Thank you. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit more careful. I'm going to be a little bit of the same. I'm going to do a little bit of the same. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. you Good evening. Welcome to the January 13th Special Meeting of the Elhambera City Council. Roll call please. Lee. Here. Mazah. Maloney. Andrade Stadler. Here. Wang. Here. The only item on the agenda is closed session. Do we have any speakers from the public for this item? Madam Mayor, we do not have any speakers for this item at this time, nor in person or on Zoom. All right. Well now moving to closed session, Mr. City Attorney? Yes. Madam Mayor and members of the City Council, We would request to recess in the closed session to discuss the real property negotiation item. The Workers' Comp Appeals Board item and three potential exposure to litigation items listed on the agenda. Thank you, Mr. City Attorney. We are now recessed to closed session. you you We have recovined from the public. We have recovined from the public. We have recovined from the public. We have recovined from the public. We have recovined from the public. We have recovined from the public. We have recovined from the public. We have recovined from the public. We have recovined from the public. We have recovined from the public. We have recovined from the closed session. Thank you everybody for your patience in waiting. Mr. City Attorney, do we have anything to report? There is no announcement out of closed session this evening. All right. We have now completed item on this evening's special meeting agenda. I will adjourn the special meeting and move into this evening's regular meeting. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the January 13th regular meeting of the Alhambra City Council. Roll call, please. Lee, here, Maaza, here, Maloney, here, on Dr. Adler, here, Wang, here. Now please join me in the flag salute. You're right hand over your heart, ready? Yes. Congratulations to the flag of the United States of America. It's to the Republic of the West Bank. When you should, your God, next is our land acknowledgement with knowledge that the land on which we're gathered is the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Garolino-Tama peoples. We seek to prioritize respect for the historic culture and contemporary presence of the native peoples throughout California, especially in the greater Los Angeles and our Hamba area. We come with respect and gratitude for the Garolino- No Gautama people who still consider themselves the caretakers of this land. It is through their examples that we're reminded of our greater responsibility to take care of Mother Earth and to take care of each other. Now before we begin tonight's agenda, I like to take a moment to provide an update for our community on the recent windstorm and item fire incident that has deeply impacted all of us. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to our city staff for their extraordinary efforts during the recent windstorm and wildfires, from first responders to public works, utilities, parks and rec, and beyond, your dedication to our citizens here in the City of Alhambra is deeply appreciated. A special thanks to our public works, utilities, and park and rec team for their tireless work, clearing debris from streets and city facilities. In our parks alone, 19 trees were down and a total of 50 more trees impact the citywide. Our police and fire personnel continue to play a vital role in relief efforts, ensuring the safety and well-being of our community and assisting Pasadena police during this challenging time. We also want to recognize the library the city of the city of the city of the city of city of the city of city of the city of city of the city of city of the city of city of the city of city of the city of city of police during the during the challenging time. We also want to recognize We also want to recognize the library for opening Reese Hall to FEMA staff where 20 to 25 people in our community received assistance yesterday and even more today. and resilience that defines our city. And here's a couple of updates on the current city services. Overnight parking enforcement, city law enforcement, street sweeping have resumed regular schedule to ensure the cleanliness of our streets. Family and friends from evacuated areas can get temporary parking permits on our website or at a kiosk. On your designated waste service day, you can set out access screen waste for Republic Services bulky item pick up by bundling and securely tying it placing it next to your waste containers and keeping each bundle under a fee lawn and for fee white for safe collection. Rest assured our water supply remains safe and unaffected by the recent windstorm and wildfires. Elhambras water is portable and the system is fully operational. Los Angeles County issued a health order prohibiting the use of power air blowers, including leaf blowers to reduce public health risk from fire ash and smoke. To stay informed, please sign up for Alhambras Emergency Alerts at www.cityofalhambra.org slash alerts. Visit our website or follow our social media, Facebook or Instagram. Or you can text El Hambra CA to 3A276. Keep yourself on emergency alerts enabled. I know there has been false alarms, but please keep it enabled. Please do not disable your emergency alerts. They are vital for staying informed and keeping us safe. We also recommend using the WatchDuty app for information updates. This app is available in the App Store on your smartphone. I know a lot of us has been impacted and I just wanted to say that this event has served as a reminder for all of us to recognize how important it is for us to be prepared. So we'll be revisiting our city's emergency preparedness plan. It also reminds us of how important it is to stay connected with our neighbors. It will be a goal of mine and hopefully with my colleagues support. I love to strengthen our neighborhood watch programs in the years to come and provide our residents tools and resources to connect with each other. And for the Alhambra community, know that ensuring public safety and the well being of our residents remain our top priority. And our entire council and staff are here for you. So free to reach out to us. We have a plan and we're ready to respond to any emergencies. Now moving on to the next item. Our first item on the agenda is a ceremonial presentation of Certificate of Service for Police Clerk, Diane Dalgadillo, him and his who retired from the city after 36 years of outstanding and dedicated service to the city and the police department. So please come up to the podium and have my colleagues join me in presenting the certificate. So I do not know what it's like to serve the city for such a long time, but I know we, the city of Alhambra, really appreciate your dedication, commitment, and your long 30 years of service to us. And we want to congratulate you on your retirement and wish you all the best in your new life chapter. Thank you very much. Would you like to say a few words? First of all, I'd like to thank God for giving me not once but twice, three times life. And I want to thank everyone for the city, all my coworkers, my chiefs, all those that have come and gone. I'm going to take a little bit of you with me and enjoy my life, the rest of my life. And I just want to thank you all. I really enjoyed my job. I found it very interesting and rewarding. Very rewarding. Thank you. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. I'm going to start with the first one. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. the Our next item on the agenda is a presentation regarding City Council appointments to various external boards and or commissions. Missedate manager, is there a report from staff for this item? Sure, this evening's presentation will be given by Lauren Miles, City Clerk. Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. At the December 9th, 2024 Council meeting, the Council adopted a resolution which declared Jeff Maloney elected as Councilperson of the Third District and Noia Wang elected as Councilperson of the Fourth District. Due to the restructuring of the City Council, vacancies were created for positions on various external boards and commissions that should now be filled. I've prepared a list reflecting all of the current City Council appointments and vacancies for your reference, as well as a brief description of each external board and or commission, both are attached to my staff report for your use. Specifically, there are five vacancies at this time to be filled. For the League of California Cities, Independent Cities Association, San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments Transportation Committee, Southern California Association of Governments, and the Elhamber Historical Society Museum. I'm available if you have any questions. