Music Thank you. 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 I'm going to be 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 Beverly Hills City Council a adjourned meeting. I am parking authority meeting. Today is January 9th, 2025. It is a little after 7 o'clock and if I could ask everyone to rise if they can and ask our esteemed fire chief, Gregory Barton, if he would lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Great, thank you. Right on over your heart. Ready begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and the Republic for which it stands. One nation, another, individual, and liberty. It's for all. Thank you. Thank you. And if the city clerk would please call the roll. Yes, good evening. We have two roll calls for this evening. The first one is for City Council. Council Member Wells. Here. Council Member Corman. here. Council member Cormin. Council member Mirish. Vice Mayor Nazarian here. And Mayor Friedman. Here. And the next is for the parking authority. Director Wells here. Director Cormin. Here. Director Mirish. Vice Chair Nazarian here. And Chair Friedman. Here. Go right to item B3, text BH, text messages on any setting related topic. Maybe sent to 310-596-4265. City staff will acknowledge receipt of the text message within one business day. However, resolution of issues may take longer. If you would like to receive updated text alerts from the Beverly Hills Police Department, please text BHPD alert to 888-777. Text alerts will keep you informed of any police activity within the city and we will soon learn another text number when our city managers report is given. Telephone call in is 310-288-2288. Members of the public are invited to listen to the meeting telephonically or share or communications on this phone line. And with that, we will go to any public comment on the parking authority consent items. No, we do not have any comment. And if I could ask Council Member Mirish to read the first two items under the minutes of the parking authority consent item and then we will vote on those and then go to the other two items under the minutes of the parking authority consent item and then we will vote on those and then go to the other two items. I move the adoption of the consent agenda as follows. One consideration of the parking authority of the minutes of the meeting of August 1, 2023 to consideration by the parking authority of the minutes of the meeting of September 19, 2023. Second. And if the clerk can call the roll, please. Councillor Member, I mean director Wells yes Director Cormin abstain I think I think I think it's okay Yes Vice chair Nazarian yes in chair Friedman yes did council member a well-winter what thank you? Okay, so we have three so director Wells abstained. Correct. And Director Corman abstained. Correct. Okay, and if I can also have Council Member Mirsch Reed, item 3 and 4 under the Parking Authority Consent Agenda. Further more, I approve the adoption of consent agenda as follows. Three, consideration by the Parking Authority of the Minutes of the Meeting of September 10, 2024. Four, consideration by the Parking Authority of the Minutes of the Meeting of September 17th, 2024. Director Wells, yes. Director Corman, Director Mirish, Vice Chair Nazarian, and Chair Friedman. Yes. Okay, moving along to item E1, if I could have, we're going to split items number 1 and 2 from the rest of them. Before I do that, do we have any requests for polls? We're going to split items number one and two from the rest of them. Before I do that do we have any requests for polls of any of the consent items one through 19. Having seen none we will then go to council member Mirish for item number one and two first. I move the adoption of the consent agenda as follows. One consideration by the City Council of the minutes of the regular meeting of August 1st, 2023. Two consideration by the City Council of the minutes of the regular meeting of September 19th, 2023. Second. Councillor the roll. Thank you. Councillor Mover Wells. I'm staying. Councillor Member Corman. Abstain. Councillor Member Mirish. Yes. Vice Mayor Nazarian. Yes. And Mayor Friedman. Yes. Moving on to our items number three through 19. Let's go three through 12 if Councillormember Wells could read those and then 13 through 19 if Councilmember Corman did those I move for the adoption of the consent agenda as follows number three consideration by the City Council of the minutes of the study session meeting of September 10th 2024 Number four consideration by the City Council of the minutes of the adjourned regular meeting of September 10th, 2024. Number five, consideration by the City Council of the minutes of the study session, meeting of September 17th, 2024. Number six, consideration by the City Council of the minutes of the regular meeting of September 17th, 2024. Number seven, review of the budgeted demands paid covering dates December 3rd, 2024 to January 2nd, 2025. Number eight, payroll disbursement report covering dates December 3rd, 2024 to January 2nd, 2025. Number nine, amending the Beverly Hills municipal code regarding public contract bid limits, second reading for adoption. Number ten requests from the NAACP for approval of the Alleyway Closure Associated with the Imps Awards nominee luncheon at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on September, on Saturday, February 1, 2025. Number 11, cost sharing agreement among Santa Monica Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency members. Number 12, agreement with MAT construction corporation for professional project coordination and construction management services for 9510 Brighton Way seismic upgrade project phase one and approval of a purchase order in the not-to-excite amount of 260,000 $280 And I move the adoption of the consent agenda as follows 13 an encroachment permit and covenant with BH luxury residences LLC owner of the property located at 9900 Wilshire Boulevard to allow a temporary pedestrian bridge connecting the two properties to encroach over North Santa Monica Boulevard to facilitate construction access to the Wendell Hills Project. Number 14, amendment number one to the agreement with Lorcan O'Hurley, he architects for architectural and engineering design for the Public Safety Center at Wilshire, La Sienaica Metroro, Purple Line Station, and approval of a change per disorder in the amount of $99,000 for a total not-to-excite amount of $172,975. Number 15, amendment number two to an agreement with fair and peers to provide traffic review support services for the One Beverly Hills Project, and approval of a corresponding change per disorder in the amount of $100,000 for a not-to-excitement of $200,000. Number 16, amendment number four to the agreement with GaffCon PM-CMLC, formerly GaffCon Inc. for labor compliance consulting services and approval of a change purchase order in the amount of $50,000 for a not-to-exc exceed amount of $150,000 for fiscal year 2024-25. Number 17, a per disorder to Plummer's Depot Inc. for a total not to exceed amount of $764,448 in 20 cents for purchase of one compressed natural gas hydro excavation vehicle and approval and appropriation from the water enterprise fund for $734,448.20 for purchases specified hydro excavation vehicle. Number eight team, a word of a contract to unlimited environmental ink for the building demolition project at 1959 South Los Siena Gaborlavard and approval of a corresponding purchase order in