City Council — 2026-10-13

Yeah.

Certainly Mr. Mayor with Council Member Arrumedo, Mayor Pro Tem Garcia and Mayor Leyna is being present the City Council met in closed session and discussed the following items item number one was not discussed Item number two, city staff made a presentation and provided an update. Item number three, city staff provided an update. City Council provided direction no final reportable action was taken nothing further to report and actually I'd like to add on item number two that no final reportable action was taken. That concludes my report out of closed session, thank

you. Thank you for that Mr. City Attorney I now call to order the October 13th 2026 concurrent joint meetings of the City Council of the City of Commerce Joint Powers Financing Authority and the governing bodies of this successor agency to the Commerce Community Development Commission. It is 6 10 p.m.

Thank you Mr. Mayor, Council Member Altamirano is currently absent. Council Member Argumedo? Here. Council Member Rabollo is currently absent. Mayor Pro Tem Garcia? Here. And Mayor Lainez?

Here

You have quorum Mr. Mayor.

Heavenly Father, we come before you today as a community united seeking your presence and blessing over the City Council meeting. We thank you for the privilege of gathering freely to serve the neighbors, families and businesses that make our city home. Lord, we ask for your guidance and wisdom of our council members tonight. Give us restraining hearts and clean minds as we deliberate on critical matters before us.

May our discussions be marked by civility, our decisions by justice and our actions by compassion. We pray that you strengthen our community spirit, protect our dedicated first responders and bless every citizen we represent. In your name we pray, amen.

Thank you Mr. City Clerk and Mayor Pro Tem. We'll go ahead and move on to appearances and presentations, and it is officially October which means it is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. This year the City of Commerce hosted a Breast Cancer Walk and Resource Fair. It was in partnership with FHCCGLA. The walk started at the clinic and we had 48 participants dressed in pink chanting down Washington Boulevard and bringing awareness to the community. The walk ended here at Rosewood Library where we were greeted with 22 vendors with important information and an educational seminar.

This event was well attended, and this event was one of our first ones that we have and that will have hopefully in the future. Right now at this time I would like to do a video of the event highlights.

Someday, pink will just be a color Not a ribbon to remember A best friend or a

mother Someday You won't have to put a wig on And a baseball cap would just be a hat Now something to hide under Cause your hair is gone Somedays coming in handy

It's just another.

Sunday, your time will be your own time. No waiting rooms or doctor's news that make you wanna cry.

Someday we're gonna have a party, we'll pop paint

You gotta keep going, keep breathing. When you face a day that feels like you're gonna break. Meet other ones that love you. Think of the angels above you and think about when pain is just another color.

Okay, thank you. I would like to take this time to thank Maritza from FHGCCLA and also Silvia Cisneros from the library, the library staff, PIO and Public Safety for helping us make this a great event. At this time, I would like to bring Maritza

Hello, good evening everyone. My name is Maritza. I'm the Outreach and Enrollment Supervisor at FACCGLA and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Sylvia, The Commerce Library, and City of Commerce for allowing this partnership to happen. And we look forward to future collaborations and you know just spreading the word that breast cancer awareness and breast cancer screening saves lives. Thank you everyone!

Thank you and if you could please read the proclamation at this time. Okay, thank

you. You know listen I want to thank the library department for their hard work on this. I didn't have a chance to attend the event but Maritza I want to thank you and FHGCCLA for just your partnership in just working with us and really raising awareness right To such an important cause and to stand in solidarity with those who have fought that fight, right? For those with breast cancer.

It really means a lot. And so I know we have a lot of survivors here and a lot of people who just fought that battle that are no longer with us here in the city of commerce. So it's a very meaningful event. So appreciate your partnership. Thank you for to the community members who did attend. And Moira thank you for your presentation as well. I saw that our Mayor Pro Tem, Mireya Garcia was out there. I don't know if you have any comments or would like to say a few words?

I just thought it was a great event. The resources that were provided for the community was wonderful and all the participants were able to walk together and we celebrate every victory along with the journey of the breast cancer victims, survivors I should say. Thank you.

Great, thank you again. My mom is personally a survivor so I definitely just stand in solidarity and really just appreciate everybody who showed up and continues to the mission of raising awareness for this cause. So again, thank you so much.

Thank you.

And so now we have the second item which is the Commerce to College Fair. I believe we have our teen librarian, Victoria Perez.

