City Council Meetings– San Gabriel City Council - Regular Meeting

Here. All right, and we will now have some announcements from our Chief City Clerk.

Tonight's meeting is live streamed on the city's online platforms. If you wish to participate remotely, please follow the procedures outlined on the city's website at sangabrielcity.com under public meetings and agendas. To address the council in person, we request that you please complete a speaker's card and hand it to the clerk at this time. When speaking, please state your name for the record. Please note that interactions between the city council, city staff, and the public during meetings are subject to the city's rules of decorum and technology disruption policy.

All right. Now let's move to approval of agenda order. Are there any objections to the agenda order? All right. Seeing none, the agenda order is approved. All right, next item, please.

Presentation, Parks Make Life Better Month. The full text of the proclamation is available on the city's website. Community Services Director Perez will make the presentation, after which Mayor Chan will present the proclamation to Community Services Commissioner Nancy Dong. We invite Director Perez and Commissioner Dong to come forward to the podium at this time.

Good evening.

Sorry. Thank you and good evening Mayor Chan and members of the City Council. We appreciate you supporting our mission by proclaiming July 2026 as Parks Make Life Better Month. The Community Services Department strives to make San Gabriel a great place to live, work, and play by providing quality programs, services, special events, and parks and facilities. We work closely with the Public Works Department who operates and maintains San Gabriel's parks and facilities so our residents have clean and safe places to play. These efforts would not be possible without the support of a team, which includes the city council, community services commissioners, staff, volunteers, and the residents whom we serve. Thank you again for supporting our department's mission, and now I would like to turn it over to Commissioner Dong, who will receive the proclamation on behalf of our department.

Thank you.

Park you, sir.

Hello, good evening, everyone. I'm Commissioner Dong, and I am so proud to receive this proclamation on behalf of the Community Services Commission and the Community Services Department. I really believe that parks are very important for the City of San Gabriel and San Gabriel Valley in general, so I'm really excited this is happening for the month of July. And really, since we're talking about parks, I would like to invite the Mayor, City Council, and all of our city staff to come out to walk Bike and Roll Day, which is on Saturday, August 8th from 10 to 2 p.m. at Marshall Park. And it's a park where The last event we had there was in 2018. This is pre-pandemic. So we really want to activate that park space. Also one of the newest parks in the city of San Gabriel. So great that we are having such an exciting event there where we will discuss alternative transportation options like Ride SG. We're talking about bikes and how to use e-bikes safely. So PD is also coming out and doing a presentation there. So very topical, very important. And I love the fact that everyone's going to come out get dressed up on their bikes, kind of like Siglivia, and just have a really fun day in the park. So thank you again for making this month possible and for awarding this proclamation to us.

Thank you, Commissioner Dong.

I'll briefly read a quick summary of the proclamation and then I'll present it to you with my colleagues and we'll take photos. The main points are whereas parks and recreation promote physical, emotional, and mental health and wellness through organized and self-directed fitness play and activity, and whereas parks and recreation strengthen community identity by providing facilities and services that reflect and celebrate community character, heritage, culture, history, aesthetics, and landscape, Now, therefore, be it resolved, the San Gabriel City Council hereby proclaims July 2026 as Parks Make Life Better Month, and in doing so, urges all its citizens to use and enjoy its parks and recreation opportunities. All right, and I would like to ask my colleagues to join me in taking a photo and presenting the certificate.

If I could have everybody look here.

One, two, three.

One more. One, two, and three. Thank you.

All right. So we will move on to the next item, please.

Public comment. This is the time set aside for members of the public to address the city council on consent calendar items and on items of interest that are not on the agenda but are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the San Gabriel City Council. We have no in-person speaker cards. Do we have any remote speakers?

We have no virtual callers or Zoom participation.

No public comment, Mayor.

Okay. Thank you.

Next item please consent calendar all items listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and Recommendations will be approved in one motion unless a member of the City Council requests separate discussion All right would any council member like to pull an item for a separate discussion?

No seeing none and Do I have a motion to approve the consent calendar?

Mayor, I move to approve. Okay.

Motion to approve by Councilman Herrera-Avila. Do I have a second?

I'll second.

Seconded by Councilwoman Menchaca. So let's please go to the vote.

Motion passes by a vote of 5-0. Thank you. Next item, please.

We have no public hearing or continued business items. The next item is new business item A, draft development impact fee nexus study presentation. Finance Director Cole Okula and Will Down Representative James Edison will make the presentation.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the City Council. Tonight, we will be presenting a draft of the Development Impact Fee Nexus Study. A little background before we get to the presentation. So in January of 2025, The City Council approved agreement with Wildan Financial Services to prepare a development impact fee nexus study. Development impact fees are an important tool to ensure that new development pays its fair share towards the cost of public facilities and infrastructure needed to serve future growth. The nexus study evaluates the anticipated impacts of future developments and calculates the maximum fee amounts the City may legally charge to offset those impacts. As the City Council is aware, the City is not required to charge the maximum fee amounts identified in the study. The next study establishes the maximum supportable fees and the City Council may choose to adopt fees at or below those amounts. Tonight, James Edison, Managing Principal with Will Dan Financial Services, is here to present the draft Development Impact Fee Nexus Study. Following the presentation, staff will be available along with Will Dan to respond to City Council questions and receive any comments. After tonight's presentation and feedback, staff will return at a future City Council meeting for formal consideration of the final Nexus Study and the updated Development Impact Fees. I would also like to note that Community Development Director Sanchez reached out to the local Building Industry Association in March of 2026. He provided a copy of the draft development nexus study that is presented tonight and he offered to discuss the study with the BIA, Building Industry Association. He also informed them that on the agenda that this item be on the agenda tonight at this council meeting. No request to meet was received. So with that, I'll turn it over to James Edison, who will present the draft development impact fee nexus study.

Thank you, honorable mayor, vice mayor, members of the council. As noted, I'm James Edison with Will Land Financial Services. I'm managing principal. I'm the principal in charge for this project, which has been going on, as has been noted, for a bit more than a year now. So I'm here today to just provide an overview of our study. I think you have a copy of it, but of course we're going to be available to answer questions and clarifications, anything else afterwards. But I'll do a brief overview of it and walk you through a few things, and then we can get to Q&A. So just first in sort of general terms, what is a development impact fee? It's important to distinguish it from all the user fees, park fees, building fees, the sorts of things that people pay on a daily basis to get services. Development impact fees are linked to development. So when new development comes along, it could be a new office, a new house, an ADU even potentially, they pay a one-time charge, usually at the time of building permit or a certificate of occupancy, to mitigate, which is why they're often called mitigation fees, mitigate the impacts to the city on infrastructure. The most intuitive one typically is parks, where when new folks live in the city, they use the parks. And if you don't build new parks, the parks get more crowded. So you have to build more parks. And the process we go through is to figure out How much parkland is needed, or what quantity of parks, which can be both acreage and also facilities, and how much does this cost? And therefore, how much should new development pay? And so that same concept applies to the other categories, traffic, police, fire, as we'll walk through. The basic idea is development pays its own way is often sort of a quick way to describe it. So why charge impact fees? I mean, I use that phrase already, growth pays its own way, which makes intuitive sense, I think, to most people, especially in places like California where other kinds of revenue sources are quite constrained. There are states we work in where, and it used to be true in California before Prop 13, that if you wanted to raise more money to build infrastructure, you just adjust what they call your mill rate. You adjust your tax rate and just charge more taxes. That doesn't happen here. You've got to find the money someplace else. So, the basic idea is, and the idea behind the Mitigation Fee Act is that, as I described, as development occurs, it places stresses, it creates a need for infrastructure, and you have to find a way to fund that, and new development should pay for some or all, depending on a lot of policy choices of that infrastructure. In addition, I think of the last notes, especially important, impact revenue, impact fee revenues, they free up general fund revenues for other services and other needs. Because that really is, you know, I mean, as you well know, general fund is sort of the backstop for everything. And to the extent you can find resources that can prevent you having to use it, then you've got it for other purposes, including a reserve, of course. So there are some legal requirements. These are based fundamentally on the U.S. Constitution, what's called takings law. But the basic idea is that in order to impose the fee, you need to show need. That is to say that there's a relationship between the development and the need for facilities. Again, the parks example often for people is the most intuitive. You have to show a benefit. That is to say that the facilities you have in mind are going to benefit new development. And finally, you have to show rough proportionality, that there's some relationship, a mathematical or other sort of reasonable relationship between the burden you're placing on new development, which is typically the fee you're placing, and the cost of the mitigation. And that's really what the NEXA study is about. That's the calculations that are in the NEXA study that prepare that calculation and look at the facilities that are needed, the developments occurring, how much the facilities cost, and therefore what the fee should be. So for those of you familiar with impact fees, in about four years ago, AB602 passed, which made a few significant changes to the impact fee programs in the state. For you, for the city's own internal operations, there's some requirements for disclosure. You can see that you have to have your impact fee schedule, prior nexus studies, five-year reports. All the reporting has to be available on your website. Many cities already did that, but it wasn't a requirement. But now it is. And then in terms of sort of technical changes, one is that now the NEXUS study itself requires a 30-day notice, which is something we'll take into account when we go to adoption, if you do elect to adopt the NEXUS study. Unlike a typical 10- or 14-day notice, the NEXUS study itself requires a 30-day notice. And then probably the most significant change for most folks is that residential fees should be charged on a per-square-foot basis. Traditionally, they've been charged per unit, but that changed with AB 602. You don't have to charge them per unit, but there's sort of a strong suggestion to do so if you decide to charge per unit or some other way, for example, per bedroom. You have to make a finding that that's actually a better way to do it than per square foot. That's the way that the legislation was written. So the most jurisdictions are going to per square foot, which is a sort of material change and actually changes the math of development, because it used to be that no matter how big the unit was, it paid the same fee. But now, a bigger unit pays more, a smaller unit pays less. I think the philosophy behind that was to ease the burden on more affordable, smaller units was the idea. I mean, I think that's, you know, at the state level was the idea of doing that. And in addition, the other changes that you now have to have, if you're a large jurisdiction, which is not what it sounds like exactly, the definition of large jurisdiction is any jurisdiction that's in a county of more than a quarter million people. So no matter how small you are, you're a large jurisdiction as long as you're in a large county. You have to have a CIP for each of your fee categories, which again was not a requirement before. but it's something that's now included in this study. So in terms of the basic methodology, the process we worked through, we prepared an estimate of future growth, both in terms of jobs and also people and housing, based on both your general plan and state resources. We look at facility standards, which is the current relationship between the facilities you have. For example, your park standard, you know, how many acres per park you have for 1,000 people. We determine and look at your CIP, the new facilities and costs. We have a CIP for each category. We allocate a share to accommodate growth, which is usually based on that relationship, either existing or planned facilities and development. We identify any alternative funding needs. to extent or funding sources. And then finally, we calculate the fee by allocating cost per unit of new development. And now the unit of new development is almost always now per square foot, both for residential and for commercial development. So the five categories that we updated, you can see there are police, fire, open space, which is essentially parks and rec, traffic, and sanitary sewer. So the growth projections we use, you can see there that the residential growth actually is between now and the next 25 years, well now 24 years, through 2050, you only have about 5,000, a little more than 5,000 new residents, but the employment's actually significant. It's over 50% growth in employment over that same period. But these are the projections we used to balance both go through the process of figuring out what new facilities will be needed, and then also what those new facilities or new costs get allocated to. So in terms of the calculation, how we calculate the impact fee, there's sort of three basic ways. Existing inventory is a way of saying, well, I mean, take again the park standard. We know you have a certain number of acres of parks for 1,000 people. So we know every new 1,000 people, which is you know, roughly 300 units, 350 units, you need three more acres of parks. And so you can figure out, you know, you don't necessarily know where those parks are going to be because over 25 years, there could be lots of places. But you know you'll need three, you know, for every thousand people, you'll need three acres of parks. And we can figure out how much that costs. We can figure out what it costs to buy the land on an average basis. We can figure out what it costs to do the park improvements. And so we can use your existing park standard to figure out what the fee should be for new development because new development is just maintaining that standard is the idea. For planned facilities, that's a situation where you know for future development you've got certain facilities you know are needed for new development and you can just allocate them or you know a portion of them. You know you've got new sewer lines for example. You know the new sewer lines are needed for new development and therefore you can look at new development, you can look at the cost of the sewer lines and do the quotient that way. And then last is the system plan method, which is kind of a combination of those two and applies to especially situations where you have a big facility that you're going to build that actually serves both. So you can't really say it's only for new development. You also can't say that new development is not going to share it. An example of that, of course, is the new police station or new fire stations, where those facilities are not only for new development, but they are for new development in part. So the way we calculate that is we actually take the existing facilities and the planned facilities, and add them together, and then divide them by the development at the end of the period we're looking at. So at the end, in 2050, we look at the total residence, total housing units, total commercial development, and figure out what the cost is per unit. And so therefore, in a way, you're actually sharing the cost between new development, which will pay at that rate, and existing development, which has a responsibility to fund part of those improvements. And you'll see that play out in a later table where you've got revenue, but you also are going to have some costs you'll have to incur to build some of your facilities that'll have to come from other sources. So in terms of which methodology we use for which fees, you can see a six-year standard we use for parks and open space. That was the one I cited there. Plan facilities, we use traffic and sanitary sewer. In both cases, you had sort of a capital improvement program that had a number of facilities that you know needed to be built. And those facilities were allocated to new development on a percentage basis based on the engineering, based on traffic studies, based on other allocations. And then a system plan that we use for police and fire because for two reasons really. One, in both cases, in the case of police, you have a planned new police station and fire, you've got two new fire stations. And for both of those, because police and fire are actually a system-wide service, you know, the city-wide service that serves everybody, and there's no, like, there's no fire stations allocated to only certain people and it only responds when there's a fire there, right? They go wherever they need to go. And so it's actually an interconnected system. And so it's very typical to use a system plan approach for that because it's really a shared, I mean you are, you are triggering the need for new development or new improvements or new facilities when new development comes. But actually, the system as a whole really benefits from those new ones. And also, existing, you know, new development will benefit from the existing fire facilities because after all, you know, we all know when there's a fire call, if one engine company's out, the next nearest one comes. Whether it's a new building or not doesn't matter, right? It's a system-wide service, if you will. So in terms of the planned facilities that we looked at for the study, you can see there's a list there. You have a new remodeled police facility, some equipment for police, fire stations, 51 and 52 expansion, a ladder truck and an ambulance, open space and rec facilities. There's a park line and improvements that will be built. For traffic facilities and street improvements, there's a list of sort of intersections and street improvements there. And for sanitary sewer, there's pipeline upgrades and about 18,000 linear feet of new pipelines. And those things are all detailed in the Nexus study. You can see them in each of the chapters has a list of the facilities that are more detailed than are here, along with the costs. So here's the maximum justified fee schedule that we've calculated. The important thing to note here is that this is, you know, we call it maximum justified for a reason, right? The point of the Nexus study is using those principles I mentioned before, nexus and proportionality, the reasonable relationship. We calculate the most you can charge, sort of legally. That doesn't mean you have to charge that amount. You can charge zero. I mean, you can charge anything less than this, no more than this. That's the idea. So really, some of the guidance we get usually from the council or from supervisors in the case of a county is what you want the fees to be because it's sort of a policy decision, right? figuring out, because there's a balance to be struck. If the BIA were here, they would talk about how high fees will discourage development. And that's another perspective. And that's a policy discussion that goes on. And the solution is unique for every community. But in any case, these are the maximum justified fees we've calculated. So the next thing to note is I mentioned how, depending on the type of calculation you use, it changes the sort of math of how you fund the facilities. So you can see here. On the left, for each of the categories, you can see the total project costs. And those are the total costs listed in the facilities list that are in each chapter. Then, based on the maximum justified fee and the expected development, we have their development fee revenue, which is how much you'll collect, assuming that our projections are correct. And of course, you know, the projections we have, we don't know this for sure, but that's our best guess. I mean, it could be more, it could be less. It could be slower, it could be faster. Also, for each fee category, there's an existing impact fee fund balance. You've got a fund balance for each of the categories. And so on the right, you have additional funding required. And that is money that in order to build the program that you're using to charge the fees, that you're basing your fees on, that's funding you're going to have to find from some other source to complete the program for each of those fee categories. So for open space and for sanitary sewer, that number is zero because actually the development is responsible for all the projects that are identified in the fee study. And so you just charge a fee if you charge the maximum fee. you would charge that and it would fund those facilities. That's less true for traffic because Some of the traffic facilities are not entirely allocated to new developments. Some of them are sort of a mix, as you'll see actually on the tables in the next study. The big one is police, and there you've got, I think, a $50 million police station, along with some other things. I mean, it's 56 total. And you can see that the growth, your growth, you've got 50% growth in commercial, but your growth in residential is fairly small. So if you look at sort of the police station benefiting the entire city, the allocation to the impact fee program I mean, it's almost $13 million, but it's only a fraction of the 56. Because that's new development's share of the new police station, right? The new development's not causing the need for the entire police station, and yet they benefit from it, so they pay for a share of it. And that's the share in that case. But it means that you've got a number there you have to meet from some other source. So lastly, we have a few fee comparisons to sort of get you an idea of some of those I call, often elected officials want to do what I call keeping behind the Joneses. They want to know sort of where they're at with other communities. And so for each of these, we have a number of, we've got Rosemead, Arcadia, Monterey Park, and South Pasadena. And then also the draft new fees and then the current fees as they stand now. Four, I see single families misspelled there. I apologize for that. BOTH THE MULTI-FAMILY AND SINGLE FAMILY COMPARISONS ARE TRICKY BECAUSE YOUR EXISTING FEE IS PER UNIT. YOUR NEW FEE IS PER SQUARE FOOT. SO WE USED A 2,000 SQUARE FOOT. WE JUST PICKED A NUMBER. SO THE COMPARISON IS A LITTLE MISLEADING THERE. I WOULD SAY THAT YOU PROBABLY BASICALLY NOW, YOUR DRAFT FEE IS SORT OF IN THE RANGE OF SOUTH PASADENA, BUT CLEARLY MORE THAN THE OTHER COMMUNITIES. I THINK ALL THE OTHER COMMUNITIES ARE STILL CHARGING PER UNIT. THIS IS A REQUIREMENT THAT CAME UP ABOUT FOUR YEARS AGO. CITIES ARE ONLY CHANGING IT WHEN THEY UPDATE THEIR FEES. YOU UPDATE YOUR FEES AT LEAST EVERY EIGHT YEARS. THERE'S A LOT OF COMMUNITIES THAT JUST HAVEN'T. MANY COMMUNITIES WAIT LONGER THAN THAT. THEY'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO. Things just happen. So I think all the other communities currently are still charging per unit. In the case of South Pasadena, we're in the process of updating their fees now. But we use their existing fees, not the draft fees they're working on, because those haven't been adopted yet. For multifamily, in this case, instead of using a single unit, we used a prototype, a 25,000-square-foot, 30-unit building. There you can see. Your draft and current fees are pretty similar, and you're sort of lower than Monterey Park and more than some of your other neighbors. For retail commercial, your draft fees have come down a lot. And the reason for that is mostly the traffic fee. Your traffic fee was quite high. And we didn't do the last fee, so I don't really have an answer as to what that difference is. But we used our methodology, what we think is legally defensible. We used your current facilities. So this is the calculation that puts you about the same as Arcadia more or less and a little more than your neighbors for office And the other thing about your your prior traffic fees is they're on a per trip basis They're all the same price and the trip rate varied So you see here in the case of the office prototype? It's not as big a difference as the other and you're as projected you're you're looking at more than Monterey Park and the other and pretty similar to your current fee and And then last, industrial. Industrial came down a lot, again, and is much more in line with your neighbors than it currently is. And with that, that's the rest of my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions or clarifications, anything you need. And thank you for your time.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Edison. Does any council member have any factual questions for the staff to clarify the report?

