Read the October 1 meeting.

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. If you can remain standing, we have our invocation this evening by our police chaplain, Vincent Berenger.

Will you please bow your head. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, thank you for every seat that has been filled here today. For each mind and heart that fills the presence of this room, we thank you. Only you truly know what we are setting out to accomplish today at this council meeting. We have an idea, a vision, hence even an agenda. We have talents, abilities, and time to work. However, only you can see in perfect detail the end of every beginning. Only you can see the end result of every decision, every project, every choice that will be made.

Father God in your mercy please use us even our mistakes and missteps to be used for the good of all Father in heaven your righteousness transcends all our efforts and understanding forgive us for our pride the pride that puffs us up and the pride that threatens to unqualify us strengthen our confidence in who you have made us to be set us free from comparison to others so that we can work together efficiently to make Santa Ana a better place to live and work for all. Father God, I ask that you bless this meeting today and all those present with wisdom, courage, and empathy.

I especially ask for blessings for Miguel, our mayor, and our council members, David, Vicente, Juan, Cecilia, and Jose. I also pray for blessings to be stowed on David, our police chief, and for Christine, our city manager, as well as all those members of our community in attendance here today. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

You may be seated.

We're going to start things off this evening with a very special presentation from our State Senator Thomas Umberg. As he approaches the mic, I just want to tell you that I believe, Madam Clerk, can you just bring the other mic down, please? I believe that we're very fortunate to have him serving in Sacramento on our behalf.

I've found Tom to be responsive, motivated, capable, experienced, and really eager to help, eager to find out what our issues are, what the problems are, and how to make a difference. So I not only look forward to this legislative update, but if any members of the council have any questions or want to engage, we're very fortunate to have our state senator here with us this evening. Please go ahead. You have the floor.

Well, thank you, Mr. Mayor. After that, I'm just going to be quiet. That's it. I'm leaving. So, no, thank you very much. You're doing a good job.

You're doing a good job, and we appreciate it.

It is quite a pleasure to be here with you. I was first elected to represent Santa Ana in 1990. It was pretty amazing that they allowed sophomores in high school to serve an elective office. You may recall that, Mr. Merritt. I think we were both sophomores in high school, right? We were. Yeah, serving this community. I'm just pleased as can be to represent Santa Ana once again. It's the largest city among the nine cities that we represent. in the district. I'm pleased that you stole the city manager from Anaheim, Christine Ridge, and I worked together in Anaheim some time ago.

What I wanted to do tonight was just give you a quick update and invite us to be of further service to you and the people that we usually serve. As I mentioned, I represented Santa Ana once before. This is my third stint in the legislature. I'm somewhat resurrected. We've been working hard on a number of pieces of legislation. I'm just going to highlight a couple things here for you tonight. One is SB 450. I know you followed it closely. Let me explain what that is. This is a piece of legislation recently signed by the governor, and its purpose is to provide transitional housing to homeless

by taking motels that may be a bit run down and then turning them over to non-profits or to cities that wish to acquire those hotels or motels, rather, and install kitchenettes so that we have a more permanent base for homeless people from which they can operate to seek, for example, training, job training. They have an address. They can use their resumes and their place of abode for purposes of education and for seeking a job.

The governor signed it. We're pleased. One of the things that we're working on that's critically important, and the city of Santa Ana has been most helpful, and that's the census. I cannot overemphasize how important the census is to all of us. For each person that is not counted, we lose about $1,800. And so with respect to education, health care, transportation, it is critically important, and Santa Ana has been a great partner in this effort. I co-chair the Census Committee in Sacramento. The state of California is devoting $187 million, just as state, to this effort.

We are at odds in some ways with the federal government in terms of making sure that everybody gets counted. And so that means that in spite of the fact the federal government's cut its budget for the census by about 50%, we have, I think, collectively stepped up to the plate. A couple other things I wanted to mention, and that's resources. One of the most important things that you do and that we do is make sure that we appropriate resources to important parts of our community. Some of you may know that part of the budget this year provided for $10 million to Discovery Cube,

that there was $1.7 million to the diaper bank of Orange County, of which you were very supportive, as well as $1 million for the Orange County Housing Trust. The issue of housing and homelessness is at the top of the governor's agenda, and I know it's at the top of your agenda, and I look forward to working with you to help to mitigate this challenge that we all face. SB1, you may recall SB1. SB1 commonly referred to as the gas tax actually passed before I was in the legislature, But nevertheless, I'll take credit for the $8.39 million for local streets and roads funding here,

and the $16 million going to solutions for congested corridors program.

Finally, what I wanted to do was that every year, each member of the State Senate gets to designate one person who has been a champion in the community. We represent about a million people. As I mentioned a moment ago, nine cities. And this year, the person that we selected as our woman of the year comes from right here in Santa Ana, in fact, just a few blocks away, and that's Leah Smith. Leah and her husband, Dwight, every night they have about 30 homeless guests that they have in their home, literally their home. They house them, they feed them, they care for them,

and they're an example for all of us in the community. They've made it their personal responsibility, and they have dedicated their lives to the homeless that are here in our community. And so what we have is we actually have a resolution that was a bipartisan resolution, as a matter of fact. It's our Woman of the Year resolution for Leah Smith, And so I'd ask you to stand with me to congratulate Ms. Smith on this recognition. Thank you.

Senator, why don't you come on this side, and we'll all stand next to you, and we'll do a group photo. That way we'll literally stand with you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, thanks.

Thanks. Continue your speech. Sure. While my speech is finished, I have to respond to any questions. If there are questions, I have to answer to answer them.

Nothing to get up there. Thank you.

And I know a number of you have come up to visit us in Sacramento. And when you are in Sacramento, I hope you use our office as a base of operations. And you probably know my legislative director, Aria Ghaffari. Aria is here hiding in the back somewhere. Aria, and I know you know Richard Santana. So if I can be of assistance, please call upon us. That's our job, just like you. Any questions?

Yes, we have Council Member Vince Armiento. Well, more than questions, there are more remarks, and I wanted to congratulate Leah and her husband for all the great work that they do. So congratulations. You made a great selection, Senator. I wanted to thank you for selecting Santa Ana as the city where you have your district office because I know you have several cities to choose from, but you decided to be here. It's important. Your staff, you know, Richard Santana happens to be my commissioner. He's a longtime leader here in the city and the president of his neighborhood association.

So, look, he does great things, and it's a reflection on the person he works with and the fact that you selected really, really incredible staff. So you've met with us not only on city issues, but you've also met with me personally on some water issues with the Orange County Water District. So I thank you and your staff for really not missing a beat. So it looks like you never left. I mean, I know you were with us when you were in the Assembly, But now that you're back in the Senate, it's like you just hit the ground running. There's usually a steep learning curve for folks, but you didn't have that.

So we certainly appreciate that, and we certainly appreciate you advocating so strongly for Santa Ana. The Cube was a huge victory for getting those funds for those folks. So thank you for doing everything that you do, and welcome. This is your house.

Well, thank you, Council Member Sarmiento. And you have reminded me of one of the most important things I came here to say, and that's a big thank you. We've recently moved our district office to the train station, Santa Ana. And I want to really thank and commend the city for the excellent job that they did in taking that place and turning it into a wonderful, wonderful office. It was done, I believe, under budget and actually early, which is an example for all of us. So followed and others did just a marvelous job. And we are so proud of our new office. So I know you'll come and see us.

Thank you for mentioning that, and I apologize for forgetting.

Other comments? Councilor Hosses-Helodio.

Yes, Senator, again, thank you for moving the office to St. Ann. I know a few of us attended your open house there, and you do have fantastic staff. You're doing good legislation as well as others. We try to remind ourselves to write letters of support on key pieces of legislation, but if you ever think that there are certain letters that we should be doing or you need somebody to testify up there down here, feel free to be our staff, call upon us for that kind of help.

Thank you, Council Member Solari. It's almost as though you had experience there.

I'm happy you're up there doing the good work. Thank you.

Well, thank you all. Mr. Mayor, thank you all. I look forward to this.

Well, let me just reiterate that I think we're very blessed to have you. I know you're working very hard. I know it's not easy. and just know that we appreciate what you do very, very much, Tom. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, now let's continue.

I believe we have our Councilman David David Benalosa with recognizing Israel Nidad, store manager for the Starbucks in downtown.

And after that, Chief Vahut, if you can be ready. And then staff has a presentation.

And then we start our meeting.

David PenalozaItem —

Good evening, everyone. For those that have visited the Starbucks here in downtown 4th and Broadway, this is Israel Vidal, the store manager there. And I'd like to personally recognize him. Israel Vidal has been the store manager for the Starbucks located at 4th and Broadway in downtown Santa Ana for the past two years. Prior to his arrival, the store was facing a variety of urban challenges that ultimately resulted in the decrease in customer and employee confidence. Israel began to engage with the community by hosting events such as Coffee with the Cop

David PenalozaItem —

and by displaying Orange County Educational Arts Academy student art during the Downtown Art Walk. By building relationships with the Santa Ana Police, particularly the Downtown Division, Israel has helped to mitigate safety concerns for the location and create a more welcoming atmosphere. Israel has focused on connecting with the community and responding to their needs. Yet he acknowledges the successes of his store could not have been accomplished alone. Instead, Israel has attributed many of the accomplishments at this location to not only the support of his leadership, but also the hard work and loyalty of his team.

David PenalozaItem —

I want to thank Israel for taking the time to connect with your community and to ensure that this Starbucks location is an appealing place to visit for not only our residents, but to those who visit the city of Santa Ana as well.

David PenalozaItem —

Again, I'd like to thank you. I know you guys are having a little bit of a struggle right now with the construction, but hopefully anything that we could offer to help, please reach out to us. And, I mean, thank you again for really holding that store afloat and keeping it there. And, you know, happy to have you.

Thank you. Happy to be here at service. If you want to say any words or anything, thank you. I'll just keep it brief. I wanted to really thank you, Council Member, and everyone really for giving me the opportunity to be here and to kind of share in the success, not just of our store, but really in the community. It really can't be possible without the effort of every single person that not only walks through the doors, but our law enforcement that continues to make that place safe and welcoming. and really just everyone that wants downtown to be great again,

to be beautiful, to be a place that everyone wants to come back to visit. And like Council Member said, there was some challenges, and now, thanks to everyone, really, it's more of a destination place. So thank you guys very much. And again, we're also lucky to be expanding in Santa Ana as well. We have a new location opening up in Grand and Fairhaven, a brand new store in the city of Santa Ana. We're going to be doing a friends and family event there, and I would love to invite everyone here to that event on October 9th from 5 to 7 p.m.

I'd love to see all your faces there and really kind of share in expanding Santa Ana and bringing coffee to everybody in the city and in the community. So thank you again very much. Thank you for the opportunity and hopefully we can continue to do great things together. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem —

There's about 50,000 people watching from home, so you just invited.

So I hope you have enough space and enough coffee. We will. We will. Thank you.

Thank you. And now we have our police chief, Chief Valentin, and he's going to introduce us to a special dog, I believe.

Not me.

Well, you're kind of standing there right next to him. No, it's a real canine.

So, Mr. Mayor, City Council, City Manager, thank you for the opportunity to really introduce the newest member of the Santa Ana Police Department. Everyone knows that we are hiring, but this introduction for this new member is special, and I'm going to share a little bit of the reasons why. All right. So this is a two-year Labrador retriever named Shadow, and she was born November 27, 2016 in Thousand Oaks, California. She was in training to be a guide dog from the guide dogs of the desert, really to become a seeing eye dog, a companion for someone.

And part of the training is that they be attentive 24-7, really. So with Shadow, what they discovered was that she prefers doing what she's doing right now, and that is laying around, lounging around, and being petted and stroked, and she's looking at me. So that's really her forte, and so she was repurposed with additional training to become a therapeutic canine. With her tonight is Commander Mike Claiborne, who did extensive research in the industry, specifically with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, who has a robust program with therapy canines.

And so in working closely with them and really through the very generous donation that we received from one of our partners who supports our canine unit, we were able to receive the therapy dog on September 6th, last month. And in that short time, she's been deployed upwards of a half dozen cases. These are sensitive cases involving child abuse, sexual assault victims. And I'll share one particular story in which a victim is providing their disclosure of what occurred to them.

The victim starts crying, is very upset, and across the interview room is Shadow. Shadow sees that, recognizes that, comes over to the victim, and just really just kind of cuddles up to that victim. and immediately the tension and the anxiety just down, a very, very, very strong interaction there. She's had success there. She's also had success in the community. She's been to a variety of community events just in the short three weeks that we've had her. Gardner Sala with a cop, the OC Grip event downtown. We intend to take her to the Link shelter and schools.

were accepting requests. She lives at our police station 24-7, and there's a long list of people more than willing to take care of her. So I want to commend Commander Mike Claiborne, who did all the research for the program, and she's been a huge success. So this is our new member of the Santa Ana Police Department.

Periodically, you had to have her come to city council meetings.

She's here. There's a lot of important decisions. She's here. She's here for you.

Look at this. I mean, it's already having a common effect, right, David?

David PenalozaItem —

If there's anybody that needs therapy, it's me. I sit between Cecilia and Jose.

Not a problem. This is much better. Much better. That was a joke, guys.

Thank you for the opportunity to introduce her. She's here, ready, and available to work and provide support. Next, Mike.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right, let's get a picture with a dog. Come on.

Can you bring back me a picture?

So the other thing I might add is since we received Shadow, there's been three other municipal police agencies in Orange County that have adopted this model and have acquired Therapy Dog.

Mike. Come on, we have to. He's picture-sized. Not like the rest of them should I. We all got to turn around. Okay, do that.

Uh-oh. I won't get on one knee because I can't get back.

Okay.

I'll do this.

She is right here.

Debbie's bringing her up here.

We'll just put a little mat behind Councilor Peña Loza.

We need some water.

Move that dog for the vote.

You can get her back after the meeting. All right, now we have a presentation by our city manager, I believe. Please go ahead. You have the floor.

I don't have a dog, but I do have a PowerPoint presentation for you.

Sorry. Very good.

All right, so honorable mayor and members of the council, we are here before you tonight to recap the efforts our staff have been undertaking to address the homelessness crisis in our city and to share our plans for what more can be done to keep our streets clean and safe. It's no secret that homelessness poses an existential crisis to the operation of our city and the quality of life for our residents. While homelessness is a symptom of many other societal challenges, it undermines and threatens the fabric of cities, especially here in California.

California has 12% of the country's population and approximately 22% of the country's homeless population.

In 2017, the countywide point-in-time count showed that Santa Ana had 1,000 homeless people in our city. That breakdown was 534 sheltered and 466 unsheltered. In early 2018, the city conducted its own emergency point-in-time count and concluded that the number had increased to over 1,600 in a little over a year. You can see the unsheltered population especially exploded. As of early 2019, our numbers have grown again to almost 1,800, but with many more people sheltered than in previous years. The challenges of homelessness are many. First is the human toll of suffering for those who find themselves homeless

and struggle to get back on their feet but have a desire to do so. Then there are those who suffer from drug addiction and mental illness that inhibits their ability to operate as productive members of society or make rational decisions to respond to outreach. There are those that also represent a criminal element and refuse aid due to desire to remain outside of the law or rules of a more formal structure or solution. And while these souls who inhabit the streets and parks of our city are the core of the story, their impact is felt by our community at large. Petty crime increases and trespassing is common.

Families feel less secure in their own neighborhoods and find themselves not allowing their children to explore their neighborhoods. Our public safety resources are drained as officers and firefighters are called to deal with issues created by homeless, tying up valuable resources that could otherwise be focused on other high-priority calls. In the past year, 17% of the calls into the Santa Ana Police Department have been in response to homelessness. In the past year, 18% of calls into OCFA, Orange County Fire Authority, have been in response to homelessness.

In those instances between Santa Ana Police Department and OCFA, those are valuable public safety resources being directed. For Santa Ana Police Department, in particular, their time, energy, and resources could otherwise be spent on crime prevention. Visually, the blight of homelessness both serves as a constant reminder of the risk and insecurity for our community and tarnishes the very image our residents and visitors have about Santa Ana. Homelessness tears at the faith in our institutions and the public's belief in the government's ability, whether federal, state or local, to truly solve a challenge.

These acts undermine quality of life, damage our resident and visitor experience, and generally do not advance our community. On these issues, our city is taking a stand and forging ahead with a renewed resolution and commitment. Case laws such as Martin v. City of Boise has made it clear being homeless is not a crime. That particular case ruled prohibition against sleeping in public violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment when the homeless individuals have no access to alternative shelter. The Martin decision confirms that cities cannot enforce camping-lodging prohibitions

if their local homeless population faces inadequate shelter space. Also, the city enforcing the ordinance must have shelter space available within its own jurisdiction. Municipalities can conduct cleanup of encampments on public property, though. Santa Ana's response to the wave of homelessness that has swept the West Coast has always included a level of compassion. It was with this ethos that drove the speedy opening of the Link Interim Homeless Shelter to provide beds for homeless residents from Santa Ana in just 28 days.

It was a symbol to Orange County, if not all major cities, that progress can happen through partnership and a must-do attitude. The Council and our community should be proud of what was accomplished with the Link and the efforts of private parties and our Public Works Agency to create another option for sheltering our homeless and cleaning up our streets. Yet while the link affirmed our community's value of compassion, it also opened the door for us to apply a standard of raised expectations and responsibility.

The link, since it's been open, has taken nearly 250 people off of the street, and it's also affirmed something that we all know we are frustrated with. Not everybody wants help. Indeed, 47% of unsheltered homeless have a choice to take a shelter, and they refuse. And this is where our community hopes for responsibility, accountability, and raised expectations. Santa Ana is tackling this second great challenge, and in some ways a harder challenge, how to help those who do not want it.

I hear from the community and I hear from Council that you are frustrated with what seems to be slow progress. I know the frustration feeds into the pressure on Council and therefore the City to do more. We are ready, willing, and trying to do more. We are prepared to innovate around the limits that the law and courts have placed on us. But as public servants and concerned members of public, we should all know the workarounds we face to address this 47% of our unsheltered homeless who may not want our help. And while we can all understand the sentiment that simply being homeless is not a crime,

we also know that being drunk in public, high in public, littering, and trespassing are crimes.

More recently, we have made some progress where homeless people occupied property along the Union Pacific Railroads. Through our sweeps and cleanups, we have now made an improvement in an area that had become and continues to be an encampment spot. This work was only possible through legal action taken by our city to seek a warrant to clean up the property. The judge granted the warrant and four others. The city will be billing the railroad over $118,000 for the cleanup efforts as they fail to address the problem on their own land.

On May 22, 2019, at approximately 8 a.m., over 50 City of Santa Ana staff, code enforcement, police, public works, parks and rec, community development, as well as private contractors, began large-scale service of the inspection and abatement warrant at five locations within the city. The one-time warrant authored us to enter the private property of Union Pacific to perform inspections and abate dangerous conditions. For example, the warrant that was exercised along the 1200-1300 block of East Edinger discovered 60 encampments occupied by 16 individuals. Trash and debris were strewn around the area.

Staff determined it was imperative for public health and safety to immediately abate the dangerous condition. Public works crews and private contractors began the cleanup efforts. Police officers and representatives from the Orange County Health Care Agency provided outreach to all 16 contacted individuals experienced homelessness. None accepted services. One individual was arrested for a narcotics violation. We are currently in negotiations with Union Pacific. I'm having my second face-to-face meeting with their VP of Risk Management, and we're coming to a letter of understanding

and they are going to make improvements and conduct maintenance on their property. So I look forward to telling you more about that. And as another example, Santa Ana worked with Caltrans to bring to light encampments on their properties in overpass areas. It was an eye-opening experience for the district director and one that has now resulted in Caltrans doing the right thing and making daily sweeps of their property to remove the encampments. Santiago Creek is a definite problem area within the city. The city has conducted over 30 cleanup efforts in Santiago Creek in 2019 and removed over 150 encampments.

The Quality of Life team was initially formed back in January of 2018, and it was formed to be a two-week pilot program for the city. It was modeled after a best practice approach presented at a police executive research forum national conference to address the broad societal homelessness impact. Our quality of life teams are now seasoned veterans, and their work at Homeless Encounters have given us key data and insights into the labor input required to address the average homelessness incident. These teams have been the cornerstone of our proactive outreach efforts.

It is these constant efforts at contact and service direction that have set a tone in the city that we expect you to accept help if you're going to be in Santa Ana. If you're a resident or a business owner wishing to report a concern about homelessness such as abandoned property on City Right-of-Way, you can download the free My Santa Ana application with an iPhone or an Android and report service requests. In addition, this month we are going to be launching a brand new My Santa Ana app where there will be an easier way to report issues relative to homelessness. Santa Ana app also has benefits for achieving superior data.

Our Santa Ana app provides geocoded data on reports of homelessness incidents and issues. This data provides mapped information with details that are now guiding our targeting efforts to move from response to systematic and routine engagement across our community. There have been a number of ways City staff has gone above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to addressing homelessness. The IT department has created a dedicated homeless services phone line and is recording messages for phone lines that provide information on our homeless services.

City staff is assembling and reviewing code complaints and police incident reports for the multi-service center, the MHA multi-service center, and the surrounding neighborhoods in preparation for a letter campaign to the Orange County Board of Supervisors, CEO, and MH Board of Directors. The goal is to call the county and MHA to take actions and take an active role in addressing the community concerns. In December 2018, the Quality of Life team launched Operation Dignity, a seven-day intensive outreach and enforcement effort. Teams worked in two shifts from 4 a.m. to 10 to implement the city's enforcement policies

and direct homeless individuals to available shelters and resources. As many as 24 people accepted shelter in one given day. In January 2019, the Quality of Life team launched Operation Safe Passage, another six-day intensive outreach effort. As a result, over 400 homeless individuals throughout the city were contacted. 37 referred to a shelter, of which 32 accepted those services at the link. The City's Quality of Life Team quickly came together and completed a successful September Special Projects Calendar with six days of cult activity along with the regular Monday through Thursday 9-4 operations.

The team cleaned over 16 tons of trash and debris and 38 trucks of trash and debris, arrested over 23 individuals for outstanding warrants, over 20 cited for municipal code violations, and five accepted services. Two of those two are linked. The Public Works Agency Maintenance Services Division has provided major contributions to the city's efforts to mitigate the impacts with the unsheltered population. Over the last year, they've responded to 1,186 service requests for transient debris. The number has increased 1,000% from the year before. They also have handled 11,000 service requests of abandoned property illegal dumping.

That's a 43% increase. The status quo is not our standard in Santa Ana. We have unfortunately been on the forefront of homelessness challenges in our area of Orange County. But a silver lining is that we have gained experience and vision on these matters. In that regard, we are better equipped to address the challenge going forward. Our community is a part of the solution, being the eyes and the ears for the city. but I am also aware and our employees are very much aware that there are at least another 1200 set of eyes that can be constantly

scanning the horizon and looking for issues to address so we can bring even more fidelity to our data sets and response time. We have begun emphasizing with all staff that it's not okay to look the other way. The mayor and council have made it perfectly clear to me that addressing homelessness is a top priority for the city and every staff member who serves this community. From parks and rec to public works, each plays a role in addressing either the underlying social challenge and the results in homelessness or in treating the symptom itself.

The cost to address homelessness in Santa Ana goes far beyond just the quality of life team. Police, fire, public works, code enforcement, management, attorney's office, everyone is involved in some way or another.

From what we can estimate, in the last fiscal year, this city spent about $16.7 million addressing homelessness. In the current fiscal year, we estimate that cost that we will spend addressing homeless will rise to $25.5 million. Police and fire have the largest burdens with almost $18 million alone between them. That's 71% of the homeless-related cost to the city. Between cleanup, code enforcement, homeless services, and park safety, that's another brand-new $6.1 million that we anticipate spending this fiscal year.

So now what are we going to do moving forward? I am proceeding with a homeless strategic plan that includes a four-step action program with a focus on four key areas. Clean, outreach, housing, and communication. So those goals, clean, is intended to reduce the negative impacts to our community, ensuring that our city is safe and clean. The outreach is geared at being persistent in our contact with anyone that has experienced homelessness. and housing is to reduce the number of unsheltered. And when I say housing, I mean all forms of housing from shelters to permanent, supportive to affordable.

