Thank you. I'm going to make a little bit of a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm gonna go back to the room. I'm gonna go back to the room. I'm gonna go back to the room. I'm gonna go back to the room. I'm gonna go back to the room. I'm gonna go do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. I'm going to do a little bit of the music. I'm going to play a little bit of the music. I'm going to play a little bit of the music. I'm gonna go back to the room. I'm gonna go back to the room. I'm gonna go back to the room. I'm gonna go back to the room. I'm gonna go back to the room. I'm gonna go back to the room. I'm gonna go back to the room. I'm gonna go back to the room. I'm gonna go back to the room. I'm gonna go back to the room. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm not going to be able to do it. Good evening and welcome to the March 24th special meeting of the Alhambra City Council. Roll call please. Mazza, Malone. Here. Wang. Here. Andrade Sadler. Here. Lee. Here. The only item on the agenda is close session. Do we have any speakers from the public for this item? Madam Mayor, we do not have any speaker cards nor are there any attendees on Zoom at this time. We will now move to close session, Mr. City Attorney. Yes, Madam Mayor, members of the City Council. We would request to recess in the closed session to discuss the one real property item listed on the agenda. One potential initiation of litigation matter and direction for your city's negotiators with regard to APOA and AFDMA. Thank you, Mr. City Attorney. We are recessed to close session. you you you you We have reconvened from closed session. Mr. City Attorney, do you have anything to report? There is no announcement out of closed session this evening. Thank you. We have 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 March 24th regular meeting of the Allhambra City Council. Roll call please. Mazah. Here. Maloney. Here. Wang. Here. Andra, this is Sadler. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. you I'm going to start with the to the flight of United States of America, to the Republic, which stands one nation regard to visible liberty and justice. Now, Hembera Mission Statement. The City of Hembera is dedicated to responsive, creative leadership, and quality services, ensuring desirable neighborhoods and supportive business environment while being sensitive to the diversity of our community. First, we have public comment for non-genii 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 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. Do we have any speaker cars from the public? The first speaker is Please stage your car your name your star will mistress Please. Please do your name. Your star will mistress. Please state your name. Oh, well, I'm sorry, city clerk. I thought I wrote my name pretty clear, law then clear on the card. My name is Mistress Transgender Queen. Let's hopefully we have a dictionary ready for all our council member who cannot read. So let's talk about a knowledge in the public comment. First of all, I have several comments to our city attorney because if they are uneducated about the Brown Act, I forgive them because they are educated. But you are the one who's supposed to be the expert of the law, aka the Brown Act. So I want to ask our city attorney that does the Brown Act allow the board member to respond to public comment? Because when I go home and watch the video from the previous meeting, I saw that my public comment was responded by the same council member for four times. And I want to ask our city attorney, is that allowed permitted under the Brown Act? That's a question number one, Mr. City Attorney. Second of all, let's respond to the Council member. The Council member said, I want to inform the speaker that City of Ahamba, we have dialed dial or write services for all of our senior members. And then that is the response that I received from the council member. Now again, maybe there's no education requirement to run the city council. Probably that's the reason why I got that response. Let's ask our city manager because I understand you have to be educationally qualified in order to be a city manager. Now I want to ask you that the last time I commented about the seniors or disabled or they are waiting in the bus stop without a shade, without a shelter, I mean it created a lot of health risk. And then if you are a hunger residence, like the council member said, you are qualified for dial-write problem solved. But I want to know, are you only in charge of the Humber residents? So are you telling me that you will ignore all of the Humber visitor? Does how many hundreds, how many thousands of visitors do you have in city of Ahumber? Do they also qualify your Ahumber dial the right services? That's question number one. Number two, assuming you have dial the right services, assuming that, how about if my neighbor wants to go to San Bernardino for her qualified for her dialysis services? Now, I want to ask you, does your dial the right will go all the way to San Bernardino? So what happened if my neighbor has a limited, they call it Medicare, Medicare limited healthy insurance that does not allow her to have a dialysis in Laudcerns County. The only medical facility that allowed to see her to help her to treat her will be in San Bernardino. Now you tell me how does that senior, how does that wheelchair person get your dialer right all the way to two hours to San Bernardino? You tell me because what I see is that there's no solution for that. They have no choice waiting in the sun, waiting in the sun 110 degree without a shelter or whatever. It's very dangerous. Number three, you are not really taking account of the homeless then. Now I want to know how many homeless are there in the city of Ahamra? How many people are living on the street for a city of Ahamra? Does those homeless person qualify for your council member's state to help the right services if they are homeless? How about if they were born instead of Texas? And somehow they live in the state, they live in the city of Ahamra right now. Do they qualify for your Ahamra Dial the right services? What I see is no because I conduct field interview. You do not go to the bus You don't know what's going on in the bus stop. You drive your car. You drive your Rose Royce You drive your Ferrari, but I am the one who walking on the street who talk to the homeless person who taking the bus every single day. So I feel it's reasonable to say that I know much better than you. What's going on on the bus on the bus stop? Also our council member said it is really hard to not to get personal with the public comment. Well that's exactly very, very personal. First of all, I made sure all of my language are professional. I made sure that all of my language are peaceful and professional, no profanity. But again, if I see my council member has demonstrated uneducation, has demonstrated incompetency that I believe under the First Amendment Freedom of Speech, I have a right to call her out. If she is ignoring the Humber visitors, she is ignoring the Humber homeless. She is only concerned about the Humber residents only that I believe I have more responsibility to call her out. And then talking about my language, actually, Mr. Mr. City Manager, I haven't even started. You haven't even heard my crazy language yet, because I made sure my language is very professional and peaceful. Our second speaker is Marlene. Marlene, please come forward. Please stage your name and your address for the record. Good evening. My name is Marlene Bronson. I'm representing my family and country. I haven't met personally met all of you but I have met Adele with the veterans memorial. I just wanted to say that I did grow up here in Alhambra. I left here in 1992 and I've been in Orange County since then. Recently I came back because to protect my daughter. My daughter inherited property here in Allhambera, one mile from my mother who happens to still be living there. So this is why I am present today. I have requested to speak with you in private and I haven't received phone calls back. So I'm here in person to discuss. I did email, but I didn't receive an email back. I'm going to, I'm did speak with an attorney as to how to handle the city water, I mean the water usage. I noticed I identified extortion of money of water over charging. And this is before you became the council member, Mr. Mazza. It's all has been going on for many years since at least I identified it since 2021. And this, so mismanagement is a concern in the water department. And I do know that Dolphin has stepped down from his position as the director. At least that's what the staff told me. I'm disappointed in your customer service. So you should be aware of this. Because, for instance, today I asked for a city complaint so that I can write it down and leave it. She denied any form. I asked her if she can look it up and she refused to obtain it. And that was in the utilities department and I believe her name was Elizabeth. The water department I have been and dispute with them for two years. Water public works and water, not just the water but public works. Myself, I've owned a wood company for 14 years. I was a practice management manager. I managed $44 million and I was the CFO and the VP of my company, which now my son is running and operating. He's been with our company for 16 years and he does high volume. I'm very familiar with construction because I built my mom's house here in the city of Ohambe, when I was 28 years old. And I had stood before the council and asked them not to condemn my parents' house because my mom had vacated it. So I understand how the city operates. However, I am disappointed in the current position, and I would like for you to re-examine your staff at the city. There's going to be moralists as her last name, which happens to be my maiden last name. And then the other person that was there today that refused to provide me the public records act to request for the history of my daughter's property. Source of water and the usage. I've been denied this four times. I'm standing here with courage because I have sacrificed my livelihood because my daughter has been experiencing vandalism here in the city of Elhambera intimidation extortion and she's young and she's autistic. I asked the police department and I'm glad they're here today because I have I asked the police department on several occasions to take reports. They refuse to take my reports. One of the incident the police officer did say that you know they were going to they I asked for human trafficking resources because I noticed the green tree hotel and the towing company. And the towing company happens to work with you the city of Alhambra, Henry's towing. The police officer directed me and said, no, we do not have any resources for human trafficking. We do not have any telephone number and I cannot provide you anything. I think you should be aware of this because I have reported it to the city police department in person on several occasions. And I think you should be re-hearing what I'm repeating. Thank you. Our next speaker is Lewis. Please state your name and address for the record. on a Lewis McC, 105 North Cordova Street, Elhamber 91801. And good evening and a nice spring, almost summer evening today, wonderful weather. What I want to talk about is, well, the main thing I want to talk about is the closed session item. I notice it's the fourth time we've had it on there. And this is a real property negotiator discussion involving the city manager and a Mayas Lutheran church negotiation concerning price terms of payment or both. But still don't know exactly what this is about. I'm hoping something good is coming out of this. But I notice this is a fourth time that's been in close session. So something must be moving on it. And hopefully there's some discussion about either summer, all of the land there, because it's a real property negotiation. Could it be used for additional park space, for additional affordable housing project in California, either a complete affordable project or one that includes affordable housing? So whatever it is, if it seems to be moving and continuing on, and hopefully we'll know more about that in the future. And just one other thing, there's seen to be some concern about whether you could use dial a ride to get to a dialysis facility. And we do have one in all hamburger on East Main Street, David just a couple blocks before the St. Gable Boarders so I'm sure the dialeride could get you there. Now the act line doesn't go there but it's on East Main Street and it shuts off, acts shuts off at chapel. And in the future, I know we're looking at possibly extending some of the lines. And that would be in line to take a look at when we're looking at those. Also, we have the newatown Service Interracial Health Center that just opened. It's not in full swing yet but we'll have the pace program in there with elderly daycare for over a hundred patients a day and so there's going to be more things happening on East Main Street where people will need to access and particularly low income people who might be wanting to take advantage of city run transportation. And I just have to say the city manager is well qualified. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Hurley. Please come up. Please state your name and address for the record. Yes. Good evening. Yes, sir. I will do exactly as you tell me. Yes, sir. Now, this motion I'm discussing tonight is something that is harmful and alarming, not just to me, but to the public. that are disabled and non-disabled, because what's harmful about this whole situation is that we have a communist country building up in California, where they're using such suggestions to the courts to censor us by using what they call epithets that are disruptive, the use of epithets that inherently harmful, attacking the humanity of their targets. Well, the Brown Act and the Rules of the Brown Act state that we can criticize our elected officials to improve the quality of life concerns that we have today. We've heard them today this before I got here. And what's harmful is that these type of motion by these sanctions for me to say yes sir, yes sir, yes sir, it's not a threat. Just like this here is not a threat. Just like this is not offensive. This is my expression, my art to express to the world, my feelings and my beliefs about why America is so fucking doomed. I am harmed by this as a disabled person, a disabled person in the population in the United States of America and California. This is how you're going to treat us that all those years of me going to see the psychologist and having therapies talk to me about this is that I can't use and say what I believe is in the interest of the first amendment. Shame on anyone of you attacking this type of behavior against the public. It's appalling. Is my finger, sir, a threat? Is my pointing my finger a threat, sir? I want to know because it's not. Volume and tone is not a threat. It's my expression of art. Just like when you hear rappers do their little skits. And the reason behind that is because I use Brandon Berg versus Ohio, yes, 395 US, for from 4, 1969, to express a particular uses of the N word. And that is free speech, an expression created by not just the industry of music, but the industry of art. I'm an artist. And now I'm being told due to my mental health, I can't express myself in fucking America? That's absolutely wrong. It needs to stop and stop now. In addition to that, Barton versus the city of Sacramento, 2002, got to read into the record my letter from United States Transportation of Federal Highway Administration. This is dear sir, Madam Congresswoman Sanchez has written to us in response to the KELT Trans Department, responsible for ADA compliance at the intersection of North Soto Street and Mirango Street. The subject, I am Armando Herman for the record, the same Armando Herman who was put in the California newspaper this Saturday and Bashed by the writer there that little faggot David Zeynheiser read about it Faggot So it goes on to point out CalTrans has a program to project and work on this concern of yours dealing with a complaint on curb ramps at the location scheduled in 2026. These are what I'm submitting into the record. These are the real life issues that most of your constituents don't understand. If you don't speak up here at this podium, you are nobody. You are not heard, right, Mr. Mazza? Right? Maloney? Or is it Bologna? Oh, did I say something offensive? No, but I like eating Bologna. If I could, I'd eat it all day. So if you can't take the criticism, maybe it's time to turn it out. Find another profession where your job is a responsibility of protecting your constituents, protecting our city, and developing infrastructure that works for everyone, disabled and non-disabled for the record. Sir. Thank you, Madam Clerk. So we have any speakers via Zoom that wish to speak. If so, please raise your hand now and you will be able to unmute yourself when your name is called. Madam Mayor, I'm not seeing any raised hands on Zoom at this time. Thank you. Our next item is a presentation regarding the council's annual appointments to the city of various boards and commissions. The city manager, is there a report from staff for this item? I can give the report, Madam Mayor. Madam Mayor and members of the City Council, pursuant to the provisions of the Elhamber Municipal Code, the annual terms of office for all members of the city's various boards and commissions expired today. Therefore it's appropriate for council persons to appoint or reappoint the representatives at this time. Appointments will be effective for a period commencing this evening and ending March 23rd, 2026. Staff requests that the mayor and each council person announce the names of each of their new appointees to the various boards and commissions as the incumbents for each of the offices will be automatically reappointed unless otherwise indicated by the appointing council member. I'm available if we if you have any questions, but we do have a couple of speaker cards on the site. Miss Lee manager are you are you going to call the appropriate department here to report? I says on here. I just gave the okay report you did it for them. Okay. Yeah. So we have two speakers. Mr. Hurley first speaker. Good evening. I'm a little intimidated when I come up here now because I just don't know what people are going to think and say about my reactions about the first amendment and free speech. The recommendations for the action for arts and culture, I think I specifically explained to you that I have a way of expressing myself, which is a culture based on events that happen in my life. I'm an NWA guy. MOU make others understand that the significant history of historic preservation and commission should maybe come to like myself, a person who preserves, a person who can direct large companies, large agencies and departments to actually do their job as you heard in my non-agenda public comment when I expressed the issue about KELTRANS. Since 2012 I had that issue and now I got a response to get those curbs and ramp cuts right there in Mirangal Soto which connects me to this side of town of Elhambera. So it's very important that we have these type of recommendations and appointments but based on the credibility and appropriateness of what they can do to improve and enhance these commission appointees or appointments. Because again, as I go through this transparency of things, I see here you have transportation commission. Now, that would fall under my category. Because as you heard tonight and as you witnessed from the account of my presentation on non-agenda public comment, I showed you how to get CalTrans responsible to do their job and spend a couple of millions of dollars on four corners of a soda morango. I believe I have that experience. I believe when I got the city of Downey to spend $21 million of put ramps and curb cuts, after 40 years I'm not having an ADA coordinator and stuffing out the public there that pay infrastructures for new streets, street lightings and so forth. They got nothing for it. You see, this is, this sounds isn't this some engaging that I've toned it down without using the epithets? Because I had to use that in Los Angeles in order to get attention drawn to all the corruption, to all the schemes, to all the scams by these elected officials ripping off the puppet. Now, if you want to continue to believe, just by what you see is okay, no. We want to see more for what our dollars can get us. We want to have more done with the ability of these commission appointments or appointees. We want to know, is there advocacy in our support, in our favor, in our heart as a city of Ohambra to grow? Because the challenge here is what I'm pointing out. And that is do you have the qualifications or is this just some, pull my friends name out of the hat or my family member and put them in a position where they're significantly allowing me to gain as a politician or helping my company and friends get ahead. No, we don't want that. We don't want that LA proof to us the problem that got me into Los Angeles is headache. And so because of that and as I express myself to you tonight from two different points of views, yes sir, yes sir, yes sir, no, it's not going to be that. I think the public has a right to weigh in on any challenge that abridges their properties, abridges their community, and abridges how they want to see their city grow and be safe in. I group with boilheights and I'll tell you every day I was safe because of the color of my skin and the tone of my mouth. And then I come back 20 years later to protect my disabled mother and my disabled brother down there. In demanded that these curb cuts and these ramps he put on Soto and Mirango. And look around me out today, standing high in my idea because I spoke out. And I got these committees and these commissions, Department of Disability Los Angeles to respond. And that's because of my determination to ensure that everyone in the committee is supported by commissioners or committee that supports them. Our next speaker is Mr. Lewis McCammon. Hello, same address, same name. The wasn't going to speak on this originally tonight, but in coming here, I was talking with the staff member for the Housing and Community Development Citizens Advisory Committee, Esteban Alvarez, and just seeing how we were going on getting a quorum for our April 1st, Tuesday, April 1st meeting, where we're to go over the five year and the one year plan. And our committee is still down a couple of seats on there. It's a 10 member committee, so we have to have six in order to have a quorum and hold an official meeting. And he informed me that sadly he just recently had a conversation with one of the people who was up for Reappointment tonight that they probably are not going to continue and one of the Dell's members there and so I'm just saying given that information anything we could do to fill a few more of those vacancies as quickly as possible on there would be appreciated so that we can continue to have official meetings. Thank you. Do we have any speakers via Zoom day? I wish to speak on this item. A