Read the December 15 meeting.

This regular meeting to order. So for everything, as I said before, there is a first time and this is my first time presiding over this new City Council. Welcome to everybody. Welcome to the members of the Council, those past and present, and welcome to all the members of the public. Before I turn it over to the clerk to conduct the roll call, I just want to describe the setting here. We have five council members here present at City Hall with a limited staff, all compliant with our CDC rules.

We have plexiglass between us, and everybody is masked up with the exception of the person who will be addressing the council. So for those of you on the phone, just so you get a visual, that's what we're doing. and we have two council members that are joining us remotely by phone so that is the way we'll be conducting tonight's meeting and i'll go ahead and turn it over to madam clerk to call roll

thank you mayor council member becerra here council member hernandez

here council member lopez here council member mendoza here council member fan here may i Pro Tempeñalosa?

Here.

And Mayor Sarmiento?

Here, thank you. So let me go ahead and turn it over to the clerk once more before I proceed with the Pledge of Allegiance. I believe she has an announcement that she'd like to make.

Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to announce that later this week, I will be sending out notifications through the city's social media platforms. And for those interested in serving a city board or commission, including those currently serving and are interested in continuing to serve, may submit an application found on the city's website at www.santa-anna.org slash cc slash appointed hyphen boards hyphen and hyphen commission. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Let me go ahead and have us all do the Pledge of Allegiance, and if you'll all please stand place your right hand over your heart and repeat after me I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of

America the United States of America to the Republic to the repulsion stands for it one nation one nation with liberty and justice for all

Thank you, and if you'll all please remain standing. We are going to go to our invocation section of our program tonight, and we are going to change things up a little bit. We are blessed in this city to have people of many faiths, and we have synagogues, mosques, parishes, temples, and we have people that worship differently, so we want to make sure that we reflect that diversity in our city and make sure we all give everybody a chance to come and address us give us blessings give us wisdom and tonight we will be begin we will begin our

invocation with Hussam I loose who is going to be addressing us for the

invocation Thank You mayor thank you members of the City Council again my name is Hussam I loose and it's a great privilege and honor to start this special city council meeting with an invocation. As Muslims, we begin every prayer and every action by reciting the following verse from the Quran. In Arabic, it goes as such, بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم. In English, it translates as, in the name of Allah, God Almighty, the most compassionate, the most merciful. And indeed, it is so befitting to start

the City Council meeting with a prayer that focuses on mercy and compassion. We pray, our Lord, God, you know that our people in our city, in our country, and around the world are anxious and worried about their health and the health and safety of their loved ones due to the COVID-19 pandemic. People are worried about their jobs, their houses, their apartments, and about putting food on their table.

We ask you, O merciful God, to bless our mayor, our city council members, our city staff, and all healthcare professionals and their respective families as they serve the needs of the residents of Santa Ana. we ask you to guide them to serve our city with mercy and to advance justice equality liberty and dignity for all people we ask you to inspire them to lead and strive for america's founding ideals for an america that embraces and churches its diverse people oh god we ask you to unite and

bless our city our country our leaders and all of our people i mean amen

Thank you so much for that. That certainly inspires us to have a very fruitful meeting. So thank you, Mr. Ilush. Let me go ahead and move along to our ceremonial section of the meeting. And I believe we have a certificate of recognition that Council Member Mendoza is going to bestow on somebody. So I'll go ahead and yield the floor to Council Member Mendoza, please.

Thank you for that Mayor Samyanchot. I am going to be presenting a certificate appreciation for, I am just getting my notes. I apologize about that. I'm getting that right here. They were already out. I'm just having a little bit of trouble finding them.

I'll be right with you, okay?

I apologize. Can we come back to that in a moment?

Sure, Council Member. Let me go ahead and I believe we have a presentation from staff that was going to follow this item. So why don't we go ahead and begin with that and if you could find your notes and gather everything, we'll go ahead and come back to the to the presentation so let me turn it over to staff for this item which is a coven 19 update to the community and I want to begin with by thanking staff and recognizing staff for the update um thank

you honorable mayor mayor pro tem and council members I have a brief PowerPoint for you you know that after we got the good news that the state was going to share some of the cares federal dollars you had requested for routine updates on this and I did it mainly through city manager comments but based on some other inquiries I'm doing more of a formal presentation tonight so it's to update you on our activities the state of kovat 19 within our community and all the just important to note all of the funded activities have to conclude this month that allows us for sufficient time we're actually ending programs December 20th

the majority of them so that we have sufficient time and staff will be busy working over the holidays to make sure that all of the final payments are processed and that we meet all of the US Department of Treasury spending requirements we've already had one introductory meeting with the state of California's Department of Finance and they are already are beginning their audit of our expenditures so first I just want to start with the counts the state of our community at a county level cases to date are a hundred and seven thousand nine hundred and thirty seven deaths to date one thousand six

hundred and ninety five with an overall positivity rate in the county of thirteen point two if you drill down at our city our cases to date are eighteen thousand four hundred and fifty two with three hundred and thirty eight deaths and our positivity rate is twenty one point oh seven we do have and I know most of you are aware that there has been a disparate impact on our community as a result of COVID-19 when compared with the rest of the County of Orange if you are interested in more details on these numbers Orange County Health Care Agency does post on their COVID website pages by

zip code so you can certainly look at that but the the last information I received is we do have five of the highest zip codes with positive test cases in them so one of our largest expenditures on our cares money has gone to kovat 19 testing so we contracted engaged a contractor to perform testing the goal was to provide up to 32,000 tests they are provided to our community at no expense and as of today I'm really excited to say that I believe at the close of the testing that was done today we have exceeded 30,000 tests for our community we'd still have as you can see

from the screen we still have locations and future testing dates and times several at Santa Ana College and then we continue to also do our mobile resource centers so with that the testing will conclude on December 20th and we will definitely hit the 32,000 threshold and potentially we will go over the 32,000 and just today staff has been scrambling to see if we could scrape together additional dollars to try to keep funding it so we don't have to turn anybody away at those already publicized locations and one of our other large contracts is one that we have with UCI this is their public health college and

UCI contracted with the county to do some serology testing for the entire region so they would have only tested a couple hundred within our city so we turned around and did our own contract with UCI for them to come in and conduct antibody testing so by doing the antibody testing they can determine the prevalence of exposure which will definitely help us in the future when I'm being optimistic that we receive additional resources to continue these efforts it's a unique test that they will then take and analyze the data and extrapolate and they can help us determine where potential hot spots could

occur in the future so if you have one community that the serology test indicates the presence of antibodies that is a community that's already been exposed so it could help us identify other communities where the exposure rate could be significantly higher and they are starting to believe that there is a presence of antibodies from having it that lasts longer than what they originally thought so that that's good news in that regard and you probably have seen the advertisements for the serology testing and I believe they've done about 700 of to date to take a look at the overall spending plan I know some of your council

members are familiar with this this was the we held a special meeting when we found out we were going to get the dollars and these were the buckets where we put the funding to one of the things that we did when you did bless this spending plan you also gave me the ability to move between the different buckets which has proved useful because some of our programs have been more popular than others and I've been able to shift in between them so just going through it you can see we have our cova testing we have the UCI antibody testing we have a nurse's hotline this is one that is quite

active it's a trilingual nurses hotline that anybody can call for free the mobile resource center that was probably the the most challenging of all of our programs this is where we actually compiled all of the assistance programs and we took it out to the streets we timed it with the street sweeping schedule so that we knew that we'd have space on the streets to set up the mobile resource centers and we have visited over a hundred neighborhoods within the city and I believe if you map it out that will mean we came within a half a mile of all of our residents clean and sanitize high-risk areas you might have noticed some additional

bodies out on the streets with sprayers that are doing the sidewalks the crosswalk buttons as well as the bus shelters that came from also the care programs and then the direct assistance programs I'm going to talk about in a little more detail because I know that is of great interest to you for our own staff it's hard to believe if you look around you at other governmental entities a lot of them are scaled way back and closed down Santa Ana for the most part we have not done that we moved very quickly and put up the protective measures to protect our employees but to still keep serving our community but we did allow employees

that their jobs were conducive to do telecommuting to keep them safe as well we contracted with hotel rooms so we had isolation assistance initially we thought what we would do is for an individual who became coven positive that needed to be protected away from their family but what ended up happening is the individuals with the coven wanted to stay in their house and the rest of the household members got to go stay at the hotel so we did keep the family protected from exposure homeless services you know we do run our own homeless shelter and we had to take additional precautions to protect the

homeless individuals that were living in those those conditions personal protective equipment with that for our employees but as well as part of the mobile resource we handed out over 270,000 masks and we're we're still handing them out today indirect city services we have had to shift a lot of bodies over to do the work under the cares program and then outdoor dining this is to keep right now they're not opening but in the past when restaurants were allowed to do the outdoor dining we did as requested by the council contract out to set up and do the street closures so we could provide those

restaurants the area to continue to offer the dining and then a larger category also first responders and EOC since the moment that we've been declared a pandemic we have had our emergency operation center opened at first it was seven days a week 24 hours a day but it has since scheduled down just to regular working hours the direct assistance programs to break them down we had utility assistance we did child care assistance rental assistance small business assistance arts and cultural relief and the arts and culture relief went to museums and nonprofits as well as individual artists we had allocated 8.6

million we've actually expended already 5.5 million and we have 3.1 million the remaining balance has been obligated but we haven't quite cut to cut the checks yet on those on the utility bill assistance and and this was one that was specifically requested by a council member it was a one-time $500 payment and it was for eligible households to pay any type of utility whether it was their internet electricity gas water or phone and in addition to the general outreach staff did use our water customers and reach out directly to those that already had past due accounts via mail and bill inserts and phone

calls the assistance programs as I mentioned before the the federal requirements for the spending on our 28 point 8 million dollars comes to an end the end of this month the good news is we do have some other money that we had received that can fund some of these assistance programs so we can keep them going until we receive additional money so the types of assistant programs that we can continue after this month is the cares for tenants so we do still have funding that we can use for rental assistance payments we still have funding that we can use for eviction prevention program and then we also have some funding to

keep small business incentive grants running now next I want to talk about a little bit about vaccines I know we're we're in the home stretch which is good and bad sometimes I think people stop doing being diligent with their protection and mask and sanitizing and washing their hands when they know of vaccinations on the way but it's the time that we need to probably be the most diligent so with the vaccines there are two of them now that have been issued an emergency youth authorization not approved vaccines so there isn't a mandate we can't require individuals to

get vaccinated as they're just authorized and there isn't one that has been trialed with children yet so there isn't one for anyone under the age of 16. today they started the delivery throughout the 50 states and I believe California was going to receive a little over 2 million but with the directive from our governor he wanted to ensure that the health care workers were some of the first ones received and we have over 2 million health care workers within our state so that is where the first ones will be going as the others roll in the distribution of them is being handled by

the California Department of Public Health and they are working directly with the counties so as far as the priorities we do believe that the state is going to follow what the CDC recommended recommends as far as who is in priority to receive those unfortunately substantial numbers of the vaccines there they're probably not going to reach our state so that the population who is seeking them can fully get them until probably late March or April but significant progress will be made between now and then in vaccinating the most vulnerable and those that are working on the front lines and I did have a conversation with

the County of Orange and they are coming up with ideas as how they're going to distribute there will be distribution of the vaccines obviously through the medical offices so individuals would be able to get them at their own doctor's office but they also do want to set up mobile vaccination locations and I've already offered to collaborate with them on trying to get some of those locations established within our city I know a couple of you have asked well why can't we spend the money past December and when are we going to get the next batch of money and based on the information I've received there really is there's

nothing in place at the federal level that is going to extend the deadline for the expenditure of the money so that is why we have and we will have spent every time that we did receive by the end of this month most recently this week there is a bipartisan group of lawmakers they are working on a relief package it's really two pieces it's about nine hundred and eight billion dollars the first one of it the seven hundred and forty eight billion it would not provide any direct funding to local governments but then there is an add-on proposal of 160 billion that would provide for some distribution to local governments they

have only a limited amount of time to see if they're going to take action on this before they do recess for their their holiday break so I will keep you posted as we continue to receive information from our lobbyist so with that I am available as well as all the staff that's done excellent work in this

area if you have any questions Thank You madam city manager so before I turn it

over to the council and I'm sorry mayor we did put together a little video if if you would allow me to share that as well.

The COVID-19 global pandemic has affected us all in one way or another. At the onset of this crisis, the city of Santa Ana emerged swiftly to provide relief. Less than one week after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global pandemic, the Santa Ana City Council declared a local emergency, and the city manager began issuing executive orders to stop evictions and provide financial relief through existing city programs. In August, the city of Santa Ana received federal funding to fight the coronavirus. Within weeks, the city launched the Santa Ana Cares Assistance Program

to help residents pay rent, utilities, and other bills, to provide grants for businesses and non-profits, and even to offer a grant for local artists impacted by the pandemic. The city then began deploying mobile resource centers directly into Santa Ana neighborhoods, a move that made it both convenient and easy for residents to take advantage of the assistance programs and on-site COVID testing. Well, I was just saying that I would have been to apply for it and they told me they were very helpful. They helped me a lot, I had to do what I had to do.

If I had not been able to go, I would have informed me. Because in fact, with the pandemic, I didn't leave. I didn't leave much, so I was in the place in the end. I didn't know about the help, but when the bags were brought to my house, I realized that there is help. And thank you very much for the first time. The CARES hotline filled with thousands of calls to answer questions about the new programs and help the public navigate the application process.

Santa Ana Cares offers a myriad of programs for those struggling in the wake of the pandemic. One vital component of the program is free COVID testing. The city provided free testing for all residents at Santa Ana College, local high schools, and at the mobile resource centers in parks and neighborhoods. More than 17,000 tests have been administered. The City has deployed the mobile resource centers to over 100 Santa Ana neighborhood and park locations, reaching thousands of residents.

The City handed out more than 270,000 masks and provided free COVID testing on site. In addition to free COVID testing, the City offers a multilingual nurse hotline with 24-7 free health advice for any residents who have questions about coronavirus. Santa Ana Cares offers a variety of financial assistance programs. One program helps tenants who have lost income during the pandemic by sending a $3,000 rental payment directly to their landlords.

Another program pays most of the back rent owed by tenants if the landlord agrees to forgive 20% and not raise rent for a time, which inevitably helps both the landlord and the tenant keep their head above water. Millions of dollars in rental assistance is being handed out through these programs. Of course, with children at home these days, child care is a necessity for many families. The Santa Ana Cares Child Care Grant offers up to $1,000 to help residents who have been financially impacted by COVID-19. Utility assistance has been provided through the Comprehensive City Program.

Grants of $500 for Santa Ana households impacted by the coronavirus have reached more than 1,100 residents for past due utility bills like electricity, natural gas, phone, internet, water, sewer, and refuse.

Of course, small businesses throughout Santa Ana have also been impacted by the shutdown order and economic fallout. Again, the Santa Ana Cares program stepped up to the challenge with several resources for businesses, including grants of up to $10,000 for those with up to 25 employees. A restaurant and bar relief grant was also implemented to target the city's vibrant nightlife community. Over 300 Santa Ana businesses have taken advantage of these grants, helping to stave off closing.

We got some outdoor patio furniture that we could use to help expand our patio to have additional seats and dining outside. We got PPE equipment for my staff and a lot of hand sanitizer.

Finally, an arts relief grant program assisted individual artists and arts-related nonprofit organizations and the city also began allowing restaurants, retailers, hair salons and personal care services to expand their operations outdoors to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. My business took a big hit. I also took a big hit as an artist so the grant money has definitely helped to pay rent for the studio and other expenses that you know didn't disappear when COVID hit. These These are just a few of the programs that have helped Santa Ana weather these trying times.

And while we may not know when life will fully return to normal, we do know that our community is stronger when we come together. And that is exactly what Santa Ana Cares aims to do through its programs and services. The application period has closed for some programs, but others are still open, including rental assistance. Time is running out, so apply now. the city remains steadfast in its commitment to provide its residents and businesses with all of the assistance it can now more than ever it is clear that santa anna cares

thank you

great thank you madam city manager and boy that was an excellent video and um thank you for that presentation because I think what it does is it summarizes for you know those of us who've been here but also those who are new to the council and the public where we are and I hope that with the with my colleagues indulgence this remains as a standing item on the agenda we obviously won't need to go into this much detail you gave great background but maybe as we go through you can update us you and your staff madam city manager on the numbers and you know I believe

it's warranted because as you mentioned at present having more than 18,000 cases that are positive in the city and more than 330 deaths and our positivity rate being close to twice with the county averages I think it's warranted but but I really really thought that was an excellent presentation so let me go ahead and bring it back to the council and what I'll do is you know for those of you who are new and those of you who are on the phone those of you who are here you just get my attention and I'll go ahead and call on you for those of you who are on the phone go ahead and just let me know you'd like to speak

and I'll go ahead and call on you and hopefully put you in the queue but let me bring it back to the council for comments I have a comment mayor

sarmento it's council member mendoza go ahead council member thank you i'd like to just ensure the public and the rest of the council that we have a friend in washington dc congressman luke ria is attempting to get an extension on and getting more cares funding for santa anna and other cities in the 46th congressional district. And I also would like to have as part of the report is how much money has been expended and how much is left so that we can be sure that we used all of it before the deadline.

Great.

Madam City Manager.

So thank you, Council Member Mendoza. Daniel can you put up the slide with the overall funding so on it on the one slide I believe it's slide 5 we're going to put up so that you're going to be able to see it it lists the categories of the spending the first is the amount that we allocated and the second column is the amount that has been expended to date and then it is footnoted the differential between the two we have already obligated so we will be concluding the month with the full

expenditure of the 28.8 great thank you for that madam city manager mayor pro

David PenalozaItem —

tempeña Losa thank you mr. mayor just for clarification I could go out of turn right as mayor pro tem I mean does it matter when I go or whoever wants to speak and raise their hand that's fine thank you for that madam city manager I just wanted to get clarification on the 6.8 million that have been obligated do you have a general idea of what different areas we've obligated that money to the reason why I was asking is because some of the notes that I wrote pertaining to slide 5 in particular where that 5.5 million still haven't been

David PenalozaItem —

expended for I believe it was direct payments to residents and I know that that the that the holiday season coming up and whatnot I know that especially with the community like ours there's a lot of need out there in our community I know it's out there and just because they might not be at our cares events you know applying for something doesn't mean they don't necessarily need it and I know that there's a lot of residents out there that could use some of this assistance citywide so if there is any possibility that in the next I know it's we only have about two months left in the month but in the next couple days we

David PenalozaItem —

do some heavy outreach door-to-door knocking with our cares ambassadors in these high-impacted communities and just really reemphasize that there is resources available for any bill they might need paid or whatnot or rental assistance because um you know I know that even growing up my mom would my mom being a resident a legal resident would be terrified of asking the government for any assistance so if we could do that that'd be nice if it's available I

David PenalozaItem —

know time is is is tight but with those extra money that you haven't expended but you did say they were obligated so if you could give us a general idea of

where I'm certainly mayor pro tem so it's in a bunch of different buckets so to the extent our contractor continues with kovat testing we receive a bill so we're obligated to pay him under his contract the UCI contract we haven't paid their entire amount but we're obligated to pay it there's outstanding purchase orders and then there's the applications for the various assistance programs that are in the pipeline that just haven't been paid yet but to the extent there's any available dollars we still have been pushing very very hard some of the programs did close as of today but a few others are open through December 20th so we will

certainly do a last-minute push to try to get every penny completely spent that

David PenalozaItem —

thank you for that and then just one final thought on the cova testing I know that for me personally one of my tests were were misplaced one or two times when I went and got tested so are we how are we keeping track of are we just getting a bill from Medica and or the company and we're just directly paying without asking questions or really looking into making sure that these tests were actually done or is it a thing where we just get a receipt and we

we pay it good question mayor pro tem and no we've actually been in the field observing them we have weekly meetings with them where we debrief on everything that went wrong at different testing sites and there has been some stumbles early on and we do scrutinize the invoices we did find some invoices where we were billed for tests that weren't performed at one of our sites so we did identify that and that is being led by my office and assistant city manager Steven Mendoza and assistant to the city manager Daisy have been staying on top of that and the weekly meetings have helped out tremendously with the vendor

because you can imagine it was a big undertaking to roll out that level of

David PenalozaItem —

testing in the community right and I appreciate that I just want to make sure that and I know you from conversations in the past your office has done a good job at saying on top of these things I just want to make sure that we're carefully vetting every invoice we receive from these different companies that we're working with because I could see someone just kind of you know fluffing up the numbers to get paid so with that said those are my comments mr.

mayor so thank you Thank You mayor pro-tem let me go ahead and recognize

Jessie LopezItem —

councilmember Lopez Thank You mayor Sarmiento well I have a comment and a question and my question I'm city manager is what are the programs I closed today

I am going to see I don't see Daisy oh Daisy is here I will ask Daisy to come up and speak to the programs I know the UCI is continuing through the month the testing is continuing through the 20th but I believe she's probably asking on

the different assistance programs and mayor and council so for the different assistance programs for the rental assistance even though you don't see it fully expended out there staff does have enough applications to fully fund that I don't believe we're taking any more from the cares program but we are taking them from the CDBG program so that will continue for the utility assistance program, we're taking those until December 15th, and that gives staff enough time to process the paperwork. For any of the other, the small business programs, we also have enough applications in the

pipeline to fully fund those with CARES in the budget that you saw, and then anything remaining after that will be funded by the CDBG program as well. So all of the applications that we take for the CARES program we will take through December 15th and then we will finish testing the actual COVID testing December 20th and then the antibody testing will continue through December 26th. Thank You Daisy. Thank you and

Jessie LopezItem —

moving on to my comment I wanted to thank Mayor Sarmiento for taking charge and making sure that we had this and Christine for providing us with the important presentation as we all know we've been one of the hardest hit cities in the county and as someone who is in direct contact with people who have been exposed to COVID or have COVID I really want to ask our community members that are listening to if they have any plans any travel plans for the holidays to rethink them because we are seeing a high number of cases go up because of Thanksgiving gatherings that people were having and so I think it's important to

Jessie LopezItem —

remind folks that there has been a surge because of that and so and I just really want to you know thank everybody for their patience and to can and encourage them to continue practicing good hygiene and again I'm really excited to see this presentation and I am supportive of having this be an item that continues thank you thank you councilmember Lopez any other comments

questions from staff I'm sorry from the from the council hearing none and seeing them I'll go ahead and bring it back to myself I wanted to again thank thank staff for the presentation thank my colleagues for the questions and comments I did have a couple of comments maybe some direction for staff I understand that there is a vaccine task force that the county has assembled and so to the extent we may already have somebody on there representing the city you know maybe something for us to do madam city manager looks like your head is nodding

yes mayor they they did allow one slot for one city manager and the county selected the city manager of Huntington Beach so I will get routine updates to the Orange County City Managers Association from that representative

great thank you and I understand that the county was going to be allocated I think an initial 25,000 vaccines to begin with I'm not sure if those are arrived today but i know that they were supposed to arrive yesterday might it might have been delayed but to the extent that you know we want to make sure we're vigilant about vaccines and how we receive our proportionate share which should be very high i don't want to lose sight of the fact that we are going through a very dark period as was mentioned by council member lopez and i think you know probably the darkest moment in this pandemic you know since it since it began

So, you know, as we see hope on the horizon, we have to realize that this is a very difficult time for many. These numbers really are disturbing. 21% in some of our, you know, five zip codes and, you know, 18,000 cases. That is very alarming. So I want you all to know that, you know, there is an effort, a campaign that is going to be launched within the next couple of days that is going to be a concerted effort amongst the county, the school district, and the city, and Latino Health Access to push out a singular message, because all those agencies have been trying to blunt this surge,

but we realize that we're all saying good things, but we're not under one banner or one uniform theme. So we all agree to do something that is going to be much, much more visible, and all of us are going to get behind the theme of you know basic simple direction which is you know six feet apart wash your hands wear your mask but it has to be a uniformed effort so we know that the county is going to be leading the effort and funding some so will the district and so will the city and I want you all to know this isn't countywide this is specific to just Santa Anna so we I know I see Paul Eakins in the audience and he'll go ahead and

share I think he's working with the team right now he'll share when the the press conference is scheduled for I believe it's scheduled for the 17th of this month which is Thursday we still we're still we still have a tentative time and date but we'll make sure to to apprise the the council so you can be present virtually so I will make sure that that happens but we that's just one more way to let the community know this is not over. And before any vaccines reach everybody, it's going to take a while. So in the meantime, that is something that we need to do through this campaigned effort.

So those are my comments. And let me go ahead and, I believe, seeing none, we'll go ahead and move along to the next item, which I believe we skipped over, and that was we gave some time to Council Member Mendoza. Let's go ahead and go back to her so she can do her recognition council member mendoza are you there and are you ready

yes mayor sarviento i am here and i apologize for my oversight i have found the my notes and today i would like to recognize and give a a certificate of appreciation to a a business and this is going to be presented to Miss Alice Kau, and she is a Sender One Climbing, a limited partnership here in Santa Ana. The co-founder and CEO, Alice Kau, K-A-O, K-A-O, discovered climbing while she was living

and working in London during a difficult time in her life. She was wanting to share the healing and self-discovery that climbing brought her. alongside with her business partners. She launched Sender One in 2011 in the United States. Sender One's first location opened in Orange County in June of 2013 with 300 members and 21 employees, and it generated 1.8 million in sales and its first 12 months of operation. Sender One numbers grew rapidly, and just prior to the pandemic,

the business had two locations with 157 employees, and this time it was $8.1 million in sales. Kale's belief in community involvement has been intertwined in Center One's culture. The company's partner has partnered with the Boys and Girls Club organization, as well as various drug rehabilitation groups in Orange County. It is for those with reasons that Ms. Alice Kale was recognized as the SBA 2020 California Small Business Person of the Year. It is small businesses like Sender One that are the heart of Santa Ana.

