Read the April 21 meeting.

Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor. Mayor

Councilmember Solorio?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Villegas?

Present.

Mayor Pulido?

Here.

All present.

All right, so let me, I know we're going to have some public comment, but let me, I always like to start, let's just start with the Pledge of Allegiance, please. So if you call, just stand wherever you may be and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. 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.

if you can remain standing do we have our chaplain vincent uh banger our police please go ahead give us the invocation please thank you your honor would you please bow your heads heavenly father

most merciful lord we thank you for every seat that's been filled here today in our not necessarily in our council chambers but online we thank you for each heart and mind that fills the presence of this room we thank you only you truly know what we're setting out to accomplish today we have an idea a vision hints and daily instructions we have talents abilities and time to work however only you can see in perfect detail the end of every beginning every project every season every life nothing is ever in vain for even mistakes and missteps are used for your good

help us heavenly father so that we can see clear through these difficult times help us to come together during this pandemic so that we may help the people help us remember that all government is from your will given to care for your people father god your righteousness transcends all our efforts and understanding forgive us for our pride the pride that puffs us up and the pride that threatens to unqualify us strengthen our confidence in you who have made us to be set us free from comparison in order to work together efficiently Bless this meeting today, all those present, as well as the lives of those we will encounter afterwards.

Ready us to make every moment count as we do your work in this city, our home, Santa Ana. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Amen.

Thank you, Chaplain, for the invocation. You're welcome, sir. I would now like to direct Council's attention to the consent calendar, but first I want to ask the Clerk, are there any members of the public at which to address us on any consent calendar items?

Madam Clerk?

No, we have no consent calendar item.

Okay, then let me go to my fellow council members. Do you have items that you wish to pull for discussion from the consent calendar?

Yes, Mr. Mayor.

Yes, go ahead.

I'd like to go ahead. This is Council Member Becerra. I'd like to go ahead and pull item 25A.

Okay. Any other items, other council members?

David PenalozaItem —

Mr. Mayor, this is Council Member Penaloza. I'd like to pull items 22B and 25D, as well as 25A, which my colleague already pulled.

That was 22B and 25B as in David?

David PenalozaItem —

Yes, sir.

Thank you. Any other Council Members, other items?

Yes, this is Council Member Iglesias. I would like to pull 25C and 25I.

Any other items? Yeah, Mr. Mayor, this is Councilmember Sarmiento. I just wanted to remind the City Attorney to report out anything she had to at a closed session.

Thank you. So we'll do that right in a moment here. Any other items? All right, seeing no other items, let me entertain a motion on the balance and then we'll come back. Is there a motion on the balance? So moved. Motion to approve the balance. Second by

Villegas. Roll call vote, please, Madam Clerk. Council Member Becerra? Yes. Council Member Iglesias? Yes. Council Member Peñalosa? Yes. Council Member Sarmiento? Yes. Council Member Solorio? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempiegas?

Yes.

Mayor Pulido?

Yes. And now let me go, Council Member Sarmiento's point is well taken. It should have actually come before this. But Madam City Attorney thinks the report out of closed session, please.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yes, Mayor. This is the City Attorney. We have two closed session discussion items this evening. The second one regarded a matter of real property negotiations. the city council discussed an unsolicited proposal which was submitted to the city regarding that potentially serving a notice of intent to the city of garden grove regarding the willowick property a motion was made to thank the the company and individuals that submitted the proposal but not to respond further that motion was approved on a 4-3 vote with council members Sarmiento, Solario, and Iglesias voting no. That's all the reportable action that I have.

Thank you for that. Madam Clerk, what is our next item? Would that be, which one, 22B would that be?

Yes, that's correct. And Mayor, before we proceed, I just want to make sure that you are noting on 11A for the second reading of the ordinance that was presented as a first reading on April 7 with your abstention, and I want to make sure that we're, are you wanting to also abstain for

that item for? Yeah, yeah, and I believe the city attorney, Madam Attorney, do you have any anything to add on that abstention? I know I talked to you earlier about it. Yes, I'd just like to

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

confirm that the official city minutes reflect that the mayor stated his reason for his abstentioned based on a potential conflict due to a potential income conflict, and that was stated on the record and is reflected in the minutes.

Yes, it has been revised.

Thank you for that. Yes. Thank you. Okay, so given that, who had 22B? Was that, who had that item?

David PenalozaItem —

I did, Mr. Mayor. Council Member Penaloza.

Please, go ahead. Thank you, sir.

David PenalozaItem —

I pulled 22B to award a purchase order in the amount of $462,000 and change to Los Angeles truck centers. The reason I pulled it, Madam City Manager, is because within the staff report, the purchase order wasn't attached. And I know that usually when we make these purchases for vehicles, whether it's Public Works or PD, wherever we're buying them, the purchase orders are attached that show the exact amount and breakdown of what was, not sure why it wasn't in this case. Is there a reason?

No sir, I'm not sure why there wasn't a purchase order attached to it. It wasn't listed as an attachment.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay, and that's why I pulled it because it wasn't consistent with what I've seen over the last years that purchase orders are attached to the staff report within the City Council agenda that's made public and this one wasn't. so that was my so is so there's no particular reason why it just no I'm

sorry I don't have a reason for that what we certainly can do is I mean if you want to continue the item or if we could post the PO after the fact so that the public could review it if you'd like that yeah if the PO could be posted by

David PenalozaItem —

tomorrow morning just so that we're certainly we can do that okay thank you

David PenalozaItem —

that's it Mr. Mayor

all right let's look at a motion and a second on that item then

David PenalozaItem —

I'll make a motion to approve Council Member Penaloza

second Council Member Becerra

roll call vote please

Council Member Becerra

yes

Council Member Iglesias no Council Member Penaloza

yes

Council Member Sarmiento

yes

Councilmember Soloria?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Viegas?

Yes.

Mayor Pulido?

Yes. I just noticed something. I want to request an extension from myself on item 25. 25B had passed a business with Mr. Rick Cagasoff and I see this is a lease agreement for some warehouse space. So, Madam Clerk, if you can please note an abstention for me for that reason on 25B.

Yes, and we won't speak on that item because that was one of the items that was pulled. So we'll get to voting on that some of the things.

Right, well when it comes up, I'll turn it over to Mayor Prochem.

Okay.

And please note my abstention. Now what are we, what is the next item?

Next item is 25D.

No, 25A.

I'm sorry, 25A. I apologize.

David PenalozaItem —

Yeah, it's 25A that was pulled by myself and Council Member Becerra.

Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So for this item, almost a year ago, back in May 6, 2019, the council approved the second ENA with Caribou. This was to allow for the negotiation of the development agreement. And I'm very reluctant to even approve another six months of negotiations just to get to a point where we have a development agreement. But given the circumstances in the world today, I'd be willing to agree to the six-month extension. But what I don't agree with right now is with section two of the draft second ENA, which would allow city staff and the developer to agree to two additional 90-day extensions

to keep the negotiations going on this development agreement and that could take negotiations out to may of 2021 with no shovels in the ground just more talking and negotiating and i think we really want to see some action on this i want to see caribou industries have a successful project at the site and I believe that Mike and his team can do it but I'd actually like to be alive to see it happen so with that I would ask that we approve the second ENA to provide the six more months until November 6th of this year but modify the language in section two to read quote the

negotiation period may only be extended by approval of the city council prior to October 23rd of 2020

David PenalozaItem —

Fine. So that's your motion? Yes. Mr. Mayor.

Is there a second?

David PenalozaItem —

I'll second that, Mr. Mayor. I'll second Council Member Becerra's motion, but just wanted to state that that was my reason for pulling it as well. In the negotiation agreement, we do have that six-month extension with an additional two 90-day extensions at the pleasure of the city manager and staff. Just wanted to, you know, to me, I want to see things get done. We've done these extensions before with Caribou Industries in regards to this project. I just feel that if we have those two extra 90-day extension options, it will give not just Caribou Industries but staff kind of that insurance to say,

David PenalozaItem —

well, you know, if things don't get done, at least we know that we could get those two guaranteed extensions. And I'm not comfortable with that because...

I would concur with you, Council Member. Let's keep pressure on and try to wrap it up. Good. If there are no more comments, let's do a roll call vote, please.

Council Member Becerra?

Yes.

Council Member Iglesias? Yes. Council Member Peñalosa?

Yes.

Council Member Sarmiento?

I actually do have a comment before I vote, and I just had a question for the City Manager. how close are we Madam City Manager to finalizing this and hopefully those two extra 90-day extensions were probably more as a matter of practice but from what I recall our conversation we were you were fairly close yes council

member thank you for the question we are confident we can get it done within the

six-month period very well thank you for that and with that all love vote yes

councilmember Solorio thank you I just a quick comment I'm supportive but would I would ask that our staff keep us updated on the progress of the negotiation and in particular how parking might be replaced or mitigated because my understanding, the parking that's currently there would be lost for a good chunk of time. And there are often times where it's very hard for people to park in the downtown. And so progress report should discuss that as well. With that, I am an aye. Those are just comments.

Mayor Proton-Viegas?

I'm a yes, and thank you very much, Madam City Manager, for clearing that up.

And Mayor Fulido?

I'm a strong yes, but I would ask, let's try to get it done real quick. We've been at this for a long time. I don't even think we should go out to six months. Let's try to surprise everybody and get it done quicker, if possible. I don't know what it would take to do that. but let's try to cut that in half possibly and we've been at this for a while this is not a new effort so hopefully with pressure it can get done quick so with that, the item passes what's the next item Madam Clerk?

25C

Do we have that one?

I pull that one, Council Member Iglesias

Go ahead, Council Member Iglesias

I just have a quick question for the city manager. This item is to adopt a side letter agreement with the Santa Ana Management Association. And it states that there's, under the staff report, it states that there's no fiscal impact. Yet I'm seeing some language that's saying that the individuals who are part-time are going to get 75%, I guess, allotted to their time, their sick pay accrual and their um i would say sick pay and vacation pay is that anything

different from where they were at before um no council member this this item before you is it's a clarification when we approved the mou we moved in a part-time classification and the mou didn't establish what the pay rate was for that part-time classification so we're bringing it back for your approval it's required to be approved by at the council level because CalPERS our pension provider requires every employee's rate of pay to be publicly adopted and posted so they're part-time employees that were in another bargaining group that with the last MOU were transferred into this bargaining

group but it failed to state what their rate of pay is so it's a correction on listing the rate of pay so there is no fiscal impact from this item okay so

So when they were under the other MOU, then it was the same benefits that they had then?

There is some slight variations between the two different bargaining groups. But for the pay, the pay rate is exactly the same rate that's paid to the full-time same classification. It's just prorated for the part-time hours.

Okay. So my question is, like you're saying, there's a slight change in classification. so is there like a 75% was that the same amount of accrual time that they were

getting in their other MOU I will have to defer if we have our HR director on the phone oh he's actually not on the phone he's behind me so it was exactly the same councilmember just good evening so then go ahead good evening this is

Stephen Pham. Thank you, ma'am. The city manager is correct. This position was classified in another MOU, and so we basically moved the position to the new MOU to be consistent with FLSA, which has designated the position as an exempt. So therefore, the real savings actually coming from the fact that we will no longer be paying these employees overtime. Whereas before, the employees belonged to another bargaining group, and they were able to draw overtime. But now by going into SAMA, which is an exempt classification, so they will no longer be earning overtime. But the pay rate and everything remain the same.

Okay. Thank you for the clarification, Stephen. Thank you.

Would you like to move that item, Council Member Iglesias?

I'll go ahead and move it.

Second from Villegas. Roll call vote, please.

Council Member Becerra?

Yes.

Council Member Iglesias? Yes. Council Member Peñalosa? Yes. Council Member Sarmiento?

Yes.

Council Member Solorio?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Temp-Viegas?

Yes.

Mayor Pulido?

Yes. Next item, Madam Clerk.

25D.

I'll turn it over to Mayor Pro Tem Villegas, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. 25D approve a three-year lease agreement with Rick Tagasoff for warehouse space in the amount of 187,200 for the police department. I believe it's to Councilmember Peñalosa. Thank you very much. Councilmember, it's all yours.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem. The reason I pulled this item tonight is because last summer when we had that discussion about the, I had an item on the agenda over just the crazy amount of illegal gambling casinos that we see in our city, cyber cafes. And my question to the police department and code enforcement was, why does it take so long for these places to get shut down? We report them. It goes on three, four months before we even see the place closed down and evicted. And one of the reasons was lack of storage space.

David PenalozaItem —

These machines that exist inside these cyber cafes are gambling machines. They're huge. They're the size of pool tables, just to put into perspective to whoever's listening. And so I'm very happy that this item is here. But I want to get reaffirmation from the police department, the city manager. Is this going to help us shut down these cyber cafes quicker? more efficiently is are we still going to see three four months after a complaint has been made whether it's from myself or a resident about a known cyber cafe that's obvious

David PenalozaItem —

to the public you know I need to hear it from our city manager our police chief that this is going to help us shut down these cyber cafes quicker than it has been in the last couple of years

Okay. Well, thank you, Council Member. I certainly can ask that having evidence storage space for those types of items is definitely a help for going after this type of criminal activity. But I'll ask the police chief to speak to how it's going to expedite the process of closing down those types of businesses.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you.

Chief Valentine.

Thank you, City Manager. Yes, thank you, City Manager. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can. Yes.

Hello? Okay, great. Thank you, Council Member Penelosa for the question. And yes, the simple answer is yes. Without the storage space, it's difficult, next to impossible, to seize those items and retain them for the period necessary for prosecution. Any delay at this point in terms of responding and expeditiously investigating for resolution is the background work that's got to be done. allegations specific but again without the storage space this was a huge hindrance to our ability to effectively address this issue so so it's very much

needed and it will directly help us facilitate those efforts across the city

David PenalozaItem —

thank you chief Valentin and and for that information and it's just important for for the residents to know for myself to know because you know for months I I didn't know the problem we were having with storage space within our department. And my questions were just, why are these things not being shut down? I mean, we know about them. They're there. They're a nuisance. They're filled with crime all night long. And they just remain open. So thank you for that. I just want to make sure that we let the public know of why these things linger on. They shouldn't, and it's unfortunate, but thank you for that.

Thank you. So is there a, Council Member Peñalosa, would you like to make a motion on that?

David PenalozaItem —

Yes, I'll make a motion to approve item 25D.

Is there a second?

David PenalozaItem —

Second.

Second by Sarmiento. Any other comments from Council Members?

If not, Madam Clerk?

Council Member Becerra?

Yep.

Council Member Iglesias?

Yes, I do have a question. If I may, for that one, the storage, it says police department. Is that funding coming from the police department or is it coming from the general fund or from other funds?

Chief Valentin, if you can answer the question, part of the city manager.

Yeah, it's coming from General Fund.

Okay. Okay, so I'll say yes, but for the future, Christine, and whoever sets the agenda, if you could put where the fund is coming from, so this will be something, you know, on the agenda itself, not like in the staff reports, but on the outside, because I know we usually do it for where the money is coming from. That would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Okay, Madam Clerk, you can continue.

And Council Member Iglesias, your vote? I said yes. Okay, Council Member Peñalosa?

David PenalozaItem —

Yes.

Council Member Sarmiento? Yes. Council Member Solorio?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tempiegas?

Yes.

And then the Mayor abstains?

Okay, we can bring the Mayor back online.

Yes, thank you, Mayor Pro Tempiegas. uh is the next item 25 i yes it is council member iglesias go ahead please okay so my question was

um pretty much the same thing i was going to ask because the states uh approve an amendment to the agreement with the santa fe building maintenance in the amount of 52 000 180 52 180 for enhanced covid related janitorial services for the police department so i'm wondering is it the police department the only department that's going to have this type of enhanced janitorial services or are we looking to seeing into like other departments to like maybe parks and recs or

other departments no council member we've already implemented enhanced sanitization throughout all of our city facilities this is the separate contract that does the jail and the police administrative building and they need to enhance theirs to cover the increase in the cost for their sanitization but we have already taken care of it in the

other facilities. Okay and then the same question for this one Christine would be I know it says police department but where is this funding coming from? The

funding is coming out of field operations. Okay so it's from the police department? it's from field operations which is primarily funded by the general fund but there may be an opportunity for some limited reimbursement for the cost okay and like you know like my request

for the other item to see if it's possible for futures like if we could put like where the um funding's coming from and the items on the on the agenda that would be great certainly can i clarify

council member glacius do you want it in the title is that what you were you're asking like sometimes we do the parentheses as to which fund yes okay got it thank you any other questions

let me just make a suggestion um and this is the city manager mainly but i believe this is eligible for reimbursement. It's not very much money. You know, the county just received $515 million to fight the coronavirus. We're in a big battle trying to get our fair share of that money. But in the interim, I'd love for us to submit this. I doubt that they could deny it. It's very directly a COVID-19 related expense and all the other related expenses

that we have. We ought to be reimbursed for all of that and a whole lot more. So with that,

David PenalozaItem —

if there's no more questions, roll call vote, please. Yeah, Mr. Mayor, this is Councilman Patelosa. Yeah, go ahead. I just wanted to state, Christine, that I'm okay with having the agenda with the information inside of the staff report as it already is to avoid just currently more work. I mean, it's in the staff report, so, but, and that's it.

Council Member Becerra yeah oh I'm sorry may I have who motioned and second for clarification I didn't catch that I don't I think Council Member

didn't he let his make a motion there was no motion I believe

would you like to motion yeah go ahead and move in

and I'll second Villegas Council Member Becerra yes

Councilmember Iglesias? Yes. Councilmember Peñalosa? Yes. Councilmember Sarmiento? Yes. Councilmember Soloria? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempe Vegas? Yes. Mayor Pulido? Yes. Motion carries 7-0.

I believe we now are on item 58. Is there any written communications you want to report or anybody wish to address it?

on that item? Yes we do, Mayor. We actually had 19 total comments submitted. 18 of them were general comments and one in favor.

Okay.

So with that, the item is before us. Who would like to address or start discussion? Mr. Mayor? Yes, Councilor Becerra, please.

uh thank you mr mayor um the fact that this item is on our agenda tonight in this way is really truly due to the dedication of the residents of san anna that stood up for their community before anybody tries to isolate this as an effort or a victory for just one neighborhood for just park santiago or just neighborhoods in one part of the city like the northern part let me remind you though that over 19 000 residents from across all parts of the city signed the referendum petitions in the opposition of the proposed project let the efforts that have led us to this moment serve as

a reminder that the power in santa anna is not in the hands of out-of-town special interests and developer money but rather the power in santa anna is in the hands of the people at times our city leaders do need to be reminded of that and most times that power is exercised during elections over the past few months though we saw a more proactive exercise of that power and it was a beautiful thing to witness and with that Mr. Mayor I would like to just jump right into the part that many have been waiting for and I'd like to make a motion to adopt a resolution

accepting the certificate as to verification of signatures from the Orange County Registrar of voters and the certificate of sufficiency from the clerk of the council and place an ordinance on first reading and authorized publication of title an ordinance of the city council of the city of santa anna california repealing ordinance number ns-2980 approving amendment application number 2018-10 rezoning the property located at 25 25 north main street from professional p to specific development number 93 AA number 2018-10 and adopting specific

development number 93 SD 93 for said property. I'll second Mr. Mayor Councilmember

Penaloza. Thank you Councilmember Penaloza. Councilman Penaloza is a seconder would you like to make comments? Say that again? Do you have a comment along with your motion to second? Yeah I mean I just absolutely just

David PenalozaItem —

wanted to thank the the you know the community and the residents of Santa Ana for really I mean they put in the work and they got this done and that was to me inspiring eye-opening and that's what you know government should be about this is you know your government and talking to the residents of Santa Ana and this is how things should be done you know if you don't like the decisions your elected leaders made then you go get signatures or you know vote them out and that's the beauty of democracy so I'm very thankful for you guys for all the hard work I'm happy to stand with you today and offer my support thank you for

that other comments from other council members yes this is councilmember

Iglesias yes go ahead please okay so I'm very I'm happy that we're here talking about this this ordinance coming before us and i'm very uh proud of the residents of santa anna that came together to you know to stand with each other i also want to thank staff for providing all the options for this project and you know the community coming together on this project it's just an amazing um thing that just you know happened before us i would also like to command the developer though for his efforts in trying to find a project that would benefit the

neighborhood and the city as a whole you know throughout this process mr mayor i have kept constant communication with both the developer and the residents who have supported this project and also those who did not support the project i just want to let you all know that on on february 29th i did commit to resent to resending my vote and gave my word to the santa ana resident janelle mclaughlin you may all know her i had mentioned to her that this project has taken a lot of emotions and time from everyone involved and although i still believe this project's a great

project and would be great for this location i you know the one thing that i did share with um janelle was i would not allow this to continue as it is very draining both physically for everyone and financially uh you know it was it was no secret that i would take a stand to do what is right for both the residents and the property owner and that's what i did and you know but i'm happy that we're here and that we're going to give it another try to see what we can do with this project i have been um having some conversations with our city attorney the city manager on the

options that we have to bring this process to an end so uh you know i was going to wait till this um this came to the agenda and i'm happy that it's here before us you know because i don't want to make it political. So I just wanted to, you know, focus on what's doing right for the city. And so thank you all for coming together more than anything. You know, this is the type of support that we need all over the city, not just here with, you know, with this project, but all over Santa Ana. There's a lot of things that are affecting us. And just the way the

community came together on this project, I would ask the community for us to come together when it comes to other things that really affect us as a whole also. So one thing that really is affecting us now is this whole homeless issue and how we have to stand together to make sure that we do what's best for the city of Santa Ana. So one question I do have for the city manager is after, you know, we're asking to see if we can do option number one, which I'm in support of. What's next? Does this mean that everything's off the table? What happens with the litigation that's happening?

Where are we with that, and how are we going to move forward? So if you could just answer those questions, because I know there were some questions, too, about the future of the building. Will it stand? Will it be demolished? Is that things that you can't answer right now?

I'll try my best, council members. So this is the introduction of an ordinance to repeal another ordinance, so it does require a second reading before there's any action taken. I'll defer to Sonia on any conversations about where the litigation stands. I do think that litigation would continue on with certain elements of it. In regards to the building, once the ordinance is repealed, if the landowner submitted for a demolition permit, I believe it would be approved.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

okay thank you and um so sonia yes um this is the attorney council member um there are two pending lawsuits at the moment one involves a sequel challenge um and the other involves a challenge to the referendum process itself so with respect to sequa if the project if there is a second reading and the project is fully rescinded, that CEQA challenge would become unnecessary. And I believe I talk with the plaintiff or the petitioner's attorney and is likely to be resolved. With respect to the referendum petition, it's possible that that litigation would continue forward.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

It would really be up to the developer at that point if the developer wanted to continue to challenge.

Okay. Okay. So then those are the questions that I have. And also I have a question on individuals that wanted to speak on this item. How were they able to do that? Because I'm getting some text that they're not able to, they were not able to comment if they wanted to.

So the only ways for the public, members of the public, to submit their comments is through email. And we have submitted that to all the council members and we have it posted on the website as well.

