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Please join me in the flocks of the Ready begin I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic which it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all. Land and acknowledgement. We occupy land originally and still inhabited and cared for by the Agabralenoino Tongua peoples. Our first item is a presentation regarding the continued operation of Wres-Rensmore, Wresmore? Sorry, council. The City Manager is there a report from staff for this item. There is the CFTRN's presentation, I should say, will be given by Andrew Ho, Director of Community Development. . . . Sorry, everybody. Good afternoon, Vice Mayor Lee, members of the City Council in September of this past year, the Council adopted short-term rental regulations prohibiting commercial parties and venues and events at short-term rentals. This essentially prohibited operations ongoing at Rensmore from occurring at the property. In October, representatives from Rensmore came to the City Council meeting and asked that the Council consider and discuss the matter further. The council directed staff to come back with today's agenda item to talk about options for Rensmore's continued operation. Rensmore was originally established in 2022 and have been operating as a short-term rental. Over the last year, the cities received inquiries from the neighborhood and complaints about noise, parking from patrons on city streets and various other traffic coming to and from the Renzmoor property. Renzmoor representatives since being made aware of these complaints have prohibited parking for patrons in the neighborhood. They've eliminated valet service and they've instituted shuttle service to and from the property. And they've also redirected the use of the entrance from the altivistigate to the grand view gate. Currently Renzmour has about 25 events planned for 2025. If a permanent solution cannot be found, they have requested that at a minimum they hold the events through 2025. Should the Council wish to permanently allow for Rensmore to operate. There's a couple of land use logistics to work through. Currently, the Rensmore property is residential zoned and the weddings and filming at the location is considered a commercial event. And so to make those events more permanent, the path forward would be to change the zoning code to allow for those types of events through a conditional use permit. And the other path to that would be to have a special permit for short term regulations, short term rentals related to rents more that the council would approve. So, posing kind of a two-pronged approach, should the council want to make that permanent to address any. That way the council can impose certain conditions to alleviate whatever neighborhood concerns there are. So with that, the recommendation this evening is to direct staff to process a text amendment to make the short-term rental ordinance to allow Rensmore to continue operation or to direct staff as deemed appropriate. So conclude my presentation unless there are questions. Thank you, Director Fult, for the presentation. Do we have any speaker cards from the public for this item? Yes, Madam Mayor. Vice Mayor, we do have several speaker cards for this item. The first speaker is Christopher. You're lasting with GAV? Sorry, GAY. Thank you. Go ahead. Good evening. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak to you all this evening. I've lived on Alta Vista for about two years now and I'm here to oppose the measure being proposed, allowing the rents more to operate permanently. I'll start off by saying this is flatly in contradiction to the purpose of zoning law, which is to have businesses and residents is separated. We all, that anyone wants to live in a residential area, appreciate that fundamental starting point. What I want to talk about is not the disruptions, it's caused to our lives over the last year. I have many people from the neighborhood, if you guys are all raised your hand, some of them will speak today, but they're all here today because they care about what this council does this evening, and they're gonna be watching very carefully. What I wanna do address specifically in my comments is my dealings with Cordelia Culver, the owner of the rents more, going back a year. I didn't come straight here to, I told her from the beginning, I don't care what she does at her property, as long as it doesn't affect us. So going back to December of last year, I have sent her at least three emails addressing these concerns we have. And in the first email, she basically told me, well, the curbs are public streets, and we're allowed to park here. In the second email, and by the way, I can provide any of these emails. I'm paraphrasing these or not. This is not verbatim, but the second email I complained because it was a big truck coming up Altevista. It was bumping into trees. It was carrying four or six porta-potties. It was clearly not something that had any business being on this narrow, hilly street. When I emailed her about that truck, her response was to deny they were having any deliveries that day, deny they were having an event that day. It was obvious they were having an event that day. The truck disappeared up our street, which is essentially a coldest act because it dead ends at that gate, and it did not come back down. There was no construction up that street. There's only about five houses between me and that rents more. So that was dishonest. And I'm bringing this up because if you guys grant this conditional use permit, there's nothing to she hasn't been a good faith actor. She has not been honest or straightforward with the neighborhood. The business license she applied with the city for lists her as a short term rental. It's not a short term rental. It's a wedding venue. A very large, she has very large events there. Sometimes over 100 people you can see by the number of cars. She operates another residence in Nangora that also does weddings. So there was never an intention to operate this as an Airbnb. The intention from the beginning was to have it as a wedding venue. So I don't know what kind of business license she was given by the city. When I read the zoning code and I've read it very carefully, the only type of business license one can get in a residential zone is what's called a home occupation business license. A home occupation business license means that you live there. Cordelia doesn't live there. No one lives there. It is used expressly for solely for this purpose. It's not a residence at all, but it is in a residential zone. Anyone that drives up there can see that it is in a low-density, hilly neighborhood. And they've decided, knowing that zoning code, to try to operate a business in the middle of this neighborhood. So there was a series of emails where she would essentially deny they were having, you know, denied the various impacts. I mean, at one point it was like they have valets driving cars and parking them all over the neighborhood. 50 cars one time and she told me that they weren't actually parking cars. They were just shuttling them around and bringing them from one gate to the other. They were putting tags, I have pictures of it, they put tags on the cars. It's a professional operation in the middle of a neighborhood completely inappropriate So there was a real change of tenor from the Rendsmore people on October 24th They they dropped off to all the neighbors these new changes Mr. Ho kind of outlined some of them All these changes and apologies and how they don't want to ever have a bad impact on our neighborhood Well, what changed on October 24th only that week started complaining to the city and their legal business was under threat of getting shut down. So now they're playing nice. They didn't care before when it was just us talking, but now that you all are involved, now they want to play nice and they say they'll abide by all these rules, self-imposed rules, by the way, not actual laws, self-imposed rules. Then they said, well, we just want to have 25 more events and then we'll wind down. Sounds okay. But now they're asking to change the law. Now, I've always grown up thinking that we're supposed to conform our conduct to the law, but they're asking for the opposite thing to conform the law to their conduct. What has always been illegal under the zoning code, now they want to permanently runs with the land, change that law, so that they can keep running their for-profit business, which has no community benefit, by the way. They're not running a museum. This is not a park or a hospital. It is a for-profit business, and it has no place in the middle of our neighborhood. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Lewis McKennan. I think this is the first time I'm able to open at one of your meetings by addressing you with good afternoon. I think this is this particular facility given its history and everything and its unique properties has some real potential for use along some of these different lines that have been discussed. The main thing is it needs to be worked out in a way that works with the neighbors and the neighborhood. I don't know whether or not this will involve an actual zone change for that particular property, some pocket zoning thing there, in which case it would need to probably go through the formal process, go to the Planning Commission, have hearings, and then come back to you as the final decider on it. Or whether there's some suggestions less than that that would allow the use of this property. But clearly it does have an impact on the neighborhood. The streets are narrow there. And so I would like to see everybody be able to work together and work something out that can accommodate both the the use of the facility for some of these types of purposes, but something that doesn't impact negatively on the surrounding community. Thank you. Our next speaker on item number one is Delilah No. Doh. Good evening. My name is Delilah Doh. I am a homeowner on Altavista Drive. I'm here with many of my neighbors both on Altavista Drive and Grandview. We are generally, most of us, are objecting to the continued operation of the runs more as a large wedding event venue, which they were not allowed to do in the first place. While we all understand that businesses can bring value and benefit to a community, the right to acquire it, peaceful environment in your own home is a fundamental reason we choose to live in a residential zone. The activities that the RENZMOR take place on many weekends, most weekends in fact and even weeknights. And their activities include frequent large events, sometimes hosting up to 150 people necessitating the need to park cars all around our neighborhood on our narrow streets, amplified music that we can all hear, and heavy traffic, including box trucks for catering equipment. Their quote unquote solution to shuttle people up and down Alta Vista and Grandview does not mitigate our concerns. It is the residents ultimately who bear the brunt of this business venture. We did not choose to live near a large events wedding venue and we should not be forced to endure the noise, congestion, lack of privacy and risk to public safety that comes with it. And when I say risk to public safety, these cars are driving down late at night at high rates of speed, oftentimes not stopping at the stop light on the bottom of altivista drive. These are events where there's liquor being served probably without a liquor license and so I do think this is a threat to our safety. We should not allow one bad faith business to continue profiting at the expense of its residents who are under the constant disruption of their operations. This is not a commercial district and allowing the rents more to continue doing business. Here sets a dangerous precedent. It undermines the very essence of why people choose to live in areas like this. As officials who have been elected by Al-Hambe residents, like myself, and not by outside business interests, I am asking to protect and preserve the integrity of our residential community. Thank you. The next speaker is Denise Delgado. Good afternoon. I reside on Altavista Drive and just in terms of this being what used to be a quiet neighborhood since this business began, I guess the highest impact for me personally is the parking situation as well as the traffic up and down the street. On several occasions there's been cars that have partially blocked or just parked right in front of the driveway. I had to come out and ask them to move. Sometimes they go nicely. Sometimes they do not. Cars have been parked backwards in the wrong direction on that street. And I have called parking enforcement. They did issue tickets. There was a truck that had like, it tires up on the curb because it was so wide for our street. It just decided to park up on the curb. So that's been a big concern. Also, when we just want to have company over like on a Saturday, we haven't been able to do that unless we park our cars on the side on the streets before that party. So in the morning, it's like a rush to get the cars, our cars out on the street. So we could at least preserve some spots for like our guests to come and not have to walk up the hill or have us drive down, pick them up because they couldn't park on our street just to have company. So, and I know that's not something that I do all the time. Like, I know host people all the time, but a good neighbor lets neighbors know on a street that's like very limited in parking. Hey, we're having people over and I just want to let you know we're going to have extra cars just like they would do for us And that hasn't happened in this situation and it's not the first time either like prior to this There was another house on the same on our street that was hosting these large parties I believe it was a short-term rental because usually on Saturdays or Sundays We'd have huge parties very loud music and the parking situation also was a problem. So this is a residential area. It's just not going to work with like these types of operations, with that many people coming in, the streets are narrow, they're hilly, it's unsafe, and I'm against this proposal. Thank you. The next speaker, item number one is Ellen Freeman. Alan Friedman also on altivista. A lot of people have said what I was going to say, but there are a few other items. One thing they mentioned in their letter was noise will be 75 decibels or less. I googled what that meant. 