Read the August 4 meeting.

Mayor Pro Tem, Mayor Pro Tem, Ward, Majestic approve.

Mayor Pro Tem, Majestic approve.

Mayor Pro Tem, Majestic approve. Mayor Pro Tem, Majestic approve.

Mayor Pro Tem, Majestic approve. Mayor Pro Tem, Majestic approve. Mayor Pro Tem, Majestic approve.

Mayor Pro Tem, Majestic approve. Mayor Pro Tem, Majestic approve. Mayor Pro Tem, Majestic approve. Mayor Pro Tem, Majestic approve. Mayor Pro Tem, Majestic approve. Mayor Pro Tem, Majestic approve. Mayor Pro Tem, Majestic approve. Mayor Pro Tem, Majestic approve.

Mayor Pro Tem, Majestic approve. Mayor Pro Tem, Majestic approve. Mayor Pro Tem, Majestic approve. call. Thank you. For any member of the public who'd like to make a comment on an item on the agenda for this special meeting may take this time now to call 669-900-9128, meeting ID 315-965-149-pound when prompted. Once a caller has entered the meeting they will be placed on hold and their microphone will be muted in accordance with the council procedures. Calls will not be accepted after the public comment session begins. Callers will be prompted to speak

in the order received and I will announce the last three digits of your phone number to inform the caller that they've been unmuted. For the record the callers encouraged but not required to provide their name in neighborhood of residents. Lastly a couple best practices, callers please do not mute your phone's microphone. We will do that on our end to prevent any issues when it is your turn to speak also if you're watching this meeting on tv or online please mute the speakers of that device before making your comments in order to pre prevent audio feedback and now to take roll

call council member becerra here council member mendoza here council member penaloza here

David PenalozaItem —

Here.

Councilmember Sarmiento?

Here.

Councilmember Solorio?

Here.

Here. Excuse me, Mayor Potem-Viegas? Here. And Mayor Pulido?

Here.

We have a quorum.

Why don't we go ahead and take a public comment, please, Madam Clerk.

Okay, there are speakers that are ready to provide their comments.

and callers with the last three numbers.

One, two, two. You have been unmuted. You have three minutes. Please proceed with your comment.

Greetings, Mayor and members of the council. This is Joe Adams, CEO of Discovery Q. I'm calling in as a voice for the nonprofits of the city to please remember the many nonprofit organizations that make up our vibrant city when considering the CARES Act funding. For the CUBE, the impact of COVID-19 has been devastating. March 16th, we had to close due to the executive orders of the governor. We furloughed 95% of our staff. We in June received PPP funds, and when given a chance we were to open, we did. But only 10% of the audience that we typically came to the CUBE came.

uh that lasted for a couple weeks and then we had to close again for executive orders

with the cube closed the field trip stopped we lost our operational revenues this time we realized that it was going to be for a much much longer time so we now laid off instead of furloughed the staff that's over 200 people many of which live in santa ana with the remaining ppp funds We pivoted and created an online platform called Discovery Cube Connect to provide hands-on STEM resources virtually. We created a studio unit to make videos and in two weeks we'll be rolling out online adventures. This was important to us as we wanted to initiate a way to still fulfill our mission, even though the cube buildings were closed,

and we needed to help the children who are now stuck at home. The PPP funds are now over. We cut most of our expenses, but we still have some. like our debt service from the 2015 expansion, which alone is over $110,000 monthly. A lot of money. And while, although we have sought additional government support, we haven't received any. Our reserves are limited, time's running out, and well before next summer, you know, we're going to have to face some serious issues if nothing changes.

the cares act funding can make a significant impact now it could help extend our digital platform to our city agencies to the kids in our community it can be a bridge to get us to a time when we can reopen and this can be the case for the many other non-profits in the city as well so thank you thank you for your consideration to include new non-profits to those you can impact to ensure their good work will continue into the future when covet is over

Thank you, caller. Next number is, last three numbers are 477. Caller, you may proceed with your comments. You have three minutes.

Yeah, Dale Helbig, Santa Ana, Ward 3. I just wanted to call and say thank you to City Council for all the long hours and hard work that you guys are putting in during this COVID pandemic. And I'm sure you guys will put this money, the $28.5 million to good use in the CARES program. So thank you again and stay safe. Thank you.

Thank you. Caller with the last three numbers, 877. You have been unmuted. Please proceed with your comment.

Hi, this is Lisa Gonzalez-Solomon. I'm coming to you once again as a resident of Santa Ana, as well as a school principal. I'm coming for a couple things, one more time. I want to thank you for the support that you have been providing to our residents, families, and students here in Santa Ana. Thank you for looking out for our safety and for caring about our community. I appreciate that you've increased the amount of rental assistance that you're providing to our families who are much in need. And I do appreciate that you're going out there and helping to feed our families as well.

We still have many residents in crisis and we still have more work to do as we continue to see an increase in the number of COVID cases. I come to you asking that you're very thoughtful with how the money is spent. I come to you once again asking that we do what we can to provide support to our residents through food, through any sort of rental assistance that we can provide. And I'm coming once again to ask you to also help with trying to establish some sort of system for providing access to distance learning for our students.

It's written into the guidelines that are provided for the CARES money that expenses can be, money can be utilized to facilitate distance learning, including technological improvements in connection with school closing to enable compliance with COVID-19 precautions. I'm asking you not just for our students, but for our greater community, for our students who are in college, for people who are working remotely and for our community who needs to have access to telehealth. I know you will make the right decisions. I truly do believe that you will. I've seen what you've been doing.

I also want to ask you to look out for our nonprofits and our small businesses because they are the heart of the city. They're the people who employ our local community. Please recognize the work that they have done to pivot, to quickly provide support to families like Latino Health Access to provide additional testing, like Relampago del Cielo who turned to providing classes virtually for our students, like the San Ana Zoo and the Discovery Cube who pivoted to virtual methods to provide programs for our children that they much need while they're at home. Thank you for all your support and we hope we take you soon.

Thank you, caller. Caller with the last three numbers, 825, you have been unmuted. Please proceed with your comment.

Hi, good evening, Mayor Pulido and Councilmembers. My name is Tai Fan, and I'm a resident here in the new Ward 1. And I just wanted to first say thank you to staff for coming up with this budget. But I do want to urge that as we deploy or invest almost $6 million of CARES Act spending to deployment of mobile COVID-19 relief workers that we really give preference and try to hire back our part-time workers who were laid off, our SEIU members who have serviced the city for decades and who many of whom are not only workers in the city, but also residents.

They really should be given preference. They are already vetted. They know our city, they know our community, and they would do a fantastic job helping residents especially during this difficult time. I also would like to urge that our city focus on hiring workers who speak Vietnamese. We don't have enough of them in our city and the vast majority of Vietnamese residents live in zip code 92704 which is the zip code with the highest number of COVID cases in the county. So it's very important that we make sure that we do this kind of outreach. I also want to thank staff in the city for looking to have direct monetary

assistance for arts relief and small businesses and particularly for you know nonprofits like the Heritage Museum of Orange County which is a fantastic gem here in the city that had to close and that serves you know students here in the city and families here in the city but is struggling because they do not have enough people visiting the museum at this time with the closures. Finally, I really hope that as we spend more money to expand assistance for renters that we make sure that it's not just available for people who have citizenship but it's

all residents in the city. I think it's really important we are a city of immigrants, a place where we're a melting pot and so we want to make sure that everybody who needs it have access to it otherwise thank you so much for all the work that you've done and I really hope that we can put this money to good use

thank you thank you caller with the last three numbers 110 please proceed with your comment you have been unmuted caller with the last three numbers 110 you may proceed with your comment you have three minutes

caller with the last three numbers 268 you have been unmuted please proceed

with your comment hi this is Yoselinda and I'm a resident for Ward 2 I'm calling regarding agenda item 68 I'm urging you all to allocate funds from the cares package of 28.6 million to the eviction defense funds and rental relief fund which will help prevent houselessness and mass displacement here in Santa Ana as you all know the COVID-19 pandemic has hit Santa Ana extremely hard family members of my own have suffered from the virus leaving some of them unable to return to work and this story is actually very similar to many others in Santa Ana who are unable to work and impacting their ability to pay rent THE RENTAL ASSISTANT FUND

WILL PROVIDE INMEDIATE AID TO FOLKS HERE IN SANTAANA WHERE THE MAJORITY ARE RENTERS. I ALSO WANT TO EMPHASIZE THAT THE $500,000 RENTAL ASSISTANT FUND WAS NOT ENOUGH. THE CITY OF SANTAANA PROVIDED $3 MILLION FOR THE RESIDENTS. AND I THINK WE SHOULD DO THE SAME FOR OUR COMMUNITY. I URGE YOU TO ALLOCATE AT THE VERY LEAST $4 MILLION FROM THE $28.6 MILLION FUND FOR THE RENTAL ASSISTANT FUND.

package to the funding of for the eviction defense fund of at least two million dollars as you all know many renters are left unequipped to navigate the eviction court process because it is just like financially inaccessible and for those that are undocumented they are unable to seek community legal aid and this fund will help folks navigate and support them through the eviction process and give them like an equitable chance to fight their case thank you for your time

Thank you caller. Caller with the last three numbers, 030, you may proceed with your comment.

Caller with the last three numbers, 030, you may proceed with your comment. You have been unmuted.

Okay.

Caller with the last three numbers, 302. You have been unmuted. Please proceed with your comment.

Good evening, council members. This is Juan Gonzales from the Memorial Park neighborhood. I sent y'all a correspondence by email, but I thought it would be wise to also emphasize over the phone a few things. Specifically, I'm calling in order for y'all to really consider unhoused residents when you're thinking about the different allocations for the CARES funding. Last year, the county identified 1,769 unhoused people living within Santana, and that is very much an underestimate. But even just looking at that figure alone, I mean, that warrants action. That warrants allocating some dollars.

