City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, good evening everyone. We're gonna call tonight's meeting to order. We will start with our Land Acknowledgement Act. We would like to acknowledge that the land we inhabit today was once known as Tavangar, the home of the Gabrielino-Tonva people. We show our respect to the Gabrielino-Tonva people, as well as all indigenous people, past, present, and future, and honor their labor as original caretakers of this land. We commit to uplifting the Gabrielino-Tonva people, invite you to acknowledge the history, and join us in caring for this land. Now let's invite the Monterey Park Police Explorers for our flag salute. Please rise. please put your right hand over your heart ready begin i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all

Upward face. Forward work. Hold forward.

Thank you. You may be seated. Madam Clerk, may we get a roll call, please? Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Goh?

Present.

Council Member Wong?

Present.

Council Member Sanchez?

Present.

Mayor Pro Tem Lo?

Present.

And Mayor Weng Keng? Present. All present, thank you. Thank you. Any agenda revisions or additions?

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

Thank you. And I understand that adding 9A requires a four-fifth vote.

Does anyone want to make a motion to... Move for approval, adding item 9A to the agenda.

I'll second.

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

Good evening, Mayor, council members, staff, and of course residents of Monterey Park. My name is Joseph Leon. I am a resident of Monterey Park and also the city's representative on the San Gabriel Valley Mosquito Vector Control Board. Today with me we have Ms. Diaz, who's Director of Communications. She'll be making a short presentation, just an update to the city of how the board works. And just so everybody knows, there is no issue with mosquitoes at this time at Modern Park, because I already got asked earlier today. Just a presentation, like an update. She's going to different cities, and we're fortunate that she's here today to do an update. And if there's any questions, of course, we'll stand by afterwards for any questions. Thank you. Without a delay, because I have a big agenda. Ms. Diaz.

Thank you Trustee Leon for the introduction and good evening and thank you to the Honorable Mayor, City Council Members and City Manager Alvarez for the opportunity to provide an update this evening. My name is Anais Medina-Diaz, I'm the Director of Communications for the San Gabriel Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District. Thank you. The SGV Mosquito Vector Control District is a public health agency created under the California Health and Safety Code. Our mission is very simple, to protect the community from mosquitoes and other vectors that can spread disease. So for that means mosquitoes, Culex mosquitoes, Aedes mosquitoes, and black flies that recently made the news a few months ago. Next slide, please. We are an independent special district, meaning we operate outside of the city and the county, and we were formed by residents to serve residents back in 1989. And the reason for that was because at that time there was an increase in St. Louis encephalitis, which was affecting public health at that moment. We were established then and continue to protect public health for San Gabriel Valley residents by providing specialized services, monitoring and controlling mosquito-borne diseases in the San Gabriel Valley, like West Nile virus and increasingly dengue fever. Next slide. We serve 26 cities and about 1.5 million residents, including Monterey Park, which is an important part of our service area. It's actually at the border of our service area. And what we do often is behind the scenes, but it directly impacts the health and quality of life for all of our residents. When most people think about mosquitoes, they think about nuisance biting, itchy bites, but really for us, mosquitoes are a public health threat first. They can transmit West Nile Virus and St. Louis Symphylitis and now locally dengue is being transmitted in the past couple years. Next slide please. How we approach mosquito control is very intentional. We don't just go out and try to treat everything. We really look at our surveillance data, and how we collect that is through mosquito trapping, disease surveillance. We test our trap data, our trap samples. We also identify insects, and that really guides our efforts and where we want to control mosquitoes, what areas, what sources we target, and when we need to do treatments that also informs that decision. Next slide, please. Our operations team really focuses on larval control because when we look at mosquitoes, it's a lot easier to get rid of or control mosquitoes when they're in their aquatic phase. We can kill hundreds of mosquitoes rather than a few flying mosquitoes. And what we look at are community sources, like at our parks, on our streets, the channels, street gutters. We also look at green swimming pools. We have a pretty robust swimming pool program that identifies green swimming pools across the SGV. And we work with residents to ensure that those are not breeding mosquitoes and spreading diseases. And underground storm drains actually act as a source even in the off season when it's nice and cool out here, they go and hide underground.

Next slide, please.

And at the heart of our program is a communications team which uses education and outreach as a core public health tool. So we try to keep our communities informed because they are the first line of defense. And we achieve this through many various ways, including presentations. But we also have a robust K through 12 education program that has NGSS-aligned curriculum. Next slide, please. Now lately we've been faced with many emergency response items, so as conditions continue to change, emergency response is becoming more important than ever. Extreme weather events and invasive mosquito species mean we must be proactive and prepare to respond when conditions shift. and that includes responding to disease outbreaks like we had dengue in 2024 and environmental events like the eaton fire which our district responded to by treating thousands of mesquite pools that were left behind unmaintained and unmanageable in the eaton area next slide please The next, unfortunately, the city of Monterey Park has a lot of West Nile virus year to year, not this year so far, but it is a hotspot for us. And so we're very proactive about trying to control the sources that are known in the city. But often we see treatments happen in the city specific community. So I'll take you through some of the ways that we come to that decision. Right now we don't have any scheduled treatments, but if the data shows that that is necessary, then we'll go ahead and move forward with that. So I'll take you through this step. So first, if there is West Nile virus detection, Monterey Park usually has one every year. We notify our city trustee and our staff and we provide communication tools to be able to inform residents about the detection of West Nile virus in the community. Now, West Nile virus is endemic, so we see it every year. It's not alarming, but it is good to know when it is actually in the community so you can take steps to protect yourself. Next slide please. Now let's say that West Nile virus continues to go detected in a specific community and we also observe increased mosquito abundance and that tells us we need to do extra work in that specific community. That's either identifying or treating known sources, searching for new sources and treating those. We observe if those efforts actually work. And if we still don't see a decrease in mosquito risk or mosquito transmission risk, then we have to take the next step, which is a treatment process, which typically happens in this community specifically. When we see that data, we have to move quickly. We want to make sure that we're protecting public health, and so we want to make sure that we're reducing the adult mosquito population that is accomplished through a treatment that both targets adult mosquitoes and juvenile mosquitoes. And so when that happens, we go ahead and notify the city. And the city has been a great partner to us in helping us inform its residents and providing information about these treatments. We'll develop and distribute a press release. And again, that is to inform residents in the area that this is happening. And of course, we do our own outreach to the residents through digital platforms. We also post notification signs in the community that is directly being treated for that. Next slide, please. Now about these mosquito control treatments, again, we don't do these willy-nilly. They're not just like out of nowhere. We wanna make sure that they are necessary because overuse of treatments will create resistance in mosquito populations. So that even goes for off-the-shelf pesticides. So when we detect that they have met certain thresholds, then we'll go quickly into trying to activate one of these treatments. They are conducted at night for specific reasons. This one only provides the environmental conditions needed for these treatments to work, so they're Sensitive to light, so once sunlight comes out, they dissipate. And then also at night, beneficial insects are dormant, so they won't affect bees and butterflies. It's specific to mosquitoes. All of the products that we use are registered with the EPA, and products are suspended through water, and so they don't have any harm on any cars or home finishes. Residents don't have to take any extra steps in closing their windows or any of that. So that's a little bit about the treatments anytime that we do have when we provide information about the products being specifically used next slide, please Now, of course, those are all out of normal things. For our day-to-day, we're still here as a community resource. We provide property consultation, so if folks are getting bid up and they can't find that source, please give us a call. Our services are paid through a benefit assessment. So all of our services are at no additional charge. We are here as a resource to your residents. Please give us a call. And we will provide a customized management plan for mosquitoes on your property. We can also provide mosquito fish and no additional charge. It's a great biological way to control mosquitoes. And of course, please sign up for reports and alerts, and that's the easiest way that you'll find information when we are doing a treatment. And then outside of mosquito control, I already spoke a little bit about the Eaton Fire burn area, but in the past couple years, our district has seen dengue activity, local dengue activity, and that's just, it's increasing risk for our area because of climate change, but also, The more travel we see in the community, there's more opportunity for travel-related cases to come. And then lastly, Aedes mosquitoes are very difficult to control. They're invasive to our area. So we are exploring innovative mosquito control techniques like sterile insect technique. What that is is a mass release of male mosquitoes. Male mosquitoes do not bite. And so these sterilized males, when they mate with females, then their eggs do not hatch. And so that reduces mosquito populations over time. And again, this targets an invasive mosquito species that is not natural to our area. And with that, I wrap up. I hope I provided some context to when we do treatments. I know Monterey Park is typically one of the cities that we do, so please let me know if you have any questions. I'm more than happy to answer any of them.

