Read the February 4 meeting.

Dr. Matthew Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch Hoch

Thank you.

Thank you.

I think it's important. The first page here, you should have a flag. This is the amicus brief, the highlighted portion. This is the amicus brief that was filed by seven South County cities before the Supreme Court, which the court did not take this case up for review. But it's important to note that they're bringing up locating shelters in other cities, of which I think we can all agree that probably one of those cities that they'd be looking at is the city that we're within right now. I encourage you to instruct the city manager and our council to be able to look at our municipal code,

specifically Muni Code 41-1200 and 1201, to be able to. because right now any shelter under 30 beds I think can be zoned by or established by right and three different SB 2 zones the next page is our point in time count I know we've been extremely focused on South County cities and the lack of action that they have but I think that the highlights in here prove out that that's not where our sole focus should be for example we have Garden Grove Huntington Beach Westminster all severely under sheltering their

homeless individuals which puts on a strain on our own city and our resources here as well as obviously South County next two pages next page is what it's just the cover so you see why come where this comes from but this is a service planning area by by shut the three shelters that the county reported during in this period but as you can see about 50% of the of the folks that are at the courtyard are not from Santa Ana or actually I'm to take that back or not even from the central service planning area yet alone we don't know how many are from Santa Ana and that is a county facility but it's important to

understand the the dynamics are they're at play there and then the next three pages are specific requests for public information that I personally have submitted to both the Orange County Sheriff Department as well as the County of Orange and I I would hope and suggest that the county or that the city do the same you guys are much more attuned to be able to how to write these I just I just pretend like I know all this stuff and I'd hope that you that you instruct the council in closed session to be able to do the same establish requests for

public information as Judge Carter this morning was also requesting so that we are armed with the data of who is in the armory in Santa Ana, who is in the courtyard here in Santa Ana. I would suppose, I would posit that our neighbors next door to us, Huntington Beach, Garden Grove, Westminster, that they are also contributing to this concentration within Santa Anna. And we want to help these folks out, but we can't do it at the expense of everyone that lives, votes, and works here. So hopefully this information you find useful to you. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you, Tim. With that, I think we're going to go in a closed session.

It's always a right.

Thank you.

If you can all please stand for 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. Our invocation this evening will be given by Rupert Vig, our police chaplain.

Would you please bow your heads? Heavenly Father, we just come before you now, Father. We thank you for this day and for our blessings. Father, we ask you to be with tonight's meeting and proceedings, Father. We pray for each and every one that's here. Father, we pray for peace, Father God, and we pray, Father, that everybody that's been appointed and anointed to do what they do here, Father, you are behind them, Father. I pray for all our citizens that are present and those that are watching. Bless them, Father. Bless their homes. Bless all this city, Father God. We thank you, and we give you honor and glory. In your name we pray.

Amen and amen.

Thank you, police chaplain. Now we're going to go ahead and sit down and start our meeting. And I'm going to ask the city attorney, is there anything to report out of closed session? No, seeing no attorney, there's nothing to report out. We'll ask her in a moment. Let's now go to Councilmember Peña Losa, recognizing Frankie Amaya for his outstanding contributions to the community.

David PenalozaItem —

Good evening, everyone. While Frankie and Maya's parents walk up, I'd like to share little words about Frankie and Maya.

Now we're going to do a special Go ahead

David PenalozaItem —

At only 19 years old Frankie Amaya is a well known soccer player who currently plays for Major League Soccer's FC Cincinnati, a soccer club based in Ohio. Frankie was the first overall draft pick of the 2019 Major League Soccer Super Draft, and the very first overall pick to be born in the 2000s. Frankie was born right here in Santa Ana, and is an example of the talent that comes from our city. In 2018, Frankie made 14 appearances with UCLA, 10 of which were starts beginning his college soccer career.

David PenalozaItem —

In January of 2019, Frankie signed the Generation Adidas contract with Major League Soccer, foregoing his college soccer career and jumping right into the professional league. Frankie has been training diligently and tirelessly, honing his skills for the upcoming season, which begins at the end of this month. Today, his parents are here to accept this recognition on Frankie's behalf. Thank you for being here, and please thank Frankie for setting such a stellar example of our youth, showing that hard work and commitment truly pays off.

David PenalozaItem —

And it was really important for me to highlight Frankie Amaya, a Santa Ana resident who was able to go on and be a star in Major League Soccer, just because he is the example of the thousands of very, very athletic and talented kids in our community and in Santa Ana that never, you know, or rarely see an opportunity to move on to something as great as a major league soccer and get paid for it, you know, getting paid for something that you're good at and that you love.

David PenalozaItem —

Last April, I found out that FC Cincinnati was going to be at LAFC playing the Los Angeles Football Club, and I went out there. Did you guys go to the game? and uh you know i i went out there just to see uh frankie play because i you know as a san anna resident and a san anna you know born and raised i had to go out there and and show support for one of our own so uh i was fangirling the whole time at the at the stadium so it's really nice to see that so uh thank you guys for uh frankie can't be here because he's training for the new season that's coming up. So he's up there. If you guys wanted to say something in Spanish

David PenalozaItem —

and English, whatever you guys are comfortable with.

David PenalozaItem —

Well,

I want to thank the city.

It shows support with the fields, the coaches, the club, Santa Ana FC provided. So I want to say thank you to everybody. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem —

So his parents are here accepting this recognition on his behalf just you know for us congratulating him and and you know just wishing him luck in his career and uh thank you guys you know for for uh guiding him so um with that said sure say something little brother so this is frankie's little brother thank you guys for

being here and supporting my brother even though he's not here he worked hard for this to be in this team and thank you for supporting him. All right. All right. That was good.

David PenalozaItem —

Do you want to join?

Sure.

David PenalozaItem —

Yo se la manda a Frank. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem —

Yeah, that's the mayor.

We'll get to him here right now. Mr. Mayor, someone wants to meet you.

Good speaker. That's a great floor.

Thank you.

Thank you.

a closed session. Good evening, Mayor and Council. There is one reportable action from tonight's closed session. By unanimous vote, the City Council authorized the filing of litigation

against the Union Pacific Railroad. Thank you. Thank you. With that, I'm now going to go to the special presentation by our police department. And we have our police chief here, David Valentin. Please, you have the floor, sir. Thank you, sir.

there we are

okay mr mayor city council city manager everyone here present and everyone watching thank you for the opportunity to share with you the outcomes really a summary of accomplishments of the police department throughout 2019. This is a very broad, high-level presentation. There are certainly a variety of other accomplishments. Up on the screen, you will see the first page. It's a two-page document that's attached to the city council agenda that provides a summary. It's available now. It'll be available on our website.

We'll also post it to social media. and so let me get into the presentation itself before i i share what occurred in the police department i wanted to acknowledge the city council for your continued support the city manager for her leadership and then my staff all the hard-working men and women of the san ana police department many of which are here tonight my immediate staff of my office is here and I appreciate all of their support and hard work.

So one of the charges that we had in the police department is to address the vacancy rate, which impacts essentially everything we do. All services that we provide is impacted by the frontline police force. And so just a short two and a half years ago, inherited about 67 vacancies in the police department. In 2018, we put together a strategic plan and really the team together that worked on this overarching goal of hiring the best police officers that we could find.

And so I'm happy to report that in 2019, we hired 50 police officers. So that hasn't happened in over 20 years in the police department. And we did that at the same time of raising the standard of the police officer that we actually brought into the police department. I meet with every recruit and every lateral applicant to make sure that they're a good fit. Not only that they meet the standard, but they're a good fit for our community.

and with the hiring of those police officers you the question is so what's what's been the positive impact here are the the core areas where officers have been deployed first is patrol operations that is our core function that's what we respond to when people call us for assistance whether it's a 9-1-1 call or a burglary to report so additional patrol officers assigned to frontline policing the second area is our homelessness response and quality of life team we've actually added officers to that team we will continue to do that in actually the first quarter of this year

but really the work the foundation began last year in the hiring of those additional officers third area and this these these focus areas deployment are all consistent with our strategic plan our five-year strategic plan that was put together with input by this council city manager and the community as well the next area is addressing violent crime so with the additional staffing we established a metropolitan division a major enforcement team which focuses on violent crime across the city this is proactive enforcement we mirrored that team with our existing gang unit

to establish this metropolitan division under one unified command. The next area is vice operations to address the various vice-related crime, not only prostitution but illegal gambling, anything in that area of violation of law. What's key here is looking at how not only did we hire the 50 officers, but we looked at where our officers are assigned outside in different task forces.

Obviously, there's value in participating in those efforts, but I took a critical look at what the return on investment was, redeployed to date seven officers from outside task forces back into the police department and or frontline.

And so with this focus on proactive policing, what we experienced was a 44% reduction in gang-related homicides from 18 to 19. I cite this particular homicide rate because that's the one that we can take measures to impact. Unfortunately, the domestic situation, the husband-wife situation that occurs behind closed doors, hard to prevent. But gang crime that occurs out in the street, gang homicides, really addressing removing guns off the streets,

that focus has resulted in this reduction in gang-related homicides. The other area we wanted to look at, and also as a result of the additional hiring of officers, is our response time. So you'll note that in Priority 1 call, which is essentially our 911 emergency life death types of calls, a reduction overall from, we're down to 7.46. That's how we ended the year. I have more specific numbers.

At the beginning of the year, we were at 8 minutes and 10 seconds for Priority 1 911 emergency calls. we ended the year at 6 minutes and 32 seconds. So that's a significant drop of about 20% as we worked through the year. And you'll also notice that in four of the five areas of our response protocol, there's been a drop last year. So again, looking at how we respond to calls, I do have currently an in-depth analysis and assessment of that protocol that hasn't changed in over two decades.

So we're looking at that, really a data deep dive and see what defensible adjustments we can make. The next area of focus for us where we had quite a bit of accomplishment is the de-escalation training and focus on ensuring that our officers are trained to look at alternatives in how they respond to critical incidents. One of the prime pieces of training platforms that we use here is our Vira-TRA Force Options Simulator, which some of you are aware of. And those of you that haven't come certainly are invited to participate in that.

In fact, our entire executive management team, under the direction of the city manager, our first EMT meeting was at the police department. actually put some of my colleagues through this system, and they got to see firsthand the value of critical decision-making, split-second scenarios that are unfolding. State-of-the-art training, we are the only police department in the county that has this threshold of training in technology. The other area that the city council supported was a transition to the Taser 7. This is an upgrade in technology for this piece of equipment.

there needs to be not only confidence in the equipment that we provide officers but the latest technology and training so that we ensure that they use the equipment and there's the focus on de-escalation. Another area that we're very proud of is our social media imprint. In fact, my social media coordinator is here and we're really focused on messaging of the police department. So everyone knows that we respond to crime, but what else do we do, right? Those stories that involve the human being behind the uniform and the badge. There's a lot of those incidents that occur throughout the year.

So we're really focused on providing tangible information. We do monitor the site in terms of feedback. And so fast forward, when we first took on this venture, We were about, you know, second or third in large agencies in the county. We're number one in city police departments in Orange County today in terms of likes. Now, please don't ask me what likes mean because I'm a Morse code type person. I recognize the value in social media. I just don't do it myself. So that's why I have good people on staff. So we use this as a daily platform to communicate with the community.

Another area that I mentioned was homelessness response, community engagement. I want to share some numbers in that regard that I think are important here, part of the slide. But over the last five years, when we look at responding to homelessness-related crimes specifically, we're talking about 13,000, roughly 13,000 arrests that have been made in 2019 alone.

6,700 were made. And so is the problem solved? No. Are there still folks that are committing crime that are part of this population? Yes. But has there been a concerted effort in addressing this? Absolutely. And this is done through the enhanced staffing that this council has supported. In addition to that, we also assigned officers to the various neighborhood association meetings. This is a model of community policing, direct engagement with neighborhoods that was in place some 20-plus years ago. Fast forward, in a sense, we're not trying to reinvent the wheel here.

We want to make sure that officers get out of the car, have direct engagement and contact with neighborhoods. And so that is my presentation. The two-page summary of this overall is attached to the agenda. It will be on our website. We'll go out to social media on Nixle tonight, any channel that you can see. And so with that, any questions? Thank you.

Let me see if Council members have any comment or question. Councilor Solario.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm not sure if I have questions, but just some comments. First, I wanted to compliment you on the great work in many areas. On the Vice side, on Friday night after a late night poker session with some friends, I drove by Harbor and Hazard and it was like, let's just say it was after midnight, and there was nobody there. So it was fantastic because I know that's been an ongoing thing that the police department in conjunction with code enforcement and city attorney's office have made a big difference. So thank you for that. Patrol, I think we all do see more cars on the street.

And at some point, too, we may want to look at, I think there's over 100 officers that do patrol out of 300 or so. I don't know what the right ratio should be. And I know as we're hiring new folks, we're having more in patrol. But to the extent we could keep beefing that up, that would be great.

