Read the July 16 meeting.

Can you 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. Remain standing. We have our invocation, I believe, this evening. Please go ahead. Doug Harlan, our police chaplain.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we thank you for this evening, Lord, where we can come into your presence. Father, we recognize that it's a privileged place, Lord, to come before your throne of grace. But God, you call us to this place, Lord, to find the things that you desire for us. God, you know that we're a people full of needs. other needs that are personal and and and needs that are spiritual god needs that don't only affect us but affect others and our community god so lord we we come with our limited wisdom

and ask for yours we ask for your guidance lord we ask for your will to be done father because unlike our will, God, your will isn't just for the good of some. Lord, you tell us in your word in Jeremiah, God, that God, you desire your thoughts toward us to be good, not for evil. You want to give every single one of us a hope and a future. God, that's why you sent your son, so that he might die, so that we can have eternal life. All that who will believe can come to you and find life. So, Lord, we ask this evening, God, for your will to be done

and that you would give us the ability to be humble enough, God, to accept the great things that you have for us. So, Father, bless this night, Lord. Have your way with us and care for your people and the people of this city, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.

You may be seated.

I'm now going to go ahead and open up our meeting. And before we take on the issues, we have our special presentation by the Orange County Fire Authority, division teams James Henry let's go ahead and start with that sir good evening

mayor and city council and city staff thank you as you know on the 4th of July and the 5th of July we had a earthquake that was up in Ridgecrest a four point six point four and a seven point one I was asked to put together a little overview of some emergency operations that we do with the fire authority and what our citizens can do to prepare so as you know disasters come in many types from natural to man-made and we are you know designed to provide services in any type of situation that we deal with in those situations the

Orange County Fire Authority which is your fire department is staffed 24 7 365 days a year and we are all risk we currently have 300 personnel on duty a day with the ability to call in more and when we exceed our ability to manage an incident locally we have a mutual aid agreement which allows us to get a neighboring resources from cities like anaheim orange los angeles and riverside and then when we exceed that we're able to call in resources from the state and the feds give you an example of some of the resources that orange county fire authority

has we're all familiar with the the ladder trucks and the fire pumpers we also have helicopters hazardous materials teams urban search and rescue teams and we have search dogs and in fact in this city here we have two search dog handlers these dogs receive over 300 hours of training and they're designed to actually search for people in in rubble you might ask why we have helicopters and bulldozers how would that affect us with helicopters we can do recon and with bulldozers we can clear streets of debris Orange County

Fire Authority also is part of a federal emergency response urban search and rescue team and that team has been deployed all over the United States including Northridge Oklahoma City Katrina and we just sent some incident management teams to Louisiana for the tropical storm Barry. In this city we have 10 fire stations and those 10 fire stations we have nine fire engines and three ladder trucks. We have a hazardous materials team, a brush unit and a battalion chief. Every day we have 48 members

that are on duty and each of these stations these units are have paramedics.

Our fire stations are located in these areas, and it's important that the public understands where these stations are located, because during an emergency, if your cell phones don't work, you can go to the fire stations, and there is a system there which is a satellite-type phone that's on the outside of the building, which will allow people to have access to our emergency center.

during a large event when we have an emergency we refer to what we call an emergency event major event operational guide and this guide helps guide us what we need to do during an emergency in the case of the earthquake that we had each of the people in the stations has a responsibility the driver of the fire engine pulls it out of the station the captain checks on the radio to the command center and the firefighters basically do a quick check of the station for any damage including gas leaks what happens after that is that we do a roll call and then the crews assemble

at the fire truck and we do a damage assessment called a windshield survey each unit of the ocfa units that are assigned to a geographical area of a specific area that they respond to and do a search. This windshield survey includes critical infrastructure like power lines, gas, utility, water systems, as well as freeways, hospitals, urban areas, and then areas of importance such as roadways and historical sites.

Our windshield surveys, based on what we find, we base our actions following those situations off to life safety incident stabilization property conservation and environment with obviously the top priority being life safety as you can imagine with northridge and different earthquakes that we've had there's a tremendous amount of damage and so we try to triage these incidents into these categories we talk about insulin stabilization we talk about fires and things like that as you know the earthquake that occurred in san francisco the majority of the damage that occurred was after the earthquake was the fires.

The next thing I want to talk about is what our citizens can do. The question is, is not when, okay, or not how, but when, and the biggest thing that we ask our citizens to do is prepare. Prepare, prepare, prepare. The City of Santa Ana provides Community emergency response training training cert as well as american red cross and if you can look up here on the website up there you can contact uh steve reiner who's the emergency manager for the san anna pd and we provide cert training and this valuable training occurs over a period of uh

weekends as well as at night and our community members are can take the training in that training they're going to cover everything from what to do with first aid how to operate a fire extinguisher and how to basically search and package people up american red cross also offers first aid and cpr training and then what else our residents can do is they need to make a plan and they need to make a family plan and that includes a location and a communication plan as you know during a disaster the local cell phone services are impacted and so what we ask people to do is find a friend or a

family member that they can call out of state the other thing we ask people to do is prepare stock up on resources water food flashlights first aid and then do a little quick assessment of your home prepare your home make sure your water heater is strapped large incidents like bookcases are secured and then know how to turn off your gas, water and electrical. What to do during an earthquake. First and foremost, stay away from windows and fallen items. Find cover under a sturdy desk or a mattress. If you're inside a building, stay inside the building unless you

believe it's actually going to collapse. Doorways and corners are your strongest areas. If you're outside of a building, stay away from windows, power lines and other falling debris. If you're driving we're going to ask you if it's safe to do so to pull over and stop after the earthquake check yourself and each other for injuries check your home for gas leaks specifically your stove water heater go out to your gas meter if you go out to your area those areas and you smell gas we ask you to turn your gas off inside your if your car is in a garage pull it out turn on your

radio for information and initiate your family and communication plan check on your neighbors and and be prepared for aftershocks. A quick diagram on how to turn off your gas. What not to do. Panic. Do not call 911 and ask if we've had an earthquake. Stay off the 911 lines unless you truly are having an emergency. If there is a fire, do not go inside the building. Do not touch down utility lines, including cable or telephone, because they may have come in contact with power lines. And if the building has collapsed, do not enter it.

Preparation. What we ask our citizens and the community is to be prepared to provide water and supplies for yourself for up to 72 hours. Build a disaster kit. And that disaster kit should include a backpack of things that you can have in your car. Emergencies happen at any time. And then get training. American Red Cross Community Emergency Response Team training and then to remember that help is coming.

You can find information on disaster supply kits. I provided some of that, but this is also on the Red Cross as well as our website, orangecountyfireauthority.org.