And communication is something that I don't think we've done a very good job on in communicating what our efforts have been in the past and so that is an area that we're going to focus on so that we can have engaged and informed community regarding our homelessness and homeless solutions. So walking through each one of those, starting with CLEAN, Santa Ana has had a large concentration of Orange County homeless housed within yards of where we sit today. Recall that it was only 18 months ago when roughly 200 people occupied the plaza of the flags,

and we were having to continuously enter the encampment to clean up feces, urine, and reduce public health risk, while also trying to protect those in the encampment from others who wanted to prey upon them. The city systematically and compassionately worked with each occupant of that encampment to redirect them to services or to find another venue to occupy, but eventually we reclaimed our civic space for all of Santa Ana under the broken windows theory blight inspires more blight but clean streets inspire sustained streets we have a big effort to get there but we need to push hard on

the cleanup no matter how you enter the city or what neighborhood you walk or sidewalks our sidewalks need to be free of litter free of feces free of remnants from homeless encampments it's an achievable standard and one whose pursuit will elevate our overall expectations for our city. So the short-term actions that we're taking to achieve this goal include changing the chain of command for Colt, increasing the presence of Colt during dusk and dawn and Saturdays. We're supplementing the Colt team with contracted Colt team members, so bringing contractors on to provide 24-7 assistance.

We're going to implement a 48-hour turnaround on service request. We are already procuring supplemental services for the public works maintenance. So in addition to our maintenance workers being called out to clean up debris, we will have contractors on call to clean up debris. We're also going to procure supplemental service for the retrieval and storage of belongings. We're going to increase patrols of the hot spot areas, and city staffers will increase the reporting of the homeless impacts through our Don't Look Away. And then one item before you tonight will certainly help address one of the problems in this area,

and that is the oversized vehicle ordinance. That's before your consideration tonight. Longer-term actions that we'd like to advance to is implementing a 36-hour turnaround on the service request. We want to implement physical changes to facilities to increase the ease of rubbish removal or the ability to patrol. We want to review other existing city ordinances to identify possible areas where we can improve enforcement. We want to take a hard look at recycling centers for compliance. We want to increase code enforcement efforts on private properties, including those vacant and abandoned.

And we want to mitigate hospital drop-offs in the city of Santa Ana and work to create equal distribution of crisis stabilization programs. The second step was outreach, and this is where we're looking to double down on our outreach efforts. We've modified our approach to be a hybrid of staff and contractors to address homeless-related issues and general maintenance in the city. As of yesterday, the city staff has duplicated our single Colt team into two Colt teams, one working east of Bristol and one working west of Bristol. These two Colt teams are further augmented by two new contractors with maintenance crews

to scan the city to ensure a more proactive response to service requests while backfilling the public works crews that are a part of the Colt team. Not only have we expanded the number of teams, we have also expanded the hours of service to include night and weekend coverage seven days a week. The short-term actions are to address the needs of the unsheltered homeless population, procure supplemental outreach workers, which we've already done on RFP and we should have a contract on board before the end of the month, augment hours of outreach to include dusk, dawn, and Saturdays,

Collaborate with the county's COC-HEAP-funded CityNet agency to assist in stranded homeless population. Longer-term actions include coordinating outreach operations with city staff, partners, and service providers in public spaces. Balance the needs and rights of individuals experiencing homelessness and the larger community through updated, fair, legal, and enforceable policies and ordinances. The mission to sustain contact with our homeless population and make it clear that our standard in Santa Ana is that you will accept services. The third area is housing. Housing continues to be a top priority.

We have nearly 1,600 units of affordable housing in our city, with an additional 857 affordable housing units in the pipeline. Santa Ana is part of only 3% of the jurisdictions in California that are on pace to meet the RENA goals this cycle. This work needs to focus on the spectrum of housing, but temporary shelter and navigation centers are perfectly acceptable pollution as we push forward for a higher standard across our city.

Short-term actions include expanding the pathway to affordable housing opportunities, develop eviction prevention programs, utilize our ESG funds for those currently or at risk of becoming homeless, and longer-term actions include establishment of a permanent shelter, support efforts for countywide increase in the mental health services and addiction services, increase permanent supportive housing pipelines throughout the county, and prioritize Santa Ana homeless. Develop landlord incentive programs and increase markability of housing vouchers.

Strategize regional equality of affordable housing throughout the Orange County Housing Finance Trust. Lastly, we need to communicate. The city's success with the link made headlines and graced the cover of Western City Magazine, but our other efforts warrant the public's awareness for a simple reason. Progress promotes more progress. Short-term actions before November 1st include develop educational materials to promote health and safety, develop a homeless resource kit, distribute kits to businesses and residents and other interested parties, provide cult ride-alongs, increase responses to reporting parties,

distribute a community needs survey, and upgrade our homeless-related web pages. Long-term actions, so this after November 1st, improve our best practices with existing stakeholders addressing homelessness throughout the county, use our technology to distribute real-time cult data, increase homeless presentations to Santa Ana's neighborhood associations, increasing knowledge of homeless solutions and supportive tools through public awareness campaigns. Addressing our challenges in Santa Ana is not just a city job, it's a community job. Our community has a history of taking on big issues and making progress,

and tackling homelessness will be one of the biggest. Yet homelessness is so pervasive throughout our community that we share a common interest in addressing this challenge. Showing each neighborhood how they are making progress and how to contribute to the future of our city will be a force multiplier on our efforts.

action steps under this four-point strategic plan have already begun and I look forward to implementing all of our goals under your leadership and that concludes my presentation and if you have any questions I'm available as well as all of the departments that lend a helping hand to addressing homelessness in our city

Thank you for that. Comments, questions, we're giving the dog back by the way. We're going to keep it longer until we all settle down. Mr. Mayor?

David PenalozaItem —

Yeah, go ahead. Now I know why it's therapeutic because I paid no attention to anything Christine said. I'm kidding. But how do you feel? It felt awesome.

He's very happy, Christine.

She's smiling, so Maeve is good. All right, thoughts, comments? Ceci Iglesias, go ahead.

I have questions for you, Ms. City Manager. Okay, how many individuals are part of the Colt team?

Can you put up the org chart? So on the org chart, the Colt team operates. There you go. So you have it in front of you. Under the CDA executive director, so you have a portion of him. Our homeless service manager is 100% dedicated to it. You have a sanitation inspector that works on it. And then down below, the blue represents what we currently have, and the yellow and the red is what we're adding on. So originally we always had a full-time heart officer, two assigned police officers, two social workers, two public work staff, and a park and rep staff. That made up what we refer to as the COLT team.

So you can see on the org chart in red, we're duplicating that exact effort. And in the middle, the yellow, those are the contractors that we are adding to supplement them. So if you count the individuals, we've doubled the number of COLT members, and then we've supplemented it with contractors.

Yes, but how many members? Because I don't have that presentation with me.

So it's it should be on it's on your screen in front of you. I can't see it. Okay, let me count for you. So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And we doubled it to 16 of assigned Colt members. And then in addition to that, we have contractors. And then you also have your homeless services manager. So 16, 17, 18 people.

So 18 people are right now with working on the Colt team. Colts are overseeing it.

Okay.

So how much money are we allocating for COALT?

The COALT, it's spread up among departments, so I don't have an exact figure, but for the current fiscal year, we're anticipating spending around $25 million in homeless, and I can tell you where it's coming from. It would be $10 million from police responses, $7.6 million from fire responses. On cleanup and code enforcement, it's around $1.4 million. The park safety, that includes the newly deployed security officers, that cost is around $700,000. And then our homeless services is about $4 million. And management and legal, about $1.2 million. That's where we're getting to the $25 million.

Okay, so as we know that many of these homeless are not our homeless here in Santa Ana. They don't have any roots in Santa Ana. So like the $25 million that you said that we're spending of Santa Ana resources and Santa Ana revenue, how much of that can we demand from the county to reimburse us? Because a lot of these individuals are not part of our community. They just are coming in, just like you were saying, 47% refuse help. So the 47%, if you were saying, okay, those 40% would leave, that would be $12.5 million that we would say technically we're putting into numbers.

I know it's not quite that easy, but it's something that I feel that we have been taking advantage of as a city from the county, and I think it's time for us to step up. And so how much money can we ask for us to be reimbursed from other agencies?

It's not easy to identify, as you mentioned, the 25 relative to those individuals that we serve that have nexus versus the police and fire calls that were just serving a homeless that happened to be within the city's jurisdiction. I will say that for a link shelter to seek shelter and then be offered shelter, homeless have to have a nexus to Santa Ana. So I can't really give you a breakdown in the other cost. It would be something that you would probably have to litigate if you attempted to receive recovery of any of our other charges for providing services.

Well, is that something that we can consider?

Well, you currently right now have a cross-complaint filed against the County of Orange.

Okay. So for me, I think it's something that's important that we should be addressing because it's time that we as a city stand up and say no more. Also, how will you achieve the clean goal? The clean goal?

Okay. So partly it's going to be getting reported the debris and encampments throughout the city quicker, and then having the resources to respond faster to clean it up, as opposed to sometimes now there's a lag between when something gets reported and something gets cleaned up. We're always going to have the challenges associated with private property, because we can't go on to private property to clean that up. So our tool in that regard is code enforcement.

And that's one of the things that the new app is going to address because it will have pull-down menus to report debris on public property or debris on private property because it's a different approach to how we address it. So I mentioned in the presentation under that category of clean the short-term steps that we're going and the long-term steps. I can certainly give you a copy of the detail. I don't know if you want me to read them again.

Yeah, because my concern comes in where, okay, I see the public space, which is, even though when I call it in, it doesn't get cleaned up. So what gives me as a council member hope that they are going to be cleaning it up? For example, I sent an email for them, for our staff, to clean up on First Street from Standard to Grand, you know, that section.

They, you know, Angie, who is our, my assistant, she sent out an email on behalf of the council member to have it cleaned up. It seemed like they only picked up a little bit. And then it's like I passed through there the next day. And it's like, it's the same trash that was there. And, you know, our staff had said that they had already cleaned it up. So, and then, so I had to make two calls in order for them to clean it up completely. So I asked for pictures of before and after. But this is something that I feel that we should, as a community, we need to be more receptive and also be more aware of what our community is seeing.

This is only what's in our view, but imagine what's not in our view, which is the things with our, and I know you only have five minutes.

So what we can't see in the alleys, what we can't see in the train tracks, that is something that I know we hide behind the fact that saying that's not our property, it's private property. But to the community, it doesn't matter. It's in Santa Ana. So what are we going to do according to your plan to address this, that we know when we call something, we see something that gets done right away?

Well, we've added substantially more resources. So before, if you called in debris on a sidewalk, we did not have available staff to go out there and address it immediately. We now have 24-7 on-call contractors that are not only responding to requests, they're out patrolling the city. So that is going to greatly increase the response time in that area. In regards to private versus public property, I mean, we have to follow the law the way that it is written. so I'm not quite sure how I can address that we change our approach to private property because we do have to do our work within the limitations of the law.

Yeah, but there's no trespassing. I mean, the law is a lie. There's no trespassing, so can we do that? I mean, can we enforce a no trespassing? The 602, I know that we've talked about this, this form, the 602.

We have, and the police department on their website has a vehicle for a business who wants to fill out a form and give authorization because the only person that can charge no trespassing is the owner of the property, and they have a means for an owner to do that. If you're referring to the Union Pacific Railroad tracks, we have not accepted their request to prosecute or charge no trespassing because I don't have a large enough police force to patrol the miles of the Pacific Railroad tracks.

Yeah, but if we start, and I know we start somewhere, Christine, we shouldn't be saying it's the Union Pacific. I think it's something that we should be saying as a city. We have to do this. If we see it, let's do it. Get them out. If we've spent enough money on police officers, I think it's something that's owed to our community. Okay, and you don't have to start the clock. I'm done.

That was for the next speaker.

David Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem —

Question. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Madam City Manager, with regards to the amount of money spent in fire OCFA, in regards to homeless situations? Was it $7.6 million?

Yes, for 2019 it was $7.661,828, and that's basically taking 18% of our contract cost.

David PenalozaItem —

That's what I was going to ask. Now, is this an additional added cost on top of what we already pay OCFA annually? Are they coming back and saying, hey, this is how much we...

No, you're paying $42.5 million to provide your fire protection services in the city, and 18% of those are being diverted towards addressing homelessness. So it's 18% of the contract price.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay, so 18% of those calls and the work, the service that they're doing in the city is related to homeless.

Correct.

David PenalozaItem —

So it's not an added, or I guess it's still a cost, but I'm just saying it's not an extra cost on top of the contractual obligation.

Above the contractual obligation.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay. Thank you. That's all I wanted to know.

Any other comments? Jose Solorio, please. Equal time.

Yeah, start at new. Thank you. He gets a new five. I'll try to be quick because I know there will be a follow-up. First, I do want to thank the staff for all the help with the cleanups at Santiago Creek. Unfortunately, they really aren't enough. I think as we're hearing, unless you are out there every day, it's tough. So I know we've been working with Caltrans and others on maybe closing those areas off, and let's continue to do that with hopefully some success. On the MHA facility on South Main, I'm glad to hear about the report and call for letters,

but I think the council really was looking more for a legal action through an abatement, a nuisance abatement process, and so the new effort hopefully is complementary, not instead of. We heard mention of a new phone number that individuals can use to call in homeless issues. I don't know I'm aware of what that is, so maybe you can now or separately mention that

You want me to mention the actual number?

Yeah, or where it is or when it's going to go live or how we ought to present that to the public. You could share that with us separately, but I know we've talked about it in the past, but looks like it's coming online. On the quality of life team, it's a good start, but as you've heard from me from day one, when you started, it needs to be increased by a factor of times five or times ten. That's how great the issue is out there. Also happy to see that you added review of recycling centers and metal shops, because there are issues there that continue the issues of

theft of metals. Things I don't see, that doesn't mean that the city isn't focusing on there that you aren't focusing on but I'll quickly mention some other things that I still like to keep on the radar because they're on the radar number one external issues regional ones that for example the new facility that that Quirksilva's office and the governor is interested in at Costa Mesa the Ferbri developmental center we should keep pushing for that because that'll be good beds overall and mental health with Irvine there's land cited over there with the purpose of homeless shelter and we're still pushing for something there or

instead of. We also have the courtyard. We know that there are issues there and I know some of the litigants have issues with ADA and other issues there so it does need to close down and be moved somewhere else we need a good replacement for the link we need with the United Way they have a program where they're trying to get individual apartments to take more section 8 vouchers or other things I think it's a fine program but out to be countywide so that it's not just you know more individuals with needs in our city on enforcement dollars we really haven't

been forceful enough with the county asking them to either help enforcement like along creeks, channels, county properties or they can reimburse us for our very big dollar amounts with the state and we had our senator here we are always looking for more more resources there's also where many of us are well aware of the jail release issues and he because of law enforcement background may be a good ally in that. Drug treatment and homeward bound programs, I know we had discussed that as well, particularly on the drug treatment. And I know that a recent idea came up with the

cannabis fund that we have even including for youth. Let's do drug treatment work. And then finally, because I know my time is up, some of these items, you know, for our next budget committee, We, I think, have a responsibility as Councilmembers also to help you find more resources, and I know I and my colleagues are committed to do that. So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Vince Armiento. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And so I wanted to start by saying I appreciate the update. I think more it's for the benefit of the public because a lot of us have obviously been privy to a lot of this information. And we know this is the issue that's polling as the number one issue in the city. So it's overtaken crime. It's overtaken other issues, so we know that this is a pervasive issue that's been with us for a while. So my fatigue level, I guess, is a little bit higher than some of my colleagues because I've been dealing with this for a while.

And I've known that the irresponsibility of our friends across the street at the board has led to this problem. They're the vested agency that's supposed to be addressing this, and we tried to work out a legislative response and solution to this, and I know we finally had to go down the judicial path and file a suit against them. So I do think that the discussion about reimbursement is relevant. I think we understand that monies have been expended from our general fund for purposes of abating and mitigating the impacts of the homeless when it really rightfully should have been borne by the county.

So that is what I think frustrates me. and I know we wanted to play nice and think that they were going to be receptive and responsive, but they just haven't been, and especially our supervisor that represents this district. They receive money from the Housing and Urban Development Department annually for matters like this. They're the safety net agency that is supposed to be addressing this, not just with homelessness but with mental health and any other social service impacts. impacts. So it really is frustrating at this point because I know that we were heartened

when Judge Carter took on this case and then the Jones case was handed down and we thought, well, now we can address this problem solved. We go ahead and open up a shelter and we can house people and we can not have the anti-camping issue prevent us from picking up and cleaning up some of the folks and really placing folks where they need to be because it's not a matter of just locking folks up. It's a matter of providing them the services that they require. So I think that we're not using our advocacy well, and that's one of the things I think that we

should be looking at. Our friends at the county are not our friends. They see this as, look, they're perfectly fine not placing any shelters or doing anything in the southern spa or any of the South County cities, they're certainly fine putting shelters here in our city and other services here. And we've had cities and central counties step up and try to do their fair share, but we've been disproportionately impacted for years. So to the extent that we bypass the county, go straight to the state, work with our legislative advocates and see if we can find a solution that the legislature can hand down,

I think at that point it's that extreme because I think there is a complete abrogation by the county, they bused in tons of folks from Irvine, and they listened to those residents saying, don't put them in our community, but leave them in Santa Ana. That's in essence what happened. And so our kids are no less valuable, no less important, no less sensitive to the impacts that the homeless have on them than folks in South County and in Irvine. And I think somebody spoke to the 100 acres that was available in the city of Irvine, and they completely, completely just laughed in our face. And so they listened to them.

They didn't listen to us. So to the extent that we have to find a way and a path to have them listen to us better, I think that's really the only way that we can be more aggressive. But I certainly appreciate what you're doing and what the staff is doing because we are almost fighting this issue with one hand tied behind our back. So let's continue doing what we're doing, but let's see what we can do to circumvent what the county has been preventing us. And thinking about our congressional representative, I see as staff person here, Senator Umberg was here.

We need to call Assemblyman Daley and let them understand, and they know this, but more acutely, why we need specific help. And that's, I think, where we are at this stage. But thank you for the update. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to thank the city manager for your presentation. I know I spoke a lot last meeting regarding this issue, and I'm anxious to see how much of an impact the new plan is going to make, and we will adjust accordingly. We have to increase. Thank you.

Thank you. I want to echo many comments that remain here, but in particular tell folks that the last few months I've just decided, I don't know why, but I'm driving around and I just stop. I go and I talk to homeless folks. Maybe it's all this court stuff with Judge Carter or just getting frustrated and saying, what can we do differently? And one thing I found is that some want help and they'll accept help. Others do not. But those that do want help, they, you know, go over the link or they go to Weiss Place. They do different things and they try to keep moving on.

Something I didn't realize until more recently is like this weekend I was behind Ace Hardware, and there was an African-American woman sleeping on the concrete. And I said, you know, do you need help? And she said yes. I said, how about if we go to a shelter, et cetera, et cetera. And then I said, I'll get you a unit. And a police officer was driving by, saw me, so he pulled in. We started talking. And then she immediately grew hostile because she said, I don't want to be arrested. You're going to put me in black and white. You're going to arrest me. And it's, no, no, no, we're not. I'm the mayor, and I'm trying to get you help.

And she's looking at me like, you must be pulling my leg. The mayor's just going to stop. And I said, yeah, we're trying to help clean up the city. We're trying to help people. We don't want you sleeping here on the street. And so ultimately what happened was I made a deal with her that I was going to, because this was on Sunday, so I said Monday at 10 a.m. an unmarked unit is going to be here to pick you up, take you over to the link. Well, it turns out, because we continued to follow her that day, that she called her mom from L.A. Her mom came, picked her up, don't know where she lives, but she's now in L.A. with her family.

and part of the lesson learned is that the more we intervene the more we track the more we try to find out what's going on who these people are you know can we help sometimes you know good things happen that you didn't even have planned but I really want to thank the city manager because I think this plan can really make a difference especially if we have unmarked units we have workers that are going out talking to people because it takes a lot of talking you can't just you know show up and in five minutes you're done with everything it just doesn't work that way

so i think this is a number one issue in the in the city and beyond we need a just a very very solidly on this and understand that it's more than homeless it impacts property values it hurts people's lives it it robs of all of us because of the what it does to humanity and and the conflicts that arise. And then of course, I think in certain cases, it's related to a lot of crime. They can go, they can steal things, they can take them to the recycling center, exchange it for money, use the money for drugs. And we're in a negative cycle where we're all part of the victims and part

of the very, very bad situation. With that, my light is red, so I'm going to not have folks start tell me that the light is red and let's just go on to the next uh next item so madam uh city

manager any conclusion or any thoughts no thank you so much for your input and i will build those into our short-term and longer-term goals and then also make sure that we post a copy of the entire four-point strategic plan so you can further refine it and direct us as you see fit thank you

and may you come back with a report at some point not so much for the council but for the community at large that watches TV and comes here to the audience and kind of want to know how we're doing. Of course, we're really going to know how we're doing when we see our streets in better conditions. Because there's just a lot of homeless out there still. So with that, let's go on to our next item. I think now we start our meeting. I mean our regular meeting.

okay um first let me ask the city attorney is there anything to report out of closed session

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

mayor we had several closed session items but there was no reportable action this evening

okay so with that we have one speaker on consent chris schmidt 25h why don't you come and speak to that and then I'll ask the council if they want to pull any items and we'll proceed. Please go ahead.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. I'm talking about agenda item 25H regarding the settlement agreement with the Orange County Catholic with workers. I was reviewing the verbiage, the language of that agenda item, and the actual settlement agreement court document, and I had some concerns because words are important, especially when it comes to legal documents.

It's 25H, right? Correct.

Yes. So in reading the agenda item and the staff report, I thought some words were kind of vague, like there is no definition of a low barrier shelter. I don't believe there's any acceptable definition of it. I've looked for it. There is no accepted definition. We were under the impression we were going to get a shelter similar to Bridges or the link, where you had to be referred, background checks, you couldn't be on drugs or alcohol, things like that. So we're a little bit concerned that how it's going to be operated. So again,

the wording is a little strange. The staff report says there's no financial cost, but But you guys just spent several minutes talking about the homeless plan and how much the Colt team cost, OCFA, SAPD, responding to calls for service. The link wasn't free. It cost us several million dollars. The new shelter will cost us several million dollars. Who's paying for it? We the residents. So I don't agree that it says no financial impact because we the residents are paying for it.

Lastly, when I look at the actual court document, it's signed September 23rd by the city staff and the city manager. So why are we discussing this now? It seems like you robbed the residents of their opportunity to discuss this. You might have discussed it back in closed session, but there was no reportable actions. And now we're told, oh, you're going to get it, and guess what? We already signed it.

So why are you discussing this now, a week and a half after she already signed it and Judge Carter's agreed to it? I don't agree with this. This is wrong. You keep doing this. You did this with the Yale Street and Central location. You signed an MOU with the county, a month later you tell them go by Yale Street. You keep hiding this stuff from us and that's why nobody trusts the city. Again, why are you discussing an item that she signed on September 23rd? I don't think that's fair. Thank you.

Do you want to address that real briefly, Ms. City Manager?

Certainly. I'd be honored to. So low barrier, he's right. There isn't a definition of it. But in our settlement agreement, you will see the term low barrier used for the one that we have to provide. You will also see in your staff report when you opened up the link, the same term was used. So our replacement shelter is intended to be identically operated just like the link. They both have been referred to as low barrier. In regards to fiscal impact, I do think it probably is a little bit confusing, but the staff report was for the settlement agreement,

and there isn't any fiscal impact that we have to pay the attorneys of the Catholic worker. But that probably could have been explained a little bit better. It's signed already, but it's not an effective agreement. So if you read the order of the court and if you read the full settlement, you would see that we reached it at a status conference, and we have a stay on it until I believe we had seven days to bring it back to the City Council to be discussed and ratified. It also has another contingency in it that unless we reach an agreement, a settlement agreement with the County of Orange,

through our cross-complaint, the Section 3 in the settlement agreement, which puts the obligation on us to have that at the shelter for 200 to 250 beds, doesn't go into effect.

Thank you. Thank you for that. Let me now bring it back to Council, the consent calendar. I would just note that item 10C is being pulled at staff request, so that's not before us at this time. And any other items? Councilor Jose Solario?

Yes, item 19C, and just with a comment in 25F and G with a question.

All right. Any others? Council Member Peñalosa? 22A and 25A. What do you want to do with those? Pull them? Pull them, yes. Okay. Are you getting all this, Madam Clerk? Council Member Ceci Iglesias? What do you not want to pull?

I know, right? Yeah. Well, they've... They already beat you to it? No, actually they said different than when I did, so we're going to have a lot of discussion. Go ahead. Other than 19C, I want to pull 25A, 25B, 25H, and 25C.

Any items to my right? Boy, if the left could be like the right. So with that, let's entertain a motion on the balance. I'll move it. Second. Those in favor, please press green. Jose, that's the one on the right.

He's got double buttons. He can vote twice.

All right. So now, which is the first time? Was it 19C? Madam Clerk? That is correct. All right.

