City Council - Regular Meeting

Except for public hearings, which will be taken at the time each hearing is called, please complete one yellow card only if you wish to make a comment on the non-public hearing items and a separate blue public hearing card for each public hearing item. I'll say it again. Please complete one yellow speaker card only if you wish to make a comment on the non-public hearing items and a separate blue public hearing speaker card for each public hearing item. The time allotted for each speaker will be determined based on the total number of requests to speak, including those submitted by in-person attendees, Zoom participants using the raise hand feature, and callers participating by phone by pressing star nine to join the speaker queue. Requests to speak will be accepted until the beginning of the applicable public comment period to determine the speaker time limit. for those time limits, for five or fewer speakers, five minutes each. For six to 20 speakers, three minutes each. For 21 to 40 speakers, two minutes each. For 41 or more speakers, one minute each. Live interpretation is available through the Wordly app, and closed captioning is available on Zoom. Reminder, any person addressing a council who disrupts, disturbs, impedes, or otherwise renders infeasible the meeting's orderly conduct who, after a request by the presenting officer, refuses to cease such behavior may be removed from the city council chambers or remote participation platform. For more information, procedures, and instructions, visit the city's website agenda page. Okay, let's see telecommunication announcements if requested. Okay, going on to number five, agenda revisions and additions.

No changes.

Okay, then going on to item six, presentation. Okay.

No presentations tonight.

Oh, okay. Oh, my goodness. Okay. Then, all righty, then we will proceed to item seven, public comment. Again, this is the final opportunity to request to speak on agenda items other than public hearing items. If you have not yet submitted a yellow speaker card and wish to comment, please raise your hand. complete a speaker card, and provide it to the city clerk. For those participating remotely, please use the raise hand feature in Zoom. If you are participating by phone, press star nine to join the speaker queue. We will hear comments from in-person speakers first, followed by remote participants. City clerk, how many in-person speakers and how many remote speakers do we have, and what will be the speaker time limit?

There are six in-person speakers, no speakers participating remotely by phone or Zoom for a total of six speakers. Each speaker is limited to three minutes each.

Okay. Thank you so much, Madam Clerk. I will call the first in-person speaker. Let's see. Alyssa Surmont, if I pronounce it correctly. Okay, thank you. Okay. Okay.

Is this where I'm supposed to be? Yes, please. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak.

My name is Elisa Surmont. I live here in Monterey Park at 1530 Valley Vista Drive. And I have some concerns I would like to speak about. I am concerned about the erection of fences in Monterey Park around city lots. The current permitting process assumes a flat level land, square lots, and a clear front side and back of the house. It does not consider houses on a hill or lots with unusual angles or vistas. The current maximum height for a fence on the side and in the back is six feet. But on certain lots, a six-foot fence can completely obstruct an entire lot's view, destroy the enjoyment of a property, and considerably reduce the property value. It can block light and airflow, produce uncomfortable glare, and obliterate the viewing of any natural vegetation. I'm maintaining that the current permitting process for a fence is outdated and must include the above considerations and take them into account as a one size fit all permit is not appropriate for all lots. People impacted by the effects of fences that create unintended or undue disruption in the function and enjoyment of their homes or experience potential damage to property value must be allowed input into the erection and placement, regardless of on whose property that fence sits. They must also be entitled to compensation for any monetary losses and suffering. That is my prepared statement. Full disclosure. This permit affects me directly and my family. We would be personally impacted. We understand that permits have to be somewhat equal for all, but there must be exceptions, because not all lots are created equal. When you live in a hill, most of the streets go north and south. Some streets go east and west, but predominantly, if a street goes north and south, the front faces that street, and thus, the side yard is the most enjoyable aspect of the property. Possibly the backyard if you're facing a street that runs east-west. But on those angles, on those sides of the properties, six-foot fences are allotted. And that seems to be the position that we're in now, my family. I have some pictures. If you can see them, I'll try to make them large and viewable. Without taking too much time.

Is that my time? Yeah, I'm sorry about that.

All right, I have black and white paper that I'll give you then.

If you could also share with our city staff, they can always follow up and share with us. Okay, yeah. Yeah, so if we could have our information, thank you. Tim will, I'm sorry, okay. What do I do? Tim will take.

Oh, wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Appreciate it.

Mr. Mayor, if we can just clarify for the speaker, too. I don't know if you're related to another party that came a few months ago now, I think, to identify the same issue. Not really. But sounds like the same exact problem. I know staff is working on it. Yes. But Tim will talk, I think, and give you an update on where we're going on this.

OK. Thank you, thank you all. Okay, next speaker, Don Rock.

Good evening, Mayor, council members, and dedicated staff. My name is Dawn Rock, longtime resident of Monterey Park. We are excited to announce that AWP is hosting its first fundraising event to support the rebuilding of the Barnes Park Aquatic Center. Join us on Thursday, August 6th from 5 to 8 o'clock p.m. at Dave & Buster's in Arcadia. During the event, 20% of all food, non-alcoholic beverage, and game play purchases will be donated to our fundraising events. You can also support the cause by purchasing power cards. Power cards are essentially gift cards. Dave and Busters will donate 50% of all power card purchases and the cards can be used during the fundraiser or saved for any future visit. Even if you can't attend the event on August 6th, you can still make a meaningful contribution by purchasing a power card that can make great birthday gifts, holiday stocking stuffers, or thoughtful presents for any occasion. Power cards can be purchased through any booster parent at the Monterey Park Manta Rays, DARE, or Mark Keppel High School Aquatics, or through any AWP member. Every meal, every game, every power card purchase helps bring us one step closer to rebuilding Barnes Park Aquatic Center and restoring a place where our community can learn, grow, and thrive. As always, thank you for your continued support and service to our community. We hope to see you on August 6th.

Do you have a flyer that you can share with the staff?

Yes. We were going to get it printed. I'll send it to you digitally, and then when I have them printed, I can pass them out to you.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Next, Winnie Lau.

I can start?

Yes, please.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Winnie Lau, and I have been resident of Maury Park for over 30 years. For the past 15 years, I have lived in the Brightwood Hills neighborhood. One of the primary reasons my family chose to move to this area was because of its beautiful, picturesque views of the city. Those views are a defining characteristic of our neighborhood and are important reasons many residents choose to live here on the hills. I'm here tonight as a concerned resident to discuss the impact that residential fencing can have on neighboring properties in the hillside communities. Recently, a new homeowner moved in next door and requested that we install a shared property line fence with a six foot tall fence. If constructed, this fence would block virtually our entire view from our home. In addition, our home does not have central air conditioning and we rely heavily on the natural breeze and airflow that comes through to our property. A solid six foot fence would significantly reduce the airflow and negatively affect our comfort, especially during the warmer months. Beyond the impact of our home, I am also concerned that excessively tall fences in hillside neighborhood can diminish the visual character of our streets, making properties appear less open and inviting, and potentially reduce neighboring property values by eliminating one of the area's most desirable features, the scenic views. This is not simply my concern alone. During the April 1, 2026, City Council meeting, three other residents also came before the City Council to express the concerns that tall fences were obstructing their views and negatively affecting their property values. This demonstrate that this issue extends beyond a single neighborhood dispute and dispute may warrant a broader view of the city policy. I respectfully ask the City Council to review the municipal code governing residential fences, particularly in the hillside neighborhoods such as the Brightwood Hills. I hope the council will consider whether the current regulations appropriately balance a homeowner's right to install a fence when neighboring property interest in preserving established views, neighboring aesthetics, and unique character of our hillside communities. I am not asking the city to prohibit fences or prevent homeowners from maintaining their privacy. Rather, I respectfully request that the city consider reasonable standards, such as lower height limits, view preservation considerations, or additional reviews of the fence in the hillside area. That would protect both homeowner privacy and the scenic qualities that make the neighborhood special i have proudly called maury park home for over three decades and i hope we can preserve the qualities that make our hillside neighborhood unique for our current and future residents thank you for your time your service and your thoughtful consideration of this matter thank you very much thank you do we know if they're related

Sorry, Mr. Mayor, I believe based on the address that I believe the two speakers might be on the same street. Okay.

Okay.

Okay. I mean, I know Tim is having a conversation in the hallway. Maybe you guys want to join that conversation right now.

And I could provide a quick update. So just the first speaker and the speaker were talking about view preservation. So there was another group of concerned residents that have come before the council to ask for a review of fencing and view preservation rules. So correct right now, there's not view preservation specific rules and we do have fence height restrictions, but understand sounds like depending on the topography of the neighborhood that we can have those considerations also included when we're looking at the view preservation policy. So staff is currently doing research and we anticipate bringing something back for council consideration in the near future. But I know Tim is having that conversation, so that would probably be the best place if he wanted to share more specifics. That way, his department is going to be the one who's reviewing that policy and bringing something back for consideration.

We do have two additional speakers on the same issue, and I'll still call them up. First, Chris Fairbanks.

I don't mean to discourage anyone. You're more than welcome to come talk, but if you want to participate in this conversation that's happening right now, feel free to do so. We won't stop you, though.