And then in summary, right, preparation is the key. Have a family communication plan and a rally point and then become trained, right, because your life or someone you know may depend upon it. And then I have some resources up here that are available for you guys' websites to gather more information. So at this time, I'll take any questions if you have any.

Thank you, Chief Henry. I appreciate it. And I appreciate the phone call and the e-mail from that night of the earthquake, and thank you for coming out and doing this presentation we asked you for. And many of you probably don't know, but I was in the epicenter of the Northridge earthquake, and I was a victim of that. I was homeless for a couple of weeks because of that. And it's a horrible feeling, and here's a person who's law enforcement. You get hit by an earthquake. You don't really know what to do because, you know, that always happens elsewhere.

So it's very, very real, and that's why my colleagues and I asked the chief to come out and say a few words. There was no structural damage in the city reported that night on their overall assessment they did. And, you know, we have some great men and women who are prepared and ready to come out and address any emergencies that we have in the city. And I want to thank you and the police department for being ready on this stuff because you just never know when it's going to happen. And thank you, Chief. Is there any questions for my colleagues?

Thank you.

Thank you again, Chief. And next we have Councilmember Solorio.

Thank you very much. It's my honor to have up with me the Executive Director of the Santa Ana Zoo and some board members and staff. Let's give them a round of applause. They do so much for our community. I had an opportunity a couple months ago to visit on one of the free Sundays of the month there's one free Sunday of the month for Santa Ana residents and like to encourage you know families to go out and visit it and it's nice if you have a kid to enjoy the day with them but if you don't have a kid find a kid bring a kid with you with permission of the of the gardener parent

obviously but it is a it's quite fun with a kid a little a little more on the on the zoo the the friends of the Santa Ana Zoo because that's you know who we're celebrating tonight was founded in 1972 to help with the first fundraising efforts of the zoo to help the city over the years they've they've helped raise well over 20 million dollars to help upgrade various animal habitats and assessed with vet care education and community events they are an official nonprofit organization and they're able to oversee a lot of the grant writing

the membership program rentals and rights most recently just to give you a sense of some of the capital improvement programs one is the first monkey ferris wheel looks very fun and get on myself but it looked fun that the Jack Lynch aviary renovation the golden headed lion tamarind holding facility the turtle education area and the camel scale just to name a few also one of my favorites that always check on is our anteater exhibit you know the prior parks director realized that you know and eaters are also part of South America it goes with some of the theme of the tear de las Pampas that was created we have a

local university that is it's high quality that there's a connection with It was a nice, you know, animal and higher ed connection. And the aunties are doing very well. They often have babies, and, you know, we share them with other facilities. So that's a really cool thing. Also, I know many of you probably have seen the movie Hangover. If you haven't seen it, check it out. It's pretty fun. We had our own little kind of twilight zone, similar situations here, where somebody stole one of the monkeys. I forget which type. and it ended up at a hotel in Newport Beach and you know we eventually were

able to retrieve and they caught the person but there's with this whole little drama about you know how somebody was able to walk off with one of our monkeys and why and how it got here and you know all the circumstances in between and you know maybe one day they'll make a movie out of it. The zoo has some upcoming fun events that we want to share with the community. There's the sunset at the zoo on July 21st and then there I think it's probably there that they're featured a fundraiser zoo fari that's on August 24th a national chemistry day on October 13th and I know for November they usually do boo at the

zoo so I'm sure that is coming up and so it's with great enthusiasm that on behalf of the mayor and City Council we recognize and thank the friends of the Santa Ana Zoo their board member and their staff for being such great stewards and champions for everything zoo and Santa Ana let's give them a round of applause

just like to thank councilmember Solario and the other council folk that have supported the zoo so much and we are very grateful I'm a citizen of Santa Ana and I've been at the zoo almost 20 years I've got working with Ethan has been a dream come true he is fantastic as the zoo director then we have board members d thomas and nathan hittle and then one of my staff members brian solis who's also san anna resident and all representing the friends and everybody works really hard and we're all trying to help the animals and help the families that visit the zoo so thank you again for your support hopefully we'll see you

this sunday we've got um a great band playing for sunset at the zoo and beer tasting it's going to be a lot of fun so come on out to the zoo this sunday from 5 30 to 7 30.

Thank you.

City Attorney, is there anything to report out of closed session, please?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Mayor, Council members and members of the public and staff, we do have two items for reportable action. Both are within the items of existing litigation under Government Code Section 54956.9. In the case of Alex Tran v. Elias Martinez, the City Council, by a vote of 5 to 1, with Councilmember Iglesias voting no, approved a settlement for $65,000. In the second case of the City of Santa Ana v. Aldous South, the City Council approved a final payment for the acquisition of property and the settlement of goodwill in the amount of $275,000 by a unanimous vote of the City Council. That's all the reportable action that I have.

All right, so with that, I'm going to bring our attention to the consent calendar. I do have one request to speak from the public. Let me call on that person first. then I'll call on council members and we'll proceed. Dale Helwig, you want to speak on item 11A I believe. Why don't you come on down please.

Good evening Mayor and council members. Dale Helwig, Santa Ana. When I was reading Looking through the proposed changes for the transient zoning code, I can't help but see that even as we're updating the zoning requirements, which I think are needed, and I've heard that they're outdated and need updating, the parking requirements for these new areas in the transit center are actually higher than even the projects that are coming before you or will be coming before you for the urban corridor, the urban neighborhoods, the urban centers,

all have a parking requirement that is much higher than the parking requirements on future projects. It's 2.0 per unit plus additional parking for guests. And so if we're updating codes and we're going to a higher number than what developers are asking for, it kind of says that the San Ante Municipal Code, which also has higher numbers, is pretty current to today's standards. So I just ask you to consider that when you're looking at future projects. Thank you.

Thank you. With that, I want to bring the consent calendar to the council, see if we have any other items. And once we figure that out, then we'll go with the balance. Yes, thank you.

On 11A, I'm going to recuse myself because I have an economic interest within that transit zoning area. On 19C, if you can put me down as a no vote, and on 25C, if you can pull that matter for me.

Okay. Councilor Iglesias, please.

Okay. So I have 19C, 25G, and 25H.

All right, let's start the clock. Let's go for 19C.

Go ahead.

Okay, so we're going to...

Yeah, right now let's take up your three items.

Okay, so...

We'll vote on those and we'll see what the balance is.

Well, 19C, I just have a question of what is the standard for destruction of obsolete records for the city?

Okay, certainly, Council Member. included in the staff report, there is attachment that shows you. So we have a record retention schedule for all different types of records that complies fully with the Public Records Act. So for these particular records, if you look on page 19C-4, you will see the types of records that this is seeking approval for destruction, and it will tell you what the retention period is for each of them. So there's one, two, three, four, five different types of records, and they each have a different retention period.

