City Council Meetings– San Gabriel City Council - Regular Meeting

There you go. All right, I call this meeting to order. Welcome to the City Council regular meeting. Today is Tuesday, July 21st, 2026. The meeting is called to order at 6.31 p.m. Pledge of Allegiance will be led by Councilmember Herrera Avila.

Please rise. Put your right hand over your heart. Ready, begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you.

Madam Clerk, roll call, please.

Mayor Chan.

Here.

Vice Mayor Ding.

Here.

Council Member Herrera-Avila.

Present.

Council Member Menchaca.

Here.

Council Member Wu.

Here. All right. Now we will have some announcements from our Chief of 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 sangabrilcity.com under public meetings and agendas. To address the city 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 order and decorum.

Thank you. Now it's time for approval of agenda order. Are there any objections to the agenda order? Hearing none, the agenda order is approved. OK. Next item, please.

Presentations, recognition of World War II veteran Mike Valdivia. Mayor Chan will make the presentation and Richard Rodriguez, grandson of Mike Valdivia, will accept the certificate of memoriam on behalf of the Valdivia family. We invite Mr. Rodriguez to come to the podium now for the mayor's presentation.

Thank you for being here. Our thanks to the Valdivia family for providing the following biography. Miguel Olvera Valdivia, born in Azusa, California on October 3, 1926. Miguel was received by the Lord on June 16, 2016. He was the firstborn of Juan Valdivia and Vicenta Valdivia Ney Olvera. They were two siblings. There were two siblings, but they died in early infancy. Miguel lost both parents by the age of three and was raised by his grandmother Philippa Overa Ney Puga, and other relatives in La Puente, California. He joined the U.S. Navy in 1944 and served the Pacific during World War II, being discharged in 1946. Miguel married Petra Prado Becerra in 1947 and soon after started a family in El Monte. He bought a shoe repair shop on the handshake in 1948 from Mr. Clyde Stanley and was in business for over 50 years at the same location in San Gabriel, California. Miguel was preceded in death by his wife, Petra, in 1999 after more than 52 years of marriage. He is survived by his five children, 15 grandchildren, 30 great-grandchildren, and 19 great-great-grandchildren. Yeah, you can talk about that. The City Council thanks Mr. Valdivia for his service to our country and community. Our heartfelt condolences to his family. Now, would any member of Mr. Valdivia's family like to come up to speak? Please go ahead. I would like to thank the City of San Gabriel, Mayor Menchaca, and council members for having us here and recognizing my grandfather. It's truly an honor and pleasure to be here. I'm here with Alvin Sanchez, who knew my grandfather very well. Would you like to say something about Mike, my grandfather?

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yes, I just want to say that Mike is probably the last World War II veteran from San Gabriel. Wow. We were hoping that Mike would be around to see our memorial built, but unfortunately, he's gonna have to be watching from upstairs. Mike, yeah, he was a mainstay, like you said, for over 50 years on San Gabriel Boulevard, and I remember going and taking my shoes over there to have them repaired or having taps put on them so they would last longer, and I'm sure uh all of my friends all my family that grew up with me uh they all took their shoes to mike i mean he was so reliable and and so uh efficient and uh you know word spread and everybody would take their shoes so uh mike valdivia is uh really uh a person to be recognized and if and again i want to say the last world war ii veteran to pass away from san gabriel and for that we we thank mike for for his service and we thank him for being a very good friend to everybody in san gabriel thank you thank you and to the valdivia family

It's our honor to honor Mr. Valdivia. Now, would my colleagues like to come to the front to take a photo with Mr. Valdivia's family?

You can stand right in front of the microphone.

All right, next item please.

Police Department promotion recognition. Police Chief Elizalde will make the presentation.

I'm just waiting for my crew to get in.

Okay.

Good evening, Mayor Chan and Councilman members. Tonight we are here to recognize and acknowledge one of our newest police officers and three recent promotions. The San Gabriel Police Department continues to evolve into a premier law enforcement agency, and not only through the cutting edge technology that we're incorporating into our operations, but more importantly, through the development of our employees. The men and women of the San Gabriel Police Department serve their community with pride, honor, and compassion. We seek out individuals who want to make a difference in how we serve our community and have the desire to want to better themselves. Hard work, dedication, passion, and persistence will only get you so far. Sometimes the hardest part of your success is having someone believe in you and see your potential. Sometimes all you need is an opportunity to prove you are worthy of the job. Here before us tonight are four San Gabriel police officers who have put in the hard work, who have found ways to improve themselves, and have made the sacrifices to better themselves, not only for their sake, but more importantly for our community. As chief, hiring and promoting people is always a gamble. So much can go wrong. But on the other hand, so much can go right. And I truly believe each of these employees will do the right thing for the department, the community, and for themselves. So it is my pleasure to introduce our first acknowledgement for tonight, our newest officer, Officer Derek Young. Derek was hired in June of 2026. He was born and raised in Alhambra, California. He attended Arcadia High School and then went on to Pasadena Community College where he earned his AA in business administration. Derek started the LAPD Police Academy in December of 2025 and graduated. Derek is the only one that put a fun fact in his bio and I think was, until he's off probation maybe, was an active MMA and jiu-jitsu competitor. So pinning Derek tonight is his mother, Marcella Lamas. So our first promotion for tonight is Andrea Fuentes. Andrea... began her career at the Rio Hondo Police Academy Class 184 back in November of 2007. She was hired by the Alhambra Police Department prior to her tenure here at San Gabriel in 2007 up until 2021, and then began in August of 2022. She has been assigned to patrol and has been one of our field training officers. She's just shy, I don't know if she knows this, but she's just six days shy of her four-year anniversary with us. So congratulations on that. Andrea will be promoted from police officer to police sergeant and assigned to our patrol division, team number two. Tonight, pinning her badge are her daughters, I'm sorry, her daughters, Emma and Lila, and her son, Michael. Our next promotion is Alan Sam. Alan started his career at the Long Beach Police Academy back in April of 2002 and was hired by the San Gabriel Police Department in 2003. Alan has worked a variety of assignments, detectives, crimes against persons, our special enforcement team dealing with narcotics and gangs. He was a field training officer, part of the bike team, and just most recently up to his promotion was a sergeant overseeing the Community Engagement Bureau. Alan has 23 years of service to us and our community, and he is being promoted from sergeant to police lieutenant, and pinning him tonight are his daughters, Avery and Tori. And last but not least, Dan Gossarin. Dan began his career attending the Fresno City College Academy back in December of 2009. He was first hired in 2011 by Mendota PD. I had to look that up. If you don't know, it's in the Fresno area. It's a real city. He then started his career and transferred over and lateraled over to San Marino PD in 2012 and began his tenure with us in June of 2017. Dan's worked a variety of assignments from motors to FTO to the FTO administrator. Our scheduling coordinator, traffic sergeant, reserve coordinator, volunteer coordinator, parking management coordinator. He oversaw while he was in traffic our OTS grants and also a member of the Kiwanis Club for the last nine years. Dan has... Total years of service for us and our community is 10 years and Dan is being promoted from lieutenant to police captain. Now with that, and I've spoken to Dan as well as Ricky, but Ricky has been in the seat a little longer. It's not that they're just a police captain. I want them to approach everything that we do as an organization and how we address our community as the second in command, should I not be available. And I think through those conversations, Dan has a really strong foundation and understands what we're trying to achieve, and I couldn't be more proud of him. So again, Dan Gossarin and his son Dane will be pinning him tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our promotions and presentations. If council would like to take photos with our officers. And thank you for coming tonight.

Yes, please. My colleagues.

That's part of the meeting.

That's part of the meeting.

He's too serious.

All right. Next item, please.

Fire Department introductions. Fire Chief Wallace will make the presentation.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and members of the San Gabriel City Council. Tonight, it's my distinct pleasure to introduce to you five of the newest San Gabriel firefighters. They're actually not that new. They've been here since March of 2025, but they've just finished their probationary years recently. And each of the members being recognized tonight have completed a five-week in-house training academy and 120 shifts assigned to the operations division in the field. This totals over 1,500 hours of training provided by our members within the department, as well as four fairly grueling block examinations. This training is all in addition to prerequisite California State and EMT certification. And all of the firefighters here will eventually be sent to paramedic school and come out as paramedics. Each one of these firefighters set an extremely high standard during training and probation and have demonstrated an exceptional work ethic and dedication to this community. So I'd like to start with Justin Copeland. Justin is 33 years old, a devoted husband, and father to Carson. Firefighter Copeland was a member of the San Gabriel Fire Department Auxiliary Program before being hired by the Los Angeles County Fire Department as a fire suppression aid, which is a wildland firefighter. Justin is glad to be back at the city of San Gabriel and looks forward to a long and healthy career. Justin has been pinned tonight by his wife, Alex. And we can see we're getting all the injuries out of the way early on. And Justin, let's have you stay fairly close by so we don't have to move you around too much with the crutches. Our second member being pinned tonight is William Martins. William is proud to be a San Gabriel firefighter. He's a loving husband as well as a father to be, and it's an honor to serve and grow alongside the city of San Gabriel. Tonight, William will be pinned by his wife, Amanda. Our next member that I'd like to introduce you to is John Donkels. Firefighter Donkels is 24 years old and also comes to us from the Auxiliary Firefighter Program. He was in there for quite a while before becoming a full-time member of this department. He would also like to recognize his family for everything they've done to support him on his journey to becoming a firefighter and looks forward to serving the people of San Gabriel. Tonight, John will be pinned by his mother, Mary. All right, Eddie Reyes. Firefighter Reyes is 28 years old. Sorry, just about took a few years off on you. And again, he came from our auxiliary program. Firefighter Reyes would like to thank his family for their endless love and support during his fire service journey. And he's especially grateful for his mother, Tanya, and girlfriend, Tori. He would also like to recognize the members of the San Gabriel Fire Department for their guidance and membership during his probationary years. The fire department notified yesterday, I know I said every one of these guys is gonna become a paramedic, and we just let him know yesterday, sort of at the last minute, that he's gonna start paramedic school now in September, and his first orientation day is Thursday. And don't worry, everyone else will get it, they're all gone in January, so everyone's gonna get their chance. Tonight, Eddie's mother Tanya will be pinning his badge. And our last member being introduced tonight is Daniel Carell. Daniel is 24 years old, was also an auxiliary firefighter, and is also a resident of the city of San Gabriel. Daniel is a member of the US Army Reserve and proudly serves the city and is grateful for the opportunity to give back to the community that has given him so much. This evening, Daniel will be pinned by his mother, Cynthia. I'd like to ask our members to come back up and I'm going to ask the city clerk now to give them a ceremonial oath tonight to reaffirm their commitment and their dedication to serving the city. And once I get that done, I'd like to invite the council down for a group photo. Thank you.

that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California and Constitution of the State of California, that I enter into this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully

Congratulations guys, good work in getting to this point. Actually, why don't we hold up? I'd like to invite the council down out this time, if they would, for a picture. I'd also kinda like to highlight that with this class, the current class that just started probation, and two recent hires, the San Gabriel Fire Department's gonna be fully staffed for the first time in any of our memories, so that's a momentous occasion.

So kind of turn yourselves a little bit this way for me. Perfect. Here we go. Ready?

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

Hey, where are you all going? Stay for the boring part. Stay for the boring politicians.

All right.

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 items of interest that are not on the agenda but are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the San Gabriel City Council. A written comment was received from Lisa Chen, resident, requesting a ban on data center development. Our first in-person speaker is Mary Garcia.

Good evening Mayor, City Council, City Manager. I just came to thank Mark, our City Manager, for a big request that I made a while back. for the cleaning of the freeway at San Gabriel Boulevard. Yay, it was done. They were there Thursday and Friday. It looks beautiful. They just missed one part, but it looks beautiful. Thank you so much for following up on that. And then I'd also like to thank Michael Sled from Public Works regarding that tree in front of my cousin's house that I kept tripping on. Apparently it had a beehive in it. You had to remove the beehive. The tree's been removed, the stump's been removed, and a new sidewalk is down. Thank you again very much.

Our next speaker is Adriana Ruiz.

Hello, good evening everybody. I just wanna make sure that this public comment is just the open public comment, not the one that's on the different agenda item. Okay, perfect, thank you. Good evening, dear Mayor, members of the City Council and City Manager. I am a homeowner in the City of San Gabriel since 2002. I respectfully submit this letter as a formal complaint and a request for an administrative review regarding the handling of my request for a reasonable accommodation on the day today that the City Council was having the proposed Athens service rate increase on the agenda. The purpose in submitting this complaint is not simply to revisit my own experience, but to ensure that all members of the public, including individuals with disabilities, temporary impairments, and seniors receive equal access to participate in city government. Today, on the day of the meeting, I requested a reasonable accommodation to the city's noon deadline for submitting written comments. At 12.45 p.m., when I attempted to drop off my written comments here at the city council chambers, I had a visible mobility impairment. Something that everyone here today can see and the same mobility impairment that members of the city council present and not only today's meeting but also at a recent informational meeting earlier this month hosted by the city. Due to recent injuries, I have been wearing both a knee brace and an ankle brace and continue to be unable to drive. The accommodation I requested was modest. I asked that my written comments be accepted after the noon deadline so they could still be provided to the city council prior to consideration of the Athens services item. Initially, I was informed that my letter could be accepted but that it quote unquote would not count and that I could instead attend the meeting to speak. I explained that this did not address my request. As you all know, written comments become part of the legislative record and allow council members to review detailed information before or during deliberation. The opportunity to speak orally is not equivalent to having written materials accepted for the record. Chief City Clerk Sharon Clark then came out to speak with me personally. I again attempted to provide my written comments and I explained that I was requesting a reasonable accommodation due to my temporary and visible mobility impairment. Rather than accept the submission or work with me to identify a practical solution, she refused to accept the letter. I later spoke with City Manager Mark Lazaretto and explained what had occurred. Had my written comments been accepted when I first attempted to submit them, the City could have acknowledged the issue, granted the requested accommodation and accepted my letter of opposition and protest regarding the Athens services rate increase. This is particularly concerning because my request involved a temporary and visible impairment and did not require an extensive BORDISM OR COMPLICATED ACCOMMODATION. I WAS SIMPLY REQUESTING A LIMITED EXCEPTION TO THE SUBMISSION DEADLINE SO THAT I COULD EXERCISE THE SAME RIGHT TO PARTICIPATE IN CITY GOVERNMENT AS OTHER MEMBERS IN THE PUBLIC. I'M REQUESTING ADDITIONAL TIME TO COMPLETE READING MY LETTER. IS THAT ALLOWABLE?

Sure.

Okay, thank you. My concern extends beyond the handling of my individual requests and beyond the actions of the Office of the City Clerk. I'm requesting a review of the City's overall policies, procedures, training, supervision, interdepartmental coordination, and decision-making process for reasonable accommodation requests made by members of the public. This review should include not only Office of the City Clerk, but also the roles and responsibilities of the City Manager's Office and any other department responsible for ensuring accessible participation in city programs, meetings, deadlines, and public processes. I'm also requesting the review of the Chief City Clerk Sharon Clark's handling of this matter, including the direction and supervision provided to the city clerk staff, the basis for stating that the letter could not be accepted, and the subsequent refusal to accept the written submission after I specifically requested a reasonable accommodation. There's more details here and I will skip it, but I want you guys to all understand that I further request that this matter be placed on the agenda for the next available city council meeting or another promptly scheduled public hearing for a report back on the city's existing policies, procedures and practices for providing reasonable accommodations to residents and members of the public. The report should address accommodations related to city deadlines, written public comments, access to meetings, participation in city programs and services and other public facing processes. This request concerns the City's obligations to the public and it's separate from policies governing reasonable accommodations for City employees. I also request that the City provide me with the written response identifying the person or department assigned to review complaints, the City's findings and any corrective actions, policy revisions or training measures that will be implemented. I appreciate the work performed by City staff and understand that difficult situations can arise. However, ensuring that residents with disabilities, temporary impairments, mobility limitations, or age-related barriers have meaningful and equitable access to local government is a fundamental policy responsibility. An accommodation should not be denied simply because a resident cannot meet a procedural deadline in the same manner as someone without an impairment, particularly when a modest exception can be provided without fundamentally altering the city's process or creating an undue administrative burden. I respectfully ask that this complaint be taken seriously, preserved as part of the city's records, and reviewed as an opportunity to strengthen accessibility, accountability, and public confidence in the city's processes. Thank you for your attention to the matter. Adriana Reese.

Thank you, Ms. Reese.

The next speaker is Caleb Schimke.

Good evening, city council and everyone else present. My name is Caleb. I've been keeping up with city council meetings since I moved here earlier this year. And I want to say that I do love living in San Gabriel. I'm a new homeowner here. Two council meetings back, I logged in on Zoom, but I wasn't quite ready to speak. And then I showed up on June 30th, but you guys skipped that week because it was Fourth of July. So I have a lot to say, but they said I only have two minutes. It looks like I had three minutes. I'm just going to list the issues that I'm interested and supported in, and then I'll go into depth for as long as I have time. FIRST, I SUPPORT MIXED USE AND DENSE HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS LIKE PACIFIC SQUARE AND 824 GLADDUS AVENUE, WHICH WAS APPROVED RECENTLY. I SUPPORT BUILDING A BIKE NETWORK LIKE THE ONE DESCRIBED IN THE SGV BIKE NETWORK MASTER PLAN THAT I BELIEVE WAS ADOPTED BY THE CITY IN 2014. AND I'D LIKE TO SPEAK WITH PUBLIC WORKS ABOUT THE PROGRESS ON WHAT HAS BEEN MADE SINCE THEN, IF POSSIBLE. I support the city doing California native plant landscaping in future park and building developments, like the one that we have in Vincent Lugo Park. I think I might be one of the biggest fans of Vincent Lugo Park, their garden there. I'd like to request that the most recent audits from the flock automated license plate readers be made accessible to the public. There's a dashboard that has some information, limited information, But I am increasingly concerned about what I've seen around the nation and also our neighbors in Los Angeles and others about the privacy and security risks associated with the flock cameras and software. I'd also like to say that I love the 487 Express bus, Metro bus that takes you right to LA Union Station and downtown. And I love the library and I commend the firefighters who were pinned today, although I'm not familiar with what pinning means. Finally, I support the city taking a stance similar to Monterey Park recently in opposing the construction of data centers in city boundaries and anywhere that the city has influence. SO IN THE 2025 CITY ADDRESS, STATE OF THE CITY ADDRESS, I WAS EXCITED TO HEAR THAT THERE WAS ZERO TRAFFIC DEATHS RECORDED IN 2024. AND I DIDN'T SEE THAT SAME NUMBER REPORTED FOR 2026 STATE OF THE CITY ADDRESS. SO I'D LIKE TO REQUEST WHAT THAT NUMBER IS. BUT GENERALLY I SUPPORT THAT THAT IS SOMETHING THAT WE HAVE IN THE CITY. I SUPPORT THE VISION ZERO INITIATIVE. at the county level and other cities, we might expect, based on the rates in our neighboring cities, to have one to two deaths per year. But if it's zero, that is great. And that ties into my support for the bike networks. I think that we can do a lot to make biking in the city feel safer, not just for bikers, but also for walkers and for people driving. Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any remote speakers wishing to speak during general public comment?

For Zoom users, click the raise hand button located in the reactions tab at the bottom of your screen.

No more public comment, Mayor.

Okay, no more public comment. Thank you. Then 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 separate discussion?

May I move to approve? All right. I second.

Motion made by Councilman Wu, seconded by Vice Mayor Ding. And let's go to the vote, please.

Motion passes by a vote of 5-0.

Okay. Next item, please.

