The City of Norwalk had their council meeting on Oct. 1 in Norwalk City Hall where they discussed and recognized multiple people and issues that was addressed, including the situation regarding wild coyotes that are roaming around the city.

They started with special presentations awarding some banners of their hometown heroes like Kristina Monica Dominguez from the US Army and Brian John Brones.

Mayor Margarita Rios stated that the month of October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the city, with Oct. 2nd being Clean Air Day. She has also proclaimed the second week of October as Code Enforcement Officer Appreciation Week.

For their city manager comments where they showed a few videos of their Hermosillo Park follow up meeting about what the community wanted for the park, their Neighborhood Block Party and their Back to School Shopping Spree event.

The council talked little about some of their lists on their consent calendar with some items being skipped or moved to the next meeting some items.

Item number 12 when the staff recommends the city council to approve the agreements with the Norwalk La Miranda Unified School District

Next, they’ve spent a lot of time on Coyote Coexistence and Management Plan that was being presented to them by Amanda Moreno, a Management Analyst of the Public Safety Department.

There has been a total of 18 reports regarding coyote activity, With them living in Norwalk and the surrounding cities for some time.

Moreno states that, “The education efforts are aimed at the residence and whether they wanna share the information it’s up to them but we’ll be sharing it on the city website so that it will be available to everyone.”

The reason as to why coyotes are suddenly appearing may be the result of water droughts in the area and less food for them in their environment.

This was the result of residents expressing their concerns of coyote encounters and activities with them appearing in residential areas most of the time.

At this time the city does not know how many coyotes there are but have been tracking these animals from January of last year to now.

This Management plan provides education regarding in situations and what to do when being spotted by a coyote or a pack of them

Dave Dodge a conservation coach for the California department of fish and wildlife stated about if a coyote is in a person’s distance, “If a pedestrian is walking down the street by themselves no pet, what we suggest is if they can haze the coyote if they can scare the coyote, pick a rock up and maybe throw it near that be a good thing. That reminds the animal why they need to be afraid of us.”

Many of the council members agreeing with this plan when they warn kids and residents to prepare or make sure that a coyote won’t attack them.

Jennifer Perez, City Council member of Norwalk, said about her past experiences with coyotes, “I personally had two experiences with a coyote being in our property last year. One attacked our dog, thankfully he lived, he was bitten basically grabbed in the side and picked up. We took him to the Vet thankful he had no rabies, but he was extremely scared to go outside for a very long time, the other incident I won’t necessarily share the gore details it wasn’t very pretty.”

The council approved the plan with a 5-0 vote.

The next thing that they talked about was the agreement to amend the fiscal year 2019/20 for general hourly and management unit employees. But would result in the elimination of certain projects and passed certain positions to other people and there will be no salary increase.

The council members decided to move this item.

The last thing they talked about was the Agreement Amendment No. 9 Water System service where they want additional staff workers as Senior Civil Engineers while additional scopes of workaround Norwalk and to get compensation of $131,400

there are 15 different types of water projects being made in Norwalk and the Agreement Amendment No.9 will be coming out of the water and sewer budget.

That was all that they discussed in the meeting with their next City Council meeting taking place on Oct. 15 at 6 p.m. at City Hall again.