It obviously does not have to be a big bulk of the allocation, but at least some kind of money for things like hygiene supplies, testing, food distribution, outreach services, and all of these to be offered at the different unhoused encampments throughout the city. You know, I think it goes without saying that the CDC has recommended things like shelter in place, you know, really washing your hands regularly. And as we all know, that is impossible for an unhoused person that is without shelter. and even more so now when all the public facilities have been shut down so i mean this is just an

outbreak waiting to happen with inner city which is already suffering so much so i really urge you all to really consider the unhoused residents and i really do mean residents because they are a part of this community as much as i am and as much as all of you are so just remember them and remember that ultimately they are very reliant on government assistance especially during this time and you know it just goes without saying that the city's morals is really dependent on how we treat our most marginalized citizens and I think the unhoused residents are that within Santana so please just consider

allocating some funds to port-a-potty you know the train stations hand sanitizer because they could mean life or death literally thank you so much

Thank you. Caller with the last three numbers, 655, you have been unmuted. Please proceed with your comment.

Yeah, my name is Benancio Chavez. Ana, this message is mainly for the mayor and the principals that are listening to me. As you already know me, my name is Benancio Chavez and you know that I am Vice President of the French Park Plaza, HOA. In the last days we have been arrested by the delinquency. We tried to ask the police to help, but the police directly is not doing anything. And I would like to think that maybe they do they do not want to blame the COVID-19

and they do not want to arrest the delinquents that have been in our vicinity robbing our property, doing drugs in public, painting graffiti, leaving garbage everywhere. We have called the police infinites of times. We have given videos of the attacks, of those who have been victims. And now, the only one who has communicated with me is the Sargent Hernandez. I have to wait for you today and I still wait here in my house because we are tired, we are tired.

We are tired, and I know you gave more money to the police, but it seems that the money that they gave is less work that they do. And you know why the police will not act in a way correct way? Because you or some of you receive money from the police police police for their campaigns. So you don't have the right to exigir that they work well, because that's why they pay for not to work,

tal vez o tal vez para no hacer su trabajo como debiera de ser por favor señores concejales el señor concejal de mi distrito haga algo trate de hacer algo le roban a la gente pobre le roban su herramienta de trabajo le roban sus su propiedad sus bicicletas ya estamos cansados ya estamos cansados la delincuencia aumentado drásticamente y la policía sigue sin hacer nada por favor se

While we wait for the translator, we will allow the next person to speak. Caller with the last three numbers, 496. You have been unmuted. Please proceed with your comment.

Thank you this is Valerie Mesquale Vice President of Santa Ana Unified School Board. Council I want to thank you for having this meeting tonight and addressing the needs in our city. Being a board member and we've been addressing this for a while now since March 13th head-on and it really is a difficult time and you'll be making you have been making some difficult decisions and so thank you for your hard work I would just ask that you consider using the 28.6 million a portion of it to join us in the partnership with Latino Health Access and the county and testing and taking care of our families within the

city because as a school district we're using our funds that we've received and we've exhausted them for the COVID to take care of our families but wouldn't it be wonderful if we partnered up you as a council and us as a school district because our constituents are the same people they're our parents and our children so i would hope that you would reach out to our superintendent to the city manager and talk about wi-fi and not putting it underground but putting it on our school site city-wide wi-fi you could put hot spots on our school sites and our buses on city cars you can

put them on many different places that do not cost millions and millions of dollars and so again i would ask that you ask the city manager to reach out to the superintendent and that we join hands together so that we can work to help our community get healthy get better and then we can go back to opening our schools and not um be in distance learning for quite some time because it's not good for our children and it's not good for our community and for our parents so thank you for all that you do and these are hard times and i know together we can get through this so thank you

and have a nice evening. Thank you and the translators here to translate for the last caller.

This message is for the mayor and the city council. As you know my name is Venancio Chavez and I'm vice president of the French Park Homeowners Association and I'm calling about the crime that's happening in our police. We've asked the police for help and the police doesn't do anything. Maybe they're trying to blame their inaction on COVID-19, and we don't get any help with what's going on with the robberies, the drug, people doing drugs, selling drugs, taggers, and littering. So I've called the police before, I've sent them videos, and I haven't received any answer from them except from Sergeant Hernandez,

who was supposed to call me back today, and I'm still waiting for him at home. We are tired of this. I understand we give more money to the police, but maybe we give them more money for less work. You want to know why the police doesn't want to do the right thing? It's because you, the politicians, get money from the police union, and maybe they're asking to do less work for more money. So maybe they're being paid not to work. I asked the council members and my council to do something. You steal from the people. And there are people stealing from our poor people.

They're stealing from the work tools. They're stealing from the property. Crime is up, and you're not doing anything. And if you want to get back to me, my phone number is 714-878-2655. Thank you.

Thank you. And caller, with the last three numbers, 683, you have been unmuted. Please proceed with your comment.

Hello, my name is Maria. I'm here to request that the city considers allocating $4 million to the rental relief fund as well as $2 million for an eviction defense fund. As we all may know, there's a predicted wave of eviction that will especially hit Santa Ana very hard. Ranchers make up more than 50% of the population in the city. Many of whom many of who have found themselves unable to pay the rent since the declaration of the COVID-19 state of emergency. We have been quarantined for about over four months now and tenants have accumulated thousands

of dollars of debt in the midst of a financial crisis exacerbated by COVID-19. The rental assistance fund would provide some type of relief as they continue to face a multi-faceted pandemic. An accessible eviction defense fund could provide legal assistance beyond the limited resources that are already constrained, especially for undocumented residents that can't seek assistance from legal aid. Also, it could support those who have been illegally evicted because landlords are not following the local eviction moratorium in place. It also doesn't leave tenants alone in a traumatic process like an eviction.

it's statistics have shown that 98 percent of tenants have gone through and have gone through your eviction court without legal representation so i think now we should really consider using the cares act funding to help the most vulnerable residents in our community especially those who are have accumulated thousands of dollars of debt and are questioning how they are going to pay this after covid19 is declared over because we all know that even post covid we're going to face financial constraints and we need to start thinking of how we're going to prepare for this now instead of dealing with it when it's actually happening.

So I ask that you expand the rental relief fund to $4 million and to consider $2 million for an eviction defense fund. Thank you.

Thank you caller. With the last three numbers, 032, you have been unmuted. Please proceed with your comment.

Hello, my name is Nathaniel Greensides, Ward 5 resident, and I am not in support of item 68. I'm not fully against it as a concept, rather I'm not in favor of the proposed expenditures. I am thankful for some of the work that the city has done during the pandemic. pandemic. To start though, I will share my disconference at the fact that this special meeting of City Council regarding the specifics of a substantial amount of money for COVID-19 pandemic relief was only advertised to the public less than 24 hours ago. On top of that, the standard City Council meeting time of 5 p.m. was pushed back an hour, which pushed

back the e-commons cutoff time by an hour, partly giving residents a chance to review the proposed relief fund expenditures. Moving on, I think that the line item of $3 million dollars for both tenant relief and child care is an injustice to residents while i don't have kids of my own and not just because rents are too high and my income is nowhere near allowing for the suggested less than 30 percent of pay towards housing costs i do have friends who have children we all know that child care is expensive and deserves its own line item in the amount of three

millions and it rent relief also deserves its own line item of three million dollars anaheim did it and so can we i applaud the city's efforts to find ways to ease tenants struggles in this pandemic however tenants were struggling before the pandemic and will continue to struggle long after a three million dollar tenant rental lease fund will not only ensure community stability now and for the longer term but also for mom-and-pop landlords here in santa anna without it as we saw in 2008 unpaid rent leads to eviction making it harder for tenants to find new places to live

loss of rental income means higher rents to make up the losses which leads to vacancies and eventually foreclosures for mom-and-pop landlords then giant corporations gobble up all the housing units for sale making it harder for individuals and families to participate in property ownership in addition to decreasing housing quality overall as well as furthering community instability making it easier for outside developers to be stable at our city in their pursuit of profit over people which is what some present council members have always advocated for

be a tax break in place at the federal and state levels in addition to easing the housing opportunity ordinances requirements to develop affordable housing will have long-term disastrous effects for all of santa anna's residents additionally there needs to be a 1 million dollar eviction defense fund of those who appear in court to their eviction cases 98 percent of them show up without legal representation with santa anna being the hardest hit by covid 19 in the county and arguably the state with santa ana households being over 50 percent renters low income multi-generational

and multi-fingal essential workers at the risk of contracting the virus santa ana residents need funds to share a fair chance at fighting an eviction state in florida because of this many residents cannot afford their representation on their own and some community organizations which offer legal assistance such as the legal aid society require that participants be documented which is a privilege afforded to not many of our residents here in Santa Ana. With our local ordinance expiring at the end of September, in addition to state eviction protection also near termination,

the upcoming wave of eviction will take, I hope you all remain well and have. Thank you.

Thank you.

