City Council Meeting: February 5, 2024

you but mayor and council we are live. Ok, good. Good evening everyone. Welcome to the FEBRUARY 5th twenty twenty four meeting of the pasadena city council. Apologize that we're running a little bit late. The council was in session discussing important items and for the record I did recuse myself from item was that see thank you to do it because I own rental property in the city so next why don't we start with the calling roll? Thank you, mayor. COUNCILMAN Hampton, an honor to be here. COUNCILMAN Jones here. COUNCILMAN Ryan here. COUNCILMAN Massouda, you're customer service. You're COUNCILMAN Williams, you're vice mayor madison here. Mayor gordo here. There's a quorum in the council present. Great. Thank you. And why don't we start or proceed to the pledge of allegiance if I MAY ask queen naomi still itano and the rose court to lead us in the pledge of allegiance? You'll step forward to the podium all the jersey has taken 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. Dear MS. So we do have some ceremonial matters as I mentioned we have the rose court in the chambers tonight and so I would like to ask mrs augustine to come and introduce good evening counsel . I'd like to introduce our queen queen naomi still hatano and she will introduce the court. Hello everyone. Good evening. Thank you for having us. You know, being on the court has been a wonderful experience and I feel like I've grown as a person and I know all these wonderful girls have to so thank you for honoring us today and I will now present princess olivia bonnet's hello council. Thank you again for having us. I can honestly say that this experience has been so extremely rewarding. I've learned so much throughout this experience and during my interview process I talked about how this opportunity I wouldn't take for granted and I I can honestly say that everything that I've learned I will take with me to college and beyond. So thank you and I will introduce princess terni de la cruz. Good evening. I'm princess triniti de la cruz and I'm a senior at marshall fundamental. It has always been my dream to be on the court so I'm so blessed to have been given this opportunity to be given a chance to represent my fellow fellow filipinos, my pasadena usd students and of course district to the best district in pasadena. Thank you. And now I would like to introduce princess vibha. Hi I'm princess phoebe. i'm from south pasadena high school and something that I've taken from this entire experience is community and how to get involved with community and just connect with the community. Thank you so much for having us today and I'll present princess leia more walker hi everybody. It's such an honor to be here. My name is princess mama walker and I'm a senior at rich preparatory school. Being on the court has truly been a once in a lifetime experience. I know I feel like I have seven new sisters. It's been so great giving back to the community and getting to know these girls is something that I truly will cherish forever. Next I would like to introduce princess jessica powell. Hello my name is jessica powell . Thank you for having us. I'm also a senior at flintridge prep and one of the best things to be on the court for me is actually being able to meet the leaders of pasadena. I've lived in pasadena my whole life and going to events and meeting people like you who worked so hard to make our city so great has been a great honor of mine. So thank you so much and I'd love to introduce princess emerson. Hello everybody. I'm princess emerson tucker. I'm a senior at baylor high school and I'm so excited and grateful to be here tonight. I grew up in pasadena and I grew up watching the parade. so this is a dream come true and I'm proud to be a part of such a diverse career representing girls all around our community. So thank you so much. Ok, so I've had the opportunity to interact with the queen in the court and I got to tell you well you can see for yourselves what an impressive group of young women we have representing the city of pasadena in our community in general. So I'd like to thank them for four doing a great job representing us and I'd like to present them each on behalf of the city council with a certificate of recognition for and thank them for their service to pasadena in our greater community. And we'll start with the queen naomi. Still the tunnel next olivia bolnick. Yes, and trinity de la cruz, thank you. Thank you. And fizbo and maya moore walker and jessica powell. Thank you. And emerson tucker, thank you. So again, let's have a round of applause for the queen and her court and again express our gratitude to the CHAIRMAN Of roses for a great parade and a great game. I think, you know, probably in my experience the best game and best parade certainly if not the best right there with the best of them. So and congratulations to all of the tournament of roses members and to the queen and her court. oh yeah. If members of the council who are in the chambers would join us in the horseshoe, we'll take a picture with mr ok. Thank you. We have oh yeah we have a presentation from coco ocn and king james regarding our black history month festivities here in pasadena. Good afternoon mayor gordon. Members of council kopano young director of parks recreation community services want to take a moment to thank city council and mayor for your continued support of our programs and operations. I want to introduce jennifer coleby. She is our new public information coordinator and she's going to take on the brief presentation and the invitation for the upcoming black history month parade and festival. Jennifer, thank you. Good evening. Mayor and city council the black history month events are happening throughout the month of FEBRUARY and are hosted by our department and other city departments including the pasadena public library as well as our local partners in various community based organizations. We are pleased to announce the black history parade and festival happening on saturday, FEBRUARY 17th. The parade will kick off at 10 A.M. At north farouk's avenue and mountainview street and will end at robinson park where the black history festival will take place from noon to four P.M. We are also pleased to announce key figures in this event including the event grand marshal MR. Danny bakewell JR. Community grand marshals DR. William turner JR. And DR. Wilma turner celebrity grand marshals MR. Michael white and jillian white. The youth grand marshals, the twenty 24 pasadena rose parade queen incourt and special celebrity entertainer tytler sun and the entertainment headliner for the event the hip hop soul duo ruffins additional events we're hosting a mardi gras themed senior night out on friday FEBRUARY twenty third from six to nine thirty pm with food, music, dancing and entertainment. The entry fee for the event is thirty five dollars and participants are encouraged to bring a masquerade mask for more information on either of these events you can contact the parks recreation and community services department at six two six seven four four seven three zero zero. There are far more black history events happening this month and to see the full list we encourage the public to either view the events calendar on the parks and recreation website or to see the press release posted by the public affairs office on the city website. Hi, thank you for your time. Thank you for