Okay. I'll catch up with them later. Because I want to tell you guys, I guess I'm going, yeah. First, I'm underdressed, I didn't realize, next time. I have nice clothes and I'll wear them. First, I want to say thank you. I've been in LA since 95, been in Monterey Park for the last 12 years, and I'm so appreciative of how the city's run. Because you guys get a lot of complaints, I want to say thank you. So that's the first thing I want to say. I am speaking of the fencing issue. There is this phrase, good fences make good neighbors. We may extrapolate from that what bad fences might do. So I just want to share that with the house. The prior speakers have spoken to the concerns right now the six-foot fence limit height based upon property line would as previously stated obliterate our view at 1530 Raleigh Vista Drive and also as mentioned interrupt airflow which could be considered a health issue and I know it's being discussed but it is a very serious matter And I don't know if the city's in any position to at any point put any kind of a moratorium on the situation while matters are being put forth in terms of redefining ordinances. I would strongly ask or request that a moratorium be considered because the issue is so significant, both in terms, like we said, of health and also of property value and aesthetics and all the reasons. So I just wanted to present that as possible. I really don't know how you guys run things.

I just wanted to put that forward as a possibility.

I'm not sure. I think everything else that I would like to say has been said. I don't know if the, we saw the city planning, we went to the city planning window here the other day, and I don't think we could get an exact property line from them. I think you need a surveyor for that. Some property lines allow for a six foot fence to be created without much view imposition, but some property lines are so close that a six foot fence is a significant So I think I can wrap up a little early. Thank you again, you guys, for your work. And I certainly appreciate being a part of Monterey Park. Thanks, you guys.

Okay, next speaker, Russell Fairbanks.

Hello. Monterey Park City Council and mayor thank you as you might imagine I am related to the immediate prior speaker as well as the first speaker and in order to avoid beating a dead horse so to speak I'll just share again my perspective we moved to Monterey Park for my high school and plan to stay for the duration of that about four years it's been 12 years And a big part of that is because we fell in love with the vistas of Monterey Park, as well as the parks and the people and the food. It's all incredible, but the views in particular. And I just want that to be a testament to the genuine value of the views, both in attracting loving residents and the value that comes to our landlord, Ken, who is wonderful. And we really appreciate him bringing us into Monterey Park for as long as we've been here. I appreciate everything that Winnie said prior, and my father and mother. And I think that having a view preservation rule or legislation, because that's really what it's about. It's about preserving the value of the natural topography of Monterey Park, is a great way of upholding the motto so lovingly bestowed upon this room, since it really is taking pride in the past of Monterey Park its physical beauty and the genuine psychological and emotional health benefits of unobstructed views, as well as faith in the future by preserving it for future residents. So thank you all very much.

Thank you. Final speaker, Matthew Meehan. Oh, actually, general public comment and item number 12. Do you want to speak now or do we wait until we get to item 12?

I can wait for item 12. Okay. I just have a general comment. So I grew up in Monterey Park. Right now, as of a couple weeks ago, I just moved to a new apartment behind the Ralphs in Atlantic Square. So I get to work, I take the train in East LA to get to downtown. And so I do some walking, and one of the intersections I take is Riggin and Gerhardt. It's residential, low-rise residential on all four sides. Maybe the back of the Ralphs is on one corner. And the streets are very wide. It's a four-way stop sign. And I am finding as a pedestrian that the drivers are very aggressive at rush hour, distracted, like, A couple days ago, I was halfway through the intersection, and someone went through in front of me with the phone to her ear. So I think that this street, it's very, again, I think the issue for a pedestrian is that the street is very wide. So I just raise it to the city, and I would love to see the city look into potentially redesigning some aspect of the street. like, for example, with curb extensions, something to make where, as a pedestrian, you're cutting down on the amount of time that you're walking in the street. I should flag that I have noticed that the fire department uses Riggin Street for emergency responses. And I'm sure you talk about redesigning an intersection that they use every day. That's a conversation that would need to be have. But I just raised that for the city council. I would love to see some improvements, certainly along the lines of, I know the city is looking at and planning, and I think probably good ways in the planning of redesigning Garvey and including things like curb extensions. So I just raised that for the city council. I appreciate your consideration. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, do we have his contact information?

Let's see. Mr. Mayor, do we have your contact information? If not, could you share with staff, please?

OK. Thank you.

OK.

Good evening, Honorable Mayor, Mayor Poon, and City Council. Sean Igoe, Public Works Director. Public Works Department is partnering with Ware Disposal on our quarterly community cleanup event, as you can see here. So this event will take place on Saturday, July 25th, from 8 AM to 12 PM. It's located at, sorry, it's located at, why am I blank? at George Elder, located at 1950 Wilcox Avenue. Sorry, got me off guard when I had to run back down. So the event, you can drop off bulky items and e-waste items. However, no hazardous waste items will be accepted. This includes items such as tires, paint, oil, things of that nature. So we will not accept that at this event. Additionally, as residents should know, you can still continue to schedule bulky item pickup at any time through Ware Disposal. So this event is primarily to pick up large items and have people drop them off, but I want to remind the community that they can still schedule at any given point with Ware Disposal. So with that, I will take questions.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Next, communication report from Police Department.

Mr. Mayor, members of city council, Scott Weiss, chief of police. Wanted to give the council a quick update on our big event coming up, National Night Out. It'll be Tuesday, August 4th in Barnes Park behind the police station. Starts at six, goes till eight. All of our police resources will be out there. There'll be canine demonstrations and all of our vehicles, all of our officers will be out there to answer questions. You've all been to this event before. usually attended very well by the public, and I wanted to let everybody know that it is coming up, and we have big stuff planned for that. Next slide, please. Just a review of our July 4th deployment. Because July 4th fell on a Saturday this year, we had extra officers out Friday and Saturday night. So besides the eight patrol officers, a supervisor and a watch commander, I put out four additional officers each of those nights. They worked from roughly eight o'clock until they went home, which is typically around two or three in the morning, depending on calls for service. We put them out in unmarked cars, and they're primarily out there to do fireworks enforcement. Fireworks is a difficult offense to catch people. We allow safe and sane fireworks between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. on Fourth of July. We had 35 fireworks calls over those two-day period of Thursday and Friday nights. Most of the calls were for illegal fireworks. A lot of firework calls that we get are from fireworks that are occurring in other cities. And they're seen in Monterey Park. And we typically will not go into East LA or into San Gabriel or Rosemead to look for the offender of fireworks in those communities. We let the person know once the officers are in the area that those fireworks are being launched from outside of our jurisdiction. We try to stay out of those other cities for enforcement. We had three fire medical-related calls. We are the PSAP for 911, so all 911 calls, police and fire come through our dispatch center, and then we transfer them over to Verdugo to dispatch fire. And we had three fire medical calls and three trash can fires. No medical calls or injuries were reported from the trash can fires. And we did not write any citations for illegal fireworks over those two days. I'm here to answer any questions you might have.

No questions, but looking forward to attending National Night Out.

It'll be fun. Absolutely.

Chief, thanks for the update. I saw or was reading headlines around some police departments exploring using drones to identify potential illegal fireworks. Is that something we've thought about or potentially could do in the future?

We could do in the future. Our drone as a first responder program is not as robust as other agencies. It requires some FAA clearances. It requires us to establish some radar coverage for the city. We're looking into a program right now. There's a couple vendors that provide it. We're looking to see if it's viable here. We also have some topography issues that are significant that other cities don't have. The hills that we have kind of keep us from maintaining contact with our drones sometimes. So we do have a very robust drone program, but it's individually launched for individual calls. So we have drone teams that are spread out around the department and they will launch their drones for an individual call. Like we had a burglary in progress call last week, and the drone was able to follow the burglar up onto somebody's property into their sliding glass door and hover over the top of them while the patrol officers closed the perimeter and took them into custody. It was really effective. But we don't have a drone as a first responder program yet. We're looking at it. I think it's a great idea. Other cities are doing it. We're just going to see if it will work for the topography in our city.

Thank you, Chief, for the report. Thank you.

Thank you for the report. Thank you. Finally, city manager's office.

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, wanted to provide a quick update. We did do some posting on social media, but wanted to share this information out. And this is in regards to renaming efforts in regards to Cesar Chavez assets in the county that are named with the name Cesar Chavez. Of course, in Monterey Park, we have a segment of roadway Avenida Cesar Chavez down over by ELAC. So we're sharing this information out. as the county is doing surveys, collecting feedback from community members, LA County is gonna share their survey results with us. And as they host in-person meetings regarding renaming efforts. We'll definitely share that information out as well. But we wanted to take a moment to invite Monterey Park residents as LA County residents to please take the survey. The QR code is on the screen. This information can be found on the city's website and also on our social media pages. We will share out the results once we hear back from the county. The council could decide if the county's efforts are something that we'd like to align on or if the city is interested in maybe making another selection for renaming that segment of the street. so it'd be completely independent but because alley county has many different facilities and parks and murals and streets they started this initiative and so we wanted to make sure that community members know that we're participating along with the county so Well, we can see their results, um, just from a more collaborative regional approach. Um, but the council could, uh, take other direction. Um, we can take other direction from council. So that concludes, uh, staff report for tonight. Thank you. Thank you questions members.

Yes, I have 1, uh, city manager. Do we do we do you happen to know the timeline in terms of when LA county is planning to disseminate some of this information?

What we heard back from the county and on our Instagram posts and on our city webpage, there is a county webpage with the video that explains their initiative and efforts. What we got back from the county, unfortunately, is that from a timeframe perspective that they plan to take time and consideration and so they didn't give us like you know a short time frame they just kind of said however long it takes to make sure that they're getting you know adequate responses um that that's all they gave us so it sounds like they're going to take it slow and make sure that everybody's um being considered in making this adjustment

Thank you. Any further questions? Thank you so much, senior manager. Okay, moving on to old business, item 9A, consideration of designation of persons for filling an argument in favor of the Monterey Park transit occupancy tax ballot proposition. Tax report, please.

