, okay, okay.

Okay, yeah, okay, all right, all right. Please, sorry, please. Thank you. I'll dispense with the niceties in the interest of time. My name is Dave Jones. I live in District 5. And the last time I checked, the First Amendment still says my freedom of speech shall not be abridged. FBI crime statistics for Monterey Park. Motor vehicle theft from 2016 through 2019 before flock 825 or 17.2 per month with 105 clearances or 2.2 per month. After flock from 2020 through this past June, not counting 2021 because the data is missing 1248 up to 18.9 stolen vehicles per month with just 120 clearances or only 1.8 per month. Burglaries from 2016 through 2019, 1,522 or 31.7 per month with 124 clearances or 2.6 per month. From 2020 through June, again, not counting 2021, 1,238 or 18.5 per month, which sounds good, But the decline actually started in 2018 with 29 per month that year and 22 per month in 2019. And clearances again dropped to 111 or 1.7 per month. Flock is a failure. It doesn't reduce crime. It doesn't help solve crime. There is no accountability, no local control, no transparency, and that means no trust. Flock doesn't make us safer. It actually makes us feel less safe. It's time to deflock Monterey Park.

Just water, folks. No ice.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. I come before you as someone who takes deep pride in my city. In June, we made history as being the first city in the nation to ban the construction of data centers. but this is only the first step to date. Our land and environment is under attack from our own actions. Our city was once a thriving ecosystem. According to 2022 reports, our tree canopy and canopy gap is relatively low. This is not only a lack of visual greenery, but affects citizens directly. We can combat this by planting more trees in areas such as Atlantic Square. where we are suffering a major urban heat island effect. It has been known to lower temperatures by 10 degrees Fahrenheit, also by creating more native ecosystems and public parks to invite back more indigenous species that were once pushed out by infrastructure. In addition, acknowledging the native people is not enough. We have to bring their voices to the forefront by partnering with local native communities and organizations. And please do not renew the FLOC contract. Thank you very much.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of council, my fellow residents. My name is Matthew. I'm a resident of District 4. I'm actually a new resident of Monterey Park. I just moved here a few months ago. And in my time here, I've been extremely impressed with the community spirit and civic-minded attitude that I have found throughout the city, which is certainly a credit to the fine work of the city council and the police department. But on this issue, we are not being asked to trust just city council and the police department. We are being asked to trust the Flock Corporation. In our current historical moment, tech companies promise us solutions that are cheap, efficient, and safe. But these promises are almost always a lie. From dating apps to social media to credit card companies, Americans' personal data is constantly being abused, sold, and lost by companies who have sworn to protect it. Why should we believe Flock is any different? The city is using our tax money to surveil us, to pay a private corporation to surveil us, with no real guarantees that Flock won't do the things that it is promised not to do. Instead, we are told that if such abuses are discovered, they will be prosecuted. But to my mind, that is the very definition of closing the door after the horses have already fled. I think it is better that rather than spending even more taxpayer money on the surveillance of those very taxpayers, we should just head this off at the pass. Don't renew the contract. Get Flock out of our fine city. Thank you for your time.

Hello Mayor Lowe and members of the City Council, staff and everybody else, all our great police and firefighters. I'm going to get right to it. So there's a picture of what the flock camera looks like 500 feet from my house. Orange and Ackley. Two quiet residential streets. Don't know why it's there. I'm going to keep this to bullet points. Number one, let the flock contract lapse. Number two, take the cameras down. Number three, in a town of this size, and I've talked about this with the chief, there are a dozen other ways that don't involve big data that we can do to improve policing in our small town. number four from our data center fight we all and i mean we all council included learned that we cannot trust big data a lot of people have made that point already number four uh i'd like to do a reading i've got a minute this is article four of the bill of rights of the constitution of the united states of america The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated. And no warrant shall issue upon probable cause supported by oath, but upon probable cause, excuse me, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. Now. uh lastly in my last 30 seconds despite what the courts have said heretofore the police and the government don't have a right to take photos of me or my vehicle without my consent or a warrant and they sure as pardon my language don't have the right to sell those pictures to a private company get the flock out of mpk thank you so much

Hi, I'm Clotilde Jang, I live in District 1. Everybody pretty much, I'm not gonna repeat what everybody said, but I'll start with flock and similar surveillance networks violates our fourth and fifth right amendments. And as a teacher of US history, I find it hard to justify that to my students, with schools starting soon. and I'm gonna say that LAPD's Chief Information Officer, Dean Gialamas, I think, said something to the effect of, this contract is not being renewed because of serious concerns around civil liberties and civil rights issues, particularly around privacy and the data that is being collected from these cameras. This is LAPD saying this. So please don't renew FLOC, thank you.

Okay. Good evening, Mayor, City Council. My name's Joyce Vega, longtime resident of Monterey Park and a lifelong resident of SGV. George Orwell's novel, 1984, was a dire warning against totalitarianism, not a blueprint to follow. It seems that our City Council and Chief of Police think that flock cameras are necessary for our residents to feel safe. Mass surveillance does not make a community safer. The data doesn't line up. Please understand that hyperscale data centers, AI, ICE, and ALPRs are all connected. The tech bros want our data, our money, and our jobs. I'd like to ask a police officer how they would feel being replaced by robocops, robodogs, drones with guns. Our community deserves better. I believe that most residents of Monterey Park can agree that $100,000 yearly, our tax dollars, could be better spent improving the quality of life in our community. I want a better future for my granddaughters. I'm urging you not to renew the FLOP contract. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, let's see, Ali Mims, M-I-M-S, Mims, Khan, let's see, Christy Lee, and Richard McDonald, and Chris Beistart, and Adam Jung. OK, thank you.

Hello, Allie Mims, resident. I do want to refute one thing that the chief said, and that is that ICE does work with Flock. And I'm surprised he doesn't know that, because that was reported on by 404 Media over a year ago. We have reports that searches from Flock, from ICE, immigration, and HSI were made out of Texas, Georgia, and Illinois. And that was just an audit from one city's data. So we can imagine that it's happening basically everywhere. But like he said, California does have regulations that don't allow the sharing of data across state lines or between local and federal agencies without a warrant. And this is supposed to make us feel better about the 34 Flock cameras in our city, but all I'm hearing is that you don't care that Flock collaborates with ICE to snatch people off the street, just as long as it's not happening in California. The $100,000 check you write to Flock Safety is not just money, it is an endorsement. And it must be naivete or arrogance that makes one believe that regulations will keep us safe from an amoral company like Flock that is driven by profit, not public safety. I do not want my city to become a techno-fascist wet dream just because somebody at the police department was taken in by a smooth-talking salesman who promised that AI could do their job for them. I want to be clear that I do think that my data is safe with our local PD. But I only think that because I don't own a car. I still don't want flock in my city or any city. The way we beat fascism is not by turning a blind eye when a technology we fund with our tax dollars is used to terrorize vulnerable populations. We beat the fascists by standing together against the surveillance state and the tech oligarchy. I'm here today to ask you to cease use of all flock cameras and not renew the contract. Thank you.

Oh, actually, before we proceed, I do apologize. I realize one of the people I called up, Richard McDonald, that was for item 11. So we will set that aside. Sorry about that. OK. Next.

on such short notice of two fucking minutes regarding the fucking flock, which Monterey Park disagrees with your ideas of get the flock out of fucking Monterey Park like I do and I believe because fucking data is shared. All data is shared. through every agency, no matter who, what, or asshole that you are. But the strict state laws, as you may know, like let's give an example. What's that dickhead from the DA's office? Is it, I believe, Hockman? Nathan J. Hockman? Yeah, that motherfucker. He comes up with some bullshit about 415 penal codes and 403 penal codes about disturbing a public fucking meeting. Well, on behalf of the public, fuck you. We're going to use our time to complain, criticize, and humiliate your assholes under this automated license plate readers. As you already know, the accountability, the compliance, the audit searches are real data shared with all government, all dickhead vendors, and all this bullshit of AI and all this leaked information that goes to these fucking dickheads that call us on phones and solicit us at our homes. We don't want it. So if you want to get our license and you want to find out whether a car is stolen or whether or not we're smuggling drugs like they do in Downey or taking guns to fucking Trump's golf course like Downey, then catch them when they're caught doing it. But don't put surveillance on us, because if that's the case, you might as well call Batman so Batman can say, get the flock out of Monterey Park. 42 U.S.C., 1983, politely, fuck you. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and member of council. My name is Adam. I'm a resident of Monterey Park. I think I'm the only one up front here to support the flock. I'm sorry, I think I just speak for my own, you know, my opinion. Excuse me, let him speak. It's a tool. It's a tool might help the police to solve some crime. I don't know what that is, and I don't know when it will use, but if it only once happen, help save one life, I think that's more than $100,000 a year of money spent. I respect our policemen. I trust them, and I only speak for myself, and I trust our firefighters as well. I trust our government. So if we have skepticism about using technology, Which is fine. Our phone has a lot of capability of capture or record, whatever. And they might use that, but I don't know. And neither any of you guys have hard evidence, but maybe you do. I just don't. Therefore, for my opinion, I support the flaw. And I don't want to have the fear of misuse of some tool to take away the opportunity of solving crimes. And yeah, I live in Monterey Park, I have kids, and I think my most concern is public safety. For me to give up some of my privacy for myself, I agree.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Oh, OK, OK. All right, next. Don Rock, Humaira, Sam Kay, Kelly Foster. OK, thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, council members, and dedicated staff. My name is Dawn Rock, longtime resident of Monterey Park. We are excited to remind you and the community that AWP is hosting its first fundraising event to support the rebuilding of the Barnes Park Aquatic Center. Join us tomorrow, Thursday, August 6th, from 5 to 8 p.m. at Dave & Buster's in Arcadia. During the event, 20% of all food, non-alcoholic beverage, and game play purchases will be donated to our fundraising efforts. You can also support the cause by purchasing power cards. Dave & Buster's will donate 50% of every power card purchase and the cards can be used during the fundraiser or saved for a future visit. Even if you can't make the meeting, the attend tomorrow, August 6th, you can still make a meaningful contribution by purchasing a power card, which birthday boy director Robert Aguirre had done. Robert is celebrating his birthday with his family tomorrow, so he won't be able to attend tomorrow. And he still purchased 10 power cards to be a champion and support the cause. We are grateful for Robert and his continued support. Thank you and happy birthday, Robert, wherever you are. I saw you earlier. Every meal, every game, every power card purchase helps bring us one step closer to rebuilding Barnes Park Aquatic Center and restoring the place where our community can learn, grow, and thrive. As always, thank you for your continued support and service to our community, and looking forward to seeing you guys tomorrow. Thank you.

Good evening. I actually came here tonight from Pasadena because cameras at Monterey Park don't just affect the people who live here. They also affect everyone who works, shops, or even just drives through because Flock and other ALP cameras are on a network shared with hundreds of agencies in California. Even though it is against California state law, the data in California has been accessed by both federal and out-of-state agencies. The many cases where this happened was usually not caught by police department guardrails or flock algorithms. It was exposed by community groups and journalists or by victims of stalking. I'm glad to hear that a lot of the speakers here trust the Monterey Park Police Department. I wish that I could say the same about the police department in my city of Pasadena. And I'll tell you that you should entrust Pasadena PD with Monterey Park data. We've got police officers accidentally shooting each other in the police parking garage. Look up Pasadena police horseplay if you don't know what I'm talking about. We can't trust them to follow basic gun safety protocols. There's no reason to trust them to follow the rules with anyone's ALPR data. Monterey Park was the first city in the US to ban data centers via the ballot. This was an incredible achievement. Monterey Park can now become the first city in LA County to get rid of all the flock cameras. South Pasadena only got rid of some of them, not all of them. I'd love to be able to go to the city council in Pasadena and say, be like Monterey Park, ban data centers, get rid of flock.

Hey, what's up, council? My name's Sam. I'm a resident here in Monterey Park. I want to take a brief little intermission from tonight's programming because as it says here in rule 4.4, time limits of resolution number 2026-R3, these time limits that you're seeing implemented here tonight are to avoid unnecessary repetition so that we can finish the meeting on time. And what I'm witnessing here and what I had a feeling I was going to witness is a lot of people who care about this community who are coming up here and trying to squeeze all of their information into two minutes. And my hat's off to a lot of these people. They managed to get a lot in there. And quite frankly, it is a little bit difficult to process all that information in such a short amount of time. I really would like to revisit what happened on April 15th when you guys all sat down and deliberated for like 40 minutes about what we're gonna do with the timing. And you looked at Alhambra, you looked at Arcadia, and you came up with this structure. And I would again echo the sentiments of the woman who just spoke is we're a leader in this community. A lot of other cities are now looking at Monterey Park and saying look what these folks did with the data center. So I encourage you not to just look at timelines of another and say maybe we can mimic that. Was all that stuff that happened with the data center unnecessary? I know there was a lot of repetition. We were all here till 12.30. We were all here till 1 a.m. at night and we were there because we care about the city and we care about the health and safety of the people here. So I think it's a small price to pay. There were only three meetings that went till 12.30 or 1 a.m. this year. I think, you know, again, it's a real small price to pay, I think, for you guys to hear our concerns. And, you know, for us, I mean, we were the first, you know, like somebody said, we're the first city in the United States that banned data centers in the city. So, yeah, thank you. That's it.

Hello, I'm Kelly Foster. My mother and my uncle are residents in District 3. I'm here to talk about the traffic that's going on on Potrero Grande. My mother's home is on the corner of Potrero Grande and East Markland Drive. It takes us 12 minutes to get into our driveway because of Costco's shopping center. They're tearing up the streets for months. I have my uncle that lives there and he's 92 and my mother's 83. We had to call the paramedics one time and it actually was a nightmare. Luckily he just fell. He is on hospice and I'm afraid that Ambulance is not gonna be able to get into my driveway to help me. They put a bus stop on the corner of my mother's street and I have homeless people tagging, throwing bottles of urine into my yard, going into the yard, throwing urine, their garbage, saving their homeless bags. I tore up my walkway to the front because I couldn't take the smell from the urine that is coming from the homeless that are at the bus stop all day. So I need to know what are you guys doing with that street on Potrero Grande? It's been months. You should have figured this out before you put that shopping center. I can't even go into the front door. I have to go to the driveway. And now I can't even get into the driveway because there's traffic going down from Costco all the way going north. So please. I don't want anything to happen to my elderly family, because I'm telling you right now, if I call 911 or the caregivers call 911 and my uncle and my mother can't be safe and survive a 911 call because of your shopping center, I'm going to sue people. I'm very concerned about that. Either close Markland Drive or one way.