Public hearing. Proposition 218, majority protest public hearing for proposed solid waste rates and new solid waste rate adjustment formula.

All right. Our city attorney will give a brief overview of this Prop 218 process.

Thank you, honorable mayor, council members, members of the public. In 1996, the public passed a constitutional amendment which limits the public agency's ability to increase rates, assessments, and taxes. Today's hearing pertains to the rates that are being proposed in connection with waste collection and compliance with the new laws. THAT THE STATE PASSED CONCERNING COMPOSTING AND SEPARATION OF TRASH. PROP 218 PROVIDES THAT IF A RATE IS CONTEMPLATED TO BE CHANGED, INCREASED, PUBLIC HAS TO HAVE NOTICE OF THAT INCREASE AND HAVE ABILITY TO EVALUATE THE BASIS UPON WHICH THAT INCREASE IS GAVE. THE NOTICE HAS BEEN SENT OUT. IT'S SENT OUT 45 DAYS BEFORE A PUBLIC HEARING. WITH THAT NOTICE IS INCLUDED AN ABILITY TO PROTEST THE RATE INCREASE. THE CITY COUNCIL CANNOT ADOPT OR SET RATES, INCREASING RATES, IF THE NUMBER OF PROTESTS EQUALS MORE THAN 50% OF THE CUSTOMERS THAT ARE BEING SERVED BY THE DISPOSABLE PICKUP SERVICE. So according to the state law, the protest has been received. The time to add any additional protests that you may not have had a chance to do is until the closure of the public hearing, which The mayor will open momentarily. Upon receiving of all protests, those protests will be counted or have been counted. The clerk will report the number to the city council. If the number is less than 50% of the residents that receive the service, the council can move forward with the adoption of the rates. If it's more, the council cannot do that. This item is not an approval of a contract, which already has been done in May, and also setting of the rates, which was also done by the Council prior. Today is the time for the protest hearing. If the protest hearing fails, Council can move forward with adoption of the rates. If it succeeds, they cannot do so. Thank you, Mayor.

Okay, thank you, Council. I now open the public hearing. City Manager Lazzaretto will make the staff presentation.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. Adam, do you have the clicker for the presentation?

Thank you very much.

So I will go through the presentation very briefly. It summarizes exactly what Martin has stated, which is why we're here tonight. And we do have the slides to answer any questions later on if council or the public has questions. But we are here tonight as a direct result of California adopting SB 1383 several years ago. And we're here to hold the official protest hearing under Prop 218. Just a reminder, prior to 2020, San Gabriel had a one stream or a one bin system where the black bin was at everybody's place of residence and you threw all of your trash into that bin. In 2020, we amended the contract to add the green bin in order to pull out as many of the organics that are in our waste stream as possible. and that was sufficient to meet state law for several years. We have recently been contacted by the state and told that commingling the recyclables with the trash causes some of those recyclables to be what they call contaminated I know contaminated sounds like a scary word, but in the trash world, that means that something that could have otherwise been recycled gets contaminated with food or it gets wet or some other substance gets on it. And instead of now going to the recycling commodity, it has to be thrown away in the landfill. Trying to do everything we can to keep things out of the landfill. Your recyclables used to be pulled out and will after this change, but they used to be all pulled out of the black bin. So we were still recycling even though we only had the two bin system. But the state has told us in order to meet those climate pollution laws, we need to source separate, which means all of our businesses and residents now have to separate the recycling at their house. We've got a slide that shows the things that go into each of the bins. One of the things that became apparent in our town hall meeting and through some discussions we've had with residents is it's very confusing to folks what goes in what bin. So we are gonna be working with Athens over the next several months to do some information and education and outreach to remind folks what go in each of those bins. And I'll tell you, it's not easy. It takes a PhD to decide whether your cat litter goes in which of those three bins. The bins up at the top, the three black, green, and blue are the bins that are showing up at everybody's house. That'll be, if it's not already rolled out at your house, it'll be rolled out over the next two weeks. Those are 96-gallon bins. The picture on the bottom is a three-yard bin that most places of business have. Those businesses will now be given a blue barrel in addition to that three-yard bin. For the rate change that is proposed or is already approved, as Martin said, under the contract amendment and is now the subject to the Prop 218 hearing, for residential customers, the only change to your rate is we used to increase the rate every year by the Los Angeles area CPI, or what we call the Consumer Price Index, what is colloquially known as CPI. We have changed that rate now, increased now to what we call the trash CPI, which is a US city average for garbage and trash collection, plus 1%. So the only rate difference for customers of our residential trash Athens customers for residential trash will be that small incremental difference between what CPI was versus what trash CPI plus one is. And just to cut to the chase for our residences, that's gonna be about 50 cents a month for this year. That will fluctuate every year depending on what those two indices do. For commercial, it's a little bit different. We are having to roll out those other bins or Athens is having to roll out those other bins and pay for those bins as well as the service that wasn't being provided before. So those rates are going up from 9% to much higher depending on whether you paid for organic service or not as a customer. Some businesses received waivers if they did not produce organic trash, and now those waivers will still be given. You don't have to have a green bin, but you'll still pay the price for that because the services are being provided to your business, even if you aren't taking advantage of that organics. The rates in black and white on the top, I know they're small, but they are available on our website and in handouts outside. For commercial customers, they're all dependent, that's the bottom part of the screen, all dependent on how big of a dumpster you have and how many times per week that you have your dumpster emptied by Athens. If you're able to change the size of your trash bin from let's say a three yard dumpster to a two yard dumpster, because now you have an extra recycling bin, it's actually possible to reduce the size or the amount of your bill every month. If you do nothing else and you keep a three yard bin and you get the new organics, you're going to pay about $60 a month more than what you're paying now. Again, on top you see residential customers. That rate is going up by $3 a month. That incremental difference would have been 50 cents had we used the old rate. So in order to do the Prop 280 hearing that Martin described, we sent notices out to over 7,000 Athens customers. That's a city function sending those letters out. The way we were able to verify where those went and how they were delivered. There's a 45-day period for people to submit a protest. I want to reiterate that this is not a yes or a no vote. We're not going to count the number of ballots we receive and see if there are more yes or more no. There needs to be more than half of the ratepayers' protest in order for the rates not to be valid. And just in the black and white up on the screen, you'll see that there is only one vote per household or per ratepayer. So with that, tonight the action that the council will be taking is opening the public hearing which we're now in the middle of. We will hear public testimony and accept any further written protests. and then the city clerk will count those protests and will let the mayor and the council know how many protests are received and whether it's what we call a valid protest. If there are not enough protests received, then the council has a resolution in front of you that you will be adopting that implement the rates. If there are enough protests received, then we would not be able to move forward tonight and we would be looking for direction from staff, I'm sorry, from council on how to move forward and what those next steps might be. And with that, Athens has several representatives here to answer any technical questions that the city council or the public has on how the... recycling and organics and waste collection process works and how the voodoo and everything else that goes into their rate setting. I see John Harrington making his way up to the podium and I don't know, John, if you had anything else that you wanted to add. But that was my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions from the council.

Thank you, City Manager Lazzaretto. Mr. Harrington, would you like to make a presentation?

Thank you, Honorable Mayor, Vice Mayor and City Council. Glad to be here. John Harrington, Senior Vice President, Government Affairs for Athens Services. NOT THAT I WOULD EVER CORRECT THE CITY MANAGER, BUT THERE'S TWO THINGS IN YOUR PRESENTATION I'D LIKE TO MAKE SURE ARE CLEAR, BECAUSE FOR ME AS A RESIDENT, THEY WOULDN'T COME ACROSS AS CLEAR. BUSINESSES THAT ACTUALLY NOW HAVE AN ORGANICS WAIVER, IN LIEU OF, SINCE THEY'RE NOT GETTING ORGANICS, IN LIEU OF THAT, THEY WOULD GET AN ADDITIONAL RECYCLING SO THEY'LL HAVE MORE CAPACITY. SO BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT GENERATING ORGANICS, THE THOUGHT IS THEY'RE MORE THAN LIKELY still generating recycling. So they get two recycling instead of one for that. So they are getting additional capacity, which is about 30% of a bin. So a bin is about six carts. If you just do the math, it's roughly equivalent of six carts. So you're getting an additional 30% capacity. The second thing is it sounded like you said the incremental rate would have been 50 cents. It's actually a difference of 50 cents additional. Because it sounded like we were, like the CPI was the majority of that rate. The new CPI, it's actually the 50 cents of the three. That was it for corrections. And then I'm here to answer any questions of council.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Harrington. Does any council member have factual questions for the staff to clarify the report? Councilman Herrera, Avila.

Thank you, Mayor. So I'll just keep it brief because I had a lot of questions last time. And for those that tuned in or that were here, thank you for doing that and for being here and staying aware. Our meeting went until like 12 o'clock last time with so many questions that particularly I had on it. So I just want to make something clear on when we say residential rates are not going up by that much, right? We're talking about... rates going from cpi to cpi trash plus one percent but we have a contract and correct me if i'm wrong that's 25 years that auto automatically renews every year when athens gives the city about 350 000 to automatically renew so technically we're on this contract for 25 25 years every year renews 25 years my concern and if you can help clarify this How would it impact if we have that additional 1% and we're moving from CPI to CPI trash plus 1%? What is that long-term impact? Right now it doesn't seem like that much, 50 cents or what have you. But in five years, 10 years, I'm afraid that this is going to start compounding. So if you could help me understand this. Gotcha.

So there's a few reasons why it actually benefits the city to have a long-term contract. I can go into that first. Athens secures your, for the city, we secure landfill capacity for the duration of the contract. So every year when we're extending one more year, what we are doing for the city of San Gabriel is getting that capacity so that when another landfill closes, somewhere like Shoal Canyon will be closing soon, Chiquita Canyon recently closed, Other cities had severe increases in their rates because now they were putting their trash locally and it's going way out from the County of Los Angeles. There's no new landfills opening. So one of the benefits of having a long term contract is the fact that San Gabriel for the long term, we guarantee you capacity. So you're not gonna get an increase because of a closure. So that's one reason why you would want a long term contract. Regarding the trash CPI, the regular CPI-U, which is the Los Angeles area CPI-U, it doesn't really track the trash industry. It's consumer goods. What we do is not consumer goods. It's local labor. It's obviously gas prices, trucking. It's everything that has to do with trash collection. It's very specific to the industry. So that tracks the business. That's the reason for the change from CPI. to trash CPI. The plus 1% comes in for, it's to collect, there's a few factors, but the major factor is it's collecting all of the regulations and California mandates that are on specifically to California companies that are not nationwide. California has several mandates that have to be paid for that they go in perpetuity. They keep increasing or they never go away unless the law changes. Another piece of that is for residents. The reason we're not giving a rate increase right now, like say for example, to pay for the new carts and to pay for the new routing, which is a new truck, labor, all that. Because we have this long-term contract, we're able to amortize that cost over the duration of the contract. So I don't know the exact figure, but it's right around year 15 or year 20, we start to become close to breaking even. What year? It depends on the economy, and we can't predict what a CPI is going to be, but it's probably around year 15, year 20. We start to break even on this new capital investment. The problem with that is about year 12, we're buying new trucks again, and so there's a whole new capital investment that this is paying for. So until this law goes away, we have to have a method to pay for this. The method is, there's two ways we can do it. Get the big giant increase right now up front and you give Athens to pay for this mandate all the money up front or we can ease it in over years. So in commercial, because businesses are a little more capable of absorbing some of that, commercial is absorbing a good chunk of it up front. Not all of it, but a good chunk of it. So that's why there's a difference in residential and commercial.

Right, so right now the bulk of the hit, I will call it a hit because there's a big hit on commercial. Some of the accounts are going to get about 14.5 increase and a smaller amount are gonna get about 60%. So I wanna make clear that nothing in the SB 13, from my understanding, nothing in the SB 13 law has changed since the original contract that when you were in council, have changed, which was 2022, right? Other than the state doing what they were going to do and actually implementing the law, is that correct? Or what changed? Because I'm trying to understand what changed, and I don't see anything changing but them enforcing as what they said they were gonna do, enforce back in 2022?

That's a really good question. So I wanna address the first part, which is the 8%, about 9% to about 60%. Percentages can be deceiving because if you go from 50 cents to a dollar, that's 100%. but the dollars actually make the percentage when you think about it. Someone right now that has a lower fee because they're not paying for the organics program that they should have been paying for since 2022, they're not paying for that right now. There's seven components to that program. one of the components is the collection of the organics so six of those components they're still required to engage with which those businesses for back in 2022 when we gave that waiver we weren't thinking of the entire program we're thinking oh gee they're not getting this service so these waivers don't have to pay for that this contract amendment is correcting for that so that As the state requires, every business is engaging in the entire program. So right now, if you're a business and you're paying, let's say, X dollars, and you have a 131, which is a one-three-yard bin service once per week, this is going to be about an 8.5% to 9% increase. But if you're a smaller business and you have a very small capacity, and you have an organics waiver, that's where it's a large percentage increase, but it's still about a $42 increase. So we either should say everyone's getting a $42 increase, plus if they weren't paying for organics before, they have to pay for that now because of the waiver. That's where the large percentage, you really want to be very careful not to mix dollars and percentages because that becomes confusing where If it benefits, you can say, oh, it's just a small percentage, or oh, it's just a small dollar figure. So we really have to be careful to know both of those. We don't want to focus on either one. So yes, there will be some percentage differences, but in the end, those folks are paying for something now that they hadn't been paying for for the past four and a half years. regarding the, you're correct in the fact there's been no major legislative changes to SB 1383, but there's some realities of the industry that have, I would say not changed, but if you read the CalRecycle guidance, even as late as 2021, they said, we hope there's capacity and we hope there's ability to divert a certain percentage from the waste stream. And we're talking about organics. So when we say this, so let's say your trash is X and organics is a component of that. The law says that we need to get 75% of what's possible organics to get out of that stream out of that stream right now. As of 2025, it was 50%. The reason that this matters, it's a compliance issue. When I say compliance, we are required to do two things. Either get 75% compliance by pulling that organic waste out of the waste stream, or another way to comply is to have three separate streams. Because we don't have a facility that can do that, that's the only path for San Gabriel.

Let me cut you off there. And I want to be transparent, right? I came from the trash industry. I was there for about nine months, so I understand what you're talking about, exactly what you're talking about. And I agree in good faith that in 2022, when the agreement with the city in Athens, and we decided to go two streams, Athens was trying to meet the mandate At that point, I'm assuming that you, Athens, or not you, well the company, had steps that you guys were taking to to get to where we're at today and divert the 75% of trash, and you even created a new facility to meet this mandate, and the state has not approved this facility, unfortunately, right? Is that the case? Well, the state has approved it.

We haven't been certified as a high diverting MRF, which is exceeding 75%.

So do you see that happening? Because if that happens, then essentially they will... we wouldn't be able to, or we shouldn't have to go into the three-bin system, and when that MRF or that facility gets certified, how are the residents gonna benefit? For me, it feels like you get certified, and then what? for it not to get certified, or what are we planning for? Because you mentioned that these facilities are gonna get further and further out because communities don't want them in their neighborhoods, but yet we have a facility that you guys are trying to get certified, and I believe that you guys are still trying to get certified, correct?

Correct. So the certification is we have a brand new state-of-the-art facility. It is the largest in the United States. It's also the most technologically advanced with the most modern equipment. There has yet to be a facility in the state of California that can achieve 75% diversion that accepts a full city's waste stream. There are four facilities in the state that are considered high diverting MRFs. However, they only accept select organics materials and not full city waste streams. The CalRecycle guidance actually notes this, that this is going to be a very long-term and difficult task. It's a very high bar, and they recognize that. And one of the things that they say is this isn't going to be able to be adopted right away. And it says in their guidance the technology does not yet exist to actually get there. So when we say high diverting MRF, that is our goal. If there's a way for us to get there, we'll go back with the city and say, guess what? We have a high diverting MRF.

And we invested a lot of money to get there. We're not going to get some credits back. You guys will have a high diverting MRF.

Well, I would say we are a good partner. And if we were able to get there, we would actually go back. We're not here just to make money. We're actually here. I consider us an extension of public works. We're here as a chosen vendor of the city to provide this service. And I really do with good faith say if we were able to get that, I'd be talking to Mark the next week.

I'm going to put a note to self there, Mark, because I really want to know when this happens, and I hope that you guys are still pursuing that, because after we go three streams, I don't know if you have other cities that have two streams, right? But everybody, it seems like everybody is going three streams now, because the state is being very hard and difficult, even though we have that four in the state, and one being close by here near downtown LA, I believe, that could still sustain the two-bin system.

It cannot sustain a full city two-stream. We've had some of the cities, if San Gabriel wanted to go inquire, they would go ask, hey, we'd love to send our two streams to you. Can we send them? You'll get a flat-out no because then we'll be decertified. The way to get certified, you have to have one year straight of 75% diversion. If you miss one month, you're no longer certified. They do not want to take the risk of taking a full stream. If they miss one month, they're no longer certified. And it really takes that gold star that they're trying to market with.

I'll do two more questions. One being, I'm clearly not happy with this. CONCERN FOR ME, NOT ONLY THE RESIDENTIAL ACCOUNTS, BUT THE COMMERCIAL MULTIFAMILY ACCOUNTS THAT ARE GETTING IMPACTED SIGNIFICANTLY, EITHER IT'S THE 8% THAT YOU MENTIONED, THE 14.5% THAT I MENTIONED, OR THE 60% THAT I MENTIONED THAT STATED IN CITY RECORD. AND I THANK YOU THAT YOU PERSONALLY WENT OUT, MYSELF, WE VISITED ONE OF THE ACCOUNTS, How are you going to assure, I mean, besides just your words, but how are you going to assure and commit that your team is going to go out to all these accounts to try to right-size? Are we going to get some sort of report? Are we going to, every four months? What are you willing to commit? I mean, at this point, it's not really a negotiation or anything, because I want to make it clear that the amendment already got approved. This is, and I'll cut it right now because we're not here to discuss the contract or anything like that, but I want to get clarifications because right now all we're doing is tallying up the vote. Is that correct, Mark? So I want to get that assurance of what we're going to do.

Gotcha, so Athens, like I've said a couple times, I was a long-term partner. We are here and we will continue to be here. We have already gone out to every business and tried to make contact. We've made contact with a good number of the commercial. And it's something we actually do every single year, is we go out to every single commercial customer. We have municipal account managers that go out to every account in every single city, every single year. We have legal compliance. We have to go out and do education. We go out and do it in the community. We do it with specific customers. We don't have a report that we give out. However, we do commit to right-sizing with every single customer. We get one-off calls where a customer will call and they don't like the increase, and so we send someone out. specifically but by that time they've already been at least knocked on their door one time and called one time but i can assure you that any every single customer is every single commercial customer has opportunity every single day to call us if they want to be proactive and they will have been contacted and when we contact we leave a sticky note on the door if no one answers

So what is the, just to be clear, what is the commitment? Are we gonna be- To continue that. We have outreach efforts all the time. Given a report, so is Athens gonna be submitting a report to our city letting them know this is how many accounts have a right size?

So we don't collect a report of individual accounts and what their streams were and what their service was and what it is. That's just not something we've ever really done for any city. No one's ever asked us for that. And to do that now as an ad hoc report, I can't promise you something that I cannot right now say, yes, I can do that. I would have to get with my team and see. But I can tell you that we have. visited every single business already, notifying folks of this. We publish it that if you want to what we call right-size your account, we will make every effort to make sure that you're not paying for air to dump air. We want to make sure that you have the right-size trash, the right-size recycling, and the right-size organics.