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Cidiclark. So we have a list of vacancies and that was due to me taking over. These seats were previously occupied by our former mayor and now I'm taking over. So here's my proposal. I'm thinking that I can let everyone know that of the list, the ones that I think will be great for our city, I would love to continue to serve. And I have to bend with to serve. And I will open up the positions that are available. And then for anyone to make a nomination, if that sounds good to everybody. All right, so of the list that our city clerk has announced, I would like to serve on the board of directors for the League of California cities. St. Gabriel Valley, Cog of governments, Council of Governments Transportation Committee, and the Southern California Association of Governments. If I have my colleagues support, then that would leave would be. There's an alternate for independent cities association and Elhamber historic museum board of directors. Is there any nomination for any of these vacancies? Katherine, are you still want to be the main representative for the Museum Board of Directors? Yes, unless someone else really wants it. I would be willing to take the alternate position there. That'll be fine, stop to me, but. You're nominating yourself. I'll support that. All right, so we have a nomination for alternate position for our Hamburg Historic Museum Board of Directors. Then we still have a vacancy for the alternate position on Independent Cities Association. Is there step up for that position. So we have a nomination. If I may, it looks like all the vacancies are currently filled. If I could just get a motion and a roll call vote to approve the vacancies being filled and then the current list, that would be helpful. Move to approve all the vacancies that have been filled. Can that be as well as the list of all of the other positions as well,, please yes, okay. All right. We have a motion from councilmember on dreads that we want to list them Or do you have no? I just need approval for the entire list that's a portion of the staff report I'll second So we have a motion from councilmember on dready statler and we have a Second from councilmember Andrade Stoutler and we have a second from Councilmember Maloney already. Roll call please. Lee. Yes. Mazza. Yes. Maloney. Yes. Andrade Stoutler. Yes. Wang. Yes. Motion passes. All right, our next presentation is survey results regarding the agenda placement of public comment for a non-agentized items. Mr. City Manager, is there a report from staff for this item? There is the presentation for this item and be given by Lauren Miles City Clerk. A good evening again Mayor and members of the City Council. At the October 28th, 2024 Council meeting, Vice Mayor Lee requested and the City Council agreed to discuss the current order of items on the agenda. More specifically, we're public comment for non-agent items takes place on the agenda. Staff reached out to the surrounding cities in the area to find out where public comment for non-agent items is placed on their agendas. A chart outlining staff survey results is attached to the staff report for your reference. To summarize the results of the survey of the 12 cities surveyed, five cities placed public comment for non-agentized items at the start of their agendas. San Marino, South Pasadena, Monoray Park, Glendora, and Rosemede. While seven cities placed it toward the middle of the agenda, Arcadia, Monrovia, West Covenia, San Gabriel, Azusa, Almonte, and Covena. The majority of cities as indicated in their agenda language and as confirmed by staff hold public comment for non-agenda items before the consent agenda, but after any presentations or ceremonial agenda items. In turn, some cities opted to have a total time limitation for the item of 30 or 40 minutes at the outset in order to timely address the other items on the agenda. Then if more speakers are present, some cities will allow either by having the item listed again at the end of their agenda or at the mayor or council's discretion continued public comment for non-agentized items at the end of the meeting. I'm available if you have any questions. Thank you. Do we have any speaker cards from the public for this item? Madam Mayor, I believe we do have a couple of speaker cards for this item. All right. So the first one, we have Jennifer in. Thank you, Madam Mayor and Members of the Council. Nice to see everyone again. I'm so glad this has finally made it onto our agenda. Thank you City Manager for making that happen. I think all of you and all of us who are regular attendees have all seen people who have been here who have not made it to open public comment. We've especially our parents, they're here with their kids. They can't stay till 9, 10 o'clock or some of this goes. Our seniors, heck, anybody who even has a job sometimes cannot stay here as late as this meeting goes. So I do think we need to make some adjustments for that. I think a time limit seems reasonable. I think after presentation seemed reasonable because sometimes we do have outside companies coming in to give presentations. We want to be respectful to them as well. So I'm sure you come up with a good decision, but yeah, I like it not being completely at the end. I think you'll get more feedback from more people. There's been plenty of times you've called for people to come and speak at the end of the meeting and they're long gone sadly. So I'm glad we're able to work something out. Thank you. Thank you for the comment. Next we have Louis McCammon. Good evening, Louis McCammon, 105 North Cardova Street. I want to thank Catherine Leap for getting us on the agenda. I think it's an appropriate item to discuss. There's one other alternative that I've seen come up in other bodies that I have spoken before and that was the Los Angeles City Board of Education, which at one point it always came at the end of the meeting, which was frequently 11 o'clock at night on a meeting that started in the early afternoon. And what they finally did was they set it for a time certain. And I believe it was, then it was six o'clock. It may have changed a little bit since that time. So that's one other thing it could be set for a time certain. Now, if you're going to set it for a time certain, certainly don't make it after 7 o'clock or anything, because we've had those rare occasions where we actually wrapped up a meeting before 7 o'clock. So, these options here all seem appropriate to me for you to consider. The option of a time certain is also one other that might be useful. And if there turns out to be a lot of those comments, I think the option setting it so that you can have so many minutes at a side maximum for it then and then continuing them at the end of the meeting might be an appropriate thing because you want to get to the rest of your agenda too. So thank you very much for your consideration on that. Thank you for the comment. Next we have Olga. Hello. Thank you and I really appreciate this even mean on the agenda. Yes, we have a very vibrant community who really wants to attend these meetings, but for reasons of childcare, getting kids to school in the morning, some of us work. We have to get up early in the morning. There's just elderly people who just don't want to be driving at night or getting home at 11 o'clock. Once sometimes these meetings, and I vote for that, if we can possibly move these to the beginning of our council meetings. And this is, I'm glad to see that San Marino, South Pass, Glendora and Rosemeade are following suit. So I'm hoping that we can bring these non agenda items at the beginning of our meetings. Thank you. Thank you for the comment. Is there anyone else wishing to speak? Do. A lot of local council, a lot of more. My name is Dan Dukken and I basically am deaf. I do try to relapse but I know I won't be able to do much here. Sometimes it's easier over here, but please bear with me. Probably really won't need to have too much discussion. But I'm not sure if you've already been appraised, perhaps why I'm here. But let me start with who I am, and hopefully there'll be interesting for you and give you some insight about what I'm coming from. So I'm retired. I'll have a PD Sergeant, starred here as an officer. I wait patrol, P2s, motor, SWAT, Tri-City, Filight Task Force, Tri-City Agent Task Force, Humbicide, Vice Detective and Charge of Red Death and Patrol Sergeant, Watch Commander, Sergeant Training of Personnel. Excuse me, sir. I just wanted to make sure that you're I have a bill tonight playing staff. I did a promotional development for the Jake. Excuse me sir. I just want to make sure we're in the middle of a agenda item that you are speaking on this topic. Otherwise you have an opportunity to see. This is all about macro information for the topic. Did you not want to hear my qualifications? I'm sorry. I'm not sure what you're asking me. Because I can't hear you. Let me clarify, we're on council. I can't hear enough. My office here could assist me. I don't know. Can you? I might be able to read this up better. What you need. I'm sorry. We want to speak out. Okay. Okay. I can clarify. So if it's not regarding this topic, then there's opportunity for him to speak at the end of the meeting where there's public comment window for not agenda items. That's and I will, I'll let you know. I'm ready to go finish. We walk. How much later? We welcome your comment. It's just that there is an order on our agenda. Right now we're talking about. I don't know. So you're telling me I'm going to come a little bit later. Correct. I'll let you know. Thank you so much. Do we have anyone on Zoom to speak on this item? Madam Mayor, yes, we do have one raised hand from Randy K. All right. Go ahead, Randy. