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So the only item on this portion is closed session. Do we have any speakers from the public on the closed session item? Mr. Vice Mayor, we do not have any speaker cards at this time. Okay. We can now move into closed session. Mr. City Attorney, do you have a report first? Yes. This evening we would request a closed session to discuss the one potential litigation matter and the existing workers comp matter. Thank you. We are now adjourned to close session. closed session to discuss the one potential litigation matter and the existing workers comp matter. Okay. Thank you. We are now adjourned to closed session. you you We have reconvene from closed session. Mr. City Attorney, do you have anything to report? There's no announcement out of closed session this evening. We are now completed the item on this evening's special meeting agenda. And I will adjourn this special meeting and move into this evening's regular meeting. Good evening and welcome to the April 14th regular meeting of the Ahembor City Council. Roll call please. Mazah. Molloni. Wang. Here. Andraadi Stadler. Here. Lee. Here. Please join me in the flash salute. Please rise. Ready, begin. Which we did to the flag to the flag of the United States of America. And to the Republic for the restarance of one nation and your God, indivisible, with liberty and a supported business environment. being sensitive to the diversity of our community. It is okay with my colleagues on the council. I am going to move to our ceremonial items to first in the agenda order and then move back to public comment for non agenda items so we can get the young entrepreneur students being honored. Being honored home given it is a school night. Very important. I was a teacher to why I don't get. Before we honor our young entrepreneurs this evening, we have two proclamations for the month of April. The first proclamation is declared April 25th as Arbor Day in Elambra. I would like to call director of Parks and Recreation Michael Macias to receive the Arbor Day proclamation. Thank you. You're welcome. Director Macias is so wonderful to have you be part of our staff and I know it's so dedicated to the city on Hambra. I'd like to read this proclamation first before I give it to you. Thank you for your patience. We're as in 1872, Junior Sterling Morton proposed the Nebraska Board of Agriculture, but a special day we set aside for the planting of trees. And whereas this holiday called Arbor Day was first observed with a planting of more than a million trees in the Brasca is now observed throughout the world. And whereas trees can reduce the erosion of our precious top soil by wind and water, caheding and cooling cost moderate the temperature, clean the air, produce live giving oxygen and provide habitat for wildlife. And whereas trees are renewable resource given giving us paper, wood for our homes, fuel for our fires and countless other wood products. And whereas our hamburger has always understood the value of trees as they reduce energy cost, increase property values, add value to retail areas and beautify the community. And whereas, trees wherever they are planted are source of joy and spiritual renewal. Now therefore, I, Catherine Lee, Mayor of the City of Mahambra, do hereby proclaim April 25, 2025 as Arbor Day in the City of Mahambra. And urge all citizens to support efforts to protect trees and willens and to plant trees and glad in the heart and promote the well-being of this and future generations. Well said. Thank you. And I'd like to present to you to our direct messias. Congratulations. We are going to call. Our second ceremonial proclamation is to declare denim day in Elhambera as part of April being sexual assault awareness month. I'm going to go ahead and read the proclamation. Whereas the month that April has been declared as national sexual assault awareness month and piece over violence has declared April 30, 2025 as denim day, denim day in Los Angeles County. And whereas both events are intended to draw attention to the fact that rape and sexual assault remain a serious societal issue and to call attention to harmful attitudes, misconceptions, and misinformation that allow these crimes to persist. And whereas today, sexual violence remains one of the most prevalent yet under reported crimes in the United States. And whereas with proper education on the matter and comprehensive prevention projects, sexual violence and its unfair and traumatizing effects are preventable. And whereas the Alhambra City Council supports the efforts of peace over violence, to educate persons in armed community about the true impact of rape and sexual assault in Southern California. Now therefore, I, Catherine Lee, mayor of the City of Alhambra, to hereby proclaim April 30, 2025, as denim day in the city of Alhambra. And urge everyone to wear jeans that day to help communicate the message that there's no excuse and never an invitation to rape. Just for information, this proclamation will be mailed to the Peace Over Violence Organization. Our next ceremonial is the presentation of the Commendations to young entrepreneur program participants. The young entrepreneurship program hosted by the Elhamber Chamber of Commerce and the Elhamber Foundation was designed to support Elhamber High School students in their journey to turn innovative ideas into viable businesses. The program provides grants and a membership opportunities for high school juniors and seniors, aiming to foster the next generation of business leaders. All of the young entrepreneur program participants and volunteer are to be congratulated for inspiring the community with her original business ideas. So we have certificates for the participants. The Allhamber City Council on behalf of the citizen of the Allhambera hereby congratulate all of you. For your participation in the Young Entrepreneurship Program hosted by the Allhamberes Humbert and the Alhambra hereby congratulates all of you for your participation in the young entrepreneurship program hosted by the Ahembra's Humbert Commerce and the Ahembra Foundation. And I just wanted to see all of you smiling faces and I just, real excited for all of you to see the certificate of recognition from the city of Ahembra. So as a mayor of Ahembra, I'd like to say thank you for all your leadership skills and look forward your your future. I'm just going to call your name and I, you're not in orders. I'm just calling your name and if you can come and receive this certificate. Once you've done so, you could just return. The first one is Sophia Weisman-Cornel. They're so polite. Next is Y Sai is a correct. She's Sire. Angelina Yip. And of course last but not least, Divya Sa'ha. She's Sire. Let's give her a big hand again. Thank you. Just thank you mayor and city council for recognizing this. It's obviously a pleasure for all of them and you for us to help that are helping out and thanks for all the volunteers and mentors who have helped out. So thanks for the support. Thank you for coming here tonight. Congratulations. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm going to get the room. I'm going to get the room. I'm going to get the room. you . Next, we have public comment for non-angentized items during this portion of the item individual speakers will have five minutes each to make their comments and the total time for the item will be 30 minutes. If there are any remaining speakers at the end of the 30 minutes, those speakers will be able to make their comments at the end of the meeting. Also we ask that any speakers state their name and address for the record before making their comments. Madam Mayor, we do have several speaker cards for the item. Okay, let's have them. We have quite a few. Madam Mayor. Yes. If I can make just a brief announcement. I think that based on information in the city clerk, it appears that many people are here to potentially speak on the fireworks issue. Just to clarify what exactly will happen at this meeting tonight on that issue, if anything. That issue is not on the agenda. What is on the agenda, at the very end of the meeting, is for the council to take a vote on whether or not they want to put the item on a future agenda for a discussion and possibly presentation by city staff and questions to be asked and answered by city staff. So the only thing that's on the agenda tonight pertaining to fireworks is whether or not the council's going to put it on a future agenda for a discussion and possible decisions. So in light of that, any people wishing to speak on that should, a man of mayor should be called at this time during the non-agentized public comment. Thank you, C-Trainian, for the clarification. I do have, in my hand, just for transparency, 13 cards total for public comments. There are non-agentized items. So, five minutes each then, it will be the first six speakers. And they do like they're all for fireworks. Five minutes each then it will be the first six speakers and They do like they're all for fireworks Let me give me a give a second. We see what happens here Meta mayor does look like there's also one raised hand on zoom for this item. Thank you I see a lot of children are here and they're very passionate about this item and I'm not sure that Who are the adults are supervising them? So I would like to see if we could help them to to leave the council as soon as possible being a school night as well and their children So I like to the council permits, I like to see if the adult who accompanied these children can speak first during the first 30 minutes as much as we can so they don't have to wait till the end of the meeting which could be a two hour long. So can I have a show hand, those who are turning their speaker card right now, in my hand that you are supervising some of the children that, because I think I like to see if you can speak first so they can leave earlier. Is that okay, city attorney? Absolutely, also, you know, you've, a council has previously a lot of 30 minutes. So if people don't use their full five minutes, you can get through more than just six speakers. Or if necessary, it's the council's discretion if you wanted to extend that 30 minutes at the beginning of the meeting. The lead. So with the council's permission, may I try to have the speaker who are supervising the children's speech first, regardless of the order that's given to me? Is that okay? that okay? All right. Madam Mayor, I might suggest for this, for this non-Agenous public comment portion, setting the time limit to three minutes so we can get through as many as possible during this portion. The rest of council, are you willing to? I agree. It gives more, lends more voices to the discussion, so thank you, councilman Maloneyoney for bringing that up. Okay, so my concern is that if people have prepared for five minutes, then I think that we I would just ask Mayor to use your discretion. If people, I just think that I would love for people to have more advanced notice to know that the length of the public comments cut to three minutes, just in case that if they have prepared for for five minutes they are allowed to made all the way here and they I just want to mayor to use your discretion to maybe potentially allow that. Thank you so I could see that maybe a comp middle the ground compromises that try to keep it to three minutes but if you ask for an extension I could send you up to five minutes. That's okay with everyone. I think that would be kind of democratic, compromised there. I'm gonna go ahead and read the names of those with submitted cards and those who have or accompany children like you just have you raise your hand at the end and let me know so you can come first. John Seagman, Genevieve, your Quidi, Jeffrey, Story, Dr. Macias Wilson, Mike Mekintosh, John Kelly, Mark Dr. Carlson, Michael Jones, Ralph Mondrag, sorry, on the great Reagan. And Ernest, Mr., Mr., saying, Helen, saying, Marco Vasquez, Mr. Chantender. So if you are a comedy children, I like you to see if you can actually raise your hand. Then I I'd call your already, so two of you. I'd like to have you speak, come up, speak first. And please state your name as well. Hello, my name is John Sligman. I'm the vice president for Alhambra American Little League. I'm also a long time lifelong resident of the Seattle Hambra. I went to Margarita Elementary as did did my children and I'm a graduate of the Hamburg High, go class 96. I played Little League myself at Grenada Parkville, Hamburg, American, and myself in the dozens of parents, children, and volunteers in the room here tonight, because of the discussion of Safe and St. fireworks. You might not be aware, but the Safe and St. fireworks booth that are the league runs on commonwealth every year is our largest fundraiser for the league. Contributes roughly $12 to $15,000 to our league every year, and we are all here tonight to encourage the City Council to not move forward on this topic. And to allow our fireworks sales in the CFL Hamburg to continue. Baning the sale fireworks would take away our single best fund raiser for the year, and it would not only drastically hurt us, but other fantastic community organizations around the city who I know will be expressing their concerns after me tonight. I know my time is limited, and there are other groups who I know want to discuss this topic further. So if any of the members of the board, the City Council would like to discuss how banning of fireworks will directly affect on the American Little League and the hundreds of families you have elected to represent. Myself and the other board members will be more than happy to provide you with any information you can whenever you'd like. But please let us keep our fireworks stand. Thank you much. Good evening. My name is Genevieve Arcade. I'm a resident, a long time resident of Elhambera. I live on 090 North Electric Avenue. I am also an Elhambera alumni, class of 96 with John. I'm also an Elhambera High School band alumni. So I am here representing the Elhamber band booster. And so I'm here today, same as what John has mentioned, which is to emphasize that the fireworks stand is a major fundraiser component for demand in itself, the program. So what the funds goes to in particular for demand is to get the kids to competition that represents not just the city, but the school and the music program in general. We use that for props, for competition fees as well as the uniforms for these kids. So if the council does go ahead and ban the sale of fireworks. This is going to severely impact our ability to provide this wonderful program for the kids. My kids are actually second generation musician that's coming into this program. So I would hate for it to really affect them in this matter. And that children here? Would you like to come up and speak? You have turned into a speaker card. Yes. Thank you. Stay joining, please. My name is Mike McIntosh, 400 South Meridian. My lifelong Alambe resident went to Marguerite Elementary School, and graduated from Alambe and 2004. I'm The head football coach at Elhamber High School and the firework stand is our biggest fund raiser that we have. The money goes directly back to our program, it pays for a lot of things within our program. Mainly it pays for our spirit packs. You see our players behind us wearing the polos. It pays for those. We try to get every single one of our players into something that says I'll have for football because we know that some families aren't able to buy those things. It pays for our team meals. We have dinner for our players before every game. Again, because we want to make sure that all of our players are fed before we go play. So it is our biggest fundraiser and without the fireworks stand, we wouldn't be able to do any of these things. It also brings together our team, our boys go out there and unload the trucks and parents and our booster club run the stand. We've been stuck in that firework stand for the last 10, 12 years on the 4th of July, but we love to do it. We know that it's helping our boys, it's helping our team. And again, without the firework stand, we wouldn't be able to do any of these things. And I'm sure a lot of the groups behind me feel the same way. That's it for me. Thank you very much for your time. Any other speakers who are accompanying students or children right now that we should speak first? Okay, we still have time for seven more. It's given three minutes each. I do appreciate the speaker that who kept it two, three minutes or less. At this moment, if the student, the children can't, you can leave this room. If you like with the adult that that will accompany, or you could stay here, that's your choice. Well, I will take seven more speakers. Now is that the order that was, at which there was submitted to me. Jeffrey Story is the next speaker. Good evening. I'm Jeff Story. I'm a member of the Knights of Columbus. Say, organization, a charitable organization that was founded in 1882 back in New Haven, Connecticut. And it started up here in Alhambra in 1923. There were, and we've been selling fireworks as long as anybody in the council can remember. That is our main source of revenue that allows us to do many charitable works. We've got a Feed the Family Program. We've got youth scholarships. We've given away hundreds and hundreds of youth scholarships. Back in 1776, when John Adams had just finished signing the Declaration of Independence, he sent a letter to his wife, recommending that Americans celebrate that momentous occasion with parades, parties, illuminations, meaning fireworks. And in 1777, they started having fireworks displays. Now I do know since I've been selling fireworks for the El I'm a memberights at Columbus for 38 years, well, I forgot to say I'm a resident of Emery Park, 1,000 five Westmont Drive. And we're right over next to El Sereno, so we get to hear lots of the illegal fireworks, which is often what people think of when they think of fireworks, but the California Safe and Safe fireworks are just that. They're safe and they're sane. But the most important thing they do is they raise a lot of money for great causes. I've seen it firsthand for many, many years, and I would entreat you all to please consider not changing the arrangement that we have here in Alhambra. Because like the folks that's built before me, I'll be happy to give you a lot more detail if you need on research that I have done in others on what the danger is with safe and safe fireworks. So please consider keeping our arrangement for fireworks in Alhambra that raises so much money Marcia Wilson and I am. I live at 213 Stockbridge Avenue. Also in the MEPARC area and I am fortunate to live on that hill area where I can look out at all of the fireworks that go on all over the city. I'm here as a former one of the founding members of the football booster club, as well as my kids played baseball at the park. And these fundraisers have been very instrumental. I mean, I remember being part of one of the first fireworks once we got our 501C3, and it is, it's a bonding experience it's a fun raising experience. But I'm also here to talk about the fact that fireworks are just fun. I mean, I think that the very fact that that that the teams and the nonprofits make so much money is because people buy them because they're fun. It is a chance to celebrate, it is a chance to commemorate and you know we see them when the Dod the Dodgers win, we see them at homecomings at the high schools and you actually as a city support a fireworks show and now, Mance, are bringing together community to celebrate and to commemorate all kinds of activities and events. So I'm here to just talk about the Safe and Same fireworks. They're not the ones that leave the ground, they're not the ones that really challenge our pets. I know that not all dogs universally don't like fireworks. Mine, both the mines sit on balcony with us watching the fireworks, so like universally they don't disturb pets. They don't mimic the very loud sounds. So if we are trying to find illegal fireworks and who's setting them off, it's not those little pop and fizzles that happen on the ground of the Safe and Seen fireworks. And so I really would urge you not even to agenda this. To agenda this even makes it, it always, it just puts everybody who's trying to use this as a fundraising activity. It puts us not at ease. You know, we would like to be able to count on the fact that our city supports these fundraisers, that our city supports the safe use of fireworks. And we will do anything that we can to make sure that that safety protocols are shared. We all go to trainings, you know, when we sell them, all the safe and sane instructions are included. And it's just a very wonderful event. And so we appreciate it and hope that you do not even choose to agendize it. Thank you. Next speakers, John Kelly. Good evening, Madam Mayor. Members of City Council and staff. My name is John Kelly, 555 North Gilbert Street in Florida and California. I'm here tonight representing TNT fireworks. We are the wholesale provider for the majority of your organizations here in Alambrane. Have been since I started in 1989. For the record, we're here for the supporting continued sale of safe and safe fireworks in Alhambra. Illegal fireworks, distribution and use, as Ben mentioned before by Paris speakers, are your problem here. And so in light of that, and having said that, for your discussion later on this evening, would you consider the forming of an ad hoc committee? Who among the illegal fireworks issue could take a look at your current ordinance, and compare that to some of your colleagues here in LA County and throughout the state. And I think in doing so, you would find that there's a wealth of different things that are going on to combat illegal fireworks use in California. Social host ordinances, administrative fines, drone enforcement is getting a lot of popularity this year. The stacking of fines, anonymous tip lines, I use of your smartphones. These are all just some of the things off the top of my head that are being poured currently by other communities throughout the state. In conclusion, don't punish the organizations and residents who lawfully purchase and use safe and safe fireworks inra. Illegal fireworks is your problem. Thank you. The next speaker is Mr. Mark Tr a question. I have a question. Dr. Wilson? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? Any other questions? state or from the city, both fire and police that have said this is nothing to do with anything that goes bad. Nothing, there's been no big issues, no fire, no problems. The second thing is the last time we talked, it was brought up here that there would be help supporting the programs that you would be doing that. I have not heard from anything. I know my colleagues have not heard either anything from this council and how to support us if one of these things were to go through and how to do this so we don't have to sell them because I bet a lot of us don't want to sell fireworks because it takes a lot of our time and we'd rather be doing things to help our kids instead of selling fireworks but we have to do that. That's the only way we can keep our programs alive. If you guys can help us that would be wonderful but we've heard nothing from this council about how to help us. Thank you. Next speaker is, I think it's a Ralph. Mon-Dragon. Mon-Dragon. Good evening, Councilor Mayor. Thank you for letting us speak here. But I'm a veteran, Vietnam veteran. In fact, I have some veterans behind me here. We do these fireworks stands because we, first of all, I'm the finance officer. So I've done finance for 30 years, businesses downtown. So I did build up the American Legion. As you can see, I got it painted outside to make it look nice because the city that's the city wants. Okay, so we're here to comply with safety also. Okay, we're not against the safety at all. Okay, but what I understand is pollution, Vietnam veteran PTSD, which I'm going to talk about the PTSD. Yes, we do got PTSD, okay, true. And it's all has to do with it, up in the air stuff. Okay? It's not the safe and sound, okay? Because in real, I'm going to put it this way. If anything breaks out, hope you're not. Who's going to run? We're not. You people are. We're going to protect you. Okay? so we got to stay open Okay, we do protect the city. There's been graffiti going on the theater. I don't call the police Because they got a lot to do but we don't take it to our hands We asked them please don't do that and they respect it because we're veterans, okay? So we help the city also So our funds go number one the Eden fire. I got a call 10 o'clock at night They need it our facility for donation and pickup and donation I Got those two low stores to donate the needs that these people want because I work for a low-spark time they so We had children Women and children come, pick up clothes and shoes. They didn't have anything. Okay? So this is our facility. I've donated 27 tents, 27 sleeping bags, 27 air mattresses from, from a big five. Store manager, he worked with me. That was for the fire department. There was there was out in San Anita. Okay. So basically our money goes for. We have the. Thanksgiving for the community, which they knock on our doors a week before. People that don't have a place to eat. Women and children, Christmas, we have the fire department, toys for tots. We get the boxes, they come with the fire trucks, we donate, we put out our own funds, which basically what we do is also what we do with that. We do voice state, girl state, which voice state, Girl State, the city of Alhambra. And again, I reached out to the council members and I explained what the Boystate and Girl State is. We do sponsor Boystate and Girl State and I've tried to work and what we do is we send them to the Capitol. They sit there with the politicians. From there they get invited to DC. Okay, so that are these funds because of that. So basically we don't got these funds. We can't do none of this. We might even have to close our doors. Okay, so what I'm asking please reconsider of not banning these fireworks stands? You know because safe and sane is not the problem the problem is Is all your illegal and you're right? We do got PTSD in the end and it's bad for the animals Okay, so there's nothing about nothing wrong with the safe and sane and Please reconsider and I thank you. The last speaker for the first portion, 30 minutes, Ernest Mistrick. Good evening. My name's Ernest Mistrick. I'm a Vietnam War veteran. I also was employed with LA City Fire Department for 35 years. 24 years as an inspector. I worked at the legal unit for six years. And we went after people that did illegal fireworks. And it's very hard to distinguish illegal fireworks to safe and sane. People improvise to do different things, anything to make a lot of noise. I'll tell you that the safe and sane, I have PTSD and the safe and sane fireworks don't affect me. The ones that shoot up in the air like at parks, it sounds like our children around, they can affect me, but not the small stuff. It's been over 50 years for me, I learned to kind of get over it. I do constant everything, but I do support the safe and safe fireworks and there's no way the police department or fire department can go in and investigate and find out are they safe and safe or are illegal. That budget would be overwhelming. It's very difficult to do that. They can be worried about EMS, maybe other drinking issues, everybody celebrating. There'll be other issues than they worry about whether they're safer, sane or illegal fireworks. But try to put the fire department to say 30% were safe and sane, 50% were illegal. It'd be very difficult. They couldn't do the job because they couldn't do the regular job of supporting and saving life and property. And that's their main concern. They don't show up at a far work even in somebody's home unless someone's injured. The police department here are very disturbance because of noise but the firepower will be very inundated. People even safe and sane, very illegal, people get hurt, people drink, yeah circumstances and their consequences but along their supervised and not drinking, they should be fine. But I'm saying, don't come in for the fire department or police department to investigate, to know the difference between safe and sane. You don't have a budget to do something like that. LA City never did anything like that. Other times that we caught people with illegal fireworks was before the actual celebration. And with the, like say, LAPD, the infiltrated, find out where kids lining because they always like to start up fireworks illegal ones before the actual, light them off. But I really support it. I want to thank you very much for hearing me. I wish it was a good evening. Thank you. Applause Madam Mayor, just a frame of reference. The city clerk has been keeping a cumulative time and how much time do we have left? We have about eight minutes left. We have one raised hand on zoom and it looks like we have about five left on with the speaker cards. Yes, one raised hand on zoom at this time. We are eight minutes left so I could take at least two more. Helen thing. Helen thing. Good evening, city of a hamburger. My is Hailey saying I'm here representing the hamburger moors high school football team as well as many others in our community teams families and more this is more than taking away a tradition we celebrate or events we celebrate our team runs fireworks stands every year and it's always close to selling out every single every single one of our favorite stands, public stands, brings the community together. And even people we know like Jack Black. It's extremely difficult to do any other fundraiser because it barely raises enough money for a quarter of the team. For us this is a major fundraiser that helps us pay for equipment, expenses, travel, uniforms, food, and drinks, and opportunities that many of our families will not be able to afford. Just two families can possibly raise a couple hundred to a thousand or so. Other fundraisers, two families can get us around $30. The money we raise directly supports the youth, keeps them active and builds community pride through our football program. We all stand aside and understand the concerns that lead to this proposed ban far break stands. But safe and sound does not make other loud noises and bad impacts in our environment. When I was a kid I remember saving up my money with my buddies and held my parents by the most expensive safe and sound fireworks we could get. only only did we give to the ones doing the fundraiser, those were the best memories when I was a kid. This is to give kids in our community something to work for, something to belong to. Safe and sound fireworks aren't just loud bangs. Their memories, their memories, and fears kids can overcome. We're all willing to work with the city to make a better by getting rid of illegal fireworks, but safe and sound fireworks doesn't do much. Our best cells will make an effect that will end pretty for our team, pretty for our teams we have in November. We are willing to add any more safety concerns to our stance. More notices you guys will like to address, but please do not take this away. This will be a huge takeaway, I'll take Mr. My name is Michael Vasquez. I live on 2030 South Sixth Street and And my, the off-hambor football team has allowed me and others to speak on behalf of this topic. I myself have been a resident of a hamburger my entire life. I've grown up here holding my grandma's hand on Main Street as a little kid, thinking what a wonderful city this is and how much I can't wait for the opportunities that await me later on when I get older. But somewhere along the way, I'll admit I was lost trying to live a life that my family and the city of Ahamba did not represent. I was lost making decisions which hurt my family and the people I love most. And being honest, I subconsciously intended on continuing down this path. getting into high school, I was at a crossroads at which I've only realized I was at until now. I decided to join the Elhamber football team, a decision that I forheartedly believe changed the directory of my life for the better. I was accepted and rewarded for my hard work. The harder I worked, the better person I became. to more resilient I became. All caused me to become what seemed to be a new fresh person free of my past mistakes. This program has changed more lives than will ever be advertised. The culture and discipline has shaped me into the man I am becoming today. This ban on fireworks, the cellophile, not only damages us as a team right now, as 90% of our funding comes from our fireworks stand, but also damages the up and coming and future youthful hamburger. The limit in our funding limits our resources, which limits the amount of kids we could take in the team each year. I couldn't imagine my trouble to pass self trying to be part of something greater than me, something which could change the director of my life just to be denied at the door for a lack of resources. My hamburger football isn't the only program which does this. I have a band, I have a little league, my cousin played for little league. My family is very deep rooted in the city, and my cousins went to Amber High School, they participated in sports, and they all depend on the fireworks stand for a significant amount of their funding. Although it'll never be shown these programs heal and shape the city without them knowing. This decision to allow fireworks can truly help us. us. But most importantly, I believe that it helps more the youth in the future of the city. And I thank you for your minute and 17 minutes left. Would you like to speak? Only one minute and 17 