the not-to-excited amount of $204,585 and approval of plans and specifications therefore with respect to design criteria and pursuant to the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act's Sequa, City Council will also consider finding the project exempt from further review under Sequa. Number 19, award of contracts to various contractors for the 9510 Brighton Way seismic upgrade project phase one and approval of corresponding purchase orders to various contractors. The contract work and the total not-to-excite amount of $985,937 and approval of plans and specifications, therefore with respect to design criteria and Pursuant to the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act, Sequa City Council will also consider finding the project to exempt from further review under sequel High second Councilmember Wells. Yes, Councilmember Corman. Yes, Councilmember Mirish. Yes, Vice Mayor Nazaria. Yes, Council member Corman? Yes. Council member Mirish? Yes. Vice Mayor Nazaria? Yes. And Mayor Friedman? Yes. Okay. So as everyone may notice, we skipped our presentations and a certificate of appointment. And we are also going to continue item number G1. And the reason for that is that, you know, tonight really is anything but a typical city council meeting. We are dealing with a catastrophic event in the LA County. On behalf of my city council colleagues and the Beverly Hills community, we send our heartfelt thoughts to our neighbors affected by these fires. We'd also like to acknowledge the first responders on the frontlines battling these historic wildfires for three days now. While there are currently no direct impacts within Beverly Hills, we continue to closely monitor the situation 24 hours a day. The numbers are constantly changing but as it stands at the moment, more than 350 people are still under mandatory evacuation across the region. I'm sorry? 350,000 people are under mandatory evacuation. Thousands of structures and homes have been destroyed in both the palisades fire and the eaten fire. People's entire lives have been lost and the largest fires are still burning and are not contained. More than 300,000 are without power across the county. There are long-term housing and childcare needs. Debris removal will be an arduous task not to mention the health hazards present in the air and of course, the mental health impact on all those affected. The weeks, months, yes, even years ahead will be long and difficult. I know I speak for the entire Beverly Hills community when I say we are here to assist and support our neighbors. Out of respect, I would like to keep this evening's meeting to approximately 30 minutes, taking care of our obligations and city business while also receiving an update on the fires. Before I turn it over to City Manager Nancy Hunt Coffee, I would ask that everyone write down the information that our City Manager will be providing. We maintain accurate information on our site. In the past 12 hours, both the City of LA and County of LA have placed fear in our residents by pushing out inaccurate evacuation information. This has been both frightening and frustrating. Our emergency staff is in constant communication with their counterparts in Los Angeles and have the accurate information posted almost immediately online. So with that, I'd like to turn it over to our city manager for an overview of our preparation efforts. Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council. This evening we will have brief reports from our fire chief, our police chief, and our director of public works. Before I turn to them I wanted to make a few remarks. Beverly Hills has been fortunate so far that we haven't had fires here in our city but we do ask everyone to remain vigilant, particularly over the next week or so. I have had people call me and say, oh, I think maybe there's a fire. I think maybe I see something. I do want to encourage people, if you see something, as we always say, if you see something, say something, please call 911 if you see any suspicious activity that you think may be related to this. As the mayor mentioned, a point of frustration over the past 24 hours has been incorrect information put out by other government agencies. The fire chief will address this a bit more in his remarks. However, as a result of this, these couple of unfortunate incidents, I wanted to just take a moment to address where the community can get legitimate information that's being put out by the City of Beverly Hills. So as you can see on the screen, I am currently on the Beverly Hills City website. It's Beverly Hills All Run Together.org. If we scroll down just a little bit. Let me move the microphone over here. Just right down here, it says emergency and disaster information. This is a page that is updated on a regular basis with information that's useful to our community. I want to take just a moment to walk through this and talk through some of the valuable information that's here. There is a video that our mayor put together directly with our chief of our fire chief and our chief of police that was made just yesterday that gave some valuable information about what's going on in the city of Beverly Hills. We cannot emphasize enough over and over again, the importance of preparing for a disaster. Please have it to go back, ready, that has your essentials in it. The best situation is when the community takes care of itself, when people take care of themselves, they take care of their neighbors, they don't have to rely on the city for assistance in all of the different areas. So please consider how to prepare yourselves, which also includes evacuation plans. Should you see information or issues related to Edison, Southern California Edison. They are their own company, the city does not run the power in the city. We have contact information where you can find information about outages, where to report downed lines, et cetera. We have information here. We had people calling to ask if they needed to boil their water. There were boil water notices. There are currently boil water notices in different areas of California. We do not have boil water notices. You can look here and we will update this information. What I really wanted to drive home tonight is the section that talks about emergency notifications for the city of Beverly Hills. We have a disaster hotline in the city that is up and running very quickly. So if your computer is down, if your power is out, if your phone isn't charged, if you have a landline, just pick up the phone and call the disaster hotline, that number is 310-550-4680. We actually have an AM radio station 1500 AM. BHTV is a great source for information. The city runs an ex account, formerly known as Twitter as well as Instagram. We are regularly posting information there. I did want to emphasize as the mayor was saying, a good way to get information is via text. So what you want to do is open up your text. Pretend that you're going to send it to, you send the message to 888-777. You want to send one text that says, bevhills to that number. That will get you all of the emergency information that goes out. You want to send a text also to BHPD alert. And that will send you all of the information from BHPD alert. So again, that number is 888-777. Send a note to that number that says Bev Hills. Send a second note to that number that says BHPD alert, and you will be subscribed to emergency information in our BHPD alert system. Let