City Council - Regular Meeting

Another one. Anybody thirsty?

Can you ask So thank Okay, good evening everyone. and we're going to get the meeting started this evening. Uh, if you have an empty seat next to you, could you raise your hand? So, some of the folks Yeah, there's a few empty seats in the front here. One, two, three. If anyone wants to come up to the front and grab a seat. So, we do have overflow seating in the lobby. Um, the meeting is being broadcast on the TV monitor. Restrooms are also in the lobby area. Uh we have staff available at the back of the chambers if anyone has questions or needs assistance. We have a lot of speakers joining us for the first time this evening. So I want to ensure everyone understands or meeting protocols. If you would like to speak and make public comment, please fill out a yellow speaker card and give it to the city clerk. Please fill out one card per item if you wish to speak on more than one item. So,

we have multiple items um regarding the data center tonight, 12 A, 12B, and 11B. If you want to speak on each item, fill out a separate card for each item. Um, I will then call speakers by name indicated on the speaker card for each agenda item and you uh would come up to the podium, speak into the mic. Um, and like previous meetings, I usually call five names so everyone can line up here in the hall uh in the uh aisle so that right after the first speaker goes, you guys can go right after to um smooth things out. Um, I want to acknowledge that the topics on our agenda tonight carry a lot of weight for our community. We are all here because we all care deeply about the future of this city. To ensure everyone has a chance to speak and be heard, I ask for your cooperation with a few ground rules. First of all, please direct all comments to the council, not to members of the audience. Please be respectful of each speaker regardless of what their opinion is. Everyone gets a chance to be heard. We also ask for silence while others are speaking. We're using a uh software called Wordily for translation and close captioning and the platform using our microphones to capture audio. Um if the audience is shouting or speaking out of turn, the platform won't be able to capture each speaker's comments. Uh so please uh uh remain silent while others are speaking so that Wordley can assist with translation. Uh please keep your comments focused on the agenda item at hand. Um, we have we we're giving the same five minutes for each speaker, but depending on how many comment cards when we get to each item, I'll let you guys

know how many comment cards we have so that you guys can regulate the time amongst yourself. That way, everyone gets a chance to speak. Uh, my role as mayor is to ensure this meeting is conducted efficiently and safely for everyone in attendance. Thank you all for coming tonight. We will call to order now and we'll start off with our flag salute with our Monterey Park uh with a scout troop 286 color guard. Please rise. Place your right hand over your heart. Ready to stands nationisible and justice for all. Right face.

Thank you. You may be seated. We do have a certificate of recognition um on behalf of city of Monterey Park for our scouts from troop 286 and we like to present it to Luke Littlefield and uh yes Robert.

Uh so good evening mayor, mayorm city council members. Robert Gary, director of recreation and community services and tonight with me I have Luke Little Little Littlefield. Uh Luke recently uh helped re re do his Eagle Scout project over at Garvey Ranch Park. So you'll see on the monitors here tonight. Uh Luke's project was actually refurbishing the very old and tattered sign that was over at Garvey Ranch Park. I'm going to allow uh Luke to speak a little bit about that process. I know he also has some thank yous that he wants to um give. And so with that, I'll turn it over to L Luke. and uh just want to also thank uh him and his uh troop for all of their work that they put into uh beautifying our city. So, Luke,

thank you, Mr. Robert, and thank you, city council, for allowing me to be here today. Um so, my project, as you know, is refurbishing the Garvey Ranch Park sign. And to get started with that, me and my scouts who volunteered, we helped make the pathway to the sign right there by clearing out the bushes and leveling the area. And we placed um the pebbles as seen and the and the stones. And after that, the park helped us take down the sign and deliver it to my home to work on refurbishing the sign where me and my scout sanded down the sign and repaired the broken wood and painted it. So, I wanted to give a special thank you to Mr. Robert for allowing this to happen as I had uh my first project idea was to be a flag pole at Garvey Ranch Park and the plan didn't make it out. But because of Mr. Robert and his support, I was able to have a new project made, which was the Garvey Ranch Park signed. And I want to give a special thank you to Miss Joanne and Mr. Paul because without them, I I would have been stressing over the Eagle Scout project and the flag, but thanks to them, I was able to get through it with the sign. So, I want to give a special thank you to the scouts who helped out and my friends, and a special thank you to my mom and dad for encouraging me through my journey. Thank you guys. Thank you so much. We'll bring the certificate to you.

Mr. Robert, you should be in the photo, too. He gave you a shout out, Mr. Okay, I'm do it now. One, two, three. Oh, wait. Okay. Wait. I'm gonna Yeah,

she's taking selfies. Look over here real quick. Oh, yeah. Good idea. All right.

No problem. All right. Thank you again to Troop 286.

Uh, Madame Clerk, may we get a roll call, please? Council member Go, present. Council member Wong, present. Council member Sanchez, present. Mayor Permllo present. Mary Yang present. We have a quum. Thank you. All right. Um uh any agenda revisions or additions? Madame Mayor, members of the council, we'd like to uh request that the council remove item 9A from tonight's agenda. And we'd also like to request um item 8A be moved before public communication if the council would like to do so.

All right. And I'd also like to move items 12A, 11B, and 12B up to be heard right after public communications. Uh all good. All right. So, we will go ahead and do um Oh, go ahead. So, just for clarification, item 9A has been removed from the city council agenda for tonight's meeting. Item 9A.

Thank you. So, let's start with the presentation for 8A. Then we'll do public communications and then um we'll do items 12 A, 11 B, and 12B. Thank you for the introduction. Good evening, madame mayor, uh, council members, and members of the community. My name is Michael Cerna. I am an engineer at Metropolitan Water District, and I will be giving a presentation to update you on our Garvey reservoir rehabilitation project. Here's my agenda. I'll provide an overview of Metropolitan, who Metropolitan Water District is. I'll provide project background followed with a project update and our next steps. Uh, Metropolitan Water District was established in 1928. We serve as a water wholesaler with 26 member agencies. Um, ultimately what that means is through our member agencies were able to deliver drinking water to approximately 19 million 19 million people in Southern California. So, this right here shows an aerial view of the city of Monterey Park. Uh, the city boundary is outlined in orange. Um highlighted is Garvey Reservoir and City Hall. So Garvey Reservoir is just southeast of here. Uh this is um this slide shows the the bird's eye view of the of the reservoir. You can see the blue highlight lines represent pipelines that are connected to the reservoir and um I've highlighted the outlet tower and the floating cover and liner which are the major components to be re rehabilitated. So quick background in this slide or I'm sorry quick background. Garvey reservoir was constructed in 1954. Um its maximum storage capacity is 1,600 acre feet. Um ultimately that reservoir provides Metropolitan with operational flexibility uh to run its water system. So why is this project needed? Um

firstly it's part of who we are. It's in our mission statement. Um MWD um wants to continue to deliver high quality water, high quality drinking water to the community and also California Division Drinking Water, DW, uh the state agency that regulates public drinking water systems requires all reservoirs be covered uh to protect from contamination. U the reservoir cover you see here was installed in 1999 um with a typical service life of about 20 to 25 years. Uh this cover is at the end of its useful life. So project goals to summarize at a high level the goal is to improve major facilities. We want to maintain Garvey reservoir reliability and improve operations and maintenance. Uh here's our project timeline. Uh this slide really shows the progress of the project as well as MWD's engagement with the city of Monterey Park. uh final design kicked off in 2023 and in 2024 we made two presentations to city council similar to what I'm doing now. Uh the first one was performed in January uh followed by another one in June. Uh the EI for the project was adopted in November of 2024 and we completed design last year and we awarded a construction contract um at the end of 2025. Uh the picture shown on the slide shows MWD's effort to engage with the city. Uh I believe on two separate occasions we hosted members of the city council and city management. Uh the mayor, public works director and city manager um all visited the reservoir. Uh this slide shows our anticipated construction schedule. Um, as mentioned, uh, we issued a contract in late, um, late last year in December 2025, and we've been working with our contractor to get the pre-construction administrator documentation completed. Um, now that our contractor satisfied some of that front-end documentation,

um, that they're ready to mobilize, and that brings us to where we are today. Um, we anticipate the contractor to mobilize later this month, uh, with active demolition to occur between April and August of this year. and ultimately construction through 2028. Uh, one thing I want to make clear and stress before we get to the next slide is Metropolitan will have a continued presence on site during construction. Uh, Garvey Reservoir is a critical piece of infrastructure for our organization. So, it's important for us to have uh full visibility as construction progresses. uh we'll have a construction manager on site as well as other engineers and inspectors and operators to uh to ensure uh progress is being made. So these are next steps and what to expect. Uh firstly there will be no disruption to your water supply. Uh city residents are not connected to the reservoir directly. So our anticipated construction should not affect uh service. To help mitigate and limit the nuisance noise, we've directed the contractor to only perform during specific working hours. Uh, as well as to mitigate the additional construction vehicular traffic in the area. We've adopted specific truck hauling hours. Again, the goal is to reduce a large truck traffic during morning and after commutes. We want to keep the road safe for our neighbors and limit the effect of construction on our daily routines. At the bottom of the slide, you'll see um a map of our construction truck route. Uh working with the city, we established this route. Uh truck access should be limited to Orange Avenue, Graves Avenue, and Garfield Avenue. Um lastly, before I close, I I want to make note that we do plan on circulating a flyer u a project information sheet to the community surrounding the reservoir. Uh we're targeting the week of March 16th, and the flyer will include much of the

information on this slide as well as what I presented to you today. That concludes my presentation. Thank you. May I Mayor? Yes, Michael. Thanks for the presentation. Just a quick uh question and if you can clarify again or just uh say it again the timeline of the construction. Yes, timeline of the construction. Again, we are set to mobilize um later this month. Uh so our contract or our contractor is ready to to move on site basically and um basically from at that point um construction will go through the end of 2028.

Thank you. Uh thank you for the presentation of the update. Uh and you're beginning if I missed it I apologize. You're beginning construction in a few weeks or months or when? Yes. So again, our contractor will mobilize at the end of this month and shovels in the ground likely in April and then through the end of 2028 is construction period. That's correct. About two years. Yes. Uh and then can you remind if I missed it, I apologize again. Can you remind us what you're actually doing at the site? You're So replacing the liner, replacing all the pipes.

So we're Yes, we're it's called the project. We're replacing the liner uh the cover as well as strengthening the outlet tower. Um there's a few other miscellaneous um equipment, mechanical, electrical, furnaces. Um but that information will be part of the flyer that we we intend to circulate. And then we're we do we have a web page already set up for this project towards informing the community. We can definitely uh add it to the city's web page.

Yeah, I think that'd be good. Especially as a long-term project. Whatever Met can provide us, I think we can just upload would be cool. And that's a cool rendering. Uh and then just to confirm there's there's no after the construction there's you're not changing capacity in terms of how much water is being would be able stored there anything like that. It'll be the same essential kind of usage. That's correct. Yes, we are not changing capacity. We're updating to make sure the equipment's up to date and all that stuff. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for the update. Um, you know, I I think it's been about a year since we toured uh I think the facility,

maybe longer. Yeah, about a year and a half. June June 2024 was uh when we had tours. Yeah. And that was my first time actually up at the Garvey Reservoir. And I think one of the things uh other than uh the reservoir that's there um is just the amazing views uh that you have up there that I uh remember. Um anyhow, um I I hope that you will come back um as the project progresses and give us updates in terms of where you guys are at and and I think to re uh to reiterate what uh Council Member Wong said, whatever we can do to inform the public in terms of um on our part um to share information about what's going on with this project, it would be appreciated uh as well.

Yeah, duly noted. Um yeah, we'll share as much information as we can. um city officials and we we would like to extend that that invite again to for the tour as we start to get into the heavy heavy parts of construction. If if you guys are up for it, you I'll be more than willing to to tour the site again. I think it's a a beautiful part of Monterey Park in terms of uh a lot of the the landscape that you can see and and just being so high, but also that particular area. I'm not trying to encourage people to go in there and walk, but it is a a very nice venue. Thank you, Mayor,

Michael. Well, thank you very much for your presentation. Um, can you I know you mentioned that uh you uh your agency will also be doing outreach to the community. Um can you describe more in detail what that entails? Are we talking about mailing letters or uh building electronic and how wide of an area we talking about? So yes, it's it is a flyer. Um it's a again just a project information sheet and it does summarize um what to expect during construction. Again, a lot of the information that I already provided today is kind of summarized in in the flyer. Um, I believe we're going um to the immediate community surrounding the reservoir, but I can get clarification on that. I I believe we are

um again, we're planning to circulate that the week of March 16th. So, okay. I I I I would like to know. I'm sure some of my colleagues because because again um it's Orange Avenue is a heavily used um street not just for people commuting to work but also using as an access way to our shopping centers and not to mention the schools up there. So I think that um it's important um that um I mean if it has to be citywide then again because of the heavy use of not just Orange but also um Graves Avenue as well. Thank you. Yes.

Yeah. Thank you for that presentation. and I'd love to join a future tour uh since I believe the previous tour was scheduled before I joined council. So, I haven't personally toured it myself, but I know the reservoir is much in need of rehabilitation. So, thank you for this project. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, that's all for 8A. Um we don't have any public communications for six and no staff communications for seven. So, we'll jump to the item that most people are here for tonight. 12A consideration and possible action to call for a special election on June 2nd, 2026 and adding a proposition to the ballot prohibiting data center citywide. So, let me just tell you guys how many speaker cards I got so you guys can regulate the time and know that more speaker cards come in throughout the night. Uh, so 12 A I currently have 55 public comment cards, 12B, two, and 11B 27. So it adds up to 85 uh speakers. So if everyone speaks for the five minutes, that's seven hours. We'll end at 2 in the morning. If everyone speaks for three minutes, that'll be over four hours. will end at 11:00 p.m. So, I don't limit folks time here. I let everyone regulate themselves. I know at one meeting a lot of people took a lot of time and over 20 people ended up going home and not getting a chance to speak. So, um if you've already heard someone say what you're you want to say, maybe you don't need to repeat yourself, but if you have something worth worth uh telling us, then then use up all the time. So, I'll uh call five names and uh you guys can line up at the aisle. Um and then when the line gets short then I will call more names. So um let's see number one we have Joyce Vega. Two is Carrie. Three is Jeremy Dave Jones and Sam.

And I also want to um make it clear that the proposed 1977 Saturn project isn't on tonight's agenda. So the city council will not and cannot discuss that particular project or any details of that particular project tonight. Um the item is for a um ballot prohibiting data centers citywide. So it's a general uh ballot measure. Uh all right, Joyce. Yes. Hi. Uh, Joyce Vega. Good evening, city council, city manager. Um, I've been a resident for over 30 years. Um, and let me be clear, I don't want a data center in my community or the greater St. Gabriel Valley. I conditionally support 12A but demand that the city close two loopholes and also pass an ordinance banning data centers immediately as per the letter from CBM dated February 27th, 2026. Um I'm fighting this fight for the future of my granddaughters. We are in an upside down world right now and I want my granddaughters to know that I fought to make things right. I'm fighting for our communities to have clean air, clean water, nature, and a world full of productive, creative people, not AI and robots. Our leaders, our leaders, our city leaders and planners need to imagine a community that benefits the people of the community and not greedy billionaire corporations that only care about money and power. My granddaughter Noel, eight years old, says, "I want a world with no data

centers here or anywhere where people live. I want a world with clean air and water to survive." Thank you. Sorry, one more thing. I hope that you all make the right decision for your own legacies.

Good evening, mayor and city council members. Um, so regarding 12A, I know you already have the letter from attorney Doug Karsten's. I'm sorry. Can you please state your name? Carrie.

Thank you. Um, I'm very appreciative that he uh was retained and was able to give you his approach, which as you know is a voting ordinance plus ballot measure. Um, regarding the zoning ordinance, uh there's some things I wanted to say to you in favor of that, arguing for that. Um, as you know, zoning ordinances are legislative acts and courts give wide difference to them. Um, the city only needs a rational basis, which is the lowest legal standard. Um, the city made the decision to adopt ordinance number 2253 to allow data centers in Saturn Park back in November 2024. It's clear now that the majority of residents were unaware of this. Uh, now you're aware of how the majority of our residents feel about allowing data centers. You should not delegate this decision solely to the ballot box. When the city is aware of the aggressive PR campaign, you're well aware of the aggressive PR campaign that HMC has started waging in favor of the data center from the hiring of multiple PR firms. Uh there may be up to three uh to Facebook and Instagram ads to canvasing the neighborhood. So this isn't this is a call that you need to make to fix a problem that you caused. Also, you now have overwhelming rational bases from the public welfare standpoint to support a zoning amendment to ban data centers. There's a wealth of evidence in the record that you can rely upon to show the detrimental impacts from data centers. You have the M andd comment letters from SCAQMD advocates for the environment creed and its experts. You have a January 2026 letter from Center for Biological Diversity.

And you have a large number of resident letters and public comments from the December through February and including today's meetings. So you have plenty of evidence in the record upon which to base a new zoning ordinance to ban data centers throughout the entire city. Now regarding the ballot language and going forward with the ballot in June, obviously I would wish to have um this me this measure on the ballot as soon as possible. However, I do have several concerns with the language in the ballot measure. I did share some of them with you a few weeks ago uh when I told you that I felt that the uh definition of data center is problematic because it's applying only to properties one or more acres of land. Um the other thing is that the um ordinance only amends the land use element and I feel that it is very important for all of the zoning amendments to be included in the ballot measure. Just to give you an example of why that's important. So the def the only definition being addressed is data center but we have data processing facility which is actually currently allowed within the office professional zone Monterey Pass Road. And if you look at the definition a data center could come in under this. It says a building dedicated space within a building, a group of buildings primarily used for the processing, storage, and management of electronic data on less than an acre of land. Although it also says it typically involves data entry, a data center could come in under that definition. Typically involves doesn't mean it has to include data entry. So primarily used for the processing, storage, and management of

electronic data. That could be a data center. So, if you do this ballot measure that only changes the land use element and you don't go through and identify all of the municipal code sections that need to be changed, I'm concerned that a data center could be allowed in Monterey Pass Road area. So, that needs to be fixed. So, I would say a cautious approach is necessary and a comprehensive amend um ordinance that includes all of the municipal code amendments that are necessary to make sure that we uh that the council adopts effective uh regulations to prohibit data centers throughout the whole city. I would also actually suggest deleting the definition of data processing facility. I don't think that adds anything to our code. I think that current uses like office administrative or office professional can encompass the type of ancillary data uses, but any use of data processing facility would most likely almost encompass a data center. So there's really no reason to have that um definition in the code at all. Thank you. Mayor, mayor, mayor, if we could maybe interrupt real quick because I think that some of many of those concerns that were shared by this speaker right now uh were emailed I think to many of us multiple times. Uh maybe we could ask our city attorney to address some of those upfront just so perhaps we don't have to repeat all of those in the public comment going forward. Yes, sir.

Uh, madame mayor, members of the council, we're happy to provide a brief staff report if that's desirable. U, I think most many of these questions have already been addressed within the staff report. Uh, certainly comments that have arisen during previous public comment with regard to uh the council adopting an ordinance. Right now, uh, the council has always been able to adopt an ordinance under its own land use authority. uh it cannot do so tonight. It requires a 20-day notice required because it's a change to the zoning. Um and I think my recommendation on that is to wait until the voters have given you direction based upon the ballot proposition assuming for the sake of my discussion right now that the council were to put something onto the ballot. If the council decides not to, that's certainly something that the council can direct us to bring back bring back zoning regulations and an ordinance. Uh what that would look like is we would draft something, we would notice it, and you would have a public hearing probably sometime in April. Uh the current recommendation, however, is to uh put something onto the ballot, wait for the voters to decide about that ballot proposition, and then come back after the ballot proposition again presumably has been approved by voters and the council can act under those circumstances. Uh the moratorum which is not this agenda item but one of the other agenda items is actually a public hearing gives the uh security for not processing any data center applications uh during the pendency of both a ballot proposition and any decision-m that the city council might make if it decided to for the sake of this discussion. Again, if if the ballot proposition didn't pass, if the council still wanted to move forward with on its own authority to adopt something, it could certainly do so at a later date. Uh what else was the question? Sorry, I didn't forget anything. Oh, the one acre. Uh the one acre, the definition that is being proposed is actually a definition that's already on the books

uh twice. It is in the marketplace specific plan and it's also in the Saturn Park uh innovation and technology zone. So there's there's no pride of authorship on that other than the council previously approved that definition for a different area within the city. You can certainly play around with the language uh at your heart's content. Happy to answer any other questions. Thank you, Carl. Uh Dave,

thank you, Mayor Yang. Honorable Mayor Yang, Mayor Pro Timlow, council members, and dedicated staff. My name is Dave Jones. I have lived in Monterey Park for the last 35 years plus and another 10 plus years before that. So 45 or more, who's counting? Um, since December, it's been clear the vast majority of Monterey Park residents and business owners are against building a data center in Saturn Park. And as our dedicated citizens have dug deeper into the issue, that sentiment has grown to a fullthroated opposition to data centers anywhere in the city. We know the electricity used to power these data centers creates a gigundous amount of CO2, 83,000 million metric tons in the case of 1977 Saturn Street. And as I've noted before, absorbing that much CO2 would require a forest of trees 350 times the size of California. But just this week, I was able to determine the cap and trade costs of mitigation. And at California's current rate of $27.94 per ton, that would cost would be over 2.3 trillion. That's seven times the entire state budget for 2025. Imagine having two data centers like that or more. Such an environmental impact cannot possibly be mitigated. We need to have

no data centers. We also know the cost of electricity will absolutely go up. Goldman Sachs has reported electricity prices jumped 6.9% in 2025, more than double the 2.9% rate of inflation. And that data centers made up 40% of the demand growth. And Bloomberg reported electricity costs in areas near data centers have increased up to 267% compared to five years ago. This is so wrong. Even President Trump in his State of the Union address said Americans should never pay higher electricity bills because of data centers. Yeah, I know. It blows my mind, too. But that's not all. That's not all. The initial study for 1977 Saturn Street tells us the sound generated by the data cent's cooling systems and generators will exceed the city's noise limits for residential neighborhoods. This is a consistent trend among data centers. In Great Oak, Virginia, residents complained of a persistent hum from cooling systems and fans that changed the character of their quiet treeline neighborhoods. In the Chicagoland suburbs of Aurora, Lyall, and Neapville, residents described the noise from data centers as like there was a helicopter on our roof. HMC Strat Cap spokespeople say they're going to use dampers and attenuators, and they've modeled the noise, and it won't be a problem, but they couldn't say what level attenuators they modeled. And even dampened, based on production specifications, the noise would still exceed the city's limits. So, I do support putting a permanent data center ban on the ballot with the following conditions. Remove the

loophole that allows data centers less than one acre to be built in the city. No data centers means no data centers and CHANGE and please change the language of the initiative so that zoning changes are implemented automatically upon passage or failing that forcing the council to take action in less than one month. Now most people here are aware HMC Stratcat held two town hall meetings this past Saturday. meetings that HNC Stratcat couldn't even be bothered to attend and reinforcing how little regard they have for the people of this city. Their ACTM spokesperson said her job was to manage the community.

Later later, they said the city absolutely does have the discretion to determine whether or not the data center should be built. Yet, HMC Strat Cap's lawyer is already threatening to sue the city. before a decision has even been made. HMC Stratcap, by their very own actions, has consistently proven they don't want to be a good neighbor. They don't want to be part of the city. They want to exploit the city.

Finally, I'd like to address the good union members here tonight. I grew up in a union home. I live in a union home. To me, being union means standing arm in- arm with your neighbor against the bosses. not standing arm in arm with the bosses against your neighbor. There's a reason for that. Bosses lie, bosses cheat. HC Stratcap has hired Rodriguez Strategies, which proudly brags about its anti-UN work on its website. HC Stratcat doesn't want to help you. They want to exploit you, too. Don't stand with the bosses. Stand with your neighbors. No data centers in Monterey Park. No data centers in Monterey Park. NO DATA CENTERS in Monterey Park.

Thank you, Dave. Let me call a few more names to get in line. Lorenzo Rodriguez and Helica Brian Marsh, Jim Pew, Caleb And uh when you come to the podium, please state your name. Thank you.

Uh good day. Uh good day, mate. My name is Jeremy. Uh I'm on the board of directors for HMC, and I just flew out from Australia. Finally showing up for you guys. Um we we heard that Bonnie Park is known for your bagels uh and local mom and pop shop. Uh Einstein is really good, delicious. Um when the board members said they wanted to build a data center, I was like, where's Monterey Park? And then I was like, "Wait, we could build a data center in a park." No, no. Mario Park is a city, not not a park. Okay. Well, anyways, uh we want to emphasize how much we're looking forward to be your new neighbors. You're very noisy, irritating, and extremely toxic neighbors. We'll be doing everything we're legally required to do to get this through. We made you a website. We made flyers. It matches the color of the official Monterey Park website, so it's, you know, it's official. And you may be asking yourself, why Monterey Park? Well, the I mean the c celebrities and CEOs won't let us build in Beverly Hills, Silver Lake or Pasadena. And why 65 feet from the nearby homes? Well, because you didn't stop us. So, there's not enough regulations and it's brand new thing. So, we're just going to go for it and you have to, you know, catch up. So, this is brand new technology and you know, we're going to just, you know, it's a gold rush for us. So, we had a lot of questions on, you know, what the data center will be used for. you like your iPhone. Uh you use banking software. You know what about Fortnite? Everyone likes Fortnite and you've used Chat GBT to write an apology to your wife. So yeah, those are all the things that we can use it for. Think of the data center as like a black box. We don't ask questions AI companies are using it like you know Chat GPD, Claude, Grock. They use this black box. We don't ask questions. They're paying the bills on time. So data centers are like, you know, they they help power school bombings in Iran, teen suicides, and surveillance data for ICE. But I can definitively say we at HMC bear no legal or moral responsibility and what goes on inside that black box or how the data

center affects your family, community's health back, you know, I'm going to fly back in Australia soon, so it doesn't matter. So I want to shout out our PR firm, Actum and Rodriguez. Thanks for all the work you guys are doing. Uh you're taking the heat for us at that little town hall. Um, those guys are nonpartisan mercenaries, so it's it's been great. They'll do marine life wildlife project one day and union busting for lift the next day. It's amazing. Um, and you know, we had a great meet and greet at the IHOP. Uh, another great local staple. Love the pancakes there. Uh, and while giving you guys the, you know, a little park, so you know, you should be happy we get a little little mini park. Why aren't you thanking us?

You know, we're we're still working on the name, but I'm pushing for the Monterey Park park. So, and you know, I mean, I mean, for the for the record, this is all par like parody. So, like, please don't sue me, HMC. One lawsuit against M Park is enough. Uh, in all seriousness, like letting HMC boss our city around isn't democracy. Having backroom deals for two years isn't democracy. Um, don't hide behind your constituents to fix your mistake. Do a moratorum as well as a ballot measure. listen to people in the community that actually know this stuff better than I do. Um, so I can please stop coming up here and making a fool of myself. Thank you.

Come on.