the presentation and thank you to all all of you for and your respective staff all staff for cleaning out such a great month of events and i encourage everyone in the community to come out and celebrate. Thank you. Next I want to remind everyone to please save the date for the 2024 mayor's state of the city address which will take place on thursday, FEBRUARY 29th at caltech in the cahill center for astronomy and astrophysics and in the auditorium is located on the south perimeter perimeter of caltech at twelve sixteen east california boulevard of that evening the doors will open at six thirty the program will begin promptly at seven P.M. And I look forward to seeing everyone there and next colleagues I'd like to share some sad news and that's the loss of a fellow pasadena and and great contributor to our city and that's marty coleman. Many of us remember marty coleman who a longtime resident and and served as outreach director for the interfaith center at all saints church. She was an advocate for socially responsible economics and fair wages and was proud to serve as the grand marshal of the 2017 dude parade when she was 86 years old for decades marty inspired others by her expert use of social activism and was a mighty force for peace and justice in our community. And of course we will MISS Her dearly. I personally had the honor and privilege to work with marty in my early 20s when I was working at day one and she was at all saints church and so I can tell you firsthand that she had a tremendous heart for pasadena and residents of pasadena and was a great mentor for me for for many years and so from a personal perspective, I certainly mourn her loss and and join with everyone in expressing our great gratitude for her service to our city. So I'll ask the council to join in memory of marty coleman. Next we go to a public comment for matters not on the agenda. We have eight speaker cards two minutes. We'll start with allen shay followed by old denham, denham by ryan. The here deha and then sofia alvarado, MR. Jay, welcome. Thank you. Well hopefully everybody enjoyed their two week vacation since we're back in play. My comment tonight is as a result of our last hearing COUNCILWOMAN Just brought up a very important message for the chamber and that was to exercise a delay in a agenda item that hadn't been presented to the residents. When I looked it up after I after I left this meeting because we couldn't rebut it, it sounded really in my opinion absurd for the mayor not to have accepted what COUNCILWOMAN Was conveying because it was a violation of due process where you can look up if you want. They didn't the residents and the people didn't have a chance to voice that additional item that was brought into the agenda item less than seventy five hours notice they didn't have it. So to me and to anyone else who want to look into it, that is a due process and that item should be reconsidered so that the residents would have a chance to voice their thoughts on that added information. So I'd like to bring that to the city council's attention because that's exactly what the mayor should be doing is making sure the interests of the residents is preserved, especially when one of the councilmen bring it to your attention. Thank you. Thank you, MR. Shea. Next speaker aldan zeon he's got stuck in traffic. Ok, so we'll move on to ryan theor followed by sofia alvarado and marcy marsha talbert and then tony mayor for corrine reed one MR. Teal welcome gava tomago. Good afternoon honorable council members. My name is cynthia. I live in district five. My kids go to longfellow elementary school so I understand today there was a closed section meeting related to the the use of jefferson elementary for temporarily housing the the students while longfellow is going through renovation between twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six. You know this is really important to us. I'm speaking on behalf of my family as well as our friends and other parents who live in the district who live close to the school a lot of us don't drive cars so you know we had about the district planned to take us to ellendale which is across across the town. the busses only go I think every fifty minutes and it takes about half an hour. So that's a time that a lot of a lot of us don't have. And you know, we also had about busing kids from jefferson. I mean longfellow to ellendale they'll add a lot of carbon footprint and you know, we're not even talking about the cost so we just had about that last week. A lot of us came and spoke to the deposed board members and they listened and that is the reason why there was a close agenda item today. So I'm here to basically encourage and request the city council and we agreed to consider the district's request to renegotiate the lease terms and conditions so that the kids can go to jefferson elementary school. Thank you. You have thirty seconds. That was just the thirty second number if you need it. Well, you know, this is really important. I just want to emphasize we have two kids at home. It is raining. They are cooped up and you know so means sitting here for a couple of hours I'm sacrificing this time so that we don't have to sit hours and hours every commuting to to the other side of town. Thank you. Cynthia alvarado, thank you for your time followed by marcia talbert and tony mayer and edward shot than emily stowe and I don't see sophia she's virtually no all right. no show ok and then marcia talbert ok was talbot welcome MISS Talbot. You have two minutes. I'll ring a bell when you have thirty seconds left. Go ahead. Thank you. I actually like to hold off on my public speaking until for me ok, that's fine. The next council meeting is end of FEBRUARY I think FEBRUARY twenty sixth I will hold my public comment until that thing. Ok thank tony. Mayor MR. Mayor. MR. Or will bring her in virtually MR. Mayor apologies for by edward shock and then emily oh no tony mayor let's bring in ed machaca. MR. Ashaka, welcome. Welcome warming. Yes. Yes, go ahead. Good evening. Greetings mayor. City council members my name is shopko. I've long supported policies and practices that further racial economic and social justice. Today I feel compelled to speak truth to power because some of you in power are distorting the truth. This past friday council member felicia williams sent out a political mailer accusing her opponent of calling rose parade volunteers in nineteen ninety three racism. That is absolutely untrue. Point of order. Mayor. Misrule shot look to the city attorney but campaigning at a public meeting I don't know that it's acceptable. This is public comment for matters not on the agenda. Oh, I see. So I think the point is that if we'd asked you that you address the full council no woman comments generally no. I like the focus at the start I started my comments. I didn't address a full council. Ok, all right. So now let's I'm saying that that mailer is absolutely untrue. When rockhole was serving as mayor he never called the rose parade volunteers racist. He did call the tournament of roses organization racist and misogynist because thirty years ago they were kohl's criticism of the tournament underscored the fervor of local and national civil rights leaders including jesse jackson. They were calling for a boycott and threatened to MARCH down colorado boulevard if the tournament did not change racist policies. Cole's words and actions MAY have in came