Who had 19C? Go ahead, Councilman Solario. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. A couple of years ago, I had asked my colleagues and staff to look at the issue of parking in our city because I really believe we need a citywide parking needs assessment and management plan. And there were leaner dollars back then and the public works staff took it upon themselves to have an in-house team of engineers and staff look at a couple areas in our city to see what the overcrowding on the streets might be,

some challenges, some possibilities, and today as a receiving file, it's on the public agenda. We have a PowerPoint with their work and findings, and I think there is some promise there. And so maybe through our budget committee or elsewhere, we shall follow up more on this. But a big finding in it is something that I was recently thinking about, is there might be some areas of town where if we can find enough local neighborhood consensus, there are some parts of our streets that we can open up for on-street parking,

as well as we have some strip malls in the evenings, as well as schools or city community centers, that in the evening they're closed off, and maybe there are some shared parking and security arrangements that we can do to open those up, because some areas are very constrained. And for this pilot study, they looked at an area in northeast Santa Ana, as well as the east side neighborhood. So I just wanted to say I'm thankful for that and that we will have additional meetings to really get into that and figure out how we do some next steps on that.

Councilman Vince Armiento. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, I was just going to say the same thing the council member said. I know when we discussed this before, we had talked about any future joint use agreements with the school district could incorporate the use of the surface street lots that they have, at least in the evening, and that might alleviate some of those impacted neighborhoods. And so we have a lot of different reciprocal understandings in those joint use agreements. Maybe this is one that we start considering incorporating into those. Thanks.

Thank you for that comment. Councilman Iglesias, please.

So on Thursday I attended the Comlink meeting and permit parking was the topic of conversation. And there were many issues and concerns that were brought up, but one of the things that really resonated in individuals wanting was there's a lot of neighborhoods that are impacted by high density apartments that are parking in the areas of the neighborhoods. And not only that, but also cars that don't belong to either the residents of the high-density apartments

or in other areas. So I was wondering if there's a way for us to do some type of, I would say, like a study and also maybe a collaboration with Comlink, because I believe Comlink is the, I would say, the organization within the city that has a better understanding of each different neighborhood. And they're able to tell us where exactly we have these pockets of areas that are affected by overparking in our neighborhoods.

So, you know, is there an opportunity for us to maybe have them to be maybe like an advisory to the city council and our staff when it comes to looking at plants that come before us, you know, regarding parking? I know that paying for it for some is something that it's not affordable, but I know we talked about it last time that we could, as a city, somehow subsidize for those that can't afford it. Because my concern is if we even went with having, I guess, understandings or MOUs with private partnerships or maybe with the school district,

is it'll open it up to whoever. How are we going to manage that? So there has to be a mechanism of management to ensure that the people that are using those are really residents of our city. If not, we're opening it up again to anybody can come and park, and how are you going to control for that? So if we do something like that, I would encourage for us to have the conversation to have Comlink to be the organization that's going to help us with this plan throughout the city when it comes to permit parking and other parking issues that we have. Thank you.

Yes, Council Member Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to thank staff as well for this study. I know that William and I, along with some other members of staff from Public Works, were at a Worcester Square Neighborhood Association meeting over the specific issue in regards to permit parking over the summer. and there was over 100 people there from the Worcester Square neighborhood at somebody's home. And there was a lot of concerns with the process and the way it's done along the lines of, you know, we all know this is a renter city.

David PenalozaItem —

A huge part of this city are renting in homes. and there was an issue because a lot of those various renters do want to have permit parking in that neighborhood. But because of the way our ordinance is written and rules pertaining to parking permits, we need the majority of homeowners, actual homeowners, to sign the petition in order to become permit parking. and part of the concern from the Worcester Square neighborhood was that you have people that have been renting

David PenalozaItem —

that have been living at these homes for 10, 15 plus years that the homeowner lives on the east coast or in other parts of the country and they can't get a hold of them. It's by the timeline given. So there's a lot of open ends to this policy that we need to look at and address and look into deeper. There wasn't anything in this report about the way the permit parking is done, which is important that we look at. And in regards to an advisory group, although the Comlink people are a great organization,

David PenalozaItem —

I think they're a very small group in a very large city, and we should include multiple people from different entities, not just the one organization. and those are just my thoughts.

Thank you. Any additional thoughts? One thought. Council Member Iglesias.

Just to piggyback on what Council Member Pinallosa said about having the majority approve of the homeowners to approve if they're going to have permit parking or not, I know that Tate was there and what he mentioned was, is there a way that the city, because I think right now it's like 66% for them to to approve it is there a way that we can lower the threshold so this way we can have more and more not of an opportunity for us to pass something like that at the city level or you know at the neighborhoods because I know they get close sometimes but they can never

pass that 66% threshold so is that something that we could look at it would

be and on the the comments regarding the permit parking the city did recently streamline substantially the length of time that it does take a neighborhood to seek that process but it's our process so we can establish the thresholds so

when so when are we going to start those conversations as council members and so

we can give you more input well today it was just a receive and file there actually was a PowerPoint presentation I'm not I think you guys have already said all your comments on it so I guess we can skip that but our next steps would be taking that report where we did our study and we identified the parking deficient areas we put together some recommendations that would be returning back to you with the solutions that we think we should move forward with and also engaging obviously the communities that are impacted which include not only residential but commercial businesses as well

David PenalozaItem —

and just to add to that um with the signatures the 66 that's required i know that some of the concerns that were also brought up in in uh this neighborhood meeting was that there was one street that only had it was a little cul-de-sac it only had three homes and they needed 66 percent of this of the homes so it was easy and all three of them signed they got 100 but then when you went over to the other uh streets that go uh north and north and south um in in that particular neighborhood

David PenalozaItem —

You know, you're talking 100 homes between the two, so it was very difficult to get those 67, 70 homes to sign, especially when you're talking about homeowners. So that's a great point, and we could just look at that as well.

All right, so pleasure of the council on this item? So just move on. Book to receive and file. Okay. Any opposition? Or just receive and file? Okay, next item, Madam Clerk.

22A.

David PenalozaItem —

Who had that one? I did, Mr. Mayor. Go ahead, please.

David PenalozaItem —

22A was approve a purchase order to courtesy Chevrolet Center for three vehicles for an amount not to exceed $82,000 to be funded by the general fund. My reason for pulling this, and we briefly discussed it, Madam City Manager, was Courtesy Chevrolet is in San Diego. And I know there was a bidding process that you went through. And they came in the highest in regards to the point system. But I was looking at the staff report. And the vehicle purchase price for...

David PenalozaItem —

I just need more information on how we go about purchasing items like this, because the vehicle purchase price, for example, for one of them, from courtesy Chevrolet in San Diego, was $26,363, and guarantee Chevrolet in Santa Ana was $26,450. That's $80 more.

David PenalozaItem —

I don't know the legal process, but is there a way where we reach back to the local business and say, hey, you know, if you knock down your price by 80 bucks, we could, I mean, I don't know if that's legal or not. I'm just trying to understand because I would rather have, give that business to a local business owner in Santa Ana. And I'm just thinking, courtesy Chevrolet in San Diego, what is the process? Do we send a staffer down the five freeway to get it? Do they deliver? Do they, because I'm also thinking of any extra cost of getting the vehicle here, if that adds to the cost at all or not?

David PenalozaItem —

So if you could just answer those questions, Madam Secretary. Certainly.

So this is a low bid. So for a good, unlike a complex service where it's an RFP and there's like a point rating system for just outright purchase of goods, we're obligated to go with the low bid. We do give a preference to businesses that are located in Santa Ana. So if you look at the staff report for the column of the prices of guarantee Chevrolet, that already takes into factor a 1% local preference for that vendor. So the price has been lowered by 1% on those prices. So the price differential in reality is a little bit higher than the small amount that you pointed out

because we do provide a 1% local vendor preference for businesses in Santa Ana. I do not know the method in which we pick up the vehicles, so I would defer to either Public Works or our finance director purchasing to answer that question.

Does anybody know how we get the cars?

I'll have to follow up with you on that.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay. Because I was just thinking, you know, if that isn't included in the initial cost of the vehicle, and you have a staff member, whether it's Public Works or Parks and Rec or whoever, you know, having to go down there and get it.

There would be costs, yes.

David PenalozaItem —

You have staff time, you have liability, you have all kinds of different, costs added that might not be taken into consideration and again I'm just this is me just thinking out loud and thinking of various ways that this could add cost and just trying to keep it we have an answer for you're gonna like it it's delivered okay all right well those are my only questions so I would move the

councilmember sarmiento thank you mr mayor pro tem so i get that we're obligated in a procurement to go with the lowest bid but that doesn't mean that we have to ratify it or adopt it i think that we had this conversation in the past when we were looking at vendors and looking at what's called a multiplier effect so even though there's a lower bid than maybe what one of our local vendors recites or proposes, the fact that the money is spent locally has an effect on the local economy. You have people that work in the local car dealer or whatever vendor it is.

So let's say we were purchasing furniture and people were going out to bid and we had something in Orange versus Santa Ana, so transportation isn't an issue and that stays fixed. the fact that we're paying not a premium but maybe more here locally it's an investment in our town. It's an investment in folks that work here. They're going to be spending money here. Those employees go and eat and have dinner and lunch and different things here. So I'm not sure if we even factored in a multiplier effect on this. And I always thought that the 1% was a little low as sort of a preference that we give to our local folks.

But to me, the disparity is so small that if it was twice the price or if it was maybe even a third or 50%, but it's a very narrow disparity. So I think it's something that we, I mean, I certainly wouldn't want us to reconsider that if my colleagues would consider. I mean, I certainly think that we should go with this local vendor because not only is this local vendor local, but Guarantee has given scholarships to many of our students. They've stepped up. They're part of the chamber. They've been part of our stakeholder community. So I think that without violating any procurement process that we have,

I think we can, given other considerations, even though they're not the lowest bidder, they're very close, I don't think it would violate any of the procurement process. Or maybe I'm mistaken, Madam City Attorney, is that something that we have the discretion to do up here?

Council Member, you absolutely have the authority to approve whatever you would like. you're a charter city and you've made the other regulations up. So you have that ability. And then we can, on a go-forward basis as well, look at the vendor preference, and maybe it's a percentage. If there's a local vendor that falls within a certain percentage to another lower bidder, we automatically go with it.

And it's no flaw or fall to the staff. I mean, you're bound by the process that we've dictated to you. But I think for us, we do have that discretion, I think, to make some adjustments. And I think it's warranted here. So I know there's a motion on the floor. What I would suggest is I would propose a substitute motion to go with the bid that was submitted by Guarantee Chevrolet on both vehicles.

Council Member Inglasius?

We have a substitute motion. So those were exactly the same questions. And I'm glad that Council Member Piniello moved to talk about it because I was going to pull it, too, because I remember having this conversation with you. Guarantee Chevrolet is a very good partner of our community, and just like Councilmember Sarmiento stated, they do provide a lot of scholarships for our students, and they provide a lot of incentives here for our community. So I would second your motion, Councilmember Sarmiento, because it's something that when I asked you,

said it's only $800 that it was a difference especially with the first one in the second one it was like you know not even 900 or something like that so it's very minimal and it's and it's something that's coming back to our community it's revitalizing our economy and and they're great they're great with our with our families and maybe we could look at the model that we have with the school district because I know with the school district we had an exclusive not an exclusive contract with them but for some things we did with guarantee Chevrolet so if you go like at that at that contract that we have with them on how we did it

with the school just to be something that we're looking into that we could apply here at the city because it's it'll be beneficial for our community

we can do that and councilmember I would like to acknowledge I spoke with you raised that same issue and councilman Penaloza you raised that same issue I as staff have to follow the rules that we have in place so I couldn't change the staff report but this board does have the ability to do that very good so we

have a second from Iglesias and councilmember Saloni was requested to

speak yes I'm supportive as well as I think of what we want to accomplish but can we legally accomplish that today or do we need like a two-week continuance really to justify a change in in in recommendation I'm actually taking a

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

look at your local rules right now what I would recommend is if you want to take action on your substitute motion, that you can do that if the only areas where you are not allowed to make up your own rules are sometimes when the state law imposes rules like public works contracts, prevailing wages, and things of that nature. You are otherwise completely allowed to adopt your own rules. What you would be doing tonight, in my opinion, is you would be deviating in a small part from your purchasing rules. But honestly, given the very small deviation in this case, as I look at the numbers,

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I would say if that's the direction you want to go in, you can do that. And we will come back with an ordinance to clarify this. But your ordinance does have provisions in your purchasing that where the City Council finds that it's in the best interest of the city, that you can do this. And I think you have articulated some findings tonight as to why you feel that's in the best interest.

Why don't you make a motion, Councilor Pinalosa?

Council Member Sargento. Oh, you already did? So we're discussing that. I think there's a lot of support. Yeah, so I've been, with what you said, City Attorney, am supportive. But continue to do legal analysis, and if in the next few days you come up with anything contradictory, we can always come back and figure out whether it needs to be undone or tweaked or something. But I am supportive of the motion. Just don't want it to be in violation of any laws. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem —

And I'd like to withdraw my original motion.

All right. Can you just state the motion very briefly, please?

Yeah. The substitute motion was to go with the guarantee Chevrolet bid for reasons that were articulated.

And we have a second. Those in favor, please press green.

Good job. Next item, Madam Clerk.

Point of 5A.

Who had that one?

Council Member Penalissa and Iglesias.

David PenalozaItem —

I did so.

David PenalozaItem —

Mr. Mayor, thank you. 25A is approve agreement with the State of California Workforce Development Board for the Prison to Employment Implementation Direct Services Grant. Now, Madam City Manager, I wanted to pull this item because I wanted just more information on the process that was done to this because of the 85B item that I do have on the agenda tonight, which also is to discuss state parolees in our community. I wanted to just see if you could answer these questions for us. Why did we submit a proposal?

David PenalozaItem —

I went through the staff report, and one of the things that I noticed is that we, along with the City of Anaheim and the County of Orange, have a Workforce Development Center, which is great, but why did Santa Ana submit the proposal on behalf of the region?

I'm going to call Community Development Director Mendoza to answer your questions and any that Council Member Iglesias may have.

Thank you, Council, very much. The City of Santa Ana submitted the proposal on behalf of the region, which includes the Santa Ana Work Center, the City of Anaheim Work Center, County of Orange, which has a center in Irvine and Garden Grove. On their behalf, because we have to have one fiscal agent. We decided to be the agent this time and take the lead as it rotates every single time. So this was our turn at the plate.

Every three years, there's new monies that come out. and it was our turn to be the fiscal agent for this round.

David PenalozaItem —

So three years ago, Santa Ana didn't submit the proposal?

No, it would have been one of the other agencies.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay, now, thank you. The RFP required a partnership with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Divisions of Adult Parole Operations. What exactly does that mean?

Deborah, can you come on up?

Can you repeat the question?

David PenalozaItem —

The RFP requires a partnership with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Divisions of Adult Parole Operations. This was directly taken from the staff report.

That's because we will be responsible for enrolling the parolees and or probationers in training, the completion of their training, attained industry value certification credential or degrees, placement in post-secondary education, and placement in state-approved apprenticeships and job placement. We're required to do all of those things and we have to have that agreement in place to do so. Deborah, this is Deborah Sanchez. She's in charge of our work center. Yes, we'll be working with the probation and parole officers who will be making referrals to the various work centers when the parolee is ready to look for work.

David PenalozaItem —

And we're required by who? By the RFP?

Required by the state.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay.

That was in the RFP, yes.

David PenalozaItem —

Is this in any way encouraging the release of state parolees in our city?

No, they're already being released in our city if they were from our city. Same with Anaheim, same with Irvine, same with Santa Ana. We're not attracting more parolees to come to Santa Ana once they come out of jail. We are serving the ones that are coming out of jail into Santa Ana.

David PenalozaItem —

But ones that were originally arrested in Santa Ana and have roots?

Yeah, they go back to the county of which they were.

David PenalozaItem —

So the state has the ability to release inmates into the city they were arrested in, but the county of Orange doesn't, so we'll make note of that for later. But where are these state parolees housed at while they go through this workforce development?

With their families or on their own. They're not housed by the work center.

David PenalozaItem —

But usually within Santa Ana because that's where the services are offered, correct?

They'll be served throughout the whole county. So if they live in other parts of the county, they may go to the Irvine location or the Anaheim location, whatever is closest to them.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay. Those are the questions I had. I believe Councilwoman Iglesias.

Go ahead, Councilwoman Iglesias.

So my question is, are the individuals that we're serving all Santa Ana residents?

The grant will serve residents in a number of these cities. We will be administering the grant. The people that come to the work center most likely will be Santa Ana parolees.

Yes. What's the percentage of the individuals that are from Santa Ana, have the roots to Santa Ana, and that we're trying to get them back?

We won't know until we serve them. We don't know who's going to walk through our door. We're going after money in order to have parolees that are in Santa Ana or probationaries in Santa Ana get some assistance to get jobs, get employment, and get back on their feet.

Okay, so how did it work then with Anaheim? Were they only Anaheim residents? Because you said three years ago another city applied.

No, no, it's just one agency taking the lead on behalf of the multiple agencies. You know, we don't – we're always duplicating services. So if Anaheim applies for this grant and Deborah applies for the grant and Irvine applies for the grant, you have three people applying for a grant. This is multiple agencies acting together to apply for the grant and one taking the lead for it. It doesn't put extra focus on Santa Ana to add probationers or parolees to our city. These parolees or probationers will be released in our city irregardless if we have a grant to get them jobs.

This grant will help them get employment.

Just to understand you then, Santa Ana is just going to have oversight of this grant, and then say they're from South County, they'll go to Irvine, and if they're from North County, they'll go to Anaheim.

Yeah, likely they'll go to the place.

And then we'll only serve Santa Ana.

No, they'll likely go to the office that's closer to their residence. If I can maybe clarify, Stephen, do you happen to know for all of the other programs at the work center what percentage of clientele come through your doors that are Santa Ana residents? Do you happen to know that? Because I would think that would hold true to these other services. Right. Currently, we're serving almost 70% of Santa Ana residents, and the balance are coming from the cities surrounding our community. Okay. What cities would that mean? We get clients that come in from the Corona area to Orange, Tustin, Irvine.

It's where the person feels best served, and so they'll come to our offices versus something that's closer to their home.

Okay. How many are you intending to serve under this grant?

310 parolees, probationers, are being proposed in this grant. About 70 will be from Santa Ana, 70 for the city of Anaheim, and the balance is Orange County.

Only 70. Okay, thanks.

All right, thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

I was just going to say, my understanding is that every probation office that is providing services, is when people come out of custody, they're supposed to report to the local probation office, and they're in different areas. So depending on what area, if you're in South County, you go to the Irvine one. If you're in this area, you go to the Santa Ana one. If you live in Orange or you live in Anaheim, Fullerton, so on and so forth, you report to the Anaheim office. So from there, they refer people to the workforce or the workplace, place. And they go and receive services there. So that's basically how this whole thing works.

Now when it comes down to the state, they're under the state being released from prison, the state has an obligation to take them back to where they are from or they report they're from.

So, and if they come back to this area, then they receive the services. Same place. Because I believe the probation department is the one in charge of giving the services for the state. That happened a while back.

All right. I think we've learned quite a bit. Councilor Solario?

Just a couple more things. With multiple agency grants, really, from a programmatic and financial standpoint, it's better to be the person organizing it all because you have more control over what you do, what others do, etc. So it's actually a good practice. And it actually shows that the other communities see that we have the leadership on the staff to get the grant, follow the rules, and do the work. With parolees, as has been mentioned, yeah, there is a state law that we'd like to say something comparable at the county level where, you know, individuals leaving the state system go back to their counties of less residence.

Also, a lot of these resources go to service providers in different cities other than Santa Ana. so it doesn't mean that everybody will come here and then finally because we manage the grant it helps us pay for rent for you know portion of the staff that we have so on the whole it's a it's a good grant and maybe we have to spend more time figuring out how those dollars get used but I am very much in

support of this effort thank you all right do we have a motion a second make a motion approve okay we have a motion a second those in favor please

press green. Okay, next item, Madam Clerk. 25B. Who had that? Council Member Iglesias.

this this one my question is for the this is the one for authorizing the city manager to execute a one-year agreement extension with NAFCARE to provide basic and emergency inmate health care Services for Santa Ana Jail for the period of October 1st, 2019 to September 30th, 2020. My question for the city manager and or the chief is, this money that we are going to be paying in the tune of $2.7 million, where does that money come from?

Council Member Iglesias, the amount for the vendor and what's before you tonight is to execute an extension with them and that price differential from last year to this one-year extension is a $35,000 increase the amount that pays for these services gets charged to our jail operations contract services account so it's basically a cost of operating the jail like every other cost of operating

the jail so it comes from the money that we charge it would be I mean it would be

offset against all of the revenue sources that the jail receives and then and this is an expense of doing business, I will say we don't achieve 100% reimbursement for the medical services. And we are required by state law to provide those medical services to inmates.

So is that something that we can liken to seeking reimbursement, say, from the state or from the county, like through CalOptima or through Medi-Cal?

I don't know the answer on those programs that you had mentioned to me before, like CalOptima. I would more than likely assume that if it's an incarcerated individual, they won't qualify for those other programs because incarcerated individuals receive medical services. But we have started the process and the talks for some of our contracts that we charge per night to raise that daily rate, and that certainly could help offset some of these medical costs as well.

Yeah, but if they're not individuals from Santa Ana, because my understanding is they're not individuals from Santa Ana that we're housing at the jail, So why are we spending our money to offset the balance of what you're saying? That's not 100% reimbursable by what we charge. So we're paying some money out of our funds somewhere. So why can't we charge that money?

We can certainly explore all areas where we could seek other reimbursement, but right now it's a cost of operating the jail, and our jail doesn't turn a profit.

Okay, so for future then I would like some type of report or something of how we could go about getting 100% reimbursement for this type of services that we're providing.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a quick question. Perhaps the cost is coming from the inmates who are not federal inmates, yet the inmates that we are processing through our jail. and if we could get some information back.

It certainly could be, and also attributed to the pay-and-stay program as well.

Pay-and-stay program also. Thank you.

Okay, with that, I'd entertain a motion.

Motion approved.

We have a second from Iglesias. Those in favor, please press green. Madam Clerk, what's our next item?

25C.

Who had that one?

Council Member Iglesias.

Okay.

This is just more of a general question what this is about. It's for the mail screener. So it's authorizing the city manager to execute a two-year agreement with ChemImage for the purchase of the VeroVision mail screener and drug presumptive identification system for at Donnie Compass Dual View Full Body Security Screening System for the period of October 1st through September 30th, 2021. What exactly is this? Why are we putting money and $367,000 into that?

Okay. I can certainly ask the chief to come up, but in general, there are two different tools to keep drugs out of our jails. So one of them is screening mail, which is a way that drugs oftentimes get sent into jails. The other one is actually a body scanner that's scanning body cavities for anyone trying to transport drugs within the jail. And I'll ask the chief if you want to add anything to my very short description of those two machines.

Thank you, City Manager, Mayor, City Council. So that's essentially the information is there are two assets to ensure the safety of the inmates and the staff that work in the jail, funded by the Welfare Inmate Fund. So it's actually, it falls in line with providing for the safety and security of inmates and our staff.

Okay, so it's not coming from general fund money or money from, what fund is it?

It's the Welfare Inmate Fund. It comes from commissary and sales within the jail itself, and it's specific for providing for the safety and security of inmates and also our staff.

Okay, and so will we provide a report on how this is working and what's not working and what's the reason why we're even having this type of system coming into our jail? Was it because what was there before wasn't working?

Well, unfortunately, in some instances, it's nonexistent, and what we have found is there's an increase in contraband coming into custodial facilities, It's specifically fentanyl, which is colorless, odorless, and very, very potent and dangerous to inmates experiencing overdoses and, in some cases, death. So we have a duty and an obligation to provide for their safety. This is one resource that we've researched thoroughly for that effort. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Motion to approve, Mr. Mayor.

Is there a second? Those in favor, please press green. What's the next item, Madam Clerk?

25C? Who ahead? 25F, excuse me. Council Member Solorio?

Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Really, 25F and 25G are very similar. I received some inquiries from the public about these items. What's innovative is really just this terminology of on-bill financing. Rather than me explain it, which I could.

