Town Hall Meeting

Monterey Park Mayor Peter Chan hosted a Town Hall Meeting on March 12th at the Brightwood Elementary School Auditorium.

Mayor Pro Tem Hans Liang, Councilmember Mitch Ing, Councilmember Teresa Real Sebastian, City Clerk Vince Chang and City Manager Ron Bow also met with the residents.

Mayor Chan thanked the residents for attending this meeting. He also thanked the city manager, city staff and the Alhambra School District for the meeting place.

He explained that the city needs funds to improve the parking lots, fill the potholes and provide for other city services without raising the taxes.

Our Market Place is highly successful with many residents from other cities shopping in our city, instead of our residents going outside of our hometown to shop.

Yes, there is more traffic on the streets near this shopping center but that is a good thing for us.  These people are bringing in more sales tax dollars to Monterey Park.

The Market Place still has more stores being developed on the site that is a 500,000 square foot center near the 60 Freeway.

The Courtyard by Marriott is a 298-room hotel that is six stories high. It is located at Hellman and North Atlantic next to the 10 Freeway. The city will be collecting a 12% bed tax for our general funds when it opens later this year.

The Towne Centre, a mixed-use project, will be located at the Garvey and Garfield intersection, across the street from Bank of America. They are waiting for our General Plan Update to proceed on this project.

The next new project should be a mixed-use project at the current location of the Hong Kong Supermarket site, located at 127 North Garfield.

The audience was treated to the Monterey Park Film that was created to highlight the benefits of living, shopping and locating your business in the city.

Mayor Chan spoke about our General Plan Update that is a “blueprint” for our city’s future. It is a 20-year plan for the future. We need to make more money for the city’s services with new stores, new restaurants and new housing to be located in our hometown.

Currently the Council has created a General Plan Advisory Committee with 11 members of the community to help created our new General Plan. This ad-hoc committee will exam and recommend changes.

The General Plan will update our ordinances and set a new vision of our city.  It will address changes to the State law on how-to address housing, mobility, climate change and environmental justice.

The residents will have several chances for their input into their vision of Monterey Park at Public Hearings.

The city will have a website dedicated to the General Plan Update in the near future.

The Market Place and the new hotels will help keep us a successful city.

Mayor Chan announced since the 710 Freeway extension is dead the State is scheduled to return the Measure R funds to all of the cities.  Monterey Park is scheduled to receive $60 million to build three parking structures and $31 million to repair our streets.

The cities are working on a regional plan on how to control all the traffic since the cars will be traveling on the streets in Monterey Park, Rosemead, San Gabriel and Montebello with the end of the 710 Freeway in Alhambra.

Mayor Chan spoke about the young people who can’t afford to purchase a home in Monterey Park since the prices are so high.  The State allows Granny Flats (a second smaller house on R-1 lots). The Council voted that any Granny Flats must meet all of the city’s housing guidelines.

Mixed use projects could provided additional housing for people looking to move into Monterey Park since we are located close to Downtown Los Angeles between the 710, 10 and 60 Freeways.

We have a few homeless people in our city so the city is working with the County to help provide them with a place to live.

The city is working on putting up Solar Panels at the City Hall, the Library and Langley Center.

The city is working on saving the rainwater for future use.

Mayor Chan reminded the residents that we need more new businesses to move into our city to provide us with more sales tax dollars. We need to rebuild new buildings in our downtown area and build on our vacant lots to provide more property tax dollars.

We need to have a balanced budget and to provide great services to our residents.

Mayor Chan thanked the residents for attending this meeting.