me just scroll down here. We have current information. We have the most generous community on Earth. The people in this community astound me every day with their generosity and their desire to help. What we want to do right now is to encourage people to donate to the organizations that are listed here on this page. We have a lot of people. We have so many people bringing donations to the fire department. They cannot eat them all. They're just humanly impossible. So we are encouraging people to donate to these organizations. People have food that they want to donate to these organizations. If people have food that they want to donate, the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank can accept donations of food. They are helping with distributing food to those areas that have been impacted by the fire disasters going on. So that is here. This is a great, this little flyer that's here. It's a great thing to print out and just put on your fridge. It's a quick note that says, where to call if you have questions, where to text. If you want to get signed up, where to look on the website if you want information. So please take a look at this website. It will help you get signed up. These are the legitimate information sources that you should rely on. I do want to note that the city also has the ability to reach out to residents. We can call all of the residents in the city. We can text all of the residents in the city. We just thanks to the generosity of the city council, we just installed sirens throughout the city where we can either put on a sound or we can announce, you know, make announcements. So in the police cars are equipped with speakers. If there is a call for an evacuation, we have multiple ways to get a hold of people so look for legitimate information coming from the city of Beverly Hills to guide you in these decisions. I wanted to give a quick note about where we are as a city employee family. We do have two employees who lost their homes in the fires. We are working to support them as an organization. We also have 76 employees who were impacted by the fires, many of whom were evacuated from their homes. Some are back home, some are not. So we are working to support them at this time. I wanted to take one more moment to talk about what happens in the city when an emergency happens or when there is a threat of an emergency. We have a space in the police department called the emergency operation center. It's a large room. It's equipped with all kinds of technology and screens. When the EOC, the Emergency Operations Center, is activated. We actually reorganized the entire city. Every department reports to the EOC to support the city, so we always think of police and fire. We appreciate their efforts to protect and keep our city safe. And supporting them as a whole team of people across the entire city. Our staff gets regrouped into a whole team of people across the entire city. Our staff gets regrouped into whole new structure, operations, logistics, etc. I'll design to support and protect our city. With that and our operations chief under those circumstances with a fire is our chief of fire, our fire chief. And with that, I'd like to have fire chief Greg Barton come up and say a few words. Thank you. Thank you, good evening everybody. I just wanted to give you a quick brief of what the fire department has done over the last few days. And also kind of the community preparedness and also the issue with the notifications that occurred twice now. So first of all, what is the fire department been doing since this happened on Tuesday morning? We've been patrolling the hillsides with not only our fire prevention staff but also all of our fire engines have been out driving around talking to the neighbors, reassuring the neighbors of what's going on in the community and also looking out and being very vigilant of what's going on. Yesterday we staffed up another fire engine at Fire Station 2, so we have more resources to respond to any type of incident. And we did that for a couple of reasons. One with the winds that were blowing and the fires going on, but also the drawdown and resources from a regional perspective, we wanted to make sure that the City of Beverly Hills was protected. On Tuesday, when the fires started in the Palisades, the City of Beverly Hills sent a fire engine over to assist with that wild end fire to help suppress it and take care of the community there. And as soon as we did that, we hired back all of our personnel. So we re- re-entangled our staffing level for the entire time. We've recently hired a bunch of very experienced fire command staff with a wealth of knowledge in the wild land fire incident. One of our recent assistant chiefs, who's currently assigned a fire marshal, was actually the incident commander in the woosly fire a couple years ago. So the wealth and knowledge that we have with our deputy chief or two assistant chiefs is outstanding, especially in the region, region wide. So we're very well known for that. We're continually monitoring all the fires in the area. We, when the fires started, the sunset fire, which was the one that started about five o'clock yesterday, right when that happened, we put resources out in the field to actually monitor what was going on. We drove the streets. We worked with the police department to actually make sure there's a way to get people out, evacuations and everything else. So we monitored it the entire time. And then after that one kind of settled down and then the one in Studio City started up a little bit later, we were monitoring that as well, to make sure any type of threat to the city of Beverly Hills was addressed and we were on it right away. A couple of other things that we've done for preparedness, we're working on a community wildfire protection plan that we're gonna start this year, which actually looks at everything that we've done, what can we do better to protect the community, North of sunset? We are the longest recognized firewise community in the state of California. We've been that since our 2005. At that time we were third in California and 114th in the nation. California now has over 900 firewise communities and we're leading the way since 2005 and we keep doing more and more. And that basically shows what the city is doing and what the community's doing to prepare for a wild land fire. And what is the community done to help us? Well, brush inspections every year. We inspect about 1500 properties and it's the community members and the residents that are doing an outstanding job clearing their brush to get the vegetation down, which allows the firefighters the ability to get in there and help protect their structures and their lives. the fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire sure we can get people out at all times. And then a couple of things we do, we've done pre-planning of the area. So when outside resources come into help us, they are able to get books to understand where all the houses are, where the pools are, where the evacuation routes are, where safety zones are. So it provides a safety for the firefighters, but also provides them a knowledge of what's going on. We also have beacon boxes. So if you drive the north end, north of sunset, you'll see these red boxes with a little red light on top. And they have all the pre-plants for the area. So that outside resources coming in can get that, get the information right away and