70 is a vacuum cleaner. And if you guys want to live with a vacuum cleaner running in your house. And my house is one of the closer ones to the castle. I'm right next to the water tower. I've heard more best man speeches than I'd ever care to hear. That's with all doors and windows closed. We all purchased homes to be in a residential neighborhood that's quiet. It isn't right now. Certainly not for me. Most cities limit wedding special events anywhere between three and six a year, not every weekend or even every day if they wanted to. Most cities have filming requirements, one to two weeks they allow, not unlimited, which they do. At this point, it's a disclosure issue. If any of us want to sell our house, we should legally disclose to a seller what's happening in our neighborhood, obviously adversely affecting all of us. As someone mentioned, there's no positive impact here for our community. Someone else did request that I ask. If you are thinking about approving this, please give more time. We all found out about this Thursday evening and we got lucky that one of the neighbors found out about it. We weren't given any notice about today. So we would request more time to let everyone else in the neighborhood know. Thank you all for your time. Next speaker is Cordelia Culver. Hi. Good evening. I'm Cordelia Culver. I am the operator of Friendsmore Castle. As most of you know, I did speak at the last council meeting as well. I just wanted to say thank you for considering this amendment. A lot of what I wanted to address was definitely neighbor concerns. What I can say is I haven't had a lot of neighbor contact. We did send out that flyer a few weeks ago. Just as mainly as a way to touch base to tell neighbors to please, here's our direct contact information. Here are the rules that we have in place for guests and clients. I think the most contact I have had is probably with Mr. Gay dating back several months, as he said. And then that sees, I stopped responding to him because, as you heard, or very early on, he called me a liar, which I am not. Also referencing the email, he referenced that truck backed all the way down the street, which you said in your email, because they didn't come onto our property. So obviously we have a bit of contentiousness between us. At this point, nevertheless, I really am committed to trying to make this work in this neighborhood. I obviously don't want to be some burden. I, you know, one of the things that I had actually prepared to say was that it's when we know, then we can solve a problem. So I did have a really positive actually conversation with one of our next-door neighbors on Grandview, Mr. Jose Garcia a few days ago in which he's he speaks you know very frankly which is honestly very helpful and said that he doesn't have an issue with our business as long as the streets are clear. We did have a film company come in recently they came in early in the morning they lined up in the street at I don't know know, like 515 in the morning, woken up. Obviously, that's horrifying to me. That's terrible. That should never happen. So that lets me know. We need to put a lot more procedures into place to prevent that from ever happening again. Likewise, as parking issues have arisen, we have addressed them all immediately. On the evening, actually that Mr. Gave was talking about where I thought that the Valic Company was just bringing cars around to our property. They were parking cars. They had them ticketed. Another neighbor actually reached out via text and I said, okay, let me check it out. And those cars were moved within 30 minutes. So we really were not absentee, as he said, I don't live at the property. I do spend a good amount of time there. But we're not absentee. We are there and we are here to make this work, if possible. I will say I disagree that this has no value for the community. I think that it's an important property. It's been there for 100 years. It has been there longer than everything else in the neighborhood. And that's not to say that it has higher value certainly than the piece of the neighborhood. It's just to say that it, I think that it deserves to be there. I know I've spoken before about sort of our process and what we've done and how much I've personally, in terms of time and money invested into the property and rehabbing it and turning it from this sort of big murder castle with a lot of overgrown foliage into something that is sort of a beacon of people to come and visit. One of the things that I'm very excited about if we can move forward with this own amendment is just sort of to continue that. There's a lot of exciting things happening in LA in the next few years. There's a lot of visitors coming internationally from around the world and we would love to host them. We are open as a short-term rental. That is the purpose of the business. And everything that we have done has operated legally within those parameters in your city. We have not and are not running any legal business. But obviously this is because I would like to continue that way. And if we can't then, then we won't. But my hope is that we can find a way forward with everyone. Again, as far as I understand, we have solved the parking issues. Noise is something that we have safeguards in place, but I would like to hear more about. That is something I haven't to my knowledge we've never gotten a noise complaint. So if that is something that's happening, let's solve it. And that's it. Thank you. The next speaker is Jose Garcia. Thank you. Hello, my name is Jose Garcia. I'm a resident on 1637 Grand View Drive. Since this, the occurrence of rents more being available for rental, it's been pretty active on our street, very, very active on our street. We've had difficulties with parking as everyone else said, I don't wanna repeat what everyone else is saying to you. But my concern is also vehicles that come through our street and block off passage for emergency vehicles to get through Grandview Drive, as you get to the wall of 1700 Renzmoor down all the way through to Altavista is a very narrow street. There is no signage saying that vehicles cannot park on that side of the street, but vehicles do park there. So they are legally there, but it blocks the way of emergency vehicles to go through. If there was a fire at the Renzmoor, if we have a lot of retires on our hill, if they get ill and they need emergency vehicles to come in, a lot of times they might be blocked because of all of the vehicles that are on the street itself. I don't have the problem with Rendsmore itself, I've spoken to both Cordelia and also Reagan. When I have issues, I contact them directly and then try to resolve it as fast as they can. But unfortunately, they have their rules, but nobody there to make sure that they're in compliance with these rules. So rules are just on a piece of paper, unless you have somebody physically there to make certain that their renters are in compliance with those rules. I've had several incidents where I myself, like other residents, had confronted people parking on the street because they made, there's enough room for two or three vehicles to be able to park, but they park right in the middle and that blocks off the use for residents in that area or anyone else that wants to park there. Again, I think for me, I've been there for about 15 years now, and I've looked at the rents more when it was a previously, God, you think I would remember. The castle, everybody knows it about the castle. And when I see it there, it's kind of sad for me because it looks like a mausoleum. You know, it's just this big, empty place. And I see that the work that they're doing to it because I live right down the hill from them. I'm only two houses away. I don't have an issue with them having events, maybe not so often. But my issue with that, again, is safety for the people in the area in terms of vehicles being able to pass emergency vehicles when needed. And I spoken to Ren's Board of Management and they've always been good about getting back to me and following up with any incidents. I'm not for and I'm not really against it this time. I just want to know that there's going to, if it is something that you're going to be put in in place for them, that there's some sort of responsibility someone there I've been to venues where there are managers there the entire time that you go Nostura my son got married we went to the venue the time expired they let us know you got an hour to get ready before you have to leave They clear everybody out and that's it for the day when you go to the rents more There had been incidents where people are at the front gate Party in that one o'clock in the morning. I have videos of all the events that I'm referring to I always videotape them just in case I need them including the 515 incident where there were people coming in for I Guess it was some kind of video shoot or something. I 5.15 in the morning and everybody's loud. So 5.15 in the morning, Sunday morning, I'm waking up to all this noise trying to figure out what's going on. So I get my phone on, I go outside, there's a line of about 20 cars ready to get, trying to get into the facility itself. So I had to call Rendsmoar to let them know. Can you please let somebody get somebody over there to open up that gate? So there has to be somebody present at all times for them to be responsible. I don't think just renting it out and walking away is enough. You have to have somebody there to make sure that they're in compliance. And thank you for hearing me today. Okay. The last speaker on item number one is Rich Browers. I live at 1801 Altavista Drive and everything's been covered that I was going to want to say, except 40 years ago I attended the last City Council meeting I attended. There was an application to turn the, it wasn't, it ran more castle and it wasn't even fill Spector's house at the time. It was owned by another private individual and a church wanted to purchase the property and convert it into a church and it was roundly defeated by the City Council. And it was a very repetition, much repetition of a lot of the neighbors complaining and they had said, well, we're going to have parking restrictions and we're going to have only one car every two minutes coming into the property and it was roundly defeated and unlike those people who were merely applying for a permit, these people bought a private residence and converted it into what they thought would be a profitable use of it I think it's a little duplicitous and I don't think this should be approved. Thank you Next speaker is David Bond Good afternoon, City Council. I'm David Bond. I'm a homeowner. I'm actually just the next door neighbor of the castle, so we share a fence and a wall. And it's been difficult to be honest over the years. When they first moved in, there's sort of this optimism that they would make it a little bit nicer and have a nicer dialogue with the neighbors, but being their next door neighbor and being the last house to that back entrance on Altavista Drive, it's absolutely turned our quite cul-de-sac into a very, very busy, what feels like a thoroughfare sometimes. My daughter's window is right there against the street and oftentimes we're smelling what smells like marijuana or something from people hanging out right there and I go the next morning with a bunch of bottles scattered on the floor. There's trash cans, which seems like 24-7. They just leave the trash cans in front of my house. So it's very difficult for me and my wife to get in and out of our property. They try to bring them in sometimes, but right now to this moment, there's four or five trash cans right there in front of my house. I've taken pictures over the past few months. They've dumped their trash when they were overflowing after a big event into my trash cans, so it looks like I have a bigger trash burden, a bigger trash usage. It's a bad nuisance. It's not being controlled well. It's just operating as a very lucrative for-profit venue for movies and commercials and weddings and things. If it was small, if it was kept inside, if they started the dialogue early, I mean, Cordelia, I'd help, you know, they'd ship a bunch of stuff, and when they first got there, they shipped it to my house. I'd knocked on the thing and I put it there. I'll try to be a good neighbor You know hand them their deliveries to their location But from there it's just got worse and worse and it's to the point where it's not safe like I can't walk Down the street We I like to walk my dog and with my my children down the street and it's very, very often. So, them asking for this law change now, this conditional use goes against what I think what the City Council and what we hear as Alambrins look forward to is City protecting its residents. Thank you. The next speaker is Pierre Lau. How are you? Hello,, Council. My name is Pierre Lau and I share the wall with the castle. So I'm right there. Noise, traffic, big issues and safety. So I want to keep this short. Turning it into a zoning, I mean, a commercial zoning, it's going to be devastating for the community, the residential people around this area. Okay, so please reconsider it. Thank you. Next speaker is Valdez. Friends is Valdez. Good evening. And I work for the fire department. So safety. If anything was to happen, there's no way all those guests could leave without getting injured Two narrow of a street in both ways wherever this castle is Nobody's ever widened the streets or they don't have any guards to maintain or exit and They have a big den of coyotes and they come and eat all our pets in the neighborhood. I witnessed them, they get hit by cars, they're just roaming everywhere. Coyotes have a roaming right but the people of the property do not eradicate and again safety. Nobody can get out of their events when they have a venue going on including us, including the neighbors. It will be disaster. Thank you. Applause. Thank you. Do we have any speakers via Zoom that wish to speak on this item? Madam Vice Mayor, I'm not seeing any raised hands on Zoom at this time. Thank you. At this time, does the council have any comments or questions for staff on this item? Well, first of all, thank you to the residents for being here today. I appreciate that. Mr. Ho, I have a couple questions. How are you this evening? Thank you. I have a question about calming measures and whether calming measures have ever been in place in the area or whether we're looking at calming measures prior to the change of the zone. Calming measures in terms of traffic calming? Yes. We've not talked with Rensmore or the neighborhood about traffic calming. So the only one from the city who is actually interacted with the residents is our traffic. You know, the people they give tickets is at the interior knowledge. And maybe you know, the answer to that. Yeah, I don't know. I know public works have gone through and painted red curb recently through there. Intercorp is our contractor that handles parking citations through the police department there. From a community development standpoint, dark code enforcement has received a few complaints about the noise and general disturbances through the community. And so we've been interacting with Mr. Gay and Ms. Culver and just reporting kind of what we're hearing and experiencing. And when you say that has that been happening for the last year or is that just recent? We've received a few inquiries probably over the last year, but in October, September it heated up a lot. And are your offices don't send out information on whether there's going to be a potential change to a zone in a neighborhood? That wouldn't be your... It would be. Okay. It was also given us direction to proceed with a zone text amendment or a zone change. Staff would take on that planning effort in the new year and when that would happen, we would send out notices to the neighborhood. Would that be only after the Council voted to approve a zoning change? It would be before. It would be before. It would be before. The item before the council tonight is to kind of give us direction as to which direction you want staff to go. And then it would come back. It would go the zone text amendment go through the Planning Commission and then ultimately to the City Council. Okay. So we're just giving direction whether to make it broader and perhaps have the neighbors meet with the owner. Thank you so much, Mr. Hyatt. I appreciate. You know, I was already told that the transportation was improving and the parking was all moved indoors inside the gates. That's what I was informed to buy, I believe, the owner. And so I'm very disappointed to hear that that hasn't happened, that all the cars that are utilizing that site are not being included inside the gates. But I also think that the reason why we made a decision to create the short-term rental ordinance was exactly for the reason all these complaints are happening. You know, and that's a big, that's a tall order to follow the short that ordinance. It's a tall order because it reduces the time people are and able to be having people over and it we really did get strict with it because we were having so many short-term rentals and not enough housing for families to move into or to rent. And so we wanted to somehow control that a little bit. And there's no doubt that your site is a different site. It's not a single family home. I'm going to listen to what the rest of the council would like to hear, but you know, do we have copies of your rules that you created for the neighborhood? Okay, great. I probably have them and I just didn't look at them for this evening. But there's a lot of work that has to go happen before this goes through. And it is my district. So