Okay, so they're not able to do it live then?

not by phone no it's just going to be the public hearing items and general public comment period so those items that are not on the agenda those are the two periods that were opening up the line for the public to call in okay so

somebody wanted to make a comment on this they could do it during public

comments then yes during the right yes okay okay thank you all right thank you

uh other comments mr mayor i have a question uh for the city attorney just for the benefit of that public because i think most of us on the council are fairly aware but can you speak to the legal questions that are still outstanding before uh the court about um the signatures gathering process and whether timelines were met i know there's different points of view and it's still court but you can you uh describe what those issues at hand are yes um so council member

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

we as i mentioned we have two lawsuits still pending the secret case and then also a challenge to the referendum um the challenge of the referendum focuses on a few key questions such as should the city clerk have accepted the referendum petition on february 24th when the 30 days ended on february 22nd another question that was asked is didn't the ordinance actually take effect on the 30th day which would have been february 22nd um thirdly was there any errors by the clerk or

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

the county registrar in accepting and counting the signatures based on the date that they were submitted and then finally does the council have authority to act because the lawsuit is pending earlier today i did submit for all of the council members an attorney client privilege memorandum in which each of these questions were addressed but i am pleased to say that our outside legal counsel um has opined that the city clerk did act correctly in accepting the petitions um and is has a ministerial duty to act this evening and presenting them to the council

thank you thank you for that madam city attorney i think it was uh strong and clear um any additional comments by council members yeah thank you mr mayor this is uh this is council member

sarmiento go ahead thank you um well listen i first want to start off because uh i know there's been a lot of communication and there's been a lot of deliberation on this and so I want to thank a lot of members of the community and the neighborhood and really people from all over the city who sent some very kind emails and I certainly appreciate that and I you know want to especially thank some of the neighbors who were very thoughtful and objective and neutral in speaking with me throughout this process and allowing me some time to reflect.

It's ironic, but this time that we've had at home sometimes gives you some moments for pause and you're able to reflect and have that luxury of time to sit back and consider things in detail. So I certainly want to thank them for that. And it wasn't easy. This process isn't a simple one. but I think we're at a moment where we can really recapture this conversation about that site, and I think it brings us back to another threshold or another phase where we can talk about what can be, and that's maybe where we need to start when we address any applications or proposals,

is let's have those conceptual conversations first before we delve in and get things worked up and then bring it for the consideration of the council when they're all fully baked. I think what we need to do is almost reverse engineer how this process is supposed to work, which is to first have that conversation with those impacted immediately and then move on from there. And I think the council, especially those members whose ward these applications and proposals reside in, need to take some leadership because I always try to give deference to members of the council

who are dealing with issues or matters within their jurisdiction. So I would just simply say let's use this as a learning experience so when we do address other sensitive and controversial matters that there may be a lot of discussion, let's alert our staff to make sure that they bring those before us as soon as possible. and we have those conversations with ourselves, our staff, and neighbors that are affected. You know, I was on the council when we adopted the Sunshine Ordinance and the premise and the spirit behind that was a solid one, was to do things early on and to do it in the transparency of daylight

and make sure everybody understood what we were doing, including our residents. And unfortunately, it seems to have become more of a check-the-box process, and that's something that doesn't help. It leads us to moments where we have a lot of very difficult moments. There's tension. There's an adversarial setting when this could be a really fluid process. So I hope that we learn from this experience. and moving forward, let's do things as we intended them to be when we adopted the Sunshine Ordinance,

which was completely in the daylight, and to make sure that everybody is put on notice very early. So if there are any things that we need to adjust, we do those early on. And we also give our applicants and our folks who want to do business with the city plenty of notice in advance to say you know there just doesn't seem to be support because I hate misleading people no matter who they are whether they're residents or whether they're folks that want to do work with the city that's just not I don't think that's a an intelligent thoughtful or smart way to do things so

those are my comments I know that we're going to be going into another phase and so I look forward to engaging with a lot of folks who communicated to me and I I look forward to having that second phase of the discussion of what can be. But with those comments, I am supportive of item number one, and I am supportive of option number one on the second item under this matter. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a comment.

Go ahead, Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So to the residents of Santa Ana who are hearing this, months ago. I remember being here in the council chambers and I was saying that I was very proud of all of you for putting up a good fight trying to get this turned around. And I remember a woman yelled out, we're not done yet. And boy, were you right. You're not done yet. You got all the signatures, you stayed committed, you kept your eye on the ball, you stayed strong, and today I say

I'm very proud of you again, but now with this victory in sight. So thank you to all who collected signatures and went out and walked, and you were out there with your heart in your hand trying to get this done. So I'm very proud of you, and thank you very much for staying the course.

Thank you. Additional comments? Yes, Mr. Mayor. I'd like to speak to everyone.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You know, some comments were made about kind of where we've been on the project and where we might go. I think most of you know that this is a project that most of our, most of the council members currently on the dais inherited from the prior council. I think from the prior council, Councilmember Sarmiento was there who I think most of the time then and now has been supportive until recently. I think Mr. Mayor has generally been in opposition throughout. I think the prior council members and staff recruited the developer to look at that

property and I totally agree that there should have been more discussion with the neighborhoods before getting so involved. When I was elected for this term, this was one of the bigger issues. And I knew there was still a very big divide between the developer and the neighborhood. And I made a motion and supported the idea of a year for it to go back to the planning staff and planning commission and the developer to work with the neighborhood more closely.

The project got cut in half both in terms of units and related traffic. They also, towards the end, created a very innovative partnership with the Discovery Science Center that would have made it better for them and safer for the kids. And I know whether or not this project continues to move forward somehow, that that still would be an option for the developer and the community in the Discovery Science Center. and I would encourage that, but for the reasons that the city attorney mentioned,

there are still legal questions before the court about the petitions, I'm going to respectfully this time abstain from this item and hopefully these legal questions will be resolved before

the ordinance comes back thank you mr mayor yes go ahead councilman and then i'll make a comment

council member abecerra go ahead thank you mr mayor i've got two questions for sonia i initially start off with one but now i've been provoked into a second one so the first one i had was just for clarification purposes the motion that i put forward on the table um there's no there's been no action by the courts that would preclude us from being able to take this action tonight in other words there's been no judicial relief obtained by uh the party suing us and no court

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

order in joining the city from doing anything is that correct correct um the there was attempt to obtain a temporary restraining order which was denied by the court and um there was a hearing date on the overall case but that has been postponed and in our opinion and in the opinion of our outside legal counsel there's no legal restrictions to you taking action this evening

thank you thank you madam city attorney my second last question is unless there's a financial um conflict is there any reason that anybody i would say on the dice let's just say on the call from the council should be abstaining from this vote

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

um there's no as i understand um the stated um abstention there's no legal reason why one would abstain and council members are always encouraged um to to take an action on a vote but i think that we do have a practice at the city of the of some people abstaining on a matter when they feel that they personally don't have enough information or if they have a personal belief that something is

restricting them from acting well but but i mean a practice i'm saying during a practice doesn't make it correct i mean i mean i i could you know if i if i do something wrong that doesn't make it right and the thing that everybody should ordain and allow to continue so i think in this point here and mr may i just ask that uh we have every member of this council take a vote on the motion unless they have a financial or other lawful reason not to take that vote.

David PenalozaItem —

I agree with that, Mr. Mayor. This is Council Member Penaloza. It's important that we all do the duty we were elected to do and took an oath to do. If we don't have any financial investments or legal reason of why we have to abstain, I would like for all of us to take a vote.

Well, look, we can request that. ultimately it's up to each one of us and our conscience and how we want to handle it but i agree that it is you know best to you know state of reason as clear as possible councilor salario i don't know if you want to say anything addition to what you've said if so i'd like to offer you that opportunity but if not then i'll make comment and then i'll call for the vote mr mr mayor you already have okay thank you yeah i hear the council member is allowed

to mayor pro tembe is here and i understand the council members are allowed to have his opinion and i just wish you would have had that opinion a while back thank you all right let me make uh

some comment um and then i'll go ahead and ask my comments i think we've all spoken and i'll ask for a question um i just want to thank a whole lot of residents that worked incredibly hard um dale i know you were you know the the leader in many ways but i also know that you are not alone uh not only your wife and and and neighbors but neighbors from throughout the city um residents You know, they raised money to get additional signatures.

I know at times you were harassed when you were out there getting signatures. You were threatened. It was an amazing, amazing effort like the one doesn't see in decades. But here, everybody came together, worked extremely hard, and now, you know, others have been convinced after your position.

And so I want to, you know, condemn, I commend you for your efforts and just, you know, state that only you know how hard you worked. truly, but I know from what I was able to watch and to participate and to assist in, I just saw your very, very deep commitment. And just a couple stories. I know that there's an older gentleman that when he knew money was needed,

I think he got in a car and drove across town and came in and gave a check and inspired a lot of other people to follow suit. I also know that, you know, you prepared yourself as much as you could because a lot of, you know, people with a lot of experience and expertise just didn't give you a chance in the world. It's like, no way. It's too many signatures. It's too difficult. It's too big. It's too long. It's too short a period. Yet you prevailed. So with that, it is now my honor to say, Madam Clerk, can you take the vote, please?

Councilmember Becerra?

Yes.

Councilmember Iglesias?

Councilmember Iglesias?

Sorry, you had to unmute. Yes.

Councilmember Peñalosa?

David PenalozaItem —

Yes.

Councilmember Sarmiento?

Yes.

Council Member Solorio?

Not voting.

I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. Could you repeat that?

I'm not voting for the reason stated before. Thank you.

Mayor Potem-Viegas?

Yes.

Mayor Pulido?

A strong yes.

Okay, 6-1. Motion carries. and now we're at 55A.

Okay. Does anybody wish to say anything relative to citing 55A?

This is Council Member I just have a question for the if I may. Go ahead. Okay. For the city manager what exactly are we doing with this item which says adopt a resolution to approve the relocation plan for the Legacy Square project at 609 North Spurgeon Street?

Certainly, Council Members. So the item before you is just to adopt a resolution to approve the relocation plan, and it's the relocation plan of the developer. So National Corps is doing an affordable housing project, and under California law, if they're doing a project that entails the relocation of anybody, They have to file a relocation plan with the local jurisdiction. So we're not relocating anybody. We're just approving what this developer's relocation plan is as required by law.

And this is just like for the churches that were, I guess, were congregating at that site, right? Because this is the one on Spurgeon by the United Methodist Church.

So on the property, it's the Santa Ana United Methodist Church, and they had two tenants that were operating in there, Iglesias Avivimiento and La Gran Coseca Church. So those are the two tenants that would require relocation.

Okay, but that money is coming from them, not the city.

Yeah, the burden for the relocation expense is with the developer, not the city. Okay, thank you.

Additional questions or comments? If not, I'd entertain a motion.

David PenalozaItem —

Motion to approve. I'll second. Council Member Penaloza. Roll call vote.

Council Member Becerra.

David PenalozaItem —

Yes.

Council Member Iglesias.

Yes.

Council Member Penaloza. Yes. Council Member Sarmiento. Council Member Solorio.

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Viegas?

Yes.

Mayor Pulido?

Yes.

6-0, motion carries.

And we're at 55B.

Next item, Madam Clerk.

55B, as in boy.

Okay, this is to adopt a resolution to provide a continuation of a partially paid temporary military leave of absence for city employees. called act of duty. I would entertain a motion.

Viegas, motion to approve. All second. Council Member Penaloza.

Any comments?

If not, roll call vote, Madam Clerk.

Council Member Becerra?

Yes.

Council Member Iglesias?

Yes.

Council Member Peñalosa? Yes. Council Member Sarmiento is absent. Council Member Solorio?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tempiegas?

Yes.

And Mayor Pulido?

Yes.

Item 55C is the next item. Mr. Mayor? Resolution for the grant application.

Mr. Mayor? Yes. Council Member Becerra, just a point of clarification, if we could, that I know that the city clerk mentioned that item 50A was a 6-1, but actually it was a unanimous vote of support 6-0 with one member abstaining.

Yes, that's correct. That is correct. Is that the way you recorded it, Madam Clerk?

Yes, I have that recorded that way. I may not have said it that way, but I have it recorded that way.

Thank you.

55C?

Mayor Pulido, are you there?

Yeah, 65C. It's the middle of a grant application for the State Coastal Conservancy. Renovation of the 17th Street Triangle Park. An arrest stop in the amount of $544,000. I would entertain the motion.

Second by Villegas.

Any questions? If not, I'll ask for a roll call vote. Roll call vote.

Council Member Becerra?

Yes.

Council Member Iglesias?

Yes.

Council Member Peñalosa? Yes. Council Member Sarmiento?

Oh, I'm sorry, 55C, the grant application to the state court. Right.

Yes.

Councilmember Soloria?

Yes.

Mayor Potem-Viegas?

Yes.

Mayor Pulido?

Yes. Item 55, Diaz and David. There's a resolution declaring city-owned properties acquired for various roadway improvement projects as surplus land directing city manager to comply with requirements of California law. Is there a motion on this item?

David PenalozaItem —

So moved. I'll second the item.

Madam Clerk, can you please, for the record, just state the maker of the motion a second? I know who they are, but just for the record.

Council Member Sarmiento motioned and seconded by Council Member Peñalosa.

Yes. Now roll call vote.

Council Member Becerra?

Yes.

Council Member Iglesias? Yes. Council Member Peñalosa? Yes. Council Member Sarmiento?

Yes.

Council Member Solorio?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem?

Yes.

Mayor Pulido?

Yes.

Motion carries 7-0. 55.

item 55E. This is a motion adopting a resolution authorizing grant funding request under measure M2. It's basically for city streets and it's a potential application of, I believe, $13.5 million in new revenue. Is there a motion?

Motion to approve. Viegas. Second by Peñalosa.

Thank you. Any comment, if not, I'll ask for a vote.

David PenalozaItem —

Mr. Mayor, I just would like to ask the city manager or the chief financial officer, director of finance, if you guys could explain just for the public's sake just why this is here and kind of the whole background behind it. Brief little, as briefly as you can, please.

certainly council members so the city of Santa Ana is eligible for a formula share of m2 dollars as well as able to participate in the competitive grant process as most people are aware we did have an audit performed by OCTA auditors and they found that some of our overhead allocations were disallowed which they made us ineligible to participate in both of these types of programs and so So we were subject to another year audit of 100% test work. They audited everything that we had. We passed that. We are now unsuspended. We're back in the program. And the account will be released for the dollars that we'll hold.

And for this upcoming, we are able to participate in attempting to get the grant money on a competitive basis, as well as receive our fair share based on the formula.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Madam City Manager. So with the audit that was done, our financial audit, we came out with 100% accuracy, correct?

Yes. Part of the request from the OCTA board chair was to do a 100% audit. And as a former auditor, I can tell you that you usually do sampling, but we were subjected to and we did pass. We do have to undergo a second year audit under those same parameters.

David PenalozaItem —

That's good. I just want to thank Ms. Catherine, our financial director, finance director, and our city manager for your leadership on this and for getting us to 100%. Thank you.

Any additional comment?

Yes, Mr. Mayor. This is Council Member Sarmiento.

Go ahead, Sarmiento. Council Member Sarmiento.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And you probably know this intimately more in detail than we do, But I want to thank staff and everybody who helped address this 100% audit, which is, in my opinion, completely irregular and something that is rarely done. In my opinion, it was done as a punitive measure by the supervisor in District 1 to be adamantly more harsh with Santa Ana than he has with other jurisdictions. And this was really unwarranted.

So to the extent that this is not only having to be done by our staff and talking about how precious and valuable staff time is, we not only had to do it once, but we're going to have to do it again. So let us all remember these acts of really irresponsibility on behalf of our friends across the street. and I say that obviously tongue-in-cheek, but that was not a good way to behave and that was not a good way to expend our staff time, especially now that we're going to be finding ourselves having to do this once more. I just, again, hats off to staff. I certainly wish we could have avoided it.

I hope you did what you could, Mr. Mayor, to try to prevent that from happening at the Transit Authority, but certainly I think hopefully our residents know how appalling it is to have to deal with this with this nonsense so those are my comments

i've got comments as well but additional comment mr mayor council member becerra here

go ahead thank you mr mayor i want to join in the course of my colleagues and also thank our staff for getting us through this and uh thank you council member sarmiento for your comments in regards to our friends across the street because it's really disappointing that that was happening especially it's one thing if it came from another entity that was trying to take the money away from us to send it somewhere else but I mean it was really just you know kind of shooting yourself in the foot so to speak when you're you know going after cities within your jurisdiction so

I was disappointing but I think we are blessed here in Santa Ana to have some great staff that we're able to get through this audit and thank you mr mayor for what you're doing for us over at OCTA as well thank you

mayor you still there

I think he has called dropped. Mayor Patel.

Yes, Mayor's call dropped, so if you wouldn't mind.

We have a motion. Yes, we're at 55E. We still have a...

55E.

Yes, we have a motion and a second.

We have a motion and a second. So hopefully we'll get the mayor back on line. And Madam Clerk, can you do a roll call, please?

Mr. Mayor Pro Tem. Yes, sir. Given that the mayor's line dropped, and I know he had said he had a comment on this, do you want to go to the next item and maybe revisit this once he's back on with us so he can comment?

That's a great idea. I think we will do that. After all, the mayor is on the board, I believe. We're going to take a quick pause. we'll move over to which is the next item 65a 65a is the reports receiving file updated revenue estimates related to covet 19 from the hiring freeze to all county i mean all city positions approve the appropriation adjustment to transfer monies from the refuse fund to the general fund direct staff prepare draft budget for the fiscal year of 2020 to 21 utilizing one-time funding

provide preliminary budget direction and direct staff to provide feasibility analysis and related to the issuance of a pension obligation. So do we have anyone? Is there a presentation? Madam City

Manager? Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. This item is to provide you with our most recent revenue updates and seek direction as we endeavor to adjust the current year budget to meet our new revenue projections and to prepare our next fiscal year's proposed budget. While we have certainly been very busy facing the multitude of challenges brought on by the pandemic, we recognize that the fiscal challenges are really just beginning and will have impacts beyond the life of the pandemic. We are looking for guidance at taking necessary steps to ensure that we adjust the organization's

spending to match the decline in our tax revenues, and I'm very confident that under your leadership we will successfully manage our way through this and emerge even stronger. I will now turn it over to Finance Director Catherine Downs, and she has a presentation.

Thank you, Madam City Manager, and thank you, Mayor Pro Tem and City Council. The purpose of this report tonight is to give you a preliminary look at the COVID impact on our city finances. we'd also like to obtain some preliminary direction from you for our next budget process the recommended actions tonight include receiving and filing our latest revenue estimates our situation is constantly changing and this is the best information that we have so far affirming the hiring freeze there were some recent exceptions made for the police department specifically

for dispatch and we'd like you to approve the six point six million dollar transfer of general fund money out of the solid waste fund so over the last ten years franchise fees which are general fund revenue have been deposited into the solid waste fund the subsequent transfers to the general fund were less than the franchise fee revenue received therefore the solid waste fund has accumulated money that should have been deposited into the general fund in the first place number four we'd like direct we'd like to see if you would like to

direct staff to include use of our three million dollar economic uncertainty reserve for the draft budget if it's deemed necessary and then finally we'd like you to see if you'd want to direct us to return with a pension obligation bond feasibility analysis.

I'm back, Mayor Potem.

I don't know what happened, but somehow I disconnected. But I'm back.

Thank you very much. We're still in the middle of the presentation. Is that correct, Ms. Downs? Yes. But go ahead, sir. It's all yours.

Please continue, Madam City Manager.

Thank you. And this is Catherine Downs, the Finance Director. On this slide here in front of you, we expect that the stay-at-home order will affect nearly half of our general fund revenue, most notably including sales tax, business license tax, hotel visitors tax, and fee revenues. We're expecting overall general fund revenue decreases of $12.35 million in the current year and $15.1 million for the next fiscal year. these estimates will change as we learn more we expect to provide updated to

information to the City Council in May based on the decrease in property assessments during the Great Recession in 2008 2009 we expect property tax may decrease by about 15 million dollars next the the following fiscal year or 14 months from now just to be clear the activity for the upcoming property assessments for this next fiscal year have largely occurred prior to coronavirus due to the loss of jobs and change of habits we do not expect a quick recovery after these revenue losses some of our other potential

revenue impacts include gas tax the League of California cities provided a preliminary estimate of the gas tax decreasing by 20 to 30 percent this year that would be the equivalent of three to four million dollars for Santa Ana the league plans to publish updated estimates after the governor publishes his May revision to the proposed state budget we do have an accumulated fund balance of 14 million dollars in the gas tax fund OCTA has provided a preliminary estimate that our measure M2 revenue may decrease by 1.3 million this

would be the local fair share portion which may result in project delays we are expecting additional state and federal money totaling at least six point five million dollars at this point and some of it has actually already been received however this revenue is limited to COVID related costs not already budgeted it is the revenue at this point is not intended to make up for our revenue losses here we provide a summary of our preliminary strategies for balancing the budget for the current fiscal year we're proposing to use the six point six million of general fund money that was accumulated in the other

fund as well as high hiring freeze to offset revenue losses for next fiscal year we expect to propose a combination of strategies the City Council may consider directing us to look for potential concessions from labor groups or and or pursue an issuance of pension obligation bonds one of the recommended actions is to affirm the hiring freeze that we that was already put in place the general fund vacancy rate is close to 10% if we don't fill those vacancies we may expect current year savings of seven million dollars and annualized

savings of 8.6 million again there was a recent minor exception made for police dispatchers roughly three-quarters or 300 of our part-time employees are currently not working the summary here includes the updated revenue estimates and the assumption that we offset revenue losses with the hiring freeze and transfer general fund money out of the other fund to maintain the estimated ending fund balance of 67 million dollars based on City Council policy the

operating reserve provides for ongoing cash flow needs and is maintained at 16.67 percent of annual general fund revenue that's equivalent to two months of operating budget the economic uncertainty reserve is to offset any major variations in tax receipts and has been maintained at 1% of general annual general fund revenue based upon the expected revenue loss for next fiscal year we may need to use both the available balance of 13 million and the economic uncertainty reserve of 3 million to preserve service levels the

unfunded pension liability is a debt already on the city's balance sheet the payments on the debt continue to grow each year recent CalPERS investment losses will affect the fiscal year 2223 payment which is 26 months from now we may be able to refinance the debt with a lower interest rate CalPERS charges us seven percent on this unfunded liability we have an analysis suggesting we could save as much as seven million dollars per year if we were to proceed with

issuing pension obligation bonds to refinance the under unfunded liability we would use the debt proceeds to make strategically targeted payments to CalPERS the unfunded pension liability has many layers and you can choose to pay specific layers that give you the biggest bang for the buck there are risks associated with pension obligation bonds after the bonds are issued and the proceeds are sent to CalPERS they may suffer additional investment losses issuing bonds does not pay off the pension liability it shifts the liability from one bucket to another on the balance sheet liability both the

same going forward if CalPERS assumptions for investment earnings are not met the pension liability will continue to grow if the City Council directs us to we can bring back a feasibility analysis which would be just the first step to see if it's even feasible based upon current market instability we should not issue bonds until the market settles down that's my recommendation so that concludes the prepared presentation thank you for allowing me to make it we're ready to answer any additional questions or any questions and we

welcome any additional direction that you may have for us at this time council members any comments

or questions yes mr mayor this is a council member sarmiento thank you go ahead please go ahead thank you and i want to thank staff and our finance director for presenting this i know that this is a snapshot of this moment in time. That doesn't mean that these are static numbers, nor will these change. So I think that this is obviously very important for us to be looking at, you know, periodically, and obviously right now on the eve of starting our conversations about the budget. But, you know, this is certainly a sobering look of what none of us expected at the beginning of the year.