There are no other callers. I only want to also announce that we did receive three email comments tonight. One Santa Ana resident requested allocation for a care fund for services for the unhoused. And then two Santa Ana residents requested for allocation care funds for eviction and rental relief services. And that is all we have, Mayor.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. My bad, but I just want us all to stand up for a moment where we may be. I want us to do the Pledge of Allegiance, please. So if you could all stand at this time. Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you for that. Now I'm going to turn matters over to our city manager to give us a presentation on all the hard work that staff has been doing. and I also want to take the moment to thank the council but especially I want to thank my fellow mayors as well because the big city mayors are really 100 percent responsible for this money this 28 million would not have come to our city were it not for the mayors across the state

isn't it isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn

isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn

isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn

isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn isn I think the manager may cover this in her presentation, but it's coming in only a sixth at a time. So we'll get three checks of one sixth. And then at that time, the state will review how we're doing. And they want to reserve the right to take half the money, about $14 million, dollars and potentially reallocate it to other state needs so the 28 million is not in our hands

we're going to have to continue to fight for it and push for it and insist that it all come here it's our our fair share is a big city with a lot of problems a lot of issues um really this money should have come in a bigger number from the county of orange because they received 554 million dollars back in uh march in the early days um and they you know very very little has gone to um uh to cities very little of that original 554 million but look i i don't know what we can do

about that other than continue to advocate on our behalf and right now we can talk about this 20 million hopefully it all comes and i know we need it desperately there's a lot of need in the city right now and we need to use it as judiciously as possible so with that i'd like to turn things

over to our city manager please um thank you mayor and thank you for those opening remarks um I know you're all aware that the most pressing issue facing us at the moment is COVID-19. This pandemic has caused a great demand for your leadership and city assistance to address a health crisis at a time when our resources are declining. I am pleased that we do have some good news in the front, thanks to a lot of people's lobbying efforts, and we hopefully will receive the full $28.6 million, but you're correct, it is being doled out one-sixth at a time. But in anticipation of the funding, we have formed an interdepartmental task force,

working diligently behind the scenes to implement your direction on a number of programs for our communities with these funds. In the presentation, I want to talk a little bit about the magnitude of the virus, particularly the disparate impact it's having on our community, how we've responded to date, and then most importantly, our proposed plan to deploy the needed federal funding. I'm sure most of you are already aware that the healthcare agencies, that's Orange County Healthcare Agency, they have a website that reports information daily. It provides the number of cases in the county.

It provides additional breakdowns by city and zip codes. But I want to take a step back and talk about other information about our community that unfortunately is contributing to rapid growth of COVID-19. Our per capita income sits at $19,500. Almost 20% of our community live at or below the poverty level. We are a very high-dense city, and we have a large number of essential frontline workers that live in our community. More and more information is coming forward that supports that our type of community is the one that is being hit the hardest by this virus.

The total cases in the U.S. are approaching 5 million, and our state represents a little over 10% of the country's cases. At the county level, our case count is second only to L.A. County and continues to grow daily. Our county is one that is on a watch list and as a result, we've been under additional restrictions by the governor's office. In our city alone, we are exceeding 7,000 cases. We do have the highest case count in the county, followed by Anaheim. The majority of other cities in our county have well below 1,000 cases. Looking at our city, the majority of cases are located in four zip code areas.

92701, 92703, 92704, and 92707. These areas will be our first targeted areas for our CARES programming.

Before I get into the proposed spending plan, I do want to highlight some of the unprecedented actions under your leadership that we've already taken to date in response to COVID-19. Following the governor's order back in March, which declared the state of emergency, our city declared a local emergency. This declaration provided the opportunity for potential state and federal resources and granted special powers to the city manager as the director of emergency services. Specifically, the ability to issue executive orders. At this time, the city was also required to comply with the governor's stay in order.

So we immediately had to modify the way that citywide operations were conducted. At one point, we did have to send over 600 employees home as a result of mandated closures. To date, I have issued ten executive orders to alleviate the impacts of COVID-19 on our community. The first one that was issued was to prevent an increase in our homeless population and preserve public health. This was a moratorium on evictions and suspension of water shutoffs. The second executive order addressed the negative impacts for city services being limited due to the statewide shutdown and

provide additional relief for late fees, deadlines, tickets, and rent increases. Next, in the absence of any order from the county's health officer, I issued my third executive order to require facial coverings for essential workers and strongly encourage that businesses require all customers to wear them. And we also encourage stores to designate times for vulnerable populations to shop. The fourth order extended my first order as the situation was certainly not improving.

Executive order number five was to assist our local businesses that were struggling to hang on by permitting operations to spill out onto sidewalks and parking lots. The last two executive orders were once again to provide relief to tenants that may have experienced a loss of income, healthcare coverage, ability to pay for basic needs, further increasing the strain on local community clinics, shelters, and food banks. Not listed are executive orders six, seven, and eight. those all dealt with establishing a curfew in light of known information concerning potential civil unrest. So where are we at now?

Currently in the state, all Californians, it is about mask, mask, mask, and I know, Mary, you've done a great job at educating people on the importance of masks, but all Californians today are required to wear masks. If you leave your house and you cannot maintain social distancing of six feet, you're to have a mask on. Unfortunately, restaurants, retailers, hair salons, gyms, places of worship, and some other locations are only allowed to operate outdoor or for pickup and delivery. This is unique to only a handful of counties in the state because of certain criteria that the governor's office has been monitoring.

Our public schools are to be distant learning only. However, they did post, just as of yesterday, a waiver that a school can seek approval for the governor's office to do some in-classroom instruction. And there also has been posted new guidance involving youth sports. Malls, museums, and zoos, those large-scale gatherings are still prohibited and probably will be so for the foreseeable future. The state is continuing to monitor our county closely on five data sets. And we're still failing two of the five data sets. So the ones that we're failing are the cases per thousand. The goal is to be below 25, and we are at 115.

That is a substantial decline from where we were about a week ago when we had exceeded 200 per thousand. The positive test rate goal is to be under 8%, and our county currently is at 8.6. And then there's a three-day average increase in hospitalized patients, and the goal is to be under 10%. We're currently meeting that. The most recent three-day average was actually a decline. Another data set that's measured is maintaining at least 20% of ICU beds to be available. And we currently have 34% of ICU beds available. Maintaining at least 25% of ventilators in the county available and we're at 54%.

So as mentioned before, the positive news is through significant efforts, our city is finally going to receive hopefully the entire amount of the 28.6 of the federal funds to address COVID. These federal dollars in the past have been directed only to state and counties. The state did pass through to cities and counties over 500,000 population, which did not include our city. But after the significant lobbying efforts, the state has committed funding to cities of our size. And we have been very hard working behind the scenes to put it to work.

This next slide is an overview of the 28.6 million that we anticipate receiving over the next five months. Obviously, the expenditures, they all have to do with COVID-19. There's some very strict US Department of Treasury regulations that we have to follow. And currently they have to be spent by the end of December. The nine spending buckets that are listed above, I'm going to go through each one of those so you don't have to spend a lot of time looking at that slide. I'll walk you through all of them. So our first priority is deploying the resources out into the hardest hit communities, a mobile-based outreach program.

For the mobile outreach strategy, this includes a caravan going right into the heart of the community with education materials, mobile testing, distribution of CARES PPE kits, and providing access to the number of monetary assistance programs we've lined up. So you can see on this slide, we've branded ourselves at Santa Ana CARES, and there's an example of what the care kit would look like. We hope to have that stuff with a mask, disinfectant, and other items.

This place based strategy is intended to provide a one stop shop for the ease of our residents access. Using GIS data, we've designed the locations to match not only the hardest hit areas, but specifically the locations with the most dense residential units. It's a little hard to see on this slide, but we actually have maps that show bubbles and the size of the bubble indicates the density of the residential area. So our focus will be where there are the largest bubbles. The timing of the mobile caravan will follow street sweeping to ensure we have adequate street space to set up.

And all protocols that are recommended by the CDC will be in place to protect the residents served but also the relief workers. In addition, the moving outreach will also have stationary care kit locations such as parks and possibly a partnership with the local grocery store. So when we're out doing the mobile outreach, we will hand out the kits, but we're also going to have other fixed locations that individuals can avail themselves to those kits as well. Part of the mobile resource will have a free standing COVID-19 testing unit. We are in the process of vetting a couple different vendors to provide this service.

We're looking for a vendor that has an FDA authorized kit and uses medically trained technicians. We also believe it's very important for our residents that there is no need for advanced scheduling or appointments. We want it to be able to be a walk-in, but we don't want it to have to be a drive-through with a car. We want it to be very simple for residents to get access.

Another thing that we've secured a contract for is a 24-7 nurse hotline. So to provide responsible healthcare answers for our residents of our city that need Any questions answered relative to COVID-19. We have found a company that can do a trilingual nurses hotline. They can actually do up to 200 different languages. For the residents in three different languages, can confidentially seek answers from a trained medical professional on everything COVID related. The only qualifier is that they have a Santa Ana address. That's it. There's nothing to do with insurance on it.

we have a large number of direct monetary assistance programs planned we have been very fortunate in the past to provide some of these same types of monetary assistance to our residents but this funding does give us an opportunity to add a lot more revenue to the programs so one of the first one is the rental assistance program and we're proposing a 2.7 proposed allocation and I know one of the callers mentioned we should do more in this area not included in this presentation is all the other funds that we've put towards rental assistance and in total there have been on top of this 2.7 that we're

proposing there's already been another 7 million relative to rental assistance so our city is in excess of the city of Anaheim we're approaching 10 million dollars in programming for rental assistance one thing that's extremely We're extremely unique about our approach to the rental assistance program. Our housing shop has been very creative in this and we've proposed a partnership with the rental properties so that we can negotiate directly with the landlords, hopefully pay back a discounted amount for the tenant's rent and let the landlord forgive something.

We believe that receiving something is better than not receiving anything. And then in return for this, we want those landlords or their property owners to agree to not evict any of the program participating residents. for a minimum of a period of six months from the agreement. We believe that this private-public partnership will relieve the tenants of their back rent that has accumulated since April 1st and give them peace of mind.

We heard you loud and clear on a potential need for child care assistance, so we've carved out $250,000. The program will be a fixed amount per child, and it's going to be to ensure that the working parents that have children under 12 that cannot attend school in person can be cared for within their home. So we're still working out the details of this program, but we do think that it's critical for individuals to continue if they are working parents. And because of COVID, their child can't attend school.

