City Council Meeting: June 5, 2023

Welcome to monday, JUNE 5th. Twenty twenty three meeting with the palestinian city council and we'll start the meeting with the calling of the rule to establish a quorum. Council member hamdan blessed and honored to be here. Council member jonge here, council member lihn here, council member madisen here, council member massouda here, council member riva's here, vice mayor williams here and mayor gado here. We have a quorum MR. Lyon and fuel leaders the pledge of allegiance already to stand face the flag, raise your hand over your heart and beginning together I pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under GOD indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. We have two ceremonial matters. The first will be presented by candace smith from california parks and recreation society region four representative smith now. Good evening mayor. Council members, staff and members of the public. my name is candace smith and I am the region for representative for the california parks and recreation society. Our members are committed to improving people's lives and the mission of cprs is to advance the parks and rec profession through education, networking, resources and advocacy. This network happens across disciplines and agency boundaries since together we can achieve what we cannot do alone and cps strives to educate policymakers that vote with the understanding that parks and recreation is an essential community service in twenty twenty two our organization hosted the best of the best contest for the california cities to show off their park and recreation achievements and awards were given in these categories of facility design, park planning and marketing communications. I am pleased to announce that pasadena's parks recreation and community services department along with public works department is a winner in the category of excellence in design park planning for your city's playhouse village park. Although it is small in size, a newly constructed playhouse village park has already made a meaningful impact in your community with its children's play area accessible playground a dog run stage and lighted pathways. So on behalf of the california parks and rec society I am pleased to present this award to lola osborn, the acting director of parks and recreation services and also to the community services team and tony, almost the director of parks public works for him for his team's efforts as well. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, MISS Smith. Next we have congratulations on the part of council member jones to all of us to the garfield heights neighborhood association jones thanks. So we're here today to announce that our very own garfield heights neighborhood association district three neighbors have been recognized as a neighborhood of the year by by the neighborhoods usa, a national organization dedicated to providing opportunities for diverse people and organizations to share their ideas, values and experiences to build stronger communities. This award was presented to garfield heights neighborhood association at their annual conference held this year in MAY in texas. The conference was an opportunity for networking and information sharing to facilitate the development of partnerships among neighborhood organizations and as we all know, garfield heights is one of the oldest neighborhoods in pasadena and any resident homeowner or tenant living within their borders is welcome as a garfield heights neighborhood association member. Residents here are proud of their historic neighborhood but most of all the neighborliness and the hospitality among the people. i've experienced this myself and you've seen a lot of them are active in their community. They are here to honor, to recognize and congratulate our neighbors, some of which are here this evening. So I also want to take this moment to thank the city manager city staff brenda harvey williams, jennifer paige for making this possible and this was a a city so thank you so this is a neighborhood that I'm very familiar with and I see a lot of familiar faces that have made a tremendous effort and impact on our community in this neighborhood and ultimately throughout our city. In fact, many of the faces that I see here have act have acted and been active not just in building garfield heights into a great neighborhood but contributing to other neighborhoods. And so I'd like to thank all of the people who were here on behalf of the city pasadena for your efforts to build a great neighborhood but also to help us build a great city so on together with council member jones, I'd like to present to the garfield heights neighborhood association congratulations upon winning the neighborhoods usa 23 neighborhood of the year award . Oh yeah the one of the flags just in the area you hope ok come on this side of the that that is what I will tell you. Why don't we get more people myside the neighborhood chair you should be everybody. All right. let me run some more people for you from around. You could come around this next round. I will make sure we got around . Congratulations. That's why I'm getting so much . Thank you again. Well done everyone and thank you. Yes, I think I'm getting sick. Thank you, jason. Ok, that next. Oh I'm sorry I should give you an opportunity to see if you could please please. Good evening. Distinguished city council members and mayor gordo my name is lisa mann. My family and I moved in garfield heights in 2010 and since that time I've been very active in our neighborhood association. I'm here with my neighbor danny parker to share the wonderful news that garfield heights has been named neighborhood of the year by neighborhoods usa. Sorry justin didn't know you were going to give that amazing welcome speech so for 48 years neighborhoods usa is recognized innovative, collaborative and exceptional projects by neighborhoods across the us. On MAY 26 danny and I traveled to the annual neighborhoods usa conference in el paso, texas to present our community project the historic pasadena bus to our number to the judges award at garfield heights first place in our category and even more astounding garfield heights received the grand prize neighborhood of the year award at the awards ceremony. The PRESIDENT Of neighborhoods usa praised garfield heights as a model of neighborhood organizing for the rest of the country. Although pasadena hosted the neighborhoods usa conference in nineteen ninety four no pasadena a neighborhood as ever one the neighborhood of the year award grand prize until now. So this is truly special and we feel very honored to and proud to represent pasadena. I want to give a shout out to our very good friend and community organizer brian barry who originally suggested the idea of an historic bus tour and helped danny and I organize it. Thank you so much, brian. I want celebrating with us here today are some of our amazing neighbors who rode on that bus yesterday. Many of them were interviewed for a fantastic video documentary produced by bobby ferguson and pasadena media and her team. So thank you neighbors and thank you, bobby. And now turn it over to my friend and neighbor the one and only danny parker. Thank you, lisa. It was quite an honor to be able to share the mosaic of diversity that is an essential ingredient to the secret sauce that makes garfield heights and pasadena so special. In MAY of twenty twenty we chartered