Start with one clarifying question, then I'll have some others after public comment. On page 33 of the report that's attached, just so you know, I served on the San Gabriel Unified School District, so I know what we own. And on there it said that Marshall Park Community Park is owned by the San Gabriel Unified School District. It's Garvey. It's not San Gabriel. So if you can correct that.

Okay. Okay.

Yeah, we actually have two school districts. We used to have two schools, but Marshall Park, part of it was converted to a park and to a facility, a Head Start program, and for our traffic division. So there's always been confusion. We only have one school from the Garvey School District, Dewey. but that area is still owned.

So that park's owned by Garvey?

Yes. It's not Garvey Unified because they don't have a high school, so it's Garvey School District. Okay. Thank you, Mayor.

Okay.

Thank you. Who would like to go next?

Well, thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much for your presentation. So when I read this report, it seems like this study is intended to help to address the long-term financial challenges that are created by Proposition 13. So that being said, this property, because that limits the property tax growth. So if I remember that, it's like a 2% annual increase capped. and it's like a 1% for selling price. most of the time. So is one of the city's tools, is it one of the city's tool to help paying the future infrastructure when property tax revenue cannot keep up with growth? And if I remember correctly, that every one dollars we collected from the property tax, that we only get 12 cents back from the county. Is there any way that we can get that numbers increase, even put it on balance?

I mean, it's a little outside the scope of this, but I can tell you that what you're talking about is ad valorem tax. And Prop 13 essentially took all the current alphabet soup of districts and sewer bonds and cities and all the rest and set the rates. There's something called a TRA, tax rate areas, and they've got, there's a zillion of them. In fact, your city, for example, is a patchwork of them that's based on the interleaving of all these districts and special entities and other things. So that fixed it. So of the ad valorem tax, your proportion of that, and 12.7% is typical. Some cities... ARE LIKE SIX. SOME CITIES ARE IN THE HIGH TEENS, AND THAT'S JUST HOW IT WAS. I MEAN, PROP 13, THEY JUST FROZE EVERYTHING. THEY JUST FROZE IT IN PLACE IN 76, 77, AND SAID, THAT'S IT. AND SO OF THE ABLORUM TAX, THERE ISN'T ANY WAY TO CHANGE THAT, UNLESS YOU CAN CONVINCE SOME OF THE OTHER DISTRICTS TO SHARE Or there are some places where there are some sewer districts that actually are running, have huge reserves. They've got reserves that are 20, 30, 40 times their operating annual revenue, and it's because they have this money and they don't need it all. They can't spend on anything else. So people say maybe they should be dissolved, but on the other hand, these boards don't agree. I mean, that's got nothing to do with their matters here. But the short answer is no, there's no way to change that. You can pass supplemental, you can do supplemental taxes. You can pass, you can have special taxes, like CFDs for particular purposes, or you also can have a, you can add to that, actually what's called an override, and that requires a vote, and it's not easy.

But where we are talking about the impact fee, that increase, that revenue will be goes to our general funds, but not But if we increase the supplemental tax for property tax, then we can only focus on one particular target or reason that why we need that tax for. Is that correct?

If you're talking about tax measures, I mean, there's a different requirement for passage depending on if it's a general tax measure or a specific tax measure. But in the context of impact fees, the restriction here is that you have – the idea is that this money relieves a burden on the general fund. It doesn't go to the general fund. In fact, each of these – it should already be – each of these revenue sources goes in a special account, and that account – If you're collecting police impact fees, that has to get spent on police facilities. If you're collecting a park impact fee, it has to get spent on park facilities. But it does effectively relieve a burden because if there's things from a policy perspective you want to construct, to the extent you've got this funding that can help fund it, that means you don't have to find the money somewhere else. Like in the case of the police station, you want to build it, a chunk of that money will come from impact fees where otherwise if you didn't have the impact fees, the whole thing would have to come from somewhere else.

I see. So this is fair. I'm sorry, is it echo? Yeah, a little feedback. Hello? I think it's okay. Sorry, we should upgrade our facility by impact fee. It's kind of impact.

Well, you can have a general government facility, general government fee, which actually can do things with City Hall, and that's not having feedback at a council meeting. That's probably an upgrade.

Well, but is it fair to say, I think it's fair to say that this study that looks at the future cost of serving the growing populations, that development impact fee or another funding options besides raising the tax on the existing residents, Is that right? Because the new residents will be paying more for their property because we have higher impact fees on each building cost. So which means that they may pay higher property, you know, higher price on their property in the future because they're moving in this city. But we increased the impact fee. So that fee could be the cost that transfer to consumer from developers.

Well, that's a point of some debate in my industry. If you think about it intuitively, let's say, for example, you decide to, because you don't want to overburden development and you don't want houses to cost so much, that you decide to charge half of the impact fee. You take the maximum justified fee and just decide now, well, not now, but at the adoption as a council, to charge half. Then along comes some developers. They build their houses. They build some houses. They pay the fees. They also pay for lumber and labor. They pay for the land. They build everything. And they get to sell the house. Are they going to sell the house for the price they could get minus the amount you agreed to reduce the impact fee by? I think the answer is no. I mean, the essential function to an economist, the The price of housing is a function of supply and demand. Supply is how many houses you can buy in the short term. I mean, in the long term, there's also zoning and land availability and lots of other things that can affect the long term availability of housing. But in the short term, it's just literally what's on the market, right? What's for sale? The demand is the folks who have jobs or have money and can buy the house and want a house, right? And that, you know, like you study economics, right? That intersects someplace at a price. And when developers, either integrated developers or just builders, when they go to sell a house, they sell a house for every nickel they can get. And that price is not determined by the cost of lumber or the cost of impact fees. In fact, if they can't cover their costs, they sell it at a loss. Or they make a giant profit, right? That's the business they're in. But to be honest, there are some economists who say that in the long run, impact fees can affect the availability of land. Because to us, actually, what impact fees do affect the price of is land. So someone who wants to build a house will say, well, I can build a house for a certain amount. It costs me this to build it. I can sell it for an amount. I subtract what I can sell it for from what it costs me. And the residual is what I can pay for the land, along with some profit, of course. But the residual is what I can pay for the land. So what costs will often do and not just impact fees but other costs will do is reduce land prices. That's why land prices are much more volatile than housing prices because they're sort of a result of all these other economic factors and they're kind of what's left over. But to be honest, I mean, it's a question that we debate, and not everybody agrees, but I think fundamentally it's difficult, because you could see on the other side that, for example, maybe, I mean, having impact fees could make a community more expensive by making more desirable. Like if you charge impact fees, it's not the impact fees that are making the houses more expensive, it's all the lovely parks. And you have all these beautiful parks, and suddenly people want the houses more. And then the houses cost more, because, right? I mean, that can happen, too. I mean, another way that could benefit you in a way is that actually the more the house sells for, the more property tax you get, right? Because that's how, you know, that's how property tax functions here, right? Every time you, you know, the sort of default for assessed value for a house in California is its sales price.

So is it fair, because in your report it shows that SAS grows, pays for growth. So which being said, is that the concept similar to mellow rules? That, for example, the community, when they have brand new cities, They would need a new police station, fire station, library, everything. So they would just apply those valid rules to the homeowners for a certain period of time, let's say 25 years. But this is more like a metal rules but only one-time fee for the new growth, for those new population.

