Okay, we're live. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Welcome to the March 3rd, 2025 meeting of the Pasadena City Council. The council did meet in close session related to items A and B and there is no reportable action. Mr. Hampton will you? Oh, I'm sorry, roll call, thank you. Council Member Cole. Council Member Hampton. Blessed in honor to be here. Council Member Jones. Present. Council Member Lyon. Here. Council Member Madison. Here. Council Member Miss Suda. Here. Vice Mayor Revis. Here. Mayor Gordo. Here. There's a quorum of the Council President. Mr. Hampton, will you lead us in a pledge of allegiance? Everyone who's able to rise, please rise. Right here. There's a quorum of the council president. Mr. Hampton will you lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Everyone who's able to rise please rise. Right hand over your hearts. Ready begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. You may be seated. Okay. We do have one ceremonial matter here today. And we have a great tradition here of Pasadena of our young folks doing great things. And today I'd like us to recognize the Rose City crystals synchronized ice skating team who in January of this year competed in the 2025 Pacific Coast Synchronized Skating sectional that was held in Irvine. In the open juvenile team free skate the team scored 34, 43, and came in first place. The aspire, four team, came in second place, and this was the club's first time fielding an adult team at sectionals, and the open adult team placed fourth. Congratulations to the team and their families, the team manager, MAPO Chan, and all of the coaches for a job very well done. Your hard work, determination and teamwork has paid off, and we as a city council and as a city are very proud of your accomplishment. So let's give them a round of applause. And I'd ask the coach to come up and join me in receiving the commendation. And the team. The team captains I think are going to come up. Yeah, this was a little less people. It's a lot of us here today. It's a lot of us. Are you sure? OK. OK. The whole team come on up. You're filling the horseshoe. We have a lot of us here. That's good. You're supposed to synchronize, right? You will. I mean, yes, come on in. Come on in. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. You guys keep going. You guys keep going.. You guys keep going? There is a lot of them. You're holding tea. Okay, so here with all our. I. Team captain, I don't know where you guys went. You are right there, perfect. Let's make sure you guys are in the front. I will say that they've dropped the average age in this room by a few decades. This is the youngest we've ever been in this room, maybe. So congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You guys slowly, slowly again. Single file line, single file line. They had something, I haven't prepared to say it. Oh dear. You see it? Okay, okay. I have a tiny bit to say quickly. First and foremost, I'd like to start off by thanking Mayor Gordo and honorable council members for taking time out of your day to recognize the team tonight. I also want to thank Vania, Janna, and our co-workers for coordinating the recognition of the entire team of the Pasadena University Crystal's organization. I also want to thank Vania, Janna, and her co-workers for coordinating the recognition of the entire team of the Pasadena Rosedi Crystal's organization. I also want to start off by saying that the coaches are so proud of our skaters and their achievements this season. We had such a rough start to this year with the fires that affected all of our teams and the tragedy of the skating families in the Delta flight as well, that all happened within weeks of our competition. So there was a lot going on. It truly has been an emotional roller coaster when it was our crunch time before our biggest competition of the year. But with even all the obstacles that were in our way, it showed me how strong our skaters were and how tight the bond they have for each other is. They were all there for each other during this time of need and they really showed how determined they were to be the best they could be. The open juvenile team, as he said earlier, they won the sectional championships which was truly a testament to their commitment and dedication to each other. They showed us with hard work and perseverance that they could accomplish anything. We are also very proud to say our aspire team, came home with silver and our adult team attended their first sectionals and came home with the pewter medal. We coaches are so lucky to have worked with such a wonderful group of skaters and can wait for the next season. We also invite all of you guys to stop by the ring. We always have our practices there and we have competitions there so please come by and join us and watch our team. We also have our practices there and we have competitions there so please come by and join us and watch our team. We also have a few gifts for you and Vania and So yeah, that is it for today. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations to all of the parents and thank you for ensuring that our kids here in Pasadena have positive activities to compete in. And that we have a robust, strong team. So thank you to all the parents and friends and supporters of the of a hand. Mary should ask them about the double rank that we were going to build. You know, I think you'd have some support for that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to take a moment of privilege here. We have our assessor here who's been waiting patiently and so we'll open public comment for matters not on the agenda before we do the SBA presentation. Mr. Brang, welcome and thank you for your service to this community. Good evening, Mr., councilmembers. It's a pleasure to be here my first time at your council chambers. I came here to hopefully add a little bit of excitement to your meeting in a way that can only be delivered by the county property tax assessor. Only to be out done by the mosquito commissioner if they're available. But I actually appreciate you're carving out a couple minutes for me to chat with you. I was invited here at the invitation of council members Hampton and Masuda to help clarify some issues related to the recent fires. I did want to commend the city's leadership, the mayor, first responders for responding so affirmatively and quickly to help those people in need. There's been a little bit of confusion. There's a lot of different city, state, and local programs, some confusion about which programs apply to what circumstances. And I wanted to try to address those because I understand that there was some information given out at your last meeting that may have been incorrect. And I'm here to set the record straight. So for those people whose properties were damaged, there, when it comes to rebuilding, there's two main programs that are available. The first is an expedited permit review process that was ordered by the governor and the city of Los Angeles by the mayor. The order state that if you plan to rebuild a replacement home that is 110% the size of the home that was there prior to the fire, you can qualify for an existing expedited permit process. There's another number that's caused some confusion as it relates to my office. It's a program called misfortune and calamity. It's administered under the revenue and taxation code and it is separate and apart from the permitting process. It has to do with the extent to which a property owner can rebuild and still retain their pre-damaged tax base. There are two different standards that can be applied. The first requires the assessor to compare the value of your property prior to the damage and the value of your property after you finish rebuilding. If the value of the rebuild property is 120% of the property's pre-damaged value, not size, but value, you will not be reassessed in your taxes will not go up. However, due to the age of many of the affected homes, rising property values and rising cost of construction, it's anticipated that many homeowners will not qualify to keep their pre-damaged tax base under this standard. However, there is a different and a better standard that we are recommending and will apply in most cases. This one allows the property owners to retain their pre-tank fire tax base if the rebuild structure is to the substantial equivalent of the home or structure that was damaged by the fire. Substantially, substantial equivalence means that the rebuild structure is similar to the damaged or destroyed structure in both size and use. This is the standard that we expect to apply in most cases as I stated. It's important to note that if should you decide to rebuild your property to be beyond what is substantially. You can do that, but what exceeds the essentially footprint of what was there previously will be assessed at market rate. So if your tax base was $100,000 and you build 110%, that next 10% is going to be built at market rate, which will increase your tax base. I prefer not to do that, but that's what the law tells me I have to do. And that's just the clarification I make sure as people are pulling their pittments in rebuilding that they don't get hit with a supplemental tax bill due to a confusion over which law applies under which circumstances. And I know that you're here for matters not on the agenda but staff tells me that you and your office is willing to come back if we were to agenda is it for a- We'd be happy to come back and provide additional information. I did bring along our director of district appraisals and our district chief appraiser who are happy to answer the questions that may come up. Great. And my understanding, and I know we have to limit it to, because it's not an agenda as matter, but my understanding is that there will be some legislative attempts to address that issue. Not that one specifically, but there are so there's a number of pieces of legislation to address other deficiencies in the current law. If I may just add one more thing, I did want to encourage anybody who wants property in the city of Pasadena, but particularly those who experience damage due to the fire. You can sign up on my website for something called the Homeowner Alert. People may be susceptible to scams right now. If by signing up for the Homeowner Alert, if somebody is attempting to scam you of your property, such as through TitleFraud, you'll receive an email notification within 48 hours. If you don't sign up, it'll take about 30 to 45 days to get a letter in the mail from the registrar recorder. So I would encourage everybody to sign up for this free service to help protect their home from fraud. Thank you. Mr. Hampton. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. You coming and explaining to us exactly what's going on. And I wanted to know if there was any information that our Department of Planning could communicate with our assessor so that residents who are going to rebuild, whether they put an ADU, et cetera, they have a common fact sheet of things that they should know. The reason I mention this and I have a clarifying question to the presentation is I had a resident in my district who did not add any extra square footage to their home. They added a bathroom. their home was reassessed because that increased the value of their property. I want to know if someone is adding an extra bathroom. Would that be reassessed or would you guys kind of look at it like there's... It's like everything else in government, the operative phrase, it depends. Generally the rule for new construction is new construction is you're adding square footage. You're adding something that wasn't there. In the case of adding a bathroom but not square footage, you are adding something that is, was not there and that is subject to reassessment. Although in the context of your property, it would probably be relatively diminimous because bathrooms aren't very large. We don't reassess the entire property. We just assess what's being added and that will be attached to you or otherwise underlying a tax base. Perfect, I would like our city manager to work with our planning department in our sister's office to make sure that we have some fact sheets of just good to know things for anyone building. We've connected with all of people in our jurisdiction who have lost homes and on behalf of the city, if we could reach out and try to make an FAQ that answers some of these questions, we'd be happy to do that council member. A lot of this information is already on our website. We'd be happy to work with you. Maybe you could direct to the links that you could attach those to your website so people could find that information more quickly. Mayor and Council, there is a schedule for the assessor to come back. It's either March 17th or March 24th, whatever worked for best for him and his schedule. We would put him on the agenda and have a full presentation of what of the information that he's providing a brief summary of right now. Might be a good idea to send it to, you know, ask your staff to go to one of our council committees at Tech, for example, so that we can hone in on some of the issues there and then have a presentation here. We're available to do whatever you need in person by webinars. Anything that will help. Thank you. And thank you for your service. Thank you very much. Thank you for your offer. Give me a few minutes of your time. Thanks. And the other public comment speaker, Amanda's not on the agenda is Olden Denham. While we're here, Mr. Denham. Good to see you. You know, I never come up here really prepared to speak, but I thought about it. I come up here. I want to make it clear, I love Pasadena. We're all the fibers of my body and whole. I love Pasadena. But I love Pasadena just like a child loves his mother, even if she is alcoholic, even if she is. He's going to try and straighten her out. And what I want to straighten out is the lies that we're living up under here. And you know what I'm trying to cover. And I want to just state a couple of lies that are obvious lies that influence the beliefs of everybody in our town. Star New said, police officer faced deadly threat before shooting after the McClein. That's a lie. The police officer didn't face no deadly threat before shooting that man. And everybody, anybody that's seen it, footies knows that. And also the interim police chief, Jason Clausson, he did the independent review. And it's been long known, the police cannot police themselves. They're not going to do it because they're going to pat they're going to be the pass on it. OK. And the police officer who shot Anthony McLean. Originally, I just wanted this man to get off of our force. I don't want to walk around with our streets with a gun in his hand. And now we've come a whole circle around. I'm trying to get us to re-address an issue that I know is handled wrong. And I don't have a whole circle around. I'm trying to get us to re-address an issue that I know is handled wrong. And I don't have a whole bunch of more to say. I'm going to wait for the safety report or whatever's coming out. I would like to have some input on it because who's ever been telling and spreading these lies, they haven't even looked at the footage or haven't looked at the bill that covers this. And I'll say it once again, and I'll leave you alone. And the key word in that AB 392 is imminent danger. Imminate threat of his life or someone else's life. If anyone can show me imminent danger of someone's life, now eat my hat. But right now my hat says I won't complain, but on the back of it it says I won't quit. Okay? And I try to see justice. Like I said, I love my mama, but I'm going to try to stop her from smoking dope or drinking alcohol. I love Pasadena, but we got to straighten out a lot of things and the lies have got to stop. And I'm going to say this one thing before I walk away. before I walk away. Pasadena had a golden opportunity here. Had a golden opportunity to step ahead and erase against police abuse of the authority. It had a golden opportunity to step ahead and systemic racism, even though we don't may not see that clearly. But we had a golden opportunity to step ahead. We still have that opportunity. We can always re-address this mismanaged Issues and this is actually one I really would like to be included in on this next whatever you want to call it independent review or whatever you want to call it because Everyone seems not to want to look at the truth and I'll say what being crump said when he was here more, look at the video. And if you haven't looked at the video, and you see the eight seconds that it took that officer to decide the dismay and needed to die, eight, less than eight seconds. Anyway, before you cut me off again, because I almost say, as your time is up. I almost say thank you for the time. And I really want you guys to consider this and consider if you don't want to talk about the subject, consider me. I'll talk to you about it any day of the week. Thank you, Mr. Dengue. Good to see you. That complete public comment on matters not on the- consider if you don't want to talk about the subject consider me I'll talk to you about it any day of the week. Thank you Mr. Denning. Good to see you. That completes public comment on that there's not on the agenda. Thank you. We'll let Mr. Ewan come back for the commendation. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Next we'll move to the consent. I'm sorry, the SBA presentation. Welcome. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with all of you tonight, Mayor, City Council. So I do, I don't know if the PowerPoint's coming up, but I'll get started, because I know we're on a clock here. So I know we want to talk about disaster relief and some of the other programs that we have available, but I would also be remiss if I didn't kind of set the stage a little bit and talk about kind of all things SBA to see how the disaster fits in. Do I get to? All right. All right. Very high tech. The clerk recently received a lot of toys in this room. It's like this beats what I have in my office right now. So SBA is an agency of the federal government where independent agency and we do have a very extensive field footprint 68 offices across the United States. I am the director here in Los Angeles, we have a cover LA Ventura in Santa Barbara counties with my team. And SBA, we can put everything into four buckets, our three C's and a D. Capital, contracting, counseling, and then the D is the disaster bucket. So we have a wide variety of things and when we're talking about disaster but when we're looking at longer term recovery, I think this is when all of SBA can come to the table and see how we can support the community and the local government in rebuilding efforts. So, I'm just going to want to set the stage of all things that are available and I know we can engage in more conversations about that. But, in the interim, I did want to talk about the disaster, the declaration. This declaration is a presidential disaster declaration. That means SBA is deployed automatically with FEMA onto the end of this declaration. And it came out very quick, as you guys all know. So because of that, our deadlines are coming up quick. And that's one thing I really did want to kind of emphasize is that for the physical damage loans and there are, that's two out of the three loans that I'll show you on the next slide, we have a deadline of March 10th, which is why I've highlighted it in red. We would love any assistance amplifying that message because we're a week out. And the thing is that I know not everybody wants a loan, right? There's a lot of loan fatigue out there, especially in our small business community. But these are low interest with generous terms. And what I recommend to people is apply, preserve your ability to access this resource in the future. You can always say, no thank you SBA, I've changed my mind, I don't want this. And there's nothing punitive, there's nothing negative about doing that. But I fear if people don't apply and they lose this opportunity, two months from now they might be, ah, I really now wish I would have applied and had this as a resource. So that's kind of the message I'm hoping everyone in here can help us amplify in the community. People can apply online directly at our website or while we have the disaster recovery centers here, they can go into a center and have someone sit down with them one-on-one and do the application with them. So and also if they just have questions that's a great resource as well. The while you guys already probably know where most the locations are but we are SBA is in more locations in just the FEMA centers we've set up other ones around the area and we're still out at Pasadena City College, the foothill campus as well. But the core programs are highlighted on this slide, and I just wanna point out that the ones in yellow are for homeowners. So I think even though we have business in our name, in times of disaster, we're here for homeowners, for renters, for businesses of all sizes and for nonprofit organizations. So really everyone has assistance available. The home loans can go up to as much as $500,000 to repair or replace disaster damage real estate with another 100,000 for personal property. So this also would apply for renters who maybe have just lost all their personal belongings. This can include anything. It also can include automobiles. We can replace primary automobiles with this program. And right now the rates are as low as 2.563%. For businesses, we have two different loan programs. Similarly, the business loans is just like the home loans. It's for disaster damage real estate or anything inside the business. If machinery, equipment, inventory, anything that might have been damaged or destroyed and needs to be replaced, we can go up to $2 million for this program. And then the economic injury disaster loan program is kind of a companion, if you will, to a lot of these programs. It is working capital. So businesses may or may not have been physically damaged, but they certainly can have economic injury for any dozens of reasons where they've lost their customer base. Maybe their employees were affected and couldn't come into work, so they couldn't operate in a normal manner. Maybe they had contracts canceled. Roads closures have impacted them. Any number of reasons why they could have lost revenue as a direct result of this, of the fires and the wind events. And that program we can also go up to $2 million. If they've applied for SBA assistance before, they're still eligible under this declaration as well to apply for additional assistance. And the great thing about this program right now is we do have a 12 month deferral on interest and payments from date of first disbursement. So for people that are looking for home loans and for the small business loans, we know we can't go back tomorrow and start rebuilding, right? So I would encourage them like talk to your case manager, sit on the loan for a little bit, see how long they'll let you extend it, and then start to draw down the funds. When you get closer to a period of time, we can actually start utilizing them. And then that's when that 12 month clock is gonna start. So we can give people a little bit longer of our one way, maybe 18 months, hopefully at least. I may be up to two years in some cases. So I encourage people to think about the flexibility with this. Also mitigation on the bottom here, this is not a standalone program, but it's bundled with, it's like an add-on, if you will, to the home loans and business loans. What we want to do here is help people build back better, build back stronger, fortify their structures, add in anything that's going to make it more resilient as a structure. It doesn't have to be preventing against future fires. It could be earthquake retrofitting. It could be rebuilding retaining walls. It could be anything that's going to fortify that structure against future incidents. And I've yet to find an insurance company that allows you to use their proceeds to do this. So that's kind of a unique twist with this program. They can use a portion of that money to do this, this very thing. Don't have to wait for insurance. You don't have to wait for any other benefits that might be coming to you. You can go ahead and apply. SB will figure that out on the back end because we are not gonna duplicate benefits, but we also don't want to delay if people need the assistance now and are able to use it now. You know, we are cash flow lender, so we will want to make sure they can afford the debt. The last thing we want is for anybody to take on debt that they cannot afford. But we're, you know, everything is pretty reasonable with this program. We can even sometimes help with refinancing, existing mortgages at these low rates and also relocation if that's something that needs to happen. And again, we are here with FEMA, but we do have two separate applications. So they can apply for one or both. At the same time, it doesn't matter. There's no particular order in which they need to apply for assistance. And so the last slide here is just really the way it's just that people can us. We kind of have two sides of the house if you will. My team and I are here. We live here. We work here. We're here in the good times and the bad. And we're here to support the community and that's the top half. The bottom half is our disaster specialty program. So we have a surge of employees that are here under the disaster umbrella, 150 surge employees that are supporting across LA County right now. And then they have some special targeted ways that you can reach them as well. But the biggest thing is, is like we're here to try to help the businesses and to try to have them through the longer term recovery. You may remember we did a business like matchmaking, like speed dating round, if you will, with businesses where we pair them with advisors to really get them to sit down and like, our goal was try to take some of the overwhelming this out of this whole process, help them figure out their path forward with their business. Do I want to rebuild? Can I rebuild, you know, what does that look like? We're hearing a lot of businesses are needing that deep dive into their financials. So working with an advisor who's got that expertise, at no cost to them, this doesn't cost them a penny to really kind of help them with this whole journey and process. So we're gonna again, bring all of the resources of SBA to try to help the community in small business, especially. Thank you. Was that, and thank you for your hard work. Mr. Hampton, you had a question? Yes. Thank you for your presentation. And last week, two of your representatives came into our council chambers. I think one was named Renetta. And I forget the other lady's name. But they were extremely gracious to explain to us what was going on during public comments. So I have a couple of questions. Can you explain if you go back to slide too? This is this one? Yes, this one. This is three actually. Oh, the back. No, that is not a three is perfect. That's. Could you explain physical damage? Just define that. So anyone is, well, I know what physical damage is, but anybody that may be thinking about this. Right. So for others, home or business, it's any of the physical assets that have been damaged or destroyed. So the home itself, and then the business itself, if they own their brick and mortar, or even if they're renting and the building burned down and they lost all of everything that was inside of it Right any machinery and equipment inventory Okay, anything that the physical the tan so that ends March 10th that does yeah, but there's an economic injury Is this the same percentage in loan the loan rates are the same? They're the same as for the business, yes. They can be 4% for. At $2 million and $500,000. And $200,000 for a renter. Well, this one, the economic injury is specific to small businesses and nonprofits. It's the only one that's a little bit narrower and focus. Because it's working capital for the business to keep operating as they try to recover from the losses. Think of it almost like gap financing. And have we sent this information, this is not for you, but to our Rindle Housing Board for any tenants so that they could disseminate that up amongst their department, a rent stabilization department. I don't know but I can look into that and we can certainly use our mechanisms to get this information out. Perfect. And we're aware of the time limitations so we'll do it right away. Absolutely. If it hasn't been done already. Thank you. And then do you know what the average loan is percent right now? I kind of- The dollars are the percentage. No, percentage. If I got a loan at a bank. Oh, gosh. It's just right, sorry, interest rates. Interest rates. Thanks, but. I mean, for small businesses, you're probably looking at least 8%. Okay, that's what I was between 7 and 11% right now. Then if I received the COVID loan, so your loans are significantly less than 7 to 8%. If I received a COVID loan and I'm paying back my COVID loan and I need to apply for something because my business burned down, et cetera. Do I have an ability to apply for another loan? Absolutely. One thing, as I said, as a cashful lender, we wanna make sure that they can afford it. We'll look at historical what the business has earned, revenue-wise, and make sure we wanna make sure they can afford it, because we obviously don't want anybody getting into a situation where they're worse off. What we typically do with SBA, you'll find is that SBA will, from the business side, we're looking at historical, we'll look at tax returns to see what historical revenues been, we'll look at financial statements, and then we're going to project forward a portion of that. And SB will usually offer the highest amount that they can. So it's not always 2 million depending on the business, but they will offer the highest amount they can. And then that bar work can accept that amount or anything less if they like. So they can decide if some of we came back and said, we'll give you, you know, we offer you 600,000. I like, no, no, no, I only need 300. They can accept less. Similarly, if they're not at these caps and... you know, we offer you 600,000. I'm like, no, no, no, I only need, you know, 300. They can accept less. Similarly, if they're not at these caps and, you know, year from now, they still need additional financing. They can come back to us and ask for a modification to increase the amount because they're not, if they're not at the caps, the two million. Thank you, and I have just one final question, and maybe how much has been issued or offered up to this point awarded awarded so to this point we are we are in totality and this is for all of the fires that were across the county we are at about 1.4 billion that has been approved so far. That's about 50, about 5,300 approvals so far, majority in the home, home loan space. And then I ask them to run reports for me on zip codes, and so often. So I can see kind of the distribution across the counties. And I will say that here, the primary zip code for Altidina is at the top. And the primary zip code for the palisades is number two. But Altidina throughout this whole process, that zip code has been leading in both number of approvals and dollars. Perfect. Thank you so much and thank you for your work. Thank you. Mr. Lyon, did you have a question? I do. Just one quick easy question, I think. On the next slide, I think. Nope. There it is. That one. You have two declaration numbers and I was looking at the website and there, it looks like you choose different applications for the different declaration numbers, and what's the distinction? One is for public assistance. So I tell 99.9% people ignore that one. I guess it is. Public assistance is essentially for nonprofit organizations that provide resources like a government entity, like perhaps a private utility or something like that. So there's, it's a separate track of declaration because it's got its own set of rules and stuff. But the primary one for people is, the one where they'll see homeowners businesses, the vanglister. Do you know which of these two it is? Just talk to the top here. I think it's the 53. I think it's 53. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Jones. Thanks, Marin. I just had two quick questions. One, is there a chance that these loans could be forgiven in the future? Not without congressional authority. And then the second one is that I was talking to a business owner in an old Pasadena and they said they've already noticed business has slowed down for them. As a result, there's a lot of customers that came from Al-Tedena. Are they able to apply to this loan, to preventing future losses or what what type of document? There's would be the economic injury, the idle program, that's exactly who it's designed for. So you'll see, idle has always has a longer runway because businesses might not know the real impact yet. If they weren't in immediate burn zone. And also, you'll see that that one also, LA County, but also the contiguous counties, because we know businesses from all over could be adversely impacted as a result of the fire incidents. So yeah, that is absolutely, they've lost business because their customers have gone away or the other issues. So they can apply for the economic injury disaster loan. And one more quick question. You would have had to be incorporated or chartered for a nonprofit by January 7th to qualify for this or what's the problem? Yeah, they had to be existing in existence. They didn't necessarily. If we had a situation where someone was ready for their grand opening on January 8th and didn't make it but had an existing business They they should qualify because they should have losses. Okay, perfect. Yeah, thank you Okay, that completes everyone in the queue. Thank you again for being here and thank you for your work. Thank you Now We'll turn to the consent calendar. Is there a sweet motion? Move by Mr. Cole. Is there a second? Seconded by Mr. Pesuda. Mayor, I just had a question about item two, the RBOC appointment. I don't need Adam Pold, but just to ask a question about it, there's no communication about the nomination in the my book at least. So I just wondered if we, you know, how we received that. City clerk received. It was received by John as to work in the mayor and council office. It's about as much as I know, and I know it was a tournament of roses. Right, no, I'm sure it's legit, but it just, it wasn't a written community. It was just a phone call or something, or? No, there was an email, but we don't generally put those nominations in the packet. It's only if there's a resignation do we put something in the packet for appointments? OK. Was there not an application distributed to the council? Don't know that I can answer that. I'm just looking at the council agenda packet. I don't see anything. Okay. Let me check. It might have been because the applications are provided separately. I can check with staff if you want me to get some additional information. I don't know. Yeah, we can follow buff line then. Okay. Okay. Get some additional information. That's I don't know. Yeah. We can follow it offline then. Okay. Okay. So there's a motion in the second. Are there any objections? Seeing none, the consent calendar is approved. Next we will turn to the second reading of an ordinance. Oh you want to do that? Okay, that just wasn't ready sir. This ordinate Okay. That just wasn't ready, sir. This ordinance was offered by Council Member Hampton. This is an ordinance of the city of Pasadena mending and adding various sections to Title 17, the zoning code of the Pasadena Municipal Code pertaining to adaptive reuse of existing non-residential buildings, including changes related to parking and variances for historic resources and minor clean-ups. Let me double check that there's not a public comment card for this one. There's no public comment card. There was correspondence received expressing insurgent with the post-ordinance as written and advocating the ordinances. But that was earlier related to the hotels and this is actually excluding that. Councillor Mellor Cole to adopt. Yes. Councillor Mellor Hampton. Yes. Councillor Jones. Okay. Council member Cole, to adopt. Yes. Council member Hampton? Yes. Council member Jones? Yes. Council member Lyon? I'll abstain. Council member Madison? Yes. Council member Missuda? Yes. Vice Mayor Revis? No. Mayor Gordo? Yes. The motion passes six in favor, one against, abstention. Thank you. To the public hearing. Okay. Next we'll turn to the public hearing. We have a number of residents in the room. And again, this is essentially the continuation of a quasi-judicial action on the part of the Board of Zoning Appeals. Again, the council will sit in its quasi-judicial capacity versus its legislative capacity. Before we proceed, we do have two members of the council that are going to introduce. Mayor, I previously served as the general council to the Western Justice Center some years ago and in that capacity arguably obtained information that may be relevant to this matter and so out of an abundance of caution I will recuse myself from participating. Okay. And I participated in the hearings as a member of the Board of Zoning Appeals when I was a planning commissioner. And therefore, I've been advised it's difficult to opine on something I've already opined on. I don't know that that's the difficult part as much as you don't get two bites. Okay. Fair point, Mayor. Okay. Mayor, I'll open the public here. Go ahead. Mr. Clerk. I know that this banner was heard already because of it being continued a couple of times. It was needed to re-notice this hearing. So this is a time and place for the public hearing on an appeal of the Board of Zoning Appeals decision to approve conditional use permit number 7114 to establish a club's lodges private meeting, land use within an existing building in the current, the Maxwell House, had five five South Grand Avenue on February 20th, 2025, 140 postcards were mailed regarding the public hearing notice. And on February 21st, 2025, 20 public hearing notices were posted. This is item five. New course. 21st, 2025, 20 public hearing notices were posted. This is item five. New correspondence received. There was correspondence from the February 10th public hearing that was conducted. So since then, the City Clerk's office received five letters in support of the Western Justice Justice Centers application for conditional use permit and providing comments related to the center and or providing comments on the matter. One letter providing information on the Maxwell House events and one letter in opposition to conditional use permit number 7114 and providing comments on the item. The correspondence that was received since February 10th plus the correspondence previously for the February 10th meeting has been posted online distributed to the council's part of the record for this item. Thank you. And we may or I was not an attendance in the February 10th meeting, but I wasn attendance for the hearing and I did review portions of the tape And I think you including this specific matter. Sorry of the hearing of the hearing Okay, I'm sure we have a clear record. I didn't want to show a meeting. Okay, but you did watch the proceedings of this matter. Okay. Okay. So, I would go down. Ms. Page? Yes. Thank you, Mayagina, for Page with the Planning Department. We do have a brief staff presentation if the council would like that. I can report that as you know the site was continued from the February 10th City Council meeting to give the parties a chance to meet and have a mediated discussion to see if there could be some resolution before returning to a continued hearing. That meeting did occur on Friday. There was no agreement reached at the mediated discussion as a result of that. So we're back tonight, essentially, where we were before at the last hearing. So we can recap anything that the council would like or we can jump into it whatever you would like to do. So when we last heard this matter, we were hopeful that the parties would come together and have a mediation that occurred, but there was no agreement. So what's the will of what's the pleasure of the council and the stromatus in your in the queue. Thank you, Mayor. Who conducted the mediation? I know we have to be measured about the positions and yeah it was the city attorney's office. We have a community mediation program through the prosecutor's office. So one of our prosecutors Set with the two sides. Can you identify who that was? It was Brian Patrick. Okay. And then I know I inquired at the last meeting about situations where the city provides financial support to nonprofits where there are reasons to do that. And the nonprofit occupies the city property as here. I think the record is established that there was, there were a number of reasons to support Western Justice Center, including their mission and their contributions to the community, their preservation of the Maxwell House. So what information do we have about analogous situations where the city has contributed financially to support the maintenance and upkeep of a historic resource that the city owns? I can let you know that we have more than 30 leases and each one is different and has different obligations so it would take a little bit to explain all that and we're enforcing not prepared to do that this moment. We didn't participate in the mediation because it is quasi-judicial and it was between two other parties that did not include the city. Happy of course to take whatever direction the council gives and can provide, you know, an a process, all the information related to the leases that we have with other nonprofits and how those, you know, it's generally a lease for a dollar with, then the obligation to maintain the building is on the nonprofit. But again, it varies a little bit among the 31, 32 because we have things like the RBAC kids space, I think it think it's called kid space, the tournament arose as a Kebulon, the list goes on and on and on and each one is reflects the period and time which it was negotiated and what the priorities were at the time that was incorporated into what are sometimes very, very, very long leases. Well, I understand that, but I'd still like to have some sense of instances where the city provides financial support, be it, you know, directly or by obviously leasing premises probably for a dollar, you're probably as a form of support, unless the upkeep is so burdensome that. It's the kind of thing that, you know, thanks, but no thanks. So, I mean, the ones I can think of are the Norton Simon, which is a very well-funded museum, but which the city contributed, contributes what? In the six figures a year for the upkeep of the landscaping? Yeah, the city does not contribute to the building itself. The Norton Simon takes care of the building, but it was formerly a city park, and so the city does pay for the maintenance and the landscaping and the tree trimming both of those for the north and Simon. Prop what cost? What's the cost of that? It's something like don't hold me to it. I think someone does have the answer. Mr. Hernandez, Director of Real Estate, so you'd hopefully have that answer for you. Good evening, Council. Geoffrey Hernandez, real estate manager for the city. The Norton Simon, the city has an obligation of $337,104. I'm sorry, could you say that again? $337,104. Annual. Annual. We also maintain the parking lots. Correct. Does that include that? Yes. OK. And I know we use the parking lots for New Year's Day. Does that include it in that lease or is that a separate? That's a separate application. Separate agreement. Are there financial implications for that? Then we pay for those spaces on years. That's part of the tournament roses license? OK, so the tournament negotiates directly with the museum for that. So what's the policy rationale for the city to provide that 337,000 a year? I think that's an annual amount. Annual amount to the Norton Simon. Yeah, that goes back decades and decades. So I can say from my perspective, it's part of the written agreement between the city and the Norton Simon and so we were when it came up for renewal that's why I'm familiar with it but it's an obligation that's written into the lease itself. I'm not sure what the council and Norton Simon I think it goes back to the 70s. I believe so yeah. But I mean there still has to be some policy rationale for, whether it was the 70s or the renewal. I think we renegotiated that recently. And the- I think it was originally from the 70s renegotiated in the 90s, but I myself nor do I think anyone on my staff were here when that was done, Mr. Hernandez. No. Is there anything in the record that shows what the policy rationale was? I don't have that information right now. And that's basically for private use by the patrons of the, or the, I guess patrons is a good word for them, you see them. And Mayor, Mr. Madison, I would just remind the council that this is a quasi-judicial matter with a conditional use permit. So that should be what the focus of the public hearing is. I understand, you know, and there was a reason you were asking for something that's totally unrelated in terms of a different. It's not totally unrelated. Well in terms of it, it's not an applicant that's before you, it's not in the vicinity of the local. Well, it's on city property. Right. But this application's on city property for a conditional use permit. Yes, and it's a conditional use permit. that you look at the facts of the case and you look at the impacts caused by whatever the project is. And that's what you base your decision on. So it was appropriate. It was okay for you to ask some but to the extent that you're getting into details of a different lease arrangement, I think it's getting beyond the scope of this project. Fair enough, that's your opinion. I, you know, what I'm struggling with is, you know, where the center clearly is doing terrific work for the community, clearly has financial need to help keep the historic resource maintained and the contributions are direct by the center and indirect through the tenets, the subtenets, that are also nonprofits, some 20 of them or so. And I should say right now a bunch of them called me since the last hearing, wanted me to call them. I did not call them. I hope they don't think I'm being rude, but it's precisely because it was a quasi-judicial hearing, and I need to keep the decision making to the information here. We talked about the lease last time, and the lease, I think there's an issue about the appropriateness under the lease. I think Mr. Hernandez will find that pretty much anything could go at night under this lease. And you know what I'm struggling with is the impact on neighbors who lived there. It's not, apparently the impact is an acute for a lot of neighbors, but every neighbor, every resident is important. So as the owner of the property, I'm wondering if this really shouldn't be more of a three-cornered agreement, or the three legs of the stool would be clean up of the lease, the city contributing to the maintenance of this historic resource that the city owns. And certainly some special events, but not to a month. Well, and I would note that the lease is really a separate matter. matter. And there was a discussion at the last hearing regarding what the lease provides, et cetera. And I think there was a question about the extent to which these activities were allowed. I don't know if you want to get into that, but there was a court decision that addressed that. I don't if you'd like we can have a Deanna Conno or deputy city assistant Excuse me assistant city attorney Address that as well, but the Lease is a legislative more of a legislative matter Separate from the Quays I So, and the members who are not participating, probably could participate in that discussion. Because this is the land use we have, you know. So. Well, the issue that I'm raising with the police, though, is one of the grounds for the appeal. So you may not believe it's quasi-judicial, but we have to deal with it to decide this case. Right, and so we have a court decision saying that it's an appropriate use. That what's an appropriate use? The use of the facility for as the Maxwell House has conducted the weddings, et cetera. Well, I'd like to hear about that thing. Okay, so I'll turn it to Mr. O'Connell. Thank you. Good evening. Deano-Connell. Okay. Just quickly, in 2017, the center entered into a license agreement with the Pasadena Republican Club to host the speaking engagement of John Eastman on Thursday, April 20, 2017 between 530 and 830 pm. And that was by a license agreement. And that's important to note because all of the the plan for public use, which Mr. McDonnell referred to often, and the most of section 5.1 of the lease, they refer to this center being required to sublease to legal nonprofits during the business hours. However, in this case itself, the center entered into a license agreement with the club after business hours, which was allowed. And it was not a lease, and it doesn't make sense to really have a sub lease for such a short period of time. So the city or the center rescinded the invitation for Mr. Eastman to speak, the club sued the city and the center. During the litigation, the city's economic development manager declared under oath that the city has no control over which entities the center may rent its facility to during the evening hours. In the opinion in 2019, Judge Tashima, first he quoted all of 5.1, and he italicized the very last sentence, which said, as we all know, nothing herein precludes the tenant from using the premises for community meetings and other purposes during non-business hours. And so the judge's dashmas then stated with respect to the rental of the premises to outside groups during non-business hours, the lease places no restrictions on the center. The court went on to say the court agrees with the club that the center possesses final policy-making authority regarding whether and to whom the Maxwell House may be rented during non-business hours. There is no question that when the city acquired this property and leased it to the center, it conveyed to the center the right and authority to rent the premises to outside groups. The record does not suggest, however, that this was anything other than a conveyance of a property interest. And that's important to note when you look at the lease section 4, which is right above section five, section four provides that the tenant shall have quiet possession of the premises subject to the lease provisions. So basically the city, if it's within the lease provisions, it should allow the tenant to use it appropriately. And then finally, the court said, under the the center required the right to use it appropriately. And then finally the court said, under the lease, the center required the right to rent the premises to outside groups during non-distance hours. So then the ninth circuit, so three more judges, agreed and stated they first noted that section 5.1 limited the center's use to nonprofit law-related functions. The court then acknowledged the last sentence of 5.1. Although the lease required the center to use the property for these purposes during ordinary business hours, it also stated that the center was not precluded from using the property for community meetings and other purposes during non-business hours. Critically, the city asserts that it has no input or control over the entities to which the center may rent its meeting rooms during non-evening hours. And one more quote from the Ninth Circuit, the least did not prohibit the center from renting out event space during non-business hours. When the city executed the lease, it was simply conveying a property interest, the right of occupancy, in the premises. The center maintained the authority to decide who, when, for what reason, and for how long a visitor could occupy the premises during the non-business hours. So that's all of the good stuff from the case. So the holding was about a political club that wanted to use one of the meeting rooms to have a speaker speak during on business hours. And the lease says that nothing here should preclude, if I recall the language, it talks about the very strict specific limitations on subletting to nonprofit tenants only. And then says nothing shall preclude the use of the space for community meetings and the like. And so the contention then is that we could open a saloon there in the evenings under that language in this case because I disagree with that. No, it would still have to comply with the land use requirements. But we're not talking about that. We're talking about the lease right now. Well it says any lawful, somewhere in there it says any lawful activity. So if it's a saloon. It's not lawful unless We have let's say a condition used for it or whatever But I don't think the city or the lease intended that any kind of use like that the way I read this the clause is That you know by saying you're having you have to have nonprofit tenants. And then it just sort of clarifies that of course you can have community, the WPRA can come and have a meeting there. Or the mayor could come and give his state of the city address there in the evening. Like this is not to be read so strictly that it's limited to that. But the staff is misreading this John Eastman opinion to be an Eastman being the speaker. Not respectfully. Is misreading that to essentially vitiate and allow any activity thereivity there At night, I'm not hearing you disagree provided. Yeah, you go get the right permit that it's a lawful event and the city approves it through Some appropriate here. It's a conditional use permit process Then it would be allowed that was not the intent of this lease. And to talk about a speech in one of the rooms, which is akin to a community meeting, even if you don't agree with the speaker or the group that's hosting that, I think is just completely unavailing on this question before us. If I could just jump in. Yes, sir. So the language that I just read is the last sentence of 5.1 regarding it could be used for other purposes during non-business hours. The very next section or subsection in the lease is compliance with law. The tenant shell and I'm paraphrasing, comply promptly with all regulations, ordinances regulating the use by the tenant. And that's why we're here for the CUP. And so if the center wanted to open up a gas station, of course, they're not going to comply with 5.2. But it's an other purpose, but it's going to be stopped by 5.2, what we're doing here. So I think that was the intent of the lease regarding how broad the purposes could be. And that's kind of taken all the sections together to make it make sense. Yeah, but again, that doesn't, that doesn't resolve the problem in my mind that, that the clause that's being relied on is, is a general one that just makes clear that, of course, the fact that you can only, you know, essentially have nonprofit tenants there, that this is not a business or commercial location. That doesn't mean that in the evening, you can have a community meeting that might involve someone that's not a nonprofit tenant of the building during the day. And that's a completely different thing to say. To read that language is saying, this means after business hours, you can do whatever you want, as long as you have a permit from the city. That was not the intent of the preservation of the Maxwell House in the middle of a neighborhood. I guarantee it. Well, I think the expectation is that the city would not approve something that is inconsistent with that. The city wouldn't have to even consider that because the lease doesn't allow. The city owns it. Right. The city owns it. Right. So I continue to believe that the way to solve this problem, it's a real problem. Like nobody here is anything up. I mean, you saw how close that wedding space is to some homes. Again, they're not a ton of residents that are that close to it. But for them, I really think it's a real intrusion on their peaceful habitation of their homes. I'm struggling with how even 21 events, and then when I see us subsidizing a museum with what a billion dollars or more of art, the Norton Simon? Oh, I bet if you bought that art for a billion dollars, you'd make money if you resold it. Oh, no. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. And that is enjoyed, that $337,000 is enjoyed really by the people. And again, I support the Norton Simon happily. It's a great institution, but Western Justice Center is right there with it. And arguably even more so because it promotes other nonprofits. So it gives directly supports justice in our community and then incubates and allows what 20 other nonprofits did. And it sounds like we're talking about a couple hundred thousand dollars of impact. And so I'd really like to see us clean up the lease because there shouldn't be, these are right thinking attorneys in our city, attorneys often nobody in the city should think that anybody that has that lease can do commercial activity at night. That was not the intent. Well, and it's in furtherance of the nonprofit activity. So the city would not allow all unlimited commercial activity. But weddings aren't directly in furtherance. They're in furtherance because they provide. They are contributing. Just like Girl Scout Cookies, you sell Girl Scout Cookies and the Girl Scout organization. Certainly, but the point being that it's a financial benefit. Yeah, and there's nothing intrinsic about a wedding to the mission of the Justice Center or to the other than the financial. So I'm just trying to help make sure that to the extent that there's discussion about changing the lease, it's a separate action that's to be taken by the council and then if the little east is changed perhaps and you come back And you look at the CUP or you approve the CUP or you deny the CUP or whatever you do with the conditional use permit Those are separate And I just wanted to try to emphasize that. Yeah, but we're sophisticated enough to be able to handle those parallel proceedings. I mean, like I said, it's part of the appeal and as a council, if we learn in almost any context that there's an issue that needs to be resolved, we should resolve it. I had a couple of other questions. One is, so a couple, Andrew's into an agreement with the Western Justice Center to have their wedding there. What's actually involved? Is there a rehearsal event that's there as part of that? I think would be best to ask the applicant for details on how they go through the process. Thank you. I don't know. You want ED to come up or council or? Whoever wants to speak and explain your process. I'd like to, hello, my name is Alisa Barrett. I'm the executive director of the Western Justice Center. I'd like to introduce my colleague Colin Duickey, who is our director of operations. He oversees many many things including the operation of the campus and he can answer your questions. Thank you. Hello. So the question was do we allow rehearsals for the wedding? Well, it was broader than that. So a couple has entered into the agreement to have their wedding there. Then what use of the center or any part of the center is provided with that. Sure. So our rentals are, when we rent the space, it is purely the space. We do not provide any sort of vending services or anything along the lines of other type of business type of auxiliary services. It's just the space itself. With that rental of the space comes the ability to have a rehearsal prior to the wedding itself on the day before the wedding over a certain amount of time, but that's really the extent of what comes with the space. We don't provide any other auxiliary services. So the rehearsals I assume generally a smaller group. Correct. Usually the wedding party, the couple perhaps the family and the whoever's, and the first Kremremesman, and Bridesmaids. And those last how long? They are fairly short. I would imagine, and honestly, I have a heft ass, Cindy, who is our events manager, the exact timing. But I would imagine it's between 30 minutes to an hour for the rehearsal. Are they using amplified sound for that? Generally no, it's just a walk through of the space of how it will go on the day. No musicians, music. Not on a rehearsal. Rehearsal dinners take place there? No. Okay. And then the wedding would have to comply with the terms of the CUP. Okay. And then the wedding ceremony itself is within that three hour window, but a wedding ceremony is up to three hours during that window. It's not the full three hours. It can, ceremonies are usually an hour, two and a half, maximum. But the reception is what is creating the issue, not the reception. Which is inside. It's not outside. Yeah. So no one goes outside during the reception. People, the way to go outside to use our bathrooms is through a door that goes through the patio on the side. So there is a door monitor, now a security guard, that makes sure that people are only going to the bathroom and coming back. There is no use of the patio outside of the ceremony use of that three hour window. OK. Thank you. And then I had my last question was about the 15 years where the average was 47 events, sort of trying to get my arms around why this only recently became such a problem. So first question is, was it a non-conforming use center? Or was there a CUP? Well, it was a non-permitted use. They didn't have a CUP. So they were operating without the benefit of a CUP. So it was not a non-conforming. It was a non-permitted use. And- Which means it wasn't a lawful activity. Correct, which is why we're here tonight with the CUP. There was an accident as we've talked about at some point in time, so then staff became aware that there were weddings occurring. Code started as a code compliance matter, and we initiated contact with the Western Justice Center until they needed to bring it into compliance, which if they wanted to apply for a CUP, they could apply for a CUP. So that's what started the legalization process. That's a pretty shocking revelation, right? That there was 15 years of unlawful use. I mean, that's probably a breach of the lease, right? I mean, at least I'm wondering if you can speak to that because I know you weren't there then, but I just My predecessor Who is now passed away judge Judith Charlene was a former Superior Court judge and I assume that if a judge was the executive director that she would have done what was needed Yeah, and I knew Judge Cherlin as well. I'm sorry. I have great respect for her. We served on the women lawyers of Los Angeles board together. I don't not mean it anyway. No, and I was agreeing with you that I... So I too was surprised when we learned this information. And we just have been following the guidance of what we need to do. So we paused events and we applied for temporary use permits and then we only did rentals according to the temporary use permit and in the process we applied for the conditional use permit so the process has been going on for almost three years. I'm just surprised that the record contains this reference to 47 events a year without noting for us that that was unlawful and constituted a breach of the lease. I think the staff report notes that this was a non permitted activity. We explained that it came through code enforcement. That was part of the background that we explained. So we talked about that at the last hour. I accept that. Thank you. And would you agree that no inference of propriety should be afforded to the fact that there were 47 unlawful events a year before? We agree. But they have the right to apply for whatever they want to ask for through the CUP. Right. They're the applicant. We process the application. So, you know, that's part of the consideration. I think that goes into determining what would be an appropriate number of events. I was held at the, as you know, the hearing officer was the first hearing and the hearing, they asked for, I think I want to say it was 36 events at the hearing officer, you could correct me if I'm wrong. The rest of the neighborhood had agreed on 36 events over 18 weekends, but based on our conversation with the appellants, we reduced that to 28 weddings on 14 weekends, according to a schedule discussed with the appellants. In the hearing officer approved the 28, then it was appealed and went to the board of zoning appeals, and was reduced to 21 events and they added some additional conditions mostly related to noise. So that's how we arrived at the 21 that we're at now. Okay, well those are my questions Mayor. I'll share comments I guess later maybe emotion but thank you. Let's turn to the applicant for three minutes. For more than 30 years, the area that has become known as the Western Justice Center Nonprofit Campus was a neglected eyesore. buildings and grounds were in a state of total disrepair that attracted vandalism, housed squatters, and posed significant safety risks to the surrounding community. When the area came under the ownership of the city in, I think, around the early 1990s, the city entered into a lease with the Western Justice Center based on a shared vision. We would revitalize the set of abandoned and deteriorating properties and transform them into a thriving hub for Pasadena's nonprofits. And the city would allow us to use the campus as a reliable source of independent funding for our core mission and to support the ongoing costs of maintaining and restoring these historic properties without being a financial burden to the city. The lease and the minutes from a pass city council meeting introduced by Mayor Gordo at the February 10th hearing clearly reflect this purpose and intent. From the start, the partnership between the City and the Western Justice Center has been built on trust. And that trust is reflected in the lease. We have done our part to fulfill our obligations under the lease, literally raising millions of dollars, defund repairs, improve safety, and improve all of the buildings and grounds on the campus. We also transformed its centerpiece, the Maxwell House, into one of the most valued and recognized historic properties in Pasadena. Now our ability to realize the benefits of those millions of dollars of investments is being undermined, creating obstacles to our financial stability, and harming the very foundation of our agreement with the city at a moment when the children and schools we serve here in Pasadena could not need us more. We ask that you remove that obstacle tonight and approve the BZA decision, a decision that attempts to strike a balance between the needs of our neighbors and the needs of the Western Justice Center. Earlier today, I submitted a letter to the public record that outlines the history of our efforts to find common ground with our neighbors and provides a small sampling of the capital improvement projects that we have undertaken since I began with the Western Justice Center in 2018. My colleague, Colin, Duwiki, and I will be available to answer any question you might have about the contents of that submission. In closing, please allow me to say this. During a time when the city is focused on rebuilding from the fires. diverting funds to an otherwise self-sufficient entity is counterproductive, inefficient, and unnecessary. And also, if you affirm the BZA decision tonight, you will not be granting us a victory. We have been through nearly three years of very tough negotiations with our neighbors, resulting in a whole host of conditions outlined in my letter that drastically reduces the number and drastically reduces the footprint of these events and cuts past fiscal fat to muscle and bone. The road ahead for us will be challenging, but we ask that you place the trust in us that we have placed in you. Keep true to the shared vision that we had in entering into this lease. And please let us refocus our attention on our work to lift up and empower the next generation of peacemakers in the Pasadena City and area. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we'll turn to the appellant. Thank you, Mayor Gordo Richard McDonald on behalf of the appellant. Members of the council, let me if I can address some of the points that council member Madison was asking about because I think they're important to address. And then Mike Davis would like to deal with the last question with regard to 47 events because as we stated in our February 10th letter that's just fundamentally false that we're not 47 some out of events and the CUP is not a reduction in what was done before. But let me if I can sort of start with the Eastman case that council referred to. that case, which I'm aware of and read, while preparing for this, did not deal with the express prohibition in Section 5.1 of the lease on for profit activities. Professor Eastman was a constitutional law professor at Chapman College. I think he's now actually disbarred. And because he was involved by thinking the January 6th insurrection or something. But that's neither here nor there. I just was remembering that. But he was there to speak. You do have a community in the event that you're wrong. What? You do have immunity in the event that you're wrong about. Sure. So yeah I don't think I'm in trouble with those guys. In any event he was there to speak on a public matters above of constitutional law and public policy. It was not a for-profit event. Section 5.1 has an express provision prohibiting renting to lawyers for profit and it goes on to say and for any for profit activities. Over the weekend I gave some letters that Mark has posted and given to all of you that show the first three or four pages show the ways that they raise money from everything. They rented out from meeting space Monday to Friday. They rented out for weddings. They rented out for filming. They have a different set of criteria for nonprofits. They have totally commercialized issues for for profit activities, which they're not allowed to do. And that case never dealt with that language in the least that prohibited it, and Eastman falls squarely within the community meetings category. Second, when they say that they don't have vendors, if you look at the material we submitted, they in fact take a look at the wedding documents, and every one of them it says, hey, here's, use our preferred vendor list for this, for that, for setup. They also say that they allow you to use Monday for removal of equipment. So it's not just Saturday Sunday, it's also Monday mornings that they're using it for. You also have this whole question of the rest of the neighborhood. The reality of the rest of the neighborhood is it's the three people that spoke last time who live over facing orange grove over 2,000 feet away. There is no other rest of the neighborhood because we represent everybody west of Grand Avenue towards where the Maxwell House and then west of them. And all of the people there are tired of the problems. The fact that it took a traffic accident to get the city to understand how this has been commercialized for quite some time is sad. But in a way, grateful that now everybody knows. Everybody knows the detriment and impact. And if you look at the photographs that we submitted again, we tried to give you the ones that show the aerial view that show you exactly where the set up of hundreds of people are right next to the wall. And literally, my clients, patios, are five feet on the other side of that wall. Who would really want to live like that? Lastly, even if there's no lease, as we explain on February 10th, and again, in the letter that I submitted today, there's no way this qualifies under the zoning code. And if you would, please be sure to look at page four of the letter that I submitted that goes through the definitions in the zoning code. And if you said this isn't a lease issue, it's just a CUP issue as the city attorney wants, it's still you can't grant the CUP. But with that, let me turn it over to Mike so we can answer the question on the 47 events. We had three minutes for you, so. Here's a separate. Three minutes. I gave her three and a half minutes. He'll be a minute and a half. Sure. Well, I guess I got three minutes, so try to make it short. I live right behind the wall. When we first moved in to 13, Judy Churlin was the executive director. He probably had three or four people that worked there. One was Bethany who kind of ran the numbers and Joe, who was in charge of the building, all this stuff out there. She was very respectful of me, and I was very respectful to her. We had a great, great relationship. As she realized how close our patios were, and she realized that close proximity was going to create problems. But we became great friends. And as always pointed out by the current executive director, the property was neglected, it was a den haven for drugs. Well, guess what? So it was my property because my property is bought by the same guy, Myron Hunt. It's on the same campus. And by the way, my house is a historic designation too. And I'm pretty sure they had parties there, OK? Now, when Charlem was there, there wasn't that many weddings, once every once in a while. And there was never 47. And I moved in at 213, she was the director till 218 when this person came in. Then we had the pandemic, and then after the pandemic, we started having the most wild west weddings you can imagine. And they say they only applied for the original application for 160 that they wanted. Now, everybody says, well, they just approved 21. 21. Okay, do the math. There's 12 months. So two weeks a month, we're gonna be disrupted. We're gonna have a wedding in our backyard, possibly the 125 people. And all of you have a home. How would you like to have a wedding in your backyard twice a month, every other weekend? The last thing I'm gonna to say, and I've thought about this now to her point for a couple three years, I've been fortunate, blessed, my wife and I both have been. And we've been involved and we've given to a number of charities. they all say we do good things and we need money. But not one of them, not one we've been involved with, has ever said we do good things, we need money, and we're going to break the law to do it. And I want you to remember that, because they're breaking the law what they're doing. They violate all the ordinances of the city of Pasadena. I think they do great things. I know they need money as do all charities. But you can't let them do it breaking the law. You as city council people are the judge and the jury, and I respectfully ask you to die this U.P. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next speaker. So we have speaker cards from Nathaniel O. Colin, Durekki, Ordie, Goldsmith, Sandy, green strain, Eva, Barriiantos, and Janie Heinrich will give at two minutes. So if you heard your name and you want to speak, please step forward. If you heard your name, please step forward and form a line. Nathaniel, is that, is this thing working? Yeah, go ahead and put it there. We'll turn that on. It'll take us a second. No problem. Can you just state your name again? Okay. That's so cool. All part of the clerk's new toy system. All right. Go ahead. Honorable council members and mayor, thank you for your attention to this matter. Maxwell is part of the Hardin, the Levin, Flores, LLC. I'm not a lawyer. I'm a sussan, attending these meetings. I have learned so much more about the Maxwell House and all the good programs that are held there. One of the most important things that I have learned here was that this issue was resolved. There was the decision and it was finalized, it was appealed, but there was no numbers were not satisfied with that decision. This circle represents the funding that the Western Justice Center would receive in a normal year from 47 weddings and events that would go towards and funding that would go towards building maintenance. I'm also not there accountant, so you know, great insult. The WJC has been beyond reasonable by giving up at least half of the funding, potential funding that could gather if my notes are accurate and if it's 47 to 21 events then that's more than 50%. They are being good neighbors. They are being more than reasonable. Neighbors are still not satisfied with that and that seems unreasonable to me. The next pie chart represents an estimated half of that funding, again21 not really half more than half the red is funding that they no longer have access to The blue is the half that they could maybe still earn through this year But if you think about it this also represents the amount of time that these neighbors get to have again on their power on their patio If it was 40 47 events and that's 21, they get time back. Lastly, I'll just make a point that I know my time is almost up. But this last chart represents the time in 2025 that this case is taking up. That blue section that symbolizes the funding that the Western Justice Center would use to maintain the property is getting smaller, which means that I assume that the nonprofits that are housed there need to make up that funding. This is hurting them. The longer this goes on, please do what you can to uphold the previous decision and uphold the permit. Thank you, sir. Next speaker. Colin Derrick, are you speaking? Yes. Hello again. So as you know, my name is Colin Derrick. I'm the president now for just over two years at the Western Justice Center. So I joined right within its infancy of application. Really through the beginning of the listening sessions that we held to truly understand the impact that these events originally were having on the neighbors. In those sessions, we came out with some great solutions to drastically improve the rules immediately. Some that weren't even required by the temper or use permit that were given. So some of those improvements were strict use of the patio for now up to three hours on the day of an event. That is three hours. That is not a full week for a wedding. That is three hours that is the day of the wedding. So when we're talking about 21 events, the patio is only used for three hours on that day. So when we are also hiring a security guard to monitor the front of the house and that monitor also patrols the neighborhood. They're not just monitoring the house. They are doing sweeps of the neighborhood which includes Defender Park. It includes access to the Colorado Street Bridge, there is a Shakespeare Club, the Elk Slotch, the Norton Simon, all within walking distance and a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It is a neighborhood that brings people to it, not just for events at the Maxwell House. In fact, there are weddings, there are people that come for weddings at Shakespeare Club, as well as just come to take photos on the Colorado Street Bridge for their wedding photos outside of an event at the Maxwell's. And those sometimes we get blamed for in when there are wedding couples in the vicinity. So we have really tried to commit to being good neighbors. We still have been implementing further rule changes hiring a second security guard, having more on-site staff to really make sure that there is as minimal of an impact as possible for the neighbors. And we will continue to do so if we are allowed to move forward with this permit. So I implore the council to assert reasonability when making their decision. Thank you. Cordy Goldsmith, followed by Sandy Greenstrain, followed by Eva Barrientos, and then Jeannie Heinrich. Welcome. Mr. Mayor, council members, I spoke with you before I'm a board member, to have been a board member for about a decade. And let me start with a conclusion, which is, you know, I urge the council to approve the PUC, see how it goes for a period of time. There's an obligation to come back to report I think within a year. I think everyone at the, the folks at the Western Justice Center, I think acknowledge that post COVID, that there were issues. and the staff met with the neighbors to address those issues. The staff has worked hard with the city, with the zoning board, to come up with restrictions with limited use to try to address the concerns. You know, listen, I hear the emotion from the neighbors. But that was from a time when there were problems, when there were issues, before the conditions to which the Western Justice Center has now agreed were imposed. And I would just urge you to give it a chance to, if the city wants to look at providing funding, alternative funding, you know, that would be great. We could come back. But every day, every week that we can't have weddings, we're losing money. And there's been much said about the assets of the Western Justice Center, but simply every dollar that the Western Justice Center loses from these weddings is a dollar less that it has to spend on taking care of the property that benefits that other nonprofits and a dollar lost to carry out its mission. So thank you. Thank you, sir. Let me question for the city attorney or Ms. Page. I mean, the granting of a CUP is an entitlement that runs with the land and can only be revoked after a due process proceeding. The last speaker suggested a temporary CUP or a time limited CUP. Is that possible? Without a revocation proceeding that would result if there were violations. I would look to the city attorney because typically we would not approve a CUP that had an end date. It does one with the land. So it would, it could be, I would make a suggestion unless City Attorney has something, but that if there's something more approved that there'd be a mandatory hearing before the City Council at the end of one year and then at that time if there was a need to do revocation or modification It could proceed after a mandatory hearing you could add a condition that there be a mandatory hearing in one year So it wouldn't be a temporary CUP. It's still run with the land but one of the conditions as Miss Page said is to have a a review or a hearing or something at a certain period in time and then determine if Replications appropriate or something else. Well, but that would be again a due process proceeding where we'd be limited Or all stated as a question. Would we be limited to The adherence to conditions of approval or would it be entirely a you know denovo proceeding. Well you'd look at the conditions of approval and the impact of the activity in the project. So well two different things impact versus adherence to I would be as two separate issues. There would be. Okay. And we could look at both. Yes, because you would be looking at let's say, you know, theoretically it's almost amounting to a nuisance or something. So you. That's the concern because on a nuisance issue it would be a higher standard and we'd actually have to tie it to that individual property as opposed to the conditions in general. There are other events or other properties that hold events in the vicinity. And so we'd have to tie it specifically if the question were nuisance to this property correct and In the proposed conditions that are before you tonight there is a mandatory review It would be done at the hearing officer level as the way the condition is structured and at any time if you have a conditional use permit And we're having issues it can always be called for review during during that product standard process as well. Okay. Sorry, but it is much more limited hearing. Okay. As opposed to a denoval proceeding. Sandy Green strain followed by Eva Barrientos and then Janey Heinrich. Welcome. Hi, I'm Sandy Greenstein, and I appreciate your service as our city council people. Tonight I speak as a resident of Linda Vista, where for Pasadena's greater good, we adjust to Rose Bowl events. A lot, based on the conversation tonight, I don't know if we adjust to 21 or 28 or more, but quite a few. And most of us do it in good spirit. I also speak as a long time volunteer in various services and sometimes a board member in nonprofit organizations, including one with a city facility sharing agreement that is not Maxwell House. I'm a volunteer in the Western Justice Center's growing United Against Hate program. I'm not a Western Justice Center board member. A lot of what was said today, get you off the hook for me reading my whole speech. I'm going to jump to, please remember, the direct financial benefits the city gains as a result of stewardship from Western Justice Center. If you have to, if you're willing to pay alternative costs out of the general fund, I bet that would be a great solution and there are probably quite a few people including those at Western Justice Center who would be extremely pleased by that. If that's not true in the future, the Center is transparent and accountable to the city in all cases. This is not commercial enterprises going on here, no matter how much they do it at Mass School House. The challenge is to local boards of directors to support fundraising for nonprofit missions is excruciating. The city should not make that fundraising more difficult by squeezing a nonprofit mission to favor city properties. Please approve conditional I will use permit 7114. Thank you. Eva Barrientos, by Janie Heinrich followed by Carl West. Welcome. Hi. Good evening. My name is Eva Barrientos. I am a local florist here in the St. Gabriel Valley. I have been working at Maxwell House since 2019. And in conclusion as to what has happened in the last couple years, clients, vendors, neighbors have all been able to come to an understanding and to a reasonable compromise by the limiting the amount of events that we're hosting, making changes on how events are held, quantity, and longevity of outdoor activities are all very reasonable requests that we've all come to agree and you know willing to follow. And I did want to note regarding the ceremonies, they are usually 15 to 30 minutes actual ceremony time, not the three hours, three hours includes setup. Our industry actually is experiencing a troubling time with inflation, talk about tarot's venues, closing, losses due to the fires. And this is all added to the stress and financial burdens of the area. Some of these couples displaced by the fires could find a home at Maxwell House in opening the doors to events seems essential to the timing right now. We all want to get back to work. I've worked at other venues around it by residential, and we end events usually around 10 o'clock, have similar rules to what Maxwell House has established and in no position of being closed. Maxwell House has not put a financial pressure on the community by establishing the source of income to maintain the buildings, And not only are we as vendors being put out of work, but the community is limited on events spaces right now. And it's also passing the financial burden to the city, which I don't feel is ideal. What is being proposed by Maxwell House and other neighbors have agreed to seems extremely reasonable to support this organization, the community and our industry. Thank you. That's it. Thank you. Janie Hiroek, followed by Car West. Hello. Thank you so much for being here. Council Iisant, nice to see you. I wanna say that we moved into Western Justice Center and we have a group of people with disabilities and there wasn't a lot of places to go in Pasadena because we're not accessible. The Western Justice Center allows our community to come to work and to make the community better with our paws and empowers and wagged programs. And because it's an accessible campus, we can all be there together. And we can teach others about what ADA accessibility. While you're all tabs temporarily abled bodied, someday you might need the services that we provide, and it's really important that we're all in a spot that we can reach our community in Pasadena. I want to say something, and I've been thinking long and hard, but I want to say that probably more than 47 times a year since we've been there. I've been thinking long and hard, but I want to say that probably more than 47 times a year since we've been there, I've picked up the cigar butts of our neighbors that are left on our property, a non-smoking campus. I will say there's been more than a few times that I've been there when the outdoor TV of our neighbor that doesn't want any noise has it blaring and a lot going on outside. We've been really good neighbors. We had a holiday party there, which was completely inside, and there were 10 phone calls during the three hours that we were there from the neighbors complaining about us being too noisy. And we weren't even outside. We were indoors and it was a very quiet group. We had no loud music. So sometimes people always look for the difficult and I'm asking all of you to open your eyes to what's really going on and to support the work we do Thank you. Thank you Carl West Mr. West welcome Mr. Mayor and members of council my name is Carl West and I live at 51 South Grand. I am one of the appellants. I think it's telling that we've listened to probably 25 or 30 speakers from the Western Justice Center, not one of which has talked about the issues that are on the table. They all talk about the good things the Western Justice Center does. I have no quarrel with that. We have supported them. The real issue here and what we're asking is that the city and the Western Justice Center live up to the deal that was struck with the Ninth Circuit and the federal government. When this property was acquired, it was to be a center for judicial resource. We don't quarrel with the good deeds that we do for all the nonprofits that are there, the fact that they form a campus. But the deal was no for-profit activity. And what we have now is a pleading that we need the money, and we've been doing it often on, never at the level that they suggested, but that's not the issue before you. The issue is they want to turn this in to a public meeting hall under the code. It's not a public meeting hall. It's an office building for nonprofits for promotion of the justice system. And we look the other way and we don't have any any quarrel with the tenants that they have there. They're all nonprofits. They're all good for Pasadena. If you look at the material we've put before you, their strategic plan says, we're looking for ways to phase out our wedding business. We're looking to enter into long-term leases and increasing the rent for our tenants. They have many other alternate ways of raising funds. The bottom line is the deal that you struck, the deal that the city made, you get it for a dollar a year, a dollar a month, you can rent it to 20 other tenants, you can get the money in, maintain your facility, and that's all we're asking that they do. And the impact on us is unquestionable. Nobody they don't bring any speakers up or anybody to tell you that you know they're not impacting us. They say oh we're doing this to mitigate we're doing that to mitigate. It's not a matter of mitigation and the conditions that were imposed by the BZA can't be met. They can't meet the noise ordinance conditions. They can't do it. So all we ask, and I think thank you, Councilman Madison, for at least looking at the lease, and look at the city staff report that led to the adoption of that lease. Mr. West, your time? Okay, correct. The staff said no for profit activity. We're just saying please live up to the deal that the city struck with the government and with the New Esther and Justice Center and that they live up to it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. That completes public comment on this matter. Okay. Mr. Madison. Thanks, Mayor. I think, you know, the parties are kind of talking past one another. And I want to repeat my solidarity and support for the Western Justice Center, the work that the Justice Center does. Directly the support of non-profit. I think it was pointed out, put into the record last time. I've recommended several nonprofits to go there and at least a couple of them have ended up signing sublices there. That is the intent. But I just, we got to get over this thing on the lease because it's fundamental to the whole contract. We own the property. When we acquired it, we intended it that it be used for legal law-related purposes. That's spelled out in the lease. I think it's even spelled out in the surplus, the plan for surplus property. When the federal government's surplus's property, they have to make findings and receive assurances that the property will be used in a particular way. And here, that's contained in the lease. And I don't know, Mark, if you can show the display it for us all to see or not. I don't know what you would need to do that. But I think it's important that we- It's an attachment. Walk through that. It is. It's a, I don't have a consecutive page number, but it's page four of the lease agreement. And while you're doing that, you know, this, the case of the Pasadena Republican Club versus Western Justice Center, again, it's pretty much completely in opposite. In that case, the Republican Club, which had held a number of events there, arranged for this license agreement to have John Eastman speak. John Eastman's a law professor. It's a law-related event that's totally consistent with the lease. And when it was canceled by Judge Charlin, and by the way, I agree with that too. I hope I have immunity for that. But because it related to the rights of LGBTQ plus persons, that was the basis for Judge Turland's decision to cancel that. Then the Republican Club sued the Western Justice Center claiming that it was a violation of their first amendment rights. And as an element of a claim like that, there had to be a state actor. And so the Republican club argued that because the city owned the property and had leased it to the Western Justice Center, that satisfied the element. And the club, excuse me, the circuit found that that was not the case, that there was no state action here, and therefore the lawsuit was dismissed. And if anything, it supports the view that I think is the correct one because the opinion of the ninth circuit says the least limited the Western Justice Center use of the property to non-profit law related functions. And then listed some of those and they're referring to this section here 5.1 use. The premises shall be used and occupied by the tenant and its sublessies only for the purposes described in the plan of public use for surplus property including but not limited to the following non-profit law related functions Operation of a center for the study of the following matters alternative dispute resolution administration of justice delivery of legal services other legally oriented issues providing space to space to nonprofit entities for legal seminars, meetings, conferences, hearing rooms, deposition rooms, arbitration rooms, law library research space. Three, residential and office facilities for legal researchers and scholars and ancillary services such as dining facilities. And four, for sub-asing portion of the premises to tax exempt organizations, providing law-related services, and for no other purposes whatsoever. And frankly, it's probably a silver lining that our society has become so legalistic that those 20 organizations that are there as sub-tenants are not ones that you would normally think of as law or legal related necessarily. But I am quite sure every one of them does deal with legal issues and has to navigate the law. And so I would find that it's totally consistent with that. That's an example of a use that maybe people could argue about. But then it goes on to say, tenant is expressly prohibited from leasing the premises or any portion thereof to lawyers offering legal services for profit or allowing the premises or any portion there of to be used for any for-profit activities. Tenet shall continuously during the term of this lease following completion of all tenant improvements is here in defined, use the premises for these purposes during ordinary business hours. So essentially that's an additional limitation to protect the community. And then it has this sort of, to me, it's kind of a footnote. Nothing here in Progluez-Taniforne using the premises for community meetings and other purposes during non-business hours. And in the the Nin Circuit case, the other purposes was the same exact purpose that all of the specific stuff above said. It was a nonprofit that was using the room to have a speaker that was talking about the law. So how we get from that to this, can we show the website please for the Maxwell House of Pasadena? The Maxwell House historic event venue. This now has been somehow morphed into an event venue. I mean, there is no support in this lease for that. Absolutely not. And up at the top, it's weddings, rentals, planning, vendors. I mean, it's essentially holding itself out and I understand the reasons why and I want to address those reasons. I don't think it's fair that the Western Justice Center that provides so much good to Pasadena should have to do this, and I don't think they can, under the lease, to be able to maintain this historic resource that we chose to purchase. So I think if there's any nonprofit in the city that's getting financial benefit, you know, I mentioned North and Simon, I know there are others, it should be this facility. And, you know, we can look the other way and say, well, they're just supporting the mission and they're trying to raise funds, but this is different in kind from what was contemplated. And I don't think any right thinking decision maker, and Richard McDonald is a litigator. Like this isn't going to go away if we say, yeah, sure, we'll just do the CUP. It's going to end up in court. It's going to continue to tie up everyone's resources and time and energy. And I get that it's not that many neighbors that are really impacted. But this is more important than just that. And those few neighbors are really important. We have an obligation to ensure that all of our residents are protected. I take my friend, Sandy Greenstein's point about the Rose Bowl. You know, the Rose Bowl was here before most of us moved into the neighborhood. It's been there over 100 years. And it's always been understood that that was a venue for large events. That's not the case with the Maxwell House. So I don't know what the legal framework for it is in terms of the municipal law, but I would say what I would do is direct staff to find and work with the Western Justice Center to find the funds here in the city as the owner of the property. You know, the things change, right? The Western Justice Center, I hope this isn't true, but they might not always be there. And we're not going to let the Maxwell House fall apart. So it's our resource and we should find a way to support the maintenance that's necessary and then help the Western Justice Center get back to their core mission which is consistent with these lease documents to promote justice and education and the rule of law. We need that today more than ever, believe me, because there are some in very high positions that have forgotten that we're a nation of laws not men and women. We're not a monarchy. So we need, I'm frankly a little embarrassed that the Western Justice Center is running an event venue at this time of such a drastic need for reeducating all of us about the rule of law and why those principles are so important. So I don't know if that resolves this CUP or not, Michelle but it would be a you would have a separate agenda item Whatever meeting the council wants to agendaize that subject and that could be appropriate at that By the way, I'm I'm not saying that you know, you couldn't have an event occasionally, you know, and maybe even you know fundraiser andiser and event, I don't see it this being consistent with what the underlying purpose of the lease was. I guess I'm wondering if God forbid, do we ask for another Continuance and then direct staff to roll up its sleeves and try to help solve the problem on this Property that we own. Again, that would be separate. So you could continue it. I don't know how long it's been. Oh, we just, this is the first one. Okay. Right. So you need to seek concurrence from the appellant, the property, the applicants. That would be advisable. And then at some future meeting, separate from the CUP consideration item, you'd have what you're asking be considered that staff would be directed to look into. Okay. On the question of original use, well I'm sorry, we're dealing with someone. So on the question of original use, my regulation, I could be wrong is that the Maxwell House together with some of the other structures in the area, part of the hotel that the, is it a royal business? Delo Reo Hotel was built in 1929 and there were four buildings that were part of that grouping. And so in terms of original use, it was the part of a hotel use originally. Okay. I think what happened, no mayor, and that's a fascinating point, right? The history there, and still once the federal government acquired it, then when they conveyed it back to the city of Pasadena, or I think it was originally some sort of authority that the council or the city had, but then later, but same difference. I don't think that's a big issue. It goes part of the redevelopment. I don't know if it was redevelopment or some other kind of joint public authority, but in any event, at that moment, they said in the surplus property plan, this is what you have to do with it. They didn't, they weren't saying, this is gonna be an historic event venue where you have lots of events, and that's the way you generate income. It said you have to use it for all those legal related purposes. So. Mr. Hampton. Thank you and I thank you again for bringing that piece back up. I did review that before. This is something that is hard to really wrap my mind completely around, but I'm doing my best to try to balance the residents' concerns as well as the Maxwell House. It is one of our assets, so we don't want our assets to turn into