Okay, thank you.

All right, I'd entertain a motion on that item.

I'll move second.

Okay, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye, let's oppose. Much carries. Now let's go. Is that okay? No, we won't. It's unanimous.

No, we've got to do it here.

All right, if you like it, press green.

We don't do this at OCTA, by the way.

the buttons and all that. So I don't understand how we're violating the law here, but not there.

So for clarification, it's 4-2, correct? As reflected...

I don't know.

4-2. Yes. Is that correct? Yes.

All right. That's why I didn't do it. The county's a mess, Mr. Lee. Maybe not. It's OCT. It's a fine run operation. Look at the 405 freeway. Look at the streetcar. Look at all the Mesrem turnback money.

Don't get us started.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I would just like to mention that the Brown Act does require us not to have just a voice. It will take either voice or roll call votes or the board, so you can have your choice.

All right, next. Next item.

It's okay for 20.

Green light, please.

For 25G, I just would like.

I think we have 25C first.

Oh, sorry. Okay. Yes.

Go ahead. So 25C, I'm simply going to move the item, but I wanted to explain to my colleagues what it was about and what it involved. So this is funds going towards a feasibility study because we've been seeing that there's a lot of flooding that occurs when we have excessive rain. And we have a lot more atmospheric rivers, unfortunately, with our changing climate. And unfortunately, we get downpours when we shouldn't. We get an abundance of water, and our infrastructure is very, very old. So you'll see a lot of it in our downtown where we see flooding into some of the public properties, public right-of-ways.

And so this is a study that will help us identify what we need to do to make sure that we avoid that. Problems aren't going to go away. Our infrastructure is still very, very old. It's decaying, unfortunately, at a very rapid rate. And this gives us a sense of what exactly we need to do and anticipate to be able to address those problems. But all the forecasting and all the science says that these, what they call sort of a pineapple express, where they're just dumping a lot of water in certain areas, we get a lot of that. And this will help us identify how we improve our infrastructure.

I think the staff report identifies a projected capital improvement amount of $600 million. I think it's closer to $320 million. But nonetheless, this will help us narrow it down, be a little bit more specific of what we need to do immediately. So I'd move the item with that comment.

Second.

Okay, so we have a motion to second. Those in favor, please say aye or press the green button. If you're opposed, press the other button.

Okay, who's got the next item? Council Member Iglesias?

Well, I just want to put 25G and 25H together. Go ahead. The reason I pulled it is because it seems like we're going retro. We're going effective July 1st for these amendment agreements to be effective, and I just don't feel comfortable with going retro on things past the deadline. So that was my reason why I pulled it.

All right. So I would entertain a motion on those two items. Motion to approve. Second. Those in, well, if you're in favor, press green.

Sassy.

Got it. So that's why you pulled it. Is that it on the consent calendar?

I then would go to the balance of the consent counter. I'd entertain a motion on that. Motion to approve. We have a motion and a second. Those in favor, please press green.

A mayor?

Yeah, I did.

I did earlier.

And for clarification, Villegas moved it, and who seconded it?

Mine was a silence.

He seconded, but we need hearing aids here. All right. Next, or West Spring.

Mayor Pulido, I would also like to administer the oath to Roxana Santos.

All right, let's go ahead and do that.

and she has been appointed as a community redevelopment and housing commissioner

come around come around

by the way what but while they're coming up i just want to announce that i was told earlier by my some of my council members that on item 75a there will not be a vote because two of us are going to recuse ourselves so if you're staff and you're here and you're waiting for that item just wanted to know to have you note that because some of you may want to go home so with that let's go ahead with the oath of office.

I Roxana Sanchez do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California,

that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion that I will

and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I'm about to enter. Thank you.

Okay, I believe we're now on item 55A.

Mr. Mayor, just as a point of order, on 75A, I don't know if it's a continuance or if that's a staff recommendation or a council recommendation. to not consider an act on 75A? Can we, I don't understand what we're doing.

Well, the staff put it on there, but I was informed by one of my colleagues that he won't be able to vote today. So if you don't have four votes. That should be a discussion item, not. And it will be. I'm just trying to let staff know in case I want to go early. But if we want to take it on now, we can take it on right now. Yeah, and if there aren't enough votes, then no votes. I'm going to recuse myself. I don't have any interest in government's businesses, but I'm very close to Malahat, who's been my consultant, and I think will continue to be in the future. So for that reason, I'm going to recuse myself.

And I'm going to recuse myself as well, but the reason why I think this, well, I'd like some clarification on my ability to vote on this in the future. So I'm still pending some clarification from the FPPC, but out of an abundance of caution, I'm going to recuse myself on the matter as well.

for this meeting all right thank you gentlemen we'll call you back councilmember salurio yes

thank you i know we discussed this before and uh it's an important item and as a you know industry you know we've been trying to grow this industry these are items i think jointly agreed to by staff and the industry that i think seem to be well thought out i'm not on the public safety committee I don't know any other committee that has reviewed it, but I do know that they've been in the making some time. So I remain supportive of these items that staff has been working on. And maybe through our city manager, through city attorney,

I think we just really need to get a very good handle on the reasons for abstentions and recusals. because either we're going to be able to continue to act on cannabis policy or not. I also know that per the Brown Act or per other items, there's either flexibility or a lot of rigidity to whether folks vote or not, as well as what needs to be placed on the record so that we know what conflicts there may or may not be. I know I myself am kind of looking at this issue.

I learned that or remember that we did a lot of our early cannabis agreements with development agreements that apparently are pretty much contractual agreements. So I'm also a little bit concerned of possible, you know, section 1090 problems. And so maybe if our city manager or staff could work with all the council members to see what interests, if any, we have that are cannabis related. and whether they do rise to the level of allowable conflicts. Maybe we need, as a counselor or staff, get an FPPC advice or something,

but I still just remain very unclear what the reasons for the recusals are or not. So that would be helpful to me and I think for the city to know whether we can address this issue in the future.

Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Iglesias.

My concern with this item, and I don't know if I shared it last time, but this time around I'm going to say the reason why. One of the things that we're looking at increasing our revenue for our city, and we've increased our sales tax for the entire residents and businesses here in Santa Ana. And then with this one, we would be giving a tax break to the cannabis industry going from 5% to 2%. So I don't believe that's something that it's fair for other businesses and also for our residents.

And then also I just, you know, I've always stood that this is about having cannabis authorized here in the city of Santa Ana to sell is something that's leading to the causes of our homeless issue, to our vagrancy, to our crimes, and then our kids getting addicted to this type of drug because it's something that is readily accessible to them. And I just feel that it's, we're doing our youth and our community service. So I'll continue to vote no on this, but more on principle, but the one when it comes to the fiscal impact, I just feel that we shouldn't be giving anybody a break from paying what's fair.