I thought my outlook was certainly optimistic, and things seemed to be trending in a really, really positive way. It looked like we had a good handle on where we were going. Unfortunately, this happened, and we're all having to reconsider and rethink some things. I've been down this road before when we went through the recession in 2008 and 2009, and it wasn't fun. You remember that, Mr. Mayor, as well. we were meeting every week because it was similar to this it was just performing triage and trying to make sure that we stayed afloat and we try to protect as many of our members of the city family as we possibly could so I

understand that we're trying to ensure that you know none of this goes sideways on us but one question I had and maybe this is for you madam city attorney or for the city manager and staff. Looking at item number three, which is the appropriation adjustment of $6.6 million to the general fund from the refuse enterprise or the trash fund, for lack of a better term, I know that we had in the past when we've done any transfers from these funding sources to the general fund, we usually supported it or buttressed it with an analysis from a third-party independent consultant

to say no 218 violations, this is all fine, and we kind of hung our hat on that. Do we, and I know this is, again, obviously, the immediacy of everything may not allow, but do we have anything like that, or how confident do you feel that we're in compliance with Prop 218?

I feel very compliant. I'm sorry, City Attorney, go ahead.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

um so uh council member just yes you have a very good memory um and an understanding of proposition 218 um in normal circumstances without um a set of findings uh you cannot move money from an enterprise fund into the general fund um there are exceptions for that but my understanding and i'll let our staff address it is that there were some monies left in the enterprise fund that should have been transferred um i do have a concern that our auditors did not discover that or perhaps our auditors did discover it and former personnel did not address the issue but um if the city council

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

can find based on the staff representations that it truly is franchise money that got stuck in that fund and wasn't properly transferred we can document that and i believe staff does have

some comments to address it yes we do actually have documentation this was money that should have never been deposited into the solid waste fund in the first place so this is really an error correction it's something that evolved over time and because it is over a long time period and we do have it well documented it fell below the materiality threshold which is part of which may address part of the city attorney's concerned about why the auditors didn't find this. So as that money was coming in, transfers of lesser amounts were being

made, and it was just that incremental difference between the two that just accumulated over time. And it actually took us quite a while to unravel all this. We've been working on it for about a

year now. Well, again, I just want to reiterate what I said. Thank you to staff for combing through things, I know you're going through things a lot more carefully because we have to these days. So it's fortuity, I guess, and maybe the sloppiness of times before you all led to this. But in the end, I think it inures to our benefit right now. Just two more questions. On the reserve fund, where does that bring us on the threshold? I know that we had set our

reserves originally at 20% then we reduce it down to I think 17% are are we still within that because I think we had two funds right there was the reserve fund and then there was the economic uncertainty fund which was almost a you know a joint fund which one are we talking about I guess

on this one right the the operating reserve and the economic uncertainty reserve are actually two different buckets of the same fund balance and so the general fund balance includes both reserve amounts and some additional money and so that operating reserve is being maintained at 16.67 percent which is in compliance with the City Council policy that's 51.7 million then the economic uncertainty reserve the City Council policy says to maintain 1% to 10% we have been maintaining the

1%, which is a little over $3 million. And in addition to that, we have, so that only adds up to close to $55 million, and we actually have an expected ending fund balance of $67 million, and some change. And so that leaves us $13 million of available fund balance above and beyond those two reserve buckets. That $13 million, if we were to transfer this $6.6 million over to take care of that error correction, that $13 million would increase up to $19.6 million.

Thank you for that. And just my final comment is that, you know, given where we are and how uncertain times are, it's good to know that we have a reserve fund and we have monies that we can draw from. because I recall during the recession, and Mr. Mayor, you'll recall this, our operating budget went as low as $3 million. I mean, that was a very, very scary moment back when we hit that low because there was no reserve fund. There was no policy in effect, and I believe that was the council that Councilman Solorio served on, and we inherited that thin, skeletal budget. So, look, we corrected it.

It was very painful, but we sent into effect a policy that in the event any other unforeseen catastrophe like this one occurs, we would have some monies to draw on. And we called it a rainy day fund. And that's what most families do. When things happen, they set aside money because we never know what could happen, whether it's an illness, whether it's unemployment, and for us, whether it's a pandemic. so I am you know very proud that we took those steps back then because at least now these are painful decisions we're making but we have something to lean on

so with that I just want to thank staff for presenting this to us mr. mayor I

also have some comments thank you I just wanted to thank my colleague

David PenalozaItem —

council members her manto with some of the same questions that I had in regards option number three so thank you staff and madam city attorney for clarifying the that we are you know okay legally the transfer you know money from the refuse enterprise fund to the general fund that was my concern from the beginning and as well as the no that was it actually was the the only question I ahead so i'm happy that council members are me into ask that so thank you thank you additional

comments mr mayor yes go ahead councillor de sarah thank you mr mayor uh i too want to thank staff and uh not to sound like i want to parrot what the other uh members are saying but i have the same question regarding the uh refuse fund but uh thank you staff for answering that and um i don't envy your task today and uh times ahead where we've got to figure out how we're going to navigate through this pandemic crisis but um i feel good knowing that you guys are at the helm as far as

staff side and uh thank you again thank you additional comments mr mayor i'd like to speak

go ahead and then thank you mr mayor uh just a few things uh yes also glad that the sanitation fee question got asked and answered uh three other points uh regarding the the pension stabilization fund i think it's also important to note amongst ourselves and for the public that we were looking at this option uh previously i know our city manager uh probably has mentioned uh this concept to you in the previous weeks. And it does look like that's an emerging best practice and really best summarized by it's, you know,

redoing debt but at a lower cost. And I think it at least merits a feasibility analysis to see what that would mean for us because it would save us money but also it would keep a pension stable for employees currently in the future. So I think that's great. with respect to the hiring freeze uh very supportive of that and from the very beginning i thought that our city and others uh should do that but i think it needs to be a smart hiring freeze and that there are some situations where our city manager needs to continue to have discretion you know we have uh some positions for example in the in the jail that given

contractual arrangements arrangements that we have that we got to have uh certain staffing levels also in dispatch and public safety there may be some that are very critical that do need to be filled as well as we finally you know got on a good pace to hire and you know we always have a continuous range of retirement so i would not like us to see completely stop our police officer and dispatcher efforts wouldn't like to see him completely stopped but i do realize it's important have something city-wide but with some discretion and then finally uh i do think that staff has done

a very good job uh putting an initial snapshot together what our finances today and in the future are and as we continue to have them look at finances as well as us ourselves i think it's also important to go back and look at measure x uh to see how residents uh thought we were going to that spend those dollars uh many of you might remember that last year i really felt like uh there was a big disconnect with what we told the voters the money was going to be spent on and what we ultimately ended up spending on which was largely operational not that that was uh uh

inappropriate but i think uh uh you know there was a call for action really regarding homelessness reducing 911 response times and and a few other things so we should largely have a workflow based budget but hopefully we could keep in mind that measure x dollars because uh there's a lot of people that are really feeling that pinch right now and i know that we get questions still about whether that rate is still appropriate or not and i think at the minimum we can spend the money wisely thank you mr mayor thank you additional comments

councilman iglesias did you have comments yes yes thank you please go ahead okay so i have a

a few comments and actually okay we wouldn't be in this mess if we would not approve that 25 million dollar raise to the to the police that's all you know it's interesting that we have 20 27 million dollars that were deficit and it's 25 million that we could have waited to see what we were at and like councilmember Sarmiento said you know that rainy fund rainy fund that we should be having rain day funds that we should be having like we do in our homes And that's one thing that I've always asked our city staff and also my colleagues to always look at.

So it's a shame that we're even looking at this right now because we could have avoided this. You know, but I want my question is to to Catherine or to the city attorney is the number three, where there's a proven appropriation adjustment for the refused enterprise fund to the general fund. So these are fees that are collected from residents, correct?

The franchise fee is actually charged to the state, the solid waste hauler. And the solid waste hauler factors that when they are requesting the fees to be set.

But these are fees paid by the residents?

Ultimately, yes. Yes, okay.

So instead, my recommendation would be instead of putting it in the general fund, because we don't know where the general fund allocates, you know, we just put it wherever. This is the time that we should be looking out for our residents. We should just be giving that money back to our residents, you know, especially those. I know many of my colleagues didn't agree when I was talking about Measure X last time, and they criticized me. But this is the time we have $6 million and we could give back to our residents in form of relief for their rent.

We could use this money for something else other than sending it back to the general fund. Because when it goes into the general fund, it kind of goes into a black hole. And you don't even know how we're appropriating it. So I have an issue with that. and I just feel it's not right and it's not very transparent on the things that we're doing with with the residence money and also you talked about the pension and you're talking about a bond and one thing is and it's troubling to see that we have a 600 and let me see you your numbers here

for the $681 million.

And it seems like it's just growing and growing. And the reason it's growing, just for the public will know, is because every time we give a raise and we give benefits to our staff, that always is going to increase every year. So there's no way of stopping it unless we do something in trying to see how we can renegotiate contracts with our labor agreement. Is that something that is an option that we could do? Because I feel it's like, you know, we're just taxing our residents to death. We're just getting them just to pay for maintaining status quo,

and it seems like we're not getting ourselves out of the hole unless we really address the elephant in the room, which is these pensions that are killing us. They're going to bankrupt us. So I know we have a fund, you know, an ending balance, you know, of reserves. But, you know, we should be paying more into CalPERS. But the thing is, we're never going to get out of this hole unless we start looking seriously on what we're approving as a council when it comes to raises. So is that something that we can look at, Madam City Manager?

Certainly, Councilmember. And just to make a couple of clarifications. So the Refuge Fund is an enterprise fund. And what an enterprise fund is, it's a self-contained business operation that provides a service and recoups from the ratepayers the cost of providing that service. A franchise fee is a general revenue for local governments to recoup when they have an exclusive provider agreement that is utilizing our streets to make a profit. So the franchise fee is a general fund revenue, and the reason that it accumulated in that other fund was an error. Over 10 years, the right amount was not transferred to the general fund.

So just a clarification on that. On the concession, we certainly put that up on a slide. That would be one area that I would definitely look to before we were to lay off individuals. I would go to our largest full-time groups and see if we can negotiate a concession. That would be something that would be subject to good faith negotiations with them and their agreement. And then on the pension, $681 million, it is a scary number, and it is a long-term ongoing number, not like a credit card payment.

But with the idea of refinancing it, because it's already a liability on our books, what it will help us achieve is it can help us control our expenditures in future years. So we look at the five-year horizon, we look at the ten-year horizon, and when you look out there, because of CalPERS adjustments to recouping payment for the pension, they are slowly, well, we thought at first they were going to slowly increase it, but instead it's a much steeper curve of increasing it. by refinancing a portion of that obligation, we can control what our debt service is in future years

and cause us to have more stability over the next 5 to 10 years. But those are all things to look into, and I hope I answered. I know it was a three-part question that you had, so hopefully I answered it.

Yeah, I still, you know, just one more clarification for the Refused Enterprise Fund. And yeah, I know you're stating it's for them, I guess, for the provider to use our streets, but ultimately it's the residents who are paying for this. So me, I'm just not comfortable in putting that into the general fund because that just goes, like I said, into a black hole and really don't have any place that we are going to allocate it. And I would, for the feasibility analysis for the pension obligation bond, The bonds, where is that money going to come from?

Is it going to be from the general fund money? Is it just we could only pay for how many years are we financing this?

And then also this is something that we could also renegotiate. Is this something that we can negotiate with either the labor agreements on what our pension liability is as a city?

No, that would not be something that you could renegotiate with the unions. It's a past unfended piece of a pension that's already earned. And I certainly, Sonia can weigh in on this since I'm not an attorney, but you can't take that away from the individuals that earned that pension. As far as the other questions on the pension, that's one of the reasons why we want to do a feasibility study. We want to see, you know, what's the best amount to refinance? What is the potential savings? What would it lower down our costs? Because right now we're making those contributions to CalPERS.

So that's why we're really recommending that you allow us to proceed with the feasibility study, and it will answer those questions, plus provide us with a whole lot more information.

Okay. Thank you, Ricky.

Any other questions? If not, I've got some thoughts and questions.

David PenalozaItem —

Mr. Mayor, I have some comments. This is Councilman Penaloza.

Please go ahead, Councilman Bann. Let's go ahead.

David PenalozaItem —

I just wanted to ask some questions to the city manager just to clarify and correct any false narrative that might be out there in regards to the refuse fund. So, I mean, the waste management is a private business, correct?

Correct, sir.

David PenalozaItem —

And as a private business, they charge the residents of Santa Ana to haul away our trash, correct?

Correct.

David PenalozaItem —

So as a private business, they're paying us, the city of Santa Ana, a franchise fee, correct? Correct. So it sounds like we're trying to dictate what the waste management could and cannot use their money for. They're paying a franchise fee to the city of Santa Ana that's coming out of their own private business. It's not necessarily money being paid for by the taxpayers, correct? Because the taxpayers are paying for a service to get the trash hauled away. And that's...

Yeah, you're correct. The ratepayers that utilize the trash service are paying for the services. I believe the finance director was just saying that when a business is doing business and they know they have a franchise fee that they have to pay, it probably certainly goes into the equation when they're setting the rates for their customers. But the customers are not paying taxes at all. they're paying for the cost of the service.

David PenalozaItem —

Right. Okay. That's what I understood. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, I have a quick comment. Does Juan Villegas?

Yes, Mayor, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Council Member Peñalosa, for bringing that up. Because it's true, it is a service for the residents. Me being on the Waste and Recycling Commission for the county, I learned a lot about these things. And it's not just the waste haulers, but also the landfills charge money. And there's new laws going into effect that are going to control how and what we do with our waste, you know, the trash and recyclables and so on and so forth. So it's getting a little expensive.

Not just our residents here are paying, but, you know, there are also the businesses that are here in town that also contract with their waste haulers. We have the schools that have a different contract with the waste haulers. We have the hospitals that contract with waste haulers, and our streets get used. And so there's a lot going on. And, yeah, this is all tied together, and I'm very happy to see our staff working on this and taking it very serious on what we're going to do with our finances. And I'm very hopeful that the future, that things will get better.

But for now, this is all we can do is just do some projections and plan. So thank you very much. Those are my comments, Mr. Mayor.

thank you um i want to thank uh several council members because i know we've all given this a lot of thought and it's uh a difficult time for us but um i would say that uh you know this is really due to the coronavirus you know if it weren't for for the the the hit to our fund and it's not just our fund it's every other city in the country uh they are really hurting um i was talking to mayor c do from anaheim they're projecting potentially as

high as 70 million dollar uh shortfall imagine what it means to close down disneyland it it It's just as mind boggling, some of these things that are that are taking place right now. And so part of what I want to say is that I'm working right now very aggressively with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the big group of California mayors and also mayors here in Orange County. In Orange County, we've written a letter going to the county of Orange because they are receiving right now $550 million.

That if that were to be prorated on a per population basis, about $58 million would be coming to Santa Ana so we could address some of these issues related to the coronavirus. And again, I would argue that were it not for the virus, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. We'd be having a fantastic year with a lot of good news. So we have our work cut out for us. This is not going to be easy, but I'm trying to figure out how to get the county. And they feel that they don't have the jurisdiction right now to do so.

But I'm trying to figure out how to get the county to yield on this and get some of this money to the cities where I believe the money belongs. So I'm working and we should all be working with everybody we can imagine that could potentially give us clarifying language that would enable some of these dollars that are COVID-19 related dollars to come to us so that we could seek relief.

Right now, they can only be used from our standpoint, from a city standpoint, to be reimbursed direct costs. That's why earlier when we talked about the jail, I pointed out that that small contract that we're doing, we ought to seek reimbursement. But that was 50-some thousand dollars. I'm talking about tens of millions of dollars that I believe should be coming to our fine city. So as we proceed, there's no guarantee we're going to get any of this money.

I think the county could very likely just try to basically take all that money, the $550 million that's arising in their bank account, and keep it pretty much and spend it on whatever they think they see fit and that complies with the regulations. So I think we should have a very aggressive program doing everything we possibly can, all of us, to inform our residents of what's going on and residents around the county.

I've managed to get 31 of 34 mayors to sign a letter requesting that all their respect respective cities, you know, follow suit and receive money. Also, there's some additional monies that might be coming, and to that extent, cities like Oakland and Long Beach and others, we're all working together trying to figure out what can we do, you know, with any potential additional monies that come from Washington. But in the interim, I would just caution that we don't jump to conclusions or do anything

hasty. And what I mean by that is I think that categorizing or potentially mentioning that the general fund is a black hole is very dangerous. It is not a black hole. It's a well-managed city with excellent staff, both in the finance department as well as at the upper echelons within the city management that I think is running the city better than it's been run in many, many years. And I think we ought to acknowledge that and be very supportive and, again, be very cautious

as to how we classify it. I do believe that we need to be prudent also at this time and believe that maybe we won't get any of this coronavirus money, even though there's, again, literally hundreds of millions of dollars around us, I think we're going to get something. But if we get nothing, how do we keep the city going? And that's what we need to be looking at right now. And so I think we need to come back with all our labor groups, look at the budget, and consider potentially opening up some negotiations and talking about the potential grim,

immediate reality that we're facing because otherwise you know we're going to have a condition a situation where we gave raises in very good faith believing that we had a completely different reality and right now we have to be able to manage you know with what we've got so I think this needs to be an ongoing discussion I don't know if at some point there should be an ad hoc committee that maybe works with a city manager even closer on these issues but um you know we need uh you know to take this very seriously because uh council member i know i

believe solario and sarmiento i know was there at the time back in 08 where we had the great um you know recession something that you know we didn't cause either but it didn't hit us out of the blue like this has and we managed to make it through that so i believe you know we are strong we'll manage to make it through this but we really have to be on our toes right now in may for the next year or so is going to be a very critical time in the history of of of our city and of our country and world for that matter a lot of things are being redefined and we need to do everything

we can to make sure we come out as strong as possible on the other end so with that i think we've all had a chance to comment um i believe this is a receiving file uh well there's several items receiving file an appropriation adjustment affirming the hiring freeze directing staff etc etc would anybody like to make a motion motion or approved second

Roll call vote, please, Madam Clerk.

Councilmember Becerra?

Yes.

Councilmember Iglesias?

Councilmember Iglesias?

No, can you hear me?

Yes, now I can. Thank you. Councilmember Peña-Luzza?

Yes.

Councilmember Sarmiento?

Yes, and Mr. Mayor, in 2008, you and I were the only ones on this council, just for clarification.

Thank you for that.

Council Member Solorio?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tempe Vegas?

Yes.

Mayor Pulido?

Yes. So now I believe, are we on item 75A?

Yes.

and we have some in place for a public hearing item 75a uh it's a doctor resolution amendment to certify eir uh it involves one broadway plaza a project at 1109 north broadway do we have uh speakers i'm going to open up the public hearing uh well do we want to do a staff

presentation first madam city manager and before we proceed if i can interrupt for a moment we did when your um phone got cut off at 55e we did not complete our vote so if we if you want to wait until after this 75a or if you want to go back to that item

let's wait till right after it right now we're already into this one Okay. Madam City Manager, a presentation?

Yes, sir, we do. So thank you, Mayor. I'm going to introduce the item and then I'll turn it over to the Executive Director of Planning for the formal presentation. This 37-story project that's before you is commonly referred to as One Broadway. A version of this project was previously approved by the City Council in 2004. The approval was affirmed by the Santa Ana voters via a referendum in 2005. The version before you keeps the 37-story structure but seeks to convert up to 19 of the floors to accommodate up to 415 dwelling units.

If approved, the proposal will transform the previously approved office development into a mixed-use environment consisting of office, residential, entertainment, and retail uses. The modified mix of uses will lessen the project's carbon footprint and negative impacts on the environment by reducing traffic and air quality impacts and will also enhance its economic feasibility. I'll now turn it over to Executive Director Tai for a presentation and details of the project and the requested actions that are before you tonight.

Thank you, City Manager Rich. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and City Council. So this is a request for approval of General Plan Amendment Number 2020-01 and Zoning Ordinance Amendment 2020-02. The site is currently zoned in specific development number 75. It's zoned for office, service, and retail uses. The size is approximately 4.3 acres, and it's currently bound by Broadway, Washington Avenue, 10th Street, and Sycamore. The site currently has seven structures, including six designated as historical.

It also includes the corner area that has currently been developed with the footing for the 37-story tall building. Surrounding uses include office and residential uses, as well as educational and public and institutional uses.

Now I'm going to the history of the project. The project was entitled back in 2004. As our city manager mentioned, the site is currently entitled for a 37-story tall building that has approximately 518,000 square feet. Included with that is a parking structure consisting of approximately 2463 parking spaces in a nine level structure eight of which will be above ground and one at below level includes an amenitized pedestrian plaza restaurants on the upper floors will also reuse some of the existing

structures for office and restaurant uses the development agreement was also approved in 2012 the development I'm sorry in 2005 however this development agreement expire in 2012. While the agreement has expired, some of the elements of the development has been put into the current approval, which includes a PLA that's recommended by the Planning Commission, and all the traffic mitigations continue to be in effect through the EIR and the Mitigation Monitoring Program. As mentioned, the applicant is entitled to the current development project today,

and already has footing on the site for the 37th Hall office structure.

This is an aerial picture of the site. As you can see, the site is surrounded, as I mentioned, by similar uses, including residential, commercial, as well as public and institutional uses. To the north is Washington Avenue. To the south is 10th Street. to the east is Broadway and it's board to the west by Sycamore I'm sorry to the east by Sycamore into the west by Broadway Sycamore will be vacated as part of this approval of the project and will be used for part of the parking structure

the applicant is proposing to amend the existing SD 75 and the general plan land designation for the one Broadway office tower to convert approximately 19 stories of the building out of the 37 story for up to 415 residential units. The total square footage is approximately 518,000 square feet and that was already approved in 2004. The parking structure will continue to be a part of this application and again that was approved in 2004. The pedestrian Plaza as well as other amenities will continue to be a part of the project and

there will also be reuse of the existing structures on site for restaurant uses. Again this was also previously approved in 2004. In addendum to previously approved certified EIR in 2004 was prepared for this project and as I mentioned earlier all mitigation measures from the project of the previous approval are still applicable and have been amended and updated and are a part of the adoption tonight this is a copy of the site plan as you can see to the left is Washington to the right you can see is 10th Street both of these streets

will be turned into one way 10th will be turned into a one-way heading east and And then Washington will be a one-way street heading west. To the south, which is on the bottom, I'm sorry, to the bottom of the picture is Broadway. The tower is at the corner of Broadway and 10th Street, and it will rise 37 stories high. Adjacent to that will be a parking structure that will be connected by the pedestrian plaza amenities as well as a bridge that will cross into the parking structure.