Utility assistance, we've heard from the community that there's many. We also know as a water provider that we have a number of accounts that are delinquent on our water bills. that there is a great need for just the basics for bill paying for utility assistance. We're proposing about $2 million allocation to this and it would consist of $500 assistance payment for residents to apply to their delinquent water, trash, electric, and gas bills.

Continuing on with the small business grants, this is an area that you have had us provide a lot of assistance for in the past. This is additional money that can go to small business grants. And we heard very loud and clear we're proposing it to go to Santa Ana businesses and nonprofits that are for the businesses. It's small businesses with 25 or less, but we also have a program where other larger nonprofits could be included in it. The funding, the monetary assistance can be used by those businesses for rent, utilities, payroll, marketing, and a number of different expenditures that they have to keep them afloat during this time.

We did add arts relief program as requested by you. We propose a half a million dollar allocation and it's aimed at really three different. It's aimed at arts related non-profit organizations and it's aimed at micro related art businesses and also individual grants to individual artists.

Temporary housing and hotel vouchers. We heard of the need from this from some of the fabulous clinics that work in our community, that some of the fastest spreading of COVID-19 is relative to transmission within households. And that's because oftentimes if one family member becomes positive, it runs through the household to the other family members. So we have secured hotel vouchers so that we can assist the residents for isolation. So whether it's us taking the healthy individuals out of the house and putting them somewhere else,

separated from the individual that tests positive, it's all intended to reduce the household transmission rate.

Education and outreach. So as part of all of the programs, the targeted programs that I just talked about, the overarching necessity is the education and the outreach. And I know we talked about this before that the residents that we really need to deliver the message to probably aren't the ones that are looking at our social media accounts. So we needed to go back to some grassroots efforts on ways that we could communicate. So we mentioned before the concept of COVID ambassadors, COVID-19 relief workers, a dedicated hotline.

We plan to, in addition, this is the nurses hotline is solely for healthcare questions, but we're going to have a dedicated city hotline as well. for people to call to inquire about any of these types of programs we are in the process of publishing a resource guide which lists all of the available programs and how they can be accessed we're going to be doing program flyers we've designed door hangers so what the door hangers are going to be used for is we want to deploy those in the neighborhood that that will indicate when the mobile resource caravan is coming to that neighborhood the date and time

and digital signs you might see some more digital signs up that we usually use for construction notices you might see them up in the middle of the street for covid related messages and of course we will continue to to utilize social media as well the digital signs we have a we have a sample we are in the process of procuring some new digital sign boards

and then on a lighter note this was a an ask of our mayor he wanted to do a mass design contest so help us design a santa ana face mask so we are going to have a contest and it'll be done through a similar to what daisy has done in the past for the census 2020 but for the top i don't know top 50 are we going to do so for the top 50 there's a chance to win a 50 gift card and then from the top winning designs we'll pick the award-winning one and we will actually have masks printed up with that artist design on them so those entries you'll be seeing stuff come out

on this soon because entries have to be mailed in by september 18th to enter into the drawing

sanitization so as you know you already have had us doing a lot of additional cleaning at all the city facilities where your employees work but one of the things we wanted to do is we We wanted to expand that to sanitize high-risk areas throughout the community. We're very fortunate. We found a company located right here in Santa Ana that's been in business for a number of years that is a chemical company. So we've entered into agreement with them, and we are going to do sanitization services. They're going to supply us a special formulated disinfectant, which cures, or not cures, but does kill the COVID bacteria.

and we want to go through the city and sanitize high traffic public areas. This would be things like our bus shelters, the crosswalk buttons, other high traffic areas.

And next, we have heard from local community clinics. Right now they are very overwhelmed. Several of them have received some county money and they're working really hard, but they have voiced some need for additional monetary assistance to help with maybe getting more medical professionals into their clinics to help meet the demand. So we're in the process of reaching out to those that serve our residents to see what we can do to help them. And then early on, we had talked about the importance of data modeling, and this has to do with partnering with UCI, where we could potentially do some expanded serology tests

and determine the prevalence of COVID-19 in our community. And what that would tell us is where we could potentially have a hotspot or where we don't have anything to worry about so the more information the better prepared that we could be and then local government covid19 related costs i know you guys are painfully aware of the significant loss of revenue the government we have experienced as a result of covid but we also have incurred millions and millions of dollars of expenses just conducting the city businesses

and mainly shifting from our fundamental services to provide different services related to COVID and also all of the expenditures and the retrofitting that we've had to do between personal protective equipment, social distancing, plexiglass, additional janitorial cleaning, and overtime, a lot of costs. So we did reserve some of the money to cover the city government cost. And these are just some examples that you may have noticed them or not noticed them. the increased amount of the plexigas barriers. We also have invested substantially and plan to do a little more investment into our IT.

One of the things that we quickly learned when we had to shut down public access is how to provide services using IT. So there are some good things that have come out of that. I know one council member is going to be extremely happy with it. But we have developed some apps. We're using apps to make appointments to come to the permit counter where you're waiting out in the parking lot and you text when you get here and you don't come in until they're ready to see you so we're continuing to do public facility enhancements so we can keep businesses keep our business open in light of covet the last bucket that you'll see on that

summary sheet or that you'll see in the body of the staff report has to do with a revenue recovery and a reserve so as the mayor mentioned this amount of money is coming from cares which was federal legislation. Right now the federal government is debating, there's two competing proposals. I don't know when they can make a decision or not but in them there is the ability, if approved, where the local jurisdiction such as our city that received CARES money, we may be able to have a longer period of time to spend it, up to 90 days after the end of the current fiscal year.

But more importantly, they may allow the CARES money to replace lost revenue for governments. In the initial CARES Act, that was not allowed. It was not permissible to use that money for revenue replacement. So we have a holding piece on 25% because under the current legislation under consideration, you could use up to 25% for revenue recovery. So we've set aside roughly $7 million for that. We hope we will find out by the end of September if there is any action taken by the federal government. The two competing measures right now, there is one that does provide additional monies to cities, counties, and states.

And one that provides no money to city, counties, and states. But we're hoping at the minimum, at least we might get an extension and be able to use some of that for revenue recovery. As you know, our current fiscal year budget, we do have an $18 million short bill. So we definitely could use the $7 million in that revenue recovery.

And the last slide, this is the interdepartmental task force that's been the creative geniuses behind all of these programs that I was able to present to you tonight. So I wanted to give a special thanks to all those employees that have been working very hard. We have a weekly Zoom call where we do the status updates on everything. Okay, so tonight what we're asking for in the staff report is really three different actions. The first one is we are asking for you to appropriate the full amount of 28.6 million.

Of course, we will be carefully spending it and monitoring it and making sure that if they stop the funding that we haven't overspent it. But because of the short timetable, we're seeking the appropriation of the entire amount. And then secondly, we'd like to get your buy-in on this spending plan and the programs. There's still a lot of tweaking to be done. We can make minor adjustments, but we would like to get the green light to move forward with everything. And then the third item is to grant me authorization to make adjustments. So currently, I can't move money between departments.

And what we're doing with the CARES money, because it is special revenue subject to DOT, U.S. DOT regulations, We're putting it in a special revenue fund. And if you look at your staff report on the last page under the fiscal impact, we've done our best to allocate it to which department we think is going to be paying which bills. But it might change. We might have some programs that are more popular than others, and one department may have to expend more than the others. So I'm seeking authorization to just to be able to move the funding between the departments,

not outside of the fund whatsoever, just between the departments to pay the bills. So those are the three recommended actions that are before you, and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Mr. Mayor, I have a question for the city manager.

Yes, go ahead, please. But first of all, thank you for that presentation, Madam City Manager. And now I want to hear from all council members and then bring it back for consideration towards the end of the discussion. Go ahead, Mayor Pro Town.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Madam City Manager and staff, thank you so much for your hard work on this. I know it took a lot. And I know we're under a timetable on this. One of the things I wanted to ask or something I wanted to ask is, you know, we want to support our businesses here in downtown. And I've been hearing from the owners in downtown, the restaurants, that they do better with the sales and people dining outside than they are inside.

So I believe they could use some help with having it look a little more professional when they dine outside. And I think it's a good idea if we could allocate some funds specifically for that because I think it would help a great deal. We do want to help the downtown restaurants, and we want to keep them going. And that's some of the feedback that I hear from the owners. So I was hoping if we could address that issue and put some funding towards that. And then that's one. And second is Wi-Fi.

Are we offering any Wi-Fi for the residents or the students regarding schooling? Or I'm not sure if I missed it here somewhere.

So I just spoke to the superintendent of Santa Ana Unified School District the other day, And he has requested our assistance through the libraries to help with some distant learning programs. So I'm going to be working with him on that. With the Wi-Fi, we did increase our number of hotspots that we have available at our libraries. One of the requests early on, there was an understanding that the city might have had a Wi-Fi infrastructure backbone throughout our city, where we could actually be an internet and a Wi-Fi provider, which we don't have that.

We have forwarded on all the information that we have found on potential grants available. And then also I know we received some information on some of the different providers in California that are giving extremely low discounts to encourage the distant learning. So we have been working with the school district on it. And I do anticipate that some of this money will go to meet what they were requesting for the distance learning, which will assist in that area.

Awesome, thank you very much. which I think every little bit helps during these very trying times. Thank you very much again to you for your leadership and all the staff that worked on this report. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

David PenalozaItem —

Mr. Mayor, this is Council Member Penaloza, if I can.

Go ahead, Council Member Penaloza. Go ahead.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, sir. And I want to say, Madam Secretary, that I agree with what Mayor Potem-Villegas brought up in regards to the businesses. I noticed that in the section where we're going to be allocating money for small business grants and recovery, it says a list of things of what they can and cannot use the money for, PPE equipment, and other... I was trying to find the page it was on.