Thank you. Any other comments? Councilmember Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem. I just wanted to state again my support for this item just because I know one of the percentages is for testing laboratories, not cells of it. But I don't, you know, one of the few times I'll disagree with you, Councilwoman Iglesias, I don't believe that cannabis is, you know, an addictive drug or, you know, it's not a gateway drug. We shouldn't really put that message out because that's been proven by numerous different entities to not be the case.

David PenalozaItem —

And it's important to look at how this is already something that's already here in our city and something that's already legalized and something that's already permitted. This is just simply simplifying that to not have all this red tape. And that's about it. And I don't have any, I don't need to reach out to the FPPC. I don't have any investments in the cannabis industry. I'm poor. I have no money to invest. I'm a millennial. So, I mean, we're okay there. So I wouldn't waste my time with that. But that's about it.

Thank you. My comments, before I ask the council what the pleasure is, if we're going to vote on this or not, or possibly move this down, you know, extend to 30 days. Many of you know that I have a law enforcement background. I'm not a big fan of the cannabis industry. I understand that the voters, I am a fan of the law, though. And if the voters voted for it, then it's here. My understanding and my thinking is that it's better to have local control, have a local ordinance on this than to be held to what the state says.

because the state doesn't know what's good for Santa Ana all the time. They have their general idea of what they have, but we can't compare ourselves to Los Angeles or San Bernardino or what have you. We're the city of Santa Ana. We should have local control on this. I also have my views that I do think of it as a gateway drug, regardless because I taught drug ed for over 10 years, and I've been in law enforcement almost 30 years come November. I've seen a lot of people affected by this, and many of them told me they started off with cannabis.

It's funny that I've been a no consistently on the committee on this, and then when it comes down to being on the dais, I find myself having to support this because I'd rather be involved in the decision-making than to be held at what the state says. And that's why I'm here and I support the ordinance. I support us moving some of the percentage on the testing from 5% to 2% because we want those labs to stay here because having safety is a big priority. I'm not a fan of selling this stuff. It's going to happen anyway. The law is the law. I consider myself a man of the law and I'm going to work on it as a professional.

Those are my comments. What is the pleasure of the council? So we'd like to move this down in case one of the gentlemen has a different letter from the FBPC clearing him completely. Maybe the staff has a recommendation? What is the staff recommendation?

I would respectfully request that you continue the item because I do believe it's my understanding that Councilmember Sarmiento is working on getting clearance to vote on the item.

David PenalozaItem —

Very good. I would make a motion to move the item for 30 days to our August meeting.

Is there a second?

David PenalozaItem —

Second.

Okay, all those in favor, push a green button.

Green for cannabis. Just kidding.

Okay, so we're not moving it.

The vote is 3-1. Motion fails.

Okay, so... I would just suggest that maybe staff look at some changes through the ordinance and taking it to the Edabit committee. We deal with economic development there. Maybe we can work on it a little bit more or new recommendations.

Well, my understanding is that there's no action because it failed so that staff can bring it back at a later date without you taking an action.

Thank you. With that, we're calling the mayor back. Thank you.

All right, so Madam Clerk, I believe we were about to begin item 55A?

That is correct.

All right, so I would entertain a motion on item 55A.

Does staff have a recommendation on 55A?

Any comments from staff on 55A?

So 55A is before you, and it's three items. It's approving an appropriation adjustment should you approve the resolution and authorize the city manager to execute the police management association, MOU, that's before you.

So is your recommendation that we approve it as is?

I believe that's how the staff report is reflected, if the recommended action is to approve it.

But I believe... That's what you recommend?

Because I know we had a discussion in closed session, and I don't know if there's any new updated recommendation based off of that.

If you wanted to provide us different direction to it, or do you want to continue it and allow us to work on it some more?

I think that would be more appropriate.

Yeah, I'd recommend a one-month continuance.

Okay.

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

Okay, motion passes unanimously. Next item, 60A, I'd entertain a motion.

Mayor Polito, I believe we have communication for that speaker card.

Okay, Lisa, yes we do. Lisa Peterson, I believe, Pedersen, followed by Kimberly Adams.

Hi, good evening. My name is Lisa Peterson and I'm a human rights activist and a resident here in Santa Ana. I'm here this evening to express my concern for the continued lack of interest by some people to help others to have a better life. As we've seen across our country and here in Santa Ana, that the cost of living continues to increase while the living wage continues to be stagnant. As a result, people have to choose between food and medicine, or even still, they have to choose between paying for food or paying to rent a place to live.

In turn, this hurts our economy, which hurts all of our people here in Santa Ana, so the cycle continues without any relief, without any hope. Jamboree Housing, along with Pacific companies, is nearing their completion of city approvals for a project that would bring more than 500 homes to low and moderate income families, along with retail space for our city. In turn, this would greatly benefit our community as taxes would go back into our economy where we would all benefit. Our children's schools would be better equipped, so upon completion of high school, they have

more options to choose from to have a great life. Seniors who have devoted their lives working to build our community don't have to make a decision between medicine and food and would have their housing that they need. The working middle class will have centers and businesses in which they can be a part of which create a sense of belonging where they can thrive. Please say yes to the sustainable community growth and living for all of our community members and not just a select few.

Thank you. Next speaker is Elizabeth Hansberg.

Good evening council. My name is Elizabeth Hansberg. I represent the non-profit organization people for housing orange county i'm here also to support the work of jamboree housing specifically this project is very important because they are targeting residents with moderate incomes 50 to 80 percent of area median income this is a bracket that does not usually get built for in the non-profit housing developer world most times housing will be built for the 30 percent very low income and low income. So this really does represent an opportunity to build housing

for people who are making too much to qualify for other projects. So this is a much needed project. I would also just remind you of the ongoing housing shortage that we are experiencing in California and the need to, when the opportunity presents, build as much housing for human beings as we can. I realize that there has been some concern about parking but the reality is is that people need homes and cars don't need homes so we need to make sure that we're prioritizing people over cars so thank

you thank you very much next speaker is Tim Fon

what was that your this is your card okay I thought the mayor I thought the

called it. Please. Ms. Adams. Welcome. Hi, my name is Kimberly Adams. I'd like to start sharing a story. I have a 26-year-old thriving daughter who works really hard and she pays over 50% of her income just on rent. This is because we are lacking affordable housing in California, especially in Orange County. A lot of cities are not doing their part when it comes to affordable housing units. In addition, she doesn't want to have kids because of global warming.

Sorry.