metamere. There are not any raised hands on Zoom at this time. Councillor Member Andrade-Stale, would you like to start with announcing the names of a new board and commission members? Sure. I believe last week I was the only one who didn't have a vacancy. But Alas, one of my obviously much qualified Mark Tusson to came from Pasadena housing authority and then is now in L.A. But he's served his six years and unfortunately, that is the limit, I believe, and then he also has more work where he's going to be flying and doing other things for his work. So that is the only reason he was had to leave. It wasn't that I asked him to be off of it. But thank you for looking out for my best interest for in housing. So my Brittany Navarro, John Hadam, Nora Hernandez, Katie Chan, Michael Soto, Dylan Littlefield, Ken Tang, Edith Garillo, Elizabeth Jacobi, and Daniel Perez. I'm sorry, not done. Carla Grihalva, my planning commissioner. You know, she's a brilliant developer, Antonio Garda, plenty of experience. Monica Calderón, Cliff Bender, Lydia Chen, Suki Lee are my youth commissioners, and I think Catherine Quintana is coming in. Thank you very much. I don't have any additions based other than what's in the staff report. The new, I had a vacancy and effectively reappointing Lee-Lee Berg after sitting out for the appropriate amount of time. I think after he was termed up. I do have some vacancies, so I intend to fill them on an ongoing basis, but that I don't have anything else to report. Thank you so no one knew to appoint this evening, but I do have somebody in mind for HCDA as a matter of fact, so hopefully that will be billed soon and then I'll be in touch with our city clerk regarding a couple of the Regancies. But for now, we're safe. Thank you. Before I read the names, I'd like to just say thank you to all the commissioners for your service. I just sincerely appreciate all your time and effort that you put into serving on the city commission, including the outgoing ones. I did make some changes to my commission appointments and I consider a couple of factors. I wanted to make sure we have broad representation throughout the city, meaning having people from all five districts and I consider experience, expertise and qualifications. And also people who have been part of our community with a desire to serve our city and just never had opportunities to serve. And it is my goal to create those opportunities and engage the talent in our community. So, and I also want to let everybody know that, you know, serving on commission is a meaningful way to contribute to our city, but it's not the only way that you can contribute to our city. So there's a lot of opportunities and I think I'm here to listen and collaborate. And I think so are my colleagues who are always here. So feel free to reach out. We're here to listen, collaborate with any ideas you may have. And we have vacancies. So do stay tuned, stay engaged. So I'm going to just read, since I do have changes, I'm going to go down the list and read the names for Arts and Cultural Events Committee. I have Susan Sanders, Civil Service Commission, Ken Kong, Design Review Board, Jennifer In, Environmental Sustainability Commission, Michael Sakudo, Scott Dudo, HCDA, Susan Advisory Committee, Aaron Fisher, Luis McCammon, Historic Preservation Commission, Joyce Amaro, Human Relations Commission, vacant still, so feel free to reach out if you're interested. Board of Library Trustees, Heather Kitchen, Parks and Recreation Commission, Hove U and Victoria Sipeda Hock-Moharo, Planning Commission, Pres Olsen and Lin Chang, Transportation Commission, Raymond Tend, David Wynn, Youth Commission, and the LeanChain, transportation commission, Raymond Ten, David Wynn, youth commission, Pamela Gazelle, Rendon Wu and Leslie Trupp. Thank you. I'm just going to go ahead and announce the all my board members and board and commissioners. Arts and culture events, Daniel Masaro, civil service commission, Uliya Passencia, design board review, design review board, micro-Dantage, Environmental Sustainability Committee, Lisa Masaro, HCDA Citizen Advisory, Yvette Cardenas, Historic Preservation Committee, Melissa Michelson. Parks and Recreation Commission, René Nava, Elaine Zhang, Planning Commission, Jacob Maharo, Victor Dorado, and Youth Commission, Chen Yu-Wong. Our next presentation is regarding update from the Clean Power Alliance. The City Manager is there, report from the staff for this item. This evening's presentation will be given by Dalya Gomez, External Affairs Manager for the Clean Power Alliance. Thank you, good evening, Madam Mayor, City Council, City staff and community members. My name is Dalya Gomez. I'm with Clean Power Alliance and I'm grateful for this opportunity to come before you today to give you some high level overview information and highlights of some of the impacts that we've had in our communities that Alhambra has been a part of and what the collective impact that we've had on our communities. Next slide, please. So I'm gonna start with the very high level overview of clean power lines. Just tell you who we are, will we do how does it work? I think you're all probably very familiar with it. However, for the sake of community members who may not be too familiar with it, just wanna give a little high level overview. So we are was known as a community choice aggregator and we're a joint powers authority that consists of 35 member jurisdictions throughout LEM Ventura counties and we're really excited to welcome three new communities later this year to in LA County and to one in Ventura County. We have just a little over 1 million customer accounts and that represents over 3 million residents and businesses throughout our service territory. Something we're really proud of is that we are the number one green power provider in the United States as designated by the US Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory. So we're really proud of that. But it's definitely not something that we've accomplished on our own. We've done that in partnership with our communities. And we are governed by one, a board of directors that consists of one elected official from each of our member agencies. And that's really to ensure that all of our communities have the opportunity to be represented when it comes to decision making in the areas of rates, power procurement, community programs. And I would be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to thank Councilmember Maloney for the role that you play as a member of our Board of Directors and also our executive community. So thank you for your guidance. And we are a not-for-profit organization. And so because of that, all of our revenue after the cost for obviously operations, power procurement, and we do set money aside for financial reserve reserve then gets pulled and return back to our communities in the form of local programs. Next slide, please. Okay, so how does it work? So historically the investor-owned utility here at Southern California Edison would procure or generate electricity for customers. They would then also be responsible for delivering that electricity to customers homes and businesses through their power lines and they would be responsible for maintaining the power lines for rating customers meters and for sending customers electricity bills. The only thing that changes with a community choice aggregation model clean power lines is that we're now taking over the procurement, the generation part. So we now procure electricity for our customers. Those are the actual electrons. We put those electrons on the power lines that Edison is still responsible for delivering to our customers. Edison continues to be responsible for maintaining the power lines, for reading customers meters and for sending our customers one monthly electricity bill. Looks very similar to all of the Edison bills. The only difference is that it is now a joint bill. And customers in the city of Alhambra will see that their generation, their electricity supply, the actual electricity they consume for any given bill in period, comes from clean power lines, but their delivery continues to become from Southern California Edison. And so it's really important to note that we're not an added charge on our customers' bills. We're simply replacing that generation that Edison would have supplied and charged customers for. Next slide, please. Okay, so we offer all of our customers three energy products that they can choose from. We call this the power of choice. The 100% green power product consists of, as the name suggests, 100% renewable energy. It generally is at about 5% premium, so about 5% more compared to Edison's base rate, and just for context, Edison's base rate consists of about 38% renewable energy. Currently, this product is at a 6% premium and it looks like maybe about $6 for every $100 of a customer's bill. And 68% of our customers are on the 100% green power product. We also offer the clean power product consists of 50% clean energy, which is a mix of renewable and large hydro electricity. This product is typically at parity, so it typically costs the same as Edison's base rate. However, currently it is at a 1% premium. And we have about 21% of our customers on this product. And then we also offer the lean product. This is our most economical product. Typically it's at a 1 to 2% discount compared to Edison's base rate, however currently it is at parity. So it costs about the same as Edison's base rate. And I don't know if I mentioned, but this product is at a, consists of 40% clean energy. And then the other option that our customers always have is the option to opt out of clean power lines and return to Edison for their generation. So customers who stay with clean power lines can opt up and opt down at any time they can do this on a monthly basis if that's what they need or want to do. So we call this the power of choice and something that we're proud of to provide. Next slide please. And to meet this ever increasing demand for clean and renewable energy, we've already executed 56 long-term contracts consisting of just a little over 2,500 megawatts of renewable energy and almost 2,000 megawatts of battery storage. In fact, in 2023, our overall energy portfolio was 75% renewable energies. So that's new steel in the ground that would not have been built but not for the work that we're doing with these projects. So in that sense, we're also helping to create stability, with reliability, and we're helping California meet its clean energy goals. And we're really particular about the projects that we execute. We have a preference for projects that are in close proximity to a CPA service territory that prioritize workforce development and that provide benefits to disadvantaged communities. We also have a very high level of environmental stewardship. In fact, we have a MOU in partnership with the Nature Conservancy, who independently screen all of our projects for how they rank in environmental stewardship. And if the Nature Conservancy ranks the project to low in environmental stewardship, we won't bring that project to our board of directors. Next slide, please. So I mentioned it's a lot of great work that is taking place not just because of clean power alliance but because of the commitment that our member jurisdictions and all of our customers have made. So the impact so far is member agencies and all of our customers have avoided an estimated 13.5 billion pounds of harmful greenhouse gas emissions since the launch of service in 2018. And that's the equivalent of planting over 101 million trees and growing them for one year. I'm sorry, over 10 years. And then more locally, if you can take me to the next slide, please. More locally here in the city of Alhambra, the city of Alhambra has selected the 100% green power product as the city's preferred energy option. The participation rate is just a little over 95%. For context, our overall participation rate between all of our member jurisdictions is the 92%. So really great work in the city of Alhambra. And about 97, a little over 97% of active customers here in Alhambra are on 100% green power. And so what does that look like? Because of the city of Alhambra, you have avoided over 230 million pounds of carbon dioxide in our environment, which is the equivalent of removing 24,000 gas fired vehicles off the road for a period of one year, or the equivalent of planting over one million trees and growing them for 10 years. Oh, good job, Alhambra. Next slide, please. Okay, so I mentioned that we're not for profit organization and as a not-profit organization, some of our revenue gets pulled and invested back into our communities in the form of local programs. I'm not going to go through all of these, but I do want to highlight just a few. We, our Board of Directors have adopted a strategic plan calling for $200 million of investment that benefit our communities in these priority areas that are local resiliency and grid management, transportation and building electrification, and local clean energy procurement. I do want to highlight some programs because we will be in the city of Hamburg on Sunday, April 27th for the city's eco-fair and we will be promoting these programs in your communities. So I'm just going to go through them really briefly. Next slide please. These are residential and small business programs and next slide please. The first program is Power Response. This is a demand response program that encourages customers to reduce or conserve energy during peak demand periods where the grid is very impacted and helps to prevent potential outages. Here customers can save money by reducing or conserving energy use and they can also some of them might qualify for financial incentives. So we have, we provide four different pathways for all customers to participate if they want to be a part of demand response. We have a program for customers who have eligible smart devices, for customers who don't have eligible smart devices. We have a pathway for commercial leaders in the city of La Hamba and also for multifamily buildings. Next slide, please. The EV Smart Charge Program is one of our newer programs and this program helps customers with electric vehicles optimize their vehicle charging through the use of a nap that automatically charges their vehicle during off-peak times when electricity demand is lower and electricity is also cleaner. A smart charging helps customers save money on their electricity bills and can also qualify them for monthly financial incentives. Next slide please. Okay, a program that we're also very excited about is the energy team. The energy team is a team of experts that provide unbiased, personalized energy guidance on electrification and energy efficiency projects. On this page, you can see some of the services we offer, guidance on available rebays and incentives and tax credits. We offer virtual energy assessments, assistance finding qualified contractors, customized electrification plans for individual homes and residents. And I do want to also add that we're in the early stages, but currently CPA staff is looking into how we can incorporate adding a fire resiliency to the energy team. And this is a free service that we offer for all our residential and small business customers. Next slide please. The Sun Storage Rebay program is a rebate that we provide to residential customers who install qualified battery storage systems that are paired to solar panels. The rebate is $750 and for low-income customers on care and pharaoh programs, they receive an additional $250 for up to $1,000 in rebates. Next slide. And the room air conditioner rebates, it's actually like a coupon. So low-income customers who are on care and fairer programs, they may qualify for a up to $300 coupon that they can take to home depot or to those to purchase a qualified room air conditioner. Next slide. And they just wanted to highlight that communities like the city of Alhambra who select the 100% green power product as the city's preferred energy option. Low-income customers in Alhambra or on the care and fair programs will receive the 100% renewable energy at the clean power rate. And that's a decision that the Board of Directors made very early on to allow customers that are not otherwise able to participate in renewable energy to be able to do so at a discounted rate. And just for reference, there are over 8,000 residents in Alhambra that are on CARE program and almost 200 on the fairer program. And we're almost there. Next slide, please. So we're going to just highlight two of our programs for our partner communities like the City of Alhambra. You can take me to the next slide. We'll start with the Power Ready program. So the Power Ready program was created to provide resiliency solutions for our community partners. Here essentially we take a building in the community that serves a critical public need and we, in essence, install solar panels and a backup battery storage system to that building so that in the event of an outage, that building that provides a community benefit will continue to be able to operate. And we are working closely with City staff to identify if this is a program that the City of Elhamber can benefit from. And then lastly, I think you're familiar with the Energized Communities Program. The Energized Communities Program assists our partner communities in reaching their sustainability and decarbonization goals by providing technical and financial support. They are two pathways for participation. They're not mutually exclusive, so all of our member agencies can participate in both programs. That's the pathways to electrification, where the benefit is agencies get to choose one project from three pre-established offerings, and the benefit is that we provide technical and incentives up to $250,000. And the Innovation Fund, this is a competitive pathway. We will have two rounds actually, we just had one round late last year, but this is a competitive program. Member agencies can participate in both rounds and the next one, the next round will open up in I think August 2025. And in a sense, member agencies can submit a sustainability project for consideration and CPA will determine if they'll grant at the $250,000 for them. But as I mentioned, these two programs are not mutually exclusive, so you can participate in both. We have been working with City staff to identify how energized communities can benefit the city of Alhambrand, and it was on today's consent agenda for electric fleet transition. And I think that is it for me. I'm happy to take any questions if you have any. Questions? At this point do we have any speaker cars from the public for this item? Madam Mayor, we do not have any speaker cards for this. Thank you very much. Do we have any speakers via zoom there? We should speak on this item. Madam Mayor, there are not any raised hands on zoom. I spoke to zoom. There is one raised hand from Maria Theresa Lopez. You hear me? Yes we can. Hello. Okay, what's Marie? It's not Maria. I'd appreciate that correction. I just have a question. I mean it's quite an extensive presentation. I just wanted to know whether we had an opportunity to at least have a summary or something ahead of time because it's hard to comment on something like that has just been presented. You know, I don't know, I had to listen to the whole presentation and you know, I'd like some time to go back. I mean, what happens after this presentation? Does it become available so that residents can go over it, ask questions at a later time maybe. That was a question. To the speaker, we will be able to answer the questions at the later time. Okay, good. Thank you. I have a question. Thank you so much for being here. We're really excited that we went from 50% to 100% and I think that it really says a lot about our city moving in a more sustainable direction. I have a question for you regarding schools. We have over, I'll hammer you Unified, it has over 16 schools. Have you engaged the school community because they may not be city council, but they are so important to our cities and they're perfect opportunities for offering a lot of real good savings for them. The reason I say that is I saw these solar panels at an event I was at at one of the schools, and I didn't see them hooked up, right? So I saw them up there and they are giving back, so they do have panels and they are reducing the the the Edison bill, but there was no switch to turn and to make the changes and make it really productive for them. So I have that question. Yeah, so one thing that comes to mind is our Power Ready program. We are now in the works of implementing Power Ready 2. So we've already had a Power Ready 1 round of projects. And I think there's about 8 or 12 projects that are being implemented. But we did some lessons learned from the first round. And we found out that it would be beneficial to be able to extend the benefit outside of city municipal facilities. So we have extended the capacity for schools to be able to participate if they meet the requirements. So that may be an option. I mentioned I think that we are in close contact with city staff to identify the potential of how power ready can benefit communities. And then outside of that, we've been doing a lot of outreach. We're doing a lot of presentations. Slowly but surely we're getting around to a lot more communities. We're finding that more communities are learning about clean power lines, understanding about clean power lines, as opposed to just even just a year ago when people were still not even aware that they were actually our customers. And if you, we look for our community partners to point us in the right direction for communities, for schools, for different organizations that can benefit from a presentation for a good learning experience. Well, thank you very much. And then I would just have one more question about Marie Lopez's question regarding how can she become more familiar with the program that is very complex. Do we have something on our website, City Manager, that sort of explains our connection to power alliance, or do you have a link that you could possibly put on our website? Yeah, and many communities, many of our partner communities, have a specific web page designated for Clean Power Alliance. I don't know if the City of Ahambra does, but it's something we can work on. In addition to that, we can definitely provide our web address so that a person can go in there and read all about Clean Power Alliance, all about the different program offerings. And if they want more specific, one-on-one conversations, I'm more than happy to speak with them. We also have a very great team of customer service representatives that can provide all the information as well. And I like that you say people can opt out at any time. So that's critical, and I think that's an important thing to get through to our residents. Of course we don't want them to but they do have that option, you know, works, work sometimes changes for people and they may need some assistance and so thank you very much. And thank you to Councilman Maloney for really taking a big lead on this. We appreciate here. Board. Thank you. Have a good night. Thank you Madam Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. Those. Those. for really taking a big lead on this. We appreciate here. Board. Thank you. Have a good night. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. That was really good. It was a lot, but I think it's important for our public to hear about what CPA is doing in the Council as well. And we have Council member Wang, I think, was not here when we had a lot of discussion about CPA originally and over the years. So it was really great to have that. I'm not going to give you any hard questions, but I do want to say that I think we should recognize not to pat ourselves on the back, but as an organization, as an effort, CPAs really accomplished quite a bit in a short period. And what, eight years or so it's been in existence. We, City of Alhambra approved joining, I think, back in 2017, is that sound right? That sounds right. And we were kind of the second round of cities to join, and it was a good idea to do that back then because we were able to get in almost on the ground floor. But just a few things that always stick out to me is that the CPA was started with a very generous loan from the county of Los Angeles. I think it was $10 million. There was a term to pay that back and the county was obviously very concerned that CPA would induct its operations in a manner that would allow them to pay back the county within that term of the loan and and we were able to do it early. And it was pretty significantly earlier than expected. So that was a nice thing to get off the ground. Just what a year and a half ago, the credit companies rated CPAs bonds as investment grade bonds, which allows CPA to do business and do projects at a much cheaper rate than other comparable entities. And I think that is something that as board member, I wasn't expecting at least that soon. And I think it reflected well on the business model of CPA and the way that it's run. I will say that this is a really complex area to operate in energy and buying power on the markets and how that interacts with the grid. And there's so much in here I could not learn that in a lifetime I don't think. But I'm sort of scratching the surface now after almost eight years of being on the board. It's really impressive what this group has done. It's some really committed people and it was fun to see this go from sort of essentially a startup, really startup mentality and you hear some of these stories about the early days and it's really eye opening about how these things are put together and now to become the number one provider of renewable energy in the entire country is pretty impressive. So I think that really reflects well on CPAs and organization and on the members of CPA for sticking it through, for not getting sidetracked or caught up in criticism, some valid, some not in the early days and seeing it through. So I think you really have, I think your slideshow too, really showed the impact that CPAs had in the communities that it serves. And I hope and expect that it will do quite a bit more in coming years. Really pleased to hear that we're trying to partner with CPA to find these different programs. I think that as the programs that are offered by CPAs sort of get a little bit more experience and the people running it, and like you said, we have lessons learned and trying to figure out what works best for our communities. I think we should really jump in and see, take advantage of all these. I want to say to Council Member and Dr. Estadler's point, too, you can opt out at any point. You can go back to Southern California Edison. Importantly, you can also opt down. So right now, Alhambra is enrolled at the 100% rate, which I still appreciate the fact that my colleagues and the whole council agreed to do that. And I appreciate the community for sticking with it at the rate that it did. If anyone's uncomfortable that you can always opt down to the clean tier, which is 50% renewable energy. And if that is too much, you can always opt down to the lean tier, which is 38% renewable. 40% clean energy. 40% and 40% is greater than Edison's default rate renewable energy component and it's cheaper. It's almost always cheaper because at the board targets that, you know, with some exceptions, but targets that to be cheaper than the Edison rate intentionally. When you talk about rates, I just want to point out, there's you see graphs and different cost estimates. These things are in flux constantly, so what maybe a discount now could be a premium and a couple months and what's in vice versa. So eventually we're going to, I think, see these things stabilize and CPAs rates will eventually be more than competitive with any other offering out on the market. So I don't want to take up too much time. I'm pleased that we're able to do this. I'm really happy to be a part of the organization of Proud that Alhamber is part of the organization. And I'm glad that we're sticking this out and working with CPA and all sorts of new projects. So it's refreshing. And it's one of those things that I think, you know, when I'm off this couch, I can look back on it and say, I'm really happy to be associated with that. I want to say one thing before I wrap up is that when we have a sustainability plan going on right now, when we were interviewing the, or my counterpart on the subcommittee was now state senators, Sasha Perez, when we were interviewing sustainability program consultants, we were sort of trying to get free advice from them. One of the things we would ask them is, what's the number one, what's the biggest bang for a buck thing we could do right now to have an impact in this sector? And I think they all pretty much said you should go to the 100% renewable rate for CPA. And we were in the process of doing that at that time already. So we're really happy to check that first box off the list. And I just want to underscore the importance of doing that and the importance of sticking with CPA. So thank you. Thank you. Just want to thank you for your presentation tonight. Not much else to say. Just happy that you know provided such great information's a great information for us and just looking forward to getting to that, you know, 80 percentile plus on green power soon. So hopefully your next presentation will be close to if not at that number already. We hope so. We're working towards it, if you have some of the. I know you have you made it. Great strides. Thank you. Thank you so much for your presentation. like our vice mayor, Mal said, I wasn't here when this effort all started. I do have some questions. I just try to understand this a little bit more. In the community, I see a lot of interesting stalling solar panels. The CPA offer any grants for funding for the community solar projects in Alhambra? Are there any you know rebate programs for residents or business who want to install solar panels, battery storage or EV chargers? Yeah, we do have a rebate program for customers who want to install battery storage systems that are paired with solar panels. The amount for that rebate is $750 and for low-income customers on care and ferro programs, they get an additional $250 for a total of $1,000. But we don't have programs specifically for the solar panels for rooftop solar. Thank you. You know with SoCal Edison, we have power outages and we want to be curious if a CPA has any plans to improve our grid reliability and reduce the frequency of power outages. Yeah. But we are working on how to help our communities with resiliency. Unfortunately, the power lines, the power poles, the maintenance of them, all of that belongs to Southern California Edison. So under the community choice aggregation model, the investor on utilities continue to be responsible for maintaining the power lines. So that is solely their responsibility and we have no role in that. Understood. Okay. And I heard that you said the next step will be doing a lot of community outreach and getting out there, which I really appreciate. We appreciate the effort to public outreach. I just want to ask that when you do public outreach, please include, you know, different language access our community to have a big population that does not speak English, so just want to make that request. And then we have our cities working on our sustainability plans. So what are some of the ways that our local business can, or not profiting you know, Hamburg can potentially collaborate with CPA, maybe share some of the ways that they can collaborate on sustainability initiatives? Yeah, and actually I took part in the early meetings. I don't know if it was last year or the year before with your sustainability folks who were gathering information from community members and community partners. So we took part in that. I was happy to do that. As far as our nonprofit organizations, we have, not myself, but one of my colleagues, that does a lot of outreach with nonprofit organizations. We do offer grants. It's a grant cycle that takes place once a year and nonprofit organizations can receive anywhere from $20,000 to $10,000 to $30,000 in grants. They have all of the benefits that all of the other CPA customers have to choose the option that's best for them. We are a list of programs when I came to Kimp Power Alliance that we had maybe three or four programs. And we saw the list of programs continues to grow. So as we grow and we develop more and we start implementing more programs we're hoping that our programs will be able to touch every type of customer within CPA service territory. Therefore, thank you so much. You're welcome. And I'm sorry, one more thing. So, I learned my lesson about not coming prepared to the City of Alhambra because I am here at community events two to three times a year. So, I always bring a translator that can speak effectively about clean power lines to all of the residents from the city of Alhambra. So I we will be doing that on the end of next month as well. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. Will you be at the fair next time? I will be at the next time. Yes. market myself and Zona. Oh, great. I look forward to seeing you there. We will be there. We'll have a Chinese speaking individual with there as well. And one other member of our team. And will you be able to provide the public some informational pieces to go home with? Yeah. Our main goal right now is really to create awareness about who we are. As I mentioned, a lot of our customers are still not familiar with who we are. So our goal is to provide them with information so that they can make the best informed decisions for themselves. So we're not out there trying to convince them to stay just to give them the information that they need so they can make the decisions that they need for themselves and their families. And then after we can establish that trust, then we start talking about programs that they can benefit from. Thank you, I'll look forward to seeing you there. Thank you very much. I'll be there. Thank you. Have a good evening. This item is an informational report for the City Council, so no vote is required. Our final presentation is regarding the city of the Alhambra objective of Design Standards and Design Guidelines Project. The City Manager is there a report for staff for this item. And there is this evening's presentation be kicked off by Senior Planner Megan Wu. Good evening, honorable mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Megan Wu. I am the Senior Planner for the City of Alhambra, and I am overseeing the objective design standards and design guidelines project. This project sets out to refine the citywide objective design standards and develop citywide design guidelines for multi-family mixed use and non-residential projects. Tonight we have with us our consultant, our design group, who will be providing a presentation on the project. Presentation will include an introduction on the differences between objective design standards and design guidelines, the intent of this project, upcoming outreach efforts, and the anticipated timeline for the project. And with that, I will pass it on to Katia. Good evening, Mayor and Council. Thank you for having us tonight. We're happy to be here. As Megan said, I'm Katia, Dylan and I'm with our design group and I'm joined with by Jamie Williams, Managing Principal at RFIRM. We are here to... Oh, I'm sorry, next slide please. We are here to... Oh, I'm one more slide. I'm so sorry. I'm going to get the hang of this any second now. We are here just to give you an update over this work effort and overview of the tools that we're going to be talking about throughout this work effort and to kind of confirm design direction. I'm going to go into it in a little bit more detail a little bit later on, but what this work effort entails is refining the objective design standards that the city has already adopted by which I mean fine-tuning the standards for multi-family, mixed use and non-residential uses. And then we're also going to craft design guidelines for three areas of the city, specifically for the Central Business District, the East Main corridor, and Valley Boulevard. Next slide, please. So what are objective design standards? Like I mentioned, you probably know you've already adopted them. But an objective design standard is a standard that has no personal or subjective judgment. It's uniformly verifiable and it's notable both by the development applicant and the public official. So if someone comes to you and and they would like to build a multi-family building and these standards are in your code. They are measurable and verifiable. If you ask three planners, all three planners will have the same answer for you. Next slide, please. So why is objective review important? For exactly that reason, is set expectations on the outset, and it's also required by state law. Next slide, please. So objective design standards work in tandem with design guidelines. And design guidelines are adopted to promote community character and design continuity to maintain neighborhood character in scale, and it also provides design direction. But it does allow for creativity and design flexibility. And they do this by providing suggestions, excuse me, and recommendations. Next slide please. So when we look at it together, standards are objectively measurable. They're required and they are rigid. Whereas design guidelines, like I said, are a suggestion or a recommendation, they are flexible and they do allow for the creativity. Next slide, please. So an example of a design standard, and I'll just read the first bullet is building facades visible from the primary street. She'll not exceed, I'm sorry, she'll not extend more than 50 feet in length without a two foot variation in depth in the wall plane. So it has these measurable standards. And so people understand what they need to be doing to meet that standard. Next slide please. Design guidelines. They can cover a wide variety of topics. For example, roof lines and I'm just going to read that first bullet point. I'm sorry. It ended up a little bit smaller than anticipated. But the guideline, a guideline for roof line or roof form could read, ensure roof forms, materials, and detailing are consistent with the chosen architectural style. So as you can tell, it's a little bit softer, it's a little less rigid, it's providing a recommendation, it's not quite as measurable. But when you have both the standards and the guidelines working together, it informs design of buildings in a way that provides you with a final product that you want. So, next slide, please. What is this work effort in tail? We started with research and evaluation. We did a windshield survey, which means we drove through Alhambra looking at what you have on the ground today. And we did some reconnaissance. We looked at existing conditions. And we looked at your code. Your zoning code. Your existing standards, your existing single family design guidelines. And now we're taking the next step and we're going to fine tune the citywide objective design standards. Like I said, we're going to take it and really kind of add some specificity for multi-family mixed use and non-residential uses. And we're also going to begin engaging the community. We're going to have a number of presentations coming up shortly where residents and interested parties can attend. And then we'll really start crafting the design guidelines once we hear and receive input from your community. Next slide, please. I also want to be very crystal clear of what this work effort does not entail. We are not changing any single family residential objective design standards or design guidelines. Those are adopted and they are working and they're working well, I think, for your community. We are not touching that. We are not revisiting single-family development standards or standards. We're not revisiting height. We're not revisiting setbacks. We're not revisiting density. Those are not, that's not on the table. We're not doing anything with that. And we're also not changing what uses are allowed where. So like I said, it's just really fine tuning the standards and then providing design guidelines for specific areas in town. Next slide please. And then again, next slide please. So currently what regulates design in your community are general plan policies. So you have an adopted general plan and that includes broad values for neighborhood character and for corridors. You also have a zoning code and as I mentioned adopted design standards. This is the implementation and you currently also have single family design guidelines and this encourages good design character and aesthetics for single family. Next slide please. So what this work effort as I mentioned entails is fine tuning the objective design standards for multi-family mixed use and non-residential uses and looking at the design guidelines so we're crafting those for the specific parts of town for the East Main corridor central business district in Valley. Next slide please. And again, next slide please. We're going to go to the community. We're going to ask them where they feel like there's improvement in design again excluding single family next slide please and Like I mentioned we are going to be heading out into the community in short order We're going to have a citywide presentation April 9th and then the following night we're going to have a presentation that focuses on Valley Boulevard. In the beginning of May we're going to come meet with your design review board and have a presentation with them and hear from them as well and then a couple nights later we're going to have an open house presentation for both the East Maine corridor and the Central Business District. Next slide please. So just to say you can see it again by focus area and presentation on the timeline. I'll be around quite a bit in the next couple months. I'm gonna be here, I'm here in March. We'll be here in April and in May. And then we're gonna come back to you in the summer and we're gonna let you know what we heard. Heard from your community, heard from your residents, what people would like and touch base again and let you know how that's been informing the work and kind of checking with you to share with you where we're at. After that we're going to look to the fall. We'll be back in the fall and we have great hopes and plans that will be done with this work effort by the end of the year. So we'll come back to you November, December, and then finalize everything January, February. Next slide please. This work effort also has a designated web page on the city's website. And currently it's kicking off the project. And as we develop materials and go out to the community, we'll keep everyone informed. We'll let people know if they want to join us, where we'll be, and then we'll also post any documents or presentations or anything that was created to this website so people can follow along. I think that brings us to our final slide, please. Next slide. And we're here for questions. Thank you. At this time, do we have any speaker cards from the public for this item? We have one speaker, Mr. Hurley. Sanctions. This looks like something similar to what the City of Los Angeles did in their uplift or upbuild of the City of Los Angeles, you know, many of their mixed use expensive, high-cost condos and reproduction of living has really become an eye sore down there. Is this the plan of Alhambra? Build more density and high rise where you can't see the beautiful San Gabriel mountains anymore from your residential home? I mean I grew up in a residential neighborhood. I could see mountains, I could see the ugly towers of the city of Los Angeles. And then I moved to a nice area up on top of the hills where I get to see everything off of Azuzan Kaleema and that nice Shabar on Park where I live. It's beautiful. Nature, cherry trees and they all blossom. But this project here will it blossom with these guidelines? I've seen it in multiple cities. I've been a Sacramento, the same concept of what you saw in those pictures is what they built and more than likely they're still vacant. And why is that? Why is that? Because they're unaffordable. So if we have a housing stock, now based on this criteria, guess what? We're going back to the Stalin days, the Communist days, and the city of Los Angeles with their gentrification which created all the homeless problems and all the homeless crisis, all the veteran crisis that are now in every small city such as Ohambra. You're no different than LA, but you're smaller. So on top of this note, the city of Downey did the same thing. And why do I bring up these cities because I've lived there before. I slept under sidewalk in the streets. I slept in their empty buildings. I crawled on their roofs. I crawled in their trash cans and found the truth that they're dirty. They're dirty. Please, Alhamdulillah, do not become dirty like that. Have a conscience and really think these matters out because if a person born and raised in Alhamdulillah, a child of Asian descent, can buy a beautiful home or they grew up then you've wasted their time and you wasted my time because I already know it's still gonna go forward you're all gonna give an aye vote but at least for the record I get to point out that mix use, density, and gentrification does not work. So as you heard earlier in your non-agent public comment, please find a better method to keep housing going, but keep it at a residential level, not density. Thank you. Our next speaker is Marling. Hello, I just want to say that I do believe that the city of Elhambera as across does need some redevelopment. I'm not sure if this is the objective, it doesn't. If that is, I do want to find out more about it. Because I do have seen the decline in the community as being less clean, less healthy from when I grew up here, as an original resident since 1970. So I just want to make sure that it's not going to be a cement city, that it's not going to be just buildings and apartments. I'm disappointed about the building on Valley Boulevard. My mom lives not far from McDonald's on Valley Boulevard where Angelos is. And there's a building that's green and it's really super high, it's an eye sore. If you look down the street and you take a photo, that building is an eye sore, it doesn't belong there. The city of Alhambra is high. Whoever pass, approve that. I don't know what they were thinking, but it's an eyear and it's very ugly. So I just want to make sure that the funding too, nothing specified on here. It's the first time I'm hearing about it. Where is the tax dollars coming from to for this design project? Financials are not in here, so I'd like to know that. Thank you. We can address the financials. Do we have any speakers via Zoom that wishes to speak on this item? Madam Mayor, there are not any raised hands on Zoom at this time. Thank you. This time we'll open up to for comments and questions from the council. Just a quick question. Do these guidelines will they include landscaping as well? Good evening, Jimmy Williams. They will. We will be addressing private landscaping as a component of the design guidelines and may show some character of public as well in some of the specific district corridors. Great. Thank you. I just want to say thank you for the presentations. It's kind of an exciting sneak review of things to come. So, I appreciate you being here. Mayor, I have a question. How far west do you go on valley boulevard? From city, it'll be from each end of the city. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Our city is developing our very first historic preservation ordinance. How does the design guidelines work with the historic preservation ordinance? There are companion documents so it depends on where I don't know enough about where your historic ordinance or overlay or what the work product you're doing, but they will work in tandem together. So if there's an overlap, both will apply. All right. I see that one of the slides, there are topics that include roof lines, dining roof textures, and primary entry appearance, community character. And I was wondering how the design guidelines would address if it does walkability, accessibility, and maybe some public spaces. The guidelines will, the guidelines are to speak to private ownership, so private property to put, so any future development that comes in, so it talks about pedestrian connectivity, open space treatment on how there's an open space requirement that's in your code, but how you might, what you might implement within that open space. So street trees, public amenities in certain areas, and the like. So there are provisions that pertain to those areas. Yes. Okay, got it. Are there any sustainability measures that will be incorporated in the design guidelines, such as green building standards, energy efficiency, and water conservation, anything around sustainability? That's certainly something that we can include. Right, great. Not standards. Not green. it wouldn't be standards, but it would be practices, and guidelines associated with sustainability. Yeah, yeah. Okay, sounds good. And then, you know, it's a trend that we're seeing that a lot of cities are looking at adaptive reuse of buildings, happening in city of LA, it's happening in all the places. Does the design guidelines kind of encourage the adaptive reuse of existing buildings to reducing environmental impact? They can. All right. I would love to see that incorporated. And then last question, how will the effectiveness of the design guidelines be measured over time? And if there are any opportunities along the road for revisions based on how we're, as we implement them, if we're getting feedback what works, what doesn't work, are there any measures that or mechanisms that's building to continue to improve the process? Try not to nerd out on an answer to that. The standards will be adopted by ordinance. The guidelines will work with staff to determine how those are adopted, but anything over time can be amended. It's just the process that you have to go through. So as you're seeing development come in, as your design review board is looking at them and using these two tools to effectively guide future development, then that will be kind of your truth test. And at any point, you could revisit it if you need to. We in our experience they tend to stand the test the time. Our group is architects help support us in developing them through our firm as well as landscape architects and urban planners and so they're based on real assumptions and practicality. Thank you so much for the wonderful presentation. Yes. I just want to thank you for the presentation as well. I think it's much needed for the City of Alhambra. You know, just looking for that consistency. I was stated earlier and somebody came in and said, well, this is what we're looking at doing without trying to guess and kind of reinvent each and every time. My only comment was asked by Councillor Mourwang. It was just, I'd like to see this get revised. And that revised, but just looked at every couple of years just for revisions, possible revisions so that we can see what is working, what isn't working. And that's it. Looking forward to the final product and hopefully by the beginning of next year we'll have it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. This is what I've been looking for for many years. I remember my previous, the design review board member commissioner said that they have nothing to really work with. What we have right now is just conforming to the neighborhood, which is not a lot to work with. And I think what's really important, that the design guidelines that we will have will definitely help to maintain our neighborhood character, which goes hand in hand with our preservation ordinance, the spirit of our preservation ordinance. We have many beautiful cross-mill homes and other types of stuff among the cities, but especially on commercial streets, like Valley, there have been buildings that have been painted over. I know we have art decal design on certain buildings, but they got painted over. So hopefully that with this effort that the city council has is undertaking with the product that we will be seeing that we will be able to let those designs still come out again. And what I really like to ask you is that, give me a clear indication on the design guidelines. It says, Crop Team, design guidelines specific to EMCE, Spain corridor, CBD and Valley Boulevard. Tell me a little bit about how it really works in terms of your perspective. How do you customize the design guidelines to each corridor? Well, we start with the urban fabric that's there today. So the East Main corridor is largely single-story, 25-foot-lots, traditional storefronts, historic character. Then you move forward to CBD. There's larger mixed-use buildings. The buildings are located adjacent to the street. There's a really important to the pedestrian realm. This larger sidewalks and amenities. And then you go over to Valley. And it's really large parking lots right at the street edge with buildings pushed behind. So as things change, as property owners start to improve their property, this gives them that design direction that was lacking in the past. The reason that some of these things have happened is because there haven't been strong design guidelines or standards in place until just recently there were some standards put in. This is really to help set that bar so that as future development comes in, you have distinctive, neighbor districts, as well as high quality architecture. So you talked about scale in the parking lot, the setback. Are you trying to see what's there now and try to refine it? Are you trying to match the neighborhood behind it? Because we have, I mean, as far as I can, I'm so sorry, that there might, there are storefronts that have no style whatsoever. But the neighborhood behind it has a particular character. Are you trying to bring that neighborhood character to the street? Well, I think I want to be clear that if you're talking about the neighborhood character in single family or multi-family residential, that's a really different use. And we're not going to do anything to transition that look and feel. But what we want to do is make Valley, for example, more livable, more walkable, more pedestrian-friendly. We want to encourage more trees in those parking lots. We want to encourage that when new development comes in, they locate the building at the street frontage as opposed to behind a big parking lot. So changing over time, it to be more livable and walkable is the desire. Matching the residential behind is not the objective. It's just to compliment it. So what if that, let's say there are a a buildings, let's say on Belly or East Bank Court or just an example, that have specific style to it and they're still being maintained by the property owner. Will the new design guideline be able to try to, would that be your design guideline try to preserve that style or is is it just gonna be, you're gonna let that just then along on its own, you're going to be looking at just livability? My, I believe, because all we've done so far is an audit and tried to really understand what's there today. I believe that in, for East Maine, we will establish character building materials that are really consistent with sort of that neighborhood and unique. I believe that in Valley, we would want to promote more flexibility in architectural styles and materials because it's kind of a different urban fabric. So yes and yes. I guess as the answer, we will be doing it, we'll be being providing more fine-grained design guidelines on the East Main Quarter and allowing more flexibility on volleyball of art with the importance of promoting quality design everywhere. Sounds interesting, I look forward to it. Thank you. This item is an informational report for the C Council, so no vote is required. The next item on the agenda tonight is the consent agenda. Item numbers 4 through 25. Do we have any speaker cards from the public for any of the consent agenda items? Madam Mayor, yes, we have several speaker cards for consent agenda items. We have cards for items number four six eleven 15 17 and 21 and lost with 21 21 Does the council have any items you want to pull? Yes, I would like to add did you say 20? Did somebody say item 20? No, so I would like to add item 20 and item 21, please. Okay, 21 is already on there, so I'm right down 20. Any other council member, like to point items? Madam Mayor, we do have a raised hand on Zoom as well, so we might want to check in with Jennifer Aing to see which item she wanted to speak on. Miss, Miss, what item would you like to speak on? Number 6, please. Okay, number 6. Move the rest of the consent. Second. Roll call, please. I'm ready, Stadler. Yes. Maloney. Yes. Wang. Yes. Mazza. Yes. Lee. Yes. There are two speakers for item number four. The first one is Mistress. Please come up. CD clerk, this is for number four only, is that correct? Am I speaking on number four only? Correct. Okay. All right. Thank you. Hopefully our CD attorney can provide a dictionary. My name is Mistria's transgender queen. Hopefully we can have a dictionary ready for the CD attorney. Number four, fair housing. Fair housing is that something that I advocated not only on this board, but on many, many local board, local city at the city level, at the county level. And then hopefully in the future, if I have a chance, I will be advocating that in the state level. Fair housing, several points. Number one, maybe our council member will never understand something called eligibility. Just like our council member, her big baby just said, we have a dialysis center, everybody can go there, they don't understand that healthy insurance, you have to be eligible, be eligible. They accept your insurance and then you can go to that dialysis center Same thing as fire fire housing It doesn't matter if you're talking about a hamburger or if you are talking about Los Angeles, you know, there are so many fair housing Program but the thing is that when you take a look skater roll, we all, uh, when you take a look, uh, people on the street, you ask them, Hey, you know, your city have a fair housing program. Your city has a shelter program. Your city has a homeless program. Why are you still in the other street? I'm not eligible. I'm sorry. So our council member does not understand. There is something called there's a word again. We need a dictionary. The word is called eligibility. So just because you have a program, just because you have a dialer right, just because you have a dialer's sender, just because you have a fair housing program, it doesn't mean you are helping people. So in general, the program, the services are only available for, I don't know the percentage, I don't know the data, I'm assuming let's just give you a rental number, 20% people who actually qualify for that. Because when I am on the bus, what I'm continue to see, maybe city manager, you can take a bus ride, whenever when you have a chance, people are sleeping on the bus. Whenever I'm walking on the street, sometimes in the corner of the main and a garfield, people at the late night when I walk home, sometimes I got scared because I don't know if that person is dead or if that person is still sleeping. So I, you know, but at the same time, we see fair housing program. We see we are all council members saying, oh, we are doing so much for homeless. We are doing so much for homeless. And then let's ask the council member that who did so much for the housing does your homeless population in Ahamra increased? Or is that decreased? Because you said you provided a lot of effort. You did a lot for homeless. You did a lot for provided housing for a program. And then also I want to ask the city manager, how many people, let's just using the city of Ahambra as an example. Let's just say 700 people, Ahambra employees. How many of your Ahambra employees actually own a house in the city of Ahambra? Ask yourself. And then I want to ask a city manager that maybe your salary maybe you barely can afford a mortgage in city of Ahambra, but other than you, other than you, because there's only a handful of people are making like a quarter million dollar like your annual salary. majority of your of your CDR Humber employees are actually below very below six figures if you are talking about every salary of CDR Humber employee are actually below, very below six figures. If you are talking about every salary of CDR Humber. And how many of them are living into CDR Humber? So, you know, again, we are just doing all the talking, fair housing, homeless housing, you know, all the different programs. In general, I don't see your program are working. In general, I don't see that you're reducing the homeless population. In general, I don't see the percentage of home ownership in the city of Ahamba are actually increasing. Ask your police officer right there. Do they own a house in the city of Ahamba? Ask your firefighter back there. Do they live in city of Ahamba? Can they afford afford a mortgage tomorrow living in city of Ahamber? Those are the one of the very, very high paid city employees. You don't, you don't, a typical ordinary random Ahamber employee do not get to paid, you know, 150,000 like them. Those are the higher, higher, very high paid employee. So forget about if you are a library worker. Forget about if you are a part of time, you know, whatever, you know, miscellaneous city employee. And then we are talking about fair housing. So, you know, you can continue to talk about if you make so many efforts. But again, if there's no result, your efforts are just wasted. Unfortunately. Our next speaker on item number four is Mr. Hurley. Well, that was an excellent point by this gentleman or lady behind me from the LGBT regarding housing, right center and how to provide housing services. Well, let me give you an example of myself to put in the picture. LA County, Hilda, Celice, allowed me to fill out 175 pieces of paper and alleged that I had a substance abuse problem. Do you any of you see a substance abuse problem here? I have the same mental health problems. Every one of you have in here today when you walk out of here. So before you point a finger to discriminate against me, my finger points right back at you for your mental health. Because as you heard heard we cannot afford housing or condos or a belief in some type of association of housing unless we're making six figures and it's true. Most of you in the administrative department here don't live in Elhambera. Not one of you probably right here tonight. Because if you did, you'd raise your hand and say, I was wrong. But you don't. I live in the city of Boya Heights. My mother owned a house, raised five kids. How does she do it? She worked three jobs. She worked. And an asshole like me went to college to learn how to deal with local government and deal with how do I gain the same amount of money to stabilize myself in housing and fair housing? Madam, a city manager? How was that? But who's to pick on the city manager tonight? Not me. I think we're all equal here. I think we're all men and women adults to understand that in order for you to live in a city that your parents grew up, you need to make six figures. Or to your parents are wealthy enough to leave you the house and you have capital gains left and right. Other than that, you're just like me. A typical person just paying a wage to rent and survive. So I don't agree with that. I do not believe in that scheme in life. I don't believe in being dirty, plain dirty. Because again, without the government's help, without government support in this state of California, you are nothing. And Donald Trump proved that to Newscom. When he told him, you get your financial responsibility clean up now, the federal government will come in and help you with your problem. The state of California is in a trillion dollar deficit, like a rocket ship going to the moon, and you're not going to catch up to to Elon. No Elon Musk is way ahead of you. He's not short of beer from a six-pack of beer. He's flying and the reason why I bring this topic up because housing is skyrocketing. It's flying and not in the benefit of my $15 a hour but in the benefit of our city manager making six figures or one of you have some hitting contract in here where you're making six figures. So again, Donald Trump proved the point. If you want to build, he will help you build, but you're going to build on the integrity of what the money is for. Federal dollars is not to be mishandled, misappropriated, or misused. It's specifically designed to support housing rights, help people who need housing, and end this and abolishes crisis on homelessness. He specifically told that Newsom and Newsom said I will try and he's he is trying. So good luck Alhamdulillah, like I said, you're not the only city struggling to provide housing for your children or the future of your grandchildren because It'll always be one person ahead of them while they're in line waiting to get a house. And in the same little town that their mommy and Grammy built for them. Up me! I'm a goddamn Native American. I know how to fight. And I fight like they do in the situation of Barton versus Sacramento. I sink my teeth into local government when you do wrong and you faulty fail at providing housing. use any power I can't trust the hell in you. Kate! I don't know if I can use any bower. I don't know if I can use any bower. I don't know if I can use any bower. I don't know if I can use any bower. I don't know if I can use any bower. I don't know if I can use any bower. I don't know if I can use any bower. I don't know if I can use any bower. I don't know if I can use any bower. giving us a briefing each and every week in your newsletter on the data of all the families that are helped through the Housing Rights Center. Somehow I guess we need to somehow convey that to our residents, what that data looks like. So I want to ask whether every Friday, whether the Housing Rights Center will remain open at our library? Housing rate center staff is at the library on every Friday with the exception of like this month in particular where there are five Fridays. Actually, I think it's five Fridays. I know there's at least five Mondays, so it must not be, but they are there unless there are five. So it's the first four Fridays of the month. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Reckhammon? Good evening again, Luke McCammon, 105 North Cardova Street. This is on item six. A consideration of an amendment to the City Manager's contract with Jessica Benquist to extend the term of the agreement. This is looking to, and this is based upon an evaluation of her performance, I, which to my knowledge occurred back on October 28th, 2024 in close session. And from what I have seen, the city manager and the city council were quite well together. The city manager has responded to the requests from the city council when there's agreement on the city council to add something to the agenda it gets added and it gets discussed. Now give you a few quick examples of that. East Main specific plan was added back in the very early days of COVID and while while it was added, it was discussed. A few proposals were brought forward. It was a very difficult time for the city financially. They weren't able to move forward on a specific plan thing, but I'm hopeful to see from one of the other items on the agenda tonight that we are going to get back to discussing some more about with reference to those type items. Seas fire in Gaza was brought forward by the City Council. It was brought forward, City Manager got it on the agenda that were developed What a resolution. I thought it was quite good. And the issue of renovations was brought by the city council again, agenda is public storage moratorium. The question about opening new firearms store, sales stores, in the city Alhambra. Actually, it's going to come back to you very soon. It was before the planning commission just this past week, as part of some updates in the proposed for the zoning code and the end. General plan. This is in the zoning code part there and it was after the shootings in Monterey Park where round two is going to be here in Alhamdul the L.I. Ballroom. Fortunately got stopped. And as a result of that, there were some discussions, there were some more times put into like a take a look at it, and some it's coming back actually as an amendment to the zoning code now before you. Soon. Now generally speaking, when persons are being brought into a new position, I'm thinking of my experience back in LA Unified School District. If they were bringing in a new superintendent, generally the contracts were negotiated for a longer period of time, somewhere up to five years with various opt-outs and so forth. But so it's not unprecedented to have longer contracts. I have heard some people mention that it might be useful to have a to look at when the elections are scheduled and so that if new city council members are coming in they have a chance to look at it. This and the period of time here it's certainly I think not unwarranted given the relationship between the council and the city manager and they are working well together. However, I think there's some valid point to taking a look of do you want the extensions to go beyond four years cycle when the when there's new elections and potentially new people on the city council as we have one new person on the city council here tonight. But like I say, I think things have been working fairly well here, but you may wanna take a look. It's certainly within your purview to go for the longer extension here, but you may want also consider either tonight or in the future Keeping it within a four-year cycle. Thank you very much And next speaker for item number 6. This is not a simple HR issue affecting a key employee. It is the most strategic decision that you will make as a council. With two years still left, extending the contract to 2031, will undoubtedly give stability to the city manager, but to the detriment of the city and its governance. Here's why. We citizens elect you council members. You don't run the City on a day-to-day basis. Instead you hire the City Manager to run the City. All 686 employees report to her. Therefore, the single most and arguably the only critical job any City Council has is to hire, evaluate, provide oversight, provide checks and balances on the City Manager. One Council cannot and should not constrain the actions and tie the hands of any future councils. By extending to 2031, you will be doing just that. We have elections in 26, 28 and 30. Council composition will change. Term limits, wins, losses. By approving item 6, you will take away all power from these future councils. You have no right to do that. You have no right to silencing, but importantly, the will of the voters who are going to be electing these future councils. You have no right to do that. You have no right to silencing when, importantly, the will of the voters who are going to be electing these future councils. You will remove all oversight of the CM until 2031. You will abdicate the one key responsibility and authority you have and neuter future councils. City Council composition will not matter. Performance review will not matter. There will be no accountability because there will be no need for it. So why act now? I've heard things like, we can't lose our city manager. She might walk away. She needs two years to find a job. The October performance review was great. The community survey was great and that this has been done before. Look, I'm not here to complain about day-to-day issues in the city. A bit skeptical about the survey, but even if all is well, our city manager is handsomely compensated. $417,000 in 2023. 