Sure. Mr. Mayor and members of the Council, this item tonight, just as a reminder, at the last Council meeting, Council had approved a measure to be put on the November ballot for a TOT, transient occupancy tax measure. This item tonight simply is requesting direction if the Council is interested in designating a person to file an argument favoring the ballot proposition. So if a member of council is interested in doing that, then we're asking the council to discuss that and maybe appoint somebody from the council to draft that argument.

Thank you. Members? Thank you.

Oh, I was just going to suggest maybe the mayor or the mayor pro tem take the lead.

I concur.

OK. Yes? Oh, yes? Okay, then I guess hearing no further discussion, we need a motion, correct? All right.

Correct, and just as a reminder, the argument needs to be filed with the city clerk's office tomorrow. Tomorrow? Yes. So let's make sure that that was also put out there.

Thank you, okay.

All right, well- So I'll move that we assign the mayor to write the- And I'll help you.

Thank you. I'll second. Moved by Mayor Pro Tem Sanchez, seconded by Council Member Yang. Hearing no further debate or discussion, members please vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you, members. Okay, next item of vote business, 9B, discussion of short term rentals. Start report please.

The item on short-term rentals is actually going to be presented by Tim Howe, our community development director. He was speaking with a few residents, so if we can just give him a minute to make his way back into the council.

Of course. Please, please. Okay.

Chambers, thank you.

Or if we want to take consent, we can do that.

Good evening.

Honorable Mayor Lowe and city council members. All right. First presentation of the night, discussion of short-term rentals. All right. To provide some background, in 2020, the city enacted regulations for short-term rentals. And a quick definition, what are short-term rentals? They are dwellings or rooms within them rented to guests for fewer than 30 consecutive days. Ergo, Airbnb, VRBO, vacation stays, there are hundreds of different booking platforms that are primarily online. Craigslist, of course. Very recently, the state of California enacted new state legislation, the Short-Term Rental Facilitator Act. Under that new law, cities can obtain physical addresses of each rental advertised on a booking platform, as well as adding the authority to audit the taxes those rentals owe. On July 1st, the city placed a measure on the November 2026 ballot to raise, if approved, the TOT tax, the transit occupancy tax rate, on short-term rentals specifically, from 13% to 16%. And should the voters approve that, that could generate up to $200,000 in additional revenue for the city. For context, the current Monterey Park market of short-term rentals, 54 short-term rentals are currently permitted within the city, while over 200 are advertised online currently.

Thank you.

Current requirements, just to highlight several of them, short-term rental operator must obtain a permit from the community development. They're required to provide proof of insurance, obtain a business license. They are to obtain a $1,500 surety bond and provide notice to all neighbors within 200 feet. of their intent to utilize the property as a short-term rental. They must prepare and provide a nuisance response plan, who to contact in case there is a nuisance issue that identifies a responsible person, and how to reach them. And any short-term rental agreements must spell out rules and outline the policies and regulations of the city, including things like trash, noise, and occupancy limits. Since 2020, a number of enforcement challenges have presented themselves. Many operators have not obtained permits, and there is constant code enforcement activity related to that. In addition, what was addressed by the recent state legislation was the challenge of listings online. Hide the property's address during the booking process and on the online listings. And they hide that address until the booking is confirmed, which makes unpermitted listings difficult to identify. A number of key provisions within the short-term rental code may be updated to improve definitions and set clearer operations. Here we're highlighting a couple of them, first being the definition of short-term rental. Currently, the code does not specify whether boarding or rooming houses are allowed. MAKING A DISTINCTION BETWEEN HOSTS VERSUS PROPERTY OWNERS, AND OWNERS NOW ARE DEFINED AS A PERSON HOLDING TITLE, BUT THERE IS NO DEFINITION FOR A HOST. THERE'S NO DEFINITION FOR A HOSTING PLATFORM, NOR ARE THERE PROHIBITIONS ON TYPES OF SHORT-TERM RENTALS. For example, can accessory dwelling units or junior accessory dwelling units be allowed or not prohibited from offering short-term rental? Primary, meaning a host permanent residence versus a non-primary short-term rental, do both qualify. The current code is silent. There's also no restriction on the number of short-term rentals that are allowed per host or owner. There's also no restriction on the number of short-term rentals that are allowed within a multifamily residential development as well as no overall maximum or cap on the number of short-term rentals allowed citywide. And currently the maximum occupancy, there's no overall maximum. It is dictated by the number of bedrooms. So the occupancy maximum is currently two persons plus an additional two persons for every bedroom within the rental unit. Lastly, the surety bond requirements. THERE IS NO YEARLY PERMIT RENEWAL, SO ONCE A PERMIT IS OBTAINED, IT'S OBTAINED INDEFINITELY. THERE ARE NO CRITERIA FOR REVOCATION SPECIFIC FOR REPEAT VIOLATIONS OR AS AN AUTOMATIC REVOCATION RELATED TO SERVICE CALLS. AND THERE IS NO OFF STREET PARKING REQUIREMENT. There's simply a limit on the number of vehicles that the renter is allowed that's based on the number of off-street spaces currently available, but not an actual requirement that those off-street spaces are utilized only. And last, the facilitator law that went into effect, SB 346, in order to effectuate that language, each local jurisdiction would have to incorporate such language into their code, which would enable the required reporting powers. So that currently does not exist within the current code either. In order to learn from other communities, staff reviewed the short-term rental rules of several nearby and comparable cities, including Alhambra, Pasadena, LA County, and Long Beach. This table is provided in your report and shows how Monterey Park's current approach compares on a number of the major provisions. And I'm happy to go over these individually during Q&A. That concludes. We can slide through those. Staff recommendation to receive and file this report. Staff is available to respond to any questions. And Code Enforcement Supervisor Ray Lozano, as well as Chief Scott Weiss from Police Department, are also available to answer any questions. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Members, come from here.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. Have we had any complaints from residents regarding short-term rental issues like parking? And if so, how many complaints approximately?

I'll give Code Enforcement Supervisor Ray Lozano first crack at that.

Thank you for your question, Council Member Yang. This year, we have received nine requests from the public related to short-term rental complaints. Thus far, code compliance team has closed out five of those complaints, obtaining full compliance, and we actively have four additional cases right now.

And each of these cases, how long does it usually take to investigate and close it out?

It varies depending on the voluntary compliance that we receive from the public. However, it does not lapse more than three weeks.

I have actually two follow-up questions. So as of now, these short-term rentals don't really need a business license or any kind of licensing from the city?

They do. They do need a permit as well as a business license.

And the follow up is if there's a violation issued, I thought I saw earlier there's no ability for the city to revoke that licensing.

LET ME CLARIFY THAT. THE CITY DOES HAVE THE ABILITY TO ADD CONDITIONS TO A PERMIT, DENY IT, REVOKE IT, WHEN AN OPERATOR OR A GUEST BREAKS THE RULES LISTED OUT IN THE MUNICIPAL CODE. SO THAT IS AVAILABLE. Public safety, they can suspend a permit immediately in the event that there's an emergency. So there are mechanisms. What was mentioned previously are automatic mechanisms based on something like three strikes for service calls. It's something to that effect.

So I guess then for Mr. Lozano, if those four complaints still remain open, what timeline do we have? And I guess that goes back to the original question, which is how long do they get before the city can do something beyond just waiting, waiting, waiting?

work in phases of a first, secondary, and third notice of violation until we get to a citation. And if there's no recourse through citations, we work with our city attorney's office on next steps to move forward on revocations. Thankfully, we have not had to do that thus far. We gain 100% compliance with all cases related to short-term rentals.

Along those lines, in terms of enforcement, do we have any mechanism or structure for doing proactive enforcement? Because I know there are short-term rentals that we know are listed that aren't registered, don't have permits, that are doing business. And then there are probably more that are doing business that we don't even know and don't have a hard time finding out about, too. Do we have an audit program or anything like that going on?

So we have 2 mechanisms currently we work with our, they will provide us information on. Short term renters that have approval from, but do not have an approved application with the city. So that is. a part of the systematic approach that this code enforcement team is gonna be implementing very soon. That is gonna be the first round of operators that we will work with and partner with to get them into compliance. And from there, it's gonna be based off of the amount in the city by district area.

And you mentioned how, Sam, you mentioned how the residential hotels, boarding houses are not covered under this. Technically, those are not legal in the city, right?

Correct. There's regulations for that.