I mean, the difference is that in the case of an impact fee, it's a one-time charge that happens long before any residents show up, right? It's a cost of construction. It's just like. financing costs for the builder, it's like lumber costs, labor costs. A Melrose tax, I mean, that gets paid off for 20 years by the homeowner, right? The homeowner pays that. And that's a different... That's another sort of discussion we have in our industry about what effect Melrose taxes have on housing prices and to the extent to which buyers take it into account. It seems that actually on the commercial side, they absolutely do. They know how much it is and they put it in their performance. Residential buyers are a little... I can tell you an anecdote for myself. When I was shopping for a home for my father-in-law in American Canyon about 20 years ago, we went to the model homes and there was this big banner that said, No Melrose. It was a big banner. I guess people knew what it was. I was curious. I said, There's no financing? There's no sewer bond? They said, Oh, there's a sewer bond. I said, A sewer bond is the same thing as a Melrose. Oh, no, no. It's not a Melrose. No, see. That's all marketing. There is some debate about the effect of on housing prices of taxes. And that's something we're sensitive to. Actually, when we do home price comparisons, we try to take taxes into account because they vary by community. Some new communities will have Melrose bonds that take your tax rate all the way up almost to 2%. Like in Orange County, especially around Newport Beach, when they do, I mean, they'll do, they'll take, you know, Melrose all the way, like a 1.9, 1.95 with an inflator. So it'll be 1.9 and it'll go up 2% forever, which is, it's a lot of tax, right? I mean, most people are paying one, you know, all in in their home, 1.2, 1.3, you know, with overrides and all the,

mosquito abatement district and some special thing you know just depends on the community but in that range i see so on your report on 12 i mean the presentation page 12 that uh the maximum justified fee schedule yeah so our city we actually have a lot of mixed use uh projects here so this report that proposed a maximum fee of two dollars and six cents per square foot for residential and per and for The commercial is $2.19. So how would that city calculate the fee for a mixed-use project?

It would just be the actual square feet. So if you had a ground floor of 3,000 square feet, you pay 3,000 square feet of commercial, and if there's 20,000 square feet of residential above, you pay that.

Oh, that's it? Yeah. Okay, I see. And also today's presentation is just for information only, as I understand.

That's right.

So what were the city council to be asked to decide next? I mean, it's about like, are we agreed to just increase the fee or, you know, with the justified numbers that recommended or, I mean, when are we going to have the discussion for this fee schedule?

So as you mentioned, Councilman Wu, tonight is just informational only. It would be to present the topic. It probably, hearing Mr. Edison's report probably makes the full Nexus study more digestible and if you have trouble sleeping tonight, I suggest you get into the details of that. With all of that background. But we have to do at least a 30-day public hearing notice, so it won't be any sooner than that. So likely end of the summer, we will be coming back to the city council. If we don't hear anything from council tonight as far as a consensus of whether we want to be at the highest end of what we can justify so that developers are paying their fair share, so to speak, or the opposite, if we're not going to be at the lower end and trying to make it business-friendly given everything that that we've just heard. We'll come back with a recommendation from staff, but at that time, council can decide to change it right up to the last minute, plus or minus. So really, it's the discussion from council on where you want to land on that spectrum.

Thank you, and does our state have any regulations that we cannot adjust the impact fee for affordable housing since we might have more affordable housing projects in the future?

Do you mean impose the fee on affordable housing? You absolutely can. It's typical for communities to reduce the fee for affordable housing, especially where the city itself is involved in the funding of affordable housing. Because there, unlike the scenario I described with a builder, the way it works is that the subsidy needed for affordable housing is net of the sort of project cost and So to some extent, you're just taking out one hand and putting in another, right? You're charging an impact fee on an affordable housing project you're funding. You're just taking the impact fee out and putting affordable housing money in, potentially. I mean, that's how many cities view it. Other cities, I mean, it's typical to make it 50% or even exempt, in my experience. But that's entirely a policy decision. You can charge impact fees on. Or sometimes it's by category. They'll say for certain types of, like for utilities, they'll pay that fee. But for things like fire and police and parks, they don't. For example, sometimes if it's an enterprise fund, like sewer or utility enterprise funds, they won't exempt it in that case, but they will for other things. I've seen different scenarios, but it's at your discretion.

Okay, so that will be in our city decision. It's not from the state. So even that will trigger the density bonus. So those units that wrote more from density bonus, we still can apply our justified impact fee. Is that correct? Yeah. Got it. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Vice Mayor Wu? Vice Mayor Ding? Okay. Thank you, Mayor.

Okay. So, actually, for your presentation, the fee is based on the page 13, right? How much the impact fee I'm sorry, I didn't understand. At the next page, you have the project fee revenue. Yeah. So you have first calling the total project cost. That's your estimate for the future cost.

Well, it's the city's estimate. It's the sum of, if you look in the next study, each of the chapters, each of the fee categories has a project list. And it's the sum of all those project lists. So it's the sum of all the things you're planning on building. And what we calculate is what portion of that can get funded by impact fees. And that's that second column.

Second column, it's for your impact fee.

Right, it's the revenue, assuming you charge the maximum amount and assuming the development projections are correct, which they're probably not exactly correct. We'll take our best shot. That's the fee based on our expected development through 2050, your expected development through 2050. Okay.

The first column is maybe the question for Mark. The first column is for the total cost for the future police, fire, open space. The cost, we estimate next maybe I don't know how many years.

That's correct. So for each of those categories staff went through and tried to project for example sewer based on the number of residents and the number of businesses what that extra demand would be on the sewer and then what the cost would need to be in order to increase the size of the sewer pipes in order to meet that extra demand. Same with traffic, open space, fire, and police. So the police, for example, takes into account the new building estimates that we have put together, plus things like extra officers and the equipment that they need. And so, to answer your question, for the next 25 years, that is projected to the best of our ability.

Okay, that's the first column. The second column, it's for next five years, or...?

for the next column is over that 25 year period, that's the projected amount of development that would occur during that time period that would pay those fees. So in that very first slide that Mr. Edison showed, it had a number of residents, excuse me, that the city would increase, so there's a number of units. And so each of those units and square feet would pay a development impact fee, and that's what would result in that revenue. So for commercial, industrial, and residential, we did a projection of what it would be over the next 25 years. It could be more than that, it could be less than that, but that's our best estimate.

So existing, then next column, existing impact fee fund balance, that's meaning Impact fee, it's a special account. It's not like for regular general account. It should be used like whatever category we have the police fire, right? That's the existing we have. Okay.

Yeah, the main thrust of this table is to give you an idea of your total project cost minus development fee revenue, because hopefully you'll collect that, minus existing fund balances, because you have that money already. Okay. And you have a net, which is that additional funding requirement. Okay. That we, you know, as a policy, you know, this has been our practice for many years, that we want to make sure that the council engages all the policy implications of impact fees. And one of the implications is if you're going to charge these fees and have these projected facilities you're going to build, you kind of have an obligation to my knowledge has never been litigated but in our eyes if you put this program together you do have an obligation to within the 2050 build the stuff you're promising that you're using to base your fees on so that we want you to see additional funding requirement required means that's money you're going to have to find over the next 25 years so it's 50 million dollars you know that's 2 million a year right it's not I mean it sounds like a big number at first but if you spread it out over 25 years it's 2 million a year which again It's a lot of money, but to a city, it's not back-breaking. It's an expense, but it's potentially doable, but it's entirely up to you, of course.

So the next column, it's like open space and the shoreline, that's special like tax already, so we don't need to count it, right? So the question is impact fee is based on last column, like additional fund required. It says if you figure like back to then, based on this figure, then you calculate the number 12.

No, the additional funding required is the money you need after you've collected the impact fees. The impact fee revenue, see development fee revenue? Maybe I should call that impact fee revenue. The column called development fee revenue, that's the impact fee revenue. This table assumes you're charging the maximum fee, that fee table you saw earlier.

Okay, that based on the second column.

Yeah, the second column is a combination of the development projections that we have and the maximum justified fee, which you don't have to charge. We're just putting this together as a sort of example of how the math works. The additional funding requirement required is money besides the impact fee, so something else. General fund, bond issue, another round of DARPA, who knows?

Okay, I see. So it's interesting that I wanted to know that for the page 12, how do you got to figure out it's for the like $2.06 for the police, fire, that's for the resident. The first one for the resident, you put square footage charge, right?

Yeah.

So you're based on that. So total will be $11.43, right? That's it.

Right. And that money goes into what we talked about, the second column. Every time development occurs.

Based on second column, you'll get a disk figure.

Right. So like a 2,000 square foot house is going to pay $23,000 in fees.

All right. Okay. And for the commercial office, it's much more less compared. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay, one more clarifying question. But we have the, if we have the more residents come out, so we require have the park. But for our city, I feel like we don't have any public land to have the extra park. So what should we do?

on the roof. We have a couple of options. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mayor. We have a couple of options. If we were able to get enough impact fee, we could look at buying land and creating parks if we were to have a large development that supported that. But more likely, what we have been doing and what we will do in the future is to intensify our current parks. When we add new programming, when we add new benefits to the community, we're able to use open space fees for those. So for example, if we do the Veterans Monument, that will add a place for people to relax, pay tribute to their loved ones, that kind of thing, and that's an extra amenity. So we can use that for those.

Okay, okay, that's good example. Okay. Thank you.

Sure Thank you Thank You vice mayor anyone else.

Yeah, if I could is it mr. Edison. Yeah. Yes Cool name. Oh, thanks So I have a few clarifying questions about like five or six I I WANT TO UNDERSTAND IMPACT FEES, RIGHT? WE'RE TALKING ABOUT WHEN PEOPLE ARE DEVELOPING. SO LET ME ASK IF SOMEBODY WAS RENOVATING THEIR HOUSE, AT SOME POINT THEY HAD ALREADY, AT SOME POINT Probably when that house was developed originally, they had to pay impact fees, right? If they existed. It might predate the impact fees. Especially here in San Gabriel, right. So if they were renovating their home, would they have to pay any impact fees?

Right. So you have some policy discretion there. SOME COMMUNITIES TAKE THE VIEW THAT IF YOU'RE BUILDING A NEW HOUSE, THEY DON'T CARE WHAT WAS ALREADY THERE, YOU PAY THE FEE. OTHERS WILL SAY IF WHATEVER IS THERE ALREADY, AND THIS COULD BE REPLACING A HOUSE OR COULD ALSO BE A CONVERSION IF YOU'RE TAKING RESIDENTIAL AND MAKING IT COMMERCIAL, or taking a commercial and changing a different kind of commercial, they're all kind of the same situation, right? You have something that's there, and you're building something else. Some communities take the view that if you paid an actual fee, you get a credit for the actual fee, and you pay whatever the net is. Others will say, will calculate what the fee would be for what's already there, and then they look at the amount that you pay for what you're building and charge the net. In this case, I think because residential is changing to per square foot, It actually raises an option that some cities are pursuing, but most are avoiding, which is actually you could even charge an impact fee for expansions. I mean, if someone adds 1,000 square feet to their house, you could charge them an impact fee for it. Most communities are not doing that, but that is an option. But typically, some of this is really up to you. And actually, I don't know your current policies, but you've got some discretion here. But the typical approach is if someone is just renovating their house and not adding any square feet, there's no impact fee. Right.

Well, there's no impact.

Right, arguably there's no impact, right.

But there would be an impact if they are adding an ADU.

Right. Right. ADUs are a separate category, and that's actually governed by state law a little bit. ADUs under 750 square feet are exempt from impact fees. ADUs over 750 square feet pay, well, they're not exempt. Some communities have them pay the amount over 750, so if you're 760, you pay for 10 square feet. Other communities say if you're 760, you pay 760, and if you're 749, you pay nothing. Right. Because the law doesn't say. The law just says exempt under 750. It doesn't say what happens if you're over. So ADUs, and you also, you don't have to charge ADUs. You can exempt them too. You don't have to charge that category. But you can't charge ADUs under 750 square feet.

Right, and I know there's another option where people can subdivide their land if they have enough land, and then they can build a new single res. So that will apply for single res.

Absolutely. Yeah, that's a new house. Yeah, that pays an impact fee. That's clear. I don't think there's any much debate about that. Interesting.

So then my following question will be if we can go to slide 15 or actually slide 14.

14, okay.

So right here we're looking at for single, like for people that want to build homes, A SINGLE FAMILY HOUSE MAY BE SUBDIVIDING THEIR PROPERTY, BUILDING ANOTHER PROPERTY OR JUST A PIECE OF LAND WHERE THEY WANT TO BUILD. we're looking at going from the current, which is about $15,000, to something along the ballpark of $22,000, $23,000, correct?

That's assuming a 2,000 square foot house.

Right, so that's only for a 2,000 square foot house, or if it's less than that, it's less money? Okay, so it adjusts?

It's per square foot, so yeah. Got it, got it. Now I want to move to slide...

slide, the next slide, which is slide 15, where we're talking about multifamily properties, and this, to be particular, the numbers that we're seeing here, just to be on the same page, 30 units, 25,000 square feet, right? And the yellow that we're seeing is where we have current. Right, and we're looking at dropping it down from, I wanna say north of 300,000 to about 275,000 or so.

Yeah, I should say for both of the residential categories, it's a little tricky because your current fee is per unit, and this fee is per square foot. And so it's a little hard to do an apples and apples comparison. Yeah, because you don't know, because it's entirely dependent on what assumption you make about how many square feet the unit has, where before it didn't matter. So these, I apologize, it's a little hard, and we wanted to do the comparison as best we could, but it's a little tricky. Please continue, but I wanted to make that point that it's a little, because the other ones are per unit, it's a little hard to compare. Right.