get to work to help protect the property and save lives in Beverly Hills. The other thing that we have and was brought up is we have our just-in- case Beverly Hills program where you get to know your neighbors so you can help and you know who needs help to be evacuated and if people are evacuated. So when the police department, the fire department comes up and asks, what do we need? Who's here? Who's not? Your neighbor knows what's going on. So it's neighbors helping neighbors. And then the last thing I wanted to address was the alerts that occurred. So the sunset fire was occurring. We were messaging the information out to the community. So calm the community down and say, we're aware of the fire. It's not a threat to Beverly Hills right now and we're well prepared, we're well staffed and we're doing everything we can. And so let's, you can feel very safe for your act. And then as you're all aware, a we a message went out that we were in a evacuation area, part of Beverly Hills was. That was issued by the City of Los Angeles Fire Department. It was a mistake on their part. We researched it and found out what happened and it was a true mistake on their part. They were very apologetic of what occurred. They guaranteed us that would never happen again and we've reached out to ensure that's not going to happen again. They don't have the right to tell Beverly Hills residents to evacuate, that is us. We're the ones that can do that and that was the messaging that we tried to get out was if you need to evacuate, the Beverly Hills will tell you that you need to evacuate. Not the City of Los Angeles, not LA County Fire Department, not LA County, the City of Beverly Hills. And that was a mistake on LA City's part. And they were very apologetic about it. Basically what ended up happening is in order to send this message out. They draw a box on a map of the area that they are going to use to make these notifications. It's commonplace for large cities to find a on the box to find a north-south street. They selected cold water canyon and sent the message out. They knew it was in the city of Beverly Hills. They made assumptions that notifications were made. They were never made. We didn't know about it until we received the notifications. In fact, the way I found out about it was one of our firefighters up at Fire Station 2 got the notice and said, what is this? And then that's when that started happening. And then we started getting the messaging out. So that's what occurred with the one last night from the city of Los Angeles. And then at four o'clock today, the county of Los Angeles sent a message out countywide. I know they're looking into it's all over the news what they're doing. I'm making an assumption of what occurred is you have to draw a box for the parameter of where you're gonna send that message. If you don't draw that box around that area where you're gonna send it and you hit send, it will send it to wherever you are, have the authority to send that notice. So for example, in Beverly Hills, we have the authority to send that message to the city of Beverly Hills, not anywhere else. And if we don't draw a parameter of where that's at and we push that button, it will go to everybody in Beverly Hills. The thought potentially is, either there was a software issue, a human issue, they're looking into it, they're gonna get back to us, they've received numerous phone calls from us, and I'm sure a lot of other people, they probably didn't draw that box, and hit the button and it went county wide. So that's kind of that situation. It was it was very I don't know how to put this but once it went out we all received phone calls. It was sad because people who evacuated from the police aid fire and other fires were in the local hotels. And they panicked and were starting to think about evacuating the entire hotels. So we were able to grab, get ahead of that and take care of it. Once we got it, city staff with policy and management, the communications within 10 minutes had messaging out to the entire city. The reverse 911 phone calls to about 70,000 people that went out within minutes of this happening to reduce any type of panicking that was occurring. We've talked to the county, the county's looking into it. We'll get more information and then we'll bring it back and let everybody know. So that's kind of where we're at from Fire Department perspective. Thank you Chief Mayor, would you like to continue through the next presentation? Thank you so much Chief Barton. Next up will be Chief of Police Mark Stainbrook to talk about the efforts of the Beverly Hills Police Department to support this wildfire incident. Thank you. So just briefly on those calls that went out at that time, we received over 140 911 calls an hour because of that messaging that went out because people were panicked about leaving. So we were able to respond to those. So far we're on tactical, modified tactical alert. That means all of our sworn personnel that are in the building, if they're not in patrol, they're in uniform and ready to deploy in the field. And we also have officers who are on reserve on standby to come in in the event that we need them. We have deployed over the last two nights, officers and supervisors to Santa Monica to help with anti-looting and patrolling their area, but we definitely had enough people here to cover our area. So we have placed extra patrol units in the hills area and covered six security units in the hills as well to look for any fires or suspicious activity. Our real-time watch center drones and cameras are pointed into the hills mainly to watch for hot spots, fire, smoke, and to notify a fire quickly if anything develops. And I would just like to stress that our community remain vigilant if they see any suspicious activity, if they see any fires or smoke to call 911 immediately and let us go investigate and pending questions or after the second take questions. Thank you. Thank you Chief. Next we'd like to call up our Director of Public Work, Shana Epstein, to focus mostly on water, moving water, fire hydrants, etc. So I'm focusing on water but I have to take my moment of shine for our department. and the early morning of Tuesday. Really for mitigation of preemptive debris removal. We topped off fuel for vehicles and generators. We began filling the reservoirs like we do for when there's any red flood. We had to fill the reservoirs. We had to fill the reservoirs. We had to fill the reservoirs. We had to fill the reservoirs. We had to fill the reservoirs. We had to fill the reservoirs. We topped off fuel for vehicles and generators, and we began filling the reservoirs like we do for when there's any red flag incident. Since Tuesday, we've had about 170 services that we've fulfilled. 