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to request that some time be allocated at the beginning of council meetings for the public to speak on non agendized items. Of the 39 cities nearby that I contacted in April, 36 of the 39 permit the public to speak on non ag residents to wait until the end of the meeting to speak. I believe the city of industry was the third, but their council meeting started at 9 a.m. So residents would only have to wait till about noon to address the council. Fourth of our population is over 60 years of age. Sometimes meetings go late into the night and even into the early hours of the morning. And it's difficult for many of us to stay up that late anymore. In addition, a lot of us are sharper earlier in the evening than late at night. Many of us have difficulty driving at night and do not want to be traveling at night alone. Residents of the city who work and have children often have things to do later in the evening like prepare for the next day and make lunches for their kids for school and help their kids with homework. They cannot spend an unlimited amount of time at a council meeting waiting to speak even when what they have to say is important. We have a lot of health care workers in El Hambra working at clinics, Monterey Park Hospital and Garfield Hospital. Many of these people work shifts are early morning hours and if they want to address the city council they need a more specific time frame where they can address our elected representatives without the uncertainty of knowing how long the meeting will take. These healthcare workers need to have an adequate amount of sleep in order to take care of their patients properly. I've had to leave at least two council meetings previously without speaking as those of us who have pets cannot leave them alone for hours at night. At least if we know we are able to present the beginning of the meeting, they will not be alone for so long. Sometimes agenda items are specific to a problem, may not involve, nor have any interest to all residents of the city. Currently, people waiting to speak are required to listen to every item prior to addressing the council. This is one way in which you will be able to increase public participation in city government. It will definitely send a message that you are interested in hearing the concerns of your constituents. I'm also certain that you will hear many positive things that you don't expect to. And I'm going to give you an example. Our hearts go out to other cities in the San Gabriel Valley that have experienced tragedy of many kinds over the last week. In El Hambro, we receive contact from you asking if we and our neighbors are OK. Two days later, our volunteer police drove around making sure we were all okay. Then public works came by to clear the streets of debris from the trees. Our neighbors stepped up to clear our street early, including a couple in their eighties armed with brooms and dust pans. We are indeed fortunate to live in a city that is so supportive and a neighborhood where we all know each other and work together to solve problems when they arise. Thank you very much to everyone there at the meeting and who work for the city and special thanks to our firefighters, they are true heroes. In closing, I would like to ask that the first 30 minutes at each council meeting be reserved for public comment on non-agentized items. In that way, the first six speakers could be accommodated early and the speakers who submitted speaker cards later would be asked to wait until the end of the meeting. In that way, at least some speakers would be able to express their concerns early in the evening allowing them to intend to other things that need their attention at home. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for your comment. Is there anyone else on Zoom wishing to speak on this item? No matter Mayor, there aren't any other raised hands at this time. All right, thank you. I know that this item was requested by Vice Mayor Lee. Would you like to begin your comments on this one? Sure, thank you, Mayor Wong. I think that it took me this long for a, if we call our last time to always for a concern about having to wait till the very end to in order to speak to just for one minute, two minutes. And so it was a wake up call for me as a council member that I wasn't thinking about how long we have our public waiting to speak to the council, you know, sometime after two or three hours. And I sometimes they want to say something very, very, not so serious, but just a small concern. So as a council member, I feel the urge to make sure that we, the council is looking at our procedure, our meeting procedure wise to make sure that we make the meeting very friendly. So that our public is willing to come in and just speak their concerns. That's why I brought up this motion and I'm glad that Council accepted to be on the agenda. I'm thankful that our staff did the survey. It made it very clear for me that many cities around us have already taken action to make sure that the public is well served. At this point, I am very open to either having on the agenda item being spoken at the middle of the meeting or at the beginning, it doesn't really matter to me but as long as we make changes tonight, I'll be fine. Thank you. Council Member Masa, would you like to speak on this item? Thank you. I appreciate that. So thank you vice mayor for bringing this item up into members of the community that came out and spoke about the concerns. I am definitely open. I think for the most part seems like most of our non agenda discussions don't go but more than maybe 15 minutes at the very most so I'd be open to having it at the beginning without of course obstructing, you know, some of the other presentations that might come about. I mean, it depends on the very speeding by meeting. I think the biggest concern would be to have certain vendors on some of the bigger agenda items waiting for hours on in, but of course that rarely happens with the amount of non-agent diaspolic comments that we get. So I'm definitely open, but I'd be open to either having a beginning or in the middle of the meeting. Council Member Maloney. Yep, it's um, it is a good topic. I will say that when I first started on council, we regularly had meetings that would start at 6 and we'd be out of here by 7. So that the reserving community comment opened public comment until the end was not a big issue. But now we have meetings that go much longer for all kinds of different reasons and I think it is unfair to have people waiting until the end. So I would support, I will offer some experience. I do, I'm an attorney for a public agency that also splits it up. You have a public comment in the beginning of the meeting until the time is certain. And then if there's any extra public comment, we can hear it at the end. It very rarely goes to the second session. So I think it would work well here. If we just, we allocated 30 minutes in the beginning of the meeting like South pass and It's like Glendor does the same thing Then if anyone isn't able to comment during that period then we can hear it at the end of the meeting But at least that we give opportunity to to you know I've seen high school kids come in here who want to speak but they can't wait till midnight To speak so it'd be nice to, you know, parents are young children, as well as people who have been medical conditions, right? And also just can't wait that long. It could be a fair thing to do. Council Member on Dr. Estelle. Yes, thank you, Mayor. And thank you to Councilwoman Lee for bringing this to our attention. I too like the beginning of the first 30 minutes to engage our community and then perhaps after the 30, after the rest of the, you know, the business said hand that we must take a look at. It is clearly is overdue and, but you know, it's actually a perfect opportunity for us because it's in line with our strategic plan not only to be more transparent, but to also engage our community, which is something we have been doing for a long time. We just don't realize that we are doing some great work on engagement. So with that being said, I too agree with everyone here that maybe in the beginning, not maybe the beginning would be great because it would encourage people to be here on time and to be ready to speak to us on issues very important to them and then allow for our regular presentations and other things to go on. Thank you. So with that, Mayor, if you don't mind, I'll make the motion for the South Pasadena. Look, but I'll wait. I'll wait for you. All right. So for public engagement, then we will be supporting to remove any hurdles to allow community members to come and speak. I will say that the one thing I just want to mention that as we move public comment to the beginning, we are also delaying folks who may want to speak on agenda items. So just keep that in mind. And I think one way to go about that is to limit maybe a 30 minute time frame in the beginning so that we can move