I commit to that. I would like a report. If you have a report or you have the numbers, because the last time when your colleague was here, he insisted on answering every single question where everybody's saving money in the city, and I was not so happy with the way he was answering the questions, and he was saying that everybody, well, we'll get everybody out there, we're gonna rise size, and then they're actually gonna be saving money, but when I went out to visit these accounts, it doesn't look like some of these restaurants are going to be able to uh right size because they already have a lot of trash and then they have they put out their cardboard now they're going to have to get a bigger bin because some of these trash bins are not going to sustain these big trash the the load and the demand for these restaurants and they already have the arrangements with whoever picks the cardboard boxes up. So a concern that I have, and I want to get clarification, we didn't have a presentation. I would have loved to see a presentation last time with Athens. It was on a consent calendar. THERE WAS NO PRESENTATION. IT WAS JUST YOUR COLLEAGUE GIVING ME ANSWERS THAT I DID NOT FEEL COMFORTABLE WITH, THAT I FELT THEY WERE NOT SATISFACTORY OR TO THE POINT. AND I GET IT. I UNDERSTAND. ALL CITIES ARE DIFFERENT. ALL CITIES ARE DIFFERENT. ORANGES AND APPLES, DIFFERENT SERVICES, DIFFERENT LEVELS AND ALL THAT. BUT I WOULD HAVE LOVED TO SEE COMPARISONS BECAUSE ONE BIG CONCERN THAT I HEAR HERE IN THE CITY, YOU KNOW, MAYBE YOU'VE HEARD, RIGHT, THAT WE ALREADY PAY FOR COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS, PARTICULARLY COMMERCIAL ACCOUNTS, WE ALREADY PAY A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF MONEY. SOME OF THESE ACCOUNTS ARE PAYING ABOUT $300, $400. And with the 15.5% increase or 60% increase, they can go up from anywhere from $100 more to more than that significantly amount of money. But that's not even the caveat. The caveat is when we start adding that trash EPI plus 1%, those businesses are going to be impacted the most. So question one, how come we didn't get a full presentation with comparisons and something more in detail? And second, how are we going to, I mean, I'm just going to throw out there, what are we going to do to alleviate when five years, ten years later, where that 1% is taking everybody to the next level when these businesses are already struggling to make ends meet? And that will be my last question.

Thank you. There's a few parts to that question. I would say that regarding a presentation, I did a presentation March, I believe, and if that wasn't what you were looking for, I apologize for that. I gave what SB 1383 is and kind of a background to everything. We were not discussing pricing or any of that at the time, so I didn't have any of that information there. Apologize for that. I can commit that I can if the council needs a presentation in the future.

John, that's already too late, okay? That's already too late. You don't even have it right now. You guys didn't have it last time. The first presentation was introducing you to SB 1383, but I'm sorry, we already knew what SB 13 was in this council. I hope that everybody knew what SB 13 was when you were sitting here in council. That presentation already happened, quite frankly. Okay, so, I mean, I guess that's not really a question. It's just, I wish you guys would have had a presentation, okay? Now, after the fact, I don't need that presentation after the fact. That contract has already gone through, and respectfully, you know, I'm just going to yield there, and I'm not going to accept that as an answer. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Any other council members have clarifying questions?

I'm gonna wait until after public comment.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right, so Chief City Clerk, do we have any public comment?

We do, Mr. Mayor. First speaker is Adriana Ruiz.

Okay, please.

Good evening, everybody. Adriana Reese, Vice President of the Las Tunas Town Homes, and our President, Adele Osorio, who is also the President of our Las Tunas Town Homes. Thank you very much for hearing us today. I obviously came in earlier to say that I have a written letter, so I'm respectfully requesting, before I begin my public comment, that you guys accept my letter in opposition, because I think it's important that you take a moment to read the letter and understand the reasons why we're here. but I will condense it right now in my public comment. We're here respectfully opposing the significant Athens service rate increase and ask that the council carefully reconsider whether the city has completed sufficient due diligence before placing these additional costs on residents, homeowners, HOAs, apartment owners, businesses, nonprofits, and other rate payers. We understand that the city must comply with California's recycling and organic waste requirements. However, state compliance does not require the city to accept substantial rate increases from its existing contractor without fully evaluating other providers, service models, and less costly alternatives. San Gabriel has contracted with Athens for decades, and the agreement has been repeatedly amended and extended. The public deserves transparency regarding the contract's rolling long-term provisions, the city's ability to renegotiate or terminate the agreement, and whether a competitive procurement process was seriously considered.

Thank you.

Of particular concern, the Fifth Amendment approved in 2020 established a contract structure under which the remaining term is maintained at a constant 25 years. In practical terms, this type of rolling or quote unquote evergreen arrangement may continually preserve a lengthy contract term and substantially limit the opportunity for meaningful competition. A contract with the constantly replenished long-term period should not be treated as a routine annual relationship. It deserves the highest level of public scrutiny, transparency, cost analysis, and accountability. And all of you members have a responsibility to the residents to maintain that. Neighboring cities use different providers and service structures, demonstrating that alternatives do exist. Before approving these increases, the city should show residents that it compared Athens costs, service levels, and proposed rates with other qualified waste companies, And I'll give you an example. The City of Alhambra uses Republic Services for residential and commercial collection. Arcadia uses Waste Management. Rosemead uses Republic Services. Monterey Park uses Ware Disposal for residential collection and permits both Ware Disposal and Athens Services to provide commercial service under non-exclusive franchise arrangements. Monterey Park also conducted a formal qualification and procurement process for residential and commercial waste collection and considered different collection systems and service structures. The city should also consider the different impacts on single-family homes, older townhome and condominium communities who we are here to represent, multifamily properties and businesses. Many properties cannot physically accommodate a standard three-container system and require shared containers, smaller bins, site-specific assessments. She has a comment, a note, and she's going to give me her three minutes.

Okay. All right. Let's do that. Is that okay? Okay. I promise not to go an additional three minutes. That's fine.

Thank you. I'm close to finishing my statement. Thank you.

No problem. Thank you.

We are not asking the city to ignore state law. We're asking the city to prove that it selected the most affordable, transparent, practical, and responsible method of compliance. I respectfully ask the council to pause the rate increases, disclose the full contract and cost analysis, evaluate competitive alternatives, and meaningfully involve affected rate payers before imposing these long-term costs on the community. Before we walk away, I just want to say that I'm extremely disappointed with the city council because I did write a letter and it was read at the last council meeting. And Athens made a lot of promises. Athens committed to reaching out to our HOA and other HOA communities. They committed to coming out to do assessments. I can tell you that we went as part of maybe 25 people that showed up to an informational meeting because really, The word is not out there. And I don't believe, I don't think we believe that the city did its due diligence in ensuring that the residents of the city of San Gabriel really understood what this was gonna cause and the importance of them to be here today. They don't understand that much. You have a lot of people that speak other languages and I don't know if you actually made sure that even those people that speak other languages understood what was happening today. And it was not until we went to that informational meeting with council member Avila who was there and representatives from Athens that we then, and the city manager, thank you, that we finally did get someone to come out to our HOA to do a visual assessment. The one place that I'm sure that council member Avila mentioned that he did go out to, that he knows that they went out to, is our HOA. And they basically said that we could potentially keep what we have. But I can tell you prior to that, we had already received an email giving us three or four different options where it was raising our rates from anywhere from $200 to $500 or $600. And that is really unfair to the HOAs, the multifamily units, the businesses of the city of San Gabriel. And that is really concerning. So all I ask is that if for whatever reason this is only an opportunity for us to voice an opposition to the rate increases, and this has already been voted on, and you do not get 50%, then you have a responsibility to ensure that next year, because this is a rolling contract, that you ensure that the residents of San Gabriel are fully aware of the impact of what is happening, and when you get to that rolling contract that you actually do a good assessment of the rates that you are imposing, on all of your residents and businesses in the city of San Gabriel. That's your responsibility.

Thank you. Next speaker.

The next speaker is Henrietta Ma. Henrietta Ma. Okay, the next speaker is Jana Bea. Jana? One moment, Mayor.

No more public comment, or?

I believe we may have some.

Okay.

Okay, for Henrietta Ma, because of a language barrier, they've asked that we read the translation. It says, I totally agree to have a trash can blue box. For the price, I prefer not so high, but reasonable, fair to the city and our neighbors. We'll call again for Jana. Okay, we also have a written comment from Jana. Let this serve as written protest. This is opposition, the proposed rate adjustments for solid weight services. I have no additional speaker cards. One moment.

Take your time.

We do have some more.

No problem. We want to make sure we do this right.

The next speaker, Brendan Linehan.

Hi, City Council. My name's Brendan Linehan, 531 Montecito Drive, San Gabriel, California. This blue trash can, what is it really going to solve the city of San Gabriel? I've had people come through my house with the black trash can and pick through all the trash to get the recyclables. Do you know what that's like to have all your trash thrown on the street and half of it left out? Now, I recycle my bottles, my cans, and I give it to my gardener. And that's a religious. I got a recycle can there because I don't want people going through my trash can. to add a blue trash can without a lock on it, what's that gonna do? All it's gonna do is have everybody that wants to get recycled go through your trash again. I think this blue trash can is a shame to the city of San Gabriel. Honestly, you're gonna have people in front of your house picking through it. They were picking through dog poop, everything to get the recyclables out of there. I told them, I don't put recyclables there anymore. I saved it. I saved it for a lady that used to do that. Okay, in front of my bush in the back, in the front of my house, you can get the recyclables. Don't go through my dirt. Please. The blue trash can, I think it's going to be a waste of time. Unless you have a lock on it to where nobody can get into it to recycle it. I pay for recycling already. through my trash bill, to go through the black. I don't know what they get out of it, but it isn't very much. 90% of my recyclables go into that, and my gardener takes it, and that makes a living for him, too. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

The next public comment is from Eduardo Salas. And he says to whom it may concern, may this letter serve as my protest to the rate hike for our solid waste service. I'm very happy that we are now getting the blue recycle bin. The way I see it, the waste collection company is actually going to make money from all the recycling that they are now going to collect from all the residents. So I defiantly are against the rate hike. Thank you. The next speaker is Norman Lee.

Good evening, mayor and council members. My name is Norman and I am not speaking on whether I am for or against the rate increase. I'm actually here representing a up and coming resident. His name is Kyrie. He has just completed elementary school and will be attending middle school in the fall. And he has heard and seen some changes that Athens Services has made across the city. and he has great interest in anything trash related, and really appreciates the work that the drivers do each and every day to come pick up the trash and empty it. I'm actually from a neighboring city, and that's actually how I got to know one of the council members. Basically, he has a YouTube channel that shares his trash interests with anybody that is interested, whoever, you know, decides to take the time to watch. And, you know, he is able to see, you know, up to five different trucks because he lives, you know, near Rosemead, but is a resident and is anticipating, you know, when the sixth truck will come, when, if and when, you know, Athens and city of San Gabriel come to an agreement on when the big delivery trucks come and, you know, deliver the blue bins. But, you know, anyways, yeah, I'm here to speak on his behalf. And, you know, this is going to be like Christmas for him, you know, when the, you know, the big delivery truck comes with, you know, the blue recycling bins, since, you know, I know the commercial side of things has, you know, the blue recycling bins. And I know that the city of San Gabriel and Athens services will get them done, whether residents like it or not, since, you know, I'm, you know, That's how I met one of the council members. You know, unfortunately, my city does not know how to figure out how to finish a rollout. So anyways, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Lee.

Linda Jo Nolasco.

Good evening, guys. City of San Gabriel. To the City of San Gabriel, I proud to ask you all regarding raising the rates, regarding the removal, raising the rates again. I am the granddaughter of Josefina and the niece of Ivan Olasko. The three of us are on the account. My grandmother opened that account almost 100 years ago when First Athens, the original owner of this company, opened it up. And the bill is in my grandmother's name and mine. And I've seen the service. I've seen how they have through the years. We do not need this rate to be raised again. And for them to bring the blue can, as it is, I do my recycling of the aluminum cans and the plastic to pay for the garbage bill. Because I have three cans, three black and three green, and they're not 96, they are 90. And I went to Athens Services because since now I'm a senior citizen, as of in August, I'll be a senior citizen. And I was asking for a senior citizen discount, just like the Edison, our water bill. Well, the city of San Gabriel doesn't give a senior citizen, but the light and the gas, they do give discounts. So I'm just protesting and saying no, because I was born here. I was born in our bathtub on the corner of 623 East Pearl Street. I was born here. In August, I'll be 64, so that's when I mean I've seen the St. Gabriel and the guys who pick up the trash. So I know this, what did they say about the CPI? It's, you know, but I protest no, okay? Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any remote speakers wishing to comment on this item? That concludes the public comment, Mayor.

Madam City Clerk, I want to also submit my protest. Okay.

I'm not on the list. I didn't see the list outside City Council. My name is Maria Hernandez-Cuellar. I'm a resident of San Gabriel, and I 100% support that you guys seemed like you guys approved this vote without notifying us when you guys were going to first vote on it. My understanding, it's already passed, and now you're looking for residents to vote no on this, THIS RAISE ON THE TRASH BINS. THE OTHER LADY THAT WAS HERE WAS AN OTHERLY WOMAN. SHE HAD IT WELL WRITTEN. WITH WHAT SHE SAID, I ALSO AGREE WITH HER. IS THERE ANOTHER TRASH COMPANY WE CAN GO TO? TRASH RATES KEEP ON GOING UP AND IT SEEMS THAT CITY COUNCIL IS NOT REALLY WORKING FOR ITS RESIDENTS IN SAN GABRIEL AND IT WAS ONLY MR. HERRERA WHO VOTED AGAINST THIS AND I KNOW YOU GUYS ARE PROBABLY GETTING PAID WELL OR PROBABLY GET CHECKS AT THE END OF THE YEAR FROM ATHENS OR WHOMEVER SO YOU GET YOUR LITTLE KICKBACKS AND I REALLY DON'T trust what the city council is doing here, and I really don't know if you are really going to count these votes, because it seems you guys already passed this without the resident's approval, or our vote. I'm submitting mine today, and it's only one per lot, and I know my understanding is that there's some residents that have one or more IN THE BACK AND THOSE ARE NOT BEING COUNTED AND THEY ARE STILL GOING TO HAVE TO BE PAYING FOR THAT. SO I REALLY DENY AND I HOPE YOU GUYS RECONSIDER THIS AND VOTE NO ON THIS. YOU ARE LOOKING AT ME LIKE WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT? I AM NOT A PUBLIC SPEAKER BUT I AM HERE AS A RESIDENT AND I WILL And this is going to be difficult for most of the residents in San Gabriel. I think people need more time to get involved with this because a lot of times they say all politicians are going to go ahead and just do what they're going to do and they don't care about the residents. You just care about your positions. And I really think that you're voted in or you run for this position and it's to help the residents and take care of the residents. So I really am against this and I will totally no on this proposition. And I hope that you reconsider it. And I hope you're truthful in seeing how many votes came in and how many residents there are and how many votes are no or how many votes are yes. But I think the majority of the residents are going to be voting no on this. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, I have no more speaker cards.

Is there another one coming up?

Thank you. Ready? Oh, hello. Good evening, everybody. I'm here to go straightforward. Reason for protect. One, I think here, I make it short. They have been long to ignore the need to recycle process by not providing the blue container at all. And now they ship from the, well, make it short. Anthony saw it, I make it AS. Now from AS, they ship it to BS. BS here stands for business charity. They use the blue container, use like the business leverage, and getting more purpose to promote the rate increasing. That's the one thing. And I know on May 19th, the Council of Railways approved some sort of bankruptcy agreement. Well, if that approved, this company supposed to be get penalized by us to delay the adjustment request, when the rate adjustment request at least six months to one year. That penalize them because they didn't do the business right. The air charge too much compared to other cities like Rosemead. Rosemead is building cycle three months for $90 plus. And our city is two months building cycle. Don't you think it's too much? The third one, I believe the city of St. Gabriel should have more power to negotiate a better deal. Even though we don't deal with the NSO, a lot of companies out there, way management, like Republic Service, something like that in Rosby, okay? Another thing, the thing like this, we should put in the vote. How many people represented, not represent the whole city? We have two zip codes compared with Rosby, one zip code. We have a lot more power. We let the people to decide. Thank you very much.

I submitted already, June 6th. I just want. Yeah, I'm the owner of the few properties around the St. Gabor, 238 St. Marcos, 250 St. Marcos, 406 West Broadway, around this area. I bought, I have six properties. THOSE RENTAL PROPERTIES. BUT I JUST COMPARE. I ACTUALLY SENDED AN E-MAIL TO THE CITY MANAGER, MARK, TWO YEARS AGO. I SENT AN E-MAIL TO EVERY COUNCIL MEMBER ON JUNE. SO THE THREE-YARD COMPARE OTHER CITIES. ON JUNE IS $426.47. EACH WEEK PICK UP PER MONTH THREE YARD. Alhambra only $237 with public service. Arcadia is only $174. So that's management. Actually already, Essence is already double other cities for almost two years. I do send an email to Mark, send to all council members. Nobody reply to us. So I just want everybody to know this. Actually, St. Gabor, we pay compared to Arcadia and Humber for the multiple, like five units buildings, we already paid doubles compared to all trash companies. And actually, every time you call those companies, I can tell everyone, you can call waste management, you can call the The Republic, you can compare. Essence, no customer service. All the customers, they don't care. You have to talk all the city managers every time. I'm dealing with them on St. Gabor and Moravia. This is my worst. I have around the city, I have around the properties around the St. Gabor Valley, but Essence is terrible. That's all I want to say.

Is there anyone else wishing to speak on this item?

Okay. If there are any other additional protest votes, please submit them now to the city clerk. No? Last chance? For protest votes? All right. So I see none. So the period for submitting protest votes is now closed, and I close the public hearing. Madam City Clerk, please count the protest votes and certify the results.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. It'll take just a few minutes.

Okay, I'll allow the last one, if that's all right. Okay. Okay. They didn't want to read?

Mr. Mayor, it'll take a few minutes for us to count and tally the votes.

But those last two people did not want to read it out loud? Okay. They were protest votes. Just submitting. Okay. Thank you. All right. At this time, I would like to call a health break, a brief recess, about 10, 15 minutes. But let's say 15 minutes and be back at 7.30 p.m.? 8.30? Oh, okay, we're at 8.30. Okay, 8.30 p.m. Okay, we're in recess?

Thank you.

Okay, I call this meeting back to order, reconvening at 8.40 p.m. Madam Chief City Clerk, report please.

Mr. Mayor, I certify that Proposition 218 protest proceeding was conducted in accordance with applicable law. All timely protests were received and tabulated. The results are as follows. Total assessable parcels, 7,624. 50% of the total assessable parcels would be 3,812. Valid protests received are 56. Therefore, a majority protest does not exist.

Okay, thank you, Madam City Clerk. It is now time for council discussion. Would any council member like to discuss any further?

I'd like just to make a few comments.

All right.

I'm not sure if you can hear me with the fan in the back.

Is it, yeah.

Can you hear me clearly? Oh, okay. Great.

Use your angry mother voice.