But they, I mean, they're very similar in terms of how they operate to short-term rentals, but they would exceed, obviously, they would exceed the occupancy limits and other issues. uh i mean i i don't have a lot of questions i i am curious how some of these other cities inter in terms of their or other jurisdictions their in their regulatory restrictions on short-term rentals how they're working um i know that i asked and we asked for this because we don't i don't know that we I don't think we currently have a major problem with short-term rentals. I think the hope and the expectation for our discussion here, and I hope action in the coming months on adjusting and enhancing our short-term rental regulation is to make sure that we avoid any problems that could happen if we start to see a proliferation of short-term rentals, and particularly as we get closer and closer to the Olympics and other major events that are coming up. for the region to get a handle on this, on short-term rentals and the impacts on our neighborhoods. Ideally, we institute policy before issues happen and neighbors have to complain about these things. So I appreciate staff and the work that we're doing to be a little bit proactive on this. Also, I think what drove this for me was the fact that L.A. County, Vernon Corporate Areas, has just recently instituted short-term rental regulations. I'm curious to see how that's working out. But I think there's some good starting points here in terms of what we should definitely explore already in terms of mimicking some of the areas and jurisdictions that are already around us. I'll go through a few that caught my eye as i read through this report i think we should definitely have an annual permit system not not a perpetual one uh to make sure that we are checking in and there is a system for short-term rental operators to have to engage with the city on an annual basis um i don't know is there a permit fee annual fee that goes on top of the annual business license fee

Not on top of the annual business license. They do need to keep current on their requirements, so typically we would see a renewed surety bond periodically, things of that nature.

And do you know, I don't know if I missed this, but off the top of your head, $1,500 surety bond, is that about what other jurisdictions are asking for, or is that amount too low? I just don't know. Or if we can look into that too.

I believe the other jurisdictions that were analyzed, none of them had that requirement.

Okay. Good to know. I also agree with some of our neighboring jurisdictions requiring Right primary residents or someone on site. Being a best practice that we should look at. I think we should restrict how many short term rentals are allowed per hosts or per owner. In the city hate for someone to own 10 short term rentals in the city right.

want to balance.

With these challenges of people being will afford the homes using. Using their homes as an opportunity to generate some revenue, but also not turning this into something way more than that. And strike the right balance. I don't know if one home or one short-term rental per owner. I don't know how we want to define it in terms of a host. Makes sense. I know it looks like other jurisdictions are at one. But at a lower number than unrestricted probably makes sense. Looks like we don't restrict having the host on site. I'm on the fence on that. We've got to figure that out. But having someone that can respond to issues at the short-term rental quickly would be ideal and some way to enforce that or put that in a regulation would make sense. I think some sort of regulation or restriction on how many short-term rentals can exist in multifamily housing makes sense so that we're not taking away apartment and even senior housing or other multifamily housing out of stock for those purposes. I'm kind of comfortable actually with our max occupancy numbers right now. parking. I think we can look at that from a neighborhood perspective. And then from the cap perspective sounds like it looks like other jurisdictions including Alhambra have hard caps on their how many short term rentals are allowed. in the city. I would support some sort of cap. I'd look at maybe something per council district or neighborhood as opposed to one for the entire city, just to make sure we're not overburdening particularly one neighborhood of the city versus others, but open to what that might look like. It looks like Alhambra is at 500 for the entire city. somewhere in that range might make sense for for monterey park divided by the five council districts but those are my initial thoughts very open have not thought through this beyond just reading through this report and thinking over the last couple of days but i'll leave it thank you

Thank you for the report. Mr. Lozano, I just wanted to do a follow-up question that Councilmember Yang had mentioned about the calls that we get. I think there have been moments in the past where we've had people come and complain about maybe an Airbnb rental next door to them. But generally, you mentioned there was like nine calls or complaints without giving us too many details about them. But generally speaking, what type of complaints do we get from Airbnb rentals? Or short-term rentals, I should say. I'm not trying to call out Airbnb, sorry.

The majority of the short-term rental complaints that we do receive are related to an abundance of individuals coming in and out of the house. And it's primarily noise complaints that we receive as it relates to those complaints.

Okay, so they're mainly like noise complaints. And then usually when we get a complaint like that, does police immediately go out or is that something that we follow up later?

Police will respond in the immediate whenever code enforcement is not there. And then the following day, they'll make notification to code enforcement. Code enforcement will follow up on the administrative route and will work in partnership with the operators to ensure that they are compliant with the codes.

Okay, so most of it is noise related, like party related or noise. Yes, primarily. Okay. um but i i did have some uh questions regarding the permitting because in the staff report it says we have according to hdl about 290 potential short-term rentals of the city but only 54 have licenses so that's about 230 some homes or short-term rentals that don't have licenses to operate right so i think that um from a perspective of ensuring that everyone is licensed and that you know everyone is paying also their fair share in terms of uh operating and for us to be able to have information about who's renting uh these short-term rentals um i think it would be prudent for us to really um activating some in some way shape or form uh a yearly license i think uh what i like about having a yearly license renewal is that it allows us to have an updated uh information about the owner and who's in and who's uh renting the in case we need to contact them in cases that we have people calling in about those complaints and stuff like that i think would be useful i agree with some of the comments from council member wong about updating and looking at some of our cities that are around us in terms of i do like the idea of a hard cap how that's established we can still discuss i'm also in the past have been very mixed about short-term rentals because when people rent short-term these are not necessarily homes that are available for long-term rentals for people who are trying to find homes and we already know that not just within our community but throughout the state we already have a housing shortage so it really limits the amount of available housing stock for people who are trying to and trying to rent homes in a long-term capacity and so we know how the economy works when that when we have less housing prices go up and so i think we're my concern with short-term rentals is that it could potentially and exponentially also increase the cost of rental units within our city, but also within the state. So I'm very mixed about Short-term rentals, but at the same time I know to councilmember Wong's point There are some people who heavily rely on the extra income to be able to support and pay for their homes Through might have an you know, an extra unit and a view that they might be renting out as a short-term rental so I want to be cognizant of that in terms of People who need that extra revenue and they're making that extra revenue as a result of the short-term rentals But Let's go ahead. So I think we do need to have, um, we do need to have a yearly permit. Um, to keep our information updated. I think we do need to go after those 236 people who don't have war operating and don't have a license. Uh, yet, and I, I do think we should be doing some building inspections of some of these, um. of some of these short-term rentals just to make sure that they're in compliance and are safe for renters who are, you know, habitating these short-term rentals. So I think that's it for now. So I don't know, I personally, I think if we have 290, I'm okay with a cap at 300, potentially 350. But I'm not sure how our housing stock compares to Alhambra. I know we're comparing with Alhambra, and Alhambra has 500. But I don't know if we have more housing compared to Alhambra, or they have more housing. Anyhow, that's kind of where I'm at right now. I wouldn't want to kick those 290 people who already have a housing rental, but I do want to make sure that they're in compliance. I also want to be wary of how many we allow because I don't want to reduce the amount of housing stock that we have for actual renters and people who need homes in the city. So that's kind of where I'm at right now. Thank you.

Thank you, colleagues. Oh, thank you. Councillor Yang?

Quick follow-up question. For the nine complaints, are any of them related to parking complaints?

No.

Okay. And then are any of them ADUs used as short-term rentals?

For my recollection, in the immediate, no.

Got it, okay. So in addition to what Mayor Pro Tem mentioned, I also think adding revocation criteria would be helpful since we don't have that right now, and also adding permit renewal after the initial permit is issued.

Thank you very much. Colleague, I want to thank you for all of your very thoughtful questions. I agree because I think broadly speaking as an issue, I too feel that you have to have your balance, but I think that also what should be driving our housing policy in general is how do we promote stable neighborhoods and part of that is having more long-term residents, and I do think that short-term rentals does create a challenge, and especially given that we have, it's an established fact that this community, like all communities in California, are dealing with housing accessibility issues, and so therefore I do agree that we need to update our regulations requiring short-term rentals and really especially addressing concerns about noise because even though, and I'm glad that it's so far only been nine complaints, but I would even say to the person that lives next to one of those homes where the complaint was lodged, I mean, that may be one complaint too many. And I know that even as far back as 2020, In my district, I think on Alhambra Avenue, there was a family that would complain about the neighbor's townhome that was used as a short-term rental. And again, it was disruptive. And so I do think that if we can be more stringent in enforcing and even going after those, then we should do so. So let's see. So this is a received file. Do we have any actions?

if we just clarify it is that enough direction for staff to bring back some draft kind of regulatory framework I believe so so okay just to reiterate some of what the feedback was so far yes to annual license renewals yes to a cap on the number of short-term rentals owned by one owner A cap on the number of short-term rentals within a residential development. Yes to an overall cap, perhaps not, and being a little bit more fine-grained than just citywide. Revocation criteria and building inspections as part of the licensing process.

Anything else, members?

I'm trying to look to see if there's any. Sure.

Mr. Mayor, well, Council Member Walensky, if I may, I wanted to just make sure that I was clarifying. The current permit process provides that the operator of the short-term rental needs to provide property manager person who is going to be responsive to calls for service. So if it is a noise complaint or something to that effect, We do share that information with our police department, and that way, if we do get a call specific to that, we have a contact to reach out to to try to help us mitigate that situation. So that criteria does exist already in our current plan. And the other challenge that I wanted to describe with short-term rentals and the platforms, and correct, I don't want to call any of them out specifically, but the platforms that they're advertised on, The challenge with enforcement is if you ever utilize the short-term rental service, the addresses are not publicly available until after you rent the space. So finding the exact locations, We do utilize a HDL who collects TOT for us. They help us to try to get these short-term rental operators into compliance. Of course, there's some challenges there, but the reason the exact address not being provided to us, it creates that challenge of where that actual location is. So we know that there's about that many, but that's based on information that's on those platforms. But we don't actually have a list of addresses so that we, you know, go after them directly. It just takes time. And oftentimes when we try to get a short-term rental operator into compliance, the other challenge that we see is sometimes the operator will say that they're going to change their mind and no longer operate that short-term rental or that they were trying it temporarily. And now that they understand that there's a permitting process, they may choose to tell us they're not going to operate it anymore. And maybe we'll suspend operations for a little bit of time before they start again. So we are trying to chase down those that are in violation and try to get them into compliance as quick as we possibly can.