All right. Uh, good evening, Mayor Yang, Mayor Pro Tam Low, Council Members Sanchez, Wong, and Go. My name is Sam. I'm a resident here from Monterey Park, um, District 3 with you, Jose. Um, yeah, I just want to say that um, with regards to I know this is for 12A, but real quick on 11B, um, I do support 11B um, but I don't think that's enough. It's it's like a a band-aid. We're bleeding out here, right? So, um, I do support that. Um, for 12A, I conditionally support 12A. Um, but I do I do think that the ballot uh the BA ballot only approach is too risky. We need something more, right? We need uh an ordinance from the city that that bans data centers. Um, in the municipal in in the municipal code and in the general plan. Um, so we need that citywide and we need it now. Um, like like some other members have said, uh, residents have said, it's not our fault, right? like we were not informed of this. It's been two years this thing has been in the works and you guys have put us in a real real tight spot. We've got people out here canvasing in the street. We've got people out here who are spending their money on flyers and and everything, their time and money to do this thing. And you know, we all pay taxes. We all elected you as officials. It's your job to help protect the health and safety of your residents. Uh, so I hear you, Carl. It is um it is within the council's powers to be able to pass this ordinance and and that's what I'm I'm here for tonight. That's why I think a lot of people are here for tonight. Um, I also want to say that um, you know, I know you got the letter and they have identified that HMC's lawsuits lawsuit threats are meritless. There's there's no bite to them. These guys are all bark. So, I don't know why you guys are are scared to go forward with that. Um, you guys have the police powers to

protect the health and safety of your residents and HMC is is not vested. You guys haven't approved their application. So, you can go forward with that. Um, I also want to point out that, you know, with regards to the one legacy thing that happened here before, they sued the city. They didn't win, right? So, don't be scared. Show up for for us residents who we elected you and that's what that's what we want to see. Um, uh, a couple things I want to just highlight here because I think it is important to to recognize our mistakes, you know, as we've been going through this process. January 2024, that's when the permit and design review application was submitted for this data center. That was two years ago. Um, most of I've talked to many people in this community who didn't hear about this until December of this year. That's two years that we didn't get any word from you guys, any outreach. So, let's own that. Um, the Spark, uh, I wasn't personally a part of that, but I heard that there was probably the highest number I think I heard was 60 residents in attendance at Spark.

40. Okay. I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. Even with that, that's about 0.1% of the population of Monterey Park. That's hardly representative of the people here of Monterey Park. And I think, you know, you see a lot of people who are showing up now because the public has been engaged. And I think that's a good thing. So, let's let's own that. Let's take it let's take um uh take advantage of this opportunity. You see these people out here who don't want this thing built here. Um, additionally, I would like to add, and I' I've brought this up before and I passed out um some information for you guys. Um you know, I don't think I've heard any one of you, and maybe I missed it in other meetings, mention anything about 1980 Saturn. Um, and I think that's a huge misstep. Um, you know, if you're going to do any analysis on these properties, you have to consider the cumulative analysis of both properties. And I think it does us a huge disservice if you just completely ignore that as, you know, this property's here, this one's across the street. And there's no way that there can be combined effects of these things. So, let's own that. Um, I think you guys have known about that for a long time. And, um, that's evident in the documents I gave you. Um there's um the the purchase records. There's the LLC filings from um from HMC that were put out. Interesting enough, the the LLC and the purchase of 1980 were done before the ISM andD for 1977 came out. In 1977, M &D came out before they even purchased the property. So, it's a really weird timeline. Maybe you guys can help elaborate on that. Um but yeah, so you know, take a look at that. I know I talked to another community member. Uh she put in a uh public public records um ticket with the city and she never got anything back. And um 1980 was discussed in um I think it was ordinance 2246 and and they didn't send that to her. She had to go digging for that on her own. And it's clear in in HMC's um investor documentations that they want to build

to here. So, um, you know, let's let's not miss that fact. And I and it's on the record here that you guys know that that's their intent is to build two of those here. So, thank you.

My name is Anelica. I'm a resident of South San Gabriel.

Hang on a second. Uh can we maybe Carl can or Inz can we just do a quick reminder again that there's no the topic of our conversation tonight and the items tonight are not on specific data center projects or proposals and that the items here correct me if I'm wrong that we're talking about are would deal with data centers uses in the entire city which would include 1980 and any other property for that matter address in the city. Just want to clarify that so that we're clear that the actions that potentially are going to be taken today have an impact on the entire city. We're not talking about one specific project. It's also why I can't actually engage on this item. If if it was specific about a the specific data center proposal, I would not be able to engage on that item. Let me know if I'm wrong.

Correct. So the item uh before council tonight is it's not in regards to any specific project, property or applicant. This is general prohibition on data centers citywide. Correct. Sorry. Go ahead, Anelica.

Okay. Hi, my name is Anelica. I'm a resident of South San Gabriel, but I will be minutes away from this data center. I want to I came out in support of a no data center ballot measure. of course with clarifications as just as everyone's saying to make sure that we do not have data centers. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the so-called HMC town hall meeting. Doesn't sound like I missed much because they were not able to answer the one important question. What are you using this data center for? How have they not told us what they're using it for? If it was anything good, they would have told us because we have a little pocket park that we can all enjoy there. Okay. I when I first found out about this meeting was actually uh the data center um project was the night before uh in December 2024 just like a lot of people here uh ironically and just as disturbing I happened to find out last night that Black Rockck has just purchased the electric grid of Indiana, the state of Indiana and Ohio. What does that mean for us? If you do not know who Black Rockck is, please look it up. But that means that they are in charge of the electric grid of Indiana and Ohio. How does that affect us? Monterey Park, they are willing to build this next to our businesses, next to our parks, next to our schools, next to our elementary school children, Hillrest Elementary School. How far is it away from this this proposed data center? We're willing to build that for our children. Monterey Park can set a precedent right now. Okay, those com those those private companies can go ahead and buy out whatever they want, but Monterey Park can take control right now and ban data centers. Okay, we take a president. Monterey Park is either going to allow these to be built everywhere. They are going to see what we are allowing here. We either set a precedent and say no, we are not going to have this in Monterey

Park or we are saying that we allow it. Okay, please Monterey Park, please. City Council, set a precedent. Okay, do not build data centers. Please, no data centers in Monterey Park.

My name is Lorenzo. I'm a resident of East LA on the border of Monterey Park. I'm here in solidarity with my neighbors and fellow men and women to speak on what I consider to be an environmental and class injustice. The air in Monterey Park is not just the air in Monterey Park. It is the air of the people all over this basin. It is of the commons. Much like the ground water that eventually seeps into the water table, what enters this environment will eventually come back to haunt us, our children, and our grandchildren. What enters this air will eventually settle back down under its own weight and become part of what we breathe on a daily basis. And the trapped gases will in turn trap heat and continue giving us hot summer days in February and March. And after some time, there will be no break from what is pumped into our environment. Living here, you may have noticed that we are in somewhat of a bowl surrounded by mountains and hillsides and by the air of the ocean pushing back. That is what gives us our smog. The air becomes trapped and all of us in the greater Los Angeles area are victims of what pollution may come from cars, machinery, industry, and now data centers, which are becoming too common. I think at a town hall there might be some faction typically of the population who can say to themselves, I see the benefit of this. I understand why this is necessary. This could make my life better. I don't think that there is some such case today. I would just like to know who it is that is asking for this. If we needed a bridge or a road or a park project or an affordable housing unit, how long would that take? How much push back would that receive? And yet here we are completely blindsided by this initiative to forever alter this community and the one surrounding it. And if it weren't for the amazing people gathered here today, the data center would already be an unalterable part of our reality. This project here is selling your children's rights to clean air and quiet neighborhoods. And it is selling the right to a secure job to the billionaire class. They hope you are too ignorant and too placated to notice that the city and the billionaire class are about to get very rich off of what is rightfully yours. The very air you need to breathe. also someone who I guarantee was not fighting to get a data center in his backyard can continue hoarding wealth and continue chipping away at workers rights. I believe we are all very focused on the environmental aspect of

this project which might be the most immediate alarming and visible consequence of the data center. But what is the purpose of this data center? It is not to use water and make noise and pollute our air. It has a very clear purpose which is just as consequential. It is here to power AI. We know what the intentions of the elite class are. They have been very clear. They are not shy about this. We know the endgame of artificial intelligence. It is not to make our lives more convenient. I think it is of no surprise to anyone here that the billionaire ruling class is not interested in making your lives easier. They are not known for their benevolence or their charity. The the advent of AI has been presented as just one more tool. However, if you are paying attention, you know it to be the last tool. The intention is to make human labor obsolete and to limit its use as much as possible. Just recently, Block, the parent company of Cash App and Square, fired 40% of its workforce to be replaced by AI, and their stock rose 25%. And to me, that was a ruling class's way of saying that was the right move, and we are headed in the right direction, and that company was rewarded for their inhumanity. We are heading to an unprecedented future where human labor is no longer necessary, where human labor is an afterthought, the one thing in a capitalist society, unfortunately, that can provide a man or woman any real sense of dignity and belonging. Additionally, we know AI is increasingly being used as a weapon of war. AI powered drones, AI powered missiles, AI powered decision-making, AI powered mass surveillance of US citizens. We are sprinting toward a cliff and voting yes on data centers is saying I am okay with that future which I have just described where future generations are just an inconvenience to the job market and rather than people, business owners would rather use AI agents which are enabled by the very data centers we are threatened by today. where the people in this city are unemployed or undermployed or living in fear of being replaced by AI. Where citizens are watched by their own government at all hours on all platforms. Where speech and conduct is policed by artificial intelligence, the people on this city council can proclaim with their vote very loudly and very clearly what future they see for this city and the people in it. Please heed our warning. Nothing good will come from

this. Five years from now, when the rest of the country is suffering from the ramifications of data centers and AI, when the cities that were too weak to say no to billionaire interests are watching the consequences of data centers unfold on their citizens, the city of Monterey Park can proudly state, "We stood up to injustice. We represented the interests of our people and we did not sell them out to the billionaires. That is a reality worth fighting for. That is a city we can be proud of. As a final remark, I say to the people of this city council, the city, the citizens of Monterey Park and its surrounding neighborhoods will not quickly forget what you decide for their future. Thank you. Well, good evening, mayor and city council members. I'm Brian Marsh. I'm with the HMC Stratcap. For several years, we have worked together in good faith with the city processing an application to develop a data center on our property at 1977 Saturn. During that process, the pro city provided asurances about the viability of data center development. We acquired the property and proceeded with our application based on those asurances. We participated in the spark process to determine if the data center use was preferred. The Spark meetings were sponsored and advertised by the city and open to the public. The Spark findings were overwhelmingly supportive of data center use.

We then worked with the city to expand the permitted uses in Saturn Park and create new zoning regulations for data centers which the city adopted in 19 in November of 2024. Following the adoption of the data center zoning regulations, we re arranged a tour of a new data center in Vernon for the city council and staff and we heard afterwards how the city would welcome a similar investment in Monterey Park. Bas based on these actions and representations by the city, we then closed on the purchase of 1977 Saturn Street in December of 2024. We continued working with the city on our planning application until it was deemed complete and in conformance with the municipal code. The city completed its environmental review under the squa under SQA and that found there were no significant environmental impacts. We negotiated a development agreement with the city that will provide numerous comm community benefits for the residents and the city scheduled our project for a hearing in November 2025 but there was no action. There was no widespread opposition at that time.

Now for the last few months we recognize that the city has faced intense public pressure opposed to the data center. We volunteered to complete a full environmental impact report in response to that opposition and to provide more information to help educate the community about our data center. We also recognize that the city may be interested in pursuing alternative land uses in Sat Saturn Park. I'm here tonight to state that HMC as the largest property owner in Saturn Park is willing to engage in productive goodfaith discussions with the city to explore those alternative uses that the city and the community desire.

The goal would be to reach a mutually acceptable win-win solution for Saturn Park. Our our preer pre preferred path is not to litigate. We must however protect our legal rights and we believe there may be a common ground solution. This is your opportunity to create a land use plan that works for the city, the community, and us. Forcing a ballot proposition with an an special election in June 2026 severely degrades our ability to work together.

Therefore, in closing, I ask that you not proceed with item 12A on the agenda and vote to postpone a potential ballot measure until a later date. that will provide us the time for the city agency and the community to create a mutually acceptable solution for Saturn Park. And we view this juncture as an opportunity to meet community desires, advance the city's priorities, and avoid costly litigation between the parties. Thank you. Um, everyone reminder, please respect everyone who is speaking at the podium, regardless of opinion. That way, we can all hear everyone's time. Thank you.

Good evening, city council members and madame mayor. My name is Jim Pew. I'm with Shepard Law Firm and we represent the applicant for the data center project in 1977 Saturn. As you know, uh my comments will be very brief tonight. Um we prepared a letter that I have here in my hand um that outlines the legal risk associated with items 11B and 12A that are on the agenda tonight. I will provide it to the city clerk um for the administrative record. It demonstrates uh in summary the city's actions on the moratorum and the ballot measure are fraught with legal risk. I expect uh the city attorney to say there's no risk. I expect the council will continued with its unfettered decision-making, but as the applicant said, I urge you to reconsider your path and work with the applicant to find a mutually acceptable outcome that pleases the community and that pleases the city and works for the applicant. I'll submit this for the record. All right, let me call a few more names. Um, Caleb's coming up. Samuel Alma, Tilda de Wolf, Kathleen Gomez, and Deborah Simone.

That is going to be a tough act to follow. Um, I feel like they just gave you an out. They said they want to build something different, so just BAN DATA CENTERS. PROBLEM SOLVED. UM, honorable mayor and council members, sorry, I'm going to read it because I'm not a a good public speaker. Um, oh, and also, if you're watching on YouTube and you want to submit, go to no data centermppk. I think this is the camera. No dataentermppk.org and you can still write a letter. There's instructions for how to write a letter to get your voice heard because we uh appreciate the democratic process. Um so thank you so much mayor and council members. Um I'm going to be kind of a broken uh record here. Um I think that's okay. I live in district five and I'm within 500 ft uh of the proposed site with my wife and three kids. We are not interested in being guinea pigs for a data center. I also want to point out that across the nation, data centers are popping up um being built by uh big tech companies who are at the forefront of this technology and they can't make a safe data center. HMC is an asset manager. I thought and I'm quite sure that their Dallas and their uh Kansas facilities were data centers that were bought that already had um uh uh renters which is State Farm. So we're asking they're telling us they can build something that Tesla, Meta, uh Amazon can't build, which is a safe data center within 65 ft of our homes. I don't buy that at all.

Um, so I'm gonna I'm gonna live edit my uh remarks here because Dave Jones, who I want to be when I grow up, already said most of it. Um, uh, so we did we learned about this project December 3rd after two years of SQL reviews. They could have reached out to us. They could have engaged us. The Spark committee was brought up. I believe those were only the only people within 500 feet of Saturn Park were actually notified and only 19 people voted on the data center. So that's not I mean there's more people here tonight against the data center and you guys were willing to update the municipal code with 19 people. Wow.

Just ban it. Um I also want to talk about the uh uh what I got two and a half uh the their town hall. Um so it was just Actim and Kimley Horn were there and I think a representative from Shephard Mullen um was there as well. Um Vin on December 3rd um when Mayor Yang asked the the applicant to do a town hall and they committed to doing that. You said um and I'm not quoting, but you said I hope that you bring um where did I write this down? You requested HMC include appropriate agencies, which I would assume meant Edison, Water District, Ginsler, who designed the facility. Um and HMC, it would be nice if HMC attended their own town hall. Um none of those people were there, so they couldn't answer questions like, "Have the heat and noise generation from Edison substation been studied?" No. What about the seven to eight steel high voltage poles that they'll have to put in residential areas to connect this their substation to the new mark substation? Could they answer that? No. What happens to the e-waste when HMC has to replace their tens of hundreds of thousands of computers and servers as the technology continues to change? That is a lot of e-waste. And we know how fast we have to replace our computers. if they're going to stay competitive, they're gonna have to replace their equipment very often. Um, let's see. I got one more thing I wanted to say. Uh, that's probably it. Um, I would say yes on the moratorum, outright ban on data centers. They gave us the out and I would say a ballot measure but lose the acreage loophole because the the technology and the facilities that house the technology can get smaller with time. But that doesn't mean that their resource usage would would decrease too.

They could still use the same amount of resources. Um, okay, that's it for me. Thank you for your time.

Uh, good day. I'm Samuel and I'm a resident of Monterey Park. Unlike Jeremy, I'm a real Australian. Uh but I don't work for HMC. Uh the first thing I want to draw attention to is how uh HMC's handlers had to bring in support by convincing union members to attend the last city council meeting on February 4th in order to satisfy their volunteer hours. The post on the post on Instagram uh read volunteer opportunity for apprentices. It goes on to say, "Apprentices can earn volunteer hours by participating. There is no mention whatsoever of the meeting's agenda. They just wanted people to fill the seats, and they sure did." Now, I think I can speak for the majority of Monterey Park residents. Is this microphone bugging out? I can hear it. Yeah, it's irritating. Uh, now I think I can speak for the majority of Monterey Park residents when I say we are most definitely not anti-UN. Some of us belong to them or wish we could. You union workers have more in common with the community members across this room than with a corporation that sent you here. You were put in this position, but you don't have to stay in it. Stand with your neighbors. Build things for the community and stand against things that will exploit it. like this data center and any other data center. There is no guarantee that the jobs on this proposed site, I think it was 200 or something like that um uh will be filled by any of the resident union members. Look at how they bust people in from the all around the country to build data centers in other cities. Last week, last weekend over a month of waiting with baited breath, we were

finally given two clown halls, sorry, town halls. In those two sessions, they failed to answer some some very important questions regarding city resource usage. And there was not a single SCE representative present to guarantee that our electricity rates won't increase for a facility that is classified as heavy industry. How can you just power up a 33 megawatt facility with without building any new energy supply? Sure, even if they pay for a new distribution, where does the extra power come from? We would need new power stations. And you know who is going to have to pay for that, don't you? Us. And that's not all. They plan on building an even bigger facility across the street at 1980 Saturn, which they declined to talk about by deflecting questions. That would bring the total energy usage to almost four times that of the entire city of Monterey Park. And now we're hearing that other buildings on the street are being looked at for future data centers. When concerned residents wanted to ask questions, we were told to scan a QR code or write them down. We had to raise our voices just to get follow-up questions answered. This after they gave us va veiled responses or deferred to an absent HMC or the city. Why wasn't HMC there themselves to answer questions? It's obvious they don't actually care about engaging with the community. In fact, the PR people running the town hall, and I'm jealous, David, you already mentioned this, said outright that they were there to manage the community. Their words, where were you, HMC? in the outback drinking a can of Fosters, throwing another shrimp on the barbie, or are you back home avoiding accountability and watching? Bluey, tonight, I'm asking the council to vote yes. Yes to extending the moratorum. Yes

to a June 2nd special election for a city-wide ban on data centers. Yes to a city ordinance that permanently bans data centers from being built in the city. And on that ballot, and we're also asking to close two loopholes, prevent data centers occupying less than one acre from slipping through and commit to a one-mon turnaround between the ballot and any amendments to the municipal code and general plan. Which brings me to something worth reflecting on. All of us here should take Mr. James Pew, HMC's lawyer, uh, and his word, the word use of the word mob as a compliment. He represents an Australian company, but he failed to realize that he was using a word that First Nations Australians use to describe themselves and their people. In Aboriginal English, mob means more than just a crowd. It refers to your extended family, your clan, and the community you come from. It's a word of connection and identity of kinship. To my fellow Monterey Park community members, that is us. We are the Monterey Park mob. Thank you FOR YOUR TIME. UH, GOOD EVENING, MAYOR YANG, council members. My name is Kathleen. I'm part of district 3. Um, I'm going to keep this pretty short. Definitely an an introvert. I don't really like to public speak, but I think at this point,

sorry. Okay. My name's Kathleen, district three. I definitely consider myself more of an introvert. I'm not a public speaker, but I feel at this point if we do not say something, we're complicit with everything going on around us. Um, I I attended the town hall that was hosted by HMC. Two things that stood out to me, their number one talking point is this little pocket park. It's not the red part here. It's not the yellow part. It's this little tiny pocket park. Last time I checked, no one wants to take a leisurely stroll around a data center. Um, thing number two that stood out to me is they were trying to justify the diesel generators in comparison to a hospital and fire station. In the event of a big power outage, what do we want to support? A hospital or a data center? I think it's pretty clear. Um, so I'll just end this by saying that I support 12A, uh, conditionally, of course, as long as we adopt a city-wide ordinance that prohibits data centers. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Tilda Dewolf and I've lived here over 50 years and I consider this the most destructive proposal I have heard in these 50 plus years. I live very close to where it would be and they will be and I would very much consider moving. Thank you. Hi, good evening uh all of you. It's great to see you. Um I'm Alma Marquez and I live here in Monterey Park. I have lived here for the last 13 years. And when I was in college at East LA College, I dreamt of moving to Monterey Park. So, uh, it was a a a real different kind of community than where I grew up in. I grew up in Huntington Park. I'm a proud product of Huntington Park. And during that time, when I was in high school and transitioning to uh to college, there was a toxic waste incinerator that they were trying to build 500 feet away from our high school. And we organized and we stopped it. And never in a million years would I or could I imagine that something similar would happen in my dream city. And I uh own a business in Monterey Park. We are a communications and community engagement firm. So we know we are experts in community engagement. What has happened here is not community engagement. So I want to say yes to the ballot measure. We want to make sure that we add a moratorum. We also are very clear that language matters. Please do

whatever you can to change the language because it is very confusing. So yes means yes, no means no. Now, as a communications expert, and I've uh talked about this with our team, we're offering our communication services pro bono to the city to help SUPPORT to help support the efforts of keeping our community clear and safe from any and every data center that is even thinking about coming to our community. I also just want to say that the prison industrial complex is the same complex that is a technology complex that we're dealing with. The tech bros are absolutely the Epstein class. They are not the working class.

Let me say Few more names. Bosco, Bosco, Ben, Lance Williams, Elijah Lim, Antonio Martinez, Mayor Yang, Mayor Promlo, members of the city council. It's great to be up here again talking with you about uh the concept of data centers in our wonderful town. I'm going to go back to what I talked about at the first meeting last year, and that's vision for this city. And I'm asking you again, what's your vision for this city? I'm here to support 12A. I'm here close the loopholes in support of what everybody else has said. in our letter from Doug Karsten's. Um, I would like you to think for a minute 10 years down the road when Monterey Park is the city that said no to data centers when Monterey Park is the city that has pride in its past, faith in its future, and it's a place for people to come live. And you know, we have supported. I am not against development down there in Saturn Park. I'm not against using union work to do it. They can wire up some mixeduse residential. They can plum mixeduse residential. They can do all those things. They can apply all their trades. I am a member of a trade union for over 30 years. I was vested in October of 1994. Um, and I got to say I I a and that work has allowed me to finally buy a home here in Monterey Park at the wonderful young age of 52. And thank you. And part of what's wrong with this country right now is the

average age of the home buyer now, do you know that is 50. 50. Gen X for crying out loud. Give me a break. I mean, I love it. But anyway, so I I you know, I I just want you all to think about that because you have all these wonderful people who are so media savvy and so civically minded. One of the wonderful things about going out and canvasing with these people is I have met neighbors who speak Cantonese, mayors who neighbors who speak uh Mandarin, uh neighbors who speak Espanol, and everybody. And we have gone out and met the people that actually live there. Who are the people in your neighborhood? If you're Gen X, you know that song, and now it's in your head. I mean, I think let's make this town a place where people want to come live, where people want to do real things, where they're not relying on a robot or a program or an app to run their lives. Let's put our faith in the future. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, City Council. My name is Bosco from District 5. Um, we all hear how the world's wealthiest corporations like Nvidia, Meta X, Amazon, and OpenAI are pushing their agenda that AI is necessary. The AI race is resulting in a rush for constructing more and more data centers around the country. These massive buildings are packed with GPUs consuming huge amounts of fossil fuels to power and cool them. Journalists are reporting on how data centers are being rapidly constructed

next to residential areas without a responsible level of concern for the health and welfare of those living nearby. A quick Google search provides resources for anyone to learn about the negative impacts that data centers have on their on nearby residents. I attended HMC's town hall last Saturday at bar at the Barnes Park clubhouse. HMC's hired publicists and consultants were there to provide information about their product project. When I shared my concerns, my questions were not answered. I asked if HMC had taken into consideration public health disorders related to constant noise exposure to low frequency noise and infrasound. The representatives answered no. However, researchers at UC Davis highlight how chronic exposure to noise can cause increased stress, hypertension, sleep disturbances, anxiety, depression, as well as behavioral and emotional disorders in children. A study from Harvard has shown an association between long-term noise exposure and an increased risk of cardiovascular mortality. Researchers at Caltech and UC Riverside reported that data center health impacts have tripled in only four years. The number of cases could rise by another 72% by 2028 if mitigations are not enacted. On another note, we discovered that HMC purchased both 1977 and 1980 Saturn Street properties at the same time in 2024, with 1980 being 25% larger. At HMC's town hall, many residents, myself included, asked what their intentions were for the 1980

property. Obviously, some sort of plan must have been in place when they purchased. However, HMC's representatives refused to answer any questions related to 1980. Yeah, let me be clear. Data centers of any size are not wanted anywhere in Monterey Park. But but before I support a ballot measure, the city must first pass a strong and clear ordinance that prohibits data centers citywide in all forms and sizes. The ordinance must ban data centers in Saturn Park, Marketplace, Monterey Pass Road, and Corporate Center Drive. Once an ordinance is passed, the ballot language must remove acreage as a factor. The ballot results must directly enact changes and bypass council as a middleman. And rushing incomplete ballot language without full community protections just to meet a June deadline is not acceptable. I am in support of the 10-month and 15-day extension of the moratorum which would expire in January 2027. All eyes are on Monterey Park right now.