we're going to be tough. Thank you. First, thank you to staff for the presentation. Thanks to all the community members that came out and the operator of Rennesmore. So I did thank you Council member for highlighting the fact that this is not an approval, there's nothing actually on the table right now. This is just an informational presentation for the Council to take it in and to give direction to staff as to how we go. We could do a number of things but there's nothing particularly on the table now. So it's not going to happen tonight. We're glad you're here. That's what these kinds of discussions are for, so we can hear from everyone before we take a concrete action on it. So it's very important. I will say that I think this, you know, part of this is the city. We weren't, I would say, we were a little bit behind in catching up with the short-term rental issue. We didn't realize it was that big of a traction of draw in El Hambra until really the last several months it kind of became a little bit more clear, especially when we're working as Councilmember said on affordable housing and housing across the board, having so many units taken up by short-term rentals for people that aren't in our community, aren't from our community, and thereby decreasing the supply of those issues. So we took it on, and then this issue came up because it doesn't quite fit into the short-term rental space, it doesn't quite fit into a hotel space. It is its kind of its own thing here. And I do think we need to recognize that this property is unique, very unique. It's a big lot, it's a big structure, and it's good that there's attention being paid to it, because I did have a chance to go through before it was sold, and it was falling apart. It was a really bad shape. The grounds were not being tended to. Insights unfinished and not real attractive and I have not been recently but from what I understand, it looks much nicer now and properties being taken care of and there's better landscaping. These are good things and we are undertaking a historic preservation effort right now and aside from anything else, it would be a shame for this property for us to lose this property. And I'm not going to say this will happen if we don't do something, but there's certainly a path where this is just left and the only thing that can be done there is residential. There may not be a lot of ways that the council can step in and say no, we want to preserve it as this giant home. And you got to figure out a way to use it. There could be an owner that comes in and says this doesn't work for me. And under the new state laws, which the city council has a very little discretion over housing, new housing proposals. We could see this thing go away. I mean, I'm not trying to be doomsday about it, but it's a very realistic possibility down the road. So that said, the operators, I understand, we're not trying to take away business from anyone. We encourage new businesses, but it certainly sounds for one reason or another that the relationship with the neighbors got off to a bad start, one way or the other. I don't know I wasn't there I don't live in that area but that's the key to this whole thing. If something here is going to work and I'm not prepared to give any specific direction tonight by any means given what I've heard tonight, if this is going to work the neighbors have to be happy. They have to be okay with this going on, but and that whether that is changes to the number of events the nature of the events where the parking and parking obviously parking and traffic flow seem to be the number one number two issues If we can't solve for that this This may not work going forward, but I really I don't want to cut off any possibility of anything happening here because I think that It's clear to me that there's a lot more need for communication between the operators and the neighborhood and without that Maybe facilitated by the city not to put more work on our staff But if there's a constructive way to have a conversation about this as to what might be acceptable and a Find a potential win-win situation for everyone involved. I'm willing to keep an open mind, but it needs to start with the community and needs to start with the neighbors. They're right. I mean, zoning codes are zoning codes. They're broad brush regulations. They're not a scalpel, right? It's a hammer in this situation that's a residential zone. It didn't account for this giant property, this giant home, that really is in Congress with the rest of the neighborhood there. There aren't giant homes like that on giant properties. So it is a different thing, and zoning codes can be changed. It doesn't mean it's illegal. It just means that we have to be really smart about how it would work. If something like this could go through, it would come with teeth. As you heard, our Andrew Ho, our director talk about, this would be a CUP in which case there would be conditional use permit, meaning it would be permitted for these particular uses under conditions. So, if the conditions aren't met, then that CUP is in danger, it could be taken away, and that use would no longer be permitted there. So this would not be carte blanche, this would not be sort of anything goes there. We would have to make sure it's under very strict conditions, because as I said, we want to make sure that the neighbors are happy and their way of life is not disturbed just because they happen to live next to this very unique property. So I'm also willing to listen to the discussion. I think my direction tonight, if I were asked right the second, it would be for staff to perhaps convene or facilitate a conversation between the operator and the neighborhood, maybe not the entire neighborhood, but representatives that could speak for them and get back, I'm not going to worry about what the details of that would be, but that has to be where this starts. This has to be where this starts. At least for me, if the neighbors aren't happy, then I'm not going to be happy. So I'd like to hear what the my colleagues have to say. Again, thank you all for coming tonight to the residents and also to staff putting the report together to the owner operator as well for the information that you've previously provided. We've got a tough situation here before us, I think, before anything. I put myself as a council member in the shoes of the community. And thank, you know, what would be my concerns if I was dealing with all of this myself, and where would I want it to go? One, but beside that, you know, I think we also have to take a look and separate the castle, the importance of the castle and what it means to the community from the actual business itself. We as council members have to do that, and just separate the importance of both. And of course, the community and the castle as part of the community would take priority over anything else. With that said, of course, businesses, as we said, are important to us. And the ideal solution, of course, you know, businesses, as I said, are important to us. And the ideal solution, of course, is to find that happy medium between the business owner and the community. But in order to do that, I think we would have to be at a point where we put absolutely zero burden on the surrounding community. You know, and that's going to be a tough thing to accomplish, I think. If this were to continue operating, I think myself, I'd want to see something that was temporary, not something that was long-term, not something that was too permanent. Because as I said, there has, there has to be absolutely zero burden on the community So with that said I am open to Possibilities of something temporary Every CUP with you know Revision's maybe every six months every 90 days or so. I know it puts burden on the on city staff to do that And everything would have to be mitigated. I mean, the parking concerns, the all of the activity happening in and around the business deliveries, noise, you know, people hanging out around has has been heard. I mean, Mr. Bonnman, you know, smelling, you know, people possibly smoking marijuana in the area. I mean, you know, you shouldn't have to deal with any of that. Again, you know, one of the concerns that I have in wanting to make work are the alternatives if the castle would cease to exist. And I mean, like physically, he's to exist. If the business went away, you know, who would come in and what would be operated on that parcel? And we know that with a lot of the state laws and the pushes for housing, there are some options for somebody to be in and buying that, maybe splitting up the parcel, building multiple residences, which would in turn eventually make it worse. So ideally, it would be, I would like to see a situation where everything is mitigated, where everyone was neighborly, truly neighborly, and surely neighborly, and work things out. But I think if anything, you would have to be something very temporary with constant provisions to the concerns that are happening now. So we'll see what our vice-member has to say and then we'll, I guess slide. Thank you. Thank you, Council. Miss Culver, is that correct? This property has been operating this way for at least a year, is that correct? You had a year to correct all the problems that the neighbors have complained? Do you, are you aware of the complaints? Could you come up here and speak? As Mr. O'Hose had a lot of this, there have been intermittent complaints about the past year, but most of this has come to ahead in October, November. All of the parking complaints that we've heard tonight are previous to about a month ago when we did change the rules. There's definitely a lag in that between us changing a policy and then obviously this meeting is tonight, not a month ago and we changed it, so there's a gap in that. But in any case, yeah, this is all the, as far as I know, a lot of this is more recent. So the complaints came to you in various ways just recently in the past few months? Um, the, I mean, there, as I said, I've had an email correspondence with Mr. Gay. Um, we've had intermittent correspondence with Mr. Garcia via text. Um, our neighbor David at the back gate early on, we had correspondence about the trash. Um, I have not heard anything since then from him, so I'm not aware of his recent remarks. I'm trying to think there was one other. I think, as I mentioned it earlier, a neighbor who had said there was cars parked in front of his house on that same evening where the valley issue happened. But that is pretty much the extent of it. And I know about parking enforcement has come out several times and left because at that point the cars were allowed to park in the streets. That was several months ago, or maybe I don't know, probably no more than three months ago, but yeah. So it sounds like from you this year in particular is when all the problems came to you. Yes, including all the emails. The emails. You said that you had an email? Oh, emails. Uh, yeah, that correspondence started. I honestly would have to look. We've had about three, I think emails back and forth. I have it. I have them all. But he originally emailed with a parking concern and then the truck, the truck with the porta-potties. We have never had porta-potties ever. And the big truck backing down the street. We did have an event that day. I did not deny that we didn't, however, we did not have a truck or that early that morning. And I don't know, I would have to reference those emails. They can hand print that out for you guys. How many events have you had this year? This year I would have to look. I don't know off the top of my head. But definitely October and was the by far the busiest month. And so did you operate last year? 2023? 2023. We took the property in March of 2022 and spent about 14 months on it. So we were, yes, we opened about February in of 23. Yeah. And then it's sort of slow. We are on Airbnb or on VRBO. But we're a very unusual property. We're not like a, you know, we're obviously, we have 10 bedrooms. It's not, it's more for larger groups Obviously, and I remember that last time you you were here You put in a lot of investment to this property. Mm-hmm. I have to say that you know when you have a business If the people around are not happy your business not gonna do well, I understand they understand that I've learned a lot tonight. I did not realize how unhappy the neighbors were. Well, that's precisely my issue here is that I am trying to grasp the magnitude of the complaints. I've been there before. There is a narrow street in front of it. So having this group sitting right here, does that make me happy? This is our in the city need to make sure that they provide services that people like and do not cause any negative impact. And I'm going to be fair to you that it sounds like you start operating 2023. You probably put in a lot of improvement there. So and you cannot tell me how many events you have put together in this year. So it sounds to me that it's slowly kicking up and you wanted to continue in 2025. Is that correct? Well, we as Mr. Rose that we do have 25 stays booked with events in 2025. So I would like to not cancel all of those, certainly. Yeah, beyond that, it's... I know if it's this big of a neighborhood impact, if nobody wants it, then no, I don't want to keep operating. I mean, no, but I will tell you that your concerns are founded. I'm pretty sure the property will be sold and turned into more houses. Which is, I mean, there's a housing crisis. Maybe that's not the worst. I don't know. I mean, my interest in the property has always been that it's, as I said before, I'm from LA and I love old stuff. So I love that the house has a very unique history. It's very unusual to have a house this large. It is, I mean, although it's been treated very poorly over the decades by the various owners, I mean, it was in apartments for at least 30 years, I think. And then it was empty for about a decade. And that's, anyway, it's been through a lot. But in probably any other neighborhood, it would already be gone. Because it would have been, you know, turned into something newer and fancier, I'm sure. So it's, it's. It's a unique property. When is, when is your next event? We have a stay with a small wedding on January 2nd. We have guests staying who are not having events. We just have travelers. We have guests staying week of Christmas and for new years. And then it's small. I would have to look to see what their plans are at my calendar. So I reindal all the issues that the residents have communicated to us. The trash issue, do you accept that? So the trash, that is something that, I mean, early on we tried to get a dumpster for the property, and we cannot, I believe, because of the contractor with the city. We do require that anybody, their front event takes their trash off site. We do not throw trash in anyone else's bins. In terms of trash cans coming in and out, we do have regular landscapers who are there on Mondays and Thursday. They bring the bins out on Monday, they bring them back in on Thursday. We can try to amend that schedule. Our trash pickup day is Wednesday. If we'd like to, yeah, we do have a number of cans, comment through it with the size of the property. We have, I think, four green bins, four black bins and five blue bins. And do you, are you there during the events from Big Yes again? So we are there for every event. We are there. We are not there for every film shoot. However, based on my conversation earlier last week with Mr. Garcia, that is definitely something we're going to change. We have had a couple of overnight film shoots for that. We've required that we be there. But for just as a, you know, like with the Airbnb, if someone's renting the property to come and stay, we're not there. So that had been our policy with daytime film shoots. All of these shoots are smaller. They're, you know, usually maximum four days, one to four days. But that's something we, I'm happy to change, having learned that information recently. Thank you. You know what? I don't want to be a neighbor next to you. Right? That's just the way it is. I'm