Actually, can I add something really quick, just to clarify, because it's a great presentation, but just want to make sure that people understand that we had West Nile virus.

the last few years in Monterey Park, but only a small, very small section of Monterey Park.

And unfortunately, it's a member of Sanchez's area. So it hasn't been throughout the, because I'm sure some of the residents probably wondering, I didn't get any notice. You only get notice if your area is affected. So for those sitting here, residents, you didn't get notice because your area wasn't affected. Fortunately, it's only been a small section of Monterey Park and it's been customer Sanchez's area. And everyone there has been notified prior to the treatment. That's what I want to share, because people are probably wondering why I didn't know anything about it, because your area wasn't affected by it. Thank you. Now I have a question.

Thank you. Yeah, go ahead.

Mayor Annalise, can you just share with us some of the things that we can do to kind of prevent the mosquitoes in a typical backyard

Yes, absolutely. So we have one key phrase. I'm sorry I didn't mention it, but it's tip, toss, and protect. Tip out stagnant water, toss out unused containers, and protect using a repellent with one of the four active ingredients recommended by the CDC and the EPA, which are D-pecuritin, IR-3535, and oil-blaminucleotides. And I know that when we think of mosquito sources, we're thinking of large, like swimming pool sources, but really all it takes is a spoonful of water to grow hundreds of mosquitoes. So we have a lot of resources on our website, a checklist of things that you can find, common sources on your property. For sources that... be removed again we offer mosquito fish but you may also find they're called mosquito bits at your local store and what they have is bti it's a naturally occurring bacteria that's often found in the products that we use that can be placed there too and then as far as repellents go there's so many products out in the shelves just make sure that if when you do buy a repellent it has one of those four active ingredients Essential oils, unfortunately, are very popular, but they don't have the key ingredient that you need for it to be an effective repellent. So we have a lot of information on our website. I invite your residents, and of course, we can provide resources to the city to share this information.

If I may add, too, on repellents, I know a lot of people think, well, I don't want to spray this on me, put it on me, because it has chemicals, it may harm me, but my understanding is they're very harmless. In fact, they're supposed to be less harmless than Santan lotion, my understanding. You might want to...

Yeah, so all of those ingredients that I mentioned have been approved by the EPA, and they've been robustly tested. And any one of those four will work. My personal favorite is picaridin, just because it's not as smelly, per se, in the products that you'll find it. But they're all just as effective. The other thing to consider is the active ingredient percentage. So if you look at the bottle, it'll say how much percentage of the item is The lower the percentage the less longer it'll last so you'll have to reapply Any other questions Thank you so much for being here I always get a lot of these questions because it is my district that usually I

is heavily impacted. And actually one of the more common questions that I always get is why our district or why does it always happen in our area? And maybe you can help, you might or might not know why it is that particularly in my district in the southern part of Monterey Park, we get a lot of this, yeah.

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

Thank you for that. And I know that my district borders or the southern part of Monterey Park borders East LA and borders Montebello and other cities. What type of coordination does the SGV mosquito and vector control do with these communities? Especially if we're getting, for example, because we might not know if there's water that's, you know, or pools that might be potentially breeding a lot of these mosquitoes that might be coming into Monterey Park because of the close borders.

Right, so mosquitoes don't follow borders. They're just all over the area. But we have a really robust relationship with the neighboring district. In fact, we have established a MOU with all of the vector control districts within the southern region to be able to share resources to respond. And we just enacted that MOU when we were responding to the Eaton Fire mosquito control. To answer your question, we have an established relationship with them. If there is West Nile virus, if there is an increased risk to the community, then we're reaching out to them and asking them if they can do their part to look at sources in that neighboring community.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And then I just had one last question because I saw that you have K-12 educational materials and I'm a teacher. So for teachers who are interested in some of your materials or perhaps your presentations, how would they get that information?

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

That's great to hear, and I trust that Joseph will get us connected, yeah.

Yes, and also, if there's any events going on in the city, the city can always contact the board, and they can be present at the different events and have different events or information for the children and adults, too. So not just the schools, but different events. We have it like Cherry Blossom, et cetera. Just let them know ahead of time so they can make arrangements. Thank you.

Thank you, Joseph, and obviously the work you and your staff do at the Mosquito Abatement District. I'm kind of curious. I know that some residents have commented, and I think I feel it's a feeling, but would you say that this was a less wet, cold winter, and does that mean that if it is a warmer, if you will, spring, does that mean the mosquito season might start earlier, or is that just... this feeling, or is it actually based on observable data about the temperature?

Yeah, no, that's a great question. So we did have a very warm winter, and we saw the effects on that specifically with our black fly population. So these are not your regular house flies. They're biting black flies. They stem from running water. So for us, it's San Gabriel River. But we did observe, more anecdotally than trapped data, that Aedes or mosquito populations stick around through the winter months. So usually we get a break from biting pressure in the winter months. Not this year. We definitely saw mosquito activity. So to answer your question, we're already in the season. And so we're going to start seeing more mosquito activity. We're really going to start seeing disease activity once overnight lows stay above 60 degrees. And so that's really any day now. But yes, the warmer temperatures during the winter really just causes these mosquitoes to come right back up before it's due time. So in February, we had a heat wave, like a little heat wave for about two weeks and we definitely saw mosquito activity at that point.

I guess the response is now sooner than later right?

Yes so the other thing is that we often think that we have a mosquito season in our area but because we have beautiful weather we really don't. They just kind of hunker down until it's warm enough throughout the day there's enough sunlight and so really it's important for residents to have you know, these mosquito control practices down throughout the year, take the spring to, you know, spring clean, reduce mosquito sources on their properties, clean out any of those things. We have, again, a lot of information, a whole different presentation on mosquito habitats and all that stuff. But, yes, always tip, toss, and protect.

Thank you.

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

Yeah. Yes, thank you. I really appreciate it.

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

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

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

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

Thank you, Dori. Next is Caleb Kwok.

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

Thank you, Caleb. Next is Don Rock.

Good evening, mayor, council members, and dedicated staff. My name is Dawn Rock, and I wasn't going to speak tonight, but this was just given to me, and I was asked to share it. It might be information that Robert or Inez already are aware of. However, I'd like to share it with all of you and the community. My apologies if the information is a little more disjointed than usual. Monterey Park has unique window of leverage to leverage upcoming la-28 Olympic opportunities to secure funding temporary infrastructure and public visibility for the Barnes Park Aquatic Center by aligning the city's goals with the la-28 get in the game initiative Monterey Park can drive community desired development spotlight the Monterey Park Manta Ray swim team, and boost local businesses. While LA-28 is not directly sponsoring new permanent pool construction, major opportunities exist to secure temporary assets and procurement contracts, temporary pool and splash pads loans, LA-28 is loaning temporary pools to municipalities such as Inglewood and Long Beach. Monterey Park can petition to secure a temporary pool loan or a splash pad asset to showcase LA-28's commitment to community engagement. LA 22 community engagement and events. Monterey Park can host official LA 28 funded community celebration events such as fan zones, watch parties, torch relay local staging to draw widespread attention to our local aquatic needs. We can also partner with LA 28 to host an international delegation country a program fully funded by LA28 that will spotlight Monterey Park on a global scale. There are other public relations, ambassador campaign, and outreach to former Olympic athletes that are now LA28 board members. Looking forward to sharing more detailed information with all of you and having Monterey Park become once again an Olympic city with a heart. regarding tonight's agenda item on the temporary ad hoc subcommittee to explore funding strategies for the Barnes Park Aquatic Center. It is my hope that two council members will be on the committee, and I look forward to sharing and working together on the multi-tiered financial funding strategy of political advocacy, community development block grants, and private philanthropy. As always, I am grateful for your time, consideration, and service to our community. Thank you.