minutes. One minute, 17 seconds. Why did everyone else have one minute? No, you're the last speaker card on my desk. So are you willing to wait till the end of the meeting? You get three minutes, five minutes. But if you speak now, you have one minute and 17 seconds. Oh, that's a good voice. I will wait. Okay, thank you. There's a speaker on Zoom. And I believe there was another speaker card from Michael Alexander Jones. He was already called. Oh, he was. I think so. You were not okay. Please come up. Sorry. Now take the one minute and 17 seconds. Okay. Even everybody, my name is Michael Alexander Jones. live right off of 5th Street. I've met you all briefly in different contexts. Nice to see you all here together. Also with the American Legion, there's a young bucks back there who's showing me up. Look, everybody else can speak to all of them a lot more than I can. I grew up in Bakersfield. My wrestling team also used Freedom Fireworks to raise money. We didn't have any money for singles, cause all the money went to the football team, no offense gentlemen. But you know what? I really think it's imperative that these kids have the opportunity. The Sons team also used Freedom Fireworks to raise money. We didn't have any money for singles, because all the money went to the football team, no offense to anyone. But you know what? I really think it's imperative that these kids have the opportunity to get that a spirit to core, make those memories, get those sunburns, get those fireworks out. As has been said, please and fire don't have an issue with this, I don't see why we're making an issue no issues there. And frankly, I don't think we should be banned and stuff unless you have a darn good reason to ban something. I don't see a darn good reason to ban this. We would have heard about it from a hamburger fire footwear issue. Frankly, I don't think we should abandon stuff unless you have a darn good reason to ban something. I don't see a darn good reason to ban this. We would have heard about it from my hand-ber-fire footwear issue. Please don't put some up for banning if there's no reason to ban it. Thank you so much for your time. At this time before I proceed to the next portion of the public meeting, anyone who wish to leave at this point may be so. We have a very packed room. And there are still our staff members who are in the outside seat. they like to come to the next one. Thank you. I I'm going to go regarding the adoption of the ordinance approving zoning text amendment AEMD-24-02. Making general clarifying updates to the city's zoning code and zoning map amendment AEMD-01, amending the city's zoning map. Adoption of a resolution approving general plan map amendment AMD-25-02, amending the general plan land use map. And determining this action is exempt from sequel. Miss City manager, is there a report from staff on this item. There is this evening's presentation will be given by Principal Planner, Mayama Curley. Good evening, Mayor and Council members. So tonight's presentation will provide an overview on the city's annual zoning code cleanup, which is being processed under the application numbers that are shown up on the screen. As the Mayor just mentioned, this year's cleanup involves the zoning text amendment, zoning map amendment, and a general plan land use map amendment. Next slide, please. So the last cleanup was presented to the city council in June 2024, and that was officially adopted by City Council on August 26, 2024. And immediately after that, we got started on the next cleanup as there's always new pieces of legislation going into effect. So similar to last year's cleanup, this year's cleanup includes amendments and additions to clarify standards, enhance consistency, comply with new state and federal laws, fix typos, and update our use allowances and regulations. This cleanup also includes minor amendments to our zoning map and our general plan land use map. There are multiple documents that are associated with this code cleanup that were included as attachments to the staff report tonight. So just a brief run through, there was a planning commission resolution providing their recommendation to the City Council on this code cleanup as well as the draft City Council ordinance which shows the zoning text amendments, additions and the zoning map update as well as the City Council resolution which shows the general plan land use map update. There is a lot of information to get through so we've summarized this into some tables and have taken a high level approach but you can review all of the full text edit changes in attachment 5 and it's shown in track changes. Next slide please. So as I mentioned we took a high level approach and kind of broke it down into substantive and non-substantive changes that were being made as part of this cleanup. In total there were 20 20 chapters that are being amended, and two new sections that are being added into the zoning code. Those new sections are in chapter 23.22, which is standards for specific uses. The way we've broken it down, we've color coded it into green and yellow. Items in green are the non-substantive changes. So those are things like section number updates or typographical edits. In total, there are 23 of those amendments. And then the yellow category has 30 substantive amendments and additions. Those are numbers 24 through 53 in the table shown in attachment one. So the two new sections that are being added are for standards for firearm sales and standards for mobile food funding. Some of the other substantive amendments and changes are to our use allowances and regulations as well as revising some development standards. Next slide, please. So this is a screenshot showing attachment one, which there's the table the non-substantive amendments, which are shown in green, to the right. I've listed out some of the examples. So updates to fences and freestanding wall standards to comply with state law, clarifying some standards for visibility at intersections, as well as standards for certain types of signs, and then including some new cross references to some other new pieces we have in the municipal code and then updating some section numbers. Next slide, please. For the substantive amendments and additions, some of those examples of the ones that are shown in yellow include updating land use regulations, so allowances for where certain types of residential uses need to be allowed based on new state laws that have gone into effect, same for new uses for reproductive health clinics and drive-through facilities, as well as clarifying some requirements related to our IHO, inclusionary housing ordinance, our tree preservation our True Preservation Ordinance, our Art and Public Places Program, and updating ADU development standards to comply with new state laws. Also, based on Feed Mac, we received previously from the community. We made some changes to our standards for drive-through facilities to require outdoor dining areas for any new drive-through facility that is for restaurant or fast food type use, as well as updating our home and I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not going to talk about that. require outdoor dining areas for any new drive-through facility that is for a restaurant or fast food type use, as well as updating our home occupation standards for new types of uses like micro enterprise home kitchen operations, which that's pursuant to new state laws and short-term rentals consistent with the new short-term rental ordinance that we recently adopted. I do want to note that as part of this cleanup, we did not include any new provisions related to SB9. And that's because we do have a consultant as part of our housing element implementation that is already working on preparing an ordinance, which we hope to bring back to you later this year. Same with the IHO ordinance, we will be doing a more comprehensive look at that as part of our housing element implementation and looks to bring that to you later this year. Next slide please. So these next couple slides, I'm just gonna quickly go over the new sections that we added since those are kind of the more significant changes that we're making as part of this code cleanup. So the first one being a new section that provides standards for mobile food bending. So things like food trucks frequently will get questions from people interested in having food trucks and we haven't really had a way to process those or approve those. So this sets forward some clear guidelines for if someone wants to park a food truck either on a private property or if they want to be parked on a street. So it imposes some new requirements like a requiring those mobile food vendors to obtain a permit and then operational standards and requirements for things like hours of operation, trash receptacles, restrooms, smoke, noise, things like that. And then very specific standards based on whether or not the mobile food vendor is going to be operating on private property versus in the public right of way. Next slide please. Okay. So the second new section that we added was related to firearm sales uses. As you'll recall, the city council did adopt an urgency ordinance and as part of that urgency ordinance did direct staff to explore the development of more permanent regulations and standards for firearm sales uses. So we did look at similar ordinance that was adopted in the city of Monoray Park and kind of built off of that. So the ordinance that's before you tonight essentially requires a conditional use permit for any firearm sales uses that want to open in the city. And they would only be allowed in the industrial zone. And then it would also impose a 600 foot buffer requirement, requiring that any new firearm retail sales uses would need to be located 600 feet away from sensitive receptors or from other firearm sales uses. Next slide, please. So we landed on the 600 foot buffer after kind of starting with a more conservative approach. So we started with the 1000 foot buffer, which is what you see on the right. And as you can see, the parcels in red show the industrial zone parcels that we have in the city. So that's where a firearm sales use would be permitted with the conditional use permit. And then what we did is we did a thousand foot buffer from those parcels around any of our sensitive receptor uses. So those would be things like our residential zones or schools, parks, those types of facilities. And so as you can see to the right, that didn't leave us with any parcels at all. So we bumped that down to a 600 foot buffer. And so as you can see kind of on the right, that does leave some parcels, some opportunities for farm sales business to open up. Next slide please. So this is a bit of a closer look. I know the colors are a little bit hard to see, but this is a closer look at the 600 foot buffer. And you can kind of see to the right where Palm Avenue would be. There are some parcels in red that are outlined in yellow. In total, there are about 36 parcels that as of today would qualify as sites that could potentially have firearm retail sales uses. So that's as the ordinance is written, obviously things can change, you know, if a new school or church facility or something of that nature opened up in one of these parcels today, that would obviously change. But as of right now, this is the number of parcels where there would be an opportunity for firearm sales use. Next slide, please. So the second component to this zoning code cleanup was some minor amendments to our zoning map and general plan land use map. In total there are 25 parcels that were proposing to amend. Similar to the slides before we broke this down into two different categories. We have the orange category of parcels where we're proposing 9 amendments and then blue category of parcels and those are all railroad parcels. So parcels that are privately owned by railroad companies but are considered public facilities. So attachment three in the staff report tonight shows the existing zoning map and then identifies which of those parcels and the existing zoning map are proposed to be modified and then attachment for likewise shows the existing general plan line use map and the parcels proposed to be updated and then in exhibit one C of attachment five. It's the proposed zoning map and exhibit two A of attachment five is the proposed general plan land use map. Next slide please. So this just shows kind of the the table that's included in attachment to providing a description of the changes that are being made to what we're calling the other parcels which are the ones in orange. So for example, there was a commercial development that was reviewed and approved both by the Planning Commission and City Council last summer. Commonly referred to as Palm and Pepper, it's a new commercial development with three fast-food restaurants. So as part of the Planning Commission's review of that project, they did recommend that there are, that there be some adjacent sites that be rezoned. So specifically the parcels at 117 South Raymond Avenue and 128 South Palm. So those are parcels that we are recommending to be rezoned based on the previous recommendation we received from the planning commission. And just some other kind of minor cleanups where there are some inconsistencies between either what's shown in the zoning map and what's shown in the general plan, land use map just wanting to clean that up to make sure everything's cohesive. And then the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, what's shown in the general plan, land use map, just wanting to clean that up to make sure everything's cohesive. And then the railroad parcels, as I mentioned, those are all privately owned parcels owned by railroad companies, but we would consider them public facilities. It's just been kind of an audit quirk in our general plan, land use map and our zoning map. The parcels have been shown on the maps, but they've never actually been given a designation since they are privately owned parcels. They do need to have a designation, so we are cleaning that up. Next slide, please. So just really quickly, these are all attachments to the staff report tonight. This shows the existing zoning map. Next slide. This shows the proposed zoning map. And obviously when you're looking at it kind of on a computer, you can zoom in and see those parcels a little bit more clearly. Next slide. This shows the existing general plan land use map and with all the parcels that are proposed to be changed identified. Next slide. And then again, this would be the proposed general plan. I'm going to use the map. Next slide. So this was presented to the Planning Commission at their regular meeting on March 17th. And they did recommend approval of the cleanup with four minor revisions, which are listed out on the screen here. These were really relatively minor revisions just for clarification purposes. And staff had no objections or concerns with the proposed revisions that they adopted as part of their approval. So we went ahead and added all of these revisions into the draft text that's before you tonight. And we're fine with those changes and we're leaving it essentially to the City Council to decide if you want to make any further changes. Next slide. So staff's recommendation is that the City Council conduct a public hearing and receive public testimony and then determine which of those four recommendations that were just shown on the last slide, you wish to include. Again, staff has no objections or concerns with those recommended revisions. And then direct the city attorney to introduce and give first reading to ordinance number O2M25-4844 and then also adopt the following resolution entitled Resolution Number R2M25-18. That concludes the presentation for tonight. And I'm available from staff if you have any questions. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I will now open the public hearing. Do we have any public speaker cards? We have one Mr. Lewis McKam. Mr. Lewis McCam. Thank you. Good evening. Luke McCam in 105 North, Cordova Street. Generally, there's no real controversy or anything in the issues before you hear tonight. I've looked them over. I attended the Planning Commission meeting. The Planning Commission had a few questions and recommended it unanimously. Some of the things you have, have been actually been before you previously. They've been pretty well hashed out what's's put into the zoning code here is just the results of the work you've done before on things like firearms, sales, public storage spaces and things like that. The one with the railroad lots is really non-controversial. They had no zoning classification at all previously. They're getting a zoning classification here. The one thing that is really new that I don't remember having come before you for detail discussion before and didn't really get detailed discussion even at the planning commission is the one on mobile food vending. You see mobile food vending in a lot of surrounding cities. You go down Atlantic in the evening in the moderate park. You'll see the food trucks there and so forth. They're pretty much there in the same space all the time. The only thing that might be useful for you to do is just ask for a brief clarification. Generally when we have looked at other things like the public storage spaces or firearm sales, we examine what surrounding cities have done. And in many cases we will develop our standards here, modeled on stuff that we see other cities doing and everything. And the one thing that might be useful here is to just get a brief clarification of the proposed standards that are before you hear how do they compare with what we see in adjacent cities. Not something that I can ask for it, it won't get answered. If you want to ask for it, you'll get a brief discussion on that and just see how they stack up. Thank you very much. Do we have any speakers via Zoom that I wish to speak on this item? Madam Mayor, there is one raised hand on Zoom at this time. Marie Terese Lopez? You can go ahead and speak, Ms. Lopez. Hello? Hello. Anyway, I think it's great that you didn't have a public. I hope you have public hearing on this matter. What struck me was that the issue about those good trucks and those vendors. I hope I mistakenly heard the presenter mention something about they would be allowed to pretty much bend anywhere, even on your property, your home property, and I have a concern about that. I think they should be restricted only to commercial areas, you know parks and whatnot have problems with that. But the other issue I have is she didn't mention she mentioned how things were they had to make certain requirements or requirements but she never mentioned health requirements and I think that's a real big issue. I've watched the city of Santa Monica, the YouTube channel and they've been shutting down a lot of these vendors because of health code violations. So I hope I just want to make sure that that's also important. We don't want anyone getting sick from these people. And I know they want to make some money and I don't know, I'm from with that. But let's just make sure we're not selling them, putting them out there in front of people's houses. Like the other person said, they stay open very late. And I'd have a concern about, you know, the trash and rats and from these food trucks and vendors. That's all. Thank you. Was that the only one? Yes, Madam. Well, now close the public testimony, testimony portion of the hearing hearing since there's no one else remaining that wishes to speak. Does the council have any comments or questions for staff on this item? Thank you, Mayor. Just a couple of things. Thank you for doing this. And yes, I did get a chance to go through all of it and look at some of the things that you did just to clean things up. I appreciate your cleanup on the amendment, giving clarification on the inclusionary housing. The amendment would clarify the timing of the developers request to pursue an alternative option for fulfilling the inclusionary housing obligation, and they have to specify that at the time that the development application is submitted. So I appreciate that. But I do have a question for you from staff about your decision, and I'm not sure if this was your decision alone. Maybe you want to come up to the mic. The decision to change the 1,000 feet buffer to 600? What was the? Right so the rationale with that is and we did consult with city attorney's office is we need to allow a fire ourselves Business to locate at least some parcels within the city So as a as shown on the map if you were to do the 1000 feet It wouldn't allow for it anywhere in the city So that's why we went with the 600 feet is it does allow for some options. So 800 didn't come up or? Well, so if you did choose, I don't know if we can bring the slide back up, but if you were to select one of those 36 parcels and then someone else wanted to go in, there's still that 600-foot buffer. And what did you remove as part of the buffer? I mean, was it a church? You no longer are using as a buffer? Description or is it a hospital? You no longer see as an important location for concern? Yes, so there's a whole host of sensitive receptors which are defined in the proposed ordinance. So that includes schools, colleges and trade schools, community assembly which does include religious facilities, community gardens, daycare centers, emergency shelters, hospitals and clinics, park and recreation facilities, social service facilities, and conditionally permitted use that provides services primarily to minors. So if you're looking at the image on the left, for example, if one of those red parcels that's off Palm, that's not kind of covered in blue or one of the other hatches, can you I don't know what you're referring to. Okay. Uh-huh. Okay. Those ones would be eligible, but as soon as one of those parcels is utilized by a firearm sales use, there's a new 600-foot buffer that goes all the way around it. So essentially this allows the opportunity for one new business to go in, but not necessarily 37 new businesses because there is that 600 foot buffer. Uh-huh, okay. Um, and what district is that in, do you know what council know what council district you're allowing those buffers to be in? I think that might be district five, but I'm not entirely sure. Do you know the answer to that? Okay. Can, can we, somebody give us that information? And are you just allowing it in the fifth district? So it's allowed only with a conditionally used permit in our industrial zones and this is the only area of the city where we have industrial zones so that was the first kind of layer of the buffer that we see. I see I think there's more industrial zones actually. A little further. Yes, this would be Council District number five. But it's based on all of the different standards that we applied in the ordinance, which is that it needs to be in an industrial zone. It needs to be 600 feet away from any residential zoning district, 600 feet away from any sensitive receptor uses, which are all those uses I just listed off. These were the limited parcels that were left in the city. Okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you for putting this together. I think on the whole this looks good. There's a lot of, I think think just technical cleanup. But what I appreciate is that when we adopted the the New Zoning Code last year there's a lot of concern about what was going in there and that the idea was that we wouldn't get back to it for another 28 years or whatever it was since the last version. So we made a promise to the community that we bring this back every year and we we did, and I appreciate that, so we can make sure we're staying on top of the different issues that come up. I'm glad that planning commission weighed in. Looks like they caught a few things that are not too controversial. So I support this, I mean, as soon as we can resolve the firearms issue, I understand the legal constraints there, but I think this is good to go as is and I appreciate the effort. Thanks. I too want to thank you for putting this together and also the planning commission for making these recommendations. Overall, I'm okay with the recommendations that were made. The only question that I have is maybe I like a little bit more clarification on the mobile food vending from Ms. Mcculley, if you don't mind. And I mean, I guess the concern that I have with mobile food vendors is, you know, I don't want to be unfair to our brick and mortar, restaurants or stores. I feel like if we do become overwhelmed with too many food trucks in the city, then that kind of contradicts the direction that council wants to take with minimizing vacancies. That includes restaurants, things like that. So just a little bit more clarification as to how you know, how permanent these mobile food vendors can become. I mean, can one get a permit, meet all the guidelines and be a permanent fixture now on Mainstreeter, any of the major thoroughfares? Yeah, so to start off, to add some clarification to Mr. McCammon's comments, it's part of kind of the research in drafting this. We did look at other cities that had similar ordinances. And then ultimately our city attorney's office did provide us with a couple of ordinances that are used in other cities, including the city of Temple City. And I believe the city of Will Demar. And there were kind of two examples. Temple cities was much prefer ordinance. And the city of Old Mars was very detailed and so we tried to kind of meld them together and come up with standards that we felt best fit the city of Alhambra with respect to the question about health permits that is one of the requirements for obtaining the mobile food vendor permit, which does expire after one year. So you would need to renew it on an annual basis and there are very detailed application requirements in terms of providing information about the location and the operational standards. And then with respect to your question about balancing the needs of our brick and mortar businesses, there is a requirement specifically in there for mobile food vendors operating in the public right of way. Essentially requiring that they be located a certain distance away from retail businesses that retail, you know, food establishments essentially. I think the requirement was, yes, so it's 300 feet away of the nearest property line from any other mobile food vendor and then 300 feet of the nearest property line of any property on which an eating and drinking establishment is located. So that would cover any sort of restaurant business that we have. Thank you so before the Zoni code update that we have now were Did we have the I mean my thought is no, but I mean did we have the option of having somebody pull a permit and Become a mobile food vendor. Yeah, we we did have a City policy from the city manager's office that was developed. I want to say back in the early 2010s, kind of when the food truck craze was just starting out. And essentially that process involved requiring them to go through kind of a background check through the police department, as well as, you know, providing their health department license and getting a business license through the finance department, as well as also getting a temporary use permit through the planning division. Over the years, we've found that that's kind of been a very onerous process for mobile food vendors who maybe just want to try out and see if their business can be successful here in Allhambra. So the intent was to really kind of be a little bit more business-friendly and provide a more streamlined process with a very clear set of rules and regulations for how they need to operate. Got it. Thank you. Appreciate the clarification on that. With regards to item number recommendation number four from the planning commission. Lost my notes here, but I think it was regarding ADUs. Yes. So I know that Council members get a lot of questions about that. And so the question is, so if it eliminates setback requirements for something that is already in place, like a structure that's in place, if there were an addition made to that existing structure, does that setback elimination requirement apply? So this specific section, this was something that staff identified as an inconsistency. So I believe the way it read before, it said there shall be no required setback applies to ADUs created within an accessory structure. And so we're just clarifying that it's within an existing accessory structure. So for example, if you have a garage from the 20s that was built right at the property line, you know, you can have an ADU in there with the existing structure setbacks. Typically, if you were building a new ADU today, we would require a minimum site and rear yard setback of four feet. So that's what that clarification was, and it was actually suggested by staff because it was a correction that we noticed needed to be made and planning commission agreed with that. Thank you. So maybe too technical of a question for tonight, but if there was an addition done to that existing structure, would that require a set set set set? Yes, the addition, you're allowed to do a limited amount of an addition. I believe it's generally no more than 150 square feet, but the addition would need to comply with the setbacks which for 80s is generally a minimum of four feet. Thank you. I had the same question as also member Maasa and I think that clarified it for me and then also wanted to understand just a little bit about planning commission recommended revisions that can you maybe share a little bit of the context regarding number one and? In two or three are it sounds like it's just minor that if there's a language cleanup and just wanted to confirm there's no That that's just a language cleanup, but I'd like to understand more about the clarification behind number one right so. So the intent with number one is, as you are aware, is one of the main goals with the zoning code update, the conference of update we adopted in 2024 was to help stream lines or in processes. So with that, there were a lot of uses that previously would have required a conditional use permit and going forward no longer require a conditional use permit. So the intent with this was, it was really a specific example recently that we had at planning commission where there was a grocery store. They had a conditional use permit that allowed them to sell beer and wine and they wanted to upgrade their license to also sell liquor. The condition, the conditional use permit from the 90s said, if you upgrade your license to liquor, you need to go back in a mend your conditional use permit. Today, in the zoning code, if a grocery store wants to open and they want to sell beer, wine, and liquor, it does not require conditional use permit. So the intent with this conflicting conditions of approval was to really specify that if there's a use, which is otherwise allowed today without acquiring these additional permits, then they don't need to get those permits, regardless of what a prior entitlement says. And so the Planning Commission, they just wanted to make that clear that this provision is specific to uses. So I believe we just added in the word that it's an application planner permit for a use. We didn't have the word use in there before, so that's what that provision was. Understood. Thank you so much for that clarification. I think I feel good about this knowing that planning commission has waiting and I know there are very thorough in going through all these changes. So I don't have any more comments. Thank you, Council. I have a quick question before we leave. So the mobile food vendors include the ones who drive the food trucks as well as the street vendors? No, so we have a separate section of the municipal code that addresses sidewalk vendors. So this is strictly for food trucks, you know, mobile food vendors that are operating like motorized vehicles, not push carts. Okay, and is that the push trucks are called, are they, is that including the zoning of day? The sidewalk vending correct. No, because that that code already exists in the municipal code. I think it's in Title 5 or 9, but we didn't make any changes to that. And that actually we do we do it follow the Counties, regulations, or sidewalk vendors, or push car vendors? I don't know. OK. For the state has heavily regulated that area. So our ordinance regulates what we can to the extent we can, which is not a lot anymore. But one of the things we do require for a mobile sidewalk vendor that's going to dispense food is a health permit from the county. And do they need to renew? Do they have to apply for anything? It's supposed to renew that annually. Okay. All right, thank you, Mr. Dinn. Thank you. Mary, I have one more question. Did you remove parks as a specific sensitive area? Parks were included as a sensitive receptor use. So you didn't remove those? You didn't remove, okay, so those are included. Yeah. How about businesses that cater to student children? Yes. So yeah, so that's why there aren't any parcels available in that really heavy industrial area because of the sky zone use. And again, that's just based on the uses that are here today. So if those uses change, then that would change the number of parcels that would be available for that type of fire. And so how do we do that if some, let's say some guy comes in and you want to open a gun business and wow we just did a pocket park over over here how do we deal with that? So as long as the uses is there, they, you know if it's one of the sensitive receptor uses that's listed out in the ordinance then the fire themselves use wouldn't be allowed. Okay. So that's something that staff would check as people come into the counter to apply