19 tree-related, 11 electrical power traffic signal outages, 130 debris plus debris removals, including everything from tree limbs, traffic control devices, other infrastructures kind of landed into the public right of way. It's all equaled about 40 loads of 10 cubic yard trucks of removing debris from the city. Ask BH, this was their first natural disaster, handling the emergency hotline during regular business hours from Tuesday until about this afternoon before the big call. It was about 101 fire wind related calls. We were after hours last night from 530 to midnight, and we received 156 calls to help with the boil water alert as well as the evacuation that were widespread overreaching notifications that were covered. And then PD Dispatch handled the calls from midnight to 6 a.m. and Asp H. resumed in those in that after the alert that came this afternoon, we received 135 calls. So I just want to give that perspective. Fleet supports police and fire vehicles. They've made them the highest priority and also made sure that all the standby generators that we are portable are or tested and ready to go. And we also have two 1000-gallow water trailers that they have prepared for use if necessary. And facilities has had a number of signs, lose equipment that they've responded to as well that were all win related for the most part. Now I'm going to focus on water supply and operations due to many of the concerns that have occurred during the palisades and eaten fires. Going to begin with sharing how our system operates. The city has local groundwater supplies and purchases water from Metropolitan Water District. The city is one of the 13 original members of this collective water supplier. The water is distributed to customers through gravity but we have to move that water throughout the system to different elevations and we define those as 13 distinct pressure zones. There are 10 reservoirs that serve those pressure zones. At each reservoir there's pumps to move up water up hill and in addition we have three emergency connections with LADWP either to supplement or supplant the supply we get from metropolitan. Another critical part of municipal water system is the fire hydrants. The city manages 1,385 fire hydrants which we test in a five year cycle. The city's fire department is class A and to accomplish that 40 of the 100 requirements must be met and achieved by the city's water utility. When the city or county calls a red flag alert, this water operations by procedure fills the reservoirs and tops off the fuel for our generators, so if we lose power, we can still move water. Typically, we cycle the reservoirs down to 35% full in order to keep water quality at the highest levels in our system. Due to the City Council's support, Public Works is in the final months of testing the reservoir management system that will allow us to keep more water in the system so we won't need as long of a lead time to fill our reservoirs. In addition, our groundwater table serves as part of our reliability mix. The city has seven operational wells, two wells under construction, and we hope to develop at least one more so our plant can operate most efficiently and effectively to provide water resiliency. The City Council and Public Works Commission have been instrumental in supporting this resiliency through the water reliability charge and the 30 million revenue bond. The city's water system is meeting or exceed all water quality standards. All that being said we are still a municipal water an extreme multi-wire-o-fire event. The water quality events experienced by palisades and Pasadena are occurring because of two different situations. The ladder had debris and elevated turbidity from fire impacts, and that is why Pasadena has a water quality alert. Palisades, as reported by LADWP's General Manager lost water pressure at the 3000 foot elevation. They could not move the water fast enough to meet the demand at that elevation. They had water supply above and below that elevation, but just not there. So what we can do to prepare for that type of situation. The fire department has mutual aid agreements for aerial water or retardant drops. The water utility has emergency connections at different elevations with LEDWP and backup power to assist with moving water. In addition, if customers are asked to evacuate, please do not leave your sprinklers, hoses, or pool pumps on. Allow the water to be available and utilized by firefighters. And as we evaluate our new automated meter infrastructure system, we are investigating the best use of two-way meters. So we can turn off remotely in instances when homes are evacuated or unfortunately burnt down. The Public Works Department takes seriously their role as first responders and prepares continuously to be prepared. Thank you and the community for your continued support. One quick question. Can you just discuss the boil water order that came out and it's effect if any on Beverly Hills? Yeah, so there's no, that boil water looked does not affect the city of Beverly Hills. It affects the one zip code in Pacific palisades that was based off of them losing pressure. And we've had that instance occur here when we had a large main break on Loma Vista. We lost enough pressure that the regulations required you to do a boil water out of precaution. And again, that would be something that would be posted on our website. It would be posted by us. You would actually, if we have a boil water alert, we go door to door. We go door to door. And also, do we leave our sprinklers on? What did you say about that? No, we do not leave our sprinklers on. If you are in a fire zone, are you being asked to leave, turn off your sprinklers, turn off your hose, turn off your water pumps, let the water be used by the firefighters. There was a lot of chatter on the community chats about that and people were under the impression that they're helping, but it's just, it's causing more demand when we can't, and we're trying to focus the demand. Thank you, Director Epstein. Before I turn it back over Mayor, I neglected to mention one thing. So not only do we not have a boil water alert, we do not have a boil water alert. We also do not have a curfew in Beverly Hills tonight. There are some announcements that there are curfews in other cities. We do not have a curfew in Beverly Hills. With that, I'll turn it back over. Okay, so really the purpose of this discussion was so that the public could understand what's going on. I will tell you that staff is available 24-7, and I know that because I've called four o'clock in the morning, I've called it midnight, and there is always somebody there. Our staff is watching out for this community. It's unfortunate that we had to rely, not rely, that we were relayed information from other governmental agencies which is incorrect. And that's really the purpose of this is to have everybody assured that our city is watching out for you. So with that, I'm just going to go to a quick report from the city attorney if any on closed session and then we'll go to council member comments if any. I have no report from closed session this evening. Okay, so if we can start with council member Wells. Thank you Mayor Friedman. Well, I just want to thank all of you for your reports and to our city manager. I appreciate so much your dedication and your planning and preparation and watching you this week really jump into action has really made me feel so confident about our city and I'm so proud of all of you and really appreciate being in Beverly Hills so thank you and to all of our firefighters and actually all the firefighters and police that are out there in the front lines I really appreciate them for putting themselves on the line we're so fortunate to have such professionalism and dedication so thank you all very much. I also, you know, I have to say I'm just very devastated and heartbroken for our neighboring communities and the devastating loss that they've had. We're watching it on, you know, on the TV and seeing the devastation. I can't imagine what it actually looks like when people go there. Not only have people lost their houses, but