Maybe there's somebody on staff that can describe for the public how these lighting retrofit improvements at some of our parks really are cost neutral, if you will, to the city and the residents because the retrofits reduce the energy cost that the city would have to pay. and you know that that's my sense of it but it would be good if we could have somebody from city staff confirmed to that point or add to it certainly

councilmember and you also 20b was one of these retrofits with on bill financing as well so you had three before you one at the stadium and then you have these two one at Rosita Park and one at Jerome Park so what they're doing is they're retrofitting the lights to be LED which draws a lower amount of electricity so our power bills with Edison drop down that differential is used for Edison to finance the retrofit for us so we keep continuing the same pay the same amount of bill even though our electric usage is lower and the differential pays back Edison with no interest cost meaning it's revenue

neutral to the city it is the money is fronted to us and then we pay it back through our bill over a 10-year period and I agree and there's comparable

models out there in the marketplace. A related question though is particularly since we finished this last year in the black, why not just pay for these outright so that there aren't any financing costs? Would that reduce any of our costs or is it really no difference?

Without the interest costs, it would be just by this way we can stretch our dollars farther by using this feature, which has no interest costs, so it's cost neutral.

Okay, thank you. And that was my thought as well. Maybe in the future in the staff report we can add a little bit more to that so that community members reading can have those type of questions addressed. Thank you so much. With that, I move 25F and G.

Those in favor, press green. What's the next item, Madam Clerk?

Can I ask the council members to please press green or red, however you want to vote?

They have. What's the next item?

Count 25G.

25G, who had that one?

Council Member Soloria.

In that motion, I said 25F and G.

Then 25H, Council Member Iglesias.

For 25H, the reason I pulled this was because it's the settlement that was with the Orange County Catholic Worker. and I have a concern and it's something that the member of the audience Chris Smith brought up which was about the terms and conditions of construction and operation of the shelter on page six of the agreement I would say it's item

number three it talks about says at the time of this agreement the city operates a temporary low barrier shelter in the city with a capacity of 200 beds known as the link according to the information that's out in our community the link is not a low barrier shelter it's more of a high barrier shelter because it individuals that can go into that facility have to be referred by police and they have to have roots in Santa Ana, so they have to first be screened in order for them to be placed at that site.

And it states that the city shall fund, obtain funding for, or coordinate third-party funding for the construction and operation of an additional low-barrier homeless shelter at a different location. So my question is, is the link a low-barrier shelter?

Yes, it is. And that was indicated in the staff report with your agreement with Mercy House when you engaged them to run the shelter for you. Bridges at Kramer is also considered a low barrier homeless shelter. You can still have transportation and different operational procedures. They still can be considered a low barrier.

So are those things that you just mentioned right now, like transportation and they can't come in and out as they please, is that something that was put into the negotiation or is that something that

you are going to bring to council after well this body would have complete control as to what operating standards you would want your shelter operated at of course we would recommend given the success of the link that we mirror what

the operating standards are at the link yeah and I do have a concern to you know doing things retro or you know coming before the council after something's been signed and for us to come for approval I'm not very comfortable with that and I just feel that this this MOU is something that was decided by I guess by you but it's something that I'm not very comfortable with so just the fact that we don't have concrete information in here other than it's very vague and very um

you know it doesn't give that city or the residents here in santa anna or the community protection of not having more homeless people dumped in santa anna thank you mayor pro-town

thank you mr mayor i just want to say that i believe uh madam city manager that you are following the directions of this council the majority of this council that allowed you the leeway and you told us the goals that we had we discussed it in depth many times and i want to thank you for doing the work that you do and of course this agreement is still contingent on our on what happens with the county so thank you very much i want to clarify that very here with the public.

Thank you. One comment, and I'll call for a motion and a vote. And that is that I think the city manager acted absolutely correctly in the procedure here, meaning we have to have, in essence, a tentative agreement to bring to the council. Otherwise, we would never finish. We're not going to have the judge in front of us, the Catholic worker advocate, trying to negotiate a tentative agreement so that we can approve it.

So I think that by the very nature of how you have to do things, the city manager acted correctly in our direction. She did a tentative agreement, brought it back to us. We can go up or down. If we say no, we don't like it, we can vote it down and there's nothing. But if we vote it up, we have to know what we're voting on. And that's what she provided. So with that, I would entertain a motion.

Motion to approve.

I'll be happy to second. Those in favor, please press green.

Motion carries 5-1. So with that, let's go on to the next item.

Mayor, if I could respectfully ask for the administration of oath for the reappointed of the commissioners.

All right. If you're here to be sworn in, Irma Macias, Phil Schaefer, Andres Masson, Mark McLaughlin. I don't know if I've seen Mark here today.

So you're going to take the oath for him, Phil? All right.

Come around. Come around.

He still has those?

It's a big number.

It's a small group.

I can ask you to raise your right hand.

Why don't you stand closer to the mic so folks at home can hear what we're up to.

I, and please state your name for the record.

I, Andres Matzkin. Irma Macias. Phil Schaefer. Thank you.

Do solemnly swear.

Do solemnly swear.

That I will. That I will. Support and defend.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Support and defend.

The Constitution. The Constitution. Of the United States. Of the United States. And the Constitution.

And the Constitution.

Of the State of California.

Of the State of California.

Against all enemies.

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 or purpose of evasion that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I'm about to enter.

Congratulations. Thank you again.

Thank you.

Oh, absolutely.

I believe our next item is item 50A. And Brooke, I think we have a request to speak, and also Mike Tardif.

Go ahead, Mike. You go first. You're walking faster.

Not bad for broken legs.

Well, you're still walking faster. There you go.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. I'm here regarding Agenda Item 50A, the proposed oversized vehicle parking ordinance. I'd like to commend City staff and Council for proposing an oversized vehicle parking ordinance for the City of St. Anna. I believe that would be a valuable safety measure to add a maximum width to the description of oversized vehicle.

In researching other California cities, it appears that many such width restrictions are between 78 and 82 inches maximum width. there's no maximum width noted on the proposed ordinance that I could see. I think that a maximum width restriction of 7 feet, which is 84 inches, would be generous and reasonable. An example, my utility trailer on which I tow my Jeep is 94 inches wide, which would be 10 inches wider than the maximum we could allow.

But it would be covered by a permit when required.

So if you could add that 7 foot width to the description we have now is 22 feet in length or 7 feet in height. But there's no mention of a maximum width. I think 7 feet maximum width would be reasonable. It would reduce obstruction to the rights of way access and provide additional parking for residents' vehicles if they're not allowed on the streets other than at permitted times.

Also in the proposed ordinance, there's a mention of signs being required to be posted in order to enforce this ordinance. To me, that seems, it might be unnecessary. It certainly will be a costly expense. If the ordinance would simply apply to all residential areas, it might be simpler.

I would hope that the permit process is easy to use and preferably done online. It's not specifically lined out in the ordinance how that is to be done, other than that the city manager will be responsible for organizing that.

the staff report mentions that there will be no charge for permits for the temporary parking permits for oversized vehicles but I noticed that the ordinance does allow for a charge for permits to be determined by the city manager I imagine that's just in case you decide you need some extra revenue Mike, it's red. Thank you.

Thank you. Brooke, you're on. Welcome, by the way.

Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, City Council. I'm coming tonight to urge you to do a little more investigation before you pass something regarding the RVs. I'm not sure, as written, that it's lawful or meets your goals. The city is really trying to take a leadership role in looking at health care first and reducing homelessness, And an important part of that is considering what actions the city and the state are taking that risk increasing homelessness. And we know the individuals living in RVs, that may be their retirement plan. It's often seniors.

We've seen it in other cities that have implemented these types of laws, sometimes with lawsuits later enjoining them from enforcing the bans on overnight sleeping and things. But the result is that the people who are living in those RVs are often the more vulnerable members. and enacting this type of law without a plan in place for what to do about that risks ticketing those individuals and eventually seizing their RVs and then having them land in your shelters where they become an increasing burden on the city. So I'd suggest instead the city consider using your outreach personnel

to figure out who are the people that are in the RVs, what are the needs, and figuring out exactly what the issues are that they're facing and who this population is before you take the step of criminalizing. Because this ordinance as written does that, right? it doesn't just say you can't be here it doesn't write a ticket like a parking ticket but it actually creates a misdemeanor where a person risk going to jail because they couldn't afford to not live in their rv so i think there's there i understand there's concerns and there are some things that maybe need solutions but i would suggest that the city really look at kind of

what what are the goals of this and if it is just providing solutions to specific problems is this complete ban going to provide that and if not are there things in between or services the city needs to look into ahead of time to ensure that the actual goals are met and that it doesn't have these unintended consequences of actually increasing homelessness instead of increasing public safety or comfort or whatever the other things are that the city is hoping to do.

Thank you for those thoughts, Brooke. We appreciate it. Thank you.

Okay, let me bring it back to Council. Comments or thoughts?

Councilman Solario, please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I am prepared to move the item, but I also did want to state that a couple of things I do agree with the last speaker, Ms. Weissman, is for other similar ordinances, we've taken out the misdemeanor provisions so as to not criminalize it and just leave in the financial fines in place. And maybe we also start with a warning and then we do a fine structure. And then in addition to just doing that, we should do some outreach and education of options for them, shelters.

One big thing I'm concerned with with these RVs and other similar vehicles is what folks do with the human waste. then there ought to be education about if folks do live in RVs or other vehicles, what some safe options might be. But I guess long story short, I moved this item with the change in Section 36-152, which is the enforcement remedy section, to remove the misdemeanor provisions.

Another reason to do that, in addition to just it being the right thing to do, is that for some, if they have an immigrant status that is under review, a misdemeanor on their file would be harmful for their status or their change in status. So that's another reason to remove the misdemeanor. With respect to the outreach, that could just be done administratively. Thank you.

Yes, Councilman Panaloza.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Madam City Manager, this question, I actually had a question for the Chief of Police. I don't know where he went, but maybe you could answer the question. Madam City Manager, what time at night is the shift change in PD?

I'm going to have to defer to the Chief on that one.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay. Yeah.

I think the question, Councilman, is what time does the shift change? Yeah. And that's 6 p.m. for Graveyard, 2 p.m. for Cover Watch. So 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. is Cover Watch, what we call Cover Watch. Graveyard is 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay.

David PenalozaItem —

The only change that I would want to see in this ordinance – thank you, Chief. Yes. That was all. The only change that I would want to see in this ordinance is in Section 2, Letter A, Madam City Manager.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I'm sorry, sir.

David PenalozaItem —

It's okay.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Discussing the ordinance, I had a question. Okay.

David PenalozaItem —

How did we come about the 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. hours?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

It mirrors the other sorts of parking restrictions. so that really it was the issue of overnight, and whenever a city bans overnight parking, they usually have the restrictions apply from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m.

David PenalozaItem —

Yeah, I've usually seen 10 p.m. I've seen 12 midnight. This one is just 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. It's a very short window.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yeah, we have to make sure. We approach this ordinance from the perspective that it really was about parking and not about homeless because that's what is important. It is really important for the reasons one of our speakers stated and that we are really looking at this as a parking. We have a parking problem in our city. We are treating these vehicles just like we do any other vehicles. So when you do that, when a city normally bans overnight parking, overnight parking is usually enforced within those hours. So we were mirroring overnight parking standards.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

If you're going to have a rule that says you can't park overnight for a car, which is two to six, we wanted the RVs to be similar.

David PenalozaItem —

Because from what I understand, and this is also, I have planned on making a comment of this during Council comment, and again meeting with numerous neighborhood residents, specifically Memorial Park neighborhood,

David PenalozaItem —

the signage at these parks and these parking lots are faded they're deteriorated and that is the excuse that that according to the resident PD is giving and the reason why they can't enforce the law of cars overstaying their visit at night in the in the park parking lot is because the signage is faded and there isn't any proper signage to to which I understand but if that's the case we should be addressing those signs and making sure that it's visible and clearly stated that that car should not be staying overnight in a park because public parks close at 10 p.m.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yes and I'd like to just address that. I can't address the sign issue and I'll defer to the city manager and public works on that but I would like to address the issue of overnight parking. There is a difference. A city has almost complete authority on setting regulations on property it owns. Parking lots at parks, parking lots on city-owned property. But with respect to vehicles parked in the public right-of-way, it's different.

David PenalozaItem —

Hold on, Madam. I can't. Do you guys mind? Just really quick. Thank you. Go ahead.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So, sorry. So, with respect to your ability to regulate parking in parking lots on city-owned property, you have a complete right to set the times of your opening and closing of those facilities. When you're regulating an RV, it's a vehicle as defined under the state vehicle code, you have numerous restrictions. You can only regulate vehicles and their parking on the rights-of-way in accordance with the rules. You have to be able to state health and safety reasons. So you, yes, you may see a ban on overnight parking in parks that starts at 10 a.m. and goes until

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

7 a.m. But when you're talking about the parking of vehicles on the public right-of-way, there are different rules that apply. And that's where we aim to be more consistent with the rules for overnight parking on all public rights away.

David PenalozaItem —

So the latest we could start is 2 a.m. or earliest?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

That's correct, because it's a vehicle that enjoys protection under the vehicle code.

David PenalozaItem —

So what is the earliest hour in the night that we could start enforcing that?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

If you are going to ban, well, you could go earlier, but if you're going to ban RVs starting at 10 p.m., then you're going to have to ban vehicles starting at 10 p.m. And you may have locations or under your parking rules where you're not going to want to do that because people may be driving a smaller vehicle and you don't want to make them leave someone's home or not be able to be parking on that street after 10 p.m.

David PenalozaItem —

But I thought this was an ordinance pertaining to oversized and recreational vehicles.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yes, but in order, your legal authority to regulate those vehicles has to be in strict compliance with the law.

David PenalozaItem —

Which is only 2 a.m.? That's the 2 to 6?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

You've got to be consistent. You've got to treat the RVs like you do cars. So if you want to ban overnight parking of these RVs during those, because that's what we're really trying to do, right? We're trying to regulate the overnight parking, right?

David PenalozaItem —

Right.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So we have to treat them in the same way we would other vehicles that are parking on public rights.

David PenalozaItem —

You can't treat them differently.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

You have to treat them the same.

David PenalozaItem —

So the other vehicles you can only enforce?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

If you want to have a rule in your city that you cannot park vehicles on the public streets overnight, and you want to define overnight as being from 10 p.m. till 6 a.m., you can do that, but it's going to apply to everybody. That will cause you major problems.

Major problems. All right, look, it's red. If you want to come back, I'll come back. let me just see what other folks want. Sassy, go ahead. It's just more going on what Councilman

Member Pinielloza was saying. The 2 a.m. time doesn't make sense to me because I've seen signs that says no parking from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m. and that would be okay because what we're trying to do is oversized vehicles are parking in areas that they're not supposed to be parking in and they're affecting our neighborhoods and anyone that would have a you know somebody who would be there like say like a regular car wouldn't that be an opportunity I mean I don't think they're just that much congested but it would have an

opportunity for maybe the neighboring homes to have permit parking it wouldn't that be something that they could also apply for if that's what they wanted but I feel 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. it's not enough time. It's not really giving anybody anything because, you know, they could be there until 2 a.m. And sometimes people want to go to sleep or do some type of rest. But at 2 a.m. I think it's too late into the morning. 12 a.m. for me would be better. That's what I've seen in most of the parking, I would say, the parking signs.

So and also I was wondering when you ask about when you talk about oversized vehicles are these referring to vans or just like RVs, trailers, detached

trailers, what's the definition? So I believe with the the ordinance that you had on the books and please correct me wrong city attorney is that it just addressed commercial vehicles so RVs didn't fall within that definition so So this changed the definition and created an oversized vehicle. So it's based on length or height. And if your vehicle fits that, then you're prohibited under this newly proposed ordinance.

Okay. So then, like the trailers, the detached trailers and all that?

Trailers are defined in here as well.

How about the ones that, you know, like when you haul things? I don't know what those are called, trailers too?

Are those part of it? The recreational vehicles?

No, the ones where you haul things, they hook up to the back of your truck or you're hauling them. Because I've seen some of those also parked on the streets too.

That is covered by this as well because it includes any extension to the vehicle caused by attachments.

Okay. And it goes by the, I would say the length. Would it be by the length or would it be the type? Height or length is how we're defining our oversized vehicles. Okay, because I've seen some neighborhoods that have detached trailers like that, that they're being parked in the neighborhood and the owner know where to be found.

So let me clarify. So you're asking if a trailer without a vehicle attached to it is parked? City Attorney would that.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Well, we have other rules that apply. This applies to a motor vehicle. Okay. And so we were trying to cure a deficiency in our code with respect to motorized vehicles. We have other provisions in our code that would deal with unmotorized vehicles.

So that's another conversation. Okay, thank you.

Any other comments?

Yes, Mr. Mayor.

Go ahead.

Thank you. And this is more directed to the city attorney. So just some questions on how we arrived at this. because I get the intent, and I know we're trying to address a problem that's of concern to many of our neighborhoods. So, you know, I know there was a time back where we tried to regulate lunch trucks and other vendors, and we tried to use some TPMs, time-placed manor restrictions, and we've had a permanent injunction as a result of the effort that we made back then.

And so I'm a little concerned about what was raised by Ms. Weitzman when she came up here because I think she's correct. This could be seen as a way of circumventing state law and protections against the homeless population because some of these vehicles could be considered dwellings. And I know that the election code recognizes vehicles as dwellings for folks who don't have homes for purposes of voting and other things as well. The issue on signage, I think, is critical because to the extent that we don't have signage, you don't have notice.

And so if you wanted to enforce anything, you have to be able to make sure that the person understands what they're doing is in violation of either municipal code or some other ordinance. So this could lead to some unintended consequences. As we're trying to address one problem, we're going to invite other challenges and other lawsuits. So I wanted to get your thoughts about this. I get the effort. I just want to make sure that we're going down the right path and we're not trying to solve one problem and create another.

So I just think that what happens is we may not be as focused because if it's a citywide ban, And I think these problems arise in certain areas. And I do think somebody mentioned, I think, the permit process did a lot to address this. And so I thought that that was a tool that maybe we could revise or maybe we could use as well, because that hasn't been challenged. And that is something that I think has been, so far, not met with any opposition. But, look, I just wanted to get your thoughts on this. What do you say about Ms. Weitzman's comments?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So first of all, I'd like to tell you that we looked at this very, very carefully. It took us several months before we presented this to the City Council, primarily because we were trying to balance the city's right to protect health, safety, and welfare against what we knew would be a perception that this is really something you're trying to do to regulate homeless. We have a severe parking issue in our city, as you know. It's come before this council numerous times. When you have parking of these oversized vehicles in particular neighborhoods, these vehicles

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

take up three or four parking spaces where others who are driving smaller vehicles could park. That's primarily why this is being presented to you. So what we did is we looked at the health, safety, welfare aspect of this. We also looked at cities where ordinances have been challenged, in particular the city of San Diego, and we took the regulations from cities whose ordinances either survived a legal challenge or where there were conversations with advocates for the homeless where they okayed the types of regulations. And so we believe that our ordinance is defensible.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

We can never guarantee that you won't be challenged, and we can never guarantee that you wouldn't be successfully challenged. But I think staff has done an excellent job in reviewing other communities and putting forth some regulations that have survived scrutiny.

Thank you for that. My time's up. So I'm just going to leave you with a couple of issues that you may want to consider. Look at the election code and how it treats folks and how it defines dwelling. Number one, the election code, because when a person is to become eligible to be a voter, you have to give an address. And so folks who are homeless don't have that. But recent case law has shown that folks can either cite their vehicle and where it's parked as a physical address. So that may create an access to a dwelling. So to the extent that that's just something that we consider.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yes, and I'd like to address that. This ordinance doesn't address anyone living in an RV, for example, if it's living on a piece of property where it can be lawfully parked, whether that happens to be someone else's property, whether that happens to be in a commercial corridor. We do know of some cities that are actually selecting areas of their city where it's okay to park overnight as a way to address homeless that are living in vehicles, and that potentially is something that you could look at in the future, if that's what you wanted to do. But, yes, I do agree with you.

Look, I'm just putting that out there just so you know. And the second thing is just to, you know, that vehicle, that large vehicle that takes up three or four spaces, that also can be regulated through a permit as well. So thank you.

Okay, so we lost the mayor for a second. Do we have a, Council Member Solorio.

Just another comment. I know on some things like the hours, we are going to have a second reading of this. And so some things like that are easier to change, right? We're changing digits. So whatever fine details like that, if we can't come to agreement today, we can always make that tweak later. Because on the parking hours, I would like to see, for example, a sheet showing for other types of parking things what their hours are. So there's consistencies. And I know, for example, with mobile truck vendors, we've been back and forth with these kind of things over the years.

And so we do want to have some consistency with how we treat different types of vehicles out in the community. Thank you.

council member iglesias so just um quick question i know i asked you um this um madam city manager is this city-wide ordinance or is it just specifically for neighborhoods

it's a city-wide ordinance okay and that's part of the reason i know you mentioned the permit parking the permit parking is a residential streets program okay so then this also would

go into the areas too where we have a lot of industrial buildings where that's where many times we see the oversized parked, I mean vehicles parked. As long as it's a public street. Okay, thank you.

Okay, so we have a motion on the floor.

I do not have a second unless someone sent it and I missed it.

Do we have a second?

David PenalozaItem —

This is for, so just the press screen. Okay, I'll second it.

Okay, all those in favor, press green.

I'm going to abstain.

Okay, motion passes. Madam Clerk, what is the next item?

55A.

55B.

A. A as in apple.

David PenalozaItem —

Move the item.

David PenalozaItem —

I have a comment, Mr. Mayor Britten.

I'll second that.

Council Member Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you.

David PenalozaItem —

55A is to adopt three resolutions for Memorial Community Center, Standard McFadden and Myrtle Park projects for the submittal of the statewide park developments and community revitalization program grant. I just wanted to thank Lisa, Parks and Rec staff, along with Ron. I know you guys have been working really hard to get these, going after these grants that are much needed for these three different parks. And our city manager and staff, thank you for that.

David PenalozaItem —

I'm excited for this. Memorial Park, again, I learned to swim in that community center. Well, not in the pool, not in the community center. And I got yelled at at the community center a couple weeks ago at the Memorial Park neighborhood meeting, which is awesome. I enjoy it.

David PenalozaItem —

but very happy to see the investment into these these parks and these two new parks that will be coming I just wanted a maybe this is a conversation for a later date but just have some ideas with the renderings that were included in the staff report with the Memorial Park just at least if you could answer this or Madam City Manager just in regards to the additional basketball court that was shown are these are these phases and renderings are these set in stone is this final is this

uh these are just conceptual uh drawings so we would uh refine them if we get the grant and hire an architect and okay engage the community and okay and that that's what i figured

David PenalozaItem —

but i just wanted to make sure that was clear with myself and with the community right uh because i I know that the other two parks on Wright and Myrtle and McFadden and Standard, there's the skate parks, which is great. But maybe we could have community surveys and further outreach to see if skate parks are really the number one desire from kids in our neighborhood. I know that back when now Pat McGuigan's skate park was done in the early 2000s, it was very popular. everybody wanted to be a skater. I wanted to be a professional skateboarder because Tony Hawk

David PenalozaItem —

was the only thing playing on my Nintendo 64. And that was like the thing to do. And now I don't, obviously I'm not in that age group anymore, but I just wanted to have the conversation to see if skate park is the desired option for these newer skate parks. Because there's one at the the Raiden Myrtle that's conceptualized, and McFadden Standard, and I know there's another one in downtown coming somewhere, and we have Mariposa Park, which is also including a skate park. So just wanted to make sure that that really is a desired need by our residents, or the majority of the kids

David PenalozaItem —

that are gonna use it, just for when we go down this line, you can have that information ready for when these grants hopefully come our way. So that's pretty much it, thank you.

Okay. I just want to note that we did have some several, 15 input sessions by the community. So this was identified during those sessions, but yes, we can certainly revisit this. Thank you.

All right. What is the pleasure of the council?

David PenalozaItem —

There was a motion and a second. Those in favor?

I'm sorry. Who seconded?

I believe. I made the motion.

All right. What's our next item, Madam Clerk?

55B.

Okay, we have no speakers on that. I would entertain a motion. I'll move the item. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Those in favor, plus green. This is the approval of Shadow. Who was here? You're on a first-name basis.

Your buddy.

All right, next item, 55C. All right, we have some speakers. Claudio Gallegos, followed by, if you could come on down, Tai Fan and Alexander. Go ahead.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I speak on behalf of Congressman Lou Correa this evening. I write to you in strong support of item 55C on your Council agenda this evening regarding a proposed resolution opposing the Department of Homeland Security's public charge rule change as applied to legal permanent residency applications. As you may know, the President has released his final rule related to public charge in the Federal Register. This rule forces struggling families pursuing the American dream to make the impossible choice, feed their children or become a U.S. citizen.

Worse, this rule supports the factually incorrect notion that immigrants are a financial burden to the American taxpayer and subside on the welfare state.