Thank you Ms. Alice Kale for being part of our community and congratulations on your award.

great thank you councilmember Mendoza let me go ahead and move along I believe we don't have the recipient on the line or anything she wasn't going to make a comment miss cow got it perfect so let me go ahead and recognize the madam city attorney is there anything to report out from closed session thank you mayor and

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

members of the council members of the public we have no reportable action this

evening great thank you for that let's go ahead and move along to the next section which is a come public comment section of the agenda and this is for the members of the public to address the City Council on agenda and non agenda items you will be given three minutes to speak the public comment line has been opened at least since 5 p.m. it will now be closed so madam clerk is there anybody on the line wishing to speak and address the council yes thank

you mayor there are speakers ready to provide their comments and as a reminder for callers wanting to speak on any public hearing items please let me know when you are unmuted and you will be placed back on hold until the mayor opens the hearing before I'm meeting callers I'd like to begin by reporting the following summary of emails provided as of today for 11 a there was a for for the second reading ordinance Fourth and Mortimer project, there were five Santa Ana residents or organizations in opposition. For 20C, the Clean and Safe Downtown Agreement, there were 49 Santa Ana residents or business owners

in support but requested amount to stay at 500,000 to continue security services. One Santa Ana resident was in support as recommended. one Santa Ana resident in opposition and one did not disclose residency in opposition for 55a we had one Santa Ana resident in support for six and that is for all the consent items and beginning with the first caller with the last three numbers one seven four if you would please dial star six to unmute your call

or select the microphone icon

Persona en el teléfono con los tres últimos números, 174. Por favor, marque estrella 6 para reactivar su llamada.

Persona en el teléfono con los tres últimos números, 174. Por favor, marque estrella 6 para reactivar su llamada o active el sonido en el aparato en el cual está usando Zoom.

Persona en el teléfono con los tres últimos números, 174. Por favor, marque estrella 6 para reactivar su llamada. o active el sonido en el aparato en cual está usando Zoom.

Persona en el teléfono con los tres últimos números, 174. Por favor, marque estrella 6 para reactivar su llamada.

Gracias. Ahora puede hablar.

Persona en el teléfono con los tres últimos números, 174.

Yes, yes. Okay, I'm sorry. Okay, yes, you can start your comment.

Thank you. Good evening, my name is Isabella Montañez and again I want to congratulate the new members of the Council and to ask the support for not to pass the point 11A about a new luxury building that will be built in the area of Lacey tristemente yo conozco personas que están viviendo en su carro y que viven cerca de esas zonas y

personas que desafortunadamente por la pandemia que estamos viviendo están en un paso y fuera de la en la banqueta en la calle por esta situación entonces pedimos que por favor vean la posibilidad verdad de crear mayores viviendas de bajo costo para nuestra comunidad y especialmente de extremadamente bajo costo y también que consideren que en esa zona hay muchas familias de bajos ingresos que

al hacer un edificio de lujo pueden ser desplazados del área donde viven y ya lo estamos viendo muchas de estas familias están viendo a otras ciudades por falta de poder pagar sus alquileres entonces apreciaríamos muchísimo que tomen esto en cuenta y que recuerden que la comunidad espera mucho de ustedes muchas gracias y buenas noches

yes yes and now we will hear from our interpreter my name is I don't want to

miss number one I'd like to congratulate our new council members and I'm asking for your support and no on 11a on the new building that is being built and lazy

there's a lot of people that are living in their cars the due to this pandemic and they are one step away from living in the streets. Please, let's try to create new low-cost living for people from low budgets. Please consider families of low incomes. They can be evicted from their residences due to not being able to pay their rent. Please take this into consideration. Thank you.

Thank you. Caller with the last three numbers, 251. If you would please dial star six to unmute your call or select the microphone icon. Thank you.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. You may proceed with your comment.

Thank you. I just wanted to say that I have been living in Santa Ana all my life. My siblings and my parents, we are very connected to the city. And I feel very frightened by the new development only because there is a lot of people that I know that are still members of the community that aren't able to afford at-rate market value apartments. the fact that there is consideration for a luxury apartment to be built is pretty surprising I know the city of Santa Ana has done wonderful things in order to develop housing for

residents of Santa Ana who are falling on hard times, homelessness, but I would really love to see a development come online for members of the community who've been part of the Santa Ana community for years that are moderate to low income to really support the community that you guys represent. Again you guys have done wonderful with the homeless population but I would love to see a development that is for the people. Santa Anna is great because of the people that have come together to live here, the culture that is here and it's really unfortunate to see you know something

like Northgate try to push members of that same market out. So thank you for

all your work and that's all. Can you please announce your name for the record?

Thank you.

Okay.

Persona en el teléfono con los tres últimos números. 135. Por favor, marque estrella seis para reactivar su llamada.

Gracias.

Hola, buenas tardes. Good afternoon, my name is Rachel Pozos, I am a volunteer in the organization Translatinets and the reason of my call this afternoon is because I would like to support the new congregational We have received support from the city of Santana, we have been able to support the city of Santana, and we have received support from the city of Santana. We have also known that other organizations

focus on women trans women, and they have received support from the city, which I believe they or they don't have a office. We fortunately have a office where we are helping our community trans here in the Condado of Orange. That means that we are the first organization that we are working on the benefit of our community trans here in the Condado of Orange. And I hope that we help our organization to keep keeping our doors open, since now in the Orange County, in what we have been six or seven months,

we have made more than 40 changes in the name. We have the weekends, we have food to women trans, and we have the first folkloric conformed with women trans. That means that we are working for the community and we have received any support from the city of Santana. That makes me a little bit of a molest, because of this organization that has received funds that doesn't look at the work that they are doing. That's enough. Let's focus more on that, and let us see who we give the money and that that money is worth it for what really is to help the community.

My name is Rachel Pozos. Thank you very much. I hope you communicate with us. We are the first organization the more head of mujeres trans-bearing in a poor she can't run in the condado

they are that yes okay now we won't hear from our interpreter good afternoon my

name is Rachel bozos I'm a volunteer at Aliancia trans Latin I like to request help from our new Congress people to get our support we are not receiving any support from the city of Santa Ana we have not received any other support there's other organizations we are concentrated in trans women we are the first organization that supports trans women for our community we need your help so we can continue with our work with the labor we've been working for six to seven months so so far so we would like to continue with our doors

open. On Wednesdays we are feeding our women, we are helping and we are working and we're working hard in our community and we're not receiving any support from our city. We don't see any work for us so we are seeing all this money that is coming to the city from all these organizations so we would like to see where this money is being spent. Thank you so much once again my name is Rachel puzzles and we are working with the I'm a volunteer at Alliance trans Latin women and we're the first organization

in the city that it's helping this patient thank you

Thank you. Persona en el teléfono con los tres últimos números.

054. Por favor, marque estrella 6 para reactivar su llamada.

Gracias. Puede empezar con su comentario.

Buenas tardes, concejal. Mi nombre es Rosa Ramirez. I'm a resident of Santa Ana California. I'm in agreement with the . I would like to build houses asexy to the community, to the immigrants that have a dignified house. Remember, you know, I'm not a member of Vicente Sarmiento, and when we had a meeting with the Latino Javier Alces, you told us that you were to listen to the community. we do it is a little bit of movement because it's pushing us up oil in what

for your family oh yeah gracias gracias and now we will hear from our interpreter

killing good evening my name is Rosa Ramirez I'm a Santa Ana resident I'm here to request your support no on 11a please work more on our low-income housing remember mr. mayor Sarmiento that once you came to one of our meetings and you said that you're here to listen to our community so this is a time that we need to listen and to support us thank you

caller with the last three numbers 0 5 2 if you would please dial star 6 or select the microphone unmute feature on your device and you may proceed with your comment.

Call her with the last three numbers 052.

If you would please dial star six or select the microphone unmute feature on your device and proceed with your comment.

Call her with the last three numbers, 052. If you would please dial star six or select the microphone unmute feature on your device.

Call her with the last three numbers, 052, or Zoom ID Juan, wanting to speak on item 11A. If you would please dial star six,

or select the microphone icon on your device to unmute your call.

Gracias. Puede empezar su comentario.

Persona en el teléfono con los tres últimos números, uno seis cero. Puede empezar su comentario.

caller with the last three numbers nine to four please down star six to unmute your call or select

ok usted puede empezar su comentario

ok ahora sí mi nombre es Fausto Ramírez yo vivo aquí en un cantar Yeah, everybody knows everybody everybody everybody everybody everybody We are now asking the Congressist to be at the 11A agenda, which is, as I mentioned, the construction of the luxury living living. We are seeing that there is more need here in the city

and no just the lujo because what is that is that this year has been more than before and all that is apart from what we are seeing right now of the COVID-19 that we are not really publicano talento es más y más entonces le estamos pidiendo que los apoyen o que se pongan a que no se construya estos edificios de lujo ya que en la

la familia gonzález yo pienso que también ellos

anteriormente fueron también personas que nos apoyaba que personas que veían

of the next year we will go gracias gracias now we will hear from our

interpreter hello good evening my name is Fausto Ramirez I'm a Santa and a resident for over 20 years I'd like to say one message to our council members please help us know on 11 a with this with this housing there's more need for low-income housing rather than luxurious housing this this year it has increased a lot more and due to COVID-19 it's really affecting a lot of people so please help us and not to build this

development there's a family Gonzales that they were also in support with us so thank you for

your time thank you caller with the last three numbers 052 please dial star six or select the microphone icon on your device to unmute your call

Caller with the last three numbers, 052, Zoom ID Juan, if you would please dial star six to unmute your call or select the microphone icon on your device to unmute your call.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, it can hear you. Go ahead. You may proceed with your comment. I'm sorry.

I was trying to begin using my telephone, and so I'm going to do it right now via the zoom okay thank you you may proceed

with your comment you have three minutes

I'm here to comment on agenda item 11 a a fourth and Mortimer mixed-use development project. I mainly want to address and clarify a few points that have been made by some project proponents. First, it's important to understand that Northgate has philosophically always provided quality products at fair prices to its customers. The same philosophy is going to be carried over to the current proposed housing component of the development, which we believe is a quality urban project. The goal is to offer housing for single individuals on up to multi-families. While this project does not have an affordable housing component,

our team is currently in discussions with CNC development in the city for a 100% affordable housing development. We are also in discussions for development of another affordable housing opportunity as well as exploring a student housing development for college students. We truly care about Santa Ana, as has been historically evident with all of our involvement with nonprofits and all of the giving programs that we've had throughout the community over the last 23 years. Lastly, please know that our team has conducted a number of local outreach meetings,

and I can give you a little summary of some of the ones that we've done since 2018. We did go ahead and conduct the sunshine ordinance meeting in 2018 we've met with neighboring condominium and apartment buildings the spectrum condominiums the garden pork apartments and parks apartments we presented at a city organized joint meeting of neighborhood associations in july 2020 which was the french park french court logan lacy downtown and french park plaza we made presentations to business organizations and individual leaders including Santana Business

Council, the Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Inc. We met with historic preservation representative and our partner in this project right here, Andrew Nelson, has knocked on nearly every door that's adjacent to our current store right there and he's spoken with a number of neighboring residents. We've always had an open door policy since the start of the project and we've held meetings both in person via zoom and met privately with any person or organization who wanted to meet with us and we've always taken information as to how they can go ahead and get a hold of

us if this item does get pulled for public hearing we're going to ask that we be invited to address any questions or concerns that the city council may have at that point in time we will end up having myself Carl Middleton who is president of Northgate real estate Andrew Nelson who is the principal at Red Oak development and then also Jennifer Lynch who is our land use council we truly appreciate the City Council's action at the December 1st meeting and humbly ask that you please approve the second reading tonight thank Thank you.

Thank you.

Caller with the last three numbers, 214, if you would please dial star six to unmute your call or select the microphone icon.

Thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

I can. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. You may proceed with your comment.

Hi, good night, council. My name is Alexis Teodoro, and I'm calling as a Santana resident.

And I encourage and urge the current council to postpone this vote and not approve it. I think I don't need to add to the reasons the community has already chimed in. I echo every single comment against this proposal. But I also want to make it clear to the North Cape Real Estate, the North Cape family, that the best way to create participatory community development is to sign a community benefits agreement with the community that lives in the area, surrounding the area,

and the organizations who have historically done a lot of work in the community, particularly those organizations that do land use work because there are a couple of there is one community organization I believe it's called thrive if I'm not mistaken and in the past they have repeatedly come to the city with different ideas on how to develop the land along with community interest not capital interest of a specific family so the best way and I encourage

you to consider this is to actually meet with the people and sign what is called a community benefits agreement out in the open and you'll be the best example of what sometimes is called participatory development, meaning it's bottom-up, and not the other way around. Historically, us residents in Santana have been primarily ignored, even when we can't make public comment, and I think it's about time we take our ideas very seriously, because we're experts in this as well. Thank you for hearing me, and I hope that you make the right decision, Council, and do not approve

this vote and allow more time for more community input especially because we're in a pandemic and we cannot properly discuss this out on the open because of the precautions that we have to take so that's another reason why this should not be approved but as a northern family wants to develop housing for us the residents who don't have it and can't afford it right now at the market rate then sign a benefit agreement of the community benefits agreement so thank you and I hope that the council listens to our residents thank you and have a good

night thank you caller with the last three numbers 0 7 3 please dial star 6 or select the microphone unmute feature on your device thank you you may proceed with your comment

hello welcome council and new council members can you hear me okay yes we can hear you i think so okay wonderful okay so um i want to talk about item 20c um the clean and safe contract for downtown and start by saying that uh i'm a resident of santa anna and my wife's family has been in santa anna for over 70 years and i'm concerned that the uh 400 000 from the ymca sale is going to the clean and safe program to benefit the interest of downtown primarily because the ymca

is a city-wide historical asset and the revenue should really serve um you know the the interest of all the city not just the downtown the downtown for years has gotten quite a bit of investment and we really need to share that with the rest of the city who uh who also need cleaning um to say that um uh you know i don't know if the security guys are in this um in this contract i didn't see them but i see pictures of them but just to say that my experience with the security guard is that they have primarily been there to serve the interests of downtown inc by under reporting crime to the

police under recording by under reporting violence from the bars and that the downtown business owners are actually instructed not to call the police but to call the uh um you know the the yellow jackets um and so i think that the main purpose of the downtown inc and this clean and safe is to serve the interest of the downtown board members and their properties an example is that looking at this contract primarily the alleys that are cleaned are on fourth street even though the bid area is much larger and uh fourth street contains a lot of businesses and properties owned by DTI board members.

So, you know, they should be spending their public money. I mean, their private money on the cleaning of their private alleys ways, but the public money should really be spent to help the other businesses paying into the bid. I noticed there were a lot of letters of support that were in favor of keeping the amount of 500,000 and in support of this. But I just wanted to point out that the majority of those letters also were from Downtown Inc. property owner tenants or board members and I don't think that that's an indication it's a sign of kind of the inherent

conflict of interest that exists and having DTI you know manage this amount of money I think there needs to be an open RFP for a competitive bid I have seen that downtown inc inflates its budget I think especially now that we're in a pandemic and and this notes that the parking revenue has gone way down it also means that the amount of traffic of people in the downtown has gone So to pay the same amount for cleaning the downtown when there's not that many people coming to the downtown I think that needs to be reexamined and Should go somewhere else and also

Just if there's an inherent conflict of interest in giving contracts to downtown Inc to serve its own areas and properties And that you know to know that the money needs to go to a wider area in this case the people they're paying into the business

Thank you caller, your three minutes are up.

From the sale of the one.

Thank you. A caller with the last three numbers, 841. Please dial star six.

Or select the microphone, unmute feature. Thank you, you may proceed with your comment.

Hi, good evening city council members. My name is Sammy Carmona. I'm a 32 year old resident, Santa Ana. I'm a second-generation Latino. And I want to thank the city council members for unanimously approving the 11A development last week.

We have a lot of affordable housing in Santa Ana. And we have a lot of new development happening now as we speak. This new development on 4th Street would be great for people like myself trying to set our foot into place. I myself attended Henninger Elementary just down the street there and I remember my parents walking me to school every morning this development gives me that chance with my son attending Henninger Elementary so I thank everyone for the approvals and I hope this goes through thank you very much have a great night

thank you caller with the last three numbers 170 if you would please dial star six or select the microphone icon on your device thank you you may proceed with your comment

caller with the last three numbers one seven zero you successfully unmuted your call please proceed with your comment yes we can hear you you may proceed with

your comment thank you um hi my name is panela felopez and i'm organizing director of chief staff organizing political home for young latinas identifying people um i'm calling in a position of agenda item 11a um the proposed north gate gonzalez real estate project fails to help address the housing needs for lower income families um that live in the surrounding lacy neighborhood community one of the neighborhoods with a high population of lower-income families. This development project needs to provide affordable housing to help address existing housing needs

and mitigate the gentrification and displacement that its project will create. The Northgate-Ponzalez real estate team cannot claim that this development will serve the Santana residents without including housing that will be affordable to families with extremely low and very low income. We urge you to reject this project until onsite affordable housing is included. The proposed project needs to articulate how the developer and its partners will help address the critical affordable housing needs of residents in the Lacey neighborhood and in the city of Santana. Thank you.

Thank you. Caller, with the last three numbers, 136, please dial star six or select the microphone icon on your device to unmute your call.

Caller 136, if you would please dial star six or select unmute or the microphone on your device to unmute your call thank you you may proceed with your comments

hello my name is Elena I'm a committee member Santana and I want to call to comment on item 11a first off I wanted to respond to the comment made earlier by the proponents of this luxury housing project. I believe he said that there was like many meetings held in 2018, but something he forgot to mention was that at these meetings, many community members clearly and repeatedly voiced their opposition to the development of these luxury apartments.

And it's nothing new today. In 2018, amongst many other concerns, community members showed up to express their worries regarding the displacement that the project would inevitably bring about. Profit and development should not be prioritized over the livelihood and well-being of community members. Low-income working class community members should not be disposed of, and that is essentially what you are doing if you prioritize the development of these luxury apartments that aren't meant for low-income communities. In 2018, I remember some of the presenters of this project have said

Some of these units are going up from $2,000 to $4,000 a unit. And this is by no means accessible. This is placement largely affects communities of color like Santa Ana that are targeted by development and are highly gentrified. These social inequities and factors have lightened the health disparities, which have been exacerbated, as we have been, by the COVID-19 pandemic. So it should come to your surprise that communities of color like Santa Ana have been immensely and gravely impacted by this pandemic. And having housing represents a means of security and safety for many reasons.

And not having housing can have a dire effect on people's mental and physical health. A recent study from the UCLA School of Public Health highlighted that thousands of COVID-19 related deaths were highly correlated to eviction. These are deaths that could have been prevented had people not been pushed out of their homes and forced to live in crowded housing conditions. had people not been inflicted with loads of stress detrimental to their mental and physical health, had people like politicians like you cared for the community and provided resources and support.

We should not have to be revisiting an issue about development as the majority of the community has already opposed. People are being pressured to call and repeat themselves, but we should be focusing on how to make housing more accessible. We should be having a conversation about how to instill a strong rent control in Santa Ana, how to make housing more accessible and secure instead of considering these plans that, like I said before, will inevitably lead to more addiction. I've heard several city council members that have claimed to support the health of the community. So I urge you to oppose a project

that you know is going to clearly leave a lot of people without homes. Thank you.

Yeah! Thank you. Caller with the last three numbers, one six zero if you would please dial star six or select the microphone unmute feature on your device caller with the last three numbers one hello hi thank you you may proceed with your comment thank you I am Jackie Cordova a mother

of Santa Ana for the last 25 years. We are at city council steps. They will not let us in. The police will not let us in to this meeting. I question the validity of this meeting if no quorum can be attained on 11A. In 2017, we recalled Pulido and Solorio. We can do the same today in a heartbeat. I do not approve of amendment application number 2020-04-11-A based on conflict of interest. Bolido and Saduiento abstained. Reminder, the city of Santa Ana and all her servants

are not allowed any type of kickbacks in redevelopment projects or funds associated with said projects. Item 13-A and 13-B. A conflict of interest is hereby filed for the appointment of Mark McLaughlin to the Planning Commission as the Ward 4 representative, along with Janelle McLaughlin for an appointment to the Environmental and Transportation Advisory Commission based on nepotism. The public further admonishes Phil Becerra and his corrupt tactics as never having his constituents'

best interests in mind when basing his decisions. We said no to the McLaughlins. They have too many hands in our pot. Item 20C, abolish Downtown Inc. Downtown Inc. does not fulfill their duty of a safe and cleanliness, nor have they ever been successful at maintaining a vibrant shopping destination for all. The business owners and residents of Santa Ana do not agree on the exorbitant fees this corrupt organization has imposed on us,

nor do we agree to have been charged for parking while paying our water bill or visiting our favorite places item 20c i have called and emailed the city manager several times regarding the condition of the property named the courtyard located at 400 west santa anna boulevard santa anna an old bus terminal currently holding orange county's homeless the property is not safe nor is it clean downtown Inc. does not do the job how are you going to sell off our resources like the YMCA and funnel this money to another corrupt organization

item 22 B the headlines read Santa Ana police lawsuit settlements cost taxpayers at least 24 million over the last decade 15 seconds judge approves 800 million settlement for Las Vegas shooting victims and hot off the press in today's deadline, Santa Ana police officer to plead guilty to federal charges. I would like to thank the FBI for investigating our police force. I do not consent to the purchase of 12 more police vehicles.

Thank you, your time is up.

Caller with the last three numbers, 994. Please dial star six or select the microphone icon. Thank you. you may proceed with your comment.

Dave Elliott, President and CEO, Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce. Welcome, Mr. New Mayor, to lead us, Mayor Sarmiento. For so many years, I've been saying a different name. So this will take a little bit, Vince, for me to get used to this, but welcome as our mayor and our new council members. Welcome to the council as well. We look forward to meeting with you in the next few months to hear your ideas and stuff for our city. I just also want to thank the council for the the fourth and more number project that you voted in last month. We think

that this is a good project that fits long-term vision for downtown. It's an economic development, a positive economic development project with jobs, residences, businesses, etc. So I just wanted to to thank the council for what you did last month and hope that you will continue to move forward with this project. And I wanted just to welcome our new council members and our new mayor. Thank you for your service and appreciate all of you. Thank you.

Thank you. Caller with the last three numbers, 276. You may dial bar six or select the microphone icon to unmute your call.

Caller with the last three numbers, 276, please dial star six or select the microphone icon on your device.

Caller with the last three numbers, 276, you may dial star six or the microphone icon to unmute your call persona en el teléfono con lo tres último número dos siete seis por favor marque estrella seis para reactivar su llamada

or active el sonido en el aparato en cual está usando Zoom.

You may proceed with your comment. Puede empezar con su comentario.

Caller with the last three numbers, 276. you successfully unmuted your call you may proceed with your comment

personal net telephone okay no traditional no knows knows yet the space for the Messiah's to comment Daniel

caller with the last three numbers three three five please dial star six to unmute your call or select the microphone icon to proceed with your comment caller with the last three numbers three three five please dial star six

good evening yes yes can start your comment

good evening my name is Sarah I am a resident of Santa Ana my comment is in opposition to the 11a this project is not what is what is needed in our city of Santa Ana that is needed a living asequible and not of luxury I would like to mention that Norgue González talks about tradition, herencia, family with this project, it reflects the values that so much it is to honor a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a

una vivienda en este edificio después de tantos años que esta comunidad los ha llevado al lugar en donde están por favor no al once a gracias gracias

now we will hear from our interpreter

good evening my name is a day of forever my long-term sana and a resident I'm here just to say that we don't need 11 a we need low income residents housing they were talking about tradition heritage and family and this is not any tradition heritage or family this does not evict their community members when in the place where their own employees cannot afford living in this in this neighborhood in this buildings so please support us and

saying no on 11a thank you caller with the last three numbers four five one please dial star six to unmute your call or select the microphone icon on your

device I can hear yes you can hear you may proceed with your comment thank you

I will speak in Spanish and then I will speak in English My name is Isuri Ramos, I'm a resident of Santana, who has worked a lot in the village of Lacey and with the residents that live there. I called myself for two weeks to ask the council to vote for this project, or vote in their contra, until the team of Northeague could have a meeting in person, and until they could respond to the community's request for the housing of low cost, as part of this project. I am with hope that this new council, that has been saying that they would respond to the community.

I am with hope that they will listen to us. The only union in person that had was that it occurred in August of 2018. And in this union, there were almost 100 people and all in opposition to this project. project. Desde entonces, Northgate no ha tenido ninguna reunión en persona, y la reunión por Zoom por internet que tuvieron este año tuvo una participación muy pobre. Entonces, yo dudo del enlace comunitario que dice Northgate que ha hecho. Yo conozco a varios residentes que viven a pocos pasos del proyecto, y Northgate no tocó sus puertas.

those same residents were present in the reunion of August 2018 which means that Northgate has their names and their phone numbers but Northgate has not done the effort to communicate with them those are the residents who are opposed to the project and represent the vecindario Lacey this issue has to be continued and with new alcaldes, Sarmiento and concejales esta oportunidad de poner el ejemplo y demostrar que valores a los recientes de santana y las preocupaciones que tienen la necesidad

para vivienda de bajo costo real y dije esto hace dos semanas y lo voy a decir otra vez porque tus planes para construir vivienda de bajo costo en otras partes no no importan ahorita si quieres hablar de vivienda de bajo costo tienes que

I'll speak in English now. Good evening, Mayor Sarmiento and council members. My name is Ysuri Ramos. I'm a Santana resident with close price to the Lacey neighborhood and the residents that live there. I called in two weeks ago to ask that the council will continue this project until Northgate real estate can hold an in-person meeting and respond to the community and respond to the community's ask for affordable housing at this project. I call again today more hopeful that this new council that campaigned on their community responsiveness will listen. The only in-person meeting on this development occurred in August of 2018.