Homicides, fantastic seeing the reduction in gang-related homicides and just regular homicides. 44% down, gangs and 36 suffer typical homicides. That's fantastic. This past year also, fantastic job closing a lot of illegal gambling facilities and partnerships again with the Attorney's Office, code enforcement, FBI, and others, major big impact. Here's where I'd like to see continued help is hot spots on the homeless. I know citywide there's more arrests and I'm very appreciative, but I think our community tends to see the same group of homeless, you know, Santiago Creek, South Main Street, Bristol Warner,

you know, Panhandle and over by 17th and Santiago. And if we can identify what those 20 are and try to keep them clean and safe, I think that would be good. Response times are doing well, but annually compared to a few years ago, citywide it was six and a half, and now we're, you know, seven-ish, eight-ish, you know, let's keep working on that. And then suggestions that moving forward of other communities, you know, we always try to be the best standard for Orange County. The way we report out crime statistics, I think we can do better. For me, one of the models has been for a long time New York City

and their ComStat program. You know, maybe we have to look at their technology, their software to see if something like that could work for us. And then finally, I know how much we do it here and maybe this might be something you could speak to or if not it could be a research point. I know in Anaheim that apparently PD has a relationship with Ring so they're able to work more closely with residents and neighborhood associations that have Ring devices because more and more we have that. And I know sometimes organically there's some of that information sharing but apparently like in Anaheim and other cities

there's direct relationships between Ring and the police department and the community So let's look to see if something like that might work for us. Again, a lot of good work done, and we've just got to keep it going. But I'm very appreciative and fantastic on hiring all the officers. I think between your work, the last collective bargain agreement that allowed us to pay them more and hire more, et cetera, I think that's been very helpful. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you. We have also Senator Vince Sarmiento, please. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Chief, for the presentation. I want to thank you and your staff and all city staff for this because I know it's a collaborative effort on this. And so the numbers obviously speak volumes, right? So we're trending much better than we were before. And I think a lot of it has to do with not just numbers because you could throw bodies and hire more folks, but if they're not deployed intelligently, then it's going to be difficult to handle a lot of the problems because we could have a thousand officers. But if they're not supervised well or directed well, then I think that's going to be a problem.

So I want to thank you on that because the numbers do speak to the fact that there are some really critical issues that are being addressed, response times being one of them. So you spoke on one of the issues I wanted to talk about. But the other one was something that was really important to me when you and I sat down and spoke about what priorities I think we have. You know, the residents here paid a premium, and they pay a premium in taxes because they expect premium service, and I think that's what we're trying to give them. That's the goal, right?

I think our residents understand that we're willing to go ahead and pay more if our service is going to be quality and the best in the county and hopefully the best in the state at some point. So what you've done with these incidents that you've shown and the training that you've been able to give to your officers, and I'm sure the new ones are receiving it as much as those that have been with the department for years, is how to de-escalate. Because what we realize is that what we saw, at least what I saw over years,

is this pattern of paying out on cases having to do with civil rights violations, excessive force cases, wrongful death cases. And I think it was for that lack of foresight that maybe now we have with you realizing that training up front pays you huge down the line, right? Because if you have these officers that have been trained to calm things down in a very, very tense condition, then, look, lives aren't lost, families aren't, you know, completely destroyed, and we're not paying out a lot of money. And we have a safer community, right? We have a community where people trust officers, people confide in them, people look to them.

And so, look, I want to thank you for that because that is a huge, huge step, something that wasn't really discussed well in the past. And so that combined with maybe some of the preemptive training that I think you and I have spoken about, maybe preemptive counseling because we give counseling to some of our officers after a critical encounter that they may have. But maybe that training needs to be done in advance, right? preemptively to prepare them for conditions that, look, I can only imagine are very, very difficult. I was with some of your officers on Thursday night at the Delhi Center when we were talking about

some problems that that neighborhood and that park had been having. They spoke really articulately about what they're doing, and you had folks from the gang unit, you had folks who were dealing with some of the homelessness problems. So one of the things that we all agreed on was a lot of this stuff has to be done in advance, not after the fact, because you have to cure the problem, but if you can somehow preemptively address the problem, then it's not as massive as it is. So that, in addition to some of what you spoke about with, I think you're referring to our

officers getting out of their cars and walking. That's community-oriented policing. That's stuff that was done back in the Clinton era, right, when we had numbers drop way, way down. So all All those things, I think, speak to the fact that we're going, you know, trending correctly. The problems that we're trying to solve are not going to be solved overnight, but I certainly appreciate you making the best efforts because it looks like we're going in that right direction. So thank you very much for your help. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. I believe – let's go to Peña Loza, and then we'll come back to you. Councilor Becerra.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Chief Valentin, thank you so much for the presentation. and want to thank you and your staff along with the city manager with the changes that you have made at the police department and the investment in training and education. I'm a big believer on higher education across the board and constant learning. So it's very important that we highlight these different investments that you're doing for de-escalation tactics and training because it really makes a difference. I was fortunate enough to go out there to your simulator last year,

David PenalozaItem —

and it gives me a whole perspective, different perspective on what the day-to-day operations of being a police officer are. I mean, I was sweating. I couldn't even function during the thing because I was like, how do people in real-life situations handle this? So it's important that these investments are made. so appreciative of the leadership and just wanted to thank you and in regards to the social media because you don't have to touch on it all you have to do is just post the picture of shadow at least once a week that's going to get you everybody loves dogs keep shadow at least once a week

David PenalozaItem —

and you'll get all the likes in the world and with that said thank you thanks sir

councilor Payne-Lizzo

Phil BacerraItem —

uh sorry it was Sarah I knew I knew but come on he was still going and he was thank you Mr. Mayor um Chief thank you for the presentation um really excited about what I've heard you know 50 new hires congratulations on accomplishing that I know that was a priority of this Council so you know thank you and having those new hires obviously impacts the ability to uh bring down the response times and as much as it's important to have professional responses I I think you'll hear a lot of people in the community that are concerned about prompt responses. They want timely responses.

Phil BacerraItem —

So as my colleagues have said, it looks like all the trends are going in the right direction, so I appreciate that and appreciate the update. And hopefully we can get these call times even down further, which I know may sound like a huge task, but I think a lot of people appreciate it. I know folks are saying that they are seeing a lot more of the patrol officers out on the beat. And, again, thank you very much for everything. Thanks, sir.

Any other comments? So let me just say thank you. Yes, sir. I know in particular we talk a lot about the homeless, and I know we have the two types of teams that are going out there. The more we can do with additional officers, the more we can impact them and say I know you can't arrest them if they're not doing anything, but stopping them and saying may I help you, what are you doing, et cetera, et cetera, I think will encourage less loitering and protect the city more

because the biggest crime I see right now everywhere I go is the homeless problem where they just kind of come in, they congregate, they take over. All of a sudden it's not our town anymore. It's their town, and we just can't afford that. I know you're doing a lot. I know the enforcement is up, but I think we need to somehow find a way to do more to make the city better than it is. Thank you very much for your work, Chief. Thank you, sir.

So with that, I'm going to direct our attention.

I know that 23A, Mayor Pro Tem, wants it to be pulled. Are there any speakers for the consent calendar?

Okay. Go ahead, Councilman Pena-Loza.

David PenalozaItem —

I'd also like to pull items 10A. I was also going to pull 23A, so thank you, Mayor Pro Temp, and 25B.

Any other items? I would entertain a motion on the balance. So moved. Second. Is it unanimous? It's unanimous, so we're not going to do your lights. It's unanimous. So with that, 10A.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. 10A is minutes from the regular meeting of January 21, 2020. The reason I pulled this, Madam City Clerk, was because, as you're aware from the email chain that I sent you, when the agenda was posted, I found some errors in the minutes after they were posted to the agenda. So I want to just remind the Clerk of the Council staff to be, you know, these are important. This is an important item, as I know that we just kind of, you know, prove it every meeting without really discussing it. But I just happened to look through them, and there were errors in the minutes.

David PenalozaItem —

So I'd just like to ask the staff if you guys could just please be more vigilant in the future when it comes to the recording of the minutes so that we don't have these minor errors in them. But with that said, I'd like to move the item, please. They were corrected, by the way. Second. For the public. We have a motion to second.

Is it unanimous? Seeing no opposition, motion passes unanimously. Next item, I think, would be 23A, was it? And we have a speaker on that, Josefina Hernandez maybe, or John?

Jonathan, come on down, please.

Good afternoon, Mayor. Good afternoon, Council. My name is Jonathan Hernandez. I'm a Sedan resident, lifelong resident of Ward 5, Artisa Pilar. And just double checking here, there was two items that I'm speaking on today. So 23A is the rate, the street construction, correct? Okay. So this was an important item for our neighborhood in Artisa Pilar, and I'm here speaking on behalf of the Neighborhood Association. As a lifelong resident of this neighborhood and a now homeowner to that neighborhood, I have experienced our streets. I have experienced the repairs that are needed firsthand.

But in addition to that, the lived experiences of driving down rate every single day to get home and how rough it is to get to Civic Center and to get down to Fifth Street and the much-needed repairs there as well. And residents in our neighborhood over the past decade have long demanded for these streets to be repaired. And when we have approached this city in the past to ask for these repairs to be done, we've been informed that it would be too expensive, that it would require state funds from the state of California to replace the concrete with new concrete.

And I'm here today to ask that this agenda item be tabled so that further dialogue could be had between staffers and members of our community so that we can discuss the impacts of asphalt versus concrete, so that we can discuss the environmental impact as well, and then lastly, the costs of it. And we hope that you please consider our insight and our lived experiences in Articia Pilar and table this item. Thank you.

Thank you. Let me come bring it to Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Jonathan, for coming out and representing Artesia Pilar. So, yes, this is in my ward, the Rage Street, 23A. It is a big, long street that's made out of concrete. The Artesia Pilar neighborhood has been very patient for an extremely long time, and they deserve to have that street replaced with cement. It is an industrial area. There's a lot of tow trucks. There's a lot of heavy trucks, a lot of machinery that go through there. And I understand, City Manager, that this is under Endabil, the director, who's filling in for FWAD.

If you can come forward, please, sir. There's a time limit on this, correct? Because this is under some funds, a grant that we have?

Yes, the funds to repair Red Street right now comes from the CDBG funds.

And it's my understanding that the area around where the streetcar will be going through, that area is going to be concrete, correct? And then the rest of the street is supposed to be asphalt. But like the gentleman was stating earlier, and the rest of the neighborhood also, they would like an opportunity to speak with the city and to see if there's something we can do to bring some funds forward so we can have a concrete, because they deserve it. Again, this is an industrial area, unlike the other areas, and I don't know if we can do anything about it. I mean, how much time are we talking about when we talk about time-sensitive?

Madam City Manager.

So, Mayor Pro Tem, we would need a decision on this item to be able to utilize those funds, but I think Nabil can speak to the fact that the gentleman that spoke is absolutely correct. The rate street is extremely deteriorated, and to do a concrete street, it would require a complete replacement, which we don't have funding for to do that. But looking at it, it is Public Works opinion that we can make it a very nice street utilizing asphalt. If we pass up this opportunity, about the only thing, and I'll defer to Nabil, The only alternative would be if we do panels and patchwork on existing concrete.

But the street is at a level of deterioration that we are recommending the asphalt.

That street is famous. Famous for being terrible to drive on. We heard you. You close your eyes, you can feel the bumps. It's terrible. I mean, I go through there quite often, and I understand there's a lot of construction going on.

And I understand that this is a grant, and if we don't use it, then we could lose those funds, and we don't want to do that. But at the same time, if we do put asphalt, because we're on a time limit, you're going to have the heavy trucks go through there again, and are we going to be waiting? It's not fair to this neighborhood. They've been very patient for a very long time.

I would like my council to please take a note of that area that if it gets damaged again, because more likely it will because of those trucks, we're going to be back. We're going to be back asking for more. Is there something you'd like to add?

No, there is a way that we can make the asphalt last longer by routine maintenance, and every so often we would come in and seal that street and maintain it better every so often. So we'll make it last a lot longer than it does or should with routine maintenance.

I would ask that if the city manager in your office could reach out to the Artesia Pilar neighborhood and meet with them and let them know the situation that we're in regarding the funds being time sensitive and at the same time that we plan on keeping an eye on it. Because, like I said, unlike the other streets, this area is an industrial area and it's going to get used. And those are my comments. And Council Member Sarmiento would like to add.

Please go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem. And thank you, Nabil, and to Jonathan as well. I think all of us know that Ray Street is known as the shock breaker, right? So you go there, you destroy your rims, you destroy your shocks. So we all know that it's been long overdue to have work done. And it's one of those, I remember when we were doing the 300 miles of streets repairs before, this would probably qualify as a total, you know, reconstruct, right? Because it was so poorly damaged. I had a question on a couple of things. You know, we normally use All-American, and I forget who else was, you know, the other contractor that,

and I know there have been four bidders here. Well, All-American was one as well. Hardy & Harper, EBS. I don't recall us ever using this contractor. Are they new, or have they done work with the city before?

I looked at their references just before this council meeting. They've done some work for Santana previously.

Probably not major work.

It was about a half a million dollar worth of work for Santana.

And we've done millions and millions with some of these others, and not saying that that's a good thing, right? Because I guess one of the things I think, you know, just to incorporate what Mayor Pro Tem was saying, what the Speaker was saying, is that what's happening at a long rate is, you know, that's where the streetcar station is going to be. So you're going to have a lot of utilities that are going to come on. And what we've noticed is, you know, you do a street nicely and then somebody forgot to put the utilities in and they dig up what's been a very nice street to begin with and it starts becoming not as nice anymore.

