Council first recognized three houses from the city by zone for having “Puente Pride,” meaning they had great holiday lights and take great care of their yard among other things.

Residents from the winning homes in the first two zones received their certificate in person alongside two of the Puente Pride Commissioners, Deborah Pringle and Leslie Costea.

Council member Dan Holloway said that he is working with John Solis to have the Puente Pride committee meet later this week.

The three presentations by representatives dealt with Measure M funds, the 2020 census and the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments active transportation plan.

Measure M funds and bond refinancing solutions were presented by Wolf & Company.

Since the company was not hired, the numbers provided were unofficial and only served as informational, but they did help city staff come up with further information and outline three proposed situations.

Holloway asked about the city’s ratings and mentioned past issues the city had five to six years ago, but the representative said that rate agencies redid their requirements recently and that past issue is likely gone now. They added that private placement (which sells a group of bonds to a private investor directly instead of to public investors) would be used if there were issues.

City staff further expanded on this report to discuss the city’s roads and how it would work with the 58 percent of roads considered poor in local neighborhoods. They also discussed the slurry seal program option along with redoing roads.

In total there is $28 million worth of repairs to be done, with $19 million for local neighborhood roads, About $7 million is left to allocate to the slurry program.

Aside from streets, another concern was counting people.

The Los Angeles Regional Census Center discussed the 2020 census and how important it was to have everybody counted to redistrict seats and distribute funding. They also said that census was offering 300,000 to 500,000 jobs and that they paid well and offered the ability to move up in the ranks.

For La Puente, the census representative said 24 percent of residents did not respond 10 years ago, which could be between 10,000 and 20,000 people.

The spots where the city was under reported linked to several apartment complexes in the city, and the city has created a task force to spread information about the census.

The Alta Planning and Design also reached out to the community for information and went over the active transportation plan and improvements to roads and sidewalks in the San Gabriel Valley.

The representative brought up bike lanes and shared lane markings, while reminding council that the city currently has no infrastructure in that regard. The representative said there are only signs for bikes in the city, and roughly two short designated bike lanes in the city and both end.

The bond money and other funding sources will have to be balanced between all of these projects and the implementation of the upcoming park master plan,