10 times the median Al-Hamron. City managers for similar-sized cities, I picked a Hawthorne Buena Park Upland in our area, make less. So why is the City Manager indispensable? City falls apart if she leaves. None of us are indispensable. And why now, with two years left on the contract, based on our fine and stillilled secret performance review, surely a job search with that kind of wonderful performance review will not take two years, will it? And if she leaves, I am confident that we can find somebody competent and qualify to do the job for $400 to $450,000 a year. And then the last excuse we've done this before, well sorry past bad actions don't say precedent. So how is the city doing? Mr. McCammon came and gave you some examples for things that were working well. Let me give you a counterpoint. Remember the six three-night cycle where we got seven thousand units of housing crammed down our throats without a clue due to bad math that we did not push back on. The next cycle will be here soon. Do we have a strategy to avoid an even bigger crammed down our throats? I will be watching from the sidelines when you struggle with the new zoning code in the housing element update when that happens. Remember measure our monies? One time we got 216..8 million, just inflation alone has dwindled that down to $270 million plus a little bit less with consultants. $50 million of purchasing power gone without a shovel in the ground. Any strategy for that? Soil and groundwater contamination parts of the city where our future development lies and tax-based lies. Any strategy on that? On each of these we are passive and we are sitting ducks. So these are a few examples of things that are strategic that I didn't find in the strategic plan or in the survey. And what I didn't find, I didn't find this item on the strategic plan. Probably the most consequential item that you're doing two weeks later in part of the consent agenda. What happened to transparency? 72 hours of notice? Look, based on this, here's what I'm asking you. Table the item to November 2026 right after the next election. And at that time, no more than a two-year extension because you can't tie future councils. It is unwarranted. It is impossible. You know, not too long ago, citizens took matters into their own hands in the city, Mejouvi. It's about bringing back accountability. We don't want to go there again. And to the city manager in a few minutes, it's not personal. As I've said to you, I will work with you when I can and oppose you when I must. I wish you stay here very long, but with two year contract extensions in November of every election year. Thank you, F patience. Next speaker is Mistress Item No. 6. All right, thank you very much. City Attorney, a quick question though. If they don't announce my phone name, do I have to? Am I obligated to respect their name though? Hopefully you can clarify that for me though if they only read half of my name. Yeah, so this one. Well, first of all, I want to apologize because in my previous example, I said $250,000 a year because that's my general knowledge. That's what how much a city manager makes a year. It's about a quarter million, but obviously I was wrong. Based on the previous speaker is like 400 something. First of all, I want to understand that if any of our council member ever take a High School government class maybe no, maybe nobody graduated from high school because if you Any of one of you take a high school class you will know that the president of the United States The person in charge of the White House. He's and the salary is is nobody knows 400,000 so you are saying that the person who man the person in charge of the White House, his annual salary is? Nobody knows, 400,000. So you are saying that the person who managed Ahambra, which is the person managed approximately 80,000, 80,000, or whatever, 100,000 residents, earns more money than the person who managed the population of several billion. Okay, that is a little bit interesting, that is a little bit interesting, very, very concerning to begin with. Second is, I'm very concerned for the member of the public that when they speak right here, they're going to continue to be silenced. I'm really concerned of that of his safety because our council member, the other four, I don't know, this one only silencing the public that's literally his number one priority that's his number one strength That's not he's not that that's her number one Probably the reason he she was get a seat right there. So The other four seems like kind of generally okay, you know, past the line right there. So, again, I'm really concerned if anyone speak against the city manager, if anyone speak against, that one, I definitely believe there are some retaliation action are coming my way, are coming his way or whatever, because it is pretty common based on my understanding of the attitude that she has demonstrated towards the member of the public. Now continue regarding the point that talking about contract it seems like the city manager reminds me of something someone actually I believe in my contemporary American social issues His name is Jay Edgar Hoover. The one who's in charge of the FBI for 48 years non-stop. Because everyone, anyone including six, seven presidents are afraid to move Edgar Hoover from the FBI because they are severe consequences. So I think the previous speaker made a very, very legitimate point, right? Because in theory, they were radically speaking, this five are in charge of the city, just like city of L.A. They don't have a city manager because the council member are running the city because the mayor are running the city. That's the reason why you are a council member. But in Ahamra we have a different story though every single one of them win the election but this person is running the city. So actually that is a very very unique point of view. I was I never thought about that but right now I think about that that's very very fair point right there. So we are having from 2017 until 2031, 14 years, 14 years, we are having this J Edgar Hoover style city manager. And then I believe 2031 is now the ending point. I believe if any of the remaining council members do right here in 2031, there will be 2035. There will be 2041. There will be 2050 until 48 years, just like the female version of Edgar Hoover. So, I definitely believe that she can be a really great, she can be perfect, amazing, very well, but again, I don't believe, you know, it is reasonable, it is legitimate, it is your business to dictate the administration for the past several decades. So that's definitely a little bit too much for me to process at this point. And then, you know, fair point is that the seed manager is the most important. Basically, I, you know, we shouldn't call the seed manager, this is the real mayor. This is the real mayor. That's not the mayor. He's only here once, once away, but this is the real Mayor running the city 825 every single day. So. My next speaker for this item is Ms. Bertha Rivera. Good evening, Madam Mayor, council members. When I first seen this, I was surprised. I had no idea that a city manager could actually negotiate a term this long. I have to agree with Ron Saho. This is not appropriate because we are stakeholders. We are the ones that are paying wages. I understand too that she also lives in Orange County. She can choose wherever she I wish she chooses wherever she wants to live. But I don't understand why we need to pay her this money and keep her at this term. There's no doubt in my mind that she's been here a while, that she's not an intelligent woman, and she's done a great job, and she's worked well with everyone. But I do have to disagree on the time limit. It needs to be reviewed. Please. Thank you. Yes. Now we will take the colors on Zoom for this item. The first speaker is Jennifer Ing. Hello Madam Mayor and Council Members. I do want to thank the City Manager for all that she does. I agree with Lou. We worked very well with this Council. Sorry, very well with multiple members of the community on items great and small. I really appreciate everything that you do. There is no way I can do your job. I do appreciate how much you keep City Council up to date. I've always felt heard in my public comment whether during these meetings or whether I've been talking to council members, the City Manager, City Directors, City Staff. We may not always agree on every topic, but you do listen and I think in a of cities, that does not happen as well as it does in Alhambra. Regarding this particular length of contract, I did kind of put my comments together before anyone else kind of came up to speak as well. But I didn't understand why this was on the agenda tonight versus not like 2026. How are we getting to 2031 and staffing contracts with city employees is absolutely not something I know virtually anything about. But when I saw the date that seemed a little bit too long the time for me. So maybe we can get some some clarification on that. That's all. Thank you very much for your time. The next speaker on Zoom is Marie Toree Slopez. Hi, sorry about that. Good evening. Am I, can you hear me? We can now. Okay, sorry. Looking at the agenda info for this item, I have a concern about why this is even an agenda item. So let's go over it. So agenda item number six indicates Ms. Bankwist was made an interim city manager in 2017. Then she became permanent in 2018. Is that correct? Then it reads, amended agreement in 2021 to extend to the term through 2027. Okay, so the previous person brought this up too. So I'm questioning why you're extending it to 30 31 We're not even we're not even Half way through 2025 and I would like an answer from the city council not the city manager What's the criteria for that? We're doing this is there one because there's no explanation the agenda item as it's written as far as the justification for extending it to 2031. Now as a taxpayer who funds part of her salary, I think I need to know as well as Alhamber residents more information about why you want to do something right now regarding agenda number six. So I go through the Elhamber website. I see on the City Manager's webpage, 2022 reports on what is the public's performance survey, 2022 accomplishments. I don't see anything current regarding the City Manager. Where is that information? I, I'm going to be honest with you as the webpage goes. It's kind of a little bit of a, you know, circuitous kind of trying to find stuff. And I would think it would be very plain and simple on the city manager's website to have things more current than what I see there. Let's see. Sorry. So on the face of it, I'm not seeing accomplishments, but I can say, yeah, let's extend it. Let's extend it. Because I don't see, all I see as a resident is the overdevelopment, the lack of promoting small businesses, filling all those empty store shops, and with her salary, 400K plus, that's an extreme amount of money. And I as a resident, don't see these see these accomplishments okay like what's going on okay so okay so then I went to look at a job description or you know on on that web page for city manager and it says works to enhance this a quote works to enhance quality of life for all-time residents through Okay dot dot recreational opportunities community events etc. I don't see that I don't see any of that in my district we've got a puny little park okay we don't have community events in my district there's nowhere to have them okay and this has on for decades. Yet, you've got an open space where that industry was, which now across the street from it is a kid's space, which I've seen thriving. You could use that space instead of wanting to build more ugly storage facilities from which, I mean, that's what I found out. And make it a part, make it a recreational, I don't see that with that kind of salary from the city manager. Okay then there's something else. Oh here's a quote from the job description. And the creation of a diversified and sustained economic base. Where is that diversified? I want to emphasize that. I don't see that. Where are diverse businesses? It should reflect many cultures, not just one. It's been a, it's going to ghost town on parts of Main Street. And you know, where's our old town? town you see the other neighboring cities this is something that according to the job description this city manager is supposed to be doing where I'm I seeing that okay I hate to be upset but you know it's it's just very frustrating but that amount of salary. And then you want to extend it, and we're not even at 2027. That's, okay, I'm done. I would like my neighbor to come and speak because she can't get on the phone. Can see, this is Mary so close. She's also speaking. I'm done, I'm done. Can she speak? Just keep it on the phone. I was trying to get on the phone guys. Can I or no? Hello. Hello, they get you off. Hello. Hello. Yeah. I can't hear them. Is there a second speaker that wishes to speak at this time? Yes, thank you. Thank you. Hello. Hi. Hi, good evening. I'm so sorry. Thank you so much. I was on my way. I just couldn't make it all the way to you. So this neighbor said, come on over. I was trying to get on the Zoom. So thank you so much for letting me speak. Good evening to everyone. My fellow residents, mayor, council member, and city staff. I deeply regret not being able to be there in person. However, I just literally found out about this and being on the agenda. So I just wanted to quickly get on here to express my concerns to the proposal extending this current city managers contract to 2031. This decision would not serve the best interests of our community as a city manager plays a pivotal role in directing many key decisions. Typically, positions of such power have term limits for a reason. Extending this contract to 2031 would be irresponsible and could cause irreparable harm to our city and its growth. It is not a very wise decision to set such a precedent. Actually, it's reckless to set such a precedent to commit to having any one individual in such a crucial position for this amount of time, especially since the city manager has held this position since 2017. So the implications of locking in a city manager for 15 years can significantly impact our community as especially when she deals with various ordinances, changes and plans that are being adopted. The needs and wants of our residents are constantly evolving and our city is growing. And if having the same city manager in this position for too long can lead to stag nation. And that is a big concern. And or it can also, it can also, it can also have a person that has a one gold mindset. So therefore, we as residents may suffer from a person that holds the highest position that affects our local government has influence on our police departments, our fire, our services that protect us. So having that certain ideas and put a quote, work for them or have an influence over new council members and not adapting to the current and future needs of the residents and our city. Moreover, it is important to consider that while you, our current council members, may be voting on this extension, some of you will be turned out in their future. Therefore, why are you taking it upon yourself to lock in a city manager for such an extensive time period? Additionally, I just urge these council, please be prudent in any decision that would grant one individual the position of City Manager for this time, this role called significant authority over our city, and it is not wise for the council to assume this responsibility or to take away the privilege of making this decision for future successors who will hold your positions as council members. At the end of the day, the future successors may not have, they might have their ideas and may have different ideologies than you do. So please, I'm just thanking you to consider these points and I hope this council will thoughtfully deliberate on this matter, keeping the best interests of our community, the residents, your constituents at the forefront. Thank you so much. Excuse me, ma'am. Could you please provide your name for the record? I don't believe it was stated. I'm so sorry. My name is Marisol Grier. I live it over at Lundjerotse Park. Now, Amber, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. The final speaker for item number six is Ms. Marlene. Thank you, council. My name again is Marlene Bronson and I do live in Orange County and LA County. So I have very familiar with both communities. And again, I'm here for God, family and country. My family lives here. I have three families that actually own homes. So we do pay property taxes. We are not a recipient of, I think somebody in the police department thought we were a section 8 family and we are not a section 8 family. My parents health service paid off and my daughter's house is paid off. We don't have any debt for housing so I want to stipulate that because there's been miscommunication about our family. I am disappointed to hear that taxpayers' dollars are going to be paying for somebody who makes more than the President of the United States. President Trump gave up his salary when he was first time president in 2000 when he was first elected and he did that for his country. There was no price gouging going on in his when he's now that he's running, he's going through the doge and I don't think you want the DOG to come in here and inspect and discover where your funds are going and how they're being distributed and are they properly distributed? I have contacted the city manager on several occasions through via the receptionist and I have not received any correspondence. And that's over the last since 2021 that I've been trying to communicate my disappointment with the public works. The curbs are broken and my mother has actually fallen down walking down these city streets. They finally repaired some of those concrete. So I'm not saying that I'm just disappointed that the council is doing this to taxpayer constituents. Look at comparison to the city of Irvine where I lived. And I also lived in Tustin since 1993 I bought my house and I lived there for over 35 years. Our city council made sure that the city was decent. I walk here and I could smell dog poop on the sidewalks. It's disgusting. Where's the taxpayer's dollars going? That needs to be evaluated. And then you want to give a city manager a pay raise basically for it to extend. The years, there's something not normal about that. I pay property taxes in Orange County for going County for buying and going to the store and buying anything, it's 8%. The city of Alhambra, it's 10.75% I think, for when you're making purchases. And look at how beautiful Orange County looks, in our vine where I live in North Tuston, where I live for 35 years. So that's what I'm looking at. beautiful Orange County looks, inner vying where I lived in North Tuston where I lived for 35 years. So that's what I'm looking at. My mom has also had another second home in San Bernardino County and those taxes were astronomical and I even pointed it out to her. I said, Mom, your taxes are high, higher than Orange County and look at how horrible the city looks. Do you understand what I'm saying here? The city streets, community, I see gangs. I've never had gangs in this community growing up. I mean, there were you know, fights, but we didn't have, we didn't hear gunshots in the middle of the night and I heard gun, I'm here in gunshots in the middle of the night. I see vacant houses which is probably laundering and you know that. I see so much. It's horrible. Safety, my daughter's been harmed. I've read in the paper and now hamburger paper that there's a fentanyl death. It's almost like this is a drug operated sex trafficking community, which is the number one crime in America. And I know this because I did in research in college. Thank you. We have two speakers for item number 11. The first one is mistress. 111. Okay, okay. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you, City Attorney. Hopefully you can get your dictionary ready. Number 11. So the number one thing I highlighted is the number one is right there it says quote enhance public safety. So let's go one enhance public safety. So you know I think you know I'm probably just going to repeat whatever the previous speaker said because you know I save all of her speech for this one right here and hence public safety. But literally, they took all of the words out of my mouth. So right now, I don't know what to talk about right now. So from my point of view, and hence public safety, let's start with the police department. There is an online article that I just recently read, is it breakdown the demographics of the each single traffic stop that was stopped by the Ahamra police department. And according to that data, I think it's like 60, 70%, they pull over and they stop is blacks. So I want to ask our city manager and then also did this one call herself the number one black lives matter supporter right there. So where is your black lives matter police leadership? And then so forth and then continuing that article I also I also read that either is the city made a decision or either the police chief made a decision they are saying that they will no longer report those data regarding the demographic for each person individual stopped by the traffic stop anymore just because they know the data looks so bad. So I, but again, when we are talking about a city, about transparency, we are talking about accountability. Well, continue to hide the data, continue to hide your statistics. Number one is, you know, is the way to go. I already know. That's what she does the best. Continuing enhanced public safety. Just I think it's a two or three days ago. I saw on KTLA, there's someone, a hamburger police pull over someone and then that guy would decide to drive, wants to drive off and run or something like that. There's a short, very, very short hamburger police pursuit, so they have to retake that one. So when we are talking about public safety, you know, I don't, I don't feel feel that the people on the street, the people on the street are actually buying, obeying by your public safety rules. I think I am probably, I'm one of the very few, you know, when I see a right light when I was walking on the street, I see the right light, I stop. You know, but again, I see on the street, you know, all those, you call it the skateboard, those teenagers, those kids, they literally, you know, crossed the street J-walking anytime, anywhere, several times, you know, they almost, the bus almost run them over. So when you are having those kind of ruthless kids, when you are having while the previous speaker also mentioned, there's a gang. When you are mentioned of that, how are you going to enhance public safety? So I think that's a really tough question for our city manager to deal with. And then also the previous speaker, several speaker mentioned that the city manager does not leave in Ahamra, the city manager leave in Orange County. Well that answers the question, what the Ahamra has a public safety crisis? Even though we're city manager does not feel safe enough to leave in city of Ahamra. Obviously that she has to drive one-on-one back orange county because knowing her state or her home it's safer. Knowing that their police, their sheriff respond faster. Knowing their police, their sheriff are doing a much better job and you know compared to the Ahamra police. Oh my god. Oh, I never went what I got attacked. I'm'm sorry, you know You know, it's not a code three call, you know, wait right there probably officer will arrive in 30 minutes But by the by the time officer arrived right there, you know the attacker or long gone So I think I I'm here to support the city manager's decision to leave in Orange County instead of leaving because she wants to protect herself. She wants to protect her kids, her husband, her family, her future generation. You better leave. You better stay away from city Ahambra. So if all of our city manager, our administrator, are no longer leaving residing the city of Ahambra anymore. Now, you tell me what makes them deserve to serve the community of city Ahambra, if they do not even feel safe to live in city of Ahambra in the first place. Our next speaker for item number 11 is Mr. McCammon. Lewis McCammon again, 105 North Card of the Street. Just as his items before you've been working on it, I think it's a basically good document. there are two areas where I think some might not necessarily have to add it in here. You could go ahead and probably adopt this as it is, but the two items that occurred to me under goal six when you're talking about improving housing opportunities. The city is already committed in the housing element that it has adopted and that has been approved by the state of California. The city committed itself to a midterm review on the housing element. Now by the time the state finally approved this thing, which was about September of last year, the cycle 6 on Rina here, the period covered by this housing element, extends from October of 2021 through October of 2009. However, given the delay in getting the thing approved, well, the exact midterm would fall in October of this year. I don't think we want to have it fall at that time. I would say, yes. And it's not specifically said in here, though the city is committed to it. I would suggest that it could be added here or you don't have to add it here. We just have to keep in mind that that is one of the things we want to be doing. And I'd suggest that more appropriate would be somewhere towards the end of 2026 or early 2027 for that midterm review. I do know that we have some in process working with the consultant to bring together a lot of the information, which will be necessary for that review. The other relates to goal four enhancing transparency. And there has been some improvements in the city website about following projects online under the community development department. added thing here where they think a project is going to have some interest in the public. They do have some information on those projects. However, it doesn't cover everything. And sometimes the thing, and there's another section of that website now where you can look up permits and so forth. But when one item came recently before the design review board and not even scheduled to come back before the planning commission at 1117 East Main Street, the Ghost Kitchen project there, which had previously come before the planning commission and been turned down seven to one there Not because they were opposed to the project. They just felt it wasn't really appropriate for that area It was much more since it wasn't something where people could they were preparing food there But it's not something where you can call up from home and order the food and then go down there and pick it up. It's something where only Uber Eats or other delivery services, DoorDash would deliver it. Because it didn't seem to fit the walkability, the types of businesses we wanted to bring into that area. And they felt it was more appropriate for the industrial zone. there, there is a document, but that is when you check under that address, there are nothing shows. You think nothing was going on there? Well, things are going on, came to design review board and so forth. But there is a document that they have. It's an internal document. I got a copy of it when I was looking for some information on 801 East Main Street. It's about a six page document or so, but it lists all the projects going on in the city through the Humanity Development Department gives the name of the staff member who's assigned to do the review on it and the status of it and so forth, brief description of it. That's a very, very useful document, but that's not on the website currently. And I think as far as transparency goes, it doesn't have to be necessarily addressed through here. It's something that, but I would suggest that that is a very, very useful document. I don't know how often it's updated, maybe each time there's a change in the project or weekly or something, that could be put on the city website, it would be a big, big asset. Thank you. Ms. Mistress, you can speak on item number 1517 together. Please come up. 1517 together. All right. Thank you very much, Mayor Wong. Starways number 15. Well, City Clerk, if it's two item, why is it only five minutes. I thought it's two item, meaning ten minutes, no? When you move on to item 17, I'll reset the clock. Thank you for the clarification. Thank you. Sure. So, item 15 about the street light services. So, I would like to ask for the city manager for help regarding this. First of all, I'm here to support if there's anything that we can improve our traffic safety. If there's anything we can improve street lighting. I am definitely support in that. But the city manager that the part I have concern is that you can improve your traffic signal, but if your people do not follow the traffic signal, then it doesn't matter how many millions you invest in the traffic signal, how many millions you invest in the street lighting, it doesn't help, it doesn't improve the community safety, it doesn't increase the public safety. Now, when you are trying to improve the traffic signals, I have a suggestion. I have a proposal that we can have some traffic surveillance camera that is installed next to the, let's just say major intersection say major intersection in some major intersection in, you know, the traffic traffic lights. We can have some traffic surveillance camera because city manager, if you understand that right now, I can go out, you know, drive my car. car I can run the right light. And then the ahamber please they can never catch me. Why? Because when you drive around the city of ahamber, you only see one police car, I just say maybe every 20 minutes, maybe every 30 minutes, during the late night, probably you don't even see one of them for four and an hour, right? So if you let's just say right now, if you go out, if you run the the right light you have a 90% of the chance that you're running the right light will never get caught because you do not have a you know traffic camera system because you do not have you know a civilian system that help you to catch the crime either it can be a traffic traffic violator, it could be a criminal violator. Because I can I don't even remember how many times that people go into the hamburger police department that, OK, I know this car, you know, I saw this one, he will he ran from there and then the hamburger police will tell, oh, unfortunately, we don't have any video footage of that. Unfortunately, you know, it will very much difficult for us to track him down. Maybe we will never track him down. But if we have a really improved traffic signal system, we've improved traffic surveillance camera system, then we can definitely improve a lot of those. That is, that is the vehicle, the vehicle val later. Now, another violator is could be the kids, the skateboard, the motorcycle, the illegal one, the legal one, the skateboard, and some of them you call it, you call it scooters, all of those ones. They are breaking law on a daily basis every single hour, but I do not see your best friend, the police chief, are having some effort, are doing those. So what the consequence of that, you know, you can be a responsible driver, you can be a safe driver. And all of a sudden, let's just say, 80 years old, with a white board, a with a skateboard and you know coming out of nowhere boom you hit him you hit her and then all of a sudden you the as the driver you are be dealing with your insurance and then you with your police issues with your you know a monthly premium hike or whatever that kid's go home for free that that doesn't seem fair for me. So, you know, long story short, it doesn't matter if you are skateboarder, bicycle, motorcycle, illegal, illegal vehicle, bus, truck, whatever, if we can improve our traffic signal, if we can improve a camera system in there, and I definitely we can make the situation much better. And then second of all, this motion, I'll also talk about the street lighting. Definitely, definitely. Many, many times, a lot of corners on the late night, there's very, very poor lighting, especially in the bus stops. Not only it's not safe, provide opportunity for those gangsters, the past driver do not even see me. Some for example, I'm having a black shirt right now, waiting in a dark corner, the past driver do not even see me. That's how bad it is. Number 17 is about the the police department air conditioning system. This agenda item for me is a little bit funny for me. It seems like our police department cannot function without air conditioning. Correct me if I'm wrong. It seems like our police department will only be capable of doing their job if they have air conditioning. So without air conditioning they will resign, they will go home, they will strike on the street or something like that. I don't know. I want to inform our city manager, I have a lot of great examples that city manager do you know those those UPS drivers who are working in a Humbera? They are working in the sun, 110 degree, 120 degree every summer and then they are working hard. I don't see a problem with that. They don't say that, hey, I don't have the energy I can now do my job. And also the City Manager, I also want to provide you with an example that you know there's a teacher in Garfield High School, his name is teacher, Ask Lante. The school does not provide them with a classroom. The Ask Lante teacher has to go there on Saturday in the hallway. They don't have a classroom. They do that in the hallway. Sunday, evening. They do that in the camp on campus. So they become the number one AP calculus in the nation. So all of those amazing worker, amazing teacher from all over the profession, they were able to function. They were able to service the community without air conditioning. But our police department seems like, okay, they are not able to work. They are not able to work just because there's no air conditioning. And then also, if you want to make a comparison city manager, I want to compare your police department with the police department where I come from. Our police department, our city do not give their officers their gun. Our police officers, we do not have a luxury Ford Explorer that they are driving, which is a $50,000 vehicle. They write a bicycle. Our police officer do not have their, you call it a walkie talkie, a special, whatever technical equipment or whatever. Our police officer use a special symbol, cell phone. That's it. Our police officer do not have any of their luxury vehicle equipment and everything. Now a city manager I want to compare that. Can you compare with any city you name it China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, any city? I you the choice any city. Let's let's compare their crime rates versus your city city of Ahembra We giving you your your your your officer 150,000 dollars and then every one of them 50,000 Explorer, you know all of their equipment You know whatever. I don't know dollars equipment. And then somehow, our officer do not have any of those. And then right now, your officer is asking a luxury air conditioning units. Our officer do not have any of those. And then why, that in our city, we don't have something called a drug overdose. Why that our officer do not have any of those? We don't have something called officer evoke shooting. Why that our officer do not have any of those? We don't have something called, you know, what they call a man with a gun. Why that our city we don't have, you know, on the news on a daily basis that a mental health object. So I'm really, really confused. I don't understand. I'm so confused. City manager that your officer has the best of the best equipment, the cars, the equipment, the guns, the rifles, whatever. Right now air conditioning, the best of the best in the world. But somehow they cannot even compete with the police department like where I come from, that where I come from, we have three officers in charge of approximately 5,000 community members, three officers. So I'm just, I just don't understand this motion. I just don't understand that your department, I don't know, they were, what is their annual budget? Probably they are probably 40% 50% of the city budget every single year. I believe that's the last time I read it. So half of the city budget are on them, but at the same time, they cannot compete with a developed country under a developing country or police department. So I don't know, city manager, you are the professional, you are the master degree, a PhD, you are the one who is qualified, so I don't have the answer, I'm only high school graduate. So I don't have the answer, but I just want to make sure you can put that into consideration, think about it. Our last speaker for tonight is Mr. Hurley. Item number 21. I hope I could beat that with that energy. But tonight's energy is just to show the world that the problems of yes, sir, this issue to improve safety and capacity for road users is safe and why do we have this motion for the contract amendment off of free month interchange improvements because for years we've been battling what to do with this overpass or this situation we We first wanted to drive it north through Pasadena and Pasadena said no, it's not going to go by us at all nor you're going to dig it through our city, not at all. But the reason probably is because as I pointed out earlier regarding my conflict with Los Angeles transportation and that of Kell Transprints transportation was that it all came down to one thing. I got the Federal Highway Administration involved Department of Justice Civil Rights and they acted upon my request and that was to shove a a big banana down their throat and tell them that either you're gonna do it all the way or no way because there'll be no federal dollars coming into your transportation budget so get it right. New scum there's a new Marshall in town by the name of aka Herman Herman bitch bitch And that's what I do. I don't ask for money when I see them. I don't ask for anything Other than then I have to tell them and state to them and say to them sir I plan to sue you Under the guidelines of the American Disability Act on behalf of citizens that are non-disabled and the disabled population because we're tired of your bullshit. Just as I cited on the record the case, 299 CV00497 which indicates Barton versus Sacramento. Rookie, did you look it up? Do you understand what I'm talking about? I'm talking about all barriers and issues involving pedestrians and the safety of motor vehicles on our highways and streets that we want conditions that are safe, universally safe, nationally safe, so that every American, every man and woman who drives a car is safe, bro. And did I learn that from here? I learned it from going to the library. The library right there where I got a copy for you. Rookie. You hear that? Rookie? Barton versus Sacramento. And those judges weren't fucking around. Neither am I. Defend this country. Make things right. Drill, drill, drill, build, build, build. Because the consequences are coming. If you're not going to delegate the budget or the resources for program activities and services based on interchange improvements, I will see the Donald Trump stop-sure project. So do not let that pass by you once or twice tonight. It shall prevail. So in part of this, the reason why the City of LA wants sanctions to censor me or to say that I am scary and I'm causing disruptions with me. Is this probably the same Communist reason I was told about Brandon Bergverson's Ohio on my first visit here? Because I had to get you involved in the emotion, the support of your constituents, your residents, the people who have really livelihood and stake as stakeholders here, what they want. Safe infrastructure, safe streets, and if they're outdated, they upgrade them. But keep in mind, I demand that at every interchange improvement, you have an ADA corner to assist you with federal highway demands That this is how we build them in the 21st century and not the old school way of ripping off the public ripping off mr Herman and paying his tags his property taxes alone is bullshit of rhetoric from your jackass governor Newsom Scuscom, Dumsom. Thank you. Does the council have any comments on item number 4611, 1517, 20 and 21? Thank you. Thank you a lot to take in on these consent items. I do want to focus on item number six. First, I'd like to clear up a couple things that, and I know that there are some procedural issues with the approval consideration of a contract. There are some substantive things as well. And I want to make sure that everyone here and everyone listening understands that the council sets the policies for the city. The council hires and confires the city manager and the city attorney. The execution of that is of the policies and ordinances and laws that the city council passes is placed in the hands of the city manager and her staff to carry out. So you heard a lot tonight, which you didn't hear was that the city manager is doing a bad job. There's no one said that. Nobody said that she's doing a bad job. Everyone actually went out of their way. Books that actually have interaction with the city went out of their way to mention this is not a personal thing and that by all accounts she's doing a good job. And I want that to sink in. The Elhamber, like many other small cities, medium, small cities throughout California, we operate on a council manager or form of government. So the city council is like a board of directors, right? Almost like a volunteer board of directors, because we get very little stipend. But we are elected and we operate as a board of directors and the city manager is effectively our CEO and we can hire and fire our CEO. She's charged with executing the operations of a city that, as you heard, has over 600 employees with fluctuation. And importantly, I think to note is that, that Alhambra is a full-service city. We have a fire department. We have a police department. Many cities do not. This is not an easy job. Our salary is not $400,000 a year. That is not her salary. You can look it up. There's all sorts of websites that are 100% transparent. You can look. There are multiple, multiple cities locally, regionally, and state wide where the city manager makes more than our city manager does. Regardless of the size of the city, there are some smaller cities that make way more and some larger cities that make lower down the scale. This, to me, is an important issue. Only because I think I'm the only one here who was on the council when she was initially hired. And the first couple of years that we had other city managers, I think we had like two or three city managers within like three years or so when I first started and just before I started on council. They all were good, you know, professional people and I think they did a really good job. What they weren't able to do is implement to undertake and implement long-term planning for the city. We didn't have that because we had people that served a year and a half, two years, a year. That is not an appropriate way to manage the city. We have been discussing for the last several years when I've been on council, we've been discussing long term plans, like our housing element, like our design standards, like our affordability housing plan, like our short term rental, our sustainability plan, these are long term plans. All of them extend, that are intended to extend, what many years into the future. I do understand the logic of saying, look, one of the most important I agree that probably the most important decision that a council can make is to hire a city manager. And that's, I agree that 100%, which is why I think this is so important and we need to focus really carefully on this issue. What I don't agree with is the that every new council, every two years, should undertake this effort again, every two years. It just is a recipe for disaster. I am not a doomsday person saying this guy is going to fall if we have to hire a city manager. There are many great professional city managers in the world. And I'm sure there's someone out there that could do a fantastic job. Elhamber is a great community and I'm sure we can interact with someone. But