a bus and took sixty neighborhood residents on a tour of the ethnic neighborhoods of pasadena. the three hour tour explored all too often neglected or overlooked histories of five groups armenian native american ,japanese, american, mexican american and black american communities. What we did was we visited twelve sites along the way we pointed out additional sites of interest as well as extended the conversation about the sites that we visited. We treated members of the neighborhood who age ranged in age from seven to one hundred years old and very interesting breadth of ages. We treated them to experiences that they could only get from people with inside knowledge. The program we distributed included maps included additional information about the sites we visited, additional information about locations of interest as well as to key pasadena transform main events. The court ordered desegregation of the public schools and the construction of the 710 and 210 freeways. As we looked back on it we think there were four key ingredients to the success and what made it overall so successful. Number one, it is living history. Our speakers shared firsthand lived experiences. Number two, it was a backstage pass. We visited sites that are not readily known and we provided insight that is not readily accessible. Number three, we were mindful of attention spans. we limited the tours to three hours and number four it was free. No charge, no excuse. A couple of brief closing thoughts we shared in el paso. Number one, healthy communities are built on a foundation of mutual understanding and trust exploring ethnic communities provide that needed understanding. We also had neighbors sharing their personal stories and histories which gave other neighbors a sense of some of the challenges faced by their neighbors and in some instances still face. Finally we had a facilitated conversation that enabled neighbors to discuss issues that often divide communities in a way that resonated both with pasadena natives as well as with those who are more recent transplants to the area to allow others to replicate what we did we created a detailed template that other neighborhood associations, community groups, religious institutions and others can follow to understand and explore their communities better. Additionally, it's worth noting that history MAY not always be positive and sometimes it's not particularly noble. But when we're informed and guided by history we can know better, we can be better and we can do better. I wish to thank lisa bryant berry our amazing tour speakers which included alma stokes and 92 year old legend and 70 year pasadena resident and might be a relative of mine brian secada, roberto martinez virginia carmelo and danny dunn abedian and also wish to thank the garfield heights board which funded the event and I also wish to thank the mayor and council for this moment of recognize and acknowledgment. Lastly, we welcome any questions and we encourage everyone to see the video that captures the spirit and impact and includes interviews with many of the people here in the room. I think it's quite moving and it does encapsulate what the tour was about. So again, thank you for your time and any questions or any more details that your curiosity just won't let you go without feel free to ask. Oh, we also have a handout one little more bit of show time and that's going to be handed. We have it and you beat us to the point on the front is a qr code to the website and you should be able to watch the video from that. That's great. Our thanks and we are happy to bring private honor to the city . Yes. MR. Hampton, I just want to also congratulate the neighbors. I was born and raised in that area and so that was my stomping grounds this this is an amazing accomplishment not just for your neighborhood or for the city as a whole because this is an example of what pasadena is is about the people and not the buildings. It's nothing else. It's the people, the community. so these awards to me you know, looking at the awards I think of a nobel peace prize and I also think of a grammy because the reason I think of those two is because the grammy because this is a hit right. And the nobel peace prize because it's neighbors working with one another loving on each other and opening their arms and in collective sharing what makes passantino so beautiful and it's the people and it's our community and our neighbors. So I love each and every one of you and I thank you guys for doing this. I'm just grateful to a council member for bringing you guys on over cast member jones and yourself for for doing this. So thank you and thank you for being an example of what pasadena is to the world. We certainly appreciate those words. And when you mention hit I'll just again in the spirit of too much information mention my college nickname as michelle can attest was the motown kid. So I hit resonates. Thank you. Thank you again. I think all of us on the council echo those sentiments. I live in a neighborhood adjacent to garfield heights in orange heights and actually that's where you grew up orange heights and I can tell you we are fortunate to live in such a beautiful part of the city where people care about one another. We care about the historic structures. it's just a it's a beautiful place to live and I'm proud to say that you're my neighbors glad to be and we hope others will replicate this because this is a very informative event and we think it's something that can be easily replicated. So we encourage others who might be so inclined to follow our template. We're happy to share happy to participate in the sense of of neighborhood that you bring to garfield heights in this part of our city is really tremendous. That's that's really what shines and I'm glad that neighborhoods usa saw it and saw that. Thank you. Thanks. With that now we can move to the oh I'm sorry the city manager has an announcement that he would like to make. Thank you, mayor. Continuing continuing on with the good news. It's I'm very pleased tonight this evening to announce that earlier today we made the appointment of MR. Tim mcdonald to serve as our permanent director of libraries and information services. Let's give him a round of applause and I say permanent. I say permanent because since FEBRUARY of last year he's been working as the acting director . So we finally got rid of that pesky acting word in front of his name. But we did do a comprehensive nationwide recruitment and found that our best candidate was right here right under our nose. So congratulations to tim and if he'd like to say a few words to the council thank you. I'm honored to be selected for this position and I'm grateful to council to the community the city manager and staff for this opportunity. And I look forward and I'm excited to working with all of you to move our libraries forward. Thank you. Thank you, MR. Mcdonald. And congratulations to you to the city manager and to you and thank you for your efforts during covid as we go through the difficult process of figuring out our beautiful library and I'm sure with all that acting time maybe you earned screen actors guild card. MR. Lyon can probably talk to you about that. Thank you. I was going to state a fun fact about him. He read every book in the library. Yeah, but congratulations. Thank you. So now we'll move on to the consent calendar and public comment for matters not on the agenda. We'll go