the tournament over the head with a two by four because it got their attention together coal and then vice mayor katie neke sat down with tournament leadership. They were able to broker a compromise that changed the tournament's governance structure and leadership path. It took twelve more years for the first woman PRESIDENT And twenty five more years for the first black PRESIDENT To lead a rose parade. that's how painfully slow the a way can be the work of achieving justice is an everyday toil and some council members are just not simply up to the task they do not recognize or appreciate the heavy lifting required certain council members campaign rhetoric is fallacious and impolitic. It belittles the accomplishments we've achieved and works against the progressive narrative. It's time that we elect rick cole once again to the city council to continue to continue everyday passion for progressivism excuse me certainly the city in a way. Thank you. That's emily stowe. So welcome to the search committee. There we go in new york. Yes, go ahead. I'll ring a bell when you have thirty seconds left. Go ahead. Ok, thank you. My name is emily stout. Thank you for allowing me to participate virtually. I live in the longfellow enrollment zone and this is my eighth year as a log fellow parents I'm speaking in support of using jefferson as a relocation site while longfellow is undergoing much needed renovation and later as a relocation site for other schools in eastern pasadena when it's their turn for renovation. The original proposal was relocated to allendale at the southern tip of pasadena. My son has attended blair for two years so I know firsthand the impact that this long commute has on families. It's been hard even though my family has the advantage of two parents flexible jobs and a reliable car. Many families don't have these luxuries. Relocating to jefferson instead is the best choice for the hundreds family families currently attending longfellow over eighty five percent of which are socially socioeconomically disadvantaged . I know this will be disruptive for the firefighters and library personnel currently occupying the building. I really appreciate their service and I hope they will be understanding and that using jefferson will minimize the impact our long fellow families. I also hope that the city of pasadena and the pasadena school district can continue to work together to make the best choices for our children and for the community. That's all I have. Thank you. That completes public comment on matters not on the agenda. There were two speakers that spoke on closed session. I think was c but or no e but they they came late for making public comment prior to closed session. I also would announce that the city clerk's office received ten letters advocating for the city to support tuesday's longfellow magnet school students to temporary relocate to the jefferson school site. Those ten letters have been posted online or distributed to the council are part of the record for tonight's meeting. Thank you mayor. Thank you. Next we'll move to the consent calendar and I would entertain a sweep motion. There is one speaker card for item three sold item three in all under sweep motion remainder I'll move the remainder oh second moved by MR. Lyne seconded by MR. Jones . Are there any oh we need a roll call accept item three to approve all consent items except item three casimira hampton your councilor jones. Yes. Councilor lyon. Yes councilor massouda yes. Councilor davis yes. Council member williams yes. Vice mayor madsen yes. Mayor gordon yes. Motion is approved without opposition. The public comment speaker on item three is greg fleming participating virtually mr fleming you have two minutes. I'll ring a bell when you're when there's thirty seconds left. Go ahead. All right. First of all, can you guys hear me? Yes, go ahead. All right. Thanks for taking my call guys. I know you guys have had a long day. My name is greg fleming. I am the incoming contractor for the item number three the furnishing of pain and repairs that you're people have decided to award to ny. The reason why I wanted to talk at today's meeting is I wanted to make sure that you were aware that I am the incumbent. I was not received I was not given a phone call a courtesy call about this contract bidding and had this unfortunate because had I been given a call you guys would be saving a significant amount of money. I brought this up with your agency personnel yoku oscar torres and his own and they are all aware that you're about to pay almost three times more for the paving repairs services that I was currently offering. I understand you use a website as they described to me because open gov where you advertise through the website unfortunately we were not we did not pick up on this website. We did not know about the bid since we are incumbent the only thing I'm trying to get across because I know this sounds like sour grapes is that I gave the information to your personnel that you're paying two point eighty six times more than what I'm currently charging you. So it's a one and a half million dollars contract. I don't think you even have the funds sufficient in the contract to complete the amount of work that you have in a given year. Ultimately, you know, taxpayers myself would love to do the work for you guys who are not benefiting from a phone call we could have received. i see that most people aren't looking at this but ultimately that's all I want to get across is that we weren't informed the contract then be a courtesy call and you're paying about two point eighty six times more than your current rates. So if it's one million you're going to pay two point eighty six million and I think that's worthwhile for you to mr fleming, your time has expired. Thank you. Thank you mr fleming. Yeah. Sydney jackson, general manager of water and power city clerk. I do believe we've got brad bowman from the water department online as well as john q online. But looking at the agenda report and based on conversations I've had the lowest responsive bidder has been selected and again this is for traditional street repair associated with traditional water main excavation. If we could pull up either john or brad I think they're both on yes. Hi. Thank you council member. Thank you, greg. Thank you sydney. My name is anku and I'm a present engineer for water delivery in pasadena water and power. Thank you greg for bringing this up again. We had the discussion with this about this item before as I have described in my communication with you that pavkovic as current contractor has been formed with the open the opportunity back in OCTOBER 12th twenty twenty three and for whatever reason pepco decided not to bid on this item and I am sorry for your decision to have made before but at the same time you are invited to bid along with other three thousand businesses according to everything was was to have the whole process was meeting the pasadena's purchasing and I am so sorry you didn't that at a time when the bid was open and we have communicated before so I hope you understand our process. Thank you again mr hampton. Your hand is a yes. I thank you. It's really the world council how you guys want to proceed with this but I have had these conversations before about open bid not all contractors especially in particular not speaking on behalf of the gentleman who just reached out but in particular local contractors