Okay, so sorry. So sorry. I have it written down and I'm still losing my place. So crushing commutes are not only severely compromising the quality of life of the workforce, but they're the number one source of carbon emissions in California. This development by Jambrihausen and the other developer is close to public transportation, would encourage the use of public transportation.

in Santa Ana I know you guys are suffering from gentrification and the cause of gentrification is the lack of housing lack of housing supply and so people are buying up neighborhoods vulnerable communities and therefore this development with new affordable housing is essential to a healthy community. When it really comes down to it, we only have one life to live. So let's make sure that other people have quality of life. Thank you.

Thank you. And I believe Tim Pham, followed by Jonathan Gibson, followed by Isui Ramos.

Good evening, Council. My name is Jonathan Gibson. I'm an attorney at Public Law Center. We're a local nonprofit here in Santa Ana that often partners up with the city for mutual goals of keeping working-class families housed and avoiding eviction. I want to speak strongly in support of this project and give a little bit of a practitioner's perspective. Someone who goes to court, who sees people who are getting evicted and who tries to stop it. First of all, this project is going to help people who are already here. This isn't going to bring other people in. It's specifically

targeted for Santa Ana residents. The average Santa Ana income is about $57,000 a year, and the income limit in this project is about $70,000. So it's specifically targeting them. I also want to talk about the housing crisis and how this project will help people from being evicted. Council Member Villegas talked about being homeless temporarily during the earthquake up in Northridge. That's something that our residents face all the time. And And I'm a Santa Ana resident too.

There's a significant number of people who are spending 70 or 80% of their income on housing. And what does that mean? That means that if someone gets sick, that means if their kid has to take time off of school and they have to take time off of work, they're going to get a three-day notice and possibly face eviction. It also means that if there's rain, if someone who works outside can't go to work for a few days, they're at risk of eviction. And this can help. It's not a silver bullet, but it definitely is going to help people catch their breath. It's going to help have a little breathing room.

I also want to talk about overcrowding in Santa Ana. by providing 500 plus units that can house thousands of people it's going to help the overcrowding crisis that leads to habitability issues that leads to slum housing conditions that we see too much and lastly it's going to help open up housing for section 8 tenants so for the for those of you don't know about it section 8 it's a federal program where the federal government pays for housing for low-income people. It's a great program, but sadly, there's just too many folks who have vouchers but can't use them. All these units would be within the voucher limit, and it would

specifically allow them to come there. So in conclusion, I strongly recommend that the council approve this project. It will help Santa Ana, and it will help the residents. Thank you.

Thank you. I called two other names. I don't know if they're present or not. Come on down, please.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. My name is Ysuri. I'm here speaking on behalf of the Kennedy Commission tonight. We advocate for families with extremely low incomes for affordable housing for them. I'm here tonight to speak in support of the proposed development at 2110, 2114, and 2020 East 1st Street. We submitted a letter of support to the Council highlighting the need for affordable housing in the city, and we ask that tonight you approve the density bonus agreement for this development to bring this affordable housing. Thank you.

Thank you. With that, I'll bring it back to the Council. What is the pleasure of the Council?

Move the item.

With comment. Go ahead and comment. Thank you. I just wanted the City Attorney, if she could take a moment, just to address an item that was mentioned by the Council for Public Law Center. I think what we had spoken about the last time this matter was before us was that this Council was limited in its scope of review, and based upon what the Planning Commission has already taken a position on on this item regarding concessions, it really does narrow what we can do. So to the extent you can kind of explain that a little bit further, Madam City Attorney.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Thank you. Yes, I will. I do recall receiving a question from one of the council members at a previous council meeting as to what authority the city had. We did look into that. It was confirmed that there are state density bonus laws, which in essence preempt the city in this area. There are some exceptions to that where the city council can make certain types of findings as to impacts, specifically in this case, potential impacts with respect to traffic. But we have worked closely with staff, and we have determined that those issues have been resolved,

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

and therefore the city at this time would be compelled to follow the state law and its own local laws with respect to the Denton City Bonus Rules.

And I certainly appreciate the comments I know that I had heard on the substantive matters and challenges like parking. And so I thank the council member who brought that up, Peñalosa, I think it was. And so thank you for that because I understand that there's been some additional work that was done, even though it's not necessary in this phase, but I think there was some work that was done. I represent this ward, so I know that the closest neighborhood, if I'm not mistaken, Director Tai, because your department handled this, right? Or was it Mendoza's? Okay, so both of yours, you're both nodding.

The closest neighborhood, I think, is mine, which is Saddleback View. And if you look at it maybe from an aerial, and I wish we had one, it's probably maybe half a mile. away. So that's a long walk when somebody's coming home and parking in a neighborhood. And that's the problem that we've had in other neighborhoods where people park in single family home neighborhoods, and then they walk to their multifamily site. That doesn't really seem to be the case here. So I think that, you know, that dynamic is not the same one that we've seen in other areas of the city. Somebody spoke about the 60 to 80% AMI

level. You know, look, I wish we were a little lower. That's my only gripe with that is that 60-80% is almost market rate. And what we need in this town is much, much lower than market rate because our AMY is, you know, what our families earn is probably some of the lowest income levels in the entire county and in the entire state. So there have been good strides that have been made, so I appreciate the work that's been done. I know that we have large families that are looking for affordable places to live. So a single bedroom is not going to really be helpful. So I really

congratulate you on the strides that you've made to include more two, three, and four bedrooms, which is what we really need for our families. And so thank you for that. Nothing's ideal in our world, but to the extent that there is progress that can be made, I certainly appreciate all the work that staff and the applicant have done. So my time is up and the light is red,

so thank you with that thank you for that so with that i believe uh we have a motion more comment counselor iglesias so and then paying looks like okay go ahead so um my comment and my

question for this um i know one of the concerns that i've had with all of the developments that are coming before the council for for approval um is the parking situation and i and i understand that the developer has come I guess to an agreement to provide a parking shuttle or a valet service on site but for me that still doesn't it doesn't answer I guess the concern that I have and and how they're going to to do that and

In reading page six of the staff report that was provided to us, I would say on the fourth sentence, because what we've been asking of other developments is for us to have at least two parking stalls per unit. And this one doesn't give it to you unless you provide the valet or whatever it is, that other type of, I would say the other, the shuttle. So in here it says constructing 2.0 parking spaces per

residential unit on the project site would require the developer to construct an additional level of parking either above or below grade resulting in increased construction cost and or a loss of an entire level of residential units. So are we really looking at the needs of the residents or are we looking at the needs of the developer. Just by reading this, it seems like we are not asking for them to provide a two parking slot because it's going to cost them more money. I feel it's, I mean, for me, it just doesn't seem right that it's going to be in low-income housing,

but yet, you know, we don't expect the developer to provide an extra, you know, concession to provide the two parking slots per unit. So for me, I'm not comfortable with this.

at all and I just do you want to ask that as a question of staff yeah so just you

know so how you guys are going to justify them certainly councilmember

glacis so as you recall this item was before you in two meetings in May and the concerns that were raised had to do with the parking so the developer went back worked very hard at a parking management plan to address all of the the concerns that were raised at the council meetings and you're right that normally it's two spaces per unit but what the developer is seeking is a concession that's available under California Government Code section 65915. So they are seeking that concession because of it being an affordable housing project which they are entitled to do.