Thank you very much. Actually, before you leave, as your chief or Sochi, perhaps you could talk to the constituent side, please. And thank you for bringing this up. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay.

Okay. Let's see. Next, Roxana Faldani. Mistress Jessica. Nancy Nguyen, Joyce Lee, A-U-R-E, A-U-R-E. Okay, and Josephine Kim.

Okay.

All right, come on down.

Scared with this new time limit, okay. I wanna start with how sad I am that we learned from the power of our civic engagement in the past few months is that now our voice is limited in this democratic process. That being said, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and city council members, thank you for hearing my comment tonight. My name's Roxanna and I'm a resident of Monterey Park and I'm asking that the city end its contract with FLOC when it expires this August. You've read all the emails, you've heard everybody tonight with the facts or figures denouncing Flock's validity. Again, Flock does not contribute to our safety, but rather has contributed to false positives, increased illegal data sharing, and mass surveillance. as well as collaborating with ICE, which members of the city council said they were very much against in all of our meetings that we were here in the past few months. So you cannot be against ICE and then continue to have a contract with FLOCC. If you haven't been paying attention, ICE can do whatever they want. We can't listen to, well, we don't have a contract with ICE. They can do whatever they want. They don't need a contract. I think the main feeling of any person is wanting to feel safe in their home, city, and community. This is why people may think that there is no issue with Flock. However, there are so many other programs and measures that can be used to do that that do not involve taking away our civil liberties. A police force with my tax dollars that keeps its community safe works via preventative measures rather than mass surveillance and policing. Funds, even within the realm of a police department, can be better used for community and social work programs, community safety and violence prevention, mental health programs and mental health counselors, as well as health and education initiatives. In history, so many very clear wrongs have been committed in the name of public interest, freedom, or safety, and we are looking at one of them right now. And Flock has spent tons of money to release this propaganda. Wow, that went by so fast.

I don't like this.

Good morning, Low. I'm a little bit high right now. So the chief said there is an iron wall around the California to protect everybody's privacy. I disagree with the wall because I know there's a wall between Mexico and the United States, and I know that that wall doesn't work too good. Number two is that LAPD Jim McDonald recently terminated the use of the flower camera. And what makes the Monterey Park police chief believe that he is much more smarter than LAPD Jim McDonald? I highly doubt that. Number three, the chief said since he's 40 years of police experience, there's never even one complaint about the usage of the floor camera. Well, chief, I disagree with that because majority of the citizens in your city probably do not even understand the language we're speaking. That's to begin with. Second of all, probably because those young kids, they are busy with computer games, social media, OnlyFans, or whatever. They don't have time to play with your games. Number four, the chief said, if the officer break a rule, there must be consequences if they misuse the data that was collected by the Fox camera. Well, I disagree with that, chief, because it's like you're saying that if you kill someone in Monterey Park, there must be consequences. We don't want you arrest the murder. We want to make sure you can do something to prevent the murder to occur from the beginning. So I really don't want for you to punish the officer who misused the data. I would prefer that nobody have the data, so no officer have the opportunity to commit that kind of violation to begin with. Number five, right now, Chief, that right now I'm having a little bit scared to walk, to do anything in the city of Monterey Park. Right now, I'm gonna go into the bathroom, but I don't know if the floor camera gonna catch me urinating or desiccating. Thank you very much.

Hello, Mayor, City Council Member. My name is Nancy Nguyen. I'm here today for supporting item 9A.

Sorry, can you adjust your mic? Can you adjust the mic down, please? Thank you. Sorry about that.

OK. I believe this item is an important step because it's allowed the city to consider updating land use policy and zoning change through a transparent public process. I hope it will create opportunity for property owners like me to have our land use review fairly and, when appropriate, restore my land back to original zoning. i would like to thank director team lou and his staff for taking the time to provide me with valuable information and guidance throughout this process finally i respect ask the mayor city council member city manager and cd attorney to vote yes on item 9a thank you very much for your time and consideration thank you

Good evening, my name is Jocely Aure and I have been a resident of Monterey Park for 23 years. We purchased our home in the summer of 2003 and that fall our home was burglarized. I called MPPD and they quickly sent an officer to assess the situation and take my statement. The burglars did not steal much, as we did not own many things, being young and new homeowners. There wasn't much to take. A few weeks later, though, I received a phone call from a police officer informing me they had retrieved my stolen passport, left at another home. Apparently, the burglars went on a spree. My parked car was hit by a man during a high-speed chase through our street on 2017, a very rare occurrence in Monterey Park. The man was apprehended, and again a week later, an officer gave me a call to update me on the case. I share this to show that our police department are able and capable to do their job without mass surveillance. I still feel safe in our city. The presence of cameras do not enhance that feeling. Rather, it makes me feel exposed and violated in a way that being burglarized did not. Even though we live in a digital age and every pocket holds a camcorder, we do not need our government to sell our data, our images, and our sense of community. We want a kind community because we are kind, not because we are being watched. I'm asking you to not renew this contract with any company with flock with accent with any other surveillance in the guise of a quick fix for a safer neighborhood thank you

Hello, my name is Josephine Kim. I've been a Monterey Park resident for a very long time now. I'm just going to give you some facts about Flock Safety. Flock Safety is a company creating AI-powered surveillance technology that is targeted for implementing in the public and private sectors, HOAs, including PDs and private companies, places of worship, and also multifamily housing. They're active in... used by more than 4,800 American police and sheriff departments, and they're active in 49 states and in 5,000 communities, and contracted with over 1,000 corporate customers. Every camera can cost $2,500 to $3,150, which are very expensive. There's over 800,000 flock cameras across the United States, which makes it an over $7.5 billion business. Their cameras are designed to capture vehicle details, license plates, et cetera, et cetera. These cameras are directly linked with law enforcement. Okay, all footage is monitored and sent to vague third party partners. Yeah, which makes sense. Flock cameras are used have there have been several cases of law enforcement using the data to stalk access track women suspected of getting abortions and pursue undocumented people a judge in watching washington state recently ruled that all data from these cameras is considered public domain which completely eradicates any idea of privacy that these companies quote unquote, insure. It's just another evil lib tech company. Though Flock promotes their technology as being for the average citizen in business, we know their intentions are much more sinister. It is not the technology that is the issue, but the greedy corporate and misguided elite that are creating and controlling these technologies. There has been very little investment into gaining feedback or insight into what communities actually want regarding AI surveillance. Their goal is to make a massive profit as quickly as possible. And so therefore, I'm sure the community of Monterey Park has said to suspend the use of flock cameras immediately. Thank you.

Okay, Paul Lang, Rodeo Lim, and Christy Lee, have you already spoken? I'm sorry, Christy Lee, yes. Okay, so Christy Lee, forgive me for mispronouncing, Christy Lee, Rachel Lim, I'm sorry, I think, yeah, Rachel Lim, 846 West Mabel Avenue, and Paul Lang. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. 9a. Oh, god. OK. I'm sorry about that. Here, let me . Oh. OK. OK. OK. Thank you. All right.

so um good evening mayor uh city council members city staff and everyone else here my name is crystal crystal lee and i'm a resident of monterey park um and first before i get into flock i do want to say thank you for the vacant vibrant work and engagement workshops you guys have held and the conversations i hope to continue to engage with you and see how it works out with our community But back to Flock, I'm not gonna, everyone else has been very, very, very eloquent and so I'm just gonna add in as resident and looking to you as our leaders to please not renew our contract with Flock and to please remove all those cameras. Mass surveillance is a bigger issue than just what's happening with our city and yeah, Constitution, Orwell, et cetera. Thank you. Yeah, and I really don't feel safe with that. And also, I do appreciate the Monterey Park police, they have been incredibly responsive when I've had to call them in the past. And so I want to say the trust is not with them. If the lack of trust is not with Monterey Park, or the leadership is with big tech companies and the misuse of data.

Thank you.

Rachel Lim?

Oh, Kim? I'm sorry, Rachel Kim, I apologize, at 846 West Mabel Avenue, 91754. All right, okay. Hold on. Oh, hello, Paul? Oh, so I guess we actually did have someone speak already for 9A, and so I, and actually the item is on the old business, I mean, I don't know if you want to speak right now for the item.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for everyone who spoke on FLOC. I was not very well informed on it prior to this meeting, and I thank everyone for the information. uh... i'm sp actually mostly asking for information on nine a uh... one i wanted to know is the city still in a period where it has suspended uh... view requirements or either building a certain amount of affordable housing for developers or paying into a fund that would fund other affordable housing? Can you answer that question at this time? We can answer our question when we get to item 9A. Okay.

But again, so again, you're asking about our IHO and our INLU fees, correct?

I don't know the technical terminology, but that sounds correct.

Yes, thank you. I'll write that down.

All right. Also, based on the community meetings about vibrancy and vitality, and again, I'm going to get the term a little off, I respect that the city is very pro-housing right now and is looking for opportunities to grow housing. I hope that you will all no longer suspend requirements toward affordable housing. Even though it may incentivize developers, I do not see any incentive to ever contribute to affordable housing requirements if it's relying on the generosity of the developers themselves. I hope that the city, if you want to pursue Solutions for our housing crisis will show the city how you can encourage organizations like Habitat for Humanity and other advocates for low-income housing to have opportunities here in this city. I feel like the need for million-dollar condos is great for developers but not great for this city. Thank you.

Okay, thank you so much.

And that concludes public comment. And as always, we appreciate everyone for taking time out to be scheduled to engage with a sorry to split my soda engaging with us. And again, we still have a lot of other important items to discuss. So we hope that you'll stay. Continue on with the agenda. Let's Yes. Now. Oh, Okay. You know, actually, I'm sorry, members, if you feel don't mind, um, I know, we haven't gotten to the full consent calendar. But I think when the items are someone who's been waiting, would we be okay, we pull item 10. E, please. There is this well, a staff report as well as the speaker. So, okay. Yeah, that's fine. Okay, all right. Yes? I'll put any for discussion. Okay, okay, okay. So let's pull item 10E, and if we could actually get a staff report as well as invite a speaker, so.

Mr. Mayor, if I may just very briefly, I know we're transitioning to a new part. I just wanted to see a lot of people trickling out. I wanted to thank people who came out today to speak on this item, encourage you to come out to our workshop next week and talk more about flock and have a lot of those questions answered. I know our police chief will be there. We will be there as well. But thank you for coming out because I know we're starting to transition to other items and hope to see you there. Thank you. Thank you.

Staff report please. Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. Memo Chavez, Recreation Supervisor with the Community Services Department. Tonight, staff is very pleased to recommend the acceptance of a generous donation of $29,510 from the Friends of the Seniors Langley Center on behalf of the City of Monterey Park. The Friends of the Seniors was established in 1986 as a nonprofit 501c3 organization with the mission of raising funds to support and enhance the activities, programs, and operations at Langley Center. The funds will allow us to purchase new tables, chairs, exercise bikes, a photo booth, and arcade-style games, providing additional recreational opportunities and enriching the experience for our older adult participants. The Aging Commission has also reviewed and supports this request. And in accordance with the City Resolution Number 11776, staff respectfully recommends that the City Council accept this generous donation. Robert Aguirre, Recreation Director, and myself are here for any questions you may have. And also in attendance, we have President of the Friends of the Seniors, John Gee.

Mr. Gee, thank you so much.

This is a technological improvement. Mr. Mayor, honorable city council, I think I've submitted a letter that references this, but I'm going to try and collapse it to its essentials. Because I am short, I endeavor to be brief. I was a resident of Monterey Park for 36 years from 1976 to 2012. Had to move to Orange County because my grandchildren's parents moved there but they worked in Los Angeles so I had to move. Robert and others may remember me while I was here attending city council meetings for over a decade, I believe. I was also a member of commissions and committees. The Friends of the Seniors suddenly became a foundation because John Wong died. And there was a lapse in participation because of COVID and his battle with leukemia. So I got asked, because I was president of the nonprofit for a number of years, to come back and to sort out the problems and to begin activating what is the mission, purpose, and role of Friends of the Seniors. Basically, I want to first introduce the members of the board here. And there are only five because that was the original foundation of the organization, five board members. I'm president. Vice president is Charles Mao, who is sitting right there. He's a member of the commission, and he's been a member of the board for, I think, over 20 years. Betty Chu, who was a city council member and a mayor, is treasurer. You know, Michelle, I keep getting that wrong after 40 years, is your city clerk. I've known her for 40 years and her parents were very close friends with me. And then I ran into Margaret Leon and she impressed me with her work on the Barnes Pool effort to reestablish it. So that's me. And I believe we should talk a little bit about Beth Ryan. Beth Ryan led, yeah, everybody knows the Langley Center for 40 years, from 1967 to 2007. She established in 1986 a nonprofit. Its purpose was to enhance things at Langley Center that budget limitations and competing community priorities would not allow. She raised over $500,000 and as a result of that, she expanded Langley Center by 5,000 square feet from 12,000 square feet to 17,000 square feet. Now, the cut to the chase. We believe in collaboration, cooperation, and participation of the city council, of city staff, and the Commission on Aging to bring back active programs that will make Langley Center second to none. And to do this, we plan to take well, we plan to accept grant applications. But we also want to say that if we have an idea that we think is good, we may go the route of request for proposal for providers and other things to submit and a proposal that satisfies what we and the commission on aging and the city feel is appropriate. So what I'm trying to say is Beth, let's let's a endowment of $600,000. It is her love gift to the city's senior citizens. We at the Friends of the Seniors take that seriously. We understand that we are fiduciaries of that endowment and that we will distribute 5% of the total endowment each year, but it will grow and contract what we can provide funds for. So what I'm here to say is we're ready to reactivate Friends of the Seniors. We're ready to collaborate and participate and partner with the city, the staff, and the Commission on Aging to make Langley Center, what Beth dreamed it should be. Thank you. I can answer questions if you wish. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Again, such generosity from someone who has been involved in our community for decades, you and your board. Colleagues, please, any questions for the item?

um just wanted to thank the friends of seniors um it's great to have you back i know you were involved with the city before and welcoming everyone everyone to come up after my colleagues have had a chance to speak thank you very much thank you john and friends of seniors i i know over the last couple years i

the team over there, they know that we redid the flooring, added some stuff to the weight room, the ping pong tables, the pool table, and this will come in handy, because that renovation, although relatively new, that building is relatively old, so we need infrastructure. I think that money's gonna come in very handy. I can tell those guys are waiting.