So, all that timing, we certainly don't want to use the grant money or lose the grant money. Is there any way that we could adopt with the understanding that there could be some adjustments made to timing? What materials are going to be used by checking with, I think this is what Mayor Pro Tem was saying, by checking with the Neighborhood Association? because I think they're probably not going to lead you or mislead you to do something that is contrary to what you're already thinking about doing. But it would be good to get their input on this in addition to what you've already fact-gathered on this.

We will arrange to meet with the Neighborhood Association as soon as possible.

And just maybe also while you're at it, just check in with some of those utilities that are going to be working very heavily on the station and see the schedule. To the extent you can coordinate the schedule as closely as possible, it saves you a lot of trouble, and look, it'll drive everybody nuts. And I've seen it happen after the road has been nicely paved, and then you just have Edison go in and dig it up, and they forgot to do something. So those were my comments.

Thank you for those comments. Additional comments, Council Member Solari, and then Peñalos.

David PenalozaItem —

I just wanted to make sure that I already pulled it as well.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I agree with most of the comments that have been made. We've all been waiting patiently for right to be done, and so it'd be a little rough to hijack it and postpone it too long. But I do think that if we move this forward, that we probably should have parallels to it. We'd meet with the Neighborhood Association to, as Councilman Sarmento said, see if there might be other materials or certain areas that could be concrete. or there are innovative materials out there. We can have a little more white in there that also helps with heat and environmental issues.

And then consistent with some recent council meetings that we've been having, we want to grow the amount of resources that we have to repair, asphalt and concrete streets. And so we do follow our city manager on what that plan out to be. I want to make sure that rate also benefits from that because it's a key residential area. A lot of folks use it. but as was mentioned by Councilmember Villegas, there's also a lot of, you know, working trucks and heavier trucks now that they get a lot of activity and so let's see what we can do to make that better so that collectively, you know, that neighborhood is better off. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem —

Councilman Fianosa. Thank you Mr. Mayor. I agree again with everything that my colleagues have said and I wanted to, you know, look at ways moving forward. I When you're driving north on the right, you have residential when you pass First Street or Civic Center, I believe, and on the left you have industrial. Have we worked with public works and traffic to completely block heavy utility trucks from using that street because of its proximity to residential? I know there are other outlets or entry points where they could enter that industrial area.

We can look into that. We haven't studied that particularly, but we can look into that. I know because of the recycling and those other activities on the 5th Street or so, there's a lot of traffic, heavy traffic. But we will study it and come back to you on that.

David PenalozaItem —

Because, I mean, that would be important, you know, if we eventually move down this road of, no pun intended, of making this project, you know, how long is it going to last with that heavy trucks going down every single day? So it would be good to look at ways where we could block heavy trucks like that to enter that residential side of rate. I know it borders both, but I mean, using it, there are other entryways.

David PenalozaItem —

And I also wanted to point out that I pulled it for similar reasons and also because I want to remind Public Works and the city manager that any of these Public Works projects that we keep, I mean, we're approving millions and millions of dollars of contracts and construction work, but we still have just four inspectors, like you mentioned, at the last council meeting. And I think that a lot of this, just driving around the city, I work full-time in Santa Ana and obviously live here,

David PenalozaItem —

so I drive around a lot, and all the work that I see going on, I just mentioned to the city manager last week, I don't think it's up to par or up to standards of what we're supposed to see or want to see with the amount of money that we're paying, tax dollars that we're using to invest into our roads. I see a lot of, back to the comments I made last week, you know, unleveled work, work not done correctly. I mean, I'm not an engineer or construction worker, but I can point out bad work when I see it. And I see it a lot.

David PenalozaItem —

I get pictures sent to me daily from constituents of all the work that's being done, whether it's resurfacing the street or sewer line improvements. You know which ones I'm talking about, Nabil. And I think it's important if we have to contract out inspectors, additional inspectors, to have on call whenever we have work like this being done. Because nobody knows if it's being done. I mean, you guys eventually see it. But the amount of work being done to the amount of inspectors that we have, it's just the inspectors are, there's just too much work to inspect for the four inspectors that we have.

David PenalozaItem —

So that's important to keep in mind moving forward with any of these public works projects. If we're going to be spending millions of dollars to invest in our streets but nobody to inspect them, that's not going to work either. So those are my comments.

Thank you. I've just got a quick comment, and that is that I know over on Durant we had a similar situation. Trucks, concrete versus asphalt, what do we do? and I know that particular area, you met with some of the businesses, you had some interaction. I go there often into that area. It's close to my neighborhood, and people are very happy. And I know that was maybe a different administration to Bill. You're not yet in the position of the area right now, but I think it was the right thing to do to go out and meet with people and make sure they understand what's happening and give you input. So with that, I'd entertain a motion.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion or approve with the understanding that we are going to keep an eye on it and make sure we give it the proper care that it needs if it gets.

Is there a second? Is there a second from Solario?

David PenalozaItem —

Now, is part of the motion including the meetings with the Neighborhood Association and the City Manager and make sure that that dialogue happens before any of this work is done?

Aye, but that's my instruction.

David PenalozaItem —

You're the maker of the motion.

No, well, we already spoke about that.

So the answer is yes. I think parallel, though, I mean, if a contract is going to be signed, we're not going to undo the contract, but parallel we can do the contractual stuff in the meetings. Absolutely.

That's why I said with the understanding that they're going to pay attention, we gave direction on the side, but I'll make a motion to approve. Second. Yeah. Okay.

Councilor Peña-Losa? No, I'm good. All right. Is it unanimous? It's unanimous.

David PenalozaItem —

Mr. Mayor, for consistency purposes, we should use the lights. That's just my opinion.

I just want to go a little quicker. If it's not unanimous, I'll use the lights.

The thing is, sometimes in the past we have issues. All right. All right. Press the green light.

Now we all feel better.

Okay. But on this point, I don't know if it should be you, Mayor, or the Clerk. I've gotten questions from constituents that when we just see the Board, we see who voted how, but the public doesn't know. So we need to figure out. Well, that's another problem we're caused by that. That's why I like it when we talk. We need to announce it somehow. Because if not, folks don't know.

I know. It makes it more confusing. They don't even know how we voted. Mr. Mayor. And she's doing it for clarity.

Phil BacerraItem —

Mr. Mayor, I mean, to Councilmember Solorio's point, I think there's state law that came into effect in the last year or two that actually asks for an announcement of the votes. So maybe that should be something.

And if it's unanimous, at OCTA, we have 17 board members, thicker agendas than here, and we don't have the lights. And we're complying with the law. And if somebody votes against, we note it. And if it's unanimous, we say it's unanimous. So I think you can comply with the law.

Well, let's try that. Look, let's just keep going. And that's 25 board members. All right, look, let's continue, but point well taken. So that's the end of the consent counter. Now is the clerk going to administer the oath of office?

Council member, I have 25B also.

25B, okay, please.

David PenalozaItem —

I vote 25B. It's a proven amendment to the agreement with Chacey Partners, Inc., the amount of $91,000 for the expansion of the scope of work for business processes. The reason I pulled it again was I can't support this item because this was, even in the staff report, it says, as part of this reorganization, Public Works Management asked Chacey to expand the scope of the business process assessment and implementation project to also review the administrative process of the newly added operations. I just want to remind our various departments that these type of amendments and changes,

David PenalozaItem —

when it's going to cost us $90,000 plus, need to come to the city manager and to this council for approval. Nobody should be making these decisions without our consideration and approval moving forward. So I will vote no on this item tonight because the work was done.

David PenalozaItem —

without and now the what what's happening here is the work was done and now city is coming to us for permission to do the work that's already been done so it's uh it shouldn't it shouldn't be that way it should come to us first for approval if we okay it then we could move forward with the expanding the scope of work so those are my comments mr mayor all right is there a motion

on the item? Motion approved. Second. There's a motion a second. Let's go ahead and vote because I think there might be one no. Vote green if you're yes, no if you're red. Red the future. Okay, let's keep moving. Now the administrator of office.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. If I could please ask Bernice Balinas, Winston Covington, Nicholas Sanchez, and Jacob De Leon to come up front please.

So if you would please raise your right hand and repeat after me, aye, and please state your name. Aye, Bernice.

How many good? Thank you. Jacob D'Aillard. Thank you.

Do solemnly swear.

Do solemnly swear.

That I will support. That I will support. And defend. And defend. The Constitution. Constitution. Of the United States. Of the United States. And the Constitution. And the Constitution. And the Constitution. Of the State of California. of the state of California, against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the state of California, that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation

without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion that I will well faithfully well faithfully discharge the duties upon which I'm about to enter

Thank you.

I believe now we're on item 55A.

That's correct.

Okay, I would entertain a motion. Motion approved. Second. Is the motion unanimous?

No opposition? No opposition. It's unanimous. Thank you.

65A, is that the next item, Madam Clerk?

That is correct.

Okay. I'll call on Mayor Pro Tem Villegas.

I believe the Council Member Becerra wanted to.

Go ahead, Council Member Becerra. We have a speaker? Come on down, Mike.

I didn't get the card. Sorry about that. So don't get mad at me. She just gave it to me, Mike. I know you can make a speech. Go ahead. It's okay. I know they're busy over there.

Mayor and City Council. This agenda item to review and modify City Council subcommittees has been turned into a political hit job against two sitting council members by the Santa Ana Police Officers Association. I have respect for the Santa Ana Police Department and the individual police officers of the department, but the association which represents them politically has sunk to the lowest of lows.

This letter they have presented calls for you to remove Councilwoman Cecilia Iglesias and Councilman Juan Villegas from the Public Safety, Code Enforcement, and Neighborhood Empowerment Committee.

In their letter, the POA maliciously and falsely accuses the two council members of violating state law and wrongfully diverting city resources. None of that is true. It is the POA which is wrongfully diverting city resources by conducting a recall campaign and special election against these council members which will cost the taxpayers of Santa Ana $650,000.

It is understood that politics plays a role in the city business that you conduct here. It is unavoidable, but it should also be kept to a minimum. It is the residents of Santa Ana that you are elected to represent and serve, not a political entity which, by spending vast sums of their members' money and costing Santa Ana taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, is attempting to run roughshod and bully and purchase a council to do their bidding.

You know what this letter from the POA really means. They are telling you that you had better kowtow to their demands or your political contributions will dry up. And they will use their dirty political money to hound you out of office as well. I urge you all to stand up for what is right and to not remove Council Members Villegas and Iglesias from the Council Public Safety Committee. Thank you.

Thanks for that, Mike. We have two other speakers. We have Jonathan Hernandez followed by Alan Wu.

Good afternoon again, Mayor, City Council. For those of you who are just getting here, My name is Jonathan Hernandez, resident of Articia Pilar neighborhood, Ward 5. And I'm here today to talk about this item that was put on the agenda. And I'm here before you to address my concerns with the removal of these two electeds

and the direction that our city is headed. It seems that the days of Education First we've long strayed away from. and we have slowly but surely have prioritized and allowed special interests to dictate who is heard in the city, who is seen in the city, and who and what communities are allowed to prosper. It couldn't be more evident. One of the city's largest political spenders has a vested interest on who holds seats on this council here. and in addition to that they have a vested interest in who holds seats in these city council committees as well. I demand that you do not support this item

although I don't see eye to eye with the two electeds that are being recalled Mayor Pro Tem Juan Villegas and Cecilia Iglesias it is my responsibility as a resident to recognize injustices and this is an injustice. I am asking that you reject this item, that you do not stay silent, and that you go against the corruption of the Police Officers Association. The city is not theirs. It belongs to the residents, and I hope that your vote is representative of that. Thank you.

Thank you. Alan?

There was a time when the Police Association represented our officers, and our officers are good people that need representation, but they did not enter into elections nor politics. They felt that there needed to be some distance between the working men and women of the police force and those that are elected by the people. The recall to it's the two of the people, and I'm highly offended that a developer and a police association use it to try to oust two people While my political view may be a little different, I've learned that these two individuals do listen to the neighborhood.

I've seen them listen, not pontificate. And what elected officials that respond to the community, I think, are good and should be kept. When you manipulate the process because the recall to, it's our two. It's when we can remove officials because they're corrupt. It's our two to change laws or whatever. But it's not the two or someone that has a vindictive. We learned that in Washington. It should not happen here in Santa Ana. And that's what we're facing today, that the power of money corrupts,

the power of an individual to corrupt, representing and manipulating facts in order to get at people. So I urge you not to let it happen. We need civilian oversight. We need council members participating there. And those of our interests should be able to serve and eliminating the committee, sort of eliminating the oversight layer so we can watch what's going on. I thought we were heading in a good direction with the family justice system, embracing the fact that our families in the city are poor and that they needed help and to lift upward. not to be oppressed with militarization of our police force,

to get away from them, let's arrest them, put them away, let's say our crime rate is high, and punish the people of the city for being poor. Most of our crimes are economically related. Abuse, domestic violence, these are crimes of the house and the pressure they feel through the housing. So I hope we could come to Tennessee Castle. I know you guys. You're good guys. You know? And I've known you for a long time, Miguel. We need to do this, but we can't let our political difference and our politics guide our way. We need to again look at

what the people of the city needs. And we're hurting because we gave a lot of money to one area and it's taking away from the parks and the salaries of other departments to help improve the city. So I urge you not to fall prey. Stand up and say no. You will not tell us what to do. And he publicly did it on the newspaper. So I'm going to tell them what to do. I would sit up and say, you're going to do what? Get the heck out of my office.