This would be developed should the project be approved into a mixed-use project that will consist of residential, commercial office, retail, and restaurant use.

This is a picture of the existing site as it sits today. As you can see, as we mentioned earlier, the site is partially under construction. The existing homes that you see along the street will remain in place.

here's a conceptual of the type of office environment that would be produced as part of the project once it's constructed this is a conceptual floor plan as well as design of one bedroom units ranging one or two bedroom units ranging from 500 to 800 square feet this is a conceptual for two to three bedrooms apartment which could be 800 square feet plus the type of amenities as mentioned includes restaurants and commercial uses there's also going to be

because a wellness center and a spa and the applicant is looking to fully amenitize the building for both residential commercial and commercial uses this is a rendering of the property the building as you can see it is 37 story tall approximately 49 and 93 feet high that includes a proposed helipad however the helipad is something that would have to come as a subsequent in title through a conditional use permit it is a feature of the project but it's not going to be approved as part of this process

this is a conceptual the lobby area as you can see it's a contemporary in nature and will have separate entrance for the commercial and residential uses here is a conceptual of what potentially could be the various use of the various stories on the building with the blue being residential and the yellow being commercial office in terms of the environment analysis as I previously mentioned the project has previously been certified with a 2004 EIR

and an addendum was prepared the reason that the addendum was prepared is pursuant to state sequel guideline and state law section 15 162 and 15 164 whenever a project has a EIR or negative decoration has been previously certified the leading agency when considering a revision to the project must consider using the previous CE IR or the free previous addendum unless it finds that there are substantial changes in the project that has gone beyond what was analyzed or there are a new situation that has not been considered

before this analyze was completed update studies were done with relation to traffic air quality and all of those areas the project not only did not increase but it actually show a significant reduction when you convert 19 story of the building from commercial to residential traffic trip was a decrease of approximately 58 percent from the daily trip from the mixed-use project going from approximately 6600 trips for the office hour to approximately 2700 trips the pollutant emissions were reduced in similar value

as well there is an increase in sewer and water demand however working with the city's Public Works Department and through the mitigation measure as outlined in the mitigation monitoring program the project applicant will pay their fair share into making improvements to the infrastructure system to accommodate the proposed use for both water and discharge water consumption and discharge so with those elements I've described there is really under state law only one choice for the project is to prepare an addendum to the

IR and that is the appropriate document that is being before you today for

adoption the office tower is currently was approved through a city council action and was approved and reaffirmed by the voter in the 2005 referendum so the project was not only approved by city council but reaffirmed by the voter of city of Santa Ana the IR and identum as I mentioned earlier identify lesser impact resulting from the post misuse the project once completed will reinforce the city as the center of Orange County and will be a part of the economic catalyst for our city as well as downtown in terms of the estimated

fees the project will potentially generate 1.1 million dollars in property taxes approximately four million dollars in who fees mitigation measure as I mentioned early remains for the project for the mixed-use project development even though the commercial development had more impact those mitigation have not changed or been reduced and the applicant is obligated to do the higher standard for mitigation the Planning Commission when they considered this back in March in early April recommended the approval of the project first of all however they also recommended four additional conditions one is for the

City Council the conserter incorporating a project labor agreement and also to as part of the mitigation for traffic is to include Logan as part of the previously six neighborhood that had I'm sorry seven neighborhoods that had the traffic mitigation measure in place that would require a traffic analysis before the project constructed and then after the project can get constructed to evaluate what are the traffic impact to each one of those neighborhoods to be used and to

have a mitigation be put in place for traffic calming measures in addition to that the Commission recommended upping the increasing the amount of the mitigation for each neighborhood from two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand for net increase of a hundred thousand dollars per neighborhood and finally the Planning Commission recommended that the park fees generated by the project which is approximately 1.7 million dollars be rededicated back into this park district which is district number two the north east sector of the city so that the money can be used to for park development of park

acquisition in this district in terms of public outreach there were extensive outreach conducted before this project during February which is the sunshine meeting as well as for the Planning Commission on March 3rd it's an April 2nd staff have also held various discussion with community and interest members and that is the scope of the outreach of this project in in summary the recommendation by the Planning Commission is to approve the project with the four conditions as recommended by the Planning Commission adopt a resolution adopting the addendum to the one Broadway Plaza II are adopt a

resolution approving the general plan amendment and adoption and ordinance adoption of an ordinance approving zoning ordinance amendment 2020 dash go to that concludes staff's report I'll be happy to ask any questions

Mr. Mayor, we do. Yeah, but I think we have members of the public. We're in the middle of a public hearing. Why don't we hear from the public and then I'll bring it back to council for questions and thoughts and all that. Madam Clerk, who do we have from the public that wishes to address this?

We have several people who are waiting to be unmuted. And before I unmute them, I want to just tell the mayor and council members that we did have also some written communications. We received 20 in opposition and 27 in favor and then three were general comments. So it was a total of 46 public comments provided by email. and then our first attendee if you would please just you will be unmuted and then you have three

minutes. You may speak now. Good evening Mayor and Council this is Claudia Alvarez. I am a 40 year resident of our city with the last 20 years as a proud homeowner in our lovely neighborhood of Washington Square. I am calling in support of One Broadway Plaza of course. As most of you know I'm former sanana mayor pretend and council member i served on the council for 12 years and was part of the council leadership that voted in support of entitlements for one plaza back in 2004. i was also part of the council leadership that worked with mr hara and other stakeholders including

our neighborhood leaders and labor unions on the development agreement that included certain contingencies amongst them funds for traffic mitigation for impacted neighborhoods and a project labor agreement which included local hire and prevailing wage as you know the project went to a referendum and was approved by our residents in 2005. the development agreement was not part of the referendum and it expired in 2012. however as you know the entitlements did not expire and if the proposed mixed use is not approved by the council tonight mr harrow would still very much be entitled to build this 37-story tower but it

be limited to the original office use proposal i could hardly believe in that project then but i think the mixed use proposal before you is an even better project why well the factors i considered in 2004 when reaching my decision were true and relevant then and even more so now for one it would revitalize the economy providing jobs during construction and thereafter it will bring more people to our city and downtown having them spend money in our local businesses and of course it would increase the city's tax revenue substantially with the covid pandemic and the

added tax of measure x tax revenue from process other than our residents is crucial we also have the other benefit of housing the occupants now as residents would not be leaving our city after five o'clock they will be more vested in our city spend their money here and at the same time the daily traffic trips would decrease substantially i also supported it of course because of the project labor agreement union jobs with local hire and prevailing wage components this of course includes the lc building traits including our iron workers ivew laborers plumbers and steam theaters and of course

our captain church union they provide much needed benefits that would be including necessary train and skilled workforce and many of their membership lives in our city now as noted in the letter of support by my good friend Doug Majoni from IBEW, or apprentices at Tanana College would also benefit in my role as president of the Board of Trustees at Rancho Central Community College District, and even more three-year-old students will also benefit. As you know, their membership again is part of our city and very much will benefit from the local hire. And of course,

it will prioritize our veterans with the Helmet to Hardship Program. And another issue, of course, this traffic mitigation that was addressed back in 2004 in 2005. we have even more traffic mitigation our neighborhoods are getting more money and mr harry remains committed in improving the uh traffic necessary mitigation necessary that was outlining the eir and last but not least of course mr harry himself i uh got to know mr harry back in back in 2000 i met him i'm done for 20 years

mayor and uh point of order mr mayor uh claudia please conclude go ahead mr harris doesn't the

first developers come and go he doesn't go he doesn't go anywhere he's not a fly by night operation and in fact he's very much a part of the sanana community he not only works here but in first many of our residents as such i think it's just summarized by whether city manager different is to say he would say if anybody's going to get it built it will be my car for all

the above city reasons i encourage you mr mayor point of order go ahead next speaker sorry go ahead can you like give them like a one minute warning or something so they're aware how they're doing

yes we will do that for you um please state your name and state whether you're in support or in opposition to the item and why, and now you have been unmuted. You have three minutes.

Caller, you may speak now. You have been unmuted.

Okay, we'll go to the next. Hello? Yes. Hello? Yes, you may speak. Yes, hi. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you.

Thank you. My name is Connie Major, and I'm asking the council to oppose the project as it is now. I think adding the housing is a good element, but I think there's still things that need to be looked at. And one of them being, yes, you're saying there's an addendum to the EIR regarding the traffic, But the traffic study that was used in this year, ended 2020. That's as far as it extended out. With three years of construction before we start the impact of the new use of the building, we need an EIR traffic study that extends from then out 10 years.

We need one that goes out to 2030, 30, 33, excuse me, 2033 at a minimum. because you can't use old information for this project. This is something so totally new to the city. So I asked you to not approve it until there's a new appropriate traffic study. Also at the Sunshine meeting, Hera boasted he was going to include affordable housing in the tower. I firmly acknowledge and agree with him. It needs to be in there. At this point, he's opting out for the in-lue fees and i feel it should be somehow i don't know what rulings there are to be able to say it needs to

be included in the building the affordable housing element on site also i feel there should be a development agreement to help make sure that the community will benefit from the things he is saying that he will stay on contract um i don't know all the things that you say about it but the performance and timing and fines if both parties don't meet the agreement.

The park fees, I understand they're already... You have one minute left. Okay, the commission is recommending you accept having the park fees used in what you said there was, northeastern santa anna but i would rather see them right in the vicinity of the building not extending out to some far distant region but so that the people in this building can use the park and the local neighborhoods around the building can use the park thank you for your time and um please i'm asking you to not accept it at this time until there are those been added items Thank you.

Thank you, Connie. Next speaker.

Please state your name and whether you're in support or in opposition to the item and why. You have been unmuted. You have three minutes.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council. Could you hear me?

No, we can't, Ernie.

Good. my name is Ernesto Medrano with the LA Orange County Building and Construction and Trades Council representing 49 local unions and district councils and I am calling in support of the project this is a project that is almost two decades in the works and the project provides for a framework for a project labor agreement with the LAOC Building Trades Council and what that encompasses are obviously a skilled and trained workforce strong safety protections for construction workers uh it'll provide for this project will provide for 3 000 high wage high

skilled jobs which also provides for a multiplier effect and given the economic situation we know that this is the best time to do this to put a boost in our local economy and the other thing it provides also is efficiency with a no strike no lockout clause this is our agreements with the Building Trade Council, provide for true and local hire, also provide preference for veterans for our Helmets to Hard Hats program. The other beautiful thing, and I think a former council member mentioned it earlier, was there are two apprenticeship readiness classes in Santa Ana,

the only two in Orange County where we are, through Santa Ana College and through Century High School, preparing young men and women through our apprenticeship readiness curriculum. This would be a career pathway for these students to be able to enter their careers into the the construction industry. The jobs that are provided are the best jobs in the sense of having good benefits, good healthcare benefits and the defined pension plan with that. So with that said, the building's environmentally sound and it also has a proximity to alternative transportation. And I urge the city council members to approve this project. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Caller, please state your name and state whether you're in support of or in opposition to the item and why you have been unmuted and now you have three minutes.

Hello caller.

You have been unmuted. You may speak.

We will go to the next speaker.

Caller, please state your name and state whether you're in support or in opposition to the item and why. You have three minutes. Your time begins now.

Yes, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Yes, my name is Roy Acucia. I'm a business rep for Speaker Fitness UA, Local 709. Also a resident in the city of Santa Ana for over 19 years. I'm here to support the One Broadway Plaza project in Santa Ana. I represent over a thousand members, many of whom would value the opportunity to work close to home, rather than spending hours from home. Our members would love to work closer to home in their community so that they may have more time with their families and not miss those precious moments. This is a big project.

There's a PLA on it. The skills and training workforce. A safe environment for construction workers. local hire for Santa Ana residents and other Orange County residents and let's not forget our veterans this is the perfect project perfect location and it couldn't be more perfect time and that time is now once again I thank you for your time and service specifically UA local 709 urges you to pass this project and let's get this thing built thank you

got it next speaker please caller please state your name and whether or not you're in support of or in opposition to the item and why you have three minutes you have been unmuted yeah good

evening you can hear me yes we can hear you okay thank you yeah my name is doug robbins i'm a business rep for the painters and allied trades i'm calling in support of this project i represent roughly 10 000 men and women in the painting drywall finishing glazing and flooring industry with the proposed pla on this project it will give our members an opportunity to work in the city where they live with the local hire provisions in the pla those workers will spend their hard-earned money in the city where they live which will have a multiplier effect to the tax revenue of santa anna as opposed to a worker that comes from out of town

who would then go home and spend the money there. The project also will create apprenticeship opportunities for local residents to start a career, making a decent wage, providing health care benefits, and a defined pension. One Broadway Plaza will be an iconic landmark in the heart of the city and would replace that unsightly huge pile of dirt that has been sitting there for roughly 20 years. Tonight we've heard a lot of conversations about economic shortfalls. This project would help ease some of those concerns.

I can't think of a better way to kickstart the local economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. I strongly urge you to support this project. Thank you.

Next caller. Next speaker. Next caller. You lowered your hand and you raised it again. Did you want to speak on this item? you have three minutes please state your name for the record okay we'll move on to the next caller maybe it's for the yes hello did you want to speak on this item 75a yes yes thank

you I couldn't I couldn't get in there my name is Doug Mangione I am representative of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers here in Orange County and we provide 2400 skilled and trained electrical workers to our signatory contractors ibw 441 was established in 1928 right here in downtown santa ana and have been providing skilled and trained electricians to the orange county region ever since our apprenticeship program is also based here in the city of santa ana under the lead educational agency of rancho santiago community college we currently provide

training to over 400 apprentices, most of which reside in Orange County and in Santa Ana. And I am also a veteran, United States Marine Corps, and I landed out here in Orange County in 1971, was introduced to the IBW on a veteran hire program, and I have worked 45 years in the IBW. It's been a good training experience, and I've raised a family here in Orange County. i'm writing in support of you to adopt a resolution the city of santa anna is fast becoming a culturally diverse vibrant urban setting this project will be a major enhancement to what the

city is becoming santa ana is now embracing the future and this project is also embracing the future this will be an environmentally conscious state-of-the-art building built to high lead standards using the latest energy efficiency technologies ibw has been in the forefront of teaching and establishing the curriculums for those technologies and our state certified electricians are well trained in the installation of these technologies and look forward to working on this landmark building i would also say that as we come out of this covet 19 pandemic and we've

heard a lot about this tonight we are going to have to get this economy rolling again get the tax dollars going and one broadway plaza is as shovel ready as any project you have one minute left. Thank you for your time and I appreciate it. We, IVW urge your support. Thank you for your

comments Doug, we appreciate them. Next speaker please. Caller, please state your name and state

whether you're in support or in opposition to the item and why. You have three minutes.

You have been unmuted, you can speak now caller.

Okay, caller dropped the call, so we will go on to the next person. If you could please state your name and state whether you're in support of or in opposition to that item. You have three minutes.

My name is Hart Keeble. I'm an iron worker with Iron Roca Local 416, and I'm in support of this project. I'm not going to cover the material that's been covered already. I'm just going to ask you to support this project for all the young people that are going to school and will be needing a job in the coming years. We've got to think about their future when we think about projects like this.

This developer is ready to invest a lot of money in Santa Ana, and there's going to be a lot of good jobs for the families in Santa Ana. I'm just counting on you guys to make the right decisions. So please support this project, and thank you very much for your service.

Thank you for that. Next speaker, please.

Caller, please state your name and state whether you're in support of or in opposition to the item and why, and you have three minutes.

Hello, my name is Alfonso Ruiz. I'm a longtime resident of Santa Ana, followed member of Local 5 Insulators Union, and I'm calling in support of the One Broadway Plaza project in Santa Ana. I think the economic and environmental impacts have been stated well, as well as the great jobs that are going to be coming to our city. So I'll take this from another angle. Aside from the many tangible benefits that it would bring us, it does something more, something intangible but equally important. It sets an example, an example of what our great city can be and can accomplish when we dare to not only think big but to do big.

an example of what great things can be accomplished when people, labor, government, and industry work together in union to build communities and relationships where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and everyone truly prospers. So I close this by saying I urge the City Council to take a bold step forward and lead us into a brighter future by approving the staff recommendation on the One Broadway Plaza project. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Next speaker, please.

Caller, please clearly state your name and state whether you're in support or in opposition to the item NY. And you have been unmuted. You have three minutes.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Luis Andres Perez. I am the political director for UA582, Plumbers, Steamfitters, Welders, and Apprentices. I'm asking you to support the three recommended actions listed under Agenda Item 75, which would be moving forward on the One Broadway project, allowing for adopt the resolution to approve the addendum to the environmental impact report, readopt the mitigation monitoring and reporting program, and approving the general plan amendment and the zoning ordinance amendment. Currently, the Building Trade Council is in talks with the developer for a community workforce agreement

that will provide skilled and trained workforce, allowing for apprenticeship opportunities for Santa Ana residents, and more importantly, allowing our members to work in their community. a community workforce agreement will also enable the project to be built on time and without distraction providing opportunities for upward mobility to your san anna residents our ua 582 members have worked for more than one million hours consecutively in the last few years much of that has to do with the fact that we see ourselves with positive and productive partners

who ultimately want to see our community flourish and with the developer committing four million dollars removal fees that are earmarked only for affordable housing the santa and city council will have more control and where to invest that money directly for the city's affordable housing projects concerning traffic mitigation by approving the mixed-use development of one broadway plaza you will have a noticeable smaller impact than if you were to pass the project that's pure commercial and with the updating of the traffic mitigation fee from 200 000 to 300 000 the developers

is committed to helping the residing neighborhoods that are immediately impacted by this development voting to approve the one broadway plaza will allow the city of san anna to move forward on a nearly two decades promise and continue to diversify and improve the city's infrastructure so once again we're asking you to approve and move forward with the one broadway plaza project

thank you thank you next speaker please caller please clearly state your name and state whether you're in support or in opposition to the item and why you have been unmuted and you have three minutes

hi good evening my name is paul moreno i'm a business agent with iron workers local 433 and i'm calling you in support of one broadway plaza project the iron workers support putting nearly uh 3 000 skilled treatments to work and being the tallest building in the county our members who reside in santa anna the neighboring communities would love to be a part of this iconic project. This project also gives Santa Ana residents the chance for a life changing career through our apprenticeship opportunities, not only with the iron workers, but also with all the other building trade civilians. Also being an energy efficient

project, it's a win-win for both the city and its residents. So there's no better time than to build than now and we look forward to partnering with you on this project and again in support

of 1 Broadway. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker, please.

Caller, please clearly state your name and state whether you're in support of an opposition to the item and why. You have been unmuted and you have three minutes. Yes, my name is Dale Helbig. I'm a

30-year resident of Santa Ana. I want to start off by saying thanking the council for their vote on item 50 alpha uh regards to 75 alpha uh the affordable housing issue has bounced back and forth uh from the sunshine meeting to two city uh planning commission meetings it's gone from it will be included to not being included back to will be included back to not being included uh it's advantageous for the developer to not include affordable housing in their project because at $4.5 million in-loop fee, he's off the hook after he makes that payment,

and that will only get the city about 9 to 15 affordable housing units, whereas if he were to include it in the project, he'd be required to add about 40-plus units. So I think the city's losing out on that with a $15 square foot fee that they assess. As far as the development agreement, there's been many handshakes been made to address different issues. The traffic studies, the project for the parks and recs money.

Handshakes don't cut it. You need to have something that you can really enforce at the right time. and I and I think we need to have a development agreement to address these issues the other thing is the environmental impact report Min Tye talked about the fact that the water usage public works took a look at that I don't think that addresses the fact that it was not addressed in the environmental impact report. Water usage will go up by over 9 million gallons a year by going to a

mixed-use development, and I think as a minimum, it should have some kind of analysis. I think it should have some kind of analysis done in the environmental impact report versus just having a report from the public works department. Again, it needs to follow the process. So, I thank you all for what you're doing. I hope you stay safe during the virus and stay healthy. Thank you. Thank you, Dale. Next speaker, please. This is our last caller. Please state your name

clearly for the record and state whether you're in support or in opposition to the item. You have been unmuted and you have three minutes. Mayor and council members, thank you, first of all,

for the service that you guys have been doing and wanting to move a great city of santana forward and being prudent and everything that you guys are doing in the city and thank you for an opportunity to address you guys this evening regarding the one broadway plaza my name is gilbert d'avila and i'm honored to be the president of the orange county labor federation that that great federation represents more than 250 000 union members throughout orange county and we strongly urge the city council tonight to support one Broadway Plaza project everyone on the dice is well aware of how long this project has been in the

works and it's no better time for it to be approved but tonight this historic project will treat thousands of well-paying highly skilled construction jobs. By approving this project, you know, you're not only going to be approving this project, but approving the best women and men in the construction trades. Mayor and City Council members, again, thank you for your service, and I urge you to approve this historic project.

Thank you, and be safe, and God bless you guys. Thank you for your comments. Let me bring it

back to council mayor we have three more callers oh we do okay go ahead caller please state your name for the record and state whether you're in support or opposition to that item you have three

minutes and you have been unmuted hi this is john hannah with the southwest regional council of carpenters i want to thank the mayor the city council and the staff and the planning commissioners for their hard work on this. I just want to say a few things. First, I'm joining most of the comments that I've heard from other people in the trade unions. I'll try not to be repetitive, but I want to say that your approval of this project will allow us to move forward and be that economic stimulus that's really needed. It was a sad tale hearing about the budget issues that the city's going to face.

About that time that some of the temporary relief will end, this project will help us get on our feet and move forward in Santa Ana. I think the traffic mitigation has been handled. And the Planning Commission made that clear. This was not just the traffic that was involved in those neighborhoods, but the overall traffic mitigation that Mycara and Caribou are going to have to deal with. We appreciate the project labor agreement work that Ernesto Medrano and Ron Miller did.

We are not technically part of the building trades, so I appreciate the recognition that's there. I do want to assure the council that Ernesto and Ron do include the carpenters, but we do need to, like their other affiliates, be a signatory for this. I do want to say that like many good things in life, this project's been long in the making. And I just want to thank probably more than anybody else, Mike Harrah. Mike's not just somebody coming in from out of town.