Well, the money is insufficient, okay? to bring back the infrastructure to what it should be. So we will have to develop a relationship that will raise funds to do that. And we will ultimately work out a plan with Robert and the staff and the Commission on Aging, whose Diane is here, to develop a way to raise funds and to bring what I believe the older part and the newer part up to code as well as improve it. And maybe, and maybe if we raise enough funds to expand it. Okay.

Thanks, John. It's good to see you. It's been a little while. And really appreciate the friends and the board members here who are being generous and supporting our programming here at Langley Senior Center and the city. I'm sure I know the staff are very grateful to the council. I am very grateful for that and good to see that you're already working closely with and partnering with.

We will be. They will be joining our next meeting. And we hope to have them participate in those meetings from now on.

Yeah, look forward to that and it looks like they're excited as well. Uh, and it sounds like you've already connected with some other. I know there are at least 2 nonprofits, other nonprofit organizations in the city. They're working to support. Recreation parks, uh, programming and facilities in the city. I think this is a great model. For these other nonprofits potentially to to learn from and to to think through as well as they're. preparing and working on their own efforts for the pool and other things in the community. Great to see that the mission and the work of the Friends of the Senior Center are going very, very well. It was a very healthy endowment that you've been able to establish and I know that many... Well, Beth established. Yeah, Beth and continuing that legacy and know that many generations of people will continue to benefit here in the community of Maury Park because of that. And it would be great to model this and provide this as a case study for other organizations in the state.

Well, I warn you that by September of 27, I will hopefully fade away as president and do something else. I am 78 years old. It is a 55 mile drive from where I live to here. and that I stopped being the president of Friends of Seniors because I had cataract problems and I couldn't drive at night. So we all age. God may be ready for me sometime soon. So I will try to help those who are here on the board and to find someone else that will add to the board after i'm gone thank you appreciate it sean

Thank you, John, for sharing, especially the story and the background to the funds and sharing a little bit about Beth Ryan. I know for a lot of us this is newer information, but thank you for your generosity. I hope there's an opportunity to be able to publicize this, but also take a picture before John leaves. And the 55 miles that you travel every day shows your love for this community, so I really appreciate that.

Well, I still miss the food here. It's much more superior than Orange County Chinese food.

Well said. Thank you.

But really, we have to remember that Beth loved this city. Beth loved the seniors in this city. And that Langley Center should not only just cater to one specific ethnic group, One of the things that I want to explore is to expand it to other ethnic groups like the Hispanics and others and have education programs that will support health, nutrition, and arts and crafts. But that will take time. It's gonna be beyond me to see it.

Thank you. Thank you so much again for your generosity.

It's not my generosity. Let me put this way. It was a unanimous vote of the board after a lot of hard work and a lot of hard thinking, because if you think about it, the first reaction I had, well, the tables are the city's responsibility. Then I thought about the health and safety of the seniors there. I thought about best priority, health and safety. And therefore we worked through my objections and others to come to this donation. And I'm sorry if I'm correcting you, but I think it should be understood that we debate all this. Sometimes blood may be on the floor, but we decided on doing this.

Thank you so much. Members, since we do have item 10E before us, perhaps we can take a vote on the item and then afterwards go down and formally give our congratulations and also our appreciation, not just to Mr. G, but to the entire board of Friends of the Senior. Well, I'll move to accept the item. Okay. Moved by Councillor Van Gogh. May I have a second, please? I'll second. Seconded by Mayor Pro Tem. Hearing no further debate or discussion, members please vote.

Approved unanimously.

And thank you. Thank you for accepting it. I'm sure you could have rejected it.

All right, first to me, one, two, three. Everybody to me, right here.

Yep, yep, there you go.

Okay. Well, remember, again, thank you very much for your flexibility tonight and to the audience for also working with us. Okay, can you be a jet? Hmm. Continue with the agenda. Let's see. Let's continue with staff communications. Brigham our library. Come on down.

All right, hello, good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, council members and community members. My name is Summer Blake and I am the Senior Librarian for Children's Services at the Monterey Park Bruggemeier Library. Can I have, yes. So we just completed our summer reading program. It just ended this past Saturday, August 1st. So we just have a little bit of information about some of the programs and attendance that we had over the course of our summer reading program, which took place throughout June and July. So we at the library had a total of 235 programs with a total attendance of 6,007. And then we also had 1,024 people register for our summer reading program that includes people of all ages. We had a program for children, a program for teens, and a program for adults. Here are just a few pictures from some of the programs that we offered over the summer. I'll just do a quick recap. In the top left there, we have some winners from our spicy romance trivia party event that we had, and the winners of that trivia event got some romance novels. In the top middle there, we had the opening of our Duty, Honor, Country, Courage exhibition honoring Asian Americans and military service. That exhibition took place the opening day. An event happened where we had a panel with military veterans who were able to come and do a community discussion. We still have that exhibition happening right now. Then in the top right we have a picture from our teen entrepreneurs program where teens were able to visit the courtyard by Marriott here in Monterey Park and learn about careers in the hospitality industry. On the bottom left we have a picture from a glow-in-the-dance Glow in the Dance, Glow in the Dark Dance Party. It was called Monterey Park Boogie Meyer Dance Party. It was a mouthful, but we loved that name. So that was for kids of all ages. Then next to that, we have a picture from one of our wood shop events that we had for children ages seven to 12. We had four different wood shop events with small wood shop projects that children were able to do, donated by Home Depot. Next to that we have one of our volunteers for our Literacy for All of Monterey Park program teaching a literacy class for us. And then on the bottom right we have a picture from our Unearth Your Creativity series where participants were able to make their own DIY puzzle picture frames. All right, so on to what we have going on now. So even though our summer reading program has ended, we do have a really lovely reading program that goes on year round. It is called 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten, and it is geared toward children ages zero to five with the goal of reading a total of 1,000 books before they enter kindergarten. As with all of our reading programs involving children, these books do not have to be read independently by the children. Any books read with caregivers, parents to the children count toward the total count. It's encouraging early literacy, kindergarten readiness, um and children are able to pick up a little incentive prizes along the way for every 100 books that they read they can also put their name on these cute little rainbow circles different colored circles that we have that we put up on the wall in the children's department so they can see tangible evidence of their achievement and they can register families can register for that program at montereypark.beanstack.org there's a qr code right there as well and all of that information is available on our website as well All right, for teens, we have a fun event coming up on Saturday, August 22nd at 3 p.m. We have a back to school social where there will be an UNO tournament. This is one of the many great events we have for teens where they can come, make new friends, hang out with old friends, and also learn a little bit more about our Junior Friends Program. Our Junior Friends Program is sort of our support group run by the teenage group where they can have a say in some of the programs that we do for their age group and they can also gain volunteer hours as well as just have an opportunity to connect with each other socially. All right, so we also have an event coming up on Saturday, August 29th. It is the One Family Between Chinatown and Little Taipei. So this is a program for adults, and it's an opportunity to learn about the history of Chinese theater and film. There's going to be a screening of the film, My Favorite Season. which is in Mandarin and has English subtitles. And then there's going to be a community discussion following the screening with experts from the Kuo Hua Theater and Sing Lee Theater. All right, and this last slide here highlights our LAMP program, which is Literacy for All of Monterey Park. This is just a sample of some of the classes that LAMP is offering for their fall semester, which runs August through November. These classes here are a part of the English language classes. and these help English language learners with reading and writing. Additionally, besides what you see here, we do have other classes such as English conversation classes, ESL classes, and citizenship preparation classes. So registration for the fall semester closes on September 12th, so there is still time for community members to register for those classes. Anyone interested can come upstairs to the LAMP department and register in person. all right so that is just a little bit of a highlight of what we've been doing over the summer and some of what we'll be doing upcoming this month thank you for giving me the opportunity to highlight some of the amazing things we do over at the library and i'm happy to answer any questions you may have sure but you said that's a little bit wow that is a very small sample of everything that we did over the summer yes okay members thank you for the presentation our library always has so many great programs uh out of curiosity what's the prize for the uno tournament That I do not know what the prize for the Uno tournament is. I'm not sure. Other than the feeling of being a champion, I'm sure there's something else.

Thank you, Summer, for that presentation. And again, thank you to our library staff for keeping the summer going. I'm sure the parents were appreciative of you guys preparing all the activities for the kids. And students, they're going to say, I'd rather be at the library than go back to school, maybe some of them. But summer's over, and we look forward to everybody going back to school. Right, Mayor Pro Tem?

I also wanted to thank the library and library staff for the presentation and all the activities that you have going out throughout the summer, not just the summer, but throughout the school year. I think it's always so great for parents like myself to always have something happening within our city, not just in the library, but Parks and Rec and many other departments. just so much activity happening here in the city and i hear that often from from other families and parents so thank you so much especially i'm especially in fact i took a picture and i sent it to my wife of the um what is it the literacy program i think that's a really great opportunity to promote literacy at a very young age and that is so important importantly necessary today as we know libraries are the real ai data centers so we need to keep supporting our libraries and our and our um and our schools. Thank you. Looking forward to that. I have one kid who's under five, so I'm gonna enroll her immediately.

Please sign up.

Well, as always, thank you so much. And also, all the information is on the library's website, correct? Yes, all the information is on our website. Thank you so much. All right, thank you very much. Okay, next, Recreation and Community Services.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and members of the City Council. My name is Alejandra Sousa, and I will be presenting programs for the Recreation and Community Services today. Starting off, we would like to thank everyone who came out and participated in two of our recent trips. Our community recently took a trip to see Mama Mia at the Amundsen Theater and Smokey Robinson and Gladys Knight at the Hollywood Bowl. Both were successful, sold-out trips, and we received plenty of positive feedback from the community, and they were always asking, where are we going to go next? Next slide, please. Next, thank you to the Recreation and Parks Commission. We will be having MPK night at Dodger Stadium on August 15th at 4.15 to watch the Dodgers take on the Brewers. This event is now sold out, but we are very excited awaiting this event. Next slide, please. On August 18th at 1 p.m., Langley Center will be showcasing the Hunger Games. Adults 50 and over are invited to join us in watching the Hunger Games with complimentary snacks and popcorn. On Tuesday, August 25th at 6 p.m., Langley Center will be having a night out event. This event will feature a full dinner, live entertainment, and dancing. This event is $10, however, by popular demand, it is also now sold out. However, we are very excited for everyone attending. On Thursday, August 20th at 1 p.m., Langley Center will be having a country line dance. This event will feature a line dance instructor to teach participants how to line dance some fried chicken and great live country music. Next slide, please. We are wrapping up the summer with our last summer movies in the park. This Thursday, we will be showcasing the movie Sharktail at George Elder Pool. Families are invited to join us in watching the movie while swimming or enjoying it from the pool deck. And then we would like to remind everyone that our Barnes Park Extended Daycare begins next week on August 13th. This is a licensed afterschool program for ages five to 12. There is still space available for anyone interested. Please contact the Barnes Park Daycare. Next slide, please. And then join us on September 11th in front of City Hall as we honor the fallen on 9-11. This event will begin at 8.30 a.m. in front of City Hall. and then last but not least uh save the date for our annual monster mash event get excited to join us as we have another fun filled event with live entertainment games food truck and lots of vendors to trick-or-treat at and thank you that concludes our presentation i'll be happy to answer any questions thank you so much members questions

Alejandra and Robert back there and Memo, thanks for all your great work for all the activities. Never to be outdone by the library. You guys are just neck and neck in terms of getting activities. And I think with the additional dollars from the Friends of Langley, might put you guys over the top. So libraries got a little more work to do next time. Thank you.

Thank you, Parks and Rec, for the presentation, but for all of the events that you guys do. I had the opportunity to attend the Smokey Robinson and Gladys Knight event. It was so great to see so many Monterey Park residents out. We had two coach buses, actually, that went out with so many people. But it was a fun event. I'm just sad I wasn't able to make it to the Mamma Mia event. But yes. It was a great time. It took my wife, so it was like date night for us. But I really encourage people who are here who have not had the opportunity to go to any of these events that you check them out because they're fun-filled. People are very generous, sharing all their snacks and sharing a lot of different stories. So it's a fun time. My wife and I really enjoyed it. So thank you so much for organizing and arranging that. Looking forward definitely to the next event.