on to our usual council business. And then to the public, I think that if there is any needs that you have and whether it is child care, you can attend it and now we have Zoom, you can provide comment via Zoom. Or if it is the placement, you can attend it, and now we have Zoom, you can provide comment via Zoom, or if it is the placement of the public comment, don't hesitate to reach out and let us know, and we will look at our needs and adjust accordingly. So with that, I think I'm ready for a motion. Council Member, I'm Dr. E. Soutler. If I could just interject just for a point of order real quickly. So you have an ordinance on the books that has the order of business. And then it says, that's the order of business except as may otherwise be, you know, paraphrase, ordered by the council. So you can make an order tonight in the form of emotion to change the council. So you can make an order tonight in the form of a motion to change the order. Ultimately, though, just for clarity and for transparency, we probably should modify the code to conform to what you end up deciding. So if I could suggest, you may want to consider ordering this for three months, six months, something like that. See how it works. If it's working out okay and you don't need to tweak it any further, then we can come back with an ordinance that reflects your new practice. If you want to make further tweaks, we don't have to keep coming back with ordinance after ordinance. That would just be a request of staff. So if you want to set some kind of time frame for us to come back to revisit this just to make sure it's working and then we can do an ordinance. And then the second question I would have is you've said 30 minutes at the beginning, I anticipate that's the motion. Is that before ceremonial items or after ceremonial items? So that would probably, that would be after ceremonial items. So if I can make a motion to allow us to move our non-agentized items temporarily in behind item E, which is our ceremonials, and will allow us to see how the flow of business works. And just for clarification, I'm sorry. Was that the first, was that 30 minutes of public comment? Yes. Yes. And then when would you like staff to come back? So staff should come back in three months. Okay. May I suggest real quick, if you don't mind? No. Maybe giving it through the summer, getting people used to, you know, the new kind of setup, you know, while the word gets out, that this is the new norm. I mean, six months will fly by, so maybe you get any summer? Is that that that's fine? That will give the opportunity for us to really get a kind of an idea of how it's flowing. Thank you for that. Thank you. So was that a second? Yes. With the amendment of it moving to the beginning of summer. All right, so we have a motion and a second. Roll call please. Maloney. Yes. Lee. Yes. I'm Dr. Stadler. Yes. Mazza. Yes. Wang. Yes. All right, motion passes. The next item on the agenda is the consent agenda item number four through 14. We have speaker cards for item number five on the consent agenda. Oh yes, there are speaker cards for item number five for consent agenda. The first one I'm going to bring up, Jennifer In. Thank you again, Madame Mayor and Council members. I did just want to express my gratitude to our, our Amber Firefighters Police Staff Public Works. It just seems like it was an amazing job trying to help everyone as much as they could. A lot of our neighbors know we're here all the time so they were calling us like what do I do with my tree stuff what happens with this what happens with that so I'm like put on the curb I'll be fine they'll come but public works was out there to get you know the larger branches out pretty gosh darn quickly and one of those particularly big so it got some cones around it but I felt that you know really public works tried to keep us as safe as possible as fast as possible. I do think maybe for the future when we're assessing our emergency plan maybe like a banner can go up on the city's main website that if you know see something say something so they can report problems with lights or branches or you know some things are going to be more imperative. There's definitely some lights that did get damaged and we don't want those to be a fire hazard. So I think if there was somewhere people could go or a dedicated phone number and email that would be helpful. And if it's something you know usually critical, they'll probably call 911 of sparks are going. But I think that would be helpful for members of the community. But no, I think Alhamnborough is everything I've heard about. We've stepped up as a city and hopefully we can step up as a community as well to help our neighboring cities that are in so much, so much need right now. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Next we have Lewis McCannumann. Next we have OCA. Loomie Keman again. I want to thank the city manager and staff for having issued the proclamation for the existence of a local emergency back on January 7th, which I think is, was very appropriate measure to do. And for the council here is going to be following up an officially ratifying that same declaration today. It does allow in here, whereas the city's ability to mobilize local resources, coordinate interagency response, accelerate, procurement of vital supplies, use mutual aid, seek future reimbursement by state and federal governments, and all of this will be necessary to respond effectively to the wind events. And they were looking particularly at impact of fallen trees, impact upon power poles and things like that, city utilities infrastructure. I believe there is some opportunity here for keep track of the time to maybe get some federal reimbursement on this. I don't know exactly how the federal proclamations have been worded whether they're strictly fire. There would not have been anywhere near this scale of a fire problem if it hadn't been for the wind involvement in it. That's what really made this a mess in the in the palisades and in the canyon fire So I think it's Definitely go ahead and do this today. I think I've seen a very appropriate response where trees were down and Linda acts apart one palm tree snapped off It's still standing about the trunk about that high, but it had fallen blocked one lane on Linder-Axapark South. Very quickly that got moved out of the way and the debris that had fallen from the fallen part has all been cut up and cleaned up. Very promptly. I was by City Public Works Office today and showed them some pictures of some of the older light structures which need some work. Obviously wind storm related. I believe on those old poles with the lights right on top. It may be that the globe just folds down because that's the way mine is in front of my house right now. It's hanging at a 90 degree angle there. And mine is completely out. I showed them pictures of that and one on Hidalgo. The Hidalgo one still works, but the mine is just no longer functions. And some, I gave them information on some of the others that need some work. And one of the areas they might want to take a look at, I will follow up. I got that I was given the card for the person to talk to directly on staff there. He wasn't in at that moment, but I will call and talk to him just because there seemed to be some different types of lights used in those. Some have what I refer to about a 3500 Kelvin. It's a sort of a more of a yellow orangeous light and some have about what it would be known as a 5000 Kelvin very bright white light in them and some of them Also, I know the one in front of ours for some time had been Functioning where it was 30 seconds on very bright 90 seconds off Little bitty dim thing like a tiny, not even a flash light. Then 30 seconds on, 90 seconds off again all night. And that's just not very useful. So they might want to look into the situation again. I'll talk to the people and explore what's going on on that. It may be the type of bulb used or something and it's best to have them on all the time. Even if it's not quite that bright, just for the effectiveness on the streets. Thank you very much. Thank you for the comment. Next we have Olga. Once again, thank you all. I think we have the best city ever. And thank you for your volunteer. And I think I really do love Elhambera. And I am glad that we're going to have a local emergency planned. And I think it should also not only be included for wind, but also earthquake. This was a wake up call for all of California, I think. No, I think I know. I would like to know that our fire hydrants are working, good working order. I know some people say we have good water pressure, but you don't know until you test them. So maybe not functioning well. I think a lot what we were seeing on TV people, like even myself, we should let the people in the city know how to turn off their gas. Some of the fires were started because people didn't know how to turn off their gas. I don't even know where because people didn't know how to turn off their gas. I don't even know where that thing is at. So it'd be nice if maybe there could be some classes and letting the public know if you're gonna evacuate, turn off your gas and that could have avoided some houses from burning down