just speaking from my heart. If I have a neighbor, a property next to me doesn't matter how gorgeous it is. I can tolerate only one night, maybe occasionally throughout the year. You see what I'm saying? It's not fair to the neighbor. So I've been there before is a very quiet area. I'm sure there are more people that are being impacted by this by your events than the who are showing up. I don't want to live there and I have no problem shutting you down by the end of the year Your next event is January and I do understand that operating a business difficult you putting a lot of money into it and I do understand that but Creating so much problem for neighbors not something I can tolerate Understand you understand so there's nothing to you personally, but I think that the trash issues being there is on the Neural Street and You cannot park on the street at all unless you promise that all the cars are parked on the property. I included Well, I've sent a lot of this before I printed this out for you tonight and I can hand it off our parking map Also our parking sign that Couple signs actually we put up on property. We haven't put any signs outside of the property for parking. But yes, all cars as of as they said about a month ago are parked inside the gate. How about the music? The music we have a desk full rating we require that all music is off by 8.30. It's a really invite inside. Sorry, that's outside. Inside 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. And with all doors and windows closed, we do monitor that as well. Okay. But there are people that are saying that it went to 1 a.mm. the morning. So I'm trying to figure out did that really happen? I don't know. I've, I mean, if that is the case, I would love to know that. That would be after that would be by guest. They're staying overnight. So that means you weren't there. Well, I'm not there when people are there overnight. I am there if there is an event which would be from before guests arrive to an hour after guest leave. So typically till midnight. We and then they would not have any, I mean we have an in-house sound system. We don't have any exterior speakers. We do obviously have house rules. We have just as any Airbnb would. We have rules about that. But yeah, if it's just something that someone is saying right now at this meeting and has never told us before, there's no way that I'm going to note that. That's the problem I have right now. There's so many issues that you're not aware of all these issues until now that that troubles me. That means that there has been no communication very little communication between you and whoever the neighbors are and that that's a problem. As I said we did send out a flyer. I did not knock on people's doors. I maybe that's just a that's a choice. I feel like that's more intrusive. I wouldn't want someone knocking on my door. I would prefer a piece of paper than I can choose how to respond. But maybe that's the wrong mode. And coding enforcement has been now for several times. Can we confirm that? I don't know who or what the coding enforcement did, yes. As far as I know, yes parking has. But as I said, we've never received like a police have never come. We never had a noise violation in the evening with police coming that sort of a thing. So that is also why some of this is news to it doesn't sound good at this point The max mic can allow is one more event and you behave there's no complaints whatsoever then no one hears the music No cards park on the street is no trash I will probably allow one more based on your request that you're asking for exemption Right now are the ordinance that we just passed does not allow any large parties. Correct. And you are open to being allowed to hold part event schedule for 2025. I cannot honor that. It's based on the complaints. I think one more is all I could allow in January. And I don't know how we're going to resolve this because it seems like the council had various opinions or perspectives on this. But I feel like, you know, this business can be revived, but right now there's just too many complaints for me to allow to go on. It's not fair for the neighbors. And you are open to just temporarily hold events until all the book events are gone. And I don't think I can allow the entire year bike allow one more and see how it goes. I don't think the world was having consensus consensus because there is a motion to be made. I don't know what the motion will be. Is there a motion? I was trying to formulate a direction and I'll just say I will, I guess, I'll make a motion. But if there is a deal to be had here between the operator and the neighbors that would allow this property to continue in its current state and not be sold and changed direction and change use, I think it's worth pursuing that. Maybe there's not. I think we have to be realistic about that. Maybe there's not an agreement that could be made. But if there is, it'd be ashamed to just say no more events here ever because the four of us say so. I would be more than happy to allow the parties involved to work together on a very short time frame to maybe come together with a framework of a deal that we can take a look at. So I will say my motion would be that would be to have staff work with the interested parties to see if there is a resolution that can be crafted and agreement that can be crafted that everyone could be happy with or at least everyone slightly unhappy with as opposed to having something catastrophic greener side. That would be my ideal. What I don't know how to do is handle the 25 events that are on calendar and kind of coming down the pike. I don't know how to handle that right now. I don't know that if we were able to craft something in that short period of time, On the ask when is the next event after the one on the third or second? I believe January 11th and then nothing until people. I have to I'm sorry I don't have my calendar in front of me but I can I can follow up with email with all of that. I have sent you previously a link to our calendar that has all of that information, but I can send that again. And welcome any ideas. That would be my preference would be to the direction would be to have the parties work together and try to hammer something out. They can't do it, they can't do it, but at least I would like to see them have that opportunity. And I'm going to go ahead and second that motion. That would be my goal as well is to have both parties come together. I think it would be a little abrupt to make any, any, you know, strict decision tonight. But I would like to give all parties that opportunity to come together and try to figure out how all of these concerns can be mitigated so that again none of these concerns are a burden or an impact on the community. You know as far as onsite management maybe that has to be expanded if events were to continue happening on site. You know I feel that no one attending an event there, whether it be short-term rental or a day event, is ever going to care about the community or respecting the property or the neighborhood because they're going to come and go. So it's really up to you as the operator to make sure that all these concerns are addressed and that all of the rules that are put together and hopefully you know in unison with the community are strictly enforced. You know, I certainly don't want the rules to have to be enforced by city staff. I mean city staff does not need the extra work, the burden. So again, I'm going to second the motion that would be my goal is to maybe in a sense it sounds like we're kind of continuing this meeting, you know, while giving the community and the operator time to try to come together and figure out some of these concerns. But yeah, I'm going to second that. Thank you. I'm a friendly amendment. Would you see me accept that? I'd like to make sure that the meeting takes place before Christmas, so it will be next week. I want three representatives from the neighborhood to meet with the operator, which is Miss Cove, with facilitated by Mr. Ho, Director Ho, if that's appropriate. And also a representative from coding enforcement as well. I think that would be much more precise. I could live with that. The meeting has been very specified. And that the result of the meeting needs to be reported back to the council. That's a friendly amendment. Um, I, I like, I understand the idea and I agree that I don't want to be too prescriptive as to like what the me who gets to come, you know, I say let them figure that out to some extent. Um, if staff feels it's appropriate to be there, then great otherwise I, I think I would suggest going to be a two-part thing where the operator and the community, the neighborhood get together, and then discuss how that would be applied with appropriate city staff instead of having staff run the meeting. But if you're okay with that, I would accept that. You accept that, Director Hall, will be there? I cannot leave that to his discretion that director who will be there? I cannot leave that to his discretion because I don't want to say go to this meeting and then it's unhelpful. If it's better to have the neighbors meet directly with the operator and then bring that to the city as a proposal, as a joint proposal, I think in my mind that's ideal, but I'm not going to, I don't want to prescribe too much. I kind of want to let the parties figure this out. So you will not accept my friendly amendment? If you change it a little bit, I would. Which part do you want to leave? If it's very friendly, I would accept it. It's very friendly. Just allowing, so just split up into two parts, so allow the community to get together, however they want, with the operator to discuss the changes and then bring it to staff after that. And then come back as soon as humanly possible to us. I agree with that part. And vice mayor, if you would accept mine, I would be willing to be at that meeting. Even better as the representative of the council for the council. I'm good with that too. Okay, I could do that. There's a motion, a second. Roll call, please. What do you mean? Can we just get a little clarification on the motion? Because we want to make sure that we can implement your direction. You would like to continue the item until it sounds like your next meeting in January. Your next meeting would be the January 13th meeting and then after that the 27th recognizing you have a lot of holidays between now and the 13th and so people getting together may be a little difficult. So if you would just let us know if you have a preference between January 13th or January 27th come back And then in terms of the structure of the meeting, it sounds like it's sort of the owner operator and neighborhood preference. If they can meet by themselves and then get together and meet with staff, that's great. If they don't want to do it that way and they just want to meet with staff and the council member, then they can go ahead and do that meeting. I actually asked for the meeting to be held in December because the next event is supposed to be scheduled in January. Is that correct? So I like the meeting to occur before that. I think you're talking about the council meeting. The next council meeting. I'm talking about when you said you wanted to report back to council. Your next meeting isn't until January 13th. Right. But I do ask the committee to be in December. Absolutely. With council member Andrada Staller volunteer to be there as well. Yes. That's great. Okay. That's the thing Tom evening is a consent agenda number item numbers 2 to sue 21. Do we have any speaker cards from 9, 11, 17 and 19. So that's 9, 11, 17? 9, 1119. May I have a motion to approve the balance of the consent agenda? Move to approve. Second. Roll call please. I'm Triedi Sadler. Yes. Mazza. Yes. Maloney. Lee. Yes. The first speaker is for item number 9, Mr. Lewis McClemon. Almost good evening. I had spoken previously when a similar issue was up before you on item 9, item 9 deals with the salary schedule for part time employee classifications in the city of Alhambra. at the state minimum wage. And the state minimum wage is going up from 16 an hour to 1650, so we have to raise that because we have to have that officially on the salary schedule to meet other state regulations. The only thing, and as I said before, we need to kind of be mindful that a lot of other jobs are paying a lot more than that right now. In many fast food jobs, pay more than that. And I don't know if we have some people there who have been very good employees. If they're part time, they're obviously not earning a lot of money at this rate. It's certainly not enough to make a living. But we might want to just keep that in mind if we want to really keep these employees given the other options that they have for earning money. We might want to look at some point at going a little bit further than that. And I know the City of LA has a number of regulations that they had put in place about paying higher salaries for certain occupations and all. That's all on that one. Am I the only card up? I can make these short. Let's get a break in here before 6 o'clock. Okay number 11 is next. You also want to speak on item number 19? Why'd you go ahead and do that? I can go in seven order out that matter to me. Okay why don't you speak all four items. Okay. 9-11-17. 11 is the next one. Yeah. This is inviting bids on the LIT Quarters Rock Traffic Control Devices Project. Again, this is something using funding from Measure M. And there are a number of locations where they are planning to put up different types of Lit cross walks which will it greatly improve pedestrian safety for those crossing those particular streets. I've seen a number of different varieties of this Some have pedestrian push buttons, signals, and different types, signage, and so forth. But something that as funding becomes available, we seem to rely very heavily on grant funding for this type of project. Keep in mind, Cordova and Main Street just last Saturday. It's good to see a number of you there at the soft opening of the Chinatown Service Center, Regional Health Center there. With the knowledge that many seniors are gonna be involved in getting medical care at that. Facility with 49 units, residential units, going up diagonally across the street from that. In the old days, in time with Burr Aing, he has pictures of the old days when there actually was a crosswalk across Main Street painted there in the oldies and at some point the city took it out. I mean you're taking your life in your hands if you cross that street there. It's just sort of like or put up a sign, do not cross here for pedestrians and just say vehicles only but if we're trying to make this more pedestrian friendly and so forth let's let's look at options as funding becomes available on that and keeping in mind the safety issues and the comment on that one. Next one be 17 if I'm the only cards you've got there. 