for that. Okay. Thank you so much. I move for approval. I'll second that. Roll call please. Wang. Yes. Maloney. Yes. Andraide Stadler. Yes. Mazza. Yes. Lee. Yes. Our next presentation is regarding approval of traffic calming guidelines and speed home policy. The city manager is there a report from staff for this item. There is a seating permit presentation will be given by Barman Janker of TransTech. Good evening, Mayor and Council members. Hopefully you remember me. I think I addressed you a few months ago. I just have three introductory comments I was going to make. My colleague, Jana Robbins, is here also if there are any questions that I cannot answer. Maybe she can help. Janna actually addresses or she attends your transportation commission more than I do. So she is very familiar with the city's process. Number two, just for the benefit of the audience, our members that are at home. Like I mentioned, I was before you on October 28th, and I made a presentation about traffic calming in general, a high level about traffic calming and different levels of traffic calming and the council directed us to go back and prepare a traffic calming policy and a speed on policy and bring it back to you. All the council members heard that, and I know that council member Wang has been added to the council now. I know her professionally, of course, from another city. I'm hopeful that she has also reviewed that presentation, and she's familiar with what was presented. And finally, I did receive some comments from the city manager's office about some comments and questions that may have been raised about some of the items in what was published. What I will try to do is to address those as part of my presentation and I try to clarify some some ambiguities about some things that are in the report. And if there are any further questions, I'll be happy. You can stop me at any time if you like or at the end or whatever that council is wished and I can go through those. With that next slide please. The last time we I was here we went through this presentation and we talked about three levels of traffic calming and these were ordered in two categories. Number one is in terms of how easy it is to implement them to go to know more extensive and more more more difficult and also about the cost. So the level one is easier to implement and easy and also the cost is low as you go through the steps. There are a little bit more difficult to install and there also the cost will go high. So in level one we talked about items like traffic brochures that we can prepare. In fact, I will show one of those at the end of my presentation. We talked about presenting those to the neighborhood meetings. We published those on the city's website. It is an education to let the people know where what traffic calming devices we use in what situations. We talked about police enforcement that when we receive a speeding concern from a resident or a resident, we will inform the police department to make we do some spot checks on those and to see if they can come to the street. That can be also supplemented with the traffic unit, a radar display unit that can be installed on the streets. So again, these are all education materials to let the people know what the speeds at what the speed they're driving on their own residential streets. Next level, we go to level two. These are, I have two or three slides on these. These are either low cost signs that can be installed. And these don't require a lot of studies. They still need to be studied to see if they are applicable to the street or not. But the study is not very significant. So they could include the speed limit signs, the larger the stop signs are locations that maybe people are not adhering to stop signs. We could put a reflecturized tape on the post and on the stop signs so that at night they can be more visible. If there are curves on the road that are not easily visible to the people, we can put advanced curve warning signs, a stop sign, a hit sign, suppose there is a curvature in the road that people cannot see the stop sign. We can put those advances to stop signs ahead. Next slide. By the same token, we can also include pavement legends for speed limits, for stop sign ahead and for edge lines that we talked about last time. In some roadways, we do install edge lines on each side of the street just to narrow the field of vision for the people who are driving down the streets in an effort to reduce the speed. And that has been proven to have some impact on some residential streets. Next. At some particular locations, specifically sometimes from when you turn from an arterial to residential street, if there are concerns or if there is some studies that have been done that there are a lot of cut through traffic, some the turns perhaps during certain hours can be prohibited or sometimes because of geometric reasons, maybe you turns need to be disallowed at some intersection. So those are the things that staff can easily assess and review and see if those science need to be studied. And finally, there's a lot of school related science and pavement markings that has its own criteria by itself. So we do monitor, we do review all your schools to make sure that all the signing and markings for the schools are up to date and up to the standard. Then we go to level three. Next slide please. Level three traffic calming devices are the types that need a little bit more analysis to figure out whether they need to be installed or not. these devices normally we would like to install these at the streets that at least the level 2s have been level 2 traffic calming measures have been implemented in the past 12 months, but we still are concerned or the citizens are still concerned that it has really has not done a good job of becoming the street then we can go to level three. The level three costs since some of those are high and I'll go through some of the cost later on, funding sources should be allocated either by the city council from the general fund or some sources, or perhaps if applicable, as we have done in the past, we can apply for some grants for some of those. And some of the traffic calming elements, more specifically, speed, hamson, and rambulist strips and things that I will discuss in a few minutes, those really, because there are a little bit more involved than a speed limit sign or a stop sign, they really need some community support through a petition process or something that I will go through. Next, items that we talked about last time in the level three are kind of mid to high level cost or electronic speed limit signs that we can install on residential streets. I mentioned last time that we try to put these with a radar unit if there are not as many trees on the street. And if they can have a good clear view of the sky, we can put them solar. The beauty of the solar devices is that once it has been done its job, if there is a street that we have been able to calm the speeds on that particular street with a radar sign, we could potentially remove it and put it maybe on another street so that we can get benefit from the same device so we don't have to buy it again. Flashing stop sign at some locations, again, it really depends on the location. If there has been some proven data that people are maybe not adhering to the stop signs if the location of the intersection is perhaps behind a curve or something that people are not easily seeing the sign we can invest a little bit more money by installing flashing stop signs at those particular locations. We don't want to put flashing in stop signs. Every single stop sign in the community, as you can imagine, if you put all of them flashing in stop sign, let it kind of lose as its effect. We don't know which one really is more important, which one is really deserving of such signs. Flashing Beacons, some school crosswalks, whether it is white crosswalk or school crosswalks, we can supplement them with flashing beacons, or what called RFP, which is a rectangular rapid flashing beacons. The only note about this is the flashing beacons on RFPs. There are some requirements in the California manual, which you have heard about the last time I mentioned that California MUTCD manual on uniform traffic control devices. There are some requirements about the traffic volumes and more specifically about the number of pedestrians that need to be present before you install a flashing beacon. So if there's only four people crossing, it really does not fulfill the wardens for a flashing beacon. And finally, the traffic circles, traffic circles, some communities do install them. There are pros and cons about the traffic circles. One thing that we have mentioned in the report is that normally, and I know that some communities don't necessarily adhere to it, but normally when you put a traffic signal, traffic circle, you do not install it at a location that is already controlled by four-way stop. And the reason is that four-way stops or three-way stop locations. Historical data shows that there is very little accident or very little collisions at an inner section that is already controlled by three-way stop or four-way stop. So in essence, it may, it really, of course, depends on the council, but it may not really be... by three ways, four ways, four ways, four. So in essence, it may, it really, of course, depends on the council, but it may not really be a prudent to spend 20, 30 to $40,000 worth of a traffic circle at the location that you really do not have a safety problem. I think one of the council members mentioned some, I believe it was council member Maloney about land escaping and those kind of things. If the intent of the traffic circle, of course, is land escaping and beautification and those kind of things, of course, that's a different issue that is a policy decision that the city council can consider. Next. These are a series of items that I mentioned last time about the speed homes or speed homes or speed cushions. I think I mentioned last time. There are really two categories of speed homes or speed cushions. There is one is the material and then one is how do you install it. The material for this speed hump can be either asphalt or it can be rubber. We mentioned last time that the asphalt is a little bit more durable. It's a little bit more expensive but not really a lot. But it's more durable. You can also rather than putting asphalt, you can put a rubber speed hump. The second category is whether you want a speed home that goes across the whole road from curb to curb, or whether you want to put some aisles between, basically, put like three or four squares, then they call them a speed cushion. And we talked about last time the beauty or the advantage of a speed cushion is that you can put those alleys in such a way that large truck, large fire truck can go through the speed cushion without being impeded. However, police cars, ambulances and other emergency vehicles, of course, they will be impacted whether it is a speed hump or a speed cushion. So that's kind of the difference between the two two. I think I'm still on the previous page if you don't mind. On the speed home level three. No, no, no, go one more, please. Okay, it must have. Okay, I may have skipped. Sorry, I think I put two pages to grab it on my page. I skip one page. So on this one, if you don't mind, go to the other one that says the Rumble Strips. Yes. Before you get to the speed, the speed homes, we talked about Rumble Strips also last time. And Rumble Strips are either a series of buttons or there are these linear parallel lines that you put on the street. So the effect of is that when you go over it, it makes a bumpy noise. I mentioned last time that normally rambla strips, you put them in front of something that you want to warn people. It is really not a speed control device. If there is a curve or if there is a hidden driveway or if there's a stop sign around the corner that you don't see it, sometimes you put rumbly strips just to let people know that they're some unique feature is ahead of their road. But some cities they have installed rumbly strips for speed control. We caution the council that there are pros and cons about rumbist groups that they are a little bit noisy and people who are next to them, they complain. And I have had some situations, some cities that rambulist groups were installed and the citizens complained and they were asking the council to remove. Curb extensions, the second, the one in the middle, curve extension can be installed either in the middle of a block or a right out at an intersection. The idea here, like the graph, the picture that shows in here, you can see that it is parking on the street and you bring a curb out. It has some advantages, whether it is a crosswalk or not. If there is a crosswalk, it reduces the length of the crosswalk and there's also some opportunity for some landscaping if that was the intent of the council on a long street block if you wanted to use curb extension for as a traffic calming device. You probably have to do it almost the same as with speed hump. You have to repeat it maybe two or three times, maybe every 300 feet every 400 feet to have that effect that people can can see curve extension and reduces the speeds. The raised crosswalks, you normally put it either at an intersection like the graph at the bottom right shows. So you basically elevate the crosswalk so it is the same level as the sidewalk so you don't really walk down. You just walk across across across, across, walk. If you put it in the middle of the block it is almost, almost functions like a speed hump and I will go through the speed hump criteria in a few minutes, in a couple minutes. And finally, what is called a hawk and this is, hawk is almost like you considered almost in terms of both how it functions and the cost of it is almost half of a traffic signal. Flashy Beacons are yellow and they just give you a warning device that you need to watch for something. A HALK is almost like a traffic signal, people push a button and you literally have to come to stop because the traffic signal, as you can see, you can see the red indication there. The traffic signal will go to red and you will stop the pedestrian crosses and after the pedestrian crosses, then you proceed. Since you don't necessarily have four poles, you only have two poles on a master's arm, the cost of it is almost half of the cost of a signal. A traffic signal these days costs up to $450,000 or so. A hog could be almost $200,000 to $250,000. Next, and I may have covered this one already. I did cover the speed humps. And next, we put in the traffic calming some order of magnitude cost for all these level one, level two and level three. The level one is between $50 to $100,000. One note about this is that the cost that we are indicating in here includes also the cost of studying whatever the citizen requesting. You know, a very simple asking asking for a care of warning sign or for speed limit sign or something. The study part of it may only cost a thousand or two by the signal warrant or a stop sign warrant or speed armament is much more involved. Just the study part of it alone could be $7,000, $8,000, $9,000. So these costs reflect the cost of the studying, the staff time that needs to invest the studying dose. It also includes the installation of those. So you cannot just consider the cost of the poll or cost of the traffic sign or whatever. It also includes the cost of the labor that either the city staff has to do do or they have to hire contractors to install those So in first category was 52 $5,000 and these are fairly low cost they include Rumble strips If I'm I'm sorry. I'm on the wrong page These are the things that we talked about, the traffic education and enforcement, the static signs, any curve painting, any edge lines that we need to put on the roadway, and any speed feedback signs that are electronic, and we can put them with solar. I moderate 50 to $100,000. These are a little bit more. It are mostly level three, applied to level three. Mostly, these are crossing guards. Crossing guard, of course, is based on what is approved or what has been contracted between the city and the crossing guard. They include some speed homes or speed cushions. Speed home, speed cushions, it really depends on the number of speed humps or speed cushions. We have mentioned in here that the $100,000 to $100,000, it really just covers about three to four speed humps. So if you have a street that requires much more, six or eight, whatever, then you have to double up the cost or the cost will go higher. It will definitely cover items like a rambula strips, a race crosswalk, solar or RFPs. They could be in the scatigory, flashing beacons. They could be in the scatigory. And the next slide, these are the items that are higher and over $100,000. And they include speed tables because the speed tables are wider. They're like 25 feet wide rather than a 12 feet wide, which is a speed hump. So they're constantly installing their more traffic circles, definitely fall into scategory. Anything for the RFP since they include a pole and a mast arm and overhead signs, those are very expensive. They fall into the sc category. Curb extensions, they become more expensive because once you put a curb extension, you have to take care of the drainage aspect of those two. So you may have to modify the drainage underneath the street. So those become expensive. Crosshawk, we talked about it before. Pedestrian signals, left-end phasing. We have been fortunate that we have been able to get a lot of grants for left and phasing at some of the intersections. But when citizens request for left and phasing or the new traffic signal, more often than not, we try to apply for a grant so that we don't have to use the city funds for those expenses. Next slide. We have put this slide in here because this is a very common request from the citizens. When people, when there's a speeding on the street, the very first thing that comes to people's mind is why don't you put this far, far away stop and hear roundabouts of the problem. There's a couple of notes on that in the California manual, there is a specific language that the stop signs are not supposed to use for speed control because the stop signs are only right away controlled. And in order to install a four-way stop at the intersection, we have to go by California, MUTCD, and consider traffic volumes, pedestrian volumes, collision history, and a whole set of criteria to find out where the reformed stop is, is warranted or not. By the same token, the same thing with the traffic signal. If people are asking either a left turn signal or a new traffic signal at some location, there are warrants in the California manual that we have to abide by and we need to take a look at. I did forget to mention something about the speed humps. I think one comment or one concern was that, and I kind of skipped over it, I think. We had mentioned last time, and I think it was in one of the slides, that the speed humps are speed humps and rambulist shapes. They are not in the California manual, they are not in the MUTCD. Things like a stop signs and traffic signals, warning signs, those kind of things, they are in the California duality. So the difference between the two is this. For a stop sign warrants, all the eligibility requirement, for a stop sign or for a traffic signal, is clearly defined in the California manual. For a stop sign, we have said that these are engineering devices. They are, it is something that the department has to come up with the specifications for a speed hump. So it's really, it's not governed by the California MUTCD. However, once you install those speed humps according to the engineering criteria that the city has adopted, California manual requires that there should be some warning signs, pavement legends and those kind of things, ahead of the speed, as well as on top of it, so that we warn the people ahead of, before they get into the speed home, that there is a new feature on the road. So the speed home itself is not in MUTCD, but all the signing and pavement legends and pavement marking that needs to be established on the street, those need to be according to the MUTCD. So that was a clarification that probably needed to be made. Next slide. We have pre-created traffic calming request process and this is something that if needed we can modify to make it more more clear if it's not. This is something that will be available at the City Hall. We will also make this available on the City's website. So a citizen can go to the website or the citizens can be directed to go to the website and fill this out. That is a step number one. They fill it out. There should be some initial review of the request just to make sure we understand what the request is so that we can establish for ourselves what we need to do for that request. So not every single request that comes to the city needs a traffic volume or accident data or a lot of other things. So the initial review is just by city staff to take a look at what the request was to make a better understanding of what the citizens are asking before we can go to the next level. And if it's needed, then obviously if there is a request for speeding or for a four-way stop or for some time to get else, then we have to conduct some traffic volumes, we have to measure the speeds on the roadway, we have to establish what is it out there and how bad is it and what traffic coming is applicable to that. Next, in terms of approval and administrative and authority and all that, approval process once it is fairly clear clear once the staff completes the study, it will be sent to the Transportation Commission and the Transportation Commission if it agrees, whether it will send it to the City Council. Award about the appeal process, I'll use an example. We are going to take an item to the Transportation to the transportation commission. There are either two cases either the citizens are asking for some kind of a device and the staff has evaluated it and agrees with it that yes we need to install such and such. That goes to the transportation commission. If the transportation commission agrees with it which in most likely I think they would. That recommendation if it is a new device to be installed that recommendation would come to the City Council for approval of that device The second version of is that the citizen is asking for something whether it's a four-way stop or something We do the analysis. Let's say that we We conclude that that device is not warranted So we take that to the Transportation Commission if the transportation agrees with the CDS staff that that device is not warranted. So we take that to the Transportation Commission, if the transportation agrees with the city of staff, that that item is not warranted, we shouldn't install it. That is the end of the process in our view. It really should not go to the council anymore because what we have studied and what we have concluded is already according to the council policy. So in our view, it really, it is a step that is not really needed to allow somebody to appeal what the Council has already approved. So that is kind of the logic behind it, if you have any concerns or any questions we can talk about it. On review of timeline, we are suggesting that you know if something has been studied, normally on on a residential street traffic volumes don't change much. The only thing that potentially could change on a residential street is collisions. If something going on that maybe collisions go up or something. So we are suggesting that if we evaluate the intersection again I use the four-way stop for for for an example. If we studied it and we collect traffic volumes and collision data and we conclude that the four-way stop was not warranted, we are suggesting that we shouldn't really be looking at it in one year again because the data in and out that would be normally the same. Unless, if somebody asked us to review it again, the easiest thing I think that we could do, and we would do, we would take a look at the collisions at least to see if the collision patterns have changed or not. If the collision patterns really have not changed, and the street is still safe, and there is no safety issue, we really don't think that it is worth to do a more new traffic council or anything, unless by for some reason we know that for some reason maybe traffic patterns have changed. Otherwise... worth to do more new traffic council or anything unless by for some reason we know that for some reason maybe traffic patterns have changed. Otherwise the street is probably the traffic volumes would probably normally be the same. With that I'm going to spend a couple minutes on the speed hop next. And one question I think was raised that why is there two documents and should this be really a part of the traffic calming document? And it could, it could very well be, this could be a chapter, it could be an appendix, it could be a part of the traffic calming guideline, it doesn't have to be separate documents. The only reason that we put it in separate documents is that more often than not when people, when the citizens are calling the city and are asking about a speed home, they are really not concerned about four way stops. They are not worried about warning signs. They are not worried about a signal. So, we thought that if they are asking specifically about the speed home, rather than sending them to a 50-page traffic calming report and then get them to the speed home, we might as well just directly get them directly to the speed home. That's really the only issue, but it really does not matter whatever the council's wishes. This could be a separate document or it could be a part of the traffic calming. The calming. With that, next slide please. Just general policy, speed homes and pavement, this is what I mentioned. I think I was here, I thought I had skipped over it. It was right in here. I talked about it already, that the speed homes are really, it's a street feature. They're not in the traffic control. I talked about this already. And they're mainly intended for residential streets. And we need to do a study, of course, to measuring of the speeds and volumes and this and that to find out whether the speed humps are warranted for that particular street or not. And next slide. This is an example of the speed h, how about the flyer and education material that I mentioned at the very beginning. I don't expect it to read it, but I just wanted to flash it on the screen. These are, there are probably seven or eight or 10 or more devices that we are working to prepare those, information about stop signs, about speed limits, about traffic signals, about left-end phasing, about crosswalks. So there's a whole set of things out there that we would like to prepare all these. Put them on your website, proper place on your website. So when people can look at those themselves or if somebody calls, we can direct them to that specific website so they can look at those and get a little bit more educated what traffic calming devices are and what is applicable for what. So this is an example of one. Next, in terms of screening and submittal process, if someone calls about the speed hump, We will be directed to fill out questionnaire, fill out what they're asking, what block they're asking. And then there is a petition process that needs to be done. And we are suggesting that 75% of the property owners should sign those. And there was a question on this, and I think I addressed this a little bit last time. Why should it be property owners? We think that it would may not be advisable to just let the area residents or just the tenants sign, because more often than not, as you can imagine, tenants, you could have long-term residents, along a city tenants, and you could have short-term residents. So hypothetically, six or eight or ten people that are renters, that are renting a place, they could vote either four or against a speed hump. And then these people would leave in six months or in a year or whatever. And then the criteria will change. New people will come in, those new people, they may be four or maybe against, and their decision may be against what the previous people decide. So what we have said that it really, the signature authority should really be the property owner. However, we would encourage once the residents call us, if they are tenants, we would encourage them to talk to the property owners and we encourage the property owners to get feedback from the area, from the tenants, from the area residents, but in terms of the signature, the valid signature, we believe that it really should be the signature of the property owners. But the council may comment on that if you wish. And the next slide. In terms of analysis of applications, I mentioned this already before that once the application is received, there are studies that need to be done based on the collision, speeding, traffic volume, traffic patterns to see whether something has been warranted or not. We will review or we will at least get input from the emergency people, especially the fire department. We have said that you know we normally don't install speedhumps on very direct emergency routes, but we would like to get input from them. You should have some say to this too. Just gets input so that all the input from the police and mainly from the fire department is also incorporated into the process. If the speed homes are qualified, of course, by the same, same as any other traffic calming device, we will take that to the Transportation Commission and then if the Transportation Commission decides on something, it will come back to the City Council for approval. And finally, award about the last comment, I think the last slide, a word about removal of the speed homes. This does not happen too often, and I haven't heard about those, but I know that Jaina tells me that it has happened at least in city of commerce when the speed homes were installed, and then people petitioned the City Council, they didn't like it, they wanted to be removed and apparently the city council removed it. So we are suggesting that if city through a process, through a petition process, the speed homes have been installed on a residential street and a year later they come back and as well, this is not good for whatever reason, that they should be almost a reversal process, they should be the same repetition and a staff review, transportation commission review, and city council to remove those speed homes. And finally, if by any chance residents they basically ask you to remove something and the speed homes are removed, then it really doesn't make sense that in a year against somebody else comes back back and so well, we change our mind, we would like it to install. So we're saying that if in case such a thing happened, which I really don't expect it to happen, but if in case we remove a stop speed humps at the request of the area residents, that we should not consider reinstalling those at least within five years, because it doesn't make sense really to every year to spend $100,000 in, $100,000 to remove it, put it back again, it's just economic cost. Now, those are mainly my points in the presentation. I'll wait. Aaron Maloney. Good evening, councilmembers. I'm Erin Maloney. I live at 823 North Margarita. And I just wanted to address very specifically some common sense issues related to, I'm very, very grateful that we've gone through actually two of the three phases that are proposed in the policy. And over the years I've lived in November for 23 years and there are stop signs that have come in and around that area but on our longer than usual block there is a grade going downhill. Human beings will always take the path of the least resistance when they're trying to get somewhere quickly. And so on Pine Street, there is no right hand, no turn on red at Pine Street. So in order to bypass Atlantic, they're coming down Margarita Avenue because there's a stop sign at the end. Thank you for putting that in many years ago. And then they can get down over to Atlantic. So just to bypass, you know, several streets, they go down our street. So in this, in the phase two study, that was just done. And I think it's been done a couple times where the, there have been the mobile unit and the sign unit. There is a noticeable difference. So the residents that are here tonight, many of us are out every single day walking, and there's young children and there's our elders. And so there's people who dart, the young children, and then there are people who are slower, are our elders, that you know, may want to cross the street to avoid a dog or something like that. So I have noticed the education in those signs works tremendously. People slow down if they know if they can actually see the reminder of the 25. So I would just like to, I'm wondering what are the results of those studies, now that we've had those studies. In accordance with the concerns of the residents, how do they compare once those traffic calming measures are taken in phase two, I'd be interesting to compare those. What is that analysis? Is it open for public to actually see the results? I think it could be very, very effective. So maybe not even getting to the point of speed helps, but just something that stops people. So that's what I just wanted to raise tonight is, is there an analysis that's actually going to happen between the test results and the final decision on whether we need this on Marguerite Avenue? So thank you so much. Appreciate it. Our next speaker on this item is Paul Thornton. Thanks. Specifically, thanks for the stop sign at Electric and Alhamrad that was put up. I was actually so moved by that