We're going to be back. Recording in progress. Vice Mayor and Council, we are live. Good evening everyone. Welcome to the May 19th regular meeting of the city council, passing the city council. Why don't we start with the roll call? Councilmember Cole. Councilmember Hampton. Blessed in honor to be here. Councilmember Jones. Here. Councilmember Lyon. Here. Councilmember Madison. Here. Councilmember Moussouda. Here. Vice Mayor Revis. Here. Mayor Cordo is absent. There's a quorum of the Council President. Councilmember Cole, would you like to lead us in the pledge of allegiance? Thank you, Mayor. I'm standing in the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God and individual with liberty and justice for all. We have two ceremonial items tonight. Yeah, yeah. Our first item is a proclamation for older Americans month. So this is a proclamation for Mayor Gordo who would like to acknowledge the contributions of older individuals that older individuals have made to the economic well-being of our nation through civic leadership and mentoring. Our expanding elder population profoundly impacts every facet of our lives and it is important to ensure that senior citizens in our community enjoy active, productive, healthy lives and do so independently,, and with dignity. So the city of Pasadena joins the national tradition of designating the month of May as a time to celebrate the contributions of older Americans and rededicate our efforts to better serving their needs. On behalf of the city council, Mayor Gordo does hereby proclaim that the month of May in the city of Pasadena is older Americans month and expresses appreciation for the continuing contributions of the city's older residents to our community and recognizes that they are vital and a growing part of our city. And I believe we have several folks to accept the proclamation and the certificate. We have Lulia Lopez, Senior Commission staff, Donnie Lawrence, Senior Commission Chair, and Katie Brandon, Senior Commission Member. And so why don't I get that out? Sorry. Oh, and please. Oh, let me go. Go ahead. So much. Hello, my name is Chelsea Mason, and I am a member of the City of Pasadena Senior Commission and I'm speaking tonight on behalf of our Chair, Donnie and Lawrence. On behalf of the City of Pasadena Senior Commission, I thank Vice Mayor Revis, Mayor Gordo and the City Council for their recognition of this national observance. Pasadena is indeed a city with tremendous resources for our older population. From the programming at the Pasadena Senior Center, the facilities at Huntington Hospital, the community building at Pasadena Village are many parks and recreational facilities, and are vibrant arts and culture community opportunities and support for older Pasadena's abound. On Wednesday, we will showcase these resources at our fourth annual event Pasadena celebrates older Americans month. And I'll have Katie Brandon, my fellow Commissioner and Executive Director of Pasadena Village share those details. Thank you Commissioner Mason. I have been honored to serve on the senior commission for the past four years and to be executive director of Pasadena Village and I'm grateful for this opportunity to address the council. We hope that all of you plan to join us on Wednesday from 10 to 1 at Victory Park for Pasadena celebrates older Americans month. This is our fourth annual collaboration between Pasadena Village, the Senior Commission, and the Pasadena Department of Parks, Recreation, and Community Services. The Eaton Fires, which impacted our entire community, highlighted the needs for older adults to be connected to trusted resources. As we were covered together, both in rebuilding and in healing, we all will need opportunities for connections and support. Each year, hundreds of older Americans attend this event to connect with over 50 businesses and organizations, and this year will be no exception. We anticipate over 500 people to join us at the Victory Park on Wednesday. This event is only possible because of the public private partnership between the city, Pasadena Village, other nonprofit organizations, and the businesses that come together to support the amazing older Americans who reside, work, and play in our city. We have garnered support from home instead Pasadena, UCLA Health, Villa Gardens, and other generous sponsors, totaling over $20,000 to cover the cost of the event, the tents and the tables, complimentary food, resource bags, and promotion and other costs. I wanted to let you know that the businesses who support this event and who serve the older adults in our community are truly partners in this event. For example, Rick who's here's here with us today, is a Medicare broker. He not only contributes to the event, but he spent hours stuffing the 300 resource bags to give away all the attendees. Yes. All the attendees who come on Wednesday. Also, Huntington Health, who's one of our sponsors, printed the Senior Resources Guide that was developed by the Senior Commission at no cost to the city or to us, and will bring them and the registered nurses to give free health screenings on Wednesday. So thank you, Vice Mayor Rivas and Mayor Gordo Nostencia, and each of you are council members for recognizing the older Americans who are critical to the fabric of our community and for joining us in promoting Pasadena celebrates older Americans month that is designated for them and in celebration of them and their contributions to this great city. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank This is the moment. Thank you. Thank you. I don't think that's true. Thank you again and we'll see you all next week on Wednesday. So we have one more proclamation and I will invite director of park circulation community services, co-cupinocian. This is a proclamation for National Water Safety Month which is very timely given warm weather and the summer upcoming and kids out of school. So this is another proclamation from Ergordo this evening relating to water safety. Swimming can play a vital role in maintaining good physical and mental health, building social connections and enhancing quality of life. And it is important for families and individuals of all ages, whether owners of private pools, users of public swimming facilities, or those visiting recreational swimming areas to understand the importance of water safety rules. Drowning is often caused by inadequate swimming skills, lack of supervision, and hazardous swimming conditions, and is a leading cause of unintentional injury related deaths worldwide. Water safety awareness and basic swimming skills are crucial to anticipating and avoiding and surviving common drowning situations, as well as recognizing and providing assistance to those in need. And therefore, on behalf of the City Council, on behalf of Mayor Gordo, we are pleased to proclaim the month of May 2025 in Pasadena as National Water Safety Month. So would anyone like to speak? Yes, please. Thank you, Vice Mayor and City Council members. Kenny James, Recreation Administrator. I have three very important people here with us today that I like to bring up. One is Grudson, who is the aquatic supervisor. The other one is Alex, who is a senior lifeguard. And then we also have Louise, who is a senior lifeguard. They are very instrumental in ensuring the safety and the excitement of everyone that participation in our Aquatics program. So I'd like to bring Grudge up to say a few words on behalf of receiving this award. Thank you. Thank you, City Council, for we would like to thank you, the Aquatics program, for recognizing water safety awareness month. We also want to let you know that we practice water safety every second of every day that we are at the pool. It is not just for one month. We would also like to encourage all of you to come and visit the city pools, especially this summer. The other thing is we would also like to have you come and take swim lessons. Our rates are very affordable. And we offer ranging from a parent and me class where the participants are the parent and the child can be six months up to three years old. We offer tiny tots, which is from three to four years old. And we also offer American Red Cross, learn to swim program and the levels that we offer from one to five. Also, during the summer, we offer recreational swim daily Monday through Saturday, and recreational swim is free to the public. The Honorable John J. Kennedy Pull is the only pull currently that we have running year round, and those same programs are offered there. We also offer lap swim, water exercise, and in the summer, water polo and swim team. So hopefully we will see you all there. Thank you again. Let's all make a splash and see you at the pool. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I feel like the receive the population. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank floor. Thank you. Vice mayor. May I be recognized just to say something about water safety? Perfect. I just want to thank our parks and recreation team for everything that they do for our children and our community, especially as it relates to water safety. I do have to testify that my niece who comes from Maryland every year, well, she sees my great niece, which is actually kind of funny, I think about it. She comes from Maryland every year for the summer. And two years ago, I signed her up to take swim lessons with the team over at our Parks and Recreation. And within four or five lessons, she knew how to swim. And now she is actually a competitive swimmer in Maryland with her middle school. So I just want to thank them for that. Number one, so I could say that for sure I know someone who's gone to this one lessons and has succeeded in the sale. But also the fact that there are a lot of pools in the city of Pasadena and it's super important for our residents to know if you do, mean our codes have been updated in their updated all the time so if your pool does not have the proper security around it I encourage you as an individual to or property owner to make sure that you do have the secure gates covers over your pools to prevent drowning because as mentioned at our water safety press conference on was that last Thursday? I think last Thursday. Christine Averado from the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center mentioned in which I didn't really think about is that drowning is silent. You don't hear that. And someone could drown in the time that it takes you to send a text message. So while you're out, and it's gonna be hot weather, there's gonna be tons of time to be in the pool, please make sure that you have the appropriate protections around your pool, but also make sure that you have someone that is monitoring your pool. Because we don't wanna be the story, we don't wanna be the statistic, We want to make sure that our young people have that opportunity, not just young people, but older people as well. I learned how to swim at an older age myself. So I thank you all for the work that you do and more kudos to you and continue to perpetuate water safety for all. Thank you. Thank you, councilmember. Before we move on to public agenda, the items not on the agenda, I just want to briefly apologize for the late start time. We were in close session for several hours, two hours, I think we ended up going. At this point there is no report of action, though all three items A through C were heard. And with that, we will turn to public comment. We have 12 cards for public comment. Not on the agenda. So, two minutes for everybody. Nicholas, Cisameel, Reverend Mark Chase, Hector AgriDano, and then Salma Zarr. If you hear your name, please step forward. Nicholas, are you here? Okay, then Reverend Mark Chase, are you here? He's on his way. Hector Agradano. Okay, go ahead. Two minutes, I'll ring a bell when you have 30 seconds left. Thank you. Hello, City Council. My name is Nick and I'm a resident of District 7 and a member of the Pasinia community. I'm here to ask that the City Council agenda the divestment from Caterpillar, Chevron and Boeing in a fire and police retirement system fund. We are witnessing crimes against humanity unfold in Palestine. I submit to the number of Palestinians killed during the ongoing Zionist genocide in Gaza, range from at least 50,000 to over 200,000, since October 7, 2023. Recent years have been the deadliest in recorded history for Palestinians living the West Bank as illegal settlements and attacks intensify across the region. This did not begin recently. Palestinians have lived under systems of apartheid and ethnic cleansing instituted by the Israeli state for the last 77 years. These systems are supported by companies in the United States, which provide the materials used to murder and displace civilians. Caterpillar manufacturers armored bulldozers use the level homes, Boeing builds 2,000-pound bombs that have been dropped on hospitals, and Chevron provides the fuel for genocide. By investing in these companies, the city of Paschina is investing in genocide, a partied and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. In 1988, the Paschina Board of Directors forced the police and fire pension board to divest from companies doing business in apartheid South Africa. Last year, the Paschina City Council called for a ceasefire of the ongoing genocide in Palestine. I respectfully ask the board maintain the tradition of moral clarity by making responsible steps towards divesting from caterpillar, chavron, and Boeing, in the fire and police retirement system fund. Thank you. Thank you. Reverend Mark Chase, followed by Hector Aguidano, followed by Sama Zarr, then Hadaab Tarifi. Permanent changes on his way. Anybody else that I called? And state your name? Sama? Okay. Greetings of peace. My name is Hadaab Tarifi time I was here I was expecting to speak for three minutes and I was asked to make it a minute and I left very disappointed thinking that I have failed my family. So I came back here, no papers, speaking from my heart. You won't wonder why I meant that I failed my family. I am from Raza, and my family were not even given that minute. My cousin Aata, who was bombed along with his in-laws, who were seeking shelter in a house, was not given that minute. They had to collect whatever's left of his body along with his in-laws, put them in a plastic bag to bury them. My other cousin, Yusuf, who is a prominent dentist, again, wasn't given that minute. I couldn't get him out when I was trying to get my family out of Gaza, but he didn't want to leave his father or his mother. And he wasn't given that minute. When him and his father were looking for a apartment to find a shelter, and they were bombed, he was killed along with his father, along with his uncle, when Israel targeted his father, who was the head of pediatric surgery at one of the hospitals in Gaza. So those minutes are important. My voice here is important, because the money that is invested in this company, along with other companies that are participating in the genocide and Gaza, is blood money. And I don't think the citizens of Pasadena who are getting benefit from this investment would want blood money going to their retirement. So I ask the city to consider, and I make myself available. I want to know why you haven't allowed us to, I just put it on the agenda, why you haven't supported us in divesting from this company. This is a really big time. Make the time, and I will meet with you, and I hope that you will put it on you. Salmas are. Oh, Reverend Chase, go ahead. Well, good evening, Council. Thank you for your patience. My name is Reverend Mark Anthony Chase. One of the pastors at All Saints Church just across the street, which is your district, Brother Justin. So it's good to see everyone this evening. We sing a song, the reason I'm late is I just put my two little boys to sleep, and we sing a song to them every night that they go to bed. And the song is Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star. Don't ask me why we sing that, they like that. But that song, it's a great song. And that song takes us a little less than a minute to sing over our children. And when I sing that song, after I sing it, I pray for them to have a great night's sleep. And I pray for all the children all over the world that need a safe and great night's sleep who might not get one. And we pray for the children of Gaza. And in that one minute that we sing that song, my mind often goes to the devastation that is being reaped on the children of Gaza as we're singing that song Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. As we look up and see the stars in our backyard, well the stars that you can still see here in Los Angeles County, there are children kids in Gaza, who are looking up and not seeing stars, but who are looking up and seeing bombs, who are looking up and seeing fighter jets, who are looking up and seeing machines and weapons of war that are financed with not only our taxes, but the things that we've invested in. So tonight, we are asking not just for city council to help divest, but to invest in the humanity of the city of Pasadena, to invest in our hearts, to invest in our souls, to invest in peace and not war, to invest in the best of ourselves and not the worst of ourselves. So as you hear divest, also hear the opportunity that is there to invest, to invest in our souls, our hearts and in peace. Amen. Thank you. Somasar, or actually is Hector Agradado. Hector's not here. Okay, we'll skip him. Somasar followed by Dr. Lena Al-Saraf, then Rob and Thea. Thank you, Council members, for recognizing older Americans month and very recently, our American month. As a young girl, I would have never thought that there would be a month or events for me in recognizing who I am. We're an ethnicity where our ethnicity isn't necessarily on our sleeve. So growing up, I always felt that there was a bit of a more subconscious racism because people don't know where you're from. So we hear a lot more. And so. and necessarily on our sleeve. So growing up, I always felt that there was a bit of a more subconscious racism because people don't know where you from. So we hear a lot more. And so I'm honored that we were doing that, and I invite you for us to be a part of it next year. I just came from West LA. We had a festival. I heard the Older Americans have a festival. I'd love to do that as well. I am a Pasadena resident. I live in Bungalo, heaven. I am also a financial advisor UBS wealth management. I've been working with the markets and investments for over 21 years, and I'm part of the... I am a Pasadena resident. I live in Bungalo, heaven. I am also a financial advisor at UBS wealth management. I've been working with the markets and investments for over 21 years. And I'm part of the PTA at Field Elementary, Chinese school, I'm a home room mother. I've also done swim lessons at Robertson. I'm a part of the community, as for Lisa, I can say. And downstairs in the bathroom, I saw a girl her name in Arabic, her name is Elizabeth and we're a part of the community as well. And what I love about Arab American Heritage Month and we're a part of the community as well And what I love about Arab American Heritage Month is that it represents us as the community And what I would ask for you to do is to represent us as a community when it comes to divestment How many people in a room in an organized fashion? Please raise your hand if you would like City Council to divest How many of you are Pasadena resident? Keep your hands up. So that is about 70, 80, 80% of the room. And I think we've been here for four- How many of you are Pasadena resident? Keep your hands up. So that is about 70, 80, 80% of the room. And I think we've been here for four weeks now. So we ask you, we implore you to use your job as representation in representing us in agendasizing the opportunity to divest. With that, I also invite you. I live in Mungalo, Heaven. If five of you want to meet others, we'll have five of you. We'll have five of you. We won't overwhelm you with all of us. Cone my house, I have a pool, it's safe. We will have. With that, I also invite you. I live in Mungalo, Heaven. If five of you want to meet others, we'll have five of you. We won't overwhelm you with all of us. Come to my house. I have a pool. It's safe. We will have tea in Canapia, which is a Palestinian dessert. We would love to meet with you to see how we can help rectify this and make sure that you have the opportunity and the power to represent the citizens, the 70% of the people in this room, who would like us to divest from arms to hurting people and to represent our people. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Lena Al-Saraf, then Rob Mathia, then Alan Shay, Olden Denham, Yadi, and then Sophia Alvarado and Heavenly Hughes if they're online. Thank you, go ahead. Good evening. Just to bring it to your attention, April was American Awareness Month as well. Dear Vice Mayor and City Council members, I'm a Pasadena resident living in district four in a physician working at a community health clinic. I'm asking the Council members to agenda as the city's divestment from Caterpillar Boeing and Chevron. I'm also asking any member of this chamber, recuse themselves for any conflict of interest, and have other council members collectively support this request. Good governance involves being responsive to the needs and request of its constituents, and being accountable and supporting the rule of law and human rights in all its dealings. There should be ethical guidance for pension investments and funds and it should be invested consistent with our values that align with our principles. The concept of six degrees of separation plays out as I relate to you that my niece and nephews have extended family in Gaza and my friends as well who have lost too many members for someone to lose in their lifetime. We are all interconnected. The moral injury that's affecting us all, especially our youth, including our students have a profound impact on witnessing the atrocities in Gaza and the thousands who are suffering and causing our future generation to experience disillusionment when we stand by and do nothing in the midst of a genocide. Let us stop the propaganda of gaslighting and understand that the children of Gaza are like the children of Pasadena, innocent and deserving of dignity, safety, and a promising future. My daughter's questioned themselves and state that any one of us could be in their situation. This is the minimum that we are requesting the council members at this time to agenda the discussion and respond to our collective request. Thank you. Thank you. Ramathia, followed by Alan Shade and old and denim Yadi, Sophia, Alvarado, and then Emily Hughes. My name is Rob Mathaya. I am an ordained minister, theology professor, member of Pasadena Menonite Church, resident of Pasadena. I was here at the last meeting and didn't have time to finish my comments. I want to add to those. My faith tradition, I don't know what faith traditions you're a part of, but my faith tradition, like most, say that when there is horrendous, evil taking place, we have a moral obligation to do what we can. I am not under the illusion that you can solve the atrocities that are taking place day by day in Gaza, the starvation that's taking place, families that are picking up body parts of children, but you can do something. And so what I'm asking you is to do what you can do. And collectively, as we do what each of us can do, we will make a change. We can make a difference. So I ask you, I don't know what your moral system is, but I ask you to check your moral compass. And do the courageous thing, do the moral thing, and don't let anybody's retirement account get padded on the dead bodies of Palestinians. Alan Shea followed by Older denim, than Yaddi, then Sophia Alvarado, and then Emily Hughes, Alan. Hello, board members. I should say, I've been going before the LA County Board. Now I'm here, so city council members. I'm here asking to agenda as usual, the same items I've been asking, but more so, one that I requested last week, which is the Pasadena Community Restorative Investment Initiative. And that is for all of the residents that have been impacted by the Eden Fire, who has not been able to find sources to assist them in rebuilding their house or finding residents and or have not been able to find sources of revenue to get back on track because of lost jobs and things of that nature. And I believe that the city has an obligation to make sure its residents are put back on good standings with their finance, with their attempt to get their lives back together and the leadership here needs to show that. And if I may say to the vice mayor, because we came out of the Northwest Commission, we are certainly the area that is impacted other than this 50 houses up in Hastings Ranch area. And I've been working closely with a lot of the residents up there, and they do need a lot of additional help and interest. And we have not had any type of real initiative or plan of action. And that is what this city council should do is initiate a true plan of action. And if so, we have one ready for you so we can start getting busy. So thank you. Thank you. Old and denim fall by Yachty, then Sophia Ovarado and Heavenly Hughes, if they're online. Good evening ladies and gentlemen of the council. I'm missing my mirror tonight. Anyway, I'm not gonna go over to Anthony McClain again tonight because I understand we're having a safety meeting Wednesday Is that correct and is it it is going to be on the agenda? Avery 392 I believe is currently scheduled on the agenda. Okay. I'm going to leave it alone until we go that and see what goes on. But I would like to mention something. Actually, it's in your district just in the... I stand one of the housings that is supplied by Union Station or by Union State. We got some issues and problems going on there. Right now, I don't want to go over all of them, but some of the things is we've been there for over a year and some of the amenities that the city is paying for, they're paying full price for, we're not getting. And that's, that's, and I'm not going to try and go into all of that right now, but I've talked to Justin. And I like to talk to you soon to see if we can solve it. One of the things is that the planning was never planned for adequate parking in these places. There's 70, there's a 70 apartments and there's only 33 parking places, which is going to create a problem down the road. But right now it's not bad, but what has happened though is because they have a commercial building in the front that they can't rent because they didn't have parking for it, the city is now taking over that place for some of one of their programs or something. But at the same time, they've restricted half of the parking, which we already don't have enough parking, and they're starting to tow some people and there's some problems, some of them say, I'm not having a problem, but some of the other people are having problems because their visitors come there and the cars get towed. There should be someone looking in work a reasonable situation out. I said the problem was already caused because of the planning. They didn't plan plan. and the cars get towed. There should be someone looking at a workable, reasonable situation out. I said the problem was already caused because of the planning. They didn't plan for adequate parking. And now they're making the people there suffer because of something needs to be done in the dress. And I thank you for your time. And I'm sure you'll see me again. Thank you. Yadi, followed by Sophia Alvarado than heavily used. Hi there. I just wanted to again ask for the item of discussing the eaten fire to be agendas at the public safety meeting. It's been almost half a year and there hasn't been a public conversation about the actions that the city took and what will be done moving forward. And I say there's not only on my behalf of my neighbors like Bill Magnum, who can't be here because they are displaced and are not living in the city. And also just to ask that the city do their best to respond to the public records request that I've made relating to the e-n-fire and not to unnecessarily stonewall or give me up just like blanket the niles of my request. Thank you. Okay, Sophia Alvarado's not on the queue. What about heavenly hues? Maybe my tribe rise? Anything like that? No, okay. That completes the public comment on matters not on the agenda. Thank you. City clerk. I see council member Coles in the queue. Go ahead. Vice mayor, can I confirm that my request last week under our council rules of conduct to put this item of our city's rules about human rights and investment. Be agendas for the finance committee can kind of confirm because I've heard from the finance director that we would be moving forward with that can we publicly confirm that I would look to staff I saw a message from you today on that topics are the staff to confirm and I'll last Matthew Hawke finance director, if he has more information on that request. The email I sent to Council Member Cole was to request what specific information that he wanted if and when it came back to the committee. But it's not my place to set the agenda for the committee meetings. That's up to the committee chair. And I believe the Council has a process for requesting items that they would follow that I'm not a part of. Yeah that's council resolution 97 16 and on page five it says there are several ways to place an item on the agenda. Number three is by any member of the City Council submitting a request for an agenda item to the mayor or city manager, which I did last week. With the timing to be determined based upon the orderly placement of the item for consideration. So I don't see that there's any question that I have a right to put something on the agenda of the question really is timing. So I just want to confirm that that's everyone else's understanding. Madam City Attorney. So I'm on that committee as well and I have that same understanding and you didn't make that request and I believe you you've made this request now twice. And from my understanding, it was supposed to come on the agenda after we discussed the budget. It's what I thought was going to happen, but if the city manager or the assistant city manager can't tell us exactly when. If there needs to be a second, if there needs to be a second, because there's four members of this committee, if there needs to be a second to put his item on, I'm happy to do that for finance. Meaning, this is a discussion. I mean, ultimately it's the will of the firefighters retirement fund, correct? Please. Do we make decisions for the firefighter retirement fund? Fire and police. Fire and police. Sorry, fire and police retirement fund. They do. They make the rounds. They make the rounds. They make the rounds. They make the rounds. They make the rounds. They make the rounds. Yeah. But I hear the request. I will follow up with the mayor who serves as chair of the Finance Committee and work on timing when it would appear. I do believe the next Finance Committee does have to deal with budgets by the city departments that report through Finance Committee but I will confer with the mayor on timing. Yeah I understand and respect the process and I'm just confirming that that is the process and obviously there's a sense of urgency about the budget there's also a sense of urgency about some of the things happening in our world. Thank you McGell for confirming that it is with staff and also the mayor will address it when he returns. Is that? Well, that I will confer with the mayor upon his return and discuss timing of that request to place the matter on the finance agenda. Okay. Thank you. I believe that concludes public comment on matters not on the agenda. Yes, so we're moving on to Cons. Oh, I'm sorry Council member Hampton. Yes during the public comment there were a couple items that came up and I think one is gonna be coming to MSC Which is the undergrounding That's gonna come to us. Oh Didn't come up, but I knew that that's where it is. Yeah, it'll come up in the wildfire mitigation plan and either our next special meeting or our reoccurring meeting after that. Perfect. And then the other item that was, and maybe we could get a memo from the planning department that would go out to the City Council of the whole, or at least to Mr. Sh Shade to let him know exactly what we are doing for all of the residents that have lost their housing during the fire. We have done quite a bit for our residents. I don't know that we put it all together but we certainly can and we certainly are prepared to make a presentation on our efforts relating to the fire. I think some committee meetings have been canceled or we weren't able to present yet. We are prepared to make that presentation as soon as it's, you know, there's room on the agenda. Perfect. And then I just had one item that has, and I would have done it at the end of the meeting, but unfortunately I won't be here until the end of the meeting. Is the reduction in fees for single family permit fees? Where staff at with that? You don't have to answer that right now, but if you- Just let you know it is a work in progress, we're aware of the request, and I've been looking at what other jurisdictions are doing. And it's always far more more complicated than first blush and so we're trying to work through to see if we can bring something forward for the council's consideration. Perfect. And there's for clarity anybody watching that was for victims of the Eden fire. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Hampton and I believe now that concludes public comment on Matters to the agenda and we will move on to the consent calendar. Yes. For consent item number seven and consent item number 12 a the minutes for the May 5th City Council and Successor Agency, those two items are being held. they'll come back in the near future. We do have public comment on items 1, 2, 4, and 10 on consent. And I can report out that the City Clerk's Office received one letter advocating for item 1. The City Clerk's Office received one letter advocating for the City to implement a comprehensive privacy program. And for item two, the City Clerk's Office received one letter expressing concerns with the staff recommendation. Those letters were posted online distributed at the council or part of the record for those two items. So do you wanna do the public comment and then we do the sweep motion or? Yeah, why don't we start with public comment? So Yadi has a speaker card in for one, two, and ten. So you have two minutes for the three items. Hi, I'll be really quick. So you guys got my written communication about my concerns about item one, the AMI, and the grave cybersecurity and privacy concerns. And there was actually wasn't an RFP of scoring rubric attached to the agenda. So I wasn't able to look at that. But I think that now more than ever, again, I want to really ask that the city consider establishing a comprehensive privacy program, especially now that we're going to be collecting massive amounts of data. And we're going to be a target for ransomware and cyber attacks. And the research on it, it's just very obvious on things like AMI. And on number 10, it is actually really interesting that the grant for the police department actually has to do with surveillance technology, but it didn't go to public safety and it didn't go to the police oversight committee. I don't understand. The shots botter didn't go to the police oversight and it was because the oversight body was new. Cell site simulator didn't go. And this is yet another time when surveillance technology is not coming before the oversight bodies. It's like is it on purpose or it's making a mockery of the system and the process? And why is it going through the finance department instead of policy? It's either money or policy. Why didn't go to public safety? It has to do with public safety because it's for acquiring more cameras. And there is no rationale attached to this grant on why there's going to be cameras in District 4, right, on the streets that I drive on every day. I'm just going to dance class. I'm not burglarizing people's homes. You guys are basically okay, like massive surveillance, and the chief of police said that he wants to bring Alpracamas across the whole city. I just don't understand how this can be acceptable and how this is like coming directly to city council on consent without any input from the community or a heads up and it's like buried in there. That is very, very concerning and I really want to ask that you kick this back to the proper committees and let it go over to the police oversight body. Thank you. Thank you. Sonia Byrne. On item number four. Good evening. In fiscal year 2026 the city will receive different pots of measure a funding including less than a million in what's called local solutions funding. But that money will be earmarked solely for those who are already housed with emergency housing vouchers. None of that money will go for housing or services for our in-house. And it won't even cover half of the funding needed for all those housed with those vouchers. The city will also receive 1.32 million in measure a comprehensive homelessness services funding, but that's the same amount that the city was allotted under measure age, no more. Finally, the city anticipates receiving one other pot of measure a money, but there isn't even a ballpark right now, and there's no commitment to using that money to house our unhoused. Of course, I don't oppose continuing the vouchers for those who are already getting those. But there should be red alarms going off everywhere. The federal government is no longer going to fund the vast majority of our housing departments budget. As it's been doing for years. There's a desperate and urgent need for appropriations to house our unhoused residents from the general fund, from the operating reserve, from the emergency reserve, and from the $10 million in additional revenue from 2025. nowhere listed on all of those items that are going to be one-time funded. Thank you. Thank you. That completes public comment on the consent calendar. Councillor Neillian, I see your first. Thank you. I did have a question about item number 10. So why didn't it go through the committee system like most requests would? This one went through the finance committee at the last meeting. And that's why you see on item 10 it starts with the finance committee. So it did go through finance and we don't take it to more than one committee because of the Brown Act that we don't want to create the consensus. So it went through finance and my understanding is that the ALPR went to the Technology Subcommittee of CPC back in October of 2023. They have not called it up to the entire CPOC for discussion, but it was presented back in ALPRs, back in October of 2023 to the subcommittee on technology. And why finance? Because they're not typically the commission committee with jurisdiction over the police department. I believe it was because it's a change in the budget appropriation, and so for that reason, when we change the budget, it goes through finance. Okay, without commenting on the substance of it, because I haven't learned enough about the substance of it, it does have bigger implications than the budget. When we're talking about surveillance technology and probably merit a public conversation before we take it up, up especially on consent So I would be inclined to send it to somebody to have a conversation about it depending on what committee would be appropriate What we already did send it to finance we have four members on the committee So did finance have a conversation about the policy implications and the and the privacy implications? Yes, they had a presentation and that presentation is linked to your agenda report and they had a fairly robust discussion among the committee. I don't recall the vote. I think it was it was support to this on a presentation here. There's a presentation available if you would like that. Maybe that presentation may. Maybe we look at the presentation. Councilmember, I know. Councilmember Hampton, I see you're in the queue. Do you want to ask your questions on a different item? Before we go to the president. It was on this item as well. And I was just wondering was there a timeline that we need to accept these dollars? or could it go to the PCO, I mean sorry the CPU, the CPUOC, there's a lot of acronyms these, CPUOC, there's a lot of acronyms, the CPUOC. And then come back to us. I would look to the department. The presentation. Yeah, perhaps we should just have the presentation and then information on the timeline. Good evening, my spare members of the council. I do have Lieutenant Sam DeSelva who did the presentation last Thursday at Finance Committee. He's ready and prepared to do a presentation tonight. And if you do decide that we need to go back to the full CPOC, I think that we will be okay. I don't think there's a timeline from what I know now. But, to reiterate what City Manager Mark has said, we did go to CPOC with a sub-commission at no time did they ask for us to bring it to the full commission. Sammy. Was there a vote out of that sub-commission? No, just a presentation. And then they have the right to pull it and ask for us to present at the full commission and that didn't happen Although if that's what this body desires we could go to the full C. P. O. C And the small committee how many people are part of that committee or how many commissioners are part of that committee So it's less than a quorum of the full body So I think there are more questions. I guess my question is how many people were at the meeting. Well, I don't know how many were at that meeting. Just a point of order, Vice Mayor, are we pulling 10 and discussing it or what are we doing? Perhaps we should just pull this item. And is there a motion on the rest of the consent calendar? Oh, I had a question about item four. But I am in favor of item number 4. I just wanted to make a comment. Okay. Why don't we go ahead and move the rest of the consent and you can ask your comment after we move. Perfect. That's finally me. So is there a motion on the balance of the consent calendar? Councilmember Lyon made the motion second and this is removing item seven correct Item seven is removed and item 12 a the minutes for the May 5th 2025 city council and successor agency minutes are Removed thank you. They they have been pulled. They'll come back in a future date Right now item 10 and item so could we list the items that were approving please. That is one through six, eight, nine, 11, 12, a, except for the May 5th meeting, and then 12, b. So we have a motion to second for that. Any objections? I have a comment on item 1. Item 1 commits us to spend I think over the next three years $2.4 million with consultants who will help us implement the automated meter installations. It's a cornerstone of conservation time-of-use rates, modern ability to accurately track electric and water usage. I certainly support the concept, but it's a $60 million investment to replace our existing meters with new meters. And that's just the estimate now. And there are privacy implications, whether real or not they need to be addressed because people have concerns. There will be questions about who gets them when gets them when and time of use rates and I will come to no surprise that I'm sometimes skeptical about consultant contracts. So I think that we need to be really paying attention to this. So I would just suggest that MSC take this up as a topic. I don't object to moving forward tonight on this consent calder item But this is a big deal and I think the council needs to be Tracking and aware and providing oversight and guidance on this Vice-Marie-Fighter mayor's part. Yes, please So councilmember Collier saying to bring the topic to MSC but but approve the contract as is and in the larger technology discussion about privacy, it's already scheduled to come to MSC and we'll discuss that larger contract at MSC. That's great. Correct. Perfect. Thank you. Great. So on the motion, any objections? Seeing none, the motion passes. Mr. Ampner, are you in the queue for? I was in the queue for comment. I'm always in the order. All the time. Sorry about that. Item number four. Number four. Number four. Item ten. Presentation. Should we go to item ten and just see the present? Go ahead, go ahead with your comment. So item four, you know, as we've all heard, you know, there's going to be some significant changes in our federal funding and the way we receive the dollars, if we receive dollars, et cetera, right? In our housing department, as mentioned, eloquently by Ms. Byron, we're not potentially going to receive some of these dollars anymore. And so I know that we're having discussions on our budget. Has that been contemplating our budget for our housing department for this year? Like our this year budget is based on grants and dollars that we were expecting to get. We may not get those dollars anymore. So have we altered our projections for our housing department? And so that's my question. I