Yes, hi! Good evening honorable mayor and council members. As you said my name is Victoria Perez and I'm the Teen Services Librarian here at the City of Commerce Public Library. I am here today to invite the community to our very wonderful event, our 21st Annual Commerce College Fair that is happening this Saturday October 17th at 10am-1pm. Here at the beautiful Rosewood Library.

The purpose of this event is to connect students, families and community members with valuable information and resources to help them plan for their educational and career goals. We'll be offering a series of workshops from everything ranging in topics from financial aid, college preparation, careers in government information about local colleges, as well as highlighting some of our new college preparation materials that will be available throughout the library giving students and families additional tools to support their college journey. And of course lunch will be provided to everyone who attends.

While this is a really great opportunity for high school students that are starting to think about their future after high school, it's not just for teens. It is open to anyone interested in these topics whether you're exploring college for yourself, supporting the student or considering a career change we encourage everybody to attend. Our goal is to make information and resources more accessible to our community, and encourage everyone to explore all the possibilities available to them.

Thank you for your time and your continued support for all of the services and programs that our library offers our wonderful community. And we look forward to seeing everybody at the Commerce College Fair this Saturday!

Great, Victoria. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. The Commerce and College Fair is the place to be this Saturday, right? And there are a lot of programs and services in Just Office that we have for our youth, right? So this is an event that I look forward to every year just because I like what you've done with the format of this event, right? You know, it used to look a lot different several years ago but now it's more intimate and you also have panels, right, you have a mentorship program And so you're not just really exposing the youth to different collegiate opportunities, right? You know, you're also providing them with resources that they would really need to succeed and thrive. Right? A mentorship, right? Not just the other things that you offer there at the library.

So I really appreciate you coming out to make us aware of the College of Commerce Fair. The Commerce of College Fair is coming Saturday.

This Saturday,

yes. And I will be there.

Thank you!

Okay great, so at this time we will now move on to public comment. At this time members of the public who wish to address

Honorable Mayor and Members of City Council, pull or continue to the next meeting?

Continue to the next meeting.

Seeing none I would move to approve.

Okay so we have a motion to approve items 3 through 5 by Councilwoman Garboyo and a second by Mayor Pro Tem Garcia. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion passes. All right, thank you. Moving on to scheduled matters, item number seven which is a presentation and update from the Sheriff's Department of Public Safety in the City of Commerce and we will have our Sergeant Yang who will be presenting.

Good evening. Before I begin, I just want to do a shout out to my mother-in-law who's also a breast cancer survivor times two actually she's had it twice so i personally have seen the suffering um the difficulties especially with the families it's a collaborative effort with the entire family to get together and at one point we thought she was going to make it so just shout out to all the survivors and those who are going through it you know I encourage you stand strong before I begin Good evening Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members. Thank you for having us tonight. Tonight I'll walk you through our September Public Safety Report for this month's crime statistics, the geographic hotspots, how commerce compares to our neighboring cities and our operational compliance standards.

Let's get started. Crime Statistics Starting with the crime statistics against persons, September saw six incidents five assault related cases and one report of rape On the year we're tracking at 63 incidents versus 72 at the same point last year. Aggravated assaults are specifically down 12.5%. Moving to property crimes, that's robbery, burglary, theft from vehicles and auto theft.

We recorded 67 incidents this month, two robberies, three burglaries, 45 other thefts, one arson and 16 grand theft autos. Last September of this year this number was 106 so we're looking at a reduction about 37%. Putting it all together, we had a total of 799 total incidents year-to-date against 988 last year. A 19.13% decrease in overall criminal activity. So now where is this crime happening?

This map tells a clear story. The city outlets was our, again, number one hotspots and it stayed there consistently through September 1st to the end of the month in both halves of the reporting period. Equally important is when. Our data shows indicates peak on Wednesdays between 6 and 8 p.m. So our team has been changing our deployment, especially during these times to try to combat these areas, especially the city outlets. And it has been fruitful. We've gotten multiple arrests, especially we had one that was wanted by the FBI. We've had another vehicle pursuit and a foot pursuit which ensued to which he had an 85k warrant for felony evading. So we're doing our best to attack this particular area, and our team is going to continuously target the Citadel outlets.