At this meeting, there were nearly 100 people present, all those in opposition. Since then, the Northgate Real Estate Team has not had any in-person meetings. The online meeting this year had poor participation. I questioned the Northgate Real Estate Team's community outreach. I know several residents that live steps away from the project site, and the Northgate Team did not knock on their door. These same residents attended the Sunshine Ordinance meeting, meaning that Northgate had their names and phone numbers, but Northgate did not reach out to them. These are residents that oppose this project,

and they represent the Lacey neighborhood. This item must be continued. This is your opportunity to set an example and to demonstrate that you value Santana residents and their concerns. The need for affordable housing is real. I said this two weeks ago, and I will say it again. Northgate real estate team, your affordable housing plans all sourced down nice, but they are irrelevant to this item. If you want to bring affordable housing to the discussion, then you must include affordable housing in this development. Thank you.

Thank you. Caller with the last three numbers, 288. Please dial star six or select the microphone icon on your device.

Caller with the last three numbers, 288. please dial star six

or select the microphone icon on your device and you may proceed with your comment.

Hello, my name is Abraham from the law. I'd like to congratulate the new council members for taking a part of being in the huge and important decisions that are made in our beautiful city of Santa Ana. I'd like to speak on item 11A,

specifically gearing towards the council members. That is important that the new council members, you guys set the tone for the future of Santa Ana and the people of Santa Ana.

As somebody whose family was displaced and had to move out of Santa Ana due to the lack of affordable housing, I understand that there's many developments but that does not take away the amount of need of the people of Santa Ana and how when we apply for affordable housing just as my family did, it takes a very long time to get approval to move in as much as six to nine months and that time does not give us enough time to act in a way that allows us to find comfortable housing and forces us

to leave the city and search for cheaper housing so that being said the people of Santa Ana have spoken tonight and it is obvious what the people of Santa Ana want and what the people of Santa Ana need so that with that being said just so you had your backs of boarding you into this position we hope that you have our backs and continue to protect the people of Santa Ana it is known that the North Gate corporation has big plans for their pockets and that plan does not include

the people of Santa so with that being said I hope you guys can really take this into stock and I urge you to vote no on 11a thank you

Thank you. Caller with the last three numbers, 602. Please dial star six to unmute your call or select the microphone icon on your device.

Caller with the last three numbers, 602. Please dial star six to unmute your device. or select the microphone icon on your device

persona en el teléfono con los tres últimos números seis cero dos por favor marque estrella seis para reactivar su llamada o active el sonido en el aparato en cual está usando Zoom.

Persona en el teléfono con los tres últimos números, 602. Por favor, marque estrella 6 para reactivar su llamada.

Call her with the last three numbers 602, please dial star 6 from your device or select the microphone icon to unmute your call.

Call her with the last three numbers, 589.

Please dial star six to unmute your call.

Or select the microphone icon on your device.

hi can you hear me yes you may proceed with your comment um hi good afternoon my name is

Kimberly Castro I am a youth and resident from Santa Ana I asked that this project 11a is not held or approved why because we want an affordable housing in our community not like not luxury I want to speak on behalf of local families and residents like myself and others that cannot afford to pay their rent because they are too high please be aware that our community voice should be heard and that we matter am also going to say it in Spanish hola buenas tardes todos mi nombre es Kimberly Castro soy una joven y residente en Santa Ana yo pido que este proyecto 11a no se apruebe porque porque queremos una vivienda

accessible y no lujosa yo quiero hablar sobre las familias de bajo ingreso como yo misma y muchos que no no no pueden pagar la renta porque están muy altas por favor sean conscientes que la comunidad tiene una voz y debería ser escuchada nosotros importamos thank you everybody have a green light muchas gracias a todos

Thank you. Caller with the last three numbers, 081. Please dial star six. Or select the microphone icon on your device. You may proceed with your comment.

Can I present my comment? Yes, please. yes good evening my name is araceli robles resident of the city of santana and I want to congratulate the new members of the council I want to say that they are in the moment today is a historic moment here in our city of santana because you are about to stop the project of living a luxury I'm going to totalmente al punto 11a y les repito están en un momento histórico para no aprobar este proyecto y no dejar que el concilio pasado siga arrastrando a la comunidad hacia lo que ellos

quieren les pido por favor no apoyen este proyecto nosotros confiamos plenamente en ustedes que no vamos a seguir teniendo esta dictadura que tuvimos con el concilio pasado que simplemente veían su benefit personal and the community never is important for nothing please right now they can make history and make our community believe that we have the best decision to vote for you and we think that they will be supporting our community thanks good night and I thank you because I know that they will listen to the community because in the 2018

lamentablemente we had a dictator in la ciudad de Santana que no escuchaba su comunidad junto con los concejales que

salieron gracias y buenos noches gracias and now we will hear from our

good evening my name is Araceli Robles I'm a cena and a resident number one I'd like to congratulate our new council members this is a historic moment because you're just about to stop this development. I'm against 11A. I don't want you to be like the previous council that dragged their community. So don't be like the previous council. Now it's this time to make history. You need to support your community.

I congratulate you because you are going to stop this development you cannot support the community don't be like the previous council that they were like a dictatorship thank you and have a good night

thank you caller with the last three numbers three six two please dial star six or select the microphone icon on your device to unmute your call. You may proceed with your comment.

hello, good afternoon, good afternoon, can you start your comment? yes, we can hear you

okay, my name is this Maria Victoria, I am resident of Santana and my comment is for the 11a. La verdad que este pues ahorita yo pienso que esas este edificios que quieren construir a al nivel que estamos ahorita y este pienso que no es bueno porque este estamos por pasando por una situación muy fuerte que hay muchas personas que no tienen ni para pagar la renta personas que

living in the street and I think that right now it's time for this to be making those apartments of luxury. I ask the congressman and the council that we support because

para que esto no no no no no siga pasando más y pues muchas gracias gracias

okay our translator will interpret now good evening my name is my director I'm

a sana and a resident I'm here to talk about 11a I I think that it's difficult to build today considering our present time we know this is a strong situation there are people that cannot pay rent they cannot pay rent there are living in the street so we don't need a luxurious apartments so please support us so this does not happen so this is not built thank you thank you caller with the last

three numbers oh my apologies with the zoom ID oh okay so it's caller with the last three numbers eight nine six please dial star six or select the microphone icon to unmute your device thank you you may proceed good evening

mayor so the end though council members my name is Jessica Larruea from the executive director of the Kennedy Commission wanted to call in opposition to item 11 a this is a development that is proposing to bring housing that unfortunately a lot of the working families in the Tantana will not be able to afford um but at the same time they are requesting incentives and concessions that they're not entitled to the city and the residents of santana should get something in return they should get affordable housing as part of this development or make sure that there is appropriate

um affordable housing being built here for the community so with that i wanted to just point out a few things um if the developer wants to proceed with this development that they're not entitled to with zoning they're asking for a zoning amendment and they should use the appropriate measures which are either doing a density bonus and provide for the concessions that they want in exchange for affordable housing or comply with the affordable housing ordinance and provide affordable housing for working families in the city of santana thank you for your time good night

Thank you.

Zoom ID.

David Carvajal.

Please dial the, you may proceed with your comment.

Good evening, City Council. My name is David Carvajal. I'm a lifelong resident of Santana and a community health worker living here in Ward 2. I'm calling in regarding agenda item 11A. I want to adamantly oppose the North East development. I want to express that at a time of immense financial hardship for Santana residents, I urge you all to reconsider the approval of this development. Like it's been mentioned many times tonight, in 2018, over 100 people crowded.

the one and only public meeting that I heard of and I'm sure many of us heard of regarding this development and it was evident that the consensus of this meeting was that this development doesn't meet the needs of our community and I think it's crazy that in the midst of a pandemic we're sitting here talking about approving luxury development if there's anything that this national catastrophe has taught us, it's that housing is important for our health. And furthermore, that housing is healthcare. Do not burden, do not continue burdening Santana residents with developments that the people of Santana cannot afford to live in.

Only one community meeting was held regarding this development. We need more community input. Do not move forward with this development until the appropriate community input has been considered. and if that means that we have to wait for Northgate and for all of us to be able to gather safely in person, that's what that means and we hope that you all can take our thoughts into consideration. Thank you.

Thank you. Caller with the last three numbers, 271. Please dial star six

or select the microphone icon on your device.

caller with the last three numbers two seven one please dial star six or the microphone icon on your device you may proceed with your comment hi my name is

boomer move mother Vicente I'm calling on item 65 D on the police I'm a lifelong resident of Santa Ana and I'm also currently a solo fellow with CHISPA. I just want to highlight the response from the community on the police oversight survey. I think these responses only serve as a reminder that the community strongly agrees that we need police oversight and oversight with teeth, ideally with subpoena and investigatory powers. Our residents are listening and they want to be involved. I hope this survey can serve as a first step towards a more engaged community process with residents in the city

and determining the type of commission we want to see. Residents of Santa Ana pay a premium for this public safety service and should be a part of this conversation. This item comes at a very interesting time when our residents are learning the city pays 24 million in payoffs for the last decade on police-related settlements. And recently today, with Santa Ana Police Officer Steven Lopez, who pleaded guilty to a federal charge of bribery, This is just yet another issue exposed by federal authorities and Santa Ana police and city officials. Our city has shied away for too long on police accountability and oversight.

I suggest staff look into models like Oakland and Portland which serve as good models that are independent commissions with investigatory powers. I hope the new council can take the right steps in addressing this long pertinent matter. Thank you.

Thank you. Caller, with the last three numbers, 943, please dial star six or select the microphone icon on your device. You may proceed with your comment.

Yes, my name is Albert Castillo.

Two years ago, Monty wanted to demolish the market on Caricuatro. The reason for this was to build luxury apartments. The community came together and shamed them for wanting to demolish a neighborhood market where many in the east side bought the groceries. We made Fort Cape wealthy. You would think a family-owned business would support our community, but Cree has no boundaries. We believe that Polito, who is a consultant or on their own, decided to move forward under the cover of a pandemic that has devastated our city.

The Pulido era is almost over. We need to help our new development until the new mayor and city council reconsider the unjust 5% in-new fee for affordable housing. Santaneros have had enough. We elected all of you because we demanded change. Don't become like the past politicians that enrich themselves and make deals to prepare themselves for the next election. Stop Mordgate and reconsider a better option for our residents.

Tell all these outdated, corrupt ways of doing business that change has come. El pueblo no más se vende. Boycott Mordgate. Thank you.

Thank you. Zoom ID, Evan Grant.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the council. Again, this is Evan Grant on behalf of Kara Grant Law. We represent the petitioners in the Santa Ana Needs Equity versus City of Santa Ana matter that has been before you earlier tonight and will probably come up a number of times again at future sessions. So again, we invite you, if you have any questions for us or want to see any of the documentation we're referring to, please let us know. We'll be happy to do that. But I want to now commend the new mayor for his difficult decision that he made in this matter,

where notwithstanding the fact that he thought that he could be impartial dealing with the matters related to the Russell Fisher project, that he recused himself because he acknowledged that there was at least an argument, at least a possibility of an appearance of impropriety. And I also want to commend the Mayor Pro Tem and Council Member Becerra for also speaking up when clearly there was something going amiss.

And things being done for Polito's benefit and for the benefit of people that he has affinity for, whether they're his friends or family members or whatever, all for Polito's interest. What I would suggest to you is that how many of you know that Jill Wallace was reading Polito's emails, official emails from the city? How many of you know? Just ask the city attorney. How many of you know that Jill Wallace was writing emails for Polito at the same time that she was being hired by consultants for the express purpose of using her influence with Polito?

and palito using his influence at the city to expedite permits they called her a permit expediter and she only does it at one place the city of santa anna and i suspect that's all but over now that mayor palito's gone we don't have any problem with mayor palito he seemed like a wonderful guy for the first number of years but somehow he became the very people that he opposed and that gave rise to his mayorship 30 years ago. The same people that tried to take advantage of his family business, he has become how the mighty have turned.

The petitioners simply want justice. They simply want what is right for the community. That's all they've ever asked for. And why the city council, you know, Christine Ridge recommended, and she reiterated last session that she recommended that the city council approve a settlement agreement with russell fisher 15 seconds that would put the city on the hook for all of the fees when russell fisher owed the indemnity why did she do that does anyone know that it was miss ridge and her staff that were well aware of joe wallace's involvement at the

same time she was acting as a consultant enough's enough i encourage you to take a new step forward Thank you for your call. Your time is up.

Caller with the last three numbers, 415, please dial star 6 or select the microphone icon on your device to unmute your call.

Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. You may proceed with your comment.

Thank you. My name is Loma Martinez. I live in Ward 3. I would like to express my opposition to Item 11A and would like to urge the council to continue this item until an in-person community meeting can happen. The proposed project fails to help address the housing needs of the surrounding community and instead increases gentrification and displacement in an area that's already deeply affected by it. In 2015, I had the honor to work with multiple organizations on a study overseen by two university professors that specifically looked at the income levels and overall housing conditions of the residents in this specific neighborhood.

During the study, I saw firsthand the hardship these families are living through and learned that half of the households in this area have a household income of $25,000 and below. I also learned that nearly 20% of those household incomes were between $10,000 and $15,000 a year. While this study happened five years ago, I can't imagine that things are dramatically better now. During the election season, I kept hearing candidates say things like born and bred in Santana and advertise themselves as community champions.

This right now is a way to walk the walk and show for the 100-plus residents who said no to this project two years ago. This is a perfect opportunity that you should all take to take a stand for the disenfranchised community in Santana. the way that previous council members stood with the community surrounding the 2525 North Main Project. In the midst of a pandemic, council already reduced the housing opportunity ordinance piece, which was a significant generator of affordable housing funds. Approving projects without affordable housing, in addition to decreasing affordable housing fund generators,

would be a double hit to our community. Thank you all for your time. Have a good night.

Thank you. Caller with the last three numbers, 193, please dial star six or select the microphone icon on your device.

Thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

Yes, hi. Hi, my name is Erica Gonzalez. I'm a 34-year-old son-of-a-resident of the Delhi neighborhood, a parent, Chicanox, and Udex member, community organizer, and small business owner. Before I give the items that I'm in opposition to, I'd like to give you all the definition of gentrification. It's the process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people, moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current inhabitants in the process. This is what we've seen constantly in downtown, and this is what we're seeing again.

3.3 million Americans are now in default for their mortgage payments, and even more are in default or in danger of being evicted from their homes, and those numbers are only expected to rise. I am in opposition of the following agenda items, agenda items 11A and 11B, the development of the luxury apartments. You need to stop all of this development until the existing 5% fees, the in-lue fees, are removed and reinstated above the previous 15%, because that needs to be in accordance with the income threshold of the Santana residents. That's what we need. We need clarification on the environmental impact report.

That EIR that's in that staff report is 10 years old, and it does not include the second block in the Lacey neighborhood that was recently added. In addition, the updated ERIs are not required to include the study of effects on parking, and we all know what a huge issue this is in the city already. We're one of the densest cities. I tell you guys this every single time I'm on this call. I know you've heard this numerous times. You guys should know this by now, like the back of your hand. I've told you we are the fourth densest city. We don't need more luxury apartments. We need to take care of our existing communities.

We also need clarification on whether these buildings are going to exceed the five stories that were previously agreed upon for all new developments. I encourage this new city council to take this opportunity to support real affordable housing and an eviction moratorium, especially during the pandemic. UCLA released a study, and I would also like to cite it like my colleague Alondra did. Those evictions between the beginning of the pandemic and the CDC's National Eviction Oratorium in September have led to 433,000 excess COVID cases and 10,700 additional deaths. Additional deaths. That's 10,000.

That's almost 11,000 people that died and didn't have to. The racial and economic disparities of the pandemic have been well documented. And if you really want to show that you care, like that video says, then show us that you care. Listen to our demands because we're not asking anymore. We're demanding. you Northgate we have supported you for 40 years there's five Northgate markets in Santana we can organize boycotts for all of them we helped you succeed we can bring you down if you don't want to support us when we supported you you need to also uh I'm in opposition of 20c the the um

appropriation of the of the those funds to downtown inc again with the gentrification in Santana for over a decade this consulting company does nothing for our community and it does everything for their own members okay so you guys need to cancel that contract give those money to the people to that organization for the transgender women that called earlier she's called multiple times and i've heard her call give money to people that need it to the community listen to us we are asking you and we are not going to ask we're demanding thank you thank you caller with the last three numbers

941. Please dial star 6 to unmute your call or select the microphone. You may proceed with your comment.

Caller with the last three numbers 941, you have successfully unmuted your call. Hi. Hi. Please state your name for the record. You may proceed with your comment.

Yes, my name is Perla Dionisio, and I am calling on behalf of the agenda item 11A on regards to the Gonzales, Northgate Gonzales development. Northgate Gonzales has been a staple in our community, and up until a couple years ago, it was a great example of what Hispanic companies can achieve. Since 2018, however, dissolution I have all my life of La Gonzales has been tainted by gentrification and their willingness to be a vessel. Gentrification is the process whereby the characters of poor urban areas is tainted by wealthier people moving in,

improving housing and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current inhabitants in the process. In 2017, the Georgetown Journal for Poverty Law and Policies wrote in an article titled, Examining the Negative Impact of Gentrification. The gentrification usually leads to a negative impact such as forced displacement, a fostering of discriminatory behavior by people in power, and a focus on spaces that exclude low-income individuals and people of color.

So as you can see, this is a perfect opportunity for this city council to do what they said they did every weekend that the community walked for them. Because this is going to show to the public and to all their constituents that they really meant what they said. And I am a member of Chicanos Unidos and we have been doing work for years calling attention to these projects. And I am so proud of Santa Ana residents that are calling in today with the same passion that we have spoken about this for years.

Furthermore, I would like to oppose the appointment of Mark Mount Laughlin to Ward 4 because he lives in Ward 3. And it doesn't make sense to me that Gentryphile Becerra is appointing him to represent my ward. So isn't 14 years of city commissions enough? Like, that is longer than our own city council members can be on there. And regardless of all his accomplishments, he has gentrified everything in Santana.

And I find that it's problematic and it's a conflict of interest that he is the board of director of the Santana Chamber of Commerce. The same people that have called tonight in support of Gonzales Development. So if this is not a conflict of interest, then what is it? And the reason why Phil is appointing him is because no one has volunteered. Well, I'm a ward for threatening and I volunteer. And I volunteer for that commission because I will make sure that gentrification stops now. And this is a good opportunity for a new city council member to show what they're made of.

thank you color with the last three numbers 010 if you would please dial star six can you hear me yes you may proceed with your comment don't tell me yet the

real quick verb and it's not a reflection of anybody but it takes three It took me three hours to get on, and somehow, you know, three hours waiting to participate in democracy is like waiting 10 hours to vote. It doesn't really work, so just my comment, three hours from the time I started now. And most of the comments were duplicated. So give us some thought, you know, in the future. We're trying to be good participants, good citizens. But three hours, I think you would agree, is a little bit too long to wait to speak for three minutes. Thank you. Anyway, now I begin.

So there are three topics I'm going to speak on, item 65 and the moral economy and financial errata. With regard to the police commission, the time to begin formating is now, today. You have some excellent information to begin this effort. The cost is relatively low. You can choose a structure from the report so much where it's very well established or design at your own direction. Either way, there is no need to hesitate or keep kicking the can down the road. The reputation of the city is online.

I've spoken to Jerry Serrano, head of the POA tonight, and he is in agreement with moving forward on the commission as he was in agreement with working with me during my run for council on a commission. So the POA is not holding anything back. It's up to the council at this point. In this respect, I recommend the following. Appoint a citizen fact-finding commission delivered to you a report for a specific recommendation. The commission will provide much more time for hearings and input from the community and come free to council up to do its normal duties. All commissioners should be randomly selected as an ad-eim.

Let's eliminate the politics of this commission and ensure fairness to residents who want to serve. Along the way for police operations, they should increase the probationary period for sworn officers from 18 months to 36 months. The counselor should also agree to increase the required for police employment to require at least an AA degree. And one that's been granted for two years from the date of employment. Please be aware there is a bill under consideration of the state assembly to require officers to have a BA degree. This is a recipe for disaster for Santa Ana College that will negatively impact the best

in the nation public safety program, but also potentially eliminate working and middle class jobs that the academy supports in the surrounding community. At a time of soaring student debt, there's got to be better options for the attention of this bill. Please contact a good friend at Rancho San Diego Community College to express your concern. the council understands i also feel the council needs to understand the use of digital tools in the survey we're not very effective here we have a massive digital divide that exists and we're spending money to improve it and what do we do we go and use a digital survey we need to do better

maybe a paper survey or through a fact-finding commission which is back to the moral economy with just last month the council's very limited discussion approved over 40 million spending not one cent went toward employee residence tonight you have a chance to 15 seconds start for new way of being mr mayor may you exercise privilege i have a speech impediment and this is rather difficult to get through in three minutes i promise that i'll only need 60 seconds more go ahead thank you sir uh tonight you have a start to be to begin a new way of

business with moral economy by keeping tax dollars in santa anna item 22b this whole source contract for four trucks at a time when this auto industry is devastated is simply immoral. Once again, the local economy cannot compete for the over $494,000 that has been requested on a sole source basis to an existing relationship. The council can begin a new course for a moral economy, vote no one 22A, and have it sent out to bed with points for local visitors. People are keeping tabs. Financial errata. The past 15 years, the city has budgeted for a full-time city attorney. and I mean a city attorney like Sonia.

It's unclear why the city budget for a city attorney when there's a contract and we have Sonia. I would encourage you in the interest of financial integrity to research and clean it up. It looks like money is being loaded into your budget that doesn't need to be. Secondly, this document shows payments for police payouts in the city was published in the Boise of Santa Ana. This is not a correct way to identify this information. It's not what I consider the standards of practice and risk management. And it does not consider a lot of things that go into this.

To this end, I've made a public information request both for the city attorney information and to get the correct data and publish it in a manner that it should be published, not in the manner that was published in the votes of OC or presented to Measure X Committee. Lastly, some Santa Ana stars and positive remarks. Kudos to all of you, Prieto and Delgado, who are in the downtown beat in our city. They are cordial, personal, and professional. Our community in downtown Canada is much safer because of their work and we need to continue on that type of quality of effort by all our people. Thank you. Your time is up. Alright.

Caller with the last three numbers, 351. Please dial star six to unmute your call.

Thank you. You may proceed with your call. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Perfect. Thank you. My name is Chloe Rios and I'm the CEO and co-founder of Alianza Translatinx, the first and only transgender-led organization currently with a physical office space in Santa Ana. We highly oppose 11A and we wish for this luxury apartment complex to not be supported by our city. First off, I would like to thank Council Member Mendoza and Becerra as well as Mayor Sarmiento for reaching out. Alianza TranslatinX has been trying to get the city's attention and support since back in July of this year,

and we are just thankful that you finally paid attention to us. Alianza TranslatinX currently offers name and gender marker change supportive services to 50 transgender people per month. We offer hot meals to over 40 houses, transgender and gender non-conforming people every Wednesday. We offer monetary support through our fiscal sponsor partnership with the Translatina Coalition to over 30 transgender and gender non-conforming people. We also offer hormone replacement therapy through our collaboration with the Trans Wellness Center in Los Angeles.

We have the Alianza Translatinx Valles Folclorico, which promotes community building and physical activity. In August of this year, Alianza Translatinx put together the very first community health fair in which several OC organizations and LA organizations participated, such as BROC of Garden Growth, APAIT, Prop 21, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and FLUG. We also organized the first Transgender Day of Remembrance in Santa Ana with over 40 transgender people showing up.

And on November 25th, we provided the first transgiving dinner in OC through which we provide a dinner meal, gift cards, and personal care items to over 50 transgender and gender non-conforming people. We want to make sure that the work Alianza Translatinx has done over the past month and continues to perform is recognized and supported by our local leaders so that we can continue to grow and expand as an organization. We have been informed that there is a member of our community who is saying that they are working for the trans community and providing services.

This person has received monetary support and certificates for the work they have not performed by a former council member Solorio. Please do not be fooled or misled by anyone that says to be helping the transgender community but instead are working for their personal gain. The work is being done by Alianza Translatin X, and we have the support of the community. Lastly, as a longtime resident of Orange County and growing up in Santa Ana, I want to thank you for your service, but I also want to ask you to please invest in transgender lives by supporting Alianza Translatin X. 15 seconds left.

We hope you can all attend our office grand opening once COVID-19 ceases. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Zoom ID Alondra Salazar, please dial the microphone icon on your device or select star six to unmute your call.

Zoom ID Alondra Salazar. Please select the microphone icon on your device.

Persona net telefono con Zoom ID Alondra Salazar.

I already spoke. Sorry, I already spoke. Just wanted to mention that.

Thank you. I think you may be logged in more than once.

Caller, Zoom ID. Victor Payan.

Hello, can you hear me?

Did you already speak?

I did, but I have a second comment for 11A this time.

Okay, you've already provided your comment. What was that? You've already provided your comment at that time.