Well, because I can hear the fans, so it gets a little difficult. So, first of all, I wanted to just make clarification questions more so than anything else, because I don't think... EVERYTHING HAS BEEN PROPERLY DISCLOSED THE WAY IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE, BECAUSE WE'VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT THIS FOR MONTHS, MAYBE EVEN A YEAR. FIRST OF ALL, THERE WAS NEGOTIATIONS, NINE MONTHS OF NEGOTIATIONS. OUR CITY MANAGER AND OUR PUBLIC WORKS DIRECTOR, MICHAEL SLED, THEY'VE BEEN WORKING THROUGH THIS. IT DIDN'T JUST HAPPEN. We've also had, as the speaker from Athens said, he did do a presentation. Mark, can you talk a little bit more about the kind of outreach that we've done? Because we did everything we could, but as everyone knows, it's hard to get everybody, you know, for a variety of reasons. I have some people that said don't waste, you know, you're hurting the environment by doing hard copies. Don't be mailing things. but sometimes that's the best way for a lot of us to get information. I know a lot of people like social media, so we work on social media. We have our weekly, it's called the City Beat. It's a weekly newsletter that gives you information. If you haven't signed up, I urge you to sign up. Juliana is somewhere here. Her and her team, they put it together. But Mark, I'm gonna turn it to you. Can you talk about some of the outreach that was done prior to it? With the understanding that, yes, some people had mentioned already, and I'm glad they are reading the agenda, the fact that we did approve it, we did stay till the bitter end, till like midnight, to talk about this. So it wasn't done in a vacuum. We had extensive conversation. There was people that were here from the uh... public uh... tonight was about the vote so we voted it passed on the the approving of the seventh amendment and then we took it to to the uh... residents so it's a process uh... and so but i wanted to kind of focus i had a my one of my neighbors is here and i i want to be respectful what she said and i want to thank you for that conversation, that very civil conversation that we had. And she brought up a good question. What kind of outreach was done prior? Because it seems like a lot of these people that was part of their concern is nobody was communicating. And I know we do our best, Mark, but can you share some of the outreach that had been done?

I would be happy to, Councilwoman Menchaca. I do want to clarify, Michael Sled was not part of the negotiations. He was not on board when we did all this, so I don't want to drag his good name through the mud just yet. He'll have his opportunity to be skewered in the future, but Martin and I did the lion's share of our discussion.

Could you share who Martin is?

Our city attorney, our assistant city attorney.

Assistant city attorney, yeah, okay.

But I will be clear, all of the outreach we have done, none of it has been with the rates. That only started over the last few weeks because we've only had the rates, and when I say few weeks, this has been a several year process, as you've said. And when I say few weeks, I mean the last few months, probably eight to 10 weeks we've had the new rates. And those have all been published. But prior to that, we tried to get as much info out as we could through our City Beat, through our Discover SG. We had articles about what SB 1383, which is what's driving all of this, why we need the extra bins and why we would be changing the services. But to be clear, the only actual to everybody's house mailers we've done related to this have been for the Prop 218 hearing. Prior to all of that, it's been through our social media and our news magazine.

Yeah, the news magazine. I call that a hard copy, our news magazine, which is now called Discover SG.

Discover SG, thank you.

Thank you. And I know that some talk has been about the blue bin. And my understanding, and maybe John Harrington might want to come up about the blue bins, why would we have to add them now? I mean, I try to make it really simple. The fact is, we have to add the blue bins. It's no longer... I guess for compliance purposes, the two bin system doesn't work because it's not enough of recyclable. We need to reach that 75, and so the two bins can't accomplish that.

Very close.

Very close, okay.

So yeah, the SB1383 has two paths to compliance. The first is what's called a high diverting MRF. That's a material recovery facility. That's where we take one or two waste streams process out everything that we can and those go into three different streams. That's the first way to compliance. We have facilities that do that and we've been doing that since the 80s, late 80s, early 90s. We've had facilities that do that. As we've gone along, the state has increased and increased and increased the amount that has to come out. We're at a point now where it went from 50% in January 1st, 2025 to 75%. That's a 50% increase when you think about it in matters of percentage. I addressed earlier, there's no actual facility in California that takes a full waste stream with all three just mixed and can divert 75%. There's some that do organics alone. So they'll take, for example, select organics customers, but not trash, and they will process that and easily get to their 75%. But they're not taking trash, recycling, and organics and getting 75% out. It's just not happening. The second way to comply, and this is the state of California, is to have three source separated. So when you have three CANs, the source is each home or each business or each multifamily unit has three places to put their different streams. That is compliant regardless of what percentage is actually diverted.

So that's really the safest to make sure we don't get hit with any penalties.

It's 100% you're going to comply. It's kind of automatic. They had to give us a way that's possible to comply. that they knew would come. So they created a way for cities to be able to avoid fines, really, is what it is. If you go to 3Stream, they consider that a compliant system. Okay.

And then I just wanted to clarify, all of us here, we may not agree with each other, but we're all here for the right reasons. We care about our communities. We're not getting anything except for what we get on a monthly basis as elected officials. So we are all... We do the best we can to make decisions, what's best for our community. I've been probably here the longest, and then Tony, and then the rest of everyone else. So we're all coming from different perspectives. I know the blue bins, I mean, this has been a conversation for a long time. Why don't we have it? My kids live all over, and they've always asked, why doesn't San Gabriel have blue bins? So I knew it was coming. I know other cities have been doing it. But especially in California, if you live in California, I know... The demands are higher. I mean, we have the highest gas prices and we have the highest, really everything, property taxes. So I knew it was coming. I think we tried to, we didn't want to burden our community as much as we could. So we did the two bins back in 2020. But with the increased mandates, it made it very difficult. So we're kind of being shepherded into this blue bin universe now.

Yeah, and this is speaking from historical knowledge. We had the opportunity to go three back in 2020, and there was a price difference back then, and we said, no, let's keep the lower price. That's not an option anymore. That's the difference. In 2025, that was no longer an option.

Okay. And then the other thing that I'm listening to also is that, you know, anytime there's change, it's difficult for all of us. It doesn't matter, you know, if we own multiple properties or one property or a business. And so I just want to see if, I know you've given us some guarantees, but I just think this is kind of an ongoing process. I mean, you know, the hearing's already taken place. You know, we've already voted on the amendment, but... Is there something that you do maybe with other communities to try to help us transition into this blue bin? And our businesses who are really single-family residents, they're not going to see much of a change in their bill, but it's the businesses. Is there something that you do with other communities? Because I've spoken to other communities, and some of the communities were mentioned, some of the cities, and I know they're not happy with their – Grass is always greener, and if you get into the nitty-gritty, every trash company has its shortcomings, and Athens does too, but I think for our city, one size doesn't fit all, but Athens has been a good partner. But with other cities that you work with, because there's quite a few, what kind of educational process, what kind of outreach does Athens have that maybe we can share with our community tonight. Those who are here, because there's so many more that are not, but maybe that might be a good way. Maybe we need to spend some extra money to have those hard copies or just do much more of an outreach to let people know what to expect and how they can ask that their fees be lowered. What do you have or what have you done with other cities?

Thank you. In my experience, every city in Southern California pays the most for trash, so you're not different from anyone else. I know. I've heard that at many meetings that we pay the most. I would say we have a very robust education campaign. We have lots of written material. We have online material. We do in person. We do it every, it's actually required under SB 1383 for us to do an education. We've had workshops. We can do individual like larger businesses. We do that all the time. We'll go into like a grocery store, have like when they do their safety training, we spend 10, 15 minutes with staff and especially the staff that handle the recycling, the trash.

Do you have a limit on the number of workshops or...

I'm not going to say unlimited, but we will come out if there's a need, we will fill that need. I mean, we're here if we identify that we're, I'll tell you, the first thing we do is we go out and we do waste assessments for all the businesses so we can figure out, you know, why aren't we getting recycling from here? What's going on from this business that we're not getting anything in the blue bin? Because we're able to track. We are able to track and figure out. you know, where the waste stream is and we can, you know, maybe we'll go contact a business and say, you know, you're very low on, for whatever reason, your recycling.

Well, because what I'm thinking is like, we have block parties. Not every community, I know, not every neighborhood has a block party or a block captain. I see Sue Fitzsimmons, she's the role model there for block captains. But I was thinking something along those lines. We have so many people here. If we could somehow get their names and emails and start having these workshops, would you limit us or we can just have as many as needed so they can understand?

Once again, I'm not going to say unlimited.

Oh, I know, you can't commit. But I will say, yeah, we can make the request.

We will make a very well-coordinated, and if it's reasonable, I mean, if you're trying to do like every day, no.

No, no, but I think if we can get some groups here together to kind of find that common ground, the concerns they have, because again, it's... It's not the residential as much, although I did hear some residential maybe having smaller bins. I know that's an option, so that would lower their fees. If you have a senior citizen, they don't need a big bin. They don't really need all three bins for that matter, but at least smaller bins.

I will say that we have a very large outreach team. They do training every single day. That's their job is they go out and they visit customers every single day. They're dispatched.

And I know you have multiple languages.

Oh, yeah. We have every single language spoken in Southern California. We have folks that speak native speakers to those languages. You'd be hard-pressed to find a language that we don't have someone at Athens that can speak that language. So yeah, we do have, we have all the resources to do the training, not the minimum state mandated training, but what I would call the white glove service where you have 10 folks, we'll get someone out there to train them, even if it's a neighborhood block party or a business or...

Because I don't think we've been as proactive in really working with our community or our residents. And so that's what I would like to see.

I agree with you, Councilwoman. But I would just say that I've also seen Athens have a booth at our weekly farmer's market, which is very much boots on the ground. Good point, Mary. For everybody, all our residents and even non-residents who come to our farmer's market. If they want to engage, it's right there.

And part of our outreach is in bill inserts. So if you get an electronic bill, you'll get it electronically. If you get a paper bill, you'll get a paper copy of the what goes where. And we do quarterly newsletters. If you see your bill electronic, you'll see that.

And you do the compost. I know I've seen that.

Yeah, and we do a composting event. We have a lot of opportunities, but there's always more. And we are always welcome. For staff or council, contact us. Members of the community can contact us. For example, if a large condominium association wants individual training at one of their meetings, we will definitely show up.

Well, I just think we just need to do a better job, and so maybe that's something we should really be deliberate about and much more proactive because I think we've never had a real meeting like this before. I don't remember a Prop 218 in the past. Maybe we've had one, but I don't remember. We've had Prop 218 for the sewers.

2013.

1-13?

2013, you had a sewer assessment, Prop 218.

I was on the school board then. So I think I would like to see more of that, and I appreciate everyone that's here. I appreciate the fact that they're voicing their concerns. We're listening. I don't agree. I think we've done the best we could. It wasn't just something that was done at the spring of the moment. Nine months of negotiations, we thought that was sufficient. But anyway, so I just wanted to share that with my colleagues, with the community. And, you know, we will do better. I know you can all get a hold of me. Like I told my neighbor, well, she can actually come to my house. But we're accessible. You can reach us. We all have e-mails. Right. And, you know, we will try to do better in trying to just get that information. And we have actually Lewis is here somewhere or was somewhere. And so there is a team out there just for San Gabriel. So if we can get that team more involved and really talk to our residents, I think that would be really helpful. And so thank you. That's all I had, Mayor.

Thank you. Any other colleagues? Any more discussion? Well, thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. First of all, thank you so much for everyone coming here today. I think this is really great that when I can see every time council meeting that we can have all of you just come here every time, at least try your best, because you would know what we are doing. Just a few of the comments here. First of all, I just heard that one of the resident that accusing us for taking we call kickback or money or salary. You know, I cannot talk or behave of any other of my colleagues, but for me, I mean, I would say this allegation is definitely false. DEFINITELY YOU CAN CHECK EVERYTHING IS VERY TRANSPARENT SO YOU CAN CHECK THE FORM 460 FROM OUR CITY'S WEBSITE BUT SECOND THING IS ACTUALLY NO ONE REALLY LIKES THE THINGS TO BE INCREASED SO THAT'S WHY LAST COUNCIL MEETING ON MAY 19TH THAT I HAVE MADE THE VERY FIRST STATEMENT IS WELL WHO MADE THIS DECISION AND I SAID OKAY WE GOT TO RECALL THIS PERSON UNFORTUNATELY THAT HE IS NO LONGER ON THE SENATE'S POSITION But I mean, there is something is mandating this local city to comply that now we have to go with the three containers. So I said, okay, how we can get rid of that? If we can escape that for a few years, can we just keep escaping from that? But unfortunately, it seems like that this is really tough. And I do see that there is a violations that if we don't follow the regulations, the penalty to the city, that can range as high as 10,000 per violation day, depends on the nature of the violation. So I did a very brief calculation. I said, wow, so if we can just violate just $10,000 per day, I thought it's per month, but per day, there'll be $36.5 million, which is about equally half of our new police station. With that, this will be really a hard decision just having that cost increase to our community. Nobody likes that, including myself as a homeowner that I just like every one of you. You're my neighbors and I'm just living in this city for 26 years and I totally get it. So this is why I really appreciate our city staff. They have been doing the work for nine months that is straight try to make try to reduce as much as possible that not the huge impact or minimize the possible impact to our residents here. I understand that some of the business owners they may not be happy about this because now they will be considered to take like a pay higher triple net which is including the all utility services including the trash services but when there is something mandate from the state the city our obligation as a city council is try to protect our people protect our community don't make everyone feel that it's so hard. So I would say our job is not only making everyone happily living here, but also we would like to do our best to help those businesses that are getting more business from many other places. This is why the city of St. Gabor now has become a very popular spot that people love to do business, even they know that could cost a little bit higher now because we are following the state codes. So I would say thank you very much for everyone coming up here today. Thank you Mr. John Harrington that coming to just sharing that with me with all of us and I would say customer service is very important. So I truly think, you know, just have, you know, try to have the customer service to answer all the questions. And also, for all people who have sent an email to us, I mean, sometimes it doesn't mean that we don't reply. I reply almost every single one of you. But sometimes, Somehow I would say, okay, maybe I should have the city manager to reply. So most of our council members, my colleagues, they will be doing the same because they don't want one person to receive five emails and probably answer something as could be like not accurate enough information for you. So I would like to reply you with my, you know, it should be keep my words accountable. Make sure all the message delivered to you is faithful, correct, accurate. But I understand maybe the decision will not be making everyone happy, but we are not here to make everyone happy. We want to make sure that we are doing the right things when the challenge from the state bill that we have to deal with, then how we can just make the best judgment and best justification to this. So I truly appreciate for everything. And thank you again, Mark, for the nine months efforts that I would say this is something that we have studied uh really long enough not just one day two days we have been following that for omar oh i would say not only nine months because before that we heard about this bill sb 3083 is coming so um but thank you that's conclude my report thank you

Thank you. Vice Mayor Ding, would you like to say? Thank you, Mayor.

Yeah, it's the most point that I think Council Member Wu already asked the question. It's more similar to us, to me. First of all, I still need to ask our city attorney, Martin, Regarding that, if any council member got something else for the item related to their company, can they vote for this item?

Would you repeat the question?

Based on the FPPG law, FPPG.

If a council member is a customer.

Yes, there is no controversial metrics. They cannot vote on that item, right, if they receive it. So I know the public comments regarding that too. You're talking about a contribution. Yeah, that would need to be disclosed. They have to excuse, right? They cannot vote on that, right? So if they vote, that's meaning, honestly, yeah, that's a violation, right? So that's, I think, I hope the public can listen, can understand it. Yeah, I really like that today I have a lot of people come out to have this question regarding the, They mandate, so they discuss already staff, it's like nine months to try help, okay, to ask everybody to reasonable and the lowest rate to our resident and the business too. Actually, for my, I just say that I'm business owner. It's actually affect me too. And I'm leaving the condo media, too, and multi-user, too. It's really affecting myself, too. But I really like public comments, also want to do the comparison. Okay, I just direct, okay, for which one company, okay? So we already previous contract, I just want to ask Mark and Martin regarding that. If we just want to do the comparison, stop the service, how long we can terminate? That's my question. We can't really terminate the contract. I hope that's a question that the public can know what's the consequence. Thank you, Vice Mayor Ding.

The answer to that question is 25 years, because we have a rolling, I think one of the first speakers talked about the structure of our contract, and it's very common for waste contracts. I know of cities that have 40-year rolling contracts. Our contract prior to 2020 was 14 years, and in 2020 it was increased to 25 years. So the short answer to your question, if we wanted to look at different companies, we would give Athens a notice this year that we're not renewing, and then we would start a negotiation process over 25 years, and then we could end the contract after 25 years.

So actually our city can, if we want to compare them, have to wait another 25 years. Correct. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. So that's, okay, if we wait 25 years, but we still need like a compliant state mandate, we still need to find a solution. Like Council Member Wu mentioned that every day probably we can get a fine Actually, it's every day. Before I read this one, it's like a few of the one months, but actually it's every day $10,000.

So that's the consequence.

It's really, I understand, a really tough decision for that. And once, like, I really, like, first of all, it's appreciate the contract and negotiate. It's really good. Still help the single family home. Just heavily increase. It's a reasonable increase, the price. It's the most effective business owner and mixed-use owner, too. Yeah. But for the business owner size, I feel maybe, you know, so a lot of the things that you feel like because business owner, they do the business, they also the outside the resident will come to our city to maybe they can share the cost, not really affect our single family home. Otherwise, you should be balanced, right? Otherwise, the single-family home will be going, if we want to balance, they're going up. Maybe some balance, how much the John Harrington can see how much, if we want to reduce the business rate and increase the single-family home rates, how much they probably need to increase.

Well, I would say it's not a matter of increasing one and decreasing another. They have two different ways of collecting the same thing. One is not subsidizing the other. They're two separate streams or lines of business. With the city, when we negotiated with the commercial, we're collecting a big portion of the capital up front because it's a bigger expenditure. Bins cost more. We have a different type of service for commercial than residential. So one isn't subsidizing the other. So you can't just say, we'll increase residential and reduce. The city attorney could speak to that. We can't have one person subsidize someone else's business. bill in trash. It's going to have a lot of electricity. We wouldn't have you pay someone else's electricity bill. Does that make sense?

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for the explanation. Also, from my understanding, based on the previous contract, because the essence of the truck in the use of our street, so the market, I just want to ask him, every year, how much they subsidize to our city, to help our city for the, like, maintain our street, street paving, yeah, that's my most, yeah, that's I wanted to see how much, yeah.

So I just checked my notes and I want to be clear. The old contract was for 11 years and in 2020 it was increased 14 years. So the 25 year number is the correct number. I just had the two years incorrect. But to answer your question, the council at that time, in return for that increase in the contract years, negotiated an annual payment of $350,000. And that's increased by CPI every year. So that is over $400,000 as of this year, annually. And that's for any purpose for the city, not just street paving. It can be used for anything.

But we voted most to try to do the paving. I remember that time.

As an example, in 2020, we were still not in great financial shape, but we were able to use that to pave the Mission Playhouse parking lot.

Okay.

And we did not have other funding to do that. Okay. If it weren't for that funding, we would still probably have potholes in that parking lot.

Okay. All right. Okay. So, I just want to calculate. If we know this kind of big sub-size for the city, so how much you can each each like the the the the holiday the unit they can save how much yeah the members 350 000 so everybody can save how much i'm sorry i don't yeah i mean like if just in case that your negotiation it's say hey we don't need a subsidized from the ascent and how much each ascent customer can save their trash bill.

I'm sorry, Vice Mayor, I can't really guess at what that would be. That would have to be a discussion with Athens. I don't know.

Yeah, but I know that's asking Mr. Harrington to.

So I want to make sure I understand the question. Are you talking about the city, that payment Athens makes to the city if we took that out of the contract?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That would have to be modeled, and it depends how that gets distributed. So that's really, it's not something I could be able to answer out of my head. It would pretty much be how the city wants it to happen.

Okay. So I just bought part. It's how much they can.

You mean based on the number of accounts? Yeah. Let's say divided by 7,000-ish accounts, and you can do the math. A little more, but yeah, right around there. Okay. All right. I'm an attorney. I'm not going to do math in my head. Okay.