Thank you, Alan. Before we proceed, I just want to ask the camera room if there's any problem with the audio, because I'm getting texts from folks at home that can't hear what we're saying. So I don't know if we could revisit that. We'll continue the meeting. But if the camera room could please recheck the audio. Again, I understand people at home cannot hear what we're saying. So with that, let's continue. Let me bring it back to Council Member Phil Becerra.

Did we get Simpson?

Apparently, since the beginning of the meeting, Alan, since the beginning of the meeting, they've been having problems with the audio at home.

I just want to be an accurate mess for a conspiracy theory.

Phil BacerraItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Hopefully they can hear me now. When I first saw this item on the agenda, my first thought was, well, this is probably a rational thing in the sense that we have committees where staff comes, they present, and then if, for instance, there's something at a particular committee that is of importance to the council, that same presentation comes before the full body. It seems like a redundancy. In other cities where I've worked in, say like the City of Los Angeles, committees of the City Council actually vote on things. They actually take action.

Phil BacerraItem —

In some cases, public hearings are actually held at the committee level. And in talking with our staff, in fact, Madam City Manager, you have a lot of experience in a neighboring big city like Anaheim. Do they have City Council committees in their structure of governance?

So, sir, based on your questions, I did a cursory review of Anaheim, Costa Mesa, and Garden Grove, and I could not find where they utilized a standing council committee where the only members of the committee were council members less than a quorum. Irvine does utilize ad hoc committees, and I know from past practice at Anaheim, they've also utilized ad hocs. And an ad hoc would be made up of less than a quorum of elected officials, but it would not be a standing committee that continued year after year.

Phil BacerraItem —

And those ad hoc committees, they typically tend to be focused on specific items, correct?

For accordance and compliance with the Brown Act to have an ad hoc committee, it must be for a limited purpose and a specific duration.

Phil BacerraItem —

Okay, so not only a specific purpose, but a sunset date. Correct. Okay. And as I looked through some of these committees' agendas, just to get an idea of what they covered, a lot of them were canceled. A lot of them didn't even have enough people showing up from this body to actually warrant having the meeting. And one more question for our city manager. So you have these committee meetings. You have a couple of us that show up, that sit on them. When it comes to staff and all the correlated costs to it, how much would you say that is to man and put the agendas together, any sort of minutes, anything related to those committees?

Phil BacerraItem —

What would you say the cost comes out to, roughly?

Based on the committees that we're talking about and the frequency of the meetings, probably you're looking at an annual expense of about $55,000.

Phil BacerraItem —

$55,000 to man these committees? Annually. Okay. So when I saw this item, then of course, as some of our speakers brought up, you have certain political entities that have decided to politicize this and myopically narrow the focus on members and take the focus away from what I saw as an opportunity to streamline the process. And in fact, I see it more as an opportunity to really focus the sunshine where it should be, which is on this council. So rather than try to tell the community, oh, you didn't go to the XYZ committee, oh, you missed it. No, you know that the city council meets twice a month. It's an easy opportunity.

Phil BacerraItem —

We meet in the same venue every time. It's a great place to focus community input and deliberations from the council. So when I saw this item, I actually leaned towards the idea of disbanding all of these committees. That was where I went to. But I want to hear from my colleagues at this point because I do see a cost savings. I do see an opportunity to streamline. And I also see the opportunity to really focus the sunshine where it should be, which is here with the seven of us on this council.

Mr. Mayor. Mayor Potem.

So my comments are, Madam City Manager, if we were to do away with these, we would save quite a bit of money on overtime, correct? Because the staff has to be there.

That's the largest component of the cost.

And we have quite a bit of staff. Now from what I see, a lot of these committees, there's a lot of good work that comes out of these, but sometimes there's just an update. We need an update on graffiti. We need an update on so forth. And when there's a project, well then we require to go through a committee. For example, like the Family Justice Center, we put that through the Public Safety Committee. But a lot of times it's just an update or if there's something else, we talk about the homeless, we talk about the noise ordinance.

There were members of Artesia Pilar that helped me with that, that really, really needed to be done. At the current time, I don't know of any big projects that are taking place other than updates on the work we have been doing. and I would be supportive if we were to do away with all of these committees and we would have an ad hoc committee when there's something that we need to address because it does have, it would be like having a focus group on something and then we could vet that and move forward.

If we feel that we need a committee, well then we can bring it back at a future date but we haven't tried this so those are my thoughts mr mayor thank you additional comment

David PenalozaItem —

council panellosa thank you mr mayor um madam city clerk why is this item even on the agenda

um thank you mayor and council members um the reason why this is on here is because on an annual basis the council can review the council committee items and since we had our Councilmember Becerra added from the special election, we can go ahead and either reorganize the members that are listed on here, and then you could also restructure the committees here. But annually, it looks like this council has reviewed the council committees.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay. Thank you. I just, my thoughts on this is I was a little confused as to why it was even on the agenda in the first place, but that answer that question so thank you I'm like along with a lot of the the members of the community are big fans a big fan of these council committees because versus an ad hoc like you see in Irvine or in other cities you know these are go on the record they're public they're they're official and it gives the community multiple layers of additional areas where they could come and give

David PenalozaItem —

their input and have discussions and go on the record about numerous subjects. However, I also thought about the different items that have come before us, specifically on the Public Safety Committee. I know that Mayor Pro Tem Villegas mentioned that the Family Justice Center went through the Public Safety Committee, but the reality is that it didn't go through the Public Safety Committee. it was presented as a presentation, but none of the input that was given by the majority of the council committee members were even considered.

David PenalozaItem —

So that's where I kind of see where Council Member Becerra is kind of alluding to the fact that there's no decision making coming from these council committees. However, I'm still supportive of them saying as is just because I know that the community really enjoys them and likes having that additional layer of government where they could participate and give constructive input. and it also helps us really dissect things before they come to the Council, us as a whole.

David PenalozaItem —

So I would just want these to remain as is, and if that's not the opinion of my colleagues, then so be it.

Thank you for your comments, additional comments. Councillor Solorio?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. If the motion is going to be to eliminate them all, I'm going to know on that as well. I do think that these committees do serve a purpose, and they provide a real valuable avenue for the public to give ideas, to follow what we're doing. It's a transparency thing. It's important. We should be having more engagement with our residents rather than less. I could support a restructuring where the ones maybe that work we keep and others that need to be restructured we can. Some of it is timing, too, as well. you know we're starting to look at the next year's budget how to properly use

measure X so having the budget committee intact I think is important I would note that on that budget committee councilmember Iglesias on that committee currently you know and a couple others you know Piniello said and myself and then the other that I want to still keep alive just because the relationship is broken we have a joint use committee between council members and school district members and there's a lot of unfortunate decision making that's happening where they're doing things that aren't helpful to us and vice versa and I know Councilmember Villegas

has been helpful in some of those and you know I have a big interest in education as well. I would hate to see that in its entirety vanish. That's not to say that we couldn't restructure that committee but I think you know that that's important and maybe the other ones we restructure to see what would be better, but to throw them all out, I don't think is worthwhile, and I think it would be bad for public engagement and transparency.

Mayor Pro Tem. The Joint Use Committee, we haven't had one in 18 months. But anyway, I'll make a motion to disband all of them. Second. Push the green button if you agree. Thank you.

Sarmiento, go ahead, and then Peña Loza.

Thank you. Go ahead. So I wanted to listen to all my colleagues, and there's some good, compelling arguments on all sides of this. And so I can't speak too directly to this because I don't sit on any of the committees. And the reason why is because we have committees at the Orange County Water District, similar to OCTA that the mayor sits on. That is a committee form of government over there. And that's what we used to have here with these committees, where you would vet and discuss in detail really complex issues,

because at the general board meeting, those only last an hour, because by the time you go there, you've already discussed it. The public's had an opportunity to comment. You've had comments from your general counsel. And that's the way it used to function. I think there was a time when these committees were completely dormant, right? And we kind of reactivated them, and we put them back together, and a lot of good ordinances came out of those, a lot of good public policy, and a lot of good discussion. The difference between an ad hoc and this is exactly what somebody mentioned, is that an ad hoc isn't publicly noticed.

That is not a good way to do business. That is not a good way to be transparent. It's not a good way to be open, because you can meet, and none of that, there are no minutes held, there's no record, and there's no legal counsel present, or it doesn't have to be, there's no requirement, and it doesn't have to comply with the Brown Act. So, you know, for a lot of reasons, the committees, I think, were at one time a very good, had a very good purpose. And I remember when we were going through the recession and this city was about to go and file a Chapter 9 bankruptcy,

we were meeting every week and we had committees that were trying to figure out what best direction to take. And so I think we even developed a reserve policy. We decided how we were going to deal with fiscal emergencies. So I think that right now what needs to happen is that some of these committees need to be restructured. I am supportive of maybe dismantling them for now and putting them aside because I don't see, again, directly because I don't sit on them. I think it's probably not functioning as smoothly as it did in the past.

And so to the extent that $55,000 is not a big ticket item, we just got through spending $900,000 on a piece of road, and there are much, much big ticket items that we've addressed, I think it's more, is it serving the purpose? And we can't have committees that have decision-making authority, or at least it's very difficult because you have to have more of a quorum. And you have to give them not just advisory power that our committees have, but actually discretionary action that they can take as a majority. And we don't have that form of government here.

So to the extent that we disband these, and we have to remember, in 10 months, we're going to have five new faces here possibly. So that is going to be a much different dynamic, and we're going to have different direction. and things are going to be debated in a different way. And folks may say, let's bring it back, let's create new committees. So I think for the time being, we do need to step back, revisit this again, and take some time and see whether these committees satisfy the public policy areas and the subject matters that we want to discuss in the next year, in the next five years.

Thanks for that. I think we have additional comment from Councilor Peña-Losa.

David PenalozaItem —

I was just going to say that out of the one committee that I do find completely pointless because of their lack of meetings, like the mayor pro tem said, is the joint use council committee. That one hasn't met. I don't know what the deal is. And when they have met, I've listened to some of the recordings, and it's just a weird eagle match between the two bodies. So I'd be happy dismantling that one and keeping the others as is status quo until down the line. But that's my opinion. Thank you.

Let me make a quick comment, and then we'll go ahead and vote. I do believe there's going to be potentially five new council members coming on this council. I think that might be a good opportunity to have this discussion. Right now, I don't sit on any of the committees either. What I do see is that, in particular, and I know she's not here today, maybe we want to talk to her later, but I think Councilor Mary Iglesias is on every single committee. I know we had this issue with Councilor Solario some years ago where he was accused of being on too many committees.

And he, you know, basically was removed from some. I'm not suggesting we do that because I think that starts to become petty, and that's not the point. But the bigger question is your purpose. And I'd be open to bring it back if there's three members that want to serve on a particular committee, and they have purpose, and they agree with staff, and we all have a discussion. I'd go for that. But at this point, I think it's dysfunctional, some really dysfunctional.

Others, like the public safety, where I think work gets done, I believe I agree with Councilor Peñalosa, a lot of the work was done really not in the committee, because it really can't some of that work. I know that Mayor Pro Tem met with the chief and with members of the community and a whole lot of work that was done outside of the committee. And my hat off to Mayor Pro Tem because Juan Villegas, I think, did an outstanding job. And now that we see what this Justice Center is and how it serves people, it's wonderful. But it could have happened and probably would have happened anyways.

And we all voted for it because we all approved money in the budget. I think it was $300,000 or something like that. And I think ultimately this is where the accountability has to be right here on this dais. so so with that let's go ahead and do the the buttons if you're good go green if not go red was the motions to eliminate them all for now

David PenalozaItem —

I'd like to make a substitute motion to just leave the committees as is.

David PenalozaItem —

We already voted, though.

Oh. All right.

Okay, I want to vote. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. It passes on a 4-2. Bad joke. Next, council item.

Just for the record, because again, folks can't see that up there. Council Member Spinalos and myself voted no.

And the other four voted yes. And Councilor Iglesias is absent. What's our next item, Madam Clerk?

85A.

We have a speaker on that. I believe there was... Mr. Mayor, since there's a speaker, let's go ahead and have this discussion. Go ahead. You want to hear the two speakers? John Noble and Kim Sandoval, please. We're on 85A.

We started late, but we're almost done, and it's 8 o'clock. And Ceci's not here. Let's continue. Just an observation.

Good evening. I'm Kimberly Sandoval. I currently stay at the courtyard, but I'm a long resident of Plaza of the Flags. I've met with a lot of you throughout the years. You passed this item, and you guys are stopping us from moving on. You have trucks coming out at 9, 10 o'clock at 9, and impounding our stuff. Blankets, important papers, ID, medication. You guys want to be part of the solution. you're part of the problem.