Right, because we want to measure the impact, right? For each unit, there's an impact for each family living there, right? They're going to be driving a car. They're going to be going to the local schools. They're going to be utilizing all the services. So that's why we want to kind of gauge that. But I see how it's harder when you're making it from like 30 units, 25,000 square feet. I can see how that's a little bit different because we don't know – We don't know how many people are going to be living in that unit, or how many rooms are going to be in that unit, How much is that going to really encompass? It could be a 30-unit apartment, 25,000 square feet, but it has a big gym facility, it has a pool facility, and the rooms are tiny, so then it's less people technically, right?

But you can see just here that you know that these units are a lot smaller than the single-family home because it's 25,000 square feet for 30 units. That means every unit's less than 1,000 square feet. Interesting. So they're paying a much smaller fee, even though... A lot of times, the same size family lives in a home as lives in an apartment. That's not a function. Often, it's socioeconomic. People with more money pay for bigger houses, have bigger houses. That doesn't mean they've got more kids or more people living in their house. That's sort of an economic function. In fact, staff decided to use a single rate for all residential. In some communities, we actually divide it by multifamily and single family, and we have that data. The complication there is actually that if you look at sort of occupancy density, the occupancy density of multifamily is higher than single family. That is to say that there's fewer square feet per person in multifamily and the people are the impact, right? The people, as you mentioned, the people are the ones that drive the cars, use the parks, all these, you know, call the police, call the fire department. And so actually, um, when we do a per square foot fee and we, and we break out single family and multifamily residential, the multifamily per square foot fee is higher than the single family fee. Now the fee, EFFECTIVE FEE PER UNIT IS LOWER BECAUSE THE UNITS ARE MUCH LOWER BECAUSE IT'S A 20% DIFFERENCE OR SOMETHING WHILE SINGLE FAMILY UNITS ARE LIKE HERE, YOU KNOW, HALF THE SIZE OR DOUBLE THE SIZE OF A MULTIFAMILY. BUT WE OFTEN GET PUBLIC COMMENT SAYING WHY ARE THE MULTIFAMILY FEES HIGHER THAN THE SINGLE FAMILY FEES WHICH THEY ARE PER SQUARE FOOT BUT A LOT OF COMMUNITIES, YOU KNOW WHAT, WE DON'T WANT TO GET INTO THAT AND ALSO YOU WANT TO ENCOURAGE MULTIFAMILY AND SO IN A SENSE WHAT WE'RE DOING IS BLENDING SO SINGLE FAMILIES PAYING A LITTLE MORE multifamily's paying a little less. They're all paying the same rate. That's a policy decision.

And I think it's arguably to say that on a multifamily apartment, there's more revenue to be collected as well. That's when it's developed, opposed from a regular single-family house also, right? So it's not apples and oranges. It's not apples and apples. I get what you're saying. I'm going to move to the next slide. It's 9-16. This is where we see a huge... We see a huge bar here, and we see a dip for the recommended amount to go down for retail commercial properties. Right now, currently, retail commercial properties that they were to develop they're paying about close to 200,000, right?

Yeah, $20 a foot. Wow, I mean. Basically, yeah, a lot. The main driver of that difference is the traffic fee a little bit, the sewer fee are the sort of differences. We didn't do the original study, so we can't really answer why it is what it was. I mean, we did carry over a lot of projects. I think also some projects have been constructed, so the facilities list dropped maybe, but we don't have a really comprehensive explanation as to why. Well, in our opinion, the draft fee we calculated is the most you can charge under current conditions doing our analysis. We can't justify the current fee as it stands. That's really, we're not in a position to be able to, you know, we give our honest professional opinion about what the fee should be and, you know, based on the data you give us and state law.

So technically, thank you, Mr. Edison. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying that. But I kind of want to dive in deeper into this. I kind of want to understand. So currently we could leave all the fees as is. Is that correct? As long as we don't or are we out of compliant or anything in that matter?

You are required by law to update your fees every eight years. And then every five years, you have to do something called renewing the nexus, which is a little ambiguous, but maybe the same.

And that's what we're doing right now, right?

So every five to eight years, you have to go through this exercise and look at the facilities, look at demographics, look at costs, and sort of refresh everything. Now, do some cities drag their feet and not do it for a long time? Yes. Do we advise that? No. But on the other hand... This is sort of a little corner of the world that most people aren't paying attention to. My family, for example, still has no idea what I do. I mean, I tell them and then they say, okay, and then they forget and then they ask me again.

The eye is glazed over.

It's a quite interesting topic. I mean, you were talking about all these things. I like it. I really like most of the things that you're talking about. It's not part of my world. I mean, it is now, so I have to try to grasp it and understand it. But I can see how they get confused as well. I'm confused, and that's why I have clarifying questions. So going back to this, so then the recommendation here is to drop it down to about, and we're talking about, again, retail, commercial, dropping it down to under, UNDER $100,000. A LITTLE UNDER $10 A FOOT. IT'S HALF, BASICALLY. SO MY QUESTION, I MEAN, I THINK TO YOU, MR. EDISON, OR TO STAFF, HAS THIS BEEN a roadblock for people trying to do retail commercial buildings or projects? And if we do decrease the impact fees, are we expecting to have a boost in people wanting more of an appeal to come here?

That's not something I can answer for you in particular for San Gabriel. I mean, I can tell you $20 a foot is a Fairly high fee. I mean, it's not crazy, but it's fairly high. In our experience, there's a real difference in the attitude towards impact fees of the commercial developers and residential developers. Residential developers are very focused on prices and what they can get the land for and making a profit and selling the house. So they're very, very sensitive to impact fees. Commercial developers, they're much more focused typically on, I mean for logistics it's about you know, it's about what customers are going to get into their buildings, what's, you know, how close are they to the freeway, who's going to, you know, who's going to occupy their space. On the retail side, who are their customers, what's their market? I mean, they're more focused on that and less sensitive about the price because if they can make the numbers work, I mean, it's not unlimited, but if they make the numbers work, a one-time cost is not as important to them, in my experience. I'm sure they disagree with that, say, what do you mean? But But in practical terms, when we hear pushback on impact fees, the pushback is almost always routinely on the residential side and seldom on the commercial side, unless the commercial developers are especially organized around a particular industry. For example, in eastern San Bernardino and eastern Riverside County, the industrial developers, the warehouse developers, which is all the warehouses that used to be around here have all gotten pushed east. You know that, the last 40 years. Everything's gotten pushed east or north. It used to be they all got pushed to Ontario, but now it's even further. It's out in the eastern counties. Those developers are very organized, like the BIA, and they do push back against industrial fees. But more typically, also because maybe they're not as organized, but in our experience... The struggle here is that you don't know what never happened. You don't know someone who looked at San Gabriel and said, hey, I'd like to open a store here. I think I'm going to build a store. What? And then they just leave. I don't know. I don't know about that. I can tell you that less is more encouraging. Certainly people like paying less for stuff. I mean, that's probably a question you can ask your community development department, because they're the ones that deal with people who do approach them and have an idea, want to know about zoning, they ask for information. When we do economic development strategic plans for other cities, one of the things actually we do try to get information from staff on is the ones that got away. We want to know who wandered off. Who approached you and then wandered off and why? We actually will try to find them and say, why did you not build it? We're working for Fort Lauderdale. Why did you guys go to the next town over? We try to get those stories because they can be helpful. It's not always price. It can be other things.

That's interesting. Maybe we could ask if we have somebody from community development that can come and kind of give us a little bit of point of clarity when it comes to our city just to understand right now that we have you here. Thank you.

Sorry if I dragged you into something you weren't expecting.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members, David Sanchez, Community Development Director. To answer the question, Has anybody come in and said, I would like to build a 10,000 square foot commercial building, but your transportation and sewer fees are too high, so I'm not gonna do it. That's not happening, and I wouldn't expect it to happen. I think there's probably two things that would occur, is one, as Mr. Edison explained, this cost would more than likely be nominal in the grand scheme of the developer pro forma, The other piece of it is it would probably get absorbed into the land cost. As Mr. Edison said, and any other kind of economic consultant, a lot of times when you have city fees and cost of development, the most fungible part of that equation is the land cost, and so you'll see that come into the land value, or the price of sale. Yeah, thank you.

It's because I see, when I'm looking at this, I kind of see like, If I was stepping down from here and looking at it as just a regular resident, it would look like we're trying to give retail and commercial developments a break, which I mean, we could, right? And then off putting it on the residential side to off balance that, right? To make it more balanced. But technically, we could just leave it like this if we have no issues, at least for this retail commercial side. Is that right?

I think what you just heard is that we have some regulations in play that ask us to look at these numbers and refresh them regularly. And I think a part of that refreshing process that's occurring right now is saying that, you know what, actually, When we look at the study today, for the next 25 years, our fees are high, and so we do have a responsibility to bring it back in line with our ability and our demands.

Right, and it will be more, it makes more sense to be, to take a balanced approach. Can we go to the next slide, and that's gonna be my last question? As far as, like, the industrial one, it's kind of shocking to me, because for that, I mean, we have a very small, Well, actually, I have two brief questions. Let's go back. Let's go to 18, which is the industrial. This one is mind-boggling. I don't think we have an industrial site. It's very tiny. But these impact fees for industrial, we're looking at more than half a million. I mean, is that going to be a deterrent? If we keep it like that, is that going to be a deterrent?

I'm sorry. That's correct. I don't know that this would be a deterrent. Again, it would probably show up in the land cost. We have very limited industrial land in the city. And that kind of creates a premium, particularly in the San Gabriel Valley. It's the same dynamic. I think at the end of the day, we have a responsibility to update it. And that's what we're looking at here. And allow Mr. Edison to add anything on top of this, if you'd like.

Thank you. One thing to note with the pricing here is that you notice this is 50,000 square feet. So it's five times the project. So the fees are higher, but they're They're actually proportionally less than the other project, the fee on a per square foot basis. The other thing to note is that what we're doing here, the exercise, is our best good faith estimate of the cost incurred by the city. Because this is not a tax. This is not some way of extracting revenue. This is a mitigation. This is our best estimate of what it costs the city to build the facilities necessary to serve development. And so that's what that current estimate is. IT'S AN IMPORTANT THING TO NOTE. THINGS CHANGE. CIRCUMSTANCES CHANGE. PLANS CHANGE. LOTS OF THINGS SHIFT. THAT REFLECTS THIS SHIFT.

WHEN I LOOK AT THIS, I'M PRETTY SHOCKED BECAUSE THIS NUMBER IS EXTRANOMIC COMPARED TO EVERYBODY ELSE. THE OTHER NUMBER WHEN IT COMES TO COMMERCIAL RETAIL WAS PRETTY HIGH, TOO. LAST QUESTION. IN THE BRACKET, I DIDN'T SEE ANYTHING WHERE COMMERCIAL RETAIL AND NOW WE HAVE MIXED USE. Did we have a chart on that, or is that separate, or how are we calculating for that? Mixed use, commercial, residential, and living space.

Right, so mixed use just gets charged according to the mix. So whatever square feet you have of retail, you pay that. Whatever square feet you have of residential, you have that. So it's percentages out, basically. I mean, not even percentages, square footage. I mean, someone comes in with an application, and they got a retail ground floor, and that's 12,000 square feet, and they got five stories above. That's another 60 on top of it. Pay for 60,000 a residential and 12,000 a commercial, and it should be pretty simple.

It's just straight math.

Yeah, that's interesting. All right, well, thank you very much. Appreciate it. You're welcome.

All right, anyone else?

No?

All right, I think I'm satisfied, thank you. So Chief City Clerk, do we have any public comment on this item?

I have no comment cards. Do we have any remote speakers?

If you're joining us via the Zoom application and wish to speak, please use the raise hand feature located at the bottom of your screen. We have no speakers.

Okay, thank you. Now it's time for council discussion. Does anyone like to add anything?

I'd like to start.

Yes.

Okay, great. Where are you? Mr. Edison? Hopefully you took some water. You've been very steady here. So first of all, I just want to thank you for being here, because you are very thorough. And it's really helpful for all of us, your answers and kind of going through the process. So let me start with, you had mentioned that long ago or in the beginning, THE IMPACT FEES WERE BASED ON UNITS AND NOT SQUARE FEET. IN MY MIND, WE KIND OF FELL BEHIND THERE. ALL THE CITIES, BUT I'M MORE CONCERNED ABOUT MY CITY. OUR CITY IS HISTORIC. ALL OF IT IS STILL, IT DOESN'T necessarily improvements. It just needs, or I'm sorry, it doesn't necessarily need improvements, but it needs to be either just demolished or redone. And the police station obviously is the best example. So is there any way to bake in this, in the impact fees, the fact that, you know, we're an older city and so there's going to be more work to be done or it doesn't really work that way?

So impact fees cannot pay for what's called existing deficiencies. So to the extent you've got facilities that are too old or dilapidated or not serving their purpose, you can't just, for example, just replace something. If you replace something and add functionality, then you've got some room there to maybe, like in the case of your police station, Or if you take a police station and expand it, you can do that. But if you're just fixing, you know, like say the roof's gone and you have to replace the roof or something, you can't do that. Because new development really is only paying for the impact it's causing. And new development is not responsible for the state of your existing facilities, whatever they may be.

I guess I'm looking at it as, you know, new development would benefit from some of these things. improvements or expansions and so I feel like it's such a tunnel vision just to say well this is me and this is all I'm going to do where everything else does impact.