first. Thank you everyone. We have for speaker cards. We're going to start with yadi and allen shay to follow then follow my old and dinham. Please be advised you have two minutes to speak if you take note of the light on the on the bias there you'll see how much time you'll have you commence. Yadi, welcome. Hi. Last year can you hear me. Yeah no ok thank you. Uh last year on valentine's day the city council passed the reproductive freedom resolution at that time it was said that if I said that a city policies were not aligned with the mission, the resolution was not worth the paper was printed on last week the city kicked out the lgbtq all our welcome campaign last pasadena also got a demand letter from the eff and aclu stating that the city's use of license plate readers specifically sharing data with other state agencies is in violation of sb thirty four in a bid twelve forty two. This is lipservice no worse you are giving people who seek reproductive and gender froemming care a false sense of security while aiding in their persecute and prosecution. There's nothing to love about that. What I would love I would love for alpro to come into compliance with sb thirty four an ab twelve forty two. I would love compliance with a before eighty one and see the annual report of military equipment like those lokey drones. I would love to see this simulator policy which supposedly exists. I would love to see the long overdue twelve month review of shotspotter mostly I would love to see an institutionalized privacy program in pasadena again the lack of oversight and guardrails over pasadena surveillance of people is indeed reckless and negligent. We're now at risk of litigation because of the city's lack of privacy protections. How many more lawsuit threats must we get? This is certainly shaping up to be a summer of surveillance in pasadena. Thank you for your comments next alan shey followed by odan denim leicestershire welcome question first before I start my comment uh shouldn't it be three minutes since we're only having a very small amount of speakers today, mayor? Actually MR. We have quite a heavy agenda for public hearings and so if you'd like to have three minutes I'm happy to give that to you at the end of the meeting because we have a number of public hearings. I think. Yeah. Instead of excusing it instead of now instead of now you saying at the end of the meeting I think that thank you for your understanding. Uh, good evening to city council members as usual. I'm here I am now demanding that we really consider agenda ising the change of the charter to include technology. The reason for that is because as a result of the the oira report that indicated that there was a horrible hobel that the police officer drop that has been investigated and has been determined there's absolutely no way for hobel to be released from a police officer belt buckle unless he or she intentionally lock unlock the latch to release that hobel in the hubble is clearly not the size of a gun of a handgun. Again, these pictures are of the same they're the same shape . The only reason there is any distortion is because there's this one is a body cam when the officer on the east side is approaching the planted gun by pasadena police department, this one is a still shot. Suppose only done by the end the forensic person from the department are you going to continue to play corruption here in pasadena and keep changing the narrative? That's exactly what's happening . And if you think that this is just going to stop, it doesn't it gets worse because it's going to add issues to the dna being put on his gun on the gun that was retrieved because there's no fingerprints of anthony mcclain on that gun, no fingerprints. It did not come up on any report. It just said his dna and the dna can be passed by the gloves that were used by officer de moringa because he had rubber gloves on. He went over and he approached anthony MR. Hughes along including on the video. MR. Shea. Thank you, MR. Shaw. The time has concluded. Thank you. Change the change the thank you, MR. Carter. Oh, denham as MR. Denham is working his way up only the people who have seen can change the charter. sir. And no, I'm a little hot here so you know come on come on up yesterday. Hey, I'm no new face around here and everyone knows the real reason I'm here is because of because of my feelings for anthony mccain murder and inappropriate and just downright wrong actions after. So that's why I'm here just to keep up the vigil because so many times I've seen the murder of a young black man gets swept under the carpet and after a while he disappears. Well, I'm not gonna let that happen. I don't like being in front of people speaking. I'm not a spokesperson for many folks but I come up here every time trying to represent truth and that's all we want. And if any of you have looked at the footage by the way I produce shows are with the use of passing the media's equipment. So it's caused me to be real for me. We're looking at footage and looking and if any of you I'm pretty sure all of you should have looked at that footage right now and if you have you know, athena mcclain didn't need to be murdered, shouldn't have been murdered and he had no gun. He had no gun but the livestock that after that I wish we could talk about something else but I know we have to continue talking about even though you can't do anything about it. So now we're at a point where we need to talk about changing the charter so as to give you the strength so we need to put the charter on the agenda sometime in the near future so we can give you that power. There's a lot of other things I would love to be talking to the city council about because I love pasadena man. I love that story about the garfield man. I love that I love pasadena. So many things that are missing about pasadena and so many other improvements that I can see we can be doing by passing justin and I talked about one of them the oak grove park situation that they have. I would love to see that develop so we can give our kids an opportunity to commune with nature. You know, for a little kid to catch his first little purchase so invaluable. I would love to see that happen in that area. But another thing I got to bring this up because I've had so many people come to me and ask me and I can't answer this question because I don't know I don't even know if you can even do anything about it. But I have so many people asking me what the heck are we going to do with the st. Luke's hospital? We got MR. Dan after a time has concluded your time has concluded. Go ahead and read it. But anyways we need to talk about that because we got homeless problems, we got mental problems. We got health problems. We got veteran homeless problem which that was supposed to be a part of the issue out there and i got so many people asking what are we going to do with that is sitting out there just collecting. Thank you, sir. Let's talk about in the near future. Thank you, sir. I think for example thank you next year adriana batiste who will be part of participating virtually adriana, can you hear us about this? Welcome adriana. Thank you. Do you have two minutes? Ok, I want to go out and she's comment regarding the three minutes we only have two items available for public hearing on this agenda and thirteen on your consent calendar. So I think when there's just a few people I'm not on the agenda. Perhaps you should do the standardized three