You're stopping us from moving on. Because every day we have to go and get this stuff again. Because you impound it. You don't let people sleep at night. You take away safe places for females to sleep at night. You're pushing them into the neighborhoods.

I don't get it. I hear about what the homeless does, the homeless does this, does that. You know, we're not bad people. I know many of you, we've stopped people from breaking into your cars.

We've walked many of your staff out to their cars at night.

But we're such bad people. You talk about what homeless does and how bad we are, but you never talk about the good that we do. And how many of your employees like being around us? Believe it or not.

You guys need to know what's going on out here because you have no idea.

I'm asking 15 minutes privately with you guys to discuss what is going on because you're not being part of the solution. You're part of the problem.

we're talking I'm tired of hearing figures and numbers and money and this and that we're talking about people's lives

you can't put an amount on somebody's life and you can't take all this stuff with you when you go

it's all materialistic things you can't take it with you when you go

and we all have one person one employer that we work for, and everybody on this panel is forgetting who that person is.

And it's him above. What happened to the compassion, the understanding? We're talking people's lives. It could be your sister, your brother,

your son, your daughter.

I beg you, be part of the solution, not the problem that you are now. Give me 15 minutes privately and let you know what's going on.

Help us get out of here. Don't keep us here every day.

Don't pass the anti-camping law.

Thank you, Lou Noble.

Yeah, these camping ordinances have really made it difficult for a lot of people out there, especially at Santiago Creek where people are getting their stuff confiscated, their blankets, their essentials in the middle of the night. They're freezing out there. They're not going to go away. They get stuff back. Even if we have to give them blankets every day, that every time that they get confiscated, That's theft. And when they get their stuff confiscated, like this lady was saying, their paperwork, it actually creates a worse situation because now you're oppressing people. You're not letting them get back on their feet.

This camping ordinance, you know, it costs millions. $25 million to do an enforcement of ordinances. That's how much it costs, right? Which it could be alleviated by giving these people, I mean, I advocate for campgrounds. I don't know why that can be done. I mean, they're already there for people who say, not in my backyard. Well, they're already in your front yard. this oppression of people, you know, getting arrested, getting ticketed over and over and over,

that the tickets that they can't pay and turn to warrants, that's criminalizing the homeless. You know, in Proverbs 21, 13 says, whoever closes his ear to the cries of the poor will himself call out and not be answered. It could happen to any one of us. It doesn't matter. Homelessness doesn't see no color, financial status, or party. I mean, I've met one homeless person that was a council member out there.

I have videos of a lot of people. I've been boots on the ground out there, and I see people suffering. Yeah, some of them might not be outstanding citizens, but they are residents of Orange County.

And this is just going to abrogate the problem. People are giving up hope because they're being oppressed. And criminalization and jailing people costs more money. even housing first would actually cost less if we could implement that and yeah every city should have a shelter of their own not just dumping everybody in one place but in the meantime you know you help you help those people that are out here in your city you know

Well, it's just, you know, call ourselves Sanctuary City. We'll help our homeless from around the county. And if they're from other cities, help them get back in their own cities. Thank you.

Thank you. I just want to take a moment and apologize for the comment I made about Councilwoman Iglesias and the time. It was inappropriate. Let's just continue with our business. So with that, I wanted to bring this back. I know that Councilor Jose Solorio requested to speak on this. I know it's something dear to Councilmember Iglesias as well, I believe. So let me yield to you, Councilor Solorio.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And as we had talked earlier, because she wasn't here, I was thinking about continuing the item. But since we had speakers, I think we should address it. First, Mr. Noble, I know that you're a good actor, you know, standing side by side, the homeless folks. And the city, I think, you know, is a good actor. We have a shelter. We have wraparound services. We have a number of affordable housing units, including those focused on homeless and veterans and others. But I think also we know more and more it's not compassionate just to let folks suffer out on the streets.

This item isn't about passing a new camping ordinance. We already have one. This ordinance is about enforcing the laws that we have related to that and panhandling, which is often very unsafe. But a part of this item here also talks about that all those service enforcement services should be accompanied with an educational component that talks about mental health, that talks about drug treatment opportunities, housing services. I'm a full supporter of the housing first model. We also ensure as often as possible that our PD go out with social service folks or folks with a soft touch to speak.

So I think that's more humane rather than letting folks suffer. We also, you know, not long ago here in San Diego passed Measure X, where we pledged to our citizens that we were going to do more to enforce these type of laws. We have to do right by that. We also have a shelter that we built for the sole purpose of offering these enforcement and education services. And, you know, I think the public often asks, well, why do we still have so many? And, you know, PD is doing more and more. and some cynically will say well they're all out there because you know the city

and the police department let them be out there and I think some areas are more unsafe than others you know I would just ask that our our city manager continue to work with our police department to identify you know the 20 to 30 hotspots in our city so that those areas aren't heavily concentrated in causing the kinds of problems that we have especially in near schools in areas frequently visited by families and children and there's crazy stuff going on out there I recently ran into a one of the security officers from Allied I was asking him how it's going on the parks and apparently recently one person

with you know very good instincts there was a homeless person to deal park with a blowtorch and yeah that individual because you know he doesn't carry a gun couldn't do certain things but he knew how to spot it out he knew how to take care of it and coordinate with city staff PD to eliminate a blowtorch that you know given the winds and everything else could have caused a lot of you know property or personal damage so I think we need to address things like that and also you know on South Main we have continuous issues I know there was one constituent that said how many more emails do we need from South Main business

people for the Santa Police Department to focus more attention and and address that I know legally we're also you know working on MHA because that is a hot spot of drastic proportions so I know we were focused on that where we clearly have to do more and then that Santiago Creek which isn't a very big area it's you know it's probably the public space that solely our police department is in charge of enforcing anti camping laws and I know we go out there once a month or whatever we do humongous cleanups but if we don't go after more often they just keep coming back and all we do is keep spending dollars and dollars in overtime

and we for these hot spots I think we just have to be a little bit more creative have more of a presence maybe have vehicles out there there's been talks about maybe taking out some of our mobile stations out there maybe they're temporary substations in these hot spots because the calls the incidents are you know it's too much too much and so for that reason I just wanted to you know have this so we can as a council give you know our insights and thoughts to to our staff VR city manager thank you thank you other comments just playing

David PenalozaItem —

Alosa and then Becerra thank you mr. mayor and thank you councilmember Solorio for putting this item on the agenda I also agree that there needs to be a higher emphasis and more of a priority on enforcing anti camping laws that are already in the books and the loitering that we see throughout our city. Like I mentioned earlier, and I'll mention it again, but you know, similar to Santiago Creek cleanup, we should do those cleanups throughout the city. Focus on a street on one day or focus on another street on another day and be visibly present so that we could enforce these laws and

David PenalozaItem —

clean up areas and the hotspots when we need to. All of the emails, constant emails and Facebook messages I get from constituents in the community is that nobody is doing anything about these numerous encampments and people loitering in public spaces whenever they're requested. We have shelter beds available. We should be able to relocate people to these shelter beds.

David PenalozaItem —

One of the messages that was brought up, I just opened it and looked for it, was at Windsor Park. This whole week, daily, I've been seeing constant pictures and messages of an individual at Windsor Park in one of the diamond areas, the baseball diamonds. And today I went to go pull it up just now to show you guys and, or tell you guys about it. And now, you know, it says more than 72 hours later, and I'm still reporting the same individual through the app. He has made Windsor Park his home. It's Tuesday afternoon and kids are starting soccer and baseball practice and he's still there.

David PenalozaItem —

Now there's a full encampment and an actual tent buildup on the actual baseball diamond. These are the things that our constituents tell us about every single day, and it seems like nobody moves when these things are requested. Nobody is out there constantly doing proactive enforcement so these things don't happen and just linger for days on end. And those are my comments. I would like to see more of an aggressive approach to this, enforcing all of our laws, anti-camping, panhandling, and those are my comments.

Phil BacerraItem —

Additional comments?

Council Member Serra, please.

Phil BacerraItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I too want to thank Council Member Soloria for bringing this item for discussion before us this evening. I think what this item says is very serious. We're saying that our police are not fully enforcing our anti-camping and anti-panhandling laws.

Phil BacerraItem —

And the issue with that, I mean, you know, many of you know we pay our police pretty well, so we would expect the best service from them. Having said that, I also don't like to give, you know, just kind of empty direction that says, go cure cancer, go fix stuff. I think we need to be a little more focused in what we're doing and what we're directing. I know that when I meet with staff, a lot of times they look to us for direction, but they really genuinely, they're not just telling us that to make us feel good. They really want direction. They want to know which way should they go.

Phil BacerraItem —

And I think that's a responsibility that we all have up here. Having said that, you know, one thing I was very fortunate to come across was a report that our PD commissioned from the University of North Texas back in January of 2015. And in that report, it talked about patrol levels. and the idea that if we had certain suitable patrol levels or staff on patrol, that we can reduce our call times. And as I mentioned earlier, when the chief gave his presentation, I think that's a very important item. I mean, we need our police to not only provide professional service, but we also need it to be prompt,

Phil BacerraItem —

and I think those things go hand in hand. One thing, my understanding, and I would defer to PD to correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is right now we have 149 officers on patrol. And the report that was commissioned back in 2015 called for a gradual increase for officers on patrol through fiscal year 2019-2020 to have us add 186 officers. So if the 149 number is true, then we're far short of that. And part of the goals from that report included five-minute response times for priority one calls, which were about two minutes over,

Phil BacerraItem —

10-minute for priority two calls, which were almost a minute over. But on priority three calls, we beat that by four minutes. The goal was 35 minutes, and we're about four and a half minutes under that. So right now, our priority one and priority two were deficient, but our priority three calls were doing well on. Priority one calls are the emergency calls. Those are the most important calls. So having said that, again, I appreciate Councilman Salora bringing this up, but I think that when we bring this up, I'm hoping that by the time we're done discussing this among the seven of us,

Phil BacerraItem —

that staff walks away with clear marching orders as to how to address the issue and not just make grand proclamations. So I leave it to you guys. Thank you.

And I think on that point, just as a follow-up, it is full enforcement because the community doesn't think we're doing any enforcement. but if you read towards the end of this it is saying that especially areas where there's a lot of children around to the area the idea of near parks near near schools should be a sensitive area and hot spots and so I mentioned the 20 or 20 to 30 that we should be looking at and so if you have other specific areas where you think they should be doing enforcement be our city manager is you know this would be a good time to do it and again I'm just thinking just because

it is resource intensive that looking at hot spot areas or areas where with a lot of families and children and I think you've what we've all been seeing that parents particularly from the Godenas high school and surrounding areas they've been very focused on it because they reported I think it was their school police chief I think they're almost like three times the number of complaints around their schools related to homelessness and they do have a small you know police force but really more in school specific it's the city's responsibility or pds to you know provide security around it and so that's why the idea around

children families and some hot spots would be good if you have other areas on where you think that they should focus on now would be a great time to share that well councilman salari i think the

Phil BacerraItem —

majority of the city is a hot spot i don't think there's many places in the city that you don't see some sort of uh encampment or loitering or any other sort of homeless related items so i i think it would be hard to narrow it down, frankly.

So just more citywide enforcement you want to see or not?

Phil BacerraItem —

Well, I want to see enforcement of those laws. That's why I appreciate you bringing that forward. Like I said, I think that really right now what we need to do is bolster our patrol, because I think that in doing that, we could achieve what you're asking for. I agree with that as well.

Go ahead, Councilor Pagano-Losa. And then Vince.

David PenalozaItem —

And I want to also put it out there that this isn't just, I'm not saying that all the other departments have to go out there and enforce our laws, but brings it back to the if you see something, say something. It shouldn't just be on police departments' hands to handle the issue, but public works, parks and rec, you guys are out there every single day in our parks, on our streets. Don't just drive by blindly and ignore these situations. Say something. Report it. Make it a note to let somebody know at the end of the day whoever needs to take care of it so that it can be addressed. with that said Madam City Manager does City Outreach

David PenalozaItem —

is that the name of the program that we use what was it?

CityNet

David PenalozaItem —

so CityNet do they go out with our quality of life team?

they do both, they will partner and go out with Colt but they also go out on their own as well

David PenalozaItem —

because two weeks ago when I was driving home from here from City Hall, I don't know if you recall that there was a homeless individual asleep on the sidewalk in the middle of the day and there was kids, children walking home from school having to step onto the street to walk around the individual laid out in the middle of the sidewalk off Flower Street in Ettinger. And I put in the request and CDA and Mr. Steven Mendoza, you guys were all very helpful in being out there quickly, but the issue I have is that when staff came out, we called into

David PenalozaItem —

CityNet, and CityNet sent out two young girls, probably 18, 19 years old, and very tiny, and approached this individual and kind of just, you know, tapped them. Hey, sir, and he turned the other way and was like, not interested, and waved his arm, and they were like, well, here's our card. and they got in the car and they were going to leave. And I stopped them and I was like, wait a minute. So this is, they're like, yeah, we'll slowly try to make that connection and build a relationship with this person. So if I hadn't been there, they would have just left for the day

David PenalozaItem —

because they gave them a business card and that was it. And that individual would have stayed there for the entire day while children of Santa Ana are having to step over him and walking onto their street to get around this individual in the middle of the day because it is causing a safety concern for our children, and that is a problem here. So are we doing an effort to see if a police officer or a public works employee could go out with CityNet when it's a male and it's the two young girls with sitting at, I know we can't control who's sitting at staffs,

David PenalozaItem —

but we're not going to make much of an effort if this is what's happening around the city.