David PenalozaItem —

And it's... Oh, here it is. It's eligible business expenses include rent, utilities, payroll, marketing, personal protective equipment, cleaning and disinfecting supplies, inventory services, and technology to automate systems or to allow for telecommuting activities of employees. One thing that a large expense that they've been having is building these outdoor patios that are very popular with the public. And like the Mayor Pro Tem mentioned, they've seen a higher drive and more clientele with these outdoor seating patios.

David PenalozaItem —

but they do cost money and it is an investment that they're whether it's temporary or not we don't know that yet but it is something that they're doing i know we're offering public streets to a lot of public street space to do this but in any way where we could allow for that flexibility where they could use this money to invest into their outdoor seating areas as part of an expense, I would be supportive of that.

David PenalozaItem —

Another thing that I noticed with the money here is that when it comes to utility

David PenalozaItem —

expenses for the public, which is also I'm supportive of, one of the utility, they could pay for water, trash, electric, and gas bill as assistance, but we don't allow for the internet and cable and cell phone bills are not eligible i agree with the cable and the cell phone but again we got to remember that there are thousands of kids that are now at home and the internet is i think uh now in in 2020 i mean if you don't have internet you you you know you you might as well just not try to do anything because if you don't have it you really can't do

David PenalozaItem —

anything and everything everyone pushes you to do things online whether it's virtual learning as we're seeing with schools or unemployment applications and I know that my mom with her medical stuff they're pushing her to do do it via the app via internet and it's like and then Teladoc it's all internet based so it is I think a necessity for us to also allow the public and and allow for internet bills to be considered as part of this conversation, especially since we're looking at ways where we can provide city Wi-Fi hotspots

David PenalozaItem —

for members of the public, additional hotspots. I know Brian in the library is doing a great job at expanding that inventory, but I'd be supportive to see the internet bill as be considered as part of these assistance payments for residents. And with the

David PenalozaItem —

there was the social media. I'm happy, you know, like anytime that there's social media push for education and outreach, I'm very supportive of it. But we also got to remind that I know Daisy Perez in your city manager's office is doing a great job at the census outreach, but the sponsoring a content. I've said this before. I've said it to PD. I've said it to City Manager's Office, Parks and Rec, that sponsored content is going to be the way to go if we really want the average person out there to see this, anything that we put out. Just because, you know, we've all, I see

David PenalozaItem —

the city of Santa Ana Facebook posts that we share, you know, we have upwards of 15,000 likes on our Facebook page, but when it comes to individual posts, we're lucky if we get three or four or five people that see them. And it's because people that don't often engage with city, the city Facebook page or posts are not going to be, are not going to see it because of the algorithms that these companies, we've got to remember that social media is a great tool but they are private businesses and they are in the business to make money and if you really want something shared and visible to a lot

David PenalozaItem —

of people we're gonna have to put dollars behind it in, excuse me, in social media sponsoring. Last thing with slide 16, the map, what we're gonna be doing the outreach with the COVID care kits. I simply don't understand. I don't know what, you know, if we're using the same data from the registrar of voters or voting patterns. Central Santa Ana, I know that this is saying that these are the hot spots with COVID,

David PenalozaItem —

but even the majority part of Central Santa Ana, I live right off of Bristol on Edinger. I know there's a location identified south by Memorial Park, but that whole area north of me is very, very dense. And we identified the areas as being the hotspots where there's the most cases on the following page by zip code, but we got to remember that in the very dense areas just north of where I live, very poor community, very dense. They might not have access to testing and that's why

David PenalozaItem —

we don't see those numbers allocated to that part of the city. But I'm not seeing any, at least the map on slide 16 looks like that. I'm not sure if there's other data available. But again, we're ignoring that whole central part of Senate, or at least it seems like we are going off of this map. I can clarify.

This is just an example of what the map looks like. We intend to hit the hot spots first with the outreach, which are those zip codes that have the highest positive test counts, which are provided by OC Healthcare Agency. The maps we've created internally, and it is based on the number of residential units located. So we're not ignoring the rest of the city. We will be visiting all of the dense areas throughout the whole city with the mobile caravats.

David PenalozaItem —

okay and and that's important that we make sure that we let the public know that and and point that out because again I live in that area of town and I could tell you that it's pretty dense and there are a ton of people in that part of town and whether it's you know nuisance abatement lawsuits for or quality of life team or COVID testing and just voting I don't see the outreach ever going it's just we just keep ignoring that's what it seems like that we just keep ignoring Central Santa Ana

David PenalozaItem —

on slide four when we have the the areas identified with the most cases it's the south the north the the southwest the areas where are known to be more affluent in the city and more aware and people vote more so that whole area if we look at ward five most of ward four and most of ward the new ward six you know you don't you know i don't see locations identified there as having COVID cases, which I know is not the case.

David PenalozaItem —

And that is it for the concerns that I had. The only other one that I wanted to mention is the hotel vouchers, I think is a great expense that we're going to be allocating money for. I want us to keep in mind that if we do offer these hotel vouchers, they probably need to be for seven to 14 days, which I'm thinking the average hotel rate goes anywhere for $100 a night, maybe. I'm thinking the Marriott, maybe if we keep them at the Red Roof Inn, we could offer a lot less.

David PenalozaItem —

But $300,000, we've got to remember that a lot of our families do live in one-bedroom apartments, families of four or five and you know there isn't anywhere in their homes where people could isolate so that's an important area that we must also consider and with the social with the learning I forget the term you mentioned with those distant learning is that something that we're working in partnership with the school district because we have two libraries as of today that where we could offer distant learning and I want to remind all of us

David PenalozaItem —

that the school district does have numerous school sites with numerous libraries where we can make sure that this is a partnership where we're not taking the full responsibility of having distant learning in our libraries and also you know offering resources if we need to to the numerous sites that are now empty where they could also do a distance learning I want to make sure it's equitable and that it's an actual partnership versus just the city is taking on this role so those are are my comments for now we'll see if more arise

Madam City Manager if you have anything so yes councilmember absolute partnership

we did the conversation just this week it was just that the conversation with

the superintendent was just this week and it was intended to be that a partnership of where our libraries can partner with the school district and we enhance the distant learning but also while you were speaking we wanted to show you although we gave a snippet of a map within the presentation this is the city-wide map that shows the bubbles that i was talking about and you can see from the the legend that the bubbles indicate the size of the number of units that are present so you can see some of the other areas throughout the whole city that we'll be focusing on.

David PenalozaItem —

That's good Madam State Manager and just these maps are very important. I know that some might not really think they are but when we make these maps public as a public record attachment attached to staff reports attached to available to the public the public sees these maps and you know even Even though this is just, I want to say a brief summary on behalf of the COVID task force here in the city, we want to make sure that we don't put out maps like this that could be a little misleading to the public. And, you know, me, myself, that I live in the central part of Santa, and I could see that and say, well, what about us, you know?

David PenalozaItem —

So it's important that we have these available and have, when it comes to maps, because people like pictures and symbols and maps and they'll see that immediately and jump to conclusions like i just said but um i i trust you and i believe that that this is we have a map for every zip code that this is not the case so um we gotta make sure that when we release these maps that they show actual uh information and and data that we're going to be using uh council member let me just

intervene then I'll go to council member Vince Sarmiento the real problem here is the county they won't give us information all they will tell you is how many cases per zip code we really are not insist at least by precinct so that within a zip code we know where the hot spots are but the county refuses to cooperate with us so we're in the dark as we start doing our serology tests we're probably going to have better data than they do as to what is really going on in the city and then as we do contact tracing on our own we'll also have I think better data and information

and this goes to the whole question about the health care official and you know the job that the county is doing or and this is actually not doing but that's that's the problem that we're

David PenalozaItem —

having getting the data that makes sense and thank you for speaking up mr. mayor I just wanted to before I forget to thank you I got want to give credit where credit is due and you were a huge force in getting this money for us so thank you on you and the other mayors of the large 10 cities because without you guys's hope that we really wouldn't have had these funds available so thanks

thank you for the thank you uh council member vent charmiento please sure thank you mr mayor um

look i want to you know i want to begin by saying that you know i'm glad we had that opening discussion about where we are as a city because you know we're certainly in the you know in the second most impacted county in the state and the most impacted city in the county so that doesn't put us in a really enviable position. We have four of the highest zip codes in the entire county so we are very very impacted by this and let me begin by thanking you know all of you my colleagues because we're having this meeting as a special meeting when we didn't didn't have to and