don't know if this is, I mean, maybe this is a discussion part, but just a budget discussion, but I'm hoping that this is our presentation when it comes to us, what is our alternate plan? I think it's important question that you're asking. And I've been very in myself and Matthew Hawkes work. I've been very clear about the uncertainty that we're facing. And so what we're presenting in the budget is our best estimate of what are current revenues and then how we would program those revenues going forward. I made a comment at one point to recognize that even though we do an annual budget, we always revisit the budget throughout the year. And I think, given the uncertainties, we're saying coming out of our federal partners that we may, if we get particular news about a funding stream that we were expecting that doesn't materialize, we would certainly come back and offer recommendations based on how we would address that revenue – that expected revenue that is now a shortfall. So it's going to be an ongoing thing, unfortunately, I think, throughout the year we're going to have to probably pivot as we see how things play out in this new administration. So in our budget, and this could be a discussion when we have the larger discussion, if there are things that our housing department thinks that we may not get anymore, I think that should be identified when presenting the housing department budget, even though we're still planning on getting those things, but if we think we might not get them, we should put brackets around those numbers to say, where are we going to get these funds from, or how are we going to continue these services, or is there a way to augment these services with something else? I think the residents should all know this. As a council member, I should know exactly this as well. It's just like our banking and regular. I mean, like as all of us are all, you know, we have our own personal finances, right? If something stops coming in, you try to figure out another way to make up for your quality of life. So we need to make sure that our quality of programs are still going. And so I know this is a deeper discussion for our housing department, but I'm just hoping that when presenting to us, we have an understanding of front of what we may or may not be getting. And I can assure you that it's our intent to tell you as much as we know, as transparently as we know it, as soon as we know it. The perfect. Thank you. And that's on a text agenda tomorrow. Yes, it is. We'll dig in tomorrow, absolutely. So now returning to item 10. If I couldn't, vice mayor, just that is also a regular agenda item on the legislative policy agenda. In other words, this isn't like the weather or something where it just changes and we're subject to the blowing winds. You know, these are... on the legislative policy agenda. In other words, this isn't like the weather or something, where it just changes and we're subject to the blowing winds. These are decisions made by the federal government. And the federal government is not just the executive branch, it's the legislative branch and the judicial branch. And NIRS, I can tell, two out of the three, disagree with the executive branch in terms of gutting all of these important programs for communities like ours. And also, as I've said before, this isn't like large S. This isn't philanthropy. This is our money. California has not in my lifetime, I don't believe, has ever received back from Washington, what we send to Washington every year. So I think I wouldn't want to give the wrong message to our community that we're going to sit idly by and just take it. We're going to continue to fight to have a fair share of our federal tax dollars return to our community for those that need it. And that's fair, and I don't disagree with that. All I'm, what I'm basically in my comments are, we should understand what we may or may not be getting. And like you said, if we have to fight to get those dollars, but we're not going to leave anybody behind why we are trying to fight to get those dollars. And that's what I want to make very clear is that wherever we get those dollars from We need to continue to keep these programs going and if we have to fight to make to get those dollars fine but There are a lot of people That are going to be left behind as we're waiting on this fight and that fight could take years and years and years But the people that that receive these dollars that we help don't have the years. Great points from both councilmembers. Well, that will be part of our larger budget discussion for sure. So returning to item 10, I guess we'll go ahead and have that brief presentation. I'm going to go back to the hotel. I'm going to go back to the hotel. I'm going to go back to the hotel. I'm going to go back to the hotel. I'm going to go about the Edward Burns Memorial Justice Assistance Grant that we got for $34,390 to lease approximately 10 ALPR cameras. If he can go to the next slide, please. The proposed action is exempt from CEQA. This is to authorize the city manager to accept the grant and to amend the past in the police department's fiscal year 2025 operating budget by recognizing the revenue for $34,390 I think we could go to the next slide, please. The... in the revenue for $34,390. Flickr code in the next slide, please. The Edward Burns Memorial Justice Assistance Grant has been awarded to lease approximately 10 LPR cameras, commonly known as LPR cameras, is automated license plate reader cameras. This grant was awarded for technology that would assist with investigations to deter crime, prevent crime, further recommendation was for technology that could be used regionally. If you're not aware, this data can be used by our regional partners, and it's accessible through the software app. The Pasadena Police Department has identified the need for AOPR cameras and the need is in alliance with our mission to increase public safety through technology. If you could go to the next slide, please. President, I'm working. Next slide. Yep, that one. How does ARPR technology prevent an eliminate crime? It's actually too components to it. The proactive approach is real-time crime alerts to law enforcement. For example, like stolen vehicles or vehicles that have fugitive holes on it, there is an immediate alert to the Pasadena Police Department. It also has real-time alerts to law enforcement with vehicles associated to abducted or missing such as amber alerts or silver alerts. Again, this provides immediate alerts to us. There was a question that came up earlier, approximately how many crimes that this has assisted us in last year. It has been approximately 22 to 25 vehicles, cases or more, actually, vehicles that we have recovered. The reason why I have to say at more is there's really not a good query button that we could search. We have to go one by one. So there's a lot of cases that it has aided in investigations and recovery of stolen vehicles. The investigation component is also, it provides criminal information that would generate almost immediately and actionable leads that can result in quick apprehension and recovery of crucial evidence if we can go to the next slide, please. Some of the questions that come up with ALPRs is our faces photograph. No, it's not. It's actually the rear of the vehicle that's photographed as it's driving away from an intersection. There's a picture on the PowerPoint slide that's currently projected. The license plate is captured. The location of the vehicle, the intersection, date and time, color and vehicle, and make a model of the vehicle. That's the only data that's captured. There is no facial recognition used from these cameras, because as I mentioned, no faces of photographs. It's usually the rear of the vehicle that's photographed. And there is no traffic enforcement done from this data. Nor do we share this data with any third party company or with the DME for registration purposes or anything like that. If you could go to the next slide. These are some of the surrounding regional partners that already have this technology. This technology is not new to us. We have approximately 78 cameras already in place in 19 different locations. And we are looking for such grants for the Chiefs Vision of having a real-time crime center day. And having such cameras is the backbone of the real time crime center. If you could go to the next slide, please. These are the three intersections that were selected to place the 10 to 12 cameras that is approximated that we would to do with the community? We have to do a lot of work to help us to understand what we are doing. We have to do a lot of work to help us to understand what we are doing. We have to do a lot of work to help us to understand what we are doing. We have to do a lot of work to help us to understand what we are doing. We have to do a lot of work to help us to understand what we are doing. received the grant three times in prior years. In 2023, we received it twice. One was for $43,334. We purchased a sea munitions structure to be used for de-escalation training by our officers. It was purchased on April 1st, 2025. Unfortunately, most of you might know that our range suffered a lot of damage with the fires. So we haven't been able to set up the structure. The structure is safe. But once the range is up and running, we'll be able to use the structure for training. The other 2023 grant for $40,2333 was used for purchase of conceivable audio recording devices and a device known as a through phone to be used by the crisis negotiation team. The through phone we have since we purchased it approximately a year ago we have not used it as of yet. 2022, we received 43,434 for an X-ray machine for vehicles and fentanyl test kits. The X-ray machine we have used approximately 12 times. It's also directly related to the seizure of approximately $2,000, $21,000, $6,000, $1.00. It was also used in a homicide case where we ex-reative vehicle to search for a hidden gun. If we could go to the next slide, please. This action will amend the Palestinian Police Department's physical ear operating budget by Recogn by recognizing revenue and appropriating $34,390 in the general fund. There are no anticipated indirect or support costs such as maintenance and IT support. Like I mentioned, this is technology that we're going to be leasing. So the vendor that we choose accepts all these costs. That's all for my presentation if you have any other questions. Thank you for your presentation before we jump to Councillor McKelmond. So I just wanted to briefly states my understanding we have been using the ALPRs for a number of years now. If you recall when we started it, I know since I've been on the council, it's come before us at least once or not twice already. It's the fixed cameras, the poles. I know we have had it for more than a year. There's two companies that we use, Vigilant, and I forget the name of the other company. And, but we've also had ALPR cameras on patrol vehicles for a very long time. And I'm guessing over five years, it's quite a while we've had it. I don't recall what specifically it was, which one of those that came, it must have been in 2022, 2023, we had a very robust discussion. I remember a lot of the concern was about the agreement we had with other agencies and how data would be shared. Because I know me personally, at least my thought, or my privacy concern, I've always viewed this distinctly from the cell site simulator, which is potentially pulling data from you when you're in your home or somewhere where you wouldn't expect. But you're not in public. Whereas this is, you know, you're driving on a public road. But when that data is aggregated, it can present very strong privacy concerns. and we want to make sure we understand who that data is being shared with and so I know we had that discussion several years ago It may have been thinking back on the timeline before the CPOC was up and running and fully staffed Which was unfortunate and so I understand their technology committee Did address it at some point in 2023, but I would hope at some point they have a fuller discussion and we'd love to get their input as well. I think that's important for any sort of technology that we now that we have this body that we hear from them, hear their concerns, make sure they're incorporated and addressed through the department's policy and so the department and so the council is fully informed as well when we're making these decisions So I appreciate your your presentation and I'll turn now to councilmember Suda Lieutenant Silva, how are you good? Thank you for your report Do you keep track of the of stolen vehicles missing persons and crime statistics, and report to the council from this program. We haven't done that before, sir. There is also on the Software app. There is really no easy way to check where, hey, how many cars went through there, and how many we were actually able to apprehend. The only way I was able to get that 22 number is actually going by case, by case, by case, and looking for keywords and pulling it out. Our crime analysts and I are currently working on it to look for other crimes that, you know it assisted in in investigations and also GTS but the 21 number is the number that I got right now but I know it's going to be a lot more than that. When you have a license plane reader do you keep record of of of the past license reader? Yes there's very very good record keeping, so the data is saved, and not only the data, whenever the office office access the data, there's also a very good audit trail. So not randomly anyone can go and access it. Officer Goseon access it, it records, which office are accessed, and I'm not sure if they have, if there's an incident number or a case number a case number that's directly access to it. And I'm not sure if there's an incident number or a case number that's directly attached to it. I would have to do research on that, but normally that's the audit trail. So we know who has gone and accessed it and how it's been used. And that's how it's actually used by all our partners in surrounding agencies too. So for example, like if a case is used, if there's a crime involving a homicide, even in another city, or a Latino city, and we were able to run that license plate off the vehicle that was involved in the homicide, and we find several hits of a license plate reader in let's say, Alhambra or Glendale. Then it gives us a real good indication that this person is probably living or has some kind of direct ties to Glendale in that area. And it would help detectives to kind of narrow down that preemption of such suspects. Thank you, Lieutenant. Councilor Ryan. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So just to make sure I understood the presentation correctly, the system is only gathering the externally identifiable information on a vehicle that I can see standing on a street corner. Can you tell her the car? Yes. License plate. Yes. Make of the car. Yes. Nothing about the no facial recognition of the driver. No. Nothing about the internal, what's happening inside the car. Nothing. And the way, which is always told to us, is that all that information that's being gathered, there's really no expectation of privacy because anybody in the public has the ability to see the license plate, see the car, and so on like that. All it does is it just says he's this car at this date and time and through this intersection. That's it. Right. Okay. And this went to the CBOC. There's subcommittee and they didn't call it up. Yes. Okay. Great. passes. Thank you. Councillor Neill. Is there a motion then on item 10? I'll move in. Second. Are there any objections? Seeing none, the motion passes. Thank you We're on to yes, we're now gonna move on to item 13. Yes, I do want to make mention of something though moving forward If we could have the full Cpoc look at any technology Be for it comes to the council That would be greatly appreciated because the next time something like this comes to the council that doesn't come to this I won't be able to support it. In that well it did go to but it didn't go to the full body so I appreciate that it did go to a committee but if the whole committee can look at it. Thank you. I think the timing may have been odd with when this, when the commission was established. And so it would be great for any new technology to go through the commission first. This however has been essentially in use for several years now. And so it's, it would still be good for them to review it. I agree. That's the purpose of the commission. Yeah, and we can do that. Thank you so much. So moving on to item 13. Thank you Director Finance Matthew Hawksworth can make this presentation. Thank you good evening Vice Mayor and City Council. Before the council tonight is step one of approving the annual schedule of taxis fees and charges. The state government code requires us to host a public meeting followed by a public hearing. The public hearing is scheduled to be conducted on June 2nd. Under the old operating budget format, the public meeting would be part of our joint finance committee, City Council meetings, and then we'd host the public hearing at a regular council meeting. So since we've gone to the subcommittee structure, we just post this as one of the regular council items. Of course, as there's public comment, we would take it. If there's council input, we would take it, but we'll be seeking actual approval and review of the fee schedule on June 2nd. Thank you for that, and I understand the staff's recommendations just to adjust everything based on CPI, and so we'll be reviewing that, the substance of it on June 2nd. That's right, we're allowed by law because there are certain taxes that we cannot adjust. Great. Any questions? Oh, councilmember Lyon, go ahead. Just one quick question, I think it's quick. Am I right that around before I was here in COVID era, we reduced some of the fees kind of across the board? That's correct. On the general fee schedule, we, which is another item that will come before the council in June, we did reduce the number of the fees on the general fee schedule. And then some of these taxis fees and charges, I believe business license, tax in particular, the council chose not to impose the CPI increase during the, at least the first year of COVID. And we've started applying it again. Correct. We've been applying the CPI to the schedule of tax and fees in charge of sense. It's the general fee schedule where the council has a more discretionary decision that we do a cost of service study. We determine what cost recovery would be and then the council often sets a fee lower than that. And that would be the general fee schedule. Okay. And that is not before us. That's correct. That'll be coming to the council in June. All in one night it doesn't get a longer review. That's correct. Although you can review it at any point in the year and we can bring it back. Okay great. All right. Thank you. Is any action needed on this item tonight or is that it? it just approval the staff recommendations is basically moving forward so that we can go to the hearing on June 2nd. Is there a motion? Seeing no objections. The item passes. Thank you. We we are now going to call item 20 Which should hopefully be a quick item Yes Vice mayor members of the city council. This is a proposed ordinance that would amend our municipal code sections 1.24 010 1.25 010 and and 1.24, 010, 1.25, 010, and 1.26, 010 of the municipal code regarding enforcement of city ordinances. And this is to make minor changes to the wording of those sections, including changing the word or to and or which will confirm that the city can prosecute a violation of the PNIS, preceding a municipal code by both administrative and criminal means. And as I think you're aware, the city can enforce our codes by administrative citation, infractions or misdemeanors. And this would clarify that it could be both administrative and criminal, either concurrently or at different times. It wasn't clear, so it was determined that it would be appropriate to include that, to provide appropriate flexibility for the city to determine the appropriate means to ensure compliance with our code. So we would request first reading. Offered by Mr. Hampton. This is an ordinance of the City of Pasadena Mending Title I sections 1.24.010, 1.25.010 and 1.26.010 of the Pasadena Municipal Code regarding enforcement of city ordinances.25.010 and 1.26.010 of the past humanist code regarding enforcement of city ordinances. No questions? Roll call. Roll call. Council Member Cole to conduct first reading. Yes. Council Member Hampton. Yes. Council Member Jones. Yes. Council Member Lyon. Yes. Council Member Madison. Yes. Council Member Moussouda. Yes. Vice Mayor Revis. Yes. Mayor Gordo was absent. That motion was approved unanimously. All right. Thank you. I'd like to thank our assistant city attorney, Danielle, saying Claire and our chief assistant city prosecutor, Tim Willman for working on this. Great. Thank you so much. So returning back to item 16. 