Thank you, Dawn. Next up is Martha Yoselens.

Good evening, council. My name is Martha and I live right off of Hellman Avenue on Olive Avenue in the city of Alhambra. I've been there over 23 years and I'm speaking regarding many topics. I'll start with the number one. For the past six weeks, maybe seven, I guess the Marriott Hotel is having a Pokemon event And we have been impacted with that, with the traffic. And our family can't even park. And sometimes they're there from 9 o'clock in the morning till even 10 o'clock at night. So I hope the city can look at that matter and do something about it. the parking, maybe the Marriott can offer valet parking, or I know it's very deep, they have a lot of levels underneath the Marriott, but I understand it's very expensive also what they charge. Another matter is that I oppose that 48 unit. I understand there's one parking, There's one parking slot for each unit that they're going to build, so that's not enough parking for the people that are going to live, I'm sure, in that unit, maybe two or three people. So when there's an overflow, and that corner of Olive, Hathaway, and Hellman, which is very dangerous, and it's a blind spot, I would like for the, the city to look into the matter and maybe put a traffic light there right in the corner for the people that are going east and west. They fly, I mean, my husband and I coming here, we couldn't even make a left turn. So then now we had to go around towards Ramona Road, which is also impacted with the parking situation. And so, I didn't write a speech or anything, but I just wanted to see if our city of Alhambra can work something out with the city of Monterey Park. You're welcome to be there anytime between 2.30 in the afternoon till about seven o'clock to see all the line of cars. And basically our street, Olive, we've never had any problems. I love it there and I would hate to move. But anyway, that's about it. Any questions? Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Martha. Next up, Bruce Mock.

Good evening. My name is Bruce Malk. I live on Hathaway Avenue in the middle of the street. Basically, I have two houses there, and I want to emphasize that we've been living there for almost 42 years. We only have four people living in a quarter and an acre, okay? Most of the houses around my houses, most of the residents only have two, up to maybe three people per household. We are single-family homes. Right now, well, we were talking about earlier, somebody had mentioned about Happy Days. Happy Days, my daughter used to go there. It's a much, much bigger lot than the one proposed here in 824 West Hellman. Okay? And you're talking about that place is going to only build 32 condos. Now you're talking about 48 for a smaller lot. higher structure, more traffic. Today at four o'clock, I tried to cross Helmand. There's so much traffic. You know, they don't stop. And then almost, you know, I put my foot out. Supposedly, they're supposed to stop and let pedestrian cross, but nobody yield. Somebody, like somebody mentioned before, one person, an older gentleman, got killed and dragged a couple blocks from that location a couple years ago. This is real. Okay? And then... A lot of people, even right now with the hotel, all the parties and conference that they have, they park all the way into my area. Two days ago, they throw in and out burger, burger wraps on our sidewalk. Okay, this is happening. Drinks, half filled, half full, half finished, left on the side of the driveway. That's not acceptable. We have been it has been a very quiet neighborhood and all of a sudden you're talking about 48 Plus 2 times 2 or more and then you're gonna have a lot more cars in that coming in It's hard to make a right turn on Hathaway or going left turn on the Hellman onto my street Thank you, you guys, for putting in the left turn signal, turning lane onto Atlantic. I appreciate that. When the hotel, you know, was first proposed, The hotel, before we were told that they're not going to have, most of their parking will be underneath. It's not going to be impacting our local streets. That's not true. It's impacting us already. With this major housing project that you're going to put there, it's going to make it even worse and worse. And more people might be getting into it. traffic accident or, you know, burglaries. A lot of strangers are going to be visiting our neighborhood. That's not nice. Noise will be a problem. Trash, I mentioned before. And then security is our main concern. Like a lot of older senior citizens, or at least my age, Lives there and we need the protection. I hope you guys can you know, put it put it in your in your decision-making Again How things is important, but you know, you need to look at the environment immediate neighborhood and We are mostly single-family homes, and I hope you will consider moving that project somewhere else or modify it or lower the density. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Next is Nancy Nguyen.

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

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

Good evening, everybody. My name is Paul Lam. I'm living in Alhambra. Close, next street is Hathaway. The Hathaway, the helmet is, this helmet is very busy. Even you don't find it after office hour, 2.30 or 3 o'clock p.m. So when you exit to right turn to the Atlantic, My property is go to the Curtis and then turn the right is next block is Hathaway. So that block is very busy, even the Marylock Hotel, 555 Hotel is very busy and the car is exit from there. Even you build, The corner, 48 multi-unit on the corner property on the Hathaway is very, very busy and very dangerous. Hathaway is maybe a couple years have car accident. The old man is die on the Hathaway. So, I hope the city will be think about because on the, even they have a stop light. When you right turn, so it's very difficult because the left turn is, I just telling you before is on the three o'clock, 2.30 to three o'clock and four o'clock, five o'clock p.m. because it's all the people from the downtown they, on the 10 freeways traffic, they exit to the Helmand. The Helmand is so busy, nonstop, so even no chance to right turn on the Atlantic. So that's, you need to think about the traffic on the Helmand. So, and also, When you build a multi-unit on that, the car is more than 48. cars because it's not only one people living in there. Maybe two family, three family, so living in the one house. So you have think about maybe two car for one family or three car in the one family. So very busy. It's not, not very good. It's very dangerous because it's even On that point, when we go to the exit to the Atlantic, the traffic light, four-way stop traffic light. The traffic light is, because it's when you turn, the merry-go-round, right now the merry-go-round, the car is turn, not turn to the left side, you turn to pass another light, go to 10 freeway. That point is that they nonstop to fasten the helmet, the car, so easy to hit. It's very easy to hit. Even I tried to pass the Atlantic, go to the helmet, and the one police car from the From the stop sign, they have a stop sign. The police car is, they nonstop, they just go through. I stand on the helmet. The police car is turn left right away. I stop. very, very good time, on the good time, the police car stop telling me, what did they telling me? He don't stop, on the stop sign, he don't stop. He just turn right, right away. And they telling me is... telling me I should be slowly. He don't slowly and then telling me slowly, because I have right to on the right, on the helmet, slowly to go through. That's my point, it's very dangerous, even the policeman. Yeah, that's my point, because it's, the stoplight and then you have to count how many car, how many minute to turn to the turn freeway and go through the helmet. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Paul. All right, and council may briefly respond at this point to any of the public comments.

Well, thank you mayor. First of all, I I wanted to say thank you I mean, this is not agenda so we can't have a discussion but thank you for the residents both my park and the Friendly neighbors in the hamper for coming by to Let us know about the concerns what we will do and what we can do is I'm gonna ask the city manager and staff to kind of look into this because usually something like this it gets kind of walk through the planning commission. So I'm just gonna have staff look into this and make sure the planning commission and staff can look into the concerns and how to mitigate the concerns for traffic safety and parking. And I'm sure there'll be updated reports along the way and just keep the residents both sides of the city involved here so that they know what's going on from a transparency standpoint. Thank you.