and offer classes to the public, such as I'm hoping we can have the cert classes come in and then, you know, have people volunteer for neighborhood captain. I know we have Mighty Soul Greer for ours and I think Jennifer, I'm not sure she's doing for her area. And I'm hoping, I know we want to keep, I'm hoping for our trees that did come down that we make a really conscientious effort to replant those trees. We still want to be named the city of trees. Linda Roxas, we had one tree came down as Lou said in the down and they weren't replaced. And I like what Jennifer said for the public if we see something say something. And I think that's it. So I'm looking forward, I'm hoping on the city website that there are classes that are offered. And so that we can, I need to know where to turn off my gas line and things like that, just common sense things like that. Okay, thank you so much, and thank you for being awesome. All of you, thank you. Okay. Thank you for the comment. Do we have anyone on Zoom wishing to speak on this item? Madam Mayor, I'm not seeing any raised hands on Zoom at this time. All right. Does the council have any comments or questions for staff on the consent agenda items? If not, I'll move. I will entertain a motion to move the consent agenda. I would second that. Except that I would like to just say a few words't mind, item number five. I too want to thank our city manager for really taking off with us and leading the resolution and making sure that it was in accordance with the California's Office of Emergency Services. To our staff that move like lightning, no pun intended. Our Instagram's Facebook and Instagram, our city's Instagram, the pages were great. I was able to send them out immediately because people want to know. And yes, it doesn't matter what age you are, you're on social media, and that passes on to other people and on to other people. So our public works just did a phenomenal job. At really we took a look at what happened in Elambra online, many of us, and then the next day was being cleaned up. So kudos to the to that department and the library department, the library for opening your doors for giving out masks for having FEMA on Sunday and Monday. I mean, all of this is critical because even though we're on the outside or underlining, people will come our way, right? And they know our library serves not just a place where kids can get books, but it's a place of community. And that really does describe for everyone here and what our city does. So thank you to the police department who were out in numbers making sure that the lights that did go dark, that no crime was occurring, and of course to our firefighters. Well, you're always in our hearts and our prayers, no matter whether you fought part of that or whether you are on the sidelines or giving information to each other and helping. Thank you very much, starting with our chief on down. Those of you who have lost your homes, and we know who you are, we're thinking about you, and we won't forget you, and we'll try and make things as easy as possible. Please know that we are your family too. So thank you, thank you very much Mayor and with that I'll second your motion. All right. Does anyone else would like to make any comments on this item? Hearing none, I will entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. And I'll second that. Okay, so we have a motion. The second roll call please. Maloney. Yes. Lee. Yes. Andrade Steadler. Yes. Mazah. Yes. Wang. Yes. All right. Consent agenda is approved. Next, we have public comment for non-agentized items. And we have a number of speaker cars. Did you have a, oh, okay. So I'm going to read the cards. All right. Okay. First, I am going to bring up Connie Savantes. And you're next. Then don't come. Do come. Madam Chair and members of City Council, my situation is that I live on Helm and Street and Second and because of the medical firm that's up in front, the parking situation is crazy on my street. And I happen to have plenty of parking on my driveway, but I constantly see people they're crossing the streets with kids and crossing Helmand from one side to another. So there's need of a some kind of a crossway because the car's don't stop. I was told that because it would create more habit by having a lot of traffic because it is it's like a freeway now When I moved in 50 some years ago. I lived I moved in that helmet was quiet Now it's a freeway so and Not only that but also that people are double parking on the street. I'm talking of residents that live there. They're double parking their cars from the other car. And it's not one day out of a week. It's every single day. Another situation is the trash cans. They're always leaving them out all week and I think I spoke to you when you came around one time. I talked spoke to you about that situation and it has not improved. I tried calling in and somehow rather they I even came in and downstairs they made fun of me. And I heard the comments I haven't recorded. And one of your members in the office down there. And I was surprised because she was training someone else. She should have been more professional. But nevertheless, my situation is the double parking, the trash cans that are left out. We have to keep our hamburger beautiful. And even though I'm right at the edge, I'm still in El Hambra, and I think I have a voice. That's it. Sorry. Thank you so much for your comment. We will follow up with you after the meeting. Thank you so much for your comment. We will follow up with you after the meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Next, I'm going to bring up Dan Dukon. Thank you for waiting. Duncan, yes. Thank you. I'm going to apologize. And moving forward. I think I'll start over. That's okay. All right. Thank you. My name is Dan Duncan. Sergeant retired. I have a PD, unimply retired. And that goes back to 87 through 90 and my last day actually should have been 1990 June or something. I do have handouts for you later. I'll try to give you the overview right now. Again, Dan Duncan, JD, MPA. I work patrol B2, motor SWAT, Tri-City Filion Task Force, Tri-City Asian Task Force, actually APD dive team, homicide, vice Vice Detective and Charge of Grant Theth, Patrol Sergeant, Watch Commander, Sergeant Training, a Personnel and Tourist Affairs. I wrote the night plan for staffing a promotional development that was based on IPD's Jacobs plan. I did weekly field training seminars or situations in the field for patrol. I was a police pursuit driving instructor. I did grant writing. I did actually city legislation writing, regarding the police department. I updated the APD policy and procedures manual. I transferred a three-ringed bidder that documented every item of equipment for all the officers and personnel. I believe it was over 500,000 times, and I had them translated into computer program back in 80, when it's a 85. We had the first mini-mainframe here, and I was able to get a hold and work with the computer expert. Everything was tracked in and out very efficiently. And I also had the first use of computer Everything was tracked in and out very efficiently. And I also had the first use of the pure crypstats back in 87, telling us where the crime was occurring, GTAs, what color the car, what time-to-day, what locations. And I was ridiculed for all that. You see, so my fellow officer still remember that. You used the bother list with that, technical. I recouped APD's first female sergeant. I recouped APD's first reserve officer. I was an adji-ship professor, Counsel State University of Los Angeles, Criminal Justice, Investigative, and also Instruction Affairs Committee and Adv advisory to the MPA program. I also work the LA DA's office of organized crime and terrorism working the Mickey Tulips on homicide, Henry Wong homicide, ZZ best, ZZ best fraud and McMorrin preschool. I'm here today because I have a vested interest in the city. I'm proud of the work that I did. I'm a part of the city when I worked here, but it can be better. And I'll explain to you that. I'm going to give you just a quick something probably already know. Now, hammer code article three section 17, every officer of the city before entering upon the duties has to take an oath of office that I will and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter. A hammer PD, all members of the department are held to the highest standards to serve adherence to the policy procedure and the requirements of those standards. We exist not to serve ourselves, we exist to serve the public in the system of our amra. I did that for my basically 14 years here. I put the city and the citizens of our amra at the foremost. And when things were not going the way should have been, I made that a parent to my staff, and that basically caused my career. And so with that I do, 8BD policy procedure, we will have no compromise for crime, relapse, prosecution of criminals, recognize the badge of office as public face, to be held so long as I am true to the ethics of police service And those are the words of your chief Mr. Chief Kennedy qualified retirees section 209.2. I'll have a code all full times what officer this department who were authorized to and did carry concealed weapon Shall