there are other great communities locally and regionally that have had extreme difficulty finding a city manager that has stayed with them for a long time, that can work on staff stability, that work on long-term financial stability, work on long-term projects that require long-term foresight. In an ideal world, there would be 50 applicants for every city manager opening. That isn't reality. That is not what's happening. I don't know why, but I can tell you that there are many cities who are under an acting city manager right now, and they are struggling to find someone permanent to take that position. And these are, you know, some of them are well healed cities that are prepared to pay very handsomely. For whatever reason, they're having a tough time. That doesn't negate any of the concerns procedurally about how we do this and making sure that we're being very careful and have our eyes wide open as we get into this process. I agree with that 100%. I just want to make sure people understand our city's reality, which is that we are humming, maybe not like a finely tuned machine, but pretty close. We are doing some really incredible work. If you've come to our strategic planning session, you will hear progress that we have made on the strategic priorities that we've set over the last few years. You can see the things that are checked off in process in the works so that we have more room to put more things on there, and all of them are long-term strategic objectives. You can't have that with a short-term professional staff, especially at the city manager level. I definitely want to hear what my colleagues have to say, but I want to make sure everyone understands that having, undertaking a search for new city manager or putting off the decision on extension to every two years is I do not think we'll end up well. Now I want to talk about one thing. So city managers, city staff, they are people, they are professional people. And like anyone looking for a job or in a job, they're looking for a couple things. They're looking for compensation. I think we compensate well. They're looking for job security. I think we have given job security. But as someone goes through this process, and if they're looking long term to potentially looking at finishing their career with a city or finishing at a project with a city. What they're looking for is some indication that their services are going to be desired and being asked to stay on staff here. I don't think it's too much to ask to give a city manager who has had excellent performance reviews, some assurance that we're going to be here and we're going to support here. I think it's also important to note that this is not anointing of hope. We're not hiring a federal judge for lifetime. This is a contract with an employee. We can fire our city manager. We can fire city manager for cause in the current contract at any point if this council sees fit. We can also separate for no cause. There are, of course, penalties built into the contract for assurance to an employee. Well, we can part ways with the City of Manager. This is not an anointing for a lifetime for anything. If there is a problem with the way the city is operating, I don't want to speak for my colleagues here, but from my perspective, the buck stops here. The buck stops here. If it's not going well in the city, it's our responsibility to ensure that our staff is executing the policies that we adopt. So I want to make sure that criticism for the way the city is operating and the policies that are implemented. You can direct it at us. I think that to the extent that some of these comments night veered into personal attacks, which are totally uncalled for, and attacks on some of the things that are policy level things. That's us. That isn't city manager. So I want to make sure that everyone understands that our city manager at this point in time has had excellent her forearms reviews for the last several years. And she has been extremely responsive to feedback from the council, including feedback from the council that we get from our community members. If we hear something's not going well, we bring it to her and things get addressed. That's my experience at least. I'd like to hear what my colleagues have to say about how we process this. But I do think that we are in a really good situation right now. We are fortunate to have a city manager who likes working here, and I hope we'll continue to like working here. I don't want to go back to the days where we have unstable leadership at the top of the city at the professional staff. It was not a time to get things done. We're getting things done now, I'd like to continue that. I agree with Vice Mayor to a large extent. I just want to explain that our city manager does not run the city. Our city manager with this model that we have, Council City Manager model. The city manager takes directions from the council majority and it's been done consistently. And I, and I, this council has done a lot. We put a lot of things on that strategic plan. And she carries out the details with the department heads. So I. When I have issues, forge to me from the residents, I would just want to explain that when the resident did not was not able to get a satisfactory service from the city, I forwarded to our city manager. And she responds back to me about the follow-up. So that's what it is with me. I'm not going to speak for other council members, but I just want to clear the air, making sure the facts are out there. I don't think it's fair for people in the public to blame her for dirty streets or whatever it is because it's, we all work as a team. And ultimately, of course, the council takes a blame. That's what we're here for. But I'm here to represent the people. So when I have a conversation or a phone call with our city manager, I make sure I afford the details. Whatever it is, down trash can issues, pavement issues, I've done all of that graffiti issue and she knows that. And she gets a done. So that's what I'm going to say for about her at this point. And I just want to make sure everybody has the facts because too many people are being blamed at the city level for things that we have not done. We've been blamed for other things that are we're not responsible but I'll take it. But again this this council is taking all the blame and take all the credit but behind us are all the employees in the city that I give them all the credit. But it's not going to be perfect. It's not going to be perfect. And I personally take take offense when somebody said the city is ugly. I do. I grew up here. The city needs improvement for sure, just like every other city, but this city is not ugly. I take off fencing that. We've been doing a lot to improve our city. Of course, there are corners and needs repairs. This is the old city. And so I just wanted to public do very patient with a council with everyone, the city manager. We have a strategic plan that one poll with a hundred items on there. I felt sorry for our staff. But the city council, with exception, of course with council member Wong, that you just arrived before this I worked together for a long time since 2018. I've seen a lot changes. The strategic plan format is being implemented by our city manager. Before that, it was very, very much of a... Let's bring a motion to the council's vote on it and if it's rejected, forget it. But this strategic plan model to me is very much open-ended. It's very friendly. I personally really embraced that model and she introduced it. So I'm going to give her credit for that. That's all I'm going to say. I have a wants to speak about this item on the City Magic's contract, I do have one second. I'd like to say a couple words. Thank you. So my first question is, and it's probably redundant, or it's probably Mr. Montez is for you, do we have a right to negotiate our city managers contract right here and now? You certainly can, but in terms of negotiation, I mean, the city manager has the ability to accept or not accept or request additional time if you want to try to negotiate from the diast. That's not typical to negotiate the contract from the diast. Okay. I didn't think so. So here we are, right? We really have ourselves a qualified city manager. There's no doubt in that. And we want to make sure that we keep her and that we are able to sustain our movement in the city with all kinds of projects that the mayor mentioned that we have going forward. In 2018, she, in 2017, she started her career as many of you read, it with El Hambra, but she had prior experience in another city government. And in 2018, she started her career with us. with us and we in she had a 20-22 I think was the extent of her contract and in 2021 we realized that we didn't want to lose her. We wanted her to stay with us because we wanted her not only to help us grow, but she had the opportunity to grow further with us. And I truly think that that's what this is about. I understand the concerns of our residents. It is a far way off. We don't know what's going to happen in the future when it's that far off. So you know, she has another two years with this contract and we jumped a little bit be ahead. Uh, well, in front of because she does have to additionally years. And I would be willing to ask our council to expand it to another two years for a total of four. Yeah, so I'd like to make a few comments as well. So, again, a lot of what I wanted to say has been said already. I don't want to be too repetitive, but I think the reason that we're here tonight is to try to provide a little bit of further stability to the city in future projects. I mean, I think we have a handful of projects ahead of us that are quite large. A lot of these have been discussed or are part of our strategic plan. And I have to say number one, I think just the, as it's been said before, the execution of items on that strategic plan have been tremendous over the past six, seven years since I've been on council. You know, I've been involved on in planning commission before being on council for a number of years and just you know been involved throughout the city and I can say that I've never seen a city manager be as active and execute so well as our current city manager and I think that's why we're seeing this contract extension in front of us tonight. I mean just before Ms. Pinkwiss we had two city managers that lasted a total of three years, year and a half each roughly, not that they were doing a bad job necessarily, but the stability wasn't there. I think we see it as council members that in order for you to be able to be effective and get anything done, be efficient as a council member, you need time. I think when you first got on council, you're going through your learning curve and it's taking a little time to get acclimated with protocol, you know, with city staff, your city manager. And it takes a while, not until you're coming to the end of your first term. You realize, okay, look, you know, I have it down. I can get things done now. And so that's the same case with our city manager, in order for her to execute a lot of these goals and plans that we have ahead of us. She needs time. Some of those items, seven, ten improvement projects, I mean that is a tremendous project ahead of us. It's multiple projects in one. We have a pedestrian, a bike plan that we've been trying to put together for many many years. We've got a city manager that finally took some action and and put that on its way to becoming a reality. We have a historic preservation plan. I've been hearing about that for probably 20, 30 years. It's on its way to become a reality as well. We have a community center that should be finalized, hopefully, in a couple of years. A sustainability plan. I mean, that's just to name a few things that we have on the horizon that we need. somebody not only knowledgeable, somebody that has the base and the long-term knowledge through the city to make these things happen. And so for those reasons, I think it is important to extend that contract. Again, it provides a city with that stability that's much needed. In terms of the comment that was made about tying the hands of future counsel, I completely disagree with that. I think any decision that we make, that case can be made for that. I mean, there's a number of decisions that we've made over the past few years that are going to affect our community for many, many years ahead. And this is one of them I think that is going to affect our community positively. Another thing, you know, that's worth mentioning, just building the team that we have now with city staff. I mean, throughout the city, I remember early on, where we were wanting a public information officer, we were wanting a deputy city manager. And we wanted some improvement through our utilities and our public works department. She brought and combined the utilities and public works positions in a one, which made it, I think, a lot more efficient. Took a couple of positions that were retiring and created our deputy city manager or public information officer. And I think even our grant writer position from that. So just a number of things to mention, but at the end of the day, I think what we're looking for, another thing before I forget, the fiscal responsibility that she's demonstrated. When I first got on council, I think our reserves were maybe at a 9.5%. We've hit 20% recently and our honor are way to hopefully hitting 30% in the next few years. So again, we need that stability for the city and I think that's the reason that we are here looking at this. As council member Maloney mentioned as well, we're not tying ourselves down any contract that has no way out. If the performance isn't there, she can be let go. If we feel that for whatever reason, the dynamic with the council changes and she is not meeting or executing the goals of the strategic plan, then we can part ways as well. well. So you know there are a number of ways out but what we are looking to do is we're looking to show her that we want stability for her, we want stability for the city. And looking at a number of other local cities, the city of the North has one example, Sal Pasadena. I think that they've been through maybe three or four city managers during the past five years. I don't know if they have a permanent city manager now. But these are many of the reasons that I can think of, excuse me, as to why we are looking to extend that contract now. So I fully supported, hopefully the rest of the council will. Anyway, looking to hear what others have to say. Thank you. Sorry. Just before we go, just to clarify, City Manager, what are the other options for us to discuss terms of a contract? Is this our base glare or only venue to do that? Is there another avenue to have those discussions? In terms of discussing contract negotiations? Well, typically if you were negotiating a contract from start with a brand new city manager, there'd be a council subcommittee appointed typically and that subcommittee would work with the city attorney and negotiate back and forth the city manager and ultimately that contract would be brought back for the entire council to look at and discuss. So, I mean that's typically how it's done. If you're going to try to negotiate terms from the Dias, it gets awkward because it's a contract. Both parties have to agree. So, if those, if there's a mutual agreement, then the item either dies or it has to be continued and it just is sort of an awkward proposition. Okay, thanks for the clarification. I appreciate hearing all my colleagues comments. I think I echo with a lot of the remarks and sentiment. I'd agree that having stability in the city, especially in such a key position for our city is extremely important because that allows us to think long-term, think strategically, and a lot of things that our communities don't see is a succession plan for leadership positions. That's not something you will think about if you're not, if you don't have stability in the city. So I certainly think that's something important. Now, for me, I've been on the council for just a little bit over three months. And it's a very short time to fairly and responsibly assess the performance of a city manager. And I understand that there was a performance review conducted October 28th, 2024 last year. It was before I got on the council, so I was in part of that process. There are key questions in the performance review matrix that I would like to be able to answer. The three months just doesn't provide me with sufficient time to, you know, responsibly answer those questions. And I want to be very, very clear that this is not a reflection on the city manager or current city manager. I for the past, you know, a couple months I've come to really appreciate've gotten to know her and really appreciate some of her really great leadership qualities and witness her dedication to the city. And I think hearing some of the comments from the public, I just really feel like I have to say this. It's a very, very difficult job to run a city. To run a city this size, for the city of Alhambra, she oversees nine departments in the city. Community development, public works, library, management services, parks and rec, HR, finance, police, and fire. While many of us see the outcomes of the city services, we see parks maintained, streets paved, we see services delivered. What's often hidden behind the scenes is all the efforts and coordination that goes on behind the scenes. And that's her and her team every day to implement. So it's an incredibly hard job. Issues come up every day, every single day. And any hour of the day, it's when you're feeding your kids. It's when you're trying to sleep. It's on your weekends, on your vacation. And that requires dedication. And that's what she does for our city. So I just don't think it's fair to attack our staff. And I don't think that's something that I could agree with. And so throughout the three months I've been on the council, I saw how she shows up every day. She leads with a very common study presence presence. She supports the staff. She empowers her team to think creatively for a solution. And I definitely appreciate all of these. And I heard from the community that, we're seeing issues in our city. I agree. I see those issues too. I experienced it too. And a lot of issues didn't exist 20 years ago. That's correct, it didn't, right? So what that means is that running a city today is very different than running a city 20 years ago and she has to meet the expectations and you know face those challenges, it requires even more hard work and dedication and problem solvingsolving skills today than 20 years ago. And I know that she's very open-minded, like my colleague said that we have a strategic plan session, and she's always there to listen. And, you know, we bring up ideas that we want to implement. She's always open-minded. She's very receptive. We have a lot of work to be done as a team together as our council with our team and with our city manager. There's a long way to go, but I don't want to dismiss all the hard work that goes into the daily operations in our city and the incredible work that she does with her team. Now, this is going to come from a pure governance standpoint. And because I take this responsibility very seriously, it would be irresponsible of me to cast a vote on this contract extension at this time without the full context and the experience necessary to do it fairly. So if I understand that if we have to vote on this contract extension, I will be abstaining from the vote. If there is, you know, if the council feels that we could potentially maybe delay this a little bit further down the line that gives me more time to fairly assess all these key questions on the performance review and give me the opportunity to do that. That's something I can work with and support as well. I'm not sure about the timing of having this item be voted on tonight. What if we table it? What will, what will be the next time we can vote on it? That would be at the council's discretion. You can table it for whatever period you want to table it. I think council member one does have a point that you just came on boring December for you to vote on this contract is really not. You don't have enough information. By no means I'm saying that I will vote no on this. I mean, I support this contract, but I do think it's fair for a new Council Member to have enough time to look at to actually evaluate our city manager before she can vote on it. If you abstain from this vote, basically because you don't have enough information, I do understand that. So I just want to kind of let you know how I feel. Thank you. So I definitely respect, I think it's very understandable that with only a couple of months under your belt that there are concerns about being able to answer some of the questions specifically in the performance review, of course, right? Because you haven't seen it at least even in full six months yet. What are my concerns? A couple of concerns is that if I don't want to portray this as that we have some sort of, you know, sort hanging overheads, if we don't do this, then everything's going to fall apart. We'll figure things out, but it's not going to get easier because the same concerns that we heard tonight will be raised again, maybe even amplified and it'll be the situation won't be any different. She still has excellent performance reviews. We'll still feel the same about her. It's just how are we going to get this done? The time frame that I'm looking at is this 3031 with the caveat that the Council, any future Council I'm done here in after 2028. So, 2029 could come and the Council member, and maybe you'll still be here, maybe not. The new Council could think, well, this isn't working. And we can do it over. That's the option. That's why this is not a lifetime appointment. It is unlike the way it was described by some people that we're locking this up. We're saddling future councils with this contract. We can cancel it at any point. I don't want to be arbitrary about this. What I'm looking at through 30, 2031, probably the biggest factor for me is that we've been working on. I think it doesn't get enough attention that it deserves, but probably the biggest single thing that we're working on at Elambra is the 710 transformation there and figuring out how we expend one of the biggest potential windfalls in our city's history. Our current city manager has been working on the 710 project for over a decade now. I don't even know how long, but it's been a long time. And she was the staffer on this issue from from very early on. She continued on in her role as it was an assistant city manager, deputy city manager at some point. And then obviously kept that in her portfolio city manager. And we have benefited from that. Metro, after they voted to council the 710 tunnel project, they earmarked a lot of money for Alhambra, over $200 billion. And we're in the process of figuring that out. I, that's the primary driver for me for this timeframe. I think right now we're looking at getting through environmental, the sequel, the sequel portion of this project in 2028. Caltrangers get to approve, we got to do an EIR and it goes to review, and we got to get through any lawsuits that have happened. And