Neighboring cities including Montabelloo, City of Industry, Hosienda Heights, Roland Heights are watching. Amazon's recent purchase of a property in Eaton Canyon with a probable plan for a future data center may very well be affected. big. So big money interests are waiting to see our outcome. We can either be another victim of corporate abuse or the leader with a plan for other cities in California to follow. We, the residents, have rallied together to ban data centers in our city. It's up to you, the city council members, to join us in support of the health health and well-being of our community. Thank you very much. Hello members of the Monterey Park City Council. Uh my name is Lance Williams. I'm a resident uh in District 2 here in Monterey Park. I've been able to call Monterey Park my home here for the last 5 years. Um and I'm here in support of the ballot measure. I'm originally from a little town some of you might have heard of called Memphis, Tennessee, where facilities like this uh have uh become all too clear in the public eye how much of a problem it can become for the community. I'm proud to call both of these communities my home, especially on days like this where today uh we're proud to be out here making our voices heard. As a city and as a country, we're currently at a crossroads. We're facing an unprecedented moment in politics where people are emboldened, engaged, and the opportunity for community organization like what we see today reflects that. Every day we witness the wishes of corporations pursuing profits over people manifesting both here and abroad. At times, the ability to change these things may seem hopeless. But in

defiance, we stand here today hopeful for a future for our community. Members of the city council, I hope the biggest takeaway for you all today is that the wishes of the residents are clear. We want to ensure a future where the wishes of the people are honored above those of corporate interest. The future, the future of developing technologies. There's a conceivable future where a facility like this will require no human operators. But we will still be here. I leave you all with a quote from a song I listened to on the walk over here from my house today. Got to serve somebody by Bob Dylan. You're But you're going to have to serve somebody. Yes, you're going to have to serve somebody. Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you're going to have to serve somebody. And the question today is, who do you all serve? Thank you. Hello. Good evening. Uh, hello council members, mayor. My name is Antonio Martinez, resident of MPK for 20 years. For the record, I am against the data center installation. I wrote my following words just moments ago and as some as my neighbors just found out about these plans. So this is only a minimal opposition on my part. From what I'm hearing, it is evident there was a lack of communication. I am not a contractor, cannot read blueprints, but I do believe in building strong relationships and following principles for everyday good life living. Having a data center does not provide that. A leader must be the chief servant and practice proper use of power. I highly encourage you

all to be good servants for all residents of this beautiful community. Life is a gift to life is a gift to be enjoyed. How can a data center provide this for these residents? It cannot and it will not and it must not. Every individual plays a critical role in advancing the larger mission of the world by contributing their own part to do right by the residents of Monterey Park. And let's ban the data centers. I would like to hear next steps on what the council will do to stop the data center machine for being constructed. Yes, on the ballot measure. Thank you. Let me say a few more names. Andy Woo, Robert Castro, Karen Luke Skywalker, and George Bowen.

Good evening, honorable mayor, council members. My name is Ben Steckler. I'm here as a planning professional to remind you of one thing. A data center is an industrial use. It does not belong anywhere near a residential use. And right now, the proposed data center the proposed data center and the one that is presumed to go across the street will be too close to residential uses. Do not reenact the industrial revolution. Do not allow for an industrial use to contaminate the lives of the people of your city. It is not something that belongs here. Monterey Park is a mostly residential community. It does not belong here. The uses should be restricted outside of residential areas. I would encourage you to continue with your path in order to enact legislation within your city and stop the construction of this and all data centers in the future. And I would encourage you to do so post haste so that you don't have to worry about lawsuits coming down that will uh occupy your time mostly and be afuddle of muddle the waters. Um, I would also encourage you to bring back the data center for consideration at 1977 Saturn and to deny it outright. It is your right as it is a basically civic duty that this council has to protect its residents within the city. And I'm trying to abridge my original comment, so forgive me for for stuttering just a little bit, but I'll keep it short. You do not want an industrial use in in any sort of

adjacency or proximity to residential uses because it will encourage more and more stronger industrial uses to do the same thing. and all you're doing is putting your citizens at risk if you allow them to move forward with any sort of an EIR or any other sort of a process. You have the right, it is a discretionary approval and all you have to do is call them back into uh a forum with proper notice and deny their request.

Thank you very much. Have a nice evening. Hey everyone, my name is Eli and I live in Monterey Park. I've lived I grew up here and it's a pretty awesome place. Um, I want to call for a permanent citywide ban on data centers and to speak out against AI as a whole. While it has potential benefits, the way that it's been developed and employed is antihuman and extremely destructive. It is a means for billionaires to extract more wealth from people like us as well as exert more influence through disinformation powered by AI. It is pushed by evil leeches like Peter Teal who says things like freedom and democracy are not compatible. Technocrats want to pursue freedom and democracy is a barrier. AI is being forced on us without our consent being integrated into search engines and our devices by default. It's eroding our critical thinking skills, teaching us not to question where our information is coming from. In dark times like this, our day-to-day interactions with each other within our community are a guiding light and drivers for real change. Algorithms fueled by AI push controversial content and divide us intentionally. They want to poison our interactions with each other. And to allow this beautiful city to be pushed over by these billionaires is to stomp out the potential for real change. It starts in places like Monterey Park. Thank you.

Um, good evening, city council. Uh, my name is Andy. I grew up in Monterey Park. I went to Markeell and I may or may not be skipping studying for midterms at USC to be here. And, uh, I support measure um, 12A banning, uh, data centers throughout our city. And on that lo on that note, I'd like to address some of the proposed economic benefits of building a data center and comparing them against the economic benefits of building your average McDonald's. So um uh the average data center has around 20 to 30 permanent workers in it. This one has 26 while the average McDonald's franchise employs around 50 people. It takes around 3 years to build a normal data center. Uh well in comparison the normal McDonald's takes around 6 to 10 months to build. Um as for taxability data centers do not provide any um tangible service to local residents while a McDonald's sells burgers and fries which can be taxed and generate revenue. Longterm uh 20 years from now people are still going to be eating burgers and fries at McDonald's. Not even three years from now, the e um economists predict that the AI bubble is about to burst like the dotcom bubble did. And then as for energy use, one McDonald's consumes roughly 81 kilowatt hours a year while um this data center would consume about 434 million kilowatt hours a year. So, um, overall wrapping it up, to build a McDonald's compared to a data center, it would, um, a McDonald's would bring twice the jobs built in a quarter of the time with more taxable economic output with longer industry stability in much less and land area while also using 0.00002% the amount of energy. And lastly, I would like to uh send a message to um, union workers. Uh Monterey Park absolutely loves you guys and we would

be willing to welcome you all here to um develop Saturn Park into something that is actually beneficial to Monterey Park residents. For example, walkable mixeduse zoning that may or may not include McDonald's. Thank you.

Uh call a few more names. Teddy Yun, Maline Maline Okmpo, Steven Kung, and Yolanda. Good evening, Madame Mayor, honorable council members, and city staff. Uh, thank you for allowing me this chance to speak. I would like to thank you, uh, first of all, for listening to the Montterrey Park residents and to coming up with solutions to address our concerns.

What was your name? Uh, I go by Luke Skywalker tonight. Um, please continue to be patient and listen to what we have to say as we move forward uh on this matter together. Uh, for the record, I support all three items uh being discussed tonight. Um, not much to say, but I want to use my time to share with you why I don't support this projects. Uh besides the environmental concerns that has been spoken about um quite a lot, uh the implication this has on how we live is at stake. Um data centers are nothing but support infrastructure for tech companies to continue to collect our data, monitor our behavior, and influence our thoughts and actions. At the core are opaque algorithms that serve content based on the user's data. Uh they customize these content based on past behavior. Uh some have said that oh these are very convenient um they're good for us but it might seem convenient uh but taken to the extreme it can decide what we read online what we think what we buy and for how much. Um already there are evidence that even the price we pay for food and services are customized to us. You and I might not even pay the same price on eggs or milk. Um there's a a study done by Consumer Reports uh using Instasar Instacart that shows that the prices that each person pays for the exact same items are completely different even though they're in the exact same location and purchasing the items at the exact same time. You and I might not even be paid the same wage for the exact same job because of our level of desperation for money. An example is Shift Key. Uh it's a gigbased app for nurses. uh from data purchased through data brokers that's collected illegally. Uh these nurses pay is determined by how much money they have in their bank account and how much

debt they owe. Um the lower the money they have in the bank account and the more debt they owe, the lower their pay actually is uh is determined. Uh that's that's very criminal. Um you and I might not even own the things we pay money for. Examples are HP printers. uh these printers don't really work for us even though we pay money for them. Uh if we want to use a cheaper ink, we cannot. It will not allow us to to to use them uh without buying ink from uh from HP. These are just a few examples of things that are being poisoned in our daily life. All of this is possible because of the data being collected on us. Data we give away for free in the name of convenience. Data being hosted in data centers. Data that is not being protected. data that is leaked every month. My email, phone number, address, and social security numbers, as are all of yours, were leaked, is leaking, and will continue to leak. They are sitting in some database in a data center somewhere waiting for cyber criminals to exploit. I don't stand here with a mask because I enjoy wearing one. I wear it because I have to protect my privacy. I don't turn off my phone and put it in a Faraday bag because it's cool. I do it to protect my privacy because these companies won't. So, no, I don't support my data being used without my consent to enrich the capitalist. I don't support uh the means to continue to enable them. I don't support data centers, period. Thank you.

Good evening, council members. My name is uh George Boangra and my brothers and sisters are here tonight and believe it or not we do live in the community and the surrounding communities around here. I did want to share some information and uh speak on this um on the prop the proposing a ballot initiate to ban all data centers citywide. Data centers are an important part of the California economy and provide many high quality union jobs throughout the state. By banning data centers citywide, the city is precluding the opportunities for union workers that live in this area a good paying wage. Our union members along with our brothers and sisters and the other trades are voting members in the city of Monterey Park as well. If the city puts a data center proposition on the ballot in June, then we will mobilize the full strength of our voting base to ensure the ballot measure fails. It is also important context that even proposed laws at the state level do not ban data centers. Those laws are more about balancing economic growth and environmental protection. The city's proposed data center ban is over the top and will result in depressed economic conditions in the city and the lack of good paying union jobs. We urge you to propose a citywide data center ban and vote tonight to not advance a ballot initiative. Thank you very much. Honorable Mayor Yang, Mayor Prom, Henry, City Council. Uh, we're a small town and I look at all of you and,

you know, I see you guys as friends. You're part of my community. You're my neighbors. I was at China Beastro about a couple weeks ago and I was staring at Henry Low like a creepy guy but I wanted to say hello but I knew he was a family and that's my point is that Monterey Park we know each other we have relationships with each other we're friends we're neighbors so when HMC Stratcap their lobbyists come into our town they don't belong here and we don't want them here and they're going to lose they're going to lose badly So, I have a I have a speech and it started with going to the town hall and I wanted to ask some questions and all I got met with was a lobbyist game plan to control uh the audience. So, here's my question. If Monterey Park's 5-year forecast shows no deficit, healthy reserves, and stable revenue growth, what exactly are we being asked to sacrifice our infrastructure, air quality, and long-term planning for a data center that adds less than 9, 8, 7, 6, 5% to the budget? Why should residents accept environmental risk and increased utility strain for a project the city does not fiscally need?

So the the fiscal case for this data center falls apart the moment you examine its numbers. The city is being told to expect five to7 million annually. How many of you folks have seen this flyer that's been going around? 5 to7 million annually. Yet $2 million of that is attributed to sales and use tax according to the report itself is collected once every four years. Calling that annual quote annual revenue is not analysis. It is misrepresentation. Another way to say it as a revenue stream collected every four years cannot under any definition be called annual. The report further inflates property tax projections by treating servers, racks, and IT equipment as real property despite California law clearly classifying them as tangible personal property. As a result, much of the recurring revenue being advertised does not legally exist. You are being asked to approve a 247 industrial facility based on projections that do not withstand the basic scrutiny. Mon Park deserves transparency and honesty, not accounting tricks. And I don't know if I mentioned, but I'm 412A. I see this as a figurative headsh shot. They got about three months to at least try to convince the community. They they're probably on their heels right now. They have no idea what they're doing. I went to IHOP. I saw their actum. They're Rodriguez lobbyists. They're green. They don't know what's going on. I went to the town hall. They're also they quote unquote said we're managing the community. Okay, that's you guys are going to lose. So please just go home.

Hi, good evening. My name is Maline Okamo. I'm a Monterey Park resident. I've lived here for over 25 years and I'm uh in support of 12A, but I want to mention uh if you could remove ballot language loopholes that would allow for data center development and approve the ballot and adopt the citywide ordinance that prohibits data centers of any size or type. Finally, please ignore HMC's lawsuit threats as they are meritless. You know, this is the third time I've come to these city council meetings, and I'm I'm just tired. I'm tired of fighting our own government and trying to convince you to care about people instead of corporations. It's just like, you want to hear something sad? You know, many people don't even want to have kids anymore because one, it's too expensive. Two, they don't see a future for them. They don't see a future for them. And could you blame them? Look how many billions are being poured into mass surveillance, prisons, ICE, ICE detention centers, wars, defense contracts, fossil fuels, weapons, and AI, which is growing faster than it could be properly regulated. And guess what's behind all this? What's going to be fueling all this? Data centers. more and more data centers to feed into this egregious obsession of the billionaire and ruling class to control and subjugate people. And what's funny, they don't even see us as people. To them, we are products. We are cogs in their machine. Do you really want to form part of this bleak future? Do you want to accelerate the exploitation of our already dwindling natural resources? Did you know the UN announced that we're in a global water bankruptcy? Meaning we're using water faster than it's being

replenished. Do you want to give in to this endless destruction and construction just to make a quick buck? I thought educated people like you would know better.

Please be on the right side of history. Please do the right thing. Do not neglect the well-being of our community and planet. I mean, say no to data centers. Come on. Abolish Ice Free Palestine.

Good evening, Shina Neo. Uh, my name is Theodor Chiao. I am a proud resident of Monterey Park, District 5. I'm also a professor uh of mathematics education at Cal State Fullerton and I'm also a union member. I I I'm pro union. All right. So, um as a professor, I I focus often on knowledge and long-term movements. Um the way history doesn't always repeat, but it rhymes. For instance, I just taught my students this week about the Chevron refinery fire in Richmond, California that targeted a Southeast Asian population. Um, the Phyis Refinery, uh, here in Los Angeles. Asthma, cancer, sickness, death, targeted at communities of color.

History doesn't repeat, it rhymes. I'm very proud to live in Monterey Park. I'm also very proud of my ancestry that comes from Hong Kong. And the history of Hong Kong is one that involves very similar ways of powerful groups coming into communities of color and exploiting their resources. Slick promises, spin, exploitation. The British used opium to destroy the mental will of the people to allow a take over their sovereignty. Similarly, we see companies like HMC that see us a proud community of color and workingclass community is similarly easy pickings. They don't need opium in 2026. They use lawyers, Instagram ads, bogus surveys, performative town hall meetings, and the threat of litigation to manipulate and gaslight us, giving us easy answers and feel good solutions to ease our pain. But what happened in Hong Kong? Our people lost their country. And if we allow these data centers, we'll lose our community. Communities of color and working-class communities are continually targeted by predators like HMC using the same colonizer playbook we've seen for centuries to sell short-term solutions that end up destroying us all and stealing our natural resources. Data centers and companies like AMC are going to keep coming. And they're going to keep coming because they think we don't know. They go, right? I'm here tonight to ask for three things. A three-prongong approach. The moratorum, a ballot measure being clear to close any loopholes about acreage, data center definitions, location, and location of any future data centers or data processing units, and adopting a permanent ordinance banning data centers in our city to show the world that we in Monterey Park are not going to be colonized. Thank you. Wardes. Good evening, honorable mayor and council members.

My family has been living in Monterey Park for four generations. What's your name?

Uh, Yolanda. My parents moved here in 1969. I am 74 years old, a retired MUSD teacher and a longtime resident. I am impressed at the turnout of community at these council meetings that are focus that are focused on the data center. I wasn't aware of this project until I read it on Instagram. It's obvious that these cities these cities uh citizens do not want this data center in the neighborhood. I certainly don't want it in my backyard. The data center will have ill effect on all human and animal life with its low frequency noise and pollution. The cost of homes will go down as utility costs go up. No eseno. At the first meeting, I saw the HMC representative stay mostly silent and observing angry citizens. Yes, we are angry. This seems to be a David and Goliath situation. And the community is David. This Goliath is calculating, restrained, and professionally trained for opposition. At the second meeting, HMC had union workers join and speak for them. This is the oldest strategy of corporate 101. The strategy of get the workingclass people against each other until one tires out the other.

This is meant to divide us while corporate sits back and waits. It's about their money. They will threaten us. They will sue and call us narrowminded and rude as we fight for the well-being of our families. We are not trained in manipulative corporate tactics as they are. What other strategies will be used in our campaign? We must be vigil vigilant. Why did this board not inform us earlier and waited until it was leaked? I was informed by social media media posts in two 2026, not 2024. I feel betrayed, lied to, disappointed, and angry. But if you don't think a small being like me can make a difference, then you never been in bed with a mosquito.

Call us unruly and misinformed shame. We are not against We are not against workingclass people because we are trying to make a living and to feed the fam our families. We are against the HMC data center in our community. This is not a fight against union workers, skilled laborers to be appreciated and honored. This center will provide temporary employment. We are not against progress and education. Data centers are necessary and aren't going away. Artificial intelligence is here and as part of our lives, we are involved with AI daily. If you have a computer or cell phone, what we are against is putting our famil family's health and well-being at risk with this data center so close to our homes. put this center away from our neighborhoods, not our fa familyfriendly city, Monterey Park. Not here. If you do your research, see that these large data centers are in workingclass neighborhoods, not where the affluent live. So, who is profiting? Not us. Data center. This is our house. This shall not pass.

Let me let me say few more names. Jesse Damon, Emily Chu, Harog Balian, Alan Roso, and Elanor Lee. Hi, I'm Steven J. Kong, Mayor Yang, council members and staff. HMC has behaved very poorly and proven themselves to be dishonest, unreliable, and of the indictive partner, serving you a smorgus board of reasons to reject their projects under your discretionary powers. They acted in bad faith from the jump when they submitted their application as a data processing center, then submitted a sloppy M&D rife with inaccuracies. They threw a sham town hall where they would only take written questions, delay follow-up questions, and gaslight us. They've threatened legal action against the city for their own failures to cheat the system. And spoiler alert, they're going to sue us anyway. They've recruited unions to intimidate us. And I want to take a second to talk about these unions. There are two types. There are unions that fight for labor and unions in the corporate pocket. I know because I'm ashamed to be a member of the Director's Guild of America, which cuts backroom deals with the studios, but I'm also proud to be a member of the Writer Guild of America. The WGA was at the vanguard of the hot labor summer of 23. A sweeping nationwide labor movement that includes SAG teamsters, lifeguards, sanitation workers, the United Auto Workers, traffic officers, nurses, fast food

employees. But you know who I didn't see out there? You guys.

You may co-opt our rhetoric, but your alliance with Rodriguez strategies betrays your corporate endgame. Rodriguez led the successful campaign for Prop 22, which prevents Lyft and Uber drivers from unionizing. This was opposed by the Service Employees International Union, United Food and Commercial Workers, and the Teamsters. So, you're siding with a union busting lobby, exposes your hypocrisy, and indictes your credibility. Now, we, the residents of Monterey Park, will show you what true union cred looks like. Note the entire coalition of union members here who are anti-data center. We come from the screen actors guild, the writer guild, the animation guild, and a paniply of IASI locals. We also have the teamsters, the nurses, and the teachers. Even our lawn signs are printed by Mitchell Publishing, a union house. We are endorsed by the DSA. We have more unions represented and more union residents. and we work here. A lot of us out of our home offices which would be threatened by the presence of a data center. We are protesting and you have crossed our picket line to take our seats in this chamber and jeopardize our labor. You lack solidarity. You are SCABS

and we do not tolerate scabs in Monterey Park and we do not tolerate corporations that bring them to our city. So tonight is payback and it's time for the city council to step up to the plate. We have called upon you to close two loopholes in the ballot measure. loopholes so gaping the residents of Monterey Park arrived at them independently of each other. Let's make this ballot measure airtight. Let's also draft an ordinance banning all data centers. It would provide immediate and maximum protection for us and send an unequivocal and official message from both the people and the government. An ordinance is the most common and effective means of banning data centers as shown in Gordon, Atlanta, Peculiar, Lordstown, Big Rapids Township, Warrington, and Palmetto. Literally, the only places where residents have resorted to a ballot measure are towns where the city council doesn't listen. You cannot distance yourself from this fight. You are in it because HMC has dragged you into it. And as our elected officials, you need to own this messaging with an ordinance. You have every reason to do it and no downsides. Not only is this the right thing to do, it would be the ultimate clapback and karmic justice for an applicant who has acted in bad faith. HMC HMC Actum and Rodriguez know that with only a ballot measure, they still have a path forward because they can outspend us. We can shut that down tonight. Remember the night of Remember the night of January 21st when y'all passed the temporary moratorum? How great that felt. I loved watching James Pew storm out of this hall. And I love the look on Loza Lambert's face when she called her boss and told him that everything had gone sideways. Let's show

these parasites that we are done playing after all the threats, misinformation, and disrespect to the people and council of this great city. Let's deliver what they've got coming to them. Find your voice. Stand strong. And pass an ordinance. They around and now they're going to find out. CHEERS. WE LOVE YOU, STEPHEN.

Robert Castro, uh, resident district five. Uh, I don't know that I get more weight. Uh, you know, it's going to affect the whole San Gabriel Valley if they build a data center. the you know a new topic the inherent danger of electricity a lot of heat uh you know I don't see the UA here the other union was here last time and I wondered plumbers plumbers well no it's it's fire suppression and there's a lot of talk about the Edison power and the generators but you know they're also going to require battery backup you know there's that UPS system that so they're talking about water, heat, electricity. Yeah, I want a job like that to be done by union labor, but not here. And uh I support the that ballot and with with the amendments they were talking about. Uh five generations here in Monterey Park and uh I don't know that gives me any more weight. I I worry about all the people that live in the community. So, uh, please do the right thing and I can have faith in the future. Thank you.

Uh, good evening, council. My name is Jesse Damon. First, shout out to Bob Castro. Thank you for not making me go after Stephen. Um, hey, HMC Stratcap. Unlike anyone from your company, we attended your sham of a town hall last Saturday. Your strategists and technical experts interpreted community engagement as refusing to answer verbal questions. You could probably talk to Alma back here. She would help. Um, you heard about managing the community. Every time one of us has to listen to that nonsense, a new activist is born. Thank you. Thank you to the city staff who did stop by our booths. Uh, act Rodriguez Shepard Mullen. Your intimidation campaign seems to have lost some steam. Your baseless threats of litigation are overpriced posturing. Your last minute letters are hilarious and pathetic. This mob is quite informed. Um,

we won't be threatened by the unions you're exploiting and we will welcome unions back when we have a project worth fighting for. I hear you. You need the work. We all need the work. Look at the world right now. Your work cannot happen on our backs and you deserve work with dignity. Hypersale AI is not it. council. The community has found its courage and it's time for you to find yours.

We can have your back on this with a ballot measure. It is very clear that you care about this community, but we also need leaders with values and vision, and those have both been thin on the ground the last few months. I understand and appreciate the need for caution, but it is not readily apparent what this council believes in or what values drive your leadership. In fact, it's hard to know how informed our leadership even is. At least two city staff and electeds have attempted to absolve themselves of responsibility by saying, "I'm new. I wasn't here when this started." But you are here now. You submitted the mitigated negative declaration for approval. You have the gavl in front of you. So, you have the power and the responsibility. Our attorney has asserted that an ordinance and ballot measure carry the same minimal level of legal exposure because the applicant has no vested rights. If you're ready to start rebuilding trust with the community, initiate a ban through an ordinance, put this on the ballot, and start engaging with us meaningfully. I've I've spent the last decade of my life as one of the leads of the California Reducing Disparities Project, a statewide initiative to address mental health disparities. Locating data centers in communities like ours are prime examples of why these disparities exist. My work is about ensuring that communities have a voice in the systems that exist to serve them because there is no about us without us. And let me tell you about this community. The depth of the talent in Monterey Park is staggering. Within a 10-minute walk from my house, there are dozens of geniuses at research, communications, visual storytelling, organizing, legal strategy, rhetoric, environmental justice, engineering, and art. These folks have put in hundreds of hours of work to protect this community while raising families, going to school, paying mortgages, working full-time,

caregiving. These people here tonight are the leaders this community deserves. And your courage and integrity are now part of the history of Monterey Park. To all the neighbors who are nervous about public speaking, to all the introverts like me, we see you. We love you. We need to hear you. People have found their voice because we cannot look away from this fight. Because we are fighting for our neighborhood, our health, and our livelihoods. This jewel of a community is worth protecting, which is why it behooves us to do everything we can to keep data centers out of Monterey Park. Council, it is time for you to take the wheel. Adopt an ordinance banning data centers like dozens of cities before us. Then close the loopholes, make sure the ballot language is airtight, and ignore the threat of frivolous lawsuits. Like it or not, Monterey Park is leading the fight for the entire San Gabriel Valley. Montabelloo passed a data center moratorum because we passed one first. Our fight inspired Sasha Renee Perez to take our the data center fight to the state level. And our families in city of industry, La Pointe, Hosianda Heights, Roland Heights are looking to us for help. I know we will win with the ballot, but relying on it alone is craven and irresponsible. It is time to lead. Pass an ordinance now. Emily.

Good evening, council members. My name is Emily. I'm a resident of Monterey Park in District 2 and a co-founder of No Data Center MPK. I I am here tonight to conditionally support item 12A. The city's approach right now seems to be pushing the ballot forward and hoping for the best. The reality is that there is too much risk to rely on a ballot alone, and the community deserves stronger protections. A ballot should be one part of a two-part plan to provide the maximum level of protection for the community. Before I go further, I want to assure everyone that this two-part plan is designed by an expert. No data center MPK has retained Doug Karsten's, an attorney who specializes in environmental, municipal, and land use law to make sure the community is fighting for the highest levels of protection possible, and that we don't leave any loopholes for future data centers. Here's what Doug proposes. In addition to the ballot, the council should also adopt an ordinance immediately to ban data centers citywide. This is what is referred to as a belt and suspenders legal strategy which mitigates risk. The way it works is that the city would first pass an ordinance to provide a permanent baseline level of protection. This is the belt. Then the ballot measure acts as the suspenders that reinforce the ordinance if it passes. And most importantly, if the ballot fails, we will still have the belt and suspenders in place, which means that we have the protection of the ordinance. This is about mitigating risk. With the city's current approach, we don't have this fallback protection. In fact, there are cascading negative effects if the ballot doesn't pass. I want to paint a picture for everyone, and just bear with me because this is not pleasant, but imagine we move forward with what the city wants today. We have a ballot in

June and a temporary moratorum and imagine this isn't hard that HMC starts aggressively campaigning and we know they have tons of money to essentially buy the ballot and despite our best efforts the ballot fails. So what happens at that point? We only have a temporary moratorium to protect us which needs to be renewed in January 2027 and we have two council seats opening up in November this year. So, it's in HMC's best interest to back pro data center candidates and try to influence our November city elections. Now, the community is fighting HMC for two elections backto back and if they win, they end the moratorum in January 2027 and they restart their application.

So, coming back to the belt and suspenders, an ordinance would take effect right away. It would provide durable protections if the ballot fails. And very importantly, it would demonstrate the council's commitment to protecting its constituents. As a community, we are not feeling the council's commitment right now. And we are seeing a lack of accountability to fix this situation and earn back public trust. The ordinance is an opportunity to do that. And to be clear, as other folks have said before me, there is nothing legally blocking the city from passing an ordinance. The council just doesn't want to do it.

Before I wrap up, I want to touch on the ballot language. There are two loopholes in the current language that leave the door open for data centers in the future. They need to be closed now. First, allowing data centers under one acre. And second, not specifying timing for zoning update implementation. Campaigning for a ballot is not a casual thing. It requires a lot of time, energy, and money from the community, and it is not worth doing for a ballot that isn't as strong as it can be. These loopholes need to be addressed now. And I strongly urge the council to please listen to your constituents and adopt an ordinance immediately to ban data centers citywide. The council's current plan is to gamble on the future of this city and that is not acceptable. Thank you.