So I mean the direct answer to that is existing development also benefits right I mean everybody benefits which is why in the case of the police station we're using this system plan where we actually say you're building a new police station and new developments pay for some of it and And you have to find funding somewhere else, which means effectively existing development, the existing city is paying for a part of it too. And that's in proportion to residents and commercial, which means it's mostly, you saw that number, I think it's 43 million left out of 56. So 13 or so new developments paying for, I mean, they're paying for their share of the new building and they're benefiting from it and they're paying it. And then the 43 has got to come from somewhere else. I mean, essentially, it's a burden of the existing city. Although, effectively, and this is an argument builders will make sometimes. They'll say, wait a minute, you know, if you go issue a bond to pay for the rest, how come we have to pay for the bond? Our new development has to pay for the bond. Well, because, you know, once you're in, you're in. Everybody's in. But basically, if you find some other revenue source, which is either the general fund or some special tax or whatever, OR BOND ISSUE TO PAY FOR THAT REMAINDER, THAT'S GOING TO COME FROM THE EXISTING CITY. YOU CAN'T MAKE NEW DEVELOPMENT PAY FOR IT BECAUSE NEW DEVELOPMENT IS ONLY PAYING FOR ITS FAIR SHARE. I MEAN, NEW DEVELOPMENT PAYS ITS OWN WAY, BUT THAT MEANS IT PAYS ITS OWN WAY, RIGHT? NOT PAYS FOR MORE THAN ITS OWN WAY, IF YOU WILL.

OKAY. WELL, I JUST THINK, ONCE YOU'RE PART OF THIS CITY, YOU KNOW, WE ALL HAVE TO KIND OF DO OUR PART, WHETHER WE CAME NOW OR BEFORE. But that's another conversation, I guess. And then on page, well, I just want to clarify it just one more time. So we update our fees every five to eight years.

Well, your fees, I think you said two. Your fees are last updated in 2004. Wow.

So you're... Yeah, so we don't get penalized because I was just thinking like... Well, that's the...

When you say penalized, I mean, the general math of impact fees is that when these updates occur, the fees go up, right? It's unusual for them to go down, honestly. Usually they go up. And for that reason, the folks who would be enforcing that update requirement also know that if it gets updated, I mean, the folks, you know, the ones paying it are the ones that have an interest in enforcing that requirement, but they know full well that if they enforce the requirement, the fees will go up. So they, you know, they're kind of slow to the mark. With that being said, There are, I mean, city attorney can probably address, there are some other potential implications of expenditure funds and refunding fee. You can get into other kinds of legal trouble potentially, and I'm not an expert on that.

But it's been 22 years, and now for playing, you know, playing based on the rules, we're going to get penalized because there are, you know, pretty hefty declines.

I would say based on our analysis, you guys have been charging too much.

No, I agree with you, but it benefits us.

It does, but that's the blunt answer.

It's like we're getting penalized now.

Right, but that's the reason updates are required.

But we ignored it for 22 years. So what happened? I guess, Mark, you wanted to play the game correctly?

I'm sorry, I just want to... clarify something. We have updated our fees or I'm sorry, increased our fees every year. They get in and, and we'll correct me if I'm wrong. They get increased by a factor that we use from the engineer. There are special LA city engineer estimates. So they've been increased over the last 25 years. What we haven't done is a new nexus study. So we haven't justified that number based on what the actual demand is. So they haven't been stagnant. And maybe that indicator has risen faster than what our projects are. Or I would guess that we've done those projects and haven't used impact fees to pay for those. And so those projects aren't needed anymore. We have several intersections that are already completed that are in our original study. So they have been increased. They just haven't been re-analyzed.

Okay. But there are Exceptionally, we definitely, okay. Well, at least it went the right direction, but okay. And then on page 12, that maximum justified fee schedule, I might need a little help with Mark here, but under commercial open space, there's a big zero there. And I disagree with that. And the reason I disagree is because we've been for years now, and I think Mark and I were around, where we did that study where we said, yes, we are open space, green space, poor. So what can we do to increase that? And we talked about these layers in that, for example, Pacific Plaza is a great example. It's a six acre project, but they're building a park, and this is a community park. It's honoring the San Gabriel Nursery families there. But I thought in this plan, we said, let's start looking at commercial areas and see how we can use, I mean, those are opportunities for parks, you know, because we don't have that much land. And so when that study was done, I think there was a recognition that even the commercial properties are benefiting. And so to have a zero there, it feels like we're being, it's contradicting. Right. And so, and I don't remember the study, Mark, but do you remember? I remember Senya was up there doing the presentation talking about these layers. They looked at the whole city and they were able to, add layers where we could put green space, that they were compatible, commercial space and green space, open space are compatible, we shouldn't look at it as they're not. And at this point, this is our only, I mean, we can buy, but I think that's much more difficult than, you know, we have existing projects, we have a lot of acres out there, and to take advantage of that opportunity and to recognize that this is a partnership. We want our commercial properties to be more walkable. We talk about shopping local and we talk about just being outside and having that community in different retail shops too. I just feel like that doesn't sit well and I just feel like we should either, I just feel that commercial, there is an interest there, there should be an interest, and then how does that fall in line with this green space study that we did? I think it was like 2018, 2019, can you? to assist me here?

I'd be happy to, and there are a couple of concepts at work here, and I think the study you're referring to, and Rebecca can probably fill in more, but we did a parks and open space master plan. and it talked about the different areas we already have and what we could add. So the two things that were kind of conflating, so just using the Pacific Plaza development as an example, the commercial part of that, so the actual restaurant retail space doesn't pay the open space fee, but the residential part does pay that fee. So they're paying that fee even though they're putting park space on their own site, they're still paying that fee so that we can create park space and open space somewhere off of that site. So that development does pay into that fee. If somebody was doing just only a commercial development, they would not pay that fee. We do require as part of our development, we require open space. And I think you all hear that quite frequently from people who are doing development in the city. One of the things they complain about is we have such a requirement for open space baked into our project. And it's because we're trying to mitigate that need on each of these sites. So just because they don't pay an impact fee, doesn't mean we can't require them to create that open space, that walkability, that green space as part of the project. They just don't pay into it because they don't have, as all commercial, they don't have an impact on the parks for the city.

I mean, I can tell you broadly the idea is that commercial development does not create the need for parks. It's sort of intuitive that residential does, because people who live in a community use the parks all the time. It's not true that retail employees may use the park for lunch or something. This has come up in many other places. Usually our solution, if you really want to consider charging commercial, is either an intercept survey, which we've done, like Riverside County did that, where they actually interviewed people. They were more worried about their trail system because they thought their trail system was being used for commuting. And we said, well, do an intercept survey. Send some employees out and interview people and ask them, you know, where you go and where you're coming from. And some of it was commuters. And so we did charge a portion of that, too, because obviously the commuters are using it. You know, okay, then we have a relationship. The city of Emeryville, Emeryville in the Bay Area, as you may know, has... I mean, it's got more residential now, but it's mostly commercial, and they have parks, and they really wanted to charge, and they did, again, an intercept survey where people in the parks, you know, why are you here? I mean, in a sort of gentle way, right? And it was a lot of employees who were hanging out and doing stuff and company parties, and so we could establish a relationship. The other way is if you have some sort of, like in your general plan, some sort of a park standard for, and it sounds like you kind of do, you've got like an open space standard for commercial. But in that case, actually, the open space they're providing on site is really an offset to any fee they would pay, right? If you did sort of calculate some fee for them, then they would get a credit for actually providing it. So it might end up being net zero. But if you had some sort of standard in your general plan that said, We've got a certain ratio, like a park master plan usually has a certain ratio for parks per thousand people or something like that. You could have a park standard for commercial. It says we need to build, for every 10,000 square feet of commercial, we need to build a half acre of parks or something. That's something we could work with as a standard, but we have to have some document like that. In the absence of those sorts of things, we think what's most legally defensible, and that's really our number one job is that we put together a fee program that's legally defensible. because we can't we can't promise you won't get sued that's not you know anybody with a pulse and a check can file a lawsuit um that doesn't mean anything yeah it doesn't right that's meaningless if someone to file it but our our job is to make it as legally defensible as possible and to us the most defensible position is that commercial development does not i mean is it desirable is it lovely is it nice to have it does it look good to have the parks nearby absolutely but does If a bunch of commercial development comes along, do you need more parks like you do when residential development comes? And we think the answer is typically no. But unless you've got policies that say otherwise, like I said, a general plan or some kind of thing that says, no, we have a ratio, this is our plan, and it's been adopted, and there's been a public hearing and an EIR and all the rest of it, that we can work with. But in the absence of something like that, we take the most conservative approach.

Because I'm thinking of the commercial properties that will have some kind of open space. I'm not sure. I think they're open to the public unless the park is related directly to the residential, then they close it. But I feel like this might be an opportunity to try to find more open spaces, Council Member Doing the same thing. Ding. Vice Mayor Ding. Vice Mayor Ding mentioned, and I believe you did too, Council Member Herrera. We all want more parks. Buying property, I just don't think it's as feasible because no one's selling, and if they're selling the property, The cost is, I think, exorbitant. So I don't know if there's a way to bring this into the fold, an opportunity to bring it into the fold. I'm just asking that question because when we did that study, it was very hopeful, and we thought, you know, we can do this. And then all of a sudden I read the study here, and I was shocked to see some of the parks that were listed. I never even thought about it as a park. Like, for example, the Grapevine Arbor, never thought of that as a park, and that was listed. You don't discriminate against parks.

All parks are parks.

Yeah, but that's a facility, and you're listing it as a park. You listed the Roosevelt tennis courts, I think, were listed. I can't even find the page. There were some things there that I think was kind of a stretch as a park. Is it 34? Thank you. And so, let's see. I got to read them because I thought they were kind of interesting. We all know, okay, well, I'll just list them. Great Vine Arbor Park, Marshall Community Park, Plaza Park, Roosevelt Park, Smith Park, Vincent Lugo, Roosevelt Tennis Courts, and the Washington Tennis Courts are all considered parkland inventory. So, for example, the plaza, Pacific Plaza, that park area, is that going to be considered here? No, because that's owned by them. Okay. So, anyway, that would be my only comment here is if there's a possibility of baking that in here. I don't know, having a fever. To give us an opportunity. Well, under, I'm looking at commercial specifically, if there's a way to justify, because I truly believe it does benefit, you know, when people come, you know, we're back to walkability, we're back to, you know, shopping local, you know, giving people who visit other options. to enjoy. I mean, people who come to Park Plaza, they're not just residents. They're people who are coming, that are visiting our church, they're visiting Blossom Market. I mean, I think there is a connection, and if we can, I think we should. This is the opportunity, and I want to come back 22 years, I won't be here 22 years later, but come back 22 years later. Hopefully it'll be eight years. Yeah, with the same situation. Because Once that land is developed, it makes it really difficult. So I understand the residential part, but I believe commercial should do their share too. I believe it supports them.

The benefit is only one prong of the analysis required to justify the fee, unfortunately. You also have to have that, as I mentioned, that you're creating the need.

Well, be creative. Find a way.

That's not my job, being creative. You already said I was creative on the list of things I included. I think that's the limit of my creativity.

Well, I'm asking you. Do your best because I can't, you know, I don't know. I'm just letting you know what I would like to see. You're not alone. We hear that a lot. Two other people have mentioned about, you know, we need to increase the screen space. So if there's a way, you know, please bring it forward. But otherwise, I think. Okay, yep, that was it. Thank you so much, Mr. Edison.

Thank you. All right, so do we, oh yes, go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. The question is, I will need Mark's help. So first, I think I just follow after Councilwoman Menchaca's questions. That is, we have a plaza park, not plaza park, I'm sorry, the Pasek Plaza, which is the project that is 252 or 254 for phase one, and maybe pretty similar units for phase two. I remember that our city will require 1% of the construction cost need to go to the public arts. So if the builders decided not to build so many, they said we would like to build a park there, will we just trade in as like an equivalent value with those units into the park and calculate that as 1% of their building cost? because we will require them to build something or to make renovation of the streets or anything that will benefit the community, which is great. But for that 1%, can they saying, we are able to build so many units here, but we're not going to build that many. We would like to give up the lands and we would just build a park there. So can they transfer that value into the public art?

Thank you, Councilman Wu. That would be a negotiation that a council would make when they're doing a development agreement for a project like that. I can't remember if you were on council at the time we approved that project or not, but that project required density and other amenities, and so we entered into a development agreement. That would have been the time to have that negotiation, and if the council at that time felt like, dedicated open park space to the community was more important than an art and public places fee, we could have had that discussion or that negotiation. At this point, I think that ship has sailed because the project is already being constructed and their pro forma is based on paying those fees and they will build the art. And I think in this case, the art is what Councilwoman Menchaca mentioned, which is the dedication to the family who owned the nursery, and they're gonna have an installation there that speaks to that family, so that art is gonna occur. But the short answer is, for example, when a project comes forward at Las Tunas and San Gabriel at the former car dealership site, if the council is in the process of negotiating a development agreement, that's the time to look at whether we want additional open space as part of the project instead of some of the impact fees or the park, the art in public places, that kind of thing.

So since we will have a park between two phrases in Plaza Park, what's that called? I'm sorry. Pacific Plaza. Then Rubio Village probably will have pretty similar things. Do we define those parks inside of the projects as a public park that people can access to that park?

Or it will be a private park? I'm sorry to cut you off. No, we don't define that as a park. Rubio Village will not have a park like Pacific Plaza. It will be in the middle of the project and it'll be spread throughout the project. Pacific Plaza was a different animal because it was so big and because of the two phases and the plaza in the middle that they wanted to create. So it has open space. that is technically private and if they wanted to prevent people from entering that they could, especially in the evenings and nights, that kind of thing. But they wanted to make it open and also they wanted to have access from the street behind so that people can come and go to that project. That's a little different than projects like Rubio Village where it's a little more insulated and the open space and amenities are for the public. Pacific Plaza will have that as well. They have pools and other, kinds of amenities for their own residents within those phases. It may not be a pool, but they have amenities that are only for the residents, but it's unique because that general plaza is open to the public to walk. And when I say open to the public, again, it's not public space. They could potentially cut that off if they had problems with people who were there that weren't desirable.