As always, thank you for a very comprehensive presentation. And again, all this information is on your website, correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, let's see. Okay, members, moving on to Code Business 9a, consideration and possible action to place a proposition on the November 3rd, 2026 ballot amending the land use and urban design element to create home overlays in cities, commercial industrial areas as identified on a land use policy map and to direct preparation of the implementation, implementing the home overlay zoning regulations. Staff, please present report.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor Low and City Council. I'm Tim Howe, Director of Community Development. As you mentioned, the item tonight is consideration and action to place the proposition on the November 3rd ballot. I will note just the one minor correction. There is an amended Exhibit A to the first attachment, which is the resolution itself. that is the exhibit showing the full text of the ballot measure there was a clerical error on staff's part and the most up-to-date version was not provided a red line copy is with you each at the dice and has been included in the copy that's available for the public on the binder in the back On July 15th, after receiving the vacant firemen community engagement summary, city council directed staff to return with the documents necessary to create HOME, H-O-M-E, acronym short for housing overlay, mixed environments, overlays throughout the city, and to place a ballot proposition affecting that change before the voters at the November 3rd, 2026 general municipal election. If approved by voters, the proposed proposition would amend the land use and urban design element to identify the commercial industrial areas where a home land use designation may be applied. A separately adopted resolution would identify areas within the city's jurisdiction that may utilize the home land use designation. That resolution would be ratified by voters throughout the home proposition. The about proposition would not itself adopt zoning regulations. If the voters approve it, council may then adopt the implementing home zoning regulations by ordinance. Thereafter, a home zoning overlay would be activated on only through approval by the city council following public hearing and community input. Since 2020, the city has seen a growing number of vacant and underutilized commercial industrial properties, leaving obsolete office and retail space that generates limited economic benefit and contributes to blight. Measure JJ in 2020 set a fixed vision for these areas, but did not give the city the ability to respond proactively as economic and housing conditions changed. Reusing vacant industrial commercial and industrial land for housing can help the city meet state RENA requirements to plan for an additional 5,257 new housing units between 2021 and 2029. And importantly, any amendment to the land use element would require voter approval. The amendment would identify maps separately adopted by the city council, where a home land use designation may be applied those areas would consist of the city's commercial industrial areas. Established single family and low density residential zones would be excluded the proposition would not itself adopt zoning regulations. It would amend the land use element to authorize council to adopt the zoning regulations needed to implement the home overlay. Next one. First, the voters would approve the proposition amending the land use element and its land use policy map. Second, council may adopt zoning regulations that establish the standards and the process for a home overlay. Third, a developer may apply to activate the home overlay on a particular parcel under those standards. This framework is similar to the city's existing business recovery development agreement zone, BRDZ, but instead to promote and enable commercial uses, this is to enable housing. A home overlay would be an optional flexible designation Council would retain a completely discretionary approval process and may decline to make the home overlay available in any given area through the zoning process. And it may deny an individual project even when the land use map allows the home overlay. So how would the overlay concept work in steps? This is largely reiterating what was mentioned earlier. Step one is the general plan. land use designation, which would be approved by voters. As proposed, that would be in November. Then step two, subsequent to that, would be zoning regulations as approved by city council. And there would be an engagement effort that would inform that. And finally, step three would be an application by a property owner or housing developer that would need to be reviewed and approved by city council before anything is built. The home overlay would operate in those distinct layers. Importantly, the home designation sits in the general plan and thus is approved by voters. The housing overlay mixed environments land use designation would be established in the land use element and shown on the land use policy map. This designation, again, can only be created by the voters. If voters approve the proposition, the city council may adopt implementing zoning regulations by ordinance those regulations may establish the home overlay zone as a holding zone laid over an eligible parcels underlying commercial or industrial zone. and identify the range of housing uses allowed, as well as setting the standards and process for activation. The earliest in any development could proceed under a home overlay would follow the adoption of such zoning regulations. Following are the maps that would be amended through this. These are the land use policy maps. This shows the overlay areas across the city. And we'll now zoom into Specific areas of the city starting with the northwest section of the city including Monterey Pass Road corporate center and Atlantic Boulevard Overlay areas again. These are the primary commercial and industrial zones areas currently in the city the next one is the Garfield village area, so this is the South Garfield area Next is covers our east-west corridor, the Garvey Corridor, as well as the North Atlantic Boulevard Corridor, the Garfield Corridor, as well as in that top rightmost corner in the northeast corner of the city, that's the North New commercial area. Next is the Saturn Park area, as well as other commercial areas and industrial areas within the southeast corner of the city. And last, the South Atlantic area. City Council has the authority to place a measure on the ballot for the November 3 2026 general election, the last day to place the proposition on the ballot is August 7 the accompanying resolutions are presented so now so that Council may act within that deadline. The council has discretion to direct preparation of an impartial analysis of the measure for inclusion in the sample ballot and voter information pamphlet. Council has the discretion of authorizing its membership to file written arguments regarding the measure and to adopt provisions to provide for the filing of rebuttal arguments. An argument for or against may not exceed 300 words and may be submitted by the city council. Council members authorized by the city council voters eligible to vote on the measure, a bona fide citizens association, or any combination of voters and associations. Rebuttal arguments may be included. In that event, city clerk sends each direct argument to the opposing side and each side may submit a rebuttal not exceeding 250 words. City clerk will set a reasonable deadline for submitting arguments and staff will confirm the specific filing and examination dates per LA County elections calendar for November. Following the election, city clerk will certify the results. If vote is approved, the amendment to the land use element and its land use policy map will take effect and staff will return with the implementing home overlay zone regulations for city council's consideration. And these are the timeline of the key dates coming forward. So now I'll just highlight, If approved by the voters, then following that roughly December 2026 January of next year would kick off the outreach process to develop the zoning ordinance language. Calling the election and placing this proposition before voters will advance the strategic plan goals to strengthen our local economy and enhance housing opportunities by creating. Mayor Mrakas, opportunities to return vacant and under used commercial and industrial land to productive use and to expand the range of housing available in the city. Mayor Mrakas, recommendation is to adopt. Mayor Mrakas, A number of resolutions will first to add a proposition to the ballot, creating the home overlays. The second is to separately adopt a resolution adopting the land use policy maps as shown for the home land use designation. Third is adopting resolutions requesting the impartial analysis and establishing procedures for ballot arguments. Fourth is determining whether Council should submit an argument in favor of the proposition. Fifth is directing staff to return with the implementing zoning regulations for council's consideration and adoption in the event that the proposition is approved. And if there are any such additional actions, we will entertain those as well. That concludes staff's presentation. I'm available for any questions. I will address the one question from the speaker previously, just in terms of, I believe the question was regarding whether or not the city's inclusionary housing regulations are currently being enforced. and they currently are they remain on pause they have been on pause since they were formulated and established and the most recent conversation before council was maybe two or three council meetings ago where an update just in terms of feasibility was discussed

Thank you. I actually had a follow up question, though. But again, given that affordability, accessibility is an issue for many of us. And again, the city did have its housing element approved by the state of California's Housing and Community Development Agency in 2023. And in that planning for different income levels is also part of that requirement and condition of the state's approval. How would this also help meet our housing element obligations, given that every 10 years, every city in the state of California is obligated to meet its housing element obligations?

City Council Chambers, From staff perspective, this would help significantly by increasing the available locations within the city that may be viable to produce housing units frankly expanding beyond the housing invent sites inventory that was approved for the 5200 units.

Great. And then also some of the legislation that either is currently under discussion in Sacramento or has been passed, uh, regarding again, uh, housing near transit, would this also, uh, be potentially helpful for us to also given these new tools from the state of California?

Yes, I think seen in tandem for potential projects, this is beneficial for projects to be able to take advantage of recent state laws that have been in an effort to facilitate housing development. Oftentimes that challenge is looking for available parcels or available land that is available for that. However, the underlying land uses would not allow those projects to really qualify for those state pathways. So this helps ease that as well. It expands opportunities.

Thank you very much. Thank you. And forgive me, I know I spoke out of turn, but please, members.

Well, thank you for that thorough presentation, Tim. And I know this was a long process getting to this point. There's been surveys sent out to the community, various community sessions hosted to gather input from our residents and community members. So I think it's great that we're at this point where we can put it on the ballot for November and have our residents vote on it.

Thank you. Next. I'm going to echo on that sentiment. Thank you, Tim, for putting together the presentation and also for the, I think there were at least three over the last three months, but this goes back even further than that. The public engagement and the community kind of sharing the voice on what we need to do on the vacant lots in our city. So I'm supportive of this.

Thank you. I'll echo my council colleagues in terms of appreciation for all the community members that showed up to the vacant environment sessions that we held and the staff for putting this together. I know this was done in a very, very robust manner, but also we did it in a relatively short time period in terms of getting it to where it's ready for the ballot. And so appreciate all the work that went into this across a lot of departments. And this is the culmination of a lot of good discussions, even before vacant or vibrant going back many years in terms of how. As the mayor alluded to how how we were answering the question of how Mario park is going to meet the state's requirements and our our wider regional statewide kind of need for housing and address the housing crisis. City Council Chambers and the need to build more housing in all communities, and we need to do our part here in Maury park and we're far from it, I pointed out last meeting. That if you look at the number of housing units that have come online in the last five years or so I think less than 100 units every year. of housing, new units each year. And our state regional housing needs assessment goal is the plan. We don't necessarily expect any most, I don't think the state expects anyone to, very many people to actually meet the entire goal of building the number of units in their arena goals. But our arena goals are 5,200 or so units, right, Tim, between 2021 and 2029, so this eight-year plan cycle. We have not even come close to that we've done the planning and approved the state has approved our housing element But in terms of the reality of actually implementing and getting units built We're a long ways off the bulk of the units that we've seen every year in Monterey Park have been ad use not actual new housing units Just about every year and so we've got a long ways to go and I mentioned this the last meeting when we directed staff to bring this to us as about measure for proposing this as a ballot measure and to bring the language for us to consider. We need to get ahead of this because the state continues to come down to be prescriptive in telling the cities what to do and forcing the cities to do certain things, including things like ADUs and other requirements where the city is losing control in terms of where we can determine where housing units are going to go and what makes sense in terms of our infrastructure and how we can minimize risk and impact to the our existing residential neighborhoods and our communities. And so this this allows the city to have another tool to really determine our own future and help meet our our goals and our requirements to build more housing in the city, but also to make sure that we give fewer and fewer reasons for the state to take that control away from us and for us to determine our own future and what our communities are going to look like going into the future. So appreciate that this is before us. I do have a couple of questions about how this is going to be implemented, though. i know we've i fully support this uh and bringing this authority to the city council uh and as that was stated in the staff report in last meeting as well i want to make clear this does not approve any housing products mixed use projects on these properties or these parcels in the city this just allows the city and the city council have a tool to have an option to do so it doesn't not automatically approve any projects doesn't automatically approve any any kind of development in these areas just gives the tool for the council to consider those things there will still be a public hearing and requirement for community engagement before the council takes action even on on allowing these home overlay zones in the city to that end uh right questions for carl or for tim right we're we've City Council Chambers, establish these maps to show in linking if the ballot measure passes. City Council Chambers, pointing to the maps of where this where the Council would be able to implement these home overlay zones is that a requirement, do we have to have. maps to point to to point out specific areas. And my question really is because as I look at this map, I see some areas that are not R1, R2, or R3, but that could potentially be good places. I understand why some of them may have been excluded. For example, St. Stephen's has been closed as a school for a number of years. It looks like we've included it here on Garvey Avenue for eligibility for home overlay zone. But St. Thomas, which is still open on south or mid-Atlantic, I guess, still open to the school. But I don't know where their numbers are in terms of enrollment. But I think at some point, they may be in a similar situation to St. Stephen's where potentially redevelopment could be an option for that site. But it's excluded from what I can tell from this map from that potential opportunity, at least with this ballot measure. and one of the earlier speakers during public comment noted their property right was excluded lost in the mix somehow when we did the 2020 land use element measure jj and their property was inadvertently rezoned to be commercial Thanks. Rezoned to be commercial when they intended to and still intend for it to be developed as a residential property. And we want to clean that up. Part of the reason, and I pointed to that during the Faking the Vibrant workshops as a reason why the City Council needs this tool to be able to make those adjustments for zoning in some of these areas that make sense. I'm a little worried about losing out and inadvertently not losing the authority or the flexibility on some of these parcels that might make sense, make a lot of sense, actually, as I look at this for home overlay zones. And so that's my question and just wondering how we can add some more flexibility if it's required to have a map or if we can just point to language that excludes specifically residential zoning in the city so that it's wider and more flexible for the council.

Mayor Mrakas, Thank you, Mr members of the Council i'll let TIM explain how the maps were derived. Mayor Mrakas, legal answer to your question is yes, the maps need to be amended, because the land use element itself has a land use policy map in which all of the different designations for land use are identified within that particular map. What we did do, though, is in order to reduce hopefully the confusion of voters in reviewing a ballot proposition with a bunch of maps attached to it, because I've seen that with other ballot propositions, is these are being adopted separately by city council resolution. And that resolution would then be ratified by voters as part of the overall ballot proposition. So these maps would be viewed via a dedicated web page associated with this resolution. That is the legal response to your question. How these maps were derived and why these particular areas were designated, that's part of the process. And I'll let Tim talk to you about that part of it. But the next part of your question is, can you expand beyond that? And the practical and legal answer is yes. You could put in additional maps, put in additional areas, and what have you. The reason that these maps are this way are, as Tim will explain, because it went through a process in order to identify these specific areas.

Thank you. Thank you, Carl. Yes, Council Member Wong, the land use policy maps that are proposed before you, those were informed frankly by the vacant vibrant efforts, the feedback we had heard, the discussions largely centered around a focus on the city's existing commercial and industrial zoned areas. The areas you mentioned, I believe those either all are or most are that have an underlying land use designation of probably public facilities. That was not necessarily a discussion point during the vacant environment discussions and this effort in pulling together these locations was very much informed by those discussions. Now that being said, that does not exclude these locations from potential opportunities for housing development.

those opportunities exist now through separate channels so although it may not be addressed here through this home overlay there are other avenues in anticipation of your next question of what those avenues might be the areas that are designated through a land use process as public facilities in our own for example by the school district school districts don't have land use authority cities have land use authority so if those cities were those schools were for example to be closed and surplus by the school district the there is a process whereby the city may zone that area based upon the surrounding zoning for those particular parcels and come up with a zoning plan that makes sense for those parcels there's an open question of whether or not the land use map should be

amended then at some point to reflect what that new zoning might be but that's the simple answer to your anticipated question so so you're saying we would have for properties that maybe exclude that right public facilities the avenue to update their zoning would be updating or land yourself

would be zoning there's a surplus surplusing process that the school district would have to go to and the school district would then ask the city to rezone that property from public facility for example to depending on whatever was surrounding that particular piece of property let's just say r2 i don't have the map in front of me but let's just say it's r2 city council then has the option of zoning that property r2 And in the future, the land use map should be updated. But actually, the state law is going to supersede that process.