Let it be known these stereotypes are false and dangerous. The United States is the land of reinvention and opportunity. For most of us, our immigrant ancestors arrived in the United States with nothing but a hope and a prayer, and from that we built the wealthiest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen. The administration's change to the public charge ignores our history and turns the nation's back on our legacy. As a high-ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security and the House Judiciary Committee,

both of which have jurisdiction over the rule change, I have been pushing back on policies like this for my two and a half years in Congress. I have spoken to the Secretary of DHS and USCIS and demanded that these policies not stand as they are detrimental to my district. As this community's representative in Washington, I have fought to prevent this change from taking place.

As a chairman of the Department of Homeland Security Committee and a member of the Judiciary Committee, I have stood arm-in-arm with our allies and face-to-face with our opponents, be it General John Kelly, Secretary Kirsten Nielsen, or Acting Secretary Kevin McAllen. I have stood up for this administration's consistent assault on immigrant communities. We must not be silent when our families, our neighbors, and our values are under attack. While this resolution before you will not prevent the administration from implementing this rule change, it shows that the city of Santa Ana stands in solidarity with its citizens.

I urge you all to support Mr. David Penalosa's resolution tonight and our immigrant community by standing with our family, friends, and neighbors in rejecting this rule. It's your job to stand up for the citizens of Santa Ana, and it is my job to stand up against the President. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Tai. And then Alexander.

Okay, it's low enough. Hi, good evening. My name is Tai Viet Phan. I'm here before you to ask that you approve the resolution brought forth by Councilmember Peña Losa. I am an attorney. I have lived here in Santa Ana most of my life and I work in the local community. My sister is actually currently in optometry school so I became an attorney. She decided to be a doctor to one-up me. I would say for all intents and purposes we have made it. I think what a lot of people don't know is that we didn't start out making

it. I was born three weeks after my parents fled Vietnam and landed in Thailand. We have crossed jungles, we have avoided literal pirates and landmines, and have crossed the Pacific Ocean to come to the United States. I came here when I was two. For food, we relied on food stamps and food banks. For housing, we relied on Section 8. And for medical care, for my mom's handicap and her amputation, and for my asthma and my dad's cancer chemotherapy, we relied on Medi-Cal.

If public charge had been the rule, the law of the land, when we came to America, my family would have been turned away for being poor, for being of no value. Essentially what that rule, public charge says, is that there was no hope for people like us. That we were not of value and that we were worthless. I say to you that any person, any immigrant who has traversed deserts, who has crossed jungles and who has crossed oceans to

make it here so that their child, who by the way if I had been born a few weeks earlier we would not have been here so for the grace of God we did make it. Anyone who has a grit and determination to do that has potential to be a great member of our American family. So I would say that the public charge rule does not just reflect, it's not just anathema to our American values of hope and potential and change. It's just plain cruel. And so as the city of Santa Ana, I think that we need to stand up because we are a melting

pot of communities. We are either immigrants ourselves or children and family members of immigrants. So we need to stand up to President Trump and the administration and say, no. Americans like me, we have potential. I came here with nothing. My family came here with nothing. And I would say today, we are giving everything we have to our community. Thank you.

We have one more speaker. Alexander.

Alexander. Hi, good evening, Mr. Mayor and City Council. I am a supporter of the recall committees against you, Juan Villegas and Cecilia Iglesias. It is clear that you are a Trump supporter and not suited for elected office in Santa Ana. The citizens of Santa Ana demand transparency and honesty from you. The agenda shows you attended Washington, D.C. for legislative meetings, but we all know you're lying and hiding the truth. The fact is you attended the White House again with your Trump supporters, friends, to support Donald Trump.

Now, Facebook shows you having brunch at the Trump Tower and parading around the White House, clearly deceiving our communities in Santa Ana. How many times have you attended Washington, D.C. on taxpayer dollars? What legislative meetings did you attend, if any? What real purpose and justification for such taxpayer expenditures is there for you to attend Washington, D.C.? or is it nothing more than a paid vacation for you and your significant other to visit Trump and wine and dine on the taxpayer dime while you show your loyalty to a White House and President Trump, who is clearly attacking our most vulnerable immigrant communities?

Is this theft or gifts of public funds? And at minimum, you should be ashamed of yourself, a so-called man of the law. You say you are in law enforcement. What exactly is your job? Are you actually a specialty security guard?

Santa Ana demands to know your itinerary and meetings for those three days and for all your vacations to visit Trump and Washington, D.C. Another public records request is to disclose the cost of all your trips, vacations, or as you say, legislative meetings and whom you attended with. The truth is the city does have a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. and in Sacramento. Have you attended any legislative meetings in Sacramento? Probably not, as President Trump is never there or welcomed there. If you are a man of integrity, you will disclose the truth of all your trips and pay back the costs to the city for your vacations.

Per the AB 1234 disclosure, you are required by law and the residents of Santa Ana demand you disclose tonight in council comments the name of every event you attended as a council member or guest and who paid for these events. Thank you.

All right. So, Councillor Peña-Losa, would you like to make any comment?

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just thank you, staff, for bringing this resolution to us rather quickly. Make no mistake that we all know the intention behind these changes in addition to the public charge rule. This is a clear attack on immigrants across the country. and I found it in my responsibility as an elected official in Santa Ana to stand with the residents side by side and the immigrants in our community to, and I know we don't have any influence over federal law, but just as a symbolic gesture that we stand by you and we oppose these changes that could severely impact our community and our immigrant community.

David PenalozaItem —

So with that said, thank you staff for bringing this forward. I'm happy that you guys are going to be having those workshops throughout the city to educate the community on what these changes exactly mean.

David PenalozaItem —

But I'm happy, you know, I'm just happy to oppose the Trump administration's changes to the public charge rule.

Councilor Iglesias.

Just to piggyback on what you just said, Councilmember Peñalosa. So we are going to be having community education on when there's a law that's coming down, how it affects our neighbors and our residents. Okay. Because sometimes that's where all the miscommunication and also all the misunderstanding rises from, from the lack of understanding and the lack of education into our community. So I want to thank you for including that in this resolution so we could be more in tune on what's really affecting our community and also what it is that the federal government is trying to come down on us as local leaders. So thank you.

David PenalozaItem —

Mr. Mayor, I was misunderstood. I mean, that education aspect is important, but these public charge rule changes are drastically going to impact our community. That is known, and that's the intention behind it, because of the hateful rhetoric that we've seen from the administration and the Department of Homeland Security. I just wanted to make sure that that was known.

All right. Anybody else? Council Member Sarmiento.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I want to thank Council Member Peñalosa for bringing this before us. And I know I think it was on an 85A from last meeting, and so I'll be happy to second this motion that you have on the floor and that you proposed. So I was in Washington as well last week, and I was on an advocacy trip that was funded and supported by the Orange County Water District, we were there to speak with our delegation, the federal EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers on water-related matters. But as we were there on Tuesday night, the news broke about the House's decision,

the House Majority's decision to begin the inquiry on impeachment. And so I was very glad to see Congressman Correa leading the effort. He sits on the Judiciary Committee, and those in our delegation, which are now six, all six of our congressional members, were very supportive of what was going on. So it was a really good environment to be at. That wasn't the purpose of my trip, but it was great to be a witness to what was happening. And I think it speaks well of our congressman because he represents a very, very targeted community. So let's not be mistaken. This is a mean-spirited effort. This is a bigoted effort.

This is an effort to attack the very people we represent. And to see the congressman take a stand and be strong made me really proud to be one of his constituents. And I think it's about time that all of us, as the councilman says, these are federal issues. we at the local level really can't do much to influence that decision. But to the extent these gestures give some solace to the people that we represent, it does let them know that they live in a community that we care, that we're going to stand side by side with them, because this isn't going to end. And it hasn't ended.

So we've survived this administration's just litany of gross violations of people's rights that we represent here. So I do want to thank you. I think that the councilman realizes that these are things that we obviously can't enforce, but we're going to continue standing with our residents and our neighbors. We have a diverse community. So to the extent that we know, they look to us for leadership. because even though we don't influence the public policy at the federal level, we can influence those that represent us. And that is indicative by the letter that was sent to us by Congressman Correa. So I want to thank him.

I don't take the opportunity to thank him enough, but this is one that he has stood strong, and I certainly applaud his courage on this. So thank you very much.

Any other comment? Right here, Mr. Mayor. Yes, Mayor Brotem.

So thank you very much. And I did vote to approve this resolution. This resolution affects veterans also. I am a veteran of the United States Army. I have a great respect for whoever is in the Oval Office. That's what military people do. That's how we are. It really doesn't matter who the Commander-in-Chief is. That's the boss. That's who we respect. In fact, everyone in this audience or listening to me today, if you have not served in the military, I don't expect you to understand. And that's okay.

But this resolution, this change in the public charge rule does affect veterans. And as a matter of fact, if you're active duty, I was reading, if you're active duty, it also affects them slightly. So they're able to change it. But, you know, anything that has to do with veterans, I'm always a big supporter. We need to protect them because they gave their all for this country.

Thank you. So with that. Mr. Mayor, just a quick point.

You know, at the end of the day, we all know what, you know, the Trump administration is trying to do with this. They're trying to deny giving more immigrants legal status. And that's bad. We should be doing things like this. And if we go to D.C., we should go out there to advocate against it. And so we are here to share our voice that we disagree. We are happy that Congress Member Correa is also here and did a letter. And we need to be careful about what we're saying or doing in D.C. because people will read the wrong message into things just by our mere presence.

So we need to be clear and consistent that we oppose the actions of the Trump administration. And most of them are anti-immigrant, and this is an immigrant city.

Yeah, it's funny because I still have a personal opinion on who I respect. You expect people to respect your position as a council member or the mayor or what have you. And just because we have a difference of opinion doesn't mean we're awful people or anything like that. The thing is, I give them respect, they give me respect. If there's a difference, that's fine, but I voted on the Sanctuary City. I voted on this. On some things that are really controversial, I wait and see what the court says. And we can differ in a civil manner. And we have a difference of opinion, and that's all it is.

We can be civil.

And still, my main job is to serve the people of Santa Ana. And when I do go to D.C., I do have, right here, information of where I've been and what I've been doing, and that's what I do. I go out there to try to represent me with the Department of Justice to get more grants, meet with Feinstein's office, all of that, and I'll be reporting that later.

All right. Thank you. Maybe enough on this item? Do we have a motion or a second? Yeah, I'll move. I don't think there was. There is? Okay. All right. Those in favor, please press green.

All right. Next item.

55D?

Pardon?

55D?

Isn't it?

It's the Santa Ana management.

55D? D, correct. I heard 65. Move the item. 5-5. Okay, we have motion to second. Those in favor, please press green.

Okay, the next item, I believe, is that E, 55E. Move the item. Those in favor, please press green.

And the next item, 55F, I would entertain a motion. All seconded.

I'd like a comment, Mr. Mayor. Okay.

Go ahead.

So I would like to apologize to the PMA, the Police Managers Association, for this taking so long. I wish there was another MOU or contract I could vote on. Everyone knows that I was not supportive of the previous contract. And I am going to support this because when you start paying politics with people's livelihoods, I'm going to draw a line there. And everyone knows that the raises right here are pretty high.

There's a few things that we did get out of, as in the Me Too clauses, which I think was worth it. For future negotiations, there won't be a Me Too clause. But I don't like playing with people's lives, so I'm going to support this. And if I'm going to support one, I'm going to support them all because they're our employees. And everyone knows where I stand with the POA contract. And that's what started this whole thing. But I'm going to draw the line because this is just taking too long. We're talking I don't know how many months, almost a year now, that these folks have been without a contract.

All right, we have a motion and a second.

Councilor Solario. I today am not prepared to support this. If we're to come back differently, I would definitely entertain that. First, just some questions to staff just to clarify and make sure folks know what we're doing. So this is an MOU with the Police Managers Association to the tune this year of $696,000 general fund money. And so is there some Measure X sales tax money that will help pay for some of these increases?

Well, I can't answer that question, sir, because Measure X is a general tax that goes into the general fund. Also, not necessarily all salary costs are general funded because police officers have other sources of funds, depending on what they're working on, that they can charge their salaries to.

Thank you. I know in other settings with similar questions you've answered that because it's all cold mingled, yes, there is Measure X money in there. So today's slightly different response, but that's okay. There are 21 approximately members in this group. If you do the math for this year's $696,000, you divide that by 21 members in this association, they will all receive, if this item passes tonight, about $33,000 in direct compensation and benefits. If you add the various layers of increases, it's not just the 5% that I did support for POA.

They have 5% for so-called compaction across the board. They have various other percentage increases for other things. That when you add the third year of the contract, it literally totals $80,000 per member over a three-year period with raises in excess of 20%. That, given the fact that they're already the best paid as managers compared to their counterparts,

They're also in that department, we have no retention, no recruitment issues as we did with POA. We also have dire financial needs across town, particularly to address the homelessness issue. Also, these various bargaining agreements that we're doing now, they all have different start and end dates for the retro. And I think that's unfair to the other groups that have shorter retro pay periods. And so for those reasons, I can't support that today. If it was really something that was a 5% increase, I'd support that. But there's a lot of folks in San Diego, they don't make $80,000 in three years.

This actually would give them $80,000 per member over that same three-year period. And I don't think it's the right thing to do.

Okay. So we have a motion and a second. I defer you to vote. Those in favor, press green.

Do it again.

All right. What's the next item, Madam Clerk?

For clarification. Okay. Thank you.

Item 65A.

All right.

The item 2 and 3 carries, but item 1 would fail.

But 2 and 3 will pass. So there's no money for it.

There's money for it in the budget, but it's not being transferred to the right accounts, which it can be done so throughout the fiscal year.

All right, so we're on 65A.

Authorized staff to prepare documents for proposed water and sewer rate adjustments. Did it cost not to exceed $75,000? I would entertain a motion.

Motion approved.

Second. Those in favor, press green.

Next item, Madam Clerk.

75A.

Okay, we have Loretta Showery wanting to address us. Please come on down.

Good evening. Thank you for having this meeting for a voice to be heard.

Certainly.

Okay, well, my concern is I've been living in this area for more than 30 years. Okay, I've never seen it so congested. As you all know, you said all the neighborhoods are congested. I don't know if this area has been addressed. The congestion has started when Cafe No. The cafe that was built right on the corner of Fifth and Euclid, there's 15 parking stalls. And during the week, there's probably 25-plus customers. On the weekend, there's 35-plus customers out of 15 parking stalls.

The overflow goes into the parking lot where the 402 medical building is going to get built. I addressed it at the board meeting with the Building and Planning Commission, how many parking stalls are going to be in the medical building. There is going to be 19 parking stalls. Out of the 19 parking stalls, how many staff members? What is the capacity of patients for the medical building?

What is the solution? If it's overflow of parking, what are you going to do with the residential? When I have family parties, like for Christmas, gatherings, Thanksgiving, there's no parking.

Is there a solution for that?

I don't know. That's why I'm here to voice my opinion on this.

Thank you.

Okay.

Any other speakers? No other comments. Seeing no one, I will close the, I was asking the audience. Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and bring it to Council for consideration. I would entertain a motion. Mr. Mayor, I have some comments. Go ahead, please.

David PenalozaItem —

with Madam City Manager. I had some comments with the single-family homes that back up against this property.

David PenalozaItem —

What kind of a setback are we approving here between the single-family homes and the property?

If you'd like, we have a presentation that happens to have a slide that will visually depict that for you. So we can put that up.

Good evening, council, mayor and council. So the question, I believe, is the setback between the building and the residential homes. So between the building and the property line, it's approximately 70-plus feet. You have 5 feet of landscape, 18 feet of parking, and 23 feet of aisle. And then between that and the building, you have about 5 to 10 feet.

David PenalozaItem —

What was the total? 75 you said?

If I add that up, it comes to about 60 plus, 70 feet.

David PenalozaItem —

And the building, it's three stories or two? It's a single story building. Single story building. Okay. The concerns that I have, and I know that all last week I was on the phone with you and the city manager, and even the police department over the modern-day parking structure lights that are glaring into the neighborhood. We've addressed that issue, but I don't want that to happen here. I think it's something that we've got to look into in regards to any zoning or, I mean, I'm sorry,

David PenalozaItem —

plan checks that PD puts in place or whether that's planning to deter crime and whatnot to force these new developments to install very, very high voltage LED or very bright lighting on their buildings because it is a nuisance and it does cause a lot of light pollution to people that live around these properties. And I don't want to see that here. I know there's a parking lot and they're going to say it needs to be lit for security reasons and whatnot. but you know they've been sitting up against a vacant dirt lot that's pitch

David PenalozaItem —

black for years so what kind of lighting will you have surrounding this property?

Thank you for the question so our code does require a minimum standard for parking lot which is one foot candle of course that one foot candle is viewed differently when you have different type of lighting LED are extremely bright as you understand what we do have are mitigation measures that we can look at and those have a mitigation measure include using deflector to help guide the lights away from residential now that does work when the light is of a certain height other aspects of that mitigation we can look at is to placement of lighting so in this case we can look at a lower placement of

lighting as to not spill into the residential those type of notes will include as part of our plan check process to ensure that we're sensitive to the neighborhood.

David PenalozaItem —

The deflectors from what I've seen don't really do much of it have much of an impact on the lighting as I've personally witnessed with the with the parking structure lighting so you know there's I know there there's always talks about adding green screening and and and trees and that's the same thing that was done in my neighborhood but the thing is that they come in and plant these itty-bitty trees that are gonna not cause you know grow in another 15 years so I want to make sure that that some green landscape is included to block any lighting or or or activity from that front building to the single

family homes there is a planter between the parking lot and the home so there will be planting along that landscape planner to address some of the concerns as you discuss.

David PenalozaItem —

I just hope that you guys work with the designing of these lights to make sure that they're facing away from the single family residential areas and are pretty blocked from coming into the, because I know it's going to, I don't want a year and a half from now to be like, oh, there's this extreme bright light blurring in through my window all night long, I can't sleep, you know, help us. And I just see that happening. So if you could please make sure that's Addressman and Madam City Manager, I'd appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you.

I have a question. Go ahead, Councilor Iglesias.

So looking at what you have brought up on your screen, Councilmember Pinaleza, so is that something that you could also, you know how we are requiring F2525 for them to have big trees or something like that so it won't affect, I guess, the residents that are neighboring that project? Is that something that you can require of the developers, I guess the owners of this project, for them to put up trees so they won't be able to, I guess, for privacy purposes? Is that something?

There will be trees located along what would be the west property line, which is against the residential homes.

How high are the trees?

The initial size of installation is a 24-inch box, would be great to about 8, 9 feet. Some, depending on the larger size, they can reach about 11 feet as well in terms of initial installation. But generally, anywhere between 8 to 10 feet would be a good size for initial installation.

And then so we have enough parking for the purposes of what it is that they're going to be using it for?

Yes.

There's enough parking there.

The square footage of the building dictates that they have 19 parking spaces and 19 have been designed into the project.

Is this, and I don't know if this is a different conversation, Madam City Attorney, but is this a project that you could also have some type of agreement with the neighborhood or neighborhood association for them to have added parking for their residents that are,

close to that area? This is something that the neighborhood can discuss with the property owner as part of this approval process. We're considering the the land use aspect of it and not necessarily the private use of the property. So that's something that we said that the owner once they you know develop the project can work the neighborhood to provide for some private solution.

But is that something that we can request of them not can? I mean is that something that we we should facilitate. That's something we can help facilitate, but we

really are not in the purview of dictating their private land use enjoyment, but yes, certainly we can help facilitate

the conversation. I would like that if we could have that as part of the process so it can help also the neighborhood and the neighbors feel comfortable with this project and build that relationship with that owner. I think it would be a good place to start. Thank you. Okay.

Any additional comments?

If not, I would entertain a motion.

I'll move it. I'll be happy to second it. Any additional comment?

Personally, I think it's a good project. The building looks nice. I think it's 3,700 square feet. It's not an excessive building or anything. I think it will serve the community well.

Yeah, I think the only thing I was going to mention is to the member of the public that spoke, you know, what's interesting is that this zoning amendment kind of goes contrary to what we've been doing recently, which is amending zones to remove professional office, commercial, and light industrial in place of residentials. So we've seen that those impacts from multifamily developments have been impacting single-family neighborhoods, right? So this one, I think, is hopefully a much less intense use. And to the extent that it's designed well, I saw that the building is on the corner,

and so there is no setback on any of the right-of-ways, and the parking wraps and creates a buffer between the neighborhood and you. I'm hoping that's going to give you some relief and some comfort. But, yeah, we've just seen just the contrary, you know, because really the highest and best use for a lot of our lands in open space has been residential. So I think hopefully this will be something that should have happened. Hopefully it's a trend. And it creates jobs. Jobs and taxes.

Can I say something?

Very briefly.

My concern was the Cafe Noe right next door to it. They have 15 spaces and they have like 35 plus customers.

So it's another building. Right. Got it.

But they were going into the over 12, the 402.

So look, we may have to come back and bring the other one, but right now what we have before us is this project. But thank you for coming down. Thank you. Okay, those in favor, please press green. Okay, next item is going to be 75B. This time and place for a public hearing, approved zoning ordinance amendment 2019-04, sections 24, 41, 45, 41 through 198. It's basically we're taking the same municipal code here prohibiting cyber cafes as a permitted use in the city. Do we have any speakers?

Seeing no speakers, I'll nonetheless open up the public hearing. If anybody wants to address this, you're welcome to come down. If not, I will close the public hearing and bring it to Council for consideration. Councilman Jose Solario.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate the staff bringing this forward. We've had numerous very problematic cyber cafes throughout the city, and sometimes they're called cyber cafes, sometimes they're called other things. But we do find them, and working together, code enforcement and PD does, and the city attorney's office does an amazing job closing this. They're often very involved because we have to track down the property owners and close off utilities and a bunch of other things, but they do it and do it well.

but we know that the problem continues and doing something along this line, which would prohibit cyber cafes, I think is a good thing. And I entrust that staff for things like libraries or computer centers, like the FedEx Kinkos, they obviously still have computers and some may want to say that's an internet cafe, but there's good detail in here and we will try to differentiate them as well. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay, with that, Councilor, I'd like to move the item with comment.

David PenalozaItem —

In regards to the cyber cafes, I just wanted to make sure that are we basically just blocking and prohibiting any cyber cafes from opening up in our city again? with the definition that we included here and not to include delivery services and whatnot?

Correct. So in the past, you did a moratorium on them, and you studied them quite lengthily. And what you're doing now is you're actually prohibiting them within your municipal code. So permanent moratorium, in other words.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay. That's good, which I'm happy to see. And like Councilmember Solorio said, I'm sure staff, along with Alvaro and PD and code enforcement, will be on top of any of them popping up illegally throughout our city.

David PenalozaItem —

I know of one in particular next to Bristol Sound on Warner and Center. I'm sorry, Bristol and Central. Central. Yeah, Central and Bristol. A friend of mine called me while he was in the parking lot of the Coffee Bean, and he said, hey, where was that cyber cafe, illegal gambling cyber cafe that you talked about? I was like, oh yeah, it's right there next to the Bristol Sound. I was like, I guess it's like nobody knows about it, but it's there. And then he said, well, there's three lucky sevens on the front window. How is it secretive? You know, that is like literally slapping us in the face.

David PenalozaItem —

You know, and that's what I've noticed with these places. They're not very secret, and they're not very, and I'm not sure what kind. And I know Alvaro has a plateful with PD and going after these different cyber cafes and illegal cannabis shops and whatnot, but I don't know why that one's still operating.

I could probably clarify that for you, Council Member. You do have businesses that were permitted before your moratorium and before this prohibition, so they're grandfathered in. They cannot expand. If they close down for greater than a year, they cannot reopen. and obviously if they are determined to be engaged in illegal activities action would be taken. But if they solely operate as a legal cyber cafe under your old ordinance, they can't exist.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay, because I also know that two council candidates live up against that cyber cafe, their neighbors, which is weird. But they've both brought it to my attention of the activity that goes on until 4 in the morning every night. just the yelling, the fighting, the shouting, the drug use, the smells.

And that, I'm sure, is not permitted.

David PenalozaItem —

It might be violating. And it happens nightly. And that whole business center where the medical offices are and the coffee bean, that's a dark. Alvaro, that's code enforcement. So I'm happy for this. Let's close them all down and I'll move the item. Okay.

We have a motion, but quick comment.

And I'll second.

You'll second and a quick comment.

Okay, so my comment's going to be, and I believe I spoke to you, Madam City Attorney, not only is it affecting the neighbors, but it's also affecting the coffee bean. I think that's the coffee bean that's in front of it. The one that's facing the hospital. I received calls from the owner of the Coffee Bean and also the manager that they have lost business in that area because their employees don't feel safe closing later on at night. So they're closing even early because they don't want their employees to be exposed to these unsafe conditions.