I think it's important enough that all of us felt that it was you know it was it was important that we didn't wait till the following meeting to start talking about this and you know let's just remind ourselves this all started on march 15th so we're now just getting around to dealing with some additional relief more than what we've done in the past i'm actually putting some relief coveted relief measures out there uh in addition to the rental uh the moratorium on rental evictions some of the assistance that we've provided in the past but this is really uh to address the um the

virus and I know all of us have been working in our own spheres trying to get this moving it's really sad I think it goes I think I you know I need to reiterate what the mayor said which is we shouldn't even be in this position had there been good leadership from the county this would have been well well ahead of us this would have been done this would the data would have been there the funds would have been there the the attention but yet we're I think look I feel like we're on a sinking ship because we have such poor leadership at the county and they are the vested

agency and we need to remind ourselves they are the vested agency to be responsible for these social services when it comes to public health so we give them that authority and the um and the public gives them that authority but we're basically having to fend for ourselves as i said before so um thank you to staff for um providing the presentation and for presenting this i know we had a version of this presented to us a couple of meetings back and I think my comments were then this is a very very good start and I think we're addressing things that you know I know are very

important so I'm not going to repeat what others said I'm just going to hopefully you know echo some of that but let me begin by just talking about a couple of adjustments and then things that are not going to be cost that'll be cost neutral but maybe some things to consider as we talk about some things and one of them is on the rental assistance so I just want it to be clear or actually you know I know on in the line item on slide 13 the rental assistance shows an amount of 2.7 million but that is in addition to what we've already allocated through our community

development block grants of 800,000 so we're looking more at about a 300 or excuse me 3.5 million um allocation for rental assistance so that's one clarity i wanted to make and also in that same um in those same line items i think um we have a couple of numbers flipped on slide 13 it shows that the small business grants will be receiving uh 500 000 and the arts relief program is going to be receiving 2.5 million so i hate to break it to the artists out there we love you but you know i think those two things actually were intended to be flipped so two and a half million

goes to the small business grants and half a million goes to the to the arts both of which are important for what everybody had mentioned already what I wanted to just call some attention to was just things that are non-cost related but maybe things that could help us out with respect to our employees that we've had to separate with I know that there are some line items here for compliance efforts and I think we've called them you know ambassadors and folks we're going to be doing outreach to residents to businesses and I know that you know we're going to be needing people

that are going to be doing the actual boots on the ground work and to the extent we can use and deploy our part-time employees that we've had to separate with for this please I know that they We probably have the first right of refusal when it comes to any opportunities. And I know Madam city manager, you and I've had this discussion several times. Thank you for, you know, making sure that, you know, these opportunities when they come to COVID related support and work, we offer it to those that we've had to separate with. And even some things that we're actually doing now,

I know we have some security staff that I've seen around the, around city hall that are taking temperatures and making sure people are coming in and they're wearing their masks. maybe even those things you know go to our part-time employees rather than outsourcing those out and really any other COVID related responsibility that we have to engage with or we are presently engaging with that we contract out I think it's important that we keep those things in-house right now because it serves a lot of purpose as somebody said before these part-time employees are people who've not only worked with our organization they've been vetted

they've gone through training and to repurpose them for other functions I I think wouldn't be too difficult and they're familiar with the organization. So that's one thing. With respect to compliance, what we do want to remember is that some other cities are actually enforcing non-use of facial coverings. And what that means is that they're actually trying to educate, obviously initially probably giving warnings. But if folks don't abide by those, they're actually enforcing and citing people. And I think that that is a very big concern that folks just won't learn and will continue to endanger themselves and others.

And that is a very dangerous thing in a city like ours because I think our numbers are around, you know, somebody said above 7,000. I think as was said previously, I think the mayor said it, we're going to be approaching 10,000 very soon. And I think the fact that, you know, we maybe not be as aggressive as we should be since we're the city that's most impacted with the zip codes that have the highest number of cases. I think we do need to look at enforcement and maybe those funds that we recover from enforcement get pumped right back in into education and into compliance. So that is another thing.

the other one that isn't going to cost anything, but something to consider when it comes to the line item involving sanitation of high risk areas or sanitization of high risk areas. I think we want to include something and because we do have a very large unsheltered population and unfortunately, you know, they are probably the most vulnerable to exposure there, you know to the extent that we can consider um some um you know mobile whether it's um you know hand washing stations something where you know these folks who are who are here and in our

presence and are going to be sharing the public right away with us whether it's a sidewalk whether it's a street whether it's any other public place um to the extent that they have a place that they can um sanitize themselves and wash their hands and keep themselves as clean as possible that is less exposure to them but it's less exposure to the general public that is housed so something for us to think about there on that line item the other one was on you know distance learning and wi-fi i know it's been mentioned before i was doing a little simple math i remember when we

presented this i think i brought this up as an 85a we kind of estimated that there were about 10 000 households out there that didn't have access to wi-fi or the internet and you know i I know that there were some providers that were providing, you know, service for a short term of, you know, even five to $10. And if you do the math of $5, 10,000 households, that's $50,000 a month. If we wanted to provide it for the fall academic semester, that is $300,000 that we could use towards that to augment what the school district is doing. But to the extent, Madam city manager,

you have some fruitful good faith discussions with the superintendent. I think you've heard it now a few times from us. We certainly want to help and not maybe do replicate what's being done by the school district but augment and supplement what they're doing. So that was that. The other one that isn't going to cost much but is part of the line item that you mentioned regarding community clinics. You and I I believe were both on on a couple of calls with the with the county public health director and Latino health access that was retained by the county to

provide some services. I know they call themselves the promotoras and they do mobile testing so to the extent that we can work with them and I know we've had a difficult time re-engaging because I think they're in the process of doing mobile testing every other day in Anaheim and in Santa but they already have a system. And to the extent we can partner with them, as I think a school board member had mentioned that spoke earlier, even providing some alleviation of citations while some of their volunteers and staff are working and providing these services, physicians and others. These are things that we can partner with them

to make sure that just the logistics work well. So I think that is almost everything. Oh, I'm sorry. The last thing that one, the one that I would like us to consider, and that was mentioned, I think a few times, and I think I've mentioned it in the past, is the eviction defense fund. Because as we are looking at, you know, providing three and a half million or more than three and a half million for rental assistance. And I think the approach that was mentioned there was to negotiate with some of the landlords to forgive, you know, after maybe negotiating an 80%, 70%, hopefully we have good negotiators

on our side, to the extent they forgive the balance of the arrears they're owed on those rents. That's a very, very good approach. But I think there, you know, I think there are some landlords that are bad actors and that are using self-help and evicting folks in violations, not just our executive orders, but the state's executive orders. I think that we have a really good template model that we've used for the deportation defense fund. It doesn't it's not a high ticket item, but to the extent that folks are going to need relief going into court and trying to plead their case alone, usually they lose.

But to the extent that they have somebody that represents them, there's a very high chance that they prevail. And what happens there? We keep folks in their home. These folks are not going to be displaced. We have people that are going to continue to do commerce here in our city. They're going to continue to have their kids attend schools and they're going to stabilize our neighborhoods. But if people start getting mass evictions or being removed from their homes, we destabilize neighborhoods. We destabilize the city. So just some things for us to consider. And those are my comments for now. Thank you for presenting this.

And I want to listen to some of the other comments from our colleagues.

Thank you for that very thoughtful discussion, Council Member Sarmiento. Who else wants to speak?

Mr. Mayor, Council Member Becerra.

Go ahead, Council Member.

Thank you. I wanted to begin by thanking our city manager and all those that participate in the city's COVID-19 task force for bringing all these proposals forward. I know you guys put in a lot of hard work and it's a difficult task given everything that we're facing. So I wanted to say thank you for that. Also, I wanted to thank Planning Commissioner Tai Phan for her comments regarding us prioritizing the rehiring of our city workers. I know some of my colleagues have already talked about it.

As we had to lay off many workers due to the impacts from COVID, I hope that we're able to bring back as many of them as possible to perform some of these tasks that we will see performed with this funding. I appreciate that we are enhancing our testing. I think it's obviously very important given what we're facing in this pandemic. Being able to provide services that are both mobile and at fixed locations is truly going to help our community. Having our public spaces sanitized by a business as Santa Ana based is a great way, a great use of this funding.

And enhancing the safety in our public facilities that unfortunately have had to remain open through much of this pandemic, such as the public counters at City Hall, this will protect our residents and our city employees, especially those employees that have had to have direct contact with the public. I appreciate the two and a half million in business grants that are being made available so that they can be used for furthering operations that have proven successful and essential for businesses facing these orders that have come down from the governor to address the

pandemic, such as outdoor dining in downtown. And I think, you know, as we get hopefully closer towards the end of this pandemic, we should really consider what our policy is going to be when it comes to these setups. When I look at, you know, what we see, for instance, on Third Street today, I think that, or and Fourth Street as well, there are places where you almost have to wonder, could we really benefit as a city by having these particular segments of streets closed off to vehicular traffic and really be reoccupied by the residents and folks that are just enjoying the

beautiful weather that we we have always been able to enjoy pandemic or no pandemic um i did have one question for staff and that was in regards to the rental assistance i love what i heard in regards to the idea of helping folks with 80% of their rent because we would then have the landlords forgive the remaining 20%. But I seem to remember there was some sort of similar emergency legislation that was making its way through Sacramento that sounded very familiar to this. And I just wanted to ask, did that legislation not make it through? Is this meant

to enhance that i just want to understand because i think the concept when i first heard it as it was going through sacramento sounded amazing but i just want to see where this particular proposal

lies in relation to that i'm sorry sir i'm not aware of what legislation that is out of sacramento i know it was the the interdepartmental task force brainstorming on the best way to get the most for the rental assistance dollars that they thought well we have a lot of large rental communities in our city and potentially the best way is approaching that that property owner or the property management and they did reach out and they have already made a number of calls and there is an interest in it i can certainly research to find out what legislation you're speaking of

i appreciate that yeah because i i think that maybe if there's a way that you know if there's funding already being made available that the what you're proposing would enhance that because as we heard from folks that called in today there's obviously going to be a wave of folks that are going to be invicted and we need to be able to address that so you know any way that we can make these dollars go further to help our our residents that would be appreciated and other than that that's all the comments I have thank you Mr. Mayor Mayor. And if I just say the attorney mayor, I just, I would just mention,

I believe just for staff and we can do some followup cause I'm not aware of the status, but I believe council member may be referring to SB 1410, which was some emergency legislation and I can assist staff in finding out the status. Thank you.

Other comments, council members.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, I think Council Member Mendoza and I are remaining. Council Member Mendoza, would you like to go first?

Yes, thank you, Council Member Solorio. My question is, on the contract for the nurses' hotline, is that for a certain amount of time? I was trying to see if I saw the date through which these funds were to be used through. Was it December of 2020? And then the follow-up question was, what will happen if we need to go beyond December 2020?