So in the example of a school property or other public facility, we could adjust the zoning without going to evoke people? Correct. That's helpful for the school properties. So I also noticed that, right, Right, where the Maury Park Golf Course is, Luminaria is, Maury Hill, well, the former Maury Hill Steakhouse, right, understanding there are other underlying reasons for why you can't do necessarily mixed-use development. But if there were a case or a time where investments were made to allow for housing or other developments to happen there, that would all, right, this, because the map is as it is, not allowing home overlay there, would have to go through the land-use element to revise that zoning. Right. based upon current law yes i can't fight a crystal ball i'd be cruising somewhere and so if there are properties that are missing from this map to update the map in the future would have to go to a vote with people right yes mr mayor members of the council the the

the requirement for voter approval for changes to the land use element occurred in the 80s and has been never been delegated back to the city council in its entirety. So the land use propositions that this council has seen most recently with measure NDC, for example, gives explicit authority by the voters to the city council to implement the changes made by the ballot proposition through zoning. But absent that explicit authorization from the voters, the city council, unlike

most city councils quite frankly does not have that ability it has to wait for voter approval for changes to the land use element understood with that said is can we add potentially some parcels right now to this map legally yes because you have not yet put it onto the ballot i would suggest adding uh right where the property where st thomas is uh where socal gas facility is i don't know if they're planning to Reduce or expand whatever their use there, but just having the opportunity there, knowing that it's not currently are two or residential Lee's owned in those areas. And particularly for St Thomas because that's i'm that's essentially the same as St stephens and we're we're putting a home overlay zone over St stephens on Garvey at this point um. I don't know what other properties are missing. I'm not here to, I don't know, we're at a deadline to get this on the ballot for November. So I don't want to nitpick there. If we need to go back to the ballot at some point in the future, I imagine we'll have to do that to do this anyway for other things. And I don't want to hold it up, but those are some examples that I would suggest adding to the map tonight. for consideration putting this on the ballot. And I'll defer to my colleagues as I look for other potential parcels that might make sense to add tonight. But if you want to go first.

All right.

Thank you, Tim, for that presentation. I don't have too many questions. Actually, I'm more excited about the possibility, well, I'm in favor of this ballot, but if the proposition, if this ballot passes, I'm excited about the opportunity to be able to build more housing in areas that we haven't been able to. I know that a lot of the questions that we get as council members has been why certain areas of the city are not developed, and a lot of the time it's because they're just not zoned for that particular development. And I think when we had the Vacant to Vibrant workshops, I think one of the great things that we were able to discuss and discover together was just how outdated some of the zoning was that allowed for other different uses that just make no sense today. And so I think the areas that we've highlighted provide some opportunity. I know some of those are in my district in the South Atlantic area that I think would be useful for development in terms of housing especially around the ELAC area so very excited and to see some of some developments if the if the proposition passes but I think that the map to me at least makes sense especially in the Garvey area as well and the areas that we've highlighted and I know that some concerns were around our one but that's not touching any of those areas specifically. So, you know, the areas that we're focusing on are areas that have some potential. So I'm completely in favor of this, moving this forward as it is.

Thank you.

Thank you, colleagues and staff for, I think, very good conversation. I'll just, my remark very briefly, just say that, and this is something that I said at several of our vacant vibrancy workshops is that in 2020, we actually twice, put our land use element on the ballot to voters to decide because we need to update our land use element and our planning documents and it's a very unique situation for Monterey Park because like many of the things we do we oftentimes when it comes to land use or other policy issues we ask the voters to decide you know rightly so because it's a democratic process having said that though is that It then becomes a political question. And so I think for many of us. In sitting here on the days, sitting in audience, people have written to us is, you know, again, how do we update our housing policies? Especially because since the pandemic, a lot of things have changed how people work. Where people live formation of families and so should this council decide to put this on the ballot, then it becomes and again, a political question in November and. Power is in our hands, of course community and everyone who lives in Monterey Park again The question is, you know, if you believe that we knew we do need to update adapt Our housing overlay policies and that's where you have the opportunity to weigh in on This measure and I'll leave at that. Okay Let's see My understanding is that for this item, there is an action that we need to take is, well, one, determining whether the city council should submit an argument in favor of the ballot proposition. Is that correct? Okay. Okay. Members?

I'll make the motion to adopt staff recommendation and put this measure on the ballot and to have The mayor the the drafting of a ballot argument with the if he's interested yeah sure and. To add. Right the parcels were St steep for St thomas's in the socal gas facility on Atlantic. I know school is a gap on Garvey not I don't anticipate them closing but this is about flexibility right for decades to come so I know school to match where st. Stevens is in terms of allowing home overlay zones I would also unless there's a reason otherwise everything that's west of the 710 freeway why for only I only I see the home overlay zone on some of the facilities on the north part I don't know why we wouldn't go all the way down to at least add some flexibility not knowing that it would be very hard to develop anything there and most of that's already public facilities for LA County but would be good to at least explore the potential and then a good part of where right the Part of the hill where lumen areas is where where Marty steakhouse used to be would make sense to me as well, on the other side of the freeway. And if my colleagues have spotted anything else happy to add those those as well, but those are what stand out to me as places that we should add to the mix for this.

If I may, Council Member Wong and honorable council members, as mentioned before, just to piggyback on what was shared earlier, there is existing state law that allows housing on school properties. There's also existing state law that allows housing on religious institution properties. that may address the need for some of these inclusions.

So you're saying that leaves only the parcels on SoCal gas by Atlantic and then the stick house, right? Because when you move the two churches and the INS school, even though that's like the long-term potential.

I have a question, I'm not sure if we're still answering theirs, yeah.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, just for, so city council members, The presentations that the staff made during their Vacancy Vibrant meetings really focused on the commercial and industrial areas of the city. So some of the other parcels that are being brought up tonight, the public facilities specifically, public facilities will have to go to the surplus land anyways if there was gonna be that type of determination in the future. So if the council is interested, as our city attorney mentioned, yes, we could add it tonight. However, we didn't include those parcels in our discussion. So just wanna be cautious about that. And as I mentioned, the public facility spaces does have a process if there were potential opportunities for the schools, to want to develop if they choose to close. Understand St. Stephen's right now is no longer operating the school portion. They're operating still as a church. So understand that that is included. But the other schools, we haven't had any indications that there's plans for that. I understand we're thinking about flexibility and long-term planning. There could be opportunities in the future. I just wanted to bring that up that to be mindful about our engagement process.

yeah given that i i would rather keep it as this because that's what we've put in front of the community that's what everyone has discussed and accepted if we add these last parcels last minute without input from the community you know we risk them not voting on it

I commend our colleagues efforts to try to find more parcels in the city to be able to add housing but I am in agreement with council member Yang that these are the maps that we did share with the public and I think in keeping with transparency I know there's not a lot of people here today or tonight I mean there are a lot of people here tonight but not everyone is here tonight to be able to to share in. But I think some of the parcels that Council Member Wong is talking about, as you shared, could potentially become housing if they applied to or if that became an option, right?

Correct. Under state law, there are avenues for schools, school district properties, as well as religious institutions.

So I'm in favor of moving this item forward just with the current maps as is.

And sorry to chime in one more time, if I may, Mr. Mayor. Of course, yes. That would also apply to our parcels that the city owns for the steakhouse area, because we would have to continue to go through that surplus land act, yes, as well, as a process. So if that was a choice in the future, we would go through that process. It would still be allowable through state law.

Councilman Wong, did you want to?

Well, if the votes aren't there, it's fine. But if I'm wrong, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, right? Surplus Land Act requires us to allow affordable housing developers to come in and have first choice or prior first refusal. It does not allow mixed use development, which is also part of this home overlay zone, which is something I would like to explore on some of these parcels. Understanding that for some of these public facilities, I mean there's still a process to allow for mixed use on some of these parcels we would just require a more robust or more robust effort in terms of a vote if we don't include them on this one right is that if i'm wrong on that, let me know. uh i would like to include some of these parcels i think it still makes sense because uh surplus land would only allow housing not mixed use and mixed use would allow more flexibility if we include it in the home overlay zone uh but i want to get something on the ballot so if we can always we can always go to the ballot again uh down the line if we missed any parcels where we want to add this additional flexibility in some other way too staff any additional comments

I absolutely appreciate the effort to look at every possible parcel. We can certainly, we'll have the opportunity to have more time to examine those properties and the implications of how we can facilitate housing. There's obviously, there may be avenues that exist now that would facilitate a mix of uses for future development as well.

Thank you. You know, if I can just add, and forgive me if I go a little off tangent, is that what Councillor Wong did bring up, I mean, it's something that we should probably consider as a discussion item, because unfortunately, in California, we have been witnessing for now, God, probably two decades now, declining enrollment, and the consequence of that declining enrollment, schools are not fully utilized. I know some school districts have actually had to close campuses down, not just here, but throughout the region because of decline in enrollment. Now, one could also make an argument that perhaps that issue relates to the housing affordability, the decline in enrollment. But nonetheless, as most likely, unfortunately, this will be a trend for foreseeable future, I think that perhaps we should talk to both our public and parochial schools like St. Stephen's that have unfortunately closed due to declining enrollment and other related factors about repurposing because otherwise it is unutilized land. I will say though that I think probably one of the challenges in which, as Tim has mentioned, under state law, school districts actually are legally allowed to build housing. In fact, in some ways, they might even be at a better advantage because as their own entity, they can conduct their own environmental impact review for developing but I think the challenge and again maybe this is something a long-term conversation about partnerships that school districts say well we're in the business of education meaning that you know the people we hire the teacher the administrators they are here to teach not to be housing developers and so there's always a capacity in terms of staff being able to do such work and again if you look at if i'm not mistaken even though statewide it is the law not many school districts have actually taken advantage of that law for the reasons i just cited that it's because school districts again their fundamental duty and mission is to educate and so i think perhaps that is something we should explore about how we could maybe do something innovative how we can partner with school districts to provide you know that resources partnership um because again unfortunately it is a trend that will probably accelerate even um in declining enrollment unfortunately so all right that's my two cents

I'll I'll make the motion if there isn't a second I'll have to make another motion just to adopt staff recommendation but I'll make the motion to to adopt sacramentation and add the parcels I named I can try to name them again and if but there if there isn't a second on that I'll make I'm happy to withdraw that motion and make a motion to adopt staff recommendation.

I'll second the motion to adopt staff recommendation. OK. He had an alternate motion to adopt staff recommendation. I'm seconding that motion.

With the added part. No, no.

OK.

Thank you for the clarification.

Thank you. OK. Well, we have a motion and a second.

Just confirming there's no other speakers on this?

No. Ninth item.

OK.

Okay, well, hearing no further debate or discussion, we have a motion second.

If I may, Mayor Lau, just to make sure we're clear on the motion, then it's staff's recommendation. Part of that motion was designating the mayor to provide ballot arguments. Is that correct? Yes. Okay, thank you.

Okay. We don't get no further discussion. Members, please vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you so much. Okay. Moving on to consent agenda items. And again, keep in mind that we did pull 10 E, uh, uh, out of respect for Mr. G who has to drive home. So, um, so we did vote on 10 E, um, but the other consent agenda items. And so, um, before we pass it, if any members wish to pull an item.

I'll move. Hmm. I'll move consent. And just note, my recuse on 10 h, given my property is within 1000 feet of the Garvey Avenue.

I, I will second but I don't need 10. I pulled I just want to make a reference to it. Okay.

It's okay with you, Mayor.

Okay, make a reference. All right.

Okay, yes. So it looks like it's been moved and seconded. Okay, here we know for the discussion members please vote.

Approved unanimously. Okay.

Now, you said Mayor Pro Tem, there was a reference question you had regarding 10i or the statement?

Yes. On the consent calendar, there is a item 10i, which is the national back to school month resolution. We have many schools in our city. We serve various school districts, including Alhambra Unified, LA Unified, Montebello Unified, and Garvey School District. And next week, most schools will be starting school, as Councilmember Goh mentioned. So the summer, summer's not exactly over yet, Councilmember Goh, it's just, there's a week left, okay? And so we're gonna live it up for that week, okay? But I did want to mention as students head back, I want us to be mindful that there's a lot going on in our communities in terms of as schools and students return. In LA Unified, there's about eight schools that immediately surround the one lineage factory fire and the food that has been spoiling in that particular area. Many of us who live in the city, especially in my district and district three are reminded every morning when we open our doors and when we walk out to the stench and smell of that rotting facility. And so a lot of students will be returning to school with that in mind and many other things that are happening in our community. So just wanna make sure that everyone is mindful and that we support our students and our teachers who are returning back. So, but do wanna welcome students back and so great to live in a community like Monterey Park that supports our schools and has amazing schools here in our community. So with that, just wanted to, we know we already passed this, so I don't need to vote again, but just wanted to be mindful. And I know that all of us have schools within our respective districts that are, that'll be returning and chief, Remind me, I know we have a national walk back to school that we've started doing a couple years now. Do you remember off the top of your hand when that is, off the top of your head? Yeah, I forget, is it September? But that's also another great way to highlight our schools and promote safety and, of course, walking back to school. So thank you for that.

Thank you very much.

okay um let us proceed with the agenda okay if you're okay uh i can clarify it's in usually in october yes october Okay, moving on to public hearing 11a, a public hearing to consider an ordinance approving amended development agreement number 2261-AADA-2601 and a resolution approving intensive map 2605, county map 82800 for mixed-use development consisting of 169 residential units and approximately 16,300 square feet of commercial retail space located at 114 East Garvey Avenue. As I said, we are now proceeding with item 11. This is the final opportunity to request to speak on public hearing items. If you have not submitted a blue speaker card and wish to comment, please raise your hand, complete a speaker card, and provide to the city clerk. For those participating remotely, please use the raise hand function on Zoom. If you are participating by phone, press star nine to join the speaker queue. uh city madam city clerk um how many in-person speakers and how many remote speakers we have and what is the speaker time for item 11 noting that we do have um uh earlier uh i guess the applicant who submitted as well and let's see what else we have and mayor i'll be recusing myself for this item oh okay okay

There are two in-person speakers and zero speakers participating remotely by phone. Resume for a total of two speakers. Each speaker is limited to five minutes each. OK.