Uh thank you mayor, council members. Uh my name is Harag Balian. Uh I'm a resident of Monterey Park in district 2 and uh also one of the founders of no data center MPK. I SUPPORT A BALLOT measure to ban data centers citywide. Uh but with the changes that others have been asking about. Um in addition to a ballot, I also think that you should ban data centers citywide by ordinance. A month ago, you all said that you were going to consider all options to ban data centers. Over the past several weeks, it became clear that you all became singularly fixated on a ballot. You really don't seem to wanted to ban data centers by ordinance. And I' I've noticed a troubling shift in how this council has been talking about its option to enact an ordinance. Specifically, I've heard several claims. A, that you don't have the power to ban data centers by ordinance and that doing so would be undemocratic. B that if you do ban uh by ordinance, it will expose the city to devastating litigation. C that even if you pass an ordinance, a future council can simply undo it, so why bother? D that you're very confident that a ballot will pass, so an ordinance would be a waste of time. And from these four claims, a conclusion e that a ballot measure is the only way to p to ban data centers. Now, no data center MPK has retained Doug Karsten's, as you've heard, to fact check every single one of these claims. His assessment is unequivocal. None of them are accurate. And frankly, he is deeply puzzled and concerned that the city appears to believe otherwise.

So, let me take these claims one at a time. A, you don't have the power. This is very clearly false. The California Constitution grants you the authority to enact ordinances. That is not some extraordinary measure. It is a core function of your office. This is called representative democracy. We've elected you to represent us, the people. So, land use, zoning, public safety, these are your domain. Passing ordinances isn't exceeding your authority. It is your authority. B, you'll get sued and it will be devastating. Also false. Our attorney has confirmed that since HMC has not secure the vested rights to proceed with their project, any lawsuit they file would lack legal merit. HMC uh threatening litigation is nothing more than intimidation. And you know, they're free to make these threats under their First Amendment rights. That threat will exist regardless of whether the ban comes by ordinance, by ballot, or both. A ballot measure does not make the city lawsuit proof. So don't let the threat of meritless lawsuit paralyze you from doing your job. C. A future council can just undo it. This argument is defeist and puts into question why you'd pass any ordinance on any topic or why you have a job at all. It also misunderstands the law. Yes, a future council could attempt to repeal an ordinance, but doing so would trigger SQA review and an EIR, creating significant legal, financial, and procedural hurdles. It would also require a public process, public

hearings, and public scrutiny. And as you can see, you know, we are here. We are engaged. We are paying attention. Now, an ordinance repeal would neither happen quickly nor quietly, especially with an engaged and organized electorate. D. It would be a waste of time. Also false. Even if you're extremely confident that a ballot will pass, passing an ordinance would mean taking HMC's deep pockets seriously. It would mean building a second line of defense against a well-funded PR campaign. And it would mean showing your constituents that you hear them and that you take some responsibility for the decisions that got us into this mess to begin with. Are you going to get behind this community? Are you going to hide behind a ballot?

And E, a ballot is the only way. Also false. I refer you back to points A, B, C, and D. This conclusion does not follow from the facts. At this point, many of you, many of you have publicly voiced support for data center regulation. Every single one of you have signed the letters backing state level data center rules. You have the legal authority. You have the public mandate. The only question is do you have the will? Thank you.

Let me call a few more names. Chris Dolly, Jessica J, Felicia Marquez, John N. Mike Romero.

Um, good evening everyone. Uh, first of all, I apologize if I um if I can't talk and I'm very nervous.

Uh, to me, first of all, I I am a resident of El Monte where there is also a data center being proposed across the street from my mom's store. her pride and joy. Um, so this is I mean all these folks have given fantastic facts. Uh, I can't top any of anything that's been said, but this is going to be personal, so I'll try to keep it short and sweet. To me, anyone who in any way supports, funds, or builds data centers is no better than street thugs that kill with guns.

At least with them, death is quick. and you can see the face of your killer. You are not constantly bombarded with chemicals and noise by a company on another continent until your body can no longer take it. A vote for a data center is a vote for poisoning people and the environment.

Um I just found out I mean I'm not as informed as half the people here, but um I just learned today that since 2024 nobody had known about this. That's a huge red flag. Um, another huge red flag for me. Um, who will be providing power to the data center. Um, one one name would be Edison. Um, correct me if I'm wrong and I may be wrong and I apologize if I am wrong, but I believe uh, Council Member Thomas Wong works for uh, Edison. That is a huge, huge red flag for me. Huge red flag.

And I wouldn't be surprised to find other red flags sitting in front of me right now. Um, like I said, I would keep this short and sweet. Um, this is all just food for thought. Thank you.

Mayor, mayor, if we could interrupt again, maybe I could call on the city attorney to do another reminder of what item we're actually talking about, what items we're talking about tonight. Just to be clear, excuse me, guys. just to explain why I can engage on this item, what my confluent interest was on the specific proposal on the data center, which is why we're accused and what we're actually talking about tonight, which is what and the reason why I can engage.

Thank you, madame mayor, members of the council. The uh FPPC decision with regard to that is posted on the data center website. Uh so anyone can read that. This is 12A has to do with all data centers. It is a policy decision that is on a city-wide basis made by the city council. Uh it does not involve any particular project. I realize that many of the commentators are talking about a particular project. That project has not made it to the city council. Uh this decision tonight or this consideration of a decision has to do with a ballot proposition and any associated direction from the city council to the city manager myself with regard to citywide prohibition on data centers. It is not specific to any particular data center. Happy to answer any additional questions. Hi, I'm Elanor Lee, resident of Monterey Park from 1966 until I got married, moved out. Now I'm back in my mom and dad's house. So, I've watched Monterey Park grow from this little town into a thriving community. And um I found out about the data center back in December. My daughter says, "You know, we're putting a data center in." And I was like, "Really?" Um, I was a little um surprised and I don't want to repeat what everybody else has said here because I got an email. I sent the email and forwarded all of you council members here. I hope you read it because it actually the attorney who attorney that was hired did his research and is pretty much shown us what we need to do. So, I'm just asking you to take that

seriously and take a look at what has been said and and also I've gone to three of these council meetings and this is the first time I got to speak

all the other times there have been so many people that I went home and because my daughter has to go to work the next day. So, I was looking at uh some of the things that pride in our past, faith in our future. I hope you have faith in our future. I don't have grandchildren. I have granddogs. But I want to see Monterey Park be even better that we are going to be showing the world what we stand for and being uh set of precedents that we are not going to stand for having a data center being put in. And that's all I have to say. Thank you. Jess J, Jessica J. Uh, city council. I am a lifelong me resident of Monterey Park, District 4. I'm also representing multiple family, friends, and community members that couldn't be here in person tonight. I stand with my fellow residents and neighboring communities in support of a June ballot measure that would prohibit data centers citywide with the caveat that one language is modified to remove any loopholes regarding size exemption and definition and two to make explicit the time frame to ensure the measure takes effect immediately upon voter approval. Mayor Yang, you said at the top of this item that we don't have to repeat what other people have spoken about or to reiterate points, but to you and the rest of the city council, it seems like we do because every time you kick the can down the road or you put the buck back on the residents to uh ban data centers, you erode the trust of this city council and of the government democratic process. I just want to make it clear for me there is no quote mutually pleasing solution unquote that we can come to that does

not include an outright prohibition on data centers citywide by both ballot and ordinance.

A ballot would be one very necessary important step of a level of protection. But I do want to speak for the many residents who may not be able to vote, such as my 98-year-old grandmother who is a resident but not a voting citizen or my dear friend's one-month-old baby uh who obviously also cannot vote. Uh especially as our voting rights seem to be threatened more and more each year. uh illegal ICE kidnappings on citizens and legal residents alike, policies like the SAVE Act and other voter intimidation tactics coming down the pipeline pipeline uh including early reports from the Washington Post of all places um about a draft executive order possibly circulating that would quote unlock extraordinary presidential powers over voting. So I believe in voting. I believe it's an important step in our democracy and uh to voice our community. But we also have to consider the residents who may not have that privilege that that right and I believe they deserve to have their voices and their rights protected still. And that's why in addition to this ballot, I also support at least a twoprong approach to ban data centers again by ballot and ordinance. And I urge you once again, I will keep coming to every single council meeting on this item until I don't have to to remember your oath. Remember who you serve. Not AI, not corporations, but the people of this community. Thank you for your time.

I have a lot of stuff. Sorry. Lots of junk. Uh, hello.

Oh, thank you. Hi, city council. Hi, Mayor. Hi, Mayor Prom. Nice to see everyone today. As you know, my family has been in Monterey Park for over 60 years. Um, I ask you tonight, city council, to vote yes on the moratorum to expand to January 2027, to vote yes on the June 2nd special election for the city ban, and yes to the city ordinance ban for forever building in Monterey Park. no data centers and to also close the two loops that we've all been discussing tonight. As you know, I'm very passionate as we all are about our power, water, health, and home values. Um, we don't want the data center. You know it, Mayor Yang, as relentless as you were to get my vote, and we've talked several times at my home, we will be a trillion times more relentless to put this data center in a cement grave. We don't want it. I want to point out I want to point out that if we want a strategic approach as a democratic process here, you must do better. Spark was not democratic. We all need to you we all want you to lead by example and not by knowing your best friends and who you're going to dinner with. We want you to lead by example. I challenge you again to be the change we need. Be the change we need. Don't be the reason we have to change. Also, to HMC and all your PR firms, don't waste your time. I've already been to where you're going, and no business owner believes your Also, while I appreciate the small headline in the Cascade Paper today that I saw when I came home from work, we can do better. Don't just provide a link. We don't want some We would want you to

take a good space out to explain what the hell is going on in our city. Last, I want to say you are all not benefiting our lives. You're not helping us. I felt guilty this weekend to fly to Idaho for my niece's wedding versus going to the town hall. What a terrible position you are putting us in. No data centers. THANK YOU. GOOD EVENING. Call some more names. Ivonne Juan, Adelie Marlin, Mary Marcos.

Good evening, Mayor Yang, Mayor Prom, and council members. Um, my name is Crystal Lee. My family has lived in Monterey Park since 1966 when my grandparents purchased their first and only home here. Um, I have been coming to these council meetings like it's my third time. So, I am going to be quick and just kind of reinforce what we've been hearing. I am asking the council to pass a citywide ordinance um that prohibits data centers in all forms and sizes and apply citywide, not just to a specific area. and also addressed the BAT language to quote to uh make direct changes to the municipal code and general plan by number and section rather than directing the council to promptly implement changes later, whatever that looks like. Um, and then close existing loopholes in the current B language that could allow smaller data centers under one acre to proceed. And I'd just like to close my comment with this. Notice how everyone who's for this project has a moneyed interest if it gets approved. But everyone against it has a wide range of nuanced reasons.

There's nothing ethically wrong with builders wanting to build in general, so don't mind the unions being here. But building where or what the community doesn't want to build shouldn't be okay. You are violating our trust and neglecting your responsibility to serve the community by allowing this to drag on and on. No means no for our neighborhoods. THANK YOU. UH MAYORS, members of city council, uh city manager and city attorney, uh thank you for listening to your community and working with us towards a ban on data centers.

What's your name?

Uh my name is John. Um I actually uh I appreciate Mayor Yang's openness and availability to us. um your constituents and council members for their serious consideration of our concerns. Uh I recognize the involvement of city council and staff in our community. Um not even realizing some dine at my family's restaurant right off of Garvey Avenue. Um but uh today I'm here because I want to bring awareness to you about unfortunately they're no longer here but um paid agitators here working against us um specifically by weaponization of union association or membership. Um, I want to pretty much emphasize what Steven Kung was saying um, in the sense that uh, these paid or accredited uh, union members um, Guilt Trip City Council and the community claiming that we are anti-UN when the outcry or our outcry is due to without exaggeration concerns with city residents living very close to the data center sites. Plural. Um, if anything, it's antihuman uh for these union members to focus on their own desire for cash when plenty of construction work exists in the county. And we'll speak on this later. Even as I speak now, I can feel the resentment towards my words. Um, I'm actually a Unite Here Local 11 member. Um, a union representing hospitality and entertainment workers throughout LA County. Uh, we recently demonstrated at Universal Studios because of ICE presence in various areas surrounding the park. We are also not getting fair wages while bringing a record profit year after year for Universal. Our profit uh our protest is for our own livelihoods. Specifically uh the lack of scheduling due to the lack of tourism due to ICE presence um and the members of the community affected by ICE raids, not greed and drive for contracts to make money at the expense of other humans just trying to live. These so-called union members don't deserve

our collective respect because their presence alone is their admission their profit is more important than our people. Not to mention their additional additional motivation to be here and get credit towards their apprenticeship or simply be paid though they claim otherwise. Residents must be forced to listen to their repetitive pleading for a data center that will provide nothing to the community. tax revenue against increased electricity and utility costs and nothing to these contractors after they complete this project. And what's worse, they'll move on to other data centers in other communities like the city of industry, Penta Hills Mall, and do the same thing again, selfishly and without any acknowledgement of the humanity of the residents affected. To conclude, city council is actually doing a great job right now in advocating for our community. I really believe that all council members here actually make themselves available and and want to hear what the community has to say and I really appreciate that. Um I also want to say uh um I actually really appreciate the city attorney's uh personability and willingness to sympathize with us residents. Um uh lastly, I had a great experience meeting the city manager at my family restaurant the other day. Um, I I really it brings me hope to see that people in council, people at the city are supporting businesses in the community and and that that really means to a lot to me. Um, it gives me hope in the midst of this this chaos to see that uh council is working with this and dealing with the frustration that HMC continues to fuel. Thank you so much,

John. John, what's what's your family's uh restaurant? Sorry.

It's going to be the right Mayor Yan, council members, I am Yvon Wong. Let me reiterate the following before I state my position. The proposed massive hypers scale data center is the size of more than four football fields and is as close as 65 ft from the nearest residences. It belongs in a heavy industrial zone, not an innovation technology zone like s certain park. The air, water, noise and light pollution from this project will be detrimental to the health of residents. Killer diesel exhaust from 24 backup generators is proven to cause cancer, respiratory, and many other diseases. PFAS known as forever toxic chemicals are used in closed loop cooling system to control corrosion at and bacteria growth. Any leakage will contaminate our soil and groundwater.

Barriers and walls are not effective to buffer the 247 non-stop humming noises and vibrations from the chillers. Data centers strain vital resources like electricity and water for our daily survival. Their presence will invariably lead to rate heights as shown in other communities. Municipalities across the country are stopping data center projects including our neighboring city Monty Bellow. We are being watched closely, locally, nationally, and internationally. The Montterrey Park sustainability plan adopted in April 2024 to mitigate climate change will be completely undermined and negated by the proposed data center, which is neither green nor sustainable. Montter Park is in a seismic zone sitting on top of the La Ponte Thrust Fort and close to the San Andreas fort data centers will pose unnecessary disaster risk and compromise the city's catastro catastrophic reserve fund. HMC's claim of five to seven million annual contribution to the city coffers is unsubstantiated. Even city attorney said that data from Virginia has no relevance to Mterrey Park and cannot support the notion it will be a significant source of tax revenue. Besides, state tax exemption for certified data center will reduce any optimistic projected revenue. There will be barely 26 permanent jobs created

by this project. Regardless whether the two certain street property sit idle, property tax will still be paid to the city. Vacancies in Saturn Park have not posed serious financial burden for the city since 2019. The city has a 1.23 million surplus per its latest midyear financial report. I applaud our city for responsible fiscal management. We are not in dire need of revenue for services, programs or improvements. Montter Park belong to all the residents. It is totally undemocratic for merely 19 people in Spark to decide on the future of Saturn Park for the entire city population of 66,000. We should take our time to plan better use and development like housing and retail which will do us no harm but bring vibrancy to the city. Residents are blessed with 17 parks in Montterrey Park. We do not need a pocket park from the data center requiring city maintenance to enjoy our city. We do not need a foreign conglomerate to sway and dictate how we should run business here and forcefed us with data center. Data center will definitely dissuade potential home buyers, residents and businesses from relocating here. In conclusion, this project is a total misfit for Mont Mter Park. We the residents have the absolute right to

determine our own destiny. So I urge our city council to go ahead with the ballot measure and tighten up the loopholes and also have them ordinance to ban city center in the city. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Hosan Mary and um I thought I would forego this speech because

uh did you submit a comment card? Wonderful job. Uh Hosan, did you submit a comment card? Yes. I don't have it. Yeah. Okay. I think you said Mary. Yeah. Oh, you put it under Mary. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. But um after hearing HMC representative and their lawyer, um I decided to come up here and um speak to you folks. On February 4th, Council for HMC referred to concerned residents of Monterey Park as an uninformed mob to pressure city council's decision making.

He repeated those same words at the meeting that night. That language alone shows how little regard HMC and its representative have for the people who actually live here. In the same breath, he has threatened legal action in order to get council to render a decision in his client's favor. If this

if they truly intended to listen to the community, they would have held open well organized town halls long before now. Instead, some of us only found out last uh about last Saturday's so-called town hall. And even then, no time was provided. It took me many hours to figure out um where to go and I texted my neighbors with the information and unfortunately because it was a short notice they couldn't attend. The meeting itself was demeaning, dismissive, uninformative.

Panel members spent more time shushing the residents than answering the questions. and no HMC representative was present. It was not a form for transparency. It was an attempt to control the narrative. Meanwhile, HMC stated an unmititigated electricity demand of four 434 million kilowatts per year, the equivalent of 40,000 households, which significantly differs from industry standards. However, even with the their stated usage, Monory Park only has 22,000 households. This data center would consume nearly twice the electricity used by every household in the city of Monoy Park combined. In order to meet the demand required requires major grid upgrades and those costs fall on rate payers. residents will face higher bill grid greater grid instability and increased vulnerability during heat waves and shortages. And while the industry research also shows that facility of this size can use up to 110 million gallons of water per year. HMC claim it will only use 12 million, a number that raises a real question about accuracy and transparency. But even at their stated figure, this project adds additional pressure to already stressed

water system in our city. Also, Monterey Park is home to some of the region's strongest public schools. uh Monory Highland, Monory Vista, Brightwood and others. Our teachers, staff, family work very hard to give our children the be very best possible future. So when HMC council calls educators and union opposing this project as mob, it's not only disrespectful, it is disconnected from who we are as a community. Can can a data center improve our children's education while exposing them to increased heat, noise, and environmental factors? Why would we place our children under such circumstances and at risk? Has the data center Okay.

All right. Has the data center meaningfully addressed these concerns with the community? If they have, most of the residents are excluded from those conversations. Their actions make one thing very clear. They have not earned this community's trust, nor do they appear to have any intent of doing so. And that was clear by the last weekend's town hall meeting

which led to my going even with my back injury. I went to house to house in my neighborhood with the help of one of my one of my neighbors and ascertained signatures ask asking what MP um no data center MPK has proposed. We sent I sent you an email but some of the residents who are elderly they have no access to computer or know how to use it. Therefore, I printed the email and had them sign and and IT'S

so um lastly, I just want to say we expect projects that would strengthen our community, not the ones that danger our infrastructure, raise our utility costs and dismiss our voice. Our message is straightforward. We deserve better and our children deserve better and so does our

Thank you. Good evening, comrades. My name is Marcos. I do not live in Monterey Park, but I'm from Alhhamra. I come here to remind everyone that this issue is not limited to Monterey Park, but every community around it. If you don't believe me, ask the eastsiders how bad the cleanup is at the XI battery plant.

If you still don't believe me, ask the northeastsiders how bad the cleanup is at Shaw Canyon. These are environmental disasters close to home and allowed by greedy capitalist politicians. I am here to address the masses in Monterey Park. You aren't alone. You have friends all around you. We lod your work. We uplift your struggle. We support the people's agenda item 12A. We support a vote and we support a full citywide ban. We stand here with you at the United Front because these politicians maintain the system of colonialism by taking the land and using it for capitalist gain when they could actually give the land back or listen to the endless list of possibilities the residents have put up. So I stand here not to beg or plead with the council but to to but to demand them listen to the community. We need to organize against the capitalist land exploitation and the business owners who are looking to divide us. So now I ask the council Burgger, Alvarez, Yang, Low, Sanchez, Wong, and no, who do you represent? Because the residents of Monterey Park have spoken in defiance. They have even suggested what they want, housing and food, and yet you push this slop. This is the cycle of colonization. You don't need to be a white person to uphold white supremacy.

And all of you up there who are all people of color, you reveal who your masters are.

So I am here to remind you that you have nothing to lose but your chains. It's clear now more than ever entertaining this idea of a data center here in Monterey Park is highlighting the fact that Democrats continue to fuel capitalist endeavors. Instead of using the space for community resources, it's for private exploitation of people, land, and resources for years to come. These politicians work to secure themselves instead of those they swore to protect. They work to protect the lining of their pockets and get their names on plaques instead of the lives of their neighbors. They are literally putting a price tag on our lives. So this is what separates us socialists from capitalists. We are defiant. We defy capitalism. We defy white supremacy. We defy patriarchy. We defy colonialism. And we will defy it to the very end. We organize every possible way and exhaust every approach. And if these statements linger with you, then answer the call. Denounce the politicians who play fast and loose with our lives for their personal gain, who sit themselves higher than us. Join a socialist organization like the Peace and Freedom Party and vote these social and vote these politicians out. or join a socialist organization that defends the community and the land. Because that's what we're doing up in Alhhamra. We are putting the capitalist politicians in the hot seat for selling us out to the colonizers just like this council wants to sell you out. Our heat runs hot and it melts even the thickest block of ice. And if you want to remove these people, seek us out. Seek the Peace and Freedom Party out on Instagram. We have

candidates running everywhere and we will front you. Don't settle for the crumbs these politicians push on you. You have revealed the power you possess. Put the council, the mayor, the city manager, and the city attorney in the hot seat because it's no longer a fight of the left or right, Democrat or Republican. It's a fight of socialist party against the capitalist party. It's a fight of the working class against the capitalist class. These politicians have revealed what they prefer more and so have we. We loudly reveal ourselves and we hold these outs accountable and we will challenge them to do better. Good night.

Do we do we still have people outside? um maybe let them know there's a lot of empty seats in here if they want to come inside. Thank you, Robert. Um and while people are coming in, I wanted to see if my uh fellow council members wanted to make any comments or share any thoughts or let them finish. No, no, we're about halfway through. Yeah, keep keep going. Okay. All right, then. Uh let me call some more names.

Dominic Haram Millo KC W Andrea Vega Tom Salonus. Okay. And Cameron Rush. Do we have to go this way or can we come straight up depending on names? Yeah, you can you can go. And then also um these are names that I called earlier but um didn't come so I just wanted to call them again. Teddy Karen Mike Romero and Adelin Marlin.

All right. Go ahead. Hello council. My name is Dominic. Um this is actually the first time I've come to one of these meetings and I have been meaning to for a while. Um I think like many of us we are afraid and uh worried and it seems like we are not being listened to. Um I know people have brought up before but these companies are coming for uh land and it's a big issue that all of us are dealing with. I as a uh college student uh fear that every day that while trying to build something in Monterey Park it will be cut short. So please listen to us all uh and thank you for uh giving time to us today. Thank you.

Good evening, council members. Uh, good to see you again. Sad that we have to be here again on this issue. Uh, my name is Casey Wong. I am a um, Los Angeles city community member. I was did grow up in this district. I lived here for over 5 years and now I work in this district very fortunately. Um as not to repeat what other folks have said um I want to point out that hundreds and thousands of people have been activated by this issue. Um it's purely through the grassroots efforts of concerned community members who are doing this on their own free time. you know, um, imagine if the people who were paid to do community engagement on this program, on this project, were actually trying to do community engagement, what they could achieve with all the capital behind them. If they really wanted to, I'm sure they could outreach, you know, every single resident in Monterey Park. Um, and yet they only managed to turn out 40 people and only 19 people in support of this project. So, um it doesn't seem like they were trying to actually engage with the community despite all of the funding they have to, you know, propose suing the city. Um I'm sure that's a lot of billable hours that, uh our friend here has sat through. Um you know, the city and the people elected to represent this community to engage with the residents. You all know how to win elections. That's how you got here. you know how to engage the community. You know how to garner votes. You know how to win support. And yet only 19 people supported this project when you all um were doing the community engagement when you created the spark. Um if you really wanted to engage the community, I believe that you would have. And yet somehow most folks here

didn't find out about this project until December of last year, just a few months ago. Um, you're all, you know, somewhat successful politicians that you have gained these seats and, um, I'm curious how you're gauging all of this community support. If I were a politician, I would see that this is a really salient issue. This is an issue people are really excited about that we're really passionate about that hundreds of people have shown up here given the time and the notice that when they know there is an a platform to engage on they will show up and I'm sure there are many people who wanted to be here tonight that could not be here as well. So if this HMC capital really wanted to engage the community, they could have. There are plenty of ways and the people would have turned out to voice their opinion and learn and engage on this program on this project. Um I'm going to end on this to expand on my comrade's words earlier. Um in the words of Ashara Shakur, it is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win, which we will. We must love and support each other. And we have nothing to lose but our chains.

Hi. Uh my name is Tom uh Tom Salonga. First time doing this here. But um a little background on me. I worked as a graphic designer for the uh film industry and I finally achieved my dream job for about a year and a half. That is until that is until the strikes of 2023 which were spurred by um the proliferation of AI and um image generators like midjourney stable diffusion and the like. So, um the I just to cut it short, like I support any sort of ordinance that would ban um the construction of data centers around uh the city just because I'm aware of the massive um health effects that um affect people that live right near them. And uh I just want to also point out I mean we here in Los Angeles have lived under nearly a decade of drought. Like we were in the orange level and we had we were told to be water wise about how much water we consume consume um what was it called like be conscious of how much power we also um use like flex hours yeah our flex hours from like 4 to 9 these data centers they run 247 I mean think of an array of um I mean I'm a PC gamer so think of an array of thousands of PC games rendering 120 frames of just information like non-stop. These machines get really hot, so they require a lot of water to stay cool. Not only that, but then just last year we had that huge fire that happened back in the Palisades as well as Aladina. So, what sense does it make to construct several of these um water hungry centers? I mean, the whole fire department was at a strain in um trying to deal with like just these massive fires that have

broken out in um our neighborhoods. So, I think if we were able to I mean, if we go back to just building these data centers, we would just fall back into the orange level and it would just put many many um homes at risk. Not only that, but uh these diesel generators emit a lot of uh pollutants which would affect the health of many citizens. So it could uh cause cancer and then also COPD. So yeah, um there were a lot of good arguments that were put out here and were really well formulated, but I feel I've u spoken my piece and I really hope that you act with your conscience. look out for all these people. Um, I know a lot of uh I have a so many friends here. So many friends that live around Monterey Park and it's been a big part of my life as well. I attended Cala. Um, my wife, her family lives here. Um, and they we want a future. We just want a peaceful future. And that's Yeah, that's it. THAT'S ALL. UM, CINDY ALVARADO, Hung Ha, Mimi Lee, Alex Leon, Luca Urbe.

