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BY BRIAN HEWS • April 20, 2020
The Cerritos City Council has called a special meeting for today at 2 p.m., it is unclear why, and it is causing angst among City employees with rumors flying around that the City will furlough employees.
Adding to the angst, there is a regular City Council meeting that has been scheduled for this Thursday April 23.
There is only one item on the agenda, and that is the “review and consideration to reduce the increasing deficit of the Fiscal Year 2019-2020 Combined Financial Budget in response to accelerated economic impacts due to the COVID-19 emergency.”
When informed of the meeting, HMG-LCCN sent the entire City Council an email why the special meeting was called, and if they were contemplating budget cuts.
A source inside City Hall informed HMG-LCCN about a letter calling for the meeting, and it was apparent to the source that the letter did not come from the City Manager’s office.
The source indicated the letter was from the Office of Mayor Solanki dated April 17 containing the following: “Section 408 gives authority to the Mayor and/or three members of the Council to call for a special meeting. As Mayor, and by the Councilmembers, signed below, we are scheduling a special meeting for April 20, 2020.
Since the letter was sent April 17, it is highly doubtful City Manager Art Gallucci knew about the meeting and thus will be unprepared to answer questions from Council, adding to the peculiarity of the hastily-called meeting.
The City Clerk’s office later confirmed that the Mayor called the meeting.
Cerritos Councilman Frank Aurelio Yokoyama, the only Councilmember to answer HMG-LCCN’s email, said, “I was informed about this special meeting on Friday [April 17]. I haven’t received any reports or memos for this meeting. I don’t understand what is so urgent for this special meeting that it couldn’t wait until Thursday’s regularly scheduled meeting.”
HAPPY 64TH ANNIVERSARY TO CERRITOS.
R-Vs-D, were going to have this resistance until next election. CCC has more or less silence, which is not a good idea, when the city is heading in to some very severe landscape climate for economical financing.
http://cerritos.granicus.com/GeneratedAgendaViewer.php?view_id=15&event_id=1339
Residents need to know how our sales tax revenue is holding up to this pandemic. Residents need to know about the budget today, compares to the budget in the early 70’s, before the auto mall and Los Cerritos Mall tax stream started actually to produce. City is a real estate landlord and many business are not going to be able to meet their lease financial agreements, so the city has to works on many modifications to the leases at: Cerritos Town Center and Cerritos Auto Mall.
Thank god city has reduced/ illuminated many social programs, but we need to look at furlough the CCPA, Library and LASD contract. Least 30% of the staff must be eliminated too. NO one in their rite mind are going to frequent CCPA or the Library, until we have a vaccine in place, which could take yrs.in the making.
Annual budge study session May 2020, is going to be long long and should be spread out over a couple of evenings, to do due diligence by the CCC, as this will be the roughest budget to be past in last 64 Yrs of Cerritos History.
Last week was another shameful event, CCC had no public hearings and the residents of the city want to know how the city is fairing the pandemic times.
CCC has not informed us, how many construction projects are put on hold plus how many business are permanently closing.
Are NW programs handing out face masks or doing a food banking or coop market shopping during this pandemic.?
http://cerritos.granicus.com/GeneratedAgendaViewer.php?view_id=15&event_id=1182
Where was Jimmy Edwards, not seen him in person since elected. Solanki, well was he sitting on a tack or what, he acted so upset and mad.
Vo least talked, but this is not Palm Sunday, he read way to many questions, almost sounded like 45RPM record which was scratched and hard to understand. Residences have had enough church on line in the past 5 weeks, today, we got another sermon by Union Vo.
Staff was not prepared for a Monday PM meeting of the caliber.
Noting really got accomplished, except for a lot of scare tactic million dollar numbers.
Hmmmm, 20 yrs and still no resolution of the Mulikan Pad, what is wrong?
Well Neiman Marcus filed BK, when will Cerritos stores start filing?
After 19 yrs of no city treasurer, the city is going to fill the job for ( City Treasurer ) Currently, the city clerk is acting as pseudo city treasurer, which the DA Office said is big no no.
Even with all the brain power, racial competition between council persons, the city failed state laws and did not fill the city clerks jobs. This was addressed countless times at public comments, council looked the other way and the DA Office took over and made it mandatory.
Wonder what kind of other shenanigans the city is pulling?
Cerritos Communications:
Frontiers, one of many IT providers for Cerritos, filed BK in April 2020.