You could send us an email for additional comments.

caller many escamilla zoom ID if you would please select the microphone and you may proceed with your comment all right can you hear me there yes we could

hear you thank you okay yeah I guess that hello to the new council and mayor congratulations on the successful runs for all of the folks up there it's a quite an interesting bunch and you already have a lot of big decisions to make on your first outing there. I'm actually probably going to go to some of the more obscure items on the agenda. There's the item 20, oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm missing the item number, 25E, which is going to be an approval for a new digital planning service or planning process. So I think that's actually

one of the, for me at least, big highlights in this particular agenda packet. And I want to kind of let you all know how great it is to be able to kind of do these types of things electronically, especially under COVID conditions, just because of the fact that you're going to be making your staff a lot more efficient and not having to kind of carry around all this paper throughout the city and then making it easier for folks to submit. So I really do think that that's a good example of the way that the city can implement technology programs in order to serve

the residents and folks a little bit better. But I do want to caveat that with the worry that some of these documents and plans do have kind of long-term value. So, you know, when it comes to the digital storage, sometimes we kind of let things go and get outdated and then we can't access the files. So I just want to make sure that we kind of keep an eye on making that available in the long term, especially when, you know, kind of down the road, if someone ever needs to modify some of these buildings, we can still kind of have the plans around, you know, 10, 20, and 30 years,

and even longer down the road. So that's the first item there. And then the second one is actually related to the housing joint session that you're having later for item 80A. And it's great to just kind of look to see where the moderate income housing asset fund is at currently. But what's buried in there is actually one of these parcels or these remnant parcels from the five freeway that's kind of been sitting around and owned by the redevelopment agency and now by the housing successor agency and it's kind of just been sitting around and not being used as a parcel by

Spurgeon and 22nd street it's it's really kind of behind these homes and it's this big empty lot and it's been up for sale a few times but there's no one that can really develop it because it doesn't conformed to any of our standards. And it seems to be quite frankly a bit of a wasted space. And we have a gardening program that's in the same neighborhood in Park Santiago. And you know we do actually allow agricultural uses and greenhouses and that sort of thing in that type of zoning. And definitely we'd want to do this maybe in conjunction with some of the

residents there. But it just seems like such a waste that you know in this time of COVID when folks are kind of wanting to have gardens and a little kind of more outdoor activity and trying to find creative ways to add outdoor recreational spaces. It seems like a really good opportunity to kind of finally take this parcel from one agency, you know, the housing agency, and maybe over into Parks and Rec or some other maybe nonprofit that would be able to use that as a gardening space outdoors. So I just wanted to put that on your radar and wish you all the best with this tough decision that you have on 11A.

I understand both sides of the debate here. And I leave it all to you up there to see what that decision is going to be. But I really do admire the passion of the residents that have called in and are basically fighting for their...

Thank you, Manny. Your time is up.

Thank you.

Zoom ID, Adriana. if you would please select the microphone icon on your device or select Star six to unmute your call

person a net the left for no going some ID Adriana portfolio activa sonino Nella operato en cuales to send a some

Zoom ID Adriana, please dial the microphone icon on your device to unmute your call.

Select star six.

personal net teléfono o zoom Adriana por favor active el sonido en el aparato en cual está usando su

Okay.

Carla Juarez. Zoom ID Carla Juarez.

Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi. Hi. Thank you. My name is Carla Juarez. I'm a Santa Ana resident. I'm calling in opposition of 11A in regards to the luxury homes I want to address the individual that called complaining that he's been waiting for three hours on the phone but we have as well because our

our livelihood is on the line or not livelihood but our being able to stay in Santa Ana is on the line with luxury homes that we can't afford families are being pushed out you guys have heard this many times before and also through the previous cars but please i urge the council and everyone else is listening in i think about who do these homes who do they benefit and if those that are being benefited out of this do they live with the consequences of these lecturing homes if if they want these lecture

homes they should build them in their neighborhoods and not in ours. Luxury homes only benefit the very few. Those that could afford it and those that are building it but not our communities. And it is very sad to see many families that have lived in Santa Ana for many many years being priced out. Priced out of their businesses, priced out of their homes, and priced out of Santa and it is very also sad that we are paying sales tax of 9.25 when other cities are better off than

us are paying less so how is it that we still we continue to build luxury homes also um the person that called wanting a luxury home there's many already built in santa they're vacant. Also please think about that. The fact that there's luxury homes vacant when we have a lot of homeless people without a home and many people living in their cars and many, many on the verge of losing their home because of this pandemic. Because after the protection

against eviction is taken away, they're going to be in danger of losing their home. But though we still have vacant homes, vacant apartment complexes, vacant condominiums, Valle El Toro, everywhere in Santa Ana. So how is it that we are building more and it's not housing that we could afford, the luxury homes that only a few could afford. Luxury homes can wait. During a pandemic is not a priority. A priority is taking care of our residents, a priority is taking care of our students, of our kids, of our education, housing. 15 seconds left. Thank you. Luxury homes is a luxury,

not a priority. It's more a want and not a need. And we need protections for those that already live in San Ana. Thank you for my time. Thank you.

Zoom ID, Leonel Velasquez.

please select the microphone icon or unmute feature on your device.

Hello?

Hello, you may proceed with your comment.

Yes, well, my name is Lenel Velasquez. I'm a resident for more than 20 years in Santana City. So needs for more affordable housing is very, very important for our city. But we also need more taxes from business to invest in youth. Luxurious apartments sounds wonderful, but with 30% for low income. But low income, that means for minimum wage.

luxury apartments with a diverse community to prevent gentrification so item 11a is very good opportunity to change the rules for a new apartment especially for a new luxury apartment in santana thank you

Zoom ID Eric Garvajal.

If you would please select the unmute microphone option on your device.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

So my name is Eric Carboff-Paul. I'm a resident of Ward 5. This is regarding item 11A and really directed towards the newer city council member and mayor, because we already know where Phil Basura, David Penaluzer and Nelida stand on this issue. The people of Santa Ana voted for all of you in hopes of change and pushing Northgate project back until they can provide affordable housing units is something we are expecting you to do. It is the agenda item where you have your first opportunity to demonstrate whether you're going to stand for the platform that you ran on or simply recycled Santa Ana politicians with new faces.

On behalf of myself and others, we hope you live up to our expectations on 11A and push the project back until they can come forward with affordable housing for the residents here in Santa Ana. In addition, I would like the city council members in particular, Jonathan Hernandez, who represents my ward, Ward 5, to look into rebuilding the handball courts of Chippa Park in the Logan neighborhood of Ward 5. My understanding is that this happened without the prior city council's knowledge or approval, but now that you're aware of it, we're hoping that you can rebuild the handball courts or move to rebuild the handball courts

of the community enjoyed using for decades. If you love the Barrio Logan neighborhood so much, like you said during your campaign, and I hope you can demonstrate it by moving to rebuild the Chippewa Park handball courts. Thank you.

Thank you. Caller, with the last three numbers, 929,

if you would please dial star six to unmute your call or select the microphone icon on your device.

Caller with the last three numbers, 929.

Please dial star six.

Thank you. You may proceed with your comment.

Hi, I'm Gabby Hernandez-Costillo. I am a social worker here in Orange County, and I also live in Ward 3. And I'm calling regarding item 20C and 75A. And I believe my comment will probably apply to all the agenda items. It's heartbreaking to hear that during this pandemic, people are begging to stay in their homes and to stay in their communities. when on top of that they're also like striving to live, striving to eat, striving to provide for their kids.

And what privilege that city council members are able to be at home and decide if people should be kicked out of their community or not. This responsibility as a city council member carries so much weight. And as many of you recently joined the city council, as you were campaigning and knocking on doors and talking to these people and telling them that you're going to represent them, whether you recently got on or you got on a few years ago, it is your duty, your duty to protect residents. this framework that the city of santa anna has worked off of them off of is so outdated

where you have the city and the staff the politicians have prioritized developers and investors and have not cared about the basic needs of their residents as an essential worker i it is it baffles me how the streetcar and luxury apartments are considered essential in a time during a pandemic. When is it going to be enough? When is it that how many luxury apartments do you have to create to meet that goal that you want to be a thriving city? I ask that the city council members, all of you,

before making a decision on the bid or on giving money to Downtown Inc., that you look into the Orange County Grand Julia report from 2011 and how it found that Downtown Inc. had structural, unlawful races and intolerable actions. Ask yourselves, why did they even come in to the city? What is their agenda? How have they helped? Because it seems like they have harmed businesses more than they have helped. There is a business that recently went out in downtown Santa Ana. They had been there for decades.

And when they went out of business, they still had to pay over $70,000 in bid fees. So even though they lost their business, they lost their livelihood, they still owe this money. So how can a city continue to impose these fees on businesses when they are struggling to even survive? And the businesses in downtown, which we're striving even before the pandemic, with the high parking fees, the citations, the never-ending streetcar, the changes in the social climate, as it keters to out-of-town young crowds.

it is time that you change this narrative that you commit yourself to the needs of residents and not to the people that we hear calling that have been on the commission for over 15 years the ceos reminding you of the favors that you thank you

time right for them zoom ID Melissa Palmarin please dial the microphone select the microphone on your device or the unmute feature

hello everyone I would like to bring attention to something I found out recently in the Santa Ana City's website in facts and figures there's one paragraph about the history of what we call Santa Ana yet there's nowhere in this paragraph about the nations who lived on this land over 10,000 years ago and still do yet we talk about Portola who arrived on the land of the Kish nation and that is human nation is inaccurate to say he discovered this land he did not discover this land colonizers came to this land committed genocide they killed first people and masses caused serious bodily injury and mental harm to first people

deliberately tried to eradicate and hold the first people and forcibly transfer children away from their families. That is what occurred. That is still what is occurring around the world today. We need to have an extensive understanding of the land we are on, the history before colonizers, because we have a colonial and capitalistic mindset. We continue to take away the quiche and artist human nations' land in hopes of revenue and profit. This land is not ours. I want to urge all of you to propose an amendment or an item to create a section in our website

talking in detail about the land of the Adashima and Kish nation, their culture, and the benefits that they contribute to the land that we settle on. And I would like you guys to collaborate with these nations as well. I urge you all to acknowledge that this land that was once filled with greenery has reduced to 4%. The amount of first people who live on this land, Santa Ana, has decreased drastically. First people represent only 0.63% of the population, which equates to around 2,106. Yet before colonizers came, the first people who lived on this land were more than 300,000.

Every single city council meeting, we should normalize saying we are gathered here today on the homeland of the Keishin Island Nation. I think acknowledging is the first step. Next, we need to take action and work closely with these nations. Lastly, I oppose 22B, 11A, and 11B.

thank you thank you mayor council members that was the last caller thank

you madam clerk and thank you to all the callers I think we had some very articulate comments I think your comments are obviously more effective when they're not made personal and we stick to just the policy so thank you all of you for for calling in let me go ahead and bring us to the consent calendar items and for our new council members this is a section of items that you can pull if you'd like to discuss individually if not they would be voted on in mass or if you'd like to recuse yourself or abstain from any of the

matters you can do so as well so I'll go ahead and use this time to call on you if any of you would like to pull or abstain from any items and let me start

Phil BacerraItem —

with councilman Becerra thank you mr. mayor I'd like to go ahead and pull items 20 C as in Charlie and 20 E as an elephant great thank you mayor pro

David PenalozaItem —

time thank you mr. mayor's hermiento I'd like to pull items 20 D as in dog 20 E as an elephant 25 E as an elephant and 55 B as in boy great thank you for that

Thai Viet PhanItem —

councilmember fan mayor I just like to state on the record that I will be abstaining and recusing myself from item 55 D the property owner on this item is Arnell developments and they are a long-term client of my employer written and Tucker I've never worked on any of their projects and although our consent calendar items are not normally required to leave the dais but I will do so on that particular item.

Great. Thank you. Thank you for that, Council Member.

Any other Council Members wish to pull any items? Council Member Lopez?

Jessie LopezItem —

Oh yes, I want to pull 11A, and I want to comment on 20A, but I don't need to pull it.

Great. 20A, you want to comment on it?

Jessie LopezItem —

Yes, I can do so now. I just want to comment that-

Let me go ahead and just so we can, and so we'll move the other items, and that way you probably want to pull it to comment on it. That's technically what we want to do. So I'll go ahead and just set it aside and have the clerk pull it for us so you can comment on it, and then we can address it then. Any other items, Council Member?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

Yes, this is Council Member Hernandez. I would like to see us further discuss 11A, as Jesse requested, and the item on police oversight as well.

Great. Yeah, we'll take that up. That's outside the consent calendar section, so we'll go ahead and take that up. Thank you, Council Member. I might as well just go ahead and call on Council Member Mendoza. Any items you wish to pull or abstain from?

No, Mayor Simonton. I don't have any items to pull or abstain on.

Great. Thank you for that. so I'll be abstaining on item 11a we have a property that's in close proximity to that that site so I will be recusing myself based upon that as I did during the first reading so I'll go ahead and I think there's one more

Thai Viet PhanItem —

there's one more request I apologize there are a lot of items pulled in so I just wanted to make sure was 22 be pulled no I don't think so we'll add

that thank you great madam city clerk did you get all those items I believe so okay so I'll entertain a motion on the balance motion to move the balance I'll second mr. mayor great thank you we have a motion in a second madam clerk will

you please call roll councilmember Becerra yes councilmember Hernandez

yes councilmember Lopez councilmember Mendoza yes councilmember fan yes mayor pro tempina Losa yes mayor Sarmiento yes motion carries 7-0 great thank you for

that let me go ahead and I think the first time that you'll be pulling is 11a and that's the one I abstained on so I'll turn the meeting over to mayor pro

David PenalozaItem —

ten your pro ten meetings yours Thank You mr. mayor and 11 a was pulled by councilwoman Lopez correct okay councilwoman opens the floor is yours

Jessie LopezItem —

thank you before I make my comment on this item I want to for full transparency I want to state that I have spoken to our city attorney because I am employed by Latino health access and Latino health access has taken a position on this project however I have my own opinion and I do not have any conflicts in acting on this item and I am able to remain objective I have a question for the Northgate team I don't know if we are able to get them back

David PenalozaItem —

online is the applicant on the phone yes the applicants are online and we can

unmute their call for all the applicants for 11a if you would please select your microphone and unmute your device or select star six if I if you're on a

Jessie LopezItem —

telephone okay they are unmuted now thank you can you please clarify how many community meetings were hosted from the point of application until now I I would like to know how many meetings you hosted in 2018, 2019, and 2020.

Andrew Nelson, I can speak to that. We had our Sunshine Ordinance meeting per city direction in 2018. We have met, we participated in the city organized joint meeting of neighborhood associations in July of 2020 that included French Park, French Court, Logan, Lacey, downtown, and French Park Plaza. We have, on our own, organized meetings with all of our adjacent property owners

and with a number of other business and city organizations, historic preservation and and neighborhood property interest so so that it's it's a long list I can I can go into further detail but that's that's

Jessie LopezItem —

captured it thank you so there was one in-person meeting in 2018 no meetings in 2019 and from what I'm understanding one meeting in 2020 with two meetings in 2020 with adjacent property owners and a virtual meeting and the summer of 2020 so in 2018 residents from the immediate neighborhood like the Lacey neighborhood showed up to express their real concerns about this market rate development and just to clarify I have no more concern no more questions for the applicant some

Jessie LopezItem —

of the concerns that they expressed were that there would be no affordable housing they felt betrayed by the Gonzalez family and that really speaks to how invested our community was with them and they are concerned about the food desert that this market leaving their neighborhood is going to create we've heard today about displacement we've also heard about the transportation problem that this is going to create because for those of you that live in the surrounding neighborhood or as I drive by this this store on a weekly basis you will know that this is always a busy store and so

Jessie LopezItem —

people that don't have cars access the store by foot and so that was another issue that they brought up and so I you know listening to the concerns of all of the callers that called in today I think that it is more than appropriate to ask that if this is something that wants to be built in our community that to that more than two meetings are giving to the Lacey neighborhood because I do believe in fairness and I do believe that and if this was happening in any other neighborhood more than two meetings would be given to them and I just think that it's the right thing to do and so you know going back to 2018 there was a

Jessie LopezItem —

very large opposition and you know you know moving forward now to 2020 we have all heard that those concerns haven't haven't gone away and if anything we know that they have worsened because people are unemployed they are on unemployment they don't know if the federal government is going to give them more unemployment they are expected to receive their last check this month and you know we're also going to see a tsunami of evictions that are going to not just impact our residents but Orange County residents and what is that gonna

Jessie LopezItem —

mean for us in terms of people not being able to afford a home or their rent and so you know we know that people are living paid paycheck to paycheck and that they need support and I think that you know we we are not a community that is hard to work with we know what we need and why we need it and if the community members in particularly dying particularly but work three members are coming out in support of the Lacey neighborhood and saying we should have more open discussions then I think that this is our obligation to to fulfill to

Jessie LopezItem —

answer the calls the cause of our community and to really extend them that wish that those were my comments thank you thank you for that councilwoman

David PenalozaItem —

Lopez are there any other council members that would like to speak on the

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

item yes mayor for time and you know so this is councilmember Hernandez go ahead councilmember Hernandez thank you I want to say thank you to the residents that took hours on end out of their day to speak on this item. As the council member of this district, I became a parent at a very young age, and I lived in Santa Ana my whole life, and I know firsthand how discomforting it is to live in poverty and to live in a community that does not prioritize you and to see luxurious buildings be built

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

that you will never have access to. And during a time like this, when we as a city are supposed to be a shining example of what government is supposed to do, which is serve the people, I don't think that this building is exactly what our community needs as evidenced by the outpouring opposition to this item. The lack of affordable housing concerns me. I did speak to the Northgate family in Red Oak, and I was able to learn about this project.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

And I wanted to bring as much information and education about this project to the diocese as possible. And after doing that, I in good conscience cannot support this project. The lack of affordable housing concerns me.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

the public safety concern is the most concerning to me the fact that not having enough access to affordable housing actually causes spikes in in crime to happen and that's not what we need in our community we need to we need to create safe havens for families to thrive and and i think that this this is something that is going to be good in theory of course right it looks like a beautiful building and I'm all for that but but in practice it's going to potentially do a lot of harm and I

David PenalozaItem —

can't I can't support that thank you councilmember Hernandez are there any other council members I would like to speak councilmember fan the floor is

Thai Viet PhanItem —

yours hi thank you mayor pretend so this project had come before me actually as a council commissioner on the Planning Commission and I had a meeting with the developer and we had you know obviously several meetings about this on the Commission and now here is the applicant still on the line Daisy madam clerk okay great so I do have a few questions for the applicant as well as our director mint I on this project and so the first thing is I hear a lot of of course the concern for affordable housing is a major issue I've experienced that my family's

Thai Viet PhanItem —

experienced that but as I understand that this current site has no housing that's correct right so with no housing okay and director tie is there any way that we would ever be able to request or require a developer to build affordable housing

Good evening, Mayor and City Council of April, Jeff. The city does have a housing opportunity ordinance that seeks to have inclusionary housing as part of new development. That inclusionary ordinance is known as the housing opportunity ordinance under the zoning code. It was recently modified back in September. The current requirements is that any new project that has a density request that is above the current general plan designation would then be required to have an inclusionary affordable housing component within it. Without that specific element in a project,

the city, that's the only time when a city can ask for inclusionary housing.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

Right, but with the recent or the previous council, they had changed the WHO, resulting in this project not being required to have any inclusion housing units, correct?

With the change, this project does not have an inclusion housing requirement in it.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

Okay, and I did hear several public comments regarding delaying this project in order for the city council to bring back the WHO and to reconsider the WHO fees. Madam City Attorney, if the WHO were brought back at the next meeting, at the earliest time possible in 2021, one how would that affect this project and inclusionary requirements so the my

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

understanding is that when this application was submitted and was actually reviewed by the Planning Commission the who ordinance had already been it had already changed it was already in effect so at this point if the City Council were to even desire revisit that public policy issue it would be necessary to go back through a first reading in the second reading and notice that all over again and it would also you'd have to also wait 30 days after that second reading for it to become effective so in effect even if this city council revisited its public

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

policy issue it would not automatically apply to this project because it's further down the road

Thai Viet PhanItem —

right so i guess what i was trying to get at is that the who ordinance that applied was that which was that apply that which was in effect at the time the application was submitted not something that is going forward and not acting retroactively. Another concern that I wanted our city to address, or the applicant, is the affordable housing issue. I understand that the applicant had discussed providing affordable housing offsite with a different developer. Will the applicant speak to that, please?

Yes, this is Carl Middleton, and I'm president of North Diego Zalas Real Estate Company. The answer is yes, we do plan to have off-site affordable housing. And, you know, I think it's important that the listeners know that the Gonzalez family shares their passion. We believe in affordable housing, and we are working with Coddle and Coddle development on a project that would deliver that 100% affordable housing. We just don't think this is the right location for it.

and I just want to correct a talking point that's been shared consistently this is not luxury housing it's meant to be quality urban housing and we expect that the residents will be people that live in Santa Ana and people that work in Santa Ana so we do share their passion Gonzales family believes in community support and it's had many programs that they've been involved with and indeed we are committed to affordable housing.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

Great, thank you. And on top of that, relating to this current project, I understand that the current Northgate market will be closed, but that you are opening another location that is larger, correct?

That's correct. This market is busy, but not sustainable. The goal is to build a new market close by, and we have a site that we are working on right now that we expect will come before the city council next year where we'll have a full-size market that will serve the community better, allow for everything from better social distancing to better variety, better service, much better parking, and it will be a benefit to the community. And we certainly will help people with access to the market during the transition period.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

Okay, and then one other thing is that you mentioned, at least as far as I understand it, that current Northgate workers will not be losing their job with this one closing down and the new one under construction, correct?

That's absolutely correct. You know, great people are hard to find. We have a great team. We certainly will find other places for them. and great customers are hard to find too and we don't want to lose these customers so we will do everything that we can to give them access to our other stores and perhaps a an interim store in the area before the new replacement store can be constructed great thank you so you know i ask

Thai Viet PhanItem —

all these questions because you know when it comes to development of the city i definitely think about the impacts on the community, the commercial development, as well as the affordability of the units available to our residents. And when I think about Northgate Market, I remember walking to Northgate Market. Living on the west side, there are two of them near me. And you know, I think it's a really important business for the community to get food, to get all the necessities. And I really do believe that by opening a larger Northgate Market and the fact that they

Thai Viet PhanItem —

are currently under discussions with an affordable housing developer to have a hundred percent affordable that you know will better serve the community in other ways because this new development will have commercial which will ensure that we hire more local residents we'll have units that at least as the developer says not luxury but tailored to the downtown area that will allow Santa residents to also live there I think there's a lot of positives that will not only spur development increase revenue for the city but also provide additional services to residents so those are my thoughts and I just wanted to make sure

Thai Viet PhanItem —

we had some of these questions answered that were brought up during public

David PenalozaItem —

comment thank you Thank You Councilwoman fan are there any other members of the IC councilmember Becerra has his hand up go ahead the floor is yours sir thank

Phil BacerraItem —

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I want to reiterate what I had said at the previous meeting when this item was brought up. I want to thank the folks at Northgate for bringing this project forward. I also want to thank them for really looking beyond just this site. I appreciate my colleagues and the questions that they've asked because I think Council Member Pham asked some very good questions in regards to kind of more of a totality of what Northgate is hoping to do here in Santa Ana and it's beyond just this site I also want to thank Councilmember Lopez for her comments because I think you know as we go forward I've always

Phil BacerraItem —

championed transparency and outreach and I think that you know what Northgate did here was above and beyond our current requirements and I'd be happy to work with my colleagues to see what we can do to even expand what is the minimum requirements for outreach because I think it's important that our community is aware of projects like this and has the opportunity to engage the folks that are proposing these projects some of the comments that were brought up by my folks that called in I do want to thank them all because I know some express their frustration with the time it took to be heard but again I I thank

Phil BacerraItem —

everybody who's committed to our city and wants to express their points of view you know some of the things that were brought up for one that this is luxury housing I know the applicant stated that this isn't luxury housing it isn't affordable subsidized housing in the traditional term or the traditional sense but here in Santa Ana we have folks that grow up in affordable subsidized housing and God bless it they end up going on to college they go on and they actually you know they get jobs that they end up making a lot of money

Phil BacerraItem —

and it's great now I guess what we have to ask ourselves here is now I know as a homeowner I pay on my property tax bill I pay for facilities or improvements to facilities at Santa Ana Unified Schools and as we improve those facilities we're doing that in the hopes that our our youth will have the opportunity to learn and to gain these opportunities to you know improve their betterment in life and so what are we hoping that they're going to do are we hoping that they will have that opportunity they'll go on to a university get this job and then move to Irvine or Tustin I would like to see

Phil BacerraItem —

them come back to the community invest in the community strengthen the families that are already here I don't want to see displacement I want to see an enhancement of our community and I think that when we're talking about what can we do to sustain the folks that are here adding affordable units does not necessarily guarantee that Santa Ana people will get those units and we have to make sure that we understand that a new affordable unit is not guaranteed to house a Santa Ana person so what I'm hoping today is that we approve this project we move it forward because I think it's something that adds to the

Phil BacerraItem —

housing diversity of the city we are the county seat we are the county seat we are the capital of Orange County we should have housing diversity we need to take care of the folks that are the most vulnerable but we also need to enhance our tax base I don't want to be on this dies in a couple of years and try to look at ways to sustain our budget and have to look at increasing what is already the highest sales tax in Orange County so with that mr. mayor pro tem

David PenalozaItem —

I'd like to go ahead and move this item thank you councilmember Becerra is there

a second to that I second it and I have common go ahead councilwoman Mendoza yes like my colleagues I am support of this project because this is a great development for the citizens of Santa Ana and I appreciate all the people who or have been waiting three hours or more to make their comments. And I just want to let you know that we hear you. We understand your concerns. And we are working to make this a better city for you and bring a higher quality of life for all our residents, not just a certain ward.