14. Oh, and 14, I'm sorry about that. Well, 14 is just a quick announcement. This item was a scheduled public hearing that was canceled. The item was re-noticed to add some additional projects to this item. In the future, it will come back, I believe, on June 16, 2025 at 6 p.m. So we don't really need a motion. It's just an announcement that this public hearing was canceled. Thank you. So item 15. Item 15 is a public hearing. It's the continuation of the fiscal year 2026 C Managers Recommended Operating budget. This is just the next meeting. It's continued to each regular meeting. So the action would be to continue this public hearing to June 2nd, 2025 at 6 p.m. All right, I see Councillor McKee. Jones is in the queue. Go ahead. Thank you, Vice Mayor. And I just had a quick question. Is there any way to post public copies at the JRCC in Pinar Esco Library? I know in the staff report it says copies are made available at the city clerk's office Santa Rafael Branch and Hastings Branch Library. But it came up during our... JRC and where? Up in Ereska. Yeah. It came up during our community meeting on the weekend. I'm going to go out on a limb and say if we're going to start separating them, we probably should just do all of them. So I'll talk to the budget staff about posting a public copy at all of them in that way and we'll make sure we cover them all. I think the concern was that there was no public copies made available in Northwest Pasadena. I understand that yeah, historically we've posted it online and a lot of people access it there, but we can certainly provide a printed copy at all the locations. Yeah. Do we need a motion to continue the hearing? Is there a motion? I'll move it. Second. I did have just a comment. Go ahead. I'll be brief, but a council member Hampton's comments earlier resonated with me, given the discussions we've been having. And we may want to, as we look at the base budget and the additions that you're recommending, we may want to think very seriously about holding money back to see what happens with the federal government. And I'm not suggesting we decide any of that tonight, but as we review the budget in the committees, we're thinking not just about, well, all this money has to be spent. We may want to hold some of it back as a reserve against the impact on vulnerable people. and I appreciate Councillor Remembrance underscoring that risk. Councillor Madison? Thank you, Vice Mayor. Yeah, I agree. We need to be even more sort of thoughtful and forward looking about things, given the current environment, kind of a technical question. Our fiscal year ends June 30. So is the goal to approve by the end of June? Yes, that's actually a requirement. That we have some sort of a approved budget, even if it was a continuing resolution to give us some spending authority come July 1st. So, but right now that I think the report says we'll adopt on June 2nd. I'm just wondering if that's really breed or necessary, especially given that we've got a holiday week the week before. Sure, so what our plan would be is that we will hopefully wrap up the Council Committee meetings in the month of May. We would return to the council on June 2nd to talk about the feedback input we received during those meetings, new things that we had learned, take any other council direction, and then come back the 9th and or the 16th to ultimately adopt the budget depending on how those conversations continued on the 2nd and the 9th and the 16th. committed to that then you know I'll support the recommendation with that understanding but I don't think there's any there's no circumstance I can see where we're going to be ready to adopt a budget on the second. Yeah no there would be no intention to do it on the second. The ninth would be the earliest that we would have thought to do it. Thank you Vice Mayor. Thanks for that clarification. We have a motion a second. Yes, vice mayor seeing are there any objections? Seeing none the motion passes Moving on to item 16 Thank you vice mayor The presentation item 16 will be introduced by Jim Wong, Director of Housing. And I have to open the public hearing. And I should note that for the prior public hearing on item 15, there were three letters related to the budget that were distributed to the council are posted online for that and will be part of the record moving forward. So I was moving ahead of that before I should have announced that. But for this, this is the time and place for the public hearing on the substantial amendment to the 2024 annual action plan for community development, block grant and home investment partnership. the city clerk's office reports that on May 15, 2025, the public hearing was published in the past Dean of press. For item 16, we received one letter expressing concerns with the proposed five-year consolidated plan. That letter was posted online distributed to the council as part of the record for this public hearing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Director of Housing Jim Wong and Program Coordinator Randy Mebson will make the presentation. Thank you, Madam. Good evening, Vice Mayor. Good evening, Council. This recommendation pertains to federal entitlement funding for the new fiscal year. And specifically, it involves roughly $6 million in three types of funding programs from the federal government. One is the community development block grant program, home dollars and emergency solutions grants. And so there are two, in addition to the approval from Council, requested approval for submitting applications for those funding sources. It also includes approval of a new five year consolidated plan for the use and expenditure of these dollars, as well as the upcoming annual action plan for the new fiscal year. So with that, I will turn it to my colleague, Randy Mapson, who can go into more details on the recommendations. Good evening, Vice Mayor Council, Pasadena residents. My name is Randy Mapson, Program Coordinator with the Housing Department. It's presentation, as I was previously said, is for the five year consolidated plan, which covers program years 2025 through 2029, that HUD requires us to submit every five years, and we're also seeking approval to submit the 2025 annual action plan as an application to HUD for funding for the community development block grant, home investment partnership and the emergency solutions programs. The consolidated plan is a comprehensive planning document that addresses both long term and short term strategies. As a recipient of the entitlement funding, the city is required to submit this plan. There's five components to develop this comp plan. The citizen participation is where we engage with the community for their input. This is an ongoing process through our community continuum of care since we are our own continuum of care, which there are a very few in Los Angeles County on an annual basis, the Northwest Commission and Human Service Commission provides input to assist with grant evaluations and award recommendations. In the five years, we conduct a survey of persons who live work in Pasadena to identify community needs and set priorities, which we'll review later on. Then we have the needs assessment is designed by her to identify kind of the more undesirable statistics in the city. It's trying to identify the most vulnerable people in the community that are at risk of becoming homeless. Then we have the market analysis and identify local housing, economic and community development conditions that influence how federal funds can be most effectively addressed, pasting as priority needs. And then we have the strategic plan which establishes the city's five-year goals and funding priorities for addressing housing Community development and economic needs using federal and local And then we have the strategic plan which establishes the city's five-year goals and funding priorities for addressing housing, community development and economic needs using federal and local resources to benefit lower-matter income persons. And finally, the annual action plan which we present every year to the public to show how we are utilizing the CDBG home and ESG funds to achieve the goals and the strategic plan. And we'll briefly explore the contribution of each one of these to each. We had a priority needs survey, was advertised starting January 1. The wildfires ignited the next week, so we suspended advertisements on social media. But we still managed to receive 794 participants, which is the most we've ever had. We first asked participants to rank these four overall community priorities for the most need in the community. For the past three, five year cycles, this ranking has not changed. And the order remains the same with affordable housing being number one overall followed by improvement to city infrastructure Improvement to facilities providing public and community services and Lastly create more jobs available to low income residents Participants were then asked to choose the highest needs out of 52 eligible community development activities on a scale of zero to four zero 0 indicating no need and 4 being the highest community need. This table shows the top 10 community needs from the survey, which looks very different from five years ago. Mental health still holds the second spot as it did last year. The neighborhood cleanup rose two spots from 6 to 4, increase affordable rental housing, fail, one spots in number eight. The seven remaining activities are all new to this top 10 list. Complete results can be broken down by category and they're found in the appendix B of the con-consolidated plan. Moving on to the needs assessment. Using data from the US census, the needs assessment zeros in on the most vulnerable residents in the community, which some consider to be at risk of homelessness. HUD uses the most recent data from the five-year estimates, which at the time of the preparing of this consolidated plan was the 2016-2022 comprehensive housing affordability strategy, data set also known as the CHAS data set. We first looked at household income. From this data set, the median income was 85,129. And 44% of Pasadena households make less than 80% was one of the stats that came out of the knees assessment. Hood categorizes household income between 80 and 50% AMI, which is the area meeting income as a low-dematter income. The next bracket is 50 to 30% as low income and then 30 to 0% AMI as very low income. So as you can see, out of those categories that are below 80% AMI, the largest group would be households that earn 30% or less consider very low income, they make up 19% of Pasadena's residents. Naturally, the data also found that 37% of very low income households experience a severe housing cost burden. That means more than 50% of the household income is going towards housing costs. Almost 50% of households, very low income households, have at least one person over 62 years old. And although majority of the very low income households are white, black and Hispanic households are affected disproportionately in those northwest Pasadena. Moving over to the market analysis, which identifies community assets through Pasadena focusing on facilities, services for the homeless specialty populations, the economy of Pasadena, barriers to affordable housing and the housing market. For the sake of time, we'll just highlight the housing market affordability statistics based on the data. Over 10,000 Pasadena households earn less than 50% AMI, and they cannot afford housing. Only 2,335 rental units are affordable to the 10,845 households that earn below 30% AMI. These households are mostly located in CDBG census tracks, and CDBG census tracts are concentrated in northwest Pasadena. Just to give you a perspective on today's median rents according to Zillow, a studio was going to run you about $1,910. A one-bedroom is going to cost you about a median rent is 1,943, two bedrooms, $2,623. And there's a big leap for three bedrooms just over $5,000. And that's partly in due because most of the three bedrooms are houses. And they're not rental units for three bedrooms. This strategic plan provides the public with an approach that the city is going to take to address the community needs and the housing market. Through the plan we have identified seniors earning less than 30% AMI are the most vulnerable and at risk of becoming homelessness and becoming homeless and are concentrated in a CDBG eligible census tracts. Those tracks, census tracks where over 51% of the residents make below 80% AMI. And so therefore as part of our strategic plan, we have included preferences for particular programs and housing projects either to have a preference for CDBG census tracks or for households that are less than 30% AMI or have at least one senior in the household. This would include CDBG and some home funded housing programs to help lower the costs for these at-risk residents. In addition, we will direct funding towards improvements to public facilities and infrastructure projects located in Northwest Pasadena. And we also use the top community development activities, community survey, to prioritize projects that match the top priorities based on the survey. So doing the evaluation process, those grant applications that we received that are including those top priorities receive bonus points so they are higher ranked and higher likely to give funding. The anticipated allocation for the next five years is expected to decrease. We are using the great recession as a model when we experienced 30% cuts. However, there is a high chance that a more significant cuts starting in program year 26 will happen due to federal budget uncertainty. Here are our goals for our five years that the strategic plan states over the next five years, which includes 100 newly constructed rental housing units, providing direct public services to 6,000 low income residents, homelessness prevention to 270 persons, and we believe that 175,000 people low income persons will benefit from capital improvement projects and over 30 businesses assisted. Finally in our action plan, again, this tells the public what we are actually going to use the funds for, represents all of the entitlements, the three entitlements that we receive. Each year, we release a notice of funding availability where internal departments or nonprofit organizations submit applications to receive funding projects that match our, as I said before, that they match our top activities, are identified, they get higher points than evaluation. Here is our staff-aware recommendation for CDBG, approximately $2.3 million to cover admin. Section 108 loan repayment, this is regarding the $6 million loan that we use to build the Robinson Recreation Center. There's a few, a couple hundred thousand for public services, two infrastructure projects, and two economic development projects directed towards businesses in the community. For the home program, we have a large development in the works for the Ramona Senior Housing Project. It's funded just over $2 million in home and an alternatebased rental assistance program. And finally, lastly with our ESG allocation, we have allocated funds for prevention, shelters, and rapid rehousing. And this concludes the presentation. We're open to any questions. Thank you. Thank you so much for your presentation. Very sobering statistics and the needs assessment and the market analysis We often talk about the housing affordability crisis, but it is very helpful to have actual data Locally to understand what it means. So thank you so much for all the work of Your team and the entire department. I see councilmember Hampton is in the queue. Do we have public comment on this item? I can wait. I'll go away until I have to. Okay, why don't we go straight to public comment? So in your burnt. First of all, I want to thank Councilmember Hampton and Cole for your thoughtful comments earlier, supportive of our most vulnerable residents. I submitted a detailed letter setting forth numerous objections to the five-year consolidated plan. I'm also opposed to the annual action plan for the reason stated in that letter. These documents are critical planning documents and both plans leave our and sheltered folks out in the cold and subject to acts of violence. There's nothing in either plan about developing interim housing for the long waits to permanent housing. The most and subject to acts of violence. There's nothing in either plan about developing interim housing for the long waits to permanent housing. The motel vouchers are woefully inadequate. What is needed is housing with on-site services. You cannot expect that anyone with serious medical or mental health issues will get adequate treatment living on the street. Last September, rabbi Grader gave you a proposal to house unsheltered folks through a most motel masterlies. No one has contacted him about this proposal. rabbi Grader and I met with staff from the LA County Homelessness Initiative last week. They are anxious to assist Pasadena in increasing our interim housing. Call them. Start working on a plan to partner with the county in providing meaningful housing for our unsheltered residents. The city has the money and the potential housing sites. As I mentioned, the operating reserve, the emergency reserve, what about the 10.6 million in additional revenue from 2025? Can that be held back? And also the general fund. And also 76% of the housing department budget is proposed to come from the federal government. When we already know from the emergency housing voucher that I just talked about, that they're not, they're only going to fund it through this year. And so the Measurer Local Solutions Fund has to be used for that. And it's only not even going to cover half. 52 of those households don't even have those vouchers. So this is red alarm time. And this is awful. It doesn't yet dress or take care of our most vulnerable residents are unsheltered folks. Thank you. Thank you. That completes public comment on this item. Councillor Hampton. Thank you for the presentation. I did have a question about the five-year plan. And so, measurables, right? You know, it would be great in these presentations to know what we did the previous five years in house, successful we were with the previous five years plan. Do we have that information anywhere because it's not in the staff report? No, we come with the Caper in October every year and present our results from the previous year. What is updates on the current five year plan that that Caper is a part of? Okay, so this five year plan is from now to 2030. 2029, yes. Oh, sorry. 2029. So if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. I'm not sure if you can see it. Number 9 and 10. They kind of seem the same to me. Is this based on ranking like every individual ranks. Has the opportunity to rank all 10 or. These are the top 10 that were the highest ranked child care centers for actual public facility improvements. So if there was a child care center maybe if it was owned by the the city or if we were giving out money to the public for a child care center There would be money for capital improvements there child care services is for the actual Services that are provided to a family that can afford child care. And maybe CDBG could probably pay for administrative costs or provide scholarships for parents to send their kids to the child care. So these are the top 10 community assessed needs. And these have been the top 10 community assessed needs for the past how many years or is this the issue? This This is brand new. Yeah, we just concluded this survey January 31. Okay, because you had mentioned that maybe it was another slide that you mentioned that something was at the top of the list. So there is three of these activities are for where we're on the previous list the rest are brand new needs that the community found. So there was the mental health, was number two, the last five year plan. Neighborhood cleanups went up one spot and I believe that the last one was the increase affordable rental housing. Those were only three that were on the previous survey that made it to the top 10 lists. The remaining are all new community needs that the survey respondents feel that passed the needs. Okay, those are you know, those are my questions right now. I do have you know what I'm not going to make a statement. I don't need to make a statement. But these I would like to know how these are going to be you know implemented. It doesn't have to be answered tonight because it's not in the staff report, but I would like to know how 9 and 10. Those are needs that come up regularly from residents with children that it's really really, I mean, it's really really, really expensive. Childcare is a top priority for young families. So anything that we could do to help our residents out with child care, as well as, as mentioned, housing those needs, I think you guys do a good job at our housing needs. But I also think that knowing what we did the previous five years and I understand, you said it's a part of another report. But that should be maybe a footnote in this or not maybe a footnote, but something that's prominent. If we've been successful the previous five years, we should talk about our successes and also our failures. We should definitely talk about our failures and what we're gonna do in the next five years to rectify those failures. So thank you for your presentation, but there's definitely more work to be done and I appreciate the outlook that it seems like the funding, well, I don't appreciate that look because the funding is dwindling and I don't appreciate that at all. But I appreciate that you guys gave a realistic view. That, thank you. Council Member Cole. You know, I appreciate the public comment critiquing sort of inadequacy of this document to take account of all of the needs facing our city. And we're a little bit at a disadvantage here in two ways. One, by my calculation, 94% of the ongoing funding in this report is recommended for elimination in the Trump budget. We would retain 6% of this money if that budget is adopted by the Congress. So we'd be planning for $189,000 plus whatever money we have leftover that they don't claw back. So putting a lot of emphasis on this document, not that I think that necessarily the Congress will adopt the Trump budget on scath, but it certainly puts into context. This we've been doing this for a long time. There's probably, I don't know, the six or seventh time we've done a five year plan. This may be the last time we do a five year plan. So I do think, separate in apart from this, we have to begin to plan, right? Because the federal government is not going to continue at anywhere near the level that it has done in recent years. And that was not enough to meet all the needs of our community. So I think we're going to have to move beyond relying on this. It reminds me, you know, we've all heard the phrase grandfather clause, but I don't think many people know how the insidious history of the grandfather clause after the Civil War, the post-reconstruction regimes came in and said, you can vote if your grandfather was eligible to vote. And of course, grandfather's weren't eligible to vote, so you couldn't. This is federal funding, I think, is sort of grandfathered in, and we've grandfathered them in. We've said we've put a little fence around the gaping needs in the poorest parts of our community and among the most vulnerable people of our community and said not our problem, it's a federal problem and we're not gonna put any general fund money in here because not our problem. If the federal government wants to give us money to address historic inequities in our community, we'll plan for it, we'll spend it, but if the federal government reduces that money or eliminates that money, and I think we're now at a historic turning point, we can no longer put a fence around the most significant needs in our community. I know and I know I don't mean this as a cheap shot Mr. City Manager I really don't but I think it's an it's an example. I'm not sure we need $137,000 to get new furniture in the human resources department