So I'm glad that we're looking into it, but if you could follow up with that owner, I would really appreciate it from the coffee bean because they've been adamant that their business is being affected because of that. So I know Alvaro is here, but I don't know if you can tell us how soon you're going to be looking into going.

Tonight at 4 a.m.

Yeah. Is that something that you could tell us now, or is that something that is?

How about come on up? We don't get to see you very often.

Yeah, and I'm glad that you're here, Alberto.

You're wearing a nice suit and everything.

David PenalozaItem —

Let's advertise our crackdown plan.

Right. Tell everybody how you're going to crackdown. Tell them what time we're going to be there. Your secret plan.

Well, if you can look at the list, we actually closed, what, 6 out of 11. So where we can use some of the other SEMC sections that we adopted so that if folks operate outside of the approved use, then we can void the certificate of occupancy and we can go ahead and revoke their approval, which is what we're doing in some of them. Where we can disconnect utilities, we can do that. In this case, it's not easy because they have a shared meter. and then we're also working with the police department and another more

bigger type of investigation. I don't mean to put you on the spot and tell you like what the plan is but I want you to just kind of explain the process what happens when you do this because sometimes you know we see this for months and it doesn't seem like nothing's being

done. Okay well I'll say it like this. So we're tracking probably 42 between 35 and 42 actual properties and so to the extent that we make the inspections and we notify the property owner and we provide notices. So and so then sometimes it's a you know cat and mouse game where some folks do remove the part of that attraction that's the illegal gaming. We work very closely with the police department so we can make the most impact that's what we try to focus. In this case we're only talking about cyber cafes so we are aware the ones on the two on South Bristol and we are working very close to

the police department. Some of the proper owners have taken through the courts to the unlock for detainer process, which takes time. And so for us, that withheld sometimes our enforcement efforts. Because again, there's a legal process. You actually have folks with legal tenancy rights. And so we're combining that with our enforcement efforts and with the police department. So we do have a strategy where we think we can be successful.

And you've been very instrumental in making a lot of changes and a lot of things. So thank you.

How about it? Can you put the other mic down, the one on this side? I keep asking the clerk, and it keeps going up. There you go. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, before we take the item up, I just wanted to prop these guys up for a little bit, because you guys did a really, really huge service to a neighborhood association that I represent, which is Grand Sunrise, and they had a cyber cafe right on Grand Avenue, just north of the 5 Freeway on the west side. So to the chief, to everybody else that was involved, we had a big neighborhood meeting. They all came down here and we spoke. And it was a matter of weeks that you all resolved the problem with the city attorney's staff, with code enforcement, with PD, everybody else involved.

So that was a very, very efficient and effective way because that wasn't just gaming. That had a lot of peripheral nuisance impacts. Which was happening in the other companies. That was right up against single-family homes that were being impacted. People were going over the fence and hanging out in the backyards of people who lived there. So you guys were very effective there. And to the extent that becomes a template or a model for use, kudos.

This is one of our priorities. We are focused on it.

Yes, stay up there. I'll bring the mic up so you can talk some more. There you go. Go ahead.

David PenalozaItem —

Before I forget, I know that I've had conversations with you and might have been the chief a couple months ago about storage of these Cyber Cafe electronics that they're using. I want to make sure that that doesn't run out of space to store these things or doesn't keep us from enforcing and cracking down. I want to make sure that we work together. If we need to find some money to find some storage units or warehouse somewhere to store all these, has that been a problem with storage? Not anymore.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

We've resolved the issue.

David PenalozaItem —

You did?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

We did.

David PenalozaItem —

What was done? Was it an additional...

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

We've resolved the issue.

It's a secret plan, but it's been done. All right. If you want more information...

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Just so that you know, these machines are evidence of crimes, and so we've resolved.

Issue's been resolved. Thank you. Thank you. Councilorio. Stay up there, Alvaro. You don't know what's coming.

Thank you so much, Code of Fortunate Manager Nunez. We're getting into specifics. I know for my part of town where we were closely watching, you all helped close down one by Floral Park and West Floral Park on West 17th Street, one on East 17th Street next to the Norms that many of us go to on a frequent occasion, and at least one on North Grand Avenue. And I know that many of our constituents and myself and the council and staff are very happy with that. And oftentimes they weren't quick and overnight, but you follow the process. You dealt with numerous departments here and the courts.

So that was awesome. For as small as your group is, the amount of work and the type of work is amazing. I'm pleased that our council and staff were able to find resources to grow the Code of Forcemen department by I believe four officers this year so that's awesome and I can only imagine what more we can do with additional personnel.

Thank you so much. Well how about a sincere saying good things about you how can I just sit here and watch? No you do do a great job you know that you You don't have enough staff. We all know that. You balance things out. We try. Very tricky job. Try and explain things to folks. Get those that want to comply to comply. And those that are just not going to, you know, getting tough with them. But you do a very important balancing act in this community. And sometimes we don't have a lot of problems because of all the things you already solved. You try. Yeah, you try. It's kind of like what Kaminsky says all the time.

You know, he's out there solving problems all the time before they get big, right? And that way the chief doesn't even hear about it because you already handled it. He's the deputy chief. And then, Sonia, the way you said it's been resolved, what did you say exactly?

Because we could send you to Washington. Just keep that line. Just keep saying that same line. Thank you, Otto. Take care. So with that, I think we have a motion and a second. Those in favor, please press green.

All right. What's next, Madam? City Clerk.

85A.

Don't we have to do the Housing Authority?

Yes. I'm sorry. Yes. All right.

I'll call the Housing Authority meeting to order. And we have no excused absences. we have to approve the special minutes. I would entertain a motion on item number one.

Second.

Those in favor, please press green. Next item is going to be, we don't have any housing authority member comment, so we'll dispense with that. And I'll reconvene the council agenda, and we'll go to item 85A, and Council Member Iglesias, please.

We have Bomarco Vicente, I believe maybe Vicente Bomarco, and then we have Eric Garcia, I believe it is, and then Jackie Cordova.

Please go ahead. Hi, my name is Bulmado Bulmaro Vicente, and I'm currently a fellow with Chispa. I was born and raised here in Santa Ana, Santa Ana, California, and I was very fortunate to attend UC Berkeley on scholarship. It was that time at Cal I was appointed to serve on the City Police Review Commission for the City of Berkeley, one of the first police oversights in the country. I served for two terms as a Police Review Commissioner for the City of Berkeley. I was able to work on policies relating to use of force, body cameras, deployment, etc.

I sat on police case hearings and made recommendations to hold officers accountable for policemen's conduct. This commission allowed the community to gain a sense of how their police is serving them. It helped reduce tensions and allowed officers to be honest with their intentions in patrolling. Lastly, it served as a platform to address the distrust between police and residents. My time on this commission provided me such an invaluable experience and allowed me to see the power of civilian oversight. Coming back to Santana, I am seeing the lack of accountability of our police.

Santana Police remains one of the leading agencies in Orange County for total number of fatal incidents and police shootings per residence. Police oversight commissions help address and ensure accountability and transparency is vital among police departments, values our police department does not have. It is imperative that the city council take action. And I hope you all make the right choice in ensuring public safety and accountability is present in our city. Thank you. Go Bears.

Your next speaker, please.

And then go ahead.

I do have – so two years ago, these conversations were prompted by the council and mayor. And at the time – my name is Eric. I'm with the ACU of Southern California. And at the time, we submitted a letter of support sort of outlining some of the basic principles that we believe to be essential to have an effective and meaningful oversight body. And so I did bring hard copies. I also emailed them so you'll have access to that in case folks – I know the council might have changed.

And so I think just the, I think it's important to sort of understand that police officers, whether or not they exercise that power, I think it's important to understand that police officers are the most powerful public employees, right? society has bestowed upon them the right to take life, right? Whether or not they exercise that, I think these sorts of incidents and incidents when that happens need to be looked at and taken very seriously. And to that end, I think the need for our oversight is particularly, at least in the state of California, profound because of the secrecy that's built into California state law, right?

Fortunately, that sort of, we made a step forward with AB 392, the right to and so that sort of is changing and the state of California is moving toward this, right, but I think this is an opportunity, a unique opportunity, right, because I know Anaheim is lauding itself as sort of being the first of its kind in Orange County, right, but as somebody who regularly attends those meetings, right, there is still very many flaws and issues that are outlined in the letter that I've shared with you that Anaheim did not adopt, right, primarily the power, and give the board the power to call and investigate officers and critical incidents.

And so I think that then we believe and we continue to believe that an effective and meaningful oversight board needs to have the authority to independently investigate critical incidents, policies, and practices. And then just moreover, the board must inform the public on their findings. I think something that Anaheim in that regard is lacking is that those meetings are sort of riddled with presentations as opposed to reporting back on findings of critical incidents, which is ultimately what we aim to achieve with civilian oversight and transparency. And so I think any oversight board should include a mechanism

by which the recommendations are seriously considered in ways. Oftentimes what we're seeing is that a board can do all its due diligence, make recommendations, and ultimately the chief can say no. And so I think the board needs a mechanism. What that looks like I think is up for account. It could go so far as to say the board has a way in on whether or not the police chief is fit to help move progressively on oversight. That is up to you all and how you all want to hold that person accountable. But to the extent that there needs to be a mechanism by which the recommendations are seriously considered,

as opposed to – and Anaheim is going to be releasing their report, and so we'll get a chance to see what recommendations have been made and what sort of – But to my understanding to date, there has not been a single recommendation that has made it to the desk of the chief, right? And so just thinking ahead of these things.

Thank you. Jackie Cordova, followed by Perla. And then after that is Laura Perez.

Good evening. I am Jackie Cordova. This message is mostly for Solorio and Pulido, who have left the stage here. I am a mother of Santa Ana. I am here on behalf of the truth disclosure. In God we trust. I invoke Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. We pray for the church of the world. I would like to dedicate this meeting in honor of victims of terror and gun violence. I would like to acknowledge the victims of the terrorist attack Las Vegas shooting two years ago on this date, October 1st, 2017.

I would like to apologize on behalf of Santa Ana for our part in these terror events and the blood on our hands for these orchestrated attacks and using them for political gain.

That was for the chief of police. I call for unity and the community-driven solutions presenting themselves to you with accountability, communication, and oversight. I call for an end to the corruption that we may move forward with a pure, clean heart. The people have spoken. We say no to David Benavidez and career politicians. We say no to Jose Solorio and stolen seats. We say no to Miguel Pulido. We say no to Lou Correa and false flags. May the Lord rebuke you. Thank you.

Thank you. Perla Dominicio, followed by Laura Perez.

Good evening. It's Dionisio. Thank you. Good evening. Mrs. Iglesias, I want to give you props. I know that you and I had a run-in at SAUC, but I always told you I stand up for the right reasons. And tonight I am here to thank you for your initiative and to approaching this matter. Because it is not right for the SAPD to continue its dirty work in placing all you bandidos on those seats.

It is not right that people are scared to call the police, whether because they're immigrants or because their living conditions are deplorable thanks to the decisions that are made in this chamber. You talk about homelessness and you talk about permits. The homelessness problem has increased in the last 10 years, thanks to the development that you have had access to blocking and protecting our residents. Yet you profit off of it. And it goes beyond 10 years.

It's 25. and you expect our city to continue being quiet and leave you on that seat and you are going to fight the whole way even after your 25 years are over, it's ridiculous. You need to do the right thing and just allow the community to come forward freely and not be scared of talking to the police. So again, I praise you, Ms. Iglesias. and like I said, I know we've had a run-ins, but I've always said that respect should be said when respect is due

and you taking on this says a lot about your character. And I appreciate all the support and all of the santaneros that have worked very hard here in the city, gone out to universities and now are back. I have been absent from city council because I began teaching. I am now a special education teacher here in Santa Ana, something that I am very proud of. Because now I can start teaching our little ones about resistance and about the 500 years of history that we have.

And strengthen our ancestors to come up here and stand up and tell you that you need to go.

Thank you, Laura Perez.

Hi, good evening, everyone. I didn't plan to be here tonight, but I was kind of dragged out of home tonight. I also wanted to thank Councilwoman Cecilia Iglesias. You've done an amazing job with the prostitution issue that we're currently experiencing. I'm a little saddened that Solorio's not here. You know, he's running for mayor, and this is taking place in his ward, which is really disheartening because he's taken no initiative to clean up, literally clean up the streets where my retired parents are cleaning, are picking up these condoms.

Instead of him cleaning the park a month ago, he should have walked three blocks over and literally cleaned the streets.

I was really excited to see that there's a recommendation for a possible oversight committee.

I've had really bad experiences. And I'm also disheartened that the city manager's not here because this recommendation was for her to consider. bitter. I wanted to report that the signs that she put up three months ago have not been effective. We've had three shootings since then. We've had a police officer allow himself to be groped by a hooker. I've reported the video to one of the investigators, Barragan. I have not heard from

him yet. We have fire engines going by and waving at these girls and I haven't heard back from the chief of the fire department. Mr. Villegas is part of an email where I said, you know, I'm ready to sit down with everyone in this committee. We haven't heard anything. So, you know, I'm here to sign up for this committee. Whatever it takes, I'm willing to step up and figure out how we hold your department accountable because you guys have done a really poor job. From your officers allowing

themselves to be touched by hookers and we have it on video. Police response taking up to five hours to show up and clear the streets from these guys that are coming into our streets every single night. It's really busy right now. The girls are coming out at 7 30 at night now since it's getting darker. Griminski, I mean, I don't know, you're about to retire, so you're just here waiting time out. All I heard from you when I gave you guys all of these suggestions, putting on the barricades, all I heard from you was, we'll see what we'll do. We'll see what can be done. And that's all.

So, you know, sign me up for this committee, whatever it takes. I'm willing to come to the table. I've sent out emails. I have a few more to send out to Mr. Pina Losa, who's also taken a great initiative.

If it takes going on council next year, then I'm willing to take out Mr. Villegas.

All right. Thank you. Your light is red. So with that, those were the last speakers. I'll bring it back to Councilman Regulacios.

Thank you, everyone that spoke on behalf of the need to have this in our city. One of the things that I started researching when I became a council member was the trust that our community has in our police department. I understand that we have many officers who are great at what they do, no issues, but then we have those that may not have the same compliments from our residents, them being effective and really looking out for the best interest of our community.

So, you know, doing my research, I'm like, okay, I know that this has been done in other cities, and when I spoke to the city manager, I know we looked at different areas where this has been implemented, And one is really close to us where we're at, and this is the city from where you came from, Ms. City Manager, which is Anaheim. And, you know, so in Southern California, there has been civilian oversight of the police department. And Anaheim being the closest one, we've also had them in Riverside, Long Beach, and L.A.

And then also nationally, there's different civilian oversights at the national level that they even have a national association, of civilian oversights that they meet on a yearly basis to see what's going on throughout the nation. And I know Anaheim just went to the one, it just happened recently in September, I think it was September 23rd, that they were in, I believe it was in Michigan. That's where they had the conference. And it just kind of brings accountability to what our police department is.

And yes, our police department, it is the most powerful department in our city, I would say, because we as residents and voters of this city have given them that authority, and which is something that I am for law enforcement, I am for fair law enforcement, that treats our community well, and I believe most of our department, our officers, have done that. But just, you know, to have this collaboration between our police department and also our community members, it's good to have an oversight committee. You know, oversight is good for anything that we have.

We do have an oversight committee for Measure X. So having a civilian oversight for this would be awesome. Also, you know, I wouldn't want to see it where, you know, that we're trying to oversee everything that the police department is doing, you know, like with their, I would say with their, when you go into personnel issues, into their discipline, I mean, I think that's something that should be brought back to us as council members and things that we should be deciding on. But to the point that we need one that is going to, you know, be the voice of our community, that our community members can be voicing our concerns to them.

I mean, I believe this is how these oversight committees or boards are put into place, for the committee to reach out to them. So it would be kind of like a planning commission, kind of, sort of. They go to them first, and then they come to us after. So I'll forward this to you all, which is the City of Anaheim, the Police Review Board. It's like, what is it? Is police oversight made up of Anaheim residents, which would be Santa Ana residents, that advise and make policy recommendations to the city manager who in turn brings it back to the city council.

So they receive real-time input on major policy incidents, access to officer-involved shooting scenes, private briefings on major incidents, community concerns, and complaints. The Santa Police Department responses to police recommendations. They'll review current and proposed police policies. and that they will also report statistics on officer involved shooting uses of force complaints and recommendations via an annual report and I know Anaheim just got theirs and then the chief is able to respond back to the committee's recommendation on what they can and cannot and then it's up to the

council to to say if they agree if they don't agree with that recommendation so I would ask my my colleagues to please support me in this because this is something that I know is our community has been asking for even before I was on the City Council something when I when I when I you know as a longtime resident Sinan is something that we've been seeing and it's something that I know that would benefit our community so I would ask with this if we could rec we could direct the city manager to start looking into research into the the oversight committee or the oversight board consider establishing one for the city of

Santa Ana. Thank you. All right with that let's hear a comment from others. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you Mr. Mayor. So we've been down this road before here at this council and you know I I understand that the city of Anaheim has a oversight board or committee but the city of Anaheim is not the city of Santa Ana. They have very different problems, you know, issues, I should say. Every city has issues, including Irvine, and you don't really hear about it, but they have different types of crime down there that are, you know, problematic. And the city of Anaheim,

they have had some really problematic issues with the shootings. They've had some riots. They were They're all within the same time frame, and it was tough. Santa Ana's a little different, and, you know, we do have the DA's office that oversees this. We have internal affairs. We have the FBI. We have the grand jury from the state and the federal government. We have the personnel board here at the city, and we also have, which I think, well, the courts also, here at the state courts, And then we also have this council. This council.

We shouldn't have to go to the citizens to demand accountability when we already have that authority. And we should step that up. I understand that. We have been trying. It's tough. The response times are low. I've said that. The response times are tough because we don't have the personnel for it. This city is very active. And I hate to say it, and I've been one of those guys that when I call and four hours later, still nothing, and I call repeatedly, I shouldn't have to say, let me just state this for the record, I never say I'm a council member, mayor pro tem, or what have you.

I never say that. You know why? I shouldn't have to. Because I'm only here for a short time. I'm here for a while because we're here to serve in this position, and then we move on. This isn't a whole career. There's term limits here for everyone. So, you know, if I can make it better, great. I love our police department. It's been very tough to vote no on the race. They do a lot of work. I wish we could afford it. You know that argument. But moving on to this, it's this council here that has the power. We have a city attorney to subpoena these folks, and we have a good police chief.

In my opinion, to make things better, we need to have more training, and we have leadership. Chief Valentin has been here now for a little over a year now. So things are shaping up. I know that we had a different police chief and there was some differences in leadership. And we need more officers, and we're trying very hard for recruitment to get them. Well, that's true. Just got to be able to afford it. You know where I'm going with that. So anyway, it's this council here, ultimately, that we have the authority.

You know what I will say I'm in favor of? A chief advisory committee. If you get people from the community that want to advise the chief on issues, great. But how do we qualify someone to be on a committee here or that in Anaheim you have someone that goes and responds to a scene? I mean, are they an expert? Sometimes they don't know the whole story. And when it comes down to investigations, you've got to be very careful. You don't want to mess those things up, and people have rights, including the officers, by the way. But this department has been doing the best they can with what they have.

We've been trying to improve it for a long time. It takes money. It takes effort. All the agencies across the state and across the nation, actually, are having difficulties recruiting people, but especially here in this state because, you know, people smoke a lot of marijuana. So you don't qualify, and I'm sorry to bring that up. But anyway, getting off track here. But we've been down this before. There's a whole bunch of oversight already. And just adding another layer, I don't advise that. But an advisory board for the chief, yeah. You know, there was a study done by UPI not too long ago,

and they were saying that we were having problems. And that assessment was inaccurate. It wasn't thorough. Our police department, even the media knew that it wasn't accurate. it. It didn't get out there. Because our police department is a good, thank you very much. Our police department is doing the best they can, and I support them, but I believe that this isn't the most effective way to go about an oversight. An advisory committee would be great.

Thank you. Additional comment?

Councilor Solorio?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As has been discussed, we've heard this issue before and so some overlap with some comments a year or two ago. I do believe, you know, similar to what Councilmember Villegas said, that really this Council here is the Oversight Board and it is an important enough function that we should be providing oversight ourselves, and we do. but I also do think that we need to do more outreach with the community to discuss these issues because that's something that we're not doing so for example I don't think there's a good understanding in the community on how we

budget for the police department in comparison to the general fund and oftentimes I'll hear you know why do you guys spend about 50% of your budget on on policing and that's just because everything every city is different you know we're not like Anaheim they have Disneyland they have their own utility And so, percentage-wise, it looks like they spend less, but per capita, they spend very similar amounts. Also, staffing ratios related to that. You know, I've looked at national ratios and actually I've been working on a document that hopefully in the next two, three weeks I'll put out.

But we really have about half the number of officers that we should have when compared to like-size cities across the country. Also, data is something that's very important in how we compile it and how we put it out. We're slowly moving towards more open data, and we keep pushing our IT personnel and others to go there. But there are always little issues. I mean, we found out, for example, about a year ago, Mr. Krishmit, who's there in the lobby probably listening, you know, he flagged me that unlike other cities, on our crime mapping tool, for whatever reason, we weren't reporting sex crimes.

And that's wrong, especially if we know that there are issues of domestic violence, prostitution, et cetera, et cetera. And it took several months, but with the support of Chief Valentin, that did get corrected, and we do now report that. But, for example, I don't know if there's other things that aren't being reported. And, you know, I in the community ought to know that. Also, I know from recent inquiries that, you know, due to some recent tech changes in the police department data and how we share that with other agencies. There's some issues there that we need to rectify.

And then finally on response times, that's something very concerning to all of us. And you probably know about six months ago I asked our department for the past five years on police response time. On priority one calls, 911, it used to be about six minutes and a half. Now it's a little over eight minutes on average. That's an extra minute and a half, and a lot of bad stuff can happen in a minute and a half. But I'm equally interested, and I'm going to ask for response time for the other tiers of 911 calls. Because more and more, as I'm out in the community, the biggest frustration isn't that they don't like our officers. They do.

It's not that they don't like our black and white. They do. It's that we're not responding. And a big part of that is staffing. We've been working on that. The POA contract that we did do is helping with recruitments of new recruits, laterals, and we're retaining folks longer, so that's a good thing. But those kinds of things, we need to have an ongoing dialogue with the community on, and I think this council should be doing it with the staff and our PD in conjunction with the community. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Council Member Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem. I just wanted to point out, Chief Valentin, that I know that you guys have been doing a lot of investments in your training and de-escalation tactics, simulators in the PD, which I know you've only been the chief for a little over a year, but you have a lot of work to, I think a lot of, there's decades of repair to do in regards to the PD. in the city. And I know that just, I could speak probably for my colleague, Councilwoman Iglesias, I can't speak for the others,

David PenalozaItem —

but I know that us too, we've been very tough on whether it's the homeless issue or just police accountability behind the scenes. And I mean, just through a public records request act to see any emails or whatnot or conversations of what's going on and updates and statuses and why things aren't happening. one of the young ladies that spoke, I had that same request in just a conversation with the chief and the city manager just last week. And I know that the city council is an oversight committee.

David PenalozaItem —

If this was a year ago when Tony Rakakis was in office, I'd probably say, yeah, let's do it. But I have a lot of faith in the new district attorney as well, top spitzer who is taking no bs from anybody whether it's a politician or whether it's a police officer we should have accountability so i have faith in that and i want to see uh what that's going to look like in the next couple of months what that's going to look like in the next year so uh and those are all the the comments i want to say is that that um i do agree with Mayor Pro Tembiegas and the current state of our city's various oversight committee boards.

Let me allow others to speak first that haven't had a chance. Do you want to say anything, Councilor Mento?

Sure. So, yeah, we have been down this road before, and I remember being part of this discussion, if I'm not mistaken. I think it was a former Councilwoman, Michelle Martinez, who proposed this on an 85A back in April of 2017. And we supported her and gave direction to the then city manager to come back and bring back some findings. And I believe the city attorney also worked with one of her deputy city attorneys, I think Ms. Bogosian, to work with a consultant to talk about what this would mean because you know I think then we had a concern

with what the funding level was and what the accountability was because if you think about public safety it doesn't just incorporate the police but incorporates also fire which we outsource to OCFA but if you combine those two expenditures that's three-fourths of what the entire general fund goes to. So we have general fund monies dedicated to commissions for parks and rec, arts and culture, planning, historical resource, and for the largest expenditure, we have no commission where any members of the public sit. That's what drove my

sort of decision to see about creating a commission. Also, the risk liability issue, how much we were expending on excessive force cases, wrongful death cases. Obviously, there's so many things that we could look at when it comes to an oversight relationship and something that we would start. It could be a commission. There are models that have an auditor designated that would oversee what the conduct is of the department.