ECHO APPRECIATION FOR FOLKS THAT SHOWED UP TODAY TO EXPRESS QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS IN REGARDS TO THE HELLMAN HATHAWAY PROJECT. I KNOW THAT STAFF ARE ALREADY WORKING ON THAT. I KNOW SOME OF THE SPEAKERS NOTED THAT IT'S NOT ON THE AGENDA. IT'S NOT ON THE AGENDA. It's not here for us to approve or deny or take any action on that specific item. When it is, I hope that when and if it is, I hope that folks will continue to engage in that project. I know the developer, the proposer there has had a community meeting. I encourage them to continue to do some outreach and engagement with their neighbors, because they're existing property owners, and I believe longtime existing property owners. And so hope that they will engage with you if any of their representatives are here. would want to make sure that they are talking to you. But appreciate that you are expressing these concerns. It sounds like many of these concerns are existing concerns, not dealing with this specific proposal. So I think we can clear the direction for staff do what we can to talk to neighbors, in particular the hotel there, about how we can potentially address some of the concerns around parking and some of the traffic issues there. Definitely want to make sure we're working to address those, particularly given that that's my council district. Want to see what we can do to encourage the courtyard by Marriott to be better neighbors to their neighbors existing there. And in regards to that, the specific proposal that's being, the development that's being proposed there, that will have to come to the city for approval. There is, I believe, ongoing conversations and there's no, nothing is set in zone. So we encourage you to continue to engage there. some of you noted that you would prefer this development or this kind of development to go in other places and Chris you to uh we are looking at other places but we don't control the city does not control where development goes we don't own the property there and we don't control specifics in terms of telling one person who wants to develop something on their property here to have to go somewhere else so there are certain things that are not within the power of the city and the city council to do uh but Given that, we want to make sure that you're continuing to engage with us. We're open to engaging and want to have this conversation and recognize some of these concerns are very real ones and want to see what we can do to address the existing concerns too. On the Vagabond property, I know the speaker was here previously at a previous council meeting as well. Understand the concern the rezoning I believe happened back in 2020 and so this is a long ongoing drama Unless Carl knows otherwise my reading of the law is we would have to go back to the voters to make that kind of adjustment so That's something we'd have to discuss the council doesn't have that power to address that directly So I know you're in conversation with the city staff on that. Let's continue that conversation And then Don I know brought up the pool in LA-28 and opportunities there and host delegation. I believe Robert and our staff are already working on engaging LA-28 and are going to some of these regular convenings for the LA area cities to see how we can continue to be part of that conversation, what we can do to potentially host events, watch events, and participate in the wider regional celebration that is going to be the Olympics. I'd love for us to be able to host a delegation. If anyone has contacts with countries that are looking for host cities, please share that with us. I think we'd be happy to be connected to some of those folks. uh to explore that kind of conversation and i know robin our city team are working on on how we can do that and we're definitely trying to leverage the world's eyes coming into the la area and the sanger route which is has a number of venues to host olympic events to see what we can do to attract investment and grants and other funding opportunities for our own athletic facilities here so encourage our continued engagement with the community and others who have ideas you have contacts please do share them we do want to leverage those and make the most of them in the next few years

All right, thank you so much. I'm gonna echo some of the items that the council members already spoken. I teach civics in Alhambra, so I'm happy to see Alhambra taking a lot of civic action and being engaged in your community. I hope as this project and other projects come up that have shared interests between both our communities come up that you'll continue to come to our council meetings and also to Alhambra council meetings as well. I know I met some of theirs as well every once in a while. But thank you for coming out today as a civics teacher, which brings me, it warms my heart that people are still very civically engaged. But this project, I think as it comes to us and as we continue, as a developer continues to you know, progress with this project that we continue to share information with the community and also share this information with the developers so they are aware of what the concerns are from not just Alhambra residents but also Monterey Park residents as well. And I want to thank Don also for coming and sharing that information. If you haven't shared it directly with Robert or Inez or any of us, if you can please share that information directly so we can be able to look up and look into that. Seems like a lot of very interesting opportunities to have, you know, FanFest areas here in our city for LA 28. But also, Robert, I know that we're doing, I saw on our agenda, a watch party for FIFA World Cup, but I know there's FanFest areas happening and being hosted throughout LA for the FIFA World Cup, which is very, very short, very, very close actually, right? That would be for us to be able to take advantage of a lot of the stuff that's happening here in Los Angeles and bring those eyes and a lot of those tax dollars here into our city as well. Anyhow, and to Alhambra as well, actually, because I know a lot of Alhambra will come out and watch those as well. Wanted to thank you for coming out tonight and hopefully we will continue to see you as this development progresses. Thank you.

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

The project still needs to go in front of the Planning Commission. That is correct.

Okay. Okay.

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

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

that I think that if if this continues to be an issue I think this also presents itself with a good opportunity for both our city and the city of Alhambra to collaborate on finding ways to be able to protect some of this parking which is very limited so that it's available for residents both we're living within Alhambra and Monterey Park so that when they come home they have available parking for them to or have the guests over and it's not an overflow parking for for the courtyard thank you

Actually, thank you for bringing that up, Councillor. Just for my clarification, so right now in Alhambra, if there's any overnight parking, it requires a permit, correct?

Madam Mayor, members of the council, yes, if the, and I don't know if Sean knows the times off the top of his head, but I believe that in Alhambra, the overnight parking restrictions start like from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m.? Is that, oh, 6 a.m., thank you for that clarification. So correct, if residents park, Alhambra residents could park in Alhambra with a permit, but if they don't have a permit, then correct, overnight parking is not allowed.

And then back in our city, for a couple years now, we've, we've had required permit parking for the neighborhoods surrounding East LA college to address some of the Parkinson's over there, right?

Correct. There is several areas in the city that have permitted parking. Some of them are different variations of times, and some, I believe the one around Elac College in that neighborhood, is enforced 24-7, if I'm not mistaken.

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

Madam Mayor, if the council is interested in us and staff bringing back an item for discussion, evaluating parking on the northern border, we can definitely look at that if that's something that the council is interested in doing.

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

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

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

Good evening, I'm Mayor of Pro Tem and City Council, Sean Igoe, public works director. Yes, there is a formal process that residents would have to go through. It's a petition process that they would have to get their neighbors to sign. There's also a cost associated with this. I don't remember what the cost is, but it's a few thousand dollars to get that process started because there is staff time that goes into this. And then after that, then they would actually have to pay for the permit annually. So there is an ongoing cost for the residents to have this permit.

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

Thanks. Yeah, and I actually spoke with the representatives at the Marriott yesterday, Jennifer Huang and Veronica, and they told me that the Pokemon card trading convention, that's one of those events that's caused a lot of traffic, they had their very last one last week. So that's not happening anymore in the future. They do have one bigger event for Father's Day weekend. So Father's Day weekend might be a little busy. But other than that, they understand that that convention trading event is too big for their hotel. So at least what they've told me is they're not going to do those kind of events anymore. And then thank you, Don, for coming to share about the pool opportunities with us. And then for Nancy and the Vagabond, I know that staff is already in communication. I believe the $100,000 money amount that you mentioned, that's if you were to conduct an entire election by yourself. But if you tag on to another election in November, then you don't have to worry about the entire cost of any election. So staff can continue to work with you on that. All right. Well, that's not really brief comments, but did you want to say something?

Madam Mayor, members of the Council, I did want to point out, appreciate the comments tonight. The city is on several different Olympic planning committees and learning more about opportunities. If community members have these types of opportunities, we would definitely like to learn more about them. Our public safety, police and fire are attending public safety committee, Olympic committee planning meetings. Our economic development staff is attending business opportunities, ways that we can engage and make sure that our city is thriving during the Olympic process. So we're attending those types of meetings. And then the recreation staff definitely is involved in um torch run and fan fest um to learn more but if there's anything else that you have please share it with us we'd love to make sure that we're not um that we're evaluating all opportunities for the city of monterey park thank you thank you all right thanks everyone for coming we're going to continue with our presentations or item 6b is city-wide communication survey results

Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the council. This evening presenting will be Citlaly Tejera. She is our Civic Spark fellow who's been helping the city manager's office with communications. We recently ran a survey, which you're aware of, and she's going to present some of the findings and takeaways from that survey. Citlaly?

