Citizen About Town

By Nancy C Arcuri, Editor and Publisher

Email: nancyarcuri@thecitizensvoice.net

Congratulations to Mayor Hans Liang and Mayor Pro Tem Mitch Ing!  You are doing a wonderful job serving our Monterey Park. Thank you Peter Chan for serving as our mayor for the last nine and one-half months. You did a wonderful job. Stephen Lam and Teresa Real Sebastian thank you for your wonderful service to our community.

I know that our Monterey Park family does not always see eye to eye on issues like Voting by District and the Districts with open seats in the 2020 election.

When the Sacramento bullies threatened us with taking away our ability to establish our residential zoning laws. We all stood up together and told these bullies to forget it.

Have we heard any more of the Legislative bills that would destroy our hometown?

Now some of these Sacramento tyrants want to destroy our Prop 13 that protects all property owners from excessive property tax.

Currently Prop 13 only allows the property tax to be increased by 2% per year based on the original sales price.

Bonds issues for schools, parks and libraries if approved by the voters can increase our property taxes.

Yet some Sacramento bullies want to force us to pay higher and higher taxes because they are not using our tax dollars to improve our quality of life in California.

They are too busy creating ridiculous laws like making our California a Sanctuary state, taking our legislative powers away from our hometowns, not obeying our Federal laws and demanding any candidate running on the March 2020 Presidential preliminary ballot turn over six years of Federal Tax Returns for them to review.

The California voters are not stupid, as these tyrants believe us to be.

Maybe all of these Sacramento elected officials should disclose their Federal Tax Returns for the last six years to us, the voters, before we let them run for our state offices.

Now candidates running for our council seats, city clerk and city treasurer are required to be 18 years old, a registered voter and a Monterey Park resident.

Our Monterey Park election laws should be amended to require any council candidates must be a resident of their District for at least one year, serving the   public as city commissioner, school board member, volunteering at the library, or Langley Center or the Boys Scout or the Girls Scouts or the Boys and Girls Club or at the Y, or at their churches or their schools.

These candidates should be educated on the history of our Monterey Park before they run for any elected offices in our hometown.

They should also want to continue improving our life by adding more businesses with sales taxes and more hotels with bed taxes to cover all the services enjoyed by our independent city.

What changes are we making to our election laws if no candidate runs in a District with an open seat? Will the current Council appoint a voter in that District? Are the residents of that District going to have any input into this procedure?

What a mess the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project and Attorney Shenkman have caused in Monterey Park by forcing us to vote by Districts to promote one cultural group over all of many cultural groups living in our hometown.

If you are interested in serving our hometown and live in Districts two, three and four be sure you speak to our City Clerk’s office about the requirements to run for City Council.

It will be interesting to see who will be governing our city after the 2020 election.

The City Clerk’s seat, the City Treasurer’s and Council seats in Districts one and five will be opened in the 2022 City Elections.

Please be sure that you know all of the facts before you sign the Recall Petitions against Peter Chan and Hans Liang.

Supporters of Mitch Ing and Teresa Real Sebastian claim corruption and blamed Judy Chu and Mike Eng, who support Peter Chan, Hans Liang and Stephen Lam as their reasons for this recall.

The simplest definition is: “Corruption is the misuse of public power (by elected politician or appointed civil servant) for private gain.”

I don’t believe that donating funds to a candidate or endorsing a candidate is a case of corruption.

If this is their belief of the Ing and Real Sebastian supporters are also guilty of corruption by donating funds to them and endorsing them for their Council seats.

Maybe their attorney should explain the facts of political corruption to their clients.

They cannot recall Stephen Lam from District two because his seat will be opened in the 2020 Election.

In reality it is because of the Redistricting Map that we had to adopt and was voted in law by all five of our Councilmember based on the 2010 Census numbers.

The map has placed Han Liang who will be termed out in 2022 and Mitch Ing who will have finished serving his third term in 2020 in District one so that District will not have an opened seat until 2022.

The map has placed Peter Chan who will be termed out in 2022 and Teresa Real Sebastian who will have finished serving her second term in 2020 in District five so that District will not have an opened seat until 2022.

Maybe it is time for Mitch Ing and Teresa Real Sebastian, who should have been termed out when the majority of the voting residents passed the 2013 Termed Out law. They claimed that the law was going forward and their Council seats were safe from the Termed Out law as long as the voters reelected them.

Their point of view does not set well with some of the voting residents who believe that the two-term law was for all of our elected officials in Monterey Park.