All right. Okay. Me too. Okay. Just asking the question. Okay. So, yeah. Yeah. It's because all the public comments are also asking why we support it, why we want to do it. So a lot of factors I want to bring up to all the public to know that, to understand that. For me, myself, I hope not increase based on my situation, right? Okay, but no matter, because we need, like for the state mandate, we have to do something. Some people should be paid something a little bit more to share the costs, right? So for the city-wise, I think, It's for me, it's a really hard decision, but the one things I really like it, the ads want to provide service, like hopefully can consistent to do that, to base on all the like specialty for the business owner and the mixed use and hopefully you can proactive to visit their sites to help them. What's the best suggestion to reduce their costs? Maybe, yeah, I know that you have a broker, maybe you don't need a three yard template, right? You can reduce that. It's try proactive to help them to reduce their costs. I saw you on the, YOUR REPORT ON NUMBER FIVE.

ON PAGE FIVE IS AN EXAMPLE OF THAT. WHILE WE HAVE AN INCREASE IN HERE, IF YOU FOLLOW THE BEHAVIOR THAT THE STATE IS TRYING TO MODEL AND REDUCE THE AMOUNT OF TRASH YOU HAVE, REDUCE YOUR SIZE, INCREASE YOUR RECYCLING in displacement of the trash. What used to go into the trash is now going into your recycling as a commercial customer. You could actually end up with a lower rate than you have right now with that added recycling capacity. The reason is recycling costs less to get out of the waste stream than trash. Trash costs more money. So when you reduce the amount of trash, let's say right now everything's going into one bin.

Yeah.

And let's say it's a three yard. If you're able to go down to a two yard bin, it's about a 2% savings if you take that and put it into trash from your current rate. Okay. If you're able to go down to a smaller, like a one and a half, it's about a 12% savings. Okay. That's just, I'm trying to do that from memory, but that's from the last time we presented, but I think that was the number we calculated. Okay. So you could, if you model the behavior that the state of California is trying to get everyone to do, you can actually, this bill could result in a lesser rate than you're currently paying.

Mm-hmm.

And we have experienced that in cities. We have seen our revenue has gone down based on people right-sizing. And that's not a bad thing for us because as our revenue goes down, our costs go down also. So it's kind of proportionate. So for Athens, it's kind of a zero-sum game. Revenue goes down, but so do the costs. So it's actually a win-win for everybody.

So I like this idea. So I hope you can continue to provide a service to proactive to reach out to their business owner. Because I know that a lot of people like it. Yeah, we do a lot of advertising. You also do a lot of the mailing or online or email. I agree they do a good job, but sometimes people are not really aware about that. So hopefully you can help our community to think about an option you suggest.

I'll give you our experience so far. We have visited every business in San Gabriel. That doesn't mean we've made contact with everyone. We've been to every single address. And we do this every year, by the way. This isn't something just for SB 1383. We go to every single business. We're making a particular focus now that we have an opportunity to right-size your trash. I think we use the term downsize in the staff report, but we call it right-sizing so that you have the right size of trash, right size recycling, and right size organics. We continue to do that. It's not a one-time thing. And it's also, if you get someone that emails you and says, hey, I never got contacted, it's more than likely we left a notice on the door. And our folks are out there every day. And I've heard lots of stories about people don't want to talk to us. They think we're just a vendor. They chase us off. And then six months later, say, oh, Athens never visited us. Believe me, we have badges. Our folks are in uniforms. We have our names on it. So... We're out there, but it's like the same difficulty that the council has trying to communicate when something like this happens. Even when you're in the field knocking on someone's door, sometimes you get chased away and then they'll say, Athens never visited us. We will be persistent and we will consistently in every single one of our cities and we do it at least once every year. And also anytime it's requested from a customer, we will be there. And if you have a customer that you want to refer to us, we'll take a referral. If Mark gets a call or the staff gets a call, we're there. We're very responsive. We're there usually within the day, the next day. We have somebody who's... only has a couple cities, and he's out here every day in all of our cities. We have a lot of folks that do that. We're assigned a very small geographical area. My team only has five cities. And when I say only, they're right here. They're Pasadena, South Pasadena, Temple City, Monrovia. They're all right here. We're not going... I go all over the place. I have different teams for different areas. And then that's just my team, but we have, like I said, we have outreach teams, we have recycling coordinators, we have all kinds of folks, lots of resources. We are proactive, but we always welcome outreach from council and staff.

Okay. I will call you next days. Yeah, do it. Okay. I'll take that challenge. Actually, I agree. Because in the council meeting, I just saw your phone call. call my cell phone and uh but i cannot answer that okay so hopefully it's maybe it's it wasn't me i promise okay all right all right okay all right thank you yeah so thank you uh thank you

Okay. Thank you, Vice Mayor Ding. Would any other council member like to ask more questions or make comments?

Yes, Mayor. I have a couple more questions, and then I'll make my deliberations. I promise to make it quick. First, I want to thank the residents that came out that were aware of this, and it really means a lot. As you can see, every single voice matters and we're here trying to do our best um for the residents of of san gabriel and unfortunately there's some that that are not as involved right so i commend you for for being involved and taking the time out of your your day to come out and and be active in this democracy that we have today um we're building a beautiful city where we can't do it alone we got we need your voices so please continue to communicate with us and being engaged and and involved. Question that I have here is, Mark, we mentioned, I want a little clarification. You said 350,000 and that's CPI that we get every year and then it goes CPI, so it will be more next year.

That's correct.

So my question for Athens is how come that's not CPI trash plus one?

Well, the main reason is it's based on an increase. The city isn't in the trash industry. It's in the general industry. We negotiated that, and we could have added that formula, but then it would be kind of a lever where it does increase rates. It's kind of a zero-sum game. So it could have been, but then it ends up adding more to residents.

We could have added a lot of stuff, right? But then that means it costs something, and you have to put it on the performa, and the performa is the projections of how you get your money back and all that. And it ends up increasing rates. Right. So my stance is this. We had SB 1383. We passed it. What was the first time, Mark? Is it 2020 or 2022? 2020 is when we initially... approve that we will be compliant with SB 1383. SB 1383 has not changed. They said they were going to enforce. We knew this was coming. This is why Athens built the MRF that I want to come and tour as well. I went and I toured the other ones that you guys have in Sun Valley. It's an amazing operation. It's very fascinating how all these hardworking people that are working for Athens, and I want to commend them too because I saw how hard they're working in these facilities. And these, what do you call them, these lines that, you know, you have just trash coming. Sorting lines. It's almost like an I Love Lucy kind of episode, right? Except they're not eating them. Right. Right. They're helping to sort the trash. Yeah. At one point, we did have an opportunity. As my point of view, because I would say I have some experience when it comes to trash, that we had an opportunity. It would have been a hard uphill battle where we could have terminated the contract because Athens wasn't meeting the mandate, and that's my personal belief. because we did have a contract, but we decided to negotiate a contract, and that's what we have here today, and not today, but yeah, today, but also a couple meetings ago. I would have liked to see a third-party company. We could have used that. I know that was brought up last time. We could have used that, but instead, you know, Citi decided to work with Athens in good faith, And I know Athens is a business. After all, it's a business. Some might argue that you have good service. And I've said it before in the past that I'm not dissatisfied with the service, even though that I've made very few, a couple of inquiries on the street sweeper, not creating too much dust, one, and not... not watering down the streets as much as it should, with just a little trickle of water. So I know you said you were going to look into that, so I hope that that gets resolved, because I already saw it three times. I'm here to work with Athens, but my first priority are the residents of San Gabriel, and that's my commitment. I do want to strongly say that I do feel that there was room for negotiation. And there could have been many things that could have been considered. So I want to make this clear. I want the commitment of Athens for the following. Outreach, outreach, outreach, outreach. And how are we going to do that? Please bring out, I know for other cities, I've seen you guys bring out the touch a truck, the big truck, and then the little truck as well. They have a very little miniature truck they bring out. I want to see that. I want to see more youth empowerment. So I know we talked, John mentioned that there's going to be possible tours for the youth. And then there is also going to be possible tours for the seniors. So I want to get that commitment from you that you're going to be doing that. And then I also want to make future for you to have for Athens to have serious considerations for our youth scholarships and senior discounts. With that said. Mark, when we're voting here today, what are we voting for? We're no longer voting for the contract, right? We're voting that we follow this 218 mandate, right?

You're correct. The amendment was already approved. So tonight you are just validating the process of the 218 rate increase and that the city clerk counted those votes and gave you the report and you're just attesting to that.

So when I was walking around in the community talking to businesses and residents and even today, I heard that some of these letters were not sent to the actual account holder. So I want to really get clarification on that.

The law requires the letters to be sent to the property owner of record and that's where they were sent.

Okay. Can I get that commitment from Athens?

So your commitment was outreach. We will do that. Um, youth tours, we will do that. We actually do that. Uh, 16 and older is generally what we do. We don't have, we can't allow children obviously in our facilities. Senior discount, that's something we have in other cities, but once again, that's a rate lever, and that's something the city has to do. It's not something Athens can administer. There's certain things that the city would have to do. Scholarships, that's something we can entertain in the future. I'm not gonna say that this contract envisions scholarships. So yes, we can do those things. Those aren't in this contemplated contract, but definitely something Athens has done with other cities, but like I think it was said here, every city has a different contract. So to try and say, this contract, you're gonna give senior discounts. Well, if we did that, there would have to be a different pro forma. So yes, it is possible, not in this contract.

If your MRF gets certified, you mentioned that, then there's going to be some kind of wiggle room without having to touch the performer.

Correct. So like I said, we're a transparent company. We're a partner. And I said, we consider ourselves, for public works purposes, we are a public works extension. All things trash, recycling, organics, we are, for all intents and purposes, the San Gabriel has given us the privilege of being the public works department in those areas. And as far as the ability to do those things, if it's part of this contract, yes. And all the tours and everything, yeah, we will do that.

Last clarifying question for Martin, right? So it goes back to the campaign contributions. I just want to make it clear, right? So there's that, you can't receive anything a year or a year, even a year after. Nobody in this body, I want to make it clear, and I want to make sure that it's clear, that in order to vote for this, there's that regulation from the state that nobody can receive that. And I'm going to say it one year before, or one year after, is that correct? Yes. And with that said, if we would have received that money within that scope of the period, we can't even be part of this conversation. We have to recuse ourselves to a certain degree, correct? That is correct. Okay. So an abstain vote, I just want to clarify something. An abstain vote doesn't mean that anybody receives money from Athens, it's almost like a protest, I would say, that you're just not voting on this. Because a no vote on something like this, saying that the city did not follow the process when I don't have quite enough evidence, right? I think the city told me that we followed the process. An abstain vote, what would that mean in legal terms?

Abstention was just a no vote. I mean, it's not a vote. You're abstaining from making a decision. That's what it means. Thank you.

Okay. Does any colleague, council member, want to make any more comments or questions? No?

I'm ready to make a motion, but I'd like to hear from you, Mayor.

All right. Well, I mean, I echo what my colleagues have already said so far. So, I mean, I think I speak for all of us on council that we are all residents of the city, and some of us may be homeowners, and no one ever likes to raise rates and have rates raised on us. But again, as was said earlier today, that one of the reasons is the SB 1383, where the state is forcing the cities to treat waste in a certain way, and that raises the cost for the trash hauler. and that unfortunately gets passed along. But I think I speak for all the council members up on the dais here that we try our best to keep costs low because we live here too and we're all residents, we're all neighbors. So I'll leave it at that. So seeing as Prop 218 process has been followed, do I have a motion? for the staff recommendation?

Yes, I just wanted to clarify with Martin what the proper recommend, because if you look under recommendation, go step by step, and we've already done all the steps, but what are we approving exactly? It's not just the staff recommendation. It is in their specific, the city council approves the adoption of resolution 2639, establishing the new rates and rate adjustment requirements.

You're voting on approval of the resolution that is before you.

Okay, so I move to approve resolution 2639, that establishing a new rate and rate adjustment methodology.

Is that correct?

Okay.

Do I have a second? All right. Do I have a second? I second. Okay. All right, so a motion has been made by Councilwoman Menchaca and seconded by Vice Mayor Ding. Let's go to the vote.

Motion passes by a vote of 4-0 with one abstention.

Thank you, Council. Okay, thank you. Next item, please.

We have no continued business this evening. Our next item is new business item A, review updated Veterans Memorial conceptual design, authorize city manager to execute agreement with DVD Creative for Veterans Memorial construction documents, and adopt resolution number 26-42 to amend the budget for completion of the documents. Community Services Director Perez will make the presentation.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. Tonight, as mentioned, we are reviewing the updated Veterans Memorial conceptual design and requesting authorization of the City Manager to execute the agreement with DVD Creative for the memorial construction documents and adopt resolution amending the budget. I'd like to walk us through a little timeline. While this has been a two-year process, which seems long, there's a lot of effort that has taken place during this timeline. So just to quickly walk us through that. In July 2024, the City Council approved the recommended location for the memorial to be placed in Plaza Park. July 2025, the architect was selected and City Council approved the agreement with DVD Creative for two conceptual designs. In September 2025, staff held a Veterans Memorial kickoff community meeting in Plaza Park with DVDC. And then in November 2025, DBDC provided two draft memorial conceptual designs. And following that in December of last year, the two designs were reviewed with the Veterans Memorial Coalition. And then those designs were brought forward to city council in February of this year. and Council recommended that the designs go forward to the Historic Preservation and Cultural Resources Commission and also the Design Review Commission and both of those meetings happened in March. The updated design was brought forward to staff, to the staff team in June of this year and then in July DVDC presented that to the Memorial Coalition. And here we are tonight. So this, again, it's a two-year process, but it does, there has been a lot that's taken place during this time. So just wanted to kind of review all of those timelines with you. And now I will actually be turning it over to Gary Vasquez, who you've met before, and he is the Director of Design for DVD Creative, and he will be presenting the updated design.

Okay, good evening. As Rebecca just mentioned, I'm here to present the updated design for the Veterans Memorial. I'm happy to be here this evening. I didn't realize it's been two years. Time flies, I guess, when you're having fun. This is just a little context as to the site. The mission is up the upper kind of right hand area and City Hall where we're in is to the left of Mission Drive there. And our site, the proposed memorial location, is kind of the upper corner of the Plaza Park, as you're aware. Oops, let's see, okay. So this is the updated, this is a site plan of the updated concept. And similar to the previous concepts that we generated with a little, basically I think we kind of simplified the design based on input that we received from the Veterans Coalition and the commissions that Rebecca had mentioned. And that has been integrated into this particular concept. And just to give you an idea, the rice mill is kind of the lower left. And the existing millstone is under a tree there, number 18. And our site kind of transects the sidewalk along Mission. and the walkway that goes through the park that parallels the mission itself. The dashed line that you see there is the memorial itself. I'm going to kind of race through this one because I think it's often hard to, in two dimension, get a feel for the design. So I'm going to go to some elevations and some modeling here real quick for you. This is the front, I'm sorry, this is the rear view of the memorial. I'm going to go to the front view actually and start there. This is the front view of the memorial wall. The center of the, we changed some things from the previous memorial wall that had kind of a more of a peaked top cap to it to a more mission style arch to it as you can see And we have some modeling that will be probably a little more clear as to the feel and the concept of what we have envisioned for this memorial. To the right, we would be displaying under the pergola. We have the pergola that spans approximately 50 feet in length. On the right-hand side, we'd want to showcase or honor the fallen soldier with the fallen soldier battlefield cross that you see on the right. And on the left, maybe honor the military nurses with a sculpture element, both for the military nurses and the fallen soldiers. Those would be mounted on a terracotta tiled brick, tiled low wall. And as I mentioned, the main memorial there in the center, and we'll have more images of that in the presentation as we go. This is an elevation of if you were kind of standing underneath the pergola, looking, this is the backside of the memorial wall that have all the names of the veterans. Let's see, and you can kind of see the fallen soldier battlefield cross there on the left now. The flags, we located the flags to a different location to the left. The flagpole would fly both the American flag and the POW flag. And let me continue on. I'll go more in detail of some of these items. Again, this is kind of the quick elevations of these. Part of the pergola design is to kind of create a where people can kind of walk through under the pergola and experience the memorial. We have the main memorial wall, but along underneath the pergola, people can kind of stroll under and take in the other elements such as this, the Mission San Gabriel. It's a U.S. naval ship, Mission San Gabriel. That was in operation in World War II, transporting supplies and things back and forth to Europe. I just learned that it has been decommissioned. I think decommissioned in, I think, 1983. But this would be a silhouette, a piece of cut steel and a silhouette of the U.S. Naval ship Mission San Gabriel. So the memorial wall would be integrated into the pergola and kind of create this kind of overall experience for those who want to to experience this. This is just a sight, a visual, aerial visual looking kind of down. The mill rise is on the lower left-hand corner. You can kind of see the flags on the other end. And then the pergola with the memorial wall there. The wall itself will stand from the floor to the top of the arch, 12 feet 6 inches in height. It's flanked by two columns that measure 42 inches in width by about six feet in height. The left column on the memorial wall will be the space to incorporate and acknowledge the six branches of the military, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Space Force, Coast Guard. And on the left-hand side, would be the column to honor, the Veterans Coalition wanted to honor three men, Rainier Aceves Aguirre, who was in the Navy at the time, Mr. Fernan de la Rosa Jr., who was U.S. Army. Both these men are local to San Gabriel. Mr. Aguirre was, as I mentioned, in the Navy. and apparently gave his life on December 7, 1941. We all know that's Pearl Harbor. And Mr. De La Rosa, Jr. was a recipient of the National Defense Service Medal, as well as a couple other medals. He was a sharpshooter, civil star member, and bronze star member as well. This shot... It kind of shows you the front view of the memorial with some bench seating in the foreground, some comments that were some changes we made from the previous design, obviously the the shape of the top of the memorial itself. The brick that you see at the base underneath where the veterans' name plaques would be placed would be probably about a nine-inch ledge built out of, again, terracotta brick. The ledge would be a place where you can set flowers, things like that, in front of the names of the veterans there. And that ledge would be repeated on the backside. Up above the veterans' names would be a recessed area in the shape of the mission where you would typically see a mission bell hanging. In this case, let me go back, would be a image of a patriotic image of the American flag constructed with a glass tile, a mural-style mural. It would be recessed into that space there. This kind of gives you an idea of the flagpole in relationship to the memorial. We'd have some nice stepping stones that lead to the flagpole with another short wall with a soft arch to it just to separate the walkway from the inside or the internal part of the memorial. This also gives you an idea of this is a shot looking really from the mission as you enter the pergola. We would have another bench there beside the flagpole. And this is a view looking down the pergola towards City Hall where we're at here. Kind of gives you an idea of the feel we'd like to to create here with a terracotta brick paving, but leaving enough space on both sides of the columns of the pergola to incorporate some greenery. We opened up the pergola structure itself by eliminating some of the lattice type work. And the post, I should mention, I don't know if you remember, but the post actually went all the way up through the beams that you see spanning across the pergola there, across the walk. We brought those down primarily because we changed the style of the memorial wall itself. As you can see, the memorial wall does reach about 12 feet 6 inches in height. And this is a view standing under the pergola. looking towards the backside of the memorial wall. And in this case, this is, we thought, I think I read to you last time the quote that the Veterans Coalition wanted to include. And we thought this would be a really nice space to include that quote. And it would be, again, a tiled mural type mosaic image, a somber military Image with soldiers kind of walking towards the Sun set as a Sun is setting One comment we did receive after presenting this to the veterans coalition was can we include maybe as a female soldier and That's so we're going to be probably taking this and maybe moda and modify it in a way to include maybe more of the female soldiers in this mosaic mural here The quote is by General Douglas MacArthur, and I'll read it again. I think it's a great quote. He says, others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and the scars of war." And that was, again, Douglas MacArthur, May 12, 1962. And as I mentioned, the backside of this also has a ledge under the mural, again, for people to place things if they want to put set flowers or anything like that along the wall. To the left of the mosaic tile mural there is a column. And that column would be the spot where we would also acknowledge and recognize members of the community that made this all possible. Probably the city council, the veterans coalition members of the coalition, maybe sponsors that helped get this thing So we have set aside actually two columns for that, one on the left and on the right. And you can, this is a good image of seeing how we had to modify the overhead structure just slightly to accommodate the height of the memorial wall. So we had to break the lattice work that kind of spans and we just let the memorial structure go right through it in this case here. So then this is looking the other way towards the mission, down the pergola. There are pass-throughs for pedestrians to go from under the pergola to the front of the memorial. You can kind of see to the lower right, that's one space where you can just kind of walk on through. And we have on the other side another space for people to kind of move on back and forth between the spaces. The wall that we would mount the... or proposed mounting the silhouette of the Mission San Gabriel, the naval ship Mission San Gabriel, would be a little bit higher and each of the sculptures that we would incorporate as well as this would have a separate plaque describing what it is and maybe a little information on how it was used, a little history behind it. This is another view, the front view. And this is more of a close up of how we are proposing to incorporate the names of the veterans. As you see there, there's a, it says Veterans of San Gabriel. That piece would actually, after discussion at our last meeting, that piece would probably be done in a material that we could etch in the name of the veterans of the memorial. It would actually come off the wall a little to get more of a kind of a more depth to the overall sign. What you see there, the overall image where the names would be, put into the wall would be about four feet high by eight feet. So basically a size of a piece of plywood in terms of the dimensions of it. And you can kind of see the ledge below, a little ledge below that would be constructed out of terracotta brick. again, an opportunity for them to set flowers and things like that. But this image, you might ask, you know, it's kind of a broken-up image. There are multiple different sizes to this image, and this kind of came about because of a, I believe one commission member, I'm not sure exactly which commission, was a little concerned because this memorial wall will have so many names initially when this gets built, but it's designed to evolve. And what I mean by that is to add names in the future. And his concern was, well, if you put all the names that we know of now, we're going to be adding names in the future. How's that going to look? Is it going to look like, you know, and where do you put the names? So we wanted to give you an idea of how we would address that. And this is one concept that we came up with, with multiple size rectangles, if you will. And each rectangle would have, well, Some rectangles would have names. Some squares would have names of the veterans. Others that would be available to put additional names in the future would not just be blank, but we would etch in images. And we're thinking of even doves and things like that. So it's going to be a little different than maybe what you typically see in terms of how to acknowledge and recognize veterans. But it's designed in a way where the city can again remove the steel plates that have the image and replace it with a bronze plate with the names of the veterans. So it's kind of a memorial that can evolve in the future and you can add to it. Currently right now it's designed and we've been, the Veterans Coalition is still We're still working with them in terms of how big the point size of the names need to be. And that's going to determine exactly how many that this particular plate can, or this particular wall can accommodate in terms of names. But currently, with names, letters, three-eighths inch in height, easily can probably accommodate up to 600 names veterans. And right now, I believe, from what I understand, there's about 400. So it can, again, continue to grow. We were asked by staff to maybe give them some ideas on how this space could be utilized and set up when they have events and ceremonies out here. And this, again, is a planned view of how we suggest this space could be set up. Those little squares represent chairs. And the shaded areas are, if you'd like shade, the squares there represent shade canopies. What you see there is approximately 160 chairs, but again, this space could accommodate much more, but we just, you know, we were told about 150, you know, but so we're showing about 160 chairs, folding chairs set up there. This kind of gives you an aerial of what it would look like during Veterans Day, let's just say, with maybe the dais or lectern in front of the memorial wall there. chairs set up around the existing bench, and then chairs set up in the grass itself. This image is of the setup without the shade canopies, and that gives you an idea of how it could look with the shade canopies. We kind of view this space as kind of a flex space in terms of how it would be utilized in the future and how you would set it up for different events. Oops, I'm sorry. So that's looking straight on under the canopies, and I had one without the canopies there. So that gives you an idea of what it would look like. So having said that, that concludes my presentation. Thank you for your attention. And again, it's been a pleasure working with the city, city staff, and the veterans behind me. I'm very passionate about this project, and it's made it fun for us. So thank you.