All right, any Councillor Peña-Los, I believe you had comment.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank You Mayor. I just wanted to state that that for the residents or speakers that came and spoke about the level of homeless in our city is due to lack of affordable housing and whatnot. Just keep in mind that Santa Ana, whether it's homeless shelters, whether it's affordable housing, is light years away from ahead of any NIMBY city in the county. So that's not a valid argument, just putting that out there. And to other speakers, I'm just saying that you know, millennials aren't having kids. I'm just going to keep sticking up for millennials.

David PenalozaItem —

We're not having kids, you know, because the baby boomers ruined the world economy, but that's besides the point. And I just wanted to thank the applicant for the work that they did. I know they worked really hard with the requests that I made and collectively on this council with the parking management plan. And there were some things in there that I did like. and just wanted to thank you for that, for working diligently and getting that parking management plan put together. And I just hope that it does carry through and carry teeth.

David PenalozaItem —

And it's not just like we usually see, it's just words and then it just gets filed away and not done anything. Whatever decision is made tonight, I'm gonna hold you very accountable to that plan and make sure that it's done. Just wanted to state that. But thank you.

Okay, so with that, Councillor José Solorio, please.

Just a couple of clarifying questions. A lot of work was done on the parking management plan, so I just want to clarify a few things. So for the shuttle program,

Let's see, there's two sections I had a question about. So for the, actually first the valet plan question. For off hours operations, because really the windows of the valet service aren't real broad, 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. But I know in discussions it was discussed that there'd be after hours opportunities. so that if somebody did need to access their car, that they would be. The language currently is written, in case of emergency, on-call property managed personnel can be accessed to act as a valet service or assistant coordinating transit.

It needs to just be stronger, like a shall rather than a could. But I think it's my understanding that it's, that is the intent, so maybe we can just work Smith and via the staff, we'll make that clarification. and then on the shuttle piece, I forget exactly where I saw it, but in making mention of those lots that may be used where folks would have their cars, it says that there would be, it kind of points to the, oh, here we go, that the spaces would be available for lease. So are you suggesting that customers would be charged extra for using the shuttle service? I don't think that that was the, that hadn't come up before,

and if so how much and is the valet also going to cost or I'll ask director I thought the intent was that it would be free thank you for that question the

shuttle is free to all residents of the project site as well as any any parking

spots where their cars may be parked as part of this shuttle program the parking

Parking spaces, so the project provides one space per unit, and the residents have the option, if they require additional off-site parking spaces, can make that as a part of their rental agreement. So it would cost extra is what you're saying? Correct. How much extra? At this point, their goal is to negotiate off-site parking spaces in a bundle, and using that bundle, they would reduce the...

Maybe the applicant can speak to it. My understanding was this would be free. I've never heard of free shuttle programs, but yet if you want a parking spot to park your car, you've got to pay extra. And where it is and how much.

Sure. Good evening, Mayor and Councilmembers and Councilmembers Solorio. I'm Michael Massey. I'm the Chief Development Officer at Jamboree. In response to your question, the intent, as we've been in discussion about the bulk parking, off-site parking, has been that we have an obligation under the parking management plan to arrange bulk spaces for residents for our overflow parking. So if there is demand from a resident for more than the one space they're allowed per unit, we do provide them the option.

We will be negotiating them in bulk, so there will be efficiencies and savings available. How much do you think it would be in bulk? We don't know yet because we're still a couple years away from actually implementing it. So we've had some very preliminary discussions with nearby landlords. so we don't have an actual price, but because we're negotiating in bulk, I think there will be considerable savings.

I would suggest for simplicity to consider it, and you could say, no, maybe we just strike out that line. That way the rest days appear as we understand all along. I mean, this idea that we're going to have people park off-site, but only if they agree to pay extra on their lease. that's a new thing. And in part because this hadn't been in writing before, and as you know, I've been asking for it in writing, and maybe that's what I would suggest is take out that line and remove this issue for now.

Mayor and members of the council, Laura Archuleta, president and CEO of Jamboree Housing. So the initial plan that was submitted to Planning Commission over a year ago actually stated that the residents would pay for that additional space. So there has not been any change. I'm sorry if that wasn't.

That hasn't been shown to us or told us here.

Yeah, if that hasn't been clarified at the beginning, there is no money in the budget to pay for additional parking. Our commitment is to arrange for that parking, and obviously the negotiated price will vary based on market demands in that area. Of course, when there's a downturn and there's more open parking, we may be able annually to reduce that. And so when the residents come in and sit down and talk to the leasing agent and they go through the qualification period, then at that time they'll be assigned their parking space on site, and then they'll be asked if they're in need of another parking space,

and we'll let them know at that time what the cost would be if they want an additional parking space.

I feel very uncomfortable, since this is part of the thing, to support the item given. and I had no idea there was going to be this extra fee, how much it might be, what percentage would have to pay this extra fee. And again, when we're talking about people that are poor already and to say, you know, and by the way, there's going to be some extra fee. We don't know how much or where and where you're going to need to park. And by the way, only during these hours do we have the shuttle.

This is new to me, and I was hoping you could just strike the line and consider further. but maybe we could also continue or something else, but I'm not comfortable with this.

Yeah, look, Councilman Lewis, I know you brought this issue up earlier.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I just, in regards to that additional cost for that parking spot, I know that I spoke for about 45 minutes with the applicant last week in a conference call because that was one of the things that stood out for me as well in the parking management plan that I wasn't comfortable with because these are very low-income families and just an additional parking spot to pay for, that's a luxury in itself. They're barely making ends meet. If they do have a second car, they're working very hard for that.

David PenalozaItem —

So demanding that they – or offering an additional parking spot off-site at a cost, I wasn't comfortable with at all. And I made that very clear when I spoke with the applicant. But I was able to outweigh one of the things that was also added to the parking management plan was the eviction if any of these parking policies on their lease is broken. And that is something that I was able to justify with because that's not something that you see very often, which I liked.

David PenalozaItem —

because that's one of the problems, too, is that we have a lot of residents in the city that do break rules in regards to parking. So having that in there, I was able to outweigh it. But if it is a possibility to look into that and see how we could alleviate that cost for those certain individuals, that's always the best practice for me. but I just wanted to say that I had brought that up to Council Member Solorio. That's it, Mr. Mayor.