He bleeds Santa Ana. And his commitment to this city is personified in this project. This is a project that is going to help people who live in Santa Ana and who want to have this kind of environment to live in. It's going to help bring people back and business back to Santa Ana so that we can afford to do these things. And finally, for the construction end, like so many speakers said, these apprenticeship programs are going to help Santa Ana youth. our carpenters who come through an apprentice program by the time they're

through they have 30 units of academic credit in a community college this is progress and this project is to be approved I hope by this council and I want to thank the council for their continued commitment to growth in this

city thank you for that was that the last speaker madam clerk no we still

have two additional ones caller please clearly state your name and state whether if you're in support or opposition to the item and why you have three minutes good evening my name is jeff dickman

and i'm a resident of the historic french park neighborhood and i'm a poet i'm i am opposed to the conversion of the apartment i mean the office units to the apartment units uh uh and and i and council takes into consideration that i'm not a trade member and and and but i am a resident and i've worked with residents from many of the other neighborhoods we're really concerned about the project and its impacts as we were 16 and 17 years ago and and the product and the impacts from the one broadway plaza project like many of the other adjoining projects that city have approved

recently or are in consideration. It's traffic and it's health and safety issues that affect the quality of life of our neighborhood. Council members, you know full well that French Park, Logan, French Court, Lacey, and Willard to some extent the other neighborhoods, we're going to be impacted by this project. Don't take that lightly. People are going to get some jobs out of this, but those jobs are temporary. But the impacts to the neighborhoods are permanent.

And in fact, I've worked with city staff over a number of years, and there really has been no interest, frankly, from the city approaching our neighborhood about any mitigation. We had some temporary mitigation many years ago, but those were pulled out and sent in. It's been crickets. Silence from city staff. Silence from council. And that's, frankly, unacceptable. If you're going to continue to consider projects of, frankly, almost any size, particularly housing projects and large ones, this is not just a drive-through food restaurant this is a substantial project with very substantial

impacts if you're not going to give due consideration to your neighborhoods why are you on council who are you serving if you're serving a developer or anybody inside or outside of the city and the building trades at our expense there's something wrong with our city there's something wrong with our staff there's something one minute left officials we had asked for and have really not had much satisfaction from the regarding we we've really not had much satisfaction from the planning commission on any real proposed mitigations the minor increase that the staff

and developer proposing from 200 to 300 000 per neighborhood is frankly not adequate it's because staff haven't really given any indication to us what those mitigations are and what they're going to cost and where they're going to be and there's no indication that the developer or the city or anybody's going to work with the neighborhoods. It's just wrong. I'm opposed to this because of the terrible process, the way this has been handled. Again, you're looking at iconic structures. You're not thinking at all about neighborhoods. Thank you.

Thank you. And more speakers, Madam Clerk?

Madam Clerk, was that it?

No, we have one more caller. Please state your name. You have three minutes.

Yes, hi. My name is Erica Gonzalez. I've been a Santana resident for 35 years, a small business owner for 10, and a community organizer for 5. I am in opposition of the One Broadway Plaza project for many, many reasons. One, it will bring more luxury apartments and further gentrify our neighborhoods. Two, our community cannot afford the medium rent of an apartment, let alone luxury apartments. Three, average income in Santana is about $35,000. What is the average price of a luxury apartment? About $3,000. Do the math. Four, the EIR is over 10 years old and has expired. It has expired. It also didn't include all of the neighborhoods.

I believe it was Logan. I can't recall exactly, but I was at that meeting a few weeks ago where Mike Kara admitted that he omitted one of the neighborhoods that needs to be redone before we can even consider this. Okay? Number five, with the COVID-19 epidemic, we have seen that density is detrimental when it comes to pandemics. Dentramental. Look at New York. Number six, Santana is the densest city in Orange County. We are the densest. Fourth densest in California. Seven, Mike Harrow promised affordable housing would be included. He said it was instructed by the city not to include the affordable housing units.

We need answers for that. Eight, while it will provide work for many residents, again, temporary, great short-term, long-term, they will be displaced, their families will be displaced, their friends will be displaced, and we will not have a home. Ten, most of the callers were trade unions, trade reps and members. Their interests are not in line with the community of Santana and our residents. They're concerned with their pockets and making them fatter. 11. Santana is already an iconic city. We don't need a 37-story building to make us even more iconic. We have so much culture that you've been appropriating it for decades, decades.

12. He does bleed Santana, but he bleeds us dry, and he doesn't have our community's best interest at heart. Then number 13. The lack of transparency with the city council is appalling. It is appalling. It is, I can't even begin to say how ecstatic I am that we are finally going to be gone with this, Mayor, because you have bled our city dry. You have run us to the ground. But you know what? We're seeds. That's what happens when you bury us. We grow, and that's exactly what's going to happen through this pandemic. The people are seeing through all that this lack of transparency, the lack of communication. Have a good night.

Thank you. um i want to bring it back to city council for uh consideration any thoughts or comments

mr mayor yes go ahead um i i actually have a couple of questions if uh mr ty is available

mr ty yes sir i'm here okay thank you um just a couple of questions to clarify a couple things so So first and foremost, no matter what we do tonight, Mr. Herrick can proceed to build a 37-story tower at Washington and Broadway, correct? That is correct. Okay. And with what we have before us tonight, there's nothing that would increase the square footage of the overall project, correct? That is correct.

Okay. And I know one person who had commented and made mention that the mitigate, well, they didn't say mitigation monitoring plan, but that there wasn't consideration paid towards the Logan neighborhood. And I understand that the previous EIR and their mitigations, they did not include Logan. But it's my understanding, and from what I read earlier, that Logan is one of the neighborhoods identified to be studied for traffic studies and will receive the $300,000 of mitigation. Is that correct? That is correct. Okay.

And as far as timing on the traffic studies, because I think some of the folks that made comments brought up some good points, and that is, so as I read through the document, as I looked through, believe it or not, I did look through parts of the addendum and the EIR today. As I was looking through it, I was not able to find a place that was just bluntly clear when these studies would be done. I saw a lot of mention of which neighborhood they would be in, a lot of existing conditions, existing traffic mitigations, you know, such as the write-in, write-out, et cetera.

But, Mr. Tai, can you help me understand, is there anything in there right now that really pins down when the developer would do the, call it the before study, and then the after study? Yes, sir. So the mitigation is in the EIR as traffic mitigation number 17. That mitigation would be implemented at the time when the applicant poll permits. Prior to construction, there will be a traffic study be completed, coordinated via our public works department to establish the precondition before the project gets constructed.

After construction of the project and at approximately 90% occupancy of the building, both in terms of commercial and residential, that would be the time when the after study would be conducted to evaluate how the project, with its full occupancy at 90 percent, impact the various neighborhoods. Based on that, then the Public Works Department then can utilize the funds that's been allocated to each neighborhood to implement traffic calming measures. Thank you for that, Mr. Ty. But going back to what you said as far as timing, I like what you had to say as far as, if I understood correctly,

that your initial neighborhood traffic studies would happen, say, around the time that the developer pulled his building permits, and then possibly the follow-up study to see what the impacts are would come at about 90% occupancy of the building. Is that correct? That would be the recommendation, and that's a practice that we use as part of what we would consider to be full occupancy. And in order, because I really think that, you know, for the folks that commented, I think it's important that we provide that certainty.

I know there's a lot of concern that because the development agreement expired, we now aren't holding them to some sort of standards. And from my understanding in talking with staff and looking through the documents myself, as far as what was in the previous development agreement, a lot of the impacts are addressed in the 2020 addendum and mitigation monitoring program. So I would really, I think for me, because it was something that wasn't really clear in these documents, Mr. Todd, could you give me possibly some guidance here as to where we should put something like this?

Should the council, one, approve this, and two, if they would agree to this, somewhere we can spell out when these studies would be done, both the before and after? would it be in one of the resolutions i know there's a document titled mutual declaration of acknowledgement and acceptance of approval conditions do you think that might be the place to do it i think if the council desired to um document what i articulated regarding the timing of that condition absolutely could be included in the mutual declaration

okay perfect well thank you mr much mr ty and uh thank you mr mayor

Thank you. Next speaker, another council member want to speak?

Yes, Mr. Mayor, Juan Villegas.

Go ahead, please.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to thank Council Member Becerra for bringing this up regarding the Logan neighborhood, because it was a concern of mine that, you know, they started off with six neighborhoods in the report, and now we're up to seven neighborhoods, which is Logan added to it. each were increased by $100,000, so now it makes it $300,000 per neighborhood to do the mitigation. And I'm glad there's a study before and a study after. And like the council member was stating, there is absolutely nothing we can do. Mr. Herrick can start building tomorrow.

And I've been on this council three years, and this started a very, very long time ago. And now here we are. and there is no affordable housing in the project and the developer has elected to put money into the city funds regarding affordable housing, which is where it's going to go. You'd rather pay the in-lieu fees and so I think that's maybe something that the public doesn't seem to understand that that is where it's going to go. So anyway, those are my comments, Mr. Mayor,

and I want to thank the staff for bringing this up and the Planning Commission for adding the Logan neighborhood. Thank you.

Thank you. Other comments from Council members? Mr. Mayor, this is Councilor Pinaloza. I have some comments, questions for you. Go Pinaloza and then Solario. Go ahead, please.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you. the question I had well first a comment I know earlier mr. tie in the beginning of the presentation you mentioned that extensive outreach to the community was done I don't think that that is factual because of the we're currently in the middle of pandemic and I feel that more could have been done and to reaching out to the community and not just the 500 foot radius that I still want to change eventually madam city manager but with that said what concerns me heavily is it's just a traffic that will be caused

David PenalozaItem —

and the traffic that will impact the neighborhood surrounding the property Willard Logan a French Park downtown and I want to just ask a couple questions Mr. Tai about the mitigation fund that's being that was added the $300,000 per neighborhood what exactly is that going to to do for each of these neighborhoods

so part of the fund will be used for the study to evaluate what type of traffic impact and how the traffic circulation pattern are impacting each neighborhood should there be impacts and based on that there would be recommendation on physical improvements for traffic calming measures such as diverters potentially traffic circles or any type of traffic calming measure that would be able to help to divert traffic away from those neighborhoods so the fees are

David PenalozaItem —

going to pay for a study and the physical improvements and for the physical requirements and and I I just I I would like to see more information on how that is going to be broken down because as i've seen you know being almost a year and a half on this council how expensive you know a little roundabout could be and how much money it takes to put something like that together i could tell you right now that just as a resident that lives here and drives these streets daily i don't think that a study is necessary i mean the traffic is going

David PenalozaItem —

to be there and it's going to be heavily impacting the neighborhood surrounding the property. And I want to know if I could get a commitment today, tonight from the applicant staff, if we could, as part of the construction of this building, include at the same time construction of barriers that would keep traffic exit traffic exit flow of traffic from this office building to going west on on Washington on 10th on Hellsworth or or

David PenalozaItem —

east on on 10th 11th on on Washington into the neighborhoods how are we going to keep this traffic from spilling out because people are gonna spill out into those neighborhoods they are gonna use it to avoid the backup on Broadway to avoid the backup on main, they will go into these neighborhoods. We don't need a study. I mean, that's what's been frustrating as going through this, is that that's obvious that that's going to happen, because it's already happening today with no building there. I mean, we're seeing just the – I went and stood with the French Park residents

David PenalozaItem —

at their Triangle Park, along with the city manager about last summer, and we saw it. We saw just the heavy flow of cars cutting through the neighborhood to avoid the traffic on Broadway and Main. So for us to sit here and say that we're going to use that money to pay for a study of something that we know is already happening today without this building being there is inappropriate. And I want to give assurance to the residents that we're going to use that money at the same time as this building is being constructed to help mitigate the traffic.

David PenalozaItem —

Just like we did it on 17th Street to keep traffic from going from Flower into Floral Park. There's no reason why Floral Park or Willsher Square, beautiful neighborhoods, could easily get barriers to block traffic from coming in, just day-to-day traffic with no heavy buildings or construction projects nearby. But an area like this, we've got to study it. And I'm using air quotes, everybody, for those hearing from home. so any comments on that mr. Thai or madam city manager yes sir you're

absolutely correct there is exhausting traffic now that we can see and experience and the project will definitely add traffic to the area the goal is not to say that there isn't any traffic the goal that studies to help confirm the various location obviously you mentioned some of the various obvious location I think those air will definitely need mitigation I will let our public works engineer to speak a little bit more in detail about the cost but in my evaluation of the amount of dollars and the studies the status can be a very small portion up to $50,000 for the study to help confirm other

areas that we may not see to see how when you have the project actually be implemented to see how it circulates and we'll be able to react better some of the obvious location where you mentioned I'm sure definitely mitigation will have to be put in place so the majority of the fund of the 2.1 million dollars will go towards the physical improvements for each one of those neighborhoods some neighborhood may need more some may need less that amount is three hundred thousand dollars per neighborhood we would have the ability to move funds between each neighborhood if it's not necessary to increase from one to the

other so that more implementation can can be put in place but the goal is to spend all that money towards implementation of putting in the barrier to help divert traffic like the one you mentioned is 17th and Ross.

Also if I may council member at some point I've forgotten to call on the applicant and he's really part of the presentation so right after you're done with this I'd like to call on the applicant and then he can answer questions and he can be available for further questions. Okay thank you Mr.

David PenalozaItem —

I'll wrap up. So with the traffic mitigation, Mr. Tai, you just agreed that we could confirm and we know that the traffic problems exist today. So I just don't understand what the need of this study is for, if we already see it today. To me, it's wasteful when it comes to using part of that money to study something that we already know exists. And with that said, so let's say this building, let's say it's two years from now, this building is constructed as it is now.

David PenalozaItem —

How long does this study take following full use and construction of this building? Are we looking at a year, two years of full building in place, full use? traffic is just all over the neighborhoods and now we got to study it and identify areas where we're gonna I mean how long is that process so the

it's a performance standard where we're using milestone to look at when we would do the study the initial study would be at the time when Paul when you when the applicant pull the permit for construction the concept is that at that time you would have the normal traffic that is without the project construction of this building I'll let the applicant answer but typically this was probably be a three two to three years construction process the occupancy and leasing up of the building as I mentioned earlier we would want to do a test at 90% occupancy meaning that the building is fully occupied so we can

understand the worst case scenario of the traffic and that absorption rate could possibly be the 6 to 12 months again the applicant can give you more more clarity on that so I would envision that if from time of pulling permit to the time of completion of the study is probably about three and half to four years into the project because of the accuracy once that study take place you can know better how to use the funding towards mitigating the actual problem beyond some of the obvious location as you mentioned like Washington and Broadway like 10th and and then you know Maine so those areas I think it's very

obvious the less obvious area could be within the internal areas of each neighborhood and that's where the study can be really helpful to confirm another another fact I want to repeat is that that was the original mitigation that was put in place is that it required that study so it's not something that we just asked for today to spend but it was a part of the original approval back in 2004 again I want to emphasize the cost of the study is very nominal majority of the funding is going to towards physical improvement mr. take Hagan are you on the line oh I'm sorry if you can come up please and maybe if you can share with

Good evening. Thank you, Tate Higgins. Good evening, Mayor, members of the council. The study, the actual study portion of the entire seven neighborhoods shouldn't be more than 100,000 between the before counts and after counts. My expectation, as Mr. Tai said, we would do the before counts sometime before the building permit is actually issued. And then as it's occupied, as it's being occupied, we would do after counts.

We can also, to kind of jumpstart that, we can actually reach out to the neighborhoods to find out where the specific areas are that they're seeing what they see as cut-through traffic. And those are the areas where we can start to lay down the hoses, determine where the additional traffic is, and start working with the neighborhoods to discuss what kind of mitigations we might be looking at. And we could be looking at, as Mr. Tai mentioned, bulb outs, roundabouts, diverters, We typically try not to do barricades to create dead-end streets,

but all those options would be on the table.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you for that.

David PenalozaItem —

Again, just $100,000. I'll do it for $10, and I'll tell you right now that the traffic will be there, and I can identify the streets because they're like that today without one Broadway Plaza built. And that's going to really, really impact those neighborhoods that are already disadvantaged. So now to have to deal with the traffic at all hours of the day, especially since there's going to be people living there. But thank you for that.

Thank you, sir.

David PenalozaItem —

And one final question, and this is for Sonia. Madam City Attorney, are you there?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I am here, Council Member.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you. So I just want to make sure, I mean, just clarify, are there any legal challenges, since this was a voter-approved project technically back in 2005, are there any legal challenges that we could possibly have, given that this was a voter-approved project and now we're adding 415 units of residential into 19 floors of it?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

um council member we thoroughly reviewed that legal question and there is a difference between voter approved initiatives which are laws that are initially initiated by by the public and referendums where the underlying ordinances or laws are actually adopted by the council and then subject to a vote of the people so i can tell you with confidence that we've looked at it we've had another law firm look at it and we believe the city does have the authority to move forward with the type of change that's being being proposed thank you

David PenalozaItem —

madam city attorney that's it mr. mayor unless I mean if the applicant is on the line and he could commit to to including from the get-go guarantee us that there's going to be, I just don't want to see a costly and endless study being done on something we know that is already going to be there. So I know it's going to take more from the applicant to try to help us guarantee that these measures are going to be taken throughout construction as part of the project. I don't want it to be a side thing that the city needs to do now and study,

David PenalozaItem —

and I want this to be part of the project if that's possible. And those are my comments, Mr. Mayor. And Mr. Tai, if you had something to add to that?

Just a final comment. As a mitigation measure, it will have to be put in place by the time the project gets approved and occupied. So rest assured that the mitigation measure is a requirement of the EIR, and it will be a part of the project. So I just want to share that with you.

David PenalozaItem —

Perfect. Thank you.

And, Mayor, one of the callers is the applicant. Michael Herra could be unmuted if you'd like him to be.

Mayor, are you online?

David PenalozaItem —

Mr. Mayor, are you there?

Yeah, yeah, I'm right here. Go ahead. Let the applicant speak.

Okay, you have five minutes.

Okay, good evening, Mike Herra. good evening mr mayor and honorable city council members it was interesting to hear everybody tonight i'm very proud to hear all the answers good or indifferent i've been here for 30 years doing great things for the city schools everything else my my all the track record that i've done is is pretty self-evident but going on to a couple things that i want to go over here especially with uh the councilman about the the um traffic impacts in the neighborhoods i was the one that on my own

added logan to it because uh where it sits at the end of this even though the traffic would be going to the freeways after that and uh the staff said that the cost of what is increased from 200 000 to probably another 100 000 per neighborhood over time since we originally did this and I agreed with that. So it went from $1.2 million in traffic mitigation for the neighborhoods, and I agreed to $2.1 million. The study itself needs to be done simply because you don't know where to put the stop signs. It could be done with stop signs.

It could be done with signals, diverters, roundabouts, one-way streets, traffic. so you could use planters in different places to make it happen uh and that all depends on the the mitigation and the how people migrate from this building and going out using this deal so that you understand uh the situation with residential is they move at different times they leave a little bit earlier or later in the day it's not during the same time uh they come home a little bit later or earlier it's not like a large commercial building with a big single user tenant

and that tenant at five o'clock you know 3 700 people leave the building in the studies that urban uh urban crossroads did and was concurred with uh the other company that did that with their peer review which was place works uh noted in there that there would be a negative 3 000 3 660 trips a day less with residential and an easy way to understand that is a thousand square feet for a commercial office space the average size the average area per person is six square feet so

that's 27 people per a thousand square feet a thousand square foot apartment building would maybe have two maybe four people in it so obviously using the same square footage and then the square footage not going up but being that of the same square footage reduces the number of people tremendously which reduces the number of traffic which changes the hours which changes the mitigation and the traffic flow so having that traffic flow go through those neighborhoods they may be completely different and especially i would think a lot less with residential than it is with the

barrage of a lot of people leaving at one time and a good an example of that is five o'clock in the entire downtown civic center everybody leaves at five o'clock so there's a big rush going through there and all that so i think that's going to help a lot to defend the fact that you have to have the study i agree with it that that to have full the permit and do a study at that time and councilman penaloza i really believe that the studies are very important if you don't do a study you don't know you don't know the beginning or the end if you go in and have your heart examined they want

you to stay still and and do a baseline and then they want you to be running or something so it's running at its maximum. You take the two together and it comes out to something where you're actually believing you can live or you could die or it's a good thing or a bad thing. In that analogy, these neighborhoods, this money goes into a pot that's $2.1 million. And like Tag said, Tag said that, you know, it may be a hundred grand.

Okay. About a hundred thousand dollars. I think at the end of the day, I think it's going to cost a lot less than that and i agree that it should be less but we're not going to know until it goes there and until you have the building full it's going to take three years to build the building it'll take six to ten months after that to get it to occupancy and then you'll know the difference between the two and the neighborhoods it impacts and that money should go directly there whatever it needs to be but i did raise it from 1.2 million to 2.1 million dollars

and we are very concerned with the neighborhoods i always have been and i always will be and we're

here for the city and god bless you brother thank you thank you mr harrah thank you um uh to mr harrah the applicant um just uh hang by because other council members may have questions that you may need to answer um so let's go on other council members please

uh mr mayor i think i was next this is a council member go ahead thank you mr mayor first uh thank you uh mike for having uh made a good uh presentation and i know sometimes a bigger question out there is you know you know are you really going to build it and can you build it and i always remind people uh you know that you've built some substantial things in santa anna and rehab even more substantial buildings and facilities in santa anna like the santoria building geosha buildings original mics various county office buildings so thank you for that i remember

when we had multiple hearings back when i was on the council during my first tour of duty reviewing this project and in looking at the square footage what's interesting about this building is it looks humongous and some would say it is humongous but keep in mind it also is a fairly any building i remember back then doing some research and the macarthur place twin towers that are fairly new those two combined square footage is about 415 000 maybe a little bit more square feet

one broad reply is just a little over 500 000 square feet so that you know always gives people a sense of of scale uh also uh what's nice about what we're seeing now is that there's more residential or some residential where before there was none and we always know that residential does generate less traffic than office i think that would be a good thing for the neighborhoods i i also was pleased that uh mike hara you know returned my call and others when uh we reminded him that on the first go around there was a project labor component and he from the very

beginning assured me that he would have the same uh project labor agreement things in place which provide local jobs uh local resources and revenue um unless the greenhouse gas emissions also we're you know in the middle of this pandemic right now and i think this will end up being as many building trade that leaders said a little bit of a stimulus for this community the local stimulus which is good and then finally you know we do have a decent number of office buildings in Santa Ana but very few class A top of the line office buildings and I want to make

sure that all our kids you know going through schools and colleges that they one day are able to work in an office building in downtown Santa Ana that they can be proud of and that we could be proud of so i'm very very supportive of this project thank you mr mayor

you're very welcome uh other council members

mr mayor can oh yes if i'm in this is council member go ahead councilor iglesias okay so i just have a couple of questions um i am not questioning the fact that you know one Broadway Plaza was approved by voters in 2005. And I truly, truly respect Mr. Hera and his commitment to Santa Ana. But I do have some concerns that residents have brought up. And also I'm just a little, you know, dismay of what's happening. We just, you know, right now we just rescinded a vote that was going to

give 256 units to for you know in a neighborhood and then now we're we're asked to approve another 450 I believe for this one so you know it's a little concerning to me with all due respect to to the applicant Mr. Harrah but things that were brought up regarding the environmental impact report that it's expired and i think that has a lot of validity uh for us to really look at it and really get the community input on what's going on with this with this project because um i i know that you know by

right he has um the authority to build the the the building but uh you know we are asked to change the zoning for this um and um so i believe that needs a lot of um communication with residents and i don't believe we've done our due diligence um and like council member penilos has stated you know based on this whole um situation that we're facing with covid 19 you know it hasn't given us the opportunity to really speak to all the residents and all the impacts that it's going to

have so my my ask would be if uh you know um we could just delay our vote and really have more community input from you know from our residents and from our businesses i like the way the last speaker you know the things that she said um she she was on point on a lot of things and and i just i just feel that you know we're just zooming through this really fast and you know i appreciate the fact you know that we're trying to get business I mean business conducted in our city and I know it's going to bring revenue but we and then the same

thing was with you know 2525 it was gonna bring revenue to the city and and all that but you know it seems like we're it's double standards we don't practice the same the same with it with every project it seems like we're you know doing a piecemeal all the time and and it's and it's not right it's especially with the general plan amendment, we need to really look at this. And if it was authorized for just building, you know, for building office space, I believe, you know, that we can't really stop. But if we're asked to change it, I, you know, I believe just it's out of courtesy and respect for our community and our residents.