Very good. Then I will open.

And Mr. Mayor, members of the council, just for clarification of the minutes, Councilmember Yang recused herself based upon a property conflict.

OK. I'm sorry. Thank you for clarifying. Thank you. OK. And I guess we will now proceed with the public hearing. Yes? OK. Whoops, sorry. OK, let's see. Shall we do the staff or do we want to? Actually, why don't we do public comment then? Again, just out of respect for folks who have been waiting patiently. OK, let's see. OK, so we have Khan. Please come forward. Okay. All right. Fine. Okay, then. Next, Mr. Jessica. Come on down.

All right, good morning, Low. I'm a little bit high. So the first is that I want to communicate with the city clerk's office first that there's only one public hearing item. I submit a blue card, but how is that the city clerk is asking me which item do I want to speak on if there's only one hearing item? I'm confused by which part is not clear. Continuing that, the mayor, many of the council member stated it numerously in the past, because I have been here, I don't know, maybe five or six times already, and then every single council member are saying that you value civic engagement, you value the public input, And then, therefore, as a result of that, you decided to cut the public comment time from five minutes per item, reduce to right now nearly only barely one minute, two minutes per item. That is the direct result that how much value you put towards the civic engagement. That's very, very interesting. And I'm only even more concerned that some of you are actually teaching the kids of doing those double standard in school. What kind of kids are you going to teach? Regarding this is that what I'm reading is 169 rental residential units plus, I don't know how big that is, a lot of the commercial retail tenants units. Then I'm happy that one of the council member acknowledged that for the housing crisis is a nationwide problem and then the council member recognized that Monterey Park are not even anywhere near the goals of the housing units per year So I'm happy that we acknowledge the housing crisis but at the same time that I only acknowledge the problem without putting much effort, it seems like irrelevant or useless input. There are some difference about housing crisis. For example, that in the city of LA, council member Kevin de Leon was doing that. They were literally building small village home, affordable housing units towards, they were, Kevin De Leon literally put his staff member going to Skid Row and then trying to put people inside of the small village housing units. But what I see in the Monterey Park is that everybody acknowledged the problem, but I do not see that everyone are putting enough effort of dealing with this housing crisis. we are not building enough residential units. That's problem number one for rental or maybe either for retail, whatever. But number two, the following up with that is that we do not have a much comprehensive rent control, rent protection like our neighboring cities. So in the event, let's just say if you have 169 rental residential units, let's just say you succeeded, you fulfilled all of the 169 units, but people in the Los Angeles County actually all over the California, what they are experiencing is the eviction rates is going higher and higher and higher. Recently, I just checked on Los Angeles County, the maximum you are allowed to raise the rent is 8%, and my property management rent by 7.9. literally 0.1% less than the annual maximum. That's just one example of the Monterey Park not doing much. So in the city of Los Angeles, the mayor, Karen Bass, and then the council member, Raymond, Last year, including this year, they were able to build a comprehensive rent protection, rent control ordinance, and I really wish in the future that the Monterey Park can do something about it. Because I don't know that if mayor look at me as because I'm low income, therefore I'm a criminal, or maybe I'm low income, therefore I'm a problematic tenant, or maybe for whatever, you name it. And now also on top of that, other than the residential units, and I also seeing that the Monterey Park is not having a lot of, probably we don't have any temporary emergency shelter place, either for everyone or either for kids or either for the domestic violence or whatever. So in the city of Los Angeles, under the leadership of Kevin de Leon, they have a special program for temporary emergency, no more than 90 days temporary protection. But in the Monterey Park, if one day I lost my job, if one day I'm short on my rent, do I get some sort of a 90-day protection? I don't think so. But just because we are low income, just because we are homeless, it doesn't mean we were a bad person. So I just want to making sure the mayor understand that we are not a criminal like you think we are.

Okay, let's see. Thank you so much. Okay. I'm sorry. I did call, well, Con, correct? Correct. I did call your name. Okay, well, come on down.

Wow, mixed use development. A criminal element of no surprise. A broken window of residential units. And I believe a bigger conspiracy to keep white niggers too, like me, from living in my community. That's right, I said a white nigger like me. Because I can't afford to live in a 169 unit residential unit with mixed use because of the rates. Are they luxury? Are they protected under these security deposits? I think that's what the public wants to know. I'll give you an example of that bullshit. Go to Fiesta Broadway in Los Angeles, because I heard someone speak about Los Angeles. It's a fucked up city, but let's use that as an example. Well, in this fucked up fiesta Broadway, ever since the criminal Jose Luis Huizar and his plum development in Los Angeles fucking chased all the wetbacks, all the immigrants, all the low-income people into your cities and to the San Gabriel Valley. And as far as white niggers can see, like me, and come to the understanding that that's the reason why we have a homeless crisis population due to the approximate reallocated commercial retail spaces. How many of those do you not see on our streets today? Walk up and down Main Street. I seen a few, particularly by Garfield. one time thriving area, now it's apparent that white niggers too can't afford to live in a luxury residential units. And this one particularly talks about 16,000 square hundred feet. Well, I couldn't even put my foot into a 1600 square foot goddamn place to live. Because I did the research. I walked up and down all those luxury apartments, all those special condoms built for people that don't use condoms in LA, and they get fucked. They get pushed out into Monterey Park, Arcadia, Pasadena, and guess what? they find out that they and their commercial retail space are empty. Why are they empty? Because most people can't afford six to $8,000 a month leases on retail areas. And tonight you're probably gonna have only myself and the other speaker, the other Asian American that spoke before me. but me being a white nigger too, I know for a fact, I can tell you for a fact that yeah, Mr. Pro Temp, as you shake your head there, Mr. Fluffy, that it is impossible for a Native American, for a Mexican American, for a goddamn nigger American, and a fucking white asshole like me to afford to live in luxury residential units. Go ask Hilda L. Solis what she's done about the problem. Isn't Hilda Solis a part of this small little town, Monterey Park? What the flock has she done? I'll tell you what the flock she's done. Out there off the 60 freeway, Going over Turbo Canyon, I believe it's 7th Street, the exit. Tore down a motel twice to create luxury housing for the poor. And the goddamn facility is not running at 100%. The same way this fucking 169 residential unit will sit vacant for up to four years from today that I speak, once it's built. Another fucking mess done by local officials. Yes, high density, and guess what, taxpayers? You fucking pay for it. Thank you. I'm submitting these into the record, by the way. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Okay, let's see. Well, let's see, the applicant, if you would like to, or have the staff report first? Okay, let's do staff reports. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Honorable Mayor Lowe and City Council. Tim Howe, Director of Community Development. Providing the staff presentation tonight is Eliana Muñoz, Senior Planner.

Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and Council Members. I'm Eliana Muñoz, the Senior Planner with the Department of Community Development. Tonight, I will be presenting a request to consider approving amended development agreement number 2261-AA and a resolution approving tentative map number 26-05 for a mixed-use development consisting of 169 market-rate residential rental units with approximately 16,300 square feet of commercial retail space. This project is located at 114 East Garvey Avenue. This is an amended development agreement because the City Council approved an earlier version of this project in 2021. But the changes to this project are significant enough and do require an amendment. project site is located at the southeast corner of east garvey and south garfield avenues it is zoned central business and is located within the plant development and the business recovery development agreements zone these are overlays the project site is also located within the garvey garfield specific plan and under our general plan the project is designated mixed use The project site measures approximately two acres and is currently vacant. Surrounding the project is a hotel, a bank, and other commercial uses. The project is also made up of six parcels, but as I mentioned earlier in the introduction, tonight's request also includes approval of a tentative map, which will merge all parcels into one single lot. On this slide are two tables comparing the 2021 project and today's proposed project. The project increased the unit count to 169 market rate residential units as opposed to 151 in 2021. The mix and sizes remained very similar, one bedroom, one bath with a den and two bedrooms or two, excuse me, one bed and one bed with a den and two beds with a den. The smallest units will measure approximately 600 square feet and the largest units will be around 1,100 square feet. The area dedicated to commercial was reduced to approximately 16,300 square feet versus 43,000 in the 2021 version. In terms of height, the 2021 project included six stories at grade and three subterranean stories and reached a height of approximately 73 feet. The proposed project today proposes seven stories at grade and will reach approximately 74 feet. The parking has been reduced from the 2021 project from 509 spaces to 343 spaces. The project will include a prominent public plaza at the corner of Garvey and Garfield. The plaza is designed as an open area. It will have decorative paving, lighting, and seating. The project will also include sidewalk improvements that include new landscaping, trees, and an upgraded bus shelter. In addition, the existing five foot wide sidewalks will be widened from 12 to 15 feet. The project will also provide open spaces for the enjoyment of its residents. Arranged on floors two, three and four will be amenities such as a karaoke lounge, a theater, gyms and co-working spaces. On the fourth floor will be an open courtyard that will feature a spa, seating areas, pergolas, barbecue areas and landscaping. On this screen is a bird's eye view of the fourth floor. Here we can see the courtyard in the center and surrounding it will be residential units. The commercial part of the project is located entirely on the first floor. Parking is located on floors one, two, and on level three, we will have a mix of parking and residential units. The project will incorporate contemporary architecture. They will use organic stucco colors such as the browns and earth tones, and will also include decorative materials such as aluminum, glass, metal, wood, and brick, brick veneer. The building also incorporates mural opportunities on the Garfield and Garvey sides, but any proposed mural will be reviewed and approved separately. The project will provide a total of 343 parking spaces arranged on levels one through three. Typically under the municipal code, the project would be required to provide 434 parking spaces. However, the project did prepare a shared parking analysis that anticipated the parking demand to be at 402. To further address that parking reduction, the analysis used an unbundled parking strategy. This strategy is a type of strategy that is allowed under municipal code. This is in which parking spaces are leased separately from residential and commercial units. So based on that parking analysis, the actual demand of the project would be consistent with the number that the project proposes. In terms of access, there will be two driveways, one along Garvey and another on Garfield. Both driveways will allow for vehicle ingress and egress. On the Garfield side, the City Engineer did include a condition of approval to restrict left turns from the project, so exiting onto Garfield. The project will also have a double left turn pocket lane on Garfield to continue to allow northbound left access onto Rosalind Place. The lane will also allow southbound access onto the project. On this screen on the lower left hand side, we can see the vehicle movements that will be allowed for the project and for Rosalind. Green corresponds to the project and blue correspond to Rosalind Place. A development agreement is required for projects containing 10 units or more. As part of this amended development agreement, the developer has committed to several public benefits. Some of those public benefits are major public gathering space and plaza, the participation and funding transit programs including the Spirit Bus and MPK Transit, $200,000 contribution to the City's Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and $200,000 contribution to the City's Park Master Plan Facilities Fund. In addition, In addition to the da also requires an annual review throughout its five year term to evaluate whether the developer is acting in good faith compliance. In terms of community outreach, the developer did conduct a community outreach meeting on April 28th at the Luminarias restaurant. 34 individuals signed in, but according to the applicant, approximately 60 people attended the meeting because there was an option to attend via Zoom. The meeting also included a presentation, of course, and according to the applicant, most of the attendees they interacted with expressed general support for the project. In terms of CEQA, the City determined that this project qualifies for the AB 130 statutory exemption. As you may know, AB 130 streamlines the CEQA process for certain housing projects and exempts them from portions of the environmental review. And because of this, technical studies such as air quality or noise analyses were not required for this project. And today's recommendation to the Council is to consider opening the public hearing, receiving documentary and testimonial evidence, closing the public hearing, and after considering the evidence received during the public hearing, introducing and waiving the first reading of an ordinance approving amended development agreement number 2261-AA and adopting the resolution approving tentative map number 26-05 and taking such additional related action that may be desirable. This concludes my presentation. Next, we will give the floor to the project's council, Mr. Richard MacDonald, and architect, Mr. Chris Beitzstedt, who also have prepared a presentation. Their presentation will elaborate further on the project. um and as always we're available staff is available for any questions and the developers team is also available via zoom and in the audience to answer any questions the council may have thank you

okay uh yes i'm applicant yes um if you want to come forward and um you know add any comments to your project um i know our council members we have questions so please come forward thank you mayor members of the council richard mcdonald on behalf of the applicant team

As Eliane mentioned, we've got the team here. So we have all the various consultants who are involved in the various reports that were prepared for the city, whether it be traffic or otherwise. They're happy to answer any questions you might have on the details or the data that was used for it. First and foremost, I'd like to apologize for using a yellow card when I understand I was supposed to use a blue card. So let me, with that, set the record straight and give the clerk the blue card. Second, I'd like to thank staff. I'd like to thank Tim and Eliana, the city attorney's office with whom I've worked with regard to the amendments to the DA in getting us here tonight. It's been, as the staff report explains, we began discussions with them in 2023 to have to make amendments. The long story short as to why an approved project has to be amended today is the impact of COVID. We had a good project, but we had 43,000 square feet of commercial, a good bulk of which was on the second floor. Post-COVID, second floor retail is a non-starter. It's not something that, according to our consultants, and we know from experience in other cities, is even viable at this point in time. We also needed to change the unit mix to include more dens because of the systemic shift in people working from home. We needed, in other words, to make modifications to the project that make it more attractive to the young professionals and the demographics of the city to still achieve the same goal, which is to create a place that has the right balance of residences and amenities to activate that area. We've kept the open plaza. In fact, we've actually changed it from one large plaza with a lot of potted plans into a more open space area so that different sorts of activities can occur on it. We've also had to deal with the impact from COVID and the high rates of inflation on the cost of construction material and labor that has impacted the pro forma, if you will, which negated the ability to do the subterranean parking. We also, though, wanted to go back and recircle and reconsider the parking, believing that 500 spaces and the types of cars would be too much traffic and congestion in an area. What we're trying to do with this project is create walkability. We're trying to create a situation where people can work remotely as often as they want, have the amenities that they need, take advantage of the ground floor commercial, but also minimize the traffic impacts, particularly on the surrounding neighborhoods. Yeah, so anyway, those are the impacts from COVID. And they hit fairly hard in 2023. We're grateful for staff for working with us over these past three years to get here. And with that, we thoroughly support staff's recommendation. We believe all the findings can be made, and the substantial evidence supports all the findings as outlined in your staff report and the exhibits there, too. And with that, let me turn it over to Chris, who can walk you through some of the more details of the design changes.