Those are excellent questions, Council Member. Currently the deadline, what we are told is we more than likely will receive 50% of the money and we have to give a status report in September. And if they like what we're doing with it, we'll receive the other 50%. But at this point in time, all funds have to be expended by the end of the calendar year, so by the end of December. Unless that federal legislative has passed, which adds an extension on time. In regards to the nurses hotline. Good, she does have the information for it. It is based on a six month term, which would basically, it would bridge us to the end of December.

We can lengthen it on a second term, but the challenges are going to be extending any of these programs beyond December is with what funding?

Okay. And my other concern with that one was that it is specific to Santa Ana residents, and so there will be verification of an address of somehow. Just wanting to make sure that our residents are the ones who are going to be benefiting and not something like when we had callers calling in from all over the world into our city council meetings. And my other question is related to the COVID-19 testing.

Have we had any vendors submit their proposals and what's the status on that coming to council so that we could select someone right away and to make sure that our residents are tested as soon as possible because time is of the essence and we need to ensure that we have that available sooner rather than later. and to ensure that the vendor contract includes tracing, contact tracing, that is very important, and that the testing is FDA approved.

And so what's the status on the selection of a vendor?

So certainly we, as you can imagine, we've received a lot of proposals, a lot of companies out there that say that they can do testing, and we've been venting all of them through our we've been using our procurement that we've set up in our emergency operation center we want to make sure that the contractor that we do select is FDA authorized the testing kit that they're using is one that is the best to determine whether someone is positive so we have we narrowed it down to three and we've been vetting those and we're very close to selecting a top vendor I have had the opportunity in

weekly calls with the county and oftentimes Dr. Cho joins those calls and he's the medical health officer for our county so I've been asking him a lot of questions on it saying okay this company claims that they have a PCR test that's an instant read is there such a thing you know can that company deliver on that and we're finding as we dig a little bit deeper some of the proposals are not they don't have the the capacity to do what they initially had committed to but I do hope within the next couple of days to make a selection based on all of the vetting that we're doing it would not require us coming back to the council

because through the executive order you've provided me the authorization to execute those agreements but if that is certainly of interest to you I can send you an email let you know which ones were we're leaning towards and which ones we think are the best ones to go forward so if you wanted to provide me

any input I'd welcome that yes I think that would be great and perhaps not just just to me but to the other council members so that we can all be on the same page. Certainly. Thank you.

Any other comments? I think Councilor Lario is next.

Yes, go ahead. Thank you. First I want to thank City Manager Christine Ridge and her very able staff. I'm looking at Daisy and Steve and Daniel and everybody else. working for a special district that just handles water and waste water and doing some amount of this work in coordination. I know what a mountain of details and logistics and paperwork and tracking and logistics that there are. So I appreciate the work. That's why I haven't given you a million recommendations because I know even just you putting this together and making it in a way that is implementable is a big deal.

I also want to let you know I appreciate that. Consistent with some of the other speakers, I think when we can hire back part-timers or other employees that currently aren't working, I think we should. I know from some research that I've done of other cities, the kind of things that they're having, extra work do are things like extra cleaning tasks, temperature checking, checking for COVID-19 compliance with masks at parks, security, and checking in at other locations. So there's a lot that could be done there.

For me overall, really, of this whole program, for me what I value the most is the rental assistance, the Wi-Fi, and business grants. At the end of the day, it's all about, you know, can people pay rent? Can they put foot on the table? and if we don't get our businesses to stay alive, we're really gonna be hurting financially in years to come. And so an investment there really is an investment into our city in the short term and long term. And then Wi-Fi, we've talked about distance learning, and I'll talk a little bit more about that. I like that there was discussion about the high risk resident testing and outreach,

and I think for part of that, what I'd like to see is what are, in addition to zip codes and the type of folks, there are some that are hypersensitive, like assisted living facilities, senior centers, maybe folks where there's other residential programs like that. We really should know what those things are and how they're doing, just because in particular, like at assisted living places, there's been rampant outbreaks that then contribute to problems elsewhere. but I appreciate that. And then that also combines with throughout seniors. You know, I want to have a consistent theme of calling out

and thinking about our seniors because they're the most vulnerable. Oftentimes they really are sheltered in place by themselves, and they are limited in technology and phone and just communications. Wi-Fi, a couple things there. Number one, I know that Senator Lina Gonzalez has a piece of legislation legislation regarding wi-fi and tech access if we haven't as a city already done letter support for senator gonzalez legislation i think we should and any ideas that we have to get more of those dollars to counties or cities like ours i think that would be good i've i've been clear whether

it be with covid money or the youth fund money that we ought to partner with our school districts and schools and larger nonprofits like Discovery, we to this day have $7 million approximately in our youth fund just collecting dust. Meanwhile, the past two, three years, we've spent the cannabis revenue for city operations, police departments, and overall for these three primaries, rental assistance, Wi-Fi, and business grants, we just got to get money out the door. And really, these three, four months I was doing the math, they ideally want us to spend all the money by December.

and because we're already in August we really only have like three or four months to spend 20 million dollars and again being in government it's not easy spending that kind of money with logistics and agendas and approvals bids and everything else so those things are very important to me I think city manager Ridge was also hinting at Verizon statewide program it was initially just a program with LA Unified to subsidize the rates that kids and low-income people could use but they've now made that a statewide program that any agency can pretty much piggyback on.

With libraries, I like the idea of making those hubs also for connectivity. And I don't like that it's always generally viewed as we have two libraries, but just for fuller disclosure, we really have more than that. We have obviously our main library. We have the New Hope Library. We also have the joint-use Roosevelt Walker Library. So that's really a third library that we have. And then the McFadden Old Library, it's now used as a PAL center, and I think we could do programming there. I think with both our city manager and our new library director, I've hinted at that.

It still looks like a library, feels like a library, and there's a lot of apartments there. So it would be very well used in terms of more Wi-Fi or gadgets or other things. Rental assistance, I mentioned that. Legal defense fund, I'm not saying no, but I think it's easier said than done. And we've got to find all the right checks and balances and what attorneys are nonprofits. I always prefer in-house. Why not contract an attorney that all they do is help us answer this? Because I know we get a lot of questions. I know Steve gets questions.

I know Hudson gets questions on a lot of these housing laws and issues, whether we like it or not. And they need support. I know sometimes it takes them time to respond. and that's just because they have to track down one of our attorneys or outside, and it would be very, very helpful. The nurse hotline, I think, is good. On that one, you might want to think about how you scale. I know in talking to somebody who works for Latino Health Access at their calling center, the main call that they're really getting is all these forms on how to register for these tests are in English.

So the main question and need that they get online in Spanish and I'm sure in Vietnamese is assistance on what does this mean and how to fill in the online form. So something as simple as that really is what you need. And that again could be an SEIU job. I don't think it needs to be a nurse. And so just kind of monitor that. Maybe check in with Latino health access or comparable hotlines, but I think you'll see that. The childcare thing, I agree, and I know Council Member Villegas brought this up in the past, that's a big need. And I know the state and the governor, they're trying to beef that up

and figure out how to do better so appreciate that i like the idea christine and knows a little bit more of an asterisk i think there are some more substantial non-profits that need more support than just the 10 000 because of the number of jobs they do create or their icons and marketing icons to our city so i'm very open to that concept i'm not i'm not saying which ones they ought to be but just that I think there's merit to that idea. Arts in the parks, I know there was an art mention. One of the things I liked about when I previously have heard and talked about arts is if we could put them in parks,

you know, with crafts. People don't need to chair crafts. They can take them home. Also, art is inspiring. A lot of what everybody does to is also very techie, so for people that are into arts or something else, I think that is a good thing. Businesses and restaurants, I know we like to focus a lot on the downtown because we're in the downtown and to get more traffic but we can't ignore the rest of our businesses and other parts of the city where the information on how they can do restaurant outdoor isn't reaching them as quickly so whatever we could do to partner with the chamber or other groups on that I think that would be

good as part of that very important is reimbursement or pushing technology that's touchless. I think if we can encourage more restaurants to use touchless technology, that also means more convenient forms of payment, and more convenient forms of payment also means easier auditing and sharing of information and resources with all the agencies that like to receive information on sales. So I think that is very, very critical. And then I would close just by saying, I know Christine, now and then you provided us updates, but I think this is critical

enough for the whole community that maybe you could provide a monthly update at a minimum a receiving file but maybe in your closing report always there's a page or two with any highlights or i know you're excellent uh with dashboards uh i think with new programs that you've started the dashboards are excellent i think more traditional things like in our police department people struggle with getting information and a lot of issues over there but i know with things moving forward it's easier to do that so with that i i thank you greatly and i'll follow up separately on

on many of these items and i just really want to close with distance learning wi-fi uh you know i have family members that just went through k-12 and you know we have educators in our family and it's a problem i mean i i foresee that we're going to have a fall where half the kids aren't checking into their classes and it's not all tech issues much of it is tech issues and it's not all hardware either some people need help just on should i sign up with spectrum or at t or do i get a mobile hot spot and you know that's something that is important as well and again i view it as

we have a ton of money here in cares covet act money and we have seven million dollars in our youth fund that uh you know i know our city manager you know is getting into better and better conversations with the superintendent and I you know really encourage a partnership on that as soon as possible you know in the million plus program and again I agree with that councilmember Pinalos and others that to the extent that we can first maximize things through our libraries etc that would be great but as we've also talked about before the governor isn't letting us open a lot of other facilities and so the districts and the schools have

access to the kids and we gotta work through them so that's all thank you

thank you um uh if uh if i may i'd like to make a few comments here i think others have spoken um first i want to thank uh every single member of the city council um i think the your thoughts and comments are all excellent and I mean that you know councilman Pena Losa you know what Mendoza said you know Becerra you know right now you know Jose's comments no counselor Sarmiento you know Villegas everybody