minutes and I want to talk about the oira review recommendation number eight which would which I will quote as we detailed in our report related to the mcdade shooting of you and listen, first policy can create the impression the department is attempting to influence the officers accounts so that it can be tailored to the audio and video evidence that has already been gathered. Such an impression will reduce confidence in the department's ability to objectively reduce to it objectively investigate deadly force incidents. It's not consistent with current investigative practices. The employees on a daily basis while there is extensive research for this point of view ppd agreement with its police union prevents the department from accepting our recommendations and the city should revisit its agreement with the people regarding the department to preview recorded evidence with officers prior to being interviewed about officer involved shootings. This body and the city manager's office have very detailed closed sessions with a and you only to reopen this as you had just approved a four year agreement in OCTOBER of twenty twenty two. I also want to let council members know I spoke with the mother of jamaal patterson today and tomorrow patterson was adriana I'm sorry but your time has concluded go ahead and wrap up your comments with what he's done. He was killed by community gun violence on OCTOBER twenty fifth twenty twenty one. And I just want to ask when it comes to justice for those killed by community gun violence the the 16 year old boy who shot and killed jamal patterson was accompanied by a 40 year old and twenty four year old adult and neither of them both of them have been released. One of them lives across the street from the patterson family. So I just want to ask when it comes to talking about gun violence and violence prevention, our gang interventionists and other justice bodies in pasadena are working to prevent this kind of violence continued when the courts actually can fail the families themselves. Thank you. You still the adults. Thank you, MISS Battista. I thank you. And that concludes public comment on matters not on the agenda. Ok, now. Yeah yeah. This was about these those comments related to assisting families is an important one and I do think we have in place a victims assistance program and so we should reach out to MISS Patterson. I know that we have in the past but reach out to see if there's any way we can help MR. You are going to follow up on that piece as well. But there were two things that came up are actually three things that came up the charter reform where we said maybe that's more of a mark question but is there a date? I think the this is michelle on honoris. I believe he's we've talked about bringing it before the council in JULY. Ok, thank you. And that be the timing of this us establishing correct. Ok so the JULY yeah. Perfect. And then military equipment and shotspotter updates do we have a date of when that will be coming back? I was asked this afternoon if JUNE 12th if the shotspotter could be added and I said yes sir I believe that's going to be on next week and I don't know about the military equipment are those both coming to the full city council? Are they coming to public safety? Because I was under the person that they were going to both come to the public safety I was asked to to bring it on the JUNE 12th council if you'd like, we can bring it to public safety if that's the will of the council first, why don't we why don't we talk as chair of the public safety committee, I'll connect the city manager will at the council. I'm perfect. Thank you. Ok next we'll move to the consent calendar. There are three motion so moved been moved and seconded. Are there any objections seen on the consent calenders approved and that brings us to item fifteen. Thank you. And this is a continued public hearing related to block five then the maintenance and the way this works is we will open the public hearing and I'll let the clerk open the public hearing. This is the time and place for the public hearing on block five maintenance assessment district increase on FEBRUARY 17. Twenty twenty three the public hearing notice was mailed to thirteen addresses. No no post in our publishing is required no chorost bonus was received by the city clerk's office regarding this item we do have one public speaker comment card. Ok and so why don't we hear from the public commenter? hello devin wang even when your muted hello. Yes we can hear you now devon you have three minutes that's thank you so much. You can out I'm the property owner of 12 eighty to twelve eighty four north lake regarding the proposed block by parking assessment increase the property was purchased in the late twenty nineteen soon after the property was acquired a of restrictions were imposed. Then the moratorium was issued where tenants were excused for not paying rent and evictions are banned. No resources were provided to the commercial landlords however property in specialist the taxes were still due, utilities still had to be paid and maintenance and repairs were still required. I was only able to save up enough money for the down payment to purchase the property after years of hard work living frugally in the hopes of having something for retirement, I thought hard work would be rewarded but I felt like I was punished instead because I am a property owner as one of the newer property owners post-test county property taxes I'm currently paying over twenty two thousand dollars in property tax if the proposed rate is approved. I'm looking at over thirty thousand dollars a year in property taxes and special assessments alone not including maintenance repair and loan payments. I don't know how I'm supposed to be able to afford that especially with a vacant unit unit, a vacant unit out rent that I have not been able to collect and no reserves due to the circumstances of the thirteen properties and twelve owners sharing the parking my portion is close to 20 percent of the entire assessment. As such I oppose increase. My understanding is that the method used for the assessment allocation is outdated since it was from nineteen ninety one which is over thirty years ago the assessment and be approved I respectfully request that the approval include instructions to the city manager to reexamine the method used for the assessment allocation and re evaluate the current accuracy of the information that was collected to ensure its fairness. I want to thank the plug indeed it's been clear for the guidance this and for their assistance in addressing my questions and concerns and I want to thank you all for your time and consideration. Thank you. Thank you and this is can you just tell us procedurally what occurs next? Yes, we are prepared for a we have a brief presentation and the we will then recess briefly and go and count the votes of the property owners if they wish to be reassessed. So why don't we just do a brief presentation? I think we're all familiar with this matter. It's been a long time in the making and then we will recess to count the votes and see what the voters see. David sinclair will give clear . Thank you. If you mind a quick quicker I'll skip some slides real quick here and just zoom in a little bit here some time. So here's the block five parking lot southeast corner of lake and washington. We did an agreement with the property owners in nineteen ninety two to maintain