Good evening, my name's Chris Bysted, managing principal at Studio T-Squared. We've been hired by the client to help amend the project that you see before you tonight. As Richard had stated, there's probably two main moves that we made. changing this project. We tried to keep the massing and the character from the original entitlements as true to the design as possible. But as Richard stated, we moved that parking garage from subterranean, several levels below grade to above grade. That's consistent with current construction trends. It also minimizes the impact to the community. Less excavation shoring driving piles hauling dirt just extra months of mess on the streets and such that helps to reduce that time frame and then a better quality of living for those that are living in a podium building and You're parking closer to your units rather than three levels below grade also reducing the retail account as Richard stated just looking at the market that's a big big move and important for the viability of the of the project, so that we don't see a bunch of vacant. Second floor retail that's really not been really attractive in recent years. We can move on to the next slide. I think some of these numbers were already described by Eliana in her presentation. But as I just mentioned, removing the underground parking helps reduce the pollution, so I won't kind of duplicate all these items. You can move on to the next. So we made these moves and still created the envelope of the building to be true to the massing and character of the building that was previously entitled. Keeping the materials the same as well. You can go to the next slide. One of the major public benefits of the project we also kept intact, and we hope to enhance this a little bit more, The Plaza on the corner of Garvey and Garfield we know that this is an active location, we know that this is this you know the Center of town, this is an important project and important location for residents. It was very important to continue to maintain this Plaza and get the character of the project. Here we have. and have a smaller plaza right at the corner of Garvey and Garfield. And then a little bit deeper down Garfield, we have a more protected plaza, which we think would be a little bit more active. Both areas and both geometries are surrounded by retail frontage so that those retail spaces can activate both the plazas. Next slide. Just another example of the plaza. We do have raised planters for landscaping, some paving elements that will enhance the pattern. If you go to the next slide, there's some character images of some of the lighting, as well as the shade trees that we're providing. Next slide. This is a couple photos of just the flexibility of the space and how we'd like to see this in the future, just the activity on the corner, the holidays and celebrations that the city can use this as a gathering spot and a place to be. Next slide. a couple renderings of some of the different angles of the project from opposite ends of Garvey and Garfield. Next slide. We'll summarize by some of the items that the residents will encounter here. On the first floor is mostly, you can see parking, and the parking is surrounded and wrapped by the retail spaces. To the north of the project, which is left on the plans, is also the leasing office and mail room. So next slide. I think there's a rendering of that space. So that's your entry lobby, the leasing office. Next slide. On the second floor, there's the double height retail, and then we have additional amenities, which are gonna be our club room, as well as the theater. Next slide. So there's an example of the club room. You can go to the next slide. There's an example of the theater, the game room. Then the next slide. On the third level, we have additional amenities. We have a lot of additional amenities that were added into this project for the residents. Part of that was the volume when we took away some of the retail. We needed to add some of that volume back. So those active uses for residents as well as the additional units that we added. So you can see the additional units that are wrapped around here at this level. And there's also the fitness center. So next slide. Here's a. Picture of the fitness center and then next slide I believe the club room should be okay the fourth floor is our podium. Eliana had explained the active podium element and there's a club room on this level as well, so a club room kind of in both both separate buildings, the bar building and the L building so next slide. The podium active uses a dog a dog run as well as some green space and sitting spaces and next slide. The character of the landscape elements on that podium courtyard. Next slide. That's our club room on the fourth floor. Next slide. Just wanted to thank Tim and Eliana for all their patience with us and all the hard work that we've done back and forth. So appreciate it. If any questions we can...

Okay, thank you so much. Well numbers if I'm sorry if I may just to wrap up we a Couple of quick additional facts. We are staying at the same height we are approximately 6,000 square feet less than the prior project and If approved we're looking to start construction in November of this year And what is your completion date?

20 yeah 2028 we're right like summer June 2028 just before the Olympics okay okay members questions

I'm going to start. Thank you, Richard and Chris, for your presentation. Just out of curiosity, the retail is going to be ground floor and storefronts are Garvey and Garfield base, right? I mean, it looks that way. Any idea what those tenants are? Is it food or is it market or dry goods? Any idea?

Based on the consultants we're working for, we're aiming for, similar to what you often see Rick Caruso do, we're aiming for destination specialty retail. Because today, Amazon is so convenient for people. And many companies, rather than use Amazon, have beefed up their online operations. So to get people to go there, who don't live there, it's gotta be something enticing, it's gotta be a destination, it's gotta be an experience. For the people that live there, you balance the destination against the need for whatever they may need. example that some of it i'm sure will have your coffee shops right so people can go downstairs and grab a coffee if they want if they're working from home they can still work from home if they want to leave and head to an office they can do so don't forget you've got proximity to uh los angeles downtown los angeles that creates this you know the systemic shift to remote work some people will probably do that two to three days a week and then go into the office so being able to come downstairs grab a coffee or whatever they may want But the idea is to tailor it, balance the need between what the residents need and what the general public wants in terms of destination retail.

Another question. Thank you for that response. Another question in terms of I know this project's been around since 2016, 17 from what I remember. And I'm glad it's going to start. I actually support the project. I've been supporting this project for some time now, knowing that this is a busy corner that's been vacant. So thank you to the team here for getting this in order. Financing. I mean, you're starting in November. Is financing secured?

will be as soon as we get approval. In other words, we've been working with the banks and getting the paperwork lined up. We've gotten the plan check material submitted and ready to go. This project, let me just clarify something. There was a previously approved project long ago and far away with a group of people that ended up in bankruptcy in 2018. The current owner bought the property out of bankruptcy, came forward, worked with the city and got the Currently entitled project done in October of 2021 So we're not we have nothing to do with the people that were in bankruptcy or that had Been involved with the city for probably 10 15 years before that so and as you can tell by buying it out of bankruptcy in 18 working with the city to get approval of a rather much more difficult project in 2021 and then recognizing the impacts of covet and working with staff and again we appreciate all the hard work and patience to get here today i mean this is a very different group than the people that were in bankruptcy that went way back yeah

And I appreciate that timeline of you guys kind of jump-starting it and getting the process going. I did notice that it's been kind of fenced. I mean, it was somewhat fenced off. It was used as a parking. But I think when I see something that's not closed out, that shows seriousness. Because I've been in the city for 45 years. And when I see a project that's kind of closed off, that means ground is about to be moved and excavation. In your case, you're not excavating. So what? There's no subterranean parking, but you are moving third so that you can build your podium and start the process. So thank you for that. I don't have any questions.

Yeah, you do have the construction, the pillars, the pylons, the whole thing. But Chris's point's a very good one. The moment you eliminate the subterranean parking, you eliminate 1,000 truck trips and truck staging and dirt hauling. That is impactful on neighborhoods, candidly, and now won't be.

Thank you. Appreciate the presentation and appreciate the staff work that got to this point as well. Kind of dovetailing off what Councilmember Goh was saying or asking about. I appreciate the timeline for construction. I was going to ask about that too. It sounds like you guys are aiming to get going very quickly. The previous iteration of this project that was entitled was all for sale units. Is that right? I don't know who.

My recollection is it was more condominium for sale. There was apartments. No, it was apartments also.

Oh, that was for rent, too? Okay. Are you condo mapping here at all, just as potential?

Not that I'm aware of. Okay.

Just curious. And then for your pro forma, do you have an estimate on what the rents are going to be for the unit type?

Do I have an estimate? No. But I will tell you the rents will be whatever the market will bear at the time that we're near completion and certificate of occupancy. And then the whole, by the way, this project and several others that I know of in the pipeline, whether you look at Austin, Denver, Phoenix, Boston now, cities that overbuilt or built a lot more housing are seeing prices come down. So you've got several, at least three that I know of projects to create more housing. And to bring rents down means build more housing.

We've got a long way to go to get to where some of these cities in Texas are.

Well, the region has a long way to go. But you can only do what you can do within your borders. But that's an endemic problem to Southern California.

I noticed we took advantage of the AB 130 CEQA exemption here. Appreciate that. Sounds like we saved some costs and time on that. understand you've reduced some of the complexity for this project by eliminating the subterranean parking which i get i'm still worried we're going to be under parked here for what it is but understand fitting this into a financing model and making sure it works out pencils out get it would point to our city staff and we've got plans and hopes for a parking structure across the street here this may add uh some need for us to push on that a little bit more aggressively as well if this project moves forward tonight uh and goes under construction in the next few months uh so maybe that's something we can add to our our push for making sure we get going on adding additional parking for the businesses along rv and whatever we can do to make sure we're if this project moves forward tonight uh a wine and Right cooperate in terms of what they're going to do on the sidewalk there on Garvey and our own Garvey. redesign and structural kind of improvements along the corridor there to make sure we're not double do we're not doing things. sounds like our construction time is going to overlap on some of that, so what are we do to coordinate on those impacts knows on the renderings palm trees, maybe we can share our I don't know what that was, but maybe we can share our tree. Our preferred tree canopy. plants for sure your use would love to see better shade trees and and things that align with our our own elements here.

We have in these images are conceptual at this point.

understand and there are conditions of approval that address parking the unbundling and which I've seen in other cities had as a big impact there's not everybody in the apartments wants parking happy to coordinate on landscaping tree trees tree plantings there are conditions of approval to address that there's conditions of approval to deal with Rosalyn which I understand are another project or was going to become one way east so we're working with public works to coordinate with them as well i appreciate that and then the well you mentioned opportunities for public art and murals would love to make sure those are not just opportunities but we're actually integrating that into the design i'd love to make sure we're consulting we are agreeing to work with staff and go through the appropriate processes so that the city basically has to approve whatever we do

Perfect. And we want to make sure it actually happens on the walls. And it looks like we'll be able to collaborate on that.

Yeah, that's at the end of the construction phase. So that's really a 2028. So we've got some time to pull that together.

Mayor Mrakas, Council member one out for the mural opportunity, it is something that is listed in their development agreement, they would have to work directly with the director of Community development and staff to come up with a with a mural.

Mayor Mrakas, or. And then for the parking are you planning I didn't see if there are details there but ev charging in the parking areas for both the retail element and for for.

Yes, we'll we'll require will provide what's required by the California building code and.

And feel free to go above what's required.

Exactly. We'll also look at the, you know, what's what the market demands and what we can provide.

I'll just notice. I know for others, four fifths. Of the council drive electric cars and we're the fleet continues to. To shift very rapidly across the Community so make sure we're ready for the for what's yeah there's there's a lot of requirements for the conduit providing the conduit for future installation. And I know I know in the previous we entitled. plans there was talk about a food hall potentially at part of the retail space would love to make sure to see if that's I know we'll have to see what the market bears but that's that's the second floor part of the second floor retail that's been eliminated

Yeah, if we can consider that. But that doesn't preclude us from having food opportunities, unique style restaurants on the first floor. And as Chris pointed out, some of those first floor units along Garfield are two story to behind which the parking ramps around. So you've got plenty of space to essentially shift that use to a more accessible location and a more likely to succeed location.

No, absolutely. I'm throwing it out there as an idea I would love to see, but knowing we have to see what the market will bear. And I think that's all I've got for now, but appreciate this. And it sounds like you guys are getting serious. My worry is with the last iteration, understanding some of the delay was due to things outside everyone's control with the pandemic and financing conditions, interest rates. Who knows where the economy is going to be in a few months from now? Never know. But whatever we can do to accelerate this process, I know you guys, it's in your interest as well to get going on this as quickly as possible. I think we want to see this long, long vacant parcel developed. As Council Member Goh noted, it's been An idea in a dream that's been floating out there for for a long time yeah and would love to see this this vacant and. vastly underutilized parcel becomes something that activates a lot of the our downtown business area, I think this project would be catalytic for. Four fifths of the Council or not on the Council, when this project was last entitled just a few years ago, so this is my first time seeing this project presented to the Council this way formally so appreciate this opportunity to weigh in. We'd love to see this catalyze a lot more development along the Garvey, the downtown business corridor and the Garvey corridor.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Mayor Patu. Any comments?

Thank you, Tim, for that presentation and for bringing this back. And I'm also very excited to see that development or that corner being developed. I know that when I joined the council, this was also something that was talked about and kind of just never really brought to fruition. So glad to see that you are eager to build there and hopefully have a completed project by 2028. uh that would that would be great um because that's one of those um vacant lots that we get as council members a lot of questions about why they're not being developed and that makes it extremely difficult for us in terms of being able to explain to them what's going on there um i did have some questions to follow up with council member wong regarding parking reductions in your new or proposed project this is already a pretty busy corridor um garfield and um and garvey um and in fact it has a bus line line 70 that goes through um and you know you We talked about the connection with downtown L. A. That bus line goes directly to downtown L. A. And 2, and it ends in no money, and so that you know that it's a very you would get a lot of traffic, not just from people who are driving there, but also people who are jumping off and on buses. So I appreciate your comments in terms of having destination venues and and businesses in your first floor. uh to be able to track um i know for us as council members that's very important in terms of building not just uh or adding to our tax base but also making our city a lot more vibrant so appreciate that and that however we can help in terms of our economic development team to be able to help connect you with potential businesses in that area we we would love to work with you to try to to try to do those but um This maybe this is more of a question for you, Tim when we were looking at their project, I know there's been a reduction in terms of the parking. In this newer development, are there any concerns in terms of. parking in terms of the impact it will have on the local community, I know there's you know I know this, this is the downtown district but there's also a lot of residential in this area as well and i'm not sure if you can answer that.