compared to putting people having a roof over their head right. We do need to treat our staff members well. We do need to have good facilities. And people come to our community and they sit in those chairs to apply for jobs. I get that. That's why I'm, but I'm saying when you weigh the two priorities, it's pretty stark. And so I think we're facing those stark choices through decisions that have nothing to do with us. We can no longer afford to do things in the way we have done them before. We've got to remove the fence and we've got to begin to face up to the fact that there are glaring needs of poor people in our community that the federal government is not going to address. And if we don't, we're going to have real suffering in our streets, even worse than the 300 people that are out on the street tonight, sleeping in sleeping bags, sleeping under bridges tonight in our city, The city of roses with a billion and a half dollar budget. Thank you, Councilmember. Oh, go ahead. Mr. Cole, just clarification, the Trump cuts that you referenced would actually impact our fiscal year 27 budget. I just want to make that clarification, small considerationriction perhaps. No, I appreciate that. This, of course, the five-year plan. Yes, and just to your point, Council Member Kuala, I know we in response to this question of, what are we going to do with the Trump budget and the administration and all their cuts plan? I think our approach needs to shift from just we're monitoring to we are coming up with a plan and assuming a very significant cut is coming. So I appreciate your comments. Councilor McCullough. I'm sorry, Councilor Lion. Thank you, Vice Mayor. This is sobering given the current state of the federal budget and whatever amounts being cut the funds that are coming through are coming with increasingly honoris conditions to apply principles to the use of the values that are antithetical to the use of the grants that are antithetical to our values, including disavowing inclusionary programs and programs aimed at increasing diversity and inclusion. And so we do have to begin to look at another way and to prioritize human beings above everything else. I wanna put a pen in something. It doesn't have to be in this plan and it's not in this plan, but we need a year round shelter in this city. And a year round shelter is a band-aid. It's not a solution, but it is, it's the first step of getting people off the street. And we never talk about it because it's hard to cite. It's expensive. It's all of those things. All of those things are true and we have to move in that direction. So I'm putting a pin in it now for next year's budget that I'm going to want to start to put funds toward that effort and it may take us a few years to put the funds together, although we do have some one-time funds coming back in to the city that we might be able to apply to that. And then I do, I want to follow up on this. I actually have reached out to Rabbi Grader and talked to him about it. So there has been some, I don't know, any particular control over this. But I do want it. So can you give me just a quick follow-up on where that conversation is? And has there been some conversation about additional motel sites? Because again, it's a drop in the bucket, but it's a drop. So where do we stand with that? Perhaps I can give a report on that. You may recall we had a joint meeting with supervisor Catherine Barger recently. And at that meeting, I asked her about that funding. And she said, yes, we are still interested in, you know, the CEO's office had informed us that funding was no longer available. So I asked her if, you know, measure a $1 or anything else might be available because that master lease of a motel program is something we're very interested in looking at, inventing and going through proper process. She told us, yes, I can work with you on that. That should be available. And I asked then, Ms. O'Reilly Jones to contact the county and start working with them and try to bring that to fruition. So we are on a work stream to get that done, working with the county and their resources. Thanks. Thank you very much and please keep us posted. Thank you so much for your comments and especially on the year-round shelter. I think that's an important goal for us to start working seriously on. So thank you for that. Are there any other comments or questions? Is there a motion to close the public hearing? Second. Second. Any objections? Seeing none, the public hearing. Second. Any objections? Seeing none, the motion passes. Is there a motion on the merits? Some move. Second. Are there any objections? Seeing none, that motion passes as well. Moving on to item 17, the annual recruitment and vacancy report. This is the time and place for the public hearing on the annual recruitment and vacancy report on May 5th, 2025, the public hearing notice was posted at City Hall and on the City Clerk's website, no correspondence will receive regarding this public hearing. And we have a presentation. Yes, thank you, Vice Mayor Tiffany Jacobs-Quinn. Director of HR will make the presentation. Okay, thank you, good evening, Vice Mayor and City Council. I'm Tiffany Jacobs-Quinn, Director of Human Resources. I'm here to present a report as part of a public hearing on recruitment efforts and vacancies at the city of Pasadena. By way of background, Assembly Bill 2561 went into effect on January 1st, 2025, and requires public agencies to present vacancy data and recruitment and retention efforts annually. The state legislature recognized that high vacancy rates adversely affect public service delivery and increased workloads for existing employees resulting in burnout and higher turnover. To mitigate these challenges, AB 2561 mandates that public agencies present the status of vacancies and the recruitment and retention efforts during a public hearing before the governing board at least once per fiscal year. This initiative aims to promote transparency and encourage proactive strategies to maintain adequate staffing levels. So to comply with the new law, the HR department will present workforce vacancy data and recruitment and retention efforts during a public hearing once per fiscal year and before adoption of the annual operating budget, which is required by statute. During the public hearing recognized employee organizations are entitled to make a presentation. Human resources has provided notice to each union about the date and time of the hearing, as well as the right to present. The law also requires that we present additional details upon request. If any union has a vac vacancy rate that's higher than 20% and we're not in that situation this year. So moving to the citywide vacancy data, you know, vacancy, the vacancy rate is something that's continually influx so we picked a point in time. This data is from April 7th, 2025. You can see the overall vacancy rate for represented employees is just under 10%. No bargaining unit currently exceeds the 20% vacancy rate. And then in alphabetical order, you have our 11 unions and their respective vacancy rates as of April 7th. Turning to our recruitment and retention activity and enhancements. So our recruitment activity in this fiscal year has also been very active. We've received over 200 staffing requests as of April 7th. We posted 122 discrete jobs. We've filled 348 positions which include temporary workers and promotions. Our average time to hire from our notice of vacancy to higher date is 73 days, which is good. That's less than three months. The largest division in our HR department is in fact dedicated to recruitment and selection work and in my experience We move just as fast as we can to fill positions while upholding the merit principle so that departments conserve the public effectively We've spent time this year enhancing our recruitment efforts as well HR is launching an online requisition and onboarding process to help expedite hiring and also make a first positive impression on new hires. Citywide we've enhanced outreach efforts for example posting more job opportunities on LinkedIn. We also increased our followers from 9,000 to 12,000 in a year. Our public safety departments work very hard on outreach. Our police department has a collateral team of 45 employees who attend job fairs, art shows historically black colleges and and universities, and special events. To expand our outreach for police trainees, we partnered with the National Testing Network, which gives us access to qualified candidates nationwide. Our fire department is in its third year of our paramedic intern program to target local candidates. They have collaborated with the city of Glendale recently on a women's empowerment camp and routinely conduct firefighter trainee recruitment each year and host annual fire academies to ensure we have a steady stream of new hires to replace our regular attrition. And in fact this week we are doing our firefighter trainee interviews at the convention center all week and we've invited over 400 candidates, so we're excited about that. Retention initiatives were focused on retaining the amazing talent we have that we've worked hard to recruit to the city. One thing we did this year that we're very proud of is launching our first employee engagement survey. This was in partnership with Gallup and the city manager's office. We were really pleased to get a high participation rate for our first time doing this. 73% of employees, over 1,400 people, filled out this survey. And we received a strong engagement score of 3.87 out of five, which is higher than 80% of other government agencies who take the same survey. So we were pleased with those results, though, of course, there is still work to do. And we're working on it. Our class and comp division of HR, our labor relations class and comp division of HR has been busy this year, ensuring that salaries remain competitive in the job market. As of April 7th, we conducted 44 salary surveys, resulting in market or equity adjustments for 160 classifications, and established 15 new classifications to make sure we keep pace with operational needs. Employee wellness has been a focus this year. We've been promoting preventative health by hosting a Kaiser Mobile Unit on-site. We've started hosting walking Wednesdays to get people outside, moving and engaging with each other. And then we've also started working on a peer support program based on our experience with the Eaton fires, given how many employees were first and second responders. So we look forward to seeing that mature. 30 days after the fires, we invited a resource down from Santa Clara County to provide trauma response and resilience training. We've continued to promote our own confidential EAP resources, and then most recently, the Department of Public Health has secured a grant from the state to bring in more professionals to help us build out a peer support program so that we as a workforce can continue to recover. We've also tried to support our fellow employees who lost homes in the fire. We're very focused on retaining them and supporting them. We are up to 66 employees who lost their homes now out of a workforce of about 2100 which is not insignificant. It's important we retain them and help them feel supported as they face the challenges of rebuilding their lives. We've connected them to temporary housing, relocation specialists. Many other free or discounted resources as well as provided some paid time off and flexibility so that they can take care of things during regular business hours. There's no fiscal impact to this recommended action. Any budget implications will be addressed via the regular budgeting process. And finally, the staff recommendation is to receive and file the annual report on recruitment and vacancy rates and compliance with assembly bill 2561. That's the end of my presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions. And I'd also like to invite input for what else you might like to be in the community. I'm going to be in the community. I'm going to be in the community. I'm going to be in the community. I'm going to be in the community. I'm going to be in the community. I'm going to be in the community. I'm going to be in the community. I'm going to be in the community. I'm going to be in the community. I'm going to be in the community. really much better than some other local public entities I know so really great work Councilor Mohammedan, go ahead. Thank you so much for the presentation. Very helpful and insightful. Questions I have are requirements. Have we lessened some of our requirements since fewer people are getting, I guess, college diplomas, college degrees. I mean, there's been a significant decrease. And I think maybe just because the cost of college, do we look at that? Do we trend that? Do we say, okay, let's figure out another way to see if someone assess someone's criteria, assess if they can compete or do this job. We do have some equivalency qualifications, so for certain jobs, we do substitute years of experience in lieu of the required education. I haven't really tracked how often we've done that or made that decision, but that is something that we assess because there are many alternative pathways to competency. So that is something that HR looks at. It would be great if we could track that to see what we're doing. I just would hate to prohibit someone to be able to do a job that they have the capabilities of being able to do, but because they don't have a graduate degree or a diploma from college, then they're left out or they're left behind. So then the other question is, you said job fares. So do we have a lot of job fairs or do we participate in different job fairs? We do. There are local job fairs, there are job fairs that different colleges and universities do we host our own job fair here in Pasadena? The human resources department doesn't, but if there are recruitment fairs that police and fire put on we show up. I would suggest, you know, I know that you guys have a large workload, but, you know, having hosting a job fair, encouraging people to apply for jobs in capacity, you know, a job fair in capacity, and maybe at the convention center, the roles bowl or at the I'm sure that they could use some people coming by there. That would be just, you know, just to have all the departments maybe once a year type of thing. And then social media, do we utilize social media to, I've noticed in some cities, like Beverly Hills actually does a really good job at this. They always have someone from a different department that will speak out about their job, what they do. I haven't seen us utilize social media in this way and it seems like everybody that works for Beverly Hills, they just love their job. By the time you're don't watch in the video, you're like, I want to work there too. So, Sue, we do anything like that. We have expanded our footprint on LinkedIn on our company page, and there's definitely more work to be done. We've been posting opportunities as they have come up. We're starting to post more just about us as an employer and our culture here, but we really could get more creative in that area. So that's one of HR's initiatives. So when I see you at our budget hearing, we'll talk a little bit about that as well. Perfect. But that's a great suggestion. We're definitely in line with that. Thank you. And then on slide five, you mentioned the engagement survey. Does that also include morale? How people feel? So Gallup has 12 proprietary questions that they ask that over the decades have shown to be very high indicators of employee engagement. And engagements, a little bit different than morale. So there is a question at the very beginning that asks generally about job satisfaction. But otherwise, questions 1 through 12 are very focused on their engagement factors. So it's a little different than morale. Engagement is about passion, employees feel about coming to work and doing their job, having the resources they need to do their job, doing what they do best every day, those sorts of things. Okay, and then what is upward mobility of one of those questions as well, do you believe that you are in a position where you have upward growth? Is that one of the questions? There is. About has somebody talked to me about opportunities for growth, for learning, has someone given me feedback recently? So personal growth is definitely part of this as well. And that's another place where the requirements are prerequisites of, I talk to residents, I mean, just just, residents, but residents that are city employees that have been doing the job for, you know, 15 years plus. And, you know, we hire someone who has never done this job before, I've never done the job, and they're their supervisor. Because they have a master's degree. And do we look at that to say, well, you know what, this person has 15 years, maybe this requirement is prohibiting them from that upward mobility or that upward growth. We definitely assess the job qualifications before we do a posting and we revisit issues like that. But those are my questions. I appreciate the presentation and I look forward to talking more about this at budget. Thank you. Councillor Mursuda? Yes, Councillor Mursuda, go ahead. Thank you. Thank you for the report. We recently received a letter or a document from the city saying what we're doing for the employees and it was really well written and I really enjoyed that. Tell us about that. I don't remember ever seeing a letter like that saying what we're doing for the employees in an emergency situation. And my second part of my question is regarding the police and fire, more training funding for those organizations regarding emergency situations, not only fire but like earthquakes. So thank you for the question. The first one about what we're doing to support our employees. So that was actually triggered by a question that Council Member Hampton asked during another budget presentation. And so there's a lot that HR is aware of that we have done for our employees, our colleagues who have lost their homes, who are also being tasked with responding to the disaster and helping the community rebuild and serving the public but then dealing with their own personal calamities as well. So it's not just HR's effort but we're aware of many of the things that the departments have done. we put together just a memo to share. And I see it as a very long road, you know, the marathon, not the sprint. And so every week we're looking for more ways that we can support our employees. Just last week we sent out a survey about which service awards they may have lost to the fire. And so we're collecting that information. So it won't all happen right away but we're here to help in any way we can. So thank you. Thank you for that letter because it was well written. Thank you so much. And training funding for our police and fire emergency situations. I mean, it needs to turn to you on that. I can provide some information on that. So many of our collective bargaining agreements with our unions do provide for training opportunities and actually, for example, on the police side, if particular milestones are met with respect to what they call post training, there's some additional salary enhancements for that. And the time to take it, we are very cognizant of the need for training, and so we provide the time. Next is resources, and we want to give people all the resources they need to be able to do their jobs effectively. So you'll see in the proposed recommended budget coming from my office some additional money, for example, for the different turnouts and the equipment that the fire department needs and so many other departments. And that's buried into the services and supplies generally. But with respect to getting ready for the next emergency, when I came here, we did not have an emergency management position. And we had people doing that work sort of part time among three different people, and I thought we need to be ready. And thankfully you saw on the fires we were ready, and largely that was because we did hire about two years ago now an emergency manager. maybe not two years, close to two years, who has been able to help us with an evacuation plan with certain training with all of the different things to help not just our departments, but also our community to be ready for the next emergency that may come our way. So I think a lot of what we saw on the fire, we were so ready for it, and a lot of that has to do with not just our emergency manager, but all of the people she coordinates. And the equipment that we've been purchasing and are ready to deploy in the training programs that we have. Thank you, Suiting Manager. Thank you very much. Council Member Cole. I joined my colleagues in lauding you for an excellent report report both in content, but also in the breadth of the efforts you're making, especially on the record on recruitment and hiring as Vice Mayor said, as the recovery and support that my colleague Mr. Mesuda has mentioned. Gall is research-backed and is used widely, both in the public and private sectors. And it does focus in not just on people, how people are feeling, but what they're actually doing. And you mentioned that there's always room for improvement. What is the approach you're taking to utilize that material both as a department on HR but also the departments? Did you collect the data by department or just citywide? We have the data broken down by department and in fact all of the teams, so a team is know, a supervisor and their direct reports. All of the teams have their own data as well. So we have invited Gallup to do some trainings with our senior management group with our executive leadership team and they trained us on action planning around the Q12, as they call it, the 12 questions and the results. So we've been working on that. And periodically we meet as a senior management group and we talk about it. Most recently we had a Gallup representative do an online training on leading during disruption. So, you know, some of our kind of action planning initiatives have been a little bit delayed with the fire response, but I think that it might actually be a really interesting time for increasing engagement in ways that we hadn't predicted because of that opportunity. Councillor M. Recall, if I may add, it's not a one and done. This is an ongoing long-term commitment that we're looking to bring the men on. And we try to focus. We can't change it overnight. We know that. So we have each team look at one or two things they could do. And then we have an aggressive goal next year. I think we