Norwalk just held their City Hall Meeting on Oct. 15 where they gave out information and resolved some issues, with the most important one being the approval of the concept design for Hermosillo Park.

The City Council started off the meeting with some special presentations. With the first one, they presented the Mayor’s award to Officer Martha Marin-Corbett and Lakeside Middle School Assistant Principal Rosa Alcala for their action in helping/rescuing a child in distress.

They proclaimed Oct. 12 as Lions Club White Cane Day. The Lions Club is a club that helps the less fortunate and to those in need. They also proclaimed Oct. 23-31 as Red Ribbon Week, with red ribbons representing to moralize communities and warm people about drug abuse.

The council discussed City Manager comments where they talked about the housing summit, showed some videos on the Cities Key to Ending Homelessness event as well as the Sound the Alarm event where people went to people’s houses and set up alarms with 150 people volunteering to do this.

During public hearing, many tried to adopt the resolution and amend the comprehensive fee schedule to establish fees for code enforcement case appeals to the Council in which they did approve it after a huge discussion by Vice Mayor Luigi Vernola.

The Council also discussed resolutions where they wanted to approve or authorize an amendment to the fiscal year March 2020 election in which it would increase the budget for the election by $153,000.

They approved the adoption budget for the purchase of some capital equipment; however, it cannot exceed $65,000.

The council discussed reports with the approval on replacing the city’s light-duty vehicles and entering an agreement with Enterprise Fleet Management Inc. for them to give the city for an open-end lease of 20 light-duty vehicles, the maintenance of leased vehicles and authorized the City Manager to execute the master agreement and any amendments provided in the budget funds.

The approval of the concept designs of the Hermosillo Park construction was finalized. The park will consist of a parking lot, a playground and two soccer fields.

The reason as to why there are two fields is because Christine Roberto Public Service Manager states that, “This is the only park that currently has soccer and we do have soccer league that come in. Utilizing this space, it won’t only be for soccer. We can use it for other things but it would allow multiple teams to play at one time. So we have the space for it and that was one of the needs that came through the community meeting so it was a request from residents. They want people to have soccer fields and multi-use sports fields there.”

She also stated, “If we receive the grant funding which we should know that by the end of the year 18 months to two years would be construction time for the project.”

For the final report, they provided information for City Council Discussion and consideration which Richard Bernard, Public Opinion Pollster, stated the reason for this ” it was primarily to see what voters priorities were and whether they would be interested in considering a potential sales tax.”

The next City Hall meeting will be on Nov. 15 at 6 p.m.