Citizen About Town

By Nancy C. Arcuri, Editor and Publisher

E-mail: nancyarcuri@thecitizensvoice.net

Fax: 626-307-9081

My hometown of Monterey Park is having several issues that the residents can’t believe City Manager Paul Talbot and City Attorneys Mark Hensley and Karl Berger are running our city without the knowledge of our city’s history.

In the early days Monterey Park had residents growing crops in the hills and valleys.  It was called dry farming.  Next to Garvey Ranch Park where the Metropolitan Water District built their reservoir people watched the cows come home from grazing on the hillsides. Land was dirt-cheap. The city fathers built our water works and water tanks in the hills. They built the pumps over our water wells in Rosemead.

We had a very prosperous downtown area with Mom and Pop businesses.  Our city leaders in the 1960s and 1970s decided to reduce the commercial size lots to keep out big box stores on Garvey Avenue like Sears. Their legacy has caused more problems in developing large shops in that area.

In the 1970s and 1980s developers built up most of the vacant lots in the city.  Some developers crowded condos into lots that are 100 feet by 300 feet. They overcrowded our city so we passed laws controlling number of units and zoning changes.

Our one time bedroom community is now the First Suburban Chinatown with Chinese language business signs in the downtown area.

Monterey Park has a history that our elected officials and city officials need to study and understand why we want English subtitles on our business signs and we don’t want to be crowded out of our hometown.

We have purchased property for our city’s parking lots and city yard over the years.  We want to know why we have to sell it and spend more money to purchase yet another site.

During the August 7 Council Meeting they decided to make some important changes in our city’s investment policy.

The biggest change would be for Monterey Park to invest in the Los Angeles County Investment Pool, which has many risky investments.

The Council decided they need more information on the County Pool after a lengthy discussion, voted to ask staff for more information and carried it over to the August 21 meeting.

On August 21 I addressed Item 13 the 2012-2013 Annual Investment Report: This Council will be making a financial decision that will affect our financial future.  You are being asked to change our investment policy to allow more risky investments of our hard earned tax dollars.

LAIF or the Local Agency Investment Fund guarantees all of our funds invested with them are backed 100% by the State and can be withdrawn with a 24-hour notice without penalty.  Currently we have $51,556,401 invested with them, which is the bulk of our assets.

We do have CDs worth $4,729,000 and other collateralized savings funds worth $20,112,716 invested in other financial institutions, which are guaranteed by our federal government.

Now you are being requested to change our investment policy to allow risky investments under the guidance of the County Treasury Pool.

I recall that Orange County risked their funds playing the stock market and were forced to file bankruptcy.

Our sister city of Montebello has problems with their current investments.

Monterey Park residents are conservative and are not willing to risk losing any of their assets as stated by 64.1% of the voters in the July election.

We expect our city and our money to be kept save and sound by our elected officials, city manager, city attorney and staff.

Please do not risk our financial future by voting to change our safe and sane investment policy.

The Council had additional discussions and voted to agree to extend the terms of our CD accounts to keep our money safe and sound.  They were unsure of investing in the County Pool until they receive more data from the County Treasurer.  They all agreed not to invest our city funds in risky investment like Bankers Acceptance, Commercial Paper and Repurchase Agreements with the County Pool.

Our City Council voted to amend the city’s investment policy with safeguards. They will review the County Pool before they make any investments with them in the future.

The business sign issue is still a hot topic that should be discussed and voted on during the October 2 meeting.  Council is waiting for input from several outside legal sources regarding their opinions if requiring English on the Chinese business signs is unconstitutional.

I reminded them during Oral Communications at the September 4 meeting: History does repeat itself in Monterey Park.  After English was voted as the Official Language of California in 1986 the sitting City Council requested English subtitles be place on all of the Chinese language business signs for health and safety reasons so we could report any 911 emergencies. The addition of English on the signs helped to promote our commerce.

Everything was going smoothly until our current city attorneys decided that we could be sued for requiring English on the business signs based on litigation from another state.

Since Monterey Park is the First Suburban Chinatown the attorneys should have conferred with the Los Angeles or San Francisco city attorneys on their business sign laws for their Chinatown businesses.

The residents have never heard of any lawsuits filed against Monterey Park for their business sign requirement of English subtitles.

Now our current city attorneys have opened Pandora’s box by requiring the signs have the Modern Latin Alphabet instead of English.

Residents and some of the news media did not realize that means using our English ABCs on the signs.

The old law, which did not cause us any legal problems, should be reinstated for the business signs.

Since our city attorneys are hired to protect Monterey Park they should not have caused this emotional conflict over our business signs.

Yes history does repeat itself in our hometown.

Please attend the October 2 meeting to voice your opinion.  After all Monterey Park is our hometown and our opinion does matter during the meetings and at the ballot box.

Item 6 Sale of City Property was on the agenda authorizing the city manager to execute an exclusive negotiation agreement between the city and City Ventures, LLC.

City Manger Paul Talbot stated this is the first step to see if it is feasible to develop a large portion of our city yard into a residential neighborhood and move our current city yard to another unnamed site in the city.  Council will not be selling the property tonight.

The developer is to pay for the new city yard and the construction of the workshops, storage areas and other required equipment with the purchase price of the city yard.

City Ventures, LLC, the developer has built several new homes in Alhambra, which is Mr. Talbot’s hometown.  They reduced the number of homes from 35 to 25 after a meeting with 18 residents of the area.  Most of the residents in the city were not notified of this meeting, which will affect all of us with traffic, schools and city services.

This venture has to be approved by the voters for the zone change since the property is over an acre per our city laws.

Mr. Talbot stated the developers would be paying for any election costs on this project.

I spoke out against sell our city yard to a developer for 25 single-family homes. History does repeat itself again as this Council is busy selling our city owned property to yet another developer. This time it is the possible sale of the majority of our city yard.  The city will still own our water works located in the yard.

Any time you sell a property that we own we will have to purchase another property for a parking lot or city yard that will cost us more money.

You are selling our property and you are spending our money.

We the residents should approve the sale of any city property. We need a new law, based on Measure J that requires a vote by the residents, who own our city property, be held before any city property is sold.

We have a law that no Council can sell our city parks to any developer.

We hope this Council is not thinking about selling our Water District or our library.

Will this Council’s legacy be that you cut up and sold our city property to developers piece by piece without regard to the wishes of the taxpaying voters?

The best moment of this meeting was when the Council voted to give MERCI $42,150 in unused CDBG government funds.  The chamber was filled with MERCI families and friends to request the Council please help MERCI to complete their project on Chandler.

MERCI provides a valuable service to our developmentally disabled residents.

They thanked the Council and staff and asked them to please continue your partnership with MERCI and provide them with financial assistance with any available government funds and donations in the years to come.

Monterey Park’s motto is “Pride in the Past” which we have. “Faith in the Future” is still opened for debate.

Please pay attention to your hometown’s government since it is a small slice of our county, state and federal governments.

The taxpaying voters may not be able to resolve every issue but we can speak up and vote our opinions at the ballot box in every election.