The Los Angeles City Council held its regularly scheduled meeting on February 11, 2025, at 10:14 a.m. (14 minutes late). The council addressed routine approvals, public comments, and voted on several items, including business tax relief for wildfire-impacted businesses. The meeting concluded with adjournments honoring notable individuals.
Those individuals were not just individual workers, but actually had small businesses. They might have attended to five or ten homes. Our informal workers are going to really appreciate that she's also here engaging in the conversation of how to support those who lost work. Our program basically provides them that immediate real-time support right now to help pay rent, help put food on the table, help us support their families. Please follow us on social media at CD6 Los Angeles. And you can also follow our website for more information. Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez and the Korean American Federation celebrated the Lunar New Year with a food giveaway. Community members in Pacoima got to enjoy the celebration with much needed essentials. Today we're at Pacoima City Hall where we have this wonderful collaboration with Hanui Bank and the Korean American Federation, my friend Robert On, who's brought all of these incredible resources to help make sure that we're closing the gaps for a lot of families that are in need. A lot of folks out here have also been affected by the recent wildfires. A lot of the attention has been on the Eden and Palisades fires, but also we had the hearst fire out here in this district. And so we also want to be cognizant and mindful of those folks that have been impacted out here. These wildfires have devastated a lot of communities. Not just the immediate burn areas, but the economic impact is something that is being felt throughout the region. So we've got a one-stop shop with FEMA that is here as well, so that we can make services more accessible to the people that need them. So I'm just grateful that as Angelinos, we are come together as one Los Angeles to make sure that no one gets left behind. Oh, I just got good groceries from good people, you know. Easy access, just pull up, get in line, wait, you know. I receive good water, I receive rice, all healthy food. I receive milk. I receive a lot of good stuff that I need because right as of right now today, I don't have nothing to eat. So you know it was a good gesture. I really appreciate it. I always say the one thing that binds all of our communities, regardless of what your ethnic background is, is rice. So it's really wonderful that we have all of these incredible ways of sharing what we all know to be familiar at a time when we all need that sense of security. It's that time of year again. Welcome to tax season. This need not be painful on your pocketbook, as the city can help with free tax preparation. LA's community investment for families department explained how you can get earned income tax credits. And the child tax credit. Today we're launching our 2025 Free Tax Prep LA campaign, which offers free tax preparation services to low and moderate income families. This is a service that the city offers. People should not have to pay for this if they qualify. Anyone that makes less than $67,000 a year qualifies for this program. It doesn't matter if you have a social security or an ITIN number. We want you to come in, use our service because if the IRS owes you money, we want to make sure you get it in your pocket. Take advantage of the available tax credits. There's upwards of $10,000 available for families who qualify, both federal credits and state credits. For example, the earned income tax credit is something that was passed many years ago that has been the number one sort of driver to get people out of poverty. People could get up to 10,000 dollars in their pockets if they qualify. We're very proud that we offer multilingual certified IRS trained staff that is available throughout our 45 locations that can help people. We want folks to just please see the city as a place where they can get many different resources, including getting their taxes done. We're here to serve people. For anyone that is interested in learning more or finding the location nearest to their home or to their place of work, they can visit Free Taxprep LA.com or our website at LA4Families.org. LA's public library is also on this free tax prep kick. And we're here for it. Don't pay to pay when you can get one-to-one guidance and assistance on your tax case at the library. We went to the branch at Lincoln Heights to find out more. We are here at the Lincoln Heights branch library, offering free tax preparation services in partnership with Cal Center Lay. We are super thrilled to be offering this free service to support the financial well-being of our community.