Like who? As a private property, no matter what.

That's right.

Okay, got it. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman Wu. Anyone else have any clarifying questions?

This is deliberation. Is it both? We're doing both, I guess. Is it both? Yeah. So, I mean, I mean, this I feel would be the perfect opportunity to understand, like from the conversation that are taking place right now, to understand that the majority of the council, like Council Member Menchaca says, wants parks, right? But there's something we lack at this point, and there's measures that we are putting right now into place so that we're in a better situation, and that's finance, right? If we had the finance, we could easily buy particular small parcels that are maybe for sale on a corner or something, and then have pocket parks, but that takes money. Knowing that, is that something, and I guess I'll ask a question too, is that something that we should also have into consideration, that the council wants to do that? Would that be on this phase, or would that be, it sounds like that would be part of a master plan.

Well, that's a master plan and a discussion with staff about how you spend the money and where and when, but having the money available certainly means I mean, I think it is a smart idea to be opportunistic. So, I mean, when you don't want to, you know, the worst scenario is you identify a parcel, announce you need it, and then the seller knows, and then they're off to the races for the price, right, as opposed to like, oh, that looks pretty good. Someone's selling it already. You go pick it up, right? I know cities do that. Like, they'll pick up things. We call it land banking. I mean, they're just being opportunistic, right, to sort of assemble the parcels they know they'll need in the long run. Sure, but that's got nothing to do with this. This is really, we're talking about the funding here. Interesting.

Okay.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

And thank you so much for the presentation. It's a lot of interesting numbers and just facts. Happy to help. And I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Colleagues, council members, any other discussion? ALL RIGHT. SEEING NONE, OH, SORRY, SORRY.

I RAISED A HAND ALREADY.

THANK YOU, MAYOR.

I DIDN'T HEAR THE ZONE MEETING. OKAY. THANK YOU, MAYOR. SO, YEAH, RIGHT NOW, THE NEW STUDIES HAVE TO, BASED ON THE PER SQUARE RELIGION, NOT FOR THE UNIT. YES. THAT'S A STATE LAW.

WELL, IT'S A STATE STRONG SUGGESTION. IT DOESN'T ACTUALLY, IT'S NOT A REQUIREMENT. So what the state law says, actually, is that if you do per square foot, you are presumed to meet the nexus requirements and proportionality, which actually, honestly, I mean, I am actually an attorney, but I'm not a practicing attorney. That's actually federal law, so that's not a promise they can make. I mean, this stuff goes, I mean, we just had the Eldorado County just had their, you know, the Sheets case just went to the Supreme Court. The nexus of proportionality is a Supreme Court federal law constitution thing for the state to promise you meet it. I don't buy it. I mean, okay, no one's litigated that. But the way it's structured is it says, number one, you are presumed to meet these nexus and proportionality requirements. That may not be the exact language, but that's the idea. The second is if you decide to do some other way, and the options generally are either per unit like we've done before or like you've done before and everybody did before since the 80s when the Mitigation Fee Act was first passed. Or per bedroom, which in our professional opinion actually could even be better, because bedrooms are more relevant for the number of people living in a house than the square footage. But anyway, if you do it some other way, then the council has to make a finding that the way that they're doing it is better than per square foot. And that's essentially a recitation. I mean, it's up to the city attorney and staff to decide how to do that exactly, but that's the standard. And I can tell you, when AB 602 first passed, we had maybe half doing per square foot and maybe a third or a little more doing per bedroom and a few sticking with per unit. The problem with per bedroom administratively is defining a bedroom. Everybody starts weaseling. Then somebody comes to the permit counter, like, that's not a bedroom. It's a rumpus room. It's got a closet. The closet's for rumpus storage. Whatever, right? I mean, the experience of staff with those kinds is they get back to us and they say, it's a pain in the butt. It's just a bunch of arguments at the counter. We're going to do it for square foot because square foot's on the plan, right? There's no arguing with it. Now, you do get into is it habitable or non-habitable. The answer is habitable, but it's a lot less ambiguous. So, I mean, now pretty much everybody's just doing per square foot. It's simpler. But that being said, you don't have to. I mean, in fact, a couple of communities have stuck with per unit because they wanted it, and they made the finding that per unit's better. And honestly, in my professional opinion, per unit's no worse than per square foot because I think square footage is almost irrelevant for residential communities. I mean, it's not, big houses have tiny families, tiny houses have big families. Over time, that all changes. I'm not sure, and it's an economic function, right? I mean, wealthy, small families have big houses. Poor, huge families have tiny houses, right? It's about economics. So I don't see the advantage, but that was a political decision, right? I mean, in fact, it was BIA supported, AB 602, that passed this. I mean, it was a lot of things, but one of the things they did was to push per square foot, which the affordable housing advocates said would lessen the pressure on or create an incentive for smaller units, right? Because if you build a smaller unit, you pay less fees, right? Or maybe the way to think about it is not that, but rather that it no longer incentivizes big houses, because it used to be no matter how big it is, you pay the same fee, so make it as big as you can. And now, no, no, the bigger it is, the more you pay. I think that was the idea.

Okay. So why are they asking the square footage and also effectively like Council Member Herrera talking about the impact for the retail and commercial and industry? they reduce a lot. Currently, we charge it looks like more after, based on the per square footage, they will be saving a lot of money for the developer, right?

Well, save is one. One way to characterize it. Another way is not get overcharged. It depends on your point of view, to be honest. Circling back, this Nexus study, this is not a policy document. This is our best estimate based on legal requirements and your capital facilities and your demographics of the most you can charge legally Okay. You know, under a process which you are, under law, required. Required, I mean, no one's enforcing it, but required to do every eight years. So that's really my answer, right? I mean, to say overcharge, undercharge, saving money, I mean, that's not really honestly how I think about this. I mean, this is the right number.

That's your study. But we are policy makers, so we should find a way to what we do, right? So after your study, we still can continue to the current one or have to use the per square footage?

Oh, you mean per unit or per square foot? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you can, as a council, give us, I mean, part of this process, the reason we're doing this and talking about the administrative studies is to get your feedback. And so if your feedback is, and it's important to note that the per unit is not the commercial. It's only residential, right? Commercial's been per square foot all along.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But the... For residential, you can direct staff that you want it to be per square foot, sorry, per unit. And if staff and the city attorney is comfortable with that and makes the finding, you can do that. I mean, that's part of why we're having this discussion. That's why we did it now as opposed to, I mean, we don't want to, I mean, I think this kind of exercise, not every city does this, but it's useful because it's a chance to really have a discussion about these issues as opposed to getting pushed to the decision point where, you know, you have to decide and adopt it or not adopt it and when you can actually step back a bit and not get into all the issues about the price level and about what's good policy. So honestly, this is what we're expecting. You give us feedback on does this make sense? Is it good? Are there things you want to change? Is it missing? Are there errors? We're a wrong school district. Let us know.

For the multifamily should be, like, encourage you, like, affordable housing, something, it's reduced it, I thought, right? For the single family, it's actually, they increase a lot, right? So, currently, like, 15,000, and then after per square footage, based on 2,000, it's almost, yeah.

I mentioned before, that's a little misleading, because the existing fees per unit and the new fees per square foot, and we just picked 2,000. So it's not, I would treat them as more not changing a lot. It's a little, we can circle back and try to come up with a better way.

It's another...

Apple to Apple to compare it out because it's a per square foot.

We're just assuming a 2,000 square foot house It's a it's a three unit or something like it's big the unit Okay, you need to based on the the bathroom or based on the know the unit three-bedroom tube It doesn't matter a house or okay a single single family house.

Yeah, okay or an apartment.

Yeah, okay

So yeah, I mean another thing you can direct us to do is give you a sort of a better account of that I mean it's a been a puzzle actually as we make the shift to super square foot to Try to explain that better and tell you whether it's going up or down because it's it's sort of a head-scratcher for us to honestly But the also honestly for the for the for the impact of fee So I just wanted to see what's the financial impact after we followed the new rule?

So how much the difference?

I mean, something that's possible is when we can do a historical analysis, look at the last five years, you know, how many units got built, how big they were, and, you know, how much they paid and how much they pay under the new fee. Okay. Right? And that would actually give you a sort of an apples to apples essentially because you could look at actual. Okay. construction. It was a 1,700 square foot unit and a 2,701 and whatever it was. I mean, we can do that. I don't mean to volunteer staff. That's not my place, but we can do the calculation part. Once we have the numbers, it's not complicated. If you want that, I mean, that's something we can do.

Okay. So another question, I'm just asking if, like, more square foot units like for the retail or whatever, is it possible we can have several different level, like a single house, per square foot, what's the impact fee? And for the retail office, it's different impact fee? It's already a different impact, but based on the square footage.

You mean charge more per square foot if it's more square feet? Yeah. I've never done that with commercial. We've done that kind of with residential, although it kind of works the opposite way because bigger houses tend to have lower occupancy density, so on a per square foot basis, bigger houses pay less. We've done it before where we had per unit fees, but we had bans.

That's my next question, if like high value home. But right now, just talking about the impact for the retail

We already effectively do that in a way in that retail development typically is going to be smaller than industrial development. Industrial are bigger projects, but they have different impacts. Many of the impacts, like fire and police and other ones, are based on employee density, and industrial projects have lower employee density than, say, retail does, and they pay a lower fee. They're also larger. That's kind of built in, but a big retail versus a small retail, I mean, in my experience, actually, a big retail, cities want to charge them more, right? When a Costco comes along, you want to get every nickel out of them you can. Well, the mom and pop one, you guys want to just like shepherd them in and help them get along, right? I mean, that's my experience. But anyway, methodologically, we have no way to distinguish that because using the data we have, it's based on averages. We don't have any way to distinguish Now, you can carve out a category. I mean, for example, a common scenario in many communities is last mile distribution, which is not like regular distribution because it's Amazon or some other delivery service that's got a little building and a big parking lot and a ton of traffic. Because there's trucks going in all the switching packages and going out. And we have a special category with much higher trip rates. But to do that, we carve out a separate category. This community in Riverside County had a problem with those same distribution centers. Our last mile distribution had vehicle storage. So there actually wasn't a building. It's just a big lot that they bought. And then they stored vehicles there. And all the vehicles left every day. And all the vehicles went in. And they... trying to figure out the impact fee for that. I mean, so we, to the extent there's identified uses, we can work with you on those, but I don't know a way to distinguish between sort of larger and smaller retail in this context. Now, certainly there's development agreements, right? I mean, then you're, you can negotiate all kinds of things, but the point of The point of an impact fee program is to create a single fee that's publicly adopted, that everybody knows, you know what you're getting into, everybody gets treated the same, which in part is meant to sort of help with legal scrutiny, right? Because there's no sort of extraction, right? I mean, it applies to everybody. It's not like saying, oh, that's a lovely project. It'd be terrible if something happened to it, right? That's a scenario that some cities have done in the past. I won't say any more than that.

Okay. All right, understand. Okay, thank you. Sure.

Thank you, Senator. Okay, thank you, Vice Mayor Ding. Any further discussion? All right, seeing none, then thank you, Mr. Edison. And I guess we're just going to receive and file, yes? Okay, thank you. Next item, please.

Consideration of resolutions relating to San Gabriel's general municipal election to be held on November 3rd, 2026. And I will make the presentation for you. So Mr. Mayor and City Council, in accordance with Section 1301 of the California Elections Code, San Gabriel's next general municipal election is scheduled for November 3rd, 2026. In order for the election to take place, it's necessary for the City Council to adopt several resolutions by a two-thirds vote, calling the general municipal election for the election of three council members, city clerk and city treasurer, requesting Los Angeles County to consolidate the election with the statewide general election, and adopting regulations for candidate statements. The fiscal year 2627 general fund budget includes $137,065 for county election services. The final cost will depend on several factors, including the number of city offices and measures appearing on the San Gabriel ballot, the number of candidates that actually run, along with the county's ability to share allocated election costs among other jurisdictions. So staff recommends adopting the following. Resolution number 26-27, calling for the holding of a general municipal election on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2026. Resolution number 26-28, requesting the Board of Supervisors of the County of Los Angeles to consolidate, administer, manage, and oversee the election. And resolution number 26-29, adopting regulations for candidate statements. And that concludes my report.

Thank you, Chief City Clerk. Does any council member have factual questions for the staff to clarify the report? Seeing none, all right. Chief City Clerk, do we have any public comment on this item?

We have no speaker cards. Is there anyone wishing to speak remotely?

If you are joining us via the Zoom application and wish to speak, please use the raise hand feature located at the bottom of your screen.

No public comment, Mayor.

Okay, thank you. Now it's time for council discussion. Would anyone like to start a discussion on this issue?

I was just going to move for staff recommendation one, two, three.

I second. Okay, motion has been made by Councilwoman Menchaca and seconded by Councilman Jorge Herrera Avila. All right, let's go to the vote, please.

Motion passes by a vote of five zero.

Okay, thank you. Now the next item is the city manager's report, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The only thing more exciting than nexus development impact fees is trash fees. I want to remind council and the community, we'll be talking Athens trash fees tomorrow. All kidding aside, we'll be having the town hall to discuss the Prop 218 hearing. That'll be tomorrow night between 6 and 8 p.m. at the Adult Recreation Center, the Padillo Room. So please come on out if you have any questions. Thank you very much.

Okay. Thank you. How... We will move to council comments and conference meeting reports. Who would like to begin?