Now next if you go to the next slide sorry that's another one next one So on the screen, you'll see two graphs per city showing East jurisdiction September activity split by first and second half of the month. East Los Angeles unincorporated 7.4 square miles given the sheer volume of reports there, the data covers Grand Theft Auto only for September 16th through the 30th. The most targeted vehicles that were seen were Honda Accords and Hyundai Sonatas.

Next slide. This slide is gonna show from 9-1 to 9-15. It's gonna show city of Maywood, which includes 1.2 square miles, which includes 24 incidents total. Next slide. That's the other half. Next slide. Now we're gonna compare it to City of Cudahy, which includes 1.25 square miles and they had a total of 20 incidents. So these are the incidents from their first half. Next slide. And these are those incidents from the second half.

And lastly, Commerce. We were a total of 6.5 square miles with total of 73 incidents. Commerce is the second largest jurisdiction in this comparison covering more than five times the land area of Maywood or Cadet. Zero crime is always the goal but in context of our footprint and our peer cities, our exposure is proportionally variable. Next I wanna shift from what happened to how we performed. We're gonna talk about operation compliance. Next slide.

So again, this is a new thing that I'm trying to include to show transparency with our department and the City of Commerce and our partnership. Every month LAC schedules sworn minutes for each city we serve. For Commerce in September, we were scheduled 248,386 minutes scheduled. We provided 242,317 minutes. Under our contract, compliance must land between 98% and 102% of scheduled minutes. Our fiscal year resets in June so what you're seeing reflects the three months of data.

For this month we sit slightly below the 98% floor. Year to date we're at 98%. The causes are documented staffing shortages and unforeseen circumstances. Historically we will recover that balance over the fiscal year. And we will continue to monitor these monthly rate. If you go down to the bottom portion, we're going to look at our response capabilities. LASD measures us on three tiers with each with its own target. So the first one is emergent calls again which include life-threatening situations or crime in progress. The target is 10 minutes for the City of Commerce, we've hit 5.4 minutes.

For priority calls which include non-emergent calls which are non-threatening or also includes when a suspect is nearby or an elevated risk Target is 20 minutes for our department. Our actual minutes for commerce is 10.8 minutes. Lastly, the routine calls which include past property crimes report requests and general inquiries are targeted 60 minutes and we hit 60 minutes all three tiers are within policy targets and on the two time uh the most time critical categories were beating the target by a wide margin One more number I want to disclose for the section on the bottom portion is 48 arrests in September for our City of Commerce. We're up from last year which had 38 arrests, so we had an increase of 26.32% which is significant alongside again we had 73 reports that were filed Lastly, if you go to the next section.

Again I just want a reminder that we have a crime mapping tool from LASD. Please if you're interested in to see what's going on in your community or type in your address and this information is always updated at the 23rd of each month so if you're very curious to see what's going on in your city please input the information and go to this website Next slide. I have two more slides, I just want to include two upcoming events and I invite the Council and Mr. Mayor and Pro Tem.

So tomorrow at October 14th at 6 30 we're going to have a neighborhood watch meeting at Barter Street and Elk Road Avenue We invite you guys to connect with the neighbors, the community and to share with Commerce so that they can come down and see if they have any questions. If you go next slide. And lastly we have on Thursday October 22nd I also invite you we have Starbucks Coffee with a Cup. We're featuring our captain, Captain Marchena. He's new to East Los Angeles Station. So if you guys can make it we would greatly appreciate it. Please ask, we want the community to ask questions and share concerns and get to know the deputies who serve you. And again coffee, most important question is coffee is provided so please show up. We would love to host everyone to show up and get to know each other.

Last slide. Any questions?

Sergeant Yang, thank you for the presentation. I really appreciate it. Does the City Council have any questions? Council Member De Boy.

Thank you very much for the updates. I just have a question. So I was looking at the compliance numbers so what's your plan to make up the deficiency in compliance?

Yes, so in order to make up we again it just varies depending on the situation. Like for example we had a huge event with Dodgers right that's another big deal we're dealing with or any issues with Commerce Center So what we usually do is that in order to make up, we would work more hours and or like doing a crime suppression. We would use those minutes to supplement any criminal activity as needed for the City of Commerce

And that's logged in to, who's, that's logged in where?