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

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

Thank you very much for that presentation.

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

Thank you, that's something we can certainly take a look at. It's been one of our goals in the city manager's office to improve our communications. St. Lolly has certainly helped immensely with that so far and as you know one of the things that we're going to be doing in the next couple months will be bringing on a communications manager for the city that will help us look into all of these different ways of Communicating I think one thing to note in City of Monterey Park is that we're still highly analog I would say more so than many other cities. I think that's why the Cascades newspaper ranks so highly and why our banners rank so highly. So I think some other opportunities that we could look into would be, and we already deliver information to schools, but posting it visibly, physically in locations that people frequent. We've done it before at our parks. Some of them have bulletin boards. We've put up our library programs, our Cascades, et cetera. perhaps places like laundromats or grocery stores where we can get in and post some information would be helpful as well.

Thank you. Our e-newsletter that we also send out, I'm kind of curious to consistent or do we see like drops and subscribes? I guess what I'm also wondering too is that given that, you know, yes, aside from issues like language barriers or access to the internet, nonetheless I think by now a large segment of our population probably consumes electronically their information. I'm kind of curious, have we ever also looked at the analytics of our newsletters and how, if possible, are there ways to improve upon it or even if there are certain months in which our newsletter gets higher traffic than others and if so, why is that? I'm just curious, I feel like the newsletter is an opportunity to really up the consumption of the newsletter?

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

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

I'm sorry. Right now, how do we enroll? Do people sign up or do we look at, say, the voter roll and just kind of automatically enroll them into the newsletter? I'm just curious.

People do have to sign up for that. We want to make sure that we're not spamming anybody so that we've got consent. So we're not taking your email addresses from anywhere else and plugging them in.

I'm just curious if, okay.

Madam Mayor, members of the Council, if I may, I do know, I think the Rec Department has used some paid ads from time to time for special events, but I think it's definitely something we could look into expanding to other departments, or if we want to look at potentially boosting attendance at a specific program. So appreciate the comment. I did want to share also based on the survey. So we have had different types of surveys. And so definitely when we have had polling surveys or random scientific surveys that are being done by consultant, it's a little different than this type of survey. This one is just available to anybody to take. So even non-residents could potentially have been participating in the survey. Definitely one of the other strategies as we continue to try to enhance communications is our Cascades newsletter is a 10 month newsletter. And so what we're looking at, so July and August and December and January, those additions have traditionally been combined. So instead of having 12 months, we've only mailed out 10 months worth of additions of Cascades. So this next year, we're looking at adding one more addition. So instead of 10 months, we're looking to expand that to 11 months so that there'll be one more month of mailing that will go out through the cascade so we could get more regular information out to the public.

Question, the survey, how was it sent to residents? Was it like via text or email or on paper?

It was available online. And we kind of did outreach through a lot through social media. We also sent little book slips and water bills. There was printed flyers throughout City Hall. I was at in-person events asking people to fill out this survey, but that is one thing that we did not do. We didn't have physically printed surveys. And for our further research, we do want to do focus groups with people that the survey didn't exactly reach. For example, maybe someone didn't have access to a phone or a computer to take this survey because it was only available digitally.

yeah i'm wondering if the results are skewed because of the way that the survey was provided we did also have it in the cascades correct yes yes so it's on the cascades as well yes got it okay well thank you for the presentation that's very informative thank you guys all right next up we have development projects updates from our community development department

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members, Joe Torres, your Economic Development Manager. I am pleased to present an update on the city's major development projects. We can all agree that land development is essential for our city's success and imperative for our community's prosperity. These development projects generate more jobs, bring desired curb appeal, unite community members, maintain or increase home values, and provide additional revenue to the city. Next slide, please. Before I present the development projects, I'd like to take a moment to familiarize the city council and members of our audience with the city's project development process, which can vary depending on the specific nature of the project. So this is more of a general overview from start to finish. The process begins when a developer submits a formal application for entitlements and permits. This is called the entitlement or zoning clearance process. A design review may be conducted, if applicable, which ensures the project's aesthetics and compatibility with the surrounding areas. The next step is a plan check, which ensures the development meets the city's building safety and fire requirements. Once we complete these three steps, the project proceeds to the permitting phase where building permits and other specific approvals are issued. However, construction can only begin once all the necessary permits are issued. Regular inspections are conducted during construction to ensure compliance with building codes and safety standards. After construction, the city conducts the final inspection and, if applicable, a certificate of occupancy is issued. The development is now ready for occupancy and operation and ready to serve our community. Now, using these steps and these milestones as our roadmap, let me guide you through the progress of our major project developments. Next slide, please. We are all excited that Monterey Park's third Starbucks location on 1969 South Atlantic is now open for business. This location features the new 2026 Starbucks prototype, which balances a spacious, cozy atmosphere inside with a state-of-the-art drive-through outside. This store is a perfect example of Monterey Park's economic vision, balancing modern innovation with a deep commitment to smart growth. Next slide. Tenant improvements have been completed at the 1800 West Garvey Building at Kasuta Canyon, and it is now operating as Varsity Jiu-Jitsu School. Staff is working with the school to schedule a ribbon cutting ceremony. Next slide. The Whitmore Villas, a development featuring 63 townhomes on 2.74 acres, now looks more like its initial conceptual design, and it's nearing completion. This project is adding valuable housing stock to our city. Next slide, please. The 5,000 square foot commercial building at 283 East Garvey is also near completion, with exterior and interior finishing work currently in progress. This new commercial space will soon be ready to welcome a retail market. Next slide. Work is also in progress at the downtown Lincoln Plaza Shopping Center at 100 to 120 North Garfield. As you can see, much of the facade work is near completion. Businesses have been open during construction, including ABC Cafe, which was located nearest to the fire damage. Next slide. At the 110,000 square foot A1 self-storage site on 2500 Davidson Drive, progress is being made with the building construction, signifying significant steps forward for this project. Next slide, please. Thumbling Dumpling Restaurant is bringing its popular culinary offerings to Monterey Park and has signed the lease at the former Caro's Restaurant. The building permit for tenant improvements was issued in March 2026, and work is very well underway. Next slide, please. Fire significantly damaged the building located at 601 West Garvey a number of years ago. The renovation finally began in July 2025, and as you can see, there has been much progress with the new facade. However, construction has stalled recently due to expired permits. Next slide. The Elite Restaurant on 700 South Atlantic Boulevard also sustained significant fire damage about a year and a half ago. Work began shortly thereafter with the goal of rebuilding and subdividing the building for two tenant occupancy instead of one. However, construction work has stalled. Next slide, please. This 40 unit condominium project on 188 South Chandler Avenue will provide much needed housing options for our senior community. The council granted a project extension in 2024 and the city issued its building permit in 2025. However, the developer has not started construction. Next slide.

Before we move on for that one, can we invite the developer to come back to provide a project update? I do remember voting for that extension. I'm very disappointed that they haven't even started construction over a year ago. Noted.