OK. Thank you. Okay, go ahead.

So thank you, Gary, for the presentation. So along with the updated design, which incorporated comments from the City Council, the Veterans Memorial Coalition, the HPCRC and DRC, is a proposal from DBDC to develop construction documents for this project. Considering the nature of this project and the fact that staff obtained proposals for construction documents at the start of the project, staff recommend that council approve moving forward with DVDC as they are the consultant most well equipped to continue with the design of the construction documents. DVDC's proposal for completion of the documents, as shown in attachment C in your packet, is for $128,615. Previously, the council had approved the budget for 116,000 as part of our capital improvement program. And so with that tonight, staff is recommending that the city council review and approve the updated concept design to Authorize the city manager to execute an amendment to the agreement with DVDC and any other necessary documents pending review and approval by the city attorney. And adopt resolution number 26-42 to amend the fiscal year 26-27 budget for an increase of $12,615 to the account listed there for the completion of the construction documents. With that, I'd be happy to take any questions or comments, as would Gary. All right.

Thank you, Director Perez. At this point, does any council member have factual questions for staff to clarify the report? Councilman Wu.

Thank you, Mayor. Well, thank you, Gary, for the presentation, and thank you, Rebecca. My question is, since we have a flag post, so in the city, that our flag post, to raise or lower the flags, that was done by our city staff. What about the flags in our monument area? Let's say when there's 9-11, there will be like a, we call it a flag post, like the flag at half-staff, right? Half-staff, yeah. So what is that situation?

Let's go back to, let's see, I've got a flag.

Or Rebecca?

So, well, we haven't selected a specific flag pole for this case, but we see this being set and constructed on a nice, kind of a decorative base that kind of has this mission-style stucco and all that. We see possibly about a 35-foot flagpole. Again, it would fly the U.S. flag, the POW flag, internal alloy-type systems, so it's a little less vandalized. At night, I think we would have lighting. I didn't discuss lighting, but lighting would be part of the overall design of this project, I'm sure, and obviously, unless the city plans on having someone come and take down the flag every day, which is probably unrealistic, we need to lup like that. So it will be lit. Now, times where it would be flown half-mast, that would have to be probably manually. Someone come out and lower the flag to a point and, again, lock up the howler or the... mechanism is to lock up the ropes. So basically, so that the maneuvering of half mass certain days would probably have to be done manually. But I don't see these flags. Usually the cities will leave them up all day, all night, and we just uplight them.

Okay.

I see.

And so for our memorial wall that how many, I just want to clarify that how many names can we can, the walls can accommodate? 400?

Yeah, well, again, it's going to depend. Right now I'm working with the Veterans Coalition. The wall that you saw there, that space could easily accommodate anywhere from 400 to 600 names if the names are approximately three-eighths inch font or height. I think they would like to go a bigger font, something that's a little more easier to read, half inch to possibly even talking an inch. Obviously, the larger the font, the higher the letter point size, it's going to reduce that count. So I see it probably being most likely a half inch high font. And that would accommodate for sure the 400 names, and we could probably work with it, maybe expand, enlarge that space to accommodate more again. So this can evolve and grow in the future. So easily, to answer your question, I'm not sure exactly the exact number, but I say anywhere between 400 and 600 names.

Got it. Well, thank you. And for the branches of the military, I know that you have a wall that come with six plates. So it's like Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and the Space Force?

Space Force is one of the six. And Coast Guard. So there are six, right?

Yeah. Okay. Then since that St. Gabriel Veteran Memorial Coalition has been doing all the works, would they have a place showing their name?

Uh, yes. And that would be, um, kind of the, I think I pointed out the backside, the backside of the Memorial wall. We have the columns on the right and the column on the left. Those are spaces to include. I think the coalition members sit in the names of city councils, maybe city staff, um, you know, uh, sponsors, if you, if there are any sponsors that, They get involved here. So we see these spaces as the place to put those names.

Got it. So what about where the name plates, let's say the name plates, can they accommodate with the names that come with non-English name? Let's say there's like Chinese-American soldiers. We have Korean-Americans, Japanese-Americans. So people like to put the names in different places. languages, would that be an option?

I'm sure it would be possible, absolutely. It's working, coordinating with the coalition and making sure, I mean, if there's, you know, if it's in a different language, you probably want somebody from that, you know, to edit or make sure the spelling's correct, things like that. But yeah, I mean, I don't see that being an issue.

So definitely that will be, let's say the memorial wall, the names will not be alphabetically older. They'll be putting somewhere. So how the logistic work? I mean, when the family, they visit and they would like to look for the names of their father, grandfather, then what is the best way for those people they can look for their...

We're still kind of working with the coalition about that. I just had a brief discussion earlier before the meeting about maybe the names be alphabetical and maybe does it include the war, the name of the war, that maybe that's what they go. And so there's some details that we need to work out. But in terms of finding a loved one, a veteran on this wall, we would probably have a QR code. And because- QR code. The simpler you have the names without the ranks and the branch of service they're in, the more names you can obviously get on this wall. But if there's a QR code that links to some website that you can type in a name, and that name, we're thinking that that would tell you an image of this would come up, and it would highlight a plaque that has that name, that person you're trying to find, let's say.

So there will be XY, like for example, maybe not Thomas Guy style, but maybe A to Z and 1 to 20.

I see if you have a QR code and you go to a site, and it would highlight a square. Like if you punch in a name, it would highlight where that name is on that. on this wall. And so you can just visually go and say, okay, the person I'm looking for is on the rectangle in the upper right hand. So it would be amongst maybe other names, but you've narrowed it down quite a bit from the other 300 names on the wall to this rectangle, this particular square or rectangle. So I think it's going to have to be a combination of being there, typing in a QR code that takes you to a web page, a website, and then on there you can probably locate the exact square where the person you're looking for would be on.

Got it. Well, and thank you so much again. I mean, at the US NS Mission St. Gabriel, I did not know that we have a ship. That is actually called San Gabriel. I just tried to Google and found it. It's been sold and scraped in December 1983.

Yeah, I heard it was scrapped in 1983. But again, it was used in World War II. World War II.

So what material that will be made from for that ship?

That particular, I see it being a silhouette, probably metal, maybe half inch thick that we could laser cut a silhouette image of the naval ship. So again, this is outdoors. It's got to be hold up to the elements, vandalism. And so I see something like this is very complicated. you know, strong and sturdy and it's not, you know, it's going to take a lot to, you know, even if you took a bat to it, you probably won't be able to bend it, so.

So for the NEM plates, the material will be metal. So let's say when the weather is really hot, then the metal could, you know, change the shape or how you solve the problem. Would that be a very common issue to the monument?

Well, we haven't selected a specific medal that the names would be etched on. We see it being, I kind of see it being a report. The plates that would be replaceable could be a metal material, a sheet metal, or maybe quarter thick steel metal, again with an etched image of some kind of peaceful image. We're thinking right now etched doves in this. So the plates that don't have names would have this kind of collage of flying doves. And the plates that do have names, we can even go with a bronze plate. That's more permanent. Once you remove the temporary plate, put in a bronze plate. Um, we could use blind, um, what they call blind studs behind it. We see these plates maybe standing off the wall itself, maybe three quarters of an inch. So these plates are actually off the wall. Um, in terms of the, uh, malleability of the steel based on the weather and all that, we would probably have to work with a sign consultant, the person who does this, to figure out exactly what might be the best metal to use that's not going to be changing shapes or forms. Because I see these plates being pretty precise in terms of how it gets attached to this wall. You don't want things looking kind of lopsided. So there's going to be some great deal of time to make sure that everything is plumb and perpendicular to the next plate next to it type of thing.

So the name will be embossed, like the printed embossed? Would that be fading out due to the sun?

Well, it could be raised even. It could be not necessarily embossed. The names could be actually raised off the surface of the plate itself. A lot of people like to take paper and pen, a pencil, and etch the name of their person that they want to get. They do that at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., and probably a lot of other memorials, I'm sure they do that.

Got it. Yeah, that's all the question I have. Thank you so much, Gary, for the presentation. Thank you, Mayor.

Councilman Wu, one item that you brought up made me think. I don't think, well, in terms of you mentioned names that are foreign characters. I don't think you're going to have to worry about that because these are all U.S. veterans. And so they had to... have their names in English or some kind of transliteration of English on their official documents. So I think we're not going to have to worry about Chinese characters or anything like that. They'll write their name in English the way they had to on their legal military documents. I was kind of thinking of that.

Because sometimes the family members would like to be the loved one to be recognized that their family's been fighting for the country, then they would like to be seen that they know where they're coming from originally. So that's one of the possible questions that will be some of the family they may ask because we do have so many, you know, we call the Chinese American military. We have those services people, they have their name, but Not only that, but also Korean, they have many people. Maybe not in our city yet, but I do see there are several cases that you can predict.

But I mean, just the way they had to write it when they were in the military, they had to write it in English. Of course, of course. Maybe that would just be the name they would use. But maybe if they have enough space, maybe they'll do both in the Asian and the Asian characters. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Yes.

Yeah, actually, I'll stick with the name theme here. Yeah, I was thinking in Spanish you have, you know, eñas and you have the ñ. and you have the accents so even though you can say it in English but I think I know for a lot of Hispanics that is very important and the accents I don't know how it looks like when they have their papers and then my son-in-law who happens to be Korean he still uses his Korean name even though He's got his English name and then he's got his Korean name. But I'm sure we'll work through that. But I'm glad you mentioned about the etching because I wasn't sure looking at it. So I guess all memorials are like that where you can etch. You have like this parchment paper. Yeah. Go up there. So that's... You would, again, I apologize.

This image, it's hard to see. But there is a dove. There are dove images on the plates that do not have names on this. And it's very light. We could have probably did a little bit more contrast so you could actually see the etch or the image that would be etched in. But you can, yeah, you can etch images on a steel plate, etch images on granite, on stone, yeah.

And then the size of the names. I know there's been some concern or preference to make it bigger, but we're not necessarily approving that tonight. We're just approving the design. You're not approving it. And what you'll start, once we approve the design, then all those details will be flushed out.

Each one of these... different dimension rectangles and squares, we will have to generate artwork for that. That would go back to the city staff for review and basically a check. So, I mean, we're just kind of trying to agree on the concept of the final plates would... Okay, that's another stage.

We just need the design tonight. Okay. And then just on the plans, I'm just... looking at them, and there's something called Plaza de San Gabriel, which doesn't exist. I was just kind of curious. It's on every design. It's like, well, are we changing the area to call it Plaza de San Gabriel? No, I'm sorry.

I think that's a mistake. That should be the Plaza Mission Plaza?

No, it's just Plaza Park. Okay, so we're not changing anything. Then we've got to get permission over there. Okay. Yeah. Maybe just change that in the future.

Yes. I apologize for that.

No, it's fine. Just want to clarify. And then lastly, I just want to thank the veterans for all the work they did, but specifically for their patience, because I know there was a little rumblings last time when I suggested the commission, the commissions, the two commissions, but I'm looking at the final product and I hope everybody felt like they gave back. They gave some really good suggestions. I think this plan is even better than the one we had before. And I know I talked to some of those commissioners and they were excited to be part of it because this is going to affect generations. And I'm just happy that the more eyes we had, the better. I don't think we need any more eyes. I think we're done. But I just want to thank the veterans for being so patient and coming along. I mean, seeing that timeline, you know, time does march very slowly sometimes. But I think we're there.

Too fast most of the time.

Yeah. So anyway, so that was all I had. So great job. Thank you. Everyone has their footprint there. Everyone has done something. TO MAKE THIS, I THINK IT'S JUST PHENOMENAL. IT'S BETTER THAN, I DON'T KNOW, I DON'T KNOW WHAT I WAS EXPECTING EXACTLY, BUT I JUST LOOKED AT IT, AND IT'S GOING TO BE HOPEFULLY A DESTINATION. YOU KNOW, WE MIGHT BE THE LAST, BUT I THINK PEOPLE ARE REALLY GOING TO APPRECIATE THIS, AND I THINK WE'RE PROBABLY ONE OF THE FIRST ONES TO HAVE THE SPACE. SPACE FORCE, YEAH. SPACE FORCE, THANK YOU. THAT'S RIGHT. AND IT'S EXCITING, VERY EXCITING. SO THANK YOU. YOU'RE WELCOME. THANK YOU.

COUNCILMEMBER AVILA.

First of all, I want to say that I'm super impressed with the veterans. I remember four years ago going to La Casa where you guys were having meetings. And some of the members that were there are not here because maybe they left. And some of them left this spiritual world, right? And to be able to be fast forward four years after and seeing how organized you guys got, how mobilized with the shirts, with the badges. With Denise, with Michael, with every single one of you guys and your passion, it's just, it's completely heartwarming. And I just commend each and every one of you guys. Look, this is coming to fruition because of you. And it takes mobilization and it takes, you know, efforts and it takes ganas to get things done. And ganas means will, right? I think that's what it means. Yeah. Close enough. Yeah. But your ganas is getting this done. Desire. And it's coming to fruition. And so with that, I want to give you guys kudos and credit for this. This is all you and something to be proud of. And you guys are leaving a solid mark in San Gabriel for life, forever. All right. So kudos on that question on a couple of questions that I have. I would like to see if we could go briefly on the lighting. I want to understand the lighting. I know the lighting for me is very important. We want to showcase it with particular spotlighting and all that. So if you can kind of help me understand, it would have been nice to get like a nighttime view.

Yeah, I don't know how much I can help you understand, but this will be lit. We do have existing there are existing lights. There are existing light standards that are existing around this site, but the entire memorial itself will be lit. for evening use, like I was mentioning, the flagpole. But we would be working especially with a lighting designer, a person who knows how to light this in a way where you aren't going to be looking at a bright light in your eyes. We'll probably be using a lot of down lights in this case because of the pergola. The sculptures and the silhouette of the Mission San Gabriel naval ship, all that will be illuminated. We have to make it safe, obviously, for people at night to walk under this pergola and on the front side itself. How that gets done, I'm going to leave that to our lighting consultant, our lighting designer. They will select the exact fixtures that they would like to use to highlight this. And I don't see this being the last time. We can have them come in and probably give a presentation on how this is going to be lit at night and actually probably use some of this modeling that we've already done for this project. to incorporate lighting for this project. So again, I think that's probably, that's down the road if we get into the construction drawings of this. Right now, we don't have it in our budget to get them involved up front early. But again, we're landscape architect designers. But again, this would require a special skill to light monuments and things like that in a way that gives us justice.

I appreciate that because there's so much opportunity, right? The night spectacle for this, it could be tremendous depending on that lighting. It's going to be a sight to see. We light up, we spotlight the little flag on the top, obviously the names, the pillars, and make it a real beautiful place to hang out at night. Especially on summer days, I can already see people hanging out there. drinking a little boba, just wondering what they're seeing, and then going up close and reading the names and getting familiar with all these people that fought for us.

Right. I imagine the lights will be on timers. I don't really think this needs to be lit all night, but you would still have security lighting on during the night. But the memorial itself will probably be, the city can decide how long they want it lit. It'll be on timers. So those are little details, decisions that will be made down the road.