it's really going to start being implemented around that 30, 30, 30, 31. I sincerely think that transforming that will transform the entire city and our quality of life. I do not want a amateur or a newbie running that project. I'm not saying that we don't have qualified staff here that can do it. I know that we do, but we don't have anyone who is familiar and has a mastery of the facts in the situation like we do with our city manager. That's the way this time frame works for me. And I appreciate the suggestions and the trying to be responsive to some of the community concerns. In this case, not always, but in this case, I think that the five of us, maybe the four of us, are in the best position to make this decision. And none of us, I haven't heard a negative word tonight. If that changes, I'll be the first one to say, I think we need to make a change, whether that's next year or the year after or not. But I think at this point, I see no reason to believe that's going to happen. I see many reasons to lock up this contract and to have some stability and insurance that we are not going to have other cities come and poach our city manager. That will happen if we give start giving out one year contracts to your contracts. other cities will come say hey we'll give you a five year contract will give you a six year contract. This is happening other communities and it happens quite often there is there's an entire industry built around placing senior staff level people in cities and they will not hesitate to review the this this meeting tonight to hear what happens with this decision and they'll come knocking. And I don't want to be in a situation where we're having to meet another city's offer if and when that happens. I would hope that we would have that opportunity but I don't know. I just don't want to be doomsday about this but this is something that plays itself over and over and over again in the world of professional city management. They have email lists, they have friendly discussions at conferences, they know what's going on. And this will happen. And I understand, I respect everyone's decision, everyone has to make it their own way. I'm explaining why I feel so strongly about getting this done. And I think getting it done tonight is probably the right way to go. I'd like your other options, but I would like us to consider moving this item. So I'll make that motion. Mayor, if I may just add something. You know, if anybody is interested in the 710 moving, well, the 710 dollars being going to our projects, it certainly is District 5's Council person. So I appreciate your comments. And yes, everything takes so long to have it done. We're still waiting for counter trends apparently. Hopefully our state senator will be able to knock on their door and give us some help there. But all along we have followed some sort of formula here. And I think the formula actually works. We're actually giving her additional years on top of what we're giving her another two years. What I recommend, which would be the 229. Her contract ends at 2027. So this would give her actually from now until 229 she's got four years with us and I think that gives us enough to move forward. I don't know if our councilwoman on the end there would be willing to do move forward in this fashion or whether she just doesn't want to be part of the vote. I mean she feels like she can't be part of the vote at all. But I respect your comments. I really do and I understand them fully. We've known Jessica since 2018, some of us even longer. And clearly she's, you know, so important to us. So, yeah, with that, I'm going to stay with that. And I'm going to second Councilman Rolone's motion to move forward with the contract as the contract extension is stated in the agenda. But before that, I want to make sure that I clarify that we heard some of the comments, or all of the comments made by the public. Some were very good valid points. Others were not so much, but as I always say, we're always willing to sit down in person, one on one, listen to the community, see what needs improvement and work on those improvements along with their city manager and the rest of council. I know Mr. Sawho made a couple of comments. Some of those were pretty big items. The cleanup of the site over on Fremont admission, here was the arena numbers. I know that we did our part to try to fight those arena numbers. Ultimately, it wasn't up to the City of Alhambra and it wasn't in the City of Alhambra's control to dictate what numbers we got. I mean, a lot of other cities around us also were placed where we're, yeah, we're placed with numbers that, you know, they can likely never never meet and that's the case of the city of Elhamber as well. So anyway a lot of those points are very valid. I think that there is always room for improvement. We can always work on you know seeing what can we do to improve and maybe reduce some of those reading numbers and work with the correspondent agencies to do the environment of environmental cleanup in those areas. But again, I just wanted to make sure that everyone knew that the public was heard. But with that, I do want to second Council on Belonies motion 2 before it. Okay, item number 11 has a motion. The second roll call please. Item number 6. 6. Oh, you're six, sorry. Madam Mayor, can I just respond to a council of women on dress, dollars comment? I hear you and I think for me, I just won't be able to vote on the contract anyway right now. And if I get more time, say a year from now, I will be because I want to be able to responsibly answer the questions on the performance review matrix. So that's where I stand on that. Item number six, we'll call please. Maloney. Yes. Mazza. Yes. Wang. Upstate. Andrade Sadler. No. Lee. Yes. Yes. We do have other items that we need to be voted on. I have a question for item number four, housing, fair housing services. The contract for $25,000. I just wanted to see with this contract, what are the hours of service? I think it's located in the libraries, am I correct? And I had complaints forward to me by tenants that they had may phone calls to the office and there was no response. This to them. So has there been any follow-up to that problem? So we have contacted the Housing Rights Center. There's two different sides of the contract. We have representation Monday through Friday, normal business hours, as other cities do as well. And then extra layer for the City of Alhambra, we have walk-in hours on Fridays at the library, except the fifth Friday if there was, is one during the month. So I believe that the criticism came for regular business hours to their phone line. We did reach out to the Housing Rights Center. They are challenged with, you know, an influx of calls and have mentioned that they are trying to do better with regards to returning phone calls and getting to those in a more timely manner. Those are different than the Friday hours that are the walk-in. Is there any way for them to forecast out to make sure that they are returning phone calls? If they're taking messages on the phone, they should be returning the phone calls. I just want to make sure that we have that follow up. That goes directly to their office. We can ask them what their turnaround time is, but I'm not sure that we have a way of monitoring that intently without hearing the feedback from the community. So if, well, I think I just want to be for a vote on this, just want to make sure that our staff in your your best ability, making sure that this complaint is forwarded to them from the mayor. That I've heard from a couple people that they have not returned phone calls left under the end string service. At this point, we have item number four, six, number four, 11, 15, 17, 20, and 21 that you be voted on. May I have a motion? Move for approval. Aye, second. Roll call please. So, excuse me, clarification. You said 4 and 6. 6 was already voted on. I said 4, 11, 15, 17, 20, and 21. Thank you, and I actually pulled 20 and 21 to ask some questions. Sure. Thank you, Mayor. I think I will bypass 20. It's fine. But with 21, I just wanted to ask a couple of questions regarding the third contract amendment with Kimberly Horm. And I know we're going to have probably more updated information as time goes on, but I wanted to know. Has Kimberly Horm been trying to contact CalTrans to push the approval forward? Yes, Kimlihorn staff has been in contact with CalTrans staff regularly. They also do regular team meetings with the CalTrans staff, the Kimlihorn staff, and then also Metro staff with our staff. And so it's been challenging. We've had some delays at the CalTrans level and that have exceeded what we ever expected. But we do believe that we are on the right path and that the additional resubmital will be completed by the end of next week and submitted to CalTrans by April 4th. That's good. Thank you. That's all I wanted to know. Move to approve it. Second. Second. Roll call, please. Is that for all of the items that were previously listed? I'm sorry, yes. It was just in addition to, I just had that one question. Clarification. Right. It's for the items. For the remaining balance. Correct. Okay, great. I'm Dready Stadler. Yes. Maloney. Wang. Yes. Mazza. Yes. Lee. Yes. Let's see what we are now. I thank those who are still awake with this. Good for you. Next we have the continuation of public comment for non-genii items. Do we have any speakers that were not able to speak at the beginning of the meeting? Please note that we kindly request the speakers. Stay there, name and address for the record before making their comments. Mr. Brian Otis. Good evening, Madam Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Brian Otis and I happen to live over at 316 North Monterey Street in Alhambra. I had no idea that item 6 was going to be so volatile. I therefore didn't comment on it when I should have but I would like to at least express my view on this. I'm coming at it from a slightly different perspective here. I happen to be a small business owner. I'm a landlord, and so one of my jobs is to hire workers to help me do repairs. And one of those jobs is to make sure that the repair is done right. Now in my case, I have to hire workers. And I would say that one good worker is better than a half a dozen mediocre or bad workers. I strongly suspect that our city manager is one of the best city managers we could ever possibly have. I am not looking at this from anything other than from an outside perspective. I don't know our city manager. I've never, never talked to her. I don't know anything about her. I don't meet her. It sprouts. I don't go out to lunch with her. My kids don't play with her kids. There's nothing like that at all that happens. I'm just looking at this from a city council perspective as a member of the audience. And I can tell you this that she is very efficient, extremely efficient. I wish she would clean my house someday. But in addition to that, more importantly, she's very knowledgeable. She knows what she was doing. There was one time where I would have expected our city attorney to know about a certain provision called AB 1482, which had to do with landlord tenants. I would not have expected our city managers to know this, but she did. She knew all about it. She knows city law. She knows state law. And I think she would be an excellent person to continue to work with this. Which worked to work with with us. Now I recently had some correspondence with her for the first time. I also sent an email at the very same time to the president of the Elhamber School Board, got no response, nothing. Not criticizing your arm, she was the person who was very busy, but Ms. Benquist did answer my response and she has been in continued in contact with me with regard to this. I would say that she is very professional. If you find somebody who's very good at what you do, then you should keep her and don't let her go under any circumstances. That would be my advice and I'm glad you voted the way you did. Thank you. Do we have any speakers via Zoom that wish to speak? If so, please raise your hand now and you will be able to unmute yourself when your name is called. I'm Adam Mayer. I'm not seeing any raised hands on Zoom at this time. Next we have Council Communications, I'd like to start. I made some notes for this, but I think I went over and over and over this in my head. And I'm hoping that the council joins me in really looking at banning safe and sane fireworks. I think the time has come for us to remove the mask from bad fireworks. Because many times are safe and sane, where kids are playing on the street, or actually masking the real illegal fireworks, they go on down the street or up, and it's difficult for the police department to figure out where that's coming from. I also think it's a near quality issue. I remember leaving the castle from that meeting and having that big cloud over black cloud of smoke from our friends to the north, who had that horrible, horrible fire that took everything and all and many of them started with an ember blowing on another roof or on a dry bush and there it went and we had embers I don't know if you guys know this, but we had embers flying around up by the castle as we were leaving as we were departing our meeting. And I think that it's a step we need to look at. Maybe I shouldn't say too much more because he's telling me I need to get you to prove it for us to look at it and yeah, thanks. I'm not quite sure what exactly we are asking. I have had a motion made that was not supported quite over two years ago, but there's a motion on the table. So all I need is for you guys to agree for us to put it on the agenda for discussion. I personally would like to make sure that my original motion was to ban all fireworks, the sale and use of it. Is that what you're supporting? She was talking about the safe and sale of selling the fireworks. That's exactly my original name. Not the Almanzo court celebration because that's controlled and there's less and so that's controlled. So if I remember this correctly, there is a motion that was made by me. It was compromised. It was on the table that restricts safe and saying fireworks use of safe and saying fireworks on July 4th that was tabled but I really wanted to ban all safe and saying fireworks right so at this point the only issue to be discussed is whether five of you agree to put this on the agenda for discussion. So you have two? Not in that form, I can't agree. If you want to continue to move forward, sorry about that. You don't have the support of all five to put it on the next agenda. So if you want to move forward still, then it will appear on the next agenda. Under your name, under Council Communications, you can again propose it. And if you get three council. Okay. To put it on agenda, it will appear on an agenda after. Okay, sounds good. Mr. C. Attorney, does she need five or three? Tonight she needs five. Oh. But she didn't get five. So if she wants, if she still wants to pursue it, her next chance is at the next meeting, and if she gets three at the next meeting, then it will show upon a subsequent agenda. I see. I could support getting on the agenda. So there are only three. Councilman. But you're jumping ahead. We still have to wait for. I just clarify. I would have supported it as well as first. But we can't. So I guess it'll skip to a couple of agenda. Well, I do have that. Why items still on the table being table, that it's restricting fireworks on July 4th, I can just go ahead and see there is a support for that tonight. To add to the agenda next time. Correct. Because that was a compromise. My original motion was exactly what it was to remove to ban all safe and safe file works from the city in terms of using and selling of them. And since council member Dottis Dallin now you're supporting it that but you're not getting five votes to put on the agenda. So I would now want to take care of the item that's on the being tabled, restricting safe and staying fireworks used on July 4th. Between, I think it was between 10, I don't remember the time, but I want that to be taken care of at this point. Mayor, if I may just remember, there is no sale on the 4th of July right now. Currently, isn't that right, Director Maseus, do people's purchase safe and safe fireworks on 4th of July? Oh, I thought they, okay. Yeah, the item is really about the use of safe and safe fire works in the city, restricting to July 4th. I believe Monacoire has similar ordinance, it's just on July 4th. To answer your question, there are sales on July 4th until all product is sold. So most, most fire work stands are sold out by noon that day so that all the workers that are working all week, all the volunteers can go home and be with their families. Thank you, Director Mercedes. And then clarify for us, what we did change was didn't we shorten the dates or the start date the start date changed didn't it the start for purchase changed. No, we stayed with what the city ordinance was. Okay. I believe it's the 28th through the 5th. Okay. Thank you. I thought that changed. So this the item, the motion I brought out there was table essentially allows us to say, Does this sail Sabin-Singt Fireworks in the city? Are we stricken the use of Sabin-Singt Fireworks? Should you live for it only. And the original problem was the fact that there was concern about AUSD profit over fireworks. And so Councilmember Drottis-Dallar now that that's no longer concerned for you, I understand that the firehouse is more important. And I don't know Councilmember Vice-Mail Olin, would you agree to that? Put that on the agenda. We're just restricting the savings thing fireworks. Use of it on July 4th, but still allowing the sale of it. No, I think we need a discussion about this, but I don't want to sort of define that scope right now. Okay, so we're just going to go ahead and leave over next time. We don't have five votes. Right, so next time what I'm hearing is next time under Council comments, we will have an item listed under Ms. Dendrotti's name and we'll have an item listed under the mayors. So next item we have three. And if you have three on either or both of those, those will show up at a certain point. Sure, okay. Any other council member comments or for tonight? I do want to let the council know that currently there is a Senate bill by State Senator Scott Weiner. SB 677. If it passes in Monday's ministerial or actually over-accounted approval of housing developments in single-family residential zones. And if it passes it with significantly curtailed local land use authority, overrides local planning efforts and absolutely increased traffic congestion. I'm planning to write a letter to a post SB677 for the reason I just dated. I'd like to see the council elected joining writing that letter. If the council, whether if you're going to put a majority of signatures on that, then it has to be agendized. If it's an individual letter, even if all five of you want to send your own letters that does not need to be agendized So let me know any of you want to be agendized I could write a letter Well, I would want to know more about what the bill actually does and And they're so early in the bill a Legislature in the I think the March 31st is their deadline to get all the bills in. So that is actually going to go through a process that may change it considerably. So I would venture to say that we wait just and just, I get what you're saying. In theory, I like what you're saying. We have single family homes in the fifth and the first district more than any of the other districts. So I'm close to supporting that but not in its raw form because it's going to be raw. I would agree and I think probably their best option, I'm talking too much, but our best option is probably be to see what the League of Cities says as well because they have a whole process to go through to figure out, you know, I'm taking input from the different communities. So I'd like to wait until that. And the same, just a request, perhaps city staff can get an email through the entire council regarding the base bill right now as it stands and then we can learn a little bit more about it. Enough familiar with it. Tell us about your own. I feel the same way and we'll probably need to do a little bit of research more information. I would echo with Councilmember Andrade Salar that we weighed a little bit and understand better as they developed. So not at this point, but open to it later. So hearing from all four of you, I'm not quite sure you want us just to wait to see what happens with the legal city and other positions, or we want to put on agenda for the staff to bring back information. I think if you would like to go ahead and issue a letter individually, that's fine. But I don't think I'm ready to move forward in that direction just yet. Okay. And what is the timeline on this bill? So yeah, typically I don't have the exact dates, but typically the end of August is when all of the bills have to be adopted by both houses and sent to the governor, and then the governor usually has the month of September to sign off or veto bills. So the bill will start in its house of origin here, the Senate. It will go through various committees in the Senate. It'll get revised several times and then once they kind of approve it, they send it over to the house side. The house side runs it through their committees. They make some changes. If they make any changes, they have to send it back to the Senate side. The Senate side has to see if they agree with those changes. And then ultimately when they get to something that doesn't get changed anymore, they both vote on it. Once they both voted on it, then it becomes something that gets submitted to the governor. And so all of that happens over the course of between now and the end of August beginning of September. Sounds like we have a lot of time, so I'll wait for a while. I am going to end tonight's meeting with announcements. Margaret calendars for our biennial, Elhammer Recycles events on Saturday, April 5th at Grenada Park. Recycle E-Waste Shred documents and collect free compost from AEM to 12 PM. Next, join the Parks and Recreation Department for the Peeps and Petals, Spring Festival at Alhembre Park on April 12. Look forward to live into live entertainment, including a magic show at 9.30am and a character's performance at 11am. You will also get to explore Alhambra Police Department and Alhambra Fire Department vehicles and equipment. Don't miss the 2025 State of the City at the Grenada LA on April 17 from 11am to 1 through. to 1 through 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 also be available on the City website. For more information, visit alhambrachamber.org. Last but not least, help us create a more resilient alhambra by participating in the Hazard Mitigation Plan process. Share input through our survey available in English, Spanish, and Chinese at cityoflhamber.org. slash hazard mitigation and meeting the adjourned. Good night everyone. I'm going to play a little bit of the song. I'm going to play a little bit of the song. I'm going to play a little bit of the song. I'm going to play a little bit of the song. I'm going to play a little bit of the song. 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