And I want you to see and hopefully you will look at the benefits that this project will bring. because this project is not just going to make this area look nicer, make it more attractive, and bring in more business to Santa Ana, but it's also going to benefit our residents. This development will have local hires, so it's creating jobs. And in addition, when this development is ready, it's going to bring in money, the revenue that we will be profiting from and that is you all of the city of

Santa Ana residents you will be benefiting from the services because that means that we're going to have more money to give to other programs such as youth services senior citizens more parks more cleaner space more enforcement more law enforcement so ultimately we're looking to what is the best for you as a resident in addition many of you have asked for low-income housing and we need we do need it however Santa Ana has already exceeded its requirement for

building affordable housing and actually we are way over the percentage that any city has had it's required to build low-income housing in addition new residents of Santa Ana we do not benefit from the low-income housing because you may not qualify I'm in that qualify and the people who qualify come from outside of Santa Ana so it's not going to benefit us to continue to build low income housing so like my colleague before indicated you know we want our

our youth to get a good education, go and find careers that are profitable and where they can earn money and come back and live in these units. We do not want them to go to other cities. We want them to stay here and give back to their communities. And so the development is ultimately a good project for Santa Ana. And if you give us your patience, I know that you will see the benefits and that you will also be in agreement with me so with that I am in agreement and I am ready to take the vote thank you councilwoman Mendoza are

David PenalozaItem —

there any other members of the council that would like to comment hearing none

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

go ahead councilmember Hernandez remember thank you I have a question for the developers I want to say thank you for them to be inaccessible during this meeting I know that we've been on this call for for quite some time I have a question and in learning about the the fact that they are willing to build affordable housing down the street two-part question number one can you tell us where these affordable housing units would be built built sure this is

Carl Middleton again with Northgate right now we're working to acquire properties along the west side of Grand between 4th and 1st actually between 4th and 2nd Street and we've already acquired the west side of Grand between 1st and 2nd Street so we have a couple properties that we're working with the city to acquire but we also have one property at the corner first and grand that will be a part of that project too. So we are absolutely committed to affordable housing. We hope that that's the location. We have another location, Councilman Hernandez

that we've talked to you about, that's not quite public yet. It's, we're working with the diocese of Orange County on a site and we would expect there to be some affordable housing there as well.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Middleton, for committing to create a 100% affordable housing unit. My following question is, if you have the capacity to build 100% affordable housing, why not build this location as 100% affordable housing?

Well, I think a couple reasons. The first is the city's vision for the downtown is that of a lively downtown with residents to support the retail businesses. And we saw this as a location where we could have really a quality urban project. And right now it's planned to be 169 units, which isn't a large project by any stretch of the imagination. But we do realize that there's no ordinance now that affects our project. And we thought, even when there was a who, why put money into the who? Let's actually build some affordable housing units. And so we went out and sought a site.

And we don't have experience doing affordable housing. So we found a great developer, CNC Development, to partner with us. And we found a site that we thought was great and ties into an overall vision

to renovate the area between 1st and 4th Street on both sides of Grand Avenue, where we hope to have our new store. So I think that was really the idea that made more sense to really focus on affordable housing where we could really go in depth with a quality developer rather than just try to tag something onto this project.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

Thank you for your answer, Mr. Milton.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank You councilmember Hernandez anybody else on the last comment go ahead councilwoman

Jessie LopezItem —

While I do commend Northgate for thinking about affordable housing in the future as the applicant just said we are discussing items that are not public and That are not on the agenda. So We should keep that in mind. I also want to point out that while no Northgate employee is going to lose their job they have publicly in the past stated that they cannot afford these apartments and I am the workforce that councilmember Becerra and miss Mendoza speaker I am from Santa Ana I went away to college I graduated I came back and I still can afford my market rate housing in my hometown and on the point of the

Jessie LopezItem —

arena numbers even if they are met we should always want to strive to provide the needs of our communities, which is affordable housing. We know that there is a need for that. And in order for this city to long-term address homelessness,

Jessie LopezItem —

overcrowding, poverty, and equity, a core value of the city, we need to have this conversation. We just saw that we spent $2.3 million from the rental fund about CARES money, and here we are approving potentially approving market rate development that the community members just spoke out against because they cannot afford this because they are rent burden 57% of our renters are tenants and this is the voice of the community telling you this is not what they need this is not what

David PenalozaItem —

they can't afford thank you Thank You Councilwoman Lopez I have a couple comments to make in regards to this project. I know that first I want to thank the callers that called in, you know, demanding that we have affordable housing in our city. There's definitely a need in our city of Santa Ana. There's a need for affordable housing to be built. And I know that being on this council in the short two years that I've been on here, we've approved a lot of affordable housing and exceed any other city in the county. Just last year, a mile and a half down the street from this location,

David PenalozaItem —

we approved over 500 affordable housing units on First Street because there's a need for this. We need to find the little soft spot and proper balance to have housing across the board of all levels of income because that's what you should do to have a good mix of people. Also, I know I heard there was also a concern of nearby residents losing their neighborhood market.

David PenalozaItem —

I also want to remind the public that just .2 miles away from the current Northgate location, there's a food for less that sells all the groceries and household things that people will need at, you know, my opinion, a lot cheaper than Northgate Market. no offense to Northgate Market but you know that's I just doing my neighborhood shopping I've realized that but with that said I know that when the applicant oh and and and when the applicant reached out to me early last year I said make

David PenalozaItem —

sure you get the support of the neighbors that bought up to this development site the single-family homes immediately north of the site the businesses east west and south the the residences right about the the north side of the project and they did they they provided as part of their their presentation at the last meeting with the areas that they surveyed and they are often letters of support from all those residents that share the street

David PenalozaItem —

with this project site so I think we need to have a balance of very low affordable housing and market rate I mean that's the reality and we have built both of them and we should continue to build both of them I think this is a great project and I know there's a motion on the floor by councilmember Becerra seconded by Councilwoman Mendoza so if there's no further motion madam city clerk can you please conduct the roll call councilmember Becerra yes

councilmember Hernandez no councilmember Lopez no councilmember Mendoza? Yes. Councilmember Phan? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa? Yes. Motion carries for to abstaining Councilmember Hernandez and Councilmember Lopez and an

David PenalozaItem —

abstention from Mayor Sarmiento. Thank you for that Madam City Clerk. Please tell us the next agenda item that has been pulled by one of the council

members councilmember Lopez pulled 28 to provide a comment thank you for that

David PenalozaItem —

and mayor Sarmiento is back so I will hand the floor over to him

Jessie LopezItem —

Sorry about that. My comment on 20A is that I am supportive of recognizing the monies from the state of California. I just want us to be very watchful about any potential liability down the road because this money is being given to one of the organizations accused of substandard practices by the ACLU. So city manager, Madam City Attorney, I want us to ensure that our city won't be sued for poor operations and because I know that we don't tolerate any sexual abuse. Thank you.

Great. Why don't we, since we didn't take a vote on this, is there a motion to approve?

David PenalozaItem —

Mr. Mayor, this is Mayor Pro Tempinalosa and I'll make a motion to approve item 28. Is there a second? I second it.

Council Member Mendoza? Great we have a motion and a second Madam Clerk unless there's any other comment or questions why don't we go ahead and call roll. Council Member Becerra? Yes.

Council Member Hernandez? Yes. Council Member Lopez? Yes. Council Member Mendoza? Yes. Councilmember Fan? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa? Yes. Mayor Sarmiento? Yes. Motion carries 7-0. Great, thank you. What's next, Madam Clerk? Councilmember Becerra pulled item 20C.

Council member Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'd like to ask for either Mr. Mendoza or Mr. Morley to come up to the podium.

Phil BacerraItem —

Mr. Mendoza, thank you. So I just, you know, from some of the comments that I heard from the folks that called in this evening, I just wanted to have you kind of clarify a couple things when it comes to what this program is so in other words are So for clean and safe This is not the same as what the businesses are assessed in relation to the two organizations in downtown which are

Downtown Inc and the Santa Ana Business Council correct correct the business improvement district is a self-imposed business tax that they place on their business license to fund events and the management of those two areas that's a separate item and now when you see all sorry go ahead okay and that is funded by an assessment on the business license okay this is a clean and safe program that is part of an old settlement if you remember years ago we entered into negotiations to settle a lawsuit which came up with the funding of the clean and safe at $400,000 a year at the time and that is funded through our

parking revenues completely different than business license assessments right

Phil BacerraItem —

so in other words the the assessment is a self-imposed assessment by the businesses so it's not like they walked in and you know the city slapped it on them they elected to have that imposed upon themselves yeah much like the

hoteliers did a couple of meetings ago correct okay and so now the the

Phil BacerraItem —

400,000 that was an increase in 2018 yes okay and so what and when did we increase it to 500,000 that year after 2019 2019 okay you know what one of the things that you know we've received a lot of communication obviously from concerned business owners in the downtown and other folks that patronize the businesses and establishments in our downtown and their concern is that obviously there's a lot of activity that the clean and safe program addresses and

Phil BacerraItem —

if anything when I've been shared was activity has increased I mean we're seeing more trash hauled away in fact what one set of stats I've seen here is that about twice as many trash bags I guess for a for a way to measure what they're they're dealing with so double the trash that they're hauling off twice as many calls for service for security and so I guess for me what I'm really concerned with is I understand that right now with our current climate you know there aren't as many folks going into the downtown but you know with the news of vaccine coming the hope that we will see increased patronage into

Phil BacerraItem —

our downtown fairly soon I think it would just be a much more expensive and more difficult climb for us to try to scale back the amount that we put into this program today and then turn around and try to somehow claw our way back in the future so I would just like to say to my colleagues I won't be supporting this measure as is I would prefer that we fund it at the level that they're at and in fact I would say a lot of the folks downtown probably would not be happy because I'm sure based on the increases in services that they experience they would love to see more but I think given everything that's

Phil BacerraItem —

going on I would hate to see us downgrade those services given the increase in demand I would like to see us in some way try to sustain it at the current level but I do want to thank staff for your guys's creativity and trying to figure out a way to I guess provide a stopgap in the interim and I know that you know as we get into the budget coming up we're gonna have some hard hard choices to make but I think that when we talk about as a city if we're gonna provide municipal services having clean streets and safe streets kind of hits right at the fundamental I mean of all the things that we want to

Phil BacerraItem —

accomplish that the core responsibilities really get down to clean and safe streets so I think to to defund this in any sort of way it just goes against the grain so I just want to express that I won't be supporting this item great

thank you for those comments anybody else have any questions or comments on the side anybody on the phone council members Hernandez or Mendoza

okay hearing none let me give it back to mayor pro tem I think he has a comment thank you for

David PenalozaItem —

that mr. mayor and thank you councilman Bussara for pulling this item 20 C the only question that I have for staff and I mean it I mean this is an unfortunate situation that we're in parking revenue is basically non-existent right now which is where this is usually funded from and it's been operating in the red even before COVID. So I want to ask, currently it's proposed to be funded with the money that was used to, that we received from the sell of the YMCA property. So how do we fund this next year? If the conversations that I've heard from staff

David PenalozaItem —

is that it is forecast that next year will be worse when it comes to the budget and approving the budget for 21 22 how do we fund this next year have we thought I mean have we looked the year from now to see where we're gonna receive because I don't want to start saying oh we need to sell another piece of public land to you know pay for this program is there does madam city manager do you want to answer this or certainly mayor pro tem I'll take this so first

First of all, we build our budgets a fiscal year at a time, so we are going to be beginning that in a few short months, so it will be prioritization of funding and where you choose to put the money. I do want to mention that the Clean and Safe program that they do fund did operate at $400,000 a year for five years until it was increased to the $500,000. And also to mention that in addition to the extra cleaning efforts that the downtown does, the city already performed street sweeping and police services as well so it's not leaving the downtown without any level of services but as you mentioned

the parking revenue is a concern for us and we haven't received any funding to offset our lost revenue for that but COVID-19 to decimate the people that used to go down and use those parking structures and where we recouped our revenue from so we'll have to evaluate it as we build the next year's budget it and I think we're going to have some tough decisions. Thank you for that.

David PenalozaItem —

There's a lot of concern with me for this particular. I do think that it should be stay at the recommended amount of $400,000 just because it is a ghost town when you're driving around downtown. And even the sidewalks that are there now, which is a whole separate issue with that never-ending streetcar project that I constantly talk about those sidewalks are terrible I mean I don't know what their power washing be not and this isn't the I'm not talking about the clean and safe program this is a streetcar construction that is a whole different animal but those sidewalks the way that they've been

David PenalozaItem —

patched up for months now without laying down that brick again or just having this crazy ugly black black tar and not tar asphalt there you go can't think of the word it just looks terrible and every time I I'm there it's extremely filthy and I know it's a lot has to do with the construction from the streetcar so I also want want to make sure what what different approaches they've taken over the last couple of months working together with the OCTA

David PenalozaItem —

to try to help reduce the filth that has come from this construction?

David PenalozaItem —

Do you guys know?

What OCTA has done?

David PenalozaItem —

Is there any effort amongst the two groups to work together to help? Because, I mean, when you talk about the dirtiness that has come from the streetcar, there is a lot of wear and tear on just the sidewalks that are not part of the construction the dust the dirt they I mean we should be asking for some contribution to maintain our sidewalks and keeping them clean so I'm not aware

of OCTA has has any conversations with the downtown groups I will let you know that our Public Works Agency works very closely with OCTA and monitoring the construction activity so it's certainly an issue we can raise with them I think

David PenalozaItem —

that's that's just my opinion I think it's an important area to approach because I think that over the last year and a half the streetcar construction has contributed a lot to just that their overall dirtiness of downtown I know it's temporary but we shouldn't have to live with the amount of nuisance that it's caused in regards to that so that's just my two cents in regards to this with this item and that's it Mr. Mayor. Great thank you. Councilmember Pham. Thank

Thai Viet PhanItem —

you Mayor. Thank you City Manager for clarifying that they did a downtown Inc did sorry the safe program operated for $400,000 for several years and I definitely understand the need for clean streets for safe streets we need that throughout the entire city the sale of the YMCA is public funds to help the entire city now there is definitely really important economic there's an important economic engine in downtown Santa Ana and I think the fact that we are considering this is us recognizing that but you know the other hundred

Thai Viet PhanItem —

thousand dollars what have we decided to do with that do you know yet do you

the remainder of the funds from the YMCA sale we have not earmarked that at

Thai Viet PhanItem —

this point right so that extra hundred thousand dollars can go to the west side to other neighborhoods to South Grand to Bristol all of these other neighborhoods that might need additional services so in recognizing the need for clean and safe areas I think the four hundred thousand dollars is an appropriate amount given that staff has considered that need but that other areas of the city need that too so I would be in support of this project for this item

thank you great anybody else want to address the council on this or address the staff on this councilmember Becerra I just have one quick question so with

Phil BacerraItem —

the sale of the YMCA the proceeds if we didn't have this item before us tonight where would those funds go towards like where would they fall into where they fall into a they would go into the general fund the general fund which under any any circumstance we would as a council decide where that money goes so whether it's downtown the west side I guess just what I want to clarify is that as we are concluding with the sale this this money is something that this council can appropriate in any way it chooses what would normally happen

councilmember is that we would come back to which we're planning on doing I believe in February we would give you a mid-year budget update report and to the extent our excess revenues because you know we do our best to project what our revenue streams are for the general fund we don't always hit the mark 100% of the time so to the extent we had a shortage in revenue but we still had the budgeted level of expenditures it could get absorbed in other locations but that would be the time where we would point out to you we do believe you have some excess money and you would have the opportunity to make a policy decision

where to reprogram it.

Phil BacerraItem —

Well, and I appreciate that our staff keeps us a little more organized than just simply, ooh, we sold something. Where do we appropriate it? So yes, I'm very appreciative of the process and that we just don't, you know, jump at everything that we acquire. But I just wanted to clarify, though, that that money would go into that, into the general fund. Okay, thank you.

Great. Thank you for those comments. Hearing no other comments, I'll just make, just actually had a quick couple of questions. So to the extent that these monies are fungible, in other words, they're not restricted to either clean or safe. They could be used in any way that we need to be. Because it looks like it's a little, I guess, counterintuitive when I read number two on the recommended action. It looks like it's specifically noted that the security guard services will be reduced, but really it could be adjusted to maintain those at a certain level and maybe decrease the maintenance, right?

We're putting that for 100,000 years.

Right. So that was one thing that I wanted to make sure that we were clear on, that it wasn't that we were strictly reducing the security services or staffing. The other one was, so to the extent that we could approve this $400,000, which is below what we've done before, we could, as you said, during a mid-year review, look at the budget and see if there's any excess or there's any surplus to augment what we approved today, right?

Correct, sir.

Okay, great. So I know that we have businesses that are struggling, and they're not new businesses. Some of them are legacy businesses that have been there for years, quinceanera shops, shops that are barely making it. And a lot of times they need a safe environment to be able to do business and operate in. And we know that they've been hurt very, very badly. And we know that normally these monies are generated through parking revenue, and we know that that is relatively nonexistent and been dormant. So I think to the extent that we could move forward with this and take a look at it at mid-year review,

when we're looking at the budget and seeing if we could augment, if possible, I think that would be a way to address this. My only other question was on the Clean and Safe team. are those is that an outsourced vendor that provides those services or yes I did firm have we ever thought about maybe using some of our employees that may be furloughed or may not be working what's your thought on something we

haven't thought about that we have thought about maybe rebidding it it's time to take a look at that aspect of it but we haven't thought about augmenting with laid-off city employees no maybe there's a win-win here where

we could try to look at that as another possibility if we go out to bid on some of these we might be able to look inside as well but to the extent that we can provide some you know continued support to the downtown and all their businesses because I know we have you know businesses of all types that are struggling you know we want to make sure that we support them because of all the good programs that we want to do a lot of them are generated from the you know sales revenue that are generated by those businesses downtown. So I don't think there are any other comments or questions on this item. Is there a motion

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

to move the recommended item? Mayor Sarmiento, this is Council Member Hernandez. Yes, go ahead Council Member. And I'm in agreement with you. I think that that's a fantastic idea to augment the employees that we've had laid off, I think that would be a great solution. And I think it'd be a win-win for everybody for us to look into that.

Great, so would you like to move the recommended item maybe for staff to consider looking at that?

I'm sorry, I had my microphone off. I meant to say, or I'll repeat what I said. Would you like to move the item with that comment about having staff maybe look at looking at the clean and safe team, you know, some of the part-time employees maybe being considered for that. Mr. Mayor, yes, I would. Okay, so we have a motion to move the recommended item. Is there a second?

Second. Council Member Mendoza.

Great. Thank you for that. Seeing no other comments or questions, Madam Clerk, if you'll please call roll.

Council Member Becerra? No. Councilmember Hernandez?

No.

Councilmember, I think that was your motion, so... Oh, yes, that's a yes. My apology.

Councilmember Lopez?

Thai Viet PhanItem —

Yes.

Councilmember Mendoza? Yes. Councilmember Phan? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa?

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. Thank you. Moving along to the next item, I believe it's 20D as in David.

That's correct. Council Member, Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa, pull the side up.

David PenalozaItem —

Mayor Pro Tempe, go ahead. Thank you, Madam City Clerk and Mr. Mayor. 20D is approve an appropriation adjustment and approve a first amendment to the agreement with InfoScent, Inc. for a total for the 2021 fiscal year amount not to exceed seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars 20d madam city manager you know that anytime we have software and technology upgrades that will allow us to provide services to our residents in a more efficient manner I am happy I also know that upgrades like these will also make staff time more efficient so good all around I just have a couple questions madam city manager and you might want to take the

David PenalozaItem —

lead on this our residents able to opt out for from receiving any building correspondence via postal mail the reason I ask is because I know that I personally at home would rather not receive any bills and he just I mean I don't look at them I don't open them I just toss them in the shredder because I get everything via email online text message reminders to pay my stuff and And so I know that if there are residents that want to choose not to receive correspondence or not to receive their water bill,

David PenalozaItem —

I know there will be a lot of them because the less amount we receive, the better. And I hate to do that now, especially to our postal services. They need all the work they can get. but you know we also need to look into if there's a cost savings in having that feature available with these these programs that we're purchasing madam

city manager thank you mayor pro tem that's an excellent question and the most common bill that we do send out as you mentioned is water bills and there is a paperless option for that but we certainly can explore some of the other things that we do send out maybe not as regular to see if there's a way to go

David PenalozaItem —

paper lists with those as well and if in the future maybe we could bring back I know I don't know how easy or hard that would be but to get back a report of just how many residents opt out of a paper bill because I am a sitting councilmember and I don't know how to opt out of the bill so if anyone's a staff if you could go in to find my address and just send me an email I don't need a physical physical bill at my house that would be great but it's something that we should you know promote to to our to our residents to hey you know hey if you

David PenalozaItem —

want to receive a simple text message or an email of how to pay your bill I know that I receive the emails but I still receive the bill that's that's the so I'm receiving the emails but the bills but it would be nice if we if we advertise that and and let our resident because I'm sure there'll be a lot that would opt out of receiving a paper bill and therefore saving you know even if it's a couple hundred dollars a month in cost savings I mean it's still something so just a thought which was basically it but with that said I would move 20 D for

approval I'll second great we have a motion is second madam clerk if you'll

please call roll councilmember Bissar yes councilmember Hernandez yeah Council member Lopez yes council member Mendoza yeah council member fan yes

mayor pretend then you know some yes mayor Sarmiento yes thank you moving along to the next item I believe it's 20 years in Edward

mayor for time and councilmember for Sarah both put this thing mr. mayor I I

Phil BacerraItem —

along with mayor pro tem pulled this item my reason for pulling it I want to speak to our director of Public Works Nabil Saba so I I'm definitely one to support protected bike lanes in town I to me seeing you know just striped lanes is just I think they're they're dangerous I think the more that we can do to protect those that not only enjoy biking but really rely on bicycling as their mode of transportation more we can do the better and so when I saw this item I was excited because anything we can do to have protected bike lanes but when I went through the staff report it wasn't clear to me because I there are

Phil BacerraItem —

different ways that different jurisdictions offer protected bike lanes and I think Santa Ana has some fantastic examples so what I was hoping to have director Saba do for us this evening was just to confirm what it was that would or what it's going to be constructed along Bristol between editor

and first good evening mayor mayor pretend members of the council happy to be here item 20 e is a Bristol Street protected bike lane from Avenger to first street it was a federal grant of two hundred two million dollars to construct a bike lane along that stretch of Bristol. It will connect the newly constructed Edinger bike lane with Willett's bike lane. So it will be like a C-shaped type bike lanes connectivity there. This is just a sample of the design

project but the existing Bristol Street right now has a bike lane but it's protected as you see in the picture. So we're hoping that with this project, it will look like this. This is a sample of a bike lane project that has just been completed north of Bristol next to the college. It will look exactly like what we have here. From left to right, a landscape median island, then three lanes of vehicle traffic, then a raised median to protect the bike, or the bike lanes, and then a bike lane followed by the sidewalk.

That's what we will achieve with this project.

Phil BacerraItem —

And thank you for that. That's what I wanted to see and what I wanted to know, just to make sure that that's the type of protection we're going to give our city's cyclists. So thank you for that.

Sure.

Would you like to move the item or just for purposes of discussion?

Phil BacerraItem —

I'd be happy to move the item. Great. Mayor Pro Tem, do you have a...

David PenalozaItem —

I'll second that. mr. mayor please go ahead but but I also pulled it because I had a couple comments madam city manager I pulled this item because I want to take a moment to make a comment for the public record about the parking issues that came out of the Edinger protected bike lanes the trash the debris the parking confusion and very narrow lanes that came with the Edinger protected parking bicycle lane like my colleague mentioned I'm also very supportive of having protected bike lanes in our city because more than 50% of our residents don't have access to a car.

David PenalozaItem —

And a lot of them do use their bicycle to get from point A to point B and so on. However, I know that the recently completed protected bike lanes on Edinger, compared to the ones on Bristol and 17th, I feel we went a little cheap. Bristol and 17th, you have a lot of green landscaping, plants, grass, it looks beautiful. and on Edinger, I mean, it's just straight concrete and maybe a couple pinkish brick pavers here and there, but they're not as nice as the ones, you know, coming out of Santa Ana College.

David PenalozaItem —

And there's also, the lanes were narrowed. I mean, they're extremely narrow now. I know that when I'm driving east on Edinger, coming from Fairview, I mean you you immediately feel it when you're driving past car intermediate of how narrow these lanes become and how close the cars are now because there was there's a protected bike lane now now the cars are parked closer to the the traffic and I mean it's you know and I know that we we had an incident of course people were drag racing which is also a problem and they

David PenalozaItem —

sideswept a couple of the cars that were parked along car intermediate I almost had swept some of the cars because of how close now those cars are parked so I want to make sure that as we move into completing these phases of protective bike lanes we're not just building them because we got the grant and without no really creative vision I know that Nabil you're leading a great shop at the Public Works and I know that there's a lot to address but it's important that as we look at other areas in central Santa Ana we think of the of the how aesthetics the

David PenalozaItem —

aesthetics of these bike lanes compared to the ones on Bristol and 17th Street I want to see the the greenery I want to see the landscape I want to see them you know pleasing to the eye of the people that we drive past them or want to use them I know that there was also I constantly see a lot of trash buildup in the protected bike lanes because now the street sweepers don't have access to drive in there which is a whole other topic that we should start addressing and educating the public on you know using your nearest trash receptacle not littering that's that's a whole other campaign

David PenalozaItem —

that we should address but there's a lot of things that come with these protected bike lanes that i want to make sure that we address um i'm not sure who wants to comment to that uh nabeel or madam

city manager i just thank you for the feedback and we'll look into those concerns

David PenalozaItem —

okay and is there a way where we could include I know that that this Bristol bike lane is there gonna be any greening green landscaping as part of the protected bike lanes are they just gonna be straight concrete yes there will be a

landscaping area in between in the protected bike lane in the protection of the bike lane and on the sidewalk okay so just before the sidewalk or the

David PenalozaItem —

parkway so I know we were working with we were working with limited space on Edinger but is there a reason why the ones on Edinger from the the Santa Ana River all the way down to Flower Street I believe are not they don't have any

landscape in them I think the reason for that was the how wide the street is and how much parking we needed to save along with the pipe bike lane and the number of lanes that we needed to keep so that was a challenge but we'll keep those in mind for future projects and make sure that we include as much as protected

David PenalozaItem —

bike lanes in the city as possible okay because what would the other issue that comes with this is just uniformity of how our city looks you drive down Bristol and turn left on MacArthur it looks like you're in a complete different city you drive south on Maine you're eligible to know hold if every street you turn on is is looks different it's built different which I love because it does give character to many of our neighborhoods but when you're traveling on these main quarters like Bristol and Ettinger and Harbin MacArthur we should should be some kind of similarity I always heard people say

David PenalozaItem —

that you knew when you enter Santa Ana when you were driving down MacArthur Street and the medians went from green grass and trees to complete dirt is that's when you were in Santa Ana now we've addressed that we're bringing back our landscaping in our center median so I'm thankful forever thankful for that I know that's also a huge effort but I'll stop talking but just different thoughts that I've had regarding these protected bike lanes let's pay attention to to how they look and figure out a way that we could really make them look nice and work for everyone even the people that need that parking space with that said

those are my comments mr. mayor yes thank you for that any other comments from the council hearing none we do have a motion in a second the only comment I would make is just to thank staff and congratulate them for you know a very nice project again you know aesthetics are important as the mayor pro tem mentioned for me I've been reading a lot of you know unfortunate accidents that have happened recently with pedestrians you know being struck and unfortunately there have been some fatalist incidents recently and to the extent these

protected bike lanes do a lot to prevent those types of fatalities is really important so thank you for you know following through with this I know this is you know we've had discussions about the whole safe streets effort and here in the city a lot of people ride their bikes a lot of people are pedestrian so it's really important that we do everything we can just to keep them safe So with that said, Madam Clerk, if you'll please go ahead and call roll.