are not members of open bid. I am but not every construction firm knows to participate in open bid and I believe it's a subscription based database and so that's also a barrier to entry for some of our local businesses. So I did have that same exact question I was trying to figure out you know, how many passenger based businesses were you having a phone call? There are there are there are sorry concrete firms in the city of pasadena. So it's not like this does not work that can be done here. There's also some asphalt companies in the city by the name or so can even answer that question who in the city what local businesses in the city were reach out to and how many apply to the staff report doesn't police looking at the staff of the staff report I'm looking at doesn't show any personality based businesses. Council member hempton, thank you for your comments. Yes, for the so the total business that we have invited is three thousand if I remember correctly we have about seven local business have reviewed our open it and for the final bid there's another capacity in our local business submitted the bids which comes much higher than our lowest rate from and why. That's all the information that I have regarding to the local business in terms of open open gov it is a website but the website is not ohlin interactive through the website actually each business email received an email regarding an open bid in this case pepco received this email in their email like mailbox as in their inbox. So my my family members are have posetti in the local business and they regularly receive the open business opportunities in the email and I can confirm that. So that is that's my question. I appreciate that there was an email I do believe that there should be and reiterated this would and so I hope in the future that you said there were seven businesses. I hope that there were personal contacts made with those businesses and not just open bid email that went out to them . Thank you council member hampton. I will discuss with purchasing about your suggestions and I'm all for promoting local business but at the same time we have to obey the pasadena purchasing rule in our municipal code. But I will definitely discuss with purchasing department ok, thank you because the county of los out of the city of glendale reaches to local businesses within our area. Arcadia does the same exact thing. All I'm saying is I have never heard anybody say oh I received phone calls from the city of asking about this but all the rest of the cities in our region are reaching out to local businesses. So I hope that your department will decide to do the same thing and city manager this should be something that procurement should encourage each department to do because at the end of day we represent the residents of city of pasadena and any opportunity we for them we should let them know about it so that they could be competitive. They bid on these products as well. I do have another question. So the gentleman who spoke said that he never received a never received phone call. Is that true or a never received any communication from your department about his bid expiring? No. So city council council member hempton to answer that question the project manager was has retired from from the department and during the opening period I do I can confirm or deny but the the existing contract expiration should be a mutually knowledge dates ok is into the general manager jackson is this bid time sensitive? I would have to defer council member to john. Ok, generally speaking most bids have a time requirement or a value expectation or value expectation. But john, could you follow up please? Yes. No my question I'm so sorry just to clarify on my question is is is something that we need to have happen today or can we go back out to bid and make the phone call to those seven businesses and also the incumbent who did not receive a phone call and I understand that there was someone who retired but that doesn't really make much of a difference. I mean this is this is general I just want to say this happens all the time. So you're in the process of your bid ending. Yes. You will reach out to you. You know, I've never ever not received I'm saying I've never received in my years of doing business doing construction courses, municipalities, federal government never ever received never received a phone call or communication. My idea was that my contract was going to expire. I've always been communicated oh by the way just you don't even know that I know that my contract will should expire. I've always been notified what your contract is about to expire. Here goes it's being flown again. So this gentleman is saying that that never happened. You can't confirm or deny that that's that's kind of that's problematic. I have to say that's problematic. And so if this is not time sensitive, I don't see what it would hurt to send this out again. I'm going to look to the city attorney to the city manager is relates to where we are in the process from a legal perspective on a legal perspective. Mayor, I just want to say we've done this before so please please don't I don't want to hear anybody say oh well legally we can't do no we have not signed a contract right now. We could we could we could say we're canceling all these bids and we're going to go back a little bit but I'll let the city manager why don't we let them. Yeah, that's correct. The city this is a recommendation so the city council can determine to reject all bids to continue no matter or to go with staff's recommendation or some other approach. And I would out from the city manager's perspective to go back out and conduct the process takes weeks and weeks. i'm not sure how many but probably a couple of months and what I don't know is when the contract expires and if we need to have a contract in place to keep operations moving forward or or not. But it would take some time to redo a process and if we do delay it would be the request that we have some emergency provisions that would allow us to perhaps extend services with the incumbent until such time as we could rebid. The notion is that we do not want to defer any water main replacement or wait for delay existing water main replacement plans and so I would be fine. Well I mean it's really up to the department but I would be supportive of, you know, doing an emergency purchase order with the incumbent while we are a looking at rebuilding this out and actually making contact with him as well as personal contacts with the seven businesses that are located in pasadena that do this type of work, I would be supportive of that and that's not something that's that's on the agenda. But it MAY be within the authority and the scope of the city manager independently, separately and I don't know when the current contract is set to expire but if if there is a request to extend another contract or something like that, that's a separate action from what's agenda. So we reject all bids or we would reject this bid and then continue. You could well you you continue the item which is one approach I'm sorry so continuing for i don't that that's an option for more information I don't know but that's an option you can reject albeit which would require them to start over see if you continue you MAY get more information from staff that will give you better guidance and a couple of weeks of whether the timing of the the expiration or some other