You have some boards that have investigatory powers. They have subpoena powers, and they're very, very strong. And there's others that are very passive. They have advisory roles. So there's a litany of things that we could consider. But one of the things that we have to consider the most is that there are due process rights for both officers, members of the public, and we have to respect those as we go through it. I think that I don't know where this is coming from. I guess that's why it bothers me because the context is a little difficult for me to understand. The dynamics back in 2017 were clear.

We wanted to have some accountability. We felt that monies were expended at a very high level. We had some concerns from the community. We had some concerns from residents on relationships. So that's what drove it. Now, I don't know what's driving it. It is very confusing. I don't see the authenticity there. and I quite frankly am not really clear on that. So that's what I think is making me consider this. And to the extent that we can get more information, I think one of the findings that we had from the reports that was prepared by the consultant

was that we incorporate the department and law enforcement into developing what kind of oversight, what kind of board, what kind of review there would be. And that's something I think that's missing, even though the chief I know has done a good job in providing us metrics with things that I know he and I have spoken with offline. You know, how the incident reports have been, you know, gathered, the data, the money that's been spent on, you know, excessive forest matters, discipline actions. So all those things I think would be within the domain of, you know, a commission like this.

But I think we have to do this hand in hand with the department. But, again, I just don't know what's driving this, and it makes me question the intent. So I do have some very strong concerns with this.

Thank you. If I may, and then I'll go to you, Councillor Iglesias. I cannot support what's being proposed. I believe public safety is a different animal from any other endeavor that we do here in the city. And I think it's our number one responsibility and priority. And so we all have to be directly involved in it. And I think commissions tend to sometimes shelter or advise. and in certain places like planning, you know, parks and recs, other areas, maybe it's appropriate.

But in this, I think it's better if we're just directly involved all the time, if you will, whatever it needs. You know, the council is that entity. We are that oversight. And we have to spend extra effort and extra time all the time making sure that the city is in good condition and safe. When I look at what we have in terms of officers, I know that we have less per thousand in other cities. But guess what? We're doing it better than other cities because we're safer than other cities.

I know some cities like Miami or Oakland, you look at their budgets and you look at their numbers, they're very inflated. They have a lot of staff and a lot of systems, but their citizens are in a condition much worse than anything we face here. So we are fortunate in many ways. We've had a long tradition of doing things well. And I think right now with the chief and a new contract and a new city manager, technology that we're incorporating and using, I think we're on the right path. And so I think we need to continue that path.

And I believe bringing a commission right now to advise us would not serve any productive purpose. So when we vote, I'm ready to vote against the recommendation if there is any vote. This isn't an action item. All right. But it's to give direction, potentially, to staff. My personal direction would be leave it alone. Okay, go ahead.

So just to answer some questions that were brought up, The intent of this is to have the community have input on what's happening with our police department. It's nothing that is ingenuine. I've seen it. I've lived here in Santa Ana since 1979. And it's issues that I see that are affecting our community. My presentation was that ultimately it would come to council, because I believe that's the way the system is set up, especially in Anaheim.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it goes from the oversight commission, and then they have an outside independent auditor, which is OIR or something like that, and they're the ones that do all the investigations and all that when it comes to personnel matters. But they're the ones that provide the oversight over what the commission, too, is doing. So it's something that goes hand in hand and ultimately goes to you as a city manager and you would be giving us recommendation as a council. So there's a lot of things that we could say that's not happening in Santa Ana.

We're just turning our eyes the other way, but there's a lot happening in Santa Ana that a lot of people may think that just because my party affiliation, I may be saying I always do things differently, but I'm doing it for the community, Mr. Sarmiento. It's for the community. People have expressed their concerns, and that's why I have brought it up. It's not to be punitive on our officers. It's to provide also a mechanism for them to feel supported because having an oversight, if nothing is going wrong, then what are we fearing? If nothing is wrong, then what are we fearing?

So we should have this oversight just to cover all our bases, have our community input, and also have our police department being protected. So that's my intent behind this, is for us to have this. And it's going to be something that will promote accountability, promote transparency, and promote public safety. So it's all that in place. So I just wanted to model something that has already been taking place in Anaheim. And it's been working for them. And we are very similar to Anaheim. And, you know, there's issues that are happening out in our community that we choose not to address.

So I'm hoping that you guys will go with my direction. But if not, then I understand your point of view is different than mine. Maybe we don't live in the same city. But I live here in Santa Ana and I've seen it happen.

So just to be clear, I'm not disputing the need for a commission or for an oversight body or some sort of role. but when it was brought back in 2017, it was driven by the community. So my recommendation would be, Council Member, sit down with the community and see what they're asking for, and have it driven by a genuine need that you see, but work with them, work with the department, and if you can bring something back that can be reconciled, then I think that there is a role. But I think that bringing this, look, I have to also consider the context in which this is brought.

I'm not ignorant to what's going on. None of us are. So, look, to me, to question a person's motives is something that is vested to me by the voters. As an equal member of this council, I have to question that. So, to the extent that you're going to be genuine in your intent, demonstrate it, and, look, win over the majority of the council, as we tried to do in 2017. We took it very far. We had funds that were dedicated, and I told somebody that we didn't, but when I look back at the legislative history, there were funds that were dedicated for a consultant to study this. We were pretty far down this path.

We didn't win the day, but we made the effort because we knew it was a necessary and needed move. So that would be my suggestion. that would be something that I think we could do. But look, to the extent that I don't know what the dynamics are, it does make me question that. So I have to speak frankly.

Thank you. May I approach that?

A question for Councilman Regalas. So exactly what is the goal of the Oversight Committee? I know you mentioned a lot of things, but what is it that we're trying to accomplish? You said accountability, correct? Yeah, well, I mean, I have a whole list of who holds them accountable. You think having a civilian oversight committee is going to change that? These people can go to jail. They can go to jail if they mess up. So I'm just trying to figure out.

Please don't interrupt.

I didn't interrupt you. Don't interrupt me. Thank you. So please, please, thank you. So I'm asking a council member here. I'm just trying to figure out exactly, you know, I believe in accountability, but I just don't see. Where's the power behind an oversight committee?

But the process with an oversight committee in selecting them, it's a rigorous process. It's not just anyone that will be able to be part of it. So there's a process of who to select.

So how do you qualify them?

There's a process. So this is why I'm asking for us to give direction to our city manager so she can go back and do the research and bring it back to us.

Correct. And once we do that, I mean, what kind of power do they have? They don't put people in jail.

They don't discipline anyone. They'll do recommendations.

What about us? Are we like chopped liver up here?

That's what I'm saying. We'll be the last ones. Please stop. We'll be the last ones to take action on the policy. But I believe we're starting to go around in circles.

This is what I was trying to get, the point I was trying to make. Thank you.

All right. So with that final comment, Councillor Solario.

Yeah, one last quick point. Another big improvement that we made since I first got back on the council is, even though there was a small pilot program, we now have citywide, every police officer that's out on patrol, out in the community, has a body-worn camera. And really, as a best practice, it is a good practice, and I'm glad that we're doing it, and it's been helpful for both sides.

All right, so with that, I'm saying from my position, no. I think I heard a caution from Mayor Potem, Councilman Sarmiento, yes from Iglesias, Jose I think no, and David Benaloza, any thought? All right. So it's basically, you know, five to one. So with that, let's go on to work study session.

No, 85B.

Oh, 85B.

Brooke and Chris Schmidt.

Hello again. So I just wanted to, I know this is an issue that I've talked to some of you about, but it's definitely an issue that is part of the countywide solution to a lot of the poverty-related problems and kind of broader problems.

And so really looking at the impact of people being brought to the jails, people being brought to specifically the jail in Santa Ana, or being released from other jails, but having their property still in Santa Ana and having to have the first thing they do be walk to Santa Ana to get their stuff back and figuring out what space there is for the city and other cities to help hold the county responsible for exit plans from the jail for figuring out, just like when a person leaves a hospital, even more so people who suffer from severe disabilities, physical and mental health conditions,

who may or may not have had a phone or funds at the time they were arrested might have family or a home or places to go but have no way to get there if there's no accountability for the county to ensure they have an exit plan so i think that's that looking into kind of what those options are is at least in part what this is about but i would definitely encourage the city to take steps to hold the county and the sheriff's department accountable for looking into what things it's doing that are increasing the pressures on this city and what responsibilities the county has

in the same way that any other entity that takes ownership of a person has to have an exit plan to make appropriate calls to whoever's going to be picking that person up to provide taxi vouchers to get them back to where they came from both for this community and for those individuals who may or may not be able to get themselves back to their homes.

Thank you.

Chris? Good evening again. I'm going to read something to you that was posted by the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs on September 29th on Facebook. Three deputies injured during major disturbance at the Orange County Neighborhood State Prison, formerly known as the Central Men's Jail. Did anybody know we have a state prison in our city? Because that's what the Orange County Association of Sheriff's Deputies is saying. I don't know if this is a joke or not, but this isn't funny to me.

I fully support this agenda item. I hope our city, you guys direct staff to meet with the county and Orange County sheriffs to create a memorandum of understanding on how they release inmates. I literally had to go out myself and figure out how they're released. Apparently sometime within this year they've updated their policy on how they release inmates from the central intake center here. People who are serving jail time in the jail are released at 2 or 3 a.m., but people who are just arraigned are let out between 9 p.m. and 12 p.m. People who are let out on bail are let out whenever. We all know we have a problem going on.

We all talk about regional solutions to homelessness, but we all know the Orange County Sheriff contracts with 13 cities in Orange County, and if they arrest somebody, they're coming to the intake release center. When they're done, they're showing the door and go, there you go, find your way back. I know this because I met a gentleman named Roger who knew how to get back to the Fullerton Transportation Center and I had to tell him which trains well which bus to take my other concern is earlier this year the county and the sheriff appropriated nine million dollars to increase in the number of

mental health beds in the central jail which I'm all for but you're basically turning the jail into mental health facility if a person was taken to a hospital another medical provider they have to have an exit plan on how to get that person back they cannot just kick them out to the street I believe LA Sheriff's Department has an exit plan under a consent decree I hope we can get a copy of that so you can be provided to you to see how LA does it I don't think it's fair for people to be arrested brought to our city and shown the door I believe they should be taken back to the origin which they were the place of

original where they were taken into custody I fully support this thank you very much David Penaloza for putting this on the agenda thank you and with

that let me bring it back to Councilor Peñalosa please. Thank you Mr. Mayor. This item 85B is to

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discuss and direct the city manager to direct staff to research and report back on the status of the central release of Orange County jail inmates and the location of state of California parolees in our community. This has been brought to my attention by dozens of residents throughout our city. I had questioned it myself, living here my whole life and just seeing the severe impact that these releases and the process and the way that they do it has had on our community and our residents in Santa Ana. I'm not here to look out for the jail inmates and their well-being. I'm here to look out for the half a million residents that call

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Santa Ana home and pay taxes. I want to see what the reports are, what the process is. I went to the Theo Lacy website. I went to the OCGL website. I went to the Music Center in Irvine website. None of them had information on how their inmates are released. I have heard from numerous people, citizens, Santa Ana police officers and a friend of mine who's an L.A. sheriff's officer who said that they're all arrested in numerous places in Orange County

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brought to OC jail, booked whatnot and their possessions are taken and then they're transferred either to Theo Lacey or if they're a juvie they start there, or numerous of the county jail locations in the county. When they're released, they're bused back to the OC jail to gather their belongings.

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Right now, I know that the music center is going through expansion, and it's going to get expanded and up to 3,600 beds, I believe it was.

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but my question is how will those inmates be released? Are they going to be released in Santa Ana? Are we going to continue seeing them released in Santa Ana because we just approved $3 million in workforce development for parolees I know those were state but that's a two part section with the state parolees in our city I know that this is problematic for residents in our city we are seeing a severe impact in our community because of these releases in our city, because of the state paroles that are brought to our city, our city shouldn't be a dumping ground for other counties' problems, and that's what we have become.

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And I know someone's going to say, oh, if we seek legal action against the sheriffs or the county, it's going to cost us money. Well, we're spending already millions of dollars to fix and clean up the mess. We need to hold the county accountable. We need to hold the sheriffs accountable. We need to see the process are doing? How are they releasing inmates? I don't mean to throw Director Mendoza under the bus, but if he said that, say, parolees, there's a law that makes them, you know, having to be released in the county they were arrested, well, we should look into that. We

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should look into see, you know, that residents that are, or inmates that are released are released in the city they were arrested, whether it's San Clemente, whether it's, I'm assuming usually South County cities because that's where the sheriffs operate. And if they're bringing inmates in and then releasing them into our community, you know, that's a problem. And not just the sheriffs. It's every police department in Orange County because a lot of them use the Orange County jail. And it's... Thank you. I think

you've articulated very well what you're saying. It's red. Why don't we let others give a little bit of input and then we'll bring it back. Okay. Thank you. Comments on what Councilmember Peñalosa is suggesting? Councilmember Solorio.

Just as a friendly suggestion, in addition to the city manager and staff reporting back on the status, maybe you can also have them look at some solutions of what we should pursue, whether it be legislation or legal action or other things, because we know what the report is, which are the things you've been mentioning, So you might want to give some thought to that. I know the legislature for folks that are released from state prison have similar language like this. And the reality is this county board supervisor on their own isn't going to make a change like this.

So unless if it's a legal action or legislative action, I just don't really see it happening other than small little tweaks around the edges. So that's the only thought. And I am looking at both the music and the other site because I know a couple years ago when I looked up the similar information, they did have the information that if somebody was released, they can be picked up there at one of those facilities or from the central jail. So maybe they have since changed it in part because I know Supervisor Doe has been looking at some aspects of this, but clearly there's more work to be done.

Additional thoughts or comments? I just want to suggest that possibly we can contact some of the other larger cities in the state, because I bet you we're not the only ones with this problem. Those that have central jails, often the counties tend to bring people from other cities to the central city, let's say, and then often when they're released, they have the same problem. I believe that potentially we could pursue state legislation. somebody like State Senator Umber could carry that and force counties to have a mechanism where they would have to attempt to release people

in the community that they were apprehended in something of that nature they would have some teeth and all this takes money who's going to pay for it who's going to force them to pay for it I think potentially a state law and I know that takes time You don't do it very quickly, but ultimately I think there might be a statewide solution that could be helpful to us. Councilor Samiento, do you want to add anything?

No, I'm simply supportive of having staff come back and report to us. I know that there wasn't a third-party nonprofit provider that helps folks who are released, and quite frankly, the legislature should have funded that ability because, I mean, I know a lot of the early release programs, which was well intended by the legislature, they never funded the back end of it, which was to allow for those communities that were going to be impacted by the early releases to have some support system available to those folks who were being released. And so they're just out on their own, and, you know, what was initially well intended

turned out to be a nightmare for those communities like ours that have men's central jails. So I certainly would welcome the fact that some research is done, some options are brought back to us, and maybe some of those third-party service providers for this population has researched and brought back to us. Thank you to the council member for bringing this.

All right. I think we have pretty good feedback. You've got it?

Yes, sir. I just want to give credit to our chief. He has already engaged in conversations with Sheriff Don Barnes, and it was a result of his conversations with the sheriff that changed the drop-up in the middle of the night, and he is continuing the dialogue with Sheriff Barnes on exactly what Councilmember Sarmiento brought up regarding nonprofits assisting them in returning to their location of origin. So it is something that started, but I wanted to make sure he got credit for that.

Thank you for that. So you'll be back to us in 30 days or so, or what? I would say two weeks.

Do you want it more than 30 days? He wants two weeks. Give me a reasonable.

In a month's time.

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Okay, 30 days. It'll be a better answer. And it's important that we document conversations like this. if we have a conversation or invite the Sheriff Don Barnes and invite our state representatives, state assembly member, State Assembly member Daley, Senator Umberg,

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Congressman, I know those are federal, but Congressman Ruta and Congressman Correa, Congressman Harley Ruta does represent most of the West Side, so we've got to make sure that everybody comes and really helps us, helps us really address this because just, I mean, changing the time, They're still getting released in our city. And it's important that we really start holding the county accountable for what the impact they're having. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. So with that, I'm going to go to the next item, which is a work-study session.

Okay, we have a speaker. Tye Phan, please.

Hi again, Councilmembers. Tye Phan, resident here in Santa Ana. I just wanted to speak regarding the seals that you'll be considering tonight. I haven't had a chance to look at them yet, but I understand that we are deciding between a couple models for a seal. I would like to say that having a seal is a great idea. I think it would look fantastic. However, I would urge you to consider e pluribus unum. Based on my comment earlier tonight about being an immigrant and being someone who came into this community, I think that that best represents who we are as a melting pot here in Orange County because Santa Ana comprises

of many families, people of different backgrounds, different faiths. I was raised Buddhist, my husband was raised Hindu, we have family and friends who are non-religious, atheists, people who are Catholic, evangelical. I think that saying, you know what, e pluribus unum, out of many, one. I don't think there can be any stronger motto than to say that we as a community stand as one, we stand together, and I think that that would be a great representation for who we are at Sandana. Thank you.

Go ahead, Paul. Just go to the mic.

Good evening. Paul Cook, Giles, French Park. I don't know if it's appropriate to say this now or wait until after you've had your work city session so I can actually address what you're going to say, but in the interest of expediency, I'm going to speak now. In 1570 in England, Elizabeth Tudor said, I have no desire to open a window into men's souls. She said that as the wars of religion were raging across Europe between Roman Catholics and Protestants, I have no desire to open a window into your souls, but I can tell you that having been raised in an environment of active faith, expressions of faith in that environment are like

the water a fish swims in. It's just part of the world. We accept it as a friendly, beneficent experience and move on. Not everyone has that experience and I strongly believe that installing an overtly religious statement in this chamber, which is intended to be welcoming and empowering for all of our citizens would be unnecessarily divisive and exclusionary. I don't think it's a good idea. I think the insulation of the old national motto, E Pluribus Unum,

would be a splendid recognition of the status of our city as a community of immigrants who are coming from many different backgrounds, many different places, building something new and wonderful. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Paul. So with that, I'm going to bring it to Council Member. Oh, do you want to make a presentation? Go ahead.

If I can do an introduction. So we did a work-study session because we didn't receive a lot of clear-cut direction on exactly what style you wanted to do, which phrase you wanted to put up. So we're just very briefly going to show you other council chambers that have utilized seals and phrases, and then we have a couple different style choices to try to get better direction before we move forward with this, should you want us to move forward with it. So with that, Public Works Department's been working very hard on it. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, and members of the City Council.

This work-study session will present to you display options for In God We Trust here at the Council Chamber. But before we do that, I'd like to show you some options or some pictures of what other cities has done in Orange County. This is the city of Buena Park. They have it behind them. This is the city of Fountain Valley. It's on the outside of the city chamber, council chamber. Irvine is in the behind of the audience. La Palma is in the back.

This is the city of Westminster, and this is the city of Yerba Linda.

The options we came up with, we came up with five that I'd like to show you. This one, option one, which is the model and the seal.

It's on top, and the seal is sandwiched by the two seals, the city seal and the 150 anniversary seal, all the way on the top. Option two is the model and the seal. But we have replaced the accordion door behind you with a curtain. Blue is an option for color.

The third option is to replace the entire accordion door behind you with drywall, and then we'll have the seal behind you on the drywall. The color can be changed, of course, or selected differently. This option number four is the seal in the alcove. However, the In God We Trust would be above on top. Again, the color could be changed and the accordion door would be removed.

This option is to replace the entire background with wood paneling with the seal behind you.

All options include a recessing of a new large monitor that is going to be installed here at Council in the future, in between, I want to say December and January time, the TV screen there will be upgraded. These are other treatments that we can offer or can be offered with the seal and the In God We Trust. And there is also an option that we can include the e-plurbus on them in the treatment.

And that's it.

Thank you for that. Sure. I know we're all going to jump into this in a minute. Hopefully we can resolve without too much discussion. But I think certainly e pluribus unum in a place like Santa Ana, which is so incredibly diverse, and yet we're always trying to come together to move things in a forward direction, direction, I think, you know, makes a whole lot of sense for us to consider. So with that, Ceci, I know you brought it up. Why don't you say some words and then let's let everybody have some

input. I want to thank staff for putting this together for us. I like your recommendation what you have in God We Trust and also the E Pluribus Sunum, you know, at the bottom included in it. I think it's a great opportunity for us to, like you were saying, Mayor, for us to bring unity because we're a very diverse community. I like all of them. I don't know what the wood, if you were to put the wood backing behind this, I mean, how would that look different than the accordion panels that we have here? The options that

were presented that have a new back wall would be you wouldn't have accordion and it would be a brand new back wall and wood there is the prices listed on your the PowerPoint presentation that would be one of the most expensive options is to replace a wood wall whereas keeping the accordion doors or doing a drape would be your less expensive ones and then your your middle price one would be if we take the accordion doors out but we drywall behind there

okay but I with the with the drapes I didn't see the recommendation of having the e pluribus unum on it we just did examples you can pick and choose you can

say I like this style but this is the phrase I want I don't want the sesquicentennial seal up I only want the city seal so it's just to give you options I for me my my

recommendation would be to include both in God we trust and the e pluribus nunum I like the way I think it's La Palme I think has it that way within the in the things that you showed us the sites that we showed us so I I don't like their I think ours is a little bit nicer. But the way they have it set up, I think it's something that I would be supportive of, being inclusive of the nation's motto and also the recommendations that came from the community member to include the A Pluribus Unum on it, too.

So my would be if we could go with both, put In God We Trust and the other A Pluribus Unum along with the city, that would be awesome. but is this going to be something that's going to be permanent or is it something that's going to be

through the um the ones we presented would be attached they would be permanent okay until

another council takes away in a few years you're so funny okay so yeah she thinks i'm funny oh can

i ask you a question councilwoman yeah if um so if you want both phrases and the city seal was there a placement that you liked better in the different models that we had provided so if we i like it

right here behind us so it would be here in the city council chambers back here up above or you do you want the alcove changed out for it i would say if we could include up above would be nice

does anybody kind of want to take a little bit more time i don't know the best way to do things having the city manager asking a question we're looking around the room I mean you can end up with a weird building that way this is more decorating I have

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go ahead some issues with with just the cost of the I mean I'm in the wrong business so these little gold-plated letters I don't think it's real gold but it's $35,000 to put some letters up on the wall.

That is a rough estimate. We will have to get some bids for the project and actual select material and finishes, and then we'll get you a more exact estimate. But we would like to show you probably a higher cost, more than a cheaper cost, just to let you know that. It's not going to be $5,000. Yeah.

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I was going to say, Cecilia, you can do it yourself and go to Michael's and get some cardboard. Come back. If you've got me on, I'd like to. No. I definitely think we should have more conversation with this and involve the community, because this council chamber is theirs, not ours, and just have a broader discussion of what exactly, because I really do like the E Pluribus Sunim in lieu, because it's more inclusive of everything across the board. And those are the comments. If we were to go to any direction, I do want to keep the accordion doors

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so that we limit the cost and just use that top part. But I would prefer a pluribus unum. It's my just to really be inclusive of everybody, which is exactly what that model means.

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Those are my opinions. So definitely a more broader conversation. Maybe bring it up to the numerous neighborhood association meetings of what they would like to see, if that's a good idea. Put up a social media poll on our city's Facebook to see what direction the majority of the city would want to take on this.

I also, and I want to call on Councilman Sarmenta in a moment, but we have a pretty diverse community as we're talking about, I Plurizunum. I wonder some of the other faiths, the Buddhist community, for example, how will they think of this? I think it's important that we try to get different opinions. I mean, we recently had the celebration of the blessing of the city, and we had multiple faiths there. It was a beautiful thing, but, you know, Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and others.