If we can just delay this vote until this COVID, you know, thing is over, and then we really get the community input and, you know, we can take a vote then. because right now, like, I just don't feel comfortable with changing it if we, you know, if we don't have everything in place. I mean, there's questions that Council Member Penalosa just asked, and it seems like, yeah, you can get a commitment, but it's something that it's not really, it's not written, you know, in the agreement right now. So, and I get the entire thing of affordable housing. It would be nice if we could get affordable housing in there,

and it seems like it's been going back and forth. So there's just a lot of unanswered questions in my point of view. And so I just feel that it's not at the point where the community is being served well. And I know Mr. Hara has been there in the community for the longest time. He's been with our schools. He's been supporting our schools. He's been supporting our community. but it's been almost 20 years that this has been in the making. I mean, what's another few months for us to really get the community input?

And then once the community says they're okay with the 456 units, then I'll be okay. So that's what I just wanted to share with you all, that I just feel we say one thing for one project and we'll say another thing for another project. it doesn't seem like we have really our requirements set in place that it could be fair for everyone. So at this point, I just think there's just a lot of questions that, you know, needs to be answered, and especially the environmental impact report being expired. That's a concern to me, and I think it should be a concern to the city.

And with that, those are my comments, and I'm hoping that we could delay this vote to when we're able to really have our community come and talk to us personally at the chambers.

David PenalozaItem —

thank you thank you uh other comments council members uh mr mayor it's uh councilman penaloza

again go ahead go ahead and then let's see if anybody else wants to talk to that well go ahead

David PenalozaItem —

please councillor penaloza thank you sir while the applicant is is on on the line and uh wanted to ask staff because uh when when i met with the i with staff actually the traffic staff and the city manager last summer with the French Park neighborhood and the French Court neighborhood and I believe Logan neighborhood residents were there as well. One of the things I brought up is that they were also concerned with not just the traffic during occupancy, but the construction traffic as well as noise that will obviously go on throughout construction, heavy equipment, etc.

David PenalozaItem —

so I wanted to see if staff was available to I wanted to make a request if staff as part of the building permit could put strict limitations on traffic through the neighborhood and construction times and and maybe even study the neighborhood so the neighborhoods surrounding the property to see when I mean if this moves forward when would be the best appropriate time to do construction because I know that usually will default to construction only during daytime because that's when, but you never know, a lot of the residents here,

David PenalozaItem —

well, there are children that go to school but do have multiple jobs that work throughout the night and maybe sleep during the day. I mean, it would be important for us to really look into these neighborhoods and see what the community feel is like to see when, what construction, and just the traffic of construction would be appropriate. So is that something we could do? Mr. Tai, is putting strict limitations on any construction traffic through neighborhoods and keep them designated to one street, like Main Street or something?

During construction, what we could do if the council desire is to place a condition that requires the applicant to submit a construction traffic plan during the construction for the city to review in order to address some of your concerns. In terms of noise during construction, there are mitigation measures already in place restricting hours of construction. So the answer to your question is yes, we can require a traffic plan for construction and incorporate as part of the mutual declaration that's being proposed for you to consider.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay, and that would be important for me because I don't want to bring it up again, but it brings me back to the modern-day parking structure. The construction, I mean, they broke every rule in the book that they were supposed to abide. They would start before 7. They'd drive through the neighborhood streets. So it's going to be something that we really need to stay on top of to make sure that any traffic concerns and nuisances is mitigated as well throughout the construction period. Thank you, Mr. Tai. That's it, Mr. Mayor.

thank you um look i just want to make a brief comment miguel i i have a i have a comment to make i have a go ahead go ahead thank you mr mayor and uh no i wanted to make sure i took my took my

turn and listened to everybody's comments so um first of all i just want to thank um all the folks who sent emails to me and you know a lot of those names sound look familiar they were the same folks that were opposing 25 25 and so I think one of the consistencies was was to make sure that we listened to the residents I know a lot of our conversation around the previous position that we took and vote that we took was because folks compelled us to they are the residents and they are the folks who are going to be permanently impacted by any decision we make.

So that being said, this is something that is different because we do have a matter here that's before us that was adopted in 2005 by referenda. So the voters did speak on that and we have to respect that fact. We have to understand that this is something very different from 2525. but nonetheless I think that there are some departures here. What the voters approved was a 37-story tower for office space and this is going to introduce an element of residential housing that wasn't considered by the voters. So you know I know our city attorney said that

there was an outside firm that you know agreed that this isn't unwinding the will of the voters. Well, I know that she'll probably agree on this, at the very least, that if we spoke to another firm, they probably would say something different. So firms, unfortunately, exist to contradict one another and to find flaws in rationale and argument. So, you know, but that isn't to say that I don't want this item to succeed. In fact, I certainly appreciate the phone calls I had with the building trades chair

and the representative from the laborers and also communication from the carpenters. So because of them, I do want to see how we can make lemonade out of lemons. And everybody should know that I was on this council when we supported the first PLA in the county. So that's something that's important to me, and I want to make sure that we continue to create jobs and create that pattern of hiring locally as well.

And with respect to Mr. Harrah, the applicant, I was also on the council that voted to remove a very onerous condition that was placed on his development, which was he had to have a 50% leased up of his space before a certificate of occupancy was issued. So that was something that was going to prevent this project from being realized right at the outset. And I remember that was probably the poison pill that was included on that approval way back when. So we did remove that form, and that's how much we thought of him and think of him, is that we wanted him to succeed.

But at the same time, we want to make sure that there's fairness. So what I want to see is, and maybe you can help me here, Sonia, But my opinion has always been that these are concessions that are going to be made, and any time there are concessions or changes and departures from what was previously approved, we should have an instrument to negotiate fairly on behalf of the residents in the city with the applicant. That doesn't mean to be oppressive or punitive on the applicant. It just means that we are on equal footing,

And the argument about a development agreement seems to make sense because we there can include both some of the issues that were raised before on mitigation measures, but also on the affordable housing question, which for me is a big deal. One of the reasons I was very supportive is because as many of the trades spoke, those families that are going to be hired to do the work are working families. And I doubt any one of them would be able to afford any of these 400 market rate units. So to the extent that we can solve that question of building on site,

I was real encouraged when I heard conversations that were initiated by the applicant that he represented there were going to be affordable units on site. That was a very, very compelling reason for me to be supportive. One of the questions I have for our director of planning is, in the event that this goes in lieu and the applicant decides to opt out and not build on site, is it going to be done at the 15% amount that we have in the WHO right now? Or if the WHO gets amended down, does that apply retroactively? What would happen in that case?

The ordinance, the way it reads right now, is that at the time of pulling a permit, that would be the WHO fee that would be applicable to the development project.

So if the WHO goes away or if it gets reduced, then the applicant would get a reduced fee at that point?

That would be the ordinance that would apply at the time.

Okay. So that doesn't help, right? Right now, there is a projected, I think it was mentioned, a $4 million expected fee at the percentage that we currently have in the housing opportunity ordinance that is being projected right so to the extent that that gets changed let's just say that ordinance goes away that turns into zero that would be correct okay so you know these are the things that i know that the applicant in good faith wouldn't do that but nonetheless we need an instrument to protect those rights that the city has and really rights that belong to the constituents

we as stewards have to protect so you know as much as we talk about being listening to the residents paying attention to them and I I do agree with Councilwoman Iglesias I'd like to see if there's more time for us to discuss this I think we're in the minority opinion so I can see that that's that's it that's fine I want to see this succeed but to the extent that we do have some tools some vessel that we can include terms that all of us can respect, not just the applicant, but also the city, because we also need to perform when the applicant is ready to move.

I think those things are fair. And so to the extent that we can create some fairness here and some balance, I would appeal to you, Sonia, to see if there's any instrument that we can use, whether it is a DA, whether it is an MOU or some other instrument, I don't think this mitigation monitoring and reporting program will fit that bill. I just don't think it's binding enough. So if you can maybe solve that for us, I know this is on first reading tonight. We'll probably see this again, but obviously if it comes back to us on second reading, and we can only consider minor changes, and there could be major changes.

And so it's important that we get things straight. So what do you suggest? Can you provide any?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yeah, Council Member, what I suggest is that if the City Council majority is looking for a way to document performance and compliance, I think staff has put that forward at this point. But if I think what you're suggesting is that we actually maybe even negotiate, particularly in the area of the affordable housing, and that would best be done via a development agreement. But of course, an agreement has to be something that two parties agree to. You don't have an agreement if you don't have two parties that agree.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So I think what is best is that tonight the City Council at least give us direction on how we would like to see, A, the performance measures documented and guaranteed, and then B, what types of things you'd like to see us negotiate. I think I've heard several tonight, and we can do that with the Council's direction.

Well, let me just wind up because I've already sucked a lot of air out of the time on this thing. And so I would just say that I think others spoke pretty articulately on mitigation efforts and so how those can be documented. So I won't touch upon those. But on the affordable housing, I would like to see that if the applicant represented at the Sunshine meeting that those units were going to be on site, it's either that or that that the affordable in lieu fee be fixed at 15 percent irrespective of what happens with the housing opportunity ordinance in

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

the future okay yeah that definitely as a payment to the city would best be documented in the form of some type of agreement so I think that you can address

position thank you thank you um any other comments um mayor potent villegas i don't know if you've

made a comment would you like to make comments sir i already made a comment uh on that so uh i'd like to make a motion to approve and but with the um

with the uh information that the council members are bringing up regarding the the uh the agreement ahead of time.

You're talking about, do you want to be more specific? What's the traffic mitigation plan?

Yes, so, you know, I understand that if the applicant doesn't, or the developer doesn't, you know, do the housing on site, then we have to get the in-loop fees. I just want to make sure that we receive something. So I am supportive of that. is that something that we can add and vote on this evening? Mr. Pro Temp? Yes sir. Yes go ahead

I I want to just say that as far as you know the affordable housing in lieu fees this isn't like the art in public places uh suggestions that we make to various projects kind of haphazardly. We have an ordinance on the books that ordinance says for x amount of square feet you provide a certain amount of dollar amounts per square foot you get a total that goes into our inclusionary housing fund so per councilmember Sarmiento's concern if we want to somehow lock the developer in at a certain rate that's one thing but I think it's misleading to act like without a development agreement this

project is just gonna walk away without providing any community benefits he is by log basic you know as mr ty mentioned he's going to have to provide uh at least in loopies if he doesn't include the units on site he's going to provide in lufies and one thing that i think is very important about this is that the in lufies allow a lot more flexibility in how we address affordable housing so it's not just simply let's go build more units but we can actually help some neighborhoods that are right around the corner from one broadway i used to live on broadway not too far from this site.

And just behind where I live is the Willard neighborhood. And there are plenty of places over there that could use some rehabilitation from these funds. Correct. So I don't think these funds are just going to go away.

Let me continue with my comments, and then you can do your thing. I'm sorry, but go ahead. Thank you very much, because I know you've got a lot to say, and I appreciate it, Phil. So I understand that we have an ordinance, and I understand that the fees are coming, and I just wanted to make sure that we receive them. So what was the difference in, let me ask Council Member Sarmiento, the difference, what is it that you were looking for? Because you, just wondering if you could clarify that.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro Temp. The only thing I was thinking about, and I think, you know, the comments previous were right, I'm just saying if that ordinance gets amended in the future, I just want to make sure that the applicant is going to be responsible to pay what we're projecting right now because the forecast of $4 million is based upon what the percentage is as it exists today.

I see, I see. Okay, thank you very much for clarifying that. Look, I just want to make a motion to approve this, and if we already have the ordinance on hand, I have faith in that, and so I'm going to make, that's my motion, and I'm hoping there's a second.

I'll second it.

Mr. Mayor, I'll go ahead and second it, but I'd like to ask the motion.

And then I'll talk to the motion as well. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

What I'd like to ask the maker of the motion is would he be open to two conditions to add to it, more of just clarity not to change what we're approving here. One would be a condition per what I was speaking with Mr. Tai about earlier in this hearing regarding the timing of the traffic studies as they relate to when they're conducted. adding that into the put that into the I believe that was the mutual declaration of acknowledgement and acceptance of approval conditions make that as an additional condition to clarify that we

would have the trap the two traffic studies done for each neighborhood the first one being done at the time that permits are pulled and then at the 90 occupancy moment and then the second condition this is really just more of a cleanup but rather on condition number four i think mr hannah from the southwest regional carpenters had mentioned that um the way that the um oc building and construction trades council interacts with the carpenters just for sake of clarity and how they operate changing the word and to including in a condition number four so it'd be just those two conditions if the maker of the motion was open to those.

Look, Madam City Manager, isn't this already a prerequisite, the studies?

It is, but he was speaking more towards the actual memorializing the timing of the study. So it would be a minor modification.

A minor application. Okay, look, I'm willing to add that to the motion.

All right, and you can go here in a second. so you'll accept your own amendment correct right all right any other comment uh uh uh chime in uh do you want to comment yes i did and uh that was the maker of the second

um maybe we can review the record on that uh i did want to on you know that last point about the the in-lue fees and you know the WHO ordinance uh we do have an ad hoc committee that uh council members uh iglesia ciega and i are on uh i think uh we've done the meetings we were required to do and i think just staff was fine-tuning the the work and the recommendations etc i would just ask kind of just informally through our city manager that we try to get that on the next uh meeting or too which is i think what uh we ideally were we're looking at as well and that can begin to address

uh what the fees would be i know we had a similar concern some of us did with the main place uh mall developments and uh there we decided you know as councilmember but there another mentioned since there's an order in place just kind of let that be uh the guide and i think uh you know the same here we have a ordinance in place and if we do uh update it uh you know maybe this project benefits or not from any changes there but i just wanted to give an update to my colleagues on that and uh suggest that uh our staff brings that back with the recommendations and the ad hocs

work as soon as possible thank you all right so with that look i just want to say that um

Mayor, if I may, may I make a substitute motion?

Yes, you may. Go ahead.

I would like for us to delay the vote and maybe extend it for another two weeks or a month because there's a lot of things that we're talking about right now that's not really in our recommendations right now that I don't feel it's right that we're adding this as we're speaking. So if we could delay taking the vote or table it for another two, I would say a month, that would be good. So I'll make a motion to delay this item for another month.

Seeing if there's no second, the motion, subsequent motion would die for lack of a second. I'll go back to the original motion. I just want to speak to it and say that I'm supportive of that motion. I believe that on the $15, you know, for Squareport, I believe the applicant's accepting that and is able to handle that within, you know, his project and what he's proposing. I think it brings a lot of jobs, and now jobs are temporary, but, you know, you go from project to project,

and people make a living in the construction trades, always going from project to project. It's what they do, so I think it's unfair to categorize them as a lesser job in any way, only because once they get it done, they go and build something else. It's what they do. Also, I believe that this project has been around a long time, but I think it's stood the test of time, and it's really the applicant's long-term commitment to finally getting it done.

And especially as we come out of the virus, I think, and we will come out, I think this will be a really strong signal as to the overall health of our city and our community. So for those reasons, and there's more, but may that have said, I'd like to ask the clerk to do a roll call vote, please.

Councilmember Becerra? Yes. Councilmember Iglesias? No. Councilmember Peñalosa? Yes. Councilmember Sarmiento?

With the mayor's clarification on the affordable housing in lieu fee to remain at 15%, I vote yes.

Council Member Solorio?

Yes, but I'm a little bit concerned about that last thing that wasn't in the motion.

Well, the mayor clarified the motion and that's the premise I'm working on.

I clarified the motion and that's based on how we're voting. That's correct. If you want to make her in the second, do you accept that as a formal amendment?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Mr. Mayor, can you speak? I would advise that, Mayor. Mr. Mayor, can you speak?

Sorry, thank you, Sonia. It's simply that, you know, the applicant, and I know because I had a chance when I debriefed with him earlier, he made it clear that he's ready to accept that fee level. So even if we were to change fees in the future, go up or down, as a part of this motion, he's accepting that rate of $15 per square foot. I'll accept that then.

Mayor, if I may make a...

Mayor Pro Tem, do you accept it?

Yes, I do. The city manager would like to say something. Stand by.

Go ahead.

If I may make a suggestion, you do have the applicant still on the line if you wanted to ask him to make that commitment as part of the public record.

I've spoken to him, but Mike, would you like to come on? Michael here, the applicant?

Yeah, I'm on. Mike Harris here. Yes.

Go ahead. Do you want to speak? Are you committed to the $15 square foot? Does that work?

I think I think it adds a lot to the community. I think I really want to help. Everybody kept saying that it was going back and forth with saying we're going to have affordable housing or not. My lenders didn't want to put affordable housing in it. So I decided to talk more to staff. and I think after it was explained to me what they do with that money by taking that money in this case like four million dollars and take it to the neighborhoods that need it the most and resurrect those areas that are downtrodden that need more work and bring more life to the area I think it

helps raise the bar for everybody I think the money does more good by helping the neighborhoods around here than me putting in affordable housing in

this building so and i believe people are saying that uh they just want to know are you committed to the to that level of funding whether you build it next year in two years or whatever we want to make that part of the motion so it'd be a requirement on you well you you took the wind

out of my sail because i was ready to say with that i will agree to pay a fixed number of 15

dollars a square foot to help our community. All right so it's officially part of the motion and we have concurrence. Thank you Mr. Herring. Thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Clerk can you continue with a roll call vote then.

Council Member Solorio? Aye. Mayor Pro Tempe Vegas? Yes. Mayor Pulido? Yes. Motion carries. 6-1

Okay, let's go back

55A

What is our next item? 55A

55A

Oh, you want to go back to that one because I didn't get the vote on that You were going to comment

That's correct, and we have motion Mayor Pro Tem Villegas and seconded by Council Member Peñalosa and Council Member Becerra

yes council member iglesias

which one are we doing i'm sorry 55e we're going back because i i got dropped at the time councilman iglesias so we're going back and voting on that again 55e oh okay i guess i was

just waiting for your comment because I think that's what we were waiting for. So, okay. 55B, yes.

Council Member Peña-Rosa?

David PenalozaItem —

Yes.

Council Member Sarmiento?

David PenalozaItem —

Yes.

Council Member Solorio? Yes. Mayor Pro Tempe-Viegas?

Yes.

Mayor Pulido?

Yes. Yes, and if you want, I think I got cut off. I simply want to state that I believe in the future we're going to be much better off because I know the city manager is going to be watching this very closely.

And that $13 million and the potential additional revenue for transportation, you know, it's much needed. We actually need much more than that. But $15 million is $15 million, and it's a very good thing. So I know that it was tough over at OCTA. They gave me a hard time, but I knew we were right. I knew that even though they put us under very heavy scrutiny, we'd be able to back everything up, and we did. So that's part of what I want to say when I got cut off earlier.

So with that, let's go back to I believe we're on item 75 B as in boy. Is that our next item? Yes.

And this is a public change. So this time and place, we're talking about adopting a COVID-19 response funding plan, authorize an agreement of approvals, et cetera.

Madam City Manager, does this involve Altamed in any way?

Yes, Mayor. So the item before you is to take the $6.4 million that we're receiving, specifically for a COVID response. It is pretty restrictive what we can use it for. And I did already enter into a letter of intent with Altamed for $250,000 as part of this funding stream because of their financial situation at the time. We have a brief presentation that shows for each one of the buckets of money.

If I don't want to vote on that, should I just abstain on the whole thing? I've worked with Gossela LaRocha before. He's the director of Ultimed. I'd rather not participate if that's the case. So let me turn things over to Mayor Potem, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Go ahead, Madam City Manager.

So we have a brief presentation for you, Mayor Pro Tem, that will show our recommendations as to how to spend the money that we're receiving. And I'll turn it over to our Executive Director of Community Development, Stephen Mendoza.

Director Mendoza, you're recognized.

Thank you very much, Mayor and Council. How are you tonight? Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak. When Council looks at their staff report, you'll notice something called Exhibit 4. If you open Exhibit 4, that is the meat of what we're going to be discussing tonight. The rest of the items in the agenda item and the recommended action are to implement that. So I don't want you to get lost in all that confusion. The item, Exhibit 4, is the spending plan. The rest of the items in the action item are to implement that change because these are federal funds and state funds for different agencies.

So you'll see a lot of actions.

The state and federal government has been proactive in providing additional funding to the city for various means to support COVID. It's in three basic different summaries of groups. One was the award of $1.3 million in Homeless Housing Assistance Prevention Program. That's the HHAP COVID-19 funds from the state.

Stephen, do you want to put the display on the slideshow? Oh, sure.

I'm sorry. Let me change my view.

Thank you. I know it's page normal. I got it. I got it. You got it? Thanks, man.

Thank you.

And that money is coming from the state at 1.3, and we already have that payment. We received that check in the mail today.

On April 2nd, we were committed $3.3 million in CDBG money coming from the feds and $1.7 million of ESG monies also coming from the federal government and we're very appreciative to have those funds and so what you have tonight is a plan to how we are proposing to spend it. The first money, the $1.3 pot that comes from the state of California, we're proposing to service the trailers that were generously donated by the state to us we're proposing to have emergency occupants agreement with hotels if needed and a hundred fifty thousand dollars for additional supplies

and furnishings and staffing over at the link which is our homeless shelter or temporary homeless shelter that we operate in the city as you know their cost of protecting the individuals in the link has increased and we want to make sure that we prepare for any changes they may come in costs and future amendments with the agreement they have with the city council the second plan is for the cdbg funds these are federal funds that are coming down in the total of 3.3 just almost 3.4 million you'll see that we've allocated some money for tenant improvements for a future shelter some emergency

rental relief fund of five hundred thousand dollars as you know we already have that safely home in Santa Ana program that we're operating this year this would expand that program with very little administrative burden on the city five hundred thousand dollars for economic development money for small business incentive program that expands a program that this city already has we we're working with about a hundred and seventy thousand dollar worth of recipients now we have that many applicants we've actually funded 11 of those loans

grants already so what we like to do is fund $500,000 more and get that money out on the street to our small businesses again those are grants not loans $400,000 for the wraparound case management services for infection control for homeless individuals quarantined into hotels so if we put people in hotels we have to also supply the services and the wraparound services for them while they're in the hotels the next line item is a light item the city manager mentioned a moment ago is $250,000 for testing at ultimate the next line item is food distribution for seniors and residents and then the rest

the remainder of 337 which is our 10% allowance for administrative costs the The third part of funds are the ESG funds that are increasing for the City of Santa Ana. You normally dole out ESG funds every couple of years, every two years. This is a new part of ESG and we're proposing to use it, the operating costs to start a new permanent shelter, wrap around case management services for infection control and homeless individuals at the trailers. The other money I just mentioned about trailers and the other part was to service the actual trailers. This services the people in the trailers.