Good evening, honorable mayor and council members. My name is Andrea Vega and I'm here representing the organization Food and Water Watch.

Yes. Yesterday we sent you a letter signed by over 20 climate organizations throughout California urging you to reject HMC Capital's data center project and enact a permanent citywide ban on data centers. The expansion of data centers poses major environmental and economic threats due to rapidly increasing demands for energy, driving more fossil fuel pollution, straining our water resources, and rising electricity prices. 56% of the electricity used to power data centers is fueled by fossil fuels. And the HMC project alone specifically would require 24 diesel generators. The project is estimated to almost triple Mterrey Park's electricity use to about 434 million kilowatts per year, which would lead to skyrocketing electricity costs for residents. At a time when electricity rates nationally have increased 21.3% from 2021 to 2024, drastically out outpacing inflation and driven in large part by the rapid buildout of data centers, a project like this would have a negative impact on already burdened rateayers. And it's clearly not just environmental organizations that are identifying the dangers that data centers pose to communities. I mean, this room has been packed with residents who are very clear

in demands. No data centers in Montterrey Park. And and honestly, let you know, let's be clear, the promised economic benefits of this project are highly misleading. Food and Water Watches analysis recently found that when it comes to data centers, there's a limited amount of long-term employment opportunities. And this research which was based on the historic data center hotbed of Virginia found that investment needed to create one permanent data center job is 100 times greater than what was required to create a job outside of that industry. These data center they benefit developers and utility companies not residents. So pass an ordinance banning all DATA CENTERS. ALL RIGHT, tough act to follow. Good evening, uh, honorable mayor and council members. Uh, much has been said tonight about, uh, the environmental impact, the community impact of these data centers. Um, I wanted to talk a little bit about something else. I wanted to talk about what we're getting in exchange for all of that sacrifice and all of that cost if this data center were to be built. I wanted to talk about what they're actually going to use this data center for because data centers uh have been around for a while and are used for lots of different things but this data center is specifically being constructed here because AI is big right now. There is a big boom, a big demand for data centers all over the country. That's why they're having to try to get these in like residential areas and places where they shouldn't be in the first place. And I want to talk a little bit about what AI actually is because to put it bluntly, AI companies think we are stupid and are engaged in active

disinformation campaigns to keep us from understanding what it actually is. So what is AI? So you know that little like row at the top of your phone keyboard that tells you like the next word you're going to say? What that is is a language model. It is built on like a bunch of words and phrases and sentences that are basically it's just a database that it pulls from and it gives you the statistically most likely next word you're going to say. And as you use your phone, as you type more, it starts incorporating your language into its training data. It's a small language model that just predicts the next word you're going to say. And sometimes it even gets it right. What big LLM, LLM stand for large language model, what those are is that on a massive scale, it is trained on the entire internet. So basically what it does is it gives you the statistically next most likely word after the one it has just said. It thinks one word at a time and it gives you the most like generic soulless like thing version of what you asked for. So uh the point I'm trying to get at is that AI does not think. It is a statistics machine and it is being marketed as marketed to you as something that thinks. It is being marketed as the path to super intelligence. Uh it is not at all. It is a statistics machine and due to the very nature of it, you can throw more training data at it which actually you can't really it's already trained on the whole internet but you can throw more training data at it theoretically. You can control you can throw more compute power at it in the form of these data centers. The fundamental problem of these AIs that they have no concept of truth or correctness or or morals and will just lie to you without even knowing about it. That cannot be fixed by more compute and by more training data. AI is a statistics engine that tells you what is the most likely thing to say uh not what is true. It has no concept of what is true because it does not think and it never will. We will never have super intelligence. So and when more people realize this we will realize that AI one moment.

Thanks. Once we realize this, we will realize that AI is a bubble that will soon pop. It is a technology whose returns are already beginning to diminish. We are we are destroying environments all around the country, all around the world. And AI is only getting marginally better. Marginally better open AI actually had to write into its code that there are three Rs in the word strawberry because it kept kept telling you that there were two because that's how that's how we discuss it on the internet, which is like, oh, is there one or two? We're talking about the end of the word strawberry, not the whole word strawberry. And honestly, if you have to if you have to write in answers to questions into the AI's code, it may as well just be a book.

My point My point is that we should not be allowing these corporations and the Epstein class to enrich themselves based on a lie. They are lying to you and they know it. We should not allow them to destroy our environments, contaminate our water, contaminate our air, disrupt our communities based on the promise of something that we will never have. We will never get what they promised to us. So why should we give them what they want? Thank you.

Hi, my name is Mimi. Um, I'm a resident of Monterey Park and my family and I have been here for about 30 years or so. Um, you may or may not remember me from the past few meetings on the data centers uh where I urged you to say no to data centers. Um, so here I am again um to urge you um this time on I think it's number 12A. Uh yes to put it on the ballot and yes to closing the loopholes as some people have mentioned. Um and I probably won't stick around for 11B but yes to that as well. Um that one's for a moratorum. I believe it was something like a hundred and so or so days. Um and I would like it to be forever. Um

yeah. So um again I urge you please protect our communities. Um protect my family and um hopefully we won't have to draw this out um again. Thank you. Let me call a few more names. Oscar Urebe Dan Fumentoto Dena Laauo, Victoria Rivera Macy.

Right. Um, good evening, mayor, city council members. My name is Hunga. Uh I've lived in uh Monry Park District 5 for 31 years. Uh I share the same concerns as a majority of Monry Park residents and strongly support the proposed approach of using ballot and ordinance to totally ban day centers in our city. Um you have listened to uh and and read about many great reasons why we should uh uh support the ban. Uh I'm not going to repeat all of these tonight. uh but I'd like to focus on the concern regarding the negative effects of these data centers will have on our property values. So you know big corporations they're all about big profits big money. So today I like to talk the financial side of our um argument. U the presence of data centers so close to residential areas will undoubtedly lead to one of two scenarios. uh a drop in property value or at best

no you no rise in property values relative to the market. Both of these scenarios are bad. Right?

So when my wife and I first heard about this project uh the second thing that I said to her was that the price of our house would drop a bunch and that even I wouldn't want to buy our house because we live within a mile from uh from the project. Um, you can probably guess uh what the first thing I said to her was, but I'm not going to repeat that here today in public. Right. So, um, so anyway, um, I'm going to make some I what I believe to be reasonable assumptions and present the math to you. Uh I've had quite a few discussions with my neighbors and one of one of them is a former uh real estate agent and we feel that our probably values would drop uh probably about 10% uh if we ended up living near a data center. Uh given the average single family home in Murray Park is around um 900,000 seems a bit high but I'll use 900,000 for now. uh each homeowner that are affected would stand to lose or not gain $90,000. Um I'm also going to assume that at least 10% of the single family homes in Mari Park would be affected, right? Especially those who live near 1977 1980 Saturn. Um these are approximately or there are approximately 15,000 single family homes in Mari Park. So, some 1,500 of the home owners would suffer the loss, right? So, I'll do the math. So, 1,500 1,500 homes times $90,000 per home. That works out to be $135 million. So, that's $135 million uh is is what these home owners would

lose collectively, right? So meanwhile, the seed would get about um 5 to 7 million if they're lucky uh in revenue each year or every four years from HMC, right? So this is a terrible deal, right? Um it's a fantastic deal for HMC, not so much for Mari Park. Okay. Um but but here's here's the punch line. Um so ideally the city would use the five or seven million to do something great for all residents, right? In some fashion that would enhance the quality of life for all of us. You know, plant more trees or plant a forest of trees. Um, and hypothetically that five or 7 million would be evenly distributed among the 60,000 Monterey Park citizens. That means each of us would reap a benefit of a little more than $100,000 a year. Right? So in my case, my wife and I would somehow be benefited by about 200,000 $200 $200 a year, right? uh in some form our house in the meantime would suffer a drop of 80 $90,000 in its value right so this is insane right uh at this rate my wife and I would have to stay alive for the next 450 years in order to break even right so um you know perhaps AI can can help us achieve this this goal in the next few um you know so uh you know HMC would point out one study done by George Mason

uh University in the cities uh in West Virginia or in sorry in Virginia that says data centers might improve uh you know the the house prices but that's for communities that never had good infrastructure in the first place. So data center would you know would likely raise uh the or in improve the infrastructure so the house prices are uh could be a little bit higher but that's that's not the case for Monterey Park. We are an established urban city community uh we have all the infrastructure we need so you know it doesn't apply if they happen to bring this up. Um I have more but I'll I'll I'll be brief. Uh so um you know the the Monterey Park net positive financial position is over 80 million as of June of last year. Uh someone fact checked me on this but I think that's the case. Do we really need this this terrible deal? Okay.

So, I I I I know that three of the the mayor and a couple of the the council members have stated their opposition to this data center publicly. So, I hope that you will actively campaign to ban data centers in the upcoming ballot. Right.

Please reach out to your constituents, use your influence to encourage them to, you know, show up to vote to ban this thing in June. uh make phone calls, go doortodoor, whatever it takes because we will do the same. Okay? So, uh do the right thing, you sleep better at night. Thank you. Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Alex Leon and I am a resident of Monterey Park. I'm here tonight because this city matters to me. Monterey Park is not just where we live. It's where families build our lives, where small businesses fight to survive, and where generations of residents have created something meaningful together. This kind of community does not happen by accident. It exists because leaders make decisions to protect it.

Yes. And tonight is one of those moments. I want to start by saying that I support a placing a citywide ban on data centers on the July ballot. I'm sorry, the June ballot. Giving voters a voice on something this significant is the right step. If we are going to do this, we need to do it the right way and the strong way. Right now, there are two areas that should be strengthened. First, the current ballot language includes an under oneacre exemption and that creates a loophole that could allow smaller data centers to move forward if the intention is to keep data centers out of Monterey Park. And this policy needs to apply to all data centers regardless of size. Second, the ballot language should include a clear one-month timeline for implementation after voter approval so that the measure takes effect promptly and avoids unnecessarily unnecessary delay or legal uncertainty. And just as important, the city should pass an ordinance now prohibiting data centers citywide while the ballot measure moves forward. I also I also want to address something that I heard earlier. I overheard a comment suggesting that concerns about health and community impact were quote unquote and that the city shouldn't worry about them because the data center could bring in more money through tax revenue. If that's the way this issue is being framed, then we have a deeper problem

because the health, safety, and quality of life of Monterey Park residents are not

They are the very reason local government exists. Economic development matters. Of course, it does. But it should never come at the expense of the people who actually live here. The purpose of this council is not simply to maximize revenue. It is to safeguard the long-term well-being of this community. I understand that the that the city is facing the possibility of a lawsuit and that is real. Cities across California face those pressures when they try to protect their communities. But threats of litigation should not dictate the future of Monterey Park. If legal challenges are coming, then the responsible thing to do is to put the city in the strongest possible position. Passing an order ordinance now protects residents immediately while voters have the opportunity to decide the issue in June. That approach is not reckless. It is responsible governance because the people who live here live with these consequences. And these decisions are not corporations. It's the residents of Monterey Park. So, I urge the council to take three clear steps tonight. Approve the June ballot measure. Strengthen the language by removing the under oneacre loophole. and adding a one-month implementation timeline and pass a citywide ordinance now that protects Monterey Park while voters still have their say. This is an opportunity to act decisively and to protect the community that all of us care about, that I care about,

that my daughters care about. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Victoria Rivera and I'll keep it brief because I am not a resident of Monterey Park. Even though I love this city, I would like to remind you guys that we are all so close together as neighbors that as a resident of East Los Angeles, I am impacted by the things that you do here in this community. As a person who studied in Monabello, who goes to Cal State LA, who worked as an educator in your schools, who serviced your children, you owe your neighbors more. You owe the people that your city employs more. You owe the residents of this community more when you make your policies than what would enrich who? Not the community that lives here, not the people that live here, and not the children that are living here who have no other options but to breathe this air and drink this water and learn in these schools. And if a project that isn't on the ballot goes through that would be forced to listen and be polluted by all the noise constantly, I just urge you to think about outside of your community and the impact that you guys have and the future generations that are living here. Thank you. Let me call a few more names. Roxanna Farahhenna Farah Hani, Samuel T, Robert Miranda, Eric Chen, Christine Park.

Good evening. Um, my name is Dan Fermentoto. I am a resident of Monterey Park going on 30 years. I'm here tonight representing my children, my husband, my father who's 93, and many of my neighbors who are too old. They're too old to be here tonight, but they are not too old to vote. So, you guys all need to remember that. And yo, Carl, you need to wake up and look at us. Have the respect that we have for you here. I have things to do, too. I have to go home, take care of my five kids, wash the dinner dishes, and do laundry. So, you're not the only one stuck here, okay? We're here for the lives of our children and that's this is just insane that I'd have to come back here again to do this. Oh, are you awake? Thank you for joining us tonight. Okay, so um one thing that I have in common like me and my neighbors, we don't speak the l same language. We're different age brackets. We we are so very different on so many different things, food, everything that you can think of. But one thing that we do agree on is we do not want a data center. These are older people who have no idea what a data center even was more even much less that we're going to have one in Monterey Park. I had to explain this to them and some of them I don't speak Chinese. I speak Portuguese but that's very a far cry from Chinese and I had to explain to them what it was what a data center was because these people had no idea. They're lifelong residents of this city and they had no idea what's going on. So that's that. Um so right now what what we hear what I'm here again representing myself and all these other people who again I remind you do are not here tonight but they vote they voted all of you here okay all of you here are voted from the citizens in this city remember that okay we demand and it's not just me we all we demand that this matter be placed on the ballot in June not next month not next not next year not two years from now we want it on June and then we also we demand it we don't want any of this less than one acre. What does that mean? Is that less of one less than one acre?

Is that going to be in your backyard? Is it in your backyard? I don't want it in my backyard. Does anyone here want a data center in their backyard because it's less than an acre? What are you guys thinking? Do you not all do you not all live here? If you don't, then you need to let us know because then that's going to be a whole another kettle of fish to fry because right like what? I don't care if it's not my city. Why don't like a lot of people mentioned it before. Why aren't they building this crap in Beverly Hills?

Why aren't they getting their water uh cut during the summer? I CAN'T WATER MY DAMN GRASS BECAUSE OH, there every three days we have to cut the gr the water because we have to save water. Someone else pointed out we can't I can't dry the freaking clothes for my five freaking kids at time when they need them because I have to wait till after 10 o'clock at night because we have to save energy. But apparently a a data center that comes from a is backed what what is it? HMC, right? HMC comes from a different country and they're going to be sucking in everything from us.

And what does it get when and again five to seven million people have said that again and again. I thought it was 5 to 7 million a year. It's every four years maybe. That's insane. Okay. So that's what I have to say about that. And I don't know if there's any more of the union members here, but shame on them because if this crap is going on in their backyard, I'm sure I'm not the only one that would go and stand by them to help them to keep these data centers out of our out of our neighborhoods in our cities. Thank you. Good night.

Good evening, mayor and the council members. I am Macy. I am a resident uh in Mar since in and out since the 80s. Uh tonight I came because I found out from my neighbors about the data center. I was not informed about uh this project until literally last week and I quickly look up a lot of information and try to learn what I have to learn about the data center and I am amazed and um just very proud with residents in Mari Park. they have have so much passion and so much compelling uh you know knowledge information about this issue and I have learned so much and on top of that I have also uh come to do some research before last week or so when I learned about the data center and what I have come uh to the conclusion of that this kind of data center's been going on across the backyard in the United States from Virginia, Texas, you know, coming to California and uh you know it is a thing to be popping up left and right and the reason a lot of these centers are being built so quickly so fast past you know the legislations is because they are under the croo secrecy you know this entire uh you know operation um because they are under the um a trade secret so they don't have to divulge any information as little as possible. So they try to pop them up very quickly, very fast. It's a race to get who gets the most centers and it is absolutely has no place in the living

cities not in this residence or any other resident nearby. And it is so true you know to cooling this kind of uh systems you know it's a 247 energy resources being p water power grid you know um not it's so true also the health um impact on on people and the buzzing the noise 247 everything is 247 constant constant a reminder of what a huge impact on human life and you are here sitting in your seat voted in by the resident of Mario Park. You have a duty responsibility to answer to your people. We are the people. We voted you in to represent us here. We have tonight a lot of people spoken the truth. outspoken about everything and and pleaded demanded everything in shape and form against this building this mega structure has no place in a quiet little town. Didn't we get some kind of top five city you know as one of the most beautiful city and you know you are going to destroy this

you are destroy us if you're going to go through with this so what the business resident recommended a very clear precise and you have to act on it there's no time but now you have the power you have the responsibility and above all you have all of here in Monterey Park you and the neighboring city from Elmonte from East LA you are touching the part of life you know either you're going to kill it or you're going to make it work make it you know a a brighter day tomorrow and you have that power right now please exercise that please do not be shy away whatever that you need to you know to be supported by us we are here So please, please think clearly and be courageous. Don't back off because someone trying to bully you

using money or power. That's never the right thing to do. Do the right thing, please. OKAY. Don't worry, I'm not going to read all of this. My comments will be brief. Mayor Yang, Mayor Promlo, members of the council, my federal my fellow residents, thank you all for staying so late. My family and I have been residents and homeowners in district 3 for nearly 16 years. What's your name? My siblings and what's your name? Oh, Robert Miranda.

Yes. My siblings and I attended public schools in Monterey Park and in Montabelloo and we have volunteered and participated in different civic events and the library over the years. We are proud of our residents in this city and want only the best for us and our neighbors as do many of us here today. Therefore, I am proud to stand here with the overwhelming majority of residents, not just tonight, but over the past two months to urge the council to take all action necessary to ban data centers completely in Monterey Park. I am in favor of the moratorum through January 2027. I am conditionally in favor of a ballot that will take place at the June special election. Uh however, with all the changes that my fellow residents have already outlined, I won't do so again. I'm also in favor of support of statements of support that are issued uh to the state legislature because all the eyes of not just the San Gro Valley but California and I'm sure the nation are on us as they are in so many other places from Virginia to Arizona. Um I do want to touch on something. This is my fourth city council meeting. I have not spoken before but and I've heard a lot of really really great points. There is one point that I want to bring up that I don't think has really been touched on in full, which is our our history. If we look over there, the city was founded in 1916 and for what? To ban a sewage treatment plant that was proposed in this area by the residents of Pasadena and Alhamra. The reason we are able to be here today and we have the privilege and luxury that areas that are unincorporated do not and that we are able to speak to you, our elected officials, is because of the legacy that the residents of this area had 110 years ago. If you want to see their legacy, look around you. This is what we're here for. that the first thing that this newly formed city council passed 110 years ago was an

ordinance to ban sewage treatment plants in the city. This is our history and it is a history I am very proud to be part of and I'm proud to be sharing with the overwhelming majority of my neighbors here. It is important for us to focus on that. I want to ask the council a question. What does pride in the past and faith in the future mean to you? Because for me, pride in the past means pride in what our city was originally founded in part four. Additionally, there, you know, there have been lots of mistakes. There's been a lot of tragedies in our past. Um, one thing that I do want to touch on that hasn't really been touched on is the OI landfill, which is still within city boundaries and which is still a active super fun site. I want to call out that the the landfill was only in operation for 36 years. However, the north parcel, which is now the marketplace, took 32 years of federal intervention and super fund funding to turn into a usable site. Imagine it took almost as long to clean up that site and only half of it because we still have the southern parcel which is completely unusable for land, for housing, for retail, for anything because of the mistakes that prior generations made in approving such a landfill. I don't want to see that happen to Monterey Park. We have Montabelloo as well with the oil rigs which are now luckily being turned into housing. But we don't know what the effects are going to be. As many of us have said, we don't live in a vacuum. Monterey Park is not an island. We have East LA which is where I originally grew up in. We have Alhhamra. We have Elmani. There are other areas like the city of industry which are also uh unfortunately I don't think he the needs of the residents who are around them enroll in Hassanda Heights. We have an opportunity here to look back at our past and take pride in in what in the successes we've made, but also look at the mistakes or failures that past generations have had. We also have three freeways that encircle the city, and they can be

convenient, but in my mind, they also represent a lack of vision or a lack of imagination that developers of the 60s and 70s had. I live on Fernfield Drive, just a block away from the Pomona Freeway, and I go to sleep every night hearing the sounds of roaring traffic. I wake up every morning to it as well. I do not want to wake up in the future to the pulsing sounds of this data center. So again I ask you what does pride in the past mean? But more importantly also what does faith in the future mean? Because currently I feel like any faith in the future I have in this city does not currently lie within our elected officials but it lies with my residents which whom my fellow residents which whom I am proud to stand in solidarity with against this data center. With that thank you FOR YOUR TIME. HELLO, ROXANNA.

HI. UM, good evening, Mayor Yang and city council members. My name is Roxanna and I'm a resident of district 5. Um, I know this is 12A, but I want to just quickly say yes on 11B and 12B. Um, sorry if that's not appropriate. Um, okay. HMC asked you to reject 12A. Uh they have not engaged this community on this project at all. They will not start now. We do not believe them and neither should you. Um I support 12A conditionally. Um I sent an email stating this and the specifics which you have heard at length already many times tonight. I won't go into it. Uh but what I heard earlier is that this council is not really entertaining the idea of an ordinance and relying primarily on the ballot which puts a lot of the um passes the buck to us really the residents. Um and I'm very curious uh what's the deal here? Because the residents have worked really hard. We're not sitting here throwing a tantrum for an ordinance. We have receipts. We have research. uh why you can adopt an ordinance. Now, many of us have talked to multiple lawyers as to why it's legally defensible and why you should not fear litigation. I have three lawyers in my own family who all have said, "I don't understand." Um what are the grounds? Do the applicants have a vested right, which we heard they don't? What's the issue? So, please enlighten us here tonight. What are we missing or what are you not telling us? Um, like the gentleman who spoke earlier, much earlier in the evening tonight, um, I think he made a really great point. You changed an ordinance or did whatever you you did, it's late. I know you guys are here too, very late, but to allow a data center to just come marching through on the say of 18

people, maybe 40 as you like to say. So, you can do it again on the say here of hundreds. Okay. Um, so I am thankful that you have time and time again sat here for hours listening to us and not cutting us off. I do really appreciate that because other city councils do. Um, so I do want to say thank you. Um, but we are um but I also want to be clear. We're here doing this because of the decisions you have made. We are here because of that. So what we are asking in 12A is plain, simple, and clear. Pass an ordinance banning data centers that is within your jurisdiction. Don't leave your constituents hanging. Close loopholes in the ballot so we will show up and we will vote and we will not leave this city hanging. Thank you.

Sorry. I just wanted to say also the woman who came up to speak earlier, she asked if I can make this comment. The one who handed the um she went around to the seniors. She wanted me to say that she forgot to mention that 99% of those seniors did not know what was happening. So, thank you. Hello. Um, hi. Good evening. Um, my name is Christine Young Park. Um, I am a resident of Monterey Park in District 2. Um, I just, this is actually my first time here. Um but um I also wanted to share that I'm really strengthened by my neighbors today and um yeah but um this issue actually hits really close to home for me as a local 839 member in the animation guild. Um many think many of us were hit really hard in our industry due to many issues which includes AI. um as to try and build this data center um and advertise the falsehood of more jobs even though we have now learned that that would only bring 20some jobs is a painful jab at those of us who have lost so so much. So many of my friends are out of work um had to move away are displaced because of this issue. Um, data center have, as we've learned as well, um, have shown to be more harmful than good at all. Please see the irony of this proposal of a data center. We, community members and workers in the LA area do not want this. I am in support of a special election, but I still urge the city council to use the powers given to them by the people to serve the people and pass an ordinance against data centers. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Yang, uh, Mayor Promp, and members of the city council, city attorney, and city staff, city clerk, madame treasure, and everybody, and all the everyone here tonight. Um, first of all, I just wanted to say that this issue will not only affect the city of Monterey Park, it will affect all of San Gabriel Valley because we know the air it, you know, the the pollution, the air pollution created by the data center, it's going to fly all over this community. So, you know, even though I'm not a resident of the city, I am a resident in San Gabriel. It will affect all of us in the San Gabri Valley. I mean, Thomas, your uh Instagram account says Thomas Wong SGV, right? This is going to affect the entire San Gabriel Valley. So I think this will affect all of us and all the children, all the families in Alhhamra, the Alhamra school district, San Gabriel Unified School District, Garvey School District, Montabelloo school district, San Marino school district, San G San Gabriel School District, Arcadia school district, El Unified, all these families, all the children will be affected by it. not just Monterey Park. So that's the first point. Now the second point is that you know we're talking about the risk of litigation. Well, a gentleman earlier talked about the uh how even eventually park still became a dumping ground, right? And we're still cleaning that up. Well, I read an

article NBC that it there was a lawsuit and it cost $600 million, okay, in damages. So, um if we do pass this data center and years later we all know everybody's going to get cancer from it and then the city will be sued. So all the money5 $6 million a year will not pay for the le will not cover the legal fees and all the damages by then with inflation. It'll be billions of dollars. People will be suing the city. This city this data center will make the city bankrupt. You are literally going to bankrupt this city 20, 30 years from now because we know the air pollution causes cancer. So, who's going to be liable for the cancer that everyone gets? The city of Monterey Park. So, I mean, you're going to get Yeah, you're going to say, "Yeah, well, there's going to be litigation." Yeah, there will be litigation. There's going to be litigation one way or the other. So you know you want there's litigation from HMC or do you want to lo risk bankrupting the entire city. So I mean that's a it's we already see this for the cleanup for the dumping sites it's already 500 million 500 million. So for this by the time this all said and done 20 years later billions the city will lose billions of dollars. So56 million dollars a year will that cover the billions of dollars? I don't think so. And lastly, I think you know um data centers is obviously a new thing, right? It's it's not like nuclear waste, you know, which we all know about. It's very new, so it's understandable. We

don't know where it's coming from, but it really is. Just think of it as having a nuclear waste facility in our backyard. So you know every time just think about I just want to plant that seed in your head. Data center equals 21st century nuclear waste. Okay. So it's okay. I mean we understand that you know maybe it's all new obviously data centers AI it's all new phenomenon and the past is the past but we can all do something. You you all can do something today, right? Let's forget about the past, right? Because it's on, you know, we didn't we didn't know, right? It's new, but you can do something today. Every day, Mayor San uh council member Sanchez, you can I hope that every day in your classroom, you're telling them your students about the data center and how evil it is. And mobilize your students. Mobilize all your students, your academ your LA County winning Dathlon students. Mobilize all your family, all your friends, all of you. You guys can do it. Put it on your social media. Do everything you can in this moment to pass this or to ban the city a data center through an ordinance and by the ballot. Thank you.

So, I I have a bunch of the comment cards where um no one came up. So, has anyone submitted a comment card for item 12A? I know we still have 30 some comment cards for Eve 11B and 12B, but has anyone submitted a comment card for 12A that hasn't been called up to speak yet? Uh, Damian, is this for 12 A or another item?