17 is about the Elhamber dog park awarding the contract on that. You put it out to bed. You have some bids back. You're going to assign the bid tonight. The only comment it was a little hard to really see everything on the map and I blew it up to the maximum I could on my computer 500% you still could very hard to read anything on it. I'm sure it's a good design. The only comment I have here is it's at that lower level it's almost at the same level as the railroad tracks. I don't know what hours you've got on this or what the schedules are on the trains coming through there but I can see a lot of dogs getting pretty freaked out if those trains make a lot of noise. They're down in the ditch it's not so quite bad and bad up above but you might want to if there's a regular schedule just make the people who use the park with their dogs, where are this? You might want to kind of stand by and be able to comfort and control your pet if the train's going to be coming through at a certain time or something there. I don't know if there's any way to mitigate the noise, but at least we can kind of work around it so that it doesn't cause any particular problems. End of comment on that one. Okay, last one is number 19. These are all the minutes. I really enjoyed going through all those minutes. Lauren, you have done an outstanding job. That was a couple hundred pages of minutes of prior meetings. And it is so good to have those together. There were some things I noticed I've missed in some that I was interested in. And once these get approved, they'll undoubtedly be posted on the agenda website so that they can be referenced and that will be very helpful for the future for many times going back and taking a look at them is useful in planning for further things that are upcoming. I know this is even in some of the work we're doing, the HCDA committee did meet and we got a quorum this last time and thank you for Mr. Mazza. Your new appointee was there and very helpful made the quorum for us and we're looking at certain things like various inspections that are conducted. There was a proactive inspection thing that we had been considering and actually had approved, but it was very difficult to implement during COVID. And it was looked at as something that would help renters. And so forth. It was very difficult to do all they could do is to some outside drive by inspections and stuff. City of LA handles all that much differently in the case of their rentals. But then there's now some stages of state law in the last couple of years where the fire department is much more involved in this. And I noticed on one of the things there was actually, we approved something going out to bid for on fire department inspections for somebody to keep track of the billing consequence to that. So I think my committee, I was good, I caught that in here. I hadn't caught it for the meeting previously when it came up but it's just something where as we Get on that To just have all that together so we can clarify What role the fire department is taking what role the Code enforcement or other Organ arm in the city might take. But Lauren, thank you for all your hard work on that. Boy, and I'm sure you had some staff help on that too, but I know you're in charge of it. So thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. McKennan. This is Council have any comments on any of these floor items? I actually do have a question, just a clarification on Exhibit A for item number 9. You have different steps and are those steps all within this year, within next year? So individuals are brought in generally at step one, then they are eligible for merit increases on their anniversary and so that's how they move generally through the steps. And so we may have individuals that are at step two or three now and then with the increases then they'll get the shift. Is that usually annually? That means they're reviewed annually on their work. Okay. Thank you. Yes, that's it for my question. Thank you. Okay. So, there is all the comments on item number 9 1117 and 19 so I'm moved to remain out to approve the remainder of the balance of the agenda I second that Roll call please Mazza yes on dress edler yes, Maloney yes, yes Yes. Yes. Yes. Lee. Yes. Next we have public comment for non-genised items. Do we have any speaker or cars from the public? We have one. Yolanda Mino. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm Ranger Council Members. The reason why I requested this meeting is because I am a resident and owner and a resident of Alhamdulillah. My residence is in the 2nd Street, 1820 South 2nd Street. On our block, the back of our property, we have An alley, which is next to the on and off ramp of the 10 freeways. And the last couple of years, there's been about two or three or more accidents. They're running across and hitting the wire fence, which is no security whatsoever, onto the alley and going into the properties. About six months ago, we had my neighbor a car running from the on-rump into the garage. I see a threat. I see a threat for the properties in Alhambra. I see a threat for the people that go through the alley. And I've been trying to see what can be done and nothing is happening. That wire fence is totally not secure. The cars in the last few months, there's a lot of cars going through the on and off run. So you can't stop the cars going through the on and off run. But something can be done for the security to protect the Ahambeur residents as well as the people. And I think something more secure than the wire fence. So I'm asking you, please, look at that. Look before there is a human tragedy. We don't want to wait for a human tragedy to occur in that area. Cars are just lighting off and going into the alley. And this is the first time I'm talking to you. I've never spoken, but I feel this down to my heart and all our neighbors and all our properties and the people that runs through there. So please, I ask you to look at that. I don't know what else to do. Right? Thank you very much. Thank you. Do we have any speakers via Zoom that wish to speak? Yes, Madam Vice Mayor. We have one raised hand from Randy K. Good evening. And congratulations to our new Mayor, Noya Wang, Council Member Maloney and Senator Sasha Perez. Tonight I wanted to mention something that I hope you will place on a future agenda. I lived near Atheon Helman in El Hambra. From time to time we've had sightings of coyotes in our backyards and on the street. Yesterday I received a call from my neighbor on Chandler and Monterey Park warning me that there was a coyote outside my place. I usually take my dog tiger lily and actually spotted it myself as it would be left where I live. I snatched her up and ran back in the house. It came to 8th street around 620 and stayed for 45 minutes. Another approached the first one on the street and it was chased toward Ramona by the first coyote. This morning one appeared about 630am, stem, stay for some time and left. They are present during daylight hours as well as at dawn based on previous encounters. The issues are the following. Our pets, both cats and dogs, are at risk of death in the jaws of coyotes, horrible deaths for any pet owner, particularly for those who have had this experience. There are after food and that includes food left out to feed feral cats, the cats themselves, squirrels, etc. The more food and water that is left outside and is available to them, the worse the coyote population will become in Alhamber and Monterey Park. We are fearful of walking our pets, leaving them outside for a few minutes, or even taking them with us to the car. I spoke with LA County Animal Control this morning, and the gentleman told me that the Coyote population here in Elhamber has increased significantly and they are unable to do anything about it. He gave me the number for LA County agricultural weights and measures. There is a pest control department within that unit that is able to address Coyote problems. They inform me they will be sending an inspector out to our area. We will see what they are able to do to remediate this problem. I have alerted as many neighbors as possible to make sure they check for coyotes prior to walking outside with their dogs. What I think would be beneficial for our cities is to educate the public regarding coyotes presence and the dangers they present to our domesticated pets. Residents should be strongly discouraged from leaving food out for feral cats and inform them that coyotes are drawn to this area to eat them and their food. Leaving food out for cats is done with good intentions. However, when people do that, it makes the very cats their feeding food for the coyotes that the food is attracting. An educational campaign intervention would be most beneficial if it could be done by the city and Mandarin English and Spanish. And thank you to the woman who works for the fire department that brought up the den at the castle too. So you can see that this is not an isolated incident. And thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Next we have council communications. I know I'll be very brief. First of all, I wanted to know whether somebody could go out to, I can't even visualize the second street in the freeway on ramp. I'm having trouble visualizing that. Can somebody go out there and see what she is referring to? And if it's on our end, what we can do, I know freeways are federal, and even though we can have input on what happens there, we would have to send a letter to either Congress, member GDQ, or somebody from the federal or maybe CalTrans, and see to it that maybe there might be place something temporarily for safety. Thank you. Thank you. And then also I wanted to address the woman who talked about coyote. It's interesting. We have our one of our representatives here from who that addresses coyote issues as well as a lot of water safety. So I'm glad you're on the line. I also am you're conversing with the pest control folks at the agriculture, which is this place to go. I know that the COG also does coyote information for an education information for our families. They generally are at a lot of our events. And maybe what we can do is put something in around Elhambera or suggest around Elhambera. Send out information since around Elhambera goes to every household. Letting people know what to do in case they see a coyote. They also give out free whistles. I give them to my daughter who walks dogs, every single two walks dogs and she walks them in the evening as well as daytime and without that whistle to deter a lot of coyotes, it would be a difficult job for her to do. So there are red whistles, maybe we can reach out to our vector control person who's here in the room, Mr. Henry Avilis. Get us some whistles for our families. That would be great. On another note, I wanted to let the council know that asphalt art initiative, who give out $100,000 grants, I gave out the information to our city manager to give to the grants manager. It's for street improvement. It came from school board member, Kaisamorano in the area of Fremont in particular, it's pedestrian and street safety money. And we might be able to apply. For those of you who don't know, if you looked at our agenda and what we pushed through the agenda quickly, was all the work that our staff is doing on a regular basis to begin a sewer, clean sewer expansion or making pipes larger for people to have better water flow. We're also working on lighting, LED lighting throughout the city. And all of that takes time. Please read through the agendas. That's what we approved. And thank you and I'll in there. Thank you so much. Our final item is closed session. Do we have any speakers from the public for this item? I'm no kind of vice mayor. We don't have any speaker cards nor anyone on Zoom with a raised hand at this time. Thank you. We are now moving to closed session. Mr. City Attorney? Yes. We would request to recess in a closed session. This has got two potential exposure to litigation item. Thank you, Mr. City Attorney, where recess to closed session. you I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. I'm going to be a little bit more patient. We have reconvene from closed session, Mr. City Attorney, do you have anything to report? There is no announcement out of closed session this evening. We have now completed all the items on this evening's adjourned regular meeting agenda. And I will adjourn that meeting and move into this evening's regular meeting. Good evening and welcome to the December 9th regular meeting of the November City Council. We'll call please. Maaza. Here. Maloney. Andratis Tabler. Here. Lee. Here. Our first order of business this evening is a single consent agenda item regarding the adoption of a resolution accepting the official certificate of the Canvas of the election returns. And statement of votes cast for the November 5th, 2024 General Municipal Election, an adoption of a resolution pertaining to their designation of the member, an alternate member of the boards of directors of Los Angeles County Sanitation District numbers, two and sixteen. Do we have any speakers from the public for this item? Madam Vice Mayor, there are no speaker cards for this item, nor are there any raised hands-on zoom at this time. Thank you. May I have a motion? Move to approve. Aye second. Roll call please. Mazza. Yes. Maloney. Yes. Andratty Maaza. Yes. Maloney. Yes. Andrati Sadler. Yes. Lee. Yes. Our next order of business this evening is a city council, oath of office and farewell ceremony where our newly elected council members, Jeff Maloney and Noya Wang will take the oath of office and the city bids farewell to Sasha Renee Perez, who is now serving as a member of the California State Senate. First, I'd like to invite the police department on a guard to present the colors of our flag salute. Everyone, please rise. the Please show me for the flash the will ready begin. the Black United States of America, and the Northern Atlantic, for which it stands, my nation, my great God, indivisible, and the looks of being justice for all. you I would now like to invite Council Member Oleg Neu-Wang to join the Council on the Thank you. I would now like to ask the City Clerk to please administer the OSA office to Councilmember Jeff Maloney, newly re-elected to represent District 3 and to our newly elected colleague representing the fourth district, Noelle Wong. I'll do, you're already to go. Thank you. I'm going to get a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a I'm going to administer the oath to Ms. Wang, please. Let me bring up my children to the Dias. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I'm not going to be a good guy. I know your way. I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California. Yes, all enemies, foreign, that I will bear to pay and the leave. To the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the mayor of California, and I take this opportunity without any mental reservation or self-reported reservation that I will. Well, and please, I'm charged with the time which I'm about to turn on the phone. Applause. I'm about to turn on the phone. I'm about to turn on the phone. I'm about to turn on the phone. I'm about to turn on the phone. I'm about to turn on the phone. I'm about to turn on the phone. I'm about to turn on the phone. I'm about to turn on the phone. I'm about to turn on the phone. and recognitions and acknowledgments by Mayor Wang and Council Member Maloney. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for being here tonight to share this very special moment with us. Now I would like to offer an opportunity for my Council colleague Jeff Maloney for his remarks. Thank you, Madam Mayor. It's an honor to be here with you. I honestly did not prepare any remarks because I think this evening we have some pretty momentous things going on. We have one council member leaving us for some reason going to the state legislature as opposed to being here and Elhamber on Monday nights. And we have a brand new mayor. So I don't want to take too much time for myself. I did want to just thank the community for giving me the opportunity to do one more term in Elambra. In Elambra, we have term limits that allow persons to serve for three consecutive terms, four year terms. Then you have to leave for four years and come back. But frankly, if I have Monday nights to myself at home for four years, I don't know that I'm going to be able to motivate to come back. So this is likely my last term on the council, especially if my family has anything to say about it. But I do look back on the previous two terms and we have gotten so much done as a team with my council colleagues with our wonderful staff here at the city, you guys make us look good all the time. We come up with some crazy ideas and said policies, and then you all have to go and implement it. So I am remiss if I don't recognize staff for all the work they do day in and day out. We're only here and we're only successful because of you all. The community, of course, for giving me the opportunity, there wasn't much of a choice on the ballot. As I looked, there's only one name there, but I like to think it's because we're doing such a good job, but whatever the reason I appreciate the opportunity, and I look forward to do another good productive four years with a slightly new council, and we're getting to that point. I do, I don't know if we have opportunity to speak later, but I think I saw our departing or our immediate past mayor and the lobby there. She listening. It's been a pleasure working with Sasha over these last few years and getting to know her as a person, as a colleague and as a friend. She's done an incredible job. She's a gifted public servant. She's incredibly smart and she learns things, even if she doesn't know it, she learns it super quickly. And she has a way of communicating with people in the community and all walks of life that any politician would envy. She's really good at talking to people and communicating and she's gonna do an incredible job when she is a Sacramento. I am sad to see her leave because we've been so successful on so many things as a group and Sasha and I have served as a subcommittee on several really important items including our pedestrian bike safety plan, our sustainability plan, things that I know that she cares deeply about and I do as well. It's been a real pleasure working with her on these things and fortunately for us here that in Elhamber we know where to find her. We know where to go with our wish list. When our budget surpluses come back to the state, I know it will happen at some point. I'm only half joking there because there are a lot of priorities in our communities that we really need to be serious about funding and sticking behind. So on that note, I do want to say congratulations to our new mayor. Now I've really enjoyed getting to know Noya over these last several months, but really a couple of years now, and all the work that you put in the planning commission and the community as a whole, you put together an incredible campaign and a really great coalition of people that were backing. It was very impressive. And I was happy that I didn't have to run my own campaign this time, but it was a pleasure watching you campaign. And I know through our conversations more recently that we share a lot of the same goals and values. And I really look forward to getting to work with you. So that'll do it for me tonight. Sasha, I hope you heard all the nice things I said about you out there in the hallway If not you go back and read the watch the recording all time stamp it for you But I'm pleased for another opportunity to serve this community. I love it here We really enjoy all the work that we've done earlier tonight You missed we we approved the contract for our first off-leash dog bar and That's something that we've, it's a small thing, but we're working up for a long time. We finally, we keep working, we keep working, we get things done. So thanks to everyone for this opportunity. Thank you, Sasha, for all your leadership over the last four years and thank you for your friendship and good luck in your future endeavors. And again, good luck to our new mayor. Congratulations very much. Thanks, everyone. Thank you so much, Council Member Maloney. This moment feels truly special for me as I return to this very seat where it all started for me. Four years ago, I was appointed to the Planning Commission. Thank you Vice Mayor Lee for that appointment and the opportunity to serve this beautiful city. I chair the commission right here in this very seat. And I remember many of the late nights that we worked through, issued through our staff with my fellow commissioners. It was a really a privilege and honor to serve the city, but also it was those years that I saw the power of local government. It's capable of solving problems and making a difference in people's lives. And I was during those years I discovered my passion for policy and the joy of working handing hand with our community. I want to take a moment to thank my fellow planning commissioners. You were my first inspirations. I learned so much from each and every one of you. I want to thank our staff for the hard work that you all do behind the scenes. With all your support, we can't really accomplish anything. I want to thank our community for consistently showing up to our meetings, doing your homework, and providing your valuable input. You all have inspired me to become the public servant I am today, so I'm grateful for that. Today, I'm so excited to return to the seat in a different role with a even bigger responsibility. I wanna thank the residents and voters of the fourth district of El Hambra. First and foremost, I want to thank you all for opening your doors to me and sharing your thoughts with me. I walked every street and knocked on every single door. And it was a humbling experience to connect with each one of you and listen to your stories. Many of you voted for the very first time. I feel so honored to be part of that journey with you. And many of you welcomed me and my children with your kindness. You offer them water and juice and allow them to pick fruit on your trees. And some days we even took home plates of dinner. So thank you. Those small acts of kindness really warmed our hearts. Most importantly, I want to thank you for your vote of confidence in my ability and commitment to serve our city. And I will live up to your expectations. For those of you that did not vote for me, I'm here to represent you as well. I will always be available for you. And I also will not only represent District 4, I'm here to work with all my council colleagues for the betterment of our entire city. I like to thank my opponents in this race. It takes a lot of courage to run a campaign and you all did that. Thank you for running the campaign. Thank you for running a positive campaign. And I know that you all did this out of the goodness in your heart and I am just so grateful that we all focus on our issues that matter to us. I like to find a way to work with each one of you in the years to come. To my incredible friends, supporters and volunteers and many of you are sitting here in this audience. Thank you for being in my life. And for being with me every step of the way. Many of you went out to Canvas for me, talk to neighbors. I know it wasn't easy, but you did it because you believe in my ability and my commitment to the city. And I thank you for that. I want you to know that you're faith in me will forever propel me forward. Until my godmother Lisa Lisa, I know you're not here today, but you have been my guiding light keeping me grounded and focused. I remember going to you when I was deciding to run and these are the words you said to me. Throughout history and in every culture, building a community and serving others has been how we find peace and endure hardship. Choosing to be an elected official is a challenging way of building a community but it's one of the most important. Those words will forever remind me why I do this work and the responsibility I carry in this role. To my family, my husband's guy, you're my rock and my hero. You held everything together at home so I could focus on this campaign. Couldn't have done it without you. Thank you. To my two kids, Marcus and Haley, you were my first supporters. You were the one of the first ones I talked to when I was deciding to run, and I know it was a little risky but you decided to support me and that meant the world to me. And then you came out to campus with me every day your summer. You sacrificed your summer to walk with me through the heat, through all the mosquito bites and you patiently waited for me even when you were hungry for me to finish up conversations with neighbors. So thank you so much. And I hope the summer has given you something special as well. The understanding of what it takes to serve. It takes hard work, sacrifice and putting others first. But it's all worth it because we're building something bigger than ourselves. And I like to echo my colleague Councilmember Maloney and say a big thank you to our outgoing mayor and now Senator Sacha Renee Perez. Thank you Sacha for all the work you've here, for being a leader here in this community. You've done tremendous work and you've set the bar really high. And I really look forward to continue our partnership and working with you in the years to come and continue to push our city forward. Congratulations to my colleague, Councilmember Jeff Maloney, for your reelection. I'm very thrilled to work with you and excited for what we will accomplish together. Finally, to everybody here tonight and the entire Elhambera community, I'm deeply honored and privileged to serve as your mayor. This is a role I do not take lightly and I promise to give it my all. We'll build upon the work already done by our amazing council and addressing our committee's needs with focus and care. The next decade will present challenges as we navigate stay in regional issues. But I'm committed to thoughtful and inclusive decision-making to make sure that no one's left behind in our community. The conversation I've had with many of you throughout the campaign at your doorstep will continue to guide me in my decision-making, and that will be the front and center of my work here as mayor. And together with my council colleagues with our staff, commissioners, and each and every one of you in our community will build an al-Hambra that reflects the best of our community. Our best days are ahead of us and I'm ready to get to work. Thank you. Now we would like to welcome many elected officials wishing to present recognitions for our newly elected council members, Mr. Meloney and Miss Wang. Please join us at the podium to make your presentations. Thank you. Hi, good evening. I know I said it would be virtual, but as you guys know, you're never going to be able to get rid of me. I'm very, very proud to be here tonight. This is really special. You know, I was reflecting on the first time that I ever had the opportunity to walk through those doors. And I think it was probably 2014 or 2013, and I was a student at Cal State LA finishing up my degree. And I was doing research on city budgets and I was assigned the city of El Hamba. And I think I was probably the only person sitting in the audience. And Luis Ayala was the district for representative at the time. And Luis Ayala was the District 4 representative at the time and I thought, that's kind of interesting. I wonder what it would be like to serve on city council. And it's really bizarre to stand here today knowing that I am now your next state senator. So it is quite a surreal feeling. I was very honored to be sworn in on Monday. As you may have read, we've reached 49% nearly gender parity in the legislature for the first time ever. It's the most amount of women we've ever seen elected. We now have a majority of women in the Senate, 21 out of 40 members, which is a huge historic moment that we are incredibly, incredibly proud of. So, I'm just excited to work with you all and this has been so special getting to represent my city and now doing this in the Senate. So I look forward to partnering with each and every single one of you and to continue, you know, to serve this community just in a different capacity. So please reach out my staff member artists here, by the way. And there will be plenty more staff for you all to meet as well. As part of my role now as a senator, I have the honor of presenting our newly elected officials, as well as our re-elected officials with certificates. And so I would like to start off first with Council Member Jeff Maloney if you would join one of my closest friends during my time on this council we've worked together on a number of items, everything from our sustainability plan to our actor transportation plan. And I have to say you were really the first one to spearhead all of that. I remember when you were, in many ways, this will voice in the council advocating for these things. And now we've seen those items get passed. We're now working on implementation, which you all will have the pleasure of working on. And it's just been really incredible to get to partner with you. So I'm so excited to see you be reelected. I'm also very happy you did not have an opponent to give you a little bit of a rest. And, you know know just really looking forward to these next four years of continuing to work together. So thank you Jeff for all of your partnership and your friendship and for all the work that you do to serve this community. You truly love all Ham Brown. I just know that because they just see it not just in you but in your family or wife. So thank you thank you for your service. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Great. And now I would like to present our certificate to our incoming council member for the fourth district as well as our mayor for the City of all Hambra, Noya Wang. Now, Noya and I have gotten to know in another quite a bit over the last couple of years and Noya, I'm always just so impressed by your kindness, your open-heartedness, and your willingness to be inquisitive. Me and Neuja were neighbors for several years and would take many walks together to talk about housing policy, to talk about what was happening at the state level. And I just appreciated how willing you were to be open-minded and to really dive deep into these issues. And I know that those talents are going to make you an excellent leader for this city. So I know I'm leaving the city in very good hands, having you come in as our next mayor. And please know that you can always reach out to me. I look forward to continuing to work together and to continuing to walk in the park together when I view up questions. So I'm excited for you and congratulations. Well, good evening everyone. This is a wonderful occasion. My name is Mike Ng. I'd like to present certificates of Congressional recognition by Congresswoman Judy Chu who couldn't be here. She left this morning on a airplane. Got up at four o'clock. I'm also speaking as the newly elected member of the San Gabriel Valley municipal water district that represents four cities, including Alhamdul and I took my oath of office this morning as well. First of all, I'd like to thank the three members of the city council who are not receiving their oath. We want to know that it takes the entire council to move our city forward. So thank you very much to Ross, Catherine and Adele. Give them a round of applause because you're going to feel very left out. First of all, incoming mayor, maybe you folks should sit down here because you're going to be coming up and down. I'd like to present a certificate of congressional recognition to our incoming mayor, who I have known personally for many years in her capacity as the executive board member and one of the youngest leaders of the youngest leaders of the Asian American architects and engineers, and I believe you are an engineer, where you demonstrated great leadership in training the next generation of architects and engineers in collaboration with government agencies. You also used your abilities to understand and adjudicate complex issues as the chair of the Ohamber Planning Commission. I know that is not an easy position because you have to balance so many concerns. And also finally, one of my favorite topics you were in the leadership of the Safe Clean Water Program, Watershed Steering Committee, addressing the needs of disadvantaged communities in LA with regards to sustainable water. Congratulations as you're not only sworn in to represent the fourth district, but you'll also serve as the mayor of this incredible city. So on behalf of Congresswoman Judy Chu and myself, I'd like to present a certificate of congressional recognition. Please take pictures so Judy will know I was not at the casino tonight. Next to my good friend, a certificate of congressional recognition to Council member Jeff Maloney, who just won re-election overwhelmingly to represent the third district. I have known Jeff since his election to the council in 2016, I believe, when I was serving the final term as assembly member of this 49th assembly district. Congresswoman Chu, especially wanted to stress Jeff's major support of the Congresswoman's San Gabriel Mountains National Monument