All right. Well, we've had a lot of... I just had a... Go ahead, Council Member Sarmiento.

Thank you. So, you know, I wish the applicant would have given a narrative of what is happening here because, you know, it doesn't really seem to tell the whole story. We're fixated on one part of this whole thing, but I represent this ward. it's one of the gateways into the city it's not a very pleasant place right now because you have street walkers you have a lot of things going on that shouldn't be going on this is one more piece of that puzzle that's going to push that bad element out bring in families and look anytime you have families and you have neighborhoods those folks that are doing bad things whether

they're using the hotels on that corridor hourly instead of daily and weekly you know is a good thing. So this, in addition to what's going on at the Amcal site down the road on First Street, what happened with the revitalization of that Holiday Inn Express, what's going on with the Islamic Center, the cultural center there, along with the zoo being revamped, along with the warmer site, all these things are solutions to a bigger problem. We identified this corridor in our housing element years ago we directed developers to come in here and not just market

rate developers but all kinds of developers and this is an element that really is missing which is that affordable housing on it nobody is against market rate housing but we need a balance right so that's what we're that's I think what's being proposed under the density bonus allowance here is to ask for that balance and I think the council member hit it right look it's not ideal We've approved many sites that compromise neighborhoods, that compromise traffic, that compromise all kinds of other CEQA problems. But we do it anyways, right?

We were asked to approve a charter school the other day that was going to, I think, double in size and was going to have a huge impact, right? And now we're looking at something that's going to provide families affordable places to live. And I think it's something that, yeah, it's not ideal, but we're balancing the interests here. But I shouldn't be having to tell this story. It should be the applicant, and I think it's something that has been missing from day one. So the floor is yours, Laura.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. I have prepared a short presentation that covers some of the benefits of this project with some good before and after pictures. If you'd like to take the time to go through it right now, I'd be happy to.

What's the pleasure of other Councilmembers? Have you heard enough? Do you want to see this presentation?

I've heard enough. I'd like to see it.

All right, well, two want to see it, so let's oblige them in. Go ahead.

Yeah, and I'll make it pretty short. Is it up on your screen? There we go. Okay, wonderful. Okay, so first, this is a rendering of the development, right? So 552 units, mixed use. It is a partnership between a for-profit and a nonprofit that's been operating here in Orange County for 30 years. It has very high quality design, again mixed use with retail on the bottom and residential above. It is part of the Metro East overlay zone which as Council Member Samrianto mentioned, there's a whole lot going on in that area right now and a whole lot of goals

when the Metro East overlay zone was adopted. I think one of the items that was brought up earlier also is where's the other residential neighborhoods in proximity. And I think if you look here, you can get an idea of our location there, 2114 and 2110, and the different colors, the different zones of where our property would be. We see this as really an ideal location for a whole number of reasons. it's very difficult to do blight removal now with the loss of redevelopment or to produce affordable housing.

To the question as we get into the parking, I mean ideally every parking, every community would have adequate parking. But under state density bonus law we are allowed to reduce that parking and still operate a very high quality development. Jamboree is fortunate to have 10,000 residents in our properties here in California, and we address those issues along the way.

So here's some before pictures and an after picture of that site. And that's what I think Council Member Sarmiento was referring to, that we're talking about significant blight removal in a way that could not be done without development on this site.

So here you see the eliminating of vacant lots, crime infestation, poorly maintained properties, and public health concerns, and reduced property values as a result of that. We actually measure and see property values going up where high quality affordable housing is being built. And then developing, of course, the well-designed high-rise mixed-use development in a transit-oriented design and situation. promoting pedestrian connections with a very innovative financing structure and for those of you who've been on the council for some time you know that very

low and low-income housing does not get built with a without a significant financial investment by our cities and this is a new creative financing mechanism to get these units built transit oriented design affordable housing, less demand for parking because of that. And you can see the environmental benefits that come along with this development. We talked about the parking mitigation plans. One of the items that Council Member Penelosa brought up the last meeting, which really got us thinking about what happens when there, if there was an emergency and the one person who was parked on site

was gone at work, what happens to the rest of those family members? And as we sat down and talked through it and you see it in the planning commission report there's actually four employees that live on site so they're they would be available to assist as discussed a little bit earlier but those comments in the last month really got us thinking through how is this actually going to function when our residents are living there you can see our proximity to the other additional transportation options for our residents and that's just a very quick overview for you obviously

Obviously, at the Planning Commission level, there was much more extensive presentation on the benefits of the project and the overall project, but I appreciate you letting me take this time to review it with you.

Thank you very much. Is there any other comments from my colleagues?

Councilman Peñalosa?

Councilman Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem —

Councilman Peñalosa Thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem. And thank you for that as well. There was a – just so the public knows, one of the things that I did bring up is that, I grew up in a single-parent family, and I know that when me or my brothers were sick or feeling ill in the middle of the night, my mom was terrified of calling 911 just because of the costs associated with it or potential costs or insurance purposes. So there was no calling an ambulance. There was a, I've got to take him to the hospital.

David PenalozaItem —

And in an affordable housing, more than likely, the families living here will be in the same predicament where they're terrified to call 911. So I asked, what if there is an emergency and the car is parked a mile away at some lot in the middle of the night when valet services aren't operating, the shuttle's not operating? and that was one of the things that, again, they came back with and they said that there will be four employees on site available to the residents, you know, at what I'm sure at a time, designated time, for these emergencies.

David PenalozaItem —

And I just want to point out that I don't think this will, this development, I don't think it'll push out vagrancy or walkers or homeless people. I don't think that's going to help alleviate the problem because we have very developed areas in the city that we have this problem 24-7. It just keeps getting worse and worse. Specifically, you know, Edinger and Standard, very developed area. There was, we had a, at the Madison Park Neighborhood Association last week, we had a movie night at the park. Hundreds of kids. There was like 20 homeless people in the restroom, 50 feet away, doing all kinds of things.

David PenalozaItem —

So that argument shouldn't be used, but again, I thank you for addressing that issue with the emergency services.

Thank you.

Additional thoughts, Mayor Pro Tem? Go ahead. Councilman Regalizios.

And this is for the developer. I know it's affordable housing. We're trying to get 552, and it's more the question of what we've asked of all the developers. It's like, can it be scaled down more? Why are we going to 552? Can it be 300 or half the size? Something that is going to be more reasonable while at the same time giving the parking ratio.

So, Council Member, I really appreciate the question.

we're in a housing crisis here in California. By state density bonus law, we're allowed to build 1,000 units on the site. So we have severely scaled it back.