Council Member Becerra?

Yes.

Council Member Hernandez?

Yes. Council Member Lopez? Yes. Council Member Mendoza? Yes. Council Member Fan? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñolosa?

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. Thank you. Moving along to the next item. I believe it's 22B.

All right. Council Member Phan pulled the item.

Go ahead, Council Member.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

Thank you, Mayor. I pulled this item because, you know, obviously there's been a lot of discussion all year, and since before then, of course, about how we're spending our money and the city's budget on police items,

whether it's raises or vehicles or anything else, right?

Thai Viet PhanItem —

And so I just wanted to ask some questions about these 12 police vehicles. Madam City Manager, I understand that these vehicles were needed due to the increase in staffing for our department.

Is that correct? Partly. There are three vehicles that are replacing vehicles that have reached the end of their useful life, and then the remainders would be for new staffing.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

Right. So we're replacing some that, because they're at the end of their life, if we don't replace them, we would be losing services to residents, essentially.

Correct. So a past priority of the council had been to increase the number of sworn so that we could reduce our response time. And so as part of that effort we did, we were able to do some hiring that we've never seen before in past years. and they need the vehicles when they're hired, and there's a lead time to get those vehicles up and running to deploy them onto the streets.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

Thank you. And if we didn't have these 12 vehicles, what would happen to the additional officers that have been hired?

I would defer to the police chief, but more than likely without a patrol vehicle, they'd need to be doubled up in other existing vehicles.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

Okay. So when you say double up, you mean you know part of two three people in a car or something like that I

believe I'll I better let the two most are alone in the vehicle so it would be

more than likely to mr. mayor council city manager thank you for the question so we deploy in one officer per vehicle that is our deployment platform in the police department and city manager is correct if we wouldn't didn't have these vehicles we would either a have to double up two officers per car or in some instances we would have officers without a vehicle to go out in the field so the three vehicles are a total or end of life and then the others are to support all the officers that we hired over the last year and a half or so

Thai Viet PhanItem —

Great, so I guess I wanted to ask the question because I was interested in seeing, understanding how increasing the purchases or having these purchases would decrease response times, correct?

Correct.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

Thanks. That was all. Okay, thank you. Easy questions.

Thank you, Council Member. Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you, Councilwoman Fan, for pulling this item.

David PenalozaItem —

I wanted to also, you know, state that I'm supportive of this item because I know that we have, you know, done a lot of hiring this past year and a half, two years, in bringing, you know, filling all the vacancies that we had within the police department. So that's going to increase the need for police interceptors, the official name here, vehicles that we might need.

David PenalozaItem —

I know that just to remind the public that just early this month we had a drunk driver that crashed head-on into two police vehicles that were completely totaled and were taken out of service. So, you know, it's wear and tear. It's accidents. It's, you know, they've reached the end of their life hiring new officers. so I think it's a good item and I'm supportive of it and just wanted to remind the public that just early last month you unfortunately had that accident where a couple of our

David PenalozaItem —

officers were injured and the vehicles were totaled and taken out of service. With that, I would like to move the item 22B. Thank you. There's a motion.

Jessie LopezItem —

Is there a second? I have a comment. Yes. go ahead councilmember Lopez thank you for pulling the item councilmember fan chief I'm sorry that you have to come back up to the podium I have a question for you can you please let us know what the end of what is end of use life mean

there was really no metric given so it's you know we like to you know about 75 thousand miles but sometimes we're pushing a hundred hundred twenty thousand miles on these cars and it's not like you know our own personal vehicles 50,000 on a police vehicle are hard driven miles the car stays on pretty much 24-7 a lot of stop and go so the wear and tear is exacerbated so that 75,000 miles on our average vehicles well over 100-150 okay and are these

Jessie LopezItem —

hybrid models that we're getting no they're not okay is is there a reason

for oh so we've done some research in the industry as a whole has done some research on primary patrol vehicles and hybrid and there just isn't the response necessary all these vehicles are police rated for your speeds required and so that's kind of where things are in terms of the technology evolving for primary vehicles and in a hybrid capacity we do have hybrid vehicles in other parts of the police department but not the primary patrol vehicle and to just for

Jessie LopezItem —

me to understand if we don't get these vehicles that means that our response times are gonna slow down even more than what they're already well all response

times in all categories have been lowered because of the additional hiring of police officers and our focus on lowering response times and we need essentially all the assets that go along with supporting that effort so we either would have officers with no vehicle to go out in the street and yes then response times would go up i also have a very large academy class that's graduating in february 13 police officers and so you know it's just a supporting uh the hiring effort that's been going on for as was stated for the last couple

Jessie LopezItem —

of you know two three years and can you let me know is there again a metric to how many police vehicles are dispatched to a call oh well it really depends on

the type of call it's not urgent something not urgent could oftentimes provide no police response it could be handled over the phone or it could be handled in our telephonic reporting unit we try to be efficient in that manner when we actually have an officer respond to a scene it's an emergency or there's suspect information the call requires immediate follow-up and in some instances when a resident demands an officer and one's available we're gonna send one

thank you yes ma'am yes thank you councilwoman excellent questions let me ask those on the phone that haven't had a chance to speak to see if they have any comments councilmember Mendoza any questions for the chief now that we haven't at the podium here it sounds like a no thank you go ahead oh thank

you for the thank you for the opportunity mayor Sarmiento I don't have any comments if I understand that we need to replace vehicles for the safety of our officers and for the safety of the public. So I don't have any questions. I am in support of this item.

Great, thank you. Council Member Hernandez, any questions or comments?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

Yes, for Police Chief Valentin, I have a question. First and foremost, thank you for taking the time to answer our question. my question pertains to what does it cost us to upkeep these vehicles and to maintain them what are the additional costs that we could be looking at as a city well there is the regular

maintenance that occurs like any other vehicle being that it's a these are police vehicles they do require additional maintenance i don't have an exact dollar figure the initial cost of the vehicle then it needs to be outfitted with all of the equipment which increases the cost of course our maintenance is completed by our city yard staff internal and so we we contract with them but they do they are hard-ridden miles as I said and so they require regular maintenance

thank you for your response to meet you thank you councilmember we have I think it was councilmember Pham and then Becerra go ahead thank you and thank you

Thai Viet PhanItem —

councilmember Lopez for asking your questions and that actually made me think of a couple more or at least a comment right we were talking about reducing response times and being responsive to residents as many of you listening know the public know we had a major vandalism incident on the west side and then we had several other high-profile incidents in which there were responses from our officers. I know at least with the residents who reached out to me, they were very thankful that our officers were very responsive and were there quickly and I want to make sure that as we, as previous, the previous

Thai Viet PhanItem —

council has funded these positions that we provide our officers with adequate resources to do your job well and to service our residents well. And so just with that comment I am in support of this item thank you great councilmember

Phil BacerraItem —

Becerra thank you mr. mayor this question is more geared toward our city manager which is gonna sound like deja vu which is so fairway forward is not a Santa business did we not have any responses from any auto dealerships here in town we do have an auto wall just all along the 55 there a couple of others scattered throughout the city did we just not get anybody that matched the

qualifications we needed so 16 Santa Ana vendors were notified and this is a purchase that's being done off of a competitive process that was done in January of 2020 so I don't have all the details of the number responded and where they were located we have taken to heart a lot of your feedback on trying to reach out and get more Santa Ana vendors to submit bids on this so I can't tell you if a number actually did reply but they were definitely contacted back in January 2020 the one deal that we did receive which was exceptional is

under the 2020 purchase of the dealer is honoring 2020 model prices for 2021 vehicles so we did receive a very good deal okay I don't think there was a

Phil BacerraItem —

second on the item so with that I'll go ahead second the motion I was about to

say that, but Mr. Mayor. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, if you'll please

call roll. Council Member Becerra? Yes. Council Member Hernandez? Yes. Council Member Lopez? Yes. Council Member Mendoza? Yes. Council Member Pham? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa? Yes. Mayor

Sarmiento yes thank you moving along to the next item I believe it was 55 B is

employed I have 25 e pulled by mayor pro temp I'm sorry go ahead you're right

David PenalozaItem —

thank you mr. mayor and madam city clerk I pulled 25 e approval of second agreement with the evolved software corporation for the purchase implementation of project box electronic plants and middle software again thank Thank you, staff, for moving forward in this direction. I know that the staff report says, you know, due to COVID, the current COVID-19 safety precautions, the city purchased and implemented a six-month pilot program for an electronic review system. This is one of those silver linings that came from this, is that businesses, private and public, had to adapt quickly and streamline their processes. So thank you.

David PenalozaItem —

I just want to make sure that we advertise the upgrades we're doing on the ground floor to invite people to do business in our city I know that there's a lot of businesses citywide that are reluctant to do changes or upgrades to their their facilities due to to knowing that it's gonna be a lot of time spent at City Hall that they probably don't need to moving forward as we implement these these systems and upgrades I not just you know a month or two ago I met with with the folks over at the observatory and you know they you know giving me a tour of the future changes that they plan on doing and they said you know it

David PenalozaItem —

would be nice if we could submit these plans you know through through the through electronically and the comments like I'm very familiar with City Hall I spend too much time there more than I need to and and it's the truth you know whether it's a resident trying to pay their bill or or a applicant trying to build a Starbucks or a 7-eleven you know it shouldn't take the amount of time it takes so very supportive of these items continue to I would like to continue seeing more of them and thanks staff for this but with that said I'll move project

David PenalozaItem —

item 25E I'll second that yes go ahead councilmember Lopez I just really want

Jessie LopezItem —

to say that this digital infrastructure investment I do believe that it's gonna add long-term investment to the agency and I really just want to applaud planning and building agency public works and IT is that that sounds like a

second is that a second that's a second great so we have a motion and a second any other comments councilmember fan I just want to thank councilmember

Thai Viet PhanItem —

Pinalosa for being the constant millennial and always bringing up infrastructure and IT upgrades in the city. It is incredibly important that cities, public agencies upgrade our IT, not only to bring it into the current century, but also to protect us against, you know, whether it's hacking or any other type of attacks on our city. And I think this will really help our businesses. I had businesses reach out to me who during COVID couldn't make an appointment to go down to city hall to submit their plans or it was just really difficult or we have staffed in this way I think we can get a lot in get a lot

Thai Viet PhanItem —

done and do it efficiently and make sure the city is greener before so thank you

great thanks well I should say even boomers like technology don't leave us out just because there's no age limit or requirement for liking speed and efficiency you're not that old mr. mayor yeah right Gen X so council members any

David PenalozaItem —

other comments seeing none here go ahead really quick just because councilwoman fan did mention that that you know it's we should advertise this more and one of the things that I realized about two months ago I went on our city website and I had no idea that we could make appointments now to do things on the ground floor so that's kind of what I mean with advertising and letting the residents know that these services are available and the capabilities that they could do from their home that would be that would be great great that's it

thank you for that hearing and seeing no other comments we have a motion in a

second madam clerk councilmember Bissar yes councilmember Hernandez yeah councilmember Lopez yes councilmember Mendoza yes Councilmember Pham? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa?

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. What's the next item now, Clark?

I have 55B pulled by Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa.

David PenalozaItem —

Go ahead, Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa. I'm really sorry, Mr. Mayor. I promise this is the last one. And to my colleagues that have indulged me,

David PenalozaItem —

55B is adopt a resolution amending the classification and compensation plan to create one part-time job classifications and amend annual budget to reclassify positions in public works agency and PD the madam city manager and shame on me for not asking about this sooner but I just have a simple question about the staff report process and I happen to notice it in this item I'm not sure if it exists in other items or what we've done in the past but should the HR executive director mr. mr. Pham be mentioned as well as the chief of police on page four I know that in the past when we've had staff reports that

David PenalozaItem —

include numerous departments if I recall we have all the departments that you know had a part in this listed on page four I'm not on the last page I'm not sure if this is an oversight or if this is just if mr. Nabil Sabah took the lead on this but I know that that you know HR did have to a lot to do with this particular item as well as a police chief because there's one position in here within the police department so I just wanted to know why those executives names aren't

listed on the staff report I concur with you mayor pro tem they should have been although you know one person usually will take the lead on completing a staff report it does impact both the police department and the Public Works Department and is is in the area of human resources so they should be

David PenalozaItem —

reflected on that page thank you okay just and again I should have caught this sooner but I didn't get a chance to but in the future just make sure that we're we're all you know and I know we do a great job I you know I don't want to be that guy that's picking on typos now but well now I am so with that said I'll

move the item for approval great we have a motion is there a second I'll second we have a motion in a second any other comments or questions from council members hearing none seeing them madam clerk if you'll please call roll council

member Becerra yes council member Hernandez yes council member Lopez yes Council Member Mendoza? Yes. Council Member Pham? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa?

David PenalozaItem —

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. Thank you, Council. So we concluded the consent calendar. It brings us to the business calendar items, item 65A, which is the approval of the annual calendar for council meetings for 2021. Is there a staff presentation? It's pretty self-explanatory. It basically says that we would be going dark, I believe, January 5th of next year and August 3rd of next year as well any questions from the council concept I'll be happy to move the item okay we have a motion and I

David PenalozaItem —

believe a council mayor pro tem yeah mr. mayor I had a question and I wanted to see if my colleagues would would agree with me it was more of I was looking over the council meeting calendar for next year and I noticed that the the dark meeting is that we choose in August is August 3rd I know that in July July 5th which is a Monday is a holiday and City Hall is closed because of the 4th of July holiday which is on Sunday I would suggest that we go dark on that first meeting in July just so that you know we don't have staff that's off for

David PenalozaItem —

four or five days, I believe it is, if you

David PenalozaItem —

continue from...

David PenalozaItem —

I'm sorry, I lost track of this. Yeah, because they're off on Monday, and then to come back to have a council meeting, I feel like it would make more sense for everybody. Just my personal opinion, if my colleagues don't agree, that's fine. I don't care what day we go dark on. but is there a reason why the third was chosen madam city clerk yes there is and

so typically the council will consider the budget during that period and so if it gets delayed to the next meeting as it has traditionally the last meetings the first meeting of August has been the one that has consistently stayed

David PenalozaItem —

canceled that that would make sense and seeing that's something that I didn't initially think about so because we would usually approve the budget in June sometimes I believe this year went to that first meeting in July for a second reading so that that makes sense so ignore me unless my colleagues have other other comments I'll shut up now and I'll second that out we have a motion

in a second thank you for the comment madam clerk I think that was helpful that I would have probably followed your lead because yeah you're right we're probably gonna have a very difficult torturous yeah process for the budget this year but Councilmember Fan did you have a comment I just wanted to make a

Thai Viet PhanItem —

comment that I too had the desire to have that first July meeting off because it's my anniversary on the second and then July 4th is a big holiday since we're we're a military family but again I knew the budget was a big issue and we'll probably have several meetings so I guess it is great thank you for that

comment any other comments from the council or questions and we'll take note to your anniversary when it comes up. So thank you for telling us all. Madam Clerk, if you'll please call roll.

Council Member Becerra. Yes. Council Member Hernandez. Yes. Council Member Lopez. Yes. Council Member Mendoza. Yes. Council Member Phan. Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñolosa.

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento.

Yes. Thank you. Moving along to 65B, the review and appointment for the regional board representatives. and do we have a presentation from staff? Is that you, Madam Clerk?

Yes, so there's no presentation, but in the staff report, it does make mention of every council member who was interested in serving. So if it's best or easiest, maybe we can go from one board at a time to see how council members want to vote on it because there are some specific boards, regional boards where multiple council members are interested. Great. Just one suggestion.

No, thank you for that. And I know in the past what we've done is, you know, sometimes these take time. So we, you know, look at it the first meeting, then we come back and revisit it on the second. And then in between, we, you know, we kind of make our decisions. But you've all done your homework and you've all, you know, shared your preferences with the clerk in advance. So thank you for you know doing that and kind of giving us a good description So for all you new council members you guys did great work and doing your homework so why don't we start with the first one and

See if anybody is interested we already have somebody who is interested on that one if unless somebody else is so that is the Metropolitan Water District and I believe a council member fan has expressed an interest to serve so

David PenalozaItem —

So, point of clarification, Mr. Mayor? Yes. Are we going to be voting on each board one by one?

Yeah, that's my recommendation. So that way we can go ahead and jot down the motion for each and every regional board.

Phil BacerraItem —

Some of them require resolutions, don't they?

I'm sorry?

Phil BacerraItem —

Don't some of these appointments, I thought I read in here that some of them require an actual resolution?

Only one requires a resolution. That's the Orange County Fire Authority.

Okay.

David PenalozaItem —

Well, so I'll make a motion, unless my colleagues feel otherwise, or anyone else is interested, to appoint Councilwoman Fan to the Metropolitan Water District.

I'll second it. Great. We have a motion and a second for Councilmember Fan to represent us at the Metropolitan Water District. Any questions or comments from the Council? Hearing none, seeing none, why don't we go ahead and take that to a vote?

Councilmember Becerra?

Yes. Council Member Hernandez? Yes. Council Member Lopez? Yes. Council Member Mendoza? Yes. Council Member Fan? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa? Yes. Mayor Sarmiento? Yes. Congratulations, Council Member Fan, and thank you for representing us there. Madam City Attorney, I remember there was a rule in the past that you couldn't vote for yourself when you were being appointed. So I think that was revised by the FPPC. And I remember we were part of that challenge. So good work for everybody so we can vote for ourselves now without getting into trouble.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

You may. Thank you for remembering that. That was the very first piece of work I ever did for the City of Santa Ana.

It was very moving. It was landmark work.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

You scared me.

so moving along to the next item which is the newport bay watershed executive committee right now we have our director of public works nabeel saba representing us unless there's anybody else why don't we just i didn't see any preference from any of the council members why don't we leave it as is congratulations mr saba you're doing a great job there um ocfi ocfa the orange County Fire Authority where we will need a resolution for this as well. It looks like we have two council members that are interested in serving, at least have shown some initial interest

in serving, Council Members Hernandez and Lopez. Is there anybody who has a real strong interest either way or anybody else?

Jessie LopezItem —

Council Member Hernandez.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

For the Orange County Fire Authority,

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

if Council Member Lopez would like to serve on that board, she will have my support.

David PenalozaItem —

If that's a motion, Council Member Hernandez,

I'll second it. Great, so we have a motion and a second. Is there any question, comment from the council? Hearing none.

This is Council Member Mendoza. I was wondering if we could appoint Council Member Hernandez as an alternate.

Do we have alternates on OCFA?

It does not require an alternate for that position, for OCFA.

Yeah, I served on that for a couple of months. I was there for a very short time, so I don't recall that there was an alternate position on that one. I think there are some specific regional boards and commissions that do have an alternate assignment, but that one doesn't have one, I believe. But point well taken to the extent that we'll be considering that for other ones. But seeing no other comments.

David PenalozaItem —

I have a question, Mr. Mayor, again, just for clarification. Is this what we're voting now, the resolution, or is that going to come back at the next meeting?

No, this is for the resolution. The resolution was one of the attachments to this exhibit. Okay.

Great. so we have a motion and a second a man of clerk will you please call me council

member Becerra yes council member Hernandez yeah council member Lopez yes council member Mendoza yeah council member fan yes mayor pretend

Peñalosa yes mayor Sarmiento yes thank you congratulations councilwoman that is an exciting board so keep us posted moving along to the Orange County sanitation district I believe councilwoman Mendoza is presently serving on there and and mayor pro tem is the alternate but there is interest by it appears Councilwoman Mendoza on this, but I think there might be a change here. Is there anybody that has a strong interest in serving on the Orange County Sanitation District?

Mr. Mayor?

Mr. Fermento, I would like to nominate Jonathan Hernandez as the primary, and I would like to be appointed as the alternate on the sanitation board.

Great, so that's an appointment motion for Councilmember Hernandez. Is there a second for that?

David PenalozaItem —

I'll second that, Mayor Sarmiento. I was the alternate, but I went to maybe one meeting early last year, so it'd be right for Councilwoman Mendoza to continue in that alternate position.

Great, so we have a motion and a second. Any questions or comments on that? Hearing none, seeing none, let's go ahead and have a roll call vote.

Councilmember Becerra? Yes. Councilmember Hernandez?

Yes.

Councilmember Lopez? Yes. Councilmember Mendoza?

Yes. Councilmember Fan? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa?

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. Congratulations, Councilman Hernandez. you'll be representing the sanitation district moving along to the orange county water district and i'm presently the representative and i will be stepping down from that because i will be representing the city at the transportation authority and i skipped over the vector control because that's um that's something that i believe has a term that doesn't conclude until 2024 so going back to the OCWD I will be stepping down from that so it becomes a vacant vacant seat and I see that councilman Hernandez and councilwoman

Mendoza have expressed an interest but you know because these are pretty intense commissions and boards to the extent that councilman Hernandez would you be willing to support Councilwoman Mendoza for OCWD? Absolutely I would like to

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

nominate Councilman Councilwoman Mendoza for water district. I'll second it. Okay

so we have a motion and a second for Councilwoman Mendoza to serve as the Orange County Water District representative. Any questions or comments

Thai Viet PhanItem —

from the council? Seeing none. Mayor? Yes. It's Councilmember Fan. Yes. I just spoke to our city attorney and I'm going to abstain from this vote as Orange County Water District is a Rattan client for many years and so I will abstain

thank you great thank you for that clarification seeing no other comments and hearing no other comments why don't we go ahead and take a vote on that

councilmember Becerra yes councilmember Hernandez yeah councilmember Lopez yes Council Member Mendoza?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa?

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. Congratulations, Council Member Mendoza. You have some very large shoes to fill, by the way. Just kidding. Just kidding.

Absolutely. I'm ready.

Size 12, by the way. Moving along to SCAG, the Southern California Association of Governments, and we I believe have Councilman Becerra who is presently serving and I believe council members Hernandez and Lopez Lopez have shown an interest I believe that they've been assigned and maybe out of fairness and equity we all get a chance to serve on different boards and commissions Councilman would you consider staying and representing us at SCAG absolutely let me go ahead and make the motion to nominate you there I'll second that mr. mayor great we have a motion and a second any questions or comments from the council seeing none

let's take a vote on that please councilmember Becerra yes councilmember Hernandez yeah councilmember Lopez yes councilmember Mendoza yes councilmember fan yes mayor pro temp in your Lassa yes mayor Sarmiento yes

congratulations Councilman Becerra moving along to OCOG that's the Orange County Council of

Governments I don't know if we have a representative no mayor that so anyone who sits on the SCAG as the city member representative will also sit on OCOG congratulations thank you

moving along to the transportation corridor agencies TCA and I believe that's Mayor Pro Tempena Losa who is presently serving there I see that there was interest by Councilman Hernandez and Councilman Lopez but to the extent to Mayor Pro Temp you would consider

David PenalozaItem —

representing us there yeah mr. mayor I'd like to express to my colleagues that I'd like to continue serving on the transportation corridor agencies there's a lot of good good things that we're doing over there we just approved 91 Express toll road to the 91 Express Lane and just a lot of projects that are coming we just hired a new CEO and I believe half the board from what I recall you know got you know turned out this past election or or voted out and so there's gonna be a lot of change at that agency so I'd like to to remain for some consistency mayor I'll

Phil BacerraItem —

move to nominate Pro Tempela's that are continuing to serve and I'll second great

we have a motion in a second seeing no comments or questions let's go ahead and

David PenalozaItem —

mr. mayor so I believe there's an alternate position for this right uh

madam city clerk I think that's correct I served on that I believe there is Is anybody willing to step up to be an alternate on that?

I will be an alternate to Council Member Mendoza.

Great, Councilwoman, go ahead and you'll be the alternate for that. Does the maker of the first and second willing to go ahead and change that and incorporate?

Phil BacerraItem —

I'll take that amendment.

Great, so we have a motion and a second for Mayor Pro Tem Peñalosa to continue being our representative and Council Member Mendoza of being the alternate. Let's go ahead and take a vote on that.

Council Member Becerra? Yes. Council Member Hernandez?

Yes.

Council Member Lopez? Yes. Council Member Mendoza? Yes. Council Member Fan? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa?

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. Boy, that was a lot less painful than I remember when we used to do it. So congratulations to all you guys. Thank you for making it smooth. Let's move along to item number 65C to approve the budget calendar for the year 2021-22.

Mayor, before we proceed, I think we have one more, the TSIA. Did I skip something? Yes, Mayor Pro Tem is currently the representative, and I did not receive any interest, so if a council member would like to...