want to get the number. I don't remember the number we're trying to get to is it for? It's just a point two increase is significant. Apparently. Yes. So we'd like to do that. We're going to do it every year and we hope to bring the mean score next year that's going to be higher than this one. That's the goal. Much appreciated and fully supportive. Just two more points. One is to what extent are some of these, and forgive me, I don't have my budget in front of me, to what extent are some of these measures built into your department's performance measures in the budget. Are you referring specifically to the Gallup? No, just generally. You know, retention, time to hire. Oh, sure. Whatever. We have, we have, one of our KPIs is time to hire in terms of posting to creation of the eligibility list. And our goal is to have 85% of those done within 90 days from posting to eligibility list, because that's sort of the time period that HR can more or less control. And then we also have percentage of employees who successfully pass probation, just somewhat related to this, and then voluntary turnover. So percentage of the total employee population that voluntary fairly separates. I think think that's really significant. And your statistic here is really startling. It may be, to some extent, statistical noise, right? Because one year to a next, there could be some other factors. But to drive down people leaving voluntarily by such a dramatic amount is impressive. And if that continues that's a very powerful outcome for your KPIs. Last point is I agree with Council Member Hampton, I think that the world, not just Pasadena, tends to overemphasize completion of degrees. I have a couple degrees, I think it's important for people to pursue education. I think we should support our people going to school and getting that master's degree. But I also think that we should always give people a path to that their life experience or their work experience if it's similar to and can measure it with the work they would have done in school that we ought to give an alternate path. Some cities say college degree or master's degree preferred or a plus but not necessarily a requirement. Councillor Member Madison? Thank you Vice Mayor and thanks for the report Tiffany. One question just process. Are there any of the bargaining groups going to present tonight? The report indicates that there's an entitlement to do that. Thank you for asking. We did get an RSVP from two unions but I don't see them here present. And if I don't know what the point of view. I don't know if they'd have to fill out a card or... Right, do it no more. I don't have a speaker card for that. Okay, for that. I was a little surprised to see that the overall vacancy rate for represented employees was about 10%. That's higher than I would have expected, but I don't know what to compare it to. So I wonder if you can speak to that. So this is the first time that we've really looked at it comprehensively from this lens, from the represented employee lens. So I think it's sort of our first go at having sort of a point in time piece of data that we can compare to in the future. When looking at some of the reasons, like, you know, Launa is the highest vacancy rate. And so what we did was kind of dig into the data, like that's sort of surprised me, because I don't think of them as having traditionally, like hard to hire positions necessarily, but in certain areas they do. Our parking enforcement reps are Laona, and so we have I think four vacancies in the Department of Transportation. We're actively recruiting, I think we tested last week, but that's one example. Public Health Department does also have several Ionivacancies that they're holding to see what happens in the fiscal year. So unfortunately I don't have kind of a better response than that, but I hope to have something better next year. Well, I think the other comparison would be to other cities. Like, and I would think we would hear like directly from the bargaining groups if we were an outlier in terms of the vacancies because the obvious argument would be we're not compensating our employees enough. And I certainly haven't heard that. I mean I do hear it from time to time but not in the way that this would suggest. And also, what are the budget implications? Like is that, it's 9.7% to be clear. So it's not 10, but it's pretty darn close. If you round it it off, it'd be 10%. So is that a constant throughout the year? Like, we don't have any reason to think that the measurement that presented tonight is somehow extraordinary or anything. So that means that when we budget for a department with a thousand FTEs, we're really only going to have 900 FTEs. And that's a fictional department, I think. Right? And so that tells us something also about our budget and how we're I understand is that the vacancies are budgeted but at a discount so they're not budgeted the full Authorized mountain. This is I'm you know Finance could speak better to this but that's one of the reasons why This budget cycle there are several departments who have lower vacancy rates. And so some of the costs that we could have absorbed through salary savings, we really can't anymore. But there is still a budget figure attached to that. I just don't know what percent it is. I mean, I know in the proposed budget, there's an amount operating budget and then a number of FTEs. So I'm not sure what you're saying that that's been reduced somehow to reflect vacancies. I wouldn't think it would be. When there are vacancies, what they do is they budget for not the entire fiscal year, knowing that it takes two to three or four months to hire somebody. So it's just a percentage based on experience as to what will actually be spent so that you're not over budgeting for a position because you know you can't hire everybody on July 1st. So they factor that in so the amount of time it takes to do the hiring process. But also on this vacancy report, it's one day, I think it said April 7th, we picked a date because it changes All the time and it doesn't go into some of the more detail But you know some of these I don't know if if they're all if they might include CTW positions grant fund the positions There's a variety of reasons do to finances why a position might state vacant for a little bit and those are all included in these numbers But by and large if you look at where we are in some of that harder to recruit areas, whether it's police or fire, you see we're having quite a bit of success and I think a really good metric is when you recognize the voluntary turnover where people are not retiring or otherwise terminated but they're choosing to go somewhere else. We had a target of, we were at 8%, we had a target at 4. And I think, you know, the numbers you're looking at in the reporter by quarter, but I think overall we're on track to it, I think 3.68. So we're doing better than our target of 4%. But that's the part that we're more in control of trying to have people recognize that we're a really good place to work and that they should stick with us and Promote and we're seeing good results in that metric And I know that the legislation requires this report to come to the council But I think this is another one kind of the theme of the evening maybe that would be good to go to municipal services Invented their first and then for example, you might have answers to the questions tonight about how do we compare to Glendale or Long Beach, or Burbank, or Santa Monica, like our cohort. Because I'd be really interested in that. It's a little bit like unemployment. There's always going to be some unemployment as people change careers, as the economies need for certain skills changes. And some people's skills are no longer, they're mismatched with the openings. But to me, 10% seems really high. And let's be clear, represented employees are the vast majority of the cities and plates. So we're pretty much talking about the entire city. So this is a new legal requirement. So we're probably one of the first ones to present it because our HR department is on the spot here. But I think the requirement is that it be presented before June 30th or something like that. So everybody else is going to be presenting the data very shortly. We can certainly get a much better sense of where everybody else lands because they'll be using the same statutory framework to do their report. Yeah, I think it's pretty clear it's helpful to do this. You know, so thank you. Councilmember Jones. Thanks, Vice Mayor. And I had a question about the 73 days time to hire. I mean, how does that compare to other agencies? Is that a good number, bad number? And then the second part is, the police and fire are included in that 73 days, or is that a separate number? So I'll take your second question first. That includes all recruitment, so public safety as well Now that that doesn't mean that they have passed probation and they're working as a police officer or a firefighter but that is That is they are reflected in that and then Less than three months is considered good industry-wide because we have the merit principle, you know, and that's in our city charter and that's foundational for most government agencies. And so we're operating within those boundaries and so we do our best to keep it moving. But yeah, 73 days is typically pretty good. And I know the chief mentioned this during public safety meeting about the Park Safety Specialist vacancies. And his concern was the reason that there was so many vacancies. I think there's only four failed, but there's 12 approved. Was because of the onboarding process and the training and then going through, I guess what you're saying is probation. Same thing with sworn officers as well. I believe they have 25 in the academy right now, but it takes roughly 18 months to 24 months to fully onboard a sworn police officer. And I'm not sure for firefighters what I've got as soon there's a similar time to hire as well. I mean what are the bottlenecks there? Is there any leeway that the city has to kind of reduce that time to hire for because I mean for park safety specialists right I mean that's a something we approved and something I think the residents at least the residents I represent always asking about asking about wanting to see at Washington Park, at Robinson Park, at Villa Park, and Memorial Park, and to share with them that we only have four knowing that we've approved 12 is kind of hard or difficult for them to hear. So for that classification specifically, it has been hard to hire. I know one of the reasons Chief Harris referred to is that when we get good ones, they end up becoming sworn officers and, you know, it's like the perfect feeder classification. I believe they also require... Well, I don't... I actually... I could get back to you on that. I'm not sure if there are any bottlenecks specifically with that. It's just, I've found that enforcement jobs are typically tougher to hire and to retain, and that goes for parking enforcement, code enforcement. And so we do our best to try to make sure they're competitively paid. But I could get back to you if there's anything, and if there's anything more specific we could do. Just an additional follow-up. So if there was 12 and we had four filled right now and then two, my understanding two are now sworn officers. So there was six. I mean, what's the maximum number that we had filled at one point? And then are we like doing a retention survey or exit survey of why they're leaving? Just because I think it's important, at least to the residents, that those positions are filled. I'd have to get back to you on that. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Merkel, you have another question? Just very briefly, I agree with Councillor Remember Madison that it will be really helpful for us to compare with other jurisdictions. I will say that there has been a significantly high level of vacancies across the public sector. In the city of Los Angeles, the city was running an Acronic 17-18% vacancy rate until the budget crisis caused them to eliminate 2700 of those vacant jobs. But this is not something that's certainly unique. This level of vacancies I think is pretty standard but we'll see what the data shows. Great, thank you again for the report. We have one comment. Oh, one comment, let's go to comment. Alexandra, I'm sorry, cannot read the last name. Could you say it? ANALA. ANALA. ANALA. Thank you. Sorry, my handwriting's been the worst all time. Just a few comments. First of all, it's obvious your organization is doing very well. I'd like to follow up on Mr. Hampton and Mr. Kohl's suggestion that we have, that we consider people with broader experience. I think it's very, I teach high school and a lot of students are finding it's exceptionally expensive to go on to an undergraduate degree much less a graduate degree these days. I priced a graduate degree last year, $100,000 a year into Wishing and that doesn't even and include other expenses. I think it's important not just to loosen the requirements a little bit and provide some substitutes but to say so in the job application, not just that we prefer a degree, but these are other ways that you might qualify for this particular position. I think it's also very important because of the comment that Mr. Hampton made that we consider employees of the division. I know it's contrary to sort of HR policy to look at your journeyman workers and say, why don't we precuse? See if we can promote these into a supervisory position. But try to make the supervisory and indeed further management positions available by looking carefully at your people and also offering in service programs whether they're on demand online programs whether they're online classes or whether you know there's some kind of subsidy for them to go to school that would be very very helpful. As far as the Gallup Q12 the problem with the Gallup Q12 is it was designed for frontline retail workers. Gallup has marketed it for knowledge workers, managers, leadership, everybody and their brother. I would encourage, I've looked at this engagement survey for City of Hope and for Cedar Sinai and a few other 4,000 to 10,000 employee organizations. And you might want to think about whether there are other tools that are better for assessing knowledge workers, managers, leadership, and indeed even executive personnel. And there's SH, you probably are a member of SHRM. They have plenty of tools for doing that. But the final comment that I have is, think very carefully about the kind of feedback that you give to supervisors about the Gallup Q12 and those kinds of assessment tools. The granularity of information that's provided to help the supervisors improve, but also the risk that they will single out individuals that they might be able to identify if the group that they're supervising is say on the order of three to five versus a larger group of people. Your time has expired. Thank you. That completes public comment on that item. Thank you so much and this is a receiving file. So thank you. We have to close the public hearing and then, yes, the proof staff recommendation. Motion to close the public hearing. Great. Hamilton. Cool. Seeing no objections. The motion passes. The public hearing is closed. The closing hearing. Go ahead. And just one last comment. It was how many employees do we have? It's close to three though. Two. Two thousand.2,100. Oh, OK. So that was, that's a great amount of, I guess, it's not mandatory to take this. It's not mandatory. In fact, gallops do not make this mandatory. OK, so $14,000, that's really good. I mean, our engagement is great. Thank you. That was it.oling question. Is there a motion to move the staff or recommendation? Seeing no objections, that motion passes. Moving on to item 18, which is in short, just giving the C clerk direction to initiate implementing. Two new charter amendments and I feel the pressure I know that we have the past environmental housing board appointments next so I will try and move through this rather quickly with the council's agreement. So I'm bringing forward the process. P.A. included two new requirements, two new charter amendments. And by the way, I presented this to the legislative policy committee. So this is information that's been vetted through ledged policy. Measure PA included two new charter amendments, requirements that the council needs to act on. The first is the council shall adopt by ordinance, the process to fill vacancies for City Council District offices. Those are for the appointments with less than two years remaining on the term. And it also will include a public outreach and engagement plan, which was a recommendation of the Charter Study Task Force for that to be included. And then the second requirement was that the committee on Council Compensation, which is in the Charter, shall be convened not less than once every five years. The last time a Council Compensation Committee was convened was in 2001. So it's been beyond that five years for a bit. The council appointment process, I think almost everyone here is familiar with it. These are just the details of that process. Just quickly, previously there had been an ad hoc committee that was formed that assisted with the preparation of questions and other details. Legend policy believes that that may not be needed if we codify the requirements. So that was one of the points that I have received back on. City Clerk would still administer the application and nomination process for council appointment. And then all qualified applicants that go through that process would attend a special city council meeting and the applicants would go through an interview process. That includes sequestering and giving the applicants a random selection to participate in the interviews. Of course it would include public comment and then questions by the city council both scripted and unscripted to follow up on some of the answers that are given. And added to this is the, is a new requirement that applicants must be resented to the city for not less than 30 days immediately proceeding the declaration of vacancy. So these details would be incorporated in the new ordinance. We're asking that you direct the city attorney to prepare the ordinance within 90 days to codify that appointment process. And also to refer the matter to the ledge policy committee to again fill out the details, develop the details so that we finalize the ordinance. and also assist staff in developing the public outreach and engagement plan and that would come back to the full city council before you are vetting and then first read ordinance so and to also assist staff in developing the public outreach and engagement plan and that would come back to the full city council before you're vetting and then first reading and adoption. So that's the appointment piece and that's going to go separate from the next piece. The Council Compensation Committee is a separate body that meets and now will meet once every five years to review city council compensation. They study, take input and make recommendations on council compensation. From the recent charter study task force, one of the suggestions for this, they didn't go in, the task force did not go in depth into council compensation, but what came out of it was they wanted the compensation committee to study child care and consider maybe changing that to family care as an eligible expense and also Apply CPI, consumer price index increases to benefits beyond monthly stipends and health health and welfare benefits So cell phone stipend computer stipend the account. So those were the recommendations of the task force. The Compensation Committee would review that as part of their scope, including the monthly stipends, reimbursement amounts, and the benefits that are detailed in PMC sections 2.05 to 10 and 2.05 to 20. We have a list. Attachment D gives you sort of a breakdown of what are the current benefits provided to council. And that's attachment D to this report. Legislative Policy Committee did provide input on this. They suggested that we may, the committee might consider separate categories for eligible expenses. Right now a lot of it's lumped into the general reimbursement expense account and maybe separating some of it out. Review of the overall compensation. I think the goal there was to broaden the pool of residents able to serve on council. So that was another aspect of the review. Consider benefit categories and or a cafeteria plan of benefits. We talked about education in the last presentation. Education reimbursement might be another benefit that might be provided to members who seek to serve on the council. And then compare eligible benefits and expenses from other cities and using them as benchmarks to see where the council, city of Pasadena stands with other cities. The council compensation committee details are all provided in section 405, but just briefly, there are eight members. Each council member is eligible to dominate one member to serve on the compensation committee. The committee members must be an elector of the city. Former officers and employees from the last five years are not eligible to serve on the committee. So beyond five years they are. Deadline to complete the committee's work is per the charter October 1 of each year. Compensation may be adjusted by ordinance, but it would take a two-thirds majority vote of the council to adopt the new compensation. And the ordinance cannot exceed the committee's recommendation. Any amounts that exceed the recommendation requires voter approval, and no more than one adopted ordinance amending council compensation is allowed within any two year period. So if you adopt an ordinance, you're going to have to wait two years before anything else can be adopted. This is the suggested timeline. We're on May 19th with this initial discussion. It'll come back. I'm sorry. On May 20th, I would suggest that the council go out and seek members to serve to represent their nominee on the committee. We would bring back myself and Alex Soto would bring back a comprehensive report to really go through the charge and get council feedback on that, the charge on the scope either June 2 or June 9 depending on the availability of the agenda. And then the committee would start its work. We'd schedule a committee review and report back in the summer. August 18, which is a data I throw out there, but it could be earlier. So it could be a little earlier if needed. And then the committee the state needs to complete their work by September 29th and submit their report to the council. The