There's a different mechanics and a different contract we would enter for that. And then the administrative cost of 10% to administer the program. So that's the meat of the agenda. But it does take a couple of other mechanical things to do. Judson has done a great job of outlining all of those procedures so you don't have to see this again in a couple of months for one action item, and then in another couple of months for another action item. He's put all action items in here. It requires a substantial amendment to the annual action plan. That's you telling HUD what you're going to use their money for every year.

Five-day comment period we just completed, and the CDBG funds in those two categories, the second two categories, will be able to be drawn down shortly. Again, the first category, we already have the check up front for that because that's a state-funded program. But the federal dollars, we pay first and we get reimbursement if we spend the money right. And with that, I open up to any questions about those three pots of funds. Again, Exhibit 4 is your best sheet to use when you're looking at hours recommending to plan, spending the funds.

Thank you, Director Mendoza. If you could stand by for some questions from the council members. Let me just go down the list. That way we're not stepping over each other. Councilmember Sarmiento.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Stephen, for that presentation as well. These ESG funds and CDBG funds, obviously we can't use any of those monies because they're restricted to just specific uses for helping our employees or trying to find some ways to employ them as essential or maybe creating some opportunities for them? Are there any funds that we expect that might be able to allow us to do that? And I know we've had extensive conversations with the city manager, and obviously we're trying to compel the county to hopefully release some of the monies that they're going to be receiving soon to the extent that –

is there anything that we can use these monies for with the exception of what you enumerated?

Not in these three categories of funds, but, again, this is a changing – This changes daily. New funds and new bills are suggested by the feds on a daily basis. So we're watching those funds, and if you're throwing that out there, we will look for those kind of things in all of these funds that come our way.

That'd be great. Thank you for that. And I would say, you know, to the extent that we have two very strong advocacy firms that are on our payroll, let's make sure, and I've been getting some of their updates as well as some of my colleagues have in staff, we want them to be laser focused on trying to advocate as strongly as they can. And I know the mayor has been doing his part in trying to convince the other 33 mayors to join him in making sure that our rights are protected. But obviously sometimes it comes to population size thresholds that have been set in some of the legislation in Washington.

But look, let's just keep on looking.

We'll look out for that, boys.

Thank you. Councilmember Salorio?

If you have any questions.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Foucault. Viejas, comment and then a question. I thought the plan was very well put together, especially in this short period of time. And, you know, thank you also for putting some additional dollars into that rental assistance program. Because in these times of need, that's really helpful and tangible. My question is regarding the testing. Ultimate is great. They're fabulous. I'm glad that they're part of this effort. I did notice that it mentioned like if they received dollars from elsewhere, that then they'd reimburse this back or they wouldn't bill us for some of that.

And I thought that that was good. But now in particular that the county today announced that Ultimate is a big part of their effort with free testing and they made mention of Bristol site in Santa Ana. Is that the way that's going to work or is it going to be additive or maybe you

just kind of compare the contract to C? Thank you Councilmember. We would need to look at what the county was actually contracting with because if it was for a different scope of services it wouldn't technically be reimbursing them for what we were reimbursing them for but we certainly can look at that to see if there's any way to recover any dollars that they did receive reimbursement for

yeah just so that it's clear and again I don't mind if it's that if I want there to be clarity on what the what the metrics are and I'm really happy that the county also reached out to them too because I know in the past there was a little bit of a rocky relationship as well thank you. Councilmember Peñalosa

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Stephen. Mr. Mendoza for that presentation. It was very informative and well put together. I'm happy that we're using all this money for very much needed throughout the different allocations that you listed. But I had a couple questions in regards to some of the amounts. One, for example, was the $400,000 being used to service trailers that were given to us by the state of California. I mean, it's 22 trailers, and this is just me trying to wrap my head around the cost of servicing a trailer. I can't afford one of these trailers. I've seen them.

David PenalozaItem —

They're really nice. and I know that all of them, whether it's a boat or a trailer, they all come with maintenance costs that I wouldn't know anything about. So, I mean, it comes out to about $18,000 per trailer to service. Is this over multiple years, one year? Can you elaborate a little bit more on that?

Well, actually, when we put this table together about two weeks ago, this was a guess. And I thought it was a little high. But now that we're actually servicing the trailers, we're emptying the black water and gray water twice a day for some families of six that are in one trailer. We are seeing that they may actually reach a higher amount than we expected. It also helped us with attaching the electrical, $30,000 to electrify these. and again servicing them, electrifying them, providing the water service for them, and everything that goes with the physical repair. We even had to build steps on them,

and we also have to pay a firm to train the residents how to use a trailer. When you and I rent a trailer, we kind of get a walkthrough from a rental company telling us how to use their trailer. We had to do an orientation with both the city staff and Mercy House staff and then also the users of the trailer who are occupying the trailers. And we have to pay a firm for that purpose. So we're paying my Thompson RV company to do that for us. So we have a lot of agreements that we actually didn't predict. So do I think I'm going to spend the 400? No. Am I going to get closer to the 400 than I originally thought? Absolutely.

And we still have seven parked at another location we can move over on to the lake that are going to incur costs.

David PenalozaItem —

thank thank you for that that really breaks it down so and just one thing that you mentioned you mentioned the family of six living in one of these trailers i was under the impression that these were going to be used for to isolating uh potent potential covet 19 uh homeless patients um is that not the case now we're just using them for for families no they are for isolating and

this family needed to be isolated because they went on a trip a day trip and they were exposed to a relative who is positive. So they're being isolated together even though there's six of them.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay, that makes sense. And one of the other things that caught my attention was you also allocated or noted money for hotel rooms and a block of rooms for

David PenalozaItem —

homeless individuals as shelter beds. Yes. Do we know where these these hotel rooms will be? What hotel we had in mind? Is it something that's going to be here in our city? Yeah we would we

would what we did we started out with surveying our hotels of who was interested. I have a list of three hotels that might be interested in this. We do not have any agreements with those hotels because we don't think the need is there yet. This is this is in case. So this is just in case

David PenalozaItem —

the link, whether it's filled or closed down, and the trailers, and then the additional shelter that we're hoping gets off the ground sometime later this year? We're also using the county hotel

system. The county is reserved hotels. We place four people from the link in the county hotels as well. Before we drop the ball, before we go for our own hotels, we'll exhaust all other things as well. We could also use hotels for our own public safety officers, for our own police. We could also use it for nurses. So it won't always be for homeless. So we have to be careful what pot we pull from. As you notice, some of this money is for homeless, some of this money is just for COVID. So we have to be very careful. So we've tried to make it as broad-ranged as possible.

And if you remember four or five weeks ago, they predicted homeless would be really impacted by COVID. We're not seeing it in Santa Ana yet. You know, we missed the ball. We're seeing it in nursing homes, but we're not seeing it in all the shelters yet.

David PenalozaItem —

Now, is that something that, and again, this is getting more into the health related, but would that be possibly because they're just out there and not being tested or

seeking any help for it? There's many theories. If you ask people in the street, people are suspected. They have a really healthy constitution. They've been on the street for years they can fight a virus but i think it's it's it's not good for me to say i'm

David PenalozaItem —

not a medical professional right okay uh that's it mr mendoza thank you thank you um and let's just make sure we don't drop the ball you almost thank you thank you council member bengalos

of great questions by the way. Councilmember Iglesias.

Yes, sorry about that. Okay, Steven, I do have questions regarding the contract that we have with Altamed or maybe the city manager can answer these questions. But I see in the staff report that it's about $250,000 that she's already allocated. Are we going to be doing anything in addition to that? And my second question is, how are we determining who's going to get tested? How does that happen? Because I know a lot of the community has been asking, where can we go get tested?

Where can we, you know, we don't have the resources. this, you know, they're looking to the, you know, to the city of L.A. that's taking the lead and, you know, whatever the city of L.A., you know, the mayor from L.A. is doing, it's like they're always questioning why isn't Shania doing this. So my question is, who's eligible to be tested and how many is Altamed going to serve?

Thank you, council members. So the scope of services that are in the letter of intent that I entered into with Altamed. It does talk about doing COVID-19 testing and also just general health checks. And with the population that they serve, they oftentimes don't receive any compensation for that. They are still doing the testing similar to how it's being done throughout the whole county. There has to be criteria met before they're able to do a testing of someone. So if an individual comes to Altamed and they are exhibiting symptoms and based on the doctor's recommendation,

they would be tested for COVID-19. Because you raise a really good point, it's one thing that we haven't done enough of in the county is the testing of COVID-19. The county just did report at the beginning of this week that they are getting 14,000 different test kits. Those are the swab test kits, and they're going to try to greatly expand their testing. They haven't come out and mentioned whether they're going to be, you know, following same criteria as far as who they would test. The other bit of good news on the front is that they are going to partner with

the local university and they're going to see about doing a program where they're going to do the antibodies testing. Anymore, that is the type of test that could be the most beneficial because it would actually let you know what percent of your population has already been exposed to COVID-19, which would be very useful information. So I hope that answered your question.

It does. And I know we talk about the homeless a lot, but my concern is mostly the community residents in Santa Ana. You know, they're the taxpayers. They're the ones that are pretty much keeping our economy going. So what's the criteria for them? The selective, I would say maybe like the selection process for those to be tested. because I just feel we don't put enough emphasis on our residents and we're putting a lot into the homeless crisis, which I believe has to be a county thing. Responsibility. So I understand the ones that may be at the link,

but the others, I just don't understand what would be the criteria for them to select them to be tested.

Well, I can't speak as a medical profession, but I will say that our funding for AltaMed is to provide those types of services to only Santa Ana residents.

Okay, so that's aside from the link, right? Or is it including the individuals living in the link?

No, this is completely separate from homeless. This is a funding financial commitment to a local medical care facility to provide services to our residents.

Is there going to be a charge Christine?

I believe they work on a sliding scale based on the patient's ability to pay.

So is there an income limit to them being eligible for testing?

I'm not aware of any, I really can't answer that, I'm not aware of any though. Not related to funding.

Yeah. Okay. So if you could double check on that and just make sure that we have that clear, because there's some individuals that, you know, they don't meet the requirement of being on the, like, you know, it's what the federal government considers a federal poverty level. But, you know, they're very busy ends meet. So it wouldn't be fair to not allow them to be part of the testing if, you know, if they're seeking that type of assistance.

Yeah, and that should not happen. Because if we are funding them and a Santa Ana resident comes in and is exhibiting the system and meets the medical criteria, they would provide the test.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Prochem. Thank you very much. Council Member Becerra. And then there's a follow-up question from Council Member Pena-Losa. Go ahead, Phil.

Thank you, Mr. Prochem. I just want to thank staff for the presentation and listening to my colleagues pretty much asked all the questions that I was going to ask. So in the spirit of time, that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem. Mr. Mendoza, one final question in regards to the rental relief fund, which I know is extremely important and very much needed here in our city. A lot of people struggling to pay their monthly rents. and I'm a little confused and I'm not sure if this is the process we usually go through is having residents go through the listed you have Salvation Army, United Way and or Catholic Charities are they do we give them the money and then residents have to go through them

David PenalozaItem —

to apply for the rental assistance fund because from what I believe we also have a rental assistance fund through the city, correct? Well, we have what you normally call Section 8,

totally different than this program. If you remember in the end of last year at the budget cycle, there was a council member who requested money for rental assistance. We provided a $25,000 program for mobile homes and I believe a $100,000 program for Safely Home in Santa Ana. This is an extension of that program. So we're adding, we had $100,000 for these charities to administer on our behalf. Now we would replenish it.

David PenalozaItem —

Awesome, which I'm 100% okay with. I just want to make sure that we're still putting out very easily accessible information to our residents, social media, email, whatever means necessary for them to know that these funds are available and have been available for them to apply for. And if there's any resources that we could put towards this program to not have a two-, three-month waiting period for a resident to hear a response or get some kind of relief, that would be appreciated. Those are my comments. But thank you for clarifying that. That's it, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Thank you very much. My brief comment, thank you, Stephen, for your leadership. Thank you for putting all this together. city manager the whole team Judson back there was a little mask on you know it's nice to see you today and and we got Paul back here also thank you very much for all your good work on this is there a motion and a second on this okay all second by Pena Losa

Madam City Clerk, call the roll.

We have public comments at this time. Oh, that's correct. Public comments. Public comments. And Mayor Pro Tem, we also received correspondence on this item. We received a total of seven, and they were all general public comments. All right.

Thank you very much. Okay, so at this time, I'm going to go ahead and open the hearing for public comments.

Okay, thank you. Caller, if you could please clearly state your name and state whether you're in support or in opposition to the item and why. You have been unmuted and now you have three minutes.

Hello, my name is Kaylee. Good evening, council members. I would just like to state that I am in favor of an emergency rental relief fund. I would just like to mention that there are prerequisites for the safely home program that will actually exclude along with renters in the city. For example, one of the requisites is to verify that you'll be able to pay the next month's rent after receiving the assistance. That will exclude a lot of people. It also says that you

should be able to provide proof that you've received a notice of eviction for non-payment of rent and currently under the statewide judicial order there are eviction notices that cannot be served so this would also exclude a lot of renters additionally i'll just state that i currently volunteer for a tenants rights hotline in santa anna to help tenants send letters to their landlords to qualify for the rights that the city provided under the moratorium and i would just like to state that it's very important to have these funds because many landlords are still

threatening to call the police because of passing rent as well as rejecting attendance letters that would qualify them for the right to repay rent so having extra funds to even pay for legal support would be very important for safety and then additionally i'll mention that one of the best method to respond to COVID-19 on behalf of housing and homelessness without having to use government funds to do so is to extend the rent freeze that is currently in place until May 31st but if it is extended until six months after the emergency is over matching the timeline of the

moratorium then many renters will be able to get out of the debt and have an easier time paying back their rent that is past due. Some stories I'm hearing from people on the hotline is that they have the maximum rent increases permitted under AB 1482, which is 8.4% prior to the rent freeze. So their rent went up on April 1st, but the rent freeze was enacted April 7th. And so people are very concerned about how to pay back rent past due in addition to staying current with rent payments. So extending the rent freeze allows renters to leave some of the debt from this crisis without having to use government funds.

Thank you for your time. Thank you very much and I'm going to have the city manager address the comments on the rent issue after all the callers.

Thank you very much. Let's continue. Caller, if you could please clearly state your name for the record and state if you're in support or opposition to the item and why you have been unmuted and now you have three minutes to speak hi there can you hear

me yes we can hear you thank you my name is nathaniel greensides and i'm in support of it however i'd like to bring up uh the fact that it doesn't do enough to ensure that folks are experiencing issues with paying rent currently during covid aren't also going to experience even further issues once the pandemic and the shelter in place orders are listed um and so i want to bring up specifically the point of an earlier point from tonight about item 25a where city council voted affirmatively to give mr mike an extension on how he's going to further develop

santa hannah and yet santa hannah city council is not taking any action currently to ensure that the rent increase moratorium during COVID pandemic is not, is extended past the shelter-in-place orders to ensure that residents who are currently experiencing issues with paying rent and would experience further issues if the rent was currently increased get a chance to catch up once the orders are listed. And, you know, I want to say that City of Council needs to make sure that they're doing the right thing and ensure that the rent frees

and eviction moratorium remained in effect for at least six months after all the shelter-in-place orders are lifted. And it's not an impossible thing to do. City Council has that power. So please make sure you do the right thing. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comment.

Caller, please clearly state your name and whether you're in support or opposition to the item and why. You have been unmuted and now you have three minutes.

Hello, my name is Maria Ceja, and I am in favor of a rental relief fund. But as mentioned before in my comment, there are certain prerequisites that do not allow a large number of the city's population to apply to this rent relief fund. Also, I know that there's a prerequisite that's asking for a W-9, and I know that that excludes the undocumented population, which is a large percentage of the Santa Ana population. I'm also a volunteer tenant counselor for a tenant hotline here in the city of Santana, and I have firsthand heard the unethical experiences that residents are currently facing in the middle of a global pandemic.

And I would also like to follow up with the comments mentioned before me that a rent freeze, like the extension of a rent freeze is necessary, especially if people are trying to pay back the rent they weren't unable to pay during this pandemic and to be topped off with a rent increase that burden would lead to severe complications and can even lead these tenants to be homeless or displaced in their long-time community uh thank you thank you for your comment okay caller um if

you can please clearly state your last caller um and whether or not you're in support or opposition to the item. You have three minutes. You have been unmuted.

Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you.

Hi, Mayor Pro Temp and other members of the council. Santa Ana renters such as myself are reaching out to you today to urge you to expand the rent freeze for six months after the emergency orders are lifted. If renters are still being expected to pay back rent, even though millions across the state have lost their crowds, having to deal with rent increases on top of the debt they already have accumulated will make it impossible for them to ever catch up. Freezing the rent, the rent increases for at least six months after the period of emergency will facilitate recovery after the pandemic.

Without a rent freeze, renters will be fighting an uphill battle against insurmountable debt please expand the current rent freeze to six months after the emergency orders are lifted and continue to create an emergency coven 19 release by the city's most economically vulnerable la has already created a similar fund through their angelino debit card program and many members of our community community will not be eligible for federal stimulus due to the immigration status. The governor of California will release funds next month but only a maximum of a thousand dollars will reach each household. Following the footsteps of LA and

provide economic relief to low-income residents. This will help our community recover after the crisis and protect against further destabilization. Furthermore, like other folks have mentioned, the current safety at home program in Santa Ana has a lot of prerequisites that have made it really impossible for us to connect community members to those funds for example the w-9 is required of landlords to fill out to receive the the grant payment and many of them because they take cash payments from

tenants and they don't want to pay taxes on it they refuse to fill out that w-9 so then the tenants aren't able to use the rental assistance fund and then they end up getting a visit anyway even though the fund exists so it'd be really great if you all are going to funnel those five hundred thousand dollars into this program that you address the current issues with it so the w-9 is one thing the other the second thing would be removing that prerequisite that they have to um have a three-day notice right now three notices can be served until after june

So how are tenants supposed to make use of the funds if they prove that they have a three day notice? It also doesn't make sense for them to have to prove that they have the rent for the following month. If it's an emergency rental assistance fund, it means that tenants don't have the funds right now and they may not have them in the future, but this is to carry them over through that specific month. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you. and that was at the last caller okay we have one more less the last color may I remind the public that the rent freeze is not on the agenda but we are going to have the city manager address it but you need to stay on topic of what the the item is on the agenda all right well thank you very much go ahead and

continue with the caller caller if you could please state your name for the record and state whether you're in support or opposition to the item. You have three minutes. You've been unmuted.

Hi good evening. My name is Carla Juarez and I am in support of helping the tenants in Santana and I do want to share my experience with helping tenants in Santana. I am a community activist and I've heard many stories and I've helped people through different walks of life and I have reached out specifically to councilmember Iglesias and councilmember Pena Loza and I only received a response back from Iglesia and she referred me back to the city manager which referred me to another person and that person specifically said that there

is no there is no assistance um in spanish and said for el momento no existe asistencia monetaria for the student to la ciudad de santana saying that there is no no assistance it could be offered for renters who have not been able to pay their rent because of covid19 and there is a lot of harassing some landlords, not accepting letters, or harassing them, scaring them that they're going to call the cops to get them kicked out. And even though that there is a protection that allows them to pay or make a payment after May 31st, landlords are lying to them

saying that this is not true, they don't accept their letters, and they're putting fear in them that they have to pay or they have to move out and even that said I have tried many different places where they could get assistance monetary assistance like for example Salvation Army they stopped accepting any applications after April the 7th because all of the funds have been exhausted they're going to be accepting applications for the rent that is due May on April the 27th but everyone else who still has not been able to pay their rent from April

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

we have one minute left

they're they're okay they're they're just out of luck and they're going to be affected so right now not only do we have a global pandemic so we're going to be facing a debt crisis and then we're going to be facing the eviction crisis. And I also want to say that I'm in favor. I know you said not to talk about it, but pushing the six months protection for no rent increase. So that way it gives a great chance for everyone to catch up because we will be facing a set crisis and then that will turn to eviction crisis. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your call. We are now going to close the public hearing, and we're going to move on to Councilmember comments on this. But I would like the city manager, if you could please address this. I understand our police officers do not also, our police officers here in the city do not assist with evictions. That is the Sheriff's Department's area and the County of Orange. So our police department is not involved in that. I believe that if the public were to be worried about or concerned about that, I recommend that they contact the county of Orange, who is charged with handling evictions.

So can you address also this rent freeze? Many callers have been talking about that. Just for a brief moment, thank you very much.

Certainly, Mayor Pro Tem. So the three items that I heard, and thank you so much for your comments. In regards to the parameters to qualify for our rental assistance program, that is something we can go back and take a look at because we certainly have the ability to change those. In regards to a request for any extension of time on whether it's eviction moratorium or rent increased freezes, it's something I will look at. We have heard from certain organizations that were seeking a lengthening of the time. We also have heard from other organizations that were asking us not to extend the amount of time.

So it's something we would have to do a legal review and look at. And then on the other item, I believe one of the callers mentioned that there were some landlords that were not complying with the executive order. And if that is the case, the place to contact is our code enforcement office. And if you go to our website under what services are still open for business, there is both an email and a phone number for our code enforcement division. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Let me go down the list for the council member comments. Council member Sarmiento.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem, and thank you, Madam City Manager, for those comments. I think, really, we can only speak to what's before us, and what's before us, again, is just the rental assistance with respect to this item. And we can expand on discussing rental freeze, if anything else, with you, and you've already heard comments, so thank you for responding to those. On the rental assistance, I would request that you go back and maybe look at how we can relax some of those conditions so they're compliant with some of your executive orders that you've issued

and to make it more flexible for people to be able to access that support and that relief. The last thing we want to do is, I think as somebody mentioned, delay it, complicate it. The whole idea behind funding it a little bit more is to make sure that people receive it immediately because at this point, monies that are delayed creates anxiety, creates probably something as difficult as the condition itself. So to the extent that we can have staff work on streamlining that and making it as flexible as possible,

and obviously we don't want to try to distinguish this. The only question I had is on the question of undocumented versus documented folks. because these are federal funds, is that the reason why maybe those that are not legal residents or citizens can't access this support?