May I? I mean, again, thank you, staff, for, I think, a very comprehensive report. I mean, again, if you're looking to immediate horizon and the Olympics are coming, and I know that hotels are being booked, including those in our city, but I'm wondering, though, if perhaps we could also look to... I know one example of a city that has been very stringent is Palm Springs. I'm not saying we adopt... the Palm Springs regulations, but nonetheless, given some of the challenges that we've already established, perhaps looking at how Palm Springs deals with the issue, and if there may be something more applicable to us.

I don't know if you mentioned this one, Tim, but let's definitely look at limit how many a person or host, how many short-term rentals they can actually operate in the city.

Correct. Got that.

Okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you, someone. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Okay, moving on to consent calendar. Member, if there's any items you should pull, as well as Madam Clerk, any requests on any consent agenda items? None, okay. Members, any items you should pull? I'll move the consent calendar. Okay, moved by Councillor Wong. I'll second. I'm sorry, yes? Second. Second by Councillor Goh, okay. Hearing no further debate or discussion on consent agenda items, members please vote.

Approved unanimously.

Thank you. Okay. Moving on to public hearing. We will now proceed to public hearing item number 11. Again, this is the final opportunity to request to speak on public items. If you have not submitted a blue speaker card and wish to comment, please raise your hand complete a speaker card and provide to the clerk. For those participating, please use the raise hand feature in Zoom. If you're participating by phone, please press star nine to join the speaker queue. Madam Clerk, how many in-person speakers and how many remote speakers do we have? And what is the speaker time?

Mayor, I'm going to recuse myself from 11A.

Okay, thank you so much.

There are no speakers.

Okay, all righty. Well, I think I still will open the hearing nonetheless, but-

Okay, um staff report updates, okay Good evening honorable mayor mayor pro tem council members City executive team and guests. My name is Jessica Estrella. I'm the fire marshal for Monterey Park Fire Department I'm here to talk about City Council staff agenda item 11 a I Consideration of costs resulting from abatement, weed nuisances, and authorizing collection via special assessment. This item is for consideration of costs associated with the City's annual weed abatement program and the authorization to collect those costs through a special assessment. On February 4, 2026, the City Council declared that weeds, brush, rubbish, and other combustible materials on certain properties constitute a public nuisance. The City contracts with LA County Agricultural Commissioner to administer and carry out weed abatement services on our behalf. Following council's action, the county prepared and issued the annual weed abatement declaration list. Property owners were notified and provided the opportunity to either voluntarily clear their properties or protest their inclusion. Those compliance and protest periods have since concluded. As of July 1, 2026, the county has completed abatement and all non-compliant properties. Tonight's actions represent the final step in this process. The county has provided an itemized accounting of all abatement related costs in accordance with state law. These costs may be recovered through a special assessment applied to the respective properties and collected through the property tax roll. For this fiscal year, a total of 1,573 parcels were identified. Of those, only one property required actual abatement work, totaling $5,377.19. The remaining parcels We're compliant but are subject to the standard annual inspection fee of $59.07 resulting in $92,858.04. The total program costs $98,235.23. There is no fiscal impact to the city as all costs are recovered by the responsible property owners. staff recommends that the city council open the public hearing receive any public comment close the hearing adopt a resolution confirming that weed abatement charge list and authorizing the collection through the special assessment okay thank you for your report um well anyone wish to okay hearing none then i will close the hearing

Members, any comments or questions?

I'll move staff recommendation.

Moved by Councillor Wong. I'll second. Seconded by Councillor Rago. Hearing no further debate or discussion, members please vote.

Approved unanimously. Thank you so much.

Okay. On to item 12A, vacant, I'm sorry, on our new business, vacant to vibrant community engagement outreach report and recommendation for consideration and request for direction. We do have one request to speak. Any other additional? Oh, but we spoke in general public, but he also asked to speak on 12A, is that?

Oh, I'm sorry. But he didn't comment on.

Yeah, he didn't comment. He didn't really, I know, I know, but he didn't really comment. He discussed the issue of traffic on Reagan, but I'm sorry, what's for you? I mean.

If the public commenter has more remarks, I'm happy to hear it.

Okay, sure. I mean, all right, Mr. Bean. Well, actually, any other requests? I'm sorry, any other, hold on, any other requests? Hold on.

Okay. Okay.

Okay. All right. Okay. Well, no, no. There was an additional one that was submitted, I guess, after the cutoff. I mean, it's two total, so I think it's all right. I mean, okay. Well, okay. And given it's two, then it will be five minutes? Five. Yes, please. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, members. And audience, please bear with us. Again, we are implementing new rules of SB 707. So, we have item 12A. Let's see, do we want to hear staff report first, then public comment, or do we want to have public comment come first? Okay, if you want, well, let's do public comment first, okay. Mr. Matthew Meehan, please come forward.

Thank you very much Mary Lowe once again good evening honorable council members city staff So I just wanted to speak on this item I did so I follow a lot of city news through this regular Newsletter that the city puts out it's super helpful for me as a resident for keeping up with things So I filled out a survey regarding this item I I think the idea is Absolutely a good one to maybe put forth this proposition amending the city's land use element so that, as I understood it, the city is considering and council members will be considering potential housing overlays. It's being described as in commercial, in areas of the city that are currently zoned commercial and industrial. Um, so, you know, just opportunities for adding. More housing in areas where, um, certainly where there are a lot of vacancies. Um, that's been an issue, um, in different parts of the city and in, uh, commercial zones. Um, you're being asked to consider development standards for the city to for city staff to develop. Um, I, I, you know, I certainly. I mentioned in my general public comment earlier, I'm a renter. It does seem to me that the greater the supply of housing in the city, there are other dynamics, but it seems like the greater the housing supply in the city, that puts some pressure on rental rates for residents like myself. So there are a few things for the council members to consider. You'll hear a presentation. But as one resident, I am in full support of this proposition being added to the ballot this November. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. And we did have a request that came a little late, but I'll still allow. Mr. Stephen Kong?

Mr. Stephen, huh?

Oh, dear. I'm sorry. Okay. Well, apologies to Mr. Stephen Kong. Okay. Well, let's let Brooker show that we did call him up. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you all. Okay. Well, in that case, anything? Okay. Well, hearing no further public comment request, then staff, please report. So, okay.