installation that I sent my council member a Facebook message to say, hey, this is wonderful. This tells me that you care. That said, I did hear some things in the presentation that I found concerning. And I've never spoken at a city council meeting because up until late February, I was a journalist and I left the place where I work. So now I'm allowed to come to City Council meetings and do things like comment. And I have to say, I was really concerned. I detected that there is a lot of skepticism about speed humps, about, with all due respect. I felt like that this is not the city might not consider this an ideal option with things like studies about collisions and so forth. And at least on my block, I live on electric avenue between Huntington and Alhambra. No, there aren't very many collisions. We do have rumble strips, we have many signs, but people still drive at what I think of really as murderous speeds between Alhambra and Huntington, two pretty important throughways. And you might not be able to find much evidence that we need a speed hump based on some of the criteria that were outlined. But if you knock door to door and ask people if they are safe, feel safe letting their children play on the front lawn, walk to school, my children sometimes walk to and from park school, they would tell you absolutely not. So in that sense, I hope that whatever the City Council adopts, that it is as much a part of this process as possible. So residents, when they are displeased by a recommendation that there should not be a speed hump, we can come to the City Council and say no. Some of the data that we live in our lives are not worn out in what's presented in these studies. I know that that's stop sign at the corner of electric and Alhambra. It's a simple gesture that allows my kids now to feel much more safe walking home from school, but really what we need on electric avenue and other places are active traffic calming measures such as speed humps. And I can tell you, based on my experience, writing about transportation issues as a former journalist. Cities that adopt postures that, like the City of Los Angeles, Vision Zero, without necessarily implementing hard infrastructure changes tend to fail. Hard infrastructures really get the job done, and I hope that this City Council, when this plan is adopted, when there is a process, they err on the side of changes such as speed humps to actively slow traffic in all hammer. Thank you. Our next speaker is Diane Liu. Hello, council members. I've also never spoken, so I've written it down, so I don't forget anything. I live on North Margarita, and I'm here tonight as a concerned resident and a pedestrian advocate urging you to act quickly and decisively in support of a comprehensive speed hump policy. I'm here today because I don't think we should wait for tragedy to strike before we do anything. It's clear that on many of our residential streets, Margarita and Electric, including it's very unsafe for pedestrians, for children, for elderly who are walking the streets, as well as people who walk their dogs like myself twice a day. In my five years of living here, there have been three near misses, right? Almost bit struck by a speeding vehicle coming down the street, even though I've waited before crossing, looking both ways, or I'm just trying to get into the street to avoid another dog. So it's very clear to me that this is very necessary and we need not only structural change, but physical deterrence. It's nice to hear that there's signs being put up and rumble strips and things like that, but the only thing that is going to physically stop people from speeding down our streets are humps. We have on one end or we have on both sides two large streets and we have a car dealership just around the corner. This means there are a lot of people test driving cars, a lot of people needing to get places quickly, and this really adds up to a lot of speed incidents. And our camera goes off quite often throughout the day spotting many speeders. I know that we've had spot enforcement and we have had police on our street. And on the nights that that has happened, I've heard that blip three or four times within 10 minutes, making it very clear that there are people speeding down that street often enough that the cops are handing out tickets. So again, all of this to say, it's very clear that this is an issue for me and my neighbors. And I don't want to get into the glory details, but I grew up in Hassan Heights and there was a similar street off of an intersection by a park and a residential neighborhood. It was an issue to a lot of the citizens, nothing happened and a young girl was struck and killed and then they finally installed a stoplight there. But every time I cross that stoplight, I think of that young girl passed away. She would have been older than me at this point, probably with a family and it's just horrifying to think that we can do something we choose not to. So I urge you to adopt a comprehensive policy that is not rooted in bureaucracy that can be implemented quickly, whether that means we have to take measures of like a pilot program to speed it up or to add additional staff to make sure that this gets passed through. But it's something that we thank you all for taking this far. It just needs to be taken to the next level. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. Applause. Our next speaker is Gina Garcia. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Gina Garcia and I live on 819 North Margarita. Those of us who live mid block have been dealing with ongoing issues related to speeding vehicles for many years now and I want to thank you for developing a proposed traffic calming policy for the city of Elambra. And as always, thank you to Elhambra Police Department for your consistently swift response to community concerns. We're also grateful for temporary solar radar signs that you provided. Their presence truly does make a difference while they're in place. As I've mentioned in the past, there have been several near misses involving children, pets, and wildlife. Personally, even something as routine as putting my toddler in his car seat feels dangerous when I'm parked on the street. Despite my door being open and clearly buckling my child in, drivers do not slow down or move over. Sometimes speeding past so fast that my car door shakes from the force. While I am thankful that a policy is finally being drafted, I do have some concerns about the steps and high thresholds required before real action can be taken. The approval process includes several barriers, including multiple studies, a very high threshold of 75% community support, and other criteria that are more stringent than in neighboring cities like Pasadena. Another major concern is that the policy does not include any clear timelines for each step in the process. For example, once a citizen submits a request, how long does it take for the first study to begin? How long are the phases? Without a transparent and predictable timeline, it feels like the process can be delayed indefinitely. And to me, this creates a sense that the city staff have too much discretionary power over how and when things might move forward. Also, when it comes to traffic studies, where and when do we as residents get the results? What is the process for accessing that information? It's not clear at all. It would be greatly appreciated if we could have easy access to the data to keep us informed as we advocate for this cause. On our particularly long block, for example, neighbors living closer to the stop signs aren't likely to support the measures like speed humps because they don't experience the same speeding issues as those of us in the middle of the block. Would it be possible to revise the policy so that approvals are based on input from residents within the specific affected zone. That would be more fair and accurate way to assess the support. I would also strongly urge the city to consider conducting a citywide community survey specifically focused on pedestrian and traffic safety. I can guarantee that the results will show what many of us already know. The majority of Elhamber residents see traffic safety, especially speeding a major problem. Giving people a voice through a survey could help shape more responsive and equitable policies. Another question I have is this. Once this new policy is adopted, will residents like myself and my neighbors who have already initiated multiple traffic studies need to start over or will our past efforts still count? We've been advocating for years and it would be deeply discouraging to have to go back to square one. I'm also concerned about the enforcement of speed limit. If this posted speed limit is 25 miles per hour, why is there a nine mile per hour grace given to violators? There's a significant difference in the outcome of collisions at 35 miles per hour versus 25 miles per hour, especially when it comes to pedestrian safety. Finally, if we could complete all the steps and our request is still denied and there is no appeal process, can you at least commit to offering us an alternative solution that demonstrates that you're listening and willing to meet us halfway? For example, something like painted illusion speed humps or other low-cost visual deterrence could help. All I'm asking for is that the thresholds for approval be lowered, that the process be made more transparent, and that the city considers joining other cities and adopting vision zero goals. As the saying goes, one death is too many. I'm here tonight to advocate for positive proactive change because lives are on the line and I believe that we can do better. Better. Thank you. Our next speaker is Mr. Meyer. Good evening, good evening Council members. Thank you for having us. I live at 824 North Margarita and the neighbors with all these same concerns. Again, we are thankful for this process going forward, but I will be frank that the ultimate goal in our neighborhood is speed humps. We've gotten the other ones, the edge finding all of them help, but there really isn't anything that's going to prevent the death of a child that darts out in there other than speed humps. It really is what's going to make the big difference. And as Paul said, that's basically our main goal. That's it. That's what we want. So, again, to some of the finer details that staff members spoke to, I would like to see that 75% threshold lowered because it is. We just need a majority. I feel like 50% is a very fine number to have. And then again, on another issue that discourages me is the appeals process. This is something that we can find whether the neighborhood once or not. So if we bring it forward and we go through the policy of submitting the request, finding the appropriate amount of neighbors that want to agree to it, but there should easily be a, once they've declined if you use that word, that there should be a process in every democracy democratic process, there should be a way to say, hey, we disagree. Let's figure out where it is And the reason that we can't have that. So again, please continue to move this forward. say, hey, we disagree. Let's figure out where it is and the reason that we can't have that. So again, please continue to move this forward. And as Diane said, we are looking for expedited ways to get this done. We've been working on it for years, trying to get speed humps. So again, thank you for your time and consideration. I hope we'll move forward with it. Thank you. Our next speaker is Mr. Lewis McCammon. Good evening again, LumaCammon 105 North Cordova Street. I'm pleased to see the council considering again and we've seen variations of this presentation previously and it looks like at this point there will be some action to move it forward. I have, I've listened very carefully to the comments from the people from North Martin, Redistry. I think they make a lot of excellent points there. There are some other areas of the city that I think are also concerning. We have lowered the speed limit just recently on a number of major streets in the city of Alhambra. And this was as a result of a very extensive traffic study running as I recall, 100 to 200 pages worth a very detailed documentation. And I've seen the new lower speed limit signs go up on parts of Main Street, parts of Atlantic and things like that. I haven't noticed too much of a reduction in the speed, but at least the signs are up. And I'm thinking that looking at some of the options that they had there, one that's a relatively low cost option, but I think might be fairly effective at least during the daytime is to paint those new speed limits on the street itself so that to be as they are driving see it there aren't a lot of speed limit signs you don't want too many you don't want overperliferation to the signs, but I think if you just have that second reminder there on the pavement that that would help. Now that focuses mostly on the major streets. I think when you get into neighborhoods then you've got to look at what the residents are saying, what issues they're identifying. I've heard from concerns in part of Emery Park about people going across Poplar and stuff like that and trying to get some method to get more safety features on that. One thing I saw that I think just should be almost universally done in the city. And I see the very effect of it night, when you have a stop sign, make sure it's a reflective stop sign, not just some dead red paint, but the reflective strip just on the pole. Very inexpensive, but very highly emphasizes the availability of that stop sign. That's something I think just should be universal throughout the city. Those stop signs with the flashing beacons usually solar or powered and so forth. They're effective there. I agree that they aren't needed everywhere but there are some places where you go at night and because of the trees or something It it's a little hard to see the stop sign until you're right on top of them. And that's very helpful on those kind of locations. Speed humps, something that should definitely be considered where there is a specific problem. And Margarerita is certain I think made their case on that. Thank you very much. Our last speaker is Veronica Alvarez. I'll ask. I'll ask. Good evening, council members. I think that in some instances we need to go straight to level three. So anyway, I'm here today as a concerned resident in our community. Speeding cars in our neighborhood have become growing concern. And so according to the most recent 2022 data from the California Office of Traffic Safety, Alhamber recorded 304 fatal and injury collisions in that year. 21 involving pedestrians and 25 involving bicyclists. Speed-related crashes and suspected speed-related hit and run accounted for 17% of fatal and injury collisions. And that doesn't take into account the speeding cars that have taken the lives of our beloved pets. I personally lost two cats due to cars racing down my street with no barrier to stop them. So over this over these past two years, there have been two high-speed hit and run accidents on my street, both resulting in significant damage to parked cars and posing a grave danger to the safety of our residents. And in both cases, the cars left skid marks that clearly showed the collision course highlighting the severity of this problem. So I'm sure that there are many priorities for this city. And per the city's website, the quality of life, the citizenry is one of them, and ensuring the safety of our residents is in keeping with the quality of life of the residents. So I, as such, I think I believe that the city is able to tackle this ongoing potentially life or death issue with the proven most effective tool out there and those are speed humps. They're proven, they're effective. It's an effective solution. Residential areas for the obvious reason, right there. They force drivers to slow down. And numerous studies have shown that speed bump significantly reduce obviously vehicle speed. And by installing these humps, I think Alhambra creates a safer environment for our children, elderly residents, and all those who use our streets, including our pets. The accidents I mentioned above and the loss of my pets could have potentially been avoided had our residential street had speed bumps. So every neighbor on my street that I've spoken to shares this very concern and supports the installation of speed humps. So City Council, please consider the following points which I know you already know. Speed bumps will reduce the risk of accidents and protect the lives of our residents. These other measures, not so much. Speed bumps will protect property. Speed bumps have massive community support. And I respectfully request that the City Council prioritize this, the well-being of our community. We ask for the installation of speed bumps in our neighborhoods. We are asking you to create a safer and more secure environment for all who live and visit El Hanbra. Thank you. Do we have any speakers via Zoom there wish to speak on this item? A metam, we do have two raised hands for this item. The first speaker is Oscar Amaro. Good evening Council members. I'm assuming you can hear me. Yes we can. As I said, good evening Council members, Mayor Lee and City staff. I know my time is limited, so I'm going to read my prepared comments quickly. Has I have a lot to say about this? My My name is Oscar Tomorrow, my wife and I reside in the Bremona Park area of Alambra, which is the neighborhood between Valley Boulevard to the North, the 10th freeway at the south, and within the major arterials of Garfield on the east and Atlantic at the west. Our home is on south six street, which is the only other street other than Atlantic and Garfield that traverses the San Bernardino Freeway, connecting Alhambert and Monterrey Park. That means we get a lot of traffic going past our house and along our street. Ramona Elementary School is located just a block north of our home at the corner of South Sixth Street in Norwood and we have children and families walking down our street daily. We have a number of traffic related problems in our neighborhood. They include people speeding east or west on Glendon Way between Atlantic and Garfield, being that there are only two stop signs, one at Ninth Street and another at Sixth Street in Glendon Way. We constantly have people not stopping at the for-way intersection, stop, not only going north and and south but also east and west. We have people doing donuts in our neighborhoods at the wider intersections and drivers racing southbound on sixth from Glendonway the intersection and under the freeway overpass into Monterey Park. This is continuous and it's not only southbound traffic but it's also drivers blowing through the stop sign that's as you travel northbound coming up from under the underpass. When my wife and I moved to Alhambra in 2000, she used to walk all over our neighborhood on a daily basis until she was almost hit twice. Now she only walks in her city's parks. As a fervent walker, she does not feel safe as a pedestrian in here in El Ambra. Our son has often wanted to bike or walk to school, but we refuse that either because on a weekly basis, both of us see people running stop signs and red lights. Since the time we've lived in our home, we've seen at least 10 vehicle lose control and crash into residential walls, fences and trees, or into yards, and hear crashes almost monthly at that intersection. And as if that weren't enough, we've had six vehicles belonging to visiting family members over the course of living there, hit while parked in front of our house. The last collision occurred just last year, which completely totaled my wife's car. As much as I'd like to believe that the traffic calming measures will help, I have serious doubts that they will help in our neighborhood. I have wanted to explore the possibility of installing speed bumps in our block for years. And in fact, I brought this issue up to City Council some years back after someone was killed by a speeding driver under the underpass. Then, Council member, Messina immediately shot it down, citing an impedance to emergency vehicles, despite other cities having them without affecting response time. Given that, I am encouraged to see the various speed hump options as well as traffic circles being proposed. I believe traffic circles are an additional stop sign at the corner of fourth and Glendonway would greatly help in slowing down traffic along glendonway. Although ideally, I'd love to see the speed homes installed along the southbound raceway along sixth. A few comments and two questions. I would like, I would hope that the city would ensure that any and all educational materials related to traffic calming guidelines and speed bump policies are translated into Spanish, Chinese, and Vietnamese. 2. I would ask that the City Council consider lowering the resident, endorse petition percentage for speed humps and rumble strips from the proposed 75% to 66.7. Both the City of Los Angeles and the City of Pasadena require 66.7, which is still considered a super majority. Three, I ask that the city council consider amending the traffic calming guidelines to include an appeal process. Currently, there is no appeal process, and I believe that needs to be changed so that there is a process to city council available to residents should they desire it. And four, I'd also be open to installing speed enforcement cameras, much like red light ones, but are instead triggered by excessive speed. The perfect spot on our block would be the city median at the end of the block where the speeding cars were to go under the freeway. Here's the question. Has Elhamber's Transportation Commission had the opportunity to review these guidelines and policy? I didn't see it on their January or March agenda. Your commissions are valuable tools and could provide vitally important feedback input and expertise on issues. Not having Alhamber's Transportation Commission review these guidelines and policy is a major oversight. If it hasn't been reviewed by your Transportation Commission, I'm curious why it was not reviewed. I am pleased to see that they all have that our hammers finally focusing on this critical public safety issue and commend this council for addressing this. Finally, my hope is that this will empower residents to make changes on their streets, making our hammered neighborhoods safer for both young and older residents. And as much as I want to see traffic calming guidelines and a speed bump policy adopted, I encourage you to have your Transportation Commission review these guidelines before you adopt either one of them. Thanks for your consideration. The next speaker is Elsa Gutierrez-Avilas. Miss Seveeless, you can unmute yourself now if you'd like and make your comments. She might not be there. There are any other raised hands at this time. Thank you. Oh unmute. unmute. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Yes, hello. Please make your comments. Do you hear me? Yes. This is Henry. I mean, that's calling We can hear you. Okay. I read over the material. It's Henry. I mean, let's I live at 3401 Julep place just to cry five. I'll hammer heels We over here in the in all hamper heels are in favor of the speed humps. I got it. I read all, but most of the write up on this number four. And I had some of the questions were answered by the presenter, but I'm going to ask them anyway again, because I jotted down this information. And here are the questions. Who's going to be on the administrative review board? How is this new system different from what TransTrek Engineering does in its presentations to the Transportation Commission? That's a second question. The third one is, what's the new role of the Transportation Commission because you kind of changing it up right here? The next one is is how does this new system differ from what we already have with the TransTech Engineering and the Transitation Commission? Here, this is a comment here. It seems like you're putting up a lot of obstacles to get to level three. the threshold I think is too high. You're adding more layers of bureaucracy. So it says here, we need 75% of the property owners residing on an effective street to be submitted for a valid community approval. That threshold needs to be lowered. You know, a trans tick, when I was on a transportation commission, they only analyzed segments of roadway. And then there exists a problem with that. And then the other thing too is that when they analyze collisions, it's only accidents that have been reported. So I remember asking the corporal, what I called a bottle of Rowei, said, met where Ramona road turns in the palm and I asked him about the accidents, I asked the corporal and he told me you know what you could have a thousand accidents over there but if they're not reported it's not in the database. That's a problem. So we need to lower the threshold and then this whole process became more bureaucratic. That's the only problem that I have with the whole situation. Again, who's going to be on this administrative review board? Because you're adding more bureaucracy to the whole thing. Once again, please approve the addition of adding speed humps. Do you have any questions for me? Oh, last thing. Do you hear me? Yes. Do you hear me? Yes. Okay. You know, I submitted a request for the five-way stop at Halman. So it at Ross in Westmont and Westmont and Halman. And I never got any information back. I sent an email to Melissa Ramos, excuse me, and I never got a response to my email. I see that email to Adele and Drottie Stadler and to Noia Wang. So they're aware of that situation. So again the five ways stop at Halman and Ross and Westmont and and Westmont and and Halman and the other one was it the the curve at or remote West Ramona Road becomes a palm. So at least please acknowledge the fact that I had sent an email out to Melissa Ramos. She can email me back. That's it. You have any questions of me? And no, we don't have any questions for you at this time. Thank you for your comments. There are no raised hands on Zoom at this time. No. Does the council have any comments or questions for staff on this item? Thank you, Mayor. I will start with some of my quick clarification questions. Just want to thank our consultant for the very thorough presentation on the traffic calming and just hearing the public comment and concerns that's raised just quickly wanted to clarify. I know that we have listed level one, two, three, as the layers of traffic on me. And we start with the easier and less costly ones. And we can escalate. And can you maybe clarify for us that for the streets that have already implemented maybe level one or two? Do they still have to start from zero? Or is it part of the evaluation of the application to see what has already been implemented and they can move directly to level two or three? Yeah, the thought was that we would like to keep it about a year or so to see whether really those in those traffic calming measures that we have implemented, whether they have had any impacts or not. We can do some speeding counts, some traffic volume counts. So we don't want to do it as soon as we install these, let's say we installed edge lines on the street, we shouldn't really just be moving to level three within one month of what we just did. We're saying that there should be at least a one year demonstration period so that we can evaluate those measures whether they have been effective or how effective they have been, but they don't have to start from scratch now. After a year, then if we convince ourselves with the data that those measures have not been effective, then we can move to the level three. And it's just so basically we will be, once we get application, we will be conducting data collection and then look at engineering evaluations and also look at existing condition, what was done already there and all of this will be comprehensively reviewed and then we decide where we go from there. So it doesn't have to always start at level one or two. It really depends on the outcome of the review. Exactly. And for level three, I know there were some comments that we should just go immediately to level three, except the speed-arm is a different, different issue because it mostly, like I said, it's not a traffic control device. It's mostly the wish of the people. And but there are some criteria needs to be met. But the other thing we really need to first exhaust our options with a low cost and issues that we can implement easily. We have to exhaust those before we jump on to the level three, just because of the sheer cost of the measures. Yes, understood. And then how are we measuring the effectiveness of the different levels of measures that we do putting to place? Is it, is there, maybe there isn't a way? I don't know, maybe it's based on community concerns. People, you know, we went through level one measures and then we still hear concerns, the speeding still persists. Maybe it's that and can you maybe share a little bit about that? Is there any measures that we put in place? I think some of those can be substantiated by field studies. Let's say that people are rolling through a stop sign and we go ahead and we enlarge the stop signs. We can do some field checks when the complaint was made. And after we enlarge the stop signs, we can do one more than once, maybe go to the same intersection, see how people are obeying the stop signs. In terms of the speeding, the people talk complain about speeding. We can put hoses out there, we can measure the speeds to see what it is. And after we do whatever that, whatever measure is that we implement it, then we can measure the speeds again. did we make any difference or not? If we put edge lines on the street, if we put some other device on the street, if we put a speed display signs on the street, did we make a dent or not? Did we make a change or not? So those are the things that we can do, basically, it's almost like it before and after. While the complaint was made, and then after we implemented those measures, We can do some studies to see how effective those measures. Thank you. And then I know that collision record was in there as one of the criteria that we do look at. I know that's coming from a new TCD and that's part of the engineering criteria that we do have to consider. How does that impact the rest of the evaluation? Maybe can you share a little bit about the collision record? Is it something that assists in a review or is it requirements? Something has to happen before we move on. Right. There are two parts of that question and actually this will answer the gentleman that said that he's a reporter and he mentioned something that I had said this the collision reports. I did not if I did the apologies, but I did not really make a mention of his collisions as part of the speed hump. There are, the cell is a single cell, the cell is a single cell, the cell is a single cell, the cell is a single cell, the cell is a single cell, the cell is a single cell, the cell is a single cell, the cell is a single cell, the cell is a single accidents, that intersection qualifies for the traffic signal. So those, yes, we have to look at the collision. For the speed hump, collision is not a requirement for the speed hump. Because the speed hump, again, it is not a traffic control device. It is mostly by partition process, but we have to fulfill some, is it really a speeding going on or not? Does it, the volume threshold meets or not? We don't want to put it on very low volume industries and we don't want to put it on a very high volume industries, but collision was not a part of the speed homes. Got it. Thank you. And I know when we went through all these traffic calming measures, you talked about them in terms of their cost, and then also the ease of implementing. Can you maybe speak to the effectiveness of these measures? Is there any particular measure that's through your experience has been effective and maybe speak a little bit to the effectiveness of the measure? Yeah, I think in my opinion, based on some data that we have received from the citizens, and I think some people have already mentioned to you at this council meeting. The edge lines, they do have some effect, they do reduce some speeding, they won't reduce it by 8 or 10 miles, but there would be marginal 2, 3, 4 miles perhaps. Those reduce the speeds a little bit because then the field of vision for the people who are driving the street is narrower now. So do you reduce those? The speed limit signs, the electronic speed limit signs, the solar ones, those definitely have some impact. They did, we have, when I was in Pasadena several years ago, we installed these on some streets, even in order to reduce the speed some on Pasadena Avenue, in fact, just north of you here. So those flashing solar speed limit sign that we installed on Pasadena Avenue, after a while the speeds went down enough so that we were able to reduce the speed limit on that road from whatever it was, let's say from 40 to 35 or whatever it was. The trailers have some impact, they do have impact, but they're a very short term because we cannot put the trailers, they cannot be put out there every single day. So we put out it, maybe a couple of days, two or three days a week, and then we move it. But it is nice, the trailers are nice that we can move them across the city, we can move them to various residential streets in the city. So those are some of the benefits and the margin on the face that you get out of those. Thank you so much. That's all my questions for the consultant. And then I do have a question maybe for staff. I wanted to understand more about our capacity in terms of enforcement. in our police, we have a traffic