the YWCA. And so we definitely need the resources that the Maxwell House has been producing to maintain that facility the way it is. But we also represent residents. And that's my number one priority always. And so I have a series of couple questions. Number one, the first time the neighbors or residents called about an event or issue deco compliance go out to monitor the sound. No, we became aware there was an accident that occurred after one of the events and so when the city became aware code compliance be aware we told them they had to cease operation of the events until they could apply for CUP. So we did after that issue two subsequent TUPs that had conditions of approval and we did not get any complaints during that time that we had the two TUPs in place until we got to the CUP hearing. But just because we had been complaints, we did have complaints, it sounds like there were complaints. I don't know if they rose to you or they may be there to taken police department. I'll look to staff to see. Are you aware that we had done additional monitoring as part of the TU piece? No. So I guess my question is, why didn't we not monitor to see if it wasn't an issue or not? I mean, the issue is an issue, but if it wasn't sound that was protruding into the private residents' neighbor. We're complaint driven. We already knew that the neighbors, there were issues with the neighbors and we knew that they would call us if they were having issues directly with any of the events we did not get any calls during the TUPs, the two years that we had the TUPs. And one TUP, there was a TUP in 2023, it had 66 events and the TUP in 2024 was for 28 events. And so, did your office not receive complaints or did the police, do we have- Our office did not receive complaints. So do we have records of if they called the police? I'm who I'm- Yes, those come through code complaints. And did those, were there- Not that I'm aware of. No. Nobody called the police. Not that I'm aware of. Okay. So I guess I have a question for Councilmember Madison. This is the resident of the neighborhood that he represents. So I'm supportive of what your initiative is. But is there a way to move forward by reducing the amount of weddings, keeping them all inside, have a sound monitor, and then looking at the whole entire contractual agreement that we have with the Western Justice Center, is that a possibility that you're thinking about right now? Certainly, you know, again, reading the lease, the way we just did, it's hard for me to see that as being a permitted use under the lease. And I respectfully again to our city attorney staff, I just having a law professor speak as part of a club that relates to legal issues doesn't stand for the precedent that you can turn it into an event venue. So to staff, if we decided as a council to grant a temporary use permit while we wait to figure out staff's point of view and renegotiating a contractual agreement between the Western Justice Center and the city, is that a possibility? the use permit is done at a director's level so we do have a, that's how we issued the two TUPs that were already done here. So it's a director's level letter. It has conditions of approval that are attached and it's good for one year. So it's not, I'm looking to the city attorney because it's not typically an action that requires council approval. It's a director's level entitled. Right. And I don't know if there's a limit to, I know you said for one year, is there a limit in our code? They can reapply after the year. But it's typically just meant to be on a short term basis, which is why we didn't initiate a third TUP and we stopped it out. And they had weddings that were booked, which is essentially why we used the TUP to allow those weddings that had been booked to proceed until we got through the CUP hearing. But at a staff level, we do a TUP with conditions of approval. And then the decision letter is routed. I'm sorry, a decision letter is routed to the council members and it could be called up if there there was a problem with it. We wouldn't turn the conditional use permit application into a temporary use permit application. I don't think our code contemplates that. I suppose they could separately apply for a TUP while we continue the conditional use permit. Yes. And then puts that farther out. If there were parameters outlying tonight, they could apply. And we would issue a decision letter. And those conditions would be reflected in the letter. So we could figure out how to make it work. But it's not typically something that's done by the council. Right. It wouldn't be be and so I'm suggesting they would separately apply as it provides for in the code. The council would not be directing what the conditions would be. They would apply just like it says in the code the director would look and see what makes sense and approve or deny subject to whatever conditions are appropriate. Currently, the conditional use permit hearing would be continued to some future date. And in the interim, there can be a separate discussion regarding the lease and then returning and a month or I don't you know whenever is appropriate for two different agenda items. One can even be closed session real property negotiations regarding the lease and then they can discuss it publicly as well if the council desires. So those are some of the options I think. So right now the proposal was for 21 of it. Vents is that correct? That was what was the report. That's not the proposal of the applicant. That's what the board is owning. Board is only that. That's the staff recommendation, which is what the board is owning. And Pilsen. Okay. And so does that contemplate Rose Bowl events? No. Would there be blackout dates on because- Completely essentially- I drive every Rose Bowl event to hold all your district as well. I'm going to tell you some of my medicine. And that area is impacted by the Rose Bowl. So if they're having a wedding on the same day as a Rose Bowl event, they're getting multiple impacts. And they could also hear concerts from the Rose Bowl from across the bridge. I bring this up because I live right next to the Rose Bowl. And if my next day of the day had a party every single day, and not every single day, twice a week, every weekend when I'm typically at home, I wouldn't have enjoyment of my own backyard and my own space. Now, I support the union of anybody getting married, more power to them, but I definitely don't want to be a part of a wedding every other weekend. Nor do I want to be a part of a wedding and a rose bull event. As part of the approval of the Board of Zoning and Pills, there's a schedule that's included in the staff report. I see the schedule. There's some weekends that have no events. There's some weekends that have one or two, so it's based on the demands and when I think more of the peak season is, but there's nothing in here that precludes an event from happening at the same time that there's an event happening at the Rose Bowl. Okay, and that could be a traffic issue as well. So I just want to say that I support the council member's decision who represents the area, but if there was a way to move forward to allow the Maxwell House to do something while we monitor and make sure that the residents are now I'm hearing perpetual weddings every weekend or every other weekend. There is monitoring that's part of the CUP conditions minimum of four times a year unannounced monitoring by code enforcement so that's built into the conditions. Perfect. Thank you. And is the current, the TUP is that? Is that expired? It expired in December. Well, I think the first step is whether the parties would consent to continuance for this purpose. Because if not, before we get there, let's hear from everyone. Mr. Masuda followed by Mr. Davis. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Mr. Madison, for bringing all that information out. Jennifer, here's where I am. What did Boza listen to? What was the argument then? It's just a matter of there. They were listening to whether or not to approve a CUP or not. Yes, yes. They were told that the lease was separate in apart from this because as the city council has a different role when it gets to the council level to Genova hearing and the city council is a part of the lease. The board of zoning appeals level is strictly a land use matter. So they were more limited and they did not get into the lease discussions. And the vote was 4-1. That's correct. And those have approved 41 events. No, they have approved 21. What was the year in the 41 come out? So 47 is the average of events. So what we were given by the representative for the Western Justice Center is from 2014 to 2023 the number of events that had occurred over those years. And then the average of that over 10 years is 47 events. So we have a reporting out of how many events were occurring. The hearing officer approved 28. It got appeal to the board of zoning appeals and they approved 21. 21. Okay. Mary, it would be very difficult for me to undo Bose's approval. So I just wanted to put that out. Thank you. Vice Mayor Revis. Thank you, Mary, and thank you, Council Member Madison, for kind of going through the lease, because originally, before the first hearing, walking into us, I would have very similar concerns. But hearing from the applicant and understanding more about how the lease came together, I think the mayor brought up the record. Did you bring in the report, the staff report at the last meeting or staff brought up the staff report at some point that we discussed a little bit more about that as well. My concerns is about that have been delayed quite a bit. I think it's still worth separately discussing and clearing up some of that language. But I think the fact that we entered into this agreement with a nonprofit asking them to take care of this asset of ours certainly implies we understood they were going to have to do something to generate funds to do that for us. So I'm less concerned about the lease for the hearing right now, but I agree we should separately and apart from this revisited at some point. I was taking another look at the conditions and I don't see any condition about the length of time on the ceremonies. Am I reading that correctly? There's no limit on how long they can be out on the patio doing a ceremony or did I- Um, condition 19 says, use of the outdoor garden patio, outdoor small patio and oak tree areas shall be limited to a maximum three hour period between the hours of 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. So that's the limitation on the outdoor- Okay, so they could theoretically be out there for the full amount of time for the ceremony or... I think it's use of the patio and in the mirror. It says use. Yeah, so it would be the ceremony or... Did photographs or anything related to that? Okay, so did BZA consider putting a limit on specifically the ceremony? Because I haven't heard specifically from the appellant but I imagine that is the most disruptive part of this whole thing. And I'm looking to staff because I wasn't at the busy hearing did they have a conversation directly about ceremonies in the patio or is it just the overall usage of the patio? The use of the pad is limited to ceremonies. Okay. And it's limited to your mic. Your mic's not on. Oh, three out, three hours. Is that on now? Yeah, so the outdoor patio is limited to a three-hour period maximum between the hours identified in the conditions of the approval. Right, but a wedding ceremony generally isn't three hours. It could be less than that. It's sort of a maximum they're allowed to be using the outdoor patios for ceremonies. Okay, so thank you for just explaining what was discussed at the BGA. I'm aware Councilmember Mursuda is. I'm inclined to support the, in uphold the BGA decision and support the staff recommendation. The only additional condition I would suggest we would look at would be to put a time limit on the, specifically on ceremonies, because that is the actual event that is disrupting the neighbors and three hours a pretty big window. But if that were tightened up a bit, I think that would be a good improvement to make. So that's where I am here at this time. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Rivas. Mr. Jones. Thanks, Mayor. And, you know, just like the rest of my colleagues, I'm struggling with this decision because Obviously we represent residents, so we need to be responsive to our residents and then this is occurs in a District that obviously I don't represent Steve Madison represents I want to provide some deference to him Although I I think that the Western Justice Center is doing great work in our community And so so I know Steve, you brought up perhaps pushing out the hearing and then while they push out the hearing staff would come back with an agenda item, trying to figure out funding to provide the cost of the maintenance. Yes. But I thought I heard the executive director implying they were not interested in that is that Or is the hearing still open or yeah, the public here is still open. Yeah, I think she Thought maybe in these difficult times you might Uses yeah, I think our concern is over the state actor issue And so obviously we're willing to sit down with the city And have a conversation about these separate issues. I think the issue for us is that Every week that we delayed is another week that we can't proceed with the process of having an event. And the last hearing was February 10th. We were at the point of getting ready to post a position to add to support Pasadena Unified. And I'm not posting that position. Because you're not able to have your hands up. Don't know know whether we're going to have money. Yeah. Yeah. Steve, is there any scenario where you'd support the CUP with the condition that we have another hearing after six months or a year? Well, I think it's too many events. Yeah. I really do. For the, again, I know it's a small number of neighbors. And I want to support the center as I've made very, very clear. But I'm interested, you know, I just don't find any support in the lease for that, you know, an event venue. So I'm surprised to hear my colleagues who I respect so much find that that's perfectly consistent with that lease agreement. Because I also fear that it'll be litigated and that that'll take more time and energy and resources and then we'll be back to square one. So, yeah. So there's no scenario, you think. Yeah, remember, I think there is there a number of it? Well, that you're comfortable with. I had a different kind of number in my mind, which was, I think, we were told it was $8,000 to have your wedding there or something like that. 9,000. 9,000. Huh. Times 21 would be less than $200,000, right? What was the cost of the maintenance? I ate. What was the cost of the maintenance per year? between the staffing for managing the property, the maintenance, the repairs, and the annual improvements that generally runs around $400 to $500,000 a year. About $250,000 comes in through our nonprofit tenants. The per square foot rental rate in Pasadena is $35, we charge $5 or less. Because otherwise the nonprofits can't afford to be with us. And then the weddings fill the gap. So without them we're in the whole, somewhere around $200,000. And so then I think we'll have to decide whether we need to return the campus to the city. Oh, I don't like hearing that. I don't like thinking about it, but that is a conversation that's happening internally with the organization. Go ahead, go ahead. I'm sorry, you might have asked you a clarifying question. So does the city not offer any support, roof repairs, et cetera, it's all on you. Yes. We raise all of it. That's the nature of the agreement that we entered into with the city. Thank you. I think there's a deeper discussion than these would be. The separate, yes. I think that's what Steve was saying is, but I'm afraid if we keep delaying it, then there could be serious financial repercussions for the same. Yeah, no, I'm disappointed that we weren't ready to have that discussion tonight, but I also imagined staff didn't feel like they had the direction to do. And this is mediation, which this is far, I think, beyond the type of thing that our prosecutor's office would normally handle. This isn't like a neighborly dispute about some impediment to the view court or something. This is complex. To have that discussion, that's a legislative discussion. We'd have to allow our colleagues call in and line to participate. Right, that's separate. That'd be separate. Just like the way you said that, we'd have to allow that. Yeah. An evil not a man. Yeah. And if I can add, we generally don't provide support to repair buildings like this one, but it's also true we don charge nominal rent, it's $1 a year. And that's the deal. Normally in the market you would pay rent and we say we won't charge you rent but you take care of the building. So that's the exchange and we can change that. That's the council's judgment and we can do that. I think the one bigger exception is the North and Simon because it's on a 7 acre parcel on that park too and so we pay I think it was $337,104 to maintain that piece. But the others, we charge a dollar. So we get the $1 rent to have, and that's to get what's called consideration in the legal field. And then we, they're responsible to take care of issues. Now we sometimes do find CDBG money. I think that was done at a Kelblon. And maybe some others, I'm only aware of a Kelblon, getting that CDBG dollars. But otherwise, the support to help the building work comes from not charging rent. Yeah. But I think the way I see this dilemma is, we don't normally have these kinds of constraints on the use of the property. I mean, this is a very specific lease that says, we, you're going to maintain it, but you can only use it for these law-related purposes, which may not be, you know, viable. I don't know what you're referring to when you say other examples. I mean the Norton Simon is an art museum and we're contributing You know substantially to that. Yeah, there are 14 examples at the ones that comes in my mind are Kebilan, Kid Space, I think our BAC pays its $1. Maxwell House. I can't, I don't have the whole list in front of me, but I think that's available if the council is interested. Well, all are limited to very specific uses like in this situation as well, is my recollection. The Norton Simeon deal, which we've had to grapple with a few times, was entering to as a way to recruit the museum and encourage them to open in Pasadena and then was renegotiated. I think it was in the 90s to keep them here because they were threatening to move operations to Los Angeles is what I recall. But those actual, the maintenance is actually worked into the lease agreement or the agreement with Norton Simon. I guess on any of those other examples, Miguel, are they invent venues? Do they use numerous events to underwrite that are different from their mission? I don't know. Yeah, it would be helpful to know that. And process wise, so if we take a vote today and we don't have five votes for any action. It goes back to the BZA No The lower decision the both the decision would stand if you could get five votes on Sequa and is there a justification as to why someone would vote no on Sequa on I'm glad that's a good think that- I think that- I think that- I think that- I think that- I think that- I think that- I think that- I think that- I think that- I think that- I think that- I think that- I think that- I think that- I think that- I think that- I think that- I think that- So we had a school in my district. I'm not going to name the school, but... So we had a school in my district. I'm not going to name the school, but that had a CUP and they were asking for a certain amount of students. And it was like a sliding scale that went up. Words. Could the council tonight say okay we'll move forward with this at the amount of 12 events with the four monitors. And if there are complaints, we can reopen this re-opener or we will not move forward for any extra and just slide up to 21. Like annually. We did this. Yeah, you could do a reverse of what I think the appellant was proposing at the last hearing that they start. They go to 18. They start at 18 events. And then it sunsets. It goes from 18 to 16 or 12. And then eventually it's sunsetting. So they were having a number and it was sunsetting to go to 0. You're talking about doing this similar with the opposite, right? So you start with a smaller number, see how they're doing, and then they could gradually ask for more events, or you could give them more events. So you could do that. You could give them a certain amount in one year, and then a certain amount in year two, or if you wanted to do something like that. The way the CUP is structured, though, There's a mandatory compliance hearing now set at one year, but it can be called up at any time. So because it's a CUP is a privilege, it's not a right. So we have the right to call it up at any time if there's any issues related to compliance. Anyways. But you could start at a lower number and we could have the hearing in a year and you could decide then if you thought that number was appropriate or if there needed to be an adjustment to the number up or down. Based on complaints, et cetera. It would be a staff, that would be a staff decision. There'd be a staff recommendation. We would write a staff report and report out on what has been happening and how many events and if we had complaints and then we would come back to the council and have another public hearing and discuss whether or not we read an appropriate number or if staff thought that should be reduced or That could possibly be increased we would have a recommendation on that I mean I would be supportive of reducing the amount of events If the council member that represents the area is supportive of that, while we figure out the one-dialiece agreement. The way the conditions are right now, if you look at condition 38, there's, and now it's, it said that it would go to the hearing officer, but we could have that hearing happen at the council. So there already is that mandatory hearing. And I think it's going to be modified or they we can add conditions, you know, but there's just you can see the series of conditions that are added. This is inclusive of what the board is owning appeals added for additional monitoring related to noise and they have a security guard now. They haven't had any events under these conditions yet, right? These are all new conditions. So we haven't had an opportunity to have these in place. And right now it's at 21 events. But if the council thought that there was a number that was more appropriate, that was a lower number than that would be the council decision. I'm curious from the applicant, you know, I would admit in every business decision, There's a tipping point where it's worth doing and you actually realize the gains that you're looking for, but because there are costs associated with staffing and everything else, I'm curious if that analysis has been done before, before we just throw out a number that may or may not make sense. Let, you know, I'm curious if there is a tipping point. And yeah, if the... May I confer with my operations director? Sure. Well you do that, there was one, oh, there was one other suggestion potentially to, yeah, right. Time limit on ceremony. While they're doing that, Mayor, I just, my concern is if we're moving toward a CUP, then I just think we're on a course where there probably will be litigation. My preference would be to try to take one more time out, see if we can figure something out that resolves the very real financial pressure on Western justice, but also doesn't result in litigation or an inordinate impact on the neighbors. Can I ask a question? How many TUPs can organizations apply for? They can reapply after each year, but we typically discourage it because we want to get it into a permanent situation. situation. So they could re- they could reapply as we were. So we put this on pause. Could they reapply with the to you P and we hold. I mean this is staff level so you hold some of these requirements. We could fold these conditions in all the operating conditions in and we would still need to have a set number of events and we still want to know as I said there's a schedule in here that talks about how many per weekend you could have there's no events in January we could continue that schedule and we would look at the number of events that would be allowed in the next year and then we could have the operating conditions under a TUP. So normally Wedding's book 12 to 18 months in advance. So I don't know whether we're going to be able to book any weddings for this year, but a number of places have been destroyed in the fire. A number of additional places just closed. So it could be that there are some couples. We had people reach out to us, but we had to turn them away. Colin is going to talk a little bit about how the numbers play out based on the financials in terms of the number of weddings. Thank you. So I will use 2023 because that is what's including your packet of the 1099. So in 2023, the operating expenses for running the campus was $454,403.66. The total revenue for the campus was just under 300,297,000. So the net income was a loss of $156,000 for the campus without taking into account the weddings. When you bring in the weddings, which had a net income of $91,000, that allowed us to cover for that loss of $156,000 and then also allow us to ramp up some of our programming which we've been wanting to do. So now when we're looking at restricting the amount of weddings to 21, that reduces our net income to $65,000. So if we were to face the same operating loss from the campus with the 21 weddings, we're already looking at how we have to reshuffle our revenue and that the net income that that would bring. So it's already something that we're facing. I just want to reiterate, to my knowledge, historically, there were around 25 to 30 weddings a year. In 2022, we had 66 weddings, and it was way too many, and people were way too loud. And that's why we began to ramp down. In conversation with the neighbors, we created the schedule that you see in the packet through direct dialogue with them. The idea was to allow no consecutive weekends and to have fewer weekends over the year impacted by having a Saturday and a Sunday event. And so that would allow us to have less frequency out of respect for their requests. So that's what we're trying to do. So the 21 events is worth it for you, business-wise? Yes, yeah, I think we're not really breaking even on the campus, but we're within a reasonable fundraising amount of still having to divert fundraising energy from our core mission and divert staffing, but it's temporarily manageable. Just why we had proposed the 28 number and remind me the complaints or the issues raised by the residents did not start until two, three years ago or? So we had different staff during 2022 and most of 2023 and they were not as good at sending issues up the chain as our current staff. And so one of the things that we've been working really hard on is having a really strict chain of command and reviewing incidents. We now keep an incident report and a log of all issues that are raised in every event. And this is to track exactly what time the call or email or text comes in, what the response of staff is, how long it takes to resolve the issue and what the resolution is. And so although we were not bound by the terms of the CEP and our last several events, we voluntarily implemented regardless. So we hired a second professional security guard. So we had one security guard in the front to manage the things that the neighbors across the street have asked us to look at. And then we had a second security guard in the back. We also bought stanchions, which is a word I didn't ever think as a nonprofit executive director. I would have to learn, but stanchions are the things that the airport that kind of direct you to where to stand. And so we have stanchions now blocking off the small patio. The small patio is shared with the Davises. And then we have the stanchions creating a narrow path from the back of our building to the bathrooms, which were built in the OTS, and are the only multi-stall restrooms on the entire campus. So that's the restrooms that people use when there's things happening. And then there's a door monitor on the inside. So there's somebody that opens the door and closes the door to make sure it's not open more than necessary. Then there's a security guard outdoors to make sure people are only staring on the narrow path. The last complaint that we got was that there were people talking in the patio and those two people were our staff and the security guard. Our staff was checking into with the security guard to make sure the guests were following the rules. So it seems like you've been trying to accommodate the issues and concerns that's been raised. Yeah, I mean, I understand why our neighbors are upset. I really do. And we've been working very hard to show them that we care about them and we care about their feelings and their concerns. And we think that we have reached a set of conditions that are difficult. Last year we had to implement the temporary use permit conditions for weddings that had already been scheduled before the conditions. Several weddings were canceled because of that and we had to return $25,000. And so we were doing a best that we can to try to have these events in a way that reduces the impact of our neighbors. So for 2023 and 2024, you've been operating under a TUP. Yeah, the first TUP was in 2023. In 2022, the staff person that had scheduled the 22 weddings has scheduled a 2023 wedding. So that's why we still have a larger number than we had new staff coming in. So we scheduled fewer weddings to try to bring things down. And we began to hire more people, which adds more cost to each event. So reduces the amount of money that then goes back to the organization. But we thought like that's a good faith effort that we need to make to do better. And so that was more we were getting used to implementing those new rules last year. Thank you. And then from this page, how long does the TUP last? 12 months. 12 months. 