that parking lot where they assessed themselves and we then improve the parking lot on their behalf. The current assessment is about twenty seven thousand dollars from nineteen ninety six. What is proposed is now an assessment of about sixty five thousand dollars per year divided among the property owners. As noted there are thirteen properties and twelve owners. This was discussed with the property owners at a on site meeting APRIL twenty twenty two. Their concerns about some of the current conditions on the parking lot but generally speaking there was verbal support among the property owners for the increase in assessment last year the city added some safety improvements replace parking lot lighting just some storm drains. I did some driving the parking lot. We also hosted a neighborhood planting and mulching in NOVEMBER to improve the site and teach techniques to those who came to the view that all told, these would be the approximate cost of the activities. the first three would be annual expenditures. The bottom one is more of a contingencies and as needed for periodic maintenance like servicio which is not every year but every six years or so. And as as the earlier ballots were sent out in FEBRUARY, votes are weighed by the amount they paint assessments first. For example, if owner pays 70 percent of the assessment their vote is weighted towards 70 either for or against. So we're recommending that he be found exempt from government review and that a resolution should be adopted for the increase. I did want to note that during the ballot counting should he remember the public choose to watch us they MAY do so just let us know what the outsider will escort them in. Thank you. Thank you with that unless there are any questions or comments, MISS Williams, this is your district. Thank you. Yes sir. Block five is located in my district and I did want to see if staff had a response to MISS Weighings question about the allocation method. Yes, the allocation method is was originally done in nineteen ninety two um we are willing to look at other ways uh to do it but it would require hiring a an engineer similar to the the bids that we have throughout an old southlake and play house to come up with a method that's fair to all of the property owners of their staff feels that you know we adopted this in nineteen ninety two. There has not been an increase since nineteen ninety six and the general fund continues to pay for the operation and maintenance of this parking lot whereas the property owners agreed to as part of the reciprocal easement agreement it is their duty to pay for the maintenance and operations. Ok so so how is the how is the assessment apportioned? Is it based on benefit or how? I would say it's based on the parking needs of the property owners. It's based on ok because it's the part because yes. Prior to the area each of the businesses had their own parking lot assigned the business and then those the fences and barriers were torn down in the parking lot. The park's see the pasadena community development commission paid for and constructed parking lot in 1992 and then the property owners all agreed to sign on to the area and participate in the maintenance and operation. Ok, thank you. It was my only question and that is the property that we received a number of calls about from neighbors in the area that is in desperate need of better maintenance and investment. I'm ok with that. We will we will recess the public hearing, allow staff to go back and count the votes and then report to us. MR. Hampton, so these funds for block five are going towards just maintaining the parking lot. that's correct. To maintain and make some improvements now we did last summer take some money from the general fund and did conduct improvements in the form of increased or better lighting that hasn't been replaced in a long, long time. We spent money on cleaning and the sewers and the drainage systems and also this extensive landscaping in the and the parking lot. And I remember this kind of coming to we talked about this briefly at one of another public hearing as it related to one of the businesses there. So do we find the sixty four thousand watt argument? Well, we're already doing or the sixty four thousand will be the entirety of what is spent on the parking lot. It will be the entirety. So great now the city collects in the form of maintenance about twenty seven thousand dollars that pays for the trash service alone. So there are other items that need to be done with the lot other than trash service. Ok, and are some of the other items like fencing closing it off, securing its parking lot? It's on page two of the of the agenda report so it's parking lot sweeping custodial service landscaping and then we're holding some in reserve because oftentimes it's the trash collection exceeds twenty seven thousand dollars because there are dumpsters that fill up and it costs more than twenty seven thousand dollars to to empty the dumpsters. But toronto this does not pay for any security measures. So that's what I was going to get to. I was just about to ask that question. The police so it's all just police calls. Yeah, and we did discuss that with the property owners of maybe getting a security guard or doing sort of other safety measures but they are recovering from covid so maybe at a later time that could be revisited. But we didn't want to put a big assessment change on there. So we're trying to that's why we beautified the parking lot. That's how you paid for led lights from amazon and and that's why we tried to improve the parking lot so the security is it is the issue or at least that's what it sounded like. It was the issue I'm I'm not the representative of that area but you know, I do receive the we received the complaint all together and I'm not you know, trying to well, I am actually advocating for security now we we have security that maintains the closures of our parks. We have security company that maintains the city hall. Have we looked at saying ok, well how much extra would it cost to add this lot into that? I know that this is this MAY not be part of this actual discussion and so but I this is more so to the city manager for a security piece that maybe that piece needs to come back to us and you know, see where we could augment or add into the security company that is securing the city hall now to drive up there from time to time so that our police department so park security is the park security and then transportation they close the gate, they open and close the gate. So there is someone there that's that's kind of doing some of those activities because the gate that goes out on mentor we've made some changes operating changes there and that has significantly decreased the calls for service. And so we're hoping that that can continue. The neighbors can work with the business owners to have even more improvements. But the calls for service have gone down quite a bit when we have seen the city attorney lean forward. I think she's about to tell us we're off for my mike off so so why don't we but the point is well taken. Why don't we ask the city manager to provide and staff just a brief update in his weekly letter or a memo just telling us what some of the issues are have been and what's being done to address them. Yeah, and then why not just ask for a calls or you know what's what's what does it hurt to to ask for a cost for the security of the private security