be issued ID card with CW approval full time support officer in this department who were authorized to and did carry concealed weapon. Shelby issued ID card with CW approval. For purpose of this polyby, I only repaired a piece officer who else qualified accepted service display retirements, which I did. I was retired IOD basically to my ears, which was a result of basically three years of SWOT not wearing hearing protectors with monthly training for a lot of loud things. On 1-8 and 1-9-25, Detective Tran was left who is a detective, I believe, that would handle the prime that we'll be talking about, was left both Cole and the email messages regarding that I would like to be here to discuss the foursary and POO.A. issues because he is also P.O.A. I was also vice president P.O.A. Mr. Duncan. Mr. Duncan. I contact the councilman Loni and ask him to cut. Mr. Duncan. Mr. Duncan. Right at time already. You have five minutes. Can I give over? Please wrap up. Please wrap. Is that all right? I'm sorry. Please wrap up. Keep going. Please wrap up. Well, I have a hand on. I've contacted everybody that I could to try to resolve this problem. And the last thing that I heard from the sheep today was he had no authority to. Well, I think he has authority to because the hammer code prompts everybody here until you change it. And right now he's reluctant to give me my D in badge, which was unfortunately lost or displaced. I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him, I told him disqualifying. The only reason why the chief has reluctance is because he knows who I am and what I did. And you will know when you read this. Number third, just a little bit more. I'm a third generation police officer. Third generation combat veteran. Honor, we retire from this department. I expect this department to act honorably and I expect it to do follow the laws and I will hold people accountable. And this will be more explanation to you. We'll give you a full view of what's going on. Thank you so much for your comment. I appreciate you giving me the extra time. And I hope to hear from you. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Next up, we have Brian Lee. Thank you very much. Hope you're a happy New Year and keep everybody safe and safe. Thank you. I go. Distinguished Honorable Mayor Wang and distinguished council members and other personnel to state this late to keep me up opportunity to express my comment. My name is Brian Lee. I live in 316, Montezuma Avenue. Around the right beef after Christmas, I have noticed the public state lights bulb went out. So I reported to the city on the answering machine. Life perl needs to be replaced. I expect a couple days somebody will come up to replace because it's relating to the safety issue. Since there's no lights in front of my house, only two lights. And since the happy blood is dark, and one thing you might have in you is a porous sac. The coyotes often come around, and very few people walk around. This is a dark, it's not really a desirable situation. So I called every other day that I called a city hall, no response. Finally I called and somebody answered the phone and she says, we are working on it. So I just, I politely asked her, what was the reason that delay has been about 10 days? And she told me, it's a personal problem. Only two people are working in this department. So it is a personal problem. As a citizen, there's a solution then. For instance, if I have your permission, I can hire a private company to come and replace the bulb. I don't know how much they will charge. Then I can you can reimburse to me. It is the personal problems. Well, you can ask us to raise them tax so you can hire more people. So, I just came here not to complain if that's the personal issue. I want to know how can I help with this, to serve the issues in under this disaster time, it may be a timid issue, but to us it's not timid, I think it's safe. Thank you for listening. May I be excused? Yes. Thank you so much for your comment. You're feel free to leave. Feel free to stay as well. We might address your comment later. Next up, we have Jennifer In. Thank you Madam Mayor and Council members again. One thing I have forgotten to bring up lately is at the corner of Hidalgo and Commonwealth, Hidalgo is the larger street, had north to south, much much wider than Commonwealth is, but only Hidalgo has a stop sign. And the Universitors would ask me to bring this up again because I nearly got T-bone down the way here. Because when you cross over Commonwealth, the people on Hadoog don't realize that it's not a four-way stop. Can we get one of those little signs that say two-way stop or whatever it is two-way only so we can stop almost getting hit all the time? That would be great. I hope I avoid that forever, but somebody's eventually going to get hit there because people just don't realize it at all. You know that I am a member of the DRB, our designer view board. So I'm speaking for myself as an individual because we're closing in, you know, with a number of months here that it'll be a year since zoning has been approved. And I was very excited to hear as part of that process that we're never going to let it go 35, 40 years again. And we're going to be talking about that every year. I think one of the things that would be helpful for us to have is the community more clarification on is the ministerial approval. What exactly is getting ministerial approval? What exactly is getting ministerial approval? I have no idea. I know it's happening because the planning commission doesn't have as many meetings as it used to. Obviously some things are going through because we've got low income housing that's going through on some of the projects. So there are some that, that's the way it's going with the state laws. But I think there could be a little more clarification for the public to understand when that happens, what properties are on it. I know there's still the 10-day appeal process, which is good, but if you don't know what was looked at, how do you appeal within 10 days? So I think the community could use some more clarification on that when that comes back for our one- year zoning review. And that's it today. Thank you all very much. And again, staff and everyone has done a great job in this very challenging time for Southern California and we really appreciate it. I know some people are living here who lost their homes. We have one person who lost their home who's staying with a friend on our block. So I think we can continue to pull together the city and really try and support our neighbors. Thank you. Thank you again. A couple of quick topics tonight. As Jennifer just noticed, it's been a while since we had a meeting of the Planning Commission. In fact, it's been four months since we last had a Planning Commission meeting. And just for transparency and everything, I think it might be very, very useful. They have an internal document there showing the status of all the development operations going on in the city if they were to just post that. I don't know how frequently it's updated maybe weekly, maybe more often, maybe less often, on the city website. So at least we can see what's going on. We know there were other things that you were discussing today in closed session with regarding the church property just north of Martha Baldwin School, just south of the Almanzo Park Recreation Center there. Be interesting to know what's going on with that. Is the church interested in selling its entire property? It does have a lot of parking lot. Space is there a possibility that some of that might be being made available to the city to do affordable housing or to expand the recreation facilities there. We know you're limited in how much you can tell us, but it would be helpful for the public just to have some broad clue as to what's going on, even if we don't need to know all the specifics and everything. Second item, it kind of got pushed off the front page, specifically locally, but that was just honoring Jimmy Carter, a person whom I think just was the model of in his years after the presidency, in the model of public service, on every issue you can almost imagine from human rights to affordable housing. And just immense dedication, traveling around the world, taking out his own hammer and everything there, a really great person. And lastly, just remembering our friends, particularly up in Altadena. I walked a couple of precincts for Sasha up in northern Altadena. Some of those precincts really are no more. There are beautiful little communities up there and you know my heartfelt synthies go out to the people in that area and just whatever we can do to assist them. I believe maybe we had some fire department apparatus up there helping on that fire or something. I'm not 100% sure. But just keeping them in mind. Thank you very much. That's it for tonight. Yeah. Thank you for your comment. Do we have anyone on zoom wishing to speak? Metamere there are not any raised hands on zoom at this time. All right Next we have council communications Councilmember on dr. D. Stoutler would you like to start? Thank you. Thank you mayor so much And thank you to all of you who came here this evening to share with us your ideas. We