David PenalozaItem —

Go ahead, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. this transportation system improvements Authority Orange and Tustin formed in 1990 I was a baby hasn't met at all I've never been to a meeting I've never heard from anybody that I don't know exactly how this board works because I've never had any communication with anyone that is in charge or whatnot so if we could find out when was the last time they met and and what because I haven't maybe somebody wouldn't have some history over it I believe madam city manager you knew a little bit about it in the past so I believe both of the

JPAs were formed at the time that the neighboring cities were doing construction and it was to better coordinate between the two if it is still an act of joint powers authority we certainly would need to have an assigned board member for it so if you wouldn't mind maybe continuing your stint and then we can we can figure out if there is a useful purpose or if the other party is interested in dissolving the authority right okay I'm fine with

that continuing to serve as a representative great I'll go ahead and move that recommendation is there a second I'll second okay we have a motion in a second seeing no in hearing no other comments madam clerk if you'll Please call roll.

Council Member Becerra? Yes. Council Member Hernandez?

Phil BacerraItem —

Yes.

Council Member Lopez? Yes. Council Member Mendoza? Yes. Council Member Fan? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñolosa?

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. Okay, now we can move along to item 65C to approve the budget calendar for fiscal year 2021-22.

Is there any questions or comments from the council?

David PenalozaItem —

I'll make a motion to approve, Mr. Mayor. Just wanted to thank staff for the nicely detailed calendar, very visually appealing. So thank you, whoever did that. But I'll move them.

I'll second. We have a motion and a second. Any questions or comments from the council? Seeing none, Madam Clerk, if you'll please call roll.

Council Member Becerra? Yes. Councilmember Hernandez? Yes. Councilmember Lopez? Yes. Councilmember Mendoza? Yes. Councilmember Fan? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa?

Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento?

Yes. Thank you. Moving along to 65D, this is the informational item relating to the police oversight. Body, is there a presentation from staff on this?

yes honorable mayor mayor pro tem and council members the item before you is to accept an informational report and certainly if you want to provide any further direction to us we've had this item before you and we received a lot of direction on things to explore and research so Daniel Soto of the city manager's office he did a lot of the work on it and he has prepared a presentation to provide to you

good evening mayor and City Council I'd like to follow up on an informational report that staff provided to the City Council on September 15th back in September staff provided an overview of police oversight models best practices and frameworks the City Council directed staff to return to City Council tonight with additional information about the police oversight models specifically those with and without investigatory or subpoena powers, to review police oversight from cities with comparably sized population, to contact the Orange

County Sheriff's Department regarding their Sheriff's Advisory Council, and to conduct some community engagement through a survey to put our feelers out and see how the community feels about police oversight.

In addition, the staff report provides information about the National Association of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, also known as NA COAL, and some of the resources that they provide for local governments exploring police oversight.

What is police oversight? Police oversight, also referred to as civilian oversight, is a form of external oversight of law enforcement and officer conduct, whose purpose is to improve law enforcement performance and accountability.

some examples of police oversight mechanisms if we're looking at simple more simple mechanisms usually include border Commission that reviews the findings of investigations of police officer conduct misconduct allegations those of which have already been reviewed by the police departments Internal Affairs Division. These simpler mechanisms usually have little to no budgetary authority and the board and Commission members serve on a volunteer basis. The more organizationally complex police oversight mechanisms may include

full-time staff including lawyers, investigators, and analysts. They may have substantial budgetary authority, may have access to conduct independent investigations and have access to records to police evidence records and other databases from the police department or law enforcement agency back to Nicole to provide information about the framework of police oversight Nicole provides three classifications that police oversight mechanisms may fall under the first of which is the investigation focus model this involves

routine independent investigations of complaints against police officers the review focus model concentrates on commenting on completed investigations completed by the internal affairs investigations of the police department or law enforcement agency this model also allows the border commission to submit recommendations to police executives and staff and the border Commission is usually composed of resident volunteers that serve and this Board of Commission may hold public meetings finally the auditor monitor

model focuses on examining patterns of complete of complaint investigations including patterns and quality of investigations finding and discipline

this model also allows the mechanism to actively participate in or monitor open internal investigations this model allows the Border Commission to make recommendations for improvement of the police department or law enforcement agency so to look at the difference between police oversight with and without subpoena or investigatory powers. Police oversight with investigatory powers typically consists of members that have the authority to subpoena or to summon folks to

complete investigations for complaints separately and externally from the police department.

the this type of border Commission may make findings based off of the investigations and make make recommendations to staff regarding recommendations for discipline the advantages can be that this type of model may may provide a perception of increased public confidence in misconduct investigations and may give the community greater sense of inclusion some of the disadvantages are that the members that participate in the border Commission must be highly trained and willing to spend a considerable

amount of time to serve on the border Commission additionally this would require significant funding for the border Commission to function properly an example of how this works in real time is the city of Berkeley in Northern California they have a police review commission it's classified under the investigation focus model and they are responsible and have the authority to do a handful of things namely they they published statistics on officer involved shootings uses of force complaints and outcomes they receive

community complaints regarding

I apologize the Berkeley Police Review Commission advises and makes recommendations to the public the City Council and the city manager they review policies practices written and unwritten and procedures relating to the Berkeley Police Department and they also receive complaints they have the ability to exercise the power of subpoena and for their membership nine residents from the city of Berkeley are appointed by the mayor and the council members one for each district of the city and one that is that is that serves at large there

are three full-time employees that staff the Berkeley Police Review Commission a police review Commission officer an investigator and an office specialist and their budget for the current fiscal year is approximately seven hundred sixty eight thousand dollars

alternatively the for police oversight mechanisms without investigatory or subpoena powers this model consists of members who review police misconduct investigations to determine whether they were conducted appropriately and adequately this border Commission also makes recommendations to staff some of the advantages of this type of police oversight mechanism is that the border Commission typically can produce findings more quickly than police oversight mechanism with investigatory powers and some of the disadvantages are that this type of model still takes considerable time required by the border

Commission members the members must have knowledge and training on how to conduct investigations relating to police misconduct and there may be some limitations to the evidence that would be provided to the police oversight mechanism that of which would be provided by the internal affairs division of that law enforcement agency an example of this is the city of Anaheim They have a police review board. It is a hybrid model, primarily a review-focused model and an auditor-monitor model. They have an independent external auditor.

So some of the functions that the Anaheim Police Review Board does is that they publish statistics on officer-involved shootings, incidents, and including access to body and work camera footage. they receive community complaints and refer them to the city manager the Anaheim Police Department and their external auditor for review they consider and approve policy recommendations from the external independent auditor they audit police practices and produce an annual report to the community and to the City Council for membership seven members serve on

the police review board for Anaheim one for each district and one that serves at large there are two staff we a zones that support the Anaheim police review board one staff member from the Anaheim City Manager's Office and one from the Anaheim Police Department who works the internal affairs division their annual budget is approximately $125,000 and funds the professional services agreement with their external independent auditor to examine a city with a similar population staff took a look at the city of Riverside which has

a population of approximately 330,000 Riverside has a community police review Commission which falls under the investigation focus model some of their functions include invite advising the mayor and City Council on police and community relations issues they serve as a vehicle for police community relations to to improve collaboration and communication through conducting public outreach they also receive and review complaints from the community they conduct hearings into allegations of misconduct they do have subpoena

power they also review and advise the police department on their policies and practices they submit written findings to the city manager and the police chief they reviewed investigate deaths of individuals arising out of the arising out of or in connection with any actions of a sworn police officer they recommend any staffing necessary to carry out the duties of the Community Police Review Commission they also advise those staff members performance and they are required to submit an annual report to report on their activities for the calendar year their membership consists of nine individuals

seven of which are appointed according to the city's seven districts and two members that serve at large and there is staffing from the city attorney's office city manager's office and the Riverside Police Department that support the activities of the Community Police Review Commission their annual budget for this fiscal year is approximately $265,000.

Staff took a look at the Orange County Sheriff's Department, and we found that the Orange County Sheriff's Department currently does not have a police oversight mechanism that they use. Their Sheriff's Advisory Council is a nonprofit that seeks public and private funding to fund items such as tools and equipment, as well as to provide financial assistance for law enforcement officers and their their families excuse me families of law enforcement officers who have been killed in line of duty another component of the staff report tonight is a community engagement survey that staff

completed over the last couple of months the survey it's collected includes responses from 597 respondents this data is preliminary and is the what could be the beginning of a community engagement initiative with with the community that would focus on maintaining a feedback loop between the city and our residents we shared the survey digitally and also communicated with our neighborhood associations and with our business folks the survey is available on our city

website in English Spanish and Vietnamese and I'll go over some of the questions from the survey so out of our five hundred ninety seven respondents approximately eighty nine point three percent of respondents identified as Santa Ana residents do you know how to file a citizen complaint with the Santa Ana Police Department alleging police misconduct seventy six point seven percent of respondents said that they do not know how to file a citizen complaint with the Santa Ana Police Department alleging police misconduct. Police oversight is

needed in Santa Ana. Do you agree or disagree? 72.5% of respondents either strongly agree or agree that police oversight is needed in Santa Ana. Police oversight will positively affect public safety in Santa Ana. 72.6% of respondents either strongly agree or agree that police oversight will positively affect public safety in Santa Ana we asked folks to identify a set of priorities should the city implement a police oversight mechanism below or on

your screen are the is the list of priorities that we received from the public. Number one, transparency. Two, community outreach. Three, use of statistical pattern analysis. Four, open communication. Five, independence. Six, access to public records. Seven, increased resources. Eight, increased protection of peace officer rights. And nine, support by stakeholders finally we asked folks to review the information that we

shared back in September regarding the different classifications by NACOL and what we saw from respondents was that they showed a moderate preference of the auditor monitor model 41.37 percent of the respondents supported that type of model followed by 36% in support of the investigation focused model the National Association of civilian oversight of law enforcement NACOL is one of many

organizations that provides assistance or guidance to local governments that are considering implementing or establishing police oversight or maybe revitalizing their existing police oversight border Commission attached to the staff report is a guidebook that was produced in 2016 in collaboration with the US Department of State which includes information such as the basic philosophy principles and objectives of law enforcement oversight methodologies models of evaluation and assessment and strategies and approaches to ensuring

constitutional policing so tonight the City Council has the following options related to this matter one direct staff to evaluate one or more of the presented police oversight mechanisms and return to the City Council with additional information to direct staff to conduct additional research on police oversight topics and return to the City Council with additional information or three take no action staff recommends that the City Council accept the informational report and provide direction I'm available if you have any questions

great thank you for that presentation Daniel let me go ahead and bring it back to the the council for comments and questions I just want to say thank you to staff because I know that this was you know this was something that the council had asked for before the end of the year and for the benefit of the new council members I think there there was certainly a detailed you know presentation so they could get up to speed with what we had seen in the past and I think I think I may be the only council member that saw the iteration that came before us back in 2015 and and this is helpful to augment for that

With that so I think it was council members Ben Yalosa and Sarah who brought this up as an 85a So we could take this up now. So thank you both and let me bring it back to all of you to Comment and give some direction on this councilman Sarah

Phil BacerraItem —

Thank you. Mr. Mayor. I just want to start off with a question So full actually first a compliment. Thank you Daniel for all the work that you put into this because From the time that myself and my colleagues brought this up as an item for consideration I know you've been putting in a lot of the legwork to provide us the information. So thank you for that And it's a lot to digest With that one thing I noticed was in your presentation You you had mentioned that Riverside with their community police review commission had subpoena powers and their budget was 264,000 and I think Berkeley Which also has investigatory powers?

Phil BacerraItem —

they were looking at a budget more in the range of 700,000 so I don't know if you know but do you have a guess why their budget is so much lower because I also saw that in the pros and cons of each model one with investigatory powers and I think this is something that'll probably be limiting for us here would be the cost of engaging in that model that's not to say that we wouldn't want to see something that that you know provides that oversight that the community is asking for but again depending on the cost we might have to tailor that model but so again the question being two or sixty four

Phil BacerraItem —

thousand mm-hmm I'm just using some well I would say cost-cutting attorneys or

what's going on over there well thank you councilmember Sarah the scholars and practitioners in this field do note that there is significant variability among the different classifications and the different oversight models, and we see that here. For example, in response to your question, the Riverside Police Department uses their $264,000 budget to fund one full-time secretary position. In contrast, the Berkeley Police Review Commission funds three full-time staff members with their budget and a significant portion of Berkeley's

Phil BacerraItem —

budget is used for their staffing costs. Okay. I know a peer of mine over there on the Riverside City Council and she had informed me that this commission came about because of some incidents over in Riverside and they seemed to like their version. And I know Anaheim's came about because of incidences over there and I want to reiterate something that I've said at previous meetings which is that our department has not risen to a level of widespread problems that other cities may have exhibited at one point in time

Phil BacerraItem —

and so the way I've always viewed this is that you know I had the opportunity to serve our city's Planning Commission for over five and a half years and now the Planning Commission definitely does not take in or expend the resources that our public safety folks do and I think it's fair to have civilian oversight in the sense of ensuring that we continue to be a police department that's on the cutting edge and we've always been progressive in many of the policies that we've had and I want to continue to have that I think we had an incident recently

Phil BacerraItem —

at 17th and Bristol regarding a protest and the one thing that after our chief responded to the community to just inform them update them I mean we don't unless the chief has something else to say about it I believe at this point we haven't concluded you know the full scope of what's happening with that or what happened with that incident but I think a lot of folks expressed appreciation that the chief was forthcoming and letting the community know what's going on and I think that this is an opportunity to formalize this sort of engagement with our community in this transparency because I think

Phil BacerraItem —

there's a lot of times where you know we're privy on this council to a lot of the good things that our police department does and the community does not always know that and I think it's important to have a body that allows the community to understand that I know that even with my background in planning being on the Planning Commission really helped me see the wonderful work that that our staff does here, and as a resident, be able to give back and be a part of the process. So I, right now at this point, in looking at what Daniel's presented to us, I think that something that kind of blends that review-focused auditor-monitor model

Phil BacerraItem —

might be something to look at. I think there's, before we get to a point where our council could say that we're gonna give a thumbs up or down on a model I think there's gonna be a lot of work that goes into it and I would hope that my colleagues will support that once we get to a point where we have a proposal that we will also go back and engage the community and I think that Daniel's done a great job in helping do that on behalf of the city and that we would continue to do that and those are my comments

right now mr. mayor great thank you for those comments any other comments from

Jessie LopezItem —

the council councilwoman Lopez yeah I do I have initial questions and I don't know if madam city manager or Daniel who exactly wants to take lead on those but before that I really just want to thank our community members that filled out the participated in this survey and you know I really they have been guiding this conversation for a very long time this is something that they have been asking for for years and finally we are able to have a public discussion about it and so thank you Daniel for presenting presenting this to us and so

Jessie LopezItem —

I wanted to know what can you let me know how we decided to examine Riverside

Anaheim and Berkeley Thank You councilmember I selected Berkeley because their city or sorry their their local government was one of the first in California to deploy police oversight and their city fell under the investigator investigatory or subpoena power model I saw that Anaheim because of their proximity to the sea because of the similarity in population and because their city's police review or police oversight mechanism fell under the non-investigatory model.

And I selected Riverside because the city of Riverside is directly behind Santa Ana in terms of their population. And our police department also engaged the Riverside Police Department to discuss their experiences with police oversight.

okay thank you great any other questions or comments from the council yes go ahead councilmember can you I think you're a little muted we can barely hear you if you can maybe get a little closer to your to your phone

It's still a little low.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

Is this better?

I'm not sure. Are you able to hear me now?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

There, we can hear you. Perfect. Go ahead. Thank you.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

I wanted to thank Daniel Soto for the comprehensive presentation that he gave. this information I know is going to be vital to our community members and into the council. This decision over. I did want to ask Daniel, I think that that the community input was imperative. I think it's going to definitely shape what this oversight commission will look like. I do think that we need to be inclusive of justice impacted individuals I would like to see the ability for people that have been through the justice system firsthand to

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

have the ability to sit on this Commission is that something that we can

look into thank you councilmember yes for future engagement that is certainly

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

something that we can look into thank you thank you I know that as this country is shaping and as we've seen some very adverse police misconduct all throughout the country I think it's necessary to have an ideological shift and the inclusivity of the criminal justice system I think that this oversight Commission is going to give us the ability to look closely at the root causes of mass incarceration police misconduct and I think when we do that we can really cultivate some solutions that help us with those that are directly impacted by crime

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

and violence and everything else that comes with living in urban communities like this. So that

was the only comment that I had. Thank you, Council Member Hernandez. Councilman Mendoza, I know you're on the line. Do you have any comments to any direction for staff?

well let me go ahead and get back to you councilwoman if you if you do have anything just get my attention councilwoman fan yes thank you staff

Thai Viet PhanItem —

thank you Daniel for this it was actually really great to see how all these different cities were implementing different models so I do have a few questions obviously the cost of any of these models would be highly dependent on exactly how we structure it, but do you have any estimates or is it just really looking at trying to compare what these other cities currently have and just ballparking it for us?

Thank you, Council Member. In our preliminary research, we do see that the budgets for these different police oversight mechanisms vary significantly from one jurisdiction to another. We can look at other jurisdictions that have police oversight mechanisms and classify them under the different NACOL classifications or the investigatory versus non-investigatory to have a better understanding of how much the budgets would vary for the different police oversight mechanisms. Thank you. And so I read

Thai Viet PhanItem —

the Anaheim model in the staff report and they do mention OIR, which is a, I guess, a law firm, a police investigatory firm. And, you know, have you talked to them? Has staff talked to them? Has this been internal completely so far?

I've spoken with the city manager's office, senior administrative analyst, who's one of the primary staff liaisons to their police oversight or their police review board. the city has a $125,000 annual contract with the OIR group, their external auditor, and they work with them periodically. And the staff workload varies from week to week, depending on the police oversight activities.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

Okay, and I only bring that up because in reviewing their recommendations to the city of Anaheim, they did go through all the policies and then gave recommendations on what to update and what to amend. And so I would like for us to potentially explore that option because, you know, we're civilians up here. I don't think any of us have been police officers or, you know, fully been immersed in that kind of work. And so I'd like to see some outside eyes. No one likes an audit.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

But in that way, we can take a look at what policies potentially can be updated or be at the forefront of what is effective and useful to implement here in the city. So that's one thing. Another thing is there have been a lot of comments regarding independence of the Oversight Commission. In reading these different models, it seems like the commissioners or, you know, the folks on the overview commissions all seem to have been appointed by the mayor and city council in one form or another. Is that correct?

For the three that we looked at? Yes.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

And then I guess Anaheim selected by lottery. So I guess it's application and then picked at random.

The selection process for the board or commission members for the different cities does vary. Some organizations do provide recommendations for how the selection process could work, who could or would be involved in appointing, and how those appointments would be finalized. But the scholars note that we do see a variation in how those best practices are applied.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

Thank you. Because I did see a lot of comments regarding independence saying away from elected officials, away from, you know, big dollar donors or et cetera. And we really get into a bit of a catch-22 because if you're not appointed by the city council and the mayor, then you essentially would have to run some type of election. Who picks the commissioners? And so in light of that concern, I'd like for us to explore a situation in which the council may appoint one for each member, including the mayor, but have a commission that is rotating on any particular item.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

So, for example, there may be a total of seven commissioners on the Police Oversight Board, but in each item that is reviewed or policy that is reviewed, you only have five members reviewing that. That is information or ideas that have been brought up for courts. Actually, the Court of Appeal and the Court of Appeals, both in state and federal court, do a type of rotating system so that you don't have the same individuals all the time reviewing. So that way, I think you get away from the influence, as some residents have been concerned about, but also prevent, essentially, a campaign for the Oversight Commission.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

The other thing I'd like for us to explore is potentially a term in which an individual is only removed for cause. Again, that would help potentially remove it away from electoral or political concerns. I think that would be potentially something to explore.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

the other issues I'd like for us to look into our I guess overall policy review whether it's going to be done by the OIR group or someone else or internally I think that we've done a really good job of posting those online I've read it read most of them myself but I think that there there's definitely more that we can do to dig into that. And finally, I look into, I guess the same thing, review and training, right? Each of those items and having these members be able to look at

Thai Viet PhanItem —

those policies. I'm supportive of an investigative model. It's no secret. I've mentioned before many times in public, my husband was a JAG, which is essentially internal affairs for the Air Force. And in those situations, when an airman commits a crime or is alleged to have committed a crime, it is not the commanding officer who decides necessarily the punishment. The investigation goes to the JAG's office. And we do that because our officers, just like our airmen, need to have a sense of camaraderie and trust with each other. That's a positive for the department.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

But when someone is alleged to have committed a crime, we need to have outside eyes who are independent to look at that. So I am definitely supportive of an independent model and additionally an auditor model. Thank you.

Great. Thanks for those comments. Mayor Pro Tem.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to thank Daniel first for this very well brought out presentation that he brought forward. and Mayor Sarmiento and Council Member Becerra for entertaining the idea back in June or May, June-July, when we brought this item forward. It's definitely something that's long overdue. It's definitely needed in our city. I'm not sure exactly what kind of oversight, but something is needed. With that said, I am very supportive of an auditor-monitor model that was presented in the staff and also look into a model with investigatory powers as well.

David PenalozaItem —

The thing with the investigatory powers is that I know that the cost increases, but one thing that I want to say is that I want to make sure that if we're looking at any model that is going to have a cost, whether it's $100,000 or $1 million, dollars that we look madam city manager and you work closely with the police department to see where in the police department that money could be absorbed from to to to make sure that that cost is not an additional cost when it comes back to us in June because the last thing I want to see is is a million

David PenalozaItem —

dollar cost added to to the police department or I'm not sure where would it would be allocated but that's something that I would highly stress is that we try to find already allocated dollars within the police department that could absorb some of some of these added additional costs would be my ask but with that said I agree with a lot of what has been said by my colleagues I think for the most part we're all in some kind of agreement and that is it Mr. Mayor. Great. Thank you. Thank you for those comments. So, you know, I'm just glad we're having

this conversation because it seems like we are consistent with the survey that was done. So it seems like we're all in lockstep with residents, which is good. That's where we should be. I think the iteration or, you know, the version of what we will finally have is something that we will discuss you know and that's good and hopefully we get some input we discuss this with you know people in the community staff hopefully will guide us along this but I think that's what this whole exercise was about and to the extent that we have three new council members that really haven't been able to

dig in and haven't had the background that we you know we've had on this it's it's important that we maybe digest this and and give good comments and all the comments that I've heard tonight were really instructive I know I think it was only Madam City Attorney and I who were left here who and maybe the chief was here as well when we when we talked about this how long ago was it about five years ago maybe five or six years ago so you know it's good to be at this point because you know one of the things I've always wanted to say is that you know this isn't meant to be you know punitive or oppressive on any one

department in our city if anything you know public safety is so important to us that we dedicate almost 60% of our general fund to it. So we should have a standing board or commission, very much like we have one for planning for parks and rec. We have a commission for arts and culture. Those are all important, but this is extremely important, obviously, as evidenced by the results of the survey. So I want to thank the residents as well for making themselves available to comment on this and feel so strongly about this as well. So I do think there's a lot of value in a commission,

whether it's investigatory and or auditor monitor. I think that's where I would be leaning towards. I like the Riverside model from what I see just at first glance because it seems like it's a blend, right? I think the one from Berkeley, and no offense to Berkeley because I love that town, I think that there's just you know we want to be also cost effective so I think we can do and accomplish maybe some of the goals that they've tried but doing it in a much leaner way and maybe that's where you know madam city attorney you can work with you know the chief and and the city manager staff to come up

with something that's cost effective but yet has some teeth because and by teeth it's again not meant to be owners but I think it's meant to be autonomous right there has to be some objectivity in whatever board we comprise and it's simply to make sure that you know some people you know yeah you know other cities react like maybe Anaheim had an incident and they you know decided let's have a you know a board an oversight board you know Riverside maybe had an incident I don't think that's the best time to make good decisions I think you make good decisions when you don't have an incident when you don't have a crisis

when you can methodically think about something that's going to prevent issues in the future. So we're at, I think, a good point where we can do that. And really, you know, we hold all of our employees accountable, no matter what department you're in, whether you're in planning and building, whether you're, you know, in personnel or human resources, any one of those. So I think this is just consistent with just civic policy that we have. So I hope that we maybe consider having this as one of our standing commissions, like we do planning, like we do historic resources, like we do any of our other commissions.

This becomes a staple of what we have. And, again, how we're going to staff it, I think, is a question, but I think whoever staffs it, it'll be members of the community and residents and a civilian board. So I think that'll be helpful. and they can work with the chief and the department to make it, continue to make it, you know, a department that people can be proud of, not just here, but maybe serve as a model for other cities. And that's truly what my hope is, is that we become that example, that people will say they got it right, they did it well, you know, that's who we want to be. So I hope that's enough information.

I think all of us have had an opportunity.

Jessie LopezItem —

but I think I see one more hand yes I do I do comment you know I think that this is a good start but I would really like us to go further to match the crisis that we are in and to look at the Oakland police police Commission model and I think that that you know if we're gonna do this if we're gonna invest in a new Commission then we need to have a strong one and you know that model is a national is nationally known and respected and they are seen as leaders in this and so that is the model that I think that we should also look at and

Jessie LopezItem —

possibly adopt here in the city of Santa Ana I'm sorry councilmember which model were you refer to Oakland police commission model

great thank you councilwoman mayor pro tem did you have one final comment yeah just one final

David PenalozaItem —

comment when it comes to whatever type of board or commission we ultimately decide on when it comes to the commissioners i would also like to see a a good vetting process and you know some kind of term limits I know that right now our our boards and commissions don't have term limits and that's another conversation that we should have as a council is term limits on our appointed boards and commissioners because you know you'll have commissioners that serve forever and ever and that's something that we also don't want to see on any board I've been very vocal about

David PenalozaItem —

you know even reducing the third term it for third term limit for third term for council members on here and I I want to make sure that all our boards and commissions there's always a fresh rotation on who serves on them because people are human beings and people end up being compromised for whatever reason and it's it's important that we have a nice change every couple years on whatever type of Commission we might have and that's that that was that was final comment and I forgot to mention earlier thank you great thank you mayor

pro tem so hopefully staff has you know sufficient comments and direction thank you Daniel for all the hard work and for presenting that to us let's move along to the next item which is our public hearing section of the agenda 75a and before we get to that item I'm gonna go ahead and call on madam clerk to provide instruction to callers that we may have online who want to comment on public hearing item 75A only.