Thank you, Councilmember Sarmiento. That question actually was brought to staff earlier this week as well, and we came up with a good solution. First, since these are federal funds, we aren't able to assist undocumented residents, but what we will be able to do is adjust our guidelines so that we can prorate the assistance for a documented member of a household so that we can assist those households.

All right. And to the extent we obviously have to comply with the conditions of monies and the sources of where we receive those funds, we have to do that. we can't violate the law but to the extent we make it as accessible as possible that would be my direction so thank you for your comments madam city

manager thank you very much councilmember Solorio

yeah I think I spoke to this item already previously I was thankful for the plan overall and the rental assistance program particular so good and in support

thank you very much Councilmember Peña Losa

David PenalozaItem —

thank you mr. mayor pro tem back to my comment that I mentioned earlier mr. Mendoza this is that and that's why I was mentioning is that we want to I want to make sure that we're putting out that information and making it easily accessible for the residents to to you know apply for for these funds because again that this isn't a you know rents are due or or whatnot and and people you know are suffering and they don't have the the luxury of time to wait or savings and and making this easily available to them is gonna go a long ways with our

David PenalozaItem —

community just like we a year ago when we when we fix the way that we the the council discretionary funds how that was taking a long time you know two months to get to the nonprofits hands you know and we fix that so that it doesn't take that long that's something that we should look into to make sure that the residents are able to get these funds quickly when it is needed and I do agree with the with the comments that were made about making these these monies available to undocumented residents in our city that do not have the IRS and

David PenalozaItem —

financial information disclosures to provide for these funds but I am supportive of this item thank you sir thank you very much councilmember

Iglesias

can you hear me I'm sorry for a while there yes we can hear you okay thank you yeah yes I am I agree with what's been shared down especially with the with the callers asking us to facilitate the process of getting the funds for the for the rental assistance I've been contacted by a lot of community members asking it's like when does you know when can we expect help and it just seems like there's so many hoops that they have to go through in order to get this assistance that they've that you know as a council we've approved so I'm

glad on the city manager is going to be looking at that and being a little bit more I would say because of buying the requirements and you know how it is to get the money back to the to the residents and another thing that I wanted to ask is I know we're talking about the residents too but I believe there's also one for the businesses there is very business rental assistance because I know I've been contacted also by business owners, and, you know, they're not able to pay some of their rent, and then the landlords, too, they're losing because, you know, they have to pay their rent, too.

So what is the process for them applying to for rental assistance, and then how long does it take?

So we at Santa Ana, we don't offer rental assistance for the businesses, but there is a small micro-incentive grant that's available to small businesses. There's a number of SBA loans that are available to businesses. There's ability to write off some payroll taxes. But probably the best thing for small businesses is the Paycheck Protection Act, which initially allocated $350 billion, and it quickly went really, really fast. But they have just now taken an action. They're finalizing it that will put more money into that program,

and that's a program where a small business can get a loan from the government to pay for things such as rent, utilities, and payroll. And if they use it for those things, the loan is completely forgiven and there's no interest to it. So it's a grant. So I would encourage our businesses to look out for the next tranche of that money. We have a wealth of information on our website in the Community Development Department on all of the programs that are available for small businesses. and we have routine meetings with the Chamber of Commerce to also help try to spread the news to all the businesses that we can reach

as to what type of assistance is available for them.

Okay. Thank you for that. And then I just have just another follow-up question for the rental assistance. For the rental assistance, is it only for individuals that have a lease under their name? Or could it be rental assistance? Say, you know, here in Santa Ana there's a lot of multifamily um individuals living in one dwelling so you know say they're renting a room is that something that could does it qualify for them to receive rental assistance or does it have to be at least under

their name um council member iglesias judson's going to take the revisions um and all the comments tonight and then get them to his staff for revisions one of the things he is considering is subtenants in these apartment units and rentals as well okay good because I

know I've received a lot of questions on that so that'll be good so thank you thank you for all the information that you've given us in and I want to thank the callers that called in regarding their concerns I you know it's the only way that the council knows what's going on in the community is hearing from you all and I just wanted the community for being involved. Thank you very much.

Councilmember Becerra? No I'm good. Thank you Mr. Pro Temp. All right thank you very much. My quick comment is that yes I'm in favor and let's see what we could do to help people with rent. This is you know we're all in this together and it's tough but eventually I think we might run out of money. God things are so bad but let's see what we can do and I'm in support. Is there a motion and a second, right? We already had that? Yes, I got Okay, Madam Clerk, can you call the

roll? Yes, and I have the motion to be Council Member Sarmiento, seconded by Council Member Peñalosa Council Member Becerra, if you can please provide your vote

Yes

Council Member Iglesias

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yes

Council Member Peñalosa

David PenalozaItem —

Yes

Council Member Sarmiento

Yes

Council Member Solorio

Mayor Pro Tem Viegas? Yes. And Mayor Polito abstained. So I have 6-1 with Mayor abstaining.

Okay, we can get the mayor back on the line.

I'm on. I'm on Mayor Pro Tem. So let's go back to the staff. Where are we? We just finished 85-75B, was that? we are at 85 a now mayor all right councilman inglesias i believe this is your item

yes um thank you uh so this item uh is to discuss and consider directing the city manager to direct staff to explore waiver of late fees for other miscellaneous fees um in the process of you know of um through this happening through us through this pandemic with covet 19. uh some individuals from the community have contacted me regarding the the dog license tax and and i when i took the city manager that's one thing that wasn't included in her executive order

so they have asked if we could waive the late fees for for the dog um licenses and um and i believe that would be a a good place of us saying no we're working with our community and also I believe the last executive order regarding the business licenses waving the penalty is about to expire at the end of the long that's I believe we did it took people 30th so would ask the in you know the city councilor just you know if we can't extend it to maybe another or whatever the city manager deems is appropriate because this would help our community moving forward

and dealing with what's going on so i respectfully ask if we could um wave the late fees for for

these um for these entities uh any comments um any thoughts on this request

David PenalozaItem —

all right I have I have I want to thank Councilman Iglesias for bringing up the dog license you know that when it comes to dogs you'll always have my support for for pets but I just want to also offer a reminder that there are you know The city does charge less if your dog is neutered or spayed, a lot less actually, over $100 less from what I've seen. And just encourage, again, residents to, there are areas too, I know people are thinking neutering and spaying is expensive,

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but there are a lot of non-profits in the county that provide very low costs. I believe I neutered my dog for 25 bucks at one of those nonprofits that do that and I think it's in Garden Grove but just wanted to put that message out there but thank you that's it

Mr. Mayor I think the city manager is going to comment I believe under the

power that you guys vest in me i could take care of those two things without even returning to city

council i would suggest that i would suggest use your um judgment and on things that you can just do that your judgment are are good uh and related to the you know cova various just go ahead and do that. I think we have public comments still right Madam Clerk? Yes we do and we do have speakers. Let's go ahead let's take them on. Okay and also we did

receive correspondence one opposition to the recall and three that were requesting to extend the rent freeze for six months beyond the May 31st deadline. And now we have a caller. Please state your name clearly for the record. You have three minutes.

Yes my name is Connie Majors and I had a few comments. One is on item 25A, the Caribou Industry Project at 3rd and Broadway with the hotel and rental residential space. I like that it's been separated with Sycamore coming through again but i'm concerned that the first two floors should be in design scale and material to combine with the historic area there um i don't know if that can be put into the development agreement but um i think it's important to have the streetscape feel uh since it's such a historic

area there and on 75a the 37 uh the 37 story tower with caribou industries i want to thank councilman penalosa for bringing up about construction traffic we know traffic is already bad in french park floral park slogan and lacy can't we at least before the building even starts put in speed bumps the neighbors know how to drive slowly if the cut through people once they're surprised with speed bumps they won't be coming through more i think speed bumps would

at least help to do it now and councilwoman iglesia thank you for bringing up about asking for more time and your no vote. Also, I want to say... Next speaker. Pardon? Are you done? No, I'm not. In 1979, I wanted to bring up about the molar high rise, how the community rallied around and worked with the council and the developer and stopped a 13-story proposed building on the corner of 901 West Civic Center Drive. That was against what is now known as the Washington Square neighborhood. And as just plain

neighbors, not even neighborhood, and without the use of computers and internet and such, we were able to get that building stopped. And the developer came to the neighborhood and asked what could, what would be acceptable. This is back in 1979. Just want to give you some history that process worked then and it's working now. I just wish we had had the same kind of process on the 37-story tower where the community is involved with the developer ahead of time and design something that works and meets community needs. Thank you, Council. I hope everybody gets a good night's sleep.

We have one more caller. Caller, please state your name for the record. You have three minutes.

My name is Gary Hendricks. I live on Spurgeon Street, adjacent to 25 Main Street property. I've watched as this fiasco has gone on and on, and I just want to make sure that as a taxpaying resident of Santa Ana, I understand what you mental giants of the city council are doing. Based on conversations that I heard tonight about all the loss of revenue due to the virus, if I understand it correctly you're now book you've now voted to take a piece of property on a Santa Ana Main Street from producing several million dollars of tax income to the city which which would make it an even greater need a

renovation of Park Santiago plus 50 years of security for the park paid for by the developer to a cost for the city to purchase a piece of property with money that you don't have and then add it to the santiago park turning it from an income producing piece of land to an ongoing cost to the taxpayers but i'm sure like so many other things that you politicians do to spend other people's money you will vote in another tax on the residents to pay for it then this piece of land can be taken over by the homeless and drug dealers just like the

rest of the park is now and create a criminal haven right behind homes with seniors and families with small children history has shown us that this is the most likely thing to happen because of santa anna being a sanctuary city where no one is ever arrested and those are who are removed are simply released only to return back to the park i do not expect anyone on the council to have the guts to reply to any of this because no previous communications have ever been answered before. Have they, Mayor Polito, Council Members, Christine Ridge, Sonia Carbala? By the way, Polito,

the only people that got harassed were the people that supported the 2525 project and not just Dale

help it. I'm done. All right. Thank you. Anybody else, Madam Clerk? That's all we have. All right. Let's go. Do we have city manager comments? Yes, sir. Just a few brief ones.

Just to point out that we are in the process of developing a strategic plan, and we have an opportunity for the community from live on YouTube and live on Facebook to provide their input on it and that is this thursday april 23rd at 7 p.m and then one other announcement the city's public works maintenance services team is preparing a public service message on how residents can celebrate arbor day this friday april 24th while still staying safe at home that's it

sir thank you um council members council member solario

thank you mr mayor uh just a couple of things uh and i know we hear it a lot but we probably can't say it enough and that is uh let's all try to just stay home and stay safe uh it's a coronavirus is the real thing and now they're even saying that when it slows back down but flu season starts back up it's even going to be harsher then so it's an interesting time uh and then uh the other thought i had you know because i've been watching the the state and the federal press conferences on this coronavirus stuff uh you know there is now you know real dialogue about when and how to open back

up and I know that Councilmember Becerra and others you know you know been talking about how we might do that in Santa Ana given that some of our orders you know also you know directly implied that we would decide when to open back up so maybe at a future meeting I don't know if it would be closed or open that we might want to begin talking about that as well thanks thank you for those

comments council member Iglesias please no no excuse me normally I go with

David PenalozaItem —

councilman Peña Losa please thank you mr. mayor just wanted to you know reach out to our community and and and just implore you all to hang in there this is almost over I can't say that enough I hope it's almost over I need a haircut so I really hope it's almost over and just wanted to remind you guys to just you know continue practicing self-distance and and wearing your face masks outside in public it's really gonna help find the curve and and I think the the community so far has has done an okay job in the last couple of

David PenalozaItem —

weeks also wanted to touch on a little bit that was mentioned about reopening Santa Ana now madam city manager now that we have we got in the hang of virtual meetings I'd like to see our commissions you know slowly come back to to being active measure X arts and culture the the parks and rec commission there might not be anything vital in or important or time sensitive in one of the other Commission some of the other commissions for us to look into having them but since we have the hat because I know that they were originally

David PenalozaItem —

canceled because we didn't know how we were going to be meeting and what that process was going to be like but now that we have virtual meetings from what I see under under control I hope that we could start having those other commissions meet soon and also want to remind everybody about the 2020 census Right now, Santa Ana has a 51.3% self-response rate, so that means a little over half of the city's households have responded to the census, which I'm very happy about and thankful. And let's get this to 100. I think we can. We have a couple of months left.

David PenalozaItem —

So please, if you're listening and you haven't done so, visit www.my2020census.gov. and with that said tomorrow is administrative professionals day so staff i'll be thinking about you and sending you all well wishes and it's also earth day so think of the of the positive in this and the glass half full earth is carrying itself from us not being out there you know you could see horizons you could see catalina island as clear as you've ever seen it you know the the water the oceans look clean so just think of the positive in this tomorrow

David PenalozaItem —

being Earth Day let's think of our planet help clean up anywhere you can and keep her in mind and also want to congratulate or wish our city manager a happy anniversary next week it will be officially one year that she's here and I'm I'm personally very happy with the work that she's done she's really turned the organization of the city of san anna around for the better and uh i i see it and uh i'm very thankful for her leadership and i know i hear it from from staff as well about your leadership madam city manager so thank you and uh hopefully you're here for many many

many more years and that's it thank you councilman iglesias yeah thank you um mr mayor i would like

to thank the city manager for being a great lead and I believe that you know we could give her more authority to to be out and be front and center when reporting out to the community I know the community wants to hear from what's going on within the city so I would like to ask you know there's anything that she could do more like on video and just be out in a you know in front of people because you know with elected officials they don't want to hear us because it seems as politicians but your city manager your public you're the

employee so it resonates with individuals so if there's something that we could do put you more on video or something from the city informing us that would be great another thing I would like to add is measure X I believe it's a very critical committee that needs to be meeting and i'm hoping that they could we could put it back on the agenda or talk you know or give them permission to come back and like what council member council member penadoza was saying you know for that meeting um and talking

about you know the city business because they're critical i mean all the other commissions are critical but right now especially with what's going on with with our financial situation they they're an advisory committee that could really help us see what we're at and um i just say you know i just want to encourage everyone to you know to stay safe i know that we try as much as to to inform our community in our different venues um you know just be able for them to understand what's going on but I feel that we could be doing more

another thing um um Christine if you can take a note yesterday when I was at the city hall uh the um I think it's a machine or whatever it is that the machine that where you can pay the bills it was out of order and and it's something that I feel it you know it's it was a disservice for When I was there, there was about 10 individuals that wanted to use it, but they couldn't. So that was kind of unfortunate.

And I'm wondering if we could bring back or, you know, help bring something back to the community. Individuals that, you know, that go there to pay for the bills. I know that we were doing parking, 12-3 parking at the downtown for them to go for the businesses. this for future i would like to see uh but like if we could wave uh the you know let me give them like maybe 30 minutes free for those that go into city hall to make a payment uh because i i believe that you know they're already there to go make a payment so or pay a fee so if we could do that

help them out and just maybe the first 30 minutes uh you know be free so um with that said i i'm I'm hoping everyone is staying safe and healthy. And we're all in this together. And we are going to get through this and just make sure that we take care of each other. And I believe this situation has brought us closer in just thinking about each other. We have to take care of each other. So have a great week, and we'll talk soon.

Thank you for that. Councilmember Phil Becerra, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to take this opportunity to congratulate Lisa Darmase for being the first woman elected exalted ruler of the Santa Ana Elks Lodge in its 118 year history and the second woman to serve in that capacity at our lodge. I was hoping to honor Lisa in our council chambers, but like other things that have been impacted by this pandemic, we'll adjust and we'll continue forward. I know that Lisa will do a fantastic job in her new role with her creativity, positive attitude, and strong desire to help our community. She has the perfect attributes for an exalted ruler serving in these times at the lodge.

So I just wanted to congratulate Lisa once again. I also want to thank everybody in San Ana who has been practicing safe distancing. It has been working, and we are slowly starting to see the curve flatten. so i ask for your patience in continuing to practice safe distancing keep washing your hands wearing facial coverings in public and while you're doing all that take a little bit of time to complete the sentence sentence census excuse me uh take 10 minutes to help positively impact our city for the next 10 years we will get through all of this thanks to you the residents of san

and with that that concludes my comments mr. mayor thank you very much for those

comments a council member of in Sarmiento yes thank you mr. mayor and I

wanted to begin by thanking the city manager for addressing the rent freeze obviously we had a lot of written communication as well as verbal and you were on top of it you know that there's discussions about extending it others about clarifying it so to the extent that you and your staff address that fairly, I have all the confidence in the world you will. The second one is to thank you as well because I know that our public works director has been speaking with some of our internet carriers to see about the discussion of still many of our households not having access to Wi-Fi. So

I did speak with Mr. Sabah and I know he's having those conversations in earnest with them and I told him I'd be happy to join and help with that because it is a really difficult statistic to know that 20% of our households are having difficulty engaging in children not being able to access distance learning. So whatever we can do to help along with the superintendent's efforts, I know you're happy to oblige on that. The other thing I wanted to talk about was just some of the positive things that have been happening because as difficult as things are, I'm amazed at some of

the community spirit that has come forward, like the Orange County Labor Federation's efforts to assist working families with helping them fill out unemployment applications. And they do this paperwork by appointment only so they can make sure and keep a safe distance from one another. You can call 714-385-1534 for that appointment.

And they are also going to be distributing food this Thursday, April 23 at 11 a.m. at their site in Orange. I also just finally wanted to thank staff for this effort at Main Place that took place just this past Saturday. It was an amazing sight to see because it was done so well relative to the one before it. And I think this was the fifth week in the sequence. But this one was close to, I think, or exceeded 6,000, 7,000, I heard. There were just so many vehicles that I lost track. But everybody who helped, the Power of One Foundation,

Maine Place, obviously, United Across Borders, Northgate Gonzalez, Taqueria Guadalajara, who I helped visit their site, they did 2,000 burritos for free for the first 2,000 vehicles that came by. Today I was grateful enough to be with our friends at Northgate Gonzalez Market with Suavecito, who manufactures pomade hair care products, and they're now doing free sanitizers or sanitizers for folks, and they donated about 1,000, and we distributed those today to some of our seniors who visit those stores from 7 to 8 in the morning, and we know how difficult it is for

them to drive, for them to access these, you know, these protective gear, and we gave those hand sanitizers as well as gloves and masks and it just shows the the strong will that we have in the city that's going to get us through this because as we're as we have challenges I see so many people that step up that really don't need to but they do it because their heart compels them to so we know we're part of that family and we feel very proud and if we don't say it enough thank you madam city manager for many reasons which will go unsaid tonight but but we look forward to getting through this together so thank you those are my

comments thank you mayor from town thank you mr mayor just want to take a quick moment to thank the staff the city manager happy anniversary for next week the staff for all the great work and the staff that's here with us this evening thank you for being brave and being out here with us to make this meeting possible um also i want to thank all the health care workers and the janitorial staff that, you know, keep us, keep the place clean and healthy for us to have the meeting and for all of the city workers to come to work. We appreciate the public safety personnel, OCFA,

the police department for going out there on the front lines along with the healthcare workers. Can't thank you enough. And last week was the dispatcher appreciation week, so I want to shout, to the police dispatchers. Thank you for what you do. And the OCFA dispatchers. I didn't know that they're like in quarantine up there. They want to make sure that no one gets sick to jeopardize the operation. So, you know, the food is sent to them and they never touch it other than when they They pick it up out of this dumbwaiter type thing.

So they're really, really, they're being kept safe to make sure that the emergency operations are up to par around the county. So thank you for what you do. Thank you to everyone. And stay safe and stay strong, Santa Ana.

Thank you for that, Mayor Pro Tem. um um i i just want to um close by talking a little bit about where we are with the pandemic uh to remind us that we're nowhere near out of it uh here in orange county um we need to find ways of pushing the county because they are still way behind in their testing um also i want to thank on that subject council member solario because you pointed out that other counties provide a lot more information uh when they put out the stats and you know we're i i think approaching

200 now of people here in the city that are impacted but we all know from the curves that if we don't uh you know work aggressively um and especially if things begin to relax and and residents want to start coming out, business want to reopen, we could get a real spike, and we could be here, you know, six, you know, 12 months from now in a much worse situation than we are right now. So I would just ask my colleagues and residents, businesses, everybody, let's really be on our toes. Again, the county is receiving $550 million.

dollars if you if you want to split it up on a per capita basis that would be 58 million dollars coming to Santa Ana I don't believe we're going to get that but we should get some money because if not the county is going to be spending that magnitude of money on on us but I guarantee you they won't do it the way we would um I would like to see some very aggressive uh you know tracing We know we have, again, almost 200 people. Now, who are those 200 people? Who do they contact?

Can we make circles around them, in essence, and help them through treatment and tracking so that we can become virus-free? I think of this somewhat analogous to a fire. And if you have a fire, the first thing you need to know is where is it? you know we sent our firefighters out there they go immediately where the fire is to put it out in this case we have no idea where it is it's just all around us and we're waiting to hope it gets better but i think we need to very aggressively do everything we can um you know to do much more

than we're able to do right now and and again the money is here it's at the county um i got 31 of 34 cities to sign a letter. I don't know if you've all seen it or not. If not, please request it. But, you know, the county, I believe, is trying to do a bait and switch on us. They're attempting to get us to go for future money, which may or may not come. But in the meantime, they want to ignore, again, half a billion dollars. It's already here in their portal. and we need to find a way to have it help all the cities in Orange County.

As I'd like to tell my fellow mayors, you know, this money came because there's a lot of people here in Orange County, over 3 million people. There are counties across America that are smaller than Santa Ana, for example. Imperial County is a county of only 200,000 people, and yet they get money because they're a county, and many counties are getting money because they're counties and yet you know we're a major metropolitan area uh and we're currently i believe being punished because we don't fit well within any of the models that the federal government uses so um as we come out of this pandemic hopefully we can

empower cities more and try to change some of the traditional formulas and methodologies that that may well empower cities on a go-forward basis. So with that, let's stay strong, stay safe. I think our employees and the council, the whole community, I think everybody's doing a great job, but it's not over yet. And we do hope that Councilor Peñalosa can get a haircut soon, but he's not the only one without a haircut. I'll tell you, there's a lot of people without haircuts right now.

and we somehow have to get this pandemic under control. We don't want to be the next New York. And I don't need to remind us that we've got tremendous density. And if that pandemic really catches us hard here in Santa Ana, we're going to be more impacted than any other city in Orange County because that density will become a weakness instead of a strength. So, again, let's keep talking to each other. If anybody ever, if we want to talk offline or some members of the community have ideas, things that we're not doing that we shouldn't be doing,

I'll tell you, I talk on a weekly, well, biweekly, really, basis with mayors across the state, on a weekly basis with mayors here in Orange County. I'm telling you, we're all concerned. we're all trying to figure out what to do and we need to stay on our toes as we go through these difficult times so with that this meeting is adjourned thank you everybody and have a good night