Okay, then you'll be the last speaker for this item. I don't have one for you for No, it must be 11 B or 12B because I don't see your name in 12 A. All right, Damian 12 A. Evening council uh and fellow residents. Uh my name is Damian. Uh been in Monterey Park residents since late 70s. Um regarding this past weekend um data center info seminar uh held two sessions on Saturday. I was there in one um session. Uh basically um yes HMC was not represented. Um a lot of the questions that were asked were related to environmental um energy um so basically didn't have um the south coast air quality management district metropolitan water district um PUC is a public utilities were not involved so um so unfortunately uh yes there was a good number of representation uh from the residents expressing those uh concerns unfortunately they could not address those um questions. Um basically since this is related to data center um um for that 12A my main question that was not answered by them was um even though one of them could have answered it because he says that uh he visited over uh several um throughout the country uh related to this question but he didn't

answer it. Uh basically is is the existing data centers that are um are operating within incorporated or within populations of those. what major impacts um have arisen related to environmental health, cost of living and utilities uh such as uh electricity and water of course and energy requirements and improvements in their infrastructures. So that's what we have to consider as well. Um and and if so, uh local governments um impacted, did they have to pass ordinances? Basically addressing those concerns or problems if if they have them. Um and of course civil litigation on the part of um the populations who are affected. Um, okay. Um, there's quite a few criticisms regarding our our city council and government. Um I've been a resident for many years and I know that all the council meetings, committees, um public forums, even like uh last week's um uh Bookam um I mean not Bookmar uh Broadway Elementary had their police and fire um open forum um uh safety for the residents to attend. Um, unfortunately it was only attended by about less than 20 or so. But anyways, for those of us who have concerns about not being informed, actually online, all the all the council meetings, all the all the committees, all the schedules, it's all it's always listed in advance. Uh, I don't think um we have

a problem with our city. We should be uh proud of our um local government and our city, the residents being uh active as well that we're well informed and um and good representation um as a result like tonight. Um oh regarding the u environmental um questions and energy use and so forth a lot of the information it's they have no our our council does not have any regulatory enforcement or uh regarding those uh um laws that are passed by the state. um the South Coast Air Quality uh management district, MWD, OSHA, and I mentioned PUC as well. Their websites are comprehensive in terms of um the state laws that affect those factors that a lot of us have concerns about. Um and of course, uh because the data centers that that's considered that's going to be incorporated within our residential population. Um yeah, you know, Monterey Park is the president for all sib uh the entire state or nation uh regarding uh uh data centers. One thing about uh on a personal note that I've I've learned from attending conferences, seminars and and uh lectures is a lot of these a lot of our concerns are regul regul uh regulated especially in California as we know and so so for to blame our city or even our

local government here that uh they're not being transparent or they're not being uh understanding or listening to us or uh favoriting uh corporate businesses or favoriting another group and so forth. you know, that's we all have opinions, but you know, they were elected to serve just like and so not every issue that's going that they're addressing is going to be um favorable towards only one uh group. they have to look at it in long term wise and address the not only the immediate issues but the long-term effects for the uh cost of I mean the quality of life mainly for the residents and and the um businesses. So thank you

Katherine Torres. Good evening, uh, Elizabeth, Henry, Jose, Thomas, and, uh, Vin. I um wasn't going to speak tonight, but I just after hearing everybody speak, I just uh want to speak about uh that residents do did reser did deserve the transparency and a responsible planning that our comm community, you know, that we we truly s that you truly were to serve our community. And um when I spoke last time in January, we were speaking because we were I mean most of the people were I think were expressing a lot of anger, anxiety and stress because we were blindsided. We found about out about something that maybe from my son or from Vin or wherever, but it was something you already knew about for quite a while. sounds like. No. Now, I read different stories, but I think Vin told me at or told everybody at the Democratic Club meeting that he that the um the corporation here, HMC, had bought the property in 2021 and wasn't news that it had been in discussion for three years. You said that. So, I'm thinking it's old and that you've had time to really figure things out for us, you know, to put it in plain language, but we were just finding out like December, January,

February. So, the shock, the trauma, and not only that, but the stress. We already have a lot of stress in our lives. You know, living right now in this time, there's a lot of stress coming all the way down from the federal government down to our local government. We are living in tough times. But to add this to our grocery bill, our gas bill, just every little little thing in life is something we didn't want. I don't want I don't want to be here tonight. I want to be home relaxing with my great granddaughter enjoying life. But I'm here and um to say that I'm not your enemy and I and I hope that when we see each other we can say hello. just hello would be nice because I went to um I went to a meet and greet just recently a couple of days after I spoke and I was I mean you ignored me. Yes, you did. You came to the table. You said hello to everybody but me and I'm okay with that. I mean I don't have to be invited to all the social events. I'm okay with that. But I think that when I go to a meet and greet, it's supposed to be meet and greet. And you didn't say hello to me, Elizabeth. I went up to you and you didn't you snubbed me 100%. And then when when I when you came to our table, you said hello to everybody one by one, but not me. And it hurt. It added a lot of stress. I slept every night thinking about that for days until I finally said, you know what? That's just the way it is. But I still have to get up here and talk and because I know for a fact that we were blindsided and we didn't know what's

going on. And the only thing that I was trying to say that that last meeting was if I'm around you because I'm involved with the community. Why did I know? So I and most of the people I talked to don't know still even now there's a lot of people I mean compared to 63,000 people in our community right now there's not that many people here tonight and I thought it would be a lot more but anyway um I have a lot written down but I am in favor of the moratorum. I am in favor of the vote, but what I heard tonight is that you you all can vote this ordinance right now today.

So, so well, I guess my question is why don't you?

I mean, you don't have to look like down, Henry. You can look at me, Ren. Thank you for looking at me when I'm talking because I'm not trying to be mean or anything. I'm not even trying to be non-friendly. I'm just wondering why you don't because everybody's I mean that that knows about this project. I mean, there's only a few people that I've ever heard that are in favor of it. So, what what is stopping you? I mean, is there any way that we could find out what stops you from Why does it have to go back to us? Because that means that we're going to have to um canvas. We're going to have to grassroots. We're going to have to canvas to let people know what's going on. We're going to have to walk the streets like we did when you were uh when you were running for council. I walked the streets for you. And I have bad knees. I have osteoarthritis. And I walked those hills for you. Could you do And you came to my house and I said, "I'm going to vote for you." Can you do that now so we could so people will know what's going on out here out in the community? Knock doors,

send flyers, put it on the radio, put it on social media, let people know, and then when they find when they do their own research, then they can they can tell you I mean they can make their own decision, the best decision for their own family. Is that fair? that you we all that you go all out with us because we out went all out with YOU

and and is it fair that you decide tonight that we will not have a data center at all? I don't know if it's 12A or 12B and I don't care. I just don't want a data center in Monterey Park. Thank you.

And the next time I see you at a meet and greet, can we say hello? I said hello to you that day, Catherine. But I do want to say that every community member that's reached out to me. I've talked to I've been to residents homes. I've been to strangers homes. Every single person who's reached out to me, I responded to emails. They can all vouch for it. But when community members attack us, I don't mind. But when a friend comes and attacks me without even a phone call, I don't consider that person a friend anymore. So I still represent the community, right? But I didn't not a single phone call to ask me what's going on. Attack nobody. I was a I'm always asking why why we were we we didn't know

why we maybe uh I know the time is expired for the your time is up. Catherine I would like to ask for a quick pause. Maybe we could ask the city attorney again. I know we at the beginning of public comment we had the city attorney. I asked the city attorney to reject interject to answer I think some of the specific questions that were asked by this past speaker maybe we can remind the folks here just so to refresh people's memories I know we've been here a long time uh about uh without giving away potential legal strategy and all those things what got us to this point of the specific items that are here and why we are pursuing a ballot measure as opposed to direct ordinance for now

madame mayor members of the council. So, let me try to address everything and forgive me if I get too verbose because I'm an attorney and I tend to do that in any event. So, I apologize ahead of time. First of all, you've everyone has heard several times now both in writing and and verbally that the applicant for 1977 Saturn has absolutely threatened to to file litigation against the city. My job is to protect the city. So, we have come up with a litigation strategy. I frankly, and I've told this in writing to to the council for for that applicant, that I think it's highly unusual that any court would would intervene with the city council's legislative decision-making authority. Uh that would be a separation of powers problem, and I don't see how uh council can overcome that problem. There is no vesting right that that applicant has for that particular piece of property. So there is no property right associated with the uses that are that are allowed for that particular piece of property. So let me just skip over that part with that revenue. Um oh and I have no idea what was submitted tonight as part of the record. Um this is a habit of trying to get things in last minute. I try to respond to those before I I inform the city council about those types of items so that you're fully informed about the types of items rather than trying to respond from the days. So I as you can see there there were there was a stack of letters. Uh they were not distributed to the city council because I haven't had the time to review them or or absorb them or inform the city council about that. But let me talk about the proposition or the ballot proposition just for a moment. U the council directed a ballot proposition be brought back to tonight's meeting for consideration. That's what we're considering on this particular agenda item. Uh the reason for a ballot proposition is twofold. One is the

ballot proposition amends the land use element to the general plan. Uh if all of you recall the major JJ last adopted a new land use element. The city council doesn't have the legal authority to amend the general plan itself. That's reserved to the voters. So the only way that you can that that general plan can be amended is with an additional voter proposition or ballot proposition that's approved by voters. So if you view the land use element as the land use constitution for the city of Monterey Park, which is what legally it is, that needs to be amended in order to ensure that the prohibition on data centers takes effect on a citywide basis. In addition to that, the ballot proposition authorizes the city council to implement the ballot proposition, assuming that it were passed by voters by ordinance, which means that after the ballot proposition were adopted, assuming that it were adopted, that's well, let me go back. Assuming that's put onto the ballot and assuming that it's adopted, um then the city council has the authority to go through the process for amending all the zoning within the city to ensure that it's consistent with that general plan amendment that the voters approved. That takes more time. As I mentioned at the outset of this meeting, uh the city council can certainly direct us to bring back an ordinance doing it now before a ballot proposition is considered by voters. that requires a 20-day notice. So certainly if that's what the council wants to do, we can do that. Uh it will require 20-day notice and we'll be back in April with some recommended language in in an ordinance that would amend the zoning within the city of of Monterey Park. Uh that doesn't mean though that it is the best strategy from both fulfilling the wishes of your constituents and also ensuring that the city's flanks are are protected. uh not

to put the ballot proposition onto the ballot. That should also occur in order to make sure that the general plan is properly amended, that everyone knows that it's a city-wide prohibition and that it's it's preserved in the general plan according to the voters's wishes. Finally, let me mention the moratorum, which is not this agenda item, but it is related to this agenda item. the mor moratorum was was put on tonight's agenda um because we have to have it properly noticed. It has to be a public hearing. So that the initial moratorium was 45 days. This one was properly noticed 11B will be a public hearing once you get to that particular agenda item. And the proposal is to extend the moratorum into January of 2027 because that accomplishes two things. One is assuming for the sake of argument that there's a ballot proposition. It allows that ballot proposition to go through the process and then assuming that that ballot proposition is approved by voters that also allows the city council to implement the zoning changes that are necessary pursuant to that ballot proposition. One last word about what was I make a last word about yeah the definition the definition is up to you. I mentioned that from the outset that the definition was taken from existing zoning regulations, but certainly you can play around with the definition. Uh folks were talking about removing the one acre requirement. That's certainly within your power to do. Um it doesn't have any there's no downside to let's put it that way. U and so if if if the council believes that there's only upsides, then then certainly take that action. Uh happy to answer any other questions. I think I covered everything, but if I missed something, please don't hesitate to tap me in.

Thank you, Carl. Uh, hopefully a quick question. What practical or real effect or difference would there be between if we were to adopt a moratorum that extends through January and adopting an ordinance not can't do it tonight as you've pointed out, but 20 days from now or whenever that nearest next council meeting is in terms of not allowing data centers. My understanding is there would be no practical difference.

Well, some of the speakers have talked about a belt and suspenders approach. As you know, I like a belt suspenders and girdle approach to most things. Uh just to make sure that everything's buckled down. U so the the ballot proposition is the reason that's there is for the reasons I mentioned. Uh the moratorum extends the time period and it preserves well prohibits the city from processing any pending applications accepting any new ones or advancing anything to the city council for consideration. So from the standpoint of prohibiting data centers within the city of Monterey Park um as a practical matter the moratorum takes care of that. That said, the girdle can certainly be an ordinance that the city council adopts on its own authority after proper noticing and we can certainly bring that back to the city council for consideration.

The one the one caveat on that is even if he directed me to do it right now tonight and I went in the back and I drafted something up, you would not be able to adopt it tonight. So I I throw that out there as a as a caveat. I do want to make one last observation about data centers. There's been a lot of talk about um that when the city council adopted the the spits for that affects Saturn Park that uh data centers were were added as a land use. Um certainly that is technically accurate that it was added as a land use. One needs to remember though that the data processing facility land use category already existed pursuing to voter direction from years ago. And so what the city council did when it added data centers as a land use, it made it a discretionary land use, meaning that you're exercising legislative authority when considering any types of projects like that. Um you have to adopt a development agreement. That is an absolute legislative function of the city council. So rather than a land use coming in as for example a data processing facility which would be a ministerial use which neither the planning commission nor the city council would ever see. Instead the city council changed those land use regulations to add in data centers and made that a legislative decision by the city council. meaning that any applicant throughout the city that wanted to go into Saturn Park, any data center as as defined would have to be approved by the city council through a legislative process. Have to answer any other questions.

I appreciate the clarification because it I despite council and the city staff continuing to uh explain that, I think it continues to come up as a a complaint. Uh so appreciate that we're continuing to offer clarification around that uh and what actually happened and transpired out of the spark process in those conversations and what ultimately made it into the spit zoning for Saturn Park. And I'm sure we will continue to remind people about what happened and the the factual kind of context around where we're at. I don't know if we want to I know there are still I think there's still speakers.

No, that was the last one. Yeah. So we can make comments now. I know that was the last one for 11B as well or we have No, no, we should we should vote on 12A and then we'll move on to 11B and 12B.

Madame Mayor, members of the council, if I can uh quickly just um reiterate that the city council is requested to consider for this item 12A, adopting resolutions 2026 R5 through R8. Those are attached to the staff report and appropriating budget adjustments and appropriations in the amount of $310,000 for special election costs as well as anticipated litigation costs. In addition, the other requests um that's in the staff report as well is city council may discuss and determine uh whether the city council should submit an argument in favor of a ballot proposition to be included in the ballot booklet for the June election if if that's of interest. And then there's a timeline in the staff report with key dates for reference of when those those items are due. So we're available to answer any additional questions.

May I Mayor Gang? Uh I'll just try to keep this simple because there's still a bunch of speakers and a bunch of items.

Um I mean first thank you for our speakers or residents for coming out. you know your passion really show and this is the third fourth time now maybe fifth if I lost track so I thank you for coming out and it is a critical issue it is a pertinent issue that's why there everyone's so passionate about this uh and I want to kind of keep this simple and if you you know you understand we also have a duty of care and I think Carl explained some of that some of the clarifications on how the issue you know how we got to this timeline today I actually have just uh one question in terms of the the one anchor question on the ballot measure. I mean, I did a quick Google and it basically said data centers are approximately 100,000 square feet and higher and I, you know, one acre is a lot smaller, but I'm okay with tweaking that language as needed. And I'm going to rely on our city attorney to help with crafting out language uh so that we cover data centers that are smaller scale. I don't I don't know what the square footage is, but if we can tweak that and madame mayor, members of the council, I I think it's it's easy editing. I think we actually have a PowerPoint somewhere that shows the language. Can we edit that so everyone can see what we're doing? That's the ballot question. Oh, you just have the ballot question. Okay, you can take that down. The ballot question doesn't help. So, do you have a staff report on on that computer?

Wait, actually, council member, just before we continue, it is almost 11. Do Mayor, do we need to extend? Yeah. Would you like to make the motion? Oh, sure. Okay. Um, let's see. I make a motion. Don't kill me. Uh, we extend the council meeting to 12:30. All right. Oh, okay. I'll second. Okay. All right. Council member W seconds. Let's vote. Approved unanimously. Unanimously. Plenty of time for the further public comment.

So, while we're working on putting up the actual language, um, let me just verbalize it and then we can hopefully get that up fairly quickly. Uh so right now the prop the draft language which reflects again I had mentioned at the outset it simply reflects the definition that already exists within the municipal code. So that's where this language is derived from. Um right now it says all data centers are prohibited throughout the city. Period. Data center means a building dedicated space within a building or group of structures located on one or more acres of land. So we would strike that particular language uh used to house large uh group of network computer systems. And then the definition continues. And then the last sentence says, "This definition does not apply to smaller data processing facilities that are located on less than one acre of land and where such facilities are accessory or incidental to another primary purpose." So, you could take out that sentence as well. um if there were unintended consequences that we weren't aware of at the time that that this were to go onto the ballot and be approved by voters. That's why there's also authority within the proposition to allow the city council to clean up any uh ambiguities through its own zoning regulations that it could could adopt after the the ballot proposition was adopted. I think that answers your question and perhaps once we get it can we can show what I'm talking about.

It does. So I'm in support of kind of allowing Carl to treat that language after discussion from council of course um on that square on that one acre language. Uh

so maybe we can whoever's controlling this can just highlight what I mentioned. So it's that last sentence correct that would be taken out and then um after the in the first sent or in the second sentence where it says structures located you take out located on one or more acres of land and strike out that language. Carl, while we're on that language, u I just want to make sure to your point around unintended consequences, right? We we have servers here at city hall. There are businesses that have servers. I just want to make sure schools have servers. I can imagine East LA College having computer science classes or whatever and having some sort of compute thing there or something else on corporate center, Monterey Pass Road, Saturn Park potentially in the future, somewhere else in the city. I want to make sure we're not going to automatically exclude potential businesses or other uses that we do want would want to have come to the city. Um, and that even already exists in the city. Uh, and from my understanding what you're saying, there's flexibility for the city to make sure that that's not going to be the case.

Correct. So, remember going back to my description of the land use element as being the land use constitution for for uh the city of Monterey Park. If you put that in the context of any other constitution that one is familiar with, it gives you the sort of the broad scope and then whichever legislative body is responsible for implementing that constitution is able to come up with the nitty-gritty so to speak. I'll use the term nitty-gritty. Um, so that that would be the uh delegation of authority to the city council to come up with zoning regulations to make sure that for example we don't have to shut down the police servers here in city hall because it's a data center. Uh we don't want that to happen. So that allows the city council to have a public discussion because again even after this were to be adopted by the voters and the council were to consider the zoning regulations to implement it. We would still have to go through a noticing process that takes noticing of 20 days and have a public hearing and have the public input for all of that before you made a decision with regard to those zoning regulations. So that's already built into California law from the standpoint of of those next steps. I I did remember one extra thing that I wanted to mention about the ballot proposition, which was uh we were directed to put this together on February 4th. And as you can see from the staff report, uh we wanted to give you the opportunity to consider putting this onto the June ballot rather than the November ballot and give you that option. In order to do that, we had to accelerate the time frame within which this came back to the city council. Ordinarily, as some of the speakers have mentioned, the I don't want to have the council or the or the public have the impression that this was a this was a rush, which is why I mentioned that I the definition that's in this ballot proposition already exists within the zoning regulations. And all we've done is taken that definition and put into this ballot proposition. But in order to meet the statutory deadlines, and these are not deadlines that we can change, uh the last day for putting anything onto the June ballot is is day after tomorrow. So, this was the last opportunity for the city council to have to consider putting something onto the

June ballot. And to some of the other speakers points, um the longer that you have to to consider a ballot proposition, let's say you want to put this off until November, that's certainly up to you and you certainly have that ability to do uh but it also gives opponents of any ballot proposition additional time to try to um convince voters not to vote for it. And that's the democratic process. But we want to give the city council the option uh once again to to consider putting it onto the June ballot. Thank you. Appreciate the clarification. I don't know if you had any

Yeah, let me just finish up. I mean I I uh you know my position is pretty clear on this now. Um, we'll we'll vote on this uh depending on how the council kind of fuse on here and I love to submit an an agreement in favor of the ballot proposition on behalf of the city when when we get there. So, all right. Uh, we've answered all of I think most of my questions. If I find any others, I'll pose them to you Carl and uh to the city staff. But I'll just note well one again want to join council colleague u go and thanking everyone who came out tonight and uh previous meetings as well express my appreciation for everyone who's engaging in this process taking time out of your days and your schedules your lives uh to engage in something that you really care deeply about and also encourage you to continue to engage on many other issues that come before the city council uh and that the city has to deal with. There are this is one of this is a obviously a very very important issue. There are other very important issues as well uh that this council has to deal with and would ask for more of our residents to continue to engage on these other things. We'd love to have your feedback on many many other things that the city has to take action on. Uh but thank you so much. encouraging you to see so many people uh show up uh and such a diverse spectrum of the residents here in Mari Park and beyond uh really engaging on something that you care deeply about. Uh I I'll just note upfront I support the items here that are presented before us. Support putting this on the the ballot pro on the ballot for June. I plan to vote for it when it's on the ballot. Uh on item one, I uh would agree with Council Member Go. Uh, I'm okay and agree with taking out or striking the

1acre language in the in the whatever the ballot language. Uh, and to the point that many speakers have made in terms of closing that uh loophole. Uh on number two, I fully support uh and would love to have council member Go uh be the lead author for the ballot argument in favor of uh this ballot measure. Uh assuming it passes and gets on the ballot tonight. Uh I'd be happy and would be proud to join Council Go in signing that ballot argument. I believe there's up to five that can do that. Uh and that would be printed along with the ballot, the sample ballot that sent out to all voters, I believe. Um, and then would I support uh the approval of the $310,000 for uh both the election costs and for potential anticipated litigation costs. At least hopefully we don't have to expend that, but uh we'll see.

And and if I could just jump in on the on the litigation issue. Uh this seems like a great time for me to report out of of close session that the the city council authorized me to initiate litigation against anyone uh specifically HMC Strat Cap in the event that any litigation was filed against the city and has authorized me to expend what is necessary in order to defend the city in that matter. uh to address kind of the other point that uh was made by some of the speakers in terms of adopting an ordinance sooner than the ballot measure potentially. Uh just to be clear right the moratorum if is which is not this item but the previous item if that were to pass or the coming item I guess uh were to pass right there would be no a data center could not get built or even start the process of potentially getting approved in the city as long as the mortoriums in place is that right

madame mayor members of the council that's correct and you know there is no I mean there's an application that's on file but there's no pending public hearing date. It was voluntarily taken out of rotation by that particular applicant. Uh this goes back to my overall observation about the threats of litigation. So I I city is not processing anything. There will be no public hearing scheduled during the moratorum. Um there will be no further action taken with regard to any application that is has filed or is is currently being uh or on file. And then uh one of the other speakers I think mentioned the need to well many speakers but one in particular mentioned uh talking about if this goes on the ballot helping to educate voters or residents in the city about this. Can you remind us about the rules around what city resources public resources can be spent on uh elections and what we can and can't do? Madame Mayor, members of the council, let me first preface that with most meetings are are great because you never hear from the city attorney, which means they're going very well. So, uh, again, I apologize for for hogging the the floor on this one. Um, yes, once the ballot propos once the proposition is put onto the ballot, no public resources can be made for advocacy. And that includes, for example, ballot arguments being drafted by whomever you authorize, whether it's the city council or whomever. uh public resources resources cannot be used for that. Uh campaign is campaigning is not allowed during for example public comment during next regular council meetings after it's been put onto the onto the ballot. Um and those caveats will be announced during those meetings just to remind everybody what the rules of the road are.

But the council or the city can educate residents that there is an election coming up and what is Yes. I'm sorry. I I it's to to council member Low's point, it's getting late. So, um yes, you the public resources may be used to educate the public, providing objective information about how the ballot proposition uh is voted upon, what its implications are. There simply cannot be advocacy for or against any particular ballot proposition.

Thank you. Well, assuming well, if if this passes tonight, I hope uh would hope to direct staff to make sure that we're doing that communication that we're doing that through whatever channel is available to the city to make sure that residents are aware that there is a measure for the city on the ballot for June in a special election. Uh obviously the need is clear from the speakers tonight and from the past council meetings as well uh that we need to do and we're always open to to improving but whatever we can do to continue to and to expand our communication and education efforts with the community that this is going to be up for a decision by voters in the city. Let's do that. Whether that's Cascades, electronic communications, others, uh would love to make sure we're doing that. um in terms of the the trying to adopt an ordinance before the ballot measure. Appreciate the legal um argument there and your explanation trying to offer some clarity. uh totally understand that from a practical standpoint my at least correct me if I'm wrong in my understanding the moratorum if extended tonight in the other item uh would not allow right we've already said wouldn't allow any data center proposal to be submitted or to be processed uh and then that would take us through if the current timeline in the previous the other item uh beyond the June election so we'll know the outcome of that election which is three months away uh it would almost a month to do that and to effectuate an ordinance prior to the election. Anyway, from that timeline, uh I'd rather direct staff to if this can work, if this we can do this, uh I'd rather direct staff to begin working on ordinance language to be adopted as soon as possible after the June election. Uh so that

well as you've as we've already laid out we can't adopt anything tonight and there's nothing to do for probably close to a month.

So I support directing staff to begin that or drafting that orange language. I don't know how long that actually takes. uh and to begin to effect well do the work to bring that back to the city council as soon as possible after the or if there's an election to make sure that we're effectuating that as quickly as possible to address many of the concerns that were laid out by by the speakers as well in terms of if this passes in June there's as little delay as possible and make sure it's implemented but also want Carl if you can clarify that there is no even if if this measure does pass in June that doesn't mean there's a open period right between then and when an ordinance is actually adopted that a data center could sneak in.

Uh madame mayor, members of the council, to answer that question first, no, because the moratorium would be in place, we wouldn't be processing anything. In any event, uh, as as we're spitballing here though, there you could conceivably direct us to to draft ordinance language in anticipation of the ballot proposition passing, go through the process to adopt it, and have the effective date be the same date that the election results are certified, and that ballot proposition becomes effective. um that would sort of be cutting in the middle of of what has been advocated tonight by many of the speakers um versus your observations on on the timing of things. So something else to consider, not to muddy the waters, but uh at least then we could be commence the process and it would cut down on the timeline um after the ballot proposition were presumably adopted. So we wouldn't have to go through the noticing provisions afterward to further extend the timeline for the data center regulations. So we could would have those in essence adopted and they would take effect the same day. So that's something else to to consider.

All right. Thanks.