12 months. And so I know Mr. Ampton brought up having him operate under another TUP. But I guess what would be the difference? Could we just say we approve the CUP, but then you would just return after 12 months? I'll look at the city attorney, but I think this would be continued to a date uncertain. I'm sorry, before she steps away, I had a question to follow up if I may. You were asking your question during that. I just I didn't want to at least to go away. Oh, yeah, you want to. Sorry. Senior council member. So, no, rapidly becoming even more senior. Procedurally, I think this this CUP would be continued to a date uncertain and To a date certain. Or I will. Or. Because I think what I mean, or we'd have to, or it could be a date certain. But we should set a year from now. A year from now? A year from now? If we're gonna do a TUP, because I think what we're counting on for Jones is going, would we do a TUP in the interim? You know what, I want to allow them to continue to operate. But I want to be respectful of the residents and, you residents, we'll hear from the applicant, and we can make a decision whether to continue it. But I would just hate for us to delay or prolong this and then put the Western Justice Center in a even deeper hole from what was raised. I mean, I don't know the financials. And so, my thinking is any way to get there we should do. So that's where I'm at. Thank you. Well, my question though, and here's, I think this is the dilemma is like we move right into this discussion of what's the right balancing of the impact on the neighbors on. But I want to go back Mark. Can we just show the lease again, please on the paragraph five on page four of the lease. And you know we showed that the website, I mean essentially what the Western Justice Center has become is an event venue for weddings and with an offering of vendors and how you can plan your wedding and all of that. And at least what I'm struggling with here is you see. The website was designed by prior staff and we don't right now have the money to figure out how to fix all the different websites. No, no, but I'm not even really talking about the website. I'm talking about all this activity that you're describing, that you're doing to host weddings and events. You talked about years where there were 66 weddings. That was only in two years and that was a very, very, very, very, very, very, very valuable operation. I got it, but that's what I want to talk about here. Because if you look at the use that the tenant is permitted to engage in, let's just start like down toward the bottom there, the part four or five lines from the bottom, where says tenant is expressly prohibited from. If you go right above that, no, no, no, don't move it. Please just leave it where it was. Thank you. No, you got to show the whole paragraph. There we go. So right before that, it says, and for no other purposes whatsoever. So all of those delineated uses above are what the Western Justice Center, the tenant, is allowed to do there. And I won't go through every one of those, but running an event venue, a wedding business is not there. So my understanding of this issue is that many nonprofits that have stewardship of historic buildings allow the building to be licensed for limited use. much of the interest in that is for weddings, and that if the funds from that were used for some purpose other than being applied to the expenses of the nonprofit, that that would be a business for profit use. But when they are used for the purpose of supporting the mission, they are what's known as a social venture, and that that is not regarded as a for-profit business under tax laws. Well, I suppose every case is different, but like this lease really, with particularity, describes exactly what you're supposed to be doing during the business hours. And all the stuff that you must be doing, all your administrative overhead of all these numerous events is not there. It's completely different. And maybe that's what the council wants to amend the lease to provide that we're going to have a venue there, not a law-related nonprofit. But that's not what it says now. And it is quite prohibitive that no other purpose is whatsoever. And to sit. a law related nonprofit, but that's not what it says now. And it is quite prohibitive that no other purposes whatsoever. And to sit. We don't provide legal services. That's not what it says. So, we're... Yeah, it doesn't say providing legal services. It's nonprofit law related functions. I mean, we can go through them if you want, but there's nothing there that you would ever connect to the business that you're now in for an event space. So we're in the business of providing conflict resolution education services to schools. That's here. And which is not a law related service, it's an education related service. I think education's mentioned here. And our secondary mission has become sustaining and managing a nonprofit campus for the benefit of the city of Pasadena. But I think in doing that, you're engaging in activities during business hours. And the way the numbers play out. I get the financial. I understand that. Yeah. And very respectfully. I think we have repeatedly stated our commitment to sit down and work with the city. I'm grateful for that. Given the amount of time that it may take to get that done without events as a bridge, we will be in a financial position where we need to reevaluate our path to the essence. We get the need to manage this campus. And then the next part, I think also has application here because says tenet is expressly prohibited from leasing the premises or any portion thereof to lawyers offering legal services for profit. Yes you can imagine. That would be an opportunity to support your mission financially. Yes I discussed with Don Baker years ago, but that's expressly prohibited, as is, allowing the premises or any portion thereof to be used for any for-profit activities. And I think when you're promoting vendors and planners as part of this event venue venture, you've now straight away from that too. With respect, we are not promoting vendors. We have added a preferred list of vendors that are vetted by us, that are trained in the conditions and rules. And the reason we have that list is partly because of the conditions first and the temporary use permit and then in the conditional use permit. But we're just stick with the lease. This doesn't say during business hours. You're prohibited from allowing the premises or any portion thereof to be used for any for-profit activity. The florist who seems like a great person is running a for-profit business. The bartenders, the caterers, they're all running a for-profit business and you're prohibited from allowing the premises to be used in that way. I think that's a, I mean, so we faced this issue when we redid the public purpose or commercial use, when we redid the Rose Bowl with the box. One of the questions was, you know, what is or isn't the commercial use? Because it changed the ability or changed how, what dollars we could access for the renovation. Vendors of, at the time, vendors of the Rose Bowl were not considered a commercial use. What was considered a commercial use that we had to carve out was my recollection, it was one of the operators who actually sold tickets or boxes. And so I'm not the commercial use issue is, I don't think, is a question that we should decide this case on. I think that there's support that in the record that says, you know, if so long as it's for purposes of supporting the Western Justice Center, I don't think it would be a commercial use. I think that's a very- Well, the least doesn't use that term commercial use. I mean, I agree, for example, if the- No, but I'm not just saying- But so, let me- I want to see the rest of this paragraph. Certainly. Because this is- my recollection is, well, I think this is for business regular, business hours. The question is what they can utilize the property for non-commercial hours. I think some of the part we read is for business hours and some isn't limited that way. And then I think you're referring to that last sentence, maybe it says nothing herein. Procludes tenant from using the premises for community meetings and other purposes during non-business hours. Use the premises for these purposes during ordinary business hours. Nothing here and precludes tenant from using the premises for community meetings and other purposes during non-business hours. Yeah, and my understanding from Don Baker was that part of the negotiation around that language was to allow the organization flexibility since it is a 99 year lease and the conditions under which the original parties imagining how the campus would operate there was a anticipation of circumstances changing? Yeah, to me, the community meetings is really important because it essentially is saying nobody should hold this up to say that you can't have a community meeting in the evening or something like that. To say that this authorizes an event venue, business there, 66 weddings, you know, or what have you. I don't think any court, you never say never, but I think I struggle with that. What I'm reacting to is the, that last sentence seems to contemplate what is allowed, but also make an exception that nothing herein, to the language above precludes other uses and I would say to you so long as it's not a commercial use you know if we run it out to to for-profit lawyers for example that would be very very different state actor issue, if the city were to contribute money, then there's a state actor in the equation and that would significantly who, well, it would lose discretion on who you couldn't lease out space to. Yeah, I would defer to the city attorney on the implications of any funding. Okay. I think the question is- In other words, you would lose discretion on who you couldn't lease out space to. Yeah, I would defer to the city attorney on the implications of any funding. Okay. In the Balvin estate act. And that's a separate. Okay. And we'll try to. All right. One more time. We could look at that and analyze that in that context. Yeah. No. OK. So where are we here? I do think that if there is an opportunity to work out this matter on a temporary basis, whether it's through a, while we can't do a CUP, and then do away with the CUP without some sort of due process proceeding to revoke a CUP, and so the alternative would be the TCUP route while we, and in post-conditions along the lines that Boza had. But at that point, we would set the public hearing you as the applicant probably would have to agree to that because, and the respondent, or the appellanant I should say. I'm going to confer with council. And can you repeat that mayor? In order to set it off, I mean, I think the applicant is entitled to a decision. So they would have to agree to putting the matter off. So you're suggesting a six month continuance? Did I hear that? No, I didn't. Oh, you didn't specify time. I didn't specify time. But that a continuance of the CUP hearing, and in the interim, they would apply for a TUP. A TUP. That the director would approve or not. That's reasonable to allow some weddings to go forward. So to allow weddings to go forward so that we could have some sort of baseline and test the conditions. Yeah, my preference mayor would be to do a short continuance, which they would agree to explore funding in the way that we support other. Other locations. Because of all the good work that the center does, the nonprofits that they're hosting, and to resolve all these disputes about the proper use. Actually, is it the applicant or the appellant or both that have to agree to some sort of continuance? I think it's the applicant who's entitled to a decision that would have to agree correct? Yes. Okay. So, Justin Moraymus on behalf of the applicant. So, along the lines of the conversation that's happening, if the applicant was allowed to apply for a new temporary use permit while this contingence was happening and with an agreement that council would sort of expeditiously continue in parallel with conversations separately agendas legislatively about the lease we would be I mean we'll do that. And just Mr. McDonnell and we have to the appellant, I have to agree to that too. Advisable. So Richard, you were willing to agree to a reduction in events. This is better than that, at least in the short. With. Okay. The original TUPs that we asked to be given notice of and were never given notice of, and for which we understood, but the condition of the last one was that they would get the CUP. And so if you're talking about a 30 day continuance here, today's March 3rd, if you're saying, hey, come back on April 7th and we'll have the legislative matter and then do the CUP, I don't know why you need a TUP at all. I frankly don't even understand why it's a big debate that there would be a 30 day continuous to address the legislative action. They've got all the information. They know all the other releases. It's relatively straightforward and we're fine with the continuance. But I'll be hogged out and whipped if that means that you want us to agree to a one-year TUP for another 21-20-some-odd events where we lose Saturday, Sunday, and then we get a weekend and then we lose another Saturday, Sunday, and it's 125. And please note, those conditions allow up to 150 people for 25% of the events. So I mean, that's ridiculous. I'll let you agree to the TUP, right? I think this at the attorney said it was advisable. Noted, the continuum. He said, oh, yes, for the TUP. Oh, I'm sorry. That's a director's decision. Right. Correct. So I don't think you're waving any rights in that regard, Richard. Good. He's always good discussion. I mean, I think it's very much. I mean, I obviously disagree. I agree with you on the lease and disagree with the honorable. You like conflict as a litigator. You can, you know, just a soldier doing a job. But I mean, I just think, you know, if you want to continue 30 days and get this worked out, they've got all the information on all the leases, it shouldn't be that hard to put this together for relatively straightforwardly. looks like 30 days would be enough time. Okay. Next question. Sir, I mean we have to- One second. Can we allow the appellant to come up in a- I don't know if he's actually a- I think he is one of the other appellants. We've had a lot of back and forth. Maybe just for a minute or two. Sir, do you want to come up in a dress? you limited to a minute is that okay? Well no I just wonder if you want to ask me or any of us any questions You ask these people all the questions you don't ask us anything. They're the applicants One of the things that has been said and it was part of the boza hearing Which is they said that they averaged? 47 events a year well mathematically she just told you that's not true. She said they did 25 to 30 before and the last couple years 66. Well, do the math. It's not 47. And so if the Boza said that based on 47, which they claim, they came up with number of 21. Well, the real number is probably something like when I lived there, you know, 10 to 12 a year. Maybe. There's no way there was an average of 47. So you can't get from 47 to 21. You know what I'm saying? That's just ridiculous. And even if you go back 14 years and leave two out, 66, 132 and 250, divide 14 year, you know, something less than 20 something. So you said when you lived there? Well, I lived there since like I said, I've lived there since 2013. Well, you still lived there. I still live there, right next door. Thank you. And the last thing I'll say is, you know, this is about disruption to your point, Rose Bowl. You're right, you can hear it. Any of you have been to a wedding? I've married two children, I've been in tons of weddings. People cheer, it's a celebration. Please let me introduce, you know, Bob and Mary Jones. Now you go inside. They go inside. Okay, now here comes the bridegroom and the, you know, the, whatever that's called. And here's Bob and Mary Smith. And then the dancing starts and I got three daughters. They all know how to scream. They all know how to holler. We can hear that through our in our kitchen, 60 feet away, 60 feet in that far. I bet this room's not even 60 feet. So it's disruption. Anyway, thank you. It would be good at the next hearing to understand what this 47 really means. I suspect that- Yes, I have in front of me. If you, I can clarify it now or we can bring it back when we come back. Well, if you can do it quickly, I suppose, yeah. Well, it's the years are 2014 to 2023. In 2014, it was 18 events. Yeah, but the events is what we need to clarify. Are you talking about a Tea Party inside? It's different types of events. that's what we need to understand. Endor, answer, or a question. The assertion is being made that we've been doing 47 weddings and other events. It says special events, and that's what it says in the staff report. I think we need some details about that. Yeah. In the staff report, it says special events were occurring, including weddings and similar types of events. And we have the numbers numbers and this is what was reported out from the applicant. I just think we need some more detail inside outside, size of the group. I know that's a lot but we can get that information if that's not. Another reason to try to resolve this. Okay, so back to... I think we have consent from both parties to a 30 day extension. With the understanding by the applicant that they'd like to apply for a TUP. Yeah, so just to mariamist, I mean, we have the applicant. There's consent under the conditions that I laid out, which is we're expeditiously looking at the lease legislatively, I have concerns that that can happen in 30 days given the complexity of it. So, hence the TUP that would allow us a stopgap, I know like the other TUPs that we had processed, the TUP doesn't last necessarily for the same amount of time. It is assumed by the CUP whenever that comes back to council and that is approved. So CUP continued, parallel path lease apply for a TUP that lasts however long it lasts while the lease comes together. Staff able to accomplish those things? Yes. I guess what I'm looking for clarity is the term of the TUP? I guess typically they are good for up to one year. I know we intend to return in a month and 30 days. So the TUP would be running during that time. I guess it could still be open even if we have a CUP hearing. thinking through. Right. Yeah. Okay. Um. Yeah, I guess the other question, thank you, Miguel, is how many events we would authorize if there's a limit in the next 30 days. I don't even know if they would schedule any within the next 30 days. So, um, I guess we have to look at the next 30 days isn't feasible for weddings. So I guess what I'm suggesting is the likelihood of this being resolved on the legislative end of the next 30 days is unlikely. So the TUP would have to be issued for its normal 12 month period, and then we'll work within the confines of however long it takes on the lease and the CUP. So we'd still look to a number of events in the next year then some direction on that. Well, and it says up to 12 months. So you sometimes you can do a TUP, but I think now the question is how many events could occur in that 12-month period? I think the director needs to exercise judgment based on everything you've heard, and it not the council directing that Because it's a TUP and under the code is the director's decision. We'll see what the applicant applies for Nobody wants this hot potato And they could apply for X and you can approve X minus Y. So we need a motion to continue it. To equal what? To equal what? Just to add on to that, right? We're obviously in March already. Besides a few potential emergency weddings given the fires and lost venue. I wouldn't expect you'd see any significant weddings for, you know, until the second half this year. I mean, the only thing that may change that of course is the loss of other venues like the Altena Country Club. So. Yeah. Okay. So is there a motion to continue? Motion to continue. That was quick. Is there a second? Was it the motion is described? April 7th at 6 p.m. Should we at least close the public hearing? No, you don't need to right now. This would be just- It was just re-noticed so- Oh, I see. This is distinction. Got it. Okay. been moved, seconded to continue. Who's? Are there objections? We could have done this three hours ago. Okay. Motion is unanimously approved. Two absences. Okay. Thank you everyone for your patience and your participation. County, MOU, item six and seven, which are going to be discussed concurrently. Okay. County MOU this is item six and seven. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. So because this MOU involves my department of that employs me directly out of an abundance of caution. I'll recuse myself specifically because the MOU incorporates or is part of my through my department. Okay. Thank you. Fair enough. Mayor, can I just have a point of order as we start? Do we have a copy of the MOU? Wasn't in my agenda packet. No, I don't think so. The terms are probably set forth in the staff report. Not the full MOU. We don't, as a general rule, include all the agreements, et cetera. So. I mean, is that the case here? There's no agreement. There's no MOU attached to the staff report, right? No, I'm not asking, is there an MOU? Yes, there is. There is. I think that needs to be shared with the council. I'd like to see it. We do have a copy available if needed. So distribute. If you want to give it to me. We don't normally attach agreements on these, but we have the agreement here. And I think we have hard copies here. We can have – yeah, I actually have asked repeatedly that anytime we're dealing with a contractual matter that we actually have the contract, because we've had problems. I'm not pointing the finger at anybody. Just shame on us if we don't actually see the contract that we're authorizing. Be entered into. What is the rationale for that, for not attaching it? Just curious. Well, we have, you know, on, this is a light agenda, but on any given meeting we'll have, you know, a dozen or so contracts, it would just be a lot. But, you know, we came ready to provide this one so that you had the actual time. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Israel Dutero, Deputy Director of Development Services is gonna give a presentation. We're combining the two items. We're going to give you an update on the debris removal phase one and phase two. And then also a presentation on the MOU. We do have, I think we lost our kernel, but we do have county representatives available online. They're virtual. So we do have two representatives from the county as well. There's any questions from the county. Okay, good evening mayor and members of the city council Israel del Toro deputy director with the planning department I would first like to start off by providing a high-level overview of the multiple programs and the agencies involved so as it relates to phase one the the removal of household hazardous materials that's being completed, that work was completed by the Environmental Protection Agency. As it relates to phase two, which is the removal of debris, including foundations and hazardous trees, that work is being completed by the United States of Engineers as Engineers. As it relates to the matter at hand that's being considered by the Council, the right of entry program, that program is being managed by the County of Los Angeles. And separately, the city also recently went live, what is known as the local private property debris removal program which is also known as the opt out program for those property owners that do not have the debris removed through Army Corps phase two work. On phase one, the scope of that work entailed removal of household hazardous materials, including paint, paint dinners, poll chemicals, oils, pesticides, cleaners, lithium batteries, including batteries from EV vehicles, propane tanks, and other items. That work commenced on January 27th, and that work has been completed countywide, including the city of Pasadena. As it relates to the phase one work, there was quite a bit of properties that were deferred. And you typically, these properties are deferred due to accessibility issues. There may be structures that are remaining up that pose a hazard to workers. So in Pasadena, we have 148 parcels that were affected. We have 52 deferred properties. So about a third and that's very consistent county wide. So county wide there was 13,600 12 parcels affected as it relates to phase one and 4,381 parcels were deferred so that's 32%. So we're in in line with the county wide figures there as well. As it relates to the properties that are being deferred by the EPA, that work is gonna be completed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, and that will include for properties that opt in and properties that opt out. So if you opt in and the time comes for debris removal, that household hazardous materials would also be removed at that time. And if you opt out, that service is also available through the Army Corps of Engineers to complete those removals. For phase two, that scope of work consists of removal of fire damage debris, foundations, which is optional vehicles, as well as hazardous trees. What's not included are structures less than 120 square feet, pools, driveways, planters, and also commercial properties that are not eligible. There is a request that was made to FEMA to expand the mission of the Army Corps and the FEMA authorization to fund debris removal for government properties and water companies. And that request is still being considered at this time by FEMA. We do have government buildings that were affected, including the police department fire and range and the mash offices over there at eating canyon. The ROE applications opened on January 28th. In Pasadena, we have received 125 applications and as of today 37 have been transmitted to the Army Corps So that represents a figure of 30% so 30% of the applications received have been reviewed and approved and are in the contractors Q over there with the Army Corps and how that figure compares to the county white figures is the county has received almost 10,000 applications and they've transmitted about 2000 applications. So approximately 20% of those applications have been transmitted to the Army Corps and are in the contractors queue. I'm going to move to this slide here to give you a little summary, a little breakdown of where we are with those 125 applications that have been submitted. So we discussed that we have 37 that were transmitted to the Army Corps. We have 31 that are received. We have 13 that require additional information. We have 28 that are under review. And we also have 16 that have been submitted, but those have not been confirmed. So the figure that you have here varies a little to the figure in the staff report of 137 applications. And the reason being is more recently, the county has been providing parcel specific information and over the last week we've actually looked at those specific details and in addition to that we've actually followed up with every single property owner that has submitted application as well as those that have not submitted an application. So the figure that we have has been scrubbed and it's 125 applications where the figure that was reported on the staff report unfortunately included some passadena properties that were not technically with intercity boundaries. So as it relates to phase two, that work commenced on February 22nd. That work started in District four. There was a property that was cleared Saturday prior to last. Work started in district one this past Saturday. So there was a property that was cleared this Saturday by the Army Corps of Engineers. And in addition to that, there is another property, a third property that was being cleared today. So I had the opportunity this past Saturday to observe the work that was taking place in District 1. I became aware that there was debris removal taking place. We did have staff that was out at the site where debris removal was occurring the previous Saturday and Council District 4. And here are some pictures that I took. The first the pictures on the top and the bottom left are from this site. The picture on the bottom right is from Council District 4. But when I arrived to the site, the first thing I noticed is that there was traffic control in place at the residential intersection and they also had traffic control in place at the site. In addition to that, you could see some of that here in these images. There was also fiber logs along the gutters on both sides of the street to protect the watershed. There was continuous watering taking place on the lower left-hand side. You could see an image of a person in a tie-vex suit watering down the debris. There was continuing water. There's a lot of water saturating that entire site for some time. And there are also air monitoring stations, multiple air monitoring stations, and also the individuals that are complete in the work also have their own personal air monitors. And although this has not yet occurred in the city of Pasadena, but should those air monitors detect levels of dust or particulate matter that exceeds what is allowed, that would require the job to be shut down temporarily. They would water the site and they would assess what remediation needs to take place in order for those levels to return to an acceptable level. In addition to that, there was a very apparent that there was a very highly coordinated logistical operation taken place. There are various types of waste stream that are hauled separately to distinct destinations. For example, some of the different types of waste streams are soil, concrete and metal, fire ash and debris, asbestos, as well as household hazardous materials. And for a property such as the one that was experiencing or the Phase II debris removal on Saturday, it was about a 1500 square foot house. Approximately 15 truckloads are required to clear that property of debris. And what I actually found quite impressive at any given time, there were never more than two trucks at the site. So they have a coordinator, they call this person the truck boss for all these various projects. It's closely monitoring the truck traffic, queuing the trucks that are in staging areas to minimize the impact because what we don't want to see are 10 heavy duty trucks parked in a residential street that are idling and emitting fumes. So all that work was very closely monitored and coordinated. There is QC work on multiple staff members and contractors. So for example, the work from the Army Corps has been contracted to ECC. That is the prime contractor. And they have various subcontractors that are completing this work. But the Army Corps of Engineer for each of these construction sites and for each of these construction crews, they have a staff person on site that's monitoring the work. And you see an image actually of this person on the top left-hand corner. In addition to that, these trucks are closely monitored. They have GPS tags on them and there is actually a tetra-tech employee that is tagging each of these trucks and following up to ensure that the truck is going to the appropriate destination because United States Army Corps of Engineers, they're also required to comply with FEMA requirements and they're also gonna seek reimbursement and they need to meet all of these stringent requirements in order for them to be eligible. We did have a couple of neighbors that dropped by on Saturday and they were very pleased with the process. At this particular visit, we, I had the pleasure of meeting General, who was at the site this Saturday, along with the Colonel Avicel, who was planning on joining us today, but unfortunately he had another commitment that came up later this evening, as well as the ECC superintendent that's responsible for the EAT and Fire. And it's worth noting to the group, because Colonel Swenson, as well as Colonel Sausin, have presented to the city council. So we actually have a new colonel, his name is Colonel Avi Chal, and he's the one that's gonna be responsible for the eat and fire. And although the general and the colonel and the ECC superintendent were on site, the findings that I made during my visit were consistent with what our staff observed the previous Saturday and Council District 4. So it's very apparent that it's a very tightly controlled operation and debris removal program. As part of Phase 2, there is a local responsibility to provide what we call a local program, it's also known as the Opt Out program. The County of Los Angeles is managing the Opt Out program for other affected cities, including the city of Los Angeles and the city of Malibu. Due to the fact that we expect maybe less than a dozen, less than 10 properties to opt out, we felt that we could provide better service to our residents by administering that program locally. So we have, the county has received four opt out forms. These are not applications. These are just forms. The role of the county is limited to verify ownership and track those property owners that are intending to opt out. The city of Pasadena went live with this program last Monday on March, I'm sorry, on February 24th, and we did receive one application today actually for an opt out permit. This expense is not federally reimbursable to the property owner. And the program requirements that we have in place generally align with the same requirements that the Army Corps of Engineer has for Phase 2, as well as generally the same requirements that the County of Los Angeles has for the opt out program that they're administering for the County, the City of Los Angeles, and the City of Malibu. There are some minor changes. So for example, with our opt out program, we are requiring a site plan and we are requiring a tree inventory. And removal of a non-hazardous protected tree would require a tree removal permit. Our DOT department has also identified designated routes, hall routes for those individuals that are participating in the opt out program. The Army Corps required a centralized right-of-entry program, and the Army Corps as well as FEMA designated Los Angeles County as the lead agency to be that conduit to collect the right of entry forms on behalf of the affected cities. The Phase 2 private property debris removal program requires an MOU between the city and the County of Los Angeles. The MOU is for the RWE program administration. So the city's responsibility is to pay their share. And the formula in place is a proportional cost share formula, and the formula is the following. The total number of Pasadena opt-in properties divided by the total county widewide properties multiplied by the total cost. So for example, if there were 100 properties that were affected in Pasadena, we know it was 148, but let's just say 100. And there was 10,000 properties affected in LA County and the cost was $10 million. So we would be the 1% of the $10 million and our liability would be, or our cost would be about $100,000. Okay, so that gives you an idea of what the cost share breakdown looks like. As it relates to the county responsibilities, we did negotiate and advocate for some provisions that would better serve the city of Pasadena and our residents. So the county through their contractor and they did award a contract to Tetra Tech to do this work which is a locally headquartered corporation here in Pasadena. They are collecting, reviewing and transmitting the right of entry forms to the Army Corps on behalf of all the affected cities. It is also worth noting that last week, last Tuesday, the city of Los Angeles approved their MOU on Tuesday and on Thursday, the city of Malibu approved their MOU with LA County. The city and county will work collaboratively on hall routes and hours, including construction hours, notifications, watershed protection, and environmental protection measures. Essentially, we will have a seat at the table with the agencies involved to advocate for the interests of this community. In addition to that, the county would be assisting with facilitating meetings with the state and federal agencies, and the city will also have detailed ride of entry access. So we could better help and serve our community members that might have some questions. So we held a webinar with those property owners and those residents that lost their home on February 5th. We have a second webinar scheduled for March 20th. And over the last week we've been doing quite a bit of outreach. So we have staff as well as our district four and district one liaisons have been working very closely with the community. We've reached out to everyone. We're verifying contact for the red tag properties.. There's probably only about a handful of property owners we've been unable and unsuccessful to make contact with. But in general, we've made contact with all of the owners. Those that have not submitted an ROE, those that have submitted an ROE. In addition to that, we have discussed with the property owners what the implications are of keeping their foundations. We have quite a bit of property owners that on their right of entry form have indicated they plan on keeping their foundation, but what are subject matter experts know, in most cases these foundations are compromised. Not only that, at the time they were built, the technology in place would not support these foundations meeting current code standards without significant modifications. And in addition to that, there is heavy duty equipment tractors that are going to be entering the property for debris