factors that you MAY want to consider before taking action to reject our bids because as a city manager said, it takes a while to rebuild and come up with another low bid in a process now. So so I would caution about simply cantoni continuing or rejecting based on someone whose comments is as important there are. I'm not downplaying MR. Bowman's comments but I one of the things that I did notice is we had two bidders that came out and so is that typical for a contract like this would be the question because that's atypical that we have two bidders for a contract such as this then I can see a an argument to be made that we're looking the city's best interest in going back out and see if we can attract more bidders. But beyond that I'd be cautious about sending things back out to bid we we we still a responsibility to the people who did bid in fairness to them, they've now put their number out and coming back and rebidding puts them at somewhat of a disadvantage. But we started off mean I'm sorry MR. It was MR. Fleming greg fleming. i apologize. So so what's is so also we could also bid to reopen it. That's also that's also yeah I think this before as well. Well let's let's get an answer to so miscall. Yes. Is this a typical number of responsive bidders for a contract that we should expect would if it were you disappointed that we didn't receive more bids for last open bid? They received three bids. So this is a typical and the contract term has how many one year with with options for additional years. Exactly. So we could go forward as MR. Hampton suggests and accept the bid, ensure that our work continues and as the city manager the staff to evaluate whether or not we exercise our options under the bid to continue for years I think it's two and three or go back out to bid or we can reopen the bid. Yeah. In the past when we've done that we have allowed people who submitted bids to provide more information. I do believe in my experience once the bid is closed it's closed so you can reject and start over or you can allow those who bid to provide additional information but you can't open up the timeline to allow more bids after prices have been shown because they're they're competing on price. Yeah, I think the once the the because they're sealed bids is my understanding if we can confirm that. so you know there is the issue of fairness, equity and fairness and the integrity of our bid system when we have continued as the city manager points out, it's to get more information as to whether or not a bitter was responsive or whether or not they had the opportunity to present all of the information that would help the council make a decision. So in this case that's not what's play. And so I think again I look to the city attorney and the city manager for guidance. How about how about we continue this until our next meeting if it's not in times of so that staff could have time to answer the question and see you are the existing contractor can continue the work if they decide they want to reopen. Yeah, that's a thank you council member. That's a question I'd have to ask the department is this time sensitive or can we come back on FEBRUARY 26 and provided additional information that's being requested? It is my understanding that we have ongoing work associate with water main replacement to delay this procurement would challenge the ability to continue that ongoing work. So if this were delayed a number of weeks we would be looking at some alternatives which might include a emergency purchase order to extend the current are the current provider just to keep services ongoing. But again that would be subject to that process which is separate and distinct from this subject to city manager approval, so forth and so on. So that leaves us with the the second option of accepting a bid and then asking the staff to look at the possibility of going back out to bid after a year or continuing bid based on the performance of the contract and if you look at the timing it was bid it says it was bid on put on the open go on OCTOBER 19th and it's now FEBRUARY so that gives you an idea of how long it takes to bid. So if we did do that, you know ,we could get started with a new bid in a couple of months and it would take a good amount of time to to wrap that up and bring it back to council for consideration. Ok, what's the role of the council? The motion? I'll make a motion to continue this and then have the city manager and the director of water and power production work out and see if they can continue to use the existing contract until we figure out all these questions were answered. I mean there is still a process problem in the process. Problem was the existing contractor and I'm not advocating for the project as be very clear I do not know this matter whatsoever. There is a courtesy that is that is it just standard business and we didn't allow that courtesy in you know, say what you want to say someone retired etc. But when someone retired someone else has to take that work and this contractor did not get that communication and unless there was some communication which maybe in a week or so we could find out there was communication and we say you know what you were communicating with. But as of right now our experts from water and power can't confirm or deny that that even happened. Council member hempton, this is the end if you it was quote let's see if there's a second motion before you I'm assuming you meant continue to the next next council meeting which will be FEBRUARY twenty sixth. Yes. So if we continue to FEBRUARY 26 I mean will that impact the work that we need to do in any way? My expectation is we would have to make that evaluation, look at how much we have left on the existing purchase order or or how much time we have left on that existing force purchase order. Look at how much work we have to do so we'll have to make that evaluation. My understanding based on conversations is as you know, we were looking at delaying potentially this council meeting due to whether this particular procurement was one of the concerns. If we delayed this for a number of weeks it was going to be a challenge for the water utility . So to answer your question is there are concerns? Well, let me ask this question . If we vote yes on this contract tonight, you're telling me tomorrow the contract to start that's not how this works. It takes weeks. Mayor, if I could we could I quote ok, thank you for your comments. Council member hempton so to address your earlier question is we have sent email to all the businesses and all due fairness who wish to call who we should now call. That will be a hard decision to make. Second of all, to answer general manager sydney jackson's question yes, this will be this was a concern that current contract expires I believe is at the beginning of APRIL. That's that's assuming the process is going to go well if we delay to the next council meeting a FEBRUARY twenty six. So when risk have a lapse of contract. Ok, so let's go back to the question is your second a hearing no second, that motion goes for the lack of a second. Is there another motion I'd make a motion to approve the contract and then look at bidding in a year and ensure during that time maybe go to edtech and ensure that we have proper communication with all of our contractors and ensure a better process. So that would be the staff direction. But just given the amount of time the amount of bidders