Citizen About Town

By Nancy C Arcuri, Editor and Publisher

Email: nancyarcuri@thecitizensvoice.net

At Oral Communication during the May 17^th meeting, I asked for a progress report on the property located at 126  N New Avenue that was slated for development with 60 residential units.

The last I heard about this project was the developer was waiting on the final decisions on our zoning.

Do you know anything about this property site?

I also asked the Council if they had any leads on businesses being proposed for the South Atlantic shopping center that houses the Ralph’s store.

This property has many vacant stores that could be enlarged to bring in new stores or restaurants into our hometown.

This South Atlantic Shopping Center was one of the many shopping centers that provided our city with much needed sales taxes.

I have heard that the rent is higher at this location so that maybe the reason for all of the empty stores.

The  shops at the Prado Shopping Center across the street seems to be fully occupied.

Can our Council and city staff help us attract more businesses to our hometown?

If our Council and residents need to understand our Planning process you need to attend our Planning Commission meetings to better understand why and how their planning decisions are made for our city.

Councilmember Vinh Ngo answered my question on the New Avenue project on May 20^th during our Fire Service Day.

He said the developer is planning to build 77 townhomes on that parcel of land and has his plans in Plan Check for approval.

I hope the project is approved as our hometown could use the additional property taxes to pay for our wonderful city’s services.

Yes, traffic will be heaver on New Avenue since is it a major artery to the 10 Freeway on the north end of our city.

I hope they put another traffic light at the corner of N New Avenue and Whitmore Street to help ease the flow of traffic on New Avenue.

On June 7th the City Council had a Closed Meeting before the regular meeting.

Mayor Jose Sanchez announced the Ron Bow our City Manager will be retiring on July 7^th. Assistance City Manager Inez Alvarez will be our Acting City Manager until the City Council decides to fill the job with a new City Manager.

During a recess at the meeting, I thanked Ron Bow for his service. I welcomed him into a well-deserved retirement.

I also told Inez Alvarez that she has my vote to be hired as our new city manager.

City Attorney Karl Berger announced the Mayor Pro Tem Thomas Wong was cleared by the Fair Political Practices Commission to speak and vote on this project. Their approval was required since Thomas Wong works for Southern California Edison who has a power plant located at the same location as the Market Place.

During June 7^th meeting  I spoke on Agenda 4-E A public hearing to consider the following: 1) Zoning Code Amendment (ZCA-23-03) to adopt the Market Place Specific Plan (SP-23-01);  2) Zone Change (ZA-23-01) to re-zone properties from the Regional
Specialty Center (R-S) zone with the Planned Development Overlay
(P-D) zone to the Market Place Specific Plan (MPSP) zone; and 3)
Development Agreement (DA-23-01) to amend in its entirety a
Development Agreement between Monterey Park Retail Partners, LLC
and the City of Monterey Park for properties collectively operating as
the Monterey Park Market Place, located at 2000-5500 Market Place
Drive, also identified by Assessor’s Parcel Numbers 5275-003-024,
025, , 027, 029, 030, 031, 037, and 038.

The staff and a representative for the developer provided information on the requested zone change with two slide shows and very good explanations on the new layout of the Market Place.

I spoke in support of this zone change. I thanked the Councilmembers for bring this agenda item back to the table for discussion.

I believe that these zoning changes to our Market Place will benefit our hometown with an additional increase in our property taxes and an additional increase in our sales taxes to support our city’s services.

Please vote YES to amend the Market Place Specific Plan with the zoning changes.

The Council had a short discussion on this agenda item before all five of them voted to approve the zoning changes to the Market Place.

Our City Council all thanked Ron Bow for his service to our city. They all said that they will miss him.