removal. And it's highly likely that these foundations, even if they weren't damaged, will be damaged. So we're definitely encouraging the public to, if they want to keep their foundation to hire structural engineer to get the foundation court tested to ensure that it is not been compromised. We've also made contact with those individuals that have intended on the route and we've had a couple of individuals change their mind once they became aware of the stringent requirements in place and we are continuously following up with all the affected property owners and our residents. So the staff recommendation is to find this action exempt from SIKWA and to authorize a city manager to enter into an MOU with a county of Los Angeles. And also find that this MOU is exempt from competitive bidding. That concludes my presentation. We do have staff from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works that is also available to answer any questions you may have. First, and the queue is Mr. Colff, followed by Mr. Moussouda. Thank you for a comprehensive report. My question actually goes to something you didn't cover in an otherwise very extensive and detailed report. And that is folks who neither enter in nor opt out and who refuse to fix up their property. It might be one, it might be five, but I think we do need to be concerned about the people who leave their neighbors with a disaster site next to them for an extended period of time. I know there's at least one problematic property owner in your district, Mr. Masuda, because I've gotten complaints about it and I'm sure you're on top of it. But what will happen to folks who drag their feet? So the Army Corps has committed to completing Phase II debris removal by January of 2026. So at this point we haven't set a date yet, but I suspect that the date is going to line with by when the Army Corps is going to complete their work. So there would be a deadline in place for those individuals that have not completed made any progress on debris removal. So here's a problem with that. If one property or two properties have already been completed, we're giving everybody else 364 days and then on this 365th day we will start the miserable slog of trying to abate a property which can drag on for months or years. So to give them a full year if they opt out and then start the clock running of notifying them and hearings and appeals and dragging their feet and fines. We could have a property sit in damage condition next to people that are trying to rebuild or who escaped damage for a really extended period of time. And I just think that's something we ought to right now be thinking about trying to make sure that doesn't happen. Because I just think I don't want to look someone in the face whether for my district or one of your districts and say, yeah, well, it's two years down the road and you still have to live next to a disaster site. Ms. Page? Yeah. Yeah, to piggyback on that, I think we can consider a six-month time frame. This is evolving right now. So I think that's a fair comment. We can abate this through public nuisance abatement. There's also health order. So we can, as a city, expedite the amount of time that we get the property cleaned up. So it doesn't have to sit there for a year or two years. I think what we were looking at is some fairness and someone that is going, if they're gonna decide to opt out or they're not gonna submit the form that they have a deadline, they know what that deadline is and then we can immediately begin on the city side in a statement. I think we should set a deadline for people to file an application that's early on. Maybe, you know, I don't want to be punitive because there will be people who are conscientious and are just struggling. They still have the dead one. people to file an application that's early on. Maybe, you know, I don't want to be punitive because there will be people who are conscientious and are just struggling. They still have the deadline of March 31st. So if they have not submitted an application by March 31st, so either they're going to be assumed to be opted out. If you don't submit an application, that's assumed to be an opt out. We're going to treat you as an opt out property. So we're going to proceed as they're being opt out. Right, but then they have a year to apply for a permit. And then you have to process the permit. And again, the property has to be cleaned up within that year. That's the same time that the Army Corps is doing their work. So we can advise them if you're opting out that then the property has to be cleaned up within that year. And there is a deadline on the opt out application as well. And that deadline is consistent with the opt in application which is March 31st. So for the opt out application they have until March 31st to submit. But if we if they can apply up until 364 days and the requirement is they have to have it abated by 365 days on the 365th day, then we start the nuisance abatement and all that and I love this city. But it is not easy to obey the nuisance with our bureaucracy and the court system. And it could last months, it couldn't last years. There are fire damage properties in this city that have sat damaged for years. And I don't want to see that. So I think we need to set a deadline of some reasonable deadline, like six months to submit an application and nine months which can be extended for someone working in good face. Yes, I think that's fair and I think what we would do is outline a compliance schedule. So it's expected that you would apply with an assert amount of time and we could hit milestones that we would expect them to achieve so that the work is done within a year. And from day one, I have been sympathetic to the people who are devastated. And I advocated for consier service to the people that are struggling. But I also know that there'll be one or two property owners that will not be responsible. And that is your response. We've just spent three hours listening to four neighbors, right? We ought to give some consideration to the neighbors of people who will not have to sit next to parties but have to sit next to a damaged property that's got nothing left but a chimney and ashes. I don't think anyone should have to sit next to that for over a year. Okay. I don't think there's any disagreement there. Mr. Moussouda followed by Mr. Lion. Well, thank you for that council member, cool. So I'm not positive which person you're talking about, but let me tell you there's a lady in my district that's next to a house. Her house didn't burn down, she's next to a house that did and the owner has been very irresponsible in the past and she doesn't think that he's going to get to be very responsible. On the same page, Mr. Miserna. We're on the same page. Okay so it's just a matter, you know she really wants to at least clean her house. And she thinks that next door is not going to start the work. And she's just going to drag her feet. And she doesn't even know where he is right now. But we need to work on that. And you're right. OK, I have some questions. I'm glad you started to talk about requirements. And so I saw the trucks in the pictures and I noticed that they were covered. I had a lot of residents that called our office, email, doesn't say there were trucks on the road that were not covered. So what has changed? To our knowledge, those are trucks that are actually doing the Eaton Wash debris removal. It's the same contractor that is ECC. So there's two different debris removal activities going on. We have different requirements by the same contractor. So we believe there's some confusion in the debris removal from the fire versus the wash debris removal. Okay. I recommend that you put something out, letting the residents know not the ones that are that had a fire. It's the many other residents that we have that are concerned about our trucks. And this is all coming to light, right? Is this happening? And the debris removal is just starting to happen in passiness. So it's simply, it's certainly message out so that people understand that they're different requirements under different processes, but the same contract. Or so it is confusing. OK. But I thought it was really great when I saw the people that were watering the dirt and the sludge and everything. So I thought that was a good idea because we required that that devil's gate, I believe. So OK, so how many of the, how many of phase two lots have been completed? And I think you said two, three, okay, three. Three as of today. Okay, three, that's a good start. And what I can't understand is, why would an applicant opt out? And I want to, I just want to, I can, if I wanted to finish my project fast and I had someone to clean it up, that was responsible, that's the only time I can see someone wanting to opt out. And Israel may have more to add because he's actually been reaching out to the opt out property owners to explain to them what their responsibility they're taking on and to make sure that they understand. And generally it's that they think they can do it faster than the program that's being offered but he may have more. So let me give you an example. I spoke to one of your constituents that submitted an opt out form. And this particular person only lost their detached garage. And they would prefer to utilize their insurance policy for demolition of that accessory structure instead of authorizing the Army Corps of Engineers to come in and complete that work. So there's a couple of examples of that. There's another person that submitted an opt out form and this person is a general contractor. But we made it very clear, I made it very clear to this person that there's a additional licensing requirements for this type of work besides a general B license. And this person's still contemplating whether or not they're gonna opt out, but they initially intended to. So that gives you a couple of examples where we have individuals that are considering the opt out. And so far, we received one actual application to the city of Pasadena for opt out. And that was received today. That's good to know. How many people of destroyed properties, especially in District 4, because that's where I am, that you can't find. And my field of rep norraine is really concerned about that because we can practically find everybody because we know the upper Hastings people, we know all the, they have block captains and we kind of know most of the people. We would try to track them down the best we can. So what we're saying is if you can't find some people, run it through our office, because we will do what we can, do also help, we want to help. Yeah, and that's the plan. We've been talking tooreen and RSLE and we're doing a coordinated effort together and I know our community connectors continue to try to do additional outreach. They were doing that Friday and today and we're actively seeking to narrow that gap but yeah we are working with the district liaison. That's all I have but thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for your answers. Yeah, that's a very organized neighborhood association that really could be helpful in finding people. Mr. Lion, followed by Mr. Madison, then Mr. Hampton. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Del Toro, for a really thorough report. It was helpful. You answered two of my three questions in the course of the report, the first being why we were going through the county versus handling it ourselves. But I understand that the Army Corps required a centralized program for the county, which makes sense, given the circumstance. My question is this. The paragraph 14 of the MOU highlights what you also highlighted in your report that we will negotiate hall routes and damage to roads and construction hours and notification windows and best practices and all of that, when will we negotiate that given that some of this work is already complete? And so is that work happening right now and how soon do we think we're going to reach some agreement about that? So we have been participating. There are various task forces that were established, including sub-work groups for various aspects of the debris removal program. So for example, we started convening a meeting to discuss hall routes about two and a half weeks ago. The Saturday and the Department of Transportation is here tonight and they participated in that meeting as well. And during that process, we were able to provide some input to the Army Corps as well as their contractor on what the desired hall routes are in Pasadena. Sedina and so far they've been complying with those hall routes. I have spoken when I was at the site on Saturday I spoke to the general as well as the superintendent at ECC, you know they did share that they will be complying with those hall routes. The other sensitive item is construction hours. So they've also shared that they will be complying with daytime construction hours so they're not doing overnight work here in Pasadena. So so far they've been receptive and responsive and where there's many task forces that meet to kind of discuss these issues including tree removals, watershed protection, rebuilding, we have various task forces that meet. Okay. So those discussions and conversations already started taking place. Okay. Great. Thank you. That was it for me. Thank you. Mr. Madison, follow up on Mr. Hampton. Thanks, Mayor. I appreciate the presentation very much as well. And I think this, I think the city's been robust about trying to stand up for our interest to the extent we can. I do have concerns though about, for example, the costs. This seems pretty open-ended in terms of what those costs could be. And they include costs of the county's existing staff, which I really struggle with that, why we would pay for the counties overhead in serving their residents that live in our city. So I wonder if anyone has a thought about that. So as it relates to, we explored the possibility of not to exceed amount in the MOU but there are implications associated with that that may deem, that may be problematic for FEMA reimbursements. Our City Attorney's Office is here, Caroline's here and I think that topic was broached by the County of Los Angeles's legal council. As it relates to cost, there's one figure we do know, which is the amount of the Tetra Tech contract that is $10.7 million. We also know in the MOU that they're not adding an administrative overhead fee to that expense, to those invoices. In some cases, whenever you're dealing with the county or the state, there's like pass through fees of 10%, 20%, 30%. I believe the MOU explicitly indicates that that's not gonna be charged. But there are other county expenses associated with the Phase Two debris removal. And we're gonna ultimately pay a very small share of that, like 1.5% of that total cost. Well, no, I get that, but my question and I appreciate that information about Tetra Tech and their contract and that gives me a lot of faith because I know how good they are. But for example, is that the cost that won't exceed the Tetra Tech contract? We have the county on the call. So, Sid Tassoro or Chris Shepherd, the deputy director with the public work department with the county of Los Angeles. Sid or Chris, would you be able to answer that question? Sure. Good evening. Thank you for having us here. Sid to sorrow. So I'll start this off. In terms of the cost for county staff with regards to emergency emergency work, So I'll start this off in terms of the cost for county staff with regards to emergency response. It's very limited because there's a large amount of our day-to-day work that we do even though it's for the power we will not be reimbursed by for FEMA. So part of the effort that we do will not be covered as part of the cost that we're gonna actually, that will actually go towards the city of Pasadena for this effort, but Christopher explained the rest. Sure, thank you, Sid. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for having us, my name is Chris Sheppard. Overcorks. The Tetris Act contract amount the $10 million amount is a not to exceed limit for that contract at this time. So that is the total amount proposed for the contract. Okay and then what what area does that cover? Is that Altadena and Pasadena? So all of the properties will be removed under that contract. That contract is in a right of entry form processing contract. It's for processing the PPDR private property debris removal program for the entire county. So all the affected areas for both fires. So that's the total cost. And as mentioned previously in the staff report, there's a proportional assignment with the jurisdictions involved. Okay. And then I'll propose that. Is it a, are we kind of a most favored nation vis-a-vis the other cities that we've seen their MOUs and they're comparable. I believe that's item A1 talks about all other cities being sort of in the same methodology will be applied to all the other cities. I don't know that it's most favored but it'll be the same is the intent. Right, and I was just gonna refer to Deputy City Attorney Caroline Munroy. She's been in a group of city attorneys working on this, so if you could speak to that briefly. Yes, Caroline Munroy, Deputy City Attorney. We have seen the agreements negotiated by City of LA, City of Malibu, and I've been involved in the negotiations on behalf of Sierra Madre, Malibu, Los Angeles, and Sierra Madre to get on the same page. So with respect to the agreement, they're all substantially the same. We've compared our terms to those within the execute agreements with City of LA, Malibu and the county, and we're on the same footing, so again though, if we look at paragraph 11, it says the parties acknowledge the costs of county staff and contractors in the administration of the program will be included in the total costs. So I struggle with that just conceptually why the city would, the county wants to administer this program. Great, I think we should administer it for Pasadena residents, but this is how it's gonna be. But then why, our residents are county residents too, where are we reimbursing the county for their own staff, their own overhead? We already paid that with our tax dollars. So what were we embarrassing? The county is incurring costs to administer the program. No question and the contractual and not you know, and we're being aware of that. We're working on that. The outside contractor, yes. And the county's time to administer the contract because they are administering the contract. They're responsible for the contract. The city's in doing that. So then on a proportional basis, all the cities are paying their share for the county to do the administration of the contract with Tetra Tech. But again, so who's paying those costs for Altadena? The county. Right. And the- Balibu's paying their proportional share of the share of the Madri's paying theirs in the city of LA. We're all have the same formula, so we pay proportional share. No, but the Al- Altonina is not paying a share. They're not reimbursing the county for- In effect they are because they will not recoup the Altonina money. They will get our share. They will get LA's share. They will get Sir Modre's that's all they'll get. They'll have to pay for what you're talking about. Who's the bill? Who's the? The county. The county is going to, if 60% of the costs are in Althadena, they'll only recover 40% of the cost of the of the tetratech and their own staff. They'll have to pay 60%. They won't get it from anyone else, so it'll be absorbed by them. Right. Why should we pay the county for doing something that they're already doing? I'm not arguing the philosophy you asked, they're not going to pay. In fact, they are going to pay their share of the unincorporated areas. Whether that's good enough for you or not, I'm not a finding. That's not my question. My question is there's no reimbursement from the Alhtedina residents, right? So why should- The county is paying for that? You're not. Can I address the staff, please sir? There's no reimbursement from all to Deaners residents to the county for the administrative overhead. Correct because they're administering it for their own jurisdiction. Right. Well, if part of their jurisdiction was doing our own, but we would still incur costs separately. So we would not be able to manage this program at a staff level. We would have to hire a contractor and we would incur our own cost. I'm not quibbling with the contractors part. I'm talking about their internal staff and there seems to be no limit to this. It's my understanding it's factored into that there's a total administrative cost that's the third part of that formula. So when you look at under A1 under what the city's responsibility is to pay, there's a total administrative cost and that is in, uh, Chris or Sid can correct me if I'm wrong. But that is inclusive of the county administrative cost as well. It's beyond just the tetrateck contract. Am I correct, Chris, since it, we pay a proportional share of the total administrative cost. That's correct. But that includes county employees that you already take our tax dollars to pay. That's what I'm struggling. I could just chime in for just a second. Maddox for a finance director. I believe the reason for the support shipment is because we have to submit our own claims to FEMA to get reimbursed for this program. Okay. And so we have to submit for our proportional share of the cost to administer the program. They can't submit on our behalf as my understanding. So as long as it says up to the amount reimbursed my FEMA, I have no problem. And I believe that's why it specifically calls out only to administer the government sponsored government-sponsored program of this because this program will be reimbursable. But I see language here about we'll pay within 30 days. When will FEMA reimburse within 30 days? I guess is no. So... But it is important. We are, I think roughly 150 homes out of 15,000 or so. I get that. So it'll be about 1% and the cost will be. But that's an aggregate. Really? In fact, not a mitigating one in my mind. Because it's so de minimis, it'll just work right into the county's overhead. And yet we're going to be charged for it, charged right now. So our taxpayers are going to be paying the county. And they're already paying the county. I think the responsibility to do this work lies on each jurisdiction. So it is Al-Tedina's county because it's unincorporated, but it's our responsibility, it's Malibu's, it's LA, city of LA's, and then the county for the unincorporated areas. So this is a methodology for each of us to take our own responsibility, but to do it in a coordinated fashion and make it female, reimbursable, eligible. Well, I think you take my point and I understand that. I'd be more comfortable if there was some clear boundaries around. It seems like it's so one sided. They're an invoices, we're gonna pay within 30 days. There's no, I mean, do we have any idea what the cost per home will be for the administrative function? I would look to Chris or said cost per parcel on administration they're asking. Council members asking. Yeah, the average cost for RLE processing for each parcel is in the neighborhood of $13 to $1500 per RLE per parcel, total costs, county time and contract time. Okay we can't put that in here. So they've not to exceed. I would defer to the city attorney. We don't recommend doing so in conversations with county council and our own review of the FEMA Reimbursability Guidelines. We recommend and the reason we made that recommendation to council is to not put a cap or a limit on our obligations under this program. So again, if these would be the county, we had an agreement that it'll be capped by whatever we're reimbursed. Then we can advance the money to the county, I guess. But I still struggle with why we should have to do that. But right now, it's sort of, we're going to pay it. There's no limited, whether we're reimbursed or not. Who knows what this president will do with this funding? There's just sort of no out-or-protection for us for us so And then what about permitting? This agreement only deals with the administrative side on the permitting if someone does opt out and is in phase two It is our permitting through our planning department that will regulate and Address all those concerns, but what about? What if they're they opt in What about the permitting for that? Certainly in the city of Pasadena, permits required to move toxic waste. There's no permit required for the opt in properties. For the which part? For the opt in properties in this program, there's no permit required from the system. You mean as a general matter or because of some federal preemption for this? A federal preemption. Program. That's crazy. And how do we feel about that? How does our public health director feel about that? There's no objection from public health for this. Okay. And then for the hauling, will there be permits required? No. They follow the agreed upon haul routes. It's regulated by the Department of Transportation. So we have posted hall routes. Again, as I said, there's task force meetings with the cities. The affected cities and the county. We meet regularly on different topics. Okay. And so there are hall routes and they have to follow those and we can enforce those in the city. I was troubled by Mr. Lam pointed out paragraph 14 about negotiating the debris removal to protect our residents. But the language says the city desires to negotiate. That doesn't sound like much of an agreement to do that. Is there any reason that we can't say the parties agreed to negotiate? Again, I'll defer to the city attorney who prepared the document, but this has been reflective of the work that we've been doing. That we meet, we work together, we come to an agreement, and that's what's been working so far, but I'll let Caroline elaborate further since she's worked on the language. Yeah, absolutely. So, this contract is with the county. It's not with US Army Corps or their contractors who are performing the work. The first sentence sets expectations. But this paragraph also requires that the county notify the city of any meetings in which they're going to make those decisions. Our county staff, or sorry, our city staff has been involved in those meetings and in the task force on particular issues including stormwater and truck route issues. So those meetings are happening, but this is reflective of the fact that this agreement is limited only to our agreement with the county for administrations of right-of-entry program. It is not dealing with the Army Corps's obligations to negotiate with the city. Okay, and then final question is, I just don't know whether administration includes the city. Okay. And then final question is with, I just don't know whether administration includes the ability to direct the order of removal in and among the constituent, you know, neighborhoods. I will look to Chris and Sid to elaborate further, but it's my understanding that that's determined by the US Army Corps. Through the mission that they're determining how the properties are selected in what order based on their contractor that's not done by the county, it's not done by the cities. That's correct. That's correct. Great, and we don't have any reason to believe that we'll be unfairly treated because we're such a small share of this county No, so far percentage wise we're actually exceeding the county I mean it's a smaller number because we have a much smaller number of parcels But we're actually ahead percentage wise on removal to date Great forget I brought it up then Thank you Okay, mr. Cole followed by mr. Hampton Mr. Hampton actually Mr. Hampton. Actually, I will make a motion. I was just about to go. And that we approve this item. Second. Okay, moving seconded. The one... Oh, I had questions. I was going to make the motion and ask my question. Okay. So let me, so I was under the impression that the opt in still, the opt in property still required permits and that they would then be applied for by the Army Corps of Engineers or the county. So that's not. There's no local permits issued. Okay, Mr. Hampton. Thank you, Israel, for the presentation. Probably that was going to be a quick one tonight. I would say based on my experiencing these removal process that we saw on Saturday that I've seen a few in Altenina and you know based on everything that the Colonel originally told us Colonel Swinson that there would be air monitors in the perimeter that's true individuals wear air monitors while they're making the removal. And so, and as Israel mentioned about protecting our water and our water basin. There's what was that called the straw? I just call it straw, but what do they call? There's various terms for those. They call them swaddles too or what? Okay. The swaddles are in the parkway. So I would say the Army Corps in Engineers so far, what I've seen has been promising and it's been exactly what they said they were going to deliver. I know that Israel's team was extremely influential in making sure that all of their trucks were had signage on them. So thank you so much for that because that was also a big issue that all of the residents were asking us about. So there are signage on each and every one of the debris removal trucks. I'm only mentioning these things because I know that there may be a few people that are watching that want to understand a little bit more about the process. I did have just two questions of Israel and one is as it relates to our ROE notification paragraph three. It says the city will be given access to a dashboard. Is it the same dashboard that I get access to that when I just look on line I hope that we're getting more of an extensive dashboard while you're there. There is a different dashboard that's not available to the public. At this point it has limited information but as time passes more and more information is becoming available. For example, when the county launched their public-facing dashboard, it only included the parcel status, but now it also, if there's additional information that's missing, it now specifies what information is missing. So, slowly but surely, they're releasing additional information. So, what's included in the MOU as well is that the city's going to have access to all virtually all of that information. Perfect. So we're going to have a residence, yes. So we should know in real time or at least the 12 hour notice that our neighborhoods can know that they're expecting debris removal. There is also a provision within the MOU that requires a 24 hour notice. Thank you. That's included in the MOU as well. Perfect. The other question I had is, and I know that you and your team are always advocating for this on behalf of our residents. But I wanted to see if there was any forward progress as it relates to prioritizing habitated neighborhoods. So at this point, it is my understanding that the prioritization is really up to the determination of the contractor. So once the ROE has been submitted and transmitted to the Army Corps, the Army Corps then transmit these transmences, ROEs, and essentially like a work order to its contractor. And then the contractor prioritizes the work just based on logistical and operational needs and efficiencies. But if there is one special request for a sensitive property to be prioritized, that request can be made. For example, the schools were the first to have the debris removed. The pass of union and the fight school districts prior to any residential debris removal. So request can be made on a case by case basis for very special circumstances. Perfect. And then to Councilmember Coles request as well. I'm glad we've talked about this before, so I'm glad that it's been reiterated tonight about those homes and property owners that just decide not to move forward. I guess maybe this is a discussion for a further date, maybe it'd take a meeting or whatnot. But it shouldn't be, the Army Corps of Engineers is leaving in 365 days or I think it's January 6th, is what the General said to us on Saturday. If that's their end date, then all of these problems should be cleared by then. So if we have a resident that is not cleared their property by then, why the Army Corps of Engineers is here, it's probably best for us to charge them later, or put a lien on their property. And I understand, and I definitely want to be mindful of the resident because they're going through a lot, right? But at the same time, it's a toxic wayside. No one wants to be living next to that. And in Pasadena, all of our residents, all of our neighborhoods, wasn't like blocks and blocks and blocks of burn. It was three or four homes here, and then there's two homes, and then you have a home right in front of you. So it's still a residential neighborhood. And so we have to protect our residents. And so I think that it would be appropriate for us to a bait for the residents that will not a bait and we charge them or put a lien on their property. And council member, we understand the concern and agree with it. And we'll work with a process and a timeline so that those properties are cleared on the same timeline. And it's important to remember, it's not punitive in any sense because the federal program will clean it for free for all residents. So people choose to opt out. They need to hold their end of the bargain and also clean it up on time because it will be cleaned up for free by January 6th. Right, but it's not free. So, if you don't have insurance, it's free. If you do have insurance, there's a charge. Well, the charge will be just what the insurance will pay, but to the resident themselves, there's no cost. And so, thank you for that also leads me to my final question. Because I didn't want to ask this question. Now, if you do opt out, in the opt out form, does it ask you for your insurance? And does your insurance still have to pay something to the Army Corps of Engineers? If you opt out, we do not request any insurance information because that cost is going to be burdened by the property owner. OK, thank you. Okay. Okay. Okay. There's one public comment card. Mr. Clerk. Amir Rahan Rahanama. Sorry. Amir, did you leave? Okay. That complete public comment on this item. Okay. There's a motion and a second. Are there any objections for the staff recommendation as presented? Any objections? Seeing none, the matter is approved. That brings us next to- A quick information item mayor. And I'm priced out. Item seven was received in filed by consensus. Oh okay. So now we have our chief assistant city prosecutor Tim Wellman here and I had been asked if he could give a brief and it is very brief. A very on the price gougouging. So Tim, you're on. A very patient Tim, woman. Thank you, well good evening everyone. I am Tim, woman. I'm Pasadena's. No, he just needs to swipe. Yeah, I'll swipe. I'm Pasadena's Chief Assistant City Prosecutor. I've been asked to give an update on price gouging complaints in Pasadena and also provide some information about some other crimes that may occur during or after the state of emergency. So our community and our friends in other communities in the county have suffered tremendous loss. That loss and the stress and the suffering and the trauma that goes along with it should not be compounded by criminal activity. And yet there are those who seek the profit off the pain of others. This will not be tolerated and those who commit crimes will be prosecuted. So what are some of the crimes to be concerned about during and after the declaration of a state of emergency? Well, in addition to crimes that can occur regardless of whether a declaration of emergency has been declared, such as burglary, identity theft, fraud, and trespassing, one particular time to be aware of is that of price scouting. Price scouting is when a seller, contractor, landlord, business, or individual raises the price of housing goods or services more than 10% after the declaration of a state of emergency. There are some defenses that allow for price increases of more than 10% Such as when the price that the provider is paying goes up The complaints that we have seen have overwhelmingly related to rental listings The city prosecutors office has developed relationships with other prosecutorial agencies in the county and We are a a member of the Los Angeles County Price Gouging Joint Task Force on Critical Fires. Price Gouging is a misdemeanor. Penalties can include up to one year imprisonment in county jail and up to a $10,000 fine or both. Violations are also subject to civil enforcement actions, including civil penalties of up to $2,500 per violation, and injunctive relief in mandatory restitution. Now this week is National Consumer Protection Week. So what are some other possible offenses to be on to look out for? Contracting without a license is always a crime, but doing so during a state of emergency can be a felony. So we ask people to watch for anyone offering construction services and to verify the contractor's license with the state contractor's licensing board. Follow some impersonation of emergency or utility personnel's crime. We request that the verify someone's identity and when in doubt called the department to confirm the person is who they say they are. False representation of emergency or utility personnel is a crime. False representation while soliciting charitable donations. Insurance fraud, financial abuse. These are the types of things that we've been told about, and we always recommend and request that if you suspect that you've been the victim of or attempted victim of a crime in the city of Pasadena to report it to the police department. So since the beginning of this disaster, The city of Pasadena, at least myself, have received 43 complaints of price scouting. 