division that's focused on traffic enforcement and help me understand the staff in capacity we have for the city of Elambra. Mayor, members of the city council, we currently in our traffic division in the police department have it staffed with a sergeant and three officers. Those officers right now, two of those are motor officers, along with the sergeant. They are charged with investigating traffic collisions and on top of writing tickets for speeding and monitoring the areas around the city that we get complaints about from the residents. So we have one sergeant and three officers that they cover the entire city about Hambra in terms of traffic enforcement. Correct. Understood. I think those are my preliminary questions. I get clarifications. I do have my comments later that I would like to give the floor to my colleagues to ask their questions. I will ask, express my comments later. so thank you again, Translc for the thorough presentation. You know, I think that in a perfect world obviously, most of the, or all of the council here would support the higher level of traffic calming measures and immediate implementation. You know, obviously we know as a mod, a council body that we don't have the means or the fund availability to implement. So I think in some areas something is better than nothing. I know that the traffic pumps are something that many residents have requested for years. very familiar with the area up by Margarita, those Robeless, all those streets up there. And I think they are very necessary. I lived and still only property on olive between Huntington and Elham Road as well. And so I'm familiar with people trying to avoid that Atlantic and speeding up olive as well, which is the street that I'm referring to. So I think traffic comes would be effective, of course, but the funding is the issue. And I know that's something that we're going to be reviewing in the near future to see if we can start implementing those and prioritizing the areas where they need to go. But again, I think something would be better than nothing. In some cases. I think we as a council really need to just focus and prioritize which are the areas of higher risk and see what we could do to address some of those issues. Like in my case, I am a council member for district two, which includes the Elmandsert Park area. And I know that I've received dozens and dozens of resident complaints where Elmands between Cordo and Valley is always an issue of people speeding up and down the street. And of course, you're only missing children. And I know we've had a couple collisions here in that area. So, again, I again, I think, you know, I'd like to see about reviewing possible funding for this and maybe prioritizing certain areas to start addressing immediately with speed humps. But also, my question is, is there any type of like temporary removable speed humps that could be installed? I mean, I can't imagine that it can be done. Anything that can be done just for trial to see like on margarita, you know, can something be installed temporarily? Yes, definitely. That is what I mentioned by rubber speed hum, sort of speed cushions. Those are the types that all it is. It is bolts that you can put in the ground. If you did purchase those, maybe perhaps for the first time, you may need to bring the vendor or some people who are knowledgeable how to install these, maybe to install those. If they teach your public-washed department, I would imagine it should not be a very difficult procedure to install those. They come up with a series of bolts. You just have to have the right equipment and the right tools to drill those in the pavement with bolts and you put them in a ground. That's really what it is. And in case for whatever reason you are not happy with them, yes, you can take those out and you can put them on another street. But those rubber ones, they are potentially portable. Yes. Great. Thank you. Just at a cross-sid, I mean, I know that on page 37 of the full report, it gives us an idea of what some of the costs are like. Something low impact would be 50,000, which is kind of an average idea. Moderate, you're looking 50 to 100,000 and anything that is high is 100 or well over $100, dollars. What would be the cost of do you think? I mean, can you give us an idea of the cost of a rubber movable speed hump? I just I knew that this issue may come up. So I just checked my email that some investigation I have done. I got some my city where I lived. They installed some rubber speed humps and I got them some information from them. The data, I don't know how old it is, at least three, four years old or at least. At that time, I think instead of a speedhom, just one set of a speedhom, it had cost the city $7,000. They paid about $2,000 at the time to install them. And there are some signs and pavement markings and things. So you have to add all that together. So when you add all that together, even just one set of a speed hump, it will be about $12,000, $13,000 in relation in comparison to the asphalt one. The asphalt one could be close to $15,000 including asphalt, material, installation, signs, markings and everything. So you're maybe saving a couple thousand dollars to $3,000 to $3,000 with the rubber ones. But if the public works, they can be trained how to install those. You could save $2,000 basically per speed, cushion or per speed hump every time. So if you've got four of them, if potentially in the future, the public works staff can install, then you can save maybe $8,000 for four speed humps. Great, I appreciate that. I think that's encouraging because it always gives us a little bit more options than having to wait and spend $100,000 plus on some of these other measures as well. But I'd like to see if we can consider that in the future. We're scheduled to have further conversation about funding for this. In the meantime, I think the only other comment, I think some of the residents on Margarita mentioned, you know, the data. And I think the data to what we see on the data and what is actually happening and what their experiencing can be a little deceitful. So that's it. That's those are my comments. Thank you. I think the data can be provided on the website. I just want to clarify because I know in another city there was a confusion. So when you install a speedometer, it is not just a cost of one. You cannot just install one. So depending on the length of the street, if you need four of them, it is four times, let's say $12,000 is $50,000. If you need six of them, it is six times, $12,000 to $15,000. So you need to keep that in mind. with that said how far spaced out are they? About average is about 400 feet. Sometimes depending on where the where the property lines are, proximity to an intersection, drainage, manholes, this or that, we may have to reduce it a little bit or enlarge it. The rule of thumb is between 350 or so to 500. Average about 400, but 350, 400 or so. so something like. Great. Appreciate the effort. Thank you. Sure. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm really happy that we're here discussing this topic. It's something that's been under discussion for a long time. We, this sort of an outgrowth of our pedestrian bike safety program, at least this iteration, this discussion about our traffic calming and speed bumps in particular. So thank you to staff for moving this, thanks to the colleagues for agreeing to move this forward, and I'm happy that we're here. Ultimately, this is an issue of life and death in our community and it's a challenge to the policy makers To it's a test of where we put our values and we put it on moving cars faster our city or people's lives and their And they're standard of living and they're feeling of safety in front of their homes and in their communities. So I think we're doing the right thing by moving this direction, and I do think that we're right on the cusp of this. So thank you to everyone for that. That said, I think that this policy, the traffic calming policy, or the guidelines, I guess. I think it's a really good start. I think that, as I thought more about it tonight, I think that probably the speed hump policy needs to be integrated into one policy. I think it's a little too confusing to have two different documents that people look at. There's some overlap in these two documents, there's some redundancies, and there's actually some contradictions in these two documents. So I want to make sure that we have everything clear. I also think that the process itself needs to be much clear. I read through it and it was very detailed and that's helpful, but I would, I sat down, probably took me two and a half hours to go through line by line, making notes, writing them up, I sent them to staff and I actually noticed that there's a lot of changes and responses and follow up information based on some of the things that I had gave feedback on. So I appreciate that. That means we're working through this. I do think it still needs some work. One of the suggestions that I had up front was in sort of page two or three of this policy, these guidelines, we should have like a flow chart, like an infographic. Here is the process. Right now the process to me seems to be that you submit a request. It goes, it may go to the Transportation Commission. It goes, you have some studies and you might get some step one stuff. And then there's some more studies and then you get step two stuff. And there's some more studies and people submit a petition. And maybe you get speed bumps unless something else over here happens. It is, it's far too confusing, I think, at this point. I know we're starting from scratch, so we're creating this from the ground up so not this is not a knock on anyone this is feedback from me looking at it as a policy maker and as a user because I live in the same neighborhood as a lot of the folks here and my street is is affected the same way so I sit at my kitchen table, marking up this policy as I watch the car speed by. So it's really, you know, in front of my face here. I put myself in the position of a neighbor's or people on my street who moved in with the young kids, and they say, this is dangerous. What do I do? And if they had to read this, I think it would be a little too much at this point. They may see something a clear executive summary with a flow chart infographic That would be a little too much at this point. They may see something a clear executive summary with a flow chart, infographic, out of it. That would be helpful just getting to that point, of course, in language, absolutely in language wherever possible. At this point too, I think when skipping ahead to the speed bump portion of the speed hump portion, it seems to be that you turn in the petition and then a bunch of other things have to be analyzed. I think that's, I think it's backwards. Because if members of the public get together with their neighbors and they get a bunch of signatures out and then they're told that one of these other things didn't come through or didn't check off and then so no speed humps. That is not only is it discouraging, you're creating a major PR problem for your council members up here, right? So we create this policy and then folks go through it on their own, they go knock door to door, they get a big effort going, only to be told later that no, you didn't meet this other criteria that happened after the petition. I think the petition should happen maybe towards the end of the process. Once you've checked off all of the the minimum criteria, you've done all the work upfront, you've told the folks, yes, the only thing you need to do now is get x number of signatures from your neighbors, then they go and do that and then we, you know, money is a separate, of course, but I think that the petition should come at the end of the process as much as possible. I think that the way I read it, there's just a little too much discretion at each level. We should try to minimize the discretion and try to make it data-driven and fact-based, and as soon as you meet that criteria, you should be able to move to the next step or get a check-off on a list. Digging in a little bit more to the weeds of this, I agree. It's stood out to me and I really appreciate you explaining the collision history aspect here, where that relates to the MUTCD standards, because the science and that's a requirement under state regulations but not necessarily for roundabouts and for speedhumps which are design features and don't require the same strict adherence to those standards. However, in a couple different parts here when we talked about speedhumps and traffic circles it did sort of refer or reference MUTCD standards and that seems a little, maybe it's because there are other standards for it and we're using it because it's available. But I think we have to make sure that that makes sense as opposed to just using it as a default standard because they're not design standard. I mean they're not traffic control devices. They're design standards. So we should be at as design standards. So I did have a question about more particular. The first couple of examples of step three, step three is described as high cost traffic measures, at least in the electronic speed, speed feedback signs. One of the pros is that the cost is low. So we have the sign being in class level three, which is high cost, but the cost here is low. And I'm not sure why those have to be level three. That's probably an error, we should move it. It should be moved to another level. And that seems pretty easy to do. No, that was very valid. The same thing I would say with the flashing LEDs on the stop signs, I know we don't want to overuse them, I get that. So that's maybe controlled by a different standard. But it also doesn't seem like an extremely high cost. And it's a moderate cost here. I do love a lot of these features. They obviously are intended for different parts of the community on different types of streets, but I think that's good. I want to address the step one and two and whether cities or streets that already have step one and step two get credit for that or have everyone to look at it. Jessica, City Manager can tell you that we've had many conversations over the years, which is particular in my area in particular in margarita, which is one of the reasons why we have those we have the the striped lines already We have additional stops stop speed limit signs. I think we have speed limit signs painted on the street too, right? You know, I haven't gone out there with the with the hoses myself But I am on that street, and I can tell you that there's still an issue. So to the extent that that that streets that have had the step one and step two and there's still an issue, I think absolutely they should be fast tracked to step three as quickly as possible. And I imagine that we have those streets in every district throughout the city. So I think that that would make sense to me, not making everyone start from the beginning. And if they've had level two or step two improvements in place for several years now, which is the case of Margarita, I don't want to wait another year to evaluate. That data should be available. And I think we collected some data even recently with the trailers that were out there. So that should be helpful. There is a, there was the threshold, what do we call it, the 85% tile, critical speed. Yes, and I can explain a little bit that too. Let's go ahead. Yeah, I'm talking too much. I need a drink of water. No, that's okay. Yeah, and that one, I just wanted to make sure that sometimes the general public not necessarily policy makers because you have heard this a lot. You have had the speed limit has come before you when we say the speed the 85% out of the street let's say this 32. It doesn't mean that 85% of the people are driving at that speed. So that means that let's say if we collect 100 samples when we say the 85% is 32, that means it is capturing the people who are driving 15 miles an hour, 20, 22, 28, 31, up to 32. But it is true that yes, 15% of the people are violating the law and they're driving more than their speed limit. But it also, you really have to look at the data to see how fast are you driving? Are they just driving 33, 34 or are they some of them? You always get that on a residential street, you get to a level that it kind of levels off and then you get a couple of people that are driving 40 miles an hour. So those are the people really when we do a traffic coming on a street, whether it is a speed hub or something else Those are really the people that we want to catch We really because those are the people who are really undoubtedly they're driving dangerously Yeah, they could put people put people's lives in danger and all that Those are the people we really want to reduce their speed. So that is kind of the issue what the speed They the fifth has come about. There is no other, all the criteria that is in the manual is based on 85 percentile. So we just want to stick with something that is understandable and the manual allows and all that. But if you have any further comments. Yeah, and I appreciate that. And I that's an area maybe I think maybe we can rethink how that has applied there. If it's the MUTCD standard and applying it to a design feature, maybe that doesn't fit exactly because I do think, as I've watched the after some of these level two, level one, level two improvements have been made, there's still cars that just don't care. They just don't care. That it could be, you could have all kinds kinds of pain on the streets, but unless they are physically slowed down, they're gonna blow through there. And you can almost always tell, just almost by the sound of the vehicle, if they live on your street or not, because most people live on the street, aren't gonna fly by, but the people that are not, and just cutting through are the ones going fast. And there has to be a way to address that, to physically slow them down. I agree with that sentiment. So I just want to, before we automatically adopt that critical speed at 85th percentile, we have to think about that still means that there is, you know, 15 percent above that and what speeds are they going? Because that's really the danger. If someone's going 35 is still pretty fast on some of these narrow streets, but if somebody's going 35, they're probably going to be able to stop. But if they're going 50, it's a different story, right? And how many people are going 50 on these streets? So I agree with the comments about the speed cushions, is that what we're calling it? The rubber ones we can install. So I think that's something we should definitely explore. I want to talk about specifically the petitions. I'm sorry, Councilman Wang, I'm giving my comments as well as my questions. But the petitions, I looked into this as well and I was interested to see that some of the other cities have a lower threshold. I think that we should definitely go for a lower threshold. I think super majority of 66, you know, a little over 66% makes sense. I mean, that carries the day in almost any situation. Unless you want to have a block party, it's 100%. But at 67%, I think that's a reasonable threshold. I absolutely think that renters should be able to weigh in. These are people that live there. There are the ones facing the issues on a day-to-day basis. I understand the issue about owners, but under that theory, people are stuck with me for four more years, even if they didn't vote for me and they leave and the new person moves in, anything you vote for is binding upon the people that follow, you know, if you don't live there for very long. So I do think it's the people who are living on the street who are affected on that same note. If there is an apartment building that they only got one signature on the petition, I understand it's one property, but it's that if we're people focused and thinking about the people that are living there, I think it should be that any resident on that street can sign the petition. That's my personal feeling about this, unless there is something that I'm missing, but I think if we are creating a policy geared towards protecting people, that all the people should be able to weigh in. I wrote some other notes here that I can't read my writing on. I absolutely, obviously, one of the big issues that we've dealt with is the effect on emergency response. We want to make sure we nail that down. We don't do anything that's going to interfere with a quick and effective emergency response. But I do think it's a factor that we need to consider. The way it was written in the policy, it almost looks like we go through all this stuff, and then we check with the emergency responders. And if they don't like it, then it's vetoed. I just want to make sure we are incorporating that important feedback into the process, but that is part of this process. And if we want to say up front that a criteria is that it is not one of the major through routes for emergency response, that's okay. But if after the fact something happens, they don't like it. I think that that is also, again, we're kind of putting the backwards. And I did want to ask do all citizen requests go to the Transportation Commission? No matter what? Is that the idea? I don't know. I think it depends what the request really is. So if it is a very minor thing that we can do, you know, that doesn't require a lot of analysis, a lot of commission review, perhaps not. But things like stop signs, warning signs, signals, speed humbits, if it is approved, a lot of those, yes, it will have to go down. I think there's, it seems like that things that are irrelevant to transportation obviously should not be considered by the Transportation Commission, but if it is valid and legitimate, I think it does sort of deserve to be heard in that process. If we're creating this process, let's put the Transportation Commission to work and let them analyze these things. I think we have some work to do on that aspect too. What is the role of the Transportation Commission in this process? Do they have any discretionary approvals? Is it just ensuring that all of the objective criteria are met? Is it just to get their feedback on it? What is their role here? I also think that they should be presented with this before it's final adoption by the council. And I, someone mentioned Vision Zero, which is only as good as the paper it's written on unless you put it into action. And that was one of the things that we had worked on over the last couple of years with our pedestrian bike plan and then now our traffic calming policy. So it is an objective. And I think that every vehicle pedestrian collision is preventable on some level. When you look around the country, I've read a lot about the city of Hoboken, New Jersey, which is just across the river from New York City. They have one of the lowest rates of pedestrian deaths from vehicle collisions. Even though it's an extremely dense community, they have a lot of cars, they have a lot of people, but because they've made physical improvements to their streets that prevent these kinds of things. So I think we have, my favorite saying is be more like Hoboken, not really. But I think we should be more like Hoboken in this aspect. And think about what we can do to make our streets. People focus as opposed to car focused. As far as the budget goes, we can work on this. We're gonna work on this. But hearing the cost numbers just off the back of the envelope, certainly it seems like there is enough, we could come up with enough access in our budget to fund a project in each of the five districts in the short term. And I think that might be a good way to go here. We can identify the highest need in our districts and start there and see how it goes. And if it works, we can plan for the future for future years. I know I had a lot to say. I didn't mean to be critical. I just was providing feedback and I'm really excited about where this is going to go. I hope to see this these policies back with some of the feedback that the council gave. Council Member Maloney, I think you have a lot of good points and we can take into consideration many of your comments. I just have two comments on two of your points and it is the wish of the council about the petition whether it should come at the back end or the front end. It is really the chicken in an ex-situations. So if we ask the petition, our thought was that, well, let's ask people if they are really supportive of it or not, before we go on to spend a lot of money analyzing it. If you put the petition at the very end, that means that every request that comes in, it is just a matter of cost. Then we have to go collect traffic counts, speeding counts, do a lot of analysis on those studies cost cost money. So we're willing to do whatever the council wishes to do, but the logic behind it was that that we wanted to see is really people or people really supportive of it or not. Yeah, I understand that and that makes it does make sense and I realize it's a chickener of the egg. I'm looking at it from the perspective of if I work a member of a community living on a street and I went door to door and I got, you know, depending on the street could be a lot of people. You know, it could be, you know, 100 something signatures. And I did that. It took me weeks because people are out of town and all these things I finally get at turn it in. And I say, actually, you didn't meet this criteria on page 14 of the policy and the whole thing is done. That's something I want to avoid. I'm open to ideas and how to make sure we're balancing these things out. But I just hate for community to go through that kind of work, only to have the rug pulled out from under them at the last step. Great. And the second comment was about apartments. I meant to address that as a part of the presentation, but I forgot. The logic behind was that is this, let's assume there's a street that has 25 or 30 residential homes on it. And there's apartment complex in the middle that there has 40 units in it. So in our view, really one unit, I mean, the property, the linear footage of of an apartment complex is not much different than a residential home. It's larger, obviously, but it is not ten times. So we don't want, we thought that really 40 people in one unit, in one structure, should not overway or change the outcome, whether it is yes or no, they shouldn't really basically change the equation much. That was the thought that is really one property, the linear footage of the linear on the curb, maybe three times as much as a house, four times or three times as much as a house, they really should have wanted. That is the thought process from stuff. I understand that. In my district, I think it has the highest percentage of rental units in the whole city. And it effectively, the policy has written effectively, takes away their voice in these petitions. And that's just, that sort of struck me as not the tone we want to set here. I understand the issue if there's another way to get at that, then I'm open to it. But having a blanket policy that says that renters can't sign. No, no, no renters. I was talking about the number of good news. Yeah, and in fact, they're renters though too. So yeah, I think that sends a message that we don't want them to participate. We only want to talk to the owners and I think it's, we need to find a better approach there. Okay, I appreciate it. Madam Mayor, just one thought on the first part about the petition. I am familiar with another city that does a, just like sort of like a kickoff petition, if you will. You need, I don't know, 10, 20 signatures to have the city spend the money to go through the studies. And so first you meet certain criteria. If you meet the criteria and then you get a signature of 10 property owners or whatever it is, then you do all the studies. And then if the studies show that it will work, then you get the actual 67% or whatever. So you don't have to incur a whole bunch of expense because one resident wants speed humps on their street and nobody else does. Interesting. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you to the residents first and foremost. We thank you for being here and of course staff for putting together the framework that will help create guidelines that really will work for our residents. And so that's why we're slowing it down because we want more engagement. I believe that actually level two should go into level one because I think level one just is so simple and that by the time you're finished there, I mean, it just, there's so much that you can add from level two into level one, and then your second page of level two could be level two. But some of the signage is already written into level one. So I would take a look at that. So level two, the first page of level two, maybe directing that into level one, so it moves it faster. I would also lower the threshold to 60%. I don't support Margarita's gains to be shelved at all and I'll tell you why. Because on popular in 2020, we had the active SGV come in and do a temporary, you know, because you guys saw it. You guys worked on some of that. You did something on popular. We have a lot of issues with, you know, the big trucks coming through popular to get to our businesses. And we know they could take, certainly can take Huntington and get off of our side streets and they did that. But more importantly, we saw a lot of accidents and a lot of speeding and you guys have done a tremendous job. I'm not saying that the city hasn't because you guys have put, stop signs up, you've done the bells and whistles and it still continues to be such a speed trap. And so there was a project that was put in place by Wes of activist G.V. and his group. And I would recommend that we take a look at that because they did all the studies for us. And they were there all the time. And I know you guys worked in tandem with them. So I would actually look at that. I understand councilman Maloney has been sort of waiting for margaritas or electric to move and it's been a couple of years. But I think that what I want to impart to you is that grants, you know, we always talk about grants and our grants people are out there. That grant was was a city. I'm not a a grant, it was a grant from them. So we, it behooves us to continue to look for those grants, those transportation, active transportation plans because there's a lot of them now that everybody wants us to focus on pedestrian safety. I would also say, so please, we can help with that, right? I also think that, I think, waiting 12 months is a really long time. I think, and so it would remove that 12 month. If you haven't had something in the hopper in 12 months, I think we need to remove that because mine was in 2020 and nothing happened with it. So meaning that temporary project, nothing happened with it after that temporary project went away except maybe there's some lights. I know I don't think it was a light. I think it was just a stop sign. And so that 12 month that you're requesting or that staff suggested I think is not far enough. Because there's been projects and people and residents who have been complaining for a really long time for things to get done to prevent pedestrians from getting hit and more car accidents. I would also think that I love the idea of people filling out that form, but I think that that form should not sit on anybody's desk for any length of time. Like, don't let it sit there two months. It's got to move so we can move things forward in the process. I also think that we need more engagement. And if that means having our commission, our transportation commission, take a look as Councilman Maloney mentioned, the whole thing that we're kind of giving you some input on. For them to take a look at it, they've been on the transportation. And they actually hear from residents before we do on transportation transportation issues I know I sat on that committee on that commission for a long time and You know it takes a while to get those stop signs up and but there's guidelines and we understand that the guidelines are important I did have let's see there was a couple of things I did I really want to thank thank you for the traffic light at second and in front of the city hall. That light has done so much for the problem of the parents driving their students to school, each and every day on second street in Ohamper. We see it every day. I know you guys staffed us too. That light is a tremendous light. It has saved people's students' lives. So you should be commended for that. Staff should be commended. That was a smart move and I think all the high schools should do the same thing. Maybe we can talk to a school board member who's out in the audience about pushing for that because it does save lives. Let's see what else did I write here Oh, so um, how do you determine or when do you determine that there should be no right no red on No right on red And I'm asking you this because I'm just gonna take free mine. It's mine. Right. Nobody else has free money except for me. Right. And free money in valley. There's a protected right hand turn. It's lit. It moves. It's great. But there are still people that make that right hand turn. And I know that's a boulevard. And that's going to be treated differently than popular. And it's going to be treated differently from any other street on mission But there's there's no disputing the fact that that's a very dangerous corner for pedestrians And so I want to know what does it take to get a no No right turn on red on a beloved. Yeah, you're talking about it a traffic signal Since you're mentioning no right turn on red or just yeah, no right turn on red on a beloved. You're talking about a traffic signal since you're mentioning no right turn