they've lost their homes. And they've really, in many ways, they've lost their home towns. And part of why we love living here, and I know I love living here, is that the surrounding neighborhoods are also what we love. We love hiking and running canyon and going to specific policies. And many years when my daughter was young, we used to go to the fourth age I parade in specific policies. And it's just such another small hometown feel. And so I think everybody either knows someone or is experiencing some form of loss and grief over this. And so my heart goes out to everybody. And I know that our community is already jumping into action and trying to reach out and help people as much as possible. So I just want to say thank you to everybody for that. I also just want to go back to, I mean this has been one heck of a start of a new year. From New Year's Eve and the tragedy that happened in New Orleans in Las Vegas, really on the eve of us having the Golden Globes. I also want to thank all of you, our public safety team and our city staff for really jumping in to action there and making certain that our Golden Globes event was a safe event that everybody could enjoy and for Beverly Hills. And I really appreciate that. I think that event went off beautifully and everybody had a great time and it was a great successful event and it was safe. And I think we're just so fortunate about that. I also think that high school students had a great experience being able to participate in the Golden Globes and I hope that that that can can use in the future. In addition to that, on that Sunday I left for Sacramento for the California Contract City's Association Conference to go to Sacramento to meet with our different legislators because this is the start of the legislative cycle. And I would say, as a takeaway, really all of the different cities and electes that I spoke with, as well as many of the different legislators, is that we all have very similar common issues that we are contending with. The first and foremost, everybody is concerned about public safety. And we started the conference on Monday with a conference, a press release, supporting that Prop 36 had passed and also calling for its, you know, expeditious implementation because that safety is so important for us as a city and actually for all the other cities as well. In addition to that, there was a lot of talk about housing and affordability, but more importantly, related to that is its impact on infrastructure and having support for cities and having local control to be able to manage what that impact is on our infrastructure. And we're seeing that now with the fires, how important infrastructure is in meaning the services that we need for our city, both on a day-to-day basis and in an emergency. And so that was another topic that came up quite a bit. And along those same lines we talked about, certainly actually I'm gonna go back for a second, along those lines we also talked about public utilities and having some form of accountability with the public utilities because we have our issues with Southern California Edison. And I heard this from many of the other electeds from the different cities that they have their issues as well. And this isn't an issue that everybody's talking about. So, and I think it's important for us to stay on that in terms of having some accountability there so that we can have that reliability. Along the same lines of what's been going on this week, we had many conversations around homeowners insurance and the ability to get insurance and for it to be affordable and for it to be adequate. And I think I brought that up when we were back in April, but it's really a conversation right now and we're seeing this 10 fold this week. So I think all of those issues were discussed this week and I think everybody's on the same page and we'll continue to have those conversations. It was a really beneficial conference for me and it was great to meet with the different legislators and our representatives. And I look forward to doing more of that. And on that note, I just want to say I'm holding my breath through Friday and hoping that we see less and less fires and that this starts to get more in control. But mostly I just want to thank all of our city staff and our public safety team for all the work that you do. We are just so, so lucky. We talk about the day to day but when the crisis comes up, you are the front lines and I cannot thank you enough. So thank you. Thank you and councilmember Corbyn. Thank you. I too want to thank Chief Barton, Chief Stain Brook, Nancy and Shana for your reports of very educational, very informative and I think it's very helpful for our residents to hear what the city is doing proactively and reactively and how we're keeping everyone safe. You know obviously the wildfires that are ravaged the LA Community Front and Center and everyone's mind at this point Herific does not begin to describe the devastation we've seen on TV You know and our hearts break for all the people who have lost homes or businesses The numbers are staggering. I mean, it's just over a thousand structures in the the palisades alone, and there are 1,000 plus structures in Al-Tedina as the mayor indicated, over 350,000 people have been displaced from their homes. And the fires are still raging. And out of control, in many instances, as we started our closed session tonight, I believe the palisades fire was still 0% contained. And new fires have popped up overnight, including the West Hills fire, which was the subject of an erroneous text message we heard earlier. And I think it's important to remember that for each burned out home, there's a fam that's lost, not only precious belongings and omantos, but what they view is really the most safe and secure place for them in the world. And for burned out business, it's not just the loss of commerce, it's the loss of a sense of the financial security and safety for a whole group of people. I mean, the emotional and psychological trauma is real. It's widespread and I fear for so many Angelina's is just beginning. The one saving grace as there seems to have been very little loss of life within major injuries, although there's still a insom in I don't mean to minimize any of them. I heard on TV just this afternoon that a firefighter was fighting a blaze and fell through the roof of a three story structure. I don't know what that person's condition is. That actually struck very close to home. My mother's, I'm sorry, my wife's father was a fireman who became disabled when he fell through the roof of a burning building. So, and these things are ongoing and the dangers are real for everyone including the front line or especially the people in the front line. We probably all know someone who's lost a house or a business and if we don't know someone who has, we know someone who knows someone who has. It really is that close to everyone. It's really incredible that the catastrophe we've seen unfold all around Beverly Hills has somehow skipped over it so far and we should count ourselves I think exceedingly lucky in that regard. I mean last night Ryan, Keith and I were sitting in Keith's office. And we watched the sunset fire erupt in the Hollywood Hills just a short distance from here. And we watched as the LA Fire Department battle the blaze on foot and in the air, dropping water from helicopters. And they ultimately beat it back before it got out of