Expansion, and especially your role in the city's receipt of $680,000 for the Alhambra Comprehensive Sustainability Plan as a federal grant champion by the Congresswoman. And Jeff, you also realized your dream of six years when the council developed Alhambra's first ever bike and pedestrian safety plan and bike network. Congratulations, Jeff Maloney, elected councilperson of the third district. I believe we can make comments later for the new senator. Thank you. Let's take a vote. Okay. Okay. There we go. Okay. Wow. That was an interesting exchange. Okay. Elected officials. I am Denise Menchalka, Vice Mayor for the City of St. Gabriel. This is my hometown. So I think it's my second visit ever to City Hall. I was at, I did graduate from Alharmher High, but never came this direction. But I am here now. And so I actually have certificates for our senator too. I know it's so small compared to the ones you were giving out, but kind of embarrassing here. But we do, on behalf of San Gabriel, we do want to recognize your accomplishments as one of us as a city council person and a mayor. For me as a vice mayor for the city of San Gabriel, I'm actually very excited to see you at the Seneca. I'll actually get to see more often now. And so you represent our city. So we look forward to partnering together. We need funding just like Al Hambro and every other city. But feel free to call me or any of my colleagues if there's anything you need. We are the historic city of San Gabriel. So I look forward to working with you in the future and congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And then let's see, I got Jeff here. So Jeff, you are definitely living the dream of not having a challenger. For us electeds, that's a dream that I've never had. Every election I've always had a challenger. But it also isn't, you know, seriousness, a testament of what you've accomplished so far. And, you know, I'm sure you'll continue on to lead with being grounded, understanding what is required for the city of Alhambra. And you have your kids, you have your wife, and you know, you're just, have all the support system there, so you're very fortunate. And I too look forward to seeing you at events and maybe one day we can work together as on a regional level. But congratulations to you and I also have a certificate from the city of St. Gabriel. And last but not least, Miss Noya Wang. So Noya, I actually got to know through the National Women's Political Caucus of the San Gui Povelli and was very impressed immediately with all that she has accomplished public works director for the city of Rosemind and for you that don't know this there are very very few women in that role so we talked about parity at the Senate I can't even imagine what the percentage is, but it's probably under 10%. But that alone was quite an accomplishment. And I applaud you for that. And you have two little young ones and a husband. And so you too have that support system that's very much needed. I saw you sitting there and boy, you are natural. So you just, even though I know you're a commission chair, but you're ready to take the office and take the helm and move forward. So I am just so proud of you and I'm just so glad that has come to fruition. I always tell people when you first get elected, be careful what you wish for. But I know you're going to do very well. I always tell people when you first get elected, be careful what you wish for. But I know you're going to do very well and if there's anything I can ever do as one of your neighboring female colleagues, please call me. So congratulations. All right. Good evening, everyone. I'm William Mann, Council member from the City of Temple City. I always like to refer to Alhamber as my second home, even though I had trouble finding this exact location. The reason I say that is because I went through the Alhambra school system, graduate of Martha Baldwin and Alhambra High. My day job at Alhambra High Work for Ellic County Public Works, their building is located on Fremont and Alhambra. My favorite restaurants are in Alhambra. I could keep going on and on. Actually, when my family first moved to Southern California, we lived in Alhambra. So for a short period of time before we move to Temple City. So it's always a pleasure to be here. First of all, I just want to say it's a pleasure to see Council members or Vice Mayor Catherine Lee, Council Member Ross Mazza and Council Member Adele Andrade Stadler. I know we see each other at events occasionally, so it's always great to see Council members in their natural environment, I should say. First of all, I do have some certificates that I would like to present first and foremost to outgoing mayor and our new state senator, senator Sasha Renee Perez. She also represents Temple City. And I'm very proud of everything she's accomplished in a short period of time. And it's amazing just to kind of see a rising star like yourself and very excited for everything that you're going to be doing at the state senate. Temple City, we're proud to say we've always had a great relationship with our state senator going back many years. And I know for a fact that that is going to continue with you being our state senator. I finally recall you joining us for one of our Lunar New Year celebrations, and you head on the whole traditional Chinese attire and you were blended right in with everyone. So we appreciate your support. So we look forward to working with you and congratulations. Applause Next, I have a certificate for newly reelected Council Member Jeff Maloney. Our common bond is we were first selected around the same time, so congratulations on, I believe it's your third term. The fact that you had no opponents, I think, is a testament to the work you've done. I guess we as elected officials, every time we have an uncontested election, we like to think that it's because we're doing a great job in our community. Doesn't want to see change because they love all the work that you do. So I'm going to say that's exactly how it is in your district. district and so congratulations. We also were matching ties that was uncorinated but apparently our wives probably have the same taste in ties because that they are better tasting us so that's another thing we have in common so congratulations. Of course, incoming mayor, Noya Wang, and again talking about common bonds, right? She and I shared the common bond of both being Berkeley civil engineers, go bears. And also she is part of my master conspiracy plan of putting civil engineers into city council position. Because we believe engineers know how to do everything. So, but that's great to see, and I mean mean that in a more serious note that I do believe not only your professional work, but is a great responsibility, but kind of like what Councilmember Minchaka mentioned earlier, you're a natural, so I am not worried about that at all so Congratulations, and I lean wing to my right. Both council members in the city of Arcadia. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, get elected, there's so many birthdays, parties, weddings to go to, but they don't really tell you that you miss your family's birthdays, parties, weddings. But there's something inside of you that drives you to be an elected official. It's to let people know that despite all the negativity that's out there, that there's a spirit of service, that there are people that cheer for other people, and there are people that truly want to impact this great city. I wanted to thank all councilmem members that are here today. Want to thank Sasha for making that big step to giving our voice up in Sacramento. Indeed in the next few years, you need to be working on housing. You need to be working on greener practices, fiscal responsibility, and community building. I pray for each and every one of you because I believe that God has put you in a place so that you can impact change. I also just wanted to, before I pass it on to Councilmember Wang Wang is that I saw heroes in this room. There are first responders that are standing in the back. During COVID, what did they tell elected officials to do, shelter in place, and what did we do? We sheltered in place. But the first responders on the other hand could not. They actually had to stand up and they had to say with passion that they were willing to die for a community because they loved this community. And I'm just so blessed to be in a room with members and colleagues that want to sacrifice for other people, as well as heroes with our first responders. And I'm just so blessed that each and every one of you as council members will stand up for the first responders and will let everybody know that freedom is not free. And the two promises that we give our community, one, we will love America and two, we will never let the flag touch the ground. Eileen Wing. First of all, I want to see congratulations to each of the newly elected. And second, I want to say thank you so much vice mayor Cassidy Lee, which is a couple days ago, which is last Tuesday she came here to City of Acadia to represent the City of Ahembra to give us the congratulations. So, and also, I want to see something different, because most of us here, which is, I'm also the board director for IPAC, because most of the Chinese Association American, especially for the elected official, to get the IPAC endorsement in the past many years. And also, I want to appreciate Linda. Linda's here, which is she was former vice chair for IPA, which is she worked for so many new, elected official in past many years. Would you please give the floor of applause to appreciate her support. I think many of the people know she was an also an also an also an also an also an also an also an also an also an also an also an also an also an also an also an also an also an also an also an also an also an also an also an so exciting to appreciate her in here. And I'm so excited to congratulate you, Sasa, which is two years ago, which is 2022. September, when she first talked to me about say she wants to run for 16, and today it becomes it's true. I'm so glad to. And also, congratulations to Noya. And I, when she asked me, can you endorse me as a yes, of course, because we are 20 years old American, we are Asian American, we need to work together to make the country, this country wonderful and strong. And also, it's really happy for you. Thank you so much to allowing us here to be here today. And I'm looking forward to work with you which will work with each of you, the city of Hamburg and the city of a K-Datukator. Thank you so much. So if we could have the mayor and councilmember Maloney and our senator Sasha Perez, if we could just have them come up. What we have is we have big smiles, big smiles. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. I'm sorry, but I parked in a parking lot that's going to close soon. And I thought that we were going to wait to have Sasha Peres, Sasha René Peres. So I'm going to do this very, very quickly. I apologize for those of you who stood in line, but I was here first. I am very particularly pleased to present a certificate of congressional recognition to outgoing mayor Sasha Renee Pettas, who's also sworn in as our state center for the 25th district. If you didn't know it, her district has over 1 million people and all of them I think are calling her tonight. I had the privilege of meeting Sasha when she was with the campaign for college opportunity. Remember that? We were at the restaurant nearby. I paid for it though. But since then, she has really impressed with her leadership. In fact, during COVID, when COVID had, she made sure the restaurants were not disadvantaged by third-party food delivery services. Remember that? That charged more than 15% of the delivery order and then your leadership with the help of the council in passing hero, hero pay for frontline food and pharmacy workers. And of course your activism environmental issues and women's rights, especially something that Judy has been pushing at the national level. Sasha effectively advocated for the city to adopt a resolution demanding that Roe v Wade be upheld and codified into law. Thank you for that. So congratulations to outgoing mayor on your amazing service. And now something that I have had responsibility taking the airplane almost every Monday morning and disappearing to another country called Sacramento and having to do with all of the issues there and then coming back on the day that you come back you'll have probably four or five dinners to go to and you'll be the only one that can say I went to five dinners and I'm still hungry because they will all have served dinner and passed down by the time you come. But I know that this is a very important moment for you and it's very special for me because I've been there not as a state senator but as a lowly assembly member. But I know what the pressure is. So again make sure you take a picture because the casinos are still open and I don't want my wife to think I'm there. Senator Sasha Renee Paris. Thank you. Thanks for coming in line, Mike. No, thank you. Let me invite up my fellow Councillors from Maurey Park. My name is Thomas Solman. I'm the mayor of the city of Maurey Park. And here, proud to be here with our favorite neighbors alongside San Gabriel and Temple City in Arcadia. But Alhambra really is one of our favorite neighbors among many here, but we appreciate the strong working relationship and the partnership in the online ship that we've experienced for many, many decades. Going back to many, many decades, I'll just do it with that. And between council members as well, between our two cities, we appreciate the special relationship and just want to congratulate Jeff Maloney But between council members as well, between R2 cities, appreciate the special relationship and just wanna congratulate Jeff Maloney on your landslide victory and and noi weighing on immediately ascending to the mayor ship and becoming, getting elected to city council. Your district is also neighboring of my district and Maureen Park, so really look forward working closely with you. I have one trivia I want to present to as well, let's start off with for outgoing mayor, Sasha Ney Perez, our new state senator, really special, really stupid, and we hope that that will continue and look forward to that continuing for Maurey Park and the state senator going for in the years to come and look forward to a very fruitful partnership. And just like others said before, we're looking forward to hopefully some grant money coming in from Sacramento when the budget improves a little bit to do the important work in investing in the QE. But thank you so much Sasha for your four years of service here in Alhambra. Congratulations on ascending to the state legislature. Look forward to whatever we can do in Monterey Park to continue to support you and support our region. Congratulations. Thank you. And let me invite if Jeff and Noia Councilmember Mayor can come down. Let me offer an opportunity for my colleagues to address these Council members. Well before I do, I wanted to congratulate Sasha on her victory and her success. We really look forward to having you in the state senate. Very few people can say this, but Sasha was at one point a former student of mine. So I'm very proud of her in so many different levels, but more importantly, as a former student. So very, very, getting a little emotional. But very, very, I'm going to end there. So congratulations congratulations Sasha. Well, you know, what can I say, Senator? You and I were both elected to City Council of Ronald same time 2020 and it's been such a joy and pleasure to work together on mutual interest and now to see you represent as an estate senate and I am just extremely grateful for not just your leadership but also your friendship and your compassion and humanity. I still remember when we had our tragedy of the mass shooting last year and of course we are so grateful for the entire region for coming to stand with my part but I I remember Sasha, you were like so many with there, every minute, every moment when the crisis