So with that, Councilor Vince Sarmiento, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm having flashbacks to the meeting before last when some of these comments were made. I think that, look, out of respect to my colleagues, I think I was the only one to dissent when this came before us initially. And it wasn't to be divisive. It was to be respectful because I respect all of us up here. I think we're all people of faith. But that's exactly the point. We're all people of faith but of different faiths. We represent maybe Catholics, maybe Christians, maybe other faiths, but there are plenty of other faiths that aren't represented up here.

and this is not our house. We occupy it to do legislative and government work and I don't think that government or politics have a role in the church or any other place of worship nor does that belong here and I think that the two speakers that spoke earlier spoke extremely eloquent about what the point is of what we're doing and I think that nobody disrespects religion we just think that the founders, when they created our great governing documents, said there is a clear firewall between church and state to the extent that we can be as inclusive as possible because

this is the quintessential town square. This is where people of all faiths or no faiths have to come before us and feel welcome here. And to the extent that we somehow make folks feel uncomfortable or not welcome, we're doing a disservice because these are their public funds that are going towards us, as little as it may cost or as expensive as it may be. But I do think that the two speakers spoke about not including e pluribus unum with In God We Trust. I heard them say in lieu of, as the council members spoke, because I think In God We Trust, to the extent

that I'm a Catholic and I would like that, yeah, but I don't want my views imposed on anybody that comes before us. It's already an intimidating environment to have them come and speak to us when they're here at the podium and speaking to us on the dais. So I certainly would opt for, I like the curtains, they're inexpensive, and maybe they'll create a nice contrast with us. I like the seal, I can support that, I can get behind that. I really do like the e pluribus unum. I think that is a very, very appropriate way to brand our city and let people

know that when they come before us, they all come before us on equal footing. And none of us is more valued than others. And that's, I think, who we've been. We have an extremely diverse city, full of immigrants, full of different faiths, and we have a large, large community of folks that are not Christian and may have different beliefs. So I certainly don't want them to feel unwelcome in their house because this is their house.

All right, additional comment. Councilor Salaudio, please. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Similar to the last two speakers, I like the idea of sharing some of these ideas with the community, getting some feedback. This is the people's house, the people's chamber, and so this, even though maybe not a big decision for us, for the broader community, it is. I think most of us, not that I've pulled the folks up here, but we're either Catholic or Christian largely behind us, but many of the community are not, and so I think we don't want to offend others, and we want to be thoughtful as we make this decision, so it's a community

decision. I do lean towards e pluribus unum or, you know, the CL City of Santa Ana so we can have some city pride. I think the city pride thing is always a great thing. I do believe also, as I've mentioned before, that maybe in the lobby there might be opportunities for more educational materials, founding fathers, in God we trust, the history of democracy. I think some of the images as well. I had some examples of kind of freedom wall kinds of things and that's the thing too. Some of these things feel better in a historical context rather than just you know throwing it up

on a wall. I would also like to try to keep the dollars down in part too because I just feel there's a lot of unmet need out in the community and for us to just spend too many dollars on our City Hall doesn't quite feel right. I would lastly on that same point to mention it would be my preference that we find capital dollars for this rather than measure X sales tax dollars because measure X is commingled with general fund dollars and as much as some folks may want to say you know there's you know no measure X dollars in there no one can really tell you that as we've heard now on multiple sessions.

So I'm sure, especially if we keep the dollar amount slow, that we can find some unused capital dollars that could be used. Thank you.

Thank you. Additional comment? Who hasn't spoken? Has anybody not spoken? Go ahead, Mayor Pro Tem.

So I was out of the room, so we're talking about which?

We're talking about what should we do, if anything.

I like the in God we trust. I like the blue curtains. I don't think people have a problem because it's on our money. They don't have a problem using it. I just went to the Capitol. I took a small tour there at the Capitol. And there's people from all over the world. And in God we trust everywhere. And they don't have a problem. And they're actually taking pictures and everything. I don't know what the big deal is. You know, it is a national model. So that's my comment.

Nice and short.

it's getting late all right well go ahead comes fina losa now we'll go through a second round

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just and then maybe just not include the the 150th seal because uh by the time it goes up it'll be 175 from what i've seen uh just my opinion so you know it'll be so let's not just let's focus on the city seal and i prefer you plural with sunum of course majority rules and have that conversation

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Thank you.

We have confidence in our staff. It's really good in that.

So just for clarification, we gave direction to staff to go back and do this study, bring back options with In God We Trust, and they did that. They also added the e pluribus unum. So why can't we do both? Like Council Member Villegas was saying, this is in our city. I mean, it's in our national motto. It's everywhere displayed in our currency. It's also in other cities, so it's something that it's other cities. They're the chambers of the people, too, so people go there. It's just I think it's the will of this council.

This council doesn't want to do it, so just say that. I don't know what it is that you're afraid of, but from last we gave direction to the city manager was for her to go back and work with staff to bring us back in God we trust and also you know now that we had that information from the gentleman saying that you purpose in number I think it's it's good we could have both but I don't think we should be going back on our direction and what we gave the city manager to do this so I I would hope that we go forward and say we could do both and we would be inclusive of everything and just displaying our nation's motto so I'm

hoping that we do consider doing both and you know that with the least expensive way to do it like I said if you want me to I'll draw up something I'll do a fundraiser for $25,000 I mean if that's something that you guys want me to do I will but I think it's something that we should not go back on our direction because I know the only one that's stayed out of it was Sarmiento Councilmember Sarmiento but everybody else I don't know why it is that you're

going back on your word. So thank you. I don't know that anybody's going back. I think we gave direction to explore and now we're trying to decide. I don't think when I said go explore to me it was just that. So is this just direction or is there a vote here? Well so far it's work study

session. Very good. I can summarize what my understanding is and you can correct me if I'm go ahead so I believe there is four that are more interested in only having a pluribus unum as a component and there are two that are open to both or in God we trust on the phrase it seems like the majority really cares about the city seal not worried about having a sesquintennial seal up there and that you most of you like the idea of above either with the accordion or a curtain. So if my understanding is correct, that's how I will proceed.

Are folks comfortable with what she is suggesting?

The four that wanted to be on them are.

The other two items that were mentioned was researching other things we could put in the lobby and then two also mentioned doing some type of a social media campaign.

And may you come back as we proceed, come back with dollar amounts so we have some idea what we're talking about before you go out and do anything.

Before you go back, I know Council Member Solorio mentioned something about putting something in the lobby. Is that somewhere we can display both in God We Trust and He Pluribus Unum in the lobby?

I'm sure we could find a place if the majority wants to have both displayed in the lobby. Are you guys comfortable with that?

Putting it on the lobby? Yeah. Yeah, that's a good idea. I'd be right above those doors.

I mean, in the lobby.

That's something, too, that I would. It looks nice, actually, when you're walking in. And we could do just the seal in here. And just the seal back here.

Again, I think this is a dangerous way to do things.

No, but it's a work study, so it's something that we.

Yeah, but we're making decisions. We're not just studying.

You're providing me direction, so I only hear two that are interested in that option at this point.

Just come back with options.

And options in the law firm. And count to four.

Okay.

All right.

Crystal clear.

All right. With that, city manager comments.

Okay. I have a few because we have so much happening in our great city. So when you leave tonight, if you look over at the water tower, you may see that it's lit up in blue and yellow, and that's in support of UC Irvine's largest philanthropic campaign to date. It's called The Brilliant Future, so you can enjoy the additional colors that are out there. Thursday, September 26, we conducted a down payment assistance workshop in council chambers and a total of 40 people attended. We continue to promote the 150 anniversary event, and there are mailers that are being sent out this week to businesses and to residents.

And there's a coupon drawing for residents and businesses who can submit a chance to win a gift card. Additional promotions are happening throughout the time, all the way towards our big celebration, which occurs in October. Mental health agency, I mentioned it in the homeless, but we did want to report back to you that we have drafted some letters. We've done research on it on the different code violations and all of the actions, so we'll have a more formal report for you as requested by council on that. And then there are a lot of foodie events in our city. So this Saturday we have the Taste of Santa Ana.

It's in the parking lot at Main Place Mall. I believe tickets can be purchased online at tasteofsantana.org. There's going to be raffles, games, and entertainment. And then Savor Santa Ana is on October 12th, Saturday from 5.30 to 9.30. And it's a sidewalk food festival that features more than 40 tastes from 46-plus restaurants in our downtown Santa Ana. And the tickets for that are $10 for five tastings. And lastly, I do want to do a big shout-out to Daisy for working very hard at pulling together all the content for that homeless presentation.

She had to work with every single operating department and crack the whip to get that data compiled for you. And this is on top of all of the other fabulous contributions she makes every day to our city. And that's it.

Thank you. And the clerk, unfortunately, didn't give me this earlier, but I have them now. So I have a few speakers that want to address this on non-agenda items. So sorry about that, Madam City Manager. manager, Brian Lottery, followed by Paul Berry.

Also known as Lockery.

Good evening, Mayor Polito and Santa Ana City Council. My name is Brian Lottery. I'm here today representing the Transportation Corridor Agencies. Most people know them as the Orange County Toll Roads. It's a public toll road system represented by cities and County Board of Supervisors are represented here by Councilman Penaloza. and we're here to we're going to all the cities all the TCA member cities to let people know about the new sticker transponder that's going out to all of the account holders about 1.5 million account holders throughout the Orange

County area and this new sticker folks will be getting it in the mail if they're fast-track account holders or Express account holders and it takes the place of the hard case transponder now the hard case transponder it may have a one two three switch on it which can be used in the los angeles freeways the 110 and the 10 freeway and you can still use this through 2024 however this is interoperable throughout the state of california and eventually will be interoperable throughout the nation so this is something that i'm very proud of that

we're rolling this out and just to let people know it goes it sticks in either the lower left the lower right windshield or up by the rear view mirror and once you stick it on it can't be taken off otherwise it breaks the transmitter that's in here so make sure that if you have to peel it off or whatever is you need to order another one don't just restick it and if you decide you don't want to use the hard case transponder you have the opportunity just to recycle it because it does have batteries so make sure you You don't throw it in the trash to take it to household hazardous waste.

So I appreciate your time and thank you very much.

A couple questions. Would it be possible at some point just to use the license plate and have the license plate registered so you don't do anything to the vehicle?

And that could be an eventuality. And the fact of the matter is once you go through the first time through the toll plaza, this will pair up to your license plate. so that it will be tied to your license plate. But in the future, that's certainly a potential possibility.

Because I think that would be ultimately much better unless you don't have this gadget, you don't have that decal, you just have technology figuring it out.

Yeah, but license plates get damaged or stolen too.

David PenalozaItem —

That was maybe the first question I asked when my first meeting back in January, February, was again it was a thing inside why are we dealing with that little plastic transponder slides across your dashboard and smacks your passenger or whatnot you know most of the time and and I was like let's you know put a sticker there the sensors that are inside books for security you know the same thing it's very similar to that and and they were the CEO is nodding his head he's like oh we're already working on that we're happy to have you on board because the board was kind of like you know about it but I was like now you know but it was

David PenalozaItem —

already in the works I wish I could take credit for it but it is a cool thing it's very easy to apply it's like a little band-aid and just like two months ago my friends were all texting me they were like hey did you send me this sticker I'm like no I didn't I didn't send you the sticker they're supposed to be rolling out but I hadn't gotten one and last week I still didn't have one and I finally saw the CEO and I was like hey give me where's my sticker so I'm happy you know to have them you don't have to be switching it's it's easy and and the license plate thing was

David PenalozaItem —

also a thing that i asked and they gave me this whole legal answer about don't accept it you got

to keep driving the right answer and i was like okay so i i'm not a engineer but i understand the technology is just not quite there yet right sometimes you have to have somebody actually physically read the license plate which is very cost prohibitive rather than but i think on the

91 Expressway at OCTA we are able to read license plates.

You can and TCA can too as well. It's just...

We read them every time. Yes.

So you gotta... But it defaults. Yeah. So if this doesn't work it'll default to the license plate but this is the primary way but it's the least expensive way.

David PenalozaItem —

Yeah and this was also used so that you could go on the 91 Expressway and the toll roads in Orange County and go up to Northern California and be able to...

Ultimately, you ought to be able to register your license plate and drive around the whole country.

David PenalozaItem —

Well, yeah, but then it's different toll agencies, and when they transfer your license plate to bill you to another toll agency, then they'll transfer you data.

Hey, if the FBI can have crime stats on everybody in the country.

David PenalozaItem —

I agree. I'm with you. I had all these questions. You're a millennial. You've got to drive the future. Don't accept the past.

All right. Thank you. Thank you.

Go ahead. Yes, I'm Paul Berry. I'm a resident here. I came dressed right from DR Microgrid, where I work. It's a company that's a startup. It's here in Santa Ana. We're in distributed energy, which is a term that everyone's going to become familiar with as things go along. I wanted to note to everyone today, do we all remember Wings of the City? What a wonderful thing that was, the statues downtown. It was just fantastic. It's actually been months now since I've been here. And it just points to the sophistication of Santa Ana.

This is a great place to live. Also, just into the public record here, We lost the discount clothing store of Falas over the last year, and I know there's a lot of people who mourn that. That was a great center for bringing a lot of people into downtown. I've been here before on climate issues, and I want to thank you all for endorsing the resolution on the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. And Lou Correa just signed on that. I think that the city sent a very sophisticated and good message to the nation. That was not a unanimous resolution.

There's a letter and a resolution, and I think that that really speaks to the complications of this sort of thing going forward. The high school kids in Santa Ana now are starting to organize to do 3.30 Friday climate rallies right here. and I spoke with a few of them last week. They said they're going to continue to do that. So climate is an issue. But what I've come here to do is to just ask for the benefit of people who understand the CCA movement. This is the community choice aggregations that are happening. This is something that we all have to understand

when this is appropriate for Santa Ana to engage in this. And Irvine has got a process underway way. It involves a JPA, Joint Powers Agreement, and I would just ask the City Council, Mr. Mayor, that you would please give some direction to the City Manager and the Public Works Department to brief you all so that you all know what's happening with Irvine. Is this a moment that we should take advantage of, or what is happening over there? And also

to seek the counsel of other elected officials in Orange County and see where we fit. These are called municipal utilities or user-owned utilities. It has nothing to do with partisanship or anything. Businesses driving this. And I just would hope that you'd follow through with something like that. Thank you very much. And thank you for your service and your stamina.

We have a 5K coming up.

Right? When is that, Madam C?

You sure?

5K will be on October 19th. It starts at 8 a.m. We'll send out a press release tomorrow morning.

So we can have short time to train. All right. So we have another speaker here, Bill Conklin.

Followed by Chris Schmitt. And Chris, you've got to make it shorter because you've been up several times. Go ahead.

Yes. Good evening, Mayor and Council members. My name is Bill Conklin, and this is my wife right here, Karina. And we have a family-owned business in the city of Santa Ana. The reason I've come to you tonight is we actually have an appeal hearing date before the City Council on the next regular City Council meeting date, which is on October the 15th. We filed our appeal about 10 days ago, and we just got the hearing date from Selena Kelleher and the Planning Commission today. Found out that it was on October 15th.

she was actually trying to get the date because she understood our circumstances. She was trying to get the date to be two weeks later at the next council meeting. So what our circumstances are is in June of this year, we made plans to go visit an ill family member. She lives in Austria, so it's big plans, actually. We don't ever go there, hardly. but in the meantime we've she's gone from being ill to actually critically ill and we don't know

how to handle this because our tickets are scheduled for leaving on October the 10th and the meeting date that we have set before the City Council to for our hearing for our appeal the the hearing on our appeal is set for October the 15th, five days later. We don't come back from Austria quite that quickly. So we're just asking, it's a request of the city council to delay that hearing for our appeal to the next scheduled meeting for the city council, which again I believe is November the 5th.

You're a car wash, right? Yes. Yeah, I believe that you have the right to appeal and that's what you've done. but you can't appeal for business reasons or trying to slow down a competitor or anything like that. I understand that's the nature of what is now occurring. Actually, no. Because if you delay it further, they're entitled to their hearing on the 15th. And you're now asking us to go beyond the 15th.

Yeah, actually it has nothing to do, actually, with business dealings, competition. I've heard what the market will bear, all of those things. It has nothing to do with those items.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Mayor, I just want to mention, because it's a quasi-adjudicative matter, you probably don't want to talk about the substance. It's not before us. You might want to just address the time issue.

All right, well, look, you've come down, you've spoken. We can act or not. Okay. Thank you. Chris Schmidt?

Several months ago, one of my neighbors, Mr. Booker, said, Hey, Chris, several years ago, OCTA promised us we would have concrete bus stop pads at all the bus stops along McFadden and Ettinger. And the next day I went out and I noticed they're not there. And there's asphalt that has spread out. My car literally bottomed out on one of them. I have a gutter that I reported three years ago that's defective, still hasn't been fixed. I'm a member of ETAC that oversees the city streets, and when I spoke to city staff, they said, we barely have enough money to make all these repairs.

Apparently, Public Works has a line item from Concrete Omnibus, and it's minimal, $250,000. I am told there is a list of requests to repair sidewalks and curbs, and we're not fixing them. When I spoke to OCTA they told me go back to your city. They have to spend their money to fix it, not OCTA. And I'm concerned because what happened earlier this year with OCTA regarding M2 funds. I don't like it that we're being charged stuff and we're being told we're gonna fix it and it never gets fixed. I would appreciate if somebody can find out when these bus pads will be installed

all the bus stops along McFadden and Ettinger? Because Mr. Booker said he never got an answer from the city. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members and staff. I'd probably be a little remiss if I didn't say I'm opposed to 2525 project, But I'd also like to say that it was refreshing to hear you guys have the flexibility to award Guarantee Chevrolet the contract. I think that's a good thing, and I'm glad to see that we're not as rigid as some people think. I'd also like to say that the presentation on the homeless was very good. It was very informative, and I think if people are watching it, they'll get a lot out of it.

But along that line, Park Santiago Neighborhood Association is having a park, essentially a Santiago Creek cleanup on October 12th. We've always had great cooperation from the police department, specifically Sergeant Blake. He's been very helpful in getting that assistance that we need for cleaning up as far as trucks and everything else. if there's anybody else in the city staff that can help us out even further we provide the manpower but there's a lot of stuff that we usually clean up a lot of mattresses

i know the city's gone down there before but they just come back two three days later and i'm sure we'll have several truckloads of stuff that we haul out of the river and so like i said if there's any other assistance that can be provided, we'd appreciate it. And they can either get in contact with me or our president, Michael Valle. So thank you.

Thank you. Let me now bring it to Council for comments. Councilman Vince Sarmiento, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and I'll be brief. I wanted to just say thank you to staff and thank you to all the speakers that came before us tonight And give a shout-out to a couple of officers whose name I wasn't able to ask for. They came to my home because they found somebody going through my mail. And, you know, my mailbox is kind of set out right by the sidewalk. They saw somebody rifling through it and taking out some of our correspondence. And they, you know, apprehended them, detained them. and they came to the front door and asked if they resided there.

And you could tell it was somebody who wasn't well and who needed some assistance, and they were very decent with him, but they did their work, and they came up, and I told him I didn't know him, and, yeah, he didn't have my consent to go through my mail. But it also is a federal offense to go through somebody's mail. I didn't want to press charges, but I think the way your officers handled them, Chief, was very humane and decent. but that's the kind of thing that we're dealing with, right? Where, you know, folks just aren't well. I don't think there was any maliciousness involved. I just think the man didn't know what he was doing,

and he said it was his mail that he was getting. And so it's unfortunate, but that's what some of our residents are dealing with. So I think the presentation on the homelessness problem, the work that's being done, you know, we have, I think all of us have real-life experiences of our, you know, contacts and people that we know in the city that have been dealing with that. So that was one comment. My last comment was,

I've been approached by many folks in the downtown who are being impacted by the construction that's taking place for the light rail on 4th Street. So they have had reductions in their revenues to the extent of 30, 40, 50 percent in customers and sales. So I don't know if OCTA has considered maybe providing some relief during that time when the construction takes place, because I know it's being done in phases, but even if it's construction that's done maybe east of where a business is, it still prevents

folks from getting in easily to those businesses that are used to having parking front and traffic. going through their corridor. So maybe, Mr. Mayor, if you'd like, maybe the council with the city manager's assistance can draft something or approach OCTA to see how we can compel them.

Right now we're planning a meeting with OCTA and the businesses, city manager and myself. What I think might be appropriate, let's do that meeting and get back to the rest of the city council.

I know you're doing everything you can. I just think to the extent we can support you in those discussions and that advocacy, and I know it's Councilmember Peñalosa's district. I don't want to speak out of turn. I just know that he's probably been approached as well. Oh, I have. So to the extent that we can all kind of, I think, coalesce on this and work together and coordinate, it's more just being fair and seeing that there is going to be disruption to those businesses. And I know a couple of them are considering leaving. Some of them have closed. And that's the last thing that we want.

because ultimately the streetcar will be an enhancement and an added value to the folks. But during that time, it's going to be very difficult. So whatever we can do, I just wanted to offer up my support. Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I got a report out that I was in Washington, D.C. last week. I met with Senator Feinstein's office, the legislative personnel, and I thank them for the support on our Homeland Security grants. Very important that we receive those funds because they're good for us regarding law and fire and emergency response, active shooter and anti-terrorism. We are the county seat. I know Disneyland is up on the priority list, but we do have to be prepared to help out.

Also, we spoke about the, I gave them a report on how our COALT team works on the homeless issue. And of all things, they brought up the needle exchange program. So we had a discussion on that. And we talked about FEMA, how we could use some FEMA funds. And we also, I gave them an update on where we stood with the recent changes on cannabis. And the gentleman that I spoke with was someone that came out here last year. and he was up and down the state visiting all the different cities. And he came to Orange County, and he had a lot of good questions. I was very surprised. He knew an awful lot about what was going on,

and I could tell these people work a lot up there. But I really, really enjoy being up there. Also, I met with Congressman Correa, and we talked about homelessness, and we talked about grants, and we talked about the different laws that they could possibly change here in the state, regarding mental health issues like follow-up. Because the mental health issue and the homelessness, a lot of it goes hand-in-hand. And then we talked about the Family Justice Center and how he is supportive of that. And I also met with Holland and Knights, our lobbyists, who were setting up these meetings.

And we have to go by their schedule because they're so busy going in and out. Congressman Correa did actually take me to the House Judiciary Committee. He was actually working, and he got off the dice, came out, we talked about it. It was an immigration issue that was taking place, and it was very, very interesting to learn how everything works. And then I also met with BBK, our lawyers from our city attorney's office, because I met with someone who specializes in the opportunity zones, and Santa Ana has Opportunity Zones right here where we are now. I'm trying to look at different ways that we can redo the Civic Center.

It's on our radar. We've been trying to put this together. It's just a lot of information, and we are working towards that to make a change here, and that is my report.

Thank you.

Excellent report. Thank you very much. Councilor Jose Solorio, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a couple of things. First, the streetcar, I did have that as a note. I've been receiving quite a number of complaints myself. I'm happy, Mr. Mayor, that you and Steph are meeting with OCTA and the merchants. And in addition to anything OCTA might be able to do, maybe there's some relief the city can offer. You know, we with controlling when streets are open or closed or even some signage, water bills, other utilities, trash, maybe there might be some things that we can help with.

They also have, even though I know there's questions on how much money is coming in from the parking fees, there's also kind of dollars that originate there that maybe we can work with. And then I did see on my desk up here this nice flyer promoting the 150th celebration at Centennial Park, Sunday, October 27th, 3 to 9 p.m. It looks like it's going to be mailed to folks, so look for it in your mailbox. And if you get it, it's real and it's going to be good. And there's going to be a lot of food, entertainment, etc. So a beautiful presentation here.

There's also a time capsule ceremony, for example, so if individuals have ideas of what we should put in the time capsule, I know we're still looking for ideas for that, so I'm looking forward to that as well. And that's all. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member David Peñalosa, please.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to also piggyback off of what Council Member Sarmiento said in regards to the impact that the streetcar construction is having in downtown. I met with numerous restaurant owners and merchants along, and it is a serious issue that they're facing right now. I know that two, three years from now, this is going to bring a lot of business to downtown and whatnot, but these businesses, most of them do not own these buildings, are renting, and they can't make ends meet because they are struggling.

David PenalozaItem —

I had lunch on Sunday at I Can Barbecue, that new barbecue place next to Velvet Lounge, and off 4th Street. Very, very delicious. A lot of good food, and you could see the investment they made in that space. And the owner happened to be there, and they came up to me, and they were worried. They are worried because of the decline in traffic that they're... Well, they said that they never got to experience the openness of the street because they just unfortunately opened during this construction. So I do want to thank you, Mr. Mayor, for having those conversations.

David PenalozaItem —

Make sure that you could report back to us of what, if any, changes are going to happen. I know they also brought up the idea of the ability to validate parking at the numerous restaurants they said would be helpful to them. Last week, I just wanted to mention that I did meet with the director of IT, Mr. Jack Trula, and our city manager, and Daisy was there as well. A lot of good things to come to our overall technology infrastructure in our city. Very excited for that.

David PenalozaItem —

It's going to save us a lot of time, and just in doing things across the board, whether you're a resident or a business owner or a city employee, it's going to do wonders for all of us. So I'm excited to see those things happen. It's October 1st, and I know there's a particular item that was promised to me in October. I'm gonna make sure that I see it launched in October.

David PenalozaItem —

But please let me know if that can't be possible. It's okay, but I just need to know if we're not gonna make that deadline. And I also sent an email to you, Madam City Manager and Chief Valentin yesterday and today.