appreciate you and those online as well. I had a question. Maybe it's time for Council to look at and maybe we already have it and you guys can let me know. You know, I know other cities are utilizing online assistance for notification if there's something that needs to happen on their home site. So for example, if there's a light out, you know, sometimes getting on a phone and waiting for a call to be responded to immediately is not always the easiest way to have and write. It's not as successful. We have staff out in the field so much working on items. So I'm wondering whether we have something online that people can actually send a message to a department that may be able to be helpful. Do we have that currently city manager? And what is that, what is that referred to as? It's called an online service request. Okay. And do we have something that can be done via telephone, right? Like just a quick submission, you know, submit something via online or off their phone. So for example, the gentleman who had an issue with his lights, can that be done quickly so he doesn't stay on the phone trying to get through to somebody but know that it's submitted? Yes, absolutely. We do have that. Okay. And that's done online. Is there one area or is it within each department that has that? So online it is one area. It's a service request. And then the phones, we have different numbers that you can call to leave a message, whether it's graffiti or other service requests. And it's sort of the same phone numbers that you gave out during the emergency, right, the departments, each department had a particular phone. So if that, if somebody doesn't, isn't able to get to the phone because they're working on maybe somebody else's program, does it roll over into like a message or does it roll over into maybe a message that says, okay, great. So it says a message that you can go online and fill this form out or you can leave a message and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. That's correct. Okay. And we'd be happy to push that out again on social media right now because we've been posting multiple messages every day. We want to make sure that we stay up in the algorithm. So we're probably way to week or so and then we can put something back out for commonly used numbers, which would be like graffiti hotline, to get bulky items through, just a combination of phone numbers or questions that people might have as they're navigating out of the windstorm and into requesting other services. We'd be happy to put those common numbers out. And do we look, do you as a city manager, do you look at how those requests move through each department? I mean, not counting the police and the fire. They have their own timeframes in which they do things like a three-minute call, getting to a place. But do you watch those to see how we are providing the services? We do. And some of those are out of our control. So in the instance that some of the areas of the city have had problematic power sources through, say, Edison to their streetlights as you're very well aware in your area. We are working with Edison. We don't have a current Edison rep right now, so it's been very challenging. But we are monitoring those. We're also watching how Edison is working with residents on rectifying those situations, but we're looking at those from not just our standpoint, but then all around. No, I appreciate that. Thank you. And so I bring this up because I think that those are the kinds of things that are important to us and to our residents to make sure that they're getting their services in a timely manner. So thank you, thank you for answering those. And for coming up with the idea to push that back out again. That's probably it for me, Mayor. Thank you. Councilmember Maloney. Thank you, Councilmember Maloney. Thank you Madam Mayor. Yeah it's been a eventful week obviously. I just say it again. I just like to offer condolences to everyone who's been affected by these fires. You know that so many different people in my life, different walks of life, different areas of the community have been affected by this, from evacuating to, you know, just smoke issues to losing their homes completely. It was nice. I do think that Elham were probably gained a few residents, if only temporarily, because there's lots of people that came down and are looking for places to stay. I know we had some friends of mine that were evacuated that planning on sleeping on our couch, but my brother's house was open, so they stayed there for a couple days and then they left and then there's an empty house nearby that another family is able to move into. So appreciate the fact that Alejandro residents are doing their part and trying to help. My wife and I went out to PCC on Saturday and to just do something to feel useful and it was a madhouse. There's probably as many volunteers as people coming to the site and the people coming to the site are probably four to one donations versus pickup. So I think the entire community really felt like the need to do something. To the point where they almost could not accept any more donations of any overflowing with clothes and food and water, I mean there's a mountain of bottled water, which is important although my sustainability side, you know, it caused but people need water. And it was really nice to see people going out of their way going to Costco picking up big pallets of water just feeling like they could do something so that was very nice I know that the American Legion in Elambra is hosting a a supply drive that all souls Had had started immediately and they were really working hard on collecting goods I think it does seem like that the people that are sort of in flux right now may not need some of the supplies that have been raised but as they get back on their feet they will. So I'm glad to see that some of these groups and organizations are packing those up, logging them away because they know this is not going to be over in a couple of weeks when people's attention starts to wane a little bit. This is going to be a multi-year effort of sustaining these people and supporting them. So I know that our community will be committed to that because it's several miles away, but obviously there's many people in our midst even here tonight that are affected directly by these fires. It's the Altoninist definitely part of my community growing up and I knew a lot of people that were affected. I did want to say from Alhamber's perspective, everyone here deserves big congratulations and kudos for the work that you all did during the disaster. Alhamber wasn't as affected as the city's hit by fire of course. But anytime we had the violent winds like that, things were flying off roofs and trees are falling and the power's getting knocked out and there's all sorts of issues that are happening up there. And I think we came through with flying colors. And I wanna tell all the department heads how much we appreciate that. Everything that I heard was that everyone was working well together and figuring things out how to not duplicate efforts, how not to get territorial about stuff which can happen in any scenario. I think that speaks to the leadership of a city manager and her team and all the departments. So, and your senior staff. So thank you for that. It made us feel very confident and I heard nothing but good things from the community members. People will, as we all know, people will find something to complain about in any situation. I know that there were some complaints out there, but on the scale of what we went through to what people's concerns were, they're pretty minimal. So that says quite a bit. So thank you all for doing that. I especially want to thank City staff and our public information team for pumping out information. When we got that, errant evacuation order, everyone's freaking out about that. When we got the orders about drinking water and we had to make sure that our folks knew this is not affecting Elhamber or in good shape. And if it were affecting Elhamber, we would also pump that out there as well. So thank you to everyone. You make our jobs look a lot easier when things function like well. So thank you to everyone. You make our jobs a lot easier when things function like that. So thank you to everyone's team and everyone else. The mayor was able to secure some donuts and coffee from donated by Starbucks on what was that Wednesday morning and she needed muscle, but some reason she asked me to help to just deliver a coffee. It was really nice seeing the teams at PD City Hall, the city yard and the fire department working together and really pulling it all nighter in some cases to address our issues. So thank you for that and it worked to the mayor. So thanks. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Masa. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Masa. Thank you, Mayor. Without trying to sound too repetitive, I just want to express my gratitude as well to all city staff. I mean, for the city manager for executing everything so well to all the city directors and departments, everyone that's worked so far into this and gone above and beyond to make sure that the community felt safe and felt at ease. I think we are in a very fortunate situation or position that we were for the most part and affected by all of this when comparison to other local communities. I think by now we all know somebody that has been affected directly by buyers. I know several families who have lost their homes entirely, not just damaged their homes, but just completely lost their homes. And they have their health and they have their lives and that's what matters. They will rebuild, but it's going to be tough. So we're very fortunate to be where we are as a city. But again, thank you to all the staff, the community that came together to help others, who's volunteered time to go into these donation sites as well. As I guess other customers have said, this isn't completely over, the items will be needed in the future. I do know that as an example, I received a call from the American Legion Post yesterday. Locally over on Stoneman, they will be issuing out sleeping bags, tents, and other things that are much, much needed. But again, I know families who walked out, basically, with the clothes, with the DJs that were wearing that night, left their cars behind, some unfortunately couldn't find their pets. You know, so, so you know, bears to all those families and I think Alhambra is here the support as we've seen with fire and police, you know, supporting Al Tadina, Pasadina, and just very grateful for that. So thank you and you know, all the best to those who have been affected. Vice Mayor Lee. Thank you Mayor Wong. It's been a really crazy week. I've been walking around thinking I'm really calm and everything's fine. Well, Elhambera and really we're really blessed and Elhambera has been relatively safe. But it's been a crazy week. This is the first time I had a when we had the wind storm last week, and I'm thinking about it, I have a Lexwoods very low to the ground. And I came to a pile of branches on my street, and I said, should I run it over? And these are not true. So I had to actually get out and use my bare hands and move all the branches away. That was the first time in my life I had to do that. And I think it's crazy for me that I've been very, very blessed with a peaceful life. We survive earthquakes, but I think I'm going through some sort of trauma right now. I have a family that's with us right now who called us at 4 o'clock in the morning last week and asked for help. We placed them in one of our where we're a horse star. And the husband said to me, we came out, we had minutes to evacuate, they living in Aladena. And looked at him, he said, he's wearing sweatpants, sweatshirts. He said, this is what I had. He came out, he came out in there, he's pajamas with his family with two dogs. I'm telling the story because I feel like it's so surreal. I'm staring at this man and saying, oh, okay. And he said, our house is totally gone. There is his neighbor who went back and said, your house is gone. And here we are, we're talking about this in a very peaceful place, but you think about it. I have no idea how it feels when your house is gone. You have no place to go back to. So they've been calling the insurance company. They went to Target by the clothes and all that. It's just really surreal for me. And that's the only thing I can express. It's, you know, living on Hamburg is so peaceful but I think what it is I'm trying to figure out how to help everyone and I you know what our council member I said very very clearly that we have to step out our comfort zone and try to help everyone that we can either by donating or just calling people or just make sure they're okay. I think all of us have friends and family or neighbors that we know they're being affected by the fires. And I also want to make sure that I want to thank all the firefighters, the first responders and military personnel. I heard that they have been military personnel have been activated to or involve very heavily in containing the fire. It's crazy that we'll have to watch TV every single day as it was COVID-19. Remember the during the pandemic you watch TV every single day and I just could not leave the TV and that's what I've been doing for a whole week and still today. And I think that it takes disasters like this for us to come back again to say, look, we got to be ready. We have to be, we have to be good neighbors. We have to help each other out. And also I want to emphasize the point that I wasn't ready for an emergency because we had power outage for three two days. I thought I was really ready but I couldn't find my flashlight for a long it's time. So that's what it is is that we have to always be make sure that we know how to evacuate quickly within a minute. Just like the family that we helped out, they only had a few minutes to get their paperwork. So I'm just saying that again, it's a wake-up call for all of us, for me especially who's been living a very, very cushy, nice life, so to speak, but things are not going to be the same. There will be more and more of this coming to us and just make sure that we stay awake and stay vigilant. Thank you, Vice-Marie. to Councilmember Maloney for joining me and carrying the stuff with me. And one thing I was able to observe and learn about our staff is that one of the reasons that they're able to work so efficiently effectively is the collaboration that they have that everybody is working closely with everybody else and we're being really good neighbors to our neighboring cities and we're able to help them. They're able to help us. So thanks to the leadership, our city manager, and your executive team for providing that leadership that allows the staff to ensure our safety for our residents. So really a big thank you to that. And I also wanna thank our neighbors. I reached out to a lot of neighbors during this crisis. Tuesday night was very very very scary with the wind gusting and the trees falling. I reached out to the neighbors a lot of our neighbors had power outages, but they also understood how how busy our city staff must be, they were patient, they waited days and days in power outages. So I just wanted to say a big thank you for our community, for your understanding in this crisis as well. And so a couple of items during today's agenda, since we're changing the public comment window to the beginning of the meeting, I would like to make sure we're doing a public outreach, put it on social media and make sure our community understands that we're changing that. And for our six months testing period, just so that our community understands that. And then a couple of comments I've heard. So piggyback on Council Member Andrade's settlers comment. I really appreciate that you bring it up. I think from what I'm hearing is that our community calling requests and want to something fixed, whether it's treelai or some other things. And what sometimes they are not able to see is how much our staff is working behind the scenes to get them repaired. Sometimes it's out of our control, sometimes it's Edison, sometimes there's other delays that's causing the delays. So it's not, they don't always see what's happening behind the scenes. So what I'm wondering about is, and I'm going to ask staff to maybe bring storm and looking to options is to see how we can maybe provide an update or allow the community member whoever made the request to track the item so that they, if they, if they have to wait, you know, two weeks a month, whatever it is that they also get updates that they are able to see the reason or if this item is closed, that they're able to see why it was closed that sometimes that the lack of that communication could cause misunderstandings. So that I think that's something that I would like to explore and I would love to see if we can provide that kind of function in our tools for for those items. And then I know that we have talked about emergency preparedness that we all agree. This is a wake up call for all of us. We're very fortunate that we were not directly impacted by the fire. But there's so many questions firing our heads. There's so many questions about what ifs. Right. So I think it's a good opportunity for us to talk about that. And I think that our city has emergency preparedness plan. I know separately we're also working on our long-term hazard mitigation plan. Those are two different plans. I would like to request that we bring back when staff is ready. We'll bring back our emergency preparedness plan to the Council for discussion so that we can look at ways to modify and make changes and improve that. And also that would be an opportunity for our community to also hear about our plan and for them to partake in this process as well. Lastly, we have our, I just want to announce that we have our Lunar New Year event coming up, celebrate the year of the snake at the 2025 Lunar New Year Festival on February 8th. So head to Main Street to enjoy delicious food, explore unique booths, and experience vibrant cultural performance for more information visit alhambarallunanewyear.com. With that, we have complete all the items on this evening's agenda. Our next regular meeting will be on Monday, January 27th. This meeting is now adjourned. I'm going to make a little bit of a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. you you