happened. And again, that just shows the caliber of your person that you are. And we know that you will do wonderful great things for us in the state senate. Congratulations. And congratulations, obviously, to our new mayor, Noya Wang, give her a round of applause. Yes. And Jeff Maloney, who I've known for quite a while and has been a great ally for us here, both as a teacher but also as a city council member, congratulate you also on your landslide victory. Very similar to us as well, but congratulate you on what and wish you some wealth for the next four years. Thank you. Mayor Wang, congratulations. And again, congratulations to the coalition that you put together for your election to represent the district that you now do. And we know that we will work together because we have to. And, oh, no, no, no, we need to. And so, but again, you know, it was my honor to have endorsed you during the election. And again, best of luck and to my dear friend Jeff Maloney who you know We we've known each other before we became elect officials 20 years ago and again, I've just enjoyed Just seeing the work you done not the council member But also the work you do in the Rose Mountains Conservancy and so just Everything that you do for our region. I mean you you're a role model, you're a leader, and you're someone that I am so honored to call a friend. And so congratulations. Yes, we both, last live victory. And so, but again, looking forward to working with you for another four years. Thank you. Good evening everyone. My name is Kentang. I'm one of the school board member for the Harvard Unified School District. I'd like to invite our superintendent of the year, Dr. Denise Haramio to come up and join me. And as Dr. Haramio is coming up, first of all, we don't have incoming certificate for our council and mayor. But I'd like to say a few words of congratulations for Jeff's. I remember four years ago we ran and I saw you, would you victory four years ago and now again, this time except there's overwhelming success in this time with 100% voter confidence there. And I just wanted to also congratulate Mayor Noya Wang for your victory as well. We look forward to working with the city. As you all know, it takes a village to raise a child and we have such an incredible partnership with the city of Elhamber as well as Monter Park and St. Gabriel and Rosemeet. So we do have a certificate for our outgoing mayor who is now our state senator, Sasha Renee Perez. And we just wanted to say in recognition of your dedicated service and outstanding contributions, the Alhambra Unified School, the strict hereby extends our heartfelt gratitude and appreciation for your exemplary leadership and dedication during your tenure as mayor of the City of Alhambra. And we want to thank you for your support to our students in our community. We want to wish you the very best as we know you will kick butt up there in Sacramento. And just four years ago, we ran during COVID, walking precinct, caravanning out there with signs on our cars and stuff. And here you are, four years later, you are our state senator. It's incredible, right? And we look forward to working with you. We look forward to what you can do for the City of Alhambra and Alhambra School District up in Sacramento. So congratulations. Thank you. Okay. Dr. Hormiel, I don't know if you want to. Thank you. Again, congratulations to Mayor Wang and to Council Member Maloney on your reelection. An incredible thank you to Sasha Renee Perez. You've been a big supporter of the school district. And I know that you'll remember us when you're in Sacramento. And you are alum and one of the nice things about starting local, we all have your cell number and we will use it. So thank you. Congratulations and thank you. Am I not joking? You know? Oh my God. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations and thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations and thank you. Thank you. Congratulations and thank you. Thank you. Good evening. This is the signal and privilege to join all of you here today at the Alhambra City Council meeting. Congratulations to our incoming Noya Wang. Congratulations. We look forward to working with you and so grateful for your leadership and efforts here in the Singapore Valley. You're here in Alhambra. I know you're a planning commissioner and public works director for your leadership and efforts here in the Singapore Valley. You're here in Al-Harmbe, I know you're a planning commissioner and public works director. And your leadership and efforts as mayor of Al-Harmbe, I look forward to working with you and your team. And thank you for your service and leadership. And to nearly re-elected Council Member Jeff Maloney, thank you for leadership and efforts as well. In the past few years, we've worked around issues around sustainability, around infrastructure, around parks, improvements, and that's a leadership of you and the rest of the City Council along with then-counse member mayor, Sasha Renee Perez. And so, grateful for your leadership and efforts. I look forward to your leadership in the next few years as well. And to all of the everyone here on the 100th City Council, thank you for your service and leadership. I look forward to, I hope all of you have a wonderful holiday season. And we're so grateful for your service and leadership and partnership with our office. And to our outgoing mayor and senator, Sassar René Perez, somebody who I've known since we were called to sit in, I believe. And the working efforts at the neighbor councils with the city of Los Angeles and the working efforts that you've done here in Alhambra, being an education champion, a leader to expand college access, college opportunity. This came from a meeting in downtown LA right now where we're talking about those efforts, and I look forward to working with you on those efforts on how we continue to expand access to higher education here in California and to expand financial aid opportunities, and really to continue to work that we've done other past decades. And so we're so grateful for your leadership and efforts. And also the youngest senator in the great city of California. Somebody's already hit the ground running. We're just in Sacramento last week. And the work and efforts there that the senator has done to already hit the ground running. We're so grateful for your leadership and efforts. And in the past many years, your leadership and efforts are in COVID, your leadership and efforts are in infrastructure, sustainable and parks that we partner on as well. And so with that, I'd like to present, and you're going to be given how many of these already have known you've done everything. To the honorable Sasha Renepra, congratulations on your leadership and efforts here. For distinguished years, a service to the city of Alhambra, your commitment to public service truly commendable and our community is so grateful for the role that you've played in progressing our handbrake forward. Congratulations and I look forward to all the work that we'll be doing together and congratulations Senator Sasha Renee Perez. Good evening. My name is Edith Gonzalez. Excuse me. My allergies. Well, first of all, I'm glad that I'm here for comedy hour. But I did just want to, my name is Edith Gonzalez and I'm here representing LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis and first I'd like to congratulate Mayor Wang on your election to the Humber City Council. We look forward to working with you. I did just want to start briefly by reading something that came up earlier today on social media and I thought it was fitting for tonight's event and it reads people who really want to make a difference in the world usually do it in one way or another and I've noticed something about people who make a difference in the world. They hold the unshakeable conviction that individuals are extremely important that every life matters. They get excited over when smile, they're willing to feed one stomach, educate one mind, and treat one wound. They aren't determined to revolutionize the world all at once. They're satisfied with small changes. Over time though, the small changes add up. Sometimes they even transform cities and nations and yes the world. And I think that's really what we're seeing here this evening, right? With the election of yourself here, of the re-election of Council Member Maloney, and of course, the sowing in of our new state senator, Sasha Renee Perez. But I really want to commend the entire council. You have all really been tremendous partners of LA County. You have all been great partners when it comes to advocating for open space, affordable housing, homelessness, and even during the pandemic. I don't think we had our hammer quite yet in our district, but we were already have been doing incredible work even before then. So I really just want to take the time to say thank you to each and every one of you, but especially to Council Member Maloney and State Center, Sasha Renee Perez, for the incredible work that you do in really advocating for your community. You know, it really, I think something that was mentioned earlier is it takes a village, right? And it really does. And I think you all have been the movers and shakers that really have moved the needle. And we just look forward to our continued partnership with the county and each and every one of you. And with that I have two certificates, one for State Senator Sasha Renee Perez. And two outgoing council member, Deff Maloney, if you would at mine, I want to get you both in the shot. Here. Here. Are there any other elected officials at this time that would like to present certificates to Mr. Maloney and incoming mayor, Ms. Wayne? Okay. Okay. Now we would like to welcome outgoing mayor Sasha and Aprile's. If you have any farewell marks that you would like to, farewell marks you would like to make it this time. Thank you. Oh my goodness. You know, I feel like I've already said so much already, but you know, this is just really, it's been a tremendous four years and honestly, I mean, all of that work would not have been able to be accomplished with so many of you. I'm so grateful for my colleagues. I mean, I was just reflecting, and if you all read my letter, I did have to resign on Monday as I took the oath of office up in Sacramento, and just reflecting on the fact that we have done such a tremendous amount of work since the pandemic happened. It's hard to believe that that was four years ago. You know, we've seen unsheltered homelessness be reduced by 75% in the city. That's really thanks to our incredible city manager for her leadership and starting the home program. We have, you know, our sustainability plan in the works. we're working on actor transportation, making sure that our schools are safe, or I know that this has been something that's been so important to Council member, on Drottay Stadler, we have a business program that's in the works to make sure that we're covering many of our vacant businesses, that both Council member Mazza as well as Council member Lee has been advocating for, and we finally have a historic preservation ordinance that we're in talks around, and this has been something that all of you at this council have been pushing for. So I know oftentimes when we talk about local city government, I think folks think, oh my gosh, what are they doing? They're wasting money. I mean, you guys have been putting in such a tremendous amount of work. And, you know, I can't emphasize enough how much I appreciate each and every single one of you for being thoughtful partners in this and for helping us to move the needle. I think when I talk to residents in Allhamper, people are really proud, they're satisfied. They see that we're trying to listen and be responsive and nothing has made me prouder than getting to serve my hometown. I mean it when I say you're not going to be able to get rid of me. I will be here all the time whether you need me or you don't, whether it's events, you know, any questions that you might have. You know, after I was sworn in, I had a lot of residents reach out. You know, there were many people that were concerned about what happened with our federal elections and lots of fear. I appreciated my council colleagues at the last minute, and joining me, both council member, Maloney and council member, Andrade, Stadler, and new council member Lee and Mazza weren't able to join us given how last minute it was. But making sure that we were recertifying the fact that our city is fully compliant with SB 54. And so that people understand that we are here to protect our immigrant communities. And I want you to know that as residents and constituents are reaching out to me that that is top of mind for me. Making sure that we're protecting our community here in Alhambra, but that we're also thinking about those real challenges that are citizens are facing. You know, whether that might be public safety, whether that is cost of living, you know, those are all things that I'm going up to Sacramento that are top of mind for me. So I'm really going to miss you guys and I mean that genuinely. But you know, I won't be far away and I'll keep coming back to this at all the time. And my staff will just be a phone call away. I'll just be a phone call away. So as Denise mentioned earlier, everybody here does have my cell number. So you guys know exactly how to reach me. And Noya, you know, this is an exciting time. I'm so excited for you. And, you know, as I shared with you earlier, you can reach out to me any time. And, just so grateful for you and your leadership and know that you're entering this role with just so much gratitude and so much humility. So, I love the city and I feel good knowing that I'm leaving it in very good hands. Thank you all. Applause. Now we'd like to hear from any elected officials wishing to present recognitions for outgoing mayor press if you haven't done so already. Okay. I think that, you know, our process maybe it wasn't very clear that everybody came up during the window and congratulated our outgoing mayor and now Senator Sasha. So thank you all. So we concluded that section. I just wanted to give one more chance to our audience, anybody who wishes to come up to the podium and say a few words. Hello. My name is Ken Susilo. I am the 2024 President of AAAE, which is the Asian American Architects and Engineers Association. We wanted to congratulate you, Council Member Jeff Maloney on your election. And Honorable Mayor Neu Wang, we are thrilled to have one of our own, take a position of leadership. As you know, as many of the folks know. And we have many board members. If the board members could stand up and acknowledge board members and past presidents. We have a strong representation here. We really wanted to show our support of you as a member, as a fellow board member of Triple AE, as an executive board member. Thank you for your leadership and we are thrilled that you've kind of taken a step up and are leading this community. And thank you again for helping and leading the AAAE this year. Thank you so much. I just wanted to say a big thank you to all elective officials, community members who are here tonight and joining us, I know a lot of the issues that we face is regional. So a lot of us living out Hamburg, we go to work in Monaco Park or we have parents that living, bros me. And so I very much look forward to working with every one of you with our council and all the elected officials and the community in the future to work together on regional issues and bring the best for our San Gabriel Valley. So thank you all for being here tonight and join our vote of office and our farewell ceremony for our senator. Press and please join us in the city hall lobby for for a reception and light refreshment we are adjourned. you 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 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 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. I'm going to do 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. 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