Okay. Thank you Carl for all of that clarification. Uh I also wanted to thank everyone who came out tonight. Uh in particular I I I saw a lot of kids. I I noticed there are some kids over here and some more over there. Uh it really goes to show that a lot of parents and a lot of families are very interested and are very concerned about what is happening in our city. So I really appreciate the parents uh who came out tonight and made that time and brought their kids with them as well. Um I think for me as a parent and uh of three daughters and but also uh as a teacher um it gives me hope that not only is civic engagement alive and well, but that um families really care and and I think that's important in terms of maintaining our democracy. So I wanted to thank you guys uh tonight for for doing that. Uh I'm also in favor of item 12 uh A uh putting a ballot proposition with the amendments that uh both uh council member Go and uh uh council member Wong have already uh mentioned. Um I did want to um also share um because there's so many people who came and and there was a person who who spoke earlier and I jotted down her name. Her name was Jessica J. And um and she talked about uh the people who can't vote. Um the people who um uh who are young and don't have a voice because they because voting gives you a voice. Uh the elderly who can't make it out uh because uh because they can't um and so or or undocumented people, people whose uh citizenship status uh is dubious and can't vote. Uh, and so I wanted to thank Jessica for sharing that because I um it made me think of um and I wanted to thank all of you guys who uh emailed us hundreds of times because it gave me a lot of things to read uh at night. But there was uh one letter that

I got um that I wanted to read to you tonight very quickly uh from a fourth grade student. Uh and she emailed me and she and she said, "I I had to write a persuasive uh essay and I decided to write it on data centers and I hope you'll listen." And she said she titled her essay data center. She said, "Have you ever heard the sound of a data center? It's like the sound of a very large vacuum cleaner, but non-stop. It's a vacuum noise every day and every night. Many people dislike the noise going on non-stop. I don't think we should have a data center in Monterey Park. Many people think the same thing. And here are the reasons why. The first reason is because it takes up a lot of energy. point. We need energy to power our lights, heat our rooms, cook dinner, and lots of other things that are key things to our survival. If we didn't have as much electricity as now, we might have a blackout, become super cold at night, and have to eat cold food, disgusting food. The second reason is because it takes a lot of fresh water. We need water for many things. We needed to wash our clothes, wash our hands, wash ourselves, do the dishes, boil food, and stay hydrated. If we didn't have enough water, it could cause a drought. It could cause our plants to wilt. We could get sick from not washing our hands. We could get an infection. If we don't clean our wounds, uh we might become dehydrated as well. The last two reasons are because it takes up a lot of space and it makes a terrible noise. This the noise sounds like a large vacuum cleaner. As I mentioned earlier, it's like there's a large vacuum machine in your backyard every day and every night. It uses up a lot of space as well. We could use the space for lots of different things that are better for our city. We could use that space for things

we don't have that we desperately need. I hope that you will consider these reasons that I have stated today. And I think about the consequences of having a data center in our city. Thank you for re Thank you for reading this. a very concerned Monterey student named Eva. It reminded me because of my daughter. My daughter's in third grade. She's not in fourth grade, but I think that's something she would probably write too. And it hit home for me. Um I think if we're already considering and I want to touch on the so separate from 12A um if we already thinking about potentially drafting ordinance language um to have whether the ballot measure passes or not um whether it's in June so that it's ready to be passed. um if we're already heading in that direction, I don't understand um why we would want to do it later rather than earlier.

I think I think we're already heading in the right direction. I think we're all on the same boat. Um I I can imagine we're we're all on this Noah's Arc boat here, but we're heading in different directions, but I think we can steer this uh the right way. Um I I I personally um would like to see if we're already drafting an ordinance uh in the future um for it to come back to council um with haste.

Yeah. So I think the earliest would be in 20 days. So possibly um uh for the council to consider. And I think to Carl's point in terms of the I know you said not just the the belts and suspenders but the girdle as well.

The girdle. Um I think uh that any if if we are very serious about banning data centers in our cities because it's not a right fit for Monterey Park. Um then I think that we need to take every possible precaution to do that. And I think that's what we said. So, I would I would like to entertain a motion to uh also consider a an ordinance uh be that can be uh prepared by staff uh to be brought back to the city council for consideration um as quickly as possible.

That's it for me. Thank you. Are we are we are we going to is this part of uh 12A or are we are we I did I did 12 but I'm just making up for recommendation. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Well, I do also want to thank everyone for coming out tonight um to speak their mind about this issue. And let me say this is that you know certainly you know as council members when we make land use decisions we you know we do have to weigh in you know economic benefits as well as the quality of life issues long-term and short term and whether or not um also you know what we're bringing in these industries whether or not they will have positive impact and whether or not they're sustainable and I think that a lot of comments has been made and I think these comments are very valid that you know you're talking about an industry um at least from what I've researched has looked at um an industry that has and by some estimates uh spent up to$4 trillion dollars of AI related infrastructure and yeah this is probably very im reminiscent of the.com boom of early 2000 we know how that went um not to mention the market valuations um which also have soared probably in the trillions of dollars again whether or or not these are investments for actual realized growth or they're just you know um numbers on a piece of paper and and again we all know how a lot of these specul speculative um investments go not to mention um you know there have been reports about whether or not AI has had actually meaning meaningful impact on earnings performances um and frankly probably why there's a lot of skepticism so I think that given that um we have an industry which I think has u cast so much doubt. So then at least for me you know I can't see um whether or not this is something we should even consider and that's why I support 12A certainly um you know putting this on the ballot um as soon as possible and um I would also say too that and again thank you Carl um and my

colleagues for bringing up kind of how we can inform and educate the residents as well. Um, and what I would also say is that I think, you know, as my friend Katherine said, it's true. I mean, when this is on the ballot, I mean, this is something where the community does have to come together, work together to make sure it it's it's passed. I mean, again, that's something that's not new to this city council when we in the past where we've had um we made decision to put ballot measures, you know, from measure JJ to measure MP to uh uh ballot measures from uh 2024. Again, these do not just happen in a vacuum. I mean, they are uh they are done through organizing and I do agree that that that is this is a a clearing call for us to work together um on this uh item, you know, which I sound like we are going to put on the ballot and um again, that is something that certainly I think all of us are willing to do.

Thank you, Mayor Potam. Well, residents across Monterey Park as well as community members around the St. Gabriel Valley have spoken loudly and clearly over the past several months. Many of you have written to us, attended meetings, and shared your concerns about the potential impacts of data centers in our community. I want you all to know that I hear you. We hear you. And I appreciate the civic engagement we are seeing from our residents. It's our responsibility as council to represent our constituents. and my priority remains in protecting the health, safety, and quality of life of the residents we serve. As a result, I am also in favor of approving the June ballot measure, including closing the two loopholes and instructing staff to immediately give 20 notice to pass a a city ordinance. So, I would like to second Council Member Sanchez's motion and put it to a vote.

Yes. All right. And just FYI, a little thank you does go a long ways. Thank you, John. Thank you, Roxanna, and everyone who were nice to us. It does go a long ways. It's not easy sitting up here. All right, let's vote. Approve your network.

We still have more agenda items, so let's have a see. I still have a stack of more public comments. Before we continue though, actually before we continue, I also make comments. So, you know, again to our friends from, you know, the different labor associations again understand that, you know, we still want to work together because we're all in this together. We regarding economic development and hopefully that we can continue work together, our friends in labor. But I will say though that when you make threats like, well, you know, our members will walk. I'm like, well, I think so. the other 10,000 residents and plus for this ballot measure. Just remember that, Madam Mayor. Sorry.

Okay. Um the there's a few other items that we'd like to make sure that the council um votes on. It's in the staff report. It's under the consideration. So, um we understood you want us to bring back the ordinance in 20 days. We want to make sure that we're also adopting the resolutions as indicate as attached to the staff report and also approving the budget um allocation. Yeah. Everything in 12. I'm sorry. And the amendment to the language that was on the screen that removes the one acre. Correct.

That's we want to make sure. So, we need we need a follow-up vote, I believe, to grab the rest of the items that we we didn't adhere. So, we just want to make sure that it's being inclusive of everything that's in the staff uh report. All right. and amendment to council member go moves council member one seconds let's vote again to encompass everything

approved unanimously okay now we can move to 11B. So 11B I think I only have two comment cards. Is that right? 11B. Oh, there's more. Oh, okay. More came in since the beginning of the meeting. All right, let's start with uh see George Bokeam, LSTO, Joyce Vega, John Shira, and Paul Lang. If anyone is still here, please come to the podium. Good evening council. I am here to talk about the uh mitigated negative declaration and why it's important to put a moratorum on data center. Um I don't know if you guys read it read it in detail. 152 pages. Um mayor please look this way. I'm talking to you. It's 156 pages um dated October 2024. And what was missing from that is this magic word called power usage effectiveness. PUE that standard was established in 2006 to deal with data center. It is to find out how much energy a data center uses. In this case, if you look at the report um from Kimley Horn, they claim a number of 49.9 which is understated. And the reason why it's understated is any usage over 50

megawws has to go through the approval of the CPU. the California Public Utilities Commission, the California Energy Commission, California Independent Grid Operator. So basically, it would have required an environmental impact report. The reason why this M&D was produced the way it was and you guys all fell for it was because it was to avoid an EIR and would it would have picked up all these environmental issues. One of them would be an urban heat island. And what that is is the energy emitted the the heat emitted from the electrical usage would have created a heat cloud which would be approximately 5 kilometer or 3 miles from the data center. So it would have impact as far north as Hillrest and into Montabelloo. So now inadvertently you guys have dragged Montabelloo into this. Okay. Additionally, they claimed this air chiller chiller project would have reduced the air. They base those number on a cooler environment. Monter Park is in a dry Mediterranean climate. We're in zone 10b. Our ambient temperature is approximately 75° a year. There is no possible mechanical way that they could have met the 49.9 megawatt. it. I did a calculation and it was consistently over 54 and on hot days on heatwave it was close to 64 and we do have heatwave. Councilman Vo last year and August 21st 2025 you tweeted out heatwave Monterey Park come to landing center cooling center. Well that day it would have hit 64 megawws and with that

said this project would have never bypassed an ER. So that was the reason why this MMD was projected. I don't know how you missed it. I think you all need a master class on energy consumption, data center, and technology. I used to work for Edison. I'm also in public policy. I'm in Sacramento, San Francisco. and council member Thomas Wong just told him that's who I am and currently I'm trying to get you money for a pool and you never call me back. So see this is what I do. I've also interned for a law firm Munger toen which is a comp competitor to the attorneys that just left.

So where's their army now? They want to sue, let them come. You guys have the power of a joint power authority. You guys can educate yourself to defend yourself. What is happening here is that they gave you information and it's called material misrepresentation. That's a legal term. You have two attorneys on this on up here on the dice. You know that this is defensible. But thank you so much. I gotta get home because I gotta get to work.

And just to clarify, this is um for 11B consideration and possible action to conduct a public hearing to extend and amend urgency ordinance number 2272 to place a general moratorium on data centers.

On 11B on item three, taking such additional related actions that may be desirable. Mayor Yang, Mayor Promlo, council members, my name is John Chira. Um, I wish to speak on additional related actions to be desirable. You are not alone. There are a multitude of other communities that are currently suffering right now due to data centers that we have data, measurable data on that the community members have all doing on their own. And what's upsetting is that there is multiple uh data that other people could have used to research the city of Monterey Park and other lowincome diverse communities that you may have been targeted. I wish to address that um this is an attack. This was a planned attack that is continuing inside of this uh United States uh by not just our administration which is actually pushing for data to over overwhelm our citizens but also um it's a problem attack by data itself. Data states that it's going to replace all uh you know uh labor and but then where do our children grow and learn? um where do we teach a youth how to become electricians in their own right, how how to be uh CAD engineers or specialists in their own fields. Um but then in correlation there is another thing that's currently happening inside of these exact same communities which is ICE which excuse me which has been actively stealing our people buying up detention centers concentration camps all across the United States something to 45 billion dollars worth which this is legalized

slave labor which is going to fill the gap when data when AI bubble pops because it can't do the work what people do and this is what AI is it is a constant theft it is a theft of images it is a theft of ideas even the most innovative things which which that tries to promise itself that scientifically has discovered things over seven years has used the amount of energy of that seven years worth of water that could have gone to our lungs our breath bre our lives and it is stealing it actively and adamantly. And when you hear everyone so mad is it because it's just because it's obvious. I have tried my best to speak personally and it is very difficult to speak to you all now because you are my neighbors because you are my council members because you are my community. I am third generation resident of Monterey Park. My mom is a mile from the carcinogens that will kill her. And I don't know how to be calm and clear in speaking that we are under attack. And this is what I'm here to say. I'm trying in my best effort with what voice I have to clearly admonish this this administration and the technocrats that are targeting you and your children and all of us. This is abhorrent behavior that that is trying its best to say that it's just a cloud that's not responsible. You know, AI is just going to be the next thing, a multi-t trillion dollar um uh race. But it's not. It is trillions that billionaires are doing in their best effort to contain and control us, our labor, our rights, our water, our land, our earth. And all we can do in our best

effort is trying to find the legal ease to protect ourselves. This is the year of the horse. Your steps are supposed to be fiery. You cannot be timid in in in your capacity to save yourselves and your friends and your neighbors and your loved ones. This is not a simple measure, but I'm saying that you're not alone. In efforts to try and speak out against these detention centers, I I implore you to reach out to the other communities that have been affected actively, to the other communities that have been targeted. What data is there that has been targeting each and every one of you currently by these data centers by by this administration by by the billionaire technocrats that are that are trying to own this world. I am I am asking you to not look lightly at what's happening and to call this terrorism for what it is. This is technocrats against the working class. This this is this is us the people trying to hold close to our future our water and our rights. Please just just consider helping.

Thank you.

Let me call a few more names. Macy Godfrey Washer, Jose Pena, Sam Mau, Tommy Zilamski or Zamsai,

Paul Lang, Monterey Park resident. I'd like to thank all of the people that spoke before me on behalf of our community for saying everything I wanted to say much better. Uh the only thing I'd like to add at this point is two meetings ago residents made it very clear that they not did not want just a 45day moratorum. They wanted a permanent ban. It sounds like the mechanism to do that in addition to a ballot measure was also an ordinance rather than a extension of the moratorum. While to respect the uh attorney's metaphor of adding the girdle to the belts and suspenders approach, I like the image. It's funny. Um I do wish that we had not delayed the opportunity to call for an ordinance two meetings ago or last meeting, both of which would have allowed that 20-day notice. A lot of us in the community are still learning the process that has to be followed for these meetings. I'm willing to be educated, not just by our council, but by our our community. I'm listening to what everyone has to say, including sometimes people I disagree with on the other side of this issue. But let's not miss any other opportunities, such as we could have already called for the ordinance in time for it to be voted on this meeting. I don't know what else can be done to strengthen the case to add another layer of clothing to protect our community. But please, if the council knows of any other mechanisms, don't say stay silent about our options. And for everyone in the community who hasn't stayed silent, you have my immense gratitude as well as to everyone who spoke from our neighboring communities. Thank you.

Good evening. I am back. Uh I I resonate the same thing. Basically we have uh already talked about what we have talked about and it is not uh what to do now is how to do it. And I think that you have the tools, you have the knowledge, you have everything that you know and you heard all of us where we stand about the data center issues. So now what left to be done is just for you to take action and we're going to pull ourselves together and get that going and um be transparent. if you come into any kind of roadblocks, you know, let's have a meeting. Let's have a conversations so we can get to where we need to be. Okay. All right. And I appreciate your time. I appreciate your listening to us, giving us a forum to talk about this. Um, we care about this outcome because it will be in, you know, it will change us forever. It is something so urgent and normally I don't come to this council meetings but I made it a point to be here tonight because it is impacting life not just my life but the next generations and the ones after. So, um, let's be very clearhead about this and, um, I appreciate you for being here and representing us and getting this going. And I think banning the loopholes is more important to have this moratorum to contingency of having them to put a foot in. Um, I think it's clearcut that we need to get them out completely forever so we don't have to deal with it. So we can focus on making something for the city. That part of lands a lot

of good things can go into it. Other business and we can put our heads together and try to figure out what would be beneficials to the cities. Okay. something good, not something that's going to destroy this and many generations to come. So, thank you and thank you tonight. Okay. Good evening, council members. My name is Jose Pina with Creed LA. We support responsible community benefiting developments, projects that come with strong rules and enforcement and trust in the process. We need to have trust in the process and that's perhaps the bigger issue. The city initially directed the applicant down an M &D path. Then came political pressure and the city shifted to a full EIR. After that, a targeted moratorum was adopted and now tonight we've moved on to a special election. From a certain perspective, that looks like moving the goalposts. This uncertainty and inconsistency hurts planning and investment, especially when a project is attempting to do things the right way. If the city believes the project is incompatible, then say so through the entitlement findings. What doesn't build trust is requiring an applicant to spend time on an EIR while simultaneously advancing policies that would make that EIR pointless. It can feel like the process is being used as a tool, not as a good faith pathway. We need to have a consistent entitlement process that the community can trust and that evaluates each and every project fairly and consistently. Thank you.

Let me call you more names. Robert Miranda, Alan Roso, Jessica J, Sylvia CS, Juan Delara.

So my name is Godfrey Washiro and I'm also with Creed LA. uh and we maintain our position or no on the moratorum and yes on an I for the Satan project cuz the reason why we on the moratorum or uh is because there was a data center project that was that was proposed and that's why we're here. So inherently we'll talk about the about the project and we're here to ask you to provide leadership on this issue and allow the entitlement process to proceed because it's the fair and just thing to do for such a highly subjective issue. The process should play out so that decisions are made based on substantial evidence within the record. That's the legal standard. That's a good policy standard that is adopted. And not calling you out, Madame Mayor, but in the January meeting, you said that you made your decision based on the evidence in front of you, which was just one side that had presented, but there was an there was a sorry, sorry, I have a cold. Uh, but there was another side that was never given a chance to speak. The voice had never been has been shut out, and it's your staff. It is the planners and experts who spent hundreds of hours using the expertise to establish the facts, put together the record and make recommendations. And I never had a presentation by staff on that project at any one time. Not in the December meeting, not in the January meeting. and and based on the substantial evidence that is facts, reasonable inferences from facts and expert opinion based on the facts which is the legal standard. The staff in the December uh December 3rd uh staff report actually did

recommend approval of the project, right? And we support that position because the reality is that there are many data centers in Southern California. There's actually one very huge data center in downtown LA. Hundreds and thousands of people walk by that data center, work near that data center, live near that data center. There's been never I've never read a report of cancer clusters that have been found because of that data center. Right. I've never heard of reports of noise pollution coming out of that da which is way larger than the one proposed here. And the one proposed the certain one was technologically way more advanced with more uh with the energy consumption and water consumption being way lower. Right? The air emissions were being controlled a lot more with this one. So with an older one, we haven't even seen electricity. haven't heard of electricity bills by downtown residents complaining that their bills have gone up or that their water bills have gone up or that people are lacking water yet there is a huge data center and it's not one downtown LA alone has very many data centers there I'm just talking about one very huge one we'll share one or whatever it is right those those are the facts right when we are making decisions make decisions based on facts not on speculation, not on narratives. And and it's clear and actually this I'm quoting the staff report for December 3rd that you make decisions not based on not based on narratives, not based on speculation, not based on arguments. You b you make decisions based on facts, right? Evidence within the record. And and that's why the and like my colleague also was talking about the e uh about the entitlement process. The entitlement

process is there for that. Like he said, if there was substantial evidence in the record that this project was not a good project, you could have simply denied it, right? Wouldn't have had to go through all this. You could have simply denied it because that's the process. That's that's the institutional process that we have put even for projects like this cuz I know you guys have gone through other highly controversial projects. You didn't go banning high-rise buildings or or a building that people are objecting to because that one thing was presented. There is a process. Let's follow the process. We don't have to go changing the rules along the way. Trust the process. It's there, right? And and and I'll say these partly as policy scholar, right? Who uh I I used to teach uh introduction to public policy, right? and and as a political scientist, it's about institutions. Institutions is what brings stability and makes society predictable. That's where there's a process. Let's follow it. Thank you and God bless you. 50.

Hi, good evening. My name is Sylvia and I am here speaking from my son tonight. He is currently working a job a job in fat food job that he does not like much. He found out out about this opportunity to become a union a appren appren apprentice apprentice um in the city we love and live in. He understand that working in our city is only temporary but is a way into the union that will create more opportunities in the future. Right now we are only return renters but his goal is to purchase a home here in the future. Please say no to the moratorum. Thank you.

I'll be brief, I swear. Let me call a few more names. Um, Patricia Poon, Ivonne Wong, Andrea Vega, Cindy Alvarado, and Ben uh Steckler. May I? Yes. Name? My name is Juan and I'm here asking you to oppose this moratorum. Considering this is not a public land, I think the proposed project benefits outweigh any specula speculated negatives. This is an opportunity for the city to to get the tax revenue that might not be available ever again. Please oppose this moratorum and thank you so much for your time. Bye.

Good evening. My name is Ben Steckler. I was asked by some of the uh representatives here of your community tonight to come in as a planning professional and give my opinion to them and to you. And after hearing the discussions between the shock and awe campaign that happened earlier tonight and this uh current proposal, I'd say that it worked and all that they've been trying to get done is being done. So, I thank you for that. each and every one of you and I'd like to say that in support of some that had to leave tonight please continue the moratorum stop the data center process stop the the potential for them to come into your community and thank you very much for the efforts and the discussion that we heard earlier tonight and I will continue to help them understand that you are doing the process that is required by law and thank you for doing that have a wonderful Uh, Laura Coiler, Morish, Mimi Lee, uh, I think we did Macy already. Samuel N, Kerry, and Veto Basuto. Hi, Mayor and council members. I I just want to let you know I do hope you will support the moratorum because that will be a foolproof way of not letting any other data centers to come in because I have found out that that three more uh parcels of land in Saturn Park is being now marketed as potential data centers.

Right. So it's very disturbing. So I think by the moratorum you will be able to stop it and um that will do our city good. Thank you. Good evening everyone. My name is Veta Pasutto. I am a representative of Anchor Church. From our perspective, data centers are powerful tools of stewardship and service from schools, education, work, family connections and community. Even charitable works for Dana centers allow community um communications across the world to connect and grow prosperous. These resources centers will when guided by responsibility and compassion can be instruments of service, wisdom, and a powerful force for the common good. Let's work. Let's work to keep our hearts and mind open to building projects to help people thrive. Thank you and God bless you. Good evening everyone. My name is Samuel and I'm a longtime resident of both Alhamra and Monterey Park, 46 years. And I'm here today because I don't support this monitorium. And uh some of the things I see out when I'm I'm out of town is uh I see lots of kids on on their tablets, tablets that their parents bought them. And what are those kids doing? They're streaming. I also know that lots of residents in this area buy and sell online. I see the trucks delivering all the items daily. And I know for sure that everybody uses digital services here, right? Everybody uses them. So, uh I support this project. And uh that's all I have to say. Thank you. Good night, everyone. Richard Choy, Dave Jones, David Hansen,

Kathy Wilson, Brian Marsh, Jim Pew, Amar Marowa. Carrie,

hi council. Um, Carrie Moric resident. So, I know it's late and I'm really sorry to be getting into the weeds with the language of the moratorum extension, but with my legal background and and detail orientedness, I just uh feel I need to express these things in order to strengthen the ordinance as written. Uh so what I did was I compared the 45day moratorum ordinance to the one that we have today and I also uh found some other issues. Um the first point is on section 2C if you could amend that language to be consistent with urgency ordinance number 2272. I thought that language was helpful at the end of section C to say to add such regulations were first considered by the city council on November 6th, 2024 and should be re-examined to protect public health, safety, and welfare. The city requires additional time to study which regulations are in the public interest. I think that's helpful language that we had before that um somehow was deleted. Um the second point is in section three. I think there are additional bases that we could use for SQA not applying and we could also request that staff file a notice of exemption. What the notice of exemption does is it reduces the statute of limitations to raise a secret challenge from 180 days to 35 days. So the things I'm asking to be added are at the and in section 3 is that under SQL guidelines sections 15307 and 15308 um that the ordinance is adopted to protect natural resources and the environment by preventing potential environmental impacts associated with new data center uses including impacts upon energy use, noise and air quality. I took those from the findings. Uh while the city studies what regulations are

appropriate and it does not authorize any physical development. Uh next on section 4 C uh this was what I had uh mentioned at the time of the last moratorum adoption was that at the end of section C that language that directs a city manager or designate to require that any applicant with a pending data center application prepare an EIR that that is um inconsistent with the purpose of the moratorum which is to place a pause on all pro the processing of pending and acceptance of new applications. So, we would want to delete that and that was the language the council did delete at the last meeting from the prior ordinance. Uh lastly in section 4E um regarding what the city manager and city attorney are being asked to do. Um last time the the language I have there in strikeout uh was uh stricken out and I think the language indicated something about um considering the ban. Um I drafted this before because I thought this item was going before 12b. Um, you could either say, uh, city manager and city attorney are directed to, um, consider regulations. I'm going to change it based on council's action in 12A to consider, um, uh, regulations needed to ban data centers uh, within Saturn Park as well as citywide to protect the public interest, health, safety, and welfare. Um, and you can see those other little changes there. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Wayne. I knew I would need this. Honorable council members, I promise I will be brief, but I just want to say uh I'm here to support the extension of the moratorum. Um the facts are the initial study in MMD were deeply flawed. The facts regarding the 83,000 million metric tons of CO2 alone prove that. I won't go over the details. As far as the data center in downtown Los Angeles is concerned, DWP electricity rates just went up 17% year-over-year. So, if Creed hasn't heard people complaining, it's because they haven't bothered to ask them. I also want to thank the council for listening to the voice of the people and voting unanimously to have staff prepare an ordinance to ban data centers in Monterey Park. I also want to thank the council members who have spoken to me both publicly and privately about this issue and the future of our city. I have great faith in all of you and that our future indeed is so bright. It might be so bright I will have to wear shades. Finally, I want to say that I participated in the spark meetings and I can say unreservedly they were not an attempt to sneak data centers into the city through the back door. They were an attempt to figure out

what the future of Saturn Park should be and it is a future that we will have to take up as soon as we get through this process and ensure that data centers are not part of that future and I look forward to that as well. Thank you very much council for listening to us tonight and for doing what's right for the city. Evening, council member. My name is Richard Chow. I'm a member of the sheet metal workers local 105. I was born and raised in Monterey Park and I still live 5 miles from here. Uh enlisted in the Navy back in 1998. uh served six years, two of which deployed during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Iraq um enduring freedom. Uh I'm a disabled veteran and uh the sheet metal trade was a great option for me due to the lot of the disabilities that I had and it's a great opportunity just like the lady who got up here. Uh I appreciate everybody not heckling me tonight like the last meeting. Um and it's nice to see how my neighbors treated me. Um, I was called a trader. But it's weird because when your city buildings ACs don't work, who do you call? Us. So, everybody loves the juice, but they don't like how it's squeezed down to that thousand information machine sitting in your pocket that was built by slaves in China, right? So, it's very odd this argument that people have, right? I looked it up on AI of a data center. Ridiculous. I was one of the people who built some of the data centers in downtown. And yes, at what expense? The same

thing. The same thing. The capabilities of everybody getting on ring when Spectrum's not operating at the speed that you desire or when Mr. Gamer Guy's ping rate is under 15 milliseconds. Like, what are we doing? This is insane. All I'm asking is to say no against the moratorum. Have options. Give people opportunities. College isn't always the option for everyone. Labor unions, this is what we do. And as a member of my labor union, I'm going to fight for my members to have a job to work at. Thank you very much. Uh, John Deb Simone and Renee Palasios.