company that already maintains the city hall go and just just so you're aware that wouldn't come out of a maintenance assessment fees, is it? It would not allow separate issues, security, et cetera except for fixtures and I get that. But part of the maintenance is if there are people that are loitering in tearing up the parking lot. Right. We're paying for that. Right. And so I'm just saying it will come from a different source of funding than let's get a policy, ok? And a I should correct myself. We're not going to recess the public hearing. What we do is now that we've heard public comment and now that we had a presentation and questions have been asked, I to read the following before we closed the public hearing, I would like to remind all property owners that assessment ballots must be returned to the city clerk prior to the close of this portion of the hearing. Please submit any remaining ballots to the city clerk's office and so if there any is anyone in the audience who wants submit a ballot asking you shall get there's a gentleman in the front row here and we will accept your ballot, sir. Thank you. And if there's anyone else and maybe staff can look outside of the city clerk's office before counting the ballots, see if there's anyone trying to deliver their ballot so next I will now entertain a motion to close the public hearing and read the item to allow staff to tabulate the assessment ballots submitted and not withdrawn in support or in opposition to the proposed assessment. So moved 2nd are there do we need a roll call? No. any objections? No. So the public hearing is closed . This item is now recess and staff will tabulate the ballots receive and report out the results and anyone who wishes to observe the counting of the ballots is welcome to join the staff and the count of hanging chads no hanging chads. Ok, so if there's a member of the public who wishes let us know so next we will move on to item sixteen. MR. Wong, welcome. This is the time place for the public hearing on substantial amendment to annual action plan. Twenty twenty two twenty twenty three for home investment partnership program funds and community development block grant program funds the on MAY four twenty twenty three and JUNE first twenty twenty three. The public hearing notice was published in the passage in the pasadena journal. No public comment was received on this matter of correspondence. Thank you and we'll welcome MR. Wong to the room and their presentation. Thank you MR. Mayor and members of the city council today we bring before you a recommendation to amend our annual action plan to allocate home funds for two specific small affordable housing developments that will provide permanent housing for the developmentally disabled population and then also to allocate some unspent chebeague covid money to supplement for existing food pantries. And I'll turn it over to randy matheson who can give a brief presentation. Thank you. This is an action plan to the bacteria that we tell the public how we're going to spend our time and funds from cbg home and emergency solutions grant oh hold one. I don't think randy your microphone is one that I'm rid of here right now. All right. Start again the annual action plan. Uh, is a document that we submit to her to show how we're going to use our endowment funds from community development block grants home and emergency solution grants the original action plan for program year twenty two was approved by council JUNE 13th twenty twenty two the first amendment is to allocate just under two million dollars uncommitted home funds to the following two motti prehaps one located at 940 north summit avenue where nonprofit developer hope inc will use funds for financial restructuring and rehabilitation of three apartment units that will serve persons with developmental disabilities. The second location is 760 rochester avenue where the same developer will utilize one point two million approximately and home funds for financial construction and rehabilitation of six apartment units serve for persons with developmental disabilities. The second amendment is to reallocate one hundred thousand from the sea to bank is from our act that will receive some years ago to the food capacity in a food pantry program. Each of the four existing food pantry partners will receive twenty five thousand dollar award increase so the four partners first african methodist episcopal church of pasadena first united methodist church of pasadena, foothill unity center inc. And national day laborers organization network the this recommendation will have no direct fiscal impact and it's going to be a total allocation of just over two million dollars that we are allocating through this uh through this action. Here's an overview of the recommendations and hope and to any questions, questions, comments. We do this on an annual basis thanking the staff for doing this work questions, comments. I just have a quick question about farhampton about the food pantries. It's great that we put these food pantries together and thank you by the way randi for the presentation. Do we know how many residents were serving that our actual bassendean residence because I've gone to a couple of the food pantries and it seems as if not everyone who utilizes our food pantries are all passing residents. Well, we don't have an exact number but the through monitoring practices, the pantries are advised to check for proof of residence though they usually check id to make sure that they are pasadena residents because there was a time where a lot of outside of passantino residents were coming so they have kind of clamped down on that to increase uh, the make sure that pazhani residents are being so with the dollars that we're giving. We don't ask for data back to say you know how many residents from battistini are supporting and serving? Uh, not specifically with the clients are located. We do request data and we do go out and do monitoring and we review client intake forms and if there is a large amount of outside residents we do submit a recommendation written recommendation as part of monitoring funding to the agency to pay attention to more of those and try to keep it serving. Passantino residents. So could we make a requirement? I mean these dollars haven't been submitted to these organizations as of yet. Right. Or were they uh this is this increase hasn't been given to them yet. We have uh expended over five hundred thousand dollars since twenty twenty one. So with the increase can we put a requirement in that says we want you to report you're who you're given the this away. I mean to I mean we're not want to stop anybody from from you know the who's in need. Right. But it would be helpful to know are these dollars really helping passing the residence or are they better used in another place? So with the specific requirement would you like I've just missed a review of the the percentage of where households are from. Yeah, we can put that information their zip code. We don't necessarily need the people's names but least a number of demographics. Yeah, demographics the zip codes or or their city residents or elderly residents that be no problem. Thank you. Thank you MR. Hampton. MR. Lyon. Thank you ma'am. Thank you for the presentation I had a quick follow up question. This is obviously really important work and an underserved population. Um, if you were to look at the numbers and compare it to the