So it's logged into our system. So every deputy that logs onto the shift has minutes that they have to account for and so each is, it's logged into our system and as a supervisor I get to see which, who's logging into what time and that way again we can dictate hey We're losing minutes, we need to add more hours and that's where our team comes in. Where we can come in and especially this week we've done a lot of crime suppression. We attempted as much as possible. We saturated the neighborhoods and tried to reach out to our communities so there's different ways to account for those minutes but that's how we

do

it.

If I may add, Honorable Mayor and Members of City Council. With regards to the minutes, I do want to commend Sergeant Yang and the Captain. We had been asking for this for some time and were not provided and now we are getting them. So, and I appreciate the Sergeant basically saying that he's monitoring, he's trying to ensure compliance but the onus is on us Part of the reason our new public safety manager is with the city is he has a lot of experience with regards to ensuring compliance, right? And so it's a checks and balances, right? The sergeant on his end tries to do whatever. But if there's months that we are deficient, right, we absolutely try to seek what is the policing model minimum, right. As Sergeant said, there's times before more after but obviously our goal is to at least get our minimum which is provided to us now on a regular basis.

But I do want to be clear, the onus is on us to manage that contract.

Okay thank you because that was going to be my next question city manager and he kind of stole my thunder. I did want to commend you for um you know we have been asking for this for a while especially the mapping of the hot spots so thank you very much for really listening to our questions and our concerns and really bringing that information forward. Thank you so much. Of course thank you.

Thank you Councilwoman any other questions or comments from the City Council?

Yes, Sergeant. Thank you. Appreciate your presentation and the forthcoming of the information that has been requested and we were able to quickly respond and react and provide it. And in terms of making up any deficiencies with the time for me I think it's about utilizing that time making enough appropriate manner, meaning being a little more strategic in terms of deploying them and making that up in that way. Where I see the hotspots, where we see problems, maybe deploying it for more visibility and also in making more contact with members of the community and protecting those who are homeless.

Thank you. And I know that I recently had some areas that I have reported I appreciate the response. I know that we didn't get as many results as we wanted, but I want to make sure that we stay on top of that area. That has been a problem for the folks over in the Vandini area so hopefully we'll be able to minimize the problems that we're having there. So thank you, appreciate everything

Thank you Councilman. Sergeant, really appreciate the transparency in reporting the minutes. I also appreciate the passion to serve and honor the contract. It means a lot so just getting that data in front of us is really important right? My question is pretty simple does the department have the capacity to make up the gap between now and the end of the year?

Oh, absolutely. We are the largest sheriff's department in the world so I don't think we're going to have any issues fulfilling that capacity. I know that we are working a lot of overtime and deputies are working but in terms for us, I don t think we re gonna have an issue with the other compliance minutes.

Okay, because I didn't calculate the year-to-date numbers but I know just for the month of September there's a gap of 96 hours. Now understood that spread across multiple decades right? Correct. So we get that to get that but I just want to make sure that we do have capacity to honor the contract and get to 100 right here. I know the councilman talked about ending park area, but also you can just focus on that part-time veterans park. As you know there's been vandalism and some crime out there for sure. I know your team is on top of it, but it continues to be an issue particularly with neon watchers so we can just look into that Maybe taking some of those minutes and applying it over there, that would be a great help. Of course.

Okay, but thank you for your report. We'll see you in the next meeting. Thank you. Okay so now

Senior Analyst Natalie Hernandez will present

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. Tonight I will be presenting the city's El Nino Preparedness and Storm Response Plan. At the September 22nd City Council meeting, council emphasized the importance of being proactive in ensuring that the city has the appropriate resources, staffing, and procedures in place should we experience significant storm activity.

In response, staff has been coordinating across city departments and with our local and regional partners to prepare for the upcoming storm season. To provide some background on El Nino and the weather conditions anticipated in the upcoming months, myself and several staff participated in a LA County El Nino Preparedness Workshop last week. During the workshop, meteorologists indicated that El Nino conditions are anticipated to peak during the late fall and winter months particularly between December 2026 and February 2027.

LA County is also taking a coordinated multi-departmental approach to storm preparedness, bringing together Public Works, Public Safety and other county agencies to ensure appropriate resources, staffing and emergency response procedures are in place ahead of potential significant weather events. The City of Commerce Preparedness Plan is also focusing on several key areas, emergency staffing and response, public works and storm preparedness, resident resources, emergency shelter operations and communication.