Thank you, Mayor. Due to the fact that we've had many callers on the speaking queue, and we currently still do, I wanted to go ahead and take this opportunity to request that any caller that is on the speaker queue and is only listening to the meeting or maybe using multiple devices which are difficult to identify, please virtually raise your hand by dialing star nine to identify that you would like to speak on public hearing item 75A only. And just in case any of them are Spanish speakers,

I did ask our translator to please interpret the statement so that way those callers that are on the call can dial star nine so that they can virtually raise their hand and indicate that they would like to speak on item 75 a and we may proceed once the interpreter translates that great thank you let me go ahead and make

the following comment this is the time and place for the public hearing on the

2020 I'm sorry may interrupt I think I need to interpret what my name is Yes, go ahead. My apologies.

son hispanohablantes se va a pedir a los intert, se le va a pedir al intérprete que produzca esa declaración en español. Muchas gracias.

Thank you. Great. Thank you for that. Let me go ahead and now bring it back. This is a time and place for the public hearing on the 2021 downtown business improvement district assessment development and I will ask the city manager if there is a presentation for this item.

yes honorable mayor we do have a brief presentation that will be given by our my assistant city manager Steven Mendoza I almost used your old title Steven that's

okay I'll answer to Ray call me right good evening mr. mayor mayor pro town council and city manager thank you very much tonight is the public hearing for the bid it's a the bid is a defined assessment area of our downtown as you can see in the in the visual representation the bid boundaries were established this way and everyone within those build boundaries is 520 businesses within what we call the business improvement assessment district or bid

BID the bid was established in 1984 it was disestablished in 2011 and re-established in 2013.

There's two bid organizations within them, and it's the Downtown Inc. and Santa Ana Business Council, who received the benefits of the bid. And council has approval action every year. We must comply with state bid law and municipal code. And the 2021 assessment report is reviewed. There's been no changes to the bid boundaries, no changes to the assessment formula we anticipate a budget of two hundred thousand dollars which will be split between the two organizations for promotional activities so tonight is your night to take a public hearing take

any testimony receive any protest and then levy the assessment some of the events that will be sponsored in the event I'm sorry this will be the saver Santa Ana the art wall blade cup block party Easter festival elder festival and we're hoping we get to have these things next year we're helping COVID gets behind us in our rear view mirror and that the two downtown groups are able to promote and create lots of traffic downtown with that I will turn it back

over to the city clerk to talk about any protests that may have been received

thank you and we I would like to announce that we receive zero protests which equals to zero percent of total assessment protests and there is not a majority protest.

Thank you, Stephen. That was a lot shorter and more brief than I expected. So let me go ahead and open up the public hearing for members of the public and madam clerk do you have a speaker queue there thank you mayor we

do not have any members of the public that would like to speak on this item

again for any of the callers that are online on the speaker queue if you would like to speak on item 75A on this public hearing item regarding the city of Santa Ana levying and assessment for the downtown Santa Ana business improvement district for calendar year 2021, please dial star nine.

Thank you. We did have one person virtually raise their hand.

Caller with the last three numbers, 924, if you would please dial star six to unmute your call. And speak on public hearing item 75A only. Thank you. You may proceed.

Good evening. This is Ryan Smolar from Downtown Inc. We're a diverse group of downtown businesses, residents, and property owners who help manage the downtown business district. I just wanted to support item 758 and downtown has had a really tough year. The pandemic, civil unrest, fires, smoke, wind, boarded up businesses, vandalism, constant construction. when we were back in the purple tier, our businesses were pretty much on average earning 75% less income than they're used to. And with the current closure,

some businesses are earning as little as 2% of what they're used to making. And despite this, I really want to give a huge shout out to our small business community downtown because they've proven to be so resilient. Some of them have been able to pivot and do other things. bridal shops turning into mask-making shops, gyms taking it outdoors into public spaces and working so hard to stay open every day, any way they can to keep as many employees retained and to continue to serve local residents. So I really applaud and have been amazed by their grit

to face so many challenges and so much uncertainty and to keep ponying up and coming in and trying to figure this out. And on top of that, the partnership with the city this year has been wonderful. We've never seen actions and responses and, you know, adaptations so quickly, so intelligently done, so fairly executed. when, you know, we saw people were starting to go outdoors with their businesses. The city quickly did research and created best practices

and we handheld businesses through that process. And when it was takeout only, you know, 35 parking spaces were converted into takeout. So it's just been incredible partnership. I think we need to continue to work close because we saw with items earlier tonight, some of our core partnerships all need to, I think, really stay in place right now. And we need to continue to work to make sure downtown continues to thrive through this period and reposition itself in the future. But just want to say thank you. And it's an honor to be a part of the organization

that makes up downtown and helps receive these funds and takes input from the city, works with the city, takes input from our stakeholders, our members, our board members, and works really closely with the community in a lot of ways. So thank you so much. 15 seconds.

Thank you. Mayor, that is all the callers I have.

Great. Thank you for that, Madam Clerk. Did we receive, prior to the public comment, maybe you might have announced it, did we receive any written protest?

Thank you for that, Mayor. Yes, we did. We received one support, Downtown Inc. and Santa Ana Business Council in support. And two Santa Ana residents in opposition, they were not formal protests.

Great. Thank you for that. So let me go ahead and close the public hearing now, and I'll bring it back to the council for questions or comments. Council members, any questions or comments? Councilman Becerra.

Phil BacerraItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You know, one of the great things with this bid is the collaboration that we see between Downtown Inc. and the Santa Ana Business Council and all the work that they do, especially during non-pandemic times, the diverse programming that both of those organizations put on throughout the downtown. And it's great to see the businesses, when they're able to, be able to step up and provide the resources for the wonderful events that happened throughout the year with that mr. mayor I'd like to go ahead and make a motion that we adopt the resolution confirming the assessment report and levying the assessment for

2021 great so there is a motion I will second that motion great we have a motion in a second any other questions or comments from the council yes mr. mayor

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

this is Jonathan Hernandez go ahead councilman thank you I have a question about the event that they are looking to have on calendar I'd like to get those events listed to me again

councilmember Hernandez we have listed for the next year is Boca de Oro the Orange County Arts and Literature Festival Sabre Center Sabre Santa's hander 2021 art walk which is monthly blade cup block party Easter festival elder adults festival which is at the senior center patches and pins and that's it

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

I'd like to to learn about what the process is for the selection of these different of of events, I would like to see more community involvement.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

And that's something that I would like to recommend is I'd like to see more community involvement when it comes to the events that we have here in downtown Santa Ana. I think that a lot of these events are great, but I do think we need to diversify some of the events that we have.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

And that's something that I think is gonna be imperative for the downtown district. because for a number of years we've had events very similar I think the safer Santa Ana event is great I think the art walk and block party is great but I'd like to see some of these events diversified and I'd like it to see us introduce something new I was thinking you know maybe we could start to see an educational you know community event a a reading event something related to education and youth in partnership with their school district I want to see us

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

diversify our events in downtown great thank you for those comments

councilman let me go ahead and bring it back to mayor pro tem thank you mr. mayor

David PenalozaItem —

I have the similar questions Steven about this the different the different events that you listed. I know that in page 75A-3, Exhibit 1 of the staff report, the annual events listed are Boca de Oro, Fashion Show, Katrina Contest, Soundwave Festival, Plaza Navideñas, Tree Lighting Ceremony, Halloween Character Trolley Engagement, Black Friday and Small Business Saturday, Business Luncheon, Easter Festival, Savers and Anna, Blade Cup, Block Party Viva La Vida, Elder Adults Festival, Dia del Nino, all fantastic events.

David PenalozaItem —

I've been to many of them, and when they're live and functioning, the events are great. I mean, it does bring people that are downtown and gets them to spend money and visit our restaurants. So I'm supportive. However, this last year, these events have been mostly canceled. I mean, we haven't had many of the events that go on. I know that they've done virtual art walks, which I can't imagine the cost would be similar or the same to what they normally are with the logistics that go on when we do have them in downtown. I know that tree lighting ceremony is listed on here.

David PenalozaItem —

and I know that this past we do have a tree that's currently lit but there wasn't a ceremony compared to the one we had last year where we had Santa and arts and crafts and music and food and whatnot and music as we saw in Plaza Calle Cuatro a year ago. What I'm asking is over the last year, have we done an audit of what this money has been spent on, given that most of these events have been canceled or changed or modified due to COVID?

David PenalozaItem —

I know that in the exhibit one that was provided, a lot of these events, it says COVID modified, COVID modified in parentheses. But I can't imagine it would carry the same cost as a full-fledged production for these events as we've seen in years past. So why are the amounts the same? I know that we're hoping COVID goes away quickly with vaccines now and whatnot. But how can we make sure that the monies used, I mean, are being used towards these events in its full amount?

well what you're seeing here is a revenue we are seeing in here is two hundred thousand dollars in revenue that's generated and how it's spent is certainly not represented in here there's no breakdown of the exact monies on each of them mark and mark and mark will help me describe a little more about how they're spending their money

Mayor of City Council, Mark Morley, Economic Development Manager. Especially this year with the budgets, there's been a lot of shifting around in terms of what they're doing for the marketing and promotion of downtown. We do audit. We have staff that review all the different invoices. We do have different mechanisms in place that say, okay, are you getting $100,000? These are the events. This is the money that's going to be spent for these events. like Mr. Mendoza said, this is just a budget for next year. This is what they're hoping to do,

David PenalozaItem —

you know, COVID lifting, that sort of thing. Right. So, but what I'm saying is over the year, so how much money was appropriated over the last year? Is it the same amount that was

appropriated? It's estimated as 100,000 each year. Annually. Both groups do have leftover money as

David PenalozaItem —

of right now. Okay. And that's where I'm getting at. Do we know how much money is left over? Yes.

can can we can you well how much is it downtown Inc has less I don't know the exact numbers I can get that to you down downtown Inc has less money than Santa

David PenalozaItem —

Anna Business Council that I know approximately do you have a proximate

20,000 percent of Business Council probably less than 10,000 for downtown

David PenalozaItem —

Inc okay which is I mean that's still if less than than 10,000 for downtown Inc that's still over 90% of the money spent that's supposed to be for these events

that haven't taken place well a lot of the budgets also go to other activities so if they focused on online marketing activities there could have been a campaign that they put money towards for that okay and and and just me personally

David PenalozaItem —

I haven't seen the the the the events happen since the pandemic started and it's an unfortunate situation because I wish they were happening but I just want to make sure that even with with this money that we're approving now going forward into 2021 if it continues like like one of the main events listed was Plaza Navi Lanias I there was no event there was nothing there was a I mean it there was a picture of our tree that's lit uploaded and and and I mean if there's a huge cost of that I'm not sure who pays for the tree I believe we do

David PenalozaItem —

through the parks and rec budget correct madam city manager I'm sorry my

report time I don't know the answer to that one I from conversations I had last

David PenalozaItem —

year with Janine over at parks and rec I believe it it comes so I remember I asked I think it was like 18 grand for this tree which I believe comes from the city the city not these funds but I'm just trying to make sure that we're not

just shelling out money and I see where you're going with it so with the assessment we do not give them a hundred thousand dollars up front they have to provide invoices showing that a service was rendered or an event happened and we reimbursement them for that service so we don't give them a hundred

David PenalozaItem —

thousand up front okay so it's not like here's a hundred thousand exactly exactly

they have to show us the invoices they have to show us the documentation the canceled checks so we require all that documentation and then we submit for

David PenalozaItem —

payment to them okay because I just it's something we got to watch closely moving forward and not just with with downtown it's with with many groups across the the city that received public funds is how has this how has the expenditure of these monies changed due to COVID-19 and is it the same and it shouldn't be the same if I mean if they're increasing if they're buying PPE or investing into their outdoor dining I understand okay we we didn't have these events but we you

David PenalozaItem —

know gave a chapter one I'm just naming a restaurant and you know a couple hundred dollars or thousand dollars for the outdoor patio type type of things I could see how that would keep the cost the same but given that these events have for the most part been canceled it's important we're watching this closely and and I mean we're tight across the board so we got to make sure we're auditing not just I mean everybody everybody that that that uh receives public funds because it's uh it's gonna be a tight budget year and I just I'm hopeful that that you guys will do that and the difference with this this

is a bid assessment from the businesses so it is not public funding we are just the pass-through agency so that money comes in from the businesses so it's

David PenalozaItem —

Right. That's assessed from the businesses themselves, but I mean, it's still...

Right, right. But there's a mechanism that we...

David PenalozaItem —

Right. It's still tax dollars that come into the city. But that's it. Thank you.

Thank you for that, Mayor Pro Tem. Any other questions or comments from the council?

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

Yes, Mr. Mayor, this is Council Member Hernandez. Yes, Councilman. Yes, I actually would, I'm interested in seeing how that money was spent for this calendar year.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

For me, I would need to see how that money was spent before I can make a decision.

Council Member Hernandez, we certainly can get that information to you. once again the item that is before you is just to confirm the assessment report and levy the assessment it is assessments on the businesses within that particular district where they are self assessing and funding money to help promote their area so it isn't like a general fund dollars that are being provided them this is just the levying of the assessment and it has zero fiscal impact on the city the action that's before you tonight but we certainly we can follow up and provide you the information with what their expenditures

had been when these dollars are received by the city in the form of the business license tax they are set aside in a trust and that's where those expenditures get made from so we can supply that information to you thank you for your

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

clarification mr. City manager I look forward to that information great thank

you for that hearing and seeing no other comments I think we do have a motion in a second. The Mayor Pro Tem just stepped out, but here he comes. Madam Clerk, if you'll

please call roll. Council Member Becerra? Yes. Council Member Hernandez? Yes. Council Member Lopez? Yes. Council Member Mendoza? Yes. Council Member Fan? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa? Yes.

Mayor Sarmiento? Yes. Thank you. Moving along to the second public hearing, item 75B, Madam Madam Clerk, I'll go ahead and instruct you to make the same comment for anybody who may be waiting to address us on the phone.

Thank you, Mayor. Callers who are on the line, if you would like to speak on public hearing item 75B, please dial star nine to identify that you would like to speak on public hearing item 75B.

again any caller who's on this on the holding queue would like to speak on public hearing item 75

B please dial star 9 a lot of personas que están en línea y desean hablar in audience a publica con respecto al articulo stint a single day for forward mark and asterisk on no way they to identify who want to express their opinion in Article 75 .

Thank you.

Great, thank you for that. Let me go ahead and say that this is the time and place for a public hearing regarding a resolution for a mitigated negative deck for a gravity sewer conversion project on the northeast, located on the northeast corner of 17th and Tustin. Is there a staff presentation on this item?

Sir, we don't have a staff presentation prepared. We have staff available for questions. The item is simply a public hearing to adopt a resolution, to adopt a mitigated negative declaration, and the project is a city project. It's not an outside developer project. It is as a result of the annexation that we did on the east side of our city, and what we are going to be doing is we're going to be converting houses that have septic tanks over to connection to our sewers.

Thank you, Madam City Manager. So I'll go ahead and open the public hearing for members of the public that would wish to address this council on this matter. Madam Clerk, are there any members of the public wishing to speak?

Thank you, Mayor. I do not see any callers. Again, I would like to announce that if you would like to speak on public hearing item 75B, please dial star 9 to virtually raise your hand.

Una vez más, si usted está en línea esperando a expresar su opinión con respecto al artículo 75B, por favor, marque en estrella 9 para identificar que desean hablar en esta audiencia pública. Muchas gracias.

Thank you, Mayor. I do not see any callers.

Great. Thank you for that. I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to the council if there's anybody that has a question or comment on this item or would like to move the item.

I will make a motion to approve thank you councilwoman is there a second second we have a motion in a second seeing no other questions or comments madam clerk

will feel please call roll councilmember Becerra yes councilmember Hernandez yes councilmember Lopez yes councilmember Mendoza yes

Council Member Fan. Yes. Mayor Pro Tempeñalosa. Yes. Mayor Sarmiento. Yes. Thank you. Moving along to the joint session of the City Council and Housing Authority, item 80A. It's to receive and file the housing successor annual report for fiscal year 2019-2020.

Do we have any council member comments, any presentation from staff? Anybody wishing to speak or object to the receive and file of this report?

This is simply receive and file, right? Do you need a motion or just?

No, if there's no objections, we can proceed.

Hearing and seeing no objections, let's go ahead and just receive and file that report. let's convene the housing authority meeting.

Let me go ahead and call the housing authority meeting to order. Madam Clerk, if you'll please call roll.

Authority Member Becerra?

Here.

Authority Member Hernandez?

Here.

Authority Member Lopez? Here. Authority Member Mendoza? Here. Authority Member Fan? Here. Vice Chair Peñalosa?

Here.

Chair Sarmiento?

Here. Thank you. Are there any members of the public wishing to address the housing authority?

We do not have any members of the public.

Great. The business calendar item is number two, to approve a first amendment to the option agreement with Washington-San Ana Housing Partners for the development at Crossroads at Washington. Do we have any members of the authority wishing to make a motion? Or have any questions or comments on the side?

David PenalozaItem —

Mr. Mayor, I'll make a motion to approve.

Is there a second?

I second.

Great, we have a motion and a second. Any questions or comments from the council? Hearing and seeing none, Madam Clerk, if you'll please conduct roll.

Authority Member Becerra? Yes. Authority Member Hernandez?

Phil BacerraItem —

Yes.

Authority Member Lopez? Yes. Yes. Authority Member Mendoza? Yes. Authority Member Phan? Yes. Vice Chair Peñalosa? Yes. And Chair Sarmiento?

Yes. So this is the section for the joint session of the City Council and the Housing Authority. Have we already considered this item in ADA? That's correct. So that concludes the business calendar, and we'll go ahead and adjourn the Housing Authority meeting and reconvene the City Council meeting, bringing it back to the Council. agenda item 85a to discuss and consider directing the city manager to direct staff to prepare back to prepare and bring back an ordinance that will regulate the various types of group homes operating in our city this is from mayor pro tem beña Losa and councilwoman Mendoza go ahead mayor pro

David PenalozaItem —

tem thank you mr. mayor the I the reason I brought this item forward is because I've heard a lot of concern from numerous residents throughout the city in numerous different neighborhoods that we need to address this issue back in 2018 and this is and that's the beauty of knocking on doors and getting to deep into your your neighborhoods as you get to know then the neighborhoods that you that you live in and you represent a knocking on doors in 2018 I remember knocking on doors throughout Broadway in particular,

David PenalozaItem —

and then specifically also in the French Park neighborhood. You would come across family home, family that's living there, great, and then immediately next door there was a house with 12 men registered to vote there, which is good. They're voters, but it was all different last names. So it was interesting. So you start to see how different it looked just from the upkeeping of the house alone, which is not their fault, but it's the companies that buy these properties and whatnot.

David PenalozaItem —

And so they cause the neighborhoods to start looking bad. I mean, you have kids playing outside next to a bunch of men that have been either addicted to drugs or released from prison and are trying to rehabilitate, which is good. There's a lot of good actors that operate decent group homes and do it right. There's a lot of bad actors that don't care about rehabilitating and just care about draining insurance companies for money until their insurance stops paying it and then they kick them out on the streets,

David PenalozaItem —

further continuing the problem that they're trying to fix. so the reason I'm bringing this forward is because I know that we currently do not have any thing in our books and if the city manager or executive director Minti could could confirm that just for the record do we have anything currently in the books that would regulate or oversee the permitting that comes with with any type of group home in our city I will actually defer to the city attorney

on this one one of the things that the state has done is they have really limited what local jurisdictions can do in order to control group homes particularly those of seven or less so I will let the city attorney speak on that

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I am not currently aware of any separate regulatory permits that we require it is a position that some other cities like Newport Beach and Costa Mesa have taken and they do regulate in that area that is not preempted by the state or federal laws. They have to do so carefully. If that's something that you'd want to consider, we can research. I did prepare a draft ordinance for the city about seven years ago on this topic, but it did precede the litigation that we've seen in Newport and Costa Mesa. So at this point, Costa Mesa has been successful and prevailed in a number

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

of cases, but they've been mostly procedural, and they're expecting to have some future substantive decisions made on the substance of their ordinances so we're going to continue to monitor that and at some point we can take that draft ordinance that we have and make sure it meets all the legal requirements as we see the court hand down further decisions right thank you

David PenalozaItem —

madam city attorney so this item really was just currently my desire was for staff to identify where these homes are located throughout our city how many are operating in our city we don't know where they're at we don't know how many operating we don't know what issues are causing this neighborhood I know that in one of the correspondence that we received you know it they they basically say you know we own the historic home that was built in 1909 on North Bush Street three years ago we made the decision to move from Irvine we absolutely love our home and the city of Santa Ana but we are seriously

David PenalozaItem —

reconsidering our decision because the city has not addressed a fundamental right, a right to feel safe and secure just outside our front door. So there's a lot of concern from numerous residents throughout the city of these issues that are happening. Nobody knows where they're at and my desire and hope for tonight is to direct staff to just simply identify throughout the city where these group homes are operating and what we could do to make sure they comply to some kind of standard those that aren't and that was basically my my desire you know it

David PenalozaItem —

definitely lit a fire under me when there was a community driven effort to get get something you know on the books that could address this and that that is it mr. mayor great thank you for

those comments councilman Mendoza Mendoza I know you were a co-author on this do you want to make

a couple of comments or speak to this matter yes thank you mayor of environmental well yeah in addition to all the comments that my colleague and mayor pro tem penalosa made I also want to add that we need to regulate and ensure that these homes are managed properly because right now what we have is these homes that are excessive in the amount of people that are allowed there it should be

really six or less but in many of these group homes they're more than that and then what occurs is we have felons that are there and on probation and so they have the anglers and they cannot leave their home right the group home so what happens is that their friends are invited over to that particular home and because they're not managed so there's no oversight um other gang members other uh ex-felons uh are come to the neighborhood causing um disruption

causing public safety concerns. And in that particular neighborhood in French Park, there's been several shootings in the past few months because of the rival gangs that are in the area. And so the city of Santa Ana needs to regulate and ensure that these homes are not close in close proximity to residential areas.

and to ensure that these insurance companies or the management companies are making sure that these are safe and that the people who are there are complying and that there is no outside visitors, no violations, because it's a violation to have other felons in these rehabilitation homes. And so we need to keep our promise to make sure that our public is safe and to provide high quality life

for our residents and that includes by monitoring these group homes. So I am asking for my colleagues to support Mayor Pro-Champanalosa and I in this very important issue to continue to provide a safe and quiet enjoyment for our residents.

Great. Thank you for those comments. Councilwoman Van.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

Hi. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor Potem-Panielosa and Councilmember Mendoza for bringing this forward. I definitely understand the concern for quiet enjoyment of your home. I don't live in a single-family home, so it's a little bit different. but I do understand that and the concerns for safety. However, I do want to caution us in either moving forward with an ordinance or looking at an ordinance given that this area of the law is incredibly fraught with concerns regarding the fourth, 14th amendment, sorry, not fourth, the 14th amendment, you know, the eighth amendment, particularly if there are

Thai Viet PhanItem —

individuals who are formerly incarcerated and continue to have additional oversight or folks who are working on rehabilitation who have whether it's use issues or anything like that. So I do appreciate that the city attorney has a draft ordinance from before, but I think that in paying attention to what I've actually read, the Newport Beach case regarding regulating group homes, and I have began to follow the Costa Mesa case, and they are hundreds of thousands of dollars in on litigation. We do not have the money to do that. Currently, the city of Santa Ana is still

Thai Viet PhanItem —

short on code enforcement officers, and we need to make sure that, you know, these issues, that individual, you know, that family has access to a code enforcement officer who may go see if there are, in fact, overcrowding issues. But, you know, six people to a home is not uncommon. Any multi-generational household, that's very common, and we can't discriminate on the basis of family or familial relationships and whatnot. So I just do want to caution us there.

Thai Viet PhanItem —

I think that we can provide resources to community members to contact whether it's a licensing authority or a state board that does in fact permit or regulate these types of boarding homes, management companies, and whatnot, who may be able to actually dig into this and revoke their license or revoke the permit on the state level which doesn't require the city of Santa Ana to specifically expend additional dollars to go after bad actors so for me I'm not going to support an ordinance or additional expenditures for our team to

Thai Viet PhanItem —

specifically go out and look for these homes particularly as it may be quite invasive um you know as a candidate you knock on doors and you go to every door and it takes months um but for city staff that is already um you know wearing thin with covid and everything that's going on i think that would be an incredibly heavy lift uh under this you know these circumstances and um i guess i'll conclude my comments there thank you great thank you

council and those are very good comments let me I know the mayor pro tem has another comment is there anybody else who hasn't spoken that would like to

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

speak yes mayor Sarmiento this is councilmember Hernandez yes and I just wanted to comment on this not so much a question but I actually have a number of different encounters with many of the group homes here in in Santa Ana specifically in Ward 5. Before I worked in the field of mental health I worked in the field of re-entry and gang prevention and I worked with youth 18 to 24 and part of my job was helping

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

them find homes and I know that a lot of people that have been through the justice system when they come home this is their only outlet that they have and I formed relationships with a number of different homes and I saw the quality of care that is provided I've also seen some bad cases but I think that we can really leverage these relationships I think if we can connect and build some bridges with them they'll be very compliant I think that it's just a matter of dialogue and I I think that if that dialogue is had, we won't continue to see these issues.

Johnathan Ryan HernandezItem —

I know that Nathese House in particular is a fantastic group home that is very well received in the community. And they've done a great job getting people to go. I just wanted to offer the other side of the spectrum that these homes can be regulated. I think we can do that through dialogue and through having a stronger relationship with them great thank you

for those comments councilman mayor pro tem you have one more comment yeah thank