Good evening, council. My name is Omar and I oppose this moratorum. I run an organization called Def Fighting Chance, an alleywide nonprofit. We work with system impacted youth, young people leaving gang life behind, some who have been through the justice system, and many who have aged out of foster care by providing MMA as rehabilitation. and that's mixed martial arts. So these young people work incredibly hard to turn their lives around, but if real opportunities aren't there afterwards, all that work can go to waste. Programs like ours can help them change direction, but we can only do so much. What they need are real pathways, apprenticeships, jobs, and careers they can build a future on. That's why this project matters. It creates opportunities for atrisisk youth and young people aging out of foster care. And at a time where many companies are turning their backs on people with records and communities of color, the contractors behind this project are doing the right thing by opening their doors to people who are often shut out of opportunity. Please oppose this moratorium. Thank you.

Uh honorable mayor, members of city council, uh thank you for giving me the time to speak again. Um the reason I wanted to come up here and why I put a last minute comment is um Mr. Washira uh the representative from Credle uh makes a good point in acknowledging that facts and evidence should shape council's opinion, but what he fails to realize is that new evidence comes out and affects council's opinion, specifically reported health effects and environmental damage in cities throughout the country. He may be right, but that is under the assumption that HMC provided well-rounded evidence and acted in good faith. Instead, HMC tried to circumvent environmental reporting by submitting an NMD instead of an EIR and then volunteered to do an EIR after public outcry. This moratorium should be permanent and from what I understand, council is initiate initiating legislation in 20 days to outright prohibit data centers. Um to that point, uh if there's potential clarification for why the moratorum would be needed, um once we pass that that resolution in 20 days, um I would appreciate it. Um, other than that, thank you.

Yeah. Right. Not me. Uh, honorable mayor, honorable mayor prom, all members of the council. This is just a point of information. So, I'm on onewilshshire.com on my thousand information device. And I I I just want to point out that um I I'm going back. This is their website. Uh 10 diesel-powered standby generators for 21.6 megawws of capacity. So that's not even close to what we're talking about here. Uh as an example, and by the way, 1977 Saturn, 1980 Saturn are just examples of projects and we can discuss them as examples because we've been presented data on those locations, at least one of them. So I just wanted to make that point too. I am in favor of the moratorum and this says that the it's 32 megawatt capacity at one Wilshire with the potential to expand 16 megawatts to a fort total of 48 megawws which is not as big as even the first project that's being introduced for Saturn Park. So you know look that's just from their website. Maybe it's wrong, maybe it's out of date, but I I I support the moratorum because in addition to the gentleman's point from the sheet metal workers union, once again, great trade. I could really use a sheet metal guy in my kitchen. I it's it's uh it is uh you know, I I have absolutely no problem with the need to build data centers in this world of information. And I have a problem with them being built 65 ft from residential development. It's just and moreover to the gentleman's uh position from Creed about one Wilshire. I mean it's one Wilshire. It's downtown is I think it's the former AT&T building that

used to connect all the calls and stuff because it's also what they're selling here is that they have fiber and carrier access for phone calls and stuff like that. So, and I I'm sorry I haven't been able to do full research on one Wilshire, but it's downtown. The background noise level in downtown is probably 75 dB, maybe more. It's not, you know, I mean, I walk past I walk through Saturn Park every day and it's not that loud. Yes, the freeway gets loud at traffic hours and occasionally there's a train going by and that the LAX flight pattern is there, but it changes. None of that is 247 noise. And therefore, I support 11B the moratorum. Thank you.

Okay. Good morning. Good evening. Or good morning. What is it?

Let's call it good morning. Good morning, mayor and council members. Uh, my name is Renee Palasios and I'm a 37year member of the Iron Workers of Local 433 and I currently serve as a business agent for my union. I'm here today to urge you not to pass the proposed urgency ordinance placing a moratorum on data centers in Monterey Park. I want to be clear if putting a a moratorum on data centers is not just a policy decision. It's a decision that directly affects people, their families, and real local jobs. Every time a new project is delayed and blocked, we lose opportunities for ski skilled workers, many of whom are members of this community. These highpaying union jobs that support families, fund schools, and strengthen the local economy. Our members are proud to work hard and safely and we take care and ensure that every project is done with quality and integrity. A moratorum does not doesn't just pause development. It pauses economic growth and prosperity and Monterey Park residents for Monterey Park residents. I respectfully ask the council to consider the economic cost of this ordinance and I we or local 433 strongly encourage you to allow these projects to move forward so that our union members and the community at large can continue to thrive. Thank you for your time, for your service, and your thoughtful consideration. All right. Any other folks who submitted a public comment card who I haven't called? Because there's a lot who I called who didn't show up. I'm guessing they all went home. All right. Then we'll close the public hearing and uh move to a discussion.

Madame Mayor, members of the council, um Tim does have a very brief presentation on this item just for context.

Mary Yang and honorable council members, I'm Tim How, director of community development. Uh the item is urgency ordinance number 22XX. uh hearing to extend and amend urgency ordinance number 2272 to place a general moratorium on data centers within the city of Monterey Park for 10 months and 15 days. Um as background on January 21st, council adopted ordinance number 2272 establishing a 45day moratorum uh to prohibit processing uh land use applications for data centers within Saturn Park. uh if not extended uh the initial urgency ordinance and moratorum would expire on March 7th. The proposed urgency ordinance would extend uh the moratorum at 10 months and 15 days with an expiration date of January 21st 2027 and would establish a morum on processing data centers within Monterey Park and allow staff to analyze and formulate new regulations at city council's direction. Uh staff implemented the following measures, identifying which zones allow data centers within the city, uh discussing potential revisions to zoning, and modified the urgency ordinance to include a citywide prohibition on data centers. On February 4th, council directed uh staff again to return today uh with additional options to prohibit data center uses and for future land use planning. Um uh SQA we uh SQA um in terms of California environmental quality act we adopted draft urgency ordinance is exempt from further environmental review because it establishes temporary rules and procedures for minor alterations in land use. Um the ordinance therefore is categorically

the ordinance therefore is categorically exempt from further SQA review under guideline section 15305. Further, the adoption and extension of the urgency ordinance is also exempt under SQUA pursuant to guidelines section 15061B3 because the ordinance is for general policies and procedure making. It is recommended that council consider uh one opening the public hearing, taking testimony and documentary evidence, and after closing the hearing and considering evidence um adopt urgency ordinance number 22XX to amend urgency ordinance 2272 to extend the general moratorum on data centers within the city for 10 months and 15 days and take such additional related action that may be desirable. That concludes staff's report. I'm available for any questions. Thank you so much, Tim, for that presentation. Any questions or comments?

Tim, thanks for the orderly timeline and discussion. Appreciate that. Just kind of level set and making sure we go through the procedural process. I think it's already after midnight. So, I thought the train has already left the station on this. We we extended to 12:30. I know, but we're already

the train already left the station for this vote, but we're going to have to vote anyways. Uh, I don't know what to say anymore, but uh, I support this item. Appreciate it. Uh, I want to make a comment because one of the, uh, Paul, I think, is still here. I see him in the back. Um, I support this moratorum. Sounds like it'll be moot once we I assume adopt an ordinance and then I assume also when the the ballot gets passed in June. uh but support making sure we have continued protections. Obviously, this existing moratorum expires just in a few days. Uh Paul made a point or one of the speakers Paul made a point earlier about additional potential measures to protect uh our community against data center development. Uh I will say we're doing I think everything we can from a policy perspective. I'd also note and I echo and encourage and welcome uh the folks that have mentioned making sure that we build something there. Uh and particularly at this point very very likely I think the only thing that will probably get built there is housing. Uh so would encourage folks the most solid way to make sure nothing gets built there is to build something there. Uh and so hope that and it sounds like we will see the results in the next few months especially with the election. Uh the community speak clearly. Uh many have spoken tonight and in the last few months as well about their community's opposition to to data centers and to specific developments here. I'd ask all of us, those of you that are here and those that you have that were here earlier as well, uh to also ask what we what we do want to see, what we do want to build here and encourage you to join me in that conversation uh and to hopefully have a productive conversation in the coming months about what we do want to get built in this area and in other parts of the city as well and hope that we can have a robust quality conversation about moving something forward and building something positive

for the community. So, uh, with that, I'll just add my my, uh, my vote when we're ready to do that for this item.

Same here. Um, thank you, Tim, for the report. Uh, and the timeline, uh, as well. Um, I think council member Wong makes a really good point um in um recommending that whatever we decide to build there if data centers is not one of them that we really uh start looking at how what what else we can uh build there. Um and and I think housing is from what I've heard a lot of you guys uh say housing is an important one and we know the housing crunch that we're already in um as a community and as a city. So, I think that's going to be our our next big battle, but I think we can do it. I support um this item as well. Great.

Yeah. And I echo council member Bers Sanchez when we have the second battle later on this year. I hope everyone of you are as passionate and do come out and support that as well. All right. So, let's uh I'm also in support of 11B. So, let's go ahead and make a motion. Madam Mayor, I Oh, actually, yeah. Car's uh edits. So, we looked at the edits. Tim will I'm happy to elaborate that, tell you which ones were we're in support of.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah, we we received um uh recommendations on some amendments to the proposed uh moratorum or the language of the urgency ordinance and um and staff would recommend uh uh comfort level but the amendments to section 4 C uh essentially which is uh omitting the sentence starting with accordingly the city manager designate is directed to require that any applicant uh prepare an EIR uh to the end of that sentence in section 4 C as well as uh the recommended changes to section 4E uh regarding language with what the city manager and city attorney u would be doing would be accomplishing

and madame mayor members of the council we are in discussions with with Mr. how with regard to the mechanisms for filing notices of exemption. So correct that that's actually something that we will be doing also. With that I'll make the motion. I'll second. Thank you. Let's vote approved unanimously. Thank you.

We're not done. All right. We have one more item. Oh, we have more items. We have Oh, yeah. Well, one more item and you guys will probably leave us and then we'll continue our business. Okay. Okay. You're welcome to stay. 12B. Consideration of letter of support for California Assembly Bill 1577 and California Senate bills 886, 887, and 978. Let's see how many comment cards we have. Oh, okay. Less than I expected.

Uh, Laura Quer, Morish, Ben Deckler, Samuel N. Sam K.

Good evening once again and thank you for your patience with us this evening. Um, again, we support the uh item 12B and your approval thereof in order to make sure that we solidify uh no data centers in residential areas and support for the state in making uh similar actions to what the city is doing already this evening. So, thank you very much for your time and your consideration. Have a wonderful evening. Um, any other Yes.

Hey everyone, I'm Sam. Um, I know it's been a long night. I'll try to be quick on this one. Um, f first of all, I just want to say thank you guys for everything you've been doing tonight. Just your patience and everything. Really appreciate everything. Um, I think I think we're really moving in the right direction. So, I appreciate that. And I will personally commit to being a part of, you know, what what does go into um to Saturn Park. And I know that'll bring jobs in for the the unions and things like that. So, um there's that. So, on this one, yeah, I just I I think um and then also thanks to the no data center Monterey Park people too for, you know, they had to, you know, put an attorney on a tainer on retainer to come and send out a letter and all that. So, appreciate those folks and it's been great to meet people in the community. Um um but yeah, for the state level legislation, all I all I really want to say is, you know, there's there's a lot of things that have happened here in this community and there are other neighboring communities and we all share the same power grid and so what happens in one community affects us over here. So I just really hope that we, you know, think about what happened here and try to wrap that into the legislation. I've read a little bit about I think it's 579 um you know something about you know maybe council or utility or proposed applicant notifying um the community and maybe surrounding communities um as early as possible maybe on permit um application submission something like that somebody's got to take accountability and notify people and um I think I was talking with Carrie there's like a 500 uh yard requirement or something like that. It needs these are bigger projects. This isn't just like a you know like a mall or something like that. These are much bigger projects with much bigger impacts. So I think there needs to be a little bit tighter legislation on that at the state level. And also um there's the 75 megawatt um limit there where you know I'm probably butchering this but where you know they would have to pay their way or something like that. So if we

look at this project specifically we had you know 49.9 or whatever megawws in one building. 49.9 megawatts in another building, but that's all load going in at the same place, right? So, they would be exempt from the 75 megawatt um you know thing at the state level. So, things like that. I think we should just really be smart about um you know, what we're putting in at the state level. So, again, appreciate you guys. I'm going to wrap it up, but thank you guys so much. Uh Carrie,

hi. Sorry, I didn't want to talk again. But on Senate Bill 978, one of the things I was concerned about was the fact that it only applies to um 75 megawatts of electricity for large scale energy users. And I actually called the staffer uh for the senator Perez about this. And the reason they wrote it this way is because they didn't put a definition of data center even though that was the reason that they um proposed the bill. They just wrote large scale energy users. But I was just telling them that this wouldn't actually help us. I know the council was um especially uh council member Low mentioned at a prior meeting how important it is to have the state give us some direction and this actually wouldn't really help us because our facility is 49.5. So I don't know if that's something you want to put in the letter that you know looking at uh lower thresholds such as you know in our case um I mean I know the investor documents say 33 so if you say 30 um but part of the issue is that they didn't define data center because she said that would be difficult to define so they were worried that by you know when they put large scale energy users they knew that there would be um other legit legitimate large scale energy users that would be cut off and that's why they made it such a high threshold. But in terms of it actually helping us, it wouldn't really help us because ours is a lot lower. So just pointing that out.

All right. Yes. Okay. So again, thank you for everyone's presence and uh passion in speaking about this topic. And I actually want to just kudos give out kudos to council member Low for bringing this up a couple of sessions ago. Uh we do need the state to step in to set guidelines so that we and every other city and the state can follow because that's how processes get done in the federal government from the federal level to the state level and into the local level. Uh I'm fine with the bill. I mean, this is Senator Perez's bill. Finance presented. I I heard uh one of our speakers mentioned that maybe we want to tweak that, but it really doesn't apply to us because there's no data center in the city. So, I don't know if that's that it may be applicable to other cities. Uh but in our case, I'm buying as presented.

I would just add to that these are not our bills that we don't author them. We don't edit them. We don't write them. Uh I would encourage you to as you have already reached out to senator's office legislators that they're the ones that are authoring these. Uh but I would add my support to council goes for these items. My only caveat is that we know the legislative process these things can change very quickly to things that we didn't necessarily sign on to. Uh so maybe we can I'm happy to sign on to these as as as written currently. Uh, but just making sure towns and our our consultants in Sacramento know that we're monitoring these and if there are changes, substantive changes to these bills that they should be brought back to council for additional consideration.

I also support uh these bills. Um, and I know that, um, to Council Member Wong's point, um, a lot of these bills we can't edit, but I know that, um, Senator's office is taking letters of support and, you know, you can always voice your concerns and opinions. I'm just happy that there and glad that there's legislation that's moving in the state level addressing data centers uh because it it helps us here at the local level to be able to address a lot of these concerns. It quite possibly what happened here today wouldn't have happened if we had state legislation already in place. Um, and so I I think that in saying that, I I I'm hoping that not just our state, but our federal government and federal leaders will take a much stronger position on data centers um and pass legis

putting together this list of bills. Um and I I also appreciate that uh according to the staff summary we're not just sending it to the authors but also to the committee because to the point of one of the speakers I mean if there any amendments to be made to the legislation it would most likely be through the committee process and that's where I would say um you know if we are going to you know take this suggestion by the constituent then probably the most relevant would be when the bill goes through a committee uh because most likely the consultants would recommend any uh amend amendments to the legis legislation um both in the house of origin and as well as the second house of consideration.

Thank you, Mayor Potam. I'm definitely in support of item 12B and I also wanted to thank Assembly Member Mike Fong and Senator Sasha Perez for fighting up the fight for us up in Sacramento. So, let's um send the letters and uh I hope community members like like Carrie has contacted them, but it helps when everybody sends them letters.

Madame Mayor, just as a note, um our consultant Alisa from Townsen is on the call, so she's hearing your comments. She will continue to help us um monitor these bills and if there's anything in addition that comes up, she understands that the data center um legislation topics is a a hot topic for Monterey Park and she will help um bring forward any additional uh legislation that might be brought up in the future.

Just a point of clarification on that for this particular session, these are the four bills. The deadline for submitting legislation was February 20th. So these are all the data center pieces of legislation that will be in the session. Uh we'll keep an eye out for anything that may be of interest in future sessions. Thank you. Uh I'll make the motion. All right, I'll second it. All right, let's vote. Approved unanimously. All right, that concludes our Madame Mayor. Sorry, just uh I don't mean to interrupt. I know we have still other items on the agenda.

Oh, go ahead. I know you got to extend the time. Sorry. I'll extend the time till uh half an hour. Is that good enough? Hopefully not, but yes, I'll second. All right, let's vote. Approved unanimously.

Madame Mayor and members of the council, I just wanted to circle back. I heard that um community members um I know are very anxious and excited to hear uh the ordinance come back in front of council. It requires a 20-day noticing uh public noticing period. There is timelines um for publication of those notices that we don't set. Um so I we were looking at a calendar to try to figure out and we have the draft ordinance language. So we're looking to bring that item back potentially for April 15th. we will if we could make it sooner, we will. But um to give us time, uh April 15th is is when we think we could bring that item back. I just wanted to clarify that, you know, the the 20-day noticing period is the requirement, but there's other dates that we have to comply with to get the notices in the publications and we have to draft ordinance language. So, didn't want to be confusing that we can get that back, you know, at the next council meeting because we won't make the noticing requirements. So, we're going to shoot for uh April 15th. We definitely are not trying to delay. We just need a little time for all the legal notices.

Thank you.

All right. So, that's concludes our new business. I know we have one uh public comment card come in for general uh public comments. Joy Row, are you are you here? She left. Oh, okay. All right, then. Let's go back on our agenda to Thank you. You're You're still welcome to stay, Dave. I know. I know.

Mayor, I know the consent calendar is the item remaining. Consent calendar. I I do want to pull item 10G for a very, very quick question or a few questions. All right. I don't need the staff report though. Any other items?

If not, I'll I'll move the remaining consent calendar. All right. Council member Wong moves. I'll second. Council member Go seconds. Let's vote. Approved unanimously. Thank you. Let's do a presentation on item 10G, Community Transportation Updates and amendment to VIA Transportation, Inc. for on demand services.

I unless others are interested, I can I'm okay skipping the presentation. I can just ask my questions. I really just want Sean to have to walk down. But, uh, appreciate the staff, uh, work on this and appreciate that we're extending this to to really, um, approach our community transit options in a more comprehensive way. Looks like we're going to go out to RFP in the next few months and we just need some time to kind of bridges to that. Everything I've heard in terms of the the via the Mon Park Transit Express program has been great and the report obviously is showing that it's very well used. um would look as we look to uh consolidate some of these services in a way or the the delivery of Dal Ride and and Transit Express and potentially even uh the fixed route services. Uh whatever we can do to find efficiencies so that we can expand services more. Clearly there's need and a desire to do so. I know we're still in the process of adjusting our spirit bus routes and that will be a constant evolution, I think, as people continue to change their their transportation uh routes and what they do. Uh but clearly uh ondemand microtransit options are very much in demand. Uh and let's see how we can continue to expand that with the dial ride. If there are opportunities to to be able to offer more on demand services uh by combining dialide with uh transit express via uh and other options let's look at those. Also wanted to note um but really appreciate staff. I know this was a pilot project with VIA for the Transit Express uh and really from kudos to staff, the VIA team, everyone that helped put uh together this I think successful pilot and look forward to expanding this uh going into the future uh on the zero mission bus requirement that the state has. Um I know that it looks like from the staff report and correct me if I'm wrong in my understanding of this uh as we contract out for these services going forward we'll start to phase in and transition

in zero mission options uh I want to make sure that we're looking at that for both uh the fixed route services and for the ondemand services uh to the extent possible where the technology is feasible to make sure we're phasing in zero mission options for those as well. Sean looks like you want to make a comment there. I don't know if you do, but if you do, I'm happy to hear it hear any comments. Yes. So, we so as part of the the zero emissions policy, we will be implementing that um for the buses. That's a requirement. That's part of our our mandate. And then as far as the the microtransit, we can incorporate that into the RFP.

Great. No, I appreciate that and would love to make sure we're doing that. I know we tabled the item on EV charging, but if we need to look at, uh, making sure we have the infrastructure support, uh, integrating zero emission buses and other continuing to electrify more of our city fleet, including the microtransit on demand service fleet. Uh, let's make sure we're integrating that into our capital project plan and capital improvement plan uh, going forward in the coming years. Um, and then whatever we can do where it's economically feasible and technologically feasible, uh, if we can transition faster than the timeline that's laid out in the state requirements for zero mission fleets, uh, to transition our spirit bus, our fixed route, and our our on demand kind of vans and transit vehicles uh, more quickly to zero emission. Let's absolutely do that and see how we can pursue that and expedite that.

We can definitely evaluate that. And just real quick, I do want to point out that we do have Alex from VIA who has stuck it out here um through this meeting. So, just want to highlight that. I apprec appreciate VIA. Thank and thank you to the VIA team. Really I think the residents in Mari Park have very much benefited from the microtransit program and really appreciate and look forward to seeing how we can expand that. Uh with that, I'm happy to make a motion less.

Actually, I also made a comment as well. Um no, I also want to thank city staff and VIA for I think a very successful ping program. I know that um I've since it launch I've I've used it several times um and I also appreciate that VIA has been pre receptive to comments about improving the service and improving the geographic reach. I think um certainly there's um more fine-tuning, but I think there's a potential um to I think more wisely maximizing um our dollars and resources um you know again addressing what is often called the first and last mile and trying to encourage uh folks to use uh right sharing or public transit in our city as well as uh utilizing the regional the expanding regional transit system that there is. And so I support um continuation to see how we can strengthen our public transportation systems.

And with that, I'll make a motion to adopt staff recommendation here and u I think clear to staff in terms of potential direction for the RFP when that comes back. And I'll support a second it. Thank you. Let's vote. Approved unanimously. All right. And that concludes our consent agenda. Moving on to uh city communications. Okay. Just uh 11. No, wait. Wait. Oh, yes. 11A. I believe we're continuing that to um the the uh next hearing. So, we won't cover that today. Do we need a vote to continue that or? Yeah, I'll make the motion to continue item 11 A.

Second. All right. Let's vote to continue 11A. approve it unanimously. Thank you. All right. Now, city communications.

I will start uh see lots of stuff this past two weeks with the Luna New Year celebration. Uh many of us just celebrated the Chinese American Museum CAM Gala last night at NBC. uh also did the Chinese American military support dinner also in the May Park restaurant on Atlantic Seafood. I think many of our council members were there as well. Then we had the uh May Cafe ribbon cutting on Saturday. This past Saturday we also did the our Hamilton Unifi Hamilton Unified School District's Asian Alumni Association dinner last week also at NBC. Uh then we also did the police town hall at Brightwood. Uh that was probably two weeks ago how time passes. Then wanted to also give a shout out to the Golden Dragon parade in Chinatown this year. There were definitely a lot more people than last year. Last year due to the fires, but I think the people went out and celebrated the Luna New Year in Chinatown this year. Uh and last but not least, uh many of us also attended what I think is really important dinner uh sponsored by the city uh for the volunteers that volunteer for the city of Mar Park including folks in our commissions at Langley Center in the library and supporting the parks and Rex. Want to give a shout out to staff for coordinating that and really to the volunteers for continuing to volunteer for our city, making our city one of the best places to kind of volunteer for. That's all I have. Uh appreciate all all the staff for the work over the last few weeks, attended many of the same events. Uh appreciate being able to engage be engaged in the community. I just have a comment on one of the items we passed on consent 10E on

the uh design for fire station 61 renovations. Whatever we can do to expedite that obviously uh would be great and look forward to hopefully that being completed in the next or soon so we can get the firefighters at our headquarters station uh into proper more proper accommodations uh sooner than later. I'll pass it on. Thank you. Um, I just wanted to mention one uh one future potential item because I know it's getting late and some of us want to go home. Um, the Mark Kemple academic decathlon team did uh really well this season. Um, and and they got second place. So, at some point, we would probably want to invite them in the near future uh to recognize them for their achievement. I know they're preparing to go to state, so um they um bring them in.

Council member, who was who was number one, though, Mark Keell um did really really well. They um they got second place. Uh I believe first place went to Ohra High School, though. And I'm their coach. Yeah. Who Who is their coach? Yes. How many years in a row is that? Three.

And I And we went by three points. Which is like a quarter of a question. We we will uh reach out to Markull and uh coordinate a time to recognize them.

Oh. Um Since we're on the theme of education, uh I believe also another one of our schools in Monterey Park is reaching a milestone and that's um Monterey Vista Elementary School which I believe will be celebrating our centennial. Um and so uh I know the we've reached out to the school district, the Garvey School District. Um but um certainly, you know, if there are any doing any events, you know, let us know. But also I think it'd be also nice to perhaps invite um uh principal and PTA uh for a presentation just to congratulate um mon for again the milestone of reaching its 100th um um anniversary of sounding.

All right. I think uh my colleagues cover most of the events. Just a few more. Um the Monterey Park Pony baseball and USA softball uh had their opening ceremonies on February 21st in the morning. Um, and some upcoming events. I know Friday, March 13th is the Monterey Park Clippers night. I don't know if tickets are sold out already, but they are sold out. Okay, so that's sold out. Another soldout event is the Monterey Park Library is hosting a Bridgetton themed tea party at Elento on March 14th. That's sold out in less than one day. And I got a ticket though. Um, and then we're also hosting uh Monterey Park Walks on uh Garfield Avenue um Atlantic Boulevard. Um that's open to the public, right?

That's correct. Uh I can I can pull that up in just a second if you'd like to give me just one second. Sure. Sure. Yeah, this it's on it's held on four different days. I know Garfield Avenue is held on March 14th from 12 to 2:00 p.m. Um what's the other one? Um but basically for um those couple hours we'll be walking down the street to see what needs to be worked on.

Uh madame mayor, members of the council, there'll be some information on our city's web page if it's not there already and we'll definitely put out some information on social media. There is this is part of our um vision zero project uh complete streets walk audits. So, there's going to be um a walk on at on Garvey Avenue Wednesday, March 11th, on Atlantic, Thursday, uh March 12th, Garfield, Saturday, March 14th, Floral, Monday, um March 16th, and Wilcox Saturday, March 21st. The community members are invited, they're different times of the day, but they're invited to walk and discuss uh potential pedestrian improvements, safety improvements to that corridor. They're asking individuals to RSVP. There's a link um uh available on our city's web page and we'll post it also on um social media. Sean ran down, so I don't know if I missed anything. Sean,

you you got it all. Great. All right, that's all for me. Anyone else? No. All right, then we will adjourn the meeting 12:42 a.m.

That's That's early for us, huh? Thank you.