The goal is to make sure we are prepared before a storm arrives that departments understand the responsibilities and that we can quickly adjust staffing and resources based on weather conditions. City staff have also been actively participating in El Nino meetings and workshops to stay informed about available resources, emergency response procedures and regional preparedness efforts.

These opportunities allow staff to better understand what assistance may be available to the city and its residents, strengthen our coordination with partner agencies and ensure we can provide City Council and the community with accurate timely information before, during and after significant storm events. The Rosewood Library is also offering an El Nino Disaster Readiness Workshop for the community hosted by the Red Cross on Monday November 9th at 1030 a.m.

So for public safety staff will monitor weather forecasts up to seven days in advance During inclement weather, the Public Safety Manager will be on duty or readily available along with two additional public safety officers who can assist with weather-related calls. For LASD, the Commerce Special Assignment Sergeant will also be on duty or readily available during significant weather events.

Two of our SAO deputies may be flexed as needed while our regular commerce line deputies will continue responding to active 911 emergencies. LASD will also help identify and communicate any weather-related frauds or scams that may target residents. LA County Fire will continue responding to emergency calls through 9-1-1, and will also assist with identifying sandbag resources for the community. Next slide please.

Public Works has been actively preparing equipment and resources for potential heavy rainfall. During forecasted periods of significant rain, Public Works will maintain 24-7 standby coverage and schedule additional or overnight crews. Staff will continue conducting inspections of underpass pumps and maintaining portable 4 inch emergency pumps and hoses to ensure they are ready for deployment.

Also, the City's underpass pump maintenance vendor is on call if needed. Public Works crews will also monitor roadway conditions during and following storm events and address critical potholes and pavement damage resulting from heavy rainfall. Additionally, staff will have barriers, barricades and other storm response equipment readily available. The City currently has 10 concrete barriers and approximately 100 barricades available for roadway closures and traffic control, and will also be readily available if public safety needs to assist with any of those road closures and traffic control.

Another important change we are recommending is increasing our professional catch basin cleaning from quarterly to monthly during the El Nino season. The most recent catch basin cleaning was completed in August, and the City would like to increase the cleaning frequency from quarterly to monthly beginning in November and continuing through February or through the end of El Nino season as conditions arise.

Approximately 100 catch basin hotspots have been identified throughout the city with an estimated cleaning cost of $40 per catch basin totaling approximately $4500 per monthly cycle. In addition, our street maintenance crews will continue inspecting catch basin openings and grates every Friday and removing debris to help maintain proper drainage and reduce localized flooding.

Tree maintenance will also continue with advanced tree trimming with the Bandini neighborhood, street medians and right-of-ways identified as priority areas. However public works will continue to prioritize and promptly address trees identified as high risk to help minimize potential hazards during significant storm events. Staff will also remain in direct communication with LA County Public Works to coordinate response efforts and request additional resources if needed.

For residents who may need assistance protecting their properties from the rainstorm, the City has prepared approximately 500 filled sandbags totaling 10 pallets at the Public Works city yard. Sandbags will be available to residents at a limit of ten per household with proof-of-city residency required and Public Works will also refill sandbags as needed. Filled sandbags are also available at Fire Station 39 in Bell Gardens with a limit of 10 per person, and empty sandbags are available at fire stations 22, 27 and 50 here in Commerce. And there's also with the limit of 10 per person.

These locations will be communicated to residents as part of our preparedness outreach. Next slide please. Another major component of the plan is establishing a temporary emergency shelter if conditions require one. The Rosewood meeting room at the Brenda Villa Aquatic Center has been identified as the city's temporary shelter location. Upon activation in the direction of the City Manager, Parks and Recreation will coordinate activation procedures, staffing responsibilities, facility access, supplies after-hour contacts and opening closing procedures.

If the shelter needs to be activated, the City will also notify the American Red Cross. The American Red Cross can provide staffing and manage shelter operations at no cost to the City including providing food, water, COTS and other shelter-related assistance. Communication will also be a critical component of the City's emergency preparedness and response efforts before, during and after significant storm events.

The City will provide timely preparedness information, safety reminders and storm-related updates through its official social media platforms and Nixle. We also encourage residents to sign up for Nixle, the city's community wide alert system to receive important local emergency notifications and updates directly. Staff is also developing an emergency communication toolkit, which will include a series of educational posts and public outreach materials to help residents prepare for potential storms.