All right, next slide please. The developer for the Celadon mixed use project on 114 East Garvey in the downtown district has submitted a revised project design changing into a seven story mixed use project with 169 units and 16,822 square feet of commercial space. City staff is currently reviewing the revised design. Next slide. A proposed 48-unit apartment complex will replace these two residential homes on 816-824 Hellman Avenue. City staff is currently reviewing the application. Next slide, please. The city has also received a conceptual plan submitted for the Deerfield Plaza Mixed Use Project. This significant development will address both housing and commercial needs, with 369 residential units, 20,745 square feet of commercial space, and 674 parking spaces. It is now in its entitlement phase and currently under review. Next slide. The city has received an application for the Park City project, a six-story mixed-use project with 120 residential units and 5,150 square feet of commercial space. The proposed project will be built on the downtown lot currently occupied by TS Emporium and other business establishments. It is currently in entitlement and is under city review. Next slide. The developer has submitted a revised application for this 34 unit townhome development on 507 North Chandler. City staff is currently reviewing the project, which will bring new housing opportunities to the neighborhood. Next slide. Charles Company, the owner and developer of this proposed residential mix use project with 173 residential units and 5,700 square feet of commercial space, submitted the conceptual plans and deposit agreement in September of 2024. The developer is currently reviewing staff comments regarding those plans. Next slide. And finally, I'm excited to share that from July 2025, which was the last time I stood in front of you to present the previous development project, to April 2025, the city has issued 131 new business licenses signaling robust economic growth and welcome new businesses that align with the city's commercial corridors and market demand, including La Diosa de los Moldes Mexican Restaurant, Asoyoru Maid Cafe, Yehubi Coffee, Rework Me Fitness Center, and Swank Hair Salon. And on the horizon, coming soon to Monterey Park, are the Melt and the Vein Coffee, among others. Madam Mayor, members of the City Council, that concludes the development project updates. I'm happy to answer questions.

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

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

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

It's where the The fitness center is mid-Atlantic Boulevard near, almost close to NBC Seafood. Oh, okay. Yeah, that right same complex. Where Honey Boba used to be, exactly. Yeah, so it's a perfect fit for them.

Yeah, I'm excited all the new coffee shops that are coming.

We have someone here who's a big fan of the bean coffee and she couldn't wait until they open shop.

Yes, yes, I agree. And I don't know if for the other coffee shop, the 10,000, if we're planning to do a ribbon cutting for them.

Definitely. We've approached them for a ribbon cutting. We're still working on getting some of their permits completed. Once that's done, the next would be a ribbon cutting ceremony.

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

Noted.

Thank you. Thank you, Joseph, for that presentation. Since we're talking about, you know, developers or I guess even owners of existing complex. I would actually like to add and suggest that perhaps one day we invite the owners of one 11 North Atlantic to come before us because let's be honest, that is a blighted shopping center. And I, I mean, when I would like to say council, at least there's some restaurant is now empty and I don't know, what our communications are. But in my opinion, it has become blight. And I think that if the owner is not being cooperative with us, then we need to then ask ourselves, well, are there carrots and sticks we need to employ? Because that is a very important corner. And on the one hand, yes, we are talking about upcoming development. But we have existing retail spaces, which At least that, but in particular, I could be wrong, you know. But, you know, the time that I used to go there for a Korean barbecue place, the bookstore, there was a shaved ice place. And to me, it just seems like a wasted opportunity and a disservice to our residents who, probably some of them, remember when I opened like 40 years ago, and I have to say that I really want some type of report about what are we doing to address what I again call blight right now at 111 North Atlantic.

Duly noted, Mayor Pro Tem.

But I'm just curious, have we had any recent communications with the owners of 111? Have we?

Not recently from my department, Mayor Pro Tem. Okay.

madam members of the council i believe there has been um code enforcement okay um working back with that management um of the property we can definitely um i don't know if they'd be interested in coming and providing an update per se but um we can definitely ask them and see if they'd be interested in demand

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

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

Thank you.

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

They're always on top of our list.

Yeah, keep being persistent. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Any other?

Yeah, I just wanted to say, I think what the mayor was trying to say is maybe we need like some type of culinary tour going on here in the city of Monterey Park. There's a lot of interest, at least for me, from hearing the mayor of a lot of amazing restaurants that are not just within our city, but that just opened in our city, I think would be very useful to do kind of like we did in the past. But would be great to be able to highlight some of these restaurants, especially as L.A. 28 is coming around the corner.

Thank you, Joe. Sounds like a great idea. We'll definitely look into it. Thank you.

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

Madam Mayor, members of city council, Scott Weese, police chief. Good to see everybody tonight. I'm gonna give you a couple updates. First one's gonna be on our Neighborhood Watch program. Here's our updated numbers. We continue to push out Neighborhood Watch to the different areas in town. Let's not fight over the numbers. We're doing our best. I know how it gets in here. Go ahead, next slide, please. I wanted to give you kind of an idea of how the program works. There's a lot of different leads that go out. We go out through Instagram. We go out through Cascades. We push the program out to the community in every different platform that we can. We typically then connect up with one of the residents. We try to establish a location for the meeting for that neighborhood. And we keep it within a manageable space. We don't... 100 people at a meeting we try to keep it to that neighborhood and that's where the neighborhood watch program kind of Came to be we want the neighbors to start to learn who lives next door and who lives down the street they exchange Phone numbers they create texting apps all the different things that keep the community connected and that little small community of maybe 10 or 12 houses they have micro issues in their neighborhood that we like to address. We set up the first meeting, we do the outreach to the community, we bring the speakers to the location, and then we help them plan future meetings. We'll come to those future meetings and provide them with whatever they need as far as police resources, and that's kind of how the program works over the long term. We've had very good success. Sometimes we do it in people's houses. Sometimes we do it on driveways. We did one recently over at the park at Monterey Highlands School, and that's what that neighborhood wanted. So we're able to kind of accommodate whatever their needs are. Anybody who's interested in the program can call our Community Engagement Bureau. There's different ways to access them. The phone number's up here on the screen, 626-307-1215. There's a link on our webpage, and those are the best ways to get ahold of us, and we'll set up the meeting from that point on. Next slide, please. Our Detective Bureau update, next one. This is our April statistics. It's very interesting, and this is kind of across a lot of different communities in Southern California. Our robberies are down by 31% from this year to last year. I think that's a great statistic. Our burglaries are down 29% from this year to last year. Another great statistic. And those kind of reflect across the region. Theft is everything other than a burglary. That's a lot of different crimes. You can see it's a lot higher number, but it's down 5%. And that could be anything from petty theft from a store, somebody stealing something off a porch, a bicycle being stolen, any of those different things. Grand Theft Auto is down 8%, stealing cars. What is up is fraud. People are using the internet to conduct fraud. People are using different methods to conduct fraud. We have a detective that works nothing but fraud investigations. And they work with their other agencies around us, the county. They work with the state of California's DOJ. And they work with the federal government, because the Secret Service is responsible for fraud investigations that go across state lines. So we work with all those partners to try to deal with the different frauds that are occurring. But the stats are really good, and we'll continue to address these issues. Next page is our NIBRS stats. NIBRS is the system by which all police departments in the country give information to the FBI on crime statistics. And it's a very robust system, but I took the three separate areas, crimes against persons, crimes against property, and then crimes against society. Crimes against society are Vice, narcotics, pornography, those kind of offenses. Crimes against persons are very obvious. Crimes against property, obviously obvious. We saw in crimes against persons about a 1% increase from 2005 to 2026. 59% of those crimes have been cleared. So that's a pretty good clearance rate for Monterey Park. The national average is in the 20s. Those crimes, crimes against persons, typically occur and you know the suspect. You've been battered by someone that you know. We're able to kind of link our suspects through those. Our crimes against property is a decrease of 11% from 20,025 to 2026, and 10% of those crimes have been cleared. Much lower clearance rate, because that includes you come home and you find out that the package on your porch has been stolen, we don't know who did it. There's not a lot of leads in those cases, so it's a much lower clearance rate. And the last one is, like I said, there's a 74% increase. That reflected in the frauds. These are crimes that recently, for about four years in Southern California, were not prosecuted. Narcotics violations, prostitution, none of those crimes were prosecuted in California. In Southern California, the DA refused to file charges on narcotics-related crimes. That has changed, and we're starting to see an uptick in those. But those are our national statistics. We continue to address all the issues. Today there was a very robust investigation we were doing in the city. We made some headway dealing with some of the crimes against society that are occurring in Monterey Park. We're targeting those with our special investigations unit. But we continue to address all the issues as they come up. The detective bureau, the police department is very dedicated to solving these crimes. So I'm here for any questions.