And with the different kind of technology that we have now, I mean, the lighting might not even, you know. Yeah, remote. Remote, not that much energy consumption. I've seen these lights that they're producing nowadays. It's mind-blowing. I would love to see also, like, the backside. I don't know. You guys worked on all these things already. So the backside where you face the street. light up right so when you're driving up spotlight some lighting on that side too i would love to see that oh this again this will be lit up for sure perfect perfect the i got two more two more items um and i talked to mark about this in detail and it sounds like you guys have something already going on can we you can leave it there I just visited Bentwood, Arkansas, and they had a beautiful plaza with the waterfall and everything, or like a water fountain. And some of these bricks that they had there, they had names on the bricks for sponsors. So I don't know if you guys are already talking about this or something like that, but I think that's a great opportunity. On the bricks themselves you mean? Yeah, the brick themselves. If you guys already thought about this, great. If you guys haven't thought about it, I mean, that's a great opportunity to pull out a brick. You sponsored, you put your name on it. Depends on what kind of level. And I think that would be a good way to also continue raising funds even after it's done. Um, it's, uh, something to consider if you guys haven't, I'm sure you have. So I just think I talked to Mark and they said, he said that you guys are talking about that already. I believe we have.

And again, uh, I know the coalition veterans coalition is really, they want it. They want to know how much that, you know, uh, um, with the names of the veterans on the veterans' wall, what that's going to cost, because they want to get going on fundraising already.

Right, and I was happy and delighted to, and I'm sure our colleagues have relationships with Judy, too, but I walked her over, I gave her a quick description. I know Denise, you went over there, too. I know we have relationships with her, so I hope that you guys keep interacting with her, because she... I'm sure their team is willing to help, and you have a lot of allies here that are willing to sponsor that, especially when we're going to Sacramento or Washington, D.C., for you guys, too. We'll keep that in mind. The last thing, I was talking with Mark about this, and I want to know if... Sounds like it's possible. But we'd love to get a time lapse. I know, Mark, you mentioned something about some cameras that we might be able to get a time lapse. So when this is happening, we can have a video, a fast-forward video of this operation when we start the building. And when we give any kind of, let's say, the state of the city, we can use that in anything that we want. Where... You take one screenshot, or how does that work, Mark? I think you mentioned one picture and save it, and then we can have some kind of time lapse so that we can show from beginning to the end. Because we're making history, and this video, whatever time lapse we make, we'll be able to share with people and share the story of all the hard work that you guys have been doing.

I can't explain it any better than that.

So just something to consider that we're talking about these things too. That's good.

We currently have a project under construction that the contractor is doing that. He's got his drone and he's snapping a picture every day.

Oh, he will be doing that too.

Yeah, he's doing it as part of his contract. Oh, wow. Oh, that's awesome.

Yeah. Well, that would be great, because we need to capture this. Even after it's done, we need to figure out, I mean, if the council agrees, how to share the story of all the hard work that you guys did needs to be captured. So that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilman Herrera-Avila. Vice Mayor Ding. Thank you, Mayor. Questions?

Yeah.

Any final questions?

First of all, really, I appreciate the San Gabriel, the more... veteran memorial, the core region. I think you almost moved this movement like almost 10 years, right? Yeah, it's finally until like two years ago, we officially go through the city, approve it. And then right now, the two years, we have the, thanks to all your company, you have also our two commission and with the As a Giver Memorial, they are all a good suggestion. It's impressed for me that this design. It's really good. And I really appreciate the staff and Rebecca too. I remember Rebecca working with the memorial. It's all the time too. Right now it's really good. Almost the final step, right? So we can build on. And if we approve the building cost, it's like $100. I think it's based on the staff report, it's totally like $128. Yeah, something like that. $128,000.

But we have most of it appropriated, and they're just asking for an additional $12,000-some-odd to appropriate.

So we already have budget. Yeah, pretty much. So just additional one, right? Okay.

Let me just clarify, though, that is not for the building cost. That's not for the construction docs. That's for the construction documents. So there's a phase.

That's for the construction documents.

Construction has not come before you yet. Until the construction documents are done, then the project would be bid out for a contractor.

Then we bid out to see how much it costs for the construction.

Yeah.

Okay, that's how I want to clarify to the public too. So it's really like it. And for the bettering the name, that's a question for Mr. Bosquez. Gary. You can call me Gary. Design. So based on your current funds, it's like you mentioned the $400 to $600,000.

It's three of eight inches, right?

Three-eighths.

I figured we just did a mock-up in the office about a three-eighths-inch high font.

Okay, okay.

Easily 400, possibly 600.

Okay, 600. But if, like I hear about it, they... If we want like a half inch, probably take how long?

Well, it's going to probably reduce, I don't know yet. We haven't figured it out.

So did you have any rough rest?

I think we could easily accommodate the 400, maybe probably up to 500 if you start increasing the font size to half inch.

That's, I think, maybe reasonable if we have the bigger fonts.

I think so. Again, I think the Veterans Coalition might have a different opinion. I've heard inch-high fonts, inch-high letters. I think that might be a little big. We will work with what they want us to go with.

If we have enough space, it's better, right? Yeah, well, yes.

The smaller the font, obviously, the more names you can get on there. But again, I think three-eighths inch is a reasonable size font. Half inch is probably better, and we'll probably come up with the exact number of names that we can get on there.

Okay.

And it depends on what they want. Do they want, again, just the name or do they want the name and the service that, you know, or, you know, their status in the military, that type of thing. So it depends. we're kind of waiting on some information.

Okay. That's my next question. You already answered it. Yeah. So that's good. And, uh, another question is, uh, some like a veteran, the name is a short, some veteran, it's a, it's a longer, how do you handle it to arrange it to hopefully we can fit the more veteran name on it?

Yeah. I mean, there's ways of getting to maximize the space that you have. You could, For example, I'm thinking of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. It's the person's name, a little dot, and then the next person's name all on the same line. And you can get a lot of names if you do it that way. If you start listing them one under the other, you probably can get probably less of names. So we'll have to work out. That's another detail we'll work out in terms of the format on how to set the names. And again, Each one of those panels will have to put together the artwork for it, which is what would go to the person doing the etching or the constructing the metal panel itself. And all that will be reviewed, again, probably numerous times just to make sure the spellings of names are correct and all that. So how it gets laid out, that's something we'll be working with the Veterans Coalition It just depends on the information they want. There's, again, as I mentioned, there was some talk about identifying each war and then the names under the name of that war, the names of veterans that fought in that particular war. So right now, there's just those details we need to finalize.

So another thing to think about, how do the people to search your name, you suggest the QR code?

Yeah.

Where do they put on the QR code?

Yeah.

Did you? I'm sorry? Where you can put on the QR code?

Yeah, with the QR code, it'll take you to a website, right?

I think what Vice Mayor is asking is where you're going to put that QR code.

Oh, where would we put it? I would probably maybe even stick it on the side of, on the monument, but on the side of maybe one of the columns there. Okay. And maybe a description of, you know, or it could be even mounted. It doesn't have to be a big, you know, it could be this, you know, this big. Just something that, so I could see it, maybe mounted on the side of the column. I could even see it maybe mounted. I wouldn't want to put it right on the veterans, the wall itself with all the names, maybe off to the side. So we'll figure that out. Where it's maybe, obviously you will see it, but it's not going to be in the face, in your face.

Is it an impossible thing? put on like some ipad or whatever they already have they let the people they can if a city can provide it but we definitely need a wi-fi something okay they can use the more high yeah high tech to search right away like uh yeah i mean that's that's doable um again

you're probably increasing the possibility of vandalism and that's you know might not be too easy to replace but um yeah i mean we could do that i mean okay if that's something the city wants to explore yeah that's safety it's an issue okay so but how about if you create it it's you also need to find someone to

to write some software to search, let the people easy to search. They also need to take a picture where the name on which one corner or which one line.

Right. Well, I mean, the QR codes are great. Obviously, if you're familiar with it, it'll take you to a site. And if you could type in a name and that maybe you could load as much information as you want on that individual. It could have a picture of him or her, a description of what war they were in, maybe a description, a paragraph or two of themselves. And the nice thing about it, if you just put the names of the veterans on there without their rank and all that, there's less opportunity to make mistakes on a permanently bronze plaque. It's easier to go into some software and maybe make some adjustments on that software than it is on a plaque that's just been cast or something like that. Um, so again, I, I see this being, um, something that, uh, it, it honors the veterans on the wall, but yet if you want more information on a particular veteran, you can just go to a webpage basically with that veteran after, you know, um, uh, shooting a, going to using a QR code to go to a webpage on that. And that would require some effort on the city's part to maybe even keep up that site.

Keep information updated.

Yes, if that's necessary, yes.

Okay. At least we have this option. And the second one is I really like your idea for the San Gabriel mission, the ship. So if you build it, we have some picture for this ship, so it's similar, hopefully similar to the original one.

The silhouette that is very similar to the ship, yes. And I haven't asked any veterans yet, but if they have any connections to the military, to the Navy, to a shipyard that does scrap ships, maybe we could take just a thought, a piece of scrap metal from a real ship and maybe cut it out of that.

That would be... Maybe asking AI to find the information. And how about this American flag? How high is it?

I see probably a 30 to 35-foot flagpole in height. But again, it would be probably mounted on a three-foot-high pedestal.

Okay.

So a little bit higher than 30, 35 feet maybe, a couple feet higher.

Okay. And the... Yeah. I saw some like this kind of higher pool. Right now they use the electronic to just in case want to raise the flag. So maybe you can for the construction maybe think about it too.

Yeah. Oh, electronic motor to raise the flag. Yeah, yeah. Okay. We could probably look into that and do that as well.

Yeah. I saw some place they did right now did really do it. I still, okay. I like it. So that's why I'm asking more questions.

Very good. Very good.

All right. Very good. Excellent. Yeah. It's the next one. It's a really idea for the lighting, especially for the evening. So everything designed should have some capacity, have some spark light, something like that?

Yeah. We'll work with the lighting designer to work all that out. And again, they will probably light this in a way where it's going to be subtle, but very noticeable in the evening and safe for people.

Yeah, it's unique for the safe. Also, like, sometimes we evening have some event celebration. It's more help, you know.

Yeah, I think we'll probably have our lighting consultant even set up a meeting with staff. And before we even dive into it, talk a little bit about how we anticipate lighting this and hear back from staff as well if there's anything that we need to include that we didn't think of.

Okay, last question. If we approve today, so probably take how long? All the construction design can finish?

Yeah, I estimate to put together the construction drawings for this approximately six months to do the CDs.

I think... VICE MAYOR DING IS ASKING HOW LONG UNTIL THE THING IS DONE DONE.

SIX MONTHS FOR THE CD, PROBABLY A MONTH OR TWO TO BID THE PROJECT AND AWARD THE CONTRACT. I PROBABLY SEE THIS IN 12 MONTHS A YEAR.

WE CAN START CRAWLING ON IT.

IT'S A FAIRLY SMALL PROJECT, BUT IT'S GOT A LOT OF You know, we're going to have artists involved in putting together the drawings and some of the murals and things like that.

Because I want to see as soon as possible to see we can have this monument. Okay, thank you. I want to start sitting on it. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

Thanks, Council Member, to page in my question.

Yes, of course. And as usual, since I am the mayor, I go last. And by now, I believe... All the questions I had have already been addressed by my colleagues and discussions. So I just want to take this time to just quickly thank DVDC for doing the work and of course our great San Gabriel City staff for working and the commissions for working all together with the special extra thank you to the coalition for having the vision and working with us to get this all put together. So like I said, I look forward to really using the facility and looking at the wall, sitting on it, and sitting on the steps there. So now, Chief City Clerk, do we have any public comment?

We do, Mr. Mayor. Our first speaker is Michael Cervantes.

Okay. Please come up, Mr. Cervantes.

I felt that I should have brought my blanket. It's 1041 right now. I guess I could have slept here or something. I had different remarks that I wanted to mention, but I wanted to focus on the names. But let me first say that the work that has been done by these landscape architects is really magnificent. It's very beautiful. A lot of thought was put into it. A lot of consideration. It's just awe-inspiring, I guess we could say. that the work they put into it. But the concern that I have comes down to the names. To say that you're going to move from 3 eighths of an inch to increase by 1 eighth of an inch is unacceptable. It's really a failure to understand what is going on. We have now additional names, maybe up to 500. That's today, okay. But you have to consider something else. Once people see that monument starting to build, they're gonna be talking to their friends, to their family, to relatives, and say to them, didn't you serve? And why isn't your name gonna be there as well? It should have been some kind of consideration to state to them to have more space there. Because this is an ongoing, in a sense it's like a living monument. More names will be on there year after year after year. Today I had someone speak to me mentioning that she wanted her son to have his name there. I've had others who've called me and asked for their names to be placed there. We were at the San Gabriel Mission, and we collected names over there on two different occasions. And so stating that, oh, we're going to have 600 most at 3 eighths of an inch, I don't understand how that could be. It's just something that should not happen. And I hope that the architect will speak to the group. I hope that the city council will take that into consideration and we can move forward. So thank you.

The next speaker is Denise Gotch.

Well, you know what they say, you save the best for last. I'm just so sad that the veterans had to wait to be after the garbage, but we are so proud of the monument. And yes, Denise Machaca, I agree with you, going to all the committees so that everybody had to say so, so that everybody knows what's going on and can't come back a year or months now and say, I didn't know about it or I didn't know this. I came to one of the council meetings and I met Michael Cervantes and the group and decided to go to their meetings and check it out because my father served in World War II at the OSS and the 82nd Airborne. He was a Bronze Star and a Good Conduct Medal. And so I wanted to see the coalition, what it was about. And going to a couple meetings, I said, this is for me because I have veterans all throughout my family. So I was given the task, along with another veteran member, to research the names. I was given the first list. I got 24 people that submitted their DD214 forms. Now I have approximately 350 to 400. And their names, you are correct, mr mayor are going by their dd214 form what they submitted what their names were as a veteran if they have a middle initial i then call that veterans family and say do you want the middle initial give me the full name and so i talked to each one of them to see the name that they want submitted and they all agree they want the name that was on their military form so that's what we're doing so the lettering will not be a problem And yes, there are the little etches on the Hispanic names. I have more of those. And I do have a couple Korean, and I do have a lot of Japanese veterans, too. I would like to personally thank Gary for the fabulous design and all the hard work he put into it. and to Rebecca Perez for helping us out through the entire process, as well as Public Works always helping the veterans by putting up the flags for all of our events and being there for us. The only suggestion I have is, like Michael, after doing these names and getting to know most of these families, I too would like the names to be a larger size, whether it's a half an inch or an inch, that will be decided later on, but I do definitely want to see the names larger. Okay? Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Alvin Sanchez.

First of all, I want to thank many of our veterans who showed up to support us today. Most of them had to leave, but I want to thank those true warriors that hung on and stayed with us. Anyway, yeah, and just to clarify a couple of things that were brought up, yeah, we do have many service people who were awarded like the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star, Silver Star, things like that, and we want them to be recognized for what they were awarded, what they earned, you know, and so... And that being said, also one of the comments that Councilman Herrera said that, yeah, you know, that our coalition, well, in my language, in the Spanish language, we don't really say ganas. We say ganas. You know, you got to have ganas. So yes, our coalition does have gotten us. And they've done such a tremendous job of getting together and a tremendous job of allowing the city council to come in with us and working with us as well as they have. I want to thank all of you for doing that. Yes, I remember you coming in about four years ago to one of our meetings, and a lot of the faces of our coalition have changed since then. You know, ideologies and things like that. But we stuck with it, and we're facing our final product here. So anyway, I just want to thank everybody that has helped us and has supported us. And yes, we're still getting a lot of names. And lastly, I just want to say that this city council has my vote as the best trash talkers. Thank you.

The next speaker is Teresa Olivas-Hustiani.

Good evening, Mayor Chan and members of the City Council. My name is Teresa Olivas-Hustiani and I am a member and a secretary of the San Gabriel Veterans Memorial Coalition. I am here tonight to support the final design of the San Gabriel Veterans Memorial Monument. This has been a journey of nearly seven years, and it means so much to see this vision finally becoming a reality. They say good things come to those who are patient, and our coalition has been very patient because we believed our veterans deserved a place where their service and sacrifice will always be remembered. This monument is especially meaningful to me because I have a military service and part of my own family. My husband is a veteran along with my grandfather and my uncle. Furman De La Rosa Jr. that will be one of our honorees. My uncle served in Vietnam and was awarded the Silver Star for his extraordinary bravery and combat. Like so many veterans, he answered the call to serve our country with courage and selflessness. The names that will be placed on this monument represents more than military service. They represents parents, spouses, siblings, friends, and neighbors who are willing to give a part of their lives for the freedoms who enjoy today. Many came home carrying experience that stayed with them long after their service ended. Their sacrifices and the sacrifices of their families deserve to be remembered. Tonight marks an important milestone for our community. Together, the coalition, the city council, city staff, and so many dedicated supporters have made it possible to create a lasting tribute to those who served our country. I hope this memorial will stand for generations as place and honor, reflection, gratitude, and remembrance. Thank you.

I have no more speaker cards. Are there any remote speakers?

It's obvious I don't have my white cane. I couldn't find the mic. I guess I'm the last one that's going to speak for our group. And sorry, Alvin, I had to say something. Alvin always tells me, Debbie, don't say anything. But I must. First of all, I want to say thank you to the council for everything you've done. But I really want to say thank you to all the veterans that came And they left. Their spirit is here.

Their spirit is there.

It's on the grounds here of San Gabriel. I know in their minds, in their heart, their dream of a memorial is in their mind. The 12-month period that Gary just shared, I don't know how many more veterans we're going to lose that are not going to be able to see this memorial. But I know in their heart, I know in their heart, everybody tried their hardest to get it sooner. But I want to thank everybody for all their time that was invested in this, but again, We must never forget our veterans. I wanna just share what Michael had said. We gotta make sure we have enough room on that memorial for the people that are gonna stand up and say, I want my brother there, I want my dad there, or my daughter. We must never forget. I see that a lot, all over with veterans. So I just want to say thank you to everybody. And Rebecca, where are you? Okay. I just want to say thank you to her and everybody that listened to her. And I just want to say thank you for the surprise you gave us when we saw those, that first year, the 200 flags on Plaza Park. I don't know who's doing that was, but I'll tell you, when we walked to Plaza Park that year, that month, I think it was November, we were numb. I just want to say thank you Rebecca and everybody, but Rebecca for putting up with us. Thank you. That was the first handout, the reach that we felt So I just want to say thank you. It's been a long night. And I had to say something. I wasn't going to sit there and not say nothing for, what, five hours? Thank you, you guys, for your time.

So good. All right. Thank you. Do we have any more?

That's all?

Okay, it is now time for council discussion. Let's have a big discussion. I have no discussion.

I want to make a motion. I want to make a motion. No big discussion. I say first. But before I make the motion, I just wanted to make sure with Gary, the understanding, I asked you that question already. The size of the font and the names, that's still, we're just approving the overall design, but that's still going to be worked through, you know, making sure that it's a living document and will have space for as many people as, you know, want to be placed on there or family members.

WE'RE STILL WORKING.

OKAY. I JUST WANTED TO CLARIFY THAT. THANK YOU. SO I'LL MAKE A MOTION. WELL, THE STAFF RECOMMENDATION, WHICH IS TO, NUMBER ONE, REVIEW AND APPROVE THE UPDATED CONCEPT DESIGN. TWO, AUTHORIZE THE CITY MANAGER TO EXECUTE AN AMENDMENT TO THE AGREEMENT WITH DVDC AND ANY OTHER NECESSARY DOCUMENTS. PENDING A REVIEW AND APPROVAL BY THE CITY ATTORNEY. AND THEN LASTLY, ADOPT RESOLUTION 26-42 TO AMEND THE FISCAL YEAR 2026-2027 BUDGET FOR AN INCREASE OF 12,615 TO ACCOUNT 1228504097821 FOR THE COMPLETION OF THE CONSTRUCTION DOCUMENTS.