Thank you, Mayor Lowe and honorable council members. I am back, Timothy Howe, Director of Community Development. Here to kick off this discussion tonight, with the Vacant to Vibrant Community Engagement Outreach Report is Dana Savanek, our consultant with Tripepe Smith. Dana.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Thank you guys so much. As Tim said, I am representing Tripepe Smith. We are a government public affairs and communications firm that has been supporting the city with community outreach and engagement specific to this vacant to vibrant effort. So I'm going to be providing an outreach report to you all on those efforts. So in response to recent conversations surrounding land use in Monterey Park and persistent community concerns around economic development and affordable housing solutions, the city launched a community engagement initiative titled Vacant to Vibrant with the goal of engaging residents in their desires surrounding development, land use, and zoning in the city. During the months of May and June, the city began circulating informational content, soliciting community feedback, and hosted three community workshops to advance conversations, answer community questions, and support deeper engagement on the topic of land use and economic development. This report provides an overview of the city's outreach efforts and collected feedback from the community to best inform the city council and staff about the viewpoints that were shared by community members. So the vacant to vibrant engagement effort included development of a webpage, social media promotion and education, an online feedback form and hosting of three community engagement workshops, one virtual and two in person. So the webpage was served as a centralized resource for background information, participation opportunities, workshop presentations and documents, and the online feedback form was hosted there, and it also included an area for frequently asked questions. The city began circulating vacant to vibrant social media content on June 4th with promotional posts for the virtual and in-person meetings, general informational content, and posts promoting the feedback form following the meetings. During the month of June, a total of nine posts related to the effort were distributed to both Instagram and Facebook. All content was translated into Spanish and Chinese for distribution across the city's platforms. The city also shared a total of 17 stories related to the effort, including each language. And here you can see the total views were 30,003, total engagements 256, and total story views 7,576. In addition to social media distribution, the city publicized the workshops and feedback form through the Cascades newspaper, the city's monthly e-newsletter, and via email. These additional distribution efforts hit 24,000 homes and over 1,000 email addresses. Housed on the Vacant to Vibrant webpage, the city embedded a feedback form to gather structured input on priorities, concerns, and ideas for future growth and community investment. The feedback form provided anyone with an internet connection a chance to directly share their ideas and thoughts with the city in a structured format. The form comprised a mix of open-ended and multiple choice questions as noted on the screen. We will move through the feedback results question by question a little later in the presentation. Just as a note, this method of feedback is helpful to give a voice, but it is not a scientific valid sampling of public sentiment. So although this is helpful data, it's mostly reflective of those who are motivated to participate in the process. It's not a scientifically valid survey. There were 64 total submissions to the online feedback form and A visual glimpse, I think, is on the next slide of the results here, which again, we'll go through question by question, but just so you can see in the report that's attached to the agenda, this is also there, so just wanted to visually show that to you all, the visual depiction of those results to some of those questions. Okay, next slide. So there were three workshops hosted, totaling 76 attendees. Language translation services were made available through Zoom AI and Wordly. The virtual workshop attendees received an informational presentation followed by a time of Q&A. Community members asked clarifying questions spanning general zoning processes, development projects, and expressed interest for retail, recreation, and housing throughout the city. The recording of the virtual session was made available on the Vacant to Vibrant webpage and the city's YouTube channel. The in-person workshop attendees received an informational presentation followed by a time of Q&A before breaking into table groups to discuss the feedback form questions among their peers. Each table appointed a scribe who documented their answers and shared feedback with the workshop participants as a whole. Some general highlights noted were Monterey Park's small town feel, dining, community and parks, With community members expressing a desire for more third spaces, walkability, and housing for young families and seniors. Community members also noted areas they see as needing new investment. We'll move through these feedback notes a little bit deeper next. And again, for visual representation, the feedback results from our table breakout sessions, which is very similar to the results of the online feedback form when you compare the two. Okay. In order to provide you all with a comprehensive picture of the feedback received through this vacant to vibrant engagement effort, we've combined the results of the feedback form with the in-person workshop table breakout sessions. And we're going to walk through a summary of the most frequent responses. However, a full breakdown of the raw data is available in your outreach report for both the feedback form and the table breakout sessions. Okay, so the first question in the form and during our table breakouts was what do you love about living in Monterey Park? And we see noted here, safety, quiet, and small town vibe. Consistently ranked as the number one reason residents choose the city, valued as a safe, peaceful, and family-oriented environment. To put down roots, diversity culture and the food scene is celebrated extensively for its deep Asian American heritage, vibrant community cultural events like the Lunar New Year and Cherry Blossom Festivals, and an unmatched multicultural local dining scene. As well as the central location and convenience, which is highly praised for its strategic geography between major freeways, giving easy accessibility to downtown Los Angeles and the rest of the San Gabriel Valley. What do you think can be improved about the experience of living in Monterey Park? So we heard that infrastructure, walkability and transit, as well as the urban canopy and shade control, vacant property management, third spaces and recreational amenities were of the top priorities here. When it comes to development in Monterey Park, what is most important to you? New commercial and retail businesses were the top priority. Residents want to diversify beyond basic retail and prevent leakage of spending to neighboring cities. Mixed use development was also mentioned as a highly favored and smart solution to combine dense housing with neighborhood scaled retail options. And affordable and targeted multi-family housing. This was heavily requested to support income based housing needs for seniors, young families, immigrant networks, and disabled residents. When it comes to vacant building concerns in Monterey Park, what is most concerning to you? So we heard a lot about rundown properties and eyesores. The community's primary concern is that long term empty buildings severely degrade neighborhood aesthetics and signal a lack of economic success. Housing and amenity access, equally flagged as a major missed opportunity. Stagnant lots should be working to solve the housing shortage or acting as accessible community hubs. When it comes to vacant properties in Monterey Park, how concerned are you? And this was overwhelmingly 87% of people marked concerned or very concerned in their response to that question. Citing public safety hazards and attracting crime or illegal squatting, trash pileups, and blight. Are there any developments in town that have added value or reflect the kind of development you want to see more in the city? And this was one of the more fun questions to see people in person as they were engaging and talking among their tables and coming up with these ideas. But as you see here, this SGV food halls and cultural hubs, Boston Market Hall, walkable retail footprints with anchor grocers, and advanced complete streets were the areas that were mentioned most frequently. Can you think of areas in Monterey Park that need new investment or need to be overhauled to increase quality of life in the city? Garvey Avenue in the downtown strip was identified as the primary commercial spine, desperately in need of major revitalization from community members, specifically the intersection of Garvey and Garfield. Atlantic Square and Times Square Corridor, Saturn Park District, and the Corporate Center Drive were also mentioned. And this question was coming from the recent conversations and ban on data centers in Monterey Park that drew a lot of community engagement and was actually kind of the spring point for some of these conversations taking place. Now that that ban has passed, what should the community instead look to in order to promote investment in the city? Mixed income residential layouts, Active green infrastructure, vibrant commercial and cultural districts, as well as sustainability hubs were the main responses from the community to this question.

Thank you, Dana. And now I'm going to provide an overview of the housing overlay concept that's described in the report. For context on November 2020 voters enacted measure JJ, which was the latest land use and urban design element for the city established land use designation city wide. and was a 20-year voter-approved vision for development in the city. Importantly, the city council may not amend the land use element without voter ratification, and a recent reminder of that was Measure NDC. Since 2020, the city has seen a growing number of vacant and underused commercial and industrial properties, some which have been idle for many years. Post the pandemic, there's certainly been shifts in how life operates and business operates, which have accelerated trends, leaving obsolete office and retail spaces that generate limited economic benefit for the city and community and can contribute to blight. Measure JJ did unfortunately not give the city the ability to respond proactively as economic and housing conditions have changed. The residents have described a shortage of affordable and multi-generational housing that makes it difficult for young residents as well as long-time families to remain in the community. and reusing vacant commercial and industrial land is an opportunity to develop housing which can help the city meet state requirements to plan for 5257 new housing units the concept Is to allow the City Council to create housing overlays throughout the city This would require an amendment to the land use element and the land use policy map This would identify specific areas where a housing overlay land use designation may be applied. And importantly, the overlay would not apply to any established residential zones, R1, R2, R3 areas.

The concept would operate in layers.

The first step would be voter approval of the land use element and land use policy map amendment. The second would be the subsequent city council actions to adopt zoning regulations. And last, property owners could then apply to use the overlay on specific parcels through a discretionary approval process before at city council. This image shows this concept in steps. Again, as mentioned, step one would be the ballot measure approved by voters. Then subsequent zoning regulations adopted by council. And lastly, a developer coming forward with an application for a specific project, which must be reviewed and approved by city council before anything is built. This concept creates a new pathway for reinvestment, supports converting underutilized or vacant properties into new housing options. It will not automatically change zoning. There would be a process for that, including discretionary approvals, and importantly, we'll continue the prohibition that's in place of data centers. It will address vacancies and blight properties, which helps the city address state requirements while continuing to preserve the character of the city's existing residential communities. And lastly, stimulates economic growth and can advance workforce housing for younger populations. The land use policy map would be updated and as part of the measure would incorporate areas within the land use map that this would impact. This shows a broad overview of areas within the city that are zoned either commercial, mixed use, innovation, technology. corporate center these are ideas of areas to incorporate into this within the staff report within the attachments you have some more fine-grained maps showing these at a larger scale The concept may also establish the development standards such as floor area ratio, densities, or maximum building heights, parking requirements that constrain how an overlay is implemented, or these standards could be left to the implementing zoning regulations that could be established later by council. This is one of the questions which staff is seeking direction from council on tonight. In terms of timeline, staff is seeking direction today and will thus prepare necessary documents if directed. Here's a potential timeline. If directed tonight, on August 5th, staff would bring back the necessary documents for council to vote to place a measure on the November ballot. The next election is November 3rd for voter consideration of the measure. And subsequent, if approved, then shortly thereafter in December or January of this winter, that would kick off outreach process to develop the ordinance language for the zoning framework. Staff seeks City Council's direction on the following four questions. First one, does Council wish to pursue a concept creating housing overlays through an amendment to the land use element? Second, if so, which areas should the map identify as eligible for the housing overlay? And should that map, as shown, include all the commercial industrial areas noted and exclude the existing established residential zones? Third, what development standards should be set in the ballot proposition, or should those standards simply be reserved for zoning regulations that follow after? And lastly, does Council wish to direct staff to prepare the necessary documents for a proposition for this housing overlay concept in time for the November 2026 ballot? This concludes staff's report. Dana and myself are available to answer any questions. Thank you.

Okay, well, thank you so much for that. Very comprehensive presentation. Well, let's proceed with, um. Council comments questions. Um.

Thank you, Mayor. Well, first of all, thank you to staff for all of the behind the scenes work that went into preparing this report, including conducting all of the community engagement sessions. I attended both of the in-person ones and they were well attended. I think the public who attended generally had good feedback about the process and provided a lot of great input. For this vacant to vibrant project, I think it's much needed After the pandemic, there's been a lot of vacancies in terms of commercial and industrial properties. And so rather than have those properties that vacant, I think the city needs to do something to fill the space, whether with housing or something that can provide more value to our city. So with regards to the four questions, maybe we can go back to the slide with the four questions. For me, question one, I would say yes. in terms of pursuing the housing overlay concept. For question two, I'm leaning towards including the commercial and industrial areas because I don't think the residential zones are as relevant right now to be changed and three leaning towards reserving the standards for after voter approval because that would create more flexibility and give opportunity for public input as well at that time and then four yes to direct staff to prepare docs for the November 2026 ballot thank you come from ago

Thank you. I am in agreement with Council Member Yang here. I think we have seen since the pandemic and even before certain parts of the city where we need growth and we need life because they've been vacant and thus the report, the title of this thing, which is Vacant to Vibrant. I want to thank Dana Trepepe-Smith and Tim for your work in kind of coordinating with the city and those not only the two meetings but also the zoom meeting was well attended by folks with a lot of good ideas and i think you guys put together put forth a good presentation and i'm gonna echo the sentiments of councilmember yang i support moving forward this i mean the key here is We're going to have an overlay, we're not changing Measure JJ, we're just going to have an overlay to respond to the changing dynamic of time and we really have underutilized vacant buildings and we need to do something with them. And that is time to do it now, which is we have to move forward, otherwise we'll continue to remain vacant and underutilized.