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

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

A lot of fraud is you're being compensated back by your credit card companies. So some people don't report those. We've worked with the credit bureaus and the credit card companies to help. They help us investigate these crimes. But most of the suspects are overseas. They're offshore. It's very difficult. Once we get out of the United States to do anything with suspects when they're in Nigeria or wherever they're at, it's very hard to find them. No, appreciate that.

And I know we do some messaging and communications out to the residents or the cast. I don't know if we do through the Cascades. I assume we do, but also online around fraud prevention and just being able to spot that. If whatever we can do to help redouble those efforts or increase what we do, especially for seniors who are more prone to some of these scams and frauds, and even not seniors, right, that fall for some of these things all the time, phishing attempts. If we can think about what else we can do to educate community members, residents about some of these things, and then businesses as well. I know we have a Business Watch program going on. Yes.

We have a really good relationship with World Journal. and our officers on a regular basis communicate through the World Journal and try to get the word out to that community. We've been pretty successful there, and we're gonna ratchet up that with World Journal and get their cooperation even more to get some of this information out.

Yeah, no, we'd love to do that, and I think, right, I don't anticipate the incidence of fraud going down anytime soon. I think it's only gonna proliferate more, especially with AI. Yes. Right. people being able to pretend like they're other people much more easily going forward and people doing more things online. Whatever we can do to help and obviously work with other regional partners, but whatever we can do to help our residents be better prepared for this new reality, I think would love to see us continue to do. I don't think you touched on violent crime very much in your stats. I assume that's because the numbers are very low.

We throw violent crime into... think violent the term violent crime comes through the media for the most part crimes against persons for us is where the violent crimes would kind of fall um the nyber systems indicates and it identifies 26 to 28 different crimes against person um it's a very unique way of tracking. We used to do it with just eight sections. Now we do it with over 40. But that's where that statistic would fall. I gave you the overalls. My statistics that I get every month are broken down into individual categories. And a lot of the categories have zeros in them. arsons, there's a lot of subcategories that we don't have a lot of incidents that occur there. But that's where it would fall is within that crimes against person breakdown. That's where the violent crime would fall. Aggravated assaults, assault with a deadly weapon, murders, attempted murders, all those different things. I just want to confirm that those numbers are also- They're very low. Yeah, they're very, very low. The biggest section of violent crime is robbery. And that doesn't qualify as a crimes against person as a violent crime unless someone's hurt. So California was reluctant to join the NIBR system because it muddies the water when it comes to looking at the statistics overall. It's very hard to kind of break it down. The old system we thought worked great. Southern California in particular was the last group in the country to switch over to the NIBR system. The other states were 10 years ahead of us doing it. So it's been a learning process for us with the new NIBRS statistics. I appreciate it. Thanks.

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

It's probably multi-layered. One of them is when the new DA came into office, prosecutions went up. And law enforcement in Southern California made it very clear that we were going to prosecute the crimes that for a long time did not get prosecuted. So that's a deterrent. You saw on the news the retail theft task forces that went out. You saw people being arrested and put in jail. You saw the DA get up there at the press conferences and saying, I'm going to prosecute these people for these crimes. That did have an effect. A lot of people said, oh, that's not gonna change things. Obviously it did have an effect. The other side of it is the public has become more aware of these crimes and they're not, they don't wanna become victims anymore. That outreach we did up in the Highlands area, we met on an individual basis a lot of those people and explained to them how they can stop becoming victims. And they followed those guidelines. Cameras went in. We have our flock system up and running. We have a lot of community engagement up in that area. There weren't as many burglaries as everybody thought, I think. That was part of it, too. There was this epidemic of burglaries happening. One house they said had nine burglaries in it. There was one. But that's just the way it goes. The other part of it is our detectives are very good at what they do, and they cooperate and share information with the agencies around us. Burglars don't have... Borders. They're like mosquitoes. I learned that tonight. They're like mosquitoes. They don't have borders. So the burglar that hits Monterey Park is also the burglar that's hitting Alhambra, and he's hitting up in the valley, and they're hitting down in Orange County. We saw from that Highlands group, they hit us. We worked the case. We broke the case for the other agencies. The surveillance went on that crew, and they were arrested up in the San Fernando Valley. after committing a burglary. So that's why I think you're seeing the numbers go down. It's us not becoming victims anymore. And I say us, the non-criminals in society have decided they don't want to be victims anymore. And we're a community that has its own police department that can respond to calls, that cares about what happens in this community. I'm not saying anything bad about LA, but you see the burglaries up in the Valley in LA, it's a manpower issue. It's a huge populated area and they just don't have enough cops to respond and deal with the problem. We have resources here and we deploy our resources accordingly to solve problems. That's what it, bottom line, we evaluate it every single day to make sure that our resources are targeting the things we need to target. That's why our numbers are down. They'll continue to go down.

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

You guys are friends, right? Okay. Yes. Of course we are. I'll see if I can do that.

Okay.

Our new RIM system, I might be able to do that. Okay. Thank you, Chief. Uh-huh.

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

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

I'm kind of curious, given what we have seen and the increased sophistication, would it then merit then perhaps doing more like how we do town halls, especially at a time when, you know, like last year or two years ago, you know, like in Highlands, but I'm wondering if it's something that we may want to consider doing like like a cyber fraud town hall, if that is...

Absolutely.

I mean, perhaps we can even invite the DA or AG's office. Again, it just sounds like that seems to be the new frontier of where these frauds are happening.

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

Yeah, thank you, Chief, for the great presentation. I'm always super impressed by our PD. You guys do such a great job. And I know we talked about the incident on my street already, but I just wanted to do a public acknowledgement. I had a neighbor who was on our street, and they saw a vacant home. with squatters inside so he was originally afraid to call the police but we called the police together reported it police monitored it at odd hours and ended up arresting two people within a few days for um burglary yes yeah so they're they're like super fast on top of it um i know some of our residents like the my neighbor could be scared to call the police for whatever reason so I think when people call, maybe have dispatchers thank them for calling so that it encourages our residents to call more.

I will pass that on.

Thank you. Yeah, I know like we've had an uptick in homeless people near my office and my staff continues to call and police are really fast to respond and communicate with the folks and offer services. So thanks for the rapid response.

This will be the last time you'll see me up here because city staff right now is throwing me under the bus for talking so long. So just, I want to pass that to you. Yeah. If they had a hook, I'd be out of here by now. So thank you very much.

Thank you. All right. Fire department. Yeah, police already used up your time, so.

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

No, no questions?

I appreciate kudos for the the open house and the pancakes. Yes. This past weekend really great to see so many in the community really excited. Not only for the pancakes but for all the equipment being able to show off everything the fire the fire department really does serve the key and keep us all safe. Appreciate that. I know the key is eager for for the next one too. Uh, and I saw a lot of kids and great people really having a lot of time. I have a lot of fun, uh, playing with the, the hose and all that stuff going on. Really great job to the police or to the fire department. Uh, and, uh, really seeing the community come together there on, on the weekend. And appreciate this. Bring more skills and training and engagement into the community and look forward to more of these kind of events. I know the CERT program's been great and a great success getting people engaged. Really enjoy and appreciate seeing these kind of more bite-sized opportunities for people to learn and upskill their public safety skill sets. Thanks.

I also wanted to echo the appreciation for the pancake breakfast the other day. My daughters still keep talking about how great the pancakes were. I thought I was going to drop them off every morning to you guys for breakfast. Sure. I wasn't sure if you guys made pancakes, but now I know that you do. All right. And then this is actually, is this happening on the same day as the Pride Parade, right? Yes. So after they're done with the parade, they can walk over and learn how to do CPR. Yeah. correct excellent I think that's great thank you so much for hosting those events and then we should do the according to my daughter pancake breakfast at least three times or four times a year so sure thanks again echoing my colleagues compliments to the open house congratulations and

And again, just to highlight, actually, people I know who live in neighboring cities came over, so that speaks volumes, that it's not just our residents, but people who live in the surrounding area likes to come and just enjoy Pancakes Company and also see the demonstrations.