Understand available resources and clarify what services and assistance the city can and cannot provide during storm related emergencies. Additionally, we will encourage residents to register for Alert LA County to receive regional emergency alerts and important public safety notifications directly. Staff will also maintain updated emergency preparedness information on the City's website and distribute informational handouts and other outreach materials as appropriate.

Our overall goal is to ensure residents receive clear, consistent and timely information so they can take proactive steps to prepare and remain informed throughout the storm season. So moving forward staff will continue coordinating with City Departments, the American Red Cross and our other partner agencies. We will continue monitoring conditions, refining the plan, maintaining our equipment and drainage systems and keeping preparedness information available to the community.

Currently there is no immediate fiscal impact associated with receiving and filing the El Nino Preparedness Plan with the exception of potential additional costs associated with increasing the cash-based cleaning from quarterly to monthly as a preventative measure during the anticipated storm season. So tonight, staff is recommending that City Council receive and file the preparedness plan and provide any additional discussion.

Myself and staff from the various departments involved in developing the El Nino Preparedness Plan are present this evening and available to answer any questions.

If I may add, this is going to be a continuous kind of live not only campaign but like series of documents. Part of what we will also do is work very closely with ARAE the County Emergency Preparedness Group. We don't know exactly how bad it's gonna be obviously you've seen the footage from Long Beach and Newport all the beach coastal cities are experiencing pretty devastating impacts right now Fortunately or unfortunately, we don't have a beach in commerce but there certainly will be related storm problems that we're going to have. And so we're advancing pre-trimming, we're advancing drain cleaning what we can to do be preventative but we will also really try to focus on a public information campaign so that the public knows what they can depend on the city and what they have to prepare on their own because I think it's sometimes confusing as to who's responsible for what right?

And again, I think as the what they're anticipating right now is anywhere from December to February this actually becoming a real problem for our communities. We will work closely with the county and the state on anything that's a benefit to this community. And again, you know between now and then anything the City Council feels we should do to prepare better or that we would like to see that you could certainly speak to it tonight and you can speak to it between now and when this disaster is expected to hit.

Great, thank you for that Mr. City Manager and Natalie thank you for the presentation as well as all staff who had a hand in developing this plan. Does the city council have any questions?

Thank you so much Natalie. This is a very detailed report, so thank you for all the work that went into this. I do have a question about the tree inventory. A few years ago, I had requested a tree inventory when they had a big disaster in a neighboring city where one of their diseased trees fell at a park on top of a family You know, there was a death that occurred.

Do we have the tree inventory, a recent one of all of our trees here in Commerce especially the ones at the park? Those are the ones that seem to like have branches falling kind of on a regular basis. So I would like to see that. I would like to see also for us to look at the tree inventory and figure out what the next step is Do we have to red tag an area where we know that there's a mature tree that has potential to fall, right? And make sure that people are not in that area. So I would like to see that. I want us to be more proactive and reactive as it relates to our trees. We do have a beautiful tree canopy here in the city but that also kind of poses a danger. It can pose a danger so I want us to kind of emphasize that look into that And then City Manager, I'm assuming our EOC has been updated with software like it's ready to go for use correct?

No. Okay that needs

to

be done like yesterday.

We are as you know the city received a grant and so it's in construction phase right we would certainly have a backup plan in case this time happens and it's not ready But already we're making it available to some of the regional emergency repair folks so that we can kind of address any needs that we are going to need ourselves. Okay, so it's getting kind of trial basis for their planning but as far as the basics we can certainly do that outside of that facility but the goal is and I don't know if we have a construction timeline Andy's here or not but you know it was a grant that we received last year and so it's in the process of being completed

Yeah, I think for me more than anything it's like making sure we have the Wi-Fi capacity. Like the things that we're going to need should it be open is going to be the Wi Fi. It's going to be other signals for the radios like those are the basic things that need to be updated and that needs to be... I mean construction can wait but we're gonna need those basic things should we need to use the EOC so I would like to see that. Thank you so much Adam.

Thank you Councilwoman, Councilman Argomeda. Yeah Natalie thank you appreciate the presentation that you just made and thank everybody who contributed to it. I just want to follow up on some items once again we did have a little bit of rain this past weekend and I did see the storm drains again there was a lot of debris right away stuff just comes down goes right in there Unfortunately, I know that the design of the storm drains is designed to catch a lot of that stuff but it also catches it now. Not to mention the stuff that's in there and you mentioned that there's a process in place to clean them. Have you guys cleaned them already?