Thank you. Governor Wong?

Thanks, and appreciate all the staff work as my colleagues have pointed out already there's been a lot of work to get to this point I know and appreciate all the residents and stakeholders that have participated in the public outreach over the last couple months on on this specific I'm echo my council colleagues already fully support this I appreciate the context Tim and the staff provided with this staff report I would just add additional context right we are in A housing crisis in the state of California in the Los Angeles area, and here in Maury Park affordability in terms of housing continues to be an issue for many, many people. And we're under strict. The state is coming down more and more strictly on cities to make sure that we are. doing everything we can to meet our regional housing needs assessment numbers. As pointed out in one of the slides, we're supposed to be planning and helping to facilitate the building of more than 5,000 units of housing in the city. Going back now four years, I think we're in the middle of our arena cycle. And I think we're far, far below that. And the vast majority of the units that have come online the last few years have an ADU. It's not actual individual housing units or condos or townhouses. There's still a long ways to go to address housing, affordability, housing needs, and housing crisis from a regional perspective and a statewide perspective. And we need to be doing our part in Maury Park to meet these needs. Otherwise, the risk is the state comes down even harsher on cities that need to support the solutions to addressing housing and housing affordability. So wanting to make sure that we are in control of our own destiny and making decisions for ourselves instead of the state coming down even more harshly as they have the last few years, forcing cities to essentially rezone without any local control over this. I think this is very much a step in the right direction to make sure that we are controlling our land use to the extent possible on our own, and especially when it comes to housing, helping to direct that in the right places where density makes more sense. So fully support this, fully support what staff has done to help provide some guidance for where we should go. I think this is a really important question, and a timely question for us to be addressing from a citywide perspective. I'd also note that most other cities and city councils have the authority that we would be asking for already here. in terms of being able to determine which areas the city should allow for more density in terms of housing. All those things are inherent within the city council to be able to decide for the most part in just about every other city in the state of California. And so this just restores some of that authority here in Maury Park to the council to do this. Doesn't create new zoning anywhere in the city automatically. Just brings that authority back to the council And if you can clarify, Tim, I know you already mentioned it, but I want to highlight this for anyone that might be paying attention to this. If there's an area in the city or neighborhood or a potential parcel that wants to build mixed-use or higher-density housing in the city, if the city council had this authority, what would be the process for potentially rezoning or allowing development that isn't currently allowed in the zoning process or currently allowed in the zoning code?

So under this concept, then a developer or property owner would come forward with an application. It would work very, it'd be somewhat analogous to what we already have within the city for commercial. A development, the business recovery, uh, development. Zone, it's it's a similar process where it would be activated through an application that would come before city council during a hearing for consideration and approval by means of a development agreement. And it would operate as essentially an overlay over the existing zoning. So it would afford additional uses, et cetera.

So it would still be, if someone wanted to develop along Garvey, higher density or, well, Garvey already allows mixed use, but if there's an area in the city that doesn't allow denser housing or an existing commercial lot that doesn't allow mixed use currently, we want to rezone potentially for higher density housing or mixed use, right? This authority, if we had it, they would still, that property owner would still have to come to the council. We'd still have a public hearing. Correct. And the council would still have discretionary authority to take action to allow that or disallow that proposal, right?

That is correct, yes. So as the sort of step two, and I may jump back, but in the step two process after the voter approval of the measure would be council implementing the corresponding zoning, which would Basically determine and lay out exactly where this could potentially be an available option and then within that Council will preserves that discretion on a parcel by parcel basis depending on the the project to decide yes or no If I may mr. Mayor members of the council just to

tag on on what tim's talking about this is not really unprecedented you already have a mechanism substantially similar to what is being suggested and that's the birds zone overlay zone that was enacted during covid that's the business recovery development zone and that's activated with a development agreement in front of the city council the city council has to approve the development agreement and with that development agreement it also activates an overlay over a portion of property within the city that only applies to commercial properties. This is a little bit different only from the standpoint of voter approval is necessary first in order to make sure that the designation works for those areas that have been identified in the maps that that Tim has been talking about. And again, the the voters would be delegating authority to the city council to enact the zoning, which we already saw in Saturn Park, and the council just approved the Olson project in Saturn Park. That was specifically because the zoning authority was delegated to the city council pursuant to Measure JJ. So this type of structure is something that the city's already doing in a different context. We're simply expanding or suggesting that you consider expanding that to something a little bit different, but something that obviously your constituents have been interested in talking about. Thanks, Carl.

I really appreciate the additional context. And I'll just add, I fully support seeking this authority with the voters in November and moving forward with the ballot measure and having staff work on bringing back language as soon as possible. Obviously, we're on a very tight time frame. It sounds like we've got a couple weeks to get language back to the council to approve to make sure it's on the ballot. To the extent possible, we'd love to do a little bit more outreach now that we're getting to a point where we're The community meetings that we had on the vacant and vibrant were kind of more general in nature in terms of how we want to address, we want to hear people's concerns around economic development, housing, and the city, and our land use, and the city, now that we're shaping kind of, based on that feedback, shaping a potential solution, policy solution that could make it onto the ballot in November to the extent possible, if we can have some community outreach or some sort of opportunity to do that, receive additional feedback and engage with community members that are interested in engaging on this now that we're moving towards a more specific action, I think would be very, very helpful. Obviously, want to balance if this makes it on the bat, so you can't advocate for or city can't spend resources to advocate when we're on a ballot measure, but want to make sure we're educating and engaging, especially the people that showed up to the last three sessions around what came out of their feedback. On the specific questions that you had, agree with council members that have already spoken. Let's move forward on this. I think this authority makes sense to bring back for housing overlays for the council to be able to do that. As our city attorney pointed out, we're already doing that to a certain extent in some areas of the city and have done that. in terms of the land use what areas we should look at doing this totally agree on on commercial industrial areas actually would be open to looking at this in r3 areas because it's not like those are already allowed to be as dense as possible from a residential perspective if we wanted to allow mixed use in those areas i don't know that if this new authority would be needed i'm looking at carl or tim or if that's something that could we could I would love to see that as an added tool if we can't do it already in our three zones but open that and I don't know if we need to do that but if we can bring that back and then in terms of development standards totally good with what the other councils already said I think what we want to achieve through this is to bring maximum flexibility to the council on development standards and kind of bring more flexibility and authority back to the council because the economy continues to change very rapidly. Even from 2020 when we adopted Measure JJ to now, the economy is a completely different place. Retail is a very different place. Even commercial mixed-use development and housing are in different places. The council and the city needs to be able to adapt with more flexibility to changing conditions in the economy. Having to go to the ballot to change some of these standards and things like that would make no sense to me. And even having to go through this ballot measure, we're already losing potentially months on. Voters made it clear by passing measure NDC that we didn't want data centers, we don't want data centers throughout the city, and particularly in Saturn Park where one was proposed. But we're now delayed many, many months to even address what we do want to potentially see in Saturn Park and other parts of the city. And to be able to bring that flexibility to be able to move more quickly will enable, I think, the city to address some of these problems more readily and to really meet the needs and the demands that the community is making that we've heard from some of these feedback sessions. Whatever flexibly we can make sure we're working in here on these design standards and development standards would make absolute sense to me. And then, yes, absolutely. On number four, if staff can bring back as quickly as possible, I think our next meeting is August 5th or August. whatever so by the next meeting we'll need draft pretty pretty thought-out ballot language for the council to deliberate in terms of putting on the ballot sounds like and then I know it sounds like the deadline for the TOT argument is due tomorrow when would we need to get if if the council does move forward on a On this housing overlay ballot measure from November, how quickly would we need to be? Are we still able to get a ballot argument in place for that too?

Mr. Mayor, members of the council, off the top of my head, the last day for putting something on to the ballot is August 7th. And so you would have additional time from the time that a ballot proposition were put onto the ballot to have arguments also submitted to the city clerk, who is the elections official for Monterey Park. I don't recall what that exact date is off the top of my head. Ordinarily, it's about 10 days after the proposition is put onto the ballot. But don't hold me to that. I'm guesstimating from experience.

We can clarify a timeline so that we can potentially prepare ahead of that. I think would be helpful. That's all I got.

Thank you, Council Member Wong. Mayor Pro Tem.