Yeah, and I think it's cool that you guys left that totaled car outside for a couple days so that committee members can be like, oh, what's going on here?

Yes.

But the demos are very interesting, and I think there's a lot of social media about it. I did see on social media recently that firefighters in other cities are fighting flames with sound waves. I don't know if you guys have seen that yet.

Yes. It's an innovative attempt to – to find different alternative solutions to firefighting. So I know that the San Bernardino County Fire Department has highlighted that in their social media, but it's not something that we've looked into fully yet. But we are aware of that, yes.

Okay, sounds good. Yeah, just an option to look into. It looked really interesting. But yeah, thanks for this presentation. It looks like a really great CPR event.

Yeah, we got all new training mannequins for this event, so. This will be the inaugural use of those. And to everyone's point and on behalf of the fire department, thank you for all attending. We appreciate your support of the fire department and we look forward to seeing you at this event. Sounds good.

Thank you. Next up, recreation and community services.

All right, let's see if I can beat both of those guys. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and city council members. Robert Aguirre, Director of Recreation and Community Services, to give you some quick updates on recreation programming. Just really quick, want to highlight and thank the community that came out and made this a very, very successful Play Days Carnival this year, celebrating the city's 110th birthday. So just want to highlight that event and thank everyone for coming out and enjoying four days of carnival, live entertainment, games, delicious food, and just overall great fun for the community. So thanks everyone for coming out. Next slide please. I wanna highlight two events that are coming up this weekend. First is gonna be this Friday. We're starting a new series with the ELAC Ceramics and Art Club. It's a group of students, and so what I'm working with the ELEC on doing is gonna be working on art shows highlighting student art at the El Encanto facility. So starting this Friday will be our first show, and it'll be, the open reception will be from six to eight p.m. at El Encanto. There will be other opportunities to view the art, which will be Saturday and Sunday of that weekend, and then the following weekend, 30 and 31st, folks can also come from between one and five p.m. to see the students' art. It's 10 students, they're all completing school, and so this is their last opportunity to kind of show some of their art, so we kind of got that in. In future shows, we'll be trying to do these throughout the year. We'll do a little more publicity, but we're trying to squeeze one in right before the end of the school year, give these students an opportunity to show their work in a studio-type setting. So we're excited about that, and we hope the community will come out and support those student artists. And then also next Monday is our annual Memorial Day ceremony, where we'll honor those that have given the ultimate sacrifice. We'll be over at the American Legion Post 397. They'll actually be hosting that event indoors this year. Post has done a significant amount of cleaning and sprucing up of their facility, and they're really interested in showing off the indoor space. And so they're taking a much more leadership role in this year's ceremony, and so we're excited to partner with them on Memorial Day ceremony and look forward to seeing everyone there on Memorial Day at 10 a.m. Also want to share that following the ceremony, they will be providing free lunch for everyone in attendance. So please come out and join us. Next slide, please. Some other things that are coming up, we do have our annual Monterey Park Health Fair. It's a partnership that we do with the UCLA Health Corps. I think we've been partnering with them for over 20 years. There's no insurance required for this. Folks can just drop in to Langley Center between 10 and 2 p.m., 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. There's a bunch of different health screenings, health resources. Stop on by. All ages are welcome. No insurance required. Really great opportunity for some folks to get some information and also some checkups. And then our award-winning San Gabriel Valley Pride Parade and Festival is coming up on June the 6th. You just heard it on the same day as the Sidewalk CPR. Join us for that event. We'll be kicking it off over at Mark Keppel High School at 9 a.m. Marching down Garfield Avenue to Barnes Park, but we'll be having our annual festival here in Barnes Park. We do have some live entertainment, some youth bands that'll be performing, as well as Mark Keppel Theater Company will be doing a performance as well, and some other youth performances. So, really excited about another year. As I mentioned, this is an award-winning event through the CPRS. California Parks and Rec Society, and so we're very proud of this partnership with the Alhambra Teachers Association and the West San Gabriel Valley Boys and Girls Club.

Next slide, please.

And so just want to highlight some events to save the date for. I know earlier we were talking about the Olympics and also FIFA's coming up with the World Cup. We will be hosting a watch party on June the 25th. What's exciting about this is before the watch party, we'll actually be hosting a free soccer clinic from 4.45 to 6.45. That's completely free. You can register online through the recreation website. And then following the clinic, there will be the USA versus Turkey game that'll be shown on a large LED screen here in Barnes Park. We'll be partnering with our farmer's market so you don't have to bring your snacks out. There'll be plenty of food there at the farmer's market so you can enjoy some good food and hopefully watch USA beat Turkey in game three there. And then also wanna highlight our upcoming Independence Day celebration on June the 27th. That'll be here at Barnes Park at the amphitheater. Festivities will kick off at four o'clock with our food trucks and some entertainment. And then we'll have our band at seven o'clock and fireworks at nine p.m. Completely free, come on out and join us and celebrate 250 years of independence for our country. And then lastly, just wanna share an upcoming and very exciting opportunity that we've engaged with. We have a pilot program that we're gonna be doing with our Dial-A-Ride program and also the MPK Transit Express. So very soon we'll be launching that. This will allow us to expand transportation options for our seniors. They will be completely free from the hours of 8 to 4, our dial-a-ride hours, but it will also expand access to our seniors from 6.30 a.m. or after hours all the way to 7.30 p.m. for just $1.00. So this will give us opportunities to serve more seniors and really get them to all of their destinations that they're interested in. So we're very excited and that will be launching very, very soon. It'll also enable our seniors to start tracking where drivers are at and know that someone's on their way to get them. So we're very excited about that. That completes my presentation. As always, continue to follow us on social media at Monterey Park Rec and keep up to date with all of our exciting activities. Thank you. Mayor May I?

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

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

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

Okay.

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

Thank you. Thank you. I would just note that both of us are wondering if there's going to be a beer garden at any of these events coming up. Not any of the upcoming events, no.

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

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

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

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

Thank you, Madam Mayor and members of the council. 9a is an item that was added as you know by a unanimous vote tonight. We were informed yesterday that preliminary or a title insurance for the South El Monte property was issued and we also were informed late yesterday that the broker asked that we accelerate the process to confirm on the record that the city manager has the signature authority to execute the purchase and sale agreement for that property. Most of this is recapped in your staff report, but just for purposes of a reminder for whomever may be watching, especially Mr. Weiss, the chief is very interested in this particular item, and I'd invite him to come down and talk to us about it. In any event, this is to recover part of the gap nuisance abatement debt that is owed by CII with regard to the 1688 Garvey site. It's for $2.5 million in one's escrow projects, closes and we receive that check it will be applied to that debt which will leave a substantial amount but we will deal with that in due time happy to answer any questions I appreciate the staff report because I don't think we've a lot of these conversations happened in closed session just because of negotiations so appreciate that we've gotten to this point very

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

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

No questions, but appreciate the report. I'm happy to move to pass this item.

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

Yeah, no questions here, but thank you to Carl and your team for all your behind-the-scenes efforts on getting this done. So we have a motion, we have a second. Let's vote. Approve unanimously. All right, thank you. Moving on to our consent calendar. Does anyone wanna pull any items or make a motion?

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

Variety of eligible projects and programs it also serves as the city's application to HUD for these grants while the city conducts a new affordable housing development proposed in the city we could utilize that for that developed that affordable housing developer to offset some of those costs and

We could, but to be classified as a chota was very restrictive.

We came together to basically put play day to celebrate our 110th year birthday for the city. Well attended. I know it was hot, but well attended. Lots of people, not only from our community, but from across other communities.