control and so many of the other fires we've seen. So we all tremendous debt of gratitude to L.A. F.D. for all the work and resources they threw into that effort for everyone's sake. And you know because without their efforts given the South quesadilly winds there's little doubt in my mind that Truesdale and our hillsad areas would have been threatened next. And these events in others over the last several days are also reminders of how much we owe our own fire department and our own police department for keeping us safe each and every day and we cannot thank you enough for doing that. And the same goes for our dedicated public service, public works personnel who help get the city ready in case our first responders need to act. Now, I don't know all the ways we can help the victims who have suffered losses from these catastrophic and even cataclysmic fires. But I'm sure we'll learn more in the days ahead. Nancy gave us a list of organizations that we can contribute to to benefit people who have been displaced or lost their homes. And we should all do all we can to help our neighbors in need. And I'm confident that we as a city council will do that as we move forward anyway we can. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Rumerish. Thank you. And you, Councillor Murmire. Thank you. And to that end, segway into the last thing that Councillor member, Corbyn said, we need to think. Maybe there are things that we haven't thought of how we as a community can help other communities. I know it's a little difficult. Everyone says, can I donate something in some cases? There are places that have said they're at a capacity for material donations. I guess money is always a possibility. But can I help physically and donate time? And everyone, I have a feeling, wants to do something. And maybe we'll think of some ways that we can help people. But first and foremost, as Craig said, we all probably know someone who lost a home and the best thing we can do is check in on them. Check in on our friends. Let them know that we're thinking about them. Let them know that we're there for them as well on a very personal level come together as a community, as a broader community. Yes, in Beverly Hills, we are lucky. And we're lucky because of you, everything that's been said about our fire department, our police, our public safety, our public works, and management staff as well. It's important and I know that this council remains and has always been committed to providing everybody with all of the materials and assets that they need to protect our city in the best way possible. And I think that's in some ways what distinguishes us from other cities. And so when other cities are making evacuation orders for our community, it really only serves to unnerve our community. And it's unnecessary. Everyone is on Tenter Hooks as it is. So I hope that we get to the bottom of what happened when LA declared an evacuation order for Beverly Hills. And certainly I hope that we get to the bottom of what happened with today's false alarm that went out to, I hear 9.6 million people in the county as if we are not worried enough. That is just absolutely inexcusable and it's not acceptable and there needs to be accountability. And I'm hoping that we follow it up and we do whatever we can in following it up with the county as well. This whole thing is, I think for all of us, many of us who grew up here and have spent our entire lives here or a large part of our lives, is something that is tragic, but it's also surreal. It's just almost an alternate reality. And let's hope that the end is here soon and that we can start picking up and cleaning up and rebuilding and coming together as a community. While the world is focused on us here, obviously there are other things that are happening in the world is focused on us here, obviously there are other things that are happening in the world. And Israel continues to be under attack from many sides with false allegations and columnaries and lies. And among those who are the biggest spreaders of those lies, it's the state of Qatar that owns Al Jazeera and that funds our universities and brainwashes our students and poisons them. And Qatar funds has been funding Syria, the new government there in an attempt to gain influence. They continue to fund the Muslim Brotherhood, which is intent upon genociding Jews, and they also fund and support other jihaddi and radical groups. And so I propose that we designate Qatar to be a state sponsor of terrorism. I propose that we sanction Qatar, including freezing Qatar's assets and using them to compensate the victims of guitar fund at terrorism and that we asked the State Department to expel the guitar console general from the city of Beverly Hills because Jew haters and racists are not welcome in our community. Thank you. Thank you and Vice Mayor Nazari. Yes thank you very much. I too would like to thank everyone for the reports. And I want to acknowledge the impact of the recent events. My heart goes out to all the families and all the individuals affected by the ongoing devastation of the fires across our region. And we all know someone that has been impacted by this. And although Beverly Hills has not directly been impacted, we are all in this together. And losing over 1,000 homes, cherished possessions, irreplaceable memories, and most tragically, several lives have been lost, is profound hardship. And it touches all of us in our community. And all of our thoughts and prayers are with everyone suffering during this very, very difficult time. I do want to commend Beverly Hills and all of the various departments that have spoken today, because we prioritize and Beverly Hills being proactive, prioritize safety through all of the different actions that we take, many of them have been discussed today, including consistent brush clearing, regular inspections, and maintenance of, you said what, 13, 1380 fire hydrants, ensuring our reservoirs are full or at high capacity and pressure. These were all issues that other cities experienced. Maintaining regular communication has also been extremely important for our community, whether it's through key stakeholders sending out NICSELs, social media, Ask Bev. And I really want to take a moment to commend our city manager, our entire staff, and all of our department heads. You guys are truly remarkable. This is what makes our city a shining star and a model for others to emulate, and an example for others to really follow. And these measures reflect our commitment to protecting the safety of our residents, our visitors, our businesses, and the community as an entire whole. I'd also like to express sincere gratitude to all of the courageous first responders who have worked tirelessly around the clock to protect us all. Not only in Beverly Hills, but across all the cities and a special acknowledgement to the Beverly Hills Fire Department, our class A department and our fire chief Greg Barton and his entire team for providing not only professionalism and bravery in the City of Beverly Hills but also providing mutual aid to all of the surrounding cities that were in dire need. And the Beverly Hills Police Department and Chief Stainbrook for their dedication to support safety and recovery efforts. Your efforts have made a significant difference and we are all deeply, deeply grateful to all of you. So thank you very much and we really appreciate it. I'd also like to thank our public