it sounds like was a consistent number of bidders and the work needs to be done if the contract is for a year we can go back out in a year just ensure that we are communicating with everybody, make sure that we get our local businesses. What is what is a timely and important issue. So that was seconded by council member lyne seconded by mr lyon . There's a motion I just I just want to reiterate it is fine. I do want to reiterate this though if it is true what the speaker said that his bid would have been significantly cheaper than this when we approved this contract moving forward our prices will never be what they once were. And I mean I get that I mean that's just that's just business. But if it's if it's really a third, our prices will always be higher. So we're not ever going to get we're not ever going to go back down because this is public information. So I just want to, you know, bring that piece of clarity. Let me just bring a little bit of advice but you guys decide where you want to do I'm going to be voting on this because because the contractor no matter what someone being retired should have gotten the courtesy and emails are not the same as making phone calls and the phone call should be to pass based businesses. Simple. That's it. Every other city does it. So the fact that someone is like oh here we can't know every other city does it thank mainstream we need to start reaching our local one question if we can. What was our projection for the country? Does anyone know when we anticipated the bids to be COUNCILMAN? I have to defer to john. That was deeply involved in the bidding process. Thank you, general manager jackson. We are anticipating we would receive somewhere between three and four bids. Sorry no what the I was asking the the amount of the bid if we projected out what we anticipated the cost of the project to be the cost of the project based on our historical spending it will be around one meeting to one at one point two meaning did that answer your question? Right. So let's take that apples to apples because these were eleven million and eighteen million. So that was if you look at the last paragraph on page two that affirms that the initial one year period it's the one year period. Right so so just like I didn't do the math to at these broke down to these were in line with your estimates. That's really what I'm going to let's just jump to that. I believe the estimate was between one and one point two and the lowest bid came in at one point five and that's on the final of page four four is where it's outlined. Ok, we have a motion on the second let's go ahead call the roll council barry hampton no councilor jones. yes. Councilor lyon. Yes. Councilor massouda. Yes. COUNCILMAN Riva's. Yes. Councilor williams. Yes. Vice mayor madsen. Yes. Mayor gordon. Yes. The motion passes seven in favor one against ok next we have an ordinance ordinance or what we have sorry. Yeah the appointment next we have the appointment of the ultranet to the san gabriel valley council of governments. Mr lyon has graciously been coerced into accepting the assignment and I would ask that we appoint MR. Lyne is my alternate so moved second and roll call to appoint council member lione as the alternate representative to the san gabriel valley kog councilor hampton councilor jones yes. Councilor ryan yes. Has massouda yes. Customer service yes. Customer williams yes. Vice mayor addison yes. Mayor gordon yes. Motion is approved without opposition and thank you mr lyon for agreeing to serve a capacity. Thank you. Next we have the first reading of an ordinance do there is a speaker card in mrs item eleven correct? That's correct. I believe there's a speaker card for item eleven. Let me just pull that up. nina chomsky, do you want to do the first reading and then call the speaker? Do you want to hear from the speaker. Let's hear from mr chomsky. Let's bring her in. Nina you have two minutes. I'll ring a bell when you have thirty seconds. Go ahead. Thank you. I hope you can hear me. We can I don't want to waste your time but my understanding was and I tried to review this complicated ordinance all day looking for what I understood was a carve out in the ordinance and it was decided I thought not speaking on behalf of the to annandale association and our concern about the elementary school properties in the zone and whether r&d is an appropriate development type of project for such a site city wide that there was going to be carved out in this ordinance and I can't find it now maybe I'm wrong and it's in there and I'm looking and I can't see it. Is it in there or not and should it be there? And I thought that what was decided and I checked with the planning commission chair and she thought it was should be in there and so we're trying to call planning staff and all of this but here we are in front of you and this is an important issue now of course I would have from now until it comes back for second reading you do all the research and send you a written and analysis of all this. But I thought that's what was decided and if I can't find it because I'm in error, I will correct your I will accept correction. But that's my issue on behalf of our association which does have to deal with an important site in the middle of our neighborhood and I support r&d. This is not an attack at all on the essence of the of the proposed ordinance. The r&d work is very important but just whether this ordinance has some kind of problem with it or not. Thank you, MR. City manager. Would you like to respond? Yes, I'm getting a text message from director of planning jennifer page. She says there is a carve out in zones. It is a footnote that excludes k-12 schools and all over ok and so that that should address the concerns raised by the speaker. So it's been offered let me do the reading. This is an ordinance of the city of pasadena amending and adding various sections of title seventeen zoning code of the pasadena municipal code pertaining to research and development development r&d land uses. It was offered by council member hampton second kazmir hampton yes councilor jones yes. Councilor lyon yes. Councilor massouda yes. COUNCILMAN Reavis yes. House member williams yes. Vice mayor madisen yes. Mayor gordo yes. The ordinance uh first reading of the ordinance was unanimous. Next we got to offer the next one. Thank you. Next as item 12 and I'll ask the clerk to introduce it and I think that was mr hampton who's yes I recall that mr hampton offered sorry this is an ordinance of the city of pasadena amending various sections of title seventeen zoning code or the passing of the city of pasadena municipal code to implement the central district specific plan update including changes pertaining to research and development. Land use is modifying the official zoning map established by the zoning code chapter seventeen point to zero seven section seventeen point to zero point two oh to update the boundaries of the central district specific plan and making technical changes to the lincoln avenue e colorado and s farrokh specific plans for internal consistency. This was often offered by council member hampton casper hampton. Yes sorry yes. Yeah there's I've been asked to hold off on hold on a second mr I'm doing the roll call ok. Oh sorry that's ok. I thought you called I did call your name but then I was told in the middle to start our kids myself based on the advice of the city attorney due to a