If they can choose who they want to ask, I should have been asked a long time ago.

Please, you already spoke. Councilmember Vince Armiento, please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

David PenalozaItem —

Wait, Madam City Manager, the questions weren't answered. Yeah, go ahead and answer.

Thank you. Council Member, CityNet's role is actually to go out and establish a relationship with the homeless and build, trust, and offer services. And they're trained professionals. So regardless if you think they're petite young women, they are trained in their profession to do that role. In regards to that specific example, the individual was not left on the sidewalk that day.

David PenalozaItem —

And the reason I ask this is because I'm not judging that the two girls can't do their job, but they said it to me. They were like, yeah, sometimes we're scared. You know, sometimes we don't, you know, we don't have any, sometimes we've been, you know, harassed and yelled at by the individual we're trying to approach. And sometimes it is just two of us and sometimes it's just one. And, you know, they did say that they do many times fear, you know, approach the individual with fear. And if they're not, they don't feel comfortable approaching the individual, they just get up and leave.

David PenalozaItem —

So that's why I mentioned that, not that I personally thought, but they told me that oftentimes they do have fear in approaching because of the state that the individual is in. So they'll just kind of walk away. So that's why I'm saying that we should make an effort to see if an individual from Colt team, a quality of life team, police officer, whether it's a public works employer or a police officer, could go out with the girls and see if there's going to be additional support.

needed. And they do. As I mentioned before, they do both because part of the strategy is sometimes homeless individuals will engage with CityNet without police presence, or they won't engage with CityNet with police presence. So that's why we do

a dual strategy on that. Thank you. Thanks for those questions and comments. Councilor Vince Amiente. Thank you again, Mr. Mayor. So I came into this discussion a little

late but you know just reading this and I think this was on a previous agenda I think it's coming from a good place I think that the intentions are well you know meaning but I'm a little confused on the direction so I have a couple of questions for you madam city manager are items like anti camping anti panhandling protecting our children are those not a top priority for you I am not aware of

any directive that I've ever issued or our police chief has ever issued that told officers to not fully enforce all of the laws, with the exception of a period of time before I was here when you were suspended from enforcing your anti-camping as a result of a lack of shelter beds.

So let me rephrase this. So since you've been here and you've discussed this issue ad nauseum with all of us in open session, in public session, and all the emails and all the data, and everything that shows that right now homelessness is probably the most important issue to all of our residents. Do you see it any other way than it being one of, if not the top priority on your list of things to do?

No, absolutely. You've made it very clear it's a top priority.

Okay. And are you giving direction to our chief of police that enforcing anti-camping and anti-panhandling and making sure that our residents, especially our children and families, are safe. Is that something that you've conveyed to the chief?

That's the absolute direction. There hasn't been any other direction.

So, you know, I don't want to mislead the public because I think the perception is different that by saying, hey, let's do this, that means that we haven't done it. And so I don't want to be contrary to what direction I think all of us have been compelling you to do. We may have different approaches on how we meet these ends or what tools we use to approach these, but I think that what's important is that we all, I think, have said this in one form or another.

I guess I'll step back a little bit. these 85A, 85 agenda items are council-driven items that I always thought were raised when we weren't addressing something, right? So they were to sort of fill a vacuum of some subject matter or something that we needed to give you specific direction on that wasn't being addressed. So I don't want the public to think that you haven't had direction from us. You're not giving the chief direction. The chief isn't executing the direction that he's received both from the council and the city manager. So I just don't want that to be confusing and that's where I think that

we may be if we handle this the wrong way. I do see a couple of novel elements that I haven't seen in the past and I want to thank the councilman for including this. An education component should be included to offer drug treatment and mental health and housing services to individuals violating these laws. I think those are things that maybe weren't included in the list or the palette of things that we've given you to consider, but I do think that, you know, I just don't want us to misuse the 85A process because I think it should be limited to things that we, you know,

haven't given staff direction on. So those are my thoughts, and, you know, I think that to the extent we can pull out some things that you haven't had clarity on from us, but I think, I don't know how much more clearly to make these items a priority. I mean, all of us, I think, have exhausted sometimes your patients and exhausted the patients of all of our staff because we just want you to understand the constituents and residents come to us. And I can't tell you that homelessness probably outnumbers any of the other items that I'm addressing, but 10 to 1, 20 to 1.

So it is just the most critical issue, but I think that we've done a very, very clear job, and if we haven't, then shame on us. But I don't think that that's the case. I think that you've completely understood the direction, but those are my thoughts, and maybe we pull these other two items out and include those on your list of things that we can address as well.

Additional comments, Councilorio? I'd like to respond to that. Just Solario, please go ahead. And I do know you missed part of our comments here. It's one of those things, perception is reality. And one of the things with all my outreach in the community, probably half of our residents don't think we enforce anti-camping laws. They don't think we enforce panhandling laws because on a daily basis, we see them out there. I mentioned how the schools and the organizing of the parents, their school police chief has come out. Their complaints are up 300%.

And on a given night, probably like tonight, there's probably over 500 camps that we have around town, including at the hotspots. Go to some of the parks that Councilmember Peñalosa said. Go to Santiago Creek. Go down by South Main. Go by the UP Railroad Yard. We have literally hundreds of camps. And so the community wonders, well, if we enforce our laws, why are they there? And so maybe we just need to do something differently.

or as Councilmember Becerra said maybe we need to add more patrol officers to help but to say that we were good that we don't need to address more fully or aggressively or in a point of matter anti-camping laws I mean I didn't know that we you know had to check that off so so this item is really just to say look we don't have endless resources to from one day to another work with all those in encampments that we have to focus in certain areas with the focus around children and families so that's what this item is all about because you know our community I think they're highly frustrated and I think we all know that

and clearly there are many many campments through our city and you know this is just an effort to see if as a council we have other thoughts on on how

to how to help all right additional comment or thought I think we've all go Go ahead, Mayor Pro Tem.

Nope, just want to move on to the next item.

Mayor, you may want to consider continuing 85B and 85C since Council Member Iglesias is not present. Those were of interest to both. I concur. Both items were of interest to both.

I would entertain such a motion. Yep. Second. Okay, is it unanimous? It's unanimous. Thank you.

85 Diaz and David, Council Member Bacera and Peñalosa, who wants to go first? And we have our speakers. Okay. Kim Sandoval, followed by Ty Pham, followed by Lou Noble, followed by Claudio Gallegos.

Good evening, Council Members, Mayor Potem, Mayor Pulido. My name is Ty Pham. I'm here as a resident of the city in my individual capacity. as a private resident over on the west side. I, like most of the residents, support a humane approach to solving homelessness, but is not something that the city can do alone. I live about a mile and a half away from the proposed Yale shelter. I sit on the board for the Heritage Museum of Orange County, one of the gems of Santa Ana, and everyone should visit, but that's about a half a mile away.

I spoke to our executive director and we're really worried about the fact that the shelter, which none of the residents in the area want, is going into an industrial area with a lot of empty space that's not patrolled at night. Reading the county's explanation of security and what's going to happen is, well, they say there's going to be 24-hour security around the shelter, but there isn't going to be any security in the surrounding neighborhood. They specifically say in their facts that the Santa Ana Police Department is responsible for anything that happens around the shelter.

Meaning the Heritage Museum, which doesn't have full-time security and much of it is open to the outdoors, now we're going to have to spend non-profit dollars to find a way to prevent loitering, to prevent others from jumping our fences. The industrial areas, there's a lot of empty space there at night, and that means that there's going to be a lot of loitering, camping, people hiding out because the shelter is not going to provide security for the surrounding areas. As you know, the city of Santa Ana has been bearing the brunt financially, physically, emotionally of the homelessness crisis.

We understand that with the settlement, the South Spa is supposed to take on their proportional burden of this crisis, yet they're refusing to do so. I really appreciate Councilmember Becerra and Councilmember Peñalosa for bringing this up because it's time, as you well know, to stand up to the county and say no more. We deserve better. Our Board of Supervisors supposed to represent us as well as South County. so we need to stand up to them and we need to say our residents matter too there are lots of empty spaces and open spots in South County they can find

plenty of county land there and until they do so they should not be opening any shelters that they are not properly staffing properly caring for and not properly protecting the residents of our city thank you thanks for that I call

on others are you here cloudy I know you're here is anybody else here Lou come on up right after Claudio please

good evening mayor and council I come here on behalf of congressman Lou Correa and his a statement regarding the 85d tonight opposing the Yale shelter the congressman supports solving this homeless crisis he believes we all need to come together to find a humane solution with that he also believes that this solution needs to be equitable and when he went and attended the hearing with Judge Carter that is what the congressman had in mind unfortunately it

seems South Orange County continues to act in bad faith with that we the official position of congressman lucrea is to oppose the yale shelter until south orange county steps up and does their fair share to help solve this homeless crisis we support this item 85d we thank councilman becerra and councilman penulosa for taking this on and we encourage Council to support them as well. Thank you.

Thanks for that, Lou.

Again, Proverbs 21, 13, whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself cry out and will not be heard. Sanctuary City, well, I don't think we're a sanctuary city anymore. our homeless community, our suffering out there. I know that if you look back at a record talking to the Board of Supervisors, I did mention that every city should have their own shelters. And they should. There shouldn't be a burden to just one city, because that's when

we get the community outrage. But We have seen shelters monitor, like Anaheim, Salvation Army. People are not laurering out there because now they have a place to go. It just has to be more humane inside.

I see that a lot of the shelters are kicking people out for 30 days for any little thing. So that has to be addressed. The shelters shouldn't be just a cycle of revolving doors. There should be an exit to that. And I was going to talk about discussing the program that you're thinking about, work program. I think a lot of the homeless out there want to work. But the oppressive tactics that have been taken through that camping ordinance of taking their stuff, confiscating their property, not giving them their stuff,

losing a lot of their paperwork, and now getting back on their feet is harder for them. So, yeah, the camping ordinance should be in place if there's facilities available, and those who are not from a certain city should be helped to return to their own city or at least have other organizations help them. CityNet has been overcrowded with a list that now people are just giving up hope because even those who want to go into the shelters are not given the ability to go in because there is no vets available.

People are getting thrown out of the shelters just to make room for others to come in. That's not the solution either.

I believe that, you know, we'll keep going to the Board of Supervisors and ask, you know, letting them know that every, I mean, to deal with the judge is just not visible when there's 40% that are going to be out there criminalized. Not all homeless are criminals. The camping ordinance is making them criminals. And that is not so. They're being so oppressed that they're giving up hope. And hopefully that, you know, people look into their heart and mind and realize that these people need help, not incarceration,

because jails are not the answer. And law enforcement is not the answer either. It costs more, like we have heard, 25 million, 13,000 people arrested that just go through the system. Jails are becoming revolving doors, too. People say, well, the camping ordinance are not working. Well, that's because the police do enforce those laws, but people are back in the streets within days. So it's not helping any.

So I think more education to the public on why a lot of these are unconstitutional. And you have to realize that it's got to be more humane to get them in and out of those shelters to a proper solution. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. So the mayor slipped out for a quick second, so we're going to continue with Councilmember Becerra and Councilmember Peñalosa. This is your item.

Phil BacerraItem —

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Santa Ana operates a city-run shelter near Warner and Red Hill. And if you go by there, you wouldn't even notice it was there. There aren't any folks outside. There are no shopping carts. There's no encampments. Nobody's loitering outside. Meanwhile, the county operates the courtyard, which is about 400 feet from here, and MHA on South Main, which is about 250 feet from the folks in the Delhi neighborhood. Now, those facilities are very noticeable. You don't need their address. You can find them very easily. There are people hanging out outside. There are encampments.

Phil BacerraItem —

In fact, there's a picture probably many of you have seen circulated on social media where you've got a guy sleeping under the MHA sign on South Main. So it's very clear it's happening. Nothing that the county says gives me comfort when they tell me that the Yale Street shelter will be run better, that they're going to do a better job. Meanwhile, they let the courtyard and MHA function the way it does. They have no concern for the negative impact that it has on the surrounding communities, Santa Ana communities. Our residents and our businesses are impacted.

Phil BacerraItem —

I want to thank all the residents from Santa Ana that went to the Board of Supervisors meeting last Tuesday. You know, when Irvine came out in full force, it's because they knew what the county was bringing. And they fought it tooth and nail. And now the county said, well, let's just go ahead and go back to our old stomping grounds in Santa Ana. And that's not right. And it's not fair. You know, Santa Ana has been leading the way when it comes to a compassionate way of addressing homelessness. We have over 81 permanent supportive housing units and another 280 in the pipeline.

Phil BacerraItem —

And I'll bet you right now there's no other jurisdiction in Orange County that has done as much for the homeless as we have. With that being said, I want to thank Council Member Penaloza for working with me on this item and bringing it before us. I would like to see us direct staff to come back with the resolution so that we can show the community that we as a council all agree that this shelter should not be placed here in Santa Ana until South Orange County does their fair share.