works department. We were one of the few cities that right away we were clearing debris in our cities, making sure that the streets were clear, making sure that our water levels were ready and with regard to constant patrolling, I mean, really a model of excellence. We commend you all. These are the moments that our city really shines brighter than anyone and we're so grateful. Just modifying tactical alerts, anti-looting, the extra patrols watching out for hot spots all of it has been incredible. I also want to recognize and thank the hotels and businesses that have opened their doors and welcomed those displaced from their homes due to the fires, your generosity, and your compassion demonstrate the strength of our community during these challenging times. And many, many, many have reached out and asked of ways that they can help. And I know that our city manager highlighted several of those and I wanna encourage people to go to Beverly Hills dot org, backslash emergency notifications. There's a list of organizations highlighted several of those and I want to encourage people to go to Beverly Hills.org. Backslash emergency notifications. There's a list of organizations that you could reach out to. Many in our region are facing tremendous challenges and we all have the ability to make a difference. And I know many organizations are working tirelessly including the Rotary Club of Beverly Hills that is headed by our fire chief as the president chief Barton and I want to also encourage our community to consider supporting relief efforts by donating to local organizations providing aid to displaced families who are in need right now. I know families who said I couldn't even think what I was doing, and I left, and with my one-year-old and my three-year-old and two cans of olives. Because it was just, you know, at moments like this, you don't really think. There's so much trauma involved. So check in with your neighbors, as was mentioned, volunteer with groups offering shelter, food and supplies to those affected. We're really blessed because we were not as severely impacted. So it's a really great opportunity to be able to give back to those who were and sharing verified resources and information. And please, please do not share information that is not validated. That's extremely important. We really do not want to create extra fear or anxiety for anybody that's undue. So please make sure that you go through that. So I again want to just to all those who are impacted by these fires, we stand with you and we offer our support and our strength. Please stay vigilant, as has been mentioned many times over and over again. If you see something, please say something and together we will absolutely recover. We will rebuild and we will emerge stronger than ever. So thank you very much for that. I also wanted to go over a brief meeting that I had with regard to December 11th, Sanitation District Meeting regarding the rate changes that were approved for District 4. Those are R. That's R district. So District 4 including only a small area of the eastern portion of the city of Beverly Hills. The general location is of the city of Beverly Hills. The general location is on the border of Beverly Hills in West Hollywood, roughly Doheny Road and Phyllis Street on the north and Beverly Boulevard on the south. There are approximately 47 parcels that are serviced by the county sanitation district and lieu of receiving wastewater services from the city. And there will be a decrease, I know this is shocking, but there will be a decrease in rates in single-family homes from $150 to $115 per year. And multifamily residents would pay 60% of what single-family homes would pay. Condors would pay 75% of what single-family homes would pay and commercial customer rates will be based on proportional adoption of the single-family home rates. The reserves are above targeted level as is indicated in this chart and the forecast for the reserves for the next 10 years and they're anticipating that there will be a decrease, so therefore they are providing this. County staff will reevaluate the rate in five years and in the future there will be if there is a need to increase these rates County staff can reinstate the rate up to $150 without a proposition without the proposition to 18 notice and I don't know if anybody has any questions about it but I did ask public works and Rob to be able to be here to answer any questions that if anybody may have any. Okay. Okay. Thank you. And I just want to acknowledge the fact that anytime there is an emergency in the city and it was alluded to in city, coffee's comments. There is a meeting amongst all the staff members, and it's a different setup in terms of who's there and all the departments. And the real purpose of that is so that everybody in every department knows what's going on. And it's really a great communication tool. I've been privileged to be a part of that. As I addressed the group on the first day we met, this is deja vu all over again, because of some of you may remember, I spent quite a number of days, weeks. My first term is mayor in the emergency operation center. And it's just rewarding to see that how they all work as a team. It is just very comforting to know that we have that group. I also want to just point out, and sometimes they're overlooked. You know, we obviously have, you know, the number one police department, number one fire department, but they are supported by the number one public works department. There is dependence upon what public works does in order to make the job of the police and fire department workout. All of those barriers, the K rails that are moved, making sure that there's water available in case of need for it. That's all done by public works. So they're on 24-7 also. They're always available and I just want to take my hat off to the public works department. The other thing I want to say is that I want to assure everybody that as a council, all of us, we have supported all monetary requests for public safety and public works. We do not cut corners in supporting our fire department, police department and public works. That's something that I think as a group we are all so proud of and of course the response that we get is the most professional police fire public works departments that any city has. I also want to acknowledge our hoteliers for their offer of making accommodations available for those in our community that may have been displaced. I received calls last night from several of the hotels offering their services and I know that there have been other hotels that have directed us contact the staff directly regarding that. And that's the kind of community we have a business community that supports our residents and we have a residential community that supports our businesses and that's really the way it should be and I am very proud of it and I know all of my colleagues are also. So with that I will adjourn this meeting until our next City Council meeting which is scheduled for January 28th, 2024. Wish everyone a good night. I will adjourn this meeting until our next City Council meeting which is scheduled for January 28th, 2024. Wish everyone a good night. 25. 25. Hello. It was a typo. I'm reading exactly what it says. 2025. I wish everybody a good evening and please everyone stay safe out there. Thank you. The stories that I would hear about how the city would send somebody home. If they're unhoused on the