on red. Or just yeah, no right turn on red. Right. So normally you put a no right turn on red out of traffic signal as if you can imagine if you are stopped at a stop bar, if you look at to your left, if you don't see a traffic that is coming from the left. Either it is on a curve, either a cross curve like it it is downhill, or maybe it is a horizontal curve. So if you don't see the oncoming car, you don't want to allow somebody to make a right turn without seeing really who's coming from the left side. So how do we get signage? Signage. So or that's what I'm asking. How do we get support for no red turn on on the right? We just need to investigate it in the field. We need to take a look at photos and visualize it. Go to the stops on with a car and See how much you can see if you have an adequate side distance. You don't need it But if you don't if it's a blind corner then those signs are advisable because we want to make sure that people they make They write turns in a safe manner. Okay, and then I know there's been some discussion about emergency response and you know and our need to respect the fire department and the police department because they need to get to their places within a certain time. And we value that time because that means they get to our residents quickly. And I know there's bumps and they don't necessarily have to be humps. They can be bumps and do the same, have the same impact, is that right? As a hump? Yes, but you know, the speed humps need to be enough size so that they can make an effect. If you make them very, very shallow, like an inch, let's say, then people just go over them without any difficulty at all. If you make them four inches high or four and a half inches, which is not advisable at all, then you really are giving a big, big bump to the people and they may hit their head to the ceiling or something. So it needs to be something that is reasonable, something that really makes an effect that people notice the bomb. So the height of a speed bomb, it's about between three to three and a half or between two or three quarters and three and a half. That's kind of the size of the speed. Thank you for that. And we would determine that based on a red fire truck driving at full speed down the street to get to where it's got to go. Right, unless if it was a speed cushions, and then in that case, the fire truck can use their tires in those alleys and those gutters, then they're things like that. That's important for us to know. And so I would like try and make that very well known. I think that that's probably it for me. Thank you so much. Of course. I think our colleagues for your comments, I do agree with a lot of what you said. And I hope that our residents are noticing the things that we're putting place around the city in terms of making sure that we are reducing our accidents and pedestrian safety injuries. I want to kind of go back to what the vice mayor said. Yes, and I do listen to you. What you said kind of makes sense to me that it's very difficult to knock on doors of collecting natures and I think all of us have done that throughout campaign and to convince the neighbors that you need to do this. So I do believe that I like to make sure that we add a step. And I think our city attorney mentioned it earlier that there's a process where other city have done, where you have a group of residents who are concerned who want to start a petition, but that they will schedule a meeting with someone that can walk them through the criteria. What will, what, the qualifications for them to be able to have a speed hump? And I think a many people do feel they hump is the answer for speeding to make sure to reduce speed. And I do understand that. So but they need to go through that meeting with someone in the city that will say we understand your concerns. These are criteria that qualifications I need to admit before we'll start the next step, before they collect the signatures. And so I do want to add that step somewhere, the intermediate step in the beginning. And I do also want to see that we lower the 75% signature requirement because I think a 67% will be appropriate. The super majority, I think that will be fair. And lastly, the five year observation, I noticed somewhere, we want something is in place that there will be five year monitoring, no sooner than that. I don't think fire is too long. So for example, put in a speed hum, or you put in a whatever traffic calming device, does it mean that I'm reading that the city will study for five years in the air and see the effectiveness of that device, is that correct? We were suggesting that we would not review the same street within five years. Let's say, like I said, let's say we looked at that intersection for four-way stop. If it doesn't meet it, it really is not going to make the data if we analyze the intersection one year from now. It is probably going to be normally the same. The thing that I mentioned is for those traffic control devices, as a minimum, we can take a look at the collisions to see if any collisions have changed in the past year or not. If the collisions have not gone up and the intersection is still safe, it is really, we can do the study, it will cost more, but we will probably, in most likelihood, the result of that study will be the same as what we did a year ago. So that's what we were talking about. I think I understand what you're saying, but I think five years too long. Yes. What? What I'm trying to get as, let's say, a good resident on CERN Street, something is put in for them. And if you study for five years, the effectiveness of that particular device is put in. I think probably two years should be long enough for the city to see that whether that particular device has this effectiveness. effective. People start to continue to speed with a traffic speed signal next to it on the street and people continue to speak and then it's easy to determine that we need something further, we need level three. That's what I'm trying to try to communicate to. I understand, yes. And I'm not sure whether council agree with me or not or whether five years too long, you wanna reduce that to maybe two or three years. And I think that there are so many residents who are telling us we need a stop sign, we need this and that. And they'd be waiting for so long. We finally have something in place. And I don't want them to go through the whole process of petition. And then finally, you get accepted and then we put in something and then another five years go by and they see that people are still speeding. It just seems like it's really, we're dragging our feet too long. I need to speed things up a little bit. Go on, I'm going to quote. And so if the council would like to think about reducing five years to perhaps three years? Okay. The five year period, I understood it to be only when we have put in some improvements, we take them out and the suggestions that we have to wait five years to put them back in again. Is that right? That was applicable also for the speed hump. If we remove something, we said we're not going to entertain putting it back in. But we also said like I explained, if we have analyzed the street for some traffic calming measure and it didn't apply or it didn't meet the warrants, we were suggesting that perhaps sometimes should pass unless we have put it in a provision. Unlifts if something has changed. If the traffic volume patterns have changed, collision history has changed, or something that will be more than happy to analyze it. But if nothing has changed on that street, if we do another stop sign war and at an intersection a year from now, in most likelihood, it will be almost the same as today. That's what we're saying. It does seem like that one something, one of these improvements goes in, it's unlikely that someone will go through the effort to have it taken out only to then have another group come in and try to put it back in again. But, you know, I think I understand, but I think something there is a level one or two. Are you talking the five year monitoring only applies to speed hump or to all levels of? Like I mentioned, the speed hump, if some speed hump has been taken out, we are suggesting that it should not go back in at least for five years. But in an intersection that does not need any qualifications for any traffic calming. We were suggesting five years, but if the council wants to reduce the two or three, that is your wish, of course. We were suggesting that really analyzing an intersection or something a year from now would be almost the same as today unless if staff determines that something has changed. Either traffic volumes have changed, collision history has changed, or something has changed that would require us to take a look at the fresh, fresh look at the data again. So for example, let's say the city decided to put in after meeting all the qualifications, something that's really simple as what are some of the things. Let's just say no left turn signal or whatever it is. And does that mean that it will require another five years, a minimum of monitoring that intersection for the city to consider stepping up to a higher level of traffic calming device? Based on what's presented in this. The example you used was for a left turn signal. What example did you use? I'm sorry. Okay, I'm taking a level to low cost physical traffic measures. Okay. Let's just say the city decided to, at a certain intersection put in a no left turn signal. No left turn sign. Oh, no left turn sign. Correct. And to me that's just a sign. Right. Based on what's in this packet that we received, does that mean that it requires at least five years of monitoring before the city considered it? I know it is a little bit confusing. It really applies, I think, to measures that we are not suggesting to implement. So it is really the other way around. It is any measure that we have done in study and we are concluding that this measure really is not warranted, it doesn't apply. We shouldn't put a four-way stop, we shouldn't put a left-hand sign, we shouldn't put a signal in here, we shouldn't do that. We're saying that if the reason or the decision was say no based on some empirical data, doing the same study a year from now would result almost with the same conclusion unless something has changed. If it is not clear, we probably have to maybe revise the language so that it is a little more clear. But it is really for recommendations that are not concluding something to be done. Madam Mayor. Yeah. So, that's for stuff that doesn't get implemented. For stuff that does get implemented, so you put paint markings on the street to identify that it's a 25 mile per hour street. The recommendation from staff was, let's wait a year to see if that works. Exactly. If it isn't working or isn't achieving much difference, then you can level up and try something more. So if you're trying things and you want to see if something more is necessary, wait a year in between things with staff's recommendation for the consultants recommendation. In terms of if you don't put something in because it doesn't meet the required tests, staff is suggesting, well let's not do those tests again for at least five years. Okay, I understand what you're saying, but I'm reading page 15 unless I absolutely missed understand it. It says read view timelineal Administrator Authority. So you have the approval process on page 15, the approval process, or to the City Council approval at the final stage and they have the appeal process. Review Timeline traffic calming measures implemented, implemented. I mean, I'm just reading as you installed it. We'll be re-evaluated, no sooner than five years after installation. So installed it. So you'll be re-evaluated. You have the way five years to re-evaluate whether that particular measure is effective for that particular intersection or area. That's what I'm talking about. So I think five years too long after installation, you will study for five years and then you reevaluate. So you're just leaving that area as is. No one is looking at it. No one's monitoring it. And after no sooner, five years, a minute, five years pass, then you evaluate whether that particular measure is effective for that area. And I think that five year of waiting and doing nothing is too long. Because if it's not working, then the resident would be complaining. They want something more effective., more effective. But you're leaving that area. Okay, here's the device. Goodbye. Waiting five years and we go by re-revealing. But that's not five year waiting period is too long for me. That's what I'm talking about. I need to take a look at that. Madam Mayor, I like that. Ernie said, it should have been really 12 months for any of the things we do. You were reading off page 15 of the traffic coming. Okay, I'll take a look at that. After the installation, that's what I'm saying, something is in place. Yeah, for the things that we do like edge lines or signs or decide, it should have our thought was the one year, 12 months. So it should be 12 months. So if there's a discrepancy or whatever, we'll review that. Okay, thank you. I think 12 months is more appropriate, more reasonable for me. So you will change that. So this is this particular pericard that just read to you that we can't read as 12 months. It should. You don't understand what I'm trying to say. It should be 12 months. Okay. Based on what you read. Yes. Thank you, because I can accept five years of leaving alone and not monitoring at all. And at this point, if there's no more council comments, will be in motion? Yes. Can I get a chance to make my comments? I only ask clarifying questions. Oh, I see. Okay. Part two. Thank you. So, hearing my colleagues talk about this, I think, you know, we will have to invest in changes one way or the other. This is a priority for our community. It's loud and clear. We heard from everybody. And also in my community, I know this is something we all care about. Safety is important that even though collision data may not support it, we don't feel safe walking on the street. So this is something we must, we have to address. It's a priority for our city. Now I just want to share a little bit of what I know as an engineer working in this industry and so that everybody understand that as we continue our discussion on this traffic calming, particularly about speed humps, that this is not a small undertaking. It is a pretty big step and it shows our commitment. I really appreciate my colleague's support in moving this forward because it is a big commitment and it's a huge step forward and we want to do it right. The one speed humps are putting the right location can be very effective, but they come with real costs and they're not cheap. They, it's not just the labor and the material to put it on the street. It's also the administrative staffing time that we will put our staff in City Hall. And there's application process is not going to be easy. There are going to be a lot of explanations, phone calls, meetings with residents. My colleagues suggested that we walk group of residents through this process, which I think is very important that people understand how this work, but that does add a lot of burden to our staffing. So that I just wanna make sure that we all understand that it is a big undertaking, that it also means that we may have to look at our consultant contracts. There's gonna be be a bigger cost there too, because of engineering studies and speeding data collections, all the things that we will have to do to make this happen. And yeah, so I just want to make sure that we are all on the same page as we move forward on this. This is not something that we just say we're committed. We'll put it on, it's going to require process, it's going to involve a lot of resources on the city, and we still have to find money for it. And we don't have, right now, we don't have the funding for this. And I think we, as council, are committed to looking for money. And this is where we may have to go a little bit creative in how we think about going about this. As we're in our current political environment where funding is a bigger uncertainty than before now. So as we, council will continue to discuss as we're moving to budget session that will think about ways to look for money. But I think this is, I just need the community to understand we're committed, but this is not going to be an easy process. There's a lot of complexity that we will have to navigate in this. So one idea I was thinking is that if we have community desire to really insult speed knowing that they are're not cheap. Knowing, you know, our consultant has laid out the cost. If there is a will to fundraise, maybe do a block party fundraise to help assist with the cost, then we should encourage that. And I also want to be very, very clear that this will not be a consideration for us as a city to evaluate priorities of streets to implement the homes. We should look at merits, we should look at safety, we should look at the priorities that we will look at, we will not consider cost, it's not a requirement. But I think given that funding is a challenge, we should encourage the community to think about this. If this is something we all want, maybe you can take part in this as well to come up with some of the funding and we can together move forward in this. Just an idea, I want to throw it out there and I want to make it very clear it's not a requirement and the city shouldn't consider funding availability as a factor as we determine which street to implement speed humps. But if the community wants to help, then that's an option that we could consider. And then I think that also related to funding as we talk about our sustainability plan, I know that's also a priority for this council. I think that's a lot of collaboration and work that can happen together with our sustainability plan. We, you know, speeding happens on the street where it's wide, open, smooth, really easy to drive through. There are designs that can happen on the streets. That will make it a little difficult to drive that fast. So we could look into those designs, those infrastructure changes, particularly around sustainability. If we find opportunities to do maybe stormwater, curb extensions, bioswells, green streets have more trees and medians and implement those. It achieved both goals. We have more green space in our city. We can utilize funding from sustainability resources. And at the same time, we design our streets in a way that slow down traffic so that we can all feel safer and promote potential safety and maybe have bike lanes and all of that. So it can all happen. So I just want to encourage collaboration between departments. So as we think about, I know this is public works and then there's other effort in the city of we're spending on sustainability initiatives. As we go forward in these efforts that we coordinate, collaborate with, think about ways that can achieve both goals together. And then the other thought is in the enforcement. I know, you know, speed radars where we display speeding and coupled with enforcement can be a really effective way to slow down cars. And we have heard from our community that they have noticed the difference. So I wanted to see if we can also maybe explore having more capacity in our traffic division to enforce speeding. Because that's accountability. People started to get pulled over for speeding, get a ticket, they will stop, hopefully. That I think that's one way we can also looking to, I know we have limited staffing availability in our police department, and again, we should think a little bit more creatively. Is this something we can contract out? Cause I don't know, it's maybe the chief can better answer the question I don't need the answer right now but do they have to be police officers to enforce traffic laws and we're looking to some options where we can contract out engage a third-party company trained skilled but just to traffic enforcement so that we hold those drivers accountable. People get consequences when they speed so they slow down their cars on our streets. Now along those same lines can we look into technology on potentially automatic enforcement? Are there technology available out there? Cameras maybe that can do automatic enforcement. Those are options I would love to, you know, explore that a little bit and looking to options. So if I could help summarize a little bit, I think this is a really good beginning, and I just really appreciate hearing from the public and my colleagues, I think staff has, staff and the consultants has to do a good job, putting this all together, and this is a really great beginning. But I think there's still a lot of work that needs to be done. So if I may just suggest that we have staff and continue to work on this and bring this back at a future council meeting. And I have taken my notes on some of the points if I can just take a step at summarizing the points that we're looking for. The things we're looking for when we bring this item back, I think we're looking for a better process, easier to navigate process for our community and have flow charts, infographic that will lay out the process, make it just really easy for the community to navigate. I think we should make it really clear that level 1, 2, 3 doesn't always, you know, when someone turns your application, it doesn't always start at level one. It's part of that evaluation process that we look at existing conditions, we look at all the different traffic commemasures, and we look at level one, two, and three to see which one makes sense to begin with. And then 70% of the property owner, I think 67% does make more sense. I think 75% is too high and given that our neighboring cities are lower, I think say 7 would make sense. And then I do think that renters and residents that live there, actually live there should have a voice in this as well. I think the way it's written right now, I do understand the importance of getting property owners consent. I don't want to remove that. I think property owners consent has to be there, but the way it's written right now is every building has one vote, right? So you can have an apartment building and that's only one vote. So if it's only one vote for apartment building, that means that vote has to come from property owners. And that leaves out all the renters that lived in the apartment. So I think maybe one way is to, again, this is a balance between administrative burden and, you know, doing it right. I think I'll leave it to staff to think about how to balance that, but I would love for us to have a way to allow the people who actually live there to also have a voice and with including the property owners consent. Maybe it's when property owners doesn't live on site, then we allow one more vote for the building, or something like that. Staff can look into that and see if we can bring back some options to do include renters and people who actually live there. I just don't want a situation where we have some streets where there are a lot of apartment buildings and duplex and fourplex and if none of the property owners lived there potentially we could have a petition with all the signatures from people that don't live there and the people who actually lived their their voices now is not included so that's another area we should looking to and just bring back some more options and then better define transportation transportation commissions row in this. I do agree that this should go to transportation commission. Have them take on this effort and take public input and put their thoughts into this and make their recommendation. That's a great idea. And then I want to talk about the one of the comments brought up by Vice Mayor Maloney that I do, I think the basically the order of how we're doing this, that we, if we have, we have the residents go out, collect collect all the signatures and then we conduct the Studies it is easier for the residents. This is actually an area that's really really tricky and it's really difficult to navigate. I do see that That concern there because it's not easy to get the signatures that you do have to put the effort out there at the same time. I do see that on the city side, if we don't require all the signatures, then if people just started to put in applications left and right, then all of a sudden, our public works department probably have to ditch everything else and just handle the applications. So I think the balance is important. I think there's maybe a couple of options we can go about this. We could either do like our senior attorney suggest to have a smaller group of signatures. And that could initiate the process. And as we move forward to the more serious engineering studies, then we require more signatures. Or we could have like, we could have initial screening criteria. basically would check off the easy ones to like street with and traffic, you know, the basically the criteria that doesn't involve engineering studies or traffic counts and have that really easy screening criteria if it meets that criteria move forward and then collect the signatures and then move forward with the engineering studies. But something that provide a better balance of having the community go out there, do all the signature collecting and then coming back only to find out, it didn't meet the criteria. So a better balance there, I think we can come up with some options. But I think with if we drop the 75% to 67%, that will help with some of the effort of collecting signatures, right? So hopefully that's a, there's a better solution there. And then I also think that the flexibility in re-evaluating the measures that's putting to place is important that five year is a bit long. So 12 months is more reasonable to have the flexibility in evaluating the effectiveness of the speed of the traffic calming measures that we put into place. So I think those are the areas that we are, if I missed anything, please chime in. But I think those are the areas that we're looking for staff and consultant to look a little bit more into and then bring back a better plan in the future council meeting. Thank you, council member Wong. So we need a motion and right now I heard, if I'm correct, if I'm wrong, I heard at least three of us wanted to lower the percentage of the required to 67%. That's a majority. And also that I think at least three of us wanted to build in an extra step, maybe starting with a small group of signature, small group resident wanting signature. And then before they gather to 75% signature, or 67% signature there, there's a meeting or something where the city will explain the criteria or qualification before they go out and spend the time in collecting the 67% signature. So I think three of us have set that. So someone needs to make motion including those three changes. So Madam Mayor, members from the Council, the agenda item, staff was requesting either approve the policy or provide direction to staff. So I don't think you're ready to approve the policy. And I don't know that you, I mean, you can make a motion if you want to, but I think that staff has kind of heard the consensus that's building on all of these issues. I think the one question that is outstanding at least to my mind is, I've heard the Transportation Commission reference. I've also heard bring this back to us. So does the Council wish to see this again before it goes to the Transportation Commission? Or do you want the staff to take the Council's feedback, revise the policy, and then go through the Transportation Commission to get their input before it comes back to you. What's the calendar on Transportation Commission meetings? I have to get back to you. I don't want to delay our process too long, but I do think if the calendar works out, I mean, ideally we do that, but if the calendar works out, then maybe it comes, it goes to the Transportation Commission, just for presentation, feedback, and then we get a crack at it. But I don't want to create a whole new process and delay us, you know, a long time. I do agree. I think that we waited for a long time. So this is a guideline. And so tonight the motion need to be made. Are you Mr. Are you saying that the council is approving a guideline tonight and the staff would take our changes and bring them back or just want to make a motion and prove it? No, no, no. If you had no comments and thought it was perfect, you could have made a motion to approve it. If you had one or two small comments and wanted to make a motion to approve it with those one or two small comments, and wanted to make a motion to approve it with those one or two small comments, I think that would be fine as well. But there are a lot of comments here. And so I don't think that I would not have a high degree of confidence that if you approved it tonight, subject to your comments, that your comments would all be captured accurately. So I think that I don't see that emotion is necessary at this point and it sounds like you would like this to go to the transportation commission and then come back to you as long as that doesn't present too much of a delay. Expeditiously. And I can let you know transportation meets the second Wednesday of the month so it it would have been this last week. So the next meeting would be May 14th. They're next meeting. Correct. And then our next meeting after that would be the end of June. What? So, concurrently, if you wanted us to take this with the changes and the comments that you've made tonight and you wanted us to take this to traffic commission, we abs or transportation commission, sorry. Transportation commission, we could. And then concurrently, we also will be looking at funding at your budget workshop. I'm going to try to work with you all tomorrow and see if there's a date that we can find that works Maybe the first week of May in order to answer any questions that you have about the budget look at the strategic plan Look at the funding associated with the strategic plan items review your reserve policy and then also talk about economic development at that meeting So we'll have a clear picture of the budget as well, so it could be moving concurrently. Does the council agree? Yeah, I mean, I think what I would do is just talk to my transportation commissioners directly, share this conversation, share the draft with them, and get their feedback to make sure we're considering it. So the council is not going to make a motion tonight? Is that what we're... Sounds like we're not. So I think we're asking staff to come back with a better plan next time. Right, so we're not making a motion tonight. Correct. We just gave them direction and that was a choice. Okay, we agree. At this point, I'd like to take a five minute recess. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you Are we convening from recess? Our next presentation is regarding consideration of an ordinance amending chapter 3.36, 3.38 and 3.40 of the November municipal code concerning bidding and contracting thresholds due to amendments to I think it it's Kupa. And set, cup, cup, you're making a statement. Cup, cup. And section 9.74.060 concerning false alarms. Mr. City Attorney. Yes, Madam Mayor, members of City Council. Hopefully it's a quick one. As the earlier zoning code amendment item was a cleanup. This is also a cleanup ordinance just taking care of a couple of things. One is last August the Council adopted Cupga, the California Uniform Public construction cost accounting act which dictates certain processes for awards of contracts but also sets certain bidding thresholds and you adjusted all of the bidding thresholds in all of the city's types of contracts Capca was then conveniently amended four months later and the thresholds went up so the So there's a threshold at $60,000 for certain things that have to happen or don't happen in another one at $200,000. So they went from 60 to 75 and 200 to 220. So in order to be consistent with CUPCA and to also raise the thresholds for your other contracts, types of contracts to match those thresholds, This ordinance will just make that adjustment. The other thing is that in looking at implementing various provisions of the existing code, one of the things that came up is the city has an alarm ordinance. So if you have a certain number of false alarms on your home alarm, after three in a year, the city will find you. However, there's provision in there that says the police chief can waive the fine. There are very few instances in the code where staff has given that level of discretion and usually when there's that kind of discretion to waive fees and fines, it's reserved to the council. So staff would just like to have that sentence deleted if somebody had an issue with it, they could certainly come to the council and talk during public comment. But staff just felt that we were better to be consistent with the other provisions in the code where that kind of discretion is reserved to the city council to eliminate that one sentence. That's it for this ordinance. Is this the first reading? Just first reading. Okay. You don't need a motion. It's just the first reading first reading. We do need a motion to introduce it as being read. I'll make a motion. We do need a call for speakers. Sorry. Sorry. That's okay. Do we have any speaker cards from the public for the item? Madam Mayor, a mayor. We do not have any speaker cards for this item and Do we have any speakers via zoom that wish to speak on this item? I am not seeing any raised hands on zoom at this time that a mayor on move Councilor have any comments or questions. I do I do have comments in between. Yeah Can I proceed Thank you. I do have some comments. I understand this change is driven by the threshold change per cup cup and I understand the thresholds are changing due to construction cost rising and the intent is to improve efficiency in public works projects, especially how we manage some of the smaller public works projects. While Cup Cup only applies to public works projects, we're also updating the stress loads in our entire purchasing policy in the city that includes purchasing materials, equipment, and also contracts with consultants. So that applies to all. And I support this change, support this ordinance. I just wanted to point out that there is a significant change in one particular threshold, which is 60,000 to 75,000 and that applies to all the contracts that we have in the city. And this is the line between city manager authority versus council authority. So, um, below, now under the new thresholds, below 75,000, the city manager has the ability to enter into contract, execute a contract above 35,000 that has to be approved by council. I do have one question that just needed clarification. What happens to the contract authority when the original contract amount is below 75,000, but a later time say if we have an amendment, the amendment itself is a large amount, but if we add the amendment to the contract, it pushes the total over the 75,000 limit, then at that time, what would happen to the contract authority? That would come back to the City Council for approval. Thank you. So I do support this ordinance to reduce delays and have a better, more efficient system. I think that the only suggestion I will make is that we putting measures in place to maintain transparency of how we use public funds, which means for all the contracts that fall below 75,000, where it does not come to council. It can be executed at the city manager level on a regular basis. We provide a list of those contracts and that list will come to city council. Just it's a way to give visibility for the public to see it for us to see it and just a way to promote transparency, but not to, you know, delay the process because the same manager needs to have a system that is able to move through the process efficiently. So I just think that's something we can put in here as a way to enhance transparency. Okay. I'll take your amendment and still move to approve. Thank you. Second. Roll call please. Maloney. Yes. Mazza. Yes. Wang. Yes. Andratty Stadler. Yes. Lee. Yes. The next item on the agenda this evening is the consent agenda item numbers 6 to 21. Do we have any speaker cards from the public for any of the consent agenda items? Yes Madam Mayor, we have a speaker card for item number 9 and item number 10. 