David PenalozaItem —

Additional comment? Councilor Peñalosa, please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you, Councilmember Becerra, for your leadership on this item. I agree 100% with everything that was said by Councilmember Becerra. This is something that, you know, until the South County Spa, the South Spa of the county, does their fair share in addressing this homeless, this regional homeless crisis, I don't want to see us do more. You know, until the county could prove that they could run a facility without seeing these problems spill out to the neighboring surroundings,

David PenalozaItem —

I don't want to see more county-ran facilities in our city. And like Council Member Bacero, I also want to thank all the residents that went out to speak at the Board of Supervisors last week. Unfortunately, there were a lot of lies said from that dais, and I wasn't allowed to speak.

David PenalozaItem —

Councilwoman Iglesias wasn't allowed to speak. because we arrived after the the the item had started you know they they suppressed our freedom of speech and to give our opinion at the Board of Supervisors which is unfortunate and I want to set the record straight that this Santa Ana City Council nor the previous one ever approved an item for a homeless shelter at Yale Street in 2016 the city did enter into an MOU with the County to explore potential shelter on West Central. This project was never materialized. Alternative sites were looked at and the county moved forward

David PenalozaItem —

with pursuing the Yale Street without keeping the city apprised of their actions. At one point the county via letter from supervisor Andrew Doe informed the city they were not proceeding with Yale but continued with the project as a result of the city but continue with the project and as a result the city terminated the MOU. Our city has carried a far greater burden than any other city in this county. We are spending an estimated 26 million dollars a year on homeless, addressing the homeless crisis. We have a city shelter serving our city's homeless and all other cities should do the same.

David PenalozaItem —

The county should follow through with its plan for homeless services to be regionally dispersed in all three spas and stop unfairly and disproportionately affecting our community late last year I went up to Sacramento to participate in the League of California City solution to homelessness conference I ran into Lisa Bartlett there which is the supervisor that is that oversees the South County District and she asked me how can we help in Santa Ana what can we do well for one, at least bother the comment on the dozens of speakers that came to your board of supervisors

David PenalozaItem —

chambers to speak in opposition of the Yale Street site and ask for South County to step up. She remained silent. So it is clear to me that the County of Orange and the board of supervisors do not care about Santa Ana and do not have any desire to run a shelter appropriately in Santa Diana. So I, along with Council Member Bacerra, would like to officially direct the city manager to draft up a resolution to oppose the Yeltside shelter until South County could show that they're

David PenalozaItem —

going to step up to the plate and build a shelter of their own and the county could spread out the

David PenalozaItem —

services proportionately. You know, it's unfortunate that we have to go down this road. We saw what Irvine did. They bused in hundreds of people to the border supervisors meeting, and they listened. The border supervisors listened, but they won't listen to us.

So, you know, with that said, let's see if there's other comment, but thank you for presenting it as well as you have. Councilor Vince Armiento, then Jose Solario, then Mayor Pro Tem, then myself.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor, and I do want to thank the two council members that raised this. And so I think what we want to do is make sure we give staff clear direction, and so this is certainly appropriate for us to do. Because, again, I think many of us, and I know I've been sort of a consistent voice, and I was, you know, where I don't think that it's our obligation anymore. I've always said that the vested responsibility for these social services lies with the county. and we've certainly done a disproportionate amount of our share. And, you know, what's interesting is that in 2016 when the courtyard was opened up,

it was opened up in probably 30 to 60 days, and it was right on the eve of an election. And it was a very close election that the supervisor had with one of our former colleagues. And so now, you know, fast forward four years later, and we want to put another shelter in Santa Ana right on the eve of another election. So it's unfortunate that the timing may or may not be coincidental, but certainly now we have four years to contemplate how the courtyard's been run, and it really is shameful to see. And I think to the folks who spoke who are part of the homeless community,

we've had unspeakable conditions there. And there's been a death there. And there's been crimes committed there. There's been rapes committed there. And I don't trust these folks to continue operating in our city just generally. I think you have a number of county agencies that are just operating way below what the standard of care is for any public agency. but I think just backing up from that I think even if they did run it appropriately and the way you should why is Santa Ana being singled out as the only city that needs to bear this

responsibility I think the central spa contains nine other cities I think that you know there was a spot identified that was a hundred acre site in Irvine near the great park that was next to a second harvest, and it was going to be a very isolated space, but folks were bused in, and as was said, everybody backed off. What we saw there was that this board of supervisors really does, they favor voices that come out and speak to them, not the compelling reason that our

Our children and our families deserve the same equity that those in South County do. And I think that maybe our families don't have the time to miss a day of work to go and spend at a Board of Supervisors meeting, and maybe other affluent communities do. But that doesn't mean that our families are any less valuable and our children are any less precious. So it's up to us to speak on their behalf. I wasn't going to say anything, but I know that we have our new communications person.

I want to thank Paul Eakins for helping me draft an op-ed that was submitted, I think, yesterday for the Register and the Voice of OC and other media outlets stating my public opposition to the shelter because it's been a consistent policy position that I've had. So I did have one question for the city attorney regarding this. SB2 allows them to put it by right, but reconfiguring the SB2 zone, is that something that would prevent the timing of this from moving forward, or are we too far down this path now?

Because, again, we've had other properties in the past that have been purchased and intended for this, and they backed off, right? There was the Normandy site right off of Grand. So any thoughts on that?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Well, I know that City Council has given us some policy direction on looking at our SB2 ordinance to look both at the caps that we have on the beds and also to look at whether we have the legal authority to restrict, whether we can restrict the beds built in those shelters and SB2 zones to people that are coming from Santa Ana. We're actively working on that right now. I know a couple of times we've discussed here in public whether the county has preemptive land use authority or not. We have heard the county say a few times that they don't want to build shelters in communities that don't want to work with them.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

And so I think we have to play this out and work with them to see that they can hear our opposition on this project if that opposition is coming from the council and the residents. But it has been the experience so far that they have not exercised that preemptive power. And I, from different sources, understand that they maybe don't all agree that that should be used or shouldn't be used. I don't know for sure. But I believe that if they were going to use their authority to build a homeless shelter, they might be able to do that, and they don't necessarily have to do it within an SB2 zone.

Okay. And we're obviously doing our share already with the LINC, with the Armory, with Wise Place, with the Salvation Army, all these other, and all the permanent supportive housing units that we have as well. So it's not that we're saying we're not going to do anything any longer.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I think when you look at, on a percentage-wise, the point in time count and the number of individuals that were identified as being homeless within the city of Santa Ana, and you look at the fact that Santa Ana provides over 900 beds. So if you look at that on a percentage-wise, Santa Ana is doing far more than its fair share. it's providing over 50% shelter spaces for these individuals whereas other communities are not even coming close to that and with that I am very supportive

of the direction thank you additional comment

just in the salario thank you mr. mayor first I want to thank councilmembers Becerra and Pinallosa for putting this on the agenda I also want to thank everybody from San Unified that went to the last board of supervisors meeting some missing work or having to make arrangements to get there. In particular, the Gadenus High School PTSO did an amazing job doing what they did and making the case via the media about the situation. So I'm very proud of all of them. Some of us previously did support the MOU that Council Member Pinalosa mentioned. But again, that was really with a focus on a different

site as well as the circumstances have changed. When that was done, that was before the city had committed to building the link so that we can enforce our anti-camping laws. We have the link now. That's new. And then, you know, based off of the success of our federal judge, other cities have stepped up and started to do shelters in their cities. And so that relieves some pressure as well. And that should mean that, you know, we shouldn't have one, another one here in Santa I also think that this is a great policy position and you know who knows whether the county will listen to our opposition or not.

I'm hopeful like City Attorney Sonia Carvajal Rubio mentioned that maybe they won't want to take that preemptive action and push this. But if that is not the case, we also need to continue looking at legal and other advocacy measures in partnership with our school partners. I know San Unified is, I think, very interested in continuing the fight, so we ought to work with them. Also, many of our issues that we have are based on the county jail and how inmates are released. And finally, but equally as important, we do have the courtyard that, yes, not very well managed and many issues there,

but the residents that are there are people, too. and we need to ensure that they humanely are taken somewhere else when the county does close the courtyard because there are significant ADA and other issues with the courtyard and I do care very much about what we do with the individuals there but if that facility or individuals are moved it doesn't have to be the stand-in it could be another community could be back to motels it could be to these be well new centers that they're starting it could be you know the Fairview developmental center there's spaces over there I do want to

though just ensure that as part of all this but separate that our city staff and my colleagues think about what we ought to do with individuals there when that transition occurs. But I do wholeheartedly support this because I think it's time for other cities to step up and we want the county to be helpful and we want them to listen to our residents and our council. Thank you.

Thank you. Let me just add that I think we definitely have to move forward aggressively. I know that homelessness is something we talk about virtually at every closed session, every time we get together. And even though we're making statistically progress, because we can show more arrests, we can show more beds, we can show more interaction and intervention, the reality is that I don't know, I think the problem is getting worse, not better.

I mean, somehow there's either more migration occurring into the city, and so we somehow handle 100, but now there's 200 to replace those. So somehow we have to, I believe, be more aggressive to get out ahead of the problem. And certainly, you know, the county is not doing, I believe, right by us. Today we were in court before Judge Dave Carter on an active lawsuit.

And, you know, we, I think, did well advocating half of the city, in particular our Deputy Chief Gaminski was there. Our city attorney, you know, both Sonia and John were there. Our city managers was there. I was there. And I believe we stood up for the city in front of the judge, in front of the courtroom. but our problems are out in the street so we're going to continue to battle you know fights on all grounds uh in this case i think this is a uh an appropriate step an appropriate action certain aspects of it are new others are not um and unfortunately the you know the problem again

is getting worse not better so i believe that through the additional officers that we hired you know through the work that the city council is doing and the level of images that we've taken because there's a very high level of interest, which is really the right position for the city. So with that, I believe there's a clear direction. Would you all like to see a vote from the city council? Because I'd like to vote for this if you need a vote.

Not necessary?

Not necessary.

All right, well, we'll vote when you bring back a specific action, and I expect it'll be unanimous. So with that, let's move on to the next item.

Housing Authority.

Housing Authority, they say they don't want us to push anything. We'll push it when it comes back with a specific action. Right now we're unanimous in direction. So with that, let me convene the Housing Authority meeting. I'd entertain a motion on the special meeting, and I'd request an excused absence for Council Member Iglesias. And item number three is the receive and file quarterly report on the housing voucher program. I would entertain a motion. Motion by Alcimiento, second by Mayor Pro Tem. Is it unanimous? Motion carries unanimously. That means they're all green if they were green.

So with that business calendar, have we already done that, Madam Clerk?

Correct. And no, the business calendar number four.

Adopt the resolution.

I'd entertain a motion on item number four.

Move.

Second.

Those in favor, is it unanimous? Motion is unanimous. Item number five, it's an agreement with Yardi Systems for Housing Authority Management Software. Is there a motion?

So move.

I'll second. Is it unanimous? Motion carries unanimously. Seeing no Housing Authority member comments, I will adjourn and call to order the successor agency. And I would entertain a motion on the special meeting minutes, excused absences.

So moved.

We have motion. Second. Is it unanimous? Motion is unanimous. Now on the business calendar for the successor agency, item number three.

I entertain a motion.

Move.

Second by Solario. Is it unanimous? No opposition. It's unanimous. Now having no comments, we'll bring it back to the city council meeting.

We have Peter Katz. Come on down, Peter. And then after that, it will be city manager comments.

Good evening, everyone. I just want to say a few things on a political level here. You know, on the national level, if you go back 70 years, 40 years of the White House were controlled by Republicans, 30 by Democrats. If you go back 90 years, 50 were controlled by Democrats, 40 by Republicans. If you go back 100 years, it's dead even. So that means all politics is local. And so we have to be careful of how we govern. And the mayor brought this up early, that next year four or five council members will be replaced based on the election coming up.

And I want to remind the public to get out and vote, register the vote, make sure you look at the ballot that you got at home, because if you've gone to the DMV in the last year, they've been automatically changing your registration. If your party registration is not right, you need to correct that. You can correct that actually on Election Day. And it's a little tiny code that's on the back where your address is, so you need to check that. But what I want to do here is a couple things.

I want to thank Vince for your time on the council, your steady leadership, as far as keeping us out of legal lawsuits and troubles. And I'm going to miss your guidance. And Mr. Polito, I've known you for a long time and many years, and I'm going to miss your sardonic sense of humor. and even though we have these midnight meetings, you chair a great meeting, you try to get a consensus with a divided council and bring people together. And I hope, but what my foresight is that the next mayor, these meetings will go to 3 and 4 in the morning. So we have to find a way to come together on issues.

So we have to start looking in the mirror and see how, when we sit out in this audience and how you guys act up here. And Mr. Penelope, you're a young man. I'm going to single out something here of what happened at the last general meeting. You supported a project, 2525 North Main Street, that over 300 people opposed in that neighborhood. And they came out here and they spoke adequately. Then you turned right around and voted against a small project when the neighborhood supported that project because it was in your district. This is the problem we're going to have with district elections.

