City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome to a meeting of the Ontario City Council. Our first order of business is a roll call, Madam City Clerk.

All right, thank you. And before we move on, does anybody have any possible conflicts of interest? Seeing none. We'll move on and we'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance led by Council Member Macias.

And our invocation will be led by Pastor Richard Hernandez, who's already there.

All right, this takes us to public comments. Your comments are limited to three minutes. You'll be alerted when you have one minute remaining. In accordance with state law, remarks during public comment are to be limited to subjects within council's jurisdiction. All of those wishing to speak, including council and staff, need to be recognized by the chair. Do we have any email comments, Madam City Clerk?

All right, thank you. So I have, once again, quite a few blue cards, so we're gonna stick tight to the timeframe. Our first speaker is Sarah Rios. You want to come up with her? You can come up with her. All right, so... This is going to be a little bit, we have a microphone for her. We'll sit her off to the side over this way, okay? And then she can hold the microphone. Yeah, that way's fine. Sarah, just be comfortable. We're just normal people. Just talk to us. You want to come up with those posters. I know that she's going to be talking about that, so you can come up with them so you're not

So you want us to go to El Camino School to participate in this community event, which is the National Walk to School. Mm-hmm. Do you have any more? No. Okay, so I'm kind of in a quandary of a moment here because I'm not really supposed to be conversing back and forth, but what you're talking about is the walk to school, which is starting at Anthony Munoz Park at seven o'clock in the morning, October 7th. And then we'll walk with you all the way to El Camino School. Okay, well, thank you.

Yeah, good job. Our next speaker is Angie Miramontes.

Yeah, I think that's appropriate. Thank you. As long as it's okay with you, right? Okay, thank you. Our next speaker is Tina Silva.

All right. Our next speaker is Brad Newman.

All right, thank you. Our next speaker is Kevin Kizzee.

Okay, Gianna Jones, or it's Gloria. It's Gloria Jones. I'm sorry. Gloria. Yeah.

ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU. MARY MCBRIDE. I'm sorry, Marty. I know the difference. But it looks like Mary here. It looks like Mary. Could have been a different person.

All right, thank you. And we'll say our last speaker is Tommy Mush again.

All right. Well, that moves us into agenda announcements and review. Mr. City manager.

No, no, no, no, that's not allowable. You're not allowed to speak unless recognized. You're not recognized, so you really need to be quiet, okay? Thank you very much.

And just to piggyback folks a little bit on what he said, especially about the homeless situation, you may have been seeing lately in the news that HUD stopped funding Los Angeles for their homeless programs. At the same meeting that they were talking about that in Washington, D.C., I was informed by a high-level HUD official that they were also talking about the city of Ontario and what a great job we do. And probably they'll be partnering with us a lot, because we do. So thank you. Thank you very much. And if that's it, then we're going to move on to any announcements that you have. No, sir.

All right, thank you. We have Mr. Kizzee speaking to item number 13.

All right, thank you. I forgot to ask, do we have any emailed?

I'd like to talk a little bit or ask questions about number 13.

Do you want to pull it for a separate vote as we're gonna? No, no. Okay.

So I just would like the city manager and or the city attorney to help me with this a little bit too, because this is an ask of us on the mobile home people. This is an ask. They don't have to do it. They don't have to do a darn thing. And that's my understanding. So I just wanted to, we are asking the mobile home park people to please be decent, don't raise their rent so much, but they don't have to agree to it. There's mobile home parks that don't even participate in this agreement and they raise the rents, but they raise them. So this is us doing an ask for them to please try to keep that d

I think your colleague would like to come to him. I just wanted to give a little history to this.

This accord actually came to us from- You know, Mr. Wapner, I would like the city manager to answer my question before you. Yeah, well, so Mr. City Manager, would you please do that?

Okay. And maybe only would you please acknowledge Councilman Wapner because he also wanted to make some comments.

I'd like to put number 13 for further discussion since I wasn't allowed to discuss it just now.

I'm sorry, I missed what happened there. So, would you like to have the opportunity to discuss it?

I think I have the right to pull an item off consent calendar. I'm requesting to have item number 13 pull off consent calendar for separate.

You know, Alan, you do, but I was speaking first, so you needed to allow me to finish what I was doing, and now it's your turn.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to pull item number 13 from the consent calendar for separate discussion.

There's nothing wrong with that, so we'll go ahead Well, order is important. That's what she's talking about.

Sounds to me like it's just let's pull item number 13 for a separate discussion. There's been no motion on the consent calendar that I'm aware of.

Okay, so Mr. Wapner has asked for item number 13 to be pulled for separate discussion, which is fine. So I'll entertain a motion to move the consent calendar made by Ms. Macias, second by Mr. Bowman. Let's take a vote. With the exception of item number 13. Okay, so that passes. So let's discuss item number 13 individually.