every member of the council I think is in tune and and working hard and I think shown the community that you know how much we all care about our our beautiful city and um and and to christine i know this has uh been tough i mean she came here to run a city she didn't come here to be a city manager to take on a pandemic but that's what she's had to do and to all the different department heads um i know i've spoken to many of you at different times about

you know what this means and what we do and how we handle it uh and i think folks are rising to the occasion uh in particular that that task force uh and the vigor and the energy and the uh empathy uh which uh you know they're they're working with they're they're really working hard to make a difference um and i know that uh you know folks like uh you know daisy um perez i mean the way she has thrown herself into this it's like it can be any hour of the day or night and and the work goes

on um and in particular the work with the other big city mayors because uh you know she's had the opportunity to work with many staffs as well as our city manager from other cities up and down California and I think that that has given us a little bit of a nudge a little bit of additional information a little bit of best practices and I think you see it in the plan that's been put forth and also the Orange County mayors different group from the big city mayors but everybody's trying to

do their part and and really ultimately we can't do well until we all do well you know we do have city boundaries but the virus doesn't recognize those and and there's so much interaction that ultimately we have to work as a region so a big thank you to everybody another area I want to talk about here briefly is on the testing I think we have to have testing with a purpose it's not just the numbers but it's you know what do you do with the information I think unfortunately the county

has lost all control and they just look at general numbers and try to predict things but But they went from really a containment strategy to just playing defense and mitigating very early on. And part of what I think we need to do is get control back as much as we can. And what I mean by that is if we do test somebody who's positive, let's try to do contact tracing so we can trace all the people that they came in contact.

and test them. And that's where this testing becomes effective, but it's got to have a quick turnaround. Unfortunately, right now across much of the nation, the lag time is so great that the results are almost meaningless. Because by the time you find out if you are positive and you tested two weeks ago, look at all the people you impacted. And if you were not positive and you tested two weeks ago you know you're really uh you know beat yourself up um and what i mean in particular by that is a lot of of the community um that tests positive they are not allowed to go back

to work and many of these are you know uh you know the breadwinners of the home and if you have you know uh you know the no money and the inability to work even though you have a job but but they don't want you to go work because they don't want you to infect other workers now you're in a really bad spot and and and if you have to go and you have to retest and it takes two weeks for the tests to come back it can be a nightmare it can be a real real nightmare where where a lot of unintended uh circumstances uh uh and events occur and and and one bad thing becomes

and bad things and now you've got the whole family effect and I know you know several you mentioned you know you know transmission and and and masks and all well that is I think the magic of the mask that even in the home if you have an infected individual anybody with symptoms or you know you need to you know do things within the home and some of those things are things like putting up sheets potentially to create spaces that are segregated within a room. Often it means wearing

masks indoors and that's an awful thing to do. You know put on a mask for several hours and you go crazy but you know not wearing a mask you could be killing people. I mean I've written in a lot of folks say it's my right not to wear a mask and part of what I tell them is look it's not your right to hurt people. You might be killing somebody. And by wearing a mask, you might be saving a life, and that life could be your own, but it could very likely be other people that you're saving. And so, you know, with this masked up effort that we are all been a part of, it's starting to work.

I can tell you that across the state, we'll know more in the next two to three weeks, because whenever you do something it takes about four weeks for the real result to become apparent the ramifications of actions you know by the time people get infected those that are serious they go to the hospital those that that that can't handle it die you know there's a big lag period but I'll tell you that you know since the most recent uh uh you know shutdown pretty much here in the state the numbers are turning around but we need to do more in in Santa Ana because we have

a greater infection rate in Santa Ana we have greater density and we have greater ability to transmit and and and therefore these efforts that we're making you know are not a moment too soon you know again unfortunately the county is not cooperating next thing I'm going to try to do I'm trying to get all the mayors in the county but every single one of you council members can also do whatever you can to help we need to get data from the county that shows you know precincts that shows infection by precinct we don't need the individual's name we don't need an

individual's address we're not trying to embarrass anybody or cause harm but if we don't have any idea where they are um it's a real problem you know whenever we have a sex offender we all go crazy and it's like where are they you know let's keep people safe um this is not unsimilar in that sense if you have people that are sick and they're shedding and they're contagious this is not a disease that respects anything and and not privacy laws not you know hepa not anything else and so I think we have to convey to the county that you know in order for us to use this money wisely

uh and yes I agree with everything that we said about you know rental assistance and and connectivity uh internet etc but if we don't get control of the virus itself and if we don't bring our infection rate down we're going to be here a year from now and nobody's going to save us You know, everybody will have gotten tired. You know, revenues will be down. You know, we'll have concessions from, you know, labor unions, but that won't be enough. You know, the budget will not be balanced. And it's all because we don't have revenues. And we don't have revenues because businesses can't function.

They can't function because we have the virus. So we have to somehow through all this do everything. including not losing sight of who the real enemy is here. And the real enemy here is the virus. So with that, thank you for indulging me. And at this point, I know we have a lot of notes that I'm sure the manager has written. And what I'd like to do is possibly just go with staff recommendation and then tell her to come back communicate with all of us about everything

she's very good at doing that um i think yes reports possibly at the end of the council meeting or whatever are appropriate you know for the uh for folks that are watching on tv and all that but i would suggest that through memos and emails um and and the nixle reports that she does and and other things that there can even be more frequent significant communication going back and forth between the manager and the city council. So with that, is there a motion?

Motion to approve. Second, and I agree Mr. Mayor, I think because part of the action is to give the city manager authority to move money around, not even including between departments, that she'll take all this input, do the best she can, and then stay in touch with us. Thank you.

And she'll get back to all of us. This is a Severan member council with really a lot of similar input.

But here we really do have to hang together and we have to push hard. The future of the city really is at stake. So with that, is it okay with folks if I ask for a roll call vote?

David PenalozaItem —

Mr. Mayor, really quick, this is Councilmember Penaloza. I just wanted to clarify with the last part of the recommended action to authorize the City Manager to move the appropriation between departments within the CARES Special Revenue fund to adjust as needed for residents actual use of each program I just wanted to ask clarification of the city manager will we be if this is part of the motion will we be briefed ahead of time or a memo daily weekly memo since I know this

David PenalozaItem —

is only I mean this is only a three-month period where we're gonna be spending this money can you just talk a little bit about you speak to that yeah

can you talk to that madam city manager please um certainly um i most definitely can and with the frequent communication and the status of all of our efforts i can add that to that report yeah if we could add we're overspending in one department and i need to adjust right

David PenalozaItem —

provide you all the details and because it's only three months i would ask and you're probably going to hate me uh for weekly updates uh maybe by the end of the week i know you do a city manager not to the to the whole city but i mean uh to us or bi-weekly uh so that we could um get these updates frequently and uh accurately every time that there are changes that need to be made um with the and i'm not sure if the if the motion was recommended actions on the staff report yes yes

it is and we can do it with that clarification and let's see if she can't do it weekly hopefully it's not too much of a burden.

David PenalozaItem —

Should the, and maybe this is a question for the city attorney, but should somebody, maybe the city manager, are you including, because most of us did agree in a lot of these things, are those, is that going to be included as part of the motion? Do you want to read those, a summary, if you can, best describe what the changes that we, because I know there were some changes in what could be allowed and what can't be allowed in the assistance we're providing for residents can you talk a little bit

about that um certainly so i believe what the the motion would be is to approve the appropriation adjustment for the full 28.6 million dollars give general approval for the proposed care spending spending plan with the additional direction that was provided by each of you at tonight's meeting and including weekly progress reports on the results and provide authorization for the city manager to move appropriations, but with notification to the entire city council.

Okay.

All right, thank you for that. If appropriate, I'd like to call a roll call vote. Madam Clerk?

Council Member Becerra? Yes. Council Member Mendoza? Yes. Council Member Peñalosa? Yes. Council Member Sarmiento?

Aye. Aye.

Council member Solorio?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tempiegas?

Aye.

Mayor Pulido?

Yes.

Motion carries.

So that's unanimous. Congratulations to the council and I thank all of you for the separate and we've got our work cut out. $28 million sounds like a lot of money, but for what we're talking about, believe me, it's really very little money. We could be using a whole lot more and putting it all to good work. So with that, is there anything else on the agenda, Madam City Manager?

No, that's all, sir.

All right, any closing comments?

Mayor, there is an adjournment in memory of.

Two individually, right? Rob Richardson?

Yes, and Eugene Harbridge.

Let's go ahead and adjourn. And because Rob was a former council member for eight years in all, I'd like to ask that may we send whatever is appropriate. I know, you know, flowers, you know, something on behalf of the city council. He not only served on the school board, but he was the council member for eight years as well.

Mr. Mayor, a little bit related to that, I don't know if it's appropriate or not, but the courtyard at the train station is named in his honor. Maybe there could be an updated tribute or sign there or something, but that might be something to think about. Or maybe we could leave some flowers there. You know, there's something there because people think of that place other than norms and policies for Rob, but I just wanted to share that.

thank you yeah may we just suggest that the city manager considered something there i know rob rob loves trains um and he used to you know go to actually he was a foamer i don't know if you want to know what a foamer is but they they say they foam with the mouth when they see a train and they they wear they wear their pants very high with the belt on the outside um and they know everything about trains but rob was a wonderful wonderful guy and uh look i could go on a long

time about rob so with with that let's just send prayers to him and take care of each other and realize we have a big job ahead of us here in the next several uh you know days and weeks to come uh try to take care of all our employees and and in our community um and just figure out how we keep the city moving forward so with that this meeting is adjourned