Sure, I can begin. And either Eliana or the applicant can elaborate. But the staff's determination, based on the shared parking analysis as well as the unbundled parking strategies that they are going to be adopting for this project, staff has determined that the proposed parking will be sufficient to meet the project's needs. But I'll open it up to the applicant or Eliana to elaborate, please.

Just briefly. the the shift towards more remote working allows for us to unbundle there are going to be people that don't want parking they're going to be people that are going to be working from home taking advantage of the retail there that are not going to have it are not going to be creating any traffic impact, on top of which the condition of approvals allow us to work with staff on whether or not we need any particular types of valet services to minimize impacts along Garfield and Garvey as well. So I think overall the idea was if we get rid of the subterranean parking, which is a big plus in terms of thousands of truck trips for excavation, and if we can get the parking to sync with the sort of the new paradigm for the project, then we reduce traffic overall. And to the extent that we can help improve circulation by creating the left turn lane on Garfield, by creating the right turn lane from Garfield to Garvey, by recognizing that there may be a shift in the direction to a one-way east on Roslyn, but if not, at least have that left turn lane into Roslyn to assist that neighborhood. So the number of spaces is just a mathematical formula. But the goal by creating those left turn lanes and right turn lanes, I think there's something in there about traffic signalization. The idea was to improve the circulation you're talking about.

Okay. And thank you for that. Tim, a question for you regarding in the future, let's say after the development is built, should there be issues with parking and let's say residents coming out? And I know we see that sometimes with some developments that are coming. People are very concerned about parking and traffic. What type of mediation can we provide after the fact?

So I'll touch on that in a couple notes. First, I do want to note that we do have additional staff that's available virtually. Ziad Masbudi, city engineer, is available virtually. And I don't know if he'd like to weigh in on that, but I'll give him a moment. then additionally because this project requires a there's a development agreement in place for it there are stipulations for regular compliance reviews that would be looking at compliance with all of the requirements of the project as well as all the conditions of approval is there anyone online

Good evening, Mr. Mayor.

uh thank you yet for them appreciate it um and then uh tim one more question uh before this um i think in its earlier versions i'm not sure if you've seen or maybe inez can speak to that or even council member lowe was here um were these units have all have they always been i mean this is a follow-up on council member wong's question um have they've always been for rent or lease or were they at some point um for sale

At the top of my head, Mayor Pro Tem Sanchez, I don't recall. I thought there was some discussion about like a mixed where there was going to be some condos and some apartments, but I don't know if the applicant could speak to that.

No, they were apartments. Okay. When we first approached the city in 2000, they were apartments. When we first approached the city, we discussed the design, the fact that they were separated single corridors as opposed to double loaded corridors, and we raised the idea of maybe we would shift to condominiums. And in looking at vesting tentative tract map options, what's before you denied is simply to merge six parcels into one. But at certain points we were looking at maybe it would go six to three for three independent condominium. So there were a lot of conversations, but that's not where we landed. We landed on making the design more efficient and the other changes that we've talked about tonight and keeping it as apartments.

Okay, thank you for that. Um, I, I think my, my concern along with the parking is also just that, um, you know, we, we are not just in a housing crunch, uh, but we're also in a crunch for affordable housing. And so, um, you know, I'm always worried about, um, apartments and stuff and apartments that are, they'll be rented at market rate, uh, for families that are, um, cannot afford that. And I think you heard earlier from Board of Trustees Meeting, Council, I'm sorry from the Mayor, who was talking about how we have declining enrollment, not just in our community, but throughout the State, because a lot of families are leaving further and further away from the center of Los Angeles, because housing has just become too expensive. I'm a classroom teacher, and so I will share with last 20 years that i've been teaching my school's been cut in half families and families have left to other states further communities and their number one reason is because housing has just become so unaffordable and um and so i'm always worried about adding more housing to the stock that's not gonna be affordable for some families, so.

We will see about the affordability when we get there, and we'll see what the market will be come summer of 28, don't know. Understand your point, thought the discussion that you had earlier about building on school sites was an excellent idea. You're starting to see that in many, many cities now. They just, the demographics are such that, you know, they've got 10, five, 10 school sites that can be developed into something. but from our perspective we were apartments before we're apartments now we have more open space now than we had before we have many more amenities to create that balance that I was talking about earlier to meet the didn't meet the needs of the community and going forward You know, we're looking forward to, as you correctly pointed out, I think, being a catalyst, multiplier effect of this type of project being able to help develop more. And then that's where you start to see the overall supply begin to increase and rents begin to come down. As for affordable, please note one of the public benefits that staff pointed out is we are doubling our contribution to your affordable housing fund than from before. So we're putting in more money towards affordable housing to help the city with its own affordable housing programs.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, real quick, if I could follow up on one of the points for Council Member Sanchez. Right, talking about market rate, There are no, with the unbundled parking structure idea concept, doesn't exist in Maury Park and maybe in Alhambra and some other developments. But if we're talking about market rate, I mean, do you anticipate, this is a thought exercise for myself too, right? There's no comparable market rate for unbundled parking for rent apartments in Monterey Park, as far as I know. And so market would have to be adjusted. I would imagine those rents would be lower because there isn't parking included. Is that inaccurate?

That's how I've seen it done in other cities, for example, Pasadena or Acadia. Los Angeles and what ends up happening is you get a unit for X but it's if you want a parking space it's you X plus if you want to bargain spaces X plus plus so that impacts the market rates as well yeah so it should show up as a discount in a way if someone's not gonna doesn't need parking isn't driving right and we don't forget we not only are talking about the electric stations that you were asking about but we also have bike racks that we're including there too you've got an easily you know easily bike friendly city this project take advantage of any density bonus or anything there's no affordable but could yes and no yes and no you get into the more units you add on you start moving up into different types of construction you move up to top five which becomes significantly more expensive and more expensive than the value of those units thanks thank you um we did have a submission for the public hearing which i'm going to allow um uh please come forward deb simone no you can stay in front of me

Uh, thank you mayor low. I really appreciate it. I this is I'm all for this. I'm as we have spoken before and I. Apologize obviously this project has been in the works for a long time, so I wasn't able to go to the planning commission. I didn't live here yet. Um, this reminds me a lot of the Lisa project downtown and I do have. And Tim, I could talk with you about this later. I mean, I think if you're gonna be marketing to young people, I'm very familiar with this corner because my business mailbox is across the street. And I think if you just have spaces for Waymos, a ride share, and actually you're gonna probably have to make accommodations for scooters. And I don't know if that's part of the plan, but that might be the kind of thing you want to look for if you're going to have young people who aren't going to have two cars or even one car. People who work from home, they're 25 years old and they're riding around in the scooters all the time. I sound really old. And you're gonna need a place where they can dump them so that they're not on the public sidewalk. This is just all from my experience living in the Rio district downtown where they had projects like the Aliso, which is just east of Alameda. um where we had a lot of problems with clogging up the sidewalks and ride shares taking up very narrow streets so just take if you can if you can make room for those things uh you're gonna attract more young people and you're gonna have a lot better success with the retail development there and all all the great restaurants we have on garvey thank you so much thank you members

Um, I will just, well, as I pointed out, I was on the council when we first approved this project, and frankly, it has been very frustrating that we have taken this long. And so, um, I mean, on the one hand, yes, it is an issue of housing supply. But as my colleague said, I mean, but it's also affordability. And again, it is a combination of two. And, you know, we have tried our best locally as well at the state level to try and address this. I know Congress recently passed its own housing legislation. you know i would say the project's probably not perfect but frankly at this point given that this has been an empty lot an office should never been empty for so long i hope that um as my colleagues have asked and you've answered that yes you are quick and prompt and you actually break ground and you mean that you will have this ready hopefully soon right before the olympics that's my commentary

Well, I support the project and I look forward to you guys moving ground faster if you can. So I would love to make the motion to approve the plan.

All right. Motion made by Council Member Gao. Do I have a second?

I'll second.

Second by Council Member Wang. Hearing no further debate or discussion, members please vote.

Approve unanimously. Thank you.

Okay, well, this now brings us to the end of our happy meeting. Okay, let's see. Let's see, new business, none. City Communications, go. Okay.

Well, thank you to staff and our police department for hosting a wonderful national night out yesterday. I believe a lot of our council members also attended the AAPI lead conference in downtown LA two weekends ago. And that's all on my end.

In addition to that, I just want to add that a few of us actually attended the July 21st board meeting for the Hamburg Unified School District, and they had a discussion on supporting the Barnes Park Aquatic Center. So thank you, Robert, for making the pitch to partner with the school district there. We're looking at potentially getting additional funds to help with that project for their use. then on the 25th i attended the long beach dragon boat which is an exciting event it's getting bigger and bigger every year so hopefully one day we will have a dragon boat team from the city of maui park to celebrate that and then on the 28th we had our first uh meet the mayor mayor henry lowe was at thai house and it was a good showing of community support Just getting everyone together to celebrate what we do in the city. And then again, thumbs up and cheers to National Night Out last night with the activities and festivities. Great showing with the community and engagement for our first responders, in particular our police department. And I just want to also give a shout out to the fire department because they were out there in full force with the search program and team.

Thank you. I attended AAPI lead conference as well. I appreciate being able to be with many AAPI elected officials from throughout the country and downtown LA, including some of my colleagues here on the council, to really just share what's going on, hear from each other, and kind of see what cool things or ideas are going on in other cities. Also, on Monday, I attended the Equality California annual leadership summit in Sacramento, representing and really great to be with LGBTQ plus elected officials and and leaders from throughout California just to hear about what's going on as well in other places and in the state of California around issues there on future agenda items and discussion. Just noting today where some of the public comment and concerns around traffic impacts for major construction projects on our streets and knowing that we have ongoing construction on Petro Grande and the similar complete street construction is going to be occurring on Maury Pass Road and Garvey. We'd love to have staff bring back and start thinking about how we can accelerate some of the construction around those projects to minimize impacts on the business community. That's going to be very, very, I mean, if we're, I was driving to Costco and in that area on Petrograna yesterday and traffic really is very bad. uh and understanding some of that is driven by the construction impacts for for patrol grande improvements that we approved a few years ago that are ongoing now knowing that that will experience and especially the businesses and garvey and mari pastor will generally experience a lot more traffic and would impact those kind of construction impacts would impact our local businesses dramatically. Would love to see us start strategizing about how we can accelerate some of the construction on Maury Pass Road and Garvey and look at potentially a business impact or business interruption fund for those businesses that are going to be impacted, see how we can bake that into the funding we do have potentially and what we need to do to prepare for those impacts and whatever we can do to minimize those impacts to the extent possible. I think we need to get ahead of that. as much as possible, because I'm increasingly worried that this is going to be, we don't want to hurt our businesses, especially as we've been working to support them in the last few years with additional programs and new programs and resources. And knowing that the economy continues to be soft for especially small business like that, want to make sure we're providing resources for them.

I wanted to follow up on what Council Member Wong just said. I've also, in fact I was there earlier today, went to Costco and the traffic is pretty bad, but to add on to the concerns with the impact to businesses, also we heard earlier about the impact to residents as well, whatever we can do to help them out, especially given the earlier resident who came in and spoke about their elderly family members, making sure that they're not uh dramatically impacted uh that it impacts their health uh so i i also support um what the council member wonk said in terms of trying to find ways to expedite this construction as best as we can and to find ways to mediate for those that are impacted including businesses and residents i think that's very important I also wanted to thank the police chief and police department, fire and all of our staff who were out there last night, a national night out. It was really well attended, really great to see everyone out there and participating. In fact, I had some residents came that said they had just come from other cities and ours was. So not to compare, but that just speaks volumes to the type of city that we are in terms of engaging our community. So I wanted to share my appreciation for staff for all the work that you did. My daughters loved it. As a matter of fact, they were coming back from a field trip with grandpa. and they got home pretty late. And so they made it to the last 30 minutes because they did not want to miss out. And my wife was like, we have to come and get them because they're all crying. They want to go to National Night Out. So it's one of their favorite events that happens along with, I saw staff, Parks and Rec share the Monster Mash and many of the other events, but that one's very important and pivotal. uh to my kids so thank you chief for that um i also went to movie night uh on the 23rd saw the incredibles um my daughters were extremely impressed with the incredible cookies uh and popcorn uh that you guys created so thank you uh to staff it was very well attended a lot of people out there i also appreciate that you guys uh do it on the days that we have our farmers market which is It's always great to support our farmers market and try to come out every Thursday to try to get not just fruits and vegetables, but dinner as well. So encourage all of my council colleagues to do the same and support our farmers market vendors. I already spoke to this earlier, but thank you, Robert, and your staff for the Gladys Knight and Smokey Robinson. Smokey Robinson is actually one of my wife's and I know she's listening. She said, poor soul. I can't believe you guys are still going. Uh, so, uh, she really loved it. Uh, and I want to do a shout out cause I know she's listening right now, but, um, it was a great night for us. So thank you, Robert, for providing that opportunity. And then lastly, uh, along with, uh, council member Yang, uh, we attended national parents day at the Barnes park amphitheater. which is the first time that was hosted here in our city. And a lot of Monterey Park residents were recognized for being amazing parents. And being a parent is not an easy feat for those of us who are parents. It's a lot of hard work, a lot of sacrifice, and requires a lot of patience. And so those who do it and do it well should be recognized. And no person becomes a parent to be recognized uh so um it takes a lot of hard work and it's a lot of responsibility so wanted to thank um la church and all the other groups that were involved with uh the preparation of this and for the recognition of those parents and that is it for me thank you

Thank you and thank you all for your reports. I'll just report and say thank you for all who attended my first mayor's meetup. Of course, it was much more planned and I hope to see many folks tonight attend. We move around different restaurants in the community because we want to promote our local businesses. And again, I just want to thank everyone tonight for uh for of course all that you do council members staff everyone um you know day in day out you do your best to serve the city and with that um i will close the meeting and say good night and happy birthday happy birthday to everyone uh whose birthday it is and also it's only wednesday so just go two more work days so have have a productive and enjoyable week and with that i adjourn the meeting good night