Did you vote against that because that restaurant did not contribute to your campaign? I mean, these are the questions that the audiences are starting to ask out there. So you can't be pro-development on one side of town and just the opposite on the other town. That was a business that was in business for 30 years, and she's playing by the rules. If ABC thinks she's serving alcohol illegally, they would certainly know that there would have been complaints filed with the ABC. So, I mean, you have to be careful how you present projects and how you vote. And so that's why, Mayor Pro Temp, I want to thank you.

I disagree with you on a lot of issues sometimes, but you stand your ground. You stand for what you're right, what you believe in, and you have a lot of respect out here in this community. And so the guys that are up here that are going to be leaving, and I don't want to leave you out, Jose, you're the Mr. Politician. You're always looking for your next job, so I'm sure you're going to be landing somewhere.

But we can't sit on the fence. We have to continue these projects. And it's the same thing with this homeless issue. You know, Mr. Mayor, you promised Judge Carter that we would have 600 beds in the city of San Antonio. We've got to put them someplace. You know, this is a temporary shelter out there. You can't clean up the homeless off the street and not have a place to put them. We have to do something. We have to solve this problem some way. So without it costing money through lawsuits and all of this, we've got to come to a solution. And the last thing I want to say is maybe we can do something for the city manager's office.

You know, there was a big fire in Irvine over the weekend.

Peter, it's red, so please conclude.

But working wardrobes lost their entire office building with all the clothes that they provide for homeless people looking for jobs and work and everything. and are asking all the communities to donate clothes and shoes. If we could find a way to get that message out, I'd appreciate that.

Thank you for your comments. And by the way, on the shelter, we just want others to do their fair share because they're not.

I realize that, and somebody has to push that issue. And if Judge Carter is no longer there, it's going to go back to square one.

Thank you. So with that, any comments from our city manager?

Just very briefly, sir. I know that you had requested that I give you homeless updates, so I'm doing them once a month typically at the first meeting. Just for the month of January, and I know you know these stats, Mayor, because you quoted them in court today, but the Colt team made 725 contacts just for the month of January, resulting in 36 individuals accepting shelter, 305 citations, and 155 arrests. So we still have our Colt and our DART teams. They're continuing to monitor and patrol the streets daily.

The crews are actively responding to requests from 9 a.m. to midnight, Monday through Thursdays, and from 7 a.m. to 10 on Friday through Sunday. They did clean up over 272 locations throughout the city. Of those 272, 125 were proactive, and 137 of them were based on requests that came directly through my Santa Ana app. So we are continuing to focus on the Santiago Creek area, and we also recently did a cleanup of a rather large storm drain where there was a lot of illegal activity taking place. That's all.

Thank you for that. Councilor Becerra, please.

Phil BacerraItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I want to thank our city staff for lighting up the water tower in purple and gold to commemorate the contributions in life of Kobe Bryant, who we lost two Sundays ago to a tragic accident that took not only his life but the lives of eight other individuals, including his daughter and Orange Coast College's baseball coach, John Altebelli, which my understanding is they're going to have services for him at Angel Stadium, I believe, coming up.

Phil BacerraItem —

As we remember those that have passed, I do want to congratulate the organizers of the TEP parades that my colleagues and I participated in two weekends ago for having successful events and bringing in hopefully a prosperous and happy Lunar New Year. I also want to thank Min Tai and his planning staff for placing information about development applications on the city's website. So now you'll be able to go to the city's website to find development applications ahead of time rather than getting a planning commission or city council agenda and going, oh my goodness, I didn't know this was being proposed.

Phil BacerraItem —

So this will hopefully give folks a lot more time and ability to participate and provide input as these development projects go through the process. I also wanted to report that after our last meeting, I was up in Sacramento attending the League of California Cities Academy up in Sac. It was a great opportunity to interact with a lot of fellow council members throughout the state. It shouldn't be a surprise to anybody given what we talked about all night tonight. Homelessness was definitely the hot topic.

Phil BacerraItem —

I also want to invite everybody to my office hours that I'll be hosting this Saturday over at the South Coast Global Medical Center on South Bristol. This Saturday at 10 a.m. and going forward it'll be on the first Saturday of each month. Just a nice informal setting, a good opportunity to discuss issues, whatever's of importance to you, and hopefully we can figure out some solutions to those problems. and since we won't meet again until February 18th, I want to take the opportunity to wish my wife a happy Valentine's Day. Thank you.

Councilman Ravince Armiento, please. Wow, making the rest of us look better, putting pressure on us now to do the same. So I'll start off saying happy Valentine's Day to my wife, my mom, and everybody out there. And hopefully they'll enjoy themselves, cover it all.

So I'm going to be brief. I really do want to thank staff for lighting that tower up as well. I think I had a conversation with the city manager, and so I think it affected us all. We had nine lives that were lost, unfortunately, and all, if not most of them, were Orange County residents and the connections between their lives and Santa Ana's. My daughter had a friend who was a mutual friend with Kobe's daughter who passed away.

So I remember Kobe coming here and using our parking lot at one time because he had to be in court for something, traffic matter or something, and they didn't want to park him in the lot over by the courthouse because he would have drawn too much attention. And I think at that time, Council Member Alvarez was down there and helped him and got a picture with him. And I was always envious because she wasn't a Laker fan, and I'm a lifelong Laker fan. I didn't get that picture. But in any event, thank you for doing that.

And I think that showed that we have so many fans of just folks who admired that life and were just affected by the tragedy. And it really, I think, affected many of us deeply. But what I did want to say, just changing topics as my final comment, was I heard that the sheriff made a statement that the sanctuary state law is making it very difficult for him to enforce. and carry out his responsibilities here in Orange County. And so I know that we've had a sanctuary city ordinance for quite a while.

And looking at the stats that the chief provided, it looks like we're trending in a very positive direction. I wouldn't say despite that, but because we have that policy, because he has been able to instill trust from our members of the public and our residents and people who may have felt jeopardized at one time by being apprehended simply because they had a status offense of not being a legal resident. Now we're witnesses. Now we're victims. Now feel comfortable coming to our officers and calling out crimes when they wouldn't have in the past.

So maybe what we could do is, I know the chief isn't here, but I see some of the staff here. Maybe we can reach out and help the sheriff understand how to better police. and how to use that as an asset rather than a detriment, because I think that our officers do it well. And I know when I've had conversations with the chief, he sees that only as an enhancement in his ability to police. And he's been very grateful, because now we don't have folks in the shadows who are unwilling to come forward to call out a crime, and are unwilling to come and testify as witnesses.

So I think we do it well, and I think we could serve as a good example here and maybe give some guidance. So with that, I'll bid everybody a good night. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted to thank all the staff that came out for the TEP Parade also. It was a great time. I know it was a lot of work and organization that take place and patience because we were there waiting for quite a while. And we had a lot of fun. It was great. I also want to thank the staff, the police department, and the city staff for all the work they did for helping us with the Family Justice Center here at the police department. First of its kind, located, co-located at a police department. So out of the 90 Family Justice Centers in the nation, this is the one that's the first.

Santa Ana has always been a leader since the 1970s in community policing, and this is just another step forward helping out our community. Also, I'm happy to report we've had four walk-ins the very next day, four walk-ins, and we have another appointment. We have 15 calls. I still don't have the stats. You know, it's not bad for just starting out, and it's made a difference. I've had a number of calls from different organizations within the county asking me for a flyer. Flyer's not done yet. They're willing to send me an email so they can print it out themselves and give it to their clients

because they see and deal with a lot of these folks from our city that could use these services. Also, I would like to invite all the girls here from Santa Ana for the Orange County Fire Academy, the Empowerment Camp. uh orange county firefighters uh god can't even the fire authority excuse me and this is a great uh weekend for them where they learn about leadership and what it's like to work in the fire service and that'll take place saturday march 7th and sunday march 8th 2020 it's free i remember last year we had i think we had the highest number of young ladies that attended

this camp, and I think it was around seven or eight. We had the highest number out of all of them. There was like 50 young ladies that attended this. It was really, really great. I'm going to see if I can have the city manager's office put this out in the city email. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you very much. Councilman José Solorio, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First,

Happy New Year to everybody that celebrates it, especially the Vietnamese community and the Chinese American community. Also happy Valentine's to everybody including my my lovely wife and did want to report on a couple things. I was able to attend the ceremony at the school district where they renamed the headquarters after you know our first mayor Spurgeon because you know many might know there was a Spurgeon school but the school district joined a couple schools together the Romero Cruz and Spurgeon. The school is now Romero Cruz. But really, pretty much at the same time, the school district made a commitment

to rename its headquarters after our first mayor. So I did attend that, and somebody from the city manager's office as well. So I want to report on that. I think that was a good action on their part. And then second, another festive thing, a beautiful baby anteater at the zoo. And little baby's healthy, and these baby anteaters, they typically just latch onto the back of the mothers for most of their living day and early months. So that's exciting. If anybody has a chance to go visit the zoo and see that baby anteater, that would be a fantastic thing to do.

I do want to thank my colleagues and staff for these complex issues. Many of these issues weren't created overnight, so they're not going to be solved overnight. but you know if every day we can make a little bit better I feel good about that and you know our city manager Ridge is now several months in I think you're more settled in and yet now have you know history on most projects and I really do appreciate working with you and I know you're doing a very good job working with your direct reports and the rest of the staff so thank you before our

councilman panelist mayor Pro Tem forgot one one last thing I wanted to

thank Councilmember Peñalosa and the mayor for attending the event the other day. I really, really appreciated the support from the council to fund that project and thank you again for being there, taking the time to come out. Thank

you. Thank you for that. Councilmember Peñalosa, please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

David PenalozaItem —

If I'd like to hear myself talk, I just would double down on everything that's been said tonight but um again uh water staff in particular thank you so much for for lighting up that tower and the the what it meant to the entire you know region of southern california not just san anna you know it's incredible i was seeing it everywhere on espn at the staples center and and so it was really nice to see that i know how difficult it is to climb that tower and how long it takes to physically you know put that colored film over each light so which reminds me of it's

David PenalozaItem —

good that we move forward look into ways where we could you know program that and and make it efficient and computerized would be great i'm highly supportive of it just wanted to thank you guys for doing that um thank you to staff for the for the TEP parade it was great being out there to celebrate from my understanding is that on Sunday at the Garden Grove Tet Parade there were supposed to be skydivers that were going to come down at like 9 45 or 10 10 a.m to start the festivities and we all waited we all waited and no skydivers were coming and then I heard that apparently John Wayne Airport where they were going to leave from had

David PenalozaItem —

grounded small airplanes and helicopters because of this missing helicopter that apparently had already crashed. So it was kind of crazy to think that that was happening. So with that said, happy Valentine's Day to my girlfriend, my mom, and my dog Jax, and to all of you out there. So thank you so much. that's it

can I ask questions about your dog

David PenalozaItem —

sure

no no let me leave it alone I'm just kidding I'm just kidding first of all happy Valentine's Day to my wife Laura and everybody that celebrates it including councilor Panels and Jax pardon we ate a barbecue

over the weekend.

Jack's ate a Barbie over the weekend.

David PenalozaItem —

I found it afterwards, after nature had taken its course. I was like, what?

Was it your Barbie?

No, my niece's.

His niece's Barbie. TMI, TMI.

After nature had taken its course? What were you doing?

Well, pick it up.

All right, enough information on that.

Wonderful Tet parades, plural. I know many of us went to the Westminster one and the Garden Grove one, and it was, I think, a very good event. Just want to mention that I've got to get out there, because when I was out at the zoo a while ago, the anteater was pregnant, and I know, Councilman Salario, you are an anteater, right? you went to UCI and there is a UCI connection by the way the Chancellor at the Dime came down and UCI helped us with it so I think it's beautiful that that we have an anteater at the at the zoo I also want to mention that the

Family Justice Center it's just too bad we didn't have a video because we should have videoed or get a copy of that entire ceremony and maybe we still reach out to the media, reach out to somebody and put it on Channel 3 because it was a wonderful, not only event, but the tour of the center itself and how it's already beginning to help people. I think it's going to be one of those projects that has a long-term legacy and those that are able to avail themselves of the services there really have no choice. They many times have no other choice.

I understand there's about 4,000 cases a year in the city of abuse, and the nearest center is over in Anaheim. And so we're going to get over time, I think, hundreds if not thousands of people utilizing our center here in Santa Ana. It's really very much needed. I also want to thank Councilor Peña-Lozik, because unfortunately right after the tragic event with Kobe Bryant and the other eight that were flying with him, including his daughter, he called me up right away, sent me a text about the water tower.

So I don't know if it was your idea or the committee's idea, but I know very quickly we jumped on that and made it happen, and I want to thank you because you're on your toes on that. Finally, I want to close this meeting in honor of Kobe Bryant. I think he's very much an Orange County, not only resident, but a family member, and the community that he was a part of. I know my good friend in Costa Mesa, Jim Righimer, the former mayor there, his daughter plays on Kobe's team.

And so they often would travel together, including in that helicopter. And that day, something happened. Jim decided to drive. He was not obviously in the helicopter. And, you know, when I called him up, they were there waiting, waiting, waiting. And then they got the bad news. So it touched, I think, all of Orange County and beyond. and I think it is appropriate to adjourn this meeting in his honor plus the other eight that we're traveling with him. With that this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.