9 and 10. And just see what we have. Any of the my colleagues want to pull any item to discuss? Madam Mayor. I'd like to pull items 16 and 17 please. Same. So 19, 16 and 17 or items are pulled. Anyone else? None move the balance of the consent calendar. I second. Roll call please. On Dr. Sadler. Yes. Wang. Yes. Mazza. Yes. Maloney. Yes. Lee. Yes. Mr. Lewis, you are speaking on item number 9. Ten. Go ahead and do both. Yes, just real briefly. So we can get out of here tonight. Yeah, I support this. I'm glad to see it moving forward. This is the appropriation for $40,860 additional for the historic resources group to further their work that's needed to complete the historic preservation ordinance. I hope that ordinance, when we finally get it adopted, I know we're a little behind all the other cities pretty much in the same gable valley, but let's play catch up and let's get it done. And hopefully we'll come up with a process that's not too difficult so that people can really use it. So yes on this one. Mr. Lewis, go ahead and speak on number 10. Number 10, again, Luma Kamen 105 North Gordova Street. This is to authorize city staff to execute a contract with the Elhamber Chamber Commerce for the next two fiscal years, 2025, 2026 and 2026, 2027. requesting an increase in the annual cost from prior years up to 144,000 per year. Now, it should be noted because I've had some people questioned, does this cover the around And I'll hammer and know it doesn't there are various state regulations which would prohibit our giving some funds to them specifically for that so none of the money goes to around Alhambra. It's now been reduced a little bit from 12 times a year to 6 times a year in the print edition and gets mail down. The chamber does a lot of good things that I have seen. It's got some really bright people in there, John Bowry, as I think has really provided a great spark, a very intelligent person, who's the CEO of it. But we have to keep in mind that the chamber commerce on some issues does wind up lobbying the city. And it's a little strange to be funding an organization that comes back and then lobbies the city. They certainly, and it's just something that doesn't mean it can't be done. But it means you have to keep that in mind. I'm thinking of projects like the villages, the Chamber of Commerce was a very active supporter of that particular project. I think the project had some merit to it, but there were some real problems with it. And it wound up that it was turned down by the Planning Commission. It was appealed to you and it was turned down here again. They went court. They lost on it. And when you look at something like that where, and they were supporting it, even in its initial, initial plan, which had had many more housing units in it, all market rate, no set of sides for affordable housing, massive impact on traffic, and all of this on top of an unstill unremediated EPA superfund site. There were some real problems with that project. And so it means that you're going to have to continue to keep in mind even though you're funding them and they're coming back to you, you still have to have an independent judgment on these projects that they're coming in lobbying for something like that. Another one was the old 801 East Main Street project for a 64 foot high medical office condo building that got turned down by the planning commission. It was not appeal to you. They lobbied for it. There was a lot of blowback from the residents in the area. So just keep in mind, you're funding them here. They will come back to you on projects like that. But be sure that you're taking a careful look at the projects on their merits. So thank you very much. That's just the comments on that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lewis. Do we have any speakers via Zoom? They wish to speak on any of the consent agenda items. Madam Mayor, there are not any raised hands-on Zoom at this time. Does the council have any comments or questions for any of the items 910, 16 and 17? Number 9 and 10 and 16. So regarding 9 of number 9, in full support of the amended amount of $40,860. Just want to see if I can get some clarification from staff. I mean for the sake of the public and there's been some inquiries about why the additional cost and so hoping to get a brief explanation from director Ho. Thank you. Hello, Ross members of the council. The additional contract amendment was dedicated to having the consultants ramp up and do more work in preparation for the additional public meetings and outreach that was required for the project. So far we've had five outreach meetings and three commission meetings and we are still prepping for future commission meetings, the Planning Commission and City Council. The original amount wasn't scoped for that and we wanted to make sure that the proper time was spent in preparing the draft and doing the right outreach for the community. Thank you for that information. I know and I agree very much necessary to end up with a nice effective robust ordinance. So, fun. Thank you. Thank you. And regarding item number 10, the Chamber contract and the change to that, I just want to make a comment that number one, I'm in support of this. First of all, second, there has been some people or there have been some people that have pushed back a little on the amounts and the duties of the chamber. And, you know, I think that for the most part, the council has committed and has made it a point to just have that commitment to continue supporting Chamber activities and of course subsequently supporting economic development and I think you know to show our commitment to that economic development, we are looking for, we need to support this. A lot of what the Chamber does definitely goes unseen. I think that if it weren't for a lot of the volunteers, a lot of the ambassadors that helped the Chamber out, this summer here would be much greater. So, I want to thank the Chamber, Mr. Brary, for the efforts and for, you know, doing what you do with the limited resources. We know it's a lot to undertake, recognize that, and I just want to thank you for that, just let you know that we continue supporting your activities, and of course, the change of the contract. So thank you on that. And then item number 16. 16 and 17. So the only thing I wanted to highlight here is just, you know, we've got a total of like $5 million here in grant funding to execute these programs with the Green Street Administration program, our project and just want to thank staff for all the work. I mean it is definitely has become very obvious in the past several years the efforts by your office as city manager to bring in these grant funds. You know, we need to keep going after more of these if possible. But thank you for that. Mayor, if I can ask Mr. Bwery to come to the microphone. I just I'd like to hear about some of your plans for the city. You've done a tremendous job so far. We've actually had the pleasure of having you be so at the center of everything business related. You took us through help, the through the pandemic, and then you're always in touch with all the small businesses where there's still struggle, you know, still struggle from the pandemic and then in addition to that, you know, the cost of everything else increasing. But we know that one of the things that you do best is you know how to celebrate and bring Al Hambra into the center of Main Street and encourage residents to celebrate cultural events. Can you tell us a little bit about what the plans are? Sure, and good evening, members of the City Council, Madam Mayor. Thank you for having me and considering this item this evening. The Chamber of Commerce has a couple of functions in El Hambra. One is, as you indicated, actually as Council Member Alamassa indicated, around economic development, things you don't see all the time. But another function is this sort of promotion and celebration, both in the community and beyond, and bringing people to shop and spend their money and frequent and patronize the businesses that we have here in El Hanber, both the retail and restaurants, and those that maybe are less well known that are doing manufacturing or other services behind the scenes. And in this, in the way our cultural celebration, so one of the biggest ones we do obviously is the Lunar New Year Festival, a project that has been inherited, and that I inherited when I arrived here, but has been since the early 1990s, a mainstay in this community to celebrate the Lunar New Year celebration. But as we consider what that represents to our community, we also recognize that there are many cultures represented here. I mean, we heard earlier about translation, many languages that could be translated for items that the city undertakes. And so as we consider sort of going into the future, we've just celebrated our third Lunar New Year on Main Street. We look at what the future will hold for our community as we look at 2025 and 2026 and into 2027. We have been laying some plans for smaller and other, so not smaller, but smaller celebrations of various cultures. We've been approached about Black history month and what we might be doing to celebrate that here in our community. We also recognize the need to celebrate our Latino population as well. I know it's something that's important to you through the number of nonprofits that you work with that you've brought to the chamber. That we've had participate actually at Lunar New Year, but having a space for those folks to celebrate their culture and really the businesses behind those cultures. So in September of this year, once again celebrate Latino Heritage Month, it goes September 15 to October 15 or those 30 days. And in that time, we're going to be highlighting some of our Latino business owners through our leadership lunch and do a panel on that. But also investigate and look at opportunities to actually have a cultural festival in the community with the same goal that the Lunar New Year festival have, which is to bring people here to support our businesses, to highlight what we have and what we can celebrate. We have to figure out how do we do that in a way that is responsible, and I say responsible because a big festival does cost over $100,000. But what's the way we can start down that path that recognizes the contributions of our diverse community in different ways? And I think working with the city, working with other partners, something that we've really prided ourselves in this year and we'll continue to do is working with other partners that are maybe in Elhamber or outside Elhambera that are doing this work. The work we do around economic development with the Chinatown Service Center and in addition to our staff. I have a staff member who speaks Cantonese, staff member who speaks Mandarin. We also work with the Chinatown Service Center that brings other in-language providers for economic development, small business support. We have two folks on our staff who speak Spanish and can provide that as well. And so that's the direction at which we'll focus on how do we incorporate and support sort of the diversity of business owners of residents of patrons that are here in Elambra. Thank you, John. I did what I guess let me for I'll just come out on the on the chamber contract. I think that we have seen an evolution in the way that the city and the chamber work together over the last several years. Obviously, we you know that it's a different kind of relationship that the city has with any other vendor, any contractor. I see it more as a partnership in a lot of ways. We are outsourcing some of the services that cities could do, but we recognize that the chamber is in a very particular position to pull those things off in a way that I think is more responsive to the community we're trying to serve here, including the business community. So I really think that the relationship and the contract that we have now is good. Obviously there are things that we need to be mindful of, including, you know, we have the issues of the mass mailing with the contract. We've addressed that. I certainly don't want to pay people to come lobby this, the city uncertain things. And I'm confident seeing the budget and the breakdown of the work that that is not included in the money that we get from that the chamber gets from the city. But I do appreciate the fact that it does put on these events. I love reading about the restaurant of the week and leaning into the idea that I'm really a destination for culinary exploration and restaurants. and I think that has really brought some attention to the community that is important. I hear it from people all the time. The food is so good and now hamburger and I think a big part of that is the fact that the food is good and we talk about it and I appreciate that the Chamber does that. So I do support this. I think it's helpful to hear different thoughts and perspectives every time this comes back up. I think two years is an appropriate amount of time. So I do support it. And I'm glad we continue to have a relationship. So thank you to John and his team for doing good work. I also wanted to comment on was it 16 and 17? The Green Streets. This wonderful. I'm really really happy seeing this go forward. In some ways, it's frustrating that a good project like this takes so long to do. I know that that is not the, um, that is no fault really of anyone. It's just the process with grants and trying to get through the design features and a lot of different things to coordinate. And anytime you got a address the infrastructure and digging things up and reformatting it, it's a lot of work. So, but at the end of the day, this is going to be a great project. That said, I have a couple of just comments that I'd like to make. In particular, you know, anytime you change stuff, people can have their own opinions. But I think here that because this has gone through a couple different iterations, I had communicated with some folks who were interested in who own businesses in that particular stretch of Main Street. And they said, initially we support the project. Initially there was diagonal parking, which would work out great for everyone. And then it was parallel parking, which does not work out great for everyone. So I don't know what that was about. I know that there was, it was also mentioned that that might have been in relation to comments that, you know, I made, I probably made in others, I think, I'm supported about ensuring that we don't do anything over there that would prohibit or preclude having bike lanes on that stretch of mean. I want to, I know we're pretty deep into the planning process here, and I bugged staff about this a lot over the years about what are we doing there, what are we doing, what's it look like? We're not done yet. I think we're pretty significantly far down the road in planning, but we have an opportunity here to get a lot of things right in that stretch. So I'll mention two things. One is that this is the only segment of main, a relatively short segment that has three lanes in each direction. That comes off Huntington right there, and it's three lanes of traffic until it gets to pass free mode, and then it goes down to two lanes. And there's two lanes for the rest of the city. Having just had a conversation earlier tonight about traffic safety and speed, making sure that people are safe, that's an area where we actually had a fatality. Someone a pedestrian was hit by a car and died. And I think it's, we would look back in years from now thinking we didn't take advantage of this opportunity where we had money, we had time, we had planning, we're almost there, and we didn't do something about improving the pedestrian safety there and the general walkability of that neighborhood even more. I think we can do it, I think that almost all of the elements that I see in this design really support that idea that we can have a safe area that's safe for people to walk to sit out and there's not a ton of restaurant over there but there's a couple and there's other businesses just to make people feel more comfortable over there. I think it would go a long way for us to consider looking at reusing one of those lanes of traffic. We have parking on both sides of the separated lane on the south side. There's parking on the inside and you're in the median. There's three lanes of traffic and there's parking again towards the street. It just seems like there's plenty of room there where we can do diagonal parking, which kind of creates a feel, a neighborhood feel there anyways, and accommodate bike lanes. It doesn't seem like there's a real desperate need for three lanes of traffic there only to cut down to two coming off of on each and there. So those are my comments. I don't want to slow this down, but I do, I would hope that we can incorporate some of these ideas and thoughts. It's not my project, it's all of our project, so I want to get my colleagues input on this. And I don't know that these items are the appropriate time to do that. But I want to support this moving forward, but I don't want to lose this opportunity and look back and say, well, we still have this unnecessary third lane of traffic in each direction on the small stretch of main when we could have made these improvements even better, created more green space, created a better walking environment and created by Cleans too. So those are my comments. But I will support these hopefully with the understanding that we will continue this particular conversation about what that's ultimately going to look like because I think there's been some infusion with the community as well as with with council. But that's it. Thank you, Mayor. I have some questions regarding the chamber contract. I'm looking at the scope of work for the contract between the city and the chamber and I just wanted to understand this better that For each of the item there is a request to city reimbursement and then there is a chamber budget so I don't want to assume but does that mean that for this particular item that there is a $1 amount that the city contribute to and then there is a matching fund that the chamber does contribute to together to achieve this goal. That is correct. Okay, thank you. So yeah, I appreciate that. And then I just think that the partnership with the Chamber is very important and critical and we have seen the incredible work you have been doing out there to help with our business community. I do appreciate all the advertising and marketing and just highlighting the businesses in our community. I think that's just really wonderful and all all the work that you're putting to the newsletter, it's great to have this partnership. And particularly as we move forward, and I know we're going to talk about economic development that we want to allocate time for that topic. So as we move forward, I think this partnership with the will be very critical and important. So appreciate that. And I just wanted to also ask, you know, in our city, there's a lot of immigrant owned businesses. There's those mom and pop shops. There's people that are part of our community. They save their whole life and start a shop, start a store. And they may not always have the resources. They may not always know how to seek help and connect with City Hall for what they need. Can you maybe share a little bit about how the chamber is being intentional reaching out to those businesses where You know, it's those that particularly immigrant-owned and have possibly barriers, cultural barriers, language barriers that they make could use more support. And how are we doing in reaching out to those and supporting them and really helping them thrive in the community? Great question. Thank you, Council Member Wang. So I sort of mentioned earlier, we do have partnerships with a number of organizations to amplify this work. With regard to, you know, AAPI community members, immigrants, as you mentioned, working with the Chinatown Service Center, Economic Development Team is a great resource for us. It's actually a partnership between the chamber Chinatown Service Center and the Small Business Development Center out of PCC, which is our local SBDC Small Business Development Center that's funded by the SBA to reach those that are in language. So it's a Mandarin Cantonese Vietnamese first outreach program. We piloted it last year in the fall. I had about a 20% response rate. One of the challenges we face is the idea that if you, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if that is communicating that message. So we try to find that partner who might be known to them. Sometimes it's a customer, a neighbor, that's a frequent shopper that is part of our community or otherwise connected to reach out to them. So that's one very intentional program. We've also been working with LEAF, which I always forget what it stands for, but it's LEAF out of Cal State LA, which does a number of cohorts to help, particularly women-owned businesses, but also very much the folks who are not maybe as inclined to get support. And so working with them, and they have an outreach team to go out on the streets and actually proactively go door to door. But again, even some of the folks like that, they're unknown. And so what our best success for outreach has been is the neighbor to neighbor outreach where we talk to a member that we know or a business that we know on the block. They do know what your neighbors are up to and that referral network of what resources are available. And then we try to provide those resources such as the work of the small business development center, center, center, it's all those I listed as a way to provide that resource. I think there's been different projects and programs throughout the last couple years that I've been here with different funding sources and different models that have brought us to different people. Just after the pandemic, we had a grant program through the Chamber and gave $2,000 grants to small immigrant for the most part women owned or bypocked owned businesses and we went door to door meeting those folks and talking to them. Some of those folks like we had one person return the check because they didn't understand why they were getting it They thought it was a mistake even though we introduced ourselves and give a letter in language And so I think there's some barriers that still exist even with best intention from both government from nonprofits And so it's about that ongoing relationship with businesses and business owners to continue to show up to continue to provide Resources even if people are thanks they flyer away, you just keep coming back because eventually we'll make a connection. And also deploying us, I think it was Ross who sent it earlier, that cadre of volunteers or ambassadors, who speak languages, who are out in the community shopping and visiting, spending money, that always gets people's attention when you show up and you buy something, and then you have a conversation about what else they might need. And so those are some of the ways that we're working with the various community members. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think you hit it on the nail that I reach out to some of the businesses as well in my area and I noticed that when I approach them, just speaking English, they almost don't want to engage. And then once you open up speaking the language that they speak and then they warm up to you and they started to open up, started to share challenges with you. And that's really, I think that's really the barrier of a lot of our community members and small businesses. So thank you for recognizing that and working in that space, I think it is important to recognize that challenge and also to be a little intentional about having staff members who may speak the language, who understand those barriers to continue to do that kind of outreach. And then I have another question. I know the Chamber does require membership for businesses to join and just wanted to understand how does it work with businesses? Is membership required in order for the Chamber to assist them? No, no. So, membership is not required. For instance, we mentioned the Restaurant of the Week program. That doesn't require membership. Anybody can be restaurant of the week. I mean, you have to be a restaurant in Elambra. But generally, everybody gets an opportunity to be restaurant of the week. There's no membership required. If someone calls us or if we meet someone who says they need assistance, we provide that connection, that referral without membership. The things that people are members for are supporting some of the larger initiatives, some of the policy conversations that we have at the state level. There also perhaps getting a discount on items that non-members don't get a discount on. But it's usually somewhere between $10 and $20. That makes membership benefits of membership more direct access, more regular access perhaps. But generally, if anybody needs help, part of our agreement with the city is that we can't turn anyone away if someone needs help with something. Someone needs help with a permit or someone needs help with marketing or someone needs help with employment. We are there to provide that connection to the resources that are provided by the city of Elambra, but also county, state, and others. We're providing resources, trying to wrap their hands around small businesses who need that support. Thank you, thank you. My last question, maybe this is already a mechanism that's in place, but I'm wondering, this is a pretty large amount that we have. With the Chamber, we appreciate all the work you do, but just in terms of transparency again for public funds. Is there a report or something, a mechanism in place for us to receive from the chamber at the end of the year to see how the funds are spent? Yes, absolutely. We do verbal quarterly reports here. And then we do provide a written report. We actually provide weekly written reports that go to the staff and they collect that. And then every month we correlate those and send them over as a monthly report. And then we also do an annual report that sort of lists out what outcomes came from the work that we did together. Thank you so much. That's all my comments. Okay, thank you. Also. For your comments, and so I'll be the last one to speak on these four items. I do support item number nine, 1617, but I want to speak to the contract item number 10 in particular. Tell some member one, I caught a word that you said. I completely agree. Government transparency is extremely important while we're using public dollars, taxpayer's money. And I have an issue, I'm very, very much concerned very much concerned about using taxpayer money. And I have an issue, I'm very, very much concerned about using taxpayer money to fund a nonprofit. And why do I say that? Chamber of Commerce have done a great job in putting up many events, and I have supported some of those events, to the best of my availability. I'm a policymaker and I support the businesses. But at the end of the day, I'm still a policymaker. There are projects that come in front of me and front of council that we vote on, especially developments. And developments and chamber of commerce to have a very close relationship. And as I look into the different, what we call a task, or the eight activities, or groups activities, that we are, that the Chamber of Commerce are asking the city touring bursts, The eight activities one, chamber central information office, I cannot fund your office. You're a nonprofit office. You're doing a great job, but I cannot agree to use taxpayer money out of our budget to fund an office. That's. Chamber of Commerce is not part of the government. Our city budget, our revenue goes, expenditure goes to employees, our benefits, expenditures on buildings that we own, the city owns. I cannot use our budget, our revenue to fund a nonprofit office. It says very clearly, Chamber Central Information Office. Requested city reimbursement $26,000. Chamber budget $105,000. And then a listing detail underneath that first category that, you know, it says a professional welcoming central information office, promosity as a destination. Welcome all businesses to on Hambra. A lot of these things refer, refer services to local businesses. A lot of these things are really chambers that, see, Chamber of Commerce, your own regular activities that you're supposed to do. For your businesses to generate new membership or to reach out to non-members, these are your internal activities. I cannot see myself funding those activities, because those are some of your skills supposed to do anyways, a nonprofit. And I'm a policy maker. The line is very clearly drawn between us. Even though I supported businesses, but still I cannot agree to offer you any money from our budget, city budget, for your office operations. And if you might go to calendar number two, current business engagement support, you're engaging your own business environment. I do support in our mission statements that we are seeking to create a business-friendly environment through policy, but not through dollars. What? one, utilize social media to promote business to business information. That's something you're doing internally for your members. Business to business, not business to city. And you're asking $24,000 from the city to inverse and your budget is $70,000. I'm going to skip number three, which number three, some of the things that I do understand that the city is seeing. I see as city events that we are contributing to those events and we are using you as a contractor to help us organize these events. Such as the, I'll have a state of city which is going to take place this Thursday. And the city is part of that. We the city is using is contracting with the Chamber of Commerce to put together and I'm going to state a city in a restaurant and we are you're asking for $2,000. I understand that. That's appropriate because the city wants you to do it for us. But there are other things I can go on and on. There are total eight categories that list it in our agenda. And you're asking for $12,000 each month starting July 2025, $12,000. So June 20, 27, two-year contract, flat amount for things I believe most of them really are something that you do internally and I cannot fund those items. I cannot fund those activities. I cannot justify it because you're a nonprofit. City revenues stay with the city activities. It goes to repairs of the buildings, library, books, librarian, all the officers standing there, your paint checks, your payroll, your benefits, all your directors, everything, electricity, water stays here with the city. I cannot give you a check, $12,000 every month, flat amount. Okay. So, and I also wanted to, I had a discussion with our city manager and I want to kind of clarify that. How, who is in charge of receiving invoices from the city chamber of commerce in the past? Is it director, or are the director of finance? Have we been receiving the past invoices that details on what the Chamber Commerce have charged us in terms of hours, printing service or whatever do we see that in the past? Yes, all invoices