Well, I guess I'll begin. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. A reminder that tomorrow, no, that's, I'm sorry, let me go through my schedule here. For the parks, a reminder that we were able to secure a $500,000 grant from the Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District. Thank you to Community Services. Thank you to Rebecca and Matthew for that. AS PART OF THAT PROPOSED ENHANCEMENT, WE ARE LOOKING AT IMPROVING, RENOVATING THE POOL FACILITY, ADDING A SPLASH PAD AND CREATING A SHELTERED PICNIC SHELTER, A SHADED PICNIC SHELTER. There are like five meetings scheduled. I believe two have already taken place. The next one is this Saturday, July 11th from 4.30 to 5.30 at the San Diego Public Library. I encourage everyone to go. There will be two more, but don't wait until the last minute. And you can go to multiple meetings, but these meetings are for the public to share their ideas and their priorities how we can make Smith Park better. Then we have the youth leadership program that the application, the deadline is coming up. That's being hosted by the San Gabriel Police Department. And it's for students in grades 6 to 12 so they can build their leadership skills, explore career development, and make a positive impact in their community. Those applications are on Friday, July 10th. I'VE SPOKEN TO FAMILIES WHO'VE ATTENDED EITHER THE COMMUNITY ACADEMY OR THE STUDENT ACADEMY, AND EVERYONE HAS SAID THAT IT IS JUST A REALLY WORTHWHILE PROGRAM TO PARTICIPATE IN, AND IT'S FREE. SO I ENCOURAGE EVERYONE TO DO THAT. I WANTED TO THANK EVERYONE FOR, WELL, THANK COMMUNITY SERVICES AGAIN, REBECCA AND MATTHEW, My council liaison for this Independence Day celebration, Council Member Wu, we had another great celebration. The drones were as spectacular than ever. I think we could probably make some changes now that it's the third year and we'll be in debriefing and so I want to encourage everyone, we do it properly, I guess we email Mark with our comments, but we will be debriefing and seeing how we can even do it bigger and better next year. But I wanted to also express my appreciation. All five school board members were there in the evening. You know, we got to use Gavrilino and I think it's just such a great, I mean, we talk about parks, you know, there's a facility there that they've opened it up to us and our community could come and enjoy it, and so I want to thank the school district for allowing us to do something like that. I wanted to also mention something I want us as a council to think about, whether it's Fourth of July or Veterans Day or Memorial Day, what I've seen when I look at other cities, we have a lack of flags, US flags. There's nothing being displayed. And I think we need to do something more patriotic. And whether they're banners or just simple flags, they don't even have to be. But back in 2013, when we celebrated our centennial, that committee created these banners, which I still have mine. And it had my family's name, John and Denise Menchaca. And then it had a picture of the Crate Vine Arbor. And it was a fundraiser, you know, to build our float. We had a float that year, Rose Parade float. And so I like us to also talk about, you know, if we just want flags, that's the easy stuff. But I thought maybe this might be an opportunity for our San Gabriel veterans, another fundraising opportunity. You know, they could put former or current service people on there, just like I think Temple City does that. I think San Marino does, too. Or they can just do banners with the flag or whatever. It could be an eagle, whatever is decided, of just their family members. You know, we put a limit because, like in my case, I would probably, you know, I have an active military serviceman. My son-in-law I have. My father-in-law, who's passed away, who served also, and then I would want one with my name on it. But anyway, we'll limit them.

Well, I will say to that point, I agree with you, and we could probably do the same thing we do for Memorial Day and Veterans Day, but do it on the July 4th, because we already have the large flags. Exactly. What I'm hearing from you is a similar concept, where you charge money to...

Put the flags up.

Put the flag up and sponsor a flag.

Yeah, exactly. So the Field of Heroes is beautiful, and then the San Gabriel Veterans, they put those little pictures, and I've put pictures there too. But this would be, you know, everywhere. The, you know, Mission, all the way down Mission, and then over here, you know, for example, during the Fourth of July, a lot of people go to parks. Plaza Park, and they watched the fireworks. And there was nothing around. No flags, no nothing on our side.

Right. I mean, we could do something similar because we already know how to do that. I mean, we already do that process for the other holidays. We just do that or do it a little larger or...

WELL, BUT WE DON'T HAVE FLAGS, LIKE, ON THE FLAG POLLS. WE HAVE, LIKE, THE SAN GABRIEL UNIFIED SCHOOLS, WELL, THE EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION, THEY HAVE THOSE IMAGINE CONTESTS. AND SO WE PUT THOSE, THAT'S WHAT'S UP RIGHT NOW. BUT I'M JUST THINKING THE KEY HOLIDAYS. BUT I'M JUST KIND OF THINKING OUT LOUD.

ALL GOOD IDEAS, YEAH.

YEAH, GET SOME GOOD IDEAS. AND THEN ALSO, YOU KNOW, IF THE SAN GABRIEL, I THINK OF THE VETERANS BECAUSE IT JUST SEEMS LIKE A NATURAL PROGRESSION. But let's just say, you know, it might be too much or they want to focus in other areas. You know, maybe open it up to some of our nonprofits that also have a connection, whether it's the Kiwanis Club, it's the Ramona Parlor, it's the Women's Foundation, it's the historical. Those of us who are involved with local clubs, we're all looking for fundraising opportunities. Maybe we do a rotation and... you know, have them, you know, each club could decide maybe their year they would do something a little different. I don't know. I'm just kind of thinking out loud. This could be a nice community kind of moment. You know, maybe one of the clubs wants to have a contest, you know, who can build the nicer banner and have those banners. But I just think we need to do something in our streets. And I mean, we can even go as far as Las Tunas and Del Mar. I mean, there's so much we can do. But there needs to be more patriotism. We just don't have it.

I agree with you.

Except for the Field of Heroes. That is really, really nice. That's spectacular. But we can do other little things that really get people more involved. And again, the natural progression is the veterans, but I know there's a lot going on there, and so maybe it would be too much, but if they want to take that on, that would be great. But it's a good conversation to have.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so I wanted to...

bring that to our... Council Member, if you're... Manchaca, if you're asking for support, I support you too, and I think the Mayor supports you too on that. Yeah, but I don't think we have an actual item.

No, we don't.

It doesn't need the three members, but yes, I'm sure... Yeah, I'm sure. I agree, and yeah, I have no problem with that.

Okay, so maybe the staff could bring a plan of some sort, and then we can kind of decide what's... Because I don't want to make it... a huge project where we have to have committees and all, but just the plans, you know, and again, it could be just flags, these flags, but I think we can do more than that.

Yeah.

All right. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. We also can like our mayor today. It's very good to help pay.

You can sell ties.

Yeah.

But anyway.

We're good.

Okay. Thank you. All right.

Thank you Go ahead there. Let me open up my report here.

So on On June 23rd to 24th, I was participating in the in the Naleo educational institute and they flew us out to bentonville arkansas for those that don't know that i know you know that's the home of sam walton that's right and i didn't know this but sam walton is the creator of walmart so walton wall and mart and then also the creator of SAM'S CLUB. I DIDN'T KNOW THAT. MAYBE YOU GUYS KNEW THAT. I THOUGHT THAT WAS VERY IMPRESSIVE. THEY HAVE A WHOLE FACILITY THERE WHERE THE WHOLE INSTITUTE WAS TALKING ABOUT EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS AND HOW TO BE RESILIENT crazy fires that we were seeing in Boyle Heights and my heart goes out to all the people that were impacted. But we were learning firsthand about how to deal with these natural disasters and I thought it was a great institute and we also got to tour the emergency facilities that they have and got to see the level of technology that they have at Walmart, at the Walmart facility. And we also got a great opportunity to hear the Kentucky governor. He came and he spoke to us. Andy Versch here, I think I'm butchering that name, but he also talked about his firsthand experience experience in dealing with natural disasters. I don't think anybody is ready. I know Council Member Menchaca, you had to deal with something that was COVID, right? In COVID time, you were the COVID mayor and you had to deal with that and nobody really prepares you for that when that hits and basically all the pressure's on you. So they were teaching us a lot of things about partnerships and who we deal with and first responders and Red Cross and AND SOMETHING ALONG THAT NATURE. I THOUGHT THAT WAS VERY IMPRESSIVE. I RECOMMEND THESE INSTITUTES. THE ONE IS FOR HISPANIC LATINOS. I KNOW THEY'RE GOING TO HAVE THEIR BIG CONFERENCE HERE. next week, and then they have the newer one, the Asian API one that's following it, that NALEO is helping them to build that. So I think it's really impressive that they have that. Another thing is that we did with the mayor, we met on June 29 to talk about a very important topic to the mayor, and that's dumplings and beer. And I just wanted to report back to the council and my colleagues here briefly of what we talked about. So they basically, they're very excited. The whole team is very excited. Yeah. The people that we contracted with seem to be very, very, they know what they're doing and they're working. I believe they said they were working some FIFA stuff or World Cups.

I think so. They're involved in many projects.

Yeah, so they're excited about our project, share the vision of what we want, and we shared the information that the council wanted. FOR THEM TO HEAR, AND WE MADE SURE TO LET THEM KNOW THAT WE WANT TO EXPAND TO GO AHEAD AND UTILIZE THE SPACE THAT WE HAVE. YOU KNOW, THAT'S THEIR PLAYGROUND. WE WANTED MORE ACTIVITIES IN THE BEER SECTION. LAST TIME IT FELT LIKE THERE WAS JUST THAT STREET. PEOPLE WERE MAKING THEIR OWN GAMES. I DON'T KNOW IF YOU GUYS SAW IT. THEY WERE DOING THE GAMES WITH LITTLE CUPS, SO WE DID MENTION having actual games there, more games there in that street area, and having props there as well to make it look more like a theme, not just a back street where, yeah, kind of shedding no lighting. You know, we talked about, yeah, we talked about that. And then we also talked about, oh, and it sounds like they have a big, a big, BEER COMPANY. I DON'T KNOW IF THE MAYOR REMEMBERS WHO THEY HAVE AS A SPONSOR POTENTIALLY.

THEY MENTIONED I BELIEVE CHINESE BEER COMPANY AS A MAJOR SPONSOR EVEN THOUGH WE WOULD HAVE MOST OF OUR BEER PARTICIPANTS WOULD BE MICROBREWERIES AND SMALLER COMPANIES BUT I THINK THEY HAVE THEY MENTIONED SOMETHING ABOUT HAVING A RELATIONSHIP WITH A LARGE ASIAN BEER COMPANY LIKE SINGH TAO THAT THEY CAN AT LEAST have them partner with us so that they can do their marketing and also be a sponsor.

Yeah, and then they also mention if we have any connections or any kind of other companies that we want to make sure they reach out to, to make sure to reach out to them. or for the council at least to reach out to Mark. I know Mark can connect the rest of the council with the team. I don't know how Mark wants to do that, but they did mention that, that they could reach out if we have connections. I know many of us do. Like Coca-Cola, I know many of us know people there. We don't have nothing to lose by asking. I know Telemundo is always here. I don't know if Council Member Menchaca is the one that has that relationship, but they're always here, they're always supporting. And then other, they had other companies in mind. We also presented the Like, I know Channel 5, they do, like, a tasting, and then you have, like, you set up, like, a, we could set up, like, a dumpling preparation kind of table with some of our vendors and then ask the news, like, Channel 5, if they can come out, like, two days before or something like that, and they like that idea. So we could do something like that. I know they do that on some of these stations. They go on site and check that out. And then lastly... And then also we wanted to make sure that we included all the surrounding businesses. We didn't want to isolate them or block them. We wanted to make sure that the surrounding businesses or the businesses in the footprint are included. So we did mention that. We also mentioned that to try to include Blossom Market, I know we're going to be in some kind of communications with them right now. We hope that they can partner up this time. And then we also talked about, lastly, we talked about the new KTV or the karaoke place, if we could set up a stage and then having an open mic, if we can partner up with them.

Divine Plus.

Divide and Plus. Divide and Plus.

Divine.

Divine and Plus. Okay.

Yeah, so we did... It's our new karaoke place.

So we did talk about that as well. Right. So that's on the work. So brief report, just to want to report back. Fourth of July, I agree, spectacular. For whatever reason, it did feel less crowded than last time. I feel like there were also less vendors. I noticed less vendors. Last time we had vendors on... ON SAN GABRIEL. I FELT LIKE THERE WAS LESS PEOPLE. I DON'T KNOW IF IT WAS BECAUSE OF THE FIFA WORLD CUP OR BECAUSE OF THE LONG WEEKEND, BUT THE DRONE SHOW WAS GOOD. IT'S ALWAYS TOO SHORT FOR ME, BUT IT DOESN'T REALLY REPLACE THE FIREWORKS. WE DIDN'T HAVE FIREWORKS TO BEGIN WITH. I WANT TO GIVE KUDOS TO COUNCILMEMBER WU. From what Congresswoman Judy Chu, she gave you credit for you being the one that presented that. So kudos on that. I mean, we're one of the first. I want to take credit for us being the first city doing that three years ago.

That's right.

And then everybody following the lead. So, I mean, that's big. BUT IT DOESN'T REALLY REPLACE THE FIREWORKS AND IT DOESN'T REPLACE THAT SENSE THAT THE COUNCILMEMBER MANCHACA WAS TALKING ABOUT, THAT SENSE OF COMMUNITY. WHEN YOU GO IN THROUGH SAN GABRIEL, I DIDN'T FEEL LIKE THAT. That wow, like this is the 250th, you know, the flags everywhere. And then I did hear from some of our constituents about that, that we didn't really have flags until the end. And then they were not all over the place. And yeah, we have these banner opportunities where I see other cities that are working with their school district. Here are our honor roll, or here are the kids that are going to USC, or here are the kids that are going to, cover your ears please, UCLA. but we have that opportunity right and then I felt like before we had and I want to see if we can and I can get some kind of support on this because I do agree where you're going with this that we need that more sense of that small we're a small town But it didn't feel like that this time around. That event was great. But we used to have, and I don't know for how many years, we used to have that parade. And I saw a lot of people having their parades. And I'm like, man, I remember being in that parade and walking on that parade.