potential conflict based on my residence. Thank you jones recused and left the meeting ok so the record will reflect seven 10 P.M. MR. Jones has stepped out of his chambers now MR. Hampton ,MR. Hampton and I hours voting out yes. oh yes. And then council member jones is absent due to recusal customer lyon yes. Council member massouda yes. Customer service yes. Customer williams yes. Vice mayor madison yes. Mayor gordo. Yes. The ordinance was the first reading of the ordinance was conducted unanimous with one absent due to recusal. Ok next we move to item thirteen and this is an all oral report from the past and police department chief MR. Jones is back in the room never left the building. He's always lurking somewhere he was doing some research and development. MR. Mayor, MR. Vice mayor, members of council. Good evening. This will be a presentation an oral presentation on behalf of the police department that constitutes a year in review for 2003 and the pasadena police department. It should be noted that I got the opportunity and had the pleasure of presenting this presentation to the cpac a couple of weeks back and now I am proud to present to you folks no you got the technical challenges solved. Let's start with the lead up. It's important to understand that twenty twenty three was a challenging year simply because of what occurred prior to we had the retirement a year prior to that of the then chief chief john perez and for the year of twenty twenty two we had two interim chiefs which provided some challenges in and of itself and then in JANUARY of 2003 the new police chief was hired and here I am now it's an interesting story. I think the city manager was really diligent in trying to get the new chief hired probably in the latter part of twenty twenty two. But I looked at the challenger, the rose bowl and the rose parade and said can we start the day after and in his prudence decided that was a good idea. So that's how it worked out. So thank you for that MR. City manager. I began my tenure on JANUARY 3rd of 2003. All right. I did something I shouldn't do here. Hold on one second there we go . All right. Initially right out of the gate what we had to do is we had to establish for that year we had to establish some transition priorities. And so I will talk a little bit about those transition priorities and what we're doing . Just so you're aware, it is a long presentation here, a lot of slides but we're going to go through the slides very quickly so I'll try to make sure I navigate it expeditiously for you. Certainly we had the new police chief that brings with it all sorts of challenges. Any time you bring in new leadership, there has to be some change management and some issues that we have to deal with. So as you might imagine, that was something that we needed to undertake immediately we developed an initial leadership transition plan which I got the opportunity to present to this body and to the cpac during that first month or two for what we were designing to be our initial 180 day plan and then came back to the cpac and gave them the update in the latter part of 2023 we had an all hands introduction where every member of the police department both sworn and civilian were brought to a location where we got an opportunity to introduce ourselves and become familiar with what the expectations would be moving forward. We certainly made sure to deliver the 21st century policing message to include two very important pillars from that document and that is the trust and transparency certainly are extremely important for what it is we're trying to do and certainly a number of others. But officer wellness being among those two as well as the internal group and executive team meeting we met with everyone in our group the department heads. We met with all of our stakeholders and started to develop a transition plan and went over the 180 day plan including the update I just to make sure we're moving in the right direction. We also met with the community stakeholders for those introductions including members of the naacp and several other community organizations. We conducted some checks and reviews making sure that our systems were in place and looking at things to see if we were meeting the industry standard and where we needed to focus moving forward. Uh, the biggest portion of that initial part of the year was the strategic planning that we did and in our strategic planning as you will see throughout this presentation we talked about the contemporary rebranding of the police department to make it different than it had ever been and utilizing the input from those internal and external stakeholders to get that done. And of course the effective administration of management of day to day operations was something that had to occur immediately. And so myself and the command staff and certainly the executive team and by extension this council and the oversight committees that we have turned to on that mission. Ok, thanks. All right. Structural change was something we needed to undertake immediately. One of the things that we found was that we were going to need to make some promotions. We had a lot of acting positions. We had some positions that were open and we had some tests that had occurred. So we made some immediate promotions and hirings very important and as it relates to running a police department, we needed to gain some stability certainly at the top of the organization. Along with that we made sure that you are reorganization. We needed to make sure that we had departments, teams and units in place that could deal with policing in the new millennium. And so we made some adjustments. One of those that we're very proud of is the street crimes unit where we took gang enforcement coupled it with our neighborhood action team and tried to provide a community element drug gang enforcement and has been immensely successful acquisitions very important. One very important piece of equipment that we acquired was our our our command center, our mobile command center which if any of you have seen it, you've probably seen it out at some of the police events up to and including the the park events that we certainly deploy this to. It is a very robust piece of equipment that allows us to do a lot in the way of both operational stuff, administrative things and certainly the community engagement piece. So it was it was very, very good national night out was a place where it was on display and got a lot of compliments but it is an extremely vital piece of equipment that we have procured and we implemented blackhawks exceedingly important. The blackhawks are important because as our model bring community back this blackhawks allow us to go out and touch reach out and touch the people that we serve in our community. I think law enforcement as a whole and certainly pasadena in the short term had lost our desire to kind of get out of our police car as we were driving by and from one call to the next and we needed to put the brakes on that and get out of our car, open the doors and meet with the people in our communities. And it was certainly great to start identifying and cooperating with the cpac, the epa, our independent police auditor and certainly the public safety with regard to recommendation on how we could better provide that service and that's ongoing to the state. One of the big things was the recommendations. We got an opportunity to to conclude with the irs and