staff support is provided there. Alex Soto will be taking the lead. I will be helping as well, but the rest of my office and the City Attorney's Office will be helping and then assistance from the Human Resources Department as needed. And that's the recommendation. Thank you so much for that. So there's still a lot of work to do. We don't need to figure this all out tonight but I see Councillor Matison as Chair of Ledgepoll, perhaps you'd like to share a little bit about what we've done. Yes, thank you and I'd be prepared to move the staff recommendation with the second date on the committee June 9th. Yes. We need that amount of time to consider applications for each member to a point. But I think a lot of gratitude to the staff and especially the city clerk for parsing the legislation and the charter and the policies. Obviously we're overdue for this. And I think you've summarized it well, Mark. I think that the ideas we should have, there should be nobody who's a resident of the city that reasonably couldn't participate as a city council member. And then among the members, there should be nobody that's more advantaged or disadvantaged than any of the others. I think that's sort of where the cafeteria plan comes in that, you know, for some members, childcare may be important for others, technology, what have you. So I think we could really benefit. I think the other thing the committee felt strongly about was outreach to the community. You know, when we've asked our community these questions before, I think they realize that it's a big commitment to serve on City Council, but they do not want big city style politics with big salaries, big staffs, and sort of political machinery like that. But the committee would be well positioned, I'm sure, to hear from the community about all that. So I think that was the sense and that's a motion that I would make. Thank you. Thank you and I believe we have a second as well. Yes. So this comes back to us in nine days. No. No. I did like how today we take action and tomorrow we owe the city clerk a report. I said tomorrow you start. Thank you about it. To vet members of the public to represent you. Are there any objections to the motion? Seeing none, that motion passes. Thank you. All right. We are finally moving on to kind of 19. The rental house board appointments. Appreciation to the applicants that are in the audience. We had initially thought that the application process, the appointment process, was started at the beginning of the meeting, but we have an announcement., I would say, I guess I've never recused myself from anything. So out of abundance of caution, as of last Friday, I have a real property under contract. So as of the 16th, so any of my votes before was not an issue. The respect to ownership interest in real property that involves rental units in excess of four to four, more than four. Yes. In the city of Pasadena. In the city of Pasadena. All right. Thank you very much for that. So we will wait for Mr. Hampton. So before you tonight, and again, appreciation to all the applicants that are here, Here have in front of you the past the Intervental Housing Board appointment process. This is for end of term appointments. So the City Clerk's Office opened the application period for these end of term positions on February 10th. And we closed the application period on April 21st. As the council knows, there are 11 primary members plus two alternates for a total of 13 members that serve on the board. Seven are tenant members. One from each council district. They can have no interest in rental property. Four are at large members in our city residents. The alternate tenant and alternate at-large our city residents. They are primarily non-voting. They may speak and participate in discussions during meetings, but they are not authorized to vote unless in the absence recuse or a vacancy of a primary member. So for the end of terms for the positions that are before you, there were three tenant members whose terms will end on March 24th, May 24th, 2025, representing districts 35 and seven, and then there are two at large members whose terms end on that date as well. Additionally, one of the nominated members to serve in a tenant position is currently the alternate tenant member. And so if that appointment is approved, then we have a vacancy in the alternate tenant member position. The City Clerk's Office issued 20 applications to pass the residence total application submitted were 15, 14 were verified as eligible one additional one needing additional signatures. The of the 14, six were eligible for tenant seats and all all applicants that are that have been verified are are eligible for the out-large seats. The full list of applicants are on page two of the Agenda Report and the redacted applications are as provided as attachment A. For the tenant members from the Council Districts, Allison Henry has been nominated for the District 3 nomination term would end on May 24th, 2029 Christine Rodriguez for district five term ending May 24th, 2029 and Debra Dunlop district seven with the same term. When we come back to it and when I finish my presentation which will be quick, you would take public comment and then maybe consider a motion to approve those recommendations one and two and then a vote. When we get to the at large seats, we have the consensus building process. Each of you should have prepared three to five names of the remaining applicants and you would let us know who are your in priority order, who are your preferences, your top preferences, your nominations. If it, these preferences do not mean someone is automatically appointed, so if somebody gets the most votes as a top preference, that does not mean someone is automatically appointed. So if somebody gets the most votes as a top preference, that does not mean that the council will appoint you, the council will go through a deliberation process and will make appointments according to their own process. If there is consensus, council can proceed to deliberations. If there is can ask, we can tell you who are the three or four that are have the most support or the council can deliberate in a different way. And then you can invite applicants to give statements and council will make some questions. Then once you're done with deliberations and the statements, there would be a motion second. And we need five affirmative votes. It can be for one applicant or it can be for a slate of applicant applicants. And the terms would end again on May 24th, 2029. And that would conclude the at large appointment. Lastly, the City Council appointment of a vacant alternate tenant seat, so in the event that the recommendations one and two are approved, then the council could review and after the out-large appointments are made, the council could review the remaining eligible applicants and determine if the council wants to proceed with the appointment tonight, or just declare the seat vacant, and we go to a vacancy, which would mean that we we'd come back in about 90 days and you could fill the vacancy at that point. If you're proceeding again determine if there's consensus that on one single tenant eligible applicant, if yes you proceeded deliberation to the motion in the second and that would conclude the appointments. So at this time I'd turn it over to the vice mayor. Yes, thank you so much and it's a lot but I'm optimistic we'll be able to get through this relatively efficiently, especially now that we have our procedures in place. It's worked well so far. Any questions? I see Councillor Matis and your NICU go ahead. I had some questions that were answered by the presentation so I really appreciate again the city Chomsky, who always exceeds expectations, I think. So thank you for that. Just as a point of order, I think it makes sense to maybe separate the vote and act first on the three district representatives. It's interesting that we have another member now who will be recused apparently Going forward on this and But as it turns out tonight none of the three Council member we have if I recall we have eight council members slash mayor appointees as it were nominations by the The districts and the mayor seven there's seven So the tenant members represent the district. The mayor actually does not have a nominee. It's the seven council members that have a nominee. And then four at large. And then there are four at large. Okay. So I'll go back to this just so you can see. So there's 11 primary members, seven are tenant members nominated by the council district. Okay and then four out large. But it will be the case in the future that the member of the board representing at least one district won't have the support or opposition of that council member because he'll be recused. Yeah, well that's not tonight, so we'll. Well, no, I'm just trying to understand. Yeah. But it's not tonight. Tonight, the council, because I would tend to show deference to the member who is nominating. And I think in that case that would be 35 and 7 have nominated. And I'd certainly support those, but I won't make the motion, because perhaps one of those shit. I was actually gonna suggest we start with public comment, and then that would be the first item we take up immediately following public comments. Certainly. I do. But are we allowing applicants to comment? Well there is one. There are one, two applicants that have put in speaker cards. They have a right to speak. I don't know what the council's will is on that. I suppose they're all equally situated and have a right to speak if they want or not? Yeah, just feel a little bit like an interview then, you know, and but if they want a lobby for the appointment and I suppose we can consider that in either direction. Yes. Yeah. And other people can still submit a comment card now, correct? They can. Okay. If that's what they, yes. That's the way they'd like to do. Okay, so we'll start with the card submitted. Beatrice Martinez, followed by Ryan Bell, followed by Belinda Nedge. Is Beatrice in? No. Ryan? Mr. Bell? Mr. Clerk, will you just remind us if an applicant is coming to the lecture? I will. Thank you. Hi. Good evening. I'll ring a bell when you have 30 seconds left. Go ahead. Thank you. Good evening, council here to actually lobby for any particular person on the board. I'm happy to welcome whoever is appointed to the board. I am just, I just wanted to respond. I wasn't going to say anything at all until I read the letters that were submitted to the council. I'm basically here to encourage you to consider tenants as rational actors who have the ability to consider complex ideas and come to reasonable conclusions. As you probably do, we sustain every other week ad hominem insults, lies, comments about our political views that are deemed disqualifying in the letters you hear that the board needs balanced and responsible people. Some are called grifters. One letter says that we need people on the board who are not crazy. I agree there are real differences on the board, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone argue that a homeowner can't think critically about economic inequality. The City Council has had no tenants on it for more than a decade, if my math is correct, and you seem to be able to make, you know, rational decisions about the city where a majority of the residents and voters are tenants. Tenants have voted many times on the rent board for things that landlord have wanted. Arnold Seagull is also a landlord and he is often left out of the count of landlords. We have two landlords on the board and I've facilitated the meetings now for two years and I can say with confidence no one's views have been dismissed. We've had long very long conversations about almost every topic. So I would invite you to judge for yourselves. I've seen Rick Cole come to a board meeting once. I would invite all of you to come and sit in on a board meeting some time. And judge for yourselves. Are we clowns? And do we need rational people or can tenants also be rational people? Thank you. Thank you. Belinda Nege, are you in the... Go on. OK. Simon Gibbons, who is an applicant, followed by Deborah Dunlap, who is an applicant, followed by Lordis Gonzalez. Thank you. And I'm here not to speak about myself, but to speak about the process, please. As we've heard, there's some different views on the competence and the rationality that's board. I'll point out that tomorrow night, some of you are going to be seeing the financial report from the board, which doesn't contain anything about how they plan to pay for their spending. So when I talk about the competence, the ability of the board, it's because they have demonstrated, on occasion, that they cannot do basic management. It's because of this that we need to have some people who have done this, who have managed businesses, who have made payroll, who have paid insurance, who have set up LLCs, who have dealt with the complicated situations that landlords deal with on a regular basis, who are going to bring the expertise that is necessary to make this board into something truly representative of the different views that are important to the ecosystem of housing in the city. So rather than listening to the tantrum of someone who has failed again and again, please let us bring forward people who have relevant expertise rather than an axe to grind. I've spoken to a number of the candidates here. There's some very impressive people. I've also been impressed with some of the existing members at the board. I've had great conversations with people on different sides of economic and political views. But I would like to say that of the candidates I've spoken to, I'm very impressed with Emily Wernberg, who brings a lot of relevant expertise, and also proud Gupta, who has also experienced a number of different things, but brings both expertise and an understanding of the difficulties that immigrants face. So, please, I recommend those two among your thoughts for out-large candidates. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Deborah Dunlop, followed by Lordis Gonzalez. Good evening. I'm honored to be a current rental board member, but I'm not here to talk about myself. I am here to comment on a common thread in the correspondence that we receive for tonight's appointments. Stating that it's time that the Council appoint board members with real estate experience. And I want to assure those commenters that there is real estate experience currently on the board. I've been a homeowner, a landlord, and I'm currently a tenant. I personally bring 30 years of real estate experience in Boston, Los Angeles, to the board, having started out as Coel Banker Broker, an escrow officer, a title officer, and a long time senior real estate paralegal. I've worked on everything from so far stadium to many large affordable housing projects across the country. I do understand real estate and all this is to say that being a tenant and having real estate experience are not mutually exclusive. Thank you. Thank you and the final speaker is Lordis Gonzalez. Sorry it's not the final speaker I have to refresh my screen. Go ahead Lordis. Good evening my name is Lou to this Gonzalez. I currently serve on the Pasadena rental board. I'm here tonight as a live long Pasadena. My husband and I purchased a modest duplex in the city with a goal of building stability for ourselves in our toddler's future. We're not developers. We live on the property. We manage it ourselves. And we're doing our best, like so many others, to create long-term security through housing. Tonight I'm asking you to please appoint at large members to the rental housing board who are not tenants members who can bring a broader and more balanced perspective to the decisions we make. Earlier this year we discussed relocation fees for her owner movements, fees that affect every landlord, regardless of their size and circumstance. I tried to raise a simple point. These high fees hit small owner-occupied landlords like us, especially hard. We're not asking to evict her profit. We're just asking the flexibility if life circumstances change. change and we need to move in, for example, myself, or in laws into our home. But when I voice those concerns, those were dismissed with a rather familiar refrain. That tenants, through no fault of their own face expensive, disruptive moves. What often is overlooked is that not all tenants are financially vulnerable. that small loan landlords like us can also be facing changes or financial hardship that make living in our own property and necessity. I also want to share a little about my family, both my mom and my brother currently open their homes to people who lost their homes in the the Indian Canyon know, we're embedded in this community, we're rooted, and we didn't turn our backs on our community. You know, we're not price-cali-ging and we're not charging excessive rents. However, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't leave me that we're also vulnerable when housing policies don't account for these kinds of circumstances. So without, excuse me, I know that I'm basically done here. The rental board needs to reflect the entire housing ecosystem. That includes tenants, yes, but also homeowners, small housing providers, and professionals who understand the complexities of our housing in their city other rice. We risk creating policy and a vacuum Thank you, learners Adam Bray Ali followed by Peter dryer followed by Brandon Lamar and then XC Marie legan Good evening, and thank you and Sorry that we don't have a full horseshoe of council members because this is the one time That you can hold the rental housing board accountable They're appointed by you they serve for your terms and there is zero accountability to anybody else in the city Nobody they're unelected and they're unaccountable and during their meetings They speak about how they can charge the highest. Nobody. They're unelected and they're unaccountable. And during their meetings, they speak about how they can charge the highest fees possible in the state. They dismiss the needs of the broad housing that we have here in Pasadena. We heard from the city's housing department about the work that they are doing. But the rental housing board is its own separate isolated created by tenant rights activists, silo, that is now controlling a significant portion of the capacity in the housing market. And the people that are voting on that board by default, the way that the rental housing board charter is written, and this kind of cock-a-maming process that you have to follow, is designed to not give the voice to property owners. It just isn't. It's an obligation that 11 of the members, seven of them by default must be tenants with no property ownership, no family property ownership across not just the city, but across the county. It's designed to prevent smart decisions and is designed to prevent the knowledge that comes from having to figure out how to pay a mortgage, the water bill, and everything else that comes with owning a property while at the same time providing a habitable, livable, functioning space for the citizens of Pasadena. But I don't get that voice. The only people with the voice in this are you. And this is the one time in the last two years that you are going to select new members of this board. You haven't come to their meetings. But they are in fact crazy. And I'm the one that wrote the letter that called them crazy and I'll stand behind that. Thank you. Peter Dreyer followed by Brandon Lamar and applicant and and by X-C Marie Legans an applicant. Hello Council members my name is Peter Dreyer I'm a honor here in Pasadena and I'm also a member of the rent board. I just want to make and I'm not I didn't sue the city to try to overturn measure H as one of the previous speakers did. So I just want to say something very quickly about the representativeness of the board. And I think Deb made a good point. She's a tenant, but she has a lot of real estate experience. I'm a homeowner. I've never been a landlord, but I was a deputy mayor of Boston for housing. I have a lot of experience about housing. And also it's important to realize that if you look at the makeup of the board, let's start with the makeup of the city. Roughly 57% of the people in the city are renters. So, it'll be more than that, about 65% of the rent board members, meaning nine of them are renters. About 43% of the people in the city are owner-occupied homeowners. A tiny percent of them are landlords. They own a single family home and they own something else. And we will know more about how many of those people exist once we finish the rental registry. But for the sake of argument, let's say that there are 3,000 homeowners that are also landlords. So that would mean that about 2% of the people in Pasadena are landlords. But right now, we have two landlords on the rent board, which is 15%. So if there's any missing representativeness on the board, it's homeowners that are not landlords. And I would suggest that that would be a reasonable thing to fill on the rent board. But to every meeting, I'll finish with this. Every meeting we have, there are a tiny handful of landlords that show up and attack what we're doing, because they don't like rent control, and they don't like the regulations that we have to they have to live with. Okay, if you think about how much we are at we spend we are budgets about five million dollars. We probably save the tenants in the city. I've done some backly on the envelope calculations. Anywhere between 10 and 15 to 20 million dollars. So it's a good investment because that money goes into the grocery stores, they go into the clothing stores It goes to the movie theaters that goes to the barbers and the nail salons. We are saving people money and they are helping the local economy They're helping the local economy and nobody ever says that on the rent board on that who comes to the rent board meetings. Thank you so much. Thank you Brandon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening everyone. You would think that my fellow rental board members know what the red light means, but we go through this every meeting. So, but you can also tell the diversity and comments, which we also go through every single meeting as well. I understand lobbying, matter of fact, I was in Sacramento this morning, today, lobbying for resources for our team and past seeing us so that we can rebuild our community, which is why my voice is the way it is right now. But I'm here just to say, what's it gonna say anything? But I put my comment card in because everybody