Correct, so staff is currently maintaining them every Friday. Public works staff is going inspecting them every Friday but with the vendor we're going to have them cleaned. They currently is quarterly but we're gonna change it to monthly to clean it so that the debris or anything there is gonna be cleaned out appropriately The other

part that I wanted to hear about is and i asked at the last meeting this these are the same items that I brought up last time. I want to know what the plan is to keep them clear during these storms in other words we need to have somehow we need to get folks out there on a regular basis going through where I'll definitely connect with the Public Works team and making sure that if they see that it's... I can answer that.

We've already talked about doubling our emergency team, right during this period of time. And we've already addressed the reached out to the contractor with regards to going from quarterly to monthly to potentially even bi-weekly on because what they do is they clean drainage beyond the surface level. Our staff can do that right but this is going into the actual system to you know remove all the clogs But we will already, we're going to have a contingency plan for our emergency staff to be ready to go and we're just going to double it up initially right. And if we need more well during this period of time you know we depending on the gravity we may staff may come to City Council to declare an emergency right? And that would allow staff to contract and do whatever we need to do to keep the community safe And full of issues related to this disaster, right?

But we've already put in place certain things. We've already contracted the contractor that does the drainage to go from quarterly. This would have been done now and then at the end of the start of 2027. So we're going to monthly and if that's not enough, what we're gonna do by weekly. But as far as the issue you're talking about after every rain at the main level of the ground level drains are gonna be clogged up because of the drainage right? So we can address that as staff so it's a combination of what maintenance folks can do and what the contractor can do to do a deeper clean if you want to call it that.

Not much different from a plumbing kind A process when restaurants get clogged with grease and all those kinds of things. They get stuck in the mechanisms that the county has put in place. We've also reached out to County Public Works, right? To see if there's anything we can do in advance of their normal schedule maintenance.

Great, thank you. I also wanted to follow up on a video that was made by the Sanitation District and I asked it to be shared with all of everybody that's represented by the Sanitation District which they did. I in addition asked our staff to share with the Public Works Department and I thought it was a great video so that they become familiar with something probably already familiar with them but Okay.

And I think it's important for them to view that community as a team, so they're prepared to run into or see some of those situations and be able to address them. Also who to contact in the context of what we have in the sanitation industry. So I want to make sure that happens. Please let me know when that is scheduled to be moved through. Thank you for your comments, Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you. Mine's more of a comment. I want to thank you for taking the proactive approach for preparing for El Nino and the locations for the standby resources. I know that takes a lot of work to close doors, so I want to commend you for that. Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem, thank you for your comments. You know a lot of my concerns or things that I wanted to flag have already been mentioned but we do want to make sure that we are inspecting and clearing out the storm drains and drainage channels to catch patients especially at cul-de-sacs and low lying streets right? The Atlantic right by the bridge to the future.

is notorious right for being flooded and having to be closed. Right so I don't think that monthly is frequent enough, so I think we should really look into that to see what we can do to mitigate that issue. I think we should be doing follow-up inspections after every storm or prioritize streets. I know it's probably big bear to do it for every storm but I would look at that.

I would also just sidewalks, roads, public facilities or just unstable limbs or root problems because even this past the weekend before last when it rained you know when it was really windy I was getting text messages on Saturday night right letting me know that hey there's a tree that fell on a traverse. It seems to be a recurring issue every time we have someone here in the city. So I'll double down on what you said Councilwoman but especially near sidewalks, roads, parks, public facilities, I would take a look at that and really get a handle on what that looks like right?

We talked about the EOC, so yes Wi-Fi, backlight power, communication tools and emergency lighting equipment. That's all very important but what I would also like to see is could we look into establishing procedures for checking on older adults people with disabilities residents who need transportation assistance Right, I think it's important for us to be around and be available to support those people. And you know just in case of emergency right so I would like to see that we talked about coordination with surrounding agencies so I think that's great it sounds like there will be kind of a cheat sheet or some type of communication given out to the public letting them know who to call for different And I think that's something that we should be able to kind of put a magnet on in the refrigerator and just have at their disposal.