remodeling your own house, it seems like a lot of money for for nine units. Right until you understand sort of the restrictions of the funding and who can participate and how we pay people. So if you could just talk a little bit about how we get to it's something like two hundred thousand to rehab if you could talk a little bit about we've already talked about yeah. Thank you COUNCILMAN. Yes. The the the funds for this project are twofold. Just over 50 percent of the funds are actually going towards the the rehab. The other almost half is going to financial restructuring to reduce their commercial debt so that the project can serve very low income individuals and so part of it is going towards in essence acquisition if you will ,or take out financing and yeah, the irony on these projects that this project uses a method that is very efficient which is to acquire what's called naturally occurring affordable housing to acquire them and then do rehab sort of moderate level rehab which is much faster and typically less expensive than building new or doing a substantial rehab where you take the building down to the studs and you start back up again. So this this method of of noah naturally occurring affordable housing, you get saved by the whatever it it's it's less expensive and it's much faster but because these units are these complexes are small, they are not eligible for the typical affordable housing leveraging sources and so they can't leverage tax credits, tax exempt bonds L.A. County funding. They don't meet the minimum criteria or if they do they don't compete well because they have so few units don't have economies of scale. So that's that's really the the big issue is that they aren't able to leverage other affordable housing because they're so small and so ironically even though they're efficient, our local subsidy per unit is actually higher. You know. Two hundred thousand dollars. Right. And also the provider is sort of limited. Correct. The the yes the the well the provider so you know the population if we look at people experiencing homelessness even here in passing the population is about twenty percent. It's it's really it's really tragic that people are developmentally disabled, developmentally disabled with limited capacity. They're being you know, fend for yourself. It's really a problem yet it's difficult to do this kind of housing because the methodology is through the regional centers that the statewide regional center. So the developers have to work very closely with the regional centers who provide the rental subsidy and the services to to the clients. But very few developers have this kind of relationship. So so hope has a long standing I mean this is the only kind of housing that they do. So we've been actually trying to to do projects with them. And then the other thing is these are funds our home funds and home funds are extremely difficult to use because hud has a lot of regulations. On the one hand they have deadlines you have to commit by a certain time you have to expend a certain time period. But on the other hand they have requirements like they have to be the last money in and oftentimes it takes more than their deadline, their time frame in order to get all the other financing lined up. So it's very difficult to use this particular project does does fit and is a good use of our home funds and hud in their home program has maximum loan limits and we're below the maximum loan amount so it fits hud's hud's parameters and we are anxious to commit and expand our home funds perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you. Is there a motion so move move by the captain seconded by MR. Ryan. Any objections seen thank you for the work and oh that motion was to close the public hearing. Yes ok thank you. Motion on american psycho on merits second MR. Hampton and MR. Lyon any objections? No. So the matter is approved. Thank you. Next we move to items 17 and 18 and we'll take these two matters together as they are related. We've done a lot of work on both the oh ok. You want to make an announcement? I remember they had public comment to disclose during consent calendar item twelve the city clerk's office received one letter in opposition to item twelve. That correspondence was distributed by the city council posted online and made part of the public record. Thank you. Thank. And so item 17 and 18 will take will take about the same time. This is the culmination of a lot of work on the part of the staff and on the part of the city council. I'd like to thank all of the council committees for and all of my colleagues for the time dedication that you put into the budgeting process a few years ago we shifted to a different process. We have a budget presentation that essentially lasted a few hours. Every department got ten or fifteen minutes and then we adopted a budget. I think with this new process of allowing committees to really do deeper dives, we we all benefit the public benefits to see what how and where we're spending their tax dollars in there. And there are a number of issues that came up during the budget discussion. Many of which will come back to us for discussion as part of a deeper dove conversation. So thank you for the work and we'll turn it over to MR. Hawksworth. Thank you, mayor. Good evening. Matt hawksworth, director of finance for the city I I echo your comments, mayor. I think that this year's budget process was very productive. We learned a lot. We heard a lot and we definitely have some great things to come back to the council to continue working through during the coming months. So that's exciting. We just have a very brief high level presentation since the council has already seen the various presentations for departments, the recommendation for tonight will be to close the public hearing and formally drop the fiscal year twenty four operating budget. The council will also be asked to adopt by resolution the city's operating budget and any changes are included in the motion passed this evening. And then lastly there's a second resolution to adopt and determining the amount to transfer from the power fund for the general fund transfer amount so aside from the initial budget that was presented to the council at the beginning of MAY, there were a few changes that were highlight highlighted during presentations or brought up during presentation. So I just quickly wanted to walk through those the first one is the police department the presented budget had removed the two full time park safety specialists that were approved last year. So we put those back into the recommended budget that approximately nine hundred thousand dollars of appropriation for those two and the chief of police provided a detailed plan of his staffing plan to fill all the park safety specialist positions. The second one is the housing department. The committee that reviewed the housing department expressed an interest in making sure that we funded that we provided funding for the housing department that was at least sufficient as what we spent this year on bad weather sheltering. So we increased the appropriation in the general fund by one hundred and fifty thousand for a total of five hundred thousand dollars from a general fund that will be committed towards weather activated sheltering which we hope to be both kongregate sheltering and motel vouchers this next season and then the fire department presented this is something that they've