I also wanted to thank staff for the report, but also for the robust workshops that we had. It was great going to the workshops and hearing from residents. I especially liked the breakout sessions. That's where you could really hear. whether people had concerns, but also the ideas that people had. And I think generally speaking, what I heard from people who were speaking, most people were in favor of housing is what I heard. And I think realize the importance of development and housing in these particular areas and corridors that we've kind of pointed out on the, I think we had the map up earlier But I'm also in favor of moving forward with giving staff direction to the different areas where we would have housing overlaying. Some of those are in District 3 that I represent in the near Atlantic Square that would provide other development opportunities, not just in that corridor, but as you can see, especially the downtown Garvey corridor. I think it's pretty exciting actually to see what we can do. Uh, also support, you know, moving forward with this excited to see it on the ballot and what can come of this. I think this would potentially give us a lot of opportunities. I think one of the things that I think it was in the second workshop that we're talking about in terms of what could potentially go and what are what limits we have and people didn't realize that a lot of this, a lot of our land use is very outdated in terms of what could potentially be built there. And I think some of them were like stuff that businesses that aren't even around anymore. So it'd be great to update a lot of those different things and see what happens here. But I'll keep it brief and just think stuff and then looking forward to seeing this on August 5th.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. And I want to, for my comments, echo the sentiments of my colleagues. I am also thankful for staff for not just today's presentation, but also staff for the effort in conducting these outreach meetings we had for the past few weeks regarding community input on how we can address vacancies and build a more vibrant community. And I just want to thank those who spoke tonight, as well as those in the audience, also those who participated in those engagement meetings. You know, I want to maybe just share from my remarks, you know, I recall attending those community meetings and some of the comments I heard was, you know, comments were such as We live in an area where we haven't seen much vibrancy, maybe because it's a commercial corridor that is not living up to its full potential because it was designed and zoned in an era way before any of us were even sitting here in the dais. Other comments was that, you know, we want to see development that also reflects the changing face of the community. And part of those changes are, number one, you know, we want to see, as I'm hearing from brethren, multi-generational housing or housing. opportunities for those who are young professionals or those who are starting families or those who are children of people who grew up in this community. How do they continue to stay engaged? And I think probably oftentimes when we hear people make comment, even tonight we hear people from saying, I lived here for many decades, for many years. And again, that's wonderful. That means we have a community that is not just one in which people want to live in, but one that afford less stability. And I think it's important for us as a community to ask ourselves, how do we maintain those conditions that allow stability. And I think it is incumbent upon us, the powers in our hands, to make sure that we make intentional conscious decisions about land use. And I often like to point out that for myself personally, going back even 23 years, yes, 23 years ago when I was canvassing for the Garvey School District Board of Education. Again, 23 years ago, back then, you know, we had people who said, well, you know, I remember knocking on like homes in the Hillcrest area, you know, someone saying, you know, it's like, oh, you know, my children grew up here, you know, went to Hillcrest Elementary School, but, you know, unfortunately, they can't afford to live here and so they moved away. That was 23 years ago and someone was already saying that, housing was a challenge 23 years ago. And unfortunately, the situation has only become worse. And I think that what is also unique about Monterey Park is that important line use decisions are made via voters. And that is unique and something that we certainly celebrate. Again, most recently, voters approving a measure in DC. But because we also have the power in our hand, we also need to then ask ourselves, then how do we continue to make the community, this city, a place in which people can continue to live or invite their extended families, or if they grew up here, how do they stay here and establish roots just like their parents or grandparents did? And so I think my colleague said, you know, the last time we asked this question of voters within 2020 would measure J. J. And that was. In the beginning of the pandemic, a lot has changed in 6 years and we need to make sure that we are. on top, or at least the birth of those issues of those conditions of those changes. And I think that's where I hope that, you know, when we move forward, that our residents, you know, those who are in audience, those who are listening, that we can have these conversations and also take action via the ballot box, so that we can, we can be given the tools to address the issue that were brought up during the debate about the data center, and subsequently during the conversation at leave like vacant to vibrant community engagement meetings and i do hope that um you know we we have a robust conversation and have a conversation at the ballot box and certainly something i look forward to and with that um i will end and ask if there any further questions or comments or if not if there's any um um action that we can take

Mr. Mayor, if I may, just wanted to make a note. There was one written communication that was received and distributed to the council on this item. So just wanted to note that. And then I wanted to also note that the city staff did send out an email to the participants of the workshops that we had email addresses for. sharing out the agenda, indicating that the outreach report was completed and attached to the agenda and that they could participate in tonight's meeting. Definitely here understanding that there's an interest for additional community outreach on the item. What we can do is, if Council is interested, we can set up a webpage with the outreach information indicating that um if the council is providing direction to put an initiative on for august 5th then we could explain that that would be another opportunity to engage with that item if that's of interest numbers yeah whatever we can do i know it's a tight time frame uh would appreciate i mean even if it's virtual i think would be helpful just to make sure we're providing input and engagement opportunities

And if no one beats me to it, I'm happy to make the motion to adopt staff recommendation and to have staff bring back ballot language for consideration for the November ballot.

Motion made by Councillor Wong. Do we have a second, please?

I'll second.

Second by Councillor Moriang. Hearing no further debate or discussion, members please vote.

Approved unanimously.

OK. Thank you very much. And staff, you have your marching orders. OK. Let's see, moving on to city communications and future agenda items. Let's go to Council Member Yang.

None here.

Okay, Council Member Goh. I just want to report that we just had the 250th birthday for the US, 4th of July, and I hope everyone had a great long weekend just a couple of weeks ago. And then there is a continuing exhibit at the library. It's titled Duty, Honor, Courage, Country. It's an API veterans exhibit that's at the library, and the launch party was on the 3rd, the day right before the 4th of July. It was well attended. We had veterans going back from the Korean War. One of the few survivors who are still here today spoke about his experiences. We had Vietnam War veterans, Gulf War veterans, and we also had a two-star general who spoke at the event. And the exhibit will continue till the rest of July, and I think also maybe the first two weeks of August. So when you have a chance, please go visit the exhibit at the library. That's all I have.

Thank you, Councilor Gault. Councilor Wong? Just echoing appreciation for the staff. I don't know if Robert's here. He might be on vacation still, but I know last meeting, before last meeting, we had the unveiling for the new mural outside our, on the wall of the Jim, I just want to continue to encourage. We really appreciate that. I think a lot of the community, most of the community, really appreciated that art. And there's a lot more wall space, I think, that we have at our city facilities and other public spaces to continue to fill. Hope that we can continue to look at what projects can be in the pipeline for continuing to do more placemaking and public art in public places would be great.

all right i'll keep this brief i'm just gonna say thank you uh to all our city staff for all of the uh work uh not just with the uh vacant to vibrant vibrant workshops but um everything else But also want to echo the amazing work that went into the murals and all the murals that we've been adding throughout the city, making our city look very beautiful. But also wanted to share that on Saturday, I had a quick opportunity to visit the Library Foundation's reopening of the library. Of the bookstore. Sorry, I was losing my words here. Of the bookstore. And so they remodeled and have viewing chairs and places you can... A lot of cool selections as well, so... I want to encourage people to go out and check the library bookstore and get some books to read. Also, the Montebello Housing Development Corporation hosted a workshop for Monterey Park residents first-time homebuyers actually and it was pretty very well attended on Saturday as well at the clubhouse here in Barnes Park and wanted to thank them for for doing that and for providing those workshops for a lot of families who were trying to learn about the process of buying their first home connecting them with banks, and just the process can be, and helping demystify the process. So I wanted to thank them for doing that. And then I am in summer mode. So I was in San Diego all of last week aboard the USS Midway, along with a few other teachers throughout the country, learning about the impact of the Midway. If you haven't visited the USS Midway in San Diego, it was a World War II aircraft carrier, although it was not used during World War II. It was commissioned during World War II, but it was predominantly used during, The Vietnam War, during our Cold War crisis, there was a U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier, I learned. Even though I was granted the opportunity to stay overnight on the Midway, I did not. But because the quarters are very, very small, so I appreciate the Navy men who serviced that ship. And it was pretty exciting to be there for the whole week. But it was also 75 degrees the entire week that I was there. So the weather was... It was quite pleasant. I was quite surprised when I got back to LA and how hot it was. But anyhow, I'm also at the moment attending the NALEO Conference, the National Association for Latino Elected Officials, which is happening here in downtown LA and they are celebrating their 50 year anniversary here in LA where it all started. That is it. Stay cool. And just want to remind folks that it is very warm. So stay hydrated. And remember that libraries are cooling centers and a great place to actually read and learn actual AI we call it right.

So thank you. Thank you, colleagues. I also attended many events my colleagues mentioned. I do want to also give particular compliments to my colleague, Councilman Van Gogh, for his leadership in organizing the event at the library on July 3rd to honoring APIs who served in the US Armed Forces. Again, it was an event that took many months of planning. And from those who attended, it was a packed room. So thank you. come or go for your leadership in organizing that event. Also, I want to thank our city staff, particularly Parks and Rec, for putting together last Monday a watch party on the lawn of City Hall for FIFA, in which it was a spirited game of soccer. And again, thank you so much for it. And also, that was kind of a last minute thing we put together. So thank you so much for staff for being responsive and flexible. I also attended on July 5th out here in front of City Hall an annual event which commemorates the Marco Polo Bridge incident and it is a monument to the beginning of World War II in Asia but also its impact to, you know, subsequently the larger conflict around the world for World War II that drew in Americans, people in the world, and the casualties, both Chinese, Chinese Americans, as well as Americans who served. And I do want to point out that I think Monarch Park were actually very unique. I think when we went through cities, if not the only city in the United States that has a monument outside that is not just devoted to World War II, but also to those who died in the conflict in Asia during World War II as well. And that reflects also our history and the cultural and historic roots that many of us have. So a lot of good stuff happening here in the city. And I want to thank my colleagues also tonight for many actions that were taken because they potentially have the potential to be transformative moving forward for our city. And with that, any other further, no caring, hearing none. One more. Yes, yes, yes. Sorry.

Mr. Mayor, I just want to make an announcement that the library is a cooling center and so is Langley Center, just in case residents have another option. So Langley Center and the library are cooling centers.

Thank you so much. Let's see, no closed session items to announce. And with that, then I will adjourn today's meeting. Stay cool and have a good evening.