develop the recommendations that we could use moving forward, ensuring that if there are incidents that we need to deal with with regard to uses of force and certainly the worst things that could occur officer involved shootings that we were really employing best practices and so that our recommendation was very important recognizing a need to increase public safety and enhance the staffing and the technology, certainly the contemporary rebranding that I spoke of and you'll hear more about that later in field training we made some significant changes in the training program to include making sure that we implemented some community engagement pieces. One of those was making sure that our trainees do at least eight hours at flintridge and make sure that they do eight hours at the impact house so that they are meeting folks from this community that some that MAY have been based on some decisions they've made facing challenges in their life gives us an opportunity for our new folks who MAY not always live in pasadena to meet and see these folks and greet them and understand them as human beings and then being able to really apply what they've learned from that so that we can provide better police service in the community range improvements are incredible. Hope to get an opportunity to show those so you those through a tour and certainly the investigative partnerships we made sure to reach back out to our state, local and federal partners to make sure that we were part of task forces and things that can help us provide much better and more much more robust police service. Next slide, please. Cultural change was one of the most important things we needed to do. We had to lay down the expectations and we did that and the expectation was that we were going to be the best, most productive service on the face of the planet as a police department and we made that clear and we make it clear at every diversity equity inclusion very important. You'll see more of that later in the slide presentation and certainly the superior community engagement. As I said, we will be superior in our engagement and our effort to reach out to the folks to this community internal relief from historical paralysis was a major issue. You'll hear more about that later in the presentation. But the reality was in inside of our organization we had people reluctant to make the changes and the moves that we needed to make to shake that trailer loose of some of the historical things that have happened in the past. We need to get people moving in the right direction by remembering the history and learning from it and then trying to make sure we're making those changes. And so that's been a little bit of tough sledding but we're moving in that direction. Future planning became a big deal sending folks to places where we start planning for our future and not planning for the current you know, we have to be thinking ahead thinking 10, 15 years from today where we need to be and how we adjust the infrastructure to get there service imperative again we have we are the people that service this community from a public safety perspective. We're now working with fire another public safety component to make sure we are providing essential services and making that we're doing it in a way that everybody agrees is top notch. And the last thing on this slide was predictive policing and being data driven. We absolutely have to understand we have to predict where crime is going to occur to the best we can to address it and then do the best we can to fix once we know where it's going to occur and that data is absolutely important as you'll see as we move through the presentation. Next slide, please. Here's some statistical data to start us out. Cad stands for computer aided dispatch and what we have here is the incident count per year on the graph that's to the left the upper left shows all of the cat incidents four year twenty two compared to your twenty twenty three in 2003 we had one hundred and eight thousand seven hundred and eighty. It calls for service and it's broken down below that sixty six thousand plus citizen initiated complaints. Those are call ins or calls for service or being flagged down and we had forty two thousand plus officer initiated events totaling 180000. That's a significant number of events from calls for service perspective and certainly that we have to respond to that lower number at the bottom of that graph that twelve hundred and eighty seven number that's the number of people who walked into our record section and initiated police service. Look at that middle graph. Those are the pedestrian stops. Those are stops that initiated by police personnel and their pedestrians, not motorists specifically delineated in 2023 we had 643 of those and that's significant as you'll see later in the presentation and on the last slide or the last graph you'll see the block walks. We didn't have any of those in 2022. We started them in MAY of 2003 and the count was at the end of the year five thousand one hundred and thirty eight actual block walks that we broadcast and put out over the radio and those block walks resulted in twenty five thousand thirty three actual contacts, individual contacts with members of our community. We are committing moving forward to doing much more than that. Eight thousand lockboxes what we're looking for in year 2024 and we want to up the number of contacts to at least thirty five thousand. Next slide please. Air operations data very important. We do run a robust air operations. We have several helicopters, one or two that protect the city of pasadena and we use in law enforcement services to pasadena. We also operate the foothill air support team helicopter for all of the agencies that contract with us for air support and we also operate the L.A. Impact helicopter. So it's robust air services and it's important that these statistics are put out there for consumption. So in 2023 we responded to eight thousand eight hundred sixteen calls for service which equal to a total of 2217 hours of fly time. That's incredible for helicopter service of these eight thousand eight hundred sixteen calls, the helicopter was first on scene in sixteen hundred and thirteen of them that's about eighteen percent. The helicopter crew was able to clear eleven percent of the calls to avoid having a ground officer respond. The importance of that is that we eliminate sometimes the opportunity for traffic collisions especially where we might have to respond a little quicker than normal and we eliminate in some of those cases the opportunity for those types of incidents to occur. The helicopter crew also responded I'm sorry response resulted or assisted in one hundred and eighty eight different arrests and typically if the airship is involved it's going to be a felony. I can break that number down for you to future presentation but 188 arrests attributed to the airship is pretty significant. Next slide please. This next statistical compilation is the gunpoint detention data the cpc asked us made a recommendation for us to track when it is that we point firearms at people in the course of our duties and so we gladly accepted that recommendation and in 2023 you can see that the gun points the gun point claims documented with that have non reports. So these are where we MAY pull a gun out on a burglary investigation where there's no report of attached to it. That number was sixty one where there is