spoken to the public safety committee a couple of times on and this is regarding recommending revenue of just shy of three hundred seventy thousand and appropriations of three hundred and sixty two thousand in connection with adding three full time equivalent positions to the department's personnel allocation. This is funded fifty percent with the general fund and fifty percent with the building services fund and this is to provide one full time senior fire inspector and two full time regular fire inspectors and this will go a long ways to help reduce construction inspection construction inspection turnaround times and achieve the state mandated inspection frequencies. And as noted above, we believe that there will be sufficient cost recovery to cover the full cost of these positions and then the second resolution I mentioned earlier is to approve the general fund transfer from the power fund. As we explained initially actually first to the finance committee in early spring that that due to some of the challenges in the power industry, their net income was trending lower than normal and so we had planned that instead of making an eighteen million dollar contribution for the power fund it would be reduced next year of thirteen dollars million with an expectation that the following fiscal year it will be increased to make up for the shortfall this year. And so the resolution will adopt a 13 million dollar transfer from power fund. And this is a this is the five year forecast. This is this includes all the updates that were provided just now including the recommended budget. So in the middle is the fbi twenty four budget column and it shows that the proposed budget shows an initially in income operating loss of about four point eight million that accounts for the five point million five point zero dollars million transfer shortfall from the power fund. And then you can see that's added back in below which shows that we have narrowly balanced budget and along with some plan surplus in the column before for the current year of about five hundred thousand dollars. So this shows that our outlook for the future is a tightly balanced budget but it is balanced in the long term which is exciting. We had always hoped that this would be the case coming out of covid in the pandemic and we hope that the economy continues to be strong and stable and the five year forecast looks pretty good. This is just some of the high level numbers that the council saw in the book. I would just note that these are the originally presented numbers. They don't include the adjustments that I just mentioned and then these are the pie charts that are the same pie charts we don't need to go through again. So with that I'd wrap up my presentation for this part. Great. Ok, this is again the culmination and there are a number of issues that surface that in one of them I'd just like to touch on and that's you know, we make tremendous investments into swimming pools and opportunities for young people to participate in programs. I know that are actually all of you have raised that issue either with me or with the city manager and during the budget discussions and so as it relates to swim fees as it relates to participation in the parks programs, we are going to take a deeper dove, if you will, using MR. Marquez's pun on the swimming. So we're going to look at all of these fees and maybe come back sometime in the fall to see if there's an opportunity to adjust before some of these fees take effect. Any increases and you know, maybe it MAY be more money from the general fund but the goal is to ensure that while families have some investment to make because we want to make sure that they take the program seriously when they enroll that at the same time it's not cost prohibitive for them, particularly when they have more than one child that's in the program. Those fees can add up tremendously with the with the cost of equipment and so the city manager and the staff will come back with a report and we can see where what programs are successful. Maybe we need to increase capacity. Maybe we need to increase investment into these programs to to increase participation. But I'm looking forward to that discussion for the council to have as well. Mayor, if I can simply add that this proposed budget does include three hundred thousand dollars in revenues from those fees. But if the council chooses to go to zero we have we looked at our financial statements and whatnot and we can support that if it's 10, if it's 15 or whatever anything in between. We have identified sources to facilitate whatever policy decision the council chooses to make. So we'll look forward to our presentation and I know that all of us want maximum participation particularly for those kids who you know who MAY not have the opportunity to participate in programs unless there's a scholarship or a subsidy. And I know that are rec and parks and humans humans services department does tremendous work in ensuring that no kid is turned away, ensuring together with the with the foundation ensuring that that all kids are able to participate. But you know, we we need to ensure that we're giving our staff the the support that they need together with the foundation and maybe it's a partnership with the foundation to to augment the dollars that are there already. But every child every family who seeks an opportunity to participate in whether it's arts, whether it's swimming at are beautiful up and coming robinson park pool or in or villa park or whether it's soccer or football. Every child in our city should have that opportunity and cost should not be something that keeps them away from participating. So we'll have that discussion at a deeper dove. MR. Hampton, just to follow up on that before we have the discussion, I know that while part of the training to park staff and city employees should be if you can't afford it because we do know that they don't anybody away but if you can't afford it or you can't, then we're going to we'll still sign you up. I think that has to be part of the day to day training because I get emails from residents and and of course then they come back to me and then I get in contact with the director and then next thing you know, it's all waived and it's all taken care of. But you know, if someone just can't, you know, pay it the initial meeting questions ask and say, you know, we're going to roll you anyhow hopefully that's part of the the training now because from my understanding no one turned away. Absolutely no. I think that's a policy that no one is turned away. Again, I applaud our our staff in record parks for ok for doing that work then I have a couple of other questions because fees are tonight as well. That's correct. So the film fee will not be changed until we have the full discussion on film vs the the proposed fee tonight does include the change of the film fee and if the support team could bring up that presentation I can that I could show that one amounted to over sorry it's the other powerpoint the one for the general fee schedule. But in short let me pull it up here so I can just look at it on my screen it previously we charged a flat fee of thirteen . The fire department's proposal is to charge one hundred and thirty three dollars per hour but they build it in fifteen minute increments and the majority of these inspections are less than fifteen minutes. So the actual impact to somebody pulling a permit would inc