from the Chamber comes through the Community Development Department. So since I was elected in 2018, I remember approving the first contract with Chamber of Commerce. We have asked at least couple of times we ordered audit and there were English that came in that there were utilities. And so Director Ho, have we, sorry, of all the invoices that you received, are we paying for utilities like rent, electricity, water? No, we are not. OK, good. Thank you. But we are receiving voices. Do a dollar amount. Yes. OK, thank you. I just cannot for the life of me. I read it through. I look at all your activity services that you provide. There might be a few that I might agree that the City Council is sharing bursts you for it because it does have something to do with the business with the city or the council committee with the city. But I mean another thing that I question with and I ask our city manager is what is your literature that you're charging us. Let's see. I think I can't find that exact page, but there's things that you want us to reimburse you and it has to do with literature of the city, like maps or tourist attraction. We have you. They're not even housed in the city hall. We don't have them. They're in your building. So you basically are asking if they're in burst you for expenditures that you print out and you put it in your office. We don't have a copy of the pass out to our residents who come into the city hall. So I cannot imagine that we should I would not agree to ring burst you for any of that. What I will agree to are a few things. Based on the agenda, service is number four and five. Number four and number five. Well, I'll just read out the events. I will support the three events that you are a contractor. We are reimburse you for part of the expenditure. Now, Humber State of City, Chinese Lunar New Year celebration, and then the third one will be Leadership Luncheon, formerly called a Rose Court. And I do have a question about that. The Leadership Luncheon, it's women's Leadership Luncheon. I'm not sure when, I think it started, last year it changed to that, including the Rose Court. Mr. Gray, so was the Rose Court, I wasn't there last year, the last time we had the event. So the Chamber decided to combine the Rose Court with the women leadership together. And was that change discussed with our city manager or at least our city staff? So last year was the Rose Court lunch we featured our members of the Rose Court. We had a bunch of people come together. They did the regular program. What we did last year, we added a piece at the end last year to sort of a reaction from established women leaders to draw the connection between Alhambra and the Rose Court, which is sort of a regional, a great regional body, if you will, of leaders that are young and emerging. And because we can, it was the Rose Court lunch last year, what we're proposing this year through this conversation and having talked to staff is that in the future, having that evolve a bit more to really highlight women leadership and women achievement in our community coupled with the future leaders that we see there. As you may recall, the last few years, the chamber has invited as our guest students from Alhambra High, Ramona Convent, Mark Heppell, that are part of their guest at the event so they can sort of be part of this conversation about inspirational young women and now we're evolving into inspirational women generally. And so that's sort of where we're headed with that. Okay. Thank you. So if you just stay where you are, now I want to know there's nothing personal about what I said. You're just the person who was taking the message from me. You're a great guy anyway. So for promotion and special events, the chamber is asking us to reimburse you $12,000 for three events, which I just listed, and your budget $25,000. Have you discussed any of the changes with the city at any point? Yes. Okay, you have met with our city manager, someone say we're going to change this. Yes. Okay, I do have a question. I will say my concern is I don't want me to be petty, but if you want us to reimburse the chamber for these three events because we are, it is a recid event. Years ago, I think when I was the first term, I was asked to go on stage to speak to the guest. We're there because the city is part of this whole thing. It was a city event. I do not know. I think my few years ago, the mayor was totally ignored. I mean we were not asked to go up there at all. And I'll tell you something else. It's kind of kind of interesting. But I feel like and then also we we were sitting the center of the room. Okay, I don't need to. We don't need to be treated as a VIP or whatever it is, but we were sitting the center of the room because of the city event. And then I think two years ago we were on the side by the door. I was telling the city manager, I was afraid the next I would be at the parking lot. Okay, that is not very respectful. Okay, you're taking a message back from me. You're asking us to pay for part of the event. I understand. I agree to it, but don't treat us like that. Okay. And so I will only approve this contract. We're not most doing any motion yet, but I'm telling you how I feel about this. I will approve this contract with the following... What's that? I'll actually totally tear project's contract. I will only approve the services that I would just list it under number four and five, the three events. I will want to make sure that City shall have input prior to the three events, at least two weeks, on the program and the seating and the speakers. I do feel that we should have input and I hope you agree. If you want us our money then we should have input. For complete government transparency, all the invoices for the three events shall be submitted to the city for a full reimbursement. And none of the voices should include anything as salaries, utilities, rent, or any overhead cost to maintain the office. That is a huge it's gonna be it. I want to ask my at home, my column, this is a huge change for this contract. I know you, before we support it, I cannot support it. I cannot support it. So I'm going to motion, I just made an emotion for item number 10 as is, is there a second? Okay. Do I need a motion for number 10? Or you could do as 19, 11. Let's do it. I like to do it for number 10 separately because I will. Mayor of number 10. Thank you. A second. Mayor, I do have just one thing I want to, I convey on number 8, I want to thank you for taking the lift students. This is so important for our schools and the work that you've done with our schools and how you're stretching it to introduce schools, students to local businesses and create career opportunities to work with our LIF program. Those students are special need adults who've never had jobs or don't know how to hold a job and they're learning through other businesses. So I commend you on working with the school district to do that. In addition to that, the young entrepreneurs and partnering with the job center. Thank you for that work. So there's a motion a second or a number 10. Can I make a comment too real quick? I don't want to believe with this too much, but I do understand mayor your comments about increased transparency. And I think the message is clear anytime we can be more transparent with any of the funds that we're spending, even with a relatively smaller amount like we're looking here. It's a big amount when you see it on paper in the scheme of the city budget. It isn't that big. Not that it's insignificant because it's money, but transparency is always good. I do want to say that I'm familiar with contracts that are on an ongoing basis, almost like a retainer. And this level of information is pretty well detailed. And although it might seem like not a great fit cost for overhead and salaries, there are 100% appropriate with contracts like this. They do need to keep the lights on. They need to pay their employees when they're working on these different projects, subscopes of work here. Transparency is always great. I think we get the message. They're right across the street. I think we see a lot of what they do. I'm very comfortable with this contract and really the evolution of this contract and the way it's changed and evolved since I'm on council. So I'm strong, yes, on the target of to talk too long. Okay, there's a motion second. Mayor, can I make a comment? I just wanted to respond to some of the concerns that you raised. And I wonder if there is another way of going about this. So I do appreciate transparency that you brought up. I also appreciate that if we can have more input about how we're going about some of these events, I support that as well as well. And I do understand that for supporting the Chamber office that we can also contribute to that. If you read about all the things that they do, I think Chamber office is located very close to City Hall. I believe that they do provide a lot of information for the community, people all go over there. They kind of, so as a member of the community, don't always know where to look for what information. So I think for Chamber to have some of the information available, staffing there, people go there, they ask questions, I think they will support our community that way. So I do think that's an important function, and they're just, they're more than a event manager. They do manage special events, but they're more than that. I think their primary, you know, the most important focus is helping our business community in any way they can, right? So business retention, if that's a goal, business, you know, we wanted to fill our vacancies on valuable, our we wanted to do a lot of things in terms of economic development. If those are our goals, I think those funds will go towards supporting what Chambers doing in helping us achieve those goals. So I do see value in that. And maybe I wonder if there is another way to go about this. confirm've confirmed that there is a report to see how the funds are spent. So maybe we approved the contract for a year. And then at the end of the year, we look at all the, we look at that report that lists all the funds, how they're spent. And then we look at the value that they bring to us and we make another decision on how we want to go about potentially reducing the scope of work or other areas in the contract. If that's a viable solution, we can go about that. But at this point, I think, even our goals with economic development, I'd rather focus more on what we want. the chamber to deliver for us than to cut the scope of work for the chamber contract. Thank you. I cannot subsidize a nonprofit in any way, but there is a motion and second roll call please. Call for the question, please. Wang. I'm sorry, I just needed to clarify what is the motion on the table. The motion was to approve the item item number 10. As is. As is. Yeah, it was a motion by Councilmember Mazza and seconded by Councilmember Andrade Steadler. Understood. Wang. Yes. Mazza. Yes. Andrade Steadler. Yes. Maloney. Yes. Lee. No. And I need a motion to approve the rights of the item. So moved. Second. For clarifications, that's number 916 and 17. That's correct. Mazza. Yes. Maloney. Yes. Andraide Sadler. Yes. Wang. Yes. Lee. Yes. I'm Dready Sadler. Yes. Wang. Yes. Lee. Yes. I'm going to get the So there's a very long agenda. Okay, we go. Next we have the continuation of public comment for non-agentized items. Do we have any speakers that we're not able to speak at the beginning of the meeting? The first speaker is Mr. Lewis McCemmon. Good evening and I am impressed with your fortitude tonight. 1115. Two things, one I intended to speak to you tonight about, and two small to really see it on my cell phone, there's a picture of the guy he's a former police officer here in Alhambra. Name is Lloyd Glick. He passed away just a couple of weeks ago at age 101 almost 102. We're two veterans, not only here as an Alabama police officer, but then recent years he even got his driver's license renewed after age 100. I mean, if I make it the 100, yeah. And at any rate, it was brought to my attention, a situation by Orlo Brown, who used to drive the soundtrack in the high-nabber parade, and who was also along with Lloyd Glick, a volunteer on the USS Iowa battleship down in San Pedro, which is where they got to know each other. But I just thought, given his service here to the city of Alhambra, I'd pass it on to you. He may not have been someone you know. I didn't know him myself, but just passing it on to you. And I hadn't intended to talk about firework stuff here tonight, but that's certainly been an issue. Now as a kid, I love fireworks. The things were a lot different when I was a kid. I don't know if any of these particular things are still in the box anymore. Smokey Joe, Piccolo Pete, which had this high whistle, probably set off every animal in the neighborhood. House on fire, which is just a little house that put out a lot of smoke and so forth. And I was impressed with the most of the concern here tonight was about this being a fundraising aspect for some really good organizations. And fundraising is tough. The sale of fireworks does allow the ability to, it's something people want. It's something that there's a certain time frame on it. They can kind of compact the sales down to a very short period of time. They're referenced to a $200 box of fireworks and so forth. Right, and I'm thinking about other, I bought Girl Scout cookies again this year and I bought the little cards from the Cub Scouts and so forth for the stuff they're selling. But one that had to buy 33 boxes of Girl Scout cookies, do I want to raise the amount of money as one box of $200 box of fireworks or you had to buy 20 of those Boy Scout Cububscout cards. And when I was a kid, 70 years ago back in 1955, I remember someone candy for the Boy Scouts. And there was a box of six different candy bars from Curtis Candy. And they were the regular size bars. They weren't the jumbo bars or anything. The whole box sold for 25 cents. And I remember we dad was teaching at Northwestern for a year and a half so I was by there and you would sell the boxes as students went by from various dormitories, sororities, and fraternities on their way to classes. But they didn't want to buy a whole box. So I had to break them up and I'd sell an individual bar for a nickel. And the boy scout got their quarter of a box and I made a whole nickel for every box I sold. But though that's just a little bit about how prices have changed. But it is something that there isn't aspect. It'd be nice if there were another way for raising money. Most cities around us don't allow fireworks anymore. And there are real concerns about the smoke and everything. When I was a kid, they burned your garbage into backyard. You know, and this guy said, there's a long outlook. We're dealing a lot more with air quality and other issues now. So it's an issue I can see both sides on but we need to come up with a better way to fund our really good organizations. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jennifer Huang. Jennifer Huang. Madam Mayor, if I may, Ms. Hong has required a translation, so we are just going to get the language line interpreter on the line, and then we'll proceed with her public comment. Do I have a Marceline on the line with Language Network? Oh. Marceline, are you there? Right, okay. Okay, here we go. Oh, we can hear you now. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Here we go. Okay, Gary. Yeah, yes, are you there? All right. Okay. Okay. Oh, we can hear you now. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. Oh, hello. Yes. I'm still on the line. Can you hear me? Yes. We can hear you. Thank you. I just wanted to thank you for helping us out tonight. introduction real quick to our speaker here at our meeting and just let her know that if it's possible for her to speak in maybe one to two sentences and then allow for you to translate, that would be the best way for us to kind of get her message across to the council here. Great. Thank you. We are concerned about the problem of our reputation. We are concerned about a very unfair situation. This is not only for the people, but also for the whole CCT, the whole city, the whole area of the area. It is not a very unfair situation. So I think today I should stand up to the experts to make sure that this is a message. Because they may not know. Thank you. All right. Okay. Thank you, first of all. I want to thank all of those officers, officers, because you have served our community and every family. So well, thank you for your service. But today I want to raise a question that's been bothering both not only me but also everyone in our community who's in needing a housing because I think when we were looking for housing we're encountering problems that's not good for us and I think I have to stand up and to voice our needs to all of you. Thank you. One is to solve the problem of the cold cold. Then I came to Huanbai, Huanbai's good teacher, It is the one that is the one that takes care of the essence of the book. and that's the name of the book. very important thing to do. I think it's a very important thing to do. I think it's a very important thing to do. I think it's a very important thing to do. I think it's a very important thing to do. I think it's a very important thing to do. I think it's a very important thing to do. I think it's a very important thing to do. I think it's a very important thing to do. we got this message from the Hamburg City Hall saying that you'll be setting up or constructing all of those apartments for those people who are on the street, who's in need of shelters and those low-income families. And I think that's a pretty good idea because you're providing a solution to them. So the person who were in charge of building all of those houses, they had promised to us, yes, we'll be offering all of those apartments to those families with low income in our Ahamber city. I was very fond of the Hanba series. I lived here for 25 years, and lived in the Ming Dynasty. I had never moved to the house. Why did I move? Because of my age, I am very scared of him. Then I will send the police to the head. They are not able to get the right one. That is the only way I can go. Or I can go to the head. Thank you. All right, so I am very grateful for the intention of the city hall. I think you're trying to help people helping all of those people who do not have a house to find them a place to stay, which is really great. And also I love a hamburger as a city. I've been living here for more than 25 years. I lived on the Main Street, on the fourth Avenue, but I've encountered a problem previously. I've never had the idea of moving out, but recently yes, because I was pretty afraid of my neighbor who had conducted sexual assault against me. And I reported this to the Humber Police Station and you have nothing to do. You said you couldn't have done anything to that. So you wanted to move and work and I moved. I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm sorry, but I'm look for a housing for me, but they said they couldn't find a house that's sitting for my program. So that's why I'm very excited, or I have expectations or hope. Or this program you mentioned, this program for constructive appointments for low-income families. In the past, I was always in the media. I was often concerned about this. In the past, I was in the media. There were many people who were in the media. I was so happy. Many people asked me to take this video. and the message is very early, and they are also in the middle of the door, in the middle of the door. As long as the information is not on their hands, there is a information, which day, which day? Every person is about to say 100 times. So, many people message was out, I have been keeping eye on it ever since. But last year on September 7th, when I went to the mention and then I saw a lot of people gathering there. I was trying to get this form, but then these people are telling me that they're in front of this TNT supermarket, telling me that we did not have this letter yet, but we already got the information that there's apartments here. I have them, but isn't this apartment only for citizens in the Hambra, in the city? Does that know? It's for the whole America. And when I heard the news, I will give them the money and the money they need. I will give them the money. I am a voucher. I am a social worker. I am a citizen of the United States. I am a person who is a member of the West. I, no problem. I will wait for you. I will just wait for you. Thank you. All right. So I still have some hope in it. So I still fill out the form and gave them all of the information they needed. I also mentioned that yes, I do have the voucher at the same time I'm a United States citizen and also I'm a receiving government aid and my credit check is 100% 100 scores and then they told me that no problem just wait. I don't know who I am. I am Han I'm going to have a good time with the other person. I can't wait. Thank you. I've been waiting for a long time and then there were no messages coming to me And then I don't even know who to look for. So I looked for this person named Holly She's supposed to be the charge that the person who's in charge of the housing program in Hembra But she told me that they're not in charge of that is people who are outside of their Program or their organization who's in charge of. So I just really don't go to the bathroom. Thank you. I received a letter on April 5th, which was sent out on April 1st. The content of this letter was already written for February 11th. It says that I cannot get a house because I cannot phone on the top of the letter. I will call the phone and call the phone on the top of the letter. I will call the phone and call the phone on the top of the letter. I will call the phone and call the phone on the top of the letter. I will call the phone and call the phone on the top of the letter. I will call the phone and call the phone on the top of the letter. I will call the phone and call the phone on the top of the letter. I know that I have never been able to change my life. I have never been able to change my life. I have never been able to change my life. So, when I received this letter, I really found it's in the appropriate, I think something that she might be going on, so I'd call this number on this letter. I wanted to keep a good point with them because for the rent, most of the part, the majority of the part was paid by the government. I'm only paying a small portion of it. I think the government and the state for your aid, but yes, my credit score is pretty good. I've never skipped my rent. So what they written on the paper, it was't care. I heard him at that time. No, I didn't. You have time. Yes, I have been thinking about it for over ten minutes. I went to the place where he wanted me to find the location of the phone. called. That's the house. I went to find them. They came back to me. He said, Our house is already full of people. You go to wait and see. I said I'm waiting and I'm waiting for 20 years. You're a new person. You're full of people. Do you have any advice for every person? Do you have any advice? I just want this house to be to the people of the country. I have given the people of the West to the people of Ahamba. I have given the people of the West to the people of Ahamba. I have never given the people of Ahamba to the people of the West. I have never given the people of the West to the people of Ahamba. I have never given the people of the West to the people of Ahamba. Miss Hong, your time just ended. Thank you. I'm not a mere worker. I'm not a professional worker. I'm not a professional worker. I'm not a professional worker. I'm not a professional worker. I'm not a professional worker. I'm not a professional worker. I'm not a professional worker. I'm not a professional worker. I'm not a professional worker. I'm not a professional worker. I'm not a professional worker. I'm not a professional worker. I'm not a professional worker. So I think it's a good thing. think we can get her that phone number. That's a few people are going to be in trouble. So, if we are to put the system in front of the users, it's not to let the people to be free. So, that's the whole thing. We are not fair enough to put the system in front of the users. Right? Thank you. All right, okay. So, then I went to find this person named Holly in the housing department from City Hall and I informed them of the situation. They told that we're not responsible for that. You should go to the people who are in the housing parts in this program and ask for them. And then I just asked them, I called that number on the letter. They wanted me to wait. And then I was asking them, how come those newcomers to the city had already moved in? They told me that this whole apartment is already full. How come I'm still not getting a room for myself? Because I've been waiting for a long time. And you promised us that this apartment is for those people in the hamburger from the city that are homeless, but you're not using the city's resource to serve the people in the city, but you're giving it out to other people. You're using our money and resource, providing it to other people, and also you're outsourcing your responsibility to other people in charge. I don't think it's fair of the caravan. I think it's really good to be disappointed. We just found the body. We found the body. We lived so much years, so long. Finally, we got drunk. We gave the money here to the people to control it. I think it's really good a long time. were in charge. I love the city and I've been living here for a long time and we've been paying our taxes in the city. But right now, we're using these resources to serve people who are not from the city. I really feel disappointed. pointed. We can help you with some phone numbers. Thank you. In the long time ago, please finish. We can help you with some phone numbers. Thank you. Does that reverse begin to want me to read the last word? Yes, please. You can go ahead and translate that last part. Thank you. All right. So she's saying those people who are in charge of the housing program, they just put all of their friends and families there. And I really think that you should pay more attention to this program because you're here to serve us and this is a problem that's connected to our well-being directly. And I really want you to focus on this because all of you are voted by us. We're also American citizens. We can vote if you're not going to do your job I think we should pick someone else for more responsible Okay, thank you, Marceline. We're all set. Thank you for your help All right, good job. I was gonna sit you in Our next speaker is mr. Brian Otis. Good evening Madam Mayor and members of the City Council. It is late and I want to go home. So I've decided that Mr. Lewis McCown has said exactly everything I need to say about the positive and negative effects of fireworks. I do hope you take this up at a later date, but as far as I'm concerned, you know, just do what you this is part of your process. If you want something put on the agenda, you can ask it a meeting. If all five of you agree comes on a future agenda. If not, then you can request that it appear under your name. And then three of you agree it will appear on a future agenda. But this is the time to answer the question of whether this will go on a future agenda, not to get into a discussion on the merits of the item. Thank you. At this time, I wish to remove my request to consider the banning of safe and sane fireworks. Thank you. Anyone else? I'd like to move forward to request the City Council agenda as a discussion of limiting the use of fireworks to July 4th to turn hours and also changing the sale of fire, saving Fiery works to match maybe just a few days before July 4th. Mr. City Attorney, at this point do I need three? Just three? You need three. Three yeses, okay. Just three you need three yes, it's okay Madam Mayor I I Know that with this when this came up last meeting I supported the discussion of fireworks and I realized there is a distinction between safe and safe and fire works and legal fireworks. So I think my concerns all I would the illegal fireworks which I'm committed to addressing but I would not support discussing the safe any limitation on the safe and safe fireworks. The City Council basically wants to have no changes to our current. Do we actually have an ordinance or code requiring about safe and safe fireworks, Mr. C. Attorney? Or is it just silent? There's no nothing. We don't have a restriction on the use of safe and fireworks. We do have a restriction on the sale of safe insane fireworks. To a certain period of time? Yes. It's the, I think it's noon on the 28th of June through noon on the 6th of July. Do we have any ordinance or code that address illegal fireworks? Yes. the state fire code bans those and then we also have our own ordinance that's specifically points to the state fire code banning illegal fireworks. So my request there are no support semi. That's fine. So this our safe and sing fireworks can be set off any time throughout the year. That's what the council wants and also the sales the sales the sales of safe and sing fire is currently half a limited time period. Yes, they have a limited window. Thank you for the clarification. Can I just say real quick that I think that someone, one of the written communications we got? period. Yes, they have a limited window. Thank you for the clarification. Can I just say real quick that I think that some of the written communications we got was from the consultant representing TNT fireworks and they provided kind of a draft ordinance for Uncity of Roseville. Some interesting stuff in there that I think addresses some of the concerns maybe that something we could pick up at a later date when it's not almost midnight. But I think it was helpful information. And I just want to make a brief comment. I just want to number one. Thank you everyone that came out tonight and spoke and supported safe and sane. I think a lot of very strong and valid points were made. So thank you for that. I do think that not for tonight, later on, I'd like to have a more in-depth discussion with the rest of the council if we can agenda this about our ordinance directing the illegal fireworks or discussing illegal fireworks. I think that is definitely something that we need to discuss and maybe have, you know, invite our police chief to bring some data, some thoughts ideas. The gentleman that spoke earlier from a TNT fireworks brought up a good point about using, I think, technology. They may be track the use of illegal fireworks. I think we might be at that point now where, know technology is, I guess, called strong enough that we can maybe have it assist our police department. We have a very robust and effective drone program. Maybe we can bind some of the drone technology to address that. So, but again, I just wanted to voice and reiterate my support for Safe and St. Fireworks. I think it creates community, it builds community, and of course, you know, just not to mention all the the positive effects that it has on our youth groups. And you know, I heard, I think we heard from a young gentleman earlier how much it changed his particular life. I think we haven't heard from a lot of other people whose lives have been affected by the teams or groups that they've been on that have been supported by Safe and St. So that is it regarding that and hopefully we'll have a further discussion about the legal fireworks at a later date. Thank you. In terms of safe and safe fireworks, I think the only concern that I have will be, I believe that I asked Archie Ragusa a few years ago when I first, we were addressing the safe and safe and safe fireworks. I believe his reply was that there are some issues about trash can fires. I think they were disposed of improperly. They were throwing the trash cans. So I think that since the council decided that we are not going to restrict safe and safe fireworks in its use and also for the sale of it, that we should address, talk about education of public in general, either our website or what have you that please make sure that when you throw away your safe and safe fireworks that is disposed of safely. I think that's something we could do just out of abundance of caution. And I have announcements. Don't miss the 2025 state of the city at the Grenada LA on April 17th, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Attendance is open to all but meals require a ticket. The event will be live streamed and we will share the same update at the April 28 Council meeting. The recording will be also available on the City website. For more information visit alhamdra. next also April 17 join us at El Manzer Park at 1.30pm for an obridae celebration featuring a ceremonial tree planting and complementary refreshments. Volunteers are needed for the 2025 neighborhood cleanup on Saturday, April 26th from 8am to through 12th of June. Helber neighbors do some spring cleaning by assisting with disposing bulky items and assisting with yard work. All volunteers must submit a waiver. For more information, visit cityoflhandroid.org slash cleanup. Celebrate sustainability at the ECO Fair. ECO Fair on Sunday, April 27th from AAM through 1PM. Enjoy games, raffles, and eco-friendly vendors while shopping at the weekly farmer's market. And that is it. We have now completed all the items on this evening's agenda and this meeting is adjourned to 5 p.m. on Monday, April 28th here in City Council chambers. Thank you. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. 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