Mayor, before we second, can I have something, can I say something?

Sure, yes, go ahead.

Council Member Wu. Well, first of all, I think this is a little bit, you know, it's really important to me because I think it's not only for our veterans group but for our community. And we are taking the major step towards accomplishing a goal that has been 1,506 days in this making. The reason I would just pick that days is because on June 7, 2022, during the council meetings, the commencing report that I, at that time, I first proposed placing the construction of San Gabriel's own veterans memorial building of a future Cities Council agenda. That proposal was inspired by an experience that maybe many of you would still remember that I had just a date early on May 30th, 2022. I attended a Memorial Day ceremony hosted by one of our neighboring cities. And while I was there, someone asked me, why don't you stay in your own city and attended Their own city ceremony. The answer was very simple, but very painful. St. Gabriel did not have its veterans memorial where we could gather as a community to honor those served and sacrificed for our nation. I share this history not to claim any credit or focus that who begin the efforts. I share it because worthwhile goals often require patience, persistence, and those unwavering commitment to see them through. It has taken 1,506 days, or we say four years, one month, and 14 days to reach this moment. But from my earliest conversation with Mr. Michael Cervantes, the president of the San Gabriel Veterans Memorial Coalition, I met him at his home, and I understand how deeply our veterans wanted to make this memorial a reality. and St. Gabriel Veterans Memorial Coalition shared an early rendering of a memorial proposal proposed for the northeast corner of Smith Park, if you remember that. And today, after countless meetings, discussions, and revisions, we are preparing to approve and second the updated conceptual design for the entire projects. This journey has been long, but some goals are just so important, that are too important to abandon simply because they take time. It may take longer than we hope, but late is always better than never. and i want to thank that every members of saint gabriel veterans memorial coalition for keeping your vision and spirit alive i also want to thank our city manager mark lazardo and also director community service of community service rebecca for taking this project seriously and devoting countless meetings and discussion to moving it forward. I'm equally grateful to my colleagues, Vice Mayor Ding, Council Member Menchaca, as well as the former colleagues Karina Rivera and also former Mayor John Harrington for supporting this effort from the very beginning. And today I will say I'm very proud to say the city of St. Gabriel is one step closer to welcome its own veterans memorial, a permanent place where we can gather to honor those heroes that defend our freedom and democracy. I will no longer need to carry an invitation and stand beneath another city's tent to observe Memorial Day or Veterans Day. But when residents and leaders or council members from other cities attend our future ceremonies, we will never tell them, go back to your own city. That is not who we are. So San Gabriel is a city with a big heart, a proud spirit, and very soon, a great memorial of the heroes it will honor. Thank you so much.

All right. Thank you. So who wants to second? Do you want to?

Yeah. I just use this opportunity to express my feeling for this long journey. Actually, before I get the 2020 for the council member, then I'm the... Rebecca is for the community service, the commissioner. That time I have more chance to, we have the like July 4th, the kids parade and the celebration. And I go to the Smith Park. I thought we respect the veteran, but it's just temporary one. At that time, I feel that's really why our city don't have any, like, better monument. That's bringing my... And then I have a chance to meet, that long time ago, your coalition president, Daniel Acosta. He introduced me to your group. so give me a really like a good the impress even then either in the commission i have a chance to communicate with the the the rebecca i really thank your correlation consistent to this couple years to support this the monument and i thanks the the rebecca the working on that and finally today we it's it's a milestone to we're moving forward and thanks Mark too okay and yeah definitely want to thank our previous council member and the current council member to help to support this this monument so yeah we yeah we we have a lot of things to do and include the name the on how How many names can be put on that? Maybe the designer can give us more options if in the future we need more names on that. Maybe you can think about it to help us. I think you have some way to do that. So yeah, it's really like... Even right now, it's already more than 11 o'clock, but we need a final vote to celebrate moving forward. Thank you, all of you.

Okay. All right. Any other council members want to make some more comments before we take the vote? Yes? No? All right. All right. Then I shall call the vote. Let us go.

We got to get this. We got to get this fixed. Come on. Do I do a voice vote? We're recording it, too.

Let's do a voice vote.

Yes. I thought you didn't vote.

Vice Mayor Dink?

Yeah. Aye.

Council Member Menchaca? Aye. Council Member Avila? Aye. Council Member Wu?

Aye. Good.

Motion passed, five to zero.

All right. Thank you. All right, now we have reached the halfway point of our meeting. And then please stay for the other, the next five hours.

So, counsel, in accordance with your rules of conducting meetings, no item should be considered, no new item on the agenda should be considered after 11 o'clock. unless the council votes by majority to put that item and consider that item back on the agenda. You have three items left. 7B, which is the consideration of the ballot measure.

That's two hours.

And then you have number eight and number nine, which are still agenda items. So by motion, whatever is your pleasure, if you.

Well, I just want to clarify with item, the agenda regarding the sales measure, we have to do it tonight, right? This is it.

That is correct. That's correct. And we can wait a month. No, no waiting a month.

YES, SO I'LL MOVE TO EXTEND OUR MEETING TO...

WHICH ITEMS?

DO YOU WANT TO CONSIDER ALL THREE ITEMS OR JUST THE ONE THAT... WELL, THE OTHER ONES ARE COUNCIL... COMMENTS AND CITY MANAGEMENT. THAT COULD BE PUSHED TO THE FOLLOWING MEETING.

Absolutely, why don't you which why don't we just get everything get it over with okay?

Let's get it over. I agree Okay, I think in next month's meeting you have everybody have more time to do All right, so I make a motion to extend the meeting for all a clock I second all items all items okay, okay, and then councilman Wu seconds I

Oh, okay. Council Member Herrera-Avila seconds. So I guess we will do the roll call vote.

Mayor Chan?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Ding? Yes. Council Member Menchaca? Yes. Council Member Herrera-Avila? Yes. Council Member Wu? Yes. Motion passes five to zero.

All right. Then I guess we'll move on to the next item, please.

Consideration of resolutions placing a measure enacting an ordinance for a transactions and use tax on the November 2026 consolidated general election ballot. City Manager Lazzaretto will make the presentation.

What time are you?

Given the late hour, I will keep this brief, but feel free, council, to ask as many questions as you need in order to make an informed and educated decision. But we are at the culmination of placing or considering placing a tax on the ballot for November. It would be a 1% sales tax or 1 cent sales tax, however you are more comfortable envisioning that. We are still waiting for legislation from the state that we will hear about likely in August. But no matter, we still do have the 25.25%, two and a half cent cap room left in LA County. So no matter what happens, putting something on the ballot, if the voters approve it, we would end up with additional revenue. I would like to remind everybody that the revenue would support that quality of life that San Gabriel is used to. The public safety services, it will enhance and protect the 911 response times that you all care so deeply about and hear from your constituents. It could be used for things like police stations, fire station expansions, adding new police and fire to help serve the residents of the city. And I also want to point out that we have done surveys using a number of methods, and we've had over 500 people respond, and over two-thirds of them understand the need for additional revenue in the city. And so with that, the action tonight in order to put this on the ballot would be to adopt the two resolutions that are attached. The first one would be submitting the ballot initiative to the voters. And the second one would be laying out the rules for how the arguments and rebuttals relating to the ballot measure are provided for. And I will end my comments by just saying from somebody that was smarter than me, I heard say that no matter what the council does tonight, Your vote is to put it on the ballot, but in reality, what your vote is to give the voters a chance to decide whether this is right for San Gabriel or not. This is empowering our residents to make a decision for themselves. So you making this decision is one that will allow the voters to make that for themselves.

and with that Martin and I are both available for any questions and Martin if you want to add to anything please thank you the only addition that I would clarification I would add that the adoption of the first resolution also introduces in places the ordinance which if approved by the voters would amend the code to include the tax measure in it okay there all right

So does any council member have actual questions for the staff to clarify the report?

Yes, I do. Just one question. I think that is also. Yeah, thank you. Just for clarification. I understand that now we are imposing 1% transactional use tax, which being said, now the seat of St. Gabriel is 1050. Now we have the major ER passed. So if the state will allow us to increase to 1%, what is the total? And if they have not approved for our increase for certain level, what is the max that we can collect until they approve the increase?

Taking your last question first, the max that we could collect would be a quarter cent, one quarter cent. And that isn't dependent upon any state law. And that was not changed by Measure ER. That was approved by LA County residents. L.A. COUNTY WAS ABLE TO GET LEGISLATION ON THEIR OWN TO INCREASE THE CAP, AND THAT LEGISLATION PROTECTED THE .25, THE QUARTER CENT THAT EVERY CITY IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY STILL HAD, OR MOST CITIES IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY STILL HAD. SO YOU'RE RIGHT, YOUR MATH IS CORRECT, THAT IF WE WERE TO ADOPT, AND OUR VOTERS WERE TO ADOPT A ONE CENT, WITH MEASURE ER, IT WOULD TAKE SAN GABRIEL'S RATE TO 12%.

Twelve. Okay. Thank you, Mark. Total is, if you include ER, it's a total how much? Twelve. Twelve. Even. Thank you.

I just want to remind everyone that we had extensive conversation about this already. And so actually all three of them we've had extensive conversations in the past. This is not the first time. And we've studied this, we're not even included, but as far back as 1999 when it came to the police station. And, you know, we studied it, and, you know, that council did, and every council since then, since I've been here, keep having these discussions. And I want to agree with the city manager that let the voters decide. That's the only, that's the one thing that we haven't done, and it's time. You know, no more delays, because every time we delay... YOU KNOW, THE INCREASE IN COST IS EXPONENTIAL. IT'S OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO FIND REALISTIC FUNDING. THIS IS WHAT OUR- THIS IS WHY WE WERE ELECTED. AND WE'VE DONE EVERYTHING WE CAN. AND AGAIN, IT'S NOT JUST US, BUT WE ARE THE ONES HAVING TO MAKE THAT DECISION NOW. And it's a legacy. We talk about future generations. You know, it's not only the memorial that we've done tonight, but this is going to have a major impact. We are an old city. There are so many infrastructure needs. You know, the police department is just one, but we have our pool, we have our Mission Playhouse. It goes on and on, things that we haven't even found probably. So this is going to be part of our legacy that we've taken that step, and we've taken it to the voters, and we're going to let the voters decide. But remember, no other council has done that yet. And so I hope we can just move forward and put this on the ballot when we can, when we get the authorization, right, Mark? But let's just take that step. So I just wanted to remind everyone.

Okay. Anybody else have any clarifying questions? No? Okay. Chief City Clerk, do we have any public comment on this issue?

No public comment, Mayor.

Okay. All right. Let's, it's time to start some council discussion. Let's discuss. Can we move?

Yeah, can we move? Aw, man.

Just move to approve.

I'll second. Discuss.

Okay, so. It's a later voter to make a decision. I mean, this is something that we have to do. Right?

Don't postpone that to the next election.

Motion by Council Member Wu, is that correct? Mm-hmm. Seconded by Councilwoman Menchaca, is that correct?

Mm-hmm.

All right, so let's take a voice vote.

Mayor Chan?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Ding? Yes. Council Member Menchaca?

Yes.

Council Member Herrera-Avila? Aye. Council Member Wu?

Aye.

Passes five to zero.

All right. Very good. Next item, please.

City Manager's Report.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. I only have one comment to make. All kidding aside, a thank you to Will Caholicula. I know that you all know that he is leaving us for, I don't think, greener pastures. Let's say other pastures.

You can't leave. I would agree.

But Will has done tremendous things for our city in setting us up with financial policies and programs that will keep us solvent for years to come. And I have expressed from my own self, thank you very much for the help you've given us and the city. And I hope you have a wonderful career moving forward.

All right. Next item.

Council comments and conference and meeting reports.

All right, let's start this. Who wants to start?

Okay, I'll just make it brief. Well, on July 16th, I attended the summer concert at Vincent Local Park. I would like to thank Matthew, the community services assistant director, and also our community service staff. Also, our PD was there. And the Boxcar 7 from Long Beach District They're providing our residents a great performance and a wonderful summer movie night. Later on, my colleagues will be, whoever will be sharing our IC conference that held from July 9th through 12th. And also the League of California City AAPI Caucus event on July 19th. So I will not repeat it. I will have my colleagues to share. And finally, July 18th is my birthday. So thank you everyone for sending me whoever the warm birthday wishes. Thank you so much.

I'll go next. All right. Mayor. Councilman Herrera-Avila. Will, I guess this is goodbye, Will. You know, since I met you, you've been a stand-up person, and I really appreciate the integrity, and you will be missed. Come back soon. And... I'm sure we'll cross paths again. Thank you. On July 14 to 16, I attended an annual conference here in Los Angeles where I participated in leadership policy discussions focused on housing, economic affordability, immigration, artificial intelligence, and government. effective government and local government. The conference also provided valuable opportunities to collaborate with Latino elected officials and public leaders from across the nation. And also I want to say thank you for Vice Mayor DING HE ALSO PARTICIPATED IN ONE OF OUR CONSTITUENT GROUPS FOR THE NATIONAL LEAGUE OF CITIES WE WERE HAVING A HILO MEETING AND HE WAS THERE HE WAS INVOLVED HE WAS ENGAGED SO VICE MAYOR DING THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING IN THAT AS WELL AND THAT'S ALL I HAVE TO REPORT THANK YOU ALL RIGHT THANK YOU WHO WOULD LIKE TO GO NEXT

I GUESS I WILL. OKAY. INDEPENDENT CITIES ASSOCIATION. I WAS ONE OF FOUR THAT ATTENDED ALONG WITH THE CITY MANAGER. AND LET'S SEE. THE CONFERENCE PROVIDED SOMETHING FOR REALLY EVERYBODY, REGARDLESS OF THE SIZE OF YOUR CITY. SO WE HAVE SESSIONS COVERED A WIDE RANGE OF TIMELY AND RELEVANT TOPICS FROM AI-POWERED CYBER ATTACKS TO EMERGING THREATS TO CITY INFRASTRUCTURE TO KEY COURT CASES IMPACTING LOCAL GOVERNMENT. WE ALSO HAD SOME PROBABLY NONTRADITIONAL KIND OF SPEAKERS. WE HAD THE U.S. WOMEN'S OLYMPIC GOLD MEDAL HOCKEY COACH, JOHN ROBLESKI, WHO SHARED HOW OLYMPIC LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES CAN BE APPLIED TO PUBLIC SERVICE AND COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP. And then we also had the, let's see, his name is, well, Army Ranger veteran who's also a recording artist and speaker, Kenny Thomas, who opened the conference with his keynote. He wrote Leading Through Crisis. He was one of those service members who was there for the, well, it's known as the Black Hawk Down conference. And he provided lots of, well, he had his book there, but he also provided lessons on how public service can be kind of sharing insights about his public service and how it compares to ours. Talks about resilience and importance of staying mission focused. So I thought that was a very interesting perspective, bringing people that were TYPICALLY, THESE ARE THE TYPES OF SPEAKERS YOU DON'T SEE, SO I WANT TO APPLAUD ICA FOR BRINGING THOSE INDIVIDUALS WHOSE BACKGROUND, NOT NECESSARILY PUBLIC SERVICE, ALTHOUGH SERVING IN THE MILITARY, I THINK, IS PUBLIC SERVICE, BUT IT WAS JUST REALLY DIFFERENT AND VERY INSIGHTFUL. And then following week, I went to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Conference. As said earlier, it was great conversation, some fresh ideas, and lots of inspiration. We too had a wide variety of speakers, I thought. The ones I was able to participate in was, the first one was a live taping of the Latino Vote podcast, I don't know if you've had heard of it, with Chuck Rocha and Mike Madrid. And then I attended a special screening of, it's called Into the Fire, documenting Tony Cardenas' journey from grassroots activism to Congress. And then there was another one called 250 Years of Latino Resilience and What Comes Next Session. And in between all this, we were able to also watch the World Cup. celebration. So we had this huge room, ballroom of sorts, and I felt bad for the speakers because it was really hard to keep everyone's attention. But, you know, we plowed through, but we were able to watch some of the major events. games that did take place, the World Cup. And then lastly, as mentioned by Councilmember Wu, I also attended the API caucus reception this past Sunday during the AAPI lead summit, and kind of interesting little tidbit is that Naleo has helped mentor that group for the last three years. And so, you know, we say stronger together and that is just a prime example how they are working collaboratively and really supporting the AAPI group. At the caucus reception, Congressman Ted Lieu was recognized as the 2026 Vincent Chin Civil Rights Champion. And Congressman Liu, for those who know him, he has been a real leader when it came to anti-Asian hate, racial profiling, discrimination, and a whole host of other things. But specifically, those have been the areas that he's been really championing. And at this point, I think that's enough. I have so much more, but that's enough. Thank you very much.

Vice Mayor Jing?

Yeah. Most of our colleagues already covered that, but just say like last two weeks, it looks like the conference week. Okay. And the Independent City Association, every seminar, it's really helped us, especially for our city to have the PDNF fire. and they have every section, every year they bring out, every year the way the city face, most of the way we face the problem. So education has, it's a really good, like educated for our council member. Okay, and July 13, I have, it's, It's part of the Nalio conference. I have a chance to go to the Latino leader tour for the Toyota Hydrogen Headquarters. That gives me a lot of education. It's their high security. You cannot take any photo over there. But their research is back to the 1992. It's really good. Zero emission, the power. And the most it's good for the... the big truck or like that's hopefully the future it's for the like not just the EV car but that's another choice for the hydrogen the gas the car okay and they also have the chance to go to the historic municipality leader a small session to meet all the nations. So it's a Spanish leadership, but it's really like we, even I'm at AAPI, but we should, through this kind of convention, we should understand each other And they give me the impress that it's really, they already do that like 50 years. For our AAPI, it's just three years. Like three years ago, they are in the Vegas. It's, I saw the story with the, it's congressman, it's Tony. Godinez, right? Okay. He have the really good experience shared to us. So it's help their community. Okay. I think all of our council members should try it. It's help our community. Help our city and help our community too. And July 14, I have chance with the the council member Machanga go to the Lakewood City Council. The James Wood, Jeff Wood become the mayor. And he's like introduced us to join the contract city. It's shared a lot of the good knowledge and information for us. And then it's 1719, I go to the AAPI leader, the national summit. It's really like have opportunity to meet all of the nationwide, our AAPI leader, but include Hispanic, the Latino too. So I really appreciate the way both understand each other to help each other. And then the last one, it's use this opportunity, the Carolina City, the conference, they have the AAPI caucus reception. It's wonderful. It's honor the Ted Lieu and also remember the Vincent Chin, the history. So everything, we remember his history. We just wonder, like, moving forward, we continue to make it peaceful. Hopefully, this kind of disaster no more happen. Okay, that's my comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Ding. All right, I'm the last one, and I will make this quick. On July 9th through the 12th, I also attended with my colleagues the ICA conference, and we had a host of issues, helpful discussions on very interesting issues, such as crisis response, effectively communicating with the community, revitalizing downtown retail areas. So it was very, very educational. And on the 18th, I attended, again, with a few of my colleagues here, a grand opening of a store called Complex. It's a new cigar, beer, and wine store in San Gabriel at 704 West Lasunas Drive. So please check them out. Another new business in our city. We're very proud of it. And so that concludes my report. All right. So the next regular city council meeting of August 4th has been canceled due to National Night Out. So I hope you guys will all show up to the Mission District for our combined citywide National Night Out. The next regular City Council meeting will be held on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, at 6.30 p.m. This meeting is adjourned in memory of Mike Valdivia at 11.29 p.m. Thanks for watching.