else did. And I appreciate the work that we've done. I've been in positions where I've been able to build programs from the ground up and I know it takes time. I know there's trial and error when building programs and everything is not gonna happen as easy as we all suspected to be. So this has been a hard but worth it time. The last thing I'll say is I believe that I have been one of the most vocal about bridging gaps between property owners and tenants in our community, especially on this board. Actually, speaking of relocation fees, I was actually the one who brought up the conversation for us to change relocation fees. Because I understand it. Every single landlord that you probably heard on public comment, I have spoken to, I have met with, and I will continue to meet with them. But I'm also here to say, no matter what decision you choose, I believe in the last two years we have done an amazing job. and I have been counter to joy to have served as the vice chair of this Runaway Housing Board. Thank you guys, have a good night. Thank you. XC, Marie Legans. Good evening. I waited so long. I thought I'd better say something since I've been here. I am born and raised here in Pasadena. I am a local broker. I'm a home owner. I'm a real, excuse me, and I own rental property here. And I just believe that my expertise is with the board needs. I argue with Brandon a lot when I see him about some things, but it's, I just believe a well rounded person that I am that I'm with this board needs. And I just asked you guys give me the chance to prove myself. Thank you. Thank you. That completes public comment on this item. I should report out that the city clerk's office received 20 letters expressing concerns with the past environmental housing board members and or advocating for housing providers to be a point to the board. And one letter advocating for transparency related to the PRHB's funds, how the funds are spent. Those letters were distributed to the council posted online are part of the record for this item. Thank you. And actually just before we move forward, just to confirm with the city attorney, this is a fully composed body for rental housing board matters given the number of recusals that we currently have is that correct? Yes, you need five members at least and you have six right and we have two that need to recuse two who will be recusing Moving forward on these matters. Yeah, and just as based on the information that's available today great and just as an aside I think it's interesting that this body now if I can count has five landlords so it is a majority landboard body hasn't had a tenant in years doesn't have a tenant now so it's no wonder that the voters of our city which are a majority tenant voted to enact the rental housing board as a counterbalance of this body so I want to thank everyone who's come out tonight especially all the current members of the board who have done a lot of hard work or the last couple years getting it up and running. Appreciate you, appreciate everyone who is stepping up tonight to serve and to do continue that hard work. And so with that, I will entertain a motion to approve the district three, five, and seven tenant nominations. So moved a second. Seeing, are there any objections? Seeing none? Oh, let's have a roll call, sure. This is to approve recommendations one and two. It's a CEQA, and then the three members listed. Yes, just to confirm the motion is for the CEQA and the three members. And the three tenant members that are listed on the agenda. Which is Allison Henry for the District 3, Christine Rodriguez for District 5, Deborah Dunlop for District 7, all of their terms ending May 24, 2029. Council Member Cole. Yes. Council Member Hampton is absent due to recusal. Council Member Jones. Yes. Council Member Lion Yes. Councillor Marra Madison. Yes. Councillor M. Masuda. Yes. Vice Mayor Revis. Yes. Mayor Gordo is absent due to recusal. That motion is unanimously approved. So those are the three new tenant members. Congratulations. Yes. Your terms will start on May 25th, 2025. So moving on to the two at large seats. Oh, could you put that back up? Okay. So at this point, I have my pen in front of me. I'm ready to have the vice mayor go around the horseshoe and ask for each council member to recite their top choices. Yes. If you could provide your top five, if you have them. And if it's three to five, it's the only. If you only have three, that's fine, but you're welcome to include five. It's for two seats. It's for two seats. So hopefully we'll have some consensus emerge. It'll be a good starting point for our discussion. Councilor McCulloch, I see you have a question before we begin. Well, not a question. It's 10-15, so I'll be very brief. But this is my first time participating in this process. And I just want to put on the record, again, very briefly. I also believe that it is a difficult challenge to have put together this from the ground up. And I don't think anyone would say that the maiden voyage of implementing measure H was easy or smooth. And I think that it's an important lesson that we need to give our commission something I've advocated for repeatedly more training, not just in the Stern lecture about not viling the Brown Act, but really training about how to be effective commissioners, how to chair a meeting, how to interact with the public, how to work with the staff. And that's why, while people's views are important, it's also important, not only their professional skills, but their ability to work with other people in this diverse community. And so those are the things that I'll be thinking about in framing both my initial suggestions as well as in our discussion where we hopefully come together in a consensus to agree on filling the two at large seats and the tenant alternate seat. I hope we will look for people who will help measure age and be successful and be fair and iron out some of the difficult kings to come with with anything new. So with that I'll turn it back to you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Councillor Neill. Madison is also thinking of the question or a quick comment. Just a quick question if I could. For me, this is sort of like picking a jury. It's the combination of people. And you certainly want to evaluate the qualifications and perspective of each individual. But I was just on the city's website. I'm still not sure I have a clear picture. Do we have anything that shows the makeup of the board right now? And obviously we can slot in our minds in the new. You know, we just made. And when the next round of appointments would be up, would it be in 27? I see Mark is in action, but I think it was in an email as well the current composition of the work. Okay. Well, he's just been so kind of us tonight that I need to put him through his paces to you. All right. So let me give a little description of what you have in front of you. The ones that are highlighted yellow are the three tenant seats that have at to end of terms. The ones that are grayish, they're supposed to be green. But at large seats whose terms have, we'll end at the end of the week. One that's highlighted is Christine Rodriguez, which is the alternate tenant seat, which is the tenant. So that's the board as it's currently composed. If you would like to know by district the distribution, I'm maybe at that's where you're going with that. No, I wasn't actually, no, I was trying to understand. And we've reappointed, Ms.op. Yes. We've reappointed but to a different position Ms. Henry. Right. She's now the District 3 and we've elevated Ms. Rodriguez from alternate to primary. Yes. The, okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Rheath. I think it's good to just get clarification and we can I suppose. Well, and I'm sorry. Is the next round then 27 would be when we'll have two? Yes, in two years. The tenant district six, the at large for Lord. So Ryan Bell's term, Lordis is term, Emmanuel Nahera, Barbara Pitts, Diane Ramirez-Shavez, Arnold Siegel, and then Peter Dreyer. It's imbalanced like that, but that's how it ended up. What ended up causing the significant imbalance, and actually also the alternate, Christine Rodriguez is ending in 2027 so both the alternates were given the 2027 term ending got it. Thank you All right, so why don't we start taking councilmember rankings? And I do have an announcement I Her Linda Lara, the out-large applicant who resides in District 6 has withdrawn her application and has decided not to pursue being concerned. So please adjust your priorities accordingly. Should we just go around the dice? Yeah, however we want. I'll start with Councilmember Jones. We start at the other end. Councilellon, are you ready? Sure. I have names. There are a number of district six representatives here were applicants. Excuse me. Thank you, Mark, for that data point on Ms. Lara. Every single applicant is to be commanded for being willing to serve in this way. It's a lot of work and not always fun and games, but extremely, extremely important to implement the voters initiative that passed by, in politics that the margin was significant. So I am strongly in favor of keeping Brown and Lamar on the board and I think given the disproportionate impact of, shall we say, the hardships of being at a tenant on people of color in our community given his position now with the NAACP. And I know he's applying individually. This isn't like the police oversight commission where we have organizational representatives. That's not this. I get it. I still think for that overall makeup of the board and based on his contributions to date, Mr. Lamar should remain on the board as an out-large pointy. I am very impressed with Emily Wormberg also for the out-large opposition. A little less so when Mr. Gibbons recommended her and Dwarfster, that made me a pause, but I'm going to stick with my impressions of Ms. Wormberg. And then I think for the alternate tenant position or alternate pardon me. Actually, we're only going to give nominations or preferences for the two at large seats. OK. And then we'll move on to the alternate tenant once completing that process. OK. Well, those are the two that I would appoint. And in that. Do you have a preference and order for the two? The order that I gave, I think, for the reasons I stated. Okay. But if there are two, providing two, you know, would be the right number. So thank you. Thank you. I'll announce that. So the first choice would be Brandon Lamar and then the second choice would be Emily Wormburg at Brandon would receive five points and Emily would receive four points. Yes it's a ranked choice voting process essentially. Councillor Merleign. I don't think I'm just going to put mine out there. I think I'm grateful for the work that the board has done. And I think it is a monumental task to invent a whole bureaucracy. And I don't think it's a criticism of the board to say that viewpoint diversity and experience diversity is a good thing. And so it feels important to me that those at-large members with a structural, nearly supermajority of tenants, that those at large members with a structural, nearly super majority of tenants that those at large members come from other perspectives in the community. So number one, Emily Wernberg, number two, Paragupta, number three, Xemarie Legans, number four, Varouj Mezrobian, number five, Brandon Lamar. Thank you. Okay, Mark, a moment. Brandon, okay. Thank you. Council member Cole. This reminds me a little bit about when people ask, do I have a favorite child? It's hard to rank these. And I, not that any of these are children or my favorites, but simply it's a hard choice, particularly because I'm conscious of what Councilmember Madison said that in the end, it's about the two and how they fit into the rest. And so that might be a different ranking when we all sort this out. With that said, my first choice would be Varouj Mezrobian, my second choice, because of continuity, Brandon Lamar. I'm impressed with both Emily Legans and, I'm sorry, X-E Legans and Emily Wernberg. So it's going to be my four choices. In that order? In that order. Thank you. We're now. Looks like it's Mark one moment. So it was Ms. Robyan, Lamar, Leighans, Warrenburg. Thank you. Councilmember Miseuda. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I actually lost one member that is no longer on the list. So I'll get right to it. It's I suggested Emily Wernberg for my number one choice. And my second choice would be Xemarie Legans. Great. Thank you. Yeah. Oh. Oh, actually go ahead. You can go next. Yeah. So, um, actually give Mark one moment. Yeah. You ready, Mark? Yeah, I'm ready. Go ahead. All right. So my first choice would be Emily. My second choice would be X-E. My third choice would be... I had it down here. Veruch. Fourth choice, Parag, and fifth choice would be Simon. There's two Simons. There's Simon,barra. Simon Ybarra, yeah. And I'm last. My first choice is Brandon Lamar, to continue his good work on the board. My second choice is Varouj Mesrobian. Third choice is Simon Yibara. Fifth choice is X-C-Marie- I'm sorry, fourth choice is X-C-Marie-Legans. And I'll just give four. Okay. So I know Mark needs a moment now to do the calculations. Mike Smith, while that's happening, I have... Are you volunteering to do give us some entertainment? No. I don't think anyone would want that. But I do. I have a card here that I wrote the names out earlier and you cut me off because I was thinking in terms of the two at large and then the alternate tenet. But it says one, two, three. And I don't know if this will move the needle or not. But my third name was Verush, Miss Robian. So if that's material. I mean, you're welcome to give a third boat so Mark can incorporate that as he's doing all his calculations. Thank you. Give him a moment. Mark, maybe I can hand. We can mark my card as an exhibit if you'd like in the room. I've got enough courtroom analogies for one meeting. So this is a great meeting. Long meeting. Six, and two. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm going to put this in the middle of the screen. I'm going to put this in the middle of the screen. I'm going to put this in the middle of the screen. This is 5, 4, 6, 6, and 2. It's your signature as well. Emily is 15. So, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And then, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I am. I'm going to go to the next room. Yes. Now here with those you. All right. Okay, so 14, 16. Oops. 16. 12. 12. 12. 12. 12. 16. 12. 16. 12. I'm back. 16 and that's 2 3, 4 and that's 4 and that's 4 and that's 2 3, 4 and that's 4 and that's 4 and that's 4 and that's 4 and that's 4 and that's 4 and that's 4 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 11, 17, 3, 4, 6 and that's 19 8 23 23 24 26 Okay, good. Okay, good. I'm just going to get another one. I'm not nervous. Okay. Okay. Okay. One more. 15. Yeah. Emily, you're at 21. 23, she had the green. The first place. I was 15. 23, that's it. And she had, um, two, one second choice. 19. That's your two. No, she only had one, you're right. So that was five, so that was 21. Okay. It's beginning to remind me of the conclave. I will put up the white smoke in a second. We're almost there. Final checks are happening. Okay. All right. We're going to actually, I'm going to give this to them and they'll plug it in so that we have it in front of us in a second. but I'll just announce this out. So, XC Marie Legans had 16 total points. She... them and they'll plug it in so that we have it in front of us in a second. But I'll just announce this out. So XC Marie Legans had 16 total points. She had five votes. Brandon Lamar had 15 total points. He had four votes. Simon Ibarra had four total points. He had two votes. Verrush had 17 points. He had five votes. Emily had 21 points. She had five votes. and Parag had six points, he had two votes. So three candidates had, three applicants had five council members vote for them. That was XC, Verrge and Emily. And Emily is the highest point. Has the highest points with 21. Then it's Varouge with 17. Then it's XC with 16. And then it's Brandon Marr with 15. Thank you so much for all those calculations and all the double checking. We really appreciate it. I think it serves as purpose, as showing who the council has the most interest in. I'm open to council discussion at this point. Next steps if we want to take up one at a time or I see Councillor Matis and are you still in the queue from before or are you? No, but I was going to request. Go ahead, go ahead. That we move Emily Wormberg. It's one of the out-large members. I'd second that. Yeah. Wait. Sorry, Mark. Need something. All right. It was not a sin. It was not a sin. It was not a sin. It was not. Okay. So it was Madison. Okay. So when that large. Yes. Roll call. To a point Emily Warrenburg to one of the at large positions. Councilmember Cole. Yes. Council member Hampton is absent due to recuse. Oh, Council member Jones. Yes. Council member Lion. Yes. Council member Madison. Council member Moussouda. Yes. Vice Mayor Revis. Yes. Mayor Cordo is absent. Does unanimous six votes. It's Miss Mourn. Emily. Vice Mayor. Oh, yes. Vice Mayor? Yes. Councillor Jones is ahead of me. I will nominate Varouj Miss Robian for the second seat. I'll second. So Councillor Perkoul. We see the roster again. The roster of the current? Yes, right there. or Madison, did you have any questions or can I move on to Councillor Margiton's who's next in the queue? Did you want to move on to the screen? I have some thoughts but before we vote on the motion. Okay. Thank you. Councillor Margiton. Go ahead with your thoughts. I was seconding Councillor Margiton's motion. No one else is in the queue. Go ahead, Councillor Madsen. Well again, I'm just concerned that we will have a diminution of African-American members if Randall Lamar is not reappointed. I would move, I mean, XC, I would move to motion, XC for the board, if Council member code entertain that, substitute. What, why don't we, let me suggest that we vote between the two and there's what, there's six of us? Was there six of us? Yeah. So if we tie, I don't know what we do then, but, you know, I certainly agree that the African American community is critically important and affected segment of our community. So, frankly, as the Armenian American community as well. And we, and I think that Mr. Mesrobian brings real estate experience that would be helpful. I am comfortable with, with, X-E, she was one of my choices, but my preference is for Mr. Mesrobian and if that's the majority of the council, I'm happy with that outcome. And I think it's worth noting that Mr. Lamar would be eligible to serve as the alternate, which we will take up right after this. No, it's our- Could we- Could you put- Our eligible- It's a bit of a motion. Could I withdraw my motion and ask us, we could vote between just our first preference between these two. Very good. So just I'm here but I can answer the question. That are eligible for the alternate tenant position is Brandon Lamar, Simon Nibara and and Lewis James Rigolosi. Those are tenant eligible members. No one else would be eligible for that position. So I just I didn't mean that that's helpful information. Okay sorry what did you say? I didn't hear that. I was suggesting the Sorry, why is that not accurate? Your attendant member. What's your name sorry. Let me check with staff on that I'm sorry Mr. Starr Starrick, one second. Here, my suggestion while we sort that out, it would be simply rather than a motion one way or the other, we call the role as to our first choice, whether it's Miss Robian or Leagans. Again, I'm happy with either outcome, but I would prefer the opportunity to express my first choice. Sure, we can do that, and I agree. Either one would be a great addition to the board. So why don't we start it? I'm sorry, it is. There's no motion. I work basically taking another ranking. I was drawn by the make of the draw. So no motion on the floor at the moment. Let's start with Mr. Jones. Yeah, Miss Leagans. And this is just taking our preference between Verrugin we arrive at another motion. Yeah, yeah, just taking a straw poll essentially Okay We're not yeah, uh, Mr. Lamar would be my choice just keeping in line with my Le choices. So Jones's legans. Oh wait, wait, wait. Oh I'm sorry, wait, wait. I thought we were choosing between I'm sorry, I was looking at my oldest. Um, Varouj was my first choice. Varouj Miss Robyan. Varouj. Mr. Masuda. Between Varouj and Miss Legable. Mr. Miserable. Mr. Miserable. Mr. Miserable. Mr. Miserable. Mr. Miserable. Mr. Miserable. Mr. Miserable. Mr. Miserable. Mr. Miserable. Mr. Miserable. Mr. Miserable. Mr. Miserable. Mr. Miserable. Mr. Miserable. Mr. M. I'll go with Mr. Ms. Robian. And Mr. Madison. Mr. Ms. Robian. So in light of that, is there a motion for the second alternate? I'm sorry, the second at large position. So moved. Or? Mr. Ms. Robian. Okay. And is there a second? Second. So that was Mr. Madison who made the motion. Who was second? Lion. Lion. Sorry. Catching up. Thank you. Roll call. Roll call. Two point for Rouge, Mr. Robyan as the at large, second at large, customer recall. Yes. Councillor Hamilton is absent is absent. Councilmember Jones. Yes. Councilmember Lion. Yes. Councilmember Madison. Yes. Councilmember Moussouda. Yes. Vice Mayor Revis. Yes. Mayor Gordon is absent due to recusal. That seemed unanimously approved. That is our second. I will move the appointment of Brandon Lamar to the tenant at large second. Oh, second. To be clear, the alternate tenant. Alternate tenant. Yeah. Apologize. Yes. As I understand, the alternate's attend the meetings, participate in the discussion, but can only vote if the primary is. Yes. Is the tenant members not there? Sorry, I didn't mean to step on you. Okay. Let's have a roll call.mer Cole yes for Brandon Lamar customer Hamden is absent customer Jones. Yes, customer lion. Yes, customer Madison. Yes, customer Moussouda. Yes vice mayor Revis Yes, the mayor of Gordo is absent due to recusal. Brandon Lamar is the alternate tenant member Vice mayor can we please Extender gratitude to all the applicants Absolutely. Thank you to everyone who has stepped up to serve on this important board and congratulations to all the new appointees. And I believe that completes our agenda. Yes. Yes. So, are the monsters any further announcements or Mr. Clerk? No, I know. That's what we've been up for. Then you are adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Who is Emily? She's right there in the yellow. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.