But nobody was showing up.

Nobody was showing up.

Nobody was showing up, yeah.

It would be interesting to see if we can, I mean, the people that were involved were the little kids, right? And then, like, we didn't really get the bands involved last time, right? I mean, where did we reach out? I'm not sure. Let me jump in for a second.

Remember, this is council comments. You could bring an item back on the agenda if you want to have more of a dialogue discussion.

Yes, I would like to at least entertain like having a parade back. Not saying replace the drone. I think the drone show is fantastic. But bringing back something that we can maybe have a parade leading into the drone show and including the band and then just having a big event. But I would like to have that discussion.

Yeah, I'm sure we can have the staff look into it for next year. Thank you.

I WANTED TO KIND OF PAY BACK ON ONE THING ON THE FAN ZONE THAT YOU SOMEBODY MENTIONED A FAN ZONE THE CONSULTANT THAT WE HIRED TO DO DUMPLINGS AND BEER THEY DEFINITELY SEEM BUT I KNOW OUR CITY DIDN'T HAVE ANYTHING FOR THE WORLD CUP AND WE I mean, it's not over yet, but I would just kind of, this could be an opportunity since you're working with them, because I kind of looked at the World Cup as kind of helping us jumpstart us for the Olympics, and I know there are some issues with fan zones, safety issues, and public safety issues, but It would have been nice if we would have had something it's probably too late now anyway But maybe not you know like an ogopogo could have something, but you would need that big screen, but as a city I feel like we're one of the few cities or maybe the only city that hasn't had a fan zone for the World Cup. No one's complained. I haven't had a constituent say, oh, we want one because they're going to other places. But I just think it could have been a good opportunity for us as we're kind of gearing up for the Olympics. And now that we have these consultants to talk about, they have so many opportunities. CONNECTIONS, YOU KNOW, THEY MIGHT BE REALLY GOOD ALSO FOR, YOU KNOW, WHEN WE TALK ABOUT OUR FOURTH OF JULY, MAYBE THEY COULD HAVE SOME IDEAS OF HOW WE CAN JUMP STARTED. SO, ANYWAY, I'M NOT SURE WHERE THIS WOULD LAND FOR STAFF PURPOSES, BUT, YOU KNOW, IF WE WANT FANS, FAN ZONES THEY'RE CALLED, We need to have some kind of planning. We need to, if we're not gonna do it this time, I was trying to remember what's coming up. Is it before the Olympics? Is it the women's?

I'm not sure.

Yeah, there's something coming up after, before the Olympics, but I think we need to get involved somehow, get our community involved. Anyway, so that was just some thoughts.

Okay, thank you. Who would like to go next? Councilman Wu?

Sure, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Today is July 7th, and actually today is the anniversary of Marco Polo Bridge incident that 300,000 Chinese were killed by the Japanese soldiers. So I attended on July 5th, I attended the 89th anniversary a commemoration of a Marco Polo Bridge incident that organized by the JCUAA, which is the Joint Chinese University Alumni Association in the city of Monterey Park. The ceremony brought together elected officials, veterans, and community leaders to remember the tragedy of Japanese invasions of China and honor those victims of Nanking Massacre. During the event, I have the opportunity to invite the veterans attendance to visit the city of st gabriel's future veterans memorial monument i would like to thank my city council colleagues and the St. Gabriel Veterans Memorial Coalition for their continuous efforts in making this meaningful project a reality. By remembering this history, we honor those who came before us and strengthened our commitment to build a better future. On July 19, I attended the scholarship award ceremony hosted by the Orange County Chinese American Chamber of Commerce Foundation. Is that June? June 19th.

I'm paying attention.

Thank you. Go ahead, sir. That's good. Actually, it was the third time that I attended this event, and each year I'm inspired by the generosity of our community business owners and members who invested in the next generation. Their scholarships, some reach up to $10,000 per year per person that help relieve the financial burden on deserving students, allowing them to pursue American dreams and in terms giving back to our community. On June 23rd, I attended a committee meeting organized by the San Gabriel Valley Human Society at San Gabriel Mission Playhouse along with Mayor Chen. The meeting provided an open discussion and productive dialogues between the new management team and community members. Although the facility in the city of St. Gabriel is still under construction, I was encouraged by the new management understanding of the improvement needed to provide quality animal care. And I look forward to seeing their services fully implemented in our city. On 26th of June, I attended San Gabriel Valley Legislative Caucus Receptions in West Covina, where I had an opportunity to connect with my fellow colleagues and also elected official community leaders. June 27, I attended the 23rd Anniversary Performance that presented by the Asian American Talented Foundation, AATF, at San Gabriel Mission Playhouse. The outstanding performance deeply moved the audience and showcased the incredible talent of the performer. I'm proud that the city of San Gabriel is a home to such a historic and beautiful venue. That evening, the artist transformed the Mission Playhouse into a world-class stage, and we were honored to host AATF for the memorable celebration. June 28th, I joined Mayor Denise Menchaca, not mayor, I'm sorry, I just got used to it, the councilwoman, Denise Menchaca, in celebrating Father Eddie's 25th anniversary priesthood at the St. Gabriel Mission. It was such a great privilege to recognize his years of faithful services, and we're so fortunate having him, his contributions to our community. On 29th, I was honored to serve as a panelist at the community forum alongside with an elected official from cities of Saratoga and Fremont in California, as well as the Inglewood Cliffs in New Jersey at the UCA, the United Chinese Association. This three-day convention brought together more than a thousand Chinese American community leaders from across the United States, and we discussed the issue affecting our community and strengthened the civic engagement. July 3, I attended an event honoring Asian American and Pasig Islander service members in the City of Monterey Park, recognizing their dedication, sacrifice, and contributions to our nation. And July 4th, I attended the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association celebrations of Americans 250 birthdays and participate in its flag rising ceremony. It was meaningful event celebrating that I attended every single year that is showing their contribution of Chinese American to the United States. And lastly, I attended the fundraising gala hosted by Herod Christian Health Center that I had an opportunity to congratulate Caroline Ng on her outstanding leadership as a CEO and for many years dedicated service in CHCHC. While we are also welcoming the new CEO Daniel Chu in the seat of St. Gabriel Herod Christian Health Centre and who brings 25 years of social workers experience in Hong Kong. Herod Christian Health Centre has been a valued partner in serving our community and I sincerely appreciate its continued commitment to improving the health and well-being of our residents. So Mayor, that concludes my report.

Thank you, Councilman Wu. Councilman Ding, Vice Mayor Ding.

Yeah, I echo the Councilmember Wu regarding today's day. It's a special day, July 7. It's Marco Polo Bridge Incident Day. It's World War II, Japanese invasion to China. And after then, the United States and the Chinese people working together especially like a fly tiger to help the China to then we finally with both people it's win the World War II. So it's a good memory that this event hold by the JCOA that I'm used to present. 2002-08, it's every year we do this kind of memorial. The purpose, it's not to remember the invasion or hate, but we purposefully want to the peace it's not easy but the freedom is not free so we wanted to remember this is incident and wish we the whole world it's continue have the peaceful okay no war that's what we wanted okay and then after like And June 18, I have chance join our employee barbecue and Mayor and Council Member Wu and me, we have the one team. We win the game.

Yes, we did.

Hardcore. No, no, no, no. It's not easy. Skills, I tell you. Like a walk-up.

Strategery. What George W. Bush calls strategery.

Okay. Thanks to the staff, the help, too. It's this every year I have a chance to attend it. It's wonderful. I have to mix with all the different department employees. It's like... mixed together. Okay, I appreciate all the staff to like participate to hold this event. June 20 I have joined my alumina, the every year host the beach volleyball CONTEST AT LONG BEACH. SO, THIS COUPLE OF YEARS, I ALWAYS TRY TO PREPARE THE 2028 OLYMPIC GAME. I ALSO, OLYMPIC GAME SHOULD BE HOLD THE SAME FACILITY IN LONG BEACH. OKAY. WERE YOU PLAYING BEACH VOLLEYBALL? I didn't play, but I just go to encourage them.

Next time, next time.

Encourage them. Make sure you play. This event start from the Maya Luna Association 2018. Let me... Okay, on the 20... June 24th, I have a chance to attend the AOA County General City Selection to vote for our local council member who will be represented in our neighborhood city. Yeah, it's a good chance to see all over the next neighborhood council member.

Who is selected? I'm sorry, Vice Mayor.

It's a city selection. So that's meaning like our maybe 37 different city in our district. Yeah, just, I cannot remember who win the, okay. Too many, because too many position, yeah. On the June 25th, I have joined the Dahua Gateway, the grand opening for the several small business with Mayor and Council Member Menchaca. It's glad to see the Dahua Gateway is foremost, it's called a focus product, right? And I hear about the occupancy will be almost more than 60%. So I wish the more business come back. And it's important that hopefully they can make more tax revenue for us. And afternoon, I go to attend the SGB COG general meeting. They have a lot of update regarding our San Gabriel Valley. Okay. And... Okay, yeah, June 27th. where I have chance to attend Council Member Wu and Council Member Machanga for the AATF, the performance. It's this, already this 23 years. I think it is, maybe they are 12 or, every two years, they have this very good performance. But I just go to the open ceremony, but I don't have chance to, usually I, every time it's a, closing ceremony too, but at that time, because I have my own performance too for another event. Okay. Yeah, 28, 20, actually for the Council Member Wu go to the event in the Vegas, it's called the UCA United Chinese American. The original just have the three days convention, and actually they expand to the four days. So I attended 28 and 29. So it's a really good experience with like, It's not just the whole nation, the United States, but I also included some legislators from Canada too. So, and I really see some state legislators, it's from the far away from the Marian. Yeah, the one legislator, it's from my same hometown. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, that's good. Okay, it's a good experience. So, yeah, it's another thing, because my hometown, Shanghai, it's really like, it's modernized, so it's already like, have the open mind, so it's easy to like, except the United States, the cultural event, even electoral, the cultural too. June 30, it's to join the 9th U.S. Legacy International Art Festival. They have the A-Hu, the instrument. It's especially famous, the instrument, the Chinese, the musical instrument. Okay. It's a really good performance. So, yeah. Hopefully, in the future, they can come to our city, use our Mission Playhouse to perform it. And July 1st, I joined a local business called 4C. gallery. They have the art exhibition and especially fundraising for the single mom to help her to go through the difficult time. And July 22nd, I have chance to welcome to my hometown, the Jing'an District, the delegate to visit our mission playhouse and our city hall. So we have a lot of the common things for both sides, our city and the district. So you have the, population there, it's larger than us, but it's a lot of cultural, it's history cultural, it's a good relationship for the future, friendship city or sister city. They are very exciting to especially see our Mission Playhouse and our small city hall. But it looks nice. It's historical. But they told me their city hall in Shanghai is a small one too. But it's historical too. And definitely for the July 3rd, really enjoyed our first, our city is, I think it's in the Southern California, where our first city have drone shows. Since that time, the mayor, the former mayor, who, the 2024, we, we, We did it, right? Okay. And I just, it's really like every year we have the more budget and the more drone, okay, so really this time it's impressed, more impressed for the drone show. So hopefully for the future we can, if more drone, maybe more exciting, and also, the time is, this time is 15 minutes, right? Yeah, it's better than 10 minutes, okay. And July 4th, and it's joined with the council member with the CCBA celebration, 4th of July, so every year they do the raise the flag and celebrate the independent days, but this year, especially the 250. Okay, yeah, July 5th. Actually, it's, we're already talking about the memory, like today's data, the incident. Okay, yeah, that's it. That's my last three weeks, the report. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Ding. And this is what happens when there's three weeks between city council meetings. All right, I'll try to be quick. I've got a similar report. uh, group of activities, uh, on, well, since we last met on, uh, June 17th, I attended the St. Gabriel Women's Foundation Annual Soup and Salad Luncheon. It's always a lovely event. On the 23rd, I, um, I attended a community informational meeting at the San Gabriel Mission Playhouse along with Councilman Wu regarding the San Gabriel Humane Society renovations and how it seems like it's coming along real well and they got a lot of good community feedback. And so that should come along well. On the 25th, in the morning, I attended, along with my council colleagues, I also attended the Tawa Gateway grand opening and ribbon cutting for five of their new tenants. And these are cha redefine, bafang dumpling, happy lamb, tours for fun, and a store called The Best Shop. It's kind of like a home goods kind of store. A lot of fascinating things. Never could imagine there are so many versions of a rice cooker. But they're very fancy. A lot of lights and buttons. And so congratulations to them. And in the evening, the same day, I attended an informational community meeting at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium hosted by LA Fire Justice to support the victims of the Eaton Fire. There was good information shared there too. On the 26th, I attended a watch party in Pasadena to see a video of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performance at the Hollywood Bowl the night previous. They're a really great choir if you've never heard them. They're very talented. On the 3rd, July 3rd, along with my colleagues, I attended the San Gabriel Independence Day Drone Show, of course, and I hope you all came out, and it was a great show. And if you didn't come out this past year, make a note on your calendar, July 3rd next year. And finally, Again, on July 5th, along with Councilman Wu, I attended the Harold Christian Health Center annual gala at the St. Gabriel Hilton. And it's such a worthy charity. They're doing great work in St. Gabriel. So please support them. So that concludes my report. So next item, closed session. We have none. So I will adjourn this meeting at 9.07 p.m. All right, thank you everyone for coming out.