Mr. Wapner. Thank you. I'm just following state law, and our ordinance right here says that any member can pull an item off the consent calendar. It's not mayor's discretion. It's called state law. In any case, had I been given the opportunity to speak, I would explain a little bit of the history behind the accord. It was actually brought to us by tenants of Mobile Home Parks. Jack Gallivan is the one that originally brought it to the city council, and they brought it because there were mobile home tenants that were increasing the rents 10, 15%, and by coming to a negotiated agreement between

The only thing, and what I'd say is that I think that the high cost of living is touching all of us, whether it's, earlier we heard just on the fields for kids to be playing on. Everything from milk to gas to playing fields to rent is a burden today, and I think we can all agree on that. On the other hand, I think that whatever works for kids this consortium of owners of properties that have mobile homes is something that we have to go and as Mr. Watmer mentioned that there is a history behind why we even have this going on. So when it comes to item number 13, so now what we have to do is have

I just wanted to make my comments on the history of the thing. I will make a motion that we approve it.

Okay, thank you very much. Is there a second? So a second by Ms. Macias. So we'll take a vote. So thank you. Thank you for having a healthy participation in the way government works. Thank you very much. I don't think there was any intention to... not allow anybody to do what they have the right to do. I think there was just a method of order. When a person is speaking, nobody should interrupt and take over. I wasn't here to see it, so I just can only believe that's what happened. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. We're going to move into public hearings now, so item number 14.

Okay, so at this time, I'll open the public hearing and let the record reflect the written communication. We don't have any blue cards to this tonight. So I'll close the public hearing and entertain a motion or discussion on the item. Moved by Mr. Bowman. Do I have a second? Second by Ms. Parada. Let's take a vote. Item passed is 5-0. That moves us to item number 15, Madam City Clerk.

Okay, thank you. I was going to ask you about that. Okay, so we do have Blue slips, you'll all be given two minutes to speak to the item. Our first speaker is Chris Robles.

All right. Thank you. Our last speaker is Jesse Fonseca. Is he outside? Somebody see if Jesse Fonseca is out there. Looks like he's not. Okay, so before we move on, Mr. City Manager, we'll close the public hearing. Did you have something to answer about these? Sure. I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Okay, we'll keep the public hearing open.

All right, thank you. So we'll close the public hearing, and I'll entertain a motion or conversation and discussion from counsel.

I'll make a motion that we approve. And I know that this has been something that all of us have been wanting for a long time. I mean, at least for the 17 years that I've been on this council, I used to work at LAC, USC Medical Center, and we used to go to Porto's and Glendale. Somebody would make the run, you know, and come back with everything. And so it's just been something that, I mean, I'd go to the Glendale Cedar, sit there and wait for the matriarch to pass me by and, you know, hi, I'm Debbie, and we really would like you in Ontario.

you know so it's just something that um it's just going to be so exciting to have them here so i'm just really really thrilled so mr bowman okay so there's been a motion in a second um any other discussion uh so we'll take the vote all right the item passes 5-0 for the What do you call them? Mashed potato balls? So good. I think we're all happy with that. So then this takes us to staff matters. Mr. City Manager? All right. And now it takes us to council matters. And I do have some issues that I want to speak about. I would like to bring forward to the council in a future meeting, sooner than l

I just want to wish everyone a happy and safe Labor Day weekend. I know that that's coming up. We typically, you know, the people that work consider just a day off, but I would hope, Mr. Mayor, if we can adjourn the council meeting on behalf of our local labor union. That'd be great.

What I'm hearing you say, Mr. Bowman, is that you'd like to present a possible moratorium on warehousing. What I'd like to ask, if I might, if you might adjust to if we can first do a study on what we're looking at. A lot of times when it comes to warehouses, I know that the media plays into that whole idea of, and the din of social media saying there's too many, there's too many. I think that what we're doing right now in the City of Ontario is we have warehouses where they belong, but I do think that we need to look at where is that happening and are we staying true to our first initiative o

Yeah, and then my adjustment to that suggestion was we need to know where we're going before we say we want to go there or we don't. And so we'd need a briefing on what we're looking at first. Is that acceptable, Mr. Bowman? Yes, sir. Okay. So then the consensus would be that we have a briefing on what we're doing for the future of warehousing in the City of Ontario, correct? Correct. Is that good?

I'm not clear yet as to what we're asking.

A report on the future of warehouses in Ontario.

Yeah, I really think that we kind of need to be educated on it. It's easy to just say no more of this, more of that, what have you, but you really have to have an intellectual understanding of what's going on. So I would appreciate that. Thank you. Ms. Prada. All right. Well, thank you very much for indulging me with the largest amount of speaking time. And so we thank you for participating and we'll see you September 15th. This meeting is now adjourned.