38 have been referred from the Los Angeles County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs. Four have been referred from the rent stabilization department. They provided a list of, I believe, 45 properties, rental properties, and there were four highlighted in terms of the request for further investigation. And we received one city website contact request. Of these 43 complaints, they relate to 33 different rental units. We receive some duplicate complaints. That's why the numbers are as such. One hotel and one house for sale. The house for sale, it's not a crime under the penal code during for price gouging to increase the price of the house. So that is not a violation, but the other items. They've all been referred to the Pasadena Police Department for investigation. As of this point, none have referred to the city prosecutor's office for review and filing, although I expect that that may change in the coming weeks. Any questions? Mr. Cole. So the default for a misdemeanor under municipal code is $1,000 for a fine and the $10,000 is that in the state law? It is. So price-gouging state laws, penal code section 396 and it does provide for financial penalty of $10,000. Would given that a few double rent from $3,000 to $7,000, which we've heard complaints about not necessarily specifically to Pasadena, I don't know what the numbers are in Pasadena, you're making $10,000 pretty quick. In terms of deterrence, I doubt a judge is going to put a landlord in jail for price gouging. I think that would send a message, but I doubt if that's going to happen. Is it A, is it possible, and B, would would be advisable in terms of deterrence to pass a mirror ordinance that we could charge under that would have a higher fine? Or is that preempted by state law? So the pass it in a municipal code does have a maximum for misdemeanors in terms of what the penalty can be. In terms of the state, what is that maximum? $1,000. That's the maximum? No, it says in the municipal code it says it's $1,000 unless otherwise specified. And it's $1,000 in our code per offense, per day, et cetera. So we can't increase it? No. Why not? Increased it over the thousand? Yes. I think that's still based on state law too. Well, it's been $1,000 since forever and $1,000 isn't what was worth It used to be 500. Right, so under the, well, it's an interesting conversation because under in the penal code, the maximum consequence for a misdemeanor is one year in the county jail. There's something that are less than that and $1,000 fine. Unless a specific penal code section provides otherwise, which section 396 the price scoutaging statute does. But we can't go about that. No. It's a preemption issue, but. That's a cost of doing business. We can also pursue civil, civilly as well. Right price gouging could also be pursued civilly and then there might be greater damages totaling more than $10,000 that way. Yeah, we could go civilly. So what is it cost us to prosecute a misdemeanor including including investigating and going to court. It depends, right. Because they could plead out, we could go to trial. You could range from a small amount to a large amount. If you're going to count the staff time, et cetera. Yeah. I mean, look, no one's going to die if they're price-couched. But for people, for anyone to take advantage of this crisis and to make thousands of dollars on an ongoing basis, on the basis that thousands of people lost their homes is just patently immoral. And it contributes to everything, all of the distress. There is not a victimless crime because people, spikes prices and it causes people who, otherwise afford to live here, to not be able to live here. So I hope that we, a, prosecute cases that are legitimate, and be that we not slap someone's wrist for this kind of an egregious violation. We will do that. We will pursue, as any type of penalties that includes criminal as well as civil. And as I mentioned, technically it's per day that each violation continues. So depends on what the courts do. The judge, you know, may say all that's too much, but we can certainly request it. Appreciate that clarification. Any other questions? No, good work. I mean, I'm sorry, I don't want to. There's a way over the point to make it even longer. Every time somebody says that. I'm just, should I say questions are clearly. So exactly, I'm just going to ask 17 questions right now. And I need paragraph answers for me, brother. Notice how I don't need to prosecute my question. I want to know, to Councilmember Cole's point, the $1,000, maybe one thing. But let's say we find someone that is actually guilty of price-cali-g. Is there a website that we could just put their business on and say, hey, you know what, this person was the cop price-cali-g. I mean, that's a fine in itself because if everybody knows that this company is doing illegal things knowingly, people would probably stop patronizing. So the Attorney General's Office filed a criminal price scourging complaint. I think it was the first one in Los Angeles County several weeks ago and they released a press release. And it had the person who was charged, right, the public document, the complaint. So that person's name was in the complaint. And in the press release, we see it with the Los Angeles DA's office. They'll put in when people are charged, not every case, but cases, press release with the notice at the bottom of the release that all people are presumed innocent who are charged and less than until proven guilty in a court law. So I wouldn't want to do that to someone that is actually not been guilty, right? I mean, so that's, but if they were found guilty, we should put a list together that says, you know, what this, this business is found guilty of doing that. That's easily found. Right. If, if we get a conviction for one of these cases, we will make that as public as possible, because it is such an egregious offense. And in addition to having a criminal record that will go with them as well, we would make that information public and communicate that. So you're a bad actor. We're going to post you on the ground. That's right. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wollman, and thank you for your patience. Okay. Now for the featured item. This is a recommendation of the rental housing board because I own rental property in the city. I am going to recuse myself from this item. Miss Revis. Hopefully not. I guess I can handle it for right here. So I guess looking to staff, I think. Okay. Good time there. All right. Very cognizant of the hour. hour. Let's try to be as efficient as possible. I understand. We have a staff or a presentation from the chair so we can hear that. Open up to questions, public comment, and then discussion. That's sound good. All right. Let's go. Thank you for joining us. Yeah. Thank you, Council, for inviting me. I'm going to be fairly brief because it was some speaking today on behalf of the board because we did make a decision together and then I can do my best to answer questions that you may have. So on February the 6th, we had a regularly scheduled rental board meeting and staff presented numerous possible policy interventions that the board could take to address various aspects of the crisis as it pertains to renters. And we took public comment. We heard a lot of really incredibly heart-breaking stories of people who either completely or partially lost their homes, their work, or weren't able to return to their units because of the toxic nature of the ash and smoke. Similar to what some of you were talking about, about having to live next door to someone who didn't, have there a lot remediated by the Army Corps, what have you, the same conditions exist for a lot of tenants. So we went through all of these public comments, and then I don't recall who at the moment, but one board member or several introduced another intervention that was not part of the staff report. I think in part because it wasn't something we could do as a board that would need to be a recommendation to the city council, which was a eviction defense for people who had been financially impacted by the fire to allow them some time to land on their feet and recover at least partially and be able to resume their rent payments. So after a considerable discussion, we voted on that, and that was an unanimous decision to recommend a city council that you all take up this issue of a an eviction defense an affirmative defense against an eviction for fire impacted individuals for non-payment of rent At the time we had this indicated for a six-month period or until the emergency declaration was rescinded by the city manager. Then I was advised to draft the very brief I admit, very brief memo that you received in your agenda. And it came back to us this past Thursday on February the 27th to approve it as to form basically and there was a recommendation to amend our recommendation to you to a year rather than six months. So that also passed and that's what's before you today. I also just briefly mentioned that the county passed an ordinance on the 25th of February, providing in substance substantially similar to what the past year rental housing board is recommending. And that was approved for it is zero with one abstention by the county on the 25th. So that's kind of where we're at and why we're here today with this recommendation. Thank you so much. I don't see anyone in the queue yet, so I'd like to ask two quick questions. I'll hopefully focus or narrow the discussion. And the last one, or you just kind of hit on it, just that the board's recommendation is essentially mirroring the counties, but for a year, as opposed to six months, is that fair to say? Yeah, I think that's, that's, yeah, more or less, I think that's a lot of the same. Meering the counties but for a year as opposed to six months. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I think that's that's a yeah, more or less. I think that's the case. I mean, the county has a lot of qualifiers for the tenants and we didn't get into that level of detail in our recommendation. So, for instance, the county stipulates that the tenant must They must be 150% of AMI or below to qualify. They also need to be seeking income replacement. There's a variety of ways that a tenant could seek replacement income either through the county's relief fund, FEMA, SBA, whatever the thing a person might qualify for. unemployment was another one, and also be actively seeking replacement employment if they've lost their job. So there's various things that the county requires tenants to be engaged in, and then also to notify their landlord within seven days of not being able to pay rent, similar to the declaration that was required during COVID. So those things are more detailed in the county ordinance. Got it. So thank you for that. And again, just to further focus our discussion for the city attorney, there's been, I've seen different public commenters. I've redone some research myself. There's been, because it's an open question, let's say at the moment, of whether or not the county's ordinance applies to incorporated cities like ours. What is our position on whether the county's ordinance applies to Pasadena? Our position is that that ordinance does not apply to the city of Pasadena as a charter city. We are independent of the county's ordinances under the California Constitution and Municipal Authority well-established authority. The council can certainly determine that it wants to adopt the same ordinance or similar provisions or the same provisions or defer to the county but we are not required to in our opinion. Thank you for clarifying that. I think that will help. Hopefully, Guy, this is- I follow up on that. Absolutely. Vice Mayor, so Michelle, is that true even in a state of emergency? Because I thought of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of the state of health order in an emergency situation, then we would be subject to that, for instance. But I think during COVID, we were told... We were told that we were not going to be able to get the county health order in an emergency situation. Then we would be subject to that, for instance. But I think during COVID, we were told we were told and we did not agree. But we still. We did not follow it. We had our own we we did not agree. No, I think what we were told and we determined was we could be more restrictive but not less so than the county. I recall the county suggesting that and we sent a letter saying we don't agree. Okay, that's good to know. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for clearly stating our opinion what it was in the past, our position rather. So it sounds like if there is interest in going with the county's position we should probably take some affirmative step to state that. So with that, Councillor Mazzin, why don't you go ahead and ask questions? Yes, so I mean, what I'm struggling with is the kind of separation of church and state here. You know, the board was established by charter amendment. So I think part of me wants the board to be able to be free to implement what recommendations, regulations even, but I suppose even the board concluded on this, you don't have the inherent power. Your authorizing legislation doesn't give you the power to do this, I take. Yeah, I mean, I think it was under the Emergency Services Act. I mean, the Declaration of Emergency in the county and also in the city of Pasadena that like an additional affirmative defense would be warranted. I'm not sure. In fact, I'm pretty sure the board could not just add another affirmative defense. I, you know, that's kind of the pur kind of the purview of regulations that go beyond what the board could do. Okay, so then if we- Because they're not a legislative body that could adopt an ordinance. Got it. Council is. If we did adopt an ordinance, would the board be able to then implement regulations? Regulations, yes. Forms the way, because I don't want people having to go downtown to the hall of administration or what have you. And I'm not sure even the procedures that county is using are the ones that we would want. Correct. So, I just put that out there for discussion. Absolutely. Thank you. Council Member Lion. Thank you. Thank you for the report and for the recommendation. I, um, with a new structure that we have in place with the new department and the board and figuring out how all of this works that I anticipated and have said before that I think we should expect bumps to happen along the way. This is one of those bumps. I thought it was perfectly appropriate for the board to recommend this. I thought the recommendation was concise and useful. And I don't think this is something that we could implement tonight if we were to act directly on what you said without reference to the county. We needed a report from the staff to say, if you want to act on this, this is you could implement it. Here's some options. These are the things you could do which the city attorney just ran through in terms of options in terms of the county ordinance. So because they're to turn it into an ordinance there's several elements in here that would need to be to fire including what it means to be affected by the fire, what's the extent of the self-certification? Do you have to cite facts who do you just say, I'm affected by the fires and that's that? Is there, do we define what a financial hardship is? And so the county ordinance does all of that. And so it would have been helpful to have had a report on that, but we didn't get it. So it's our position that the county purports to include us in their ordinance. If you read it, they, and but frankly, if you read the codes, they rely on. I don't think it gives them a lot to stand on. So I'm wondering question for the city attorney. You, one of the options you just put out is that we could defer to the county. And I think that, I think leaning into the county recommendation is the sort of sweet spot middle ground here because all of the letters seem to be satisfied with that. The landlord letters seem to say, like, don't go further than the county and the tenant letters we got were generally in support but also didn't want to go less than the county or to do nothing. So if we were to go there, do we need to adopt the whole ordinance or can we defer or can we just say we opt in? And that's the end without sort of giving away our position on where we stand. I strongly advise that the city and it can be done in short order, not tonight, but even in a week, there could be an ordinance that just like with some of the building codes we incorporate by reference what the county has done with the building code or the fire code or whatever it is so if the council directs that we could come back next week with an ordinance. Here's what I knew it. I was next week? I was going to say here's what I saw happen. The second you said in a week. I saw the city. I'm sorry. I was like, we're not here next week. I'll say or to or Wednesday. I mean, I don't know. But the 17th I guess I'm sorry for first reading and the 24th for second reading. assuming we want to go with the same thing. If the council wants to do that, we could do that. Okay. And I would remind you that my understanding is that the board just Thursday or Friday, after our agenda was posted, that's when they came up with the final direction, I believe. So I don't know that staff probably had the time to prepare a staff report with all of those options. Got it. Understood. Well, and I don't even know that it was clear that a staff report was needed because a recommendation came up, but it just, they would have been helpful. It's worth knowing. So for me, having read through the county's ordinance today, I think it covers all of what my concerns were here. I think it's fair. I think it is pretty balanced. It requires a factual reporting. And for the judge to make findings that the facts are correct. So I would be prepared to move in, to move that we go in that direction. And there's certainly a lot to be said with being consistent. Yeah, so that everybody understands what the rules are and we're all in one. Amongst landlords and tenants so thank you for that. Thank you. Council Member Cole. I am deeply concerned about the housing crisis and the economic impact on our residents including folks who rent properties. They also have been affected by this. And there are a number of recommendations that were made by your staff in terms of options. Did the board take action on any of those other measures? And if so, could you? Sure. Yeah, we did. So there were a few that we've acted on already and some that are still pending because they're a little bit more involved so one thing we did as of last Thursday I'm not going to these are in no particular order we passed a resolution allowing a landlord to voluntarily lower their rent without affecting their base rent. I don't know if that makes sense or if I should say more, but basically if I'm a landlord and I lower the rent, now I've established a new baseline from which I could raise the rent in the future. But this would allow them to lower the rent temporarily, put it back to where it was, and then still be entitled to their rent increase. We basically took some of the governor's orders and extended them to Pasadena a little bit longer. So unauthorized occupants and pets that are fire victims that another tenant might be taking in. So, you know, your neighbor's house burned down and so you're going to have them stay with you for a while. That would not constitute a lease violation under this temporary regulation. And then also extending the governor's order that in transient occupancy tax situation, so like hotels, motels, Airbnb's, that staying beyond 30 days would not create a tendency. We're under normal law if you stay beyond 30 days in a rental unit, you've established a tendency and the landlord is obliged to follow all the tenant protections. Which is why if you stay in a hotel, I've never done it, but if you stayed 29 days, the hotel operator will make you move out and check back in or move into a different room or something like that so that you don't trigger that. this would allow tenants to stay longer. We also passed a resolution allowing the department staff to issue a pro-rated refund of rental housing fees to landlords who had registered already and paid the fee whose units burned down completely. So there were about 11 or 12 units that were in that situation and we we were able to return some funds to the landlord to lost their properties. We're also considering for future pursuit of regulations. There were some of the things that were already on our list. One is around how we regulate repairs to a unit that is partially damaged such that the the tenant might need to move out temporarily, but not permanently. So the sort of line of demarcation there is 30 days. So if a repair or a renovation takes longer than 30 days, we already have regulations for that. We don't currently have regulations for repairs to take less than 30 days and might just require a temporary Relocation of that tenant while they do some like a week or two or something like that So those are coming back to us yet from staff. So that's they were I think 11 or 12 things on that list when we first received it from staff And one final question which is The county has a provision in their ordinance and they've actually allocated some money so that if there's hardship on the part of landlords who are extending lenient conditions to their tenants, that there's some mechanism for reimbursement. That may not be all sorted out yet, but did you talk about that? Yeah, so I'm glad you asked that So in this will hopefully well, it's kind of late. I know how many people are still listening online, but The county sent up a relief fund and you can learn about it at LA County Relief Fund.com's pretty straightforward LA County Relief Fundcom, so anybody who's had a financial impact related to the fire can seek a grant essentially from the county. And I think that would go a long ways to helping people meet the rent. In fact, it's one of the things that the county provides as an option to meet one of the conditions of the eviction defense, which is that you have to be seeking income replacement to qualify and this is one of those income replacements. But my understanding that landlords can also apply for that. I believe so, yes. I do want to point out just really briefly that our tenants do qualify for that as well. And last week we did send them an e-blast and forming them of the application period for that with the county department of business, a consumer affairs. While you're up there, Ms. Morales. There's a big difference between someone paying no rent for six months and then, 12 months and then for whatever reason moving out and landlord is out six or 12 months of rent or someone paying nothing and the landlord has to pay their electricity bill and their water bill and their property tax and their mortgage. In cases, you are moving toward some mediation model. Would this be a potential opportunity for a mediation where partial rent, some agreements could be made so that it isn't a binary. You get to not pay any rent for six months or 12 months versus trying to work with the tenant and the landlord for mutually agreeable terms. Am I right that you're seeking mediation services? Yes, we're kicking off that program next week. We have contracted the Loyola Center for Conflict Resolution and they are going to be providing conflict resolution resolution conferences for us and so we'll be scheduling those and we will be able to do that. It's not arbitration so it's not binding. It's not arbitration it's not binding it's conflict resolution. But it does offer an opportunity for them to come together and work out their agreements and it could be the tenet says I can pay all the rent except for $500. And maybe they agree to those terms. And that would be an agreement that they would make. And again, it's between the landlord and the tenant. Those are the best agreements that we know that are made outside of the city. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilmember Jones. Thanks, Vice Mayor. And why not the western justice center? I was thinking as we... Are you right here? But just on the point of... On the point that Mr. Cole was coming out with about the county's fund, is there an expiration date to that fund? Can tenants reach into that fund beyond the six months after the eviction moratorium expires? My understanding is that it's probably more bound by the volume of money that's available and probably will be Extinguished. Do you remember do you know how much is in that fund? I don't. I think it's a 15 million or 15 million. What did you say? I thought it was 8.7 million less. I'm already 8.7. Yeah, I think it's going to be dependent on applications as they're received. So we'll have to, and that's why we got the notes out to all of our tenants and to our e-blless list last week. And a tenant can apply for those funds to supplement their entire rent, or just to the cover the gap. I guess if there's a 10% reduction in their income, they can apply just for that 10% to make up the gap, or what's the process? Well, the 10% is actually a requirement that they need to meet before they can even qualify. So it could be that they can't pay the rent for whatever reason they won't be able to pay the entire rent. They could make their application a request for that. I think it's gonna be up to the county. We can get those numbers back to you if you'd like, but we don't have the specifics of that today, so my apologies. I see, I see. Yeah, you know, I'd be more inclined to support deferring to the county's six-month eviction moratorium, similar to what Councilmember Ryan and seemed like Councilmember Cole was on that path, and I think, you know, going into it, as long as our tenants, our residents, would qualify for the funding, which I'm here and they do, they're able to use some of that funding to supplement their rent. And also the landlords, you know, what is not the mom and pop? What do we, what do we call it? No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. My mother works. Small, small time. Dad and pop family on. Family on. Yeah, like family on. They can reach into that pot as well. Because there's a concern, rightfully so for workers and tenants, there's a concern, rightfully, for the small time landlord. So also be able to pay their mortgage. Right. A lot of them right are just passed through at this point they they charge the rent they take that money they pay the mortgage and I'm not sure that maybe this small business administration that to program might assist landlords with lost revenue as well so yeah I'd be more inclined to support that as well. Thank you. Great. Council Member Hampton. Thank you. And I think I mentioned earlier today that the small business administration was here at the beginning of our meeting to put that information out to all of your tenants and also housing providers as well. Because there's money out there and the interest rates on those loans are really low and no one has to take them. So if someone is really in need and they're seeking the support as mentioned from the county, or from the county's ordinance, this may be helpful for them to get the assistance that they need. So I had a couple things, and maybe this is another item to come back to the full council, and it's what do we do to help our housing providers? I mean, because ultimately, we need our housing providers to continue to keep us with the housing stock. So we have to incentivize our housing providers in a way to keep those less vacancies. I mean there's a lot of vacancies now and we want to make sure that we're encouraging them to fill those vacancies because we have a lot of residents that have been displaced, not just in Pasadena but also in our neighboring city. And so other thing is for rental assistance, our housing department has what is it called it's called rent assistance. What is that, I mean, how's that applied? How do these tendons, how do they apply for that? Are you referring to section eight housing or something? No, no, I mean, they have a rental assistance. If you lose your job, there's supposed to be a rental assistance form that you could outside of section eight. This is through a housing department. They might have had, you know, it depends on the different grant programs that they're able to get money from and the parameters around it. I am aware that in the past there have been, I don't know what they call them, ESG grants, things like that. I don't know the current status of them, but they would, you know, folks should reach out to the housing department to see if they have any of those grants available at this time. way we get the house I assume the housing department and the Ritz-Dobbizization Board are talking to one another? Yes and we can check with them again to see but the last time I did they did not have any funding so I can again check with the housing department to see if there's any funding. Okay and report it back. Perfect. I mean I think there's some work to be done but I'm supportive of what the county is doing. It sounds like there's an opportunity for the residents that are actually affected by the fire to turn into appropriate documentation. Now what happens if a resident decides not to pay for six months? I guess that's the question. They decide not so they decide not to pay. I mean, is it like COVID, do you have to pay back? Yes. So the county has that rent pay back is within 12 months after the protections end. So that would be a determination that council will have to make. So the protections are for six months then they have 12 months to start paying back on the protection. Yes. Or to finish it. To complete, I'm sorry, 12 months to confide. That's what the county has to say. The deadline is 12 months after the protection ends. OK, and so someone could rack up with a significant bill. I'm sorry? Let's say someone doesn't pay. Right. The rent is $2,000, right? Yeah. I mean, you could make a recommendation, for example, that they will have to pay on a monthly basis, X amount of dollars divided by 12, or whatever, the amount divided by 12 months so that they're paying a month of payment. That could be a recommendation that you make. But in this instance with the county, they're only required to pay it within 12 months after the protections end. Well, I think that, do you want to join me? With the counties, They're required to pursue the rent assistance fund, correct? Yes. Yes. So they're necessarily. So it could be that yes, that it gets paid off. But let's just say, for example, those friends do not pay for everyone. I think your concern is that you would have a housing provider, that doesn't get That payment for an additional 12 months And that I mean that rent assistance font fun just so everybody's aware it's 612 and 18 18 is the max 18000 612 thousand and 18 thousand of the max that doesn't mean that anyone's guaranteed to get $18,000 That's's correct. That doesn't mean anybody's guaranteed to get 12 or 6. Right. So you could apply for this grant. That doesn't mean that you're necessarily going to get it. Right. Right. So you could provide other protections if you would like to do that. So I think with your mediation even anyone who decides that they just can't pay for the six months. I think the mediation will come in extremely handy and something that's going to have to be proactive with not only just the tenants, but also with our housing providers so they are well aware. The minute that one of their residents or one of their tenants, tell them that they can't pay, there needs to be a discussion immediately, because we'll be putting tenants in a hole. We'll essentially push those same people out that we're trying to make these protections. Right, exactly. We can do that. If you'd like to put that into the ordinance, then we can enforce it that way, or we can recommend it, however you choose. I think we'll talk about that later. But yeah, then to the city manager, the county has put together a fund. And we're now asking, I mean, as I mentioned about as I mentioned about incentives, right? Maybe we need to pitch in every one of our tendances isn't going to get these dollars. I'm just going to be, that's just to realistic, there's a lot of folks searching for the same amount of money, the same pot, the pot's not big. And so I think we need to look at other funding sources, the ways that we can support our residents that are living here in the city at the same time, helping our housing providers. And we can certainly look at that. I do want to highlight what Dr. Morales did just say and be clear our tenants in Pasadena I mean our residents in Pasadena who are tenants are eligible for this funding because they are also canary residents, right? Right. No, but I'm saying just because you're eligible, this is mean that you're gonna get it. Right. And I mean that's very clear on the website. He says that on the website. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I agree, but I just didn't want anyone resident of Pasadena to be unclear that they too are eligible to apply and hopefully receive funding from it. We can look. Thank you. Thank you. Let's go ahead and move on to public comment then. Before I call names, I wanted to report out the correspondence we received on this item. Eight letters expressing concerns with the city adopting an ordinance related to emergency eviction defense for tenants impacted by the fire and or advocating for the city council to include safeguards to protect property owners if an ordinance is approved and providing other comments. Six letters in opposition to the Pasadena Rental Housing Board's recommendation to the city council to adopt an ordinance. Three letters advocating for the City Council to align with the LA County's emergency tenant protections and two letters in support of the past the rental housing boards recommendation for the City Council to adopt an ordinance. All the correspondence was distributed to the Council posted online as part of the record for this item. We have ten speaker cards submitted. I'm not sure if everyone's here. So we'll just call Angela Strong. We're going to give two minutes for speaking. Angela Strong, Jesus Rojas. Are you here? Great. Bert Newton, Marley, come on up, Angela. And then Deborah Lutz. Two minutes, I'll ring a bell when you have 30 seconds left. Go ahead. Hello City Council. My name is Angela Strong and I am a Rinter here in Pasadena and I have a lot of friends and like neighbors who live around me that are also Rinters and many of them had issues with potentially having lapses and job like hours and times and well as potentially losing the places where they were working or having to take and family members and the financial kind of burdens that come on with that as well. And other friends that I have that actually, we're in Alchidina, our lost homes and stuff like that, are looking for other places to rent, et cetera, and the amount of people kind of flooding into the rental market gives an incentive for landlords to try to get tenants out who may not be, or who could be falling behind on rent, etc. to get the levels up to kind of market value. For these things, especially if the tenants have been around for a while, because Pasadena does have rent control on a lot of our rental units, but that doesn't really apply between tenant seas. So the landlords can raise rent in between tenant seas and in a situation like this, there may be more appeal to do that, right? And the rental market's already kind of hard here to find places to rent, especially if you're a family's, trying to look for bigger places. More so the places that I see available in Pasadena are more like one bedroom, studios, et cetera. So opening those ups may be underland lords, what they would potentially want to do, could push Pasadena residents who have been a part of this city for a while out, and that would hurt the city as a whole because they have jobs here, et cetera, providing into the community. And so that would be a bad thing that we don't want. Thank you. Thank you. Jesus Rojas, Bert Newton, Marley, then Deborah Lutz. Good evening, Council. My name is Jesus Rojas for the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles. We just want to thank you for considering the Alley County Resolution. You know we appreciate that. It makes it easier for tenants and landlords to just follow one ordinance. Also we urge the City Council to consider creating its own direct rental assistance for anybody that has been financially impacted to low income renters or small housing providers with rental unable to pay the rent due to the wildfires. And part of Agla will be able to help with anything you guys need. You know, we're here to just have renters and landlords be together and not be against each other. So thank you. Thank you. Bert Newton, followed by Marley, followed by Deborah Lutz, then Patrick Briggs. Yes, good evening. I'm speaking for Macon Housing and Community Happen. We support the recommendation from the rental board. We are not a attendance rights organization, but we have had people reach out to us, mostly service providers reaching out to us for help for families that they're working with. It seems to be that the families that they're seeking help for mostly are undocumented families, some of the most vulnerable in this situation, and with the rental market being flooded with homeowners who've lost their homes and are now looking for rental units, there seems to be a small number of landlords that are being tempted to get rid of their current tenants and then get around rent control, and so they can raise get tenants that will pay a much higher rent. Because even the 10% allowed by the state under the declared emergency is much more than the 3% allowed under rent control. It doesn't take a lot of landlords doing this. I was looking at the numbers and there's well more than 20,000 rental units in Pasadena that are under rent control. You know, 1% of that is 200, 2 percent is 400. If you have three people in a household, you already have over a thousand people that are being affected just by that small number. So you may hear from landlords that they're trying to do the right thing, maybe they are. You know, it could be 95 percent of them, 98 percent of them are. But we still have a crisis because a very small number could be displacing a lot of people. And there are some of the most vulnerable people as well. Also we should look at what happened in Maui when the fires in 2023, rents in some areas of Maui rose 50 to 80%. The reports of people having their tendencies terminated rose. And that was even though they had some protections from the governor that the governor had given them. But the big loophole was between tendencies, the rent protections didn't hold. And so that's why we support tenant protection protections. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Marl Marley followed by Deborah Lutz followed by Patrick Briggs. Hi. Just the ding mean 30 seconds. Yes. Okay great. Nice to see you all again at an hour past my bedtime. I'm a renter. I've been in Mr. Hampton's district for almost eight years in the same house. We were displaced. I've been displaced because the house got a lot of smoke and ash damage. My landlord is not remediating. Although her insurance company came out and I was there and they told her that they were going to pay her for remediation, she still hasn't done anything. I have continued to pay rent. I've now paid the third month in a row on a place that I'm not able to live. So I'm speaking in support of yes eviction protections. If I was not so scared of being evicted, I would not continue paying for a place that I can't live because my landlord's being irresponsible. I've, like I said, been there seven years. I've been an exemplary tenant. I've never missed rent payment. And I know that she has insurance to cover it. And I also know that I'm not the only person whose landlord is not remediating in the hopes that will leave. My landlord's wanted me to leave for a while because I'm in rent control. She could probably get twice as much for my house. But I know that the county also issued a statement about responsibility for remediation being under the landlord. And I think that it would be very helpful if the city also adopted a mandate like that because right now there's no, it's really unclear who the responsibility falls with. But I know that homeowners and landlords have insurance to pay for that. I had three remediation companies come out myself so that I could present my landlord with estimates. All of them said that the structural stuff, the HVAC, the ducts, etc. is the responsibility of the landlord, not the tenant. I sent them all to her so she has options but she's not doing it. So yeah, that renter protections, eviction protections, and responsibility of remediation for the homeowner so that tenants can stay housed. Thank you. Thank you. Debra Lutz, followed by Patrick Brick, then Christine Rodriguez, D'Nalece, then Ryan Barrett. Thank you. And I actually wanna thank a lot of the council members this evening. I heard a lot of thoughtful questions and I kind of wasn't expecting it. So I do want to thank you for thinking of some of the complications that come about when we're dealing with the county and the city. What I will point out is just to remind everybody that the county program, the rent relief is not fully funded yet, and that money is not going to go very far. Pasadena has a unique opportunity because we are housing a lot of residents in hotels and motels right now, and I'm not sure the term that it's called but whatever tax that is, the transient tax or whatever, could that money that goes to the city be used to provide some rental relief. I think that this council needs to set up a task force with the Chamber of Commerce or whatever organizations that are within the city to come up with creative ways to support the tenants. Because the wait, the burden on the property owners to sustain these properties with what has been described by some of the tenants that spoke here today of so many people's income being affected by the fires. We cannot keep treading water, we are sinking. And on one hand, we're supporting other local businesses. I was just reading in the Star News about some support for businesses in El Tudina. And everyone's all excited about it. It's really, I mean, to hear that, and then hear the hammer being slammed down on landlords, accusing us of all price scouting and not wanting to help tenants. And you want us to house them but at the same time the threats of more and more regulations and unfunded rent relief programs. It's just not sustainable so I applaud you for the questions you were asking keep asking them that we need more and be creative come up with ways to fund this rent relief. I will also remind you during COVID. I do believe there is a requirement to not be evicted you had to pay 25% of your rent. Okay. And another thing that with the rent stabilization department, having the rent counseling, some financial counseling and understanding what they can afford, help them develop a plan to see that at the end of the tunnel, this mountain of debt is going to bury them alive. And so we need to come together as an entire community and not only put the burden on the housing providers. Thank you. Patrick Briggs, followed by Christine Rodriguez, then Ryan Barrett, then Lisa Thornton, and then Lee Yost. Donna Sider and then Adam Brealli. Go ahead. Thank you. I'm here. I'm a homeowner here in Pasadena, and for seven years, my wife and I were landlords. I'm here, actually, also as an all-saints, Episcopal Church member, reflecting the views of many of our Church members in support of the Pasadena Rental Housing Board's proposal for eviction protections. And I want to say that I was just in an education for ministry class for the last two and a half hours prior to coming over here. I do that every week on Mondays. And we've been studying Old Testament. And Old Testament is pretty confusing sometimes, but I know one thing it's not confusing in Old Testament is the concern that God has for the poor. And I'm going to read a little bit of scripture from Zechariah because because I think it's appropriate here, because I don't think God was as concerned with the needs of landlords. I mean, we're privileged people to have the wealth to actually own property that we can rent. That's not to say we shouldn't be protected, but I think our concern needs to be rightly with the poor. So Zechariah 7, and I'm going to, and the word of the Lord came again to Zechariah. This is what the Lord Almighty said, administer true justice, show mercy, and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor, do not plot evil against each other, But they refused to pay attention. Stubbornly, they turned their backs and covered their ears. They made their hearts as hard as Flint and would not listen to the law or to the words of the Lord Almighty had sent by His Spirit through the earlier prophets. So Lord Almighty was very angry. So I'm proud to live in this community. I respect the work that you've done to keep this an amazing city to live in. And I want to be more proud. I want to know that the needs of the poor and the oppressed and the foreigner are taken care of with as much importance as the landlords have been in the past. Christine Rodriguez followed by Ryan Barrett followed by Lisa Thornton and Unilee Joost and Donna Sider and Adam Braille Lee. Hi, good evening Council members. My name is Christine Rodriguez. I'm coming here as an individual and as a resident of District 5. I'm here to talk about the need for the recommendation to be one year as opposed to six months. If you think about it, if you do the math one, two, three, if you can add up six months, that's August, right? And so I also want to make very clear that the LA County Grant Relief Program, the deadline for applications is March 12, which is next Wednesday. And so if we think about it, if somebody who is going through, you know, losing their home, having financial instability, having to pay for hotels, having to pay for maybe new clothes, having to pay for toiletries, maybe baby food, just think of all the costs that you have to do, paying for parking even if you're staying at a hotel, those things add up and say, you know, if you're in I would assume maybe August, you're kind of stable, but still, you know, barely getting your foot grounded on like your new stable home situation. And that's when the audience at six months can be taken away from people. Again, I think a year's needed to really help people get stabilized and to prevent homelessness in the future. Say that person didn't apply or didn't know about the LA County grant relief program. They wouldn't have access to those funds to pay for any rent that maybe that they missed due to being misplaced. So I really do encourage you and motivate you folks to pass the ordinance that the rental board has passed. And again, to help out those who've been through the fire. I personally, again, do think that this is the barest of minimum that we can do for people affected by the fire as we have heard the rental board is limited in its capacity. So I think a lot of the recommendations people have given are really great ones. Rental Assistance Program, I think is definitely needed for those who are unable to pay the rent because of all these financial hardships are going through to assist those and still keep landlords, you know, their rent due at the end of the day. Also some sort of task force. The rental board is doing as best as they could, but it's a lot to handle on their own. I think a task force specifically for addressing issues for the fire. We think about things like like habitability a lot of folks are mentioning that You know to help address those issues mr. Rodriguez your time is expired. Thank you. Thank you Ryan Barrett Bob at least the thorton then only you just Almost good morning Really quickly. I just want to say thank you all All vice chair and Council. Ryan Barrett, Pasadena Foothills Association of Realtors. Speaking on behalf of my association, I will be very quick and brief with my statements. Look, it's like five points. Not even that. I just want to say I appreciate you all taking the time to consider a six-month And staying within alignment with the county Let's just make it digestible and easy to understand for everyone and be Straight straight to the point on this That's it. That's all I have to say. I think it's important for us to stay in alignment on that and go ahead and just move forward with this like that. So thank you. Thank you, Lisa Thornton, who is participating virtually, followed by Unilew Joost. Yes, hi. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. I'll ring about 30 seconds. Go ahead. Wonderful. Thank you. Hi, my name is Lisa Thornt. I am a member of Pasadena Mennonite Church and a renter in City Council District 1. So I'm here today to urge you to support the recommendations from the Pasadena Rental Housing Board to adopt the eviction defense for tenants. Not just for six months recommended by the county, but for 12 months recommended by the rental housing board. Specifically for tenants who are experiencing economic hardship to the fires. As you all know, January 8 was the terrifying day. Many of us, my husband and I fled our home early in the early hours the morning with our pets to the home of close friends who welcomed us with open arms. We are grateful to these friends and that these friends live in a place where they could open their home to us. But many are not this fortunate. Without protections landlords can evict not only displaced families, but those who have chosen to open their homes to people in need due to economic hardship from loss of income or increased expenses of taking care of us and housing us. Those who are most vulnerable should not be pushed out even by the smallest number of landlords looking to raise rents beyond the 3% limit allowed here in Pasadena. 1% of landlords could affect hundreds of families in our communities. The trauma of this fire will linger beyond the six months or even one year of protections and we would like to see our city ensure that we are protected for as long as possible. So I understand the fear of confusion between the county and local measures but Pasadena is of course in a unique position that doesn't apply to the entire county and it's because of that that I would recommend you to please consider supporting the Pasadena Rental Housing Board's emergency eviction defense for 12 months going beyond what the county is recommending. Thank you very much. Thank you, Unilead Joast. Greetings, council members. You can hear me? Yes, go ahead. Thank you. I'm Unilead Joast. Greetings, council members. You can hear me? Yes, go ahead. Thank you. I'm Unilego's POD parent, tenant and long time resident of Pasadena district 4. Thank you for your service of a council and the opportunity to comment up, gender 8. The in-fire has had a profound impact on POD students and families. According to POD, more than two-thirds of PST students had to evacuate and almost half of the district staff live in evacuation zones. I understand from a local teachers union that as many as 300 of its members have lost homes to the menace of plays. The fire severely damaged five of PST school sites on left almost all others covered in ash and debris. My son's school we open only after a three week closure. In light of such tragic circumstances affecting so many of our students and families I urge the Council to do all the care and ensure to protect USD students and families the vast majority of whom are renchers. Specifically I urge the Council to protect USD students and families against infections and rent heights in this moment of accelerating rent increases by following the past year housing rental boards recommendation to adopt an ordinance for temporary emergency eviction defense for tenants impacted by the Empire. Additionally, I urge the Council to protect the health of our PUC students and families against exposure to carcinogenic and toxic, sued ash and smoke in the Empire that could lead to cancer in other illnesses in the future. By following the recommendations of longtime Casino resident and housing excerpt Peter Dreyer, who published an article in Casino now entitled Casino Ventures Need More Protection from bent gouging illegal evictions on public health hazards. And I've attached a copy of this article in the public comment that I submitted to the council. So thank you for doing all that you can to protect the lives, health, and welfare of our PEOCities students' families, because we're depending on it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Donna Ciders, not Adam Brayalee. Good evening and thank you for your time and consideration this evening. There are so many voices and so many people being requested to be heard not only on this particular issue but so many things related to the fire. At its core what the rental housing board has done is sent you a suggestion that you tell property owners in Pasadena that they're not legally able to collect rent for a full year. Period. That's a year where they are obligated to continue to pay all of their current obligations, mortgages, property taxes, insurances, the pastoral and rental housing board fees, the pastoral and the water and the power of utility fees, handyman repair, and any other of the myriad operational expenses that are required in order to maintain safe and healthy housing in the city. Nobody at the rental housing board appears to have any consideration about how to make the finances of all this work. But they seem overjoyed and almost immediately ready to tout that all capitalism is somehow disaster capitalism. And within minutes without most of the people on their board actually participating, they pulled out a multi-page promise to prevent property owners from being able to collect rents. That's all this is. It's an unconstitutional taking. It's completely out of bounds. The county has already implemented within the last 10 days, a six-month eviction moratorium, for-payment of rent. The Pastiano Rental Housing Board cancelled pretty much every single one of their meetings for last month in order to sideline any public comment or any public input to their proposal. They pulled it out at a special meeting with the 24 hours notice. They went through hours of their own discussion points. Mr. Peter Dreyer was just referenced a few minutes ago. This is a person who literally in the aftermath of the fire was demanding that every property owner be forced to have the city of Pasadena. Let's go and remediate smoke inside of every rental. Mr. Breaulick, can you bring your comments to a close? I would like to encourage you to throw this drivel back at the passing and rental housing board and ask them how they expect properties to be maintained in Pasadena if landlords are not allowed to collect rent for a year. Thank you. You're asking yourself the same thing. Thank you. That completes public comment on this item. All right, Thank you so much for everyone for sticking with us. Lave into the night. I see Councillor Merkel is in the queue. Given the hour, I will be very brief and make two points. The first point is I hope that we don't make this a theitting of tenants who cannot pay versus landlords. The reality is that if we do that, we're not going to be helping either. Yes, there has to be give and take, but I think that if we put all of the responsibility for helping tenants who are in distress on the landlords, that's unfair. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't help those who are in need because these are our residents who we will lose. And they either become homeless or they move to some other community taking their kids out of our public schools in some cases, leaving jobs in our community in other cases. So the second point is simple. We can dream up among the seven of us the perfect ordinance that has bells and whistles and all kinds of unique aspects but there are 88 cities in the county and I think we should either defer to the county or pass our own that completely mirrors the county. I agree with Councillor Romantic and we should administer it, but we should administer the same rules that the county does. We shouldn't make people go down to the hall of records and down down LA to deal with this. And I think there should be two things. There should be an effort to have mediation so that it isn't just a binary you pay your rent or you don't pay your rent. I think we should encourage people to come to agreement. And I think we need to figure out a way to make it possible just to help tenants pay their rent, which in turn allows landlords to pay their expenses. It doesn't mean we're going to cover 100% of all tenants in distress in Pasadena. I don't think that's fiscally responsible or even within our ability. But I do think that some effort needs to be made in that. So I'm gonna make a motion as a first step. And that is that we either defer or pass an ordinance, because I don't think they've passed an ordinance, but we pass an ordinance that explicitly incorporates whatever the county is going to do and that we then administer it ourselves and that we explore ways afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford to afford and we should, but I think at the end of the day we need to be the backup So that's my motion and we'll see if there's a support I'd support your motion with a Requirement that this staff comes back to us in 30 days with how we can help with rental assistance I'm happy to make that as a friendly amendment. Any further comments, Councillor Ember-Hampton? Okay. Okay, Councillor Ember-Jones. Yeah, likewise. Councillor Ember-Lion was in the queue and you're out. We all wanted to make a motion. Right. No, I think that lands. I'm sorry, because Madison, were you going to say something? I just had a comment. So would it mirror the county in every respect? Or would our rental board have some discretion to? I think in the administration of it, Mr. Madison, But I think the rules need to be the same, because I think those who've made the argument that we don't need to confuse tenants and landlords about, well, what's the rule here? And I think clarity and consistency is critical. In administering it, I think we have a lot of flexibility to do it in a way that's perhaps less bureaucratic and even handed But I think I have trust that we are building that capacity through our rental board And then it'd be six months as well as the county correct. That's the motion. Yeah Thank you Councilor Ryan just as a practical matter. I'm not sure how much there is to administer because it's a defense to a UD action. So it's really the courts administer at once it's in place. What I would say is that it would be helpful for the city attorney to point out any place where our ordinance needed to deviate from the county for some particular reason know, particular reason, but otherwise it's, that there's, there's not really administration of it. Perhaps the only administration would be making it known within the city. I have one just quick and I don't think this is part of the ordinance or maybe it is, that the rental housing board, if this, I mean, once passes, does the rental housing board have the authority to say, well, if you are not paying rent, I mean you should at least try to pay 25% like similar to what it was in COVID. I didn't know that that was a requirement during COVID. I don't believe that's part of the county ordinance, so that's not going to be a part. I'm sorry, would the red stabilization board have the authority to say okay during the mediation? I'm looking to the rent stabilization department in the city attorney. City attorney can answer that question. I don't know if the board has that authority. The board doesn't. I'm not hearing Councillormember Hampton saying it's a mandate. I'm hearing him say that we should encourage people to do this. That's part of the agency. And I think that makes sense. Not everybody's going to be able to do that. But it makes a lot more sense to not get into huge debt as the point has been made. Because that only means that someone at the end of the year and a half will be evicted. And that's what we're trying to avoid here is people losing their shelter. So I think it's a good point. Vice President, right, someone losing their shelter in a housing provided losing their property. Indeed. And so again, I think that's why I'd like the housing board, if not administer, perhaps at least to be proactive in trying to encourage mutual efforts to for tenants to get as much assistance as possible and for as much collaboration between tenants and their landlords as possible. And where the landlords are half a 1% or 1% or 5% whatever that number might be of folks who want to take advantage of this to get rid of their tenants. I think we should take a hard line with that kind of behavior. But I don't think we should penalize the 95 or the 99% who are not. I was just going to briefly mention that if one administrative responsibility could be the forms, the declaration forms that are required by the tenant and perhaps those need to be submitted to the department as well so that we can track how many people are utilizing this. So it's a possibility. I think we would have the authority to promulgate regulations in that regard. Thank you for that. Madam City Attorney, is that clear to you is is are those instructions? sufficient I think so okay and obviously as quickly as possible next week Well, I learned I messed up Two weeks Had a quick quick question so process we'll do it on March 17th the the first reading, March 24th, the second reading. Yes. Yes. And then the 24th is when it goes into effect and then they would have seven days. Well, no, it would, if it's an ordinance, it would be after publication. And publication would be that following Thursday and you're not, are you going to do it 30 days or you're doing it on publication? It may be a pom publication because I don't think we'd have to look at that. But I received the direction as come back with the mechanism to most effectively and expeditiously track what the county is doing with modifications as appropriate for Pasadena and encouraging mediation and potentially payment through mediated terms of some portion of their rent. And within 30 days we'd have a report back on potential funding source for that kind of assistance. All right. That all sounds good, but when would it go into effect? So if it's, I say that because it may be a penal ordinance, which is 30 days, but I think we can do it as an ordinance as effective of hum publication, which is the Thursday after the second reading. 26. 26. Of March, would be residents reach out to us asking about what we discussed. 1774 24 plus Thursday. Thursday 26th. No it's not. 27th. 27th. I didn't know it was going to do all these. However the county did a resolution so I'm going to look to see if there is something that is going to be effective at what the council wants, that could be something other than an ordinance that's introduced and offered and adopted. That would be sooner. But I got the direction to do what we can as soon as possible. It also looks like we have a super majority so an urgency ordinance would be another path. Right. Which yeah, the civil public. Any further questions? No? Yeah, we're running out a time. All right. Let's call the roll. Or do we need to call the roll? Or are there any objections to the motion? Seeing none. The motion passes. And that pleads the agenda. With 12 minutes left to spare in the day. So thank you all for sticking with us. I would just note that we are dark next week, March 10th. The meeting that was scheduled to be a joint meeting with PUSD has been rescheduled for late April, April 24th, I believe. So next week we're canceled. So thank you. Thank you all. Have a good night. We're adjourned.