Yeah, I know, but just because, I mean, there's a lot of things in California that are, they want us to follow, but, you know, none of it makes sense. I know. So this doesn't make sense. And so, but my thing is, you know, responsible development. So, and because it goes back to the same one, you know, to the same question that we're asking, up you know Mr. Oglenick and with 225 and I know it's two two different things but it's pretty much the same questions that we're asking so why is it that we should give you uh something that you know we're not allowing for the other developers and I think it's it's not right if we know we do one

thing for the other we should do it for you know for everyone so not just because it's California law this means like it makes sense but um it's just why 552 what can it be less sure I hear you

I often have had in my 35 years experience doing this, council members who would prefer single-family homes. I get it. This is what we're proposing here.

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to echo those words from Council Member Iglesias. It's true. We're holding 25 North Main at a very high standard, and that developer is doing what he can to try to get a project through. and here we have this other project, a little bit different than theirs, but you're talking about someone that deals with parking issues daily. So you're going to find me having a tough time supporting something that doesn't have ample parking. Maybe the developer here should lower it quite a bit in good faith because I'm not about to contribute to the parking problem we have in this city.

There you go, Mr. Moore. All right. So where we are, is there a motion up or down?

There's a motion and a second on the floor.

There is from Councilman Solario.

I'd like to withdraw my motion. And if there's a withdrawal and a second, maybe a continuance, but I mentioned the concerns.

So he's withdrawing his motion?

David PenalozaItem —

I'll second Councilmember Samantha's motion.

I don't think he made a motion. No, but I was a second. I'm willing to make a motion to move forward. So I'll move my second from a second to a motion.

No, I'll second his motion to move forward. Okay, those in favor, please press green. Those opposed, press red.

I'm abstaining.

Did you want to say something large?

I did. Thank you. I think that as the applicant who have gone through this now for several years working on this project, I think we would actually like to call for a vote.

Well, we did.

So that's the vote on the project or to continue it?

Okay. Thank you. Sonia, do you mind just admonishing us and letting us know what we're looking at?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Well, I mean, I just would like to advise the council. It's not every day that I have to give you legal advice in public. I don't like to do that. I would tell you that-

Do you want us to break and go into closed session?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I think we need to schedule this for closed session, but I think we've made, staff has been very clear in our advice to you that this project is far down the road. There is state and local law on it, and we have received a threat of litigation with respect to this, so that's something I'd like you to take into consideration as you vote tonight or if you reconsider your vote.

May I make a substitute motion to continue, and we all look at it further?

I would just offer, just as a general comment, though, that this issue of a new fee and what it might be, city governments can't willy-nilly say we're going to start assessing folks' parking fees without due process, disclosure, et cetera. So I think this proposal has a lot of new pieces of information that merit discussion and review, apart from other aspects of the recommendation, because there's really numerous documents here that we're being asked to review and consider.

Councillor Peñalosa.

David PenalozaItem —

I don't think that the idea to have the city charge people for parking was what was mentioned. I think that's kind of what that sounded like. But I know that...

No, but we approve fees, and we're being here asked to give approval on assessing fees for parking.

David PenalozaItem —

I think what was stated by the applicant is that they would, at the time of lease agreement with the resident, if I'm moving in with my family, I'm like, you know what, I have two cars, what do I do? They'll say, well, we'll add, I don't know, 50, whatever the amount is.

But performance and financing, the whole bit, take into account every aspect of revenue in and expenses out. So what's the revenue base or cost associated with this? I don't know. Does the city have a perform on that?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Mayor and Councilmember, I just want to remind you of something. There is an overriding public policy in a decision that's been made by the state legislature in this case. This is not a local issue. This is not your typical issue. The state of California and the legislature, and some people say it's wisdom or it's whatever, has made a policy decision that housing is important, that affordable housing is very important. And in that regard, they have written these density bonus rules, and they're telling you that they know that there are going to be impacts. They know that their policy decisions are going to create these impacts.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So the result for the city is that you then layer on top of that your own density bonus rules. You have applicants who comply with those rules. And then the state says to you, we do want to give you some local control. We want to make sure that you can make findings when you feel it's appropriate if you see these significant impacts. The conversations that you have had are getting into the details of who pays for what. but you haven't taken the time to really discuss those impacts. And what happened is this matter went to your planning commission for a discussion, and they made those recommendations to you.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

That's why you have a planning commission, and you have your professional staff who's brought to you this project. And I know that is a very uncomfortable place to be. I would only make the comparison. For example, I've had to inform clients that some people don't want adult businesses in their communities, but there's First Amendment rights and you have to approve them. And I just think that you need to be mindful that there's some very clear state law here. Whether you agree with that state law or disagree with it, it is the law.

Thank you for that. Go ahead.

I just wanted us to make our decisions with our eyes wide open. And so, I mean, you have rights. Nobody's going to advise you to withhold those rights or restrain yourself, nor advocate and, you know, come after us. but we do have a very limited scope in what we're doing here today. So I know that's been repeated many times, but that seems to be getting away from us, and we talk about ancillary issues that maybe isn't the right forum for it to be discussed, because I know it was discussed at the Planning Commission, which was the rightful place and the right forum for us to discuss them.

I do just want to clarify for Council Member Solorio. So our plan is to not make money on those parking spaces. And annually, we will be submitting our compliance documents to the city, and we can show those contracts we have with those third-party parking lot owners. So you can see that it's just...

So if it's not about making money, then let's just strike out that one line and we're good.

It's just a pass-through of the fee, a pass-through of the cost is what it is. How much is the cost? We don't know, and I really think it's going to depend on the market.

We're not going to put a blind cost on poor people.

But it will be disclosed to all of our residents. Blind cost on poor people. Okay.

So we already voted on this. Why are we still discussing it? Yeah.

Next item.

Next item.

Unless somebody wants to reconsider anything.

David PenalozaItem —

If not, yes, Councillor Peña-Loza. I just want to take the applicant for it. So all the concerns and the changes I asked for were done to the best that they could. And thank you for that effort on that parking management plan, which I'd like.

All right. Now on to item 75B. This time in place to hold a hearing on appeal application filed by Fiedler Group on behalf of 7-Eleven.

65A. 65A. Well, you just gave it to me. I thought, okay. Sorry about that.

65A.

Okay, I'd entertain a motion on 65A.

Mayor, this item would require some discussion.

Okay.

Go ahead. So at the last council meeting on July 2nd, you approved the recognition of $399,000 in unclaimed deposits to the general fund as revenue, and a request was made from the dais for me to return to you to program that money to actually spend during the current fiscal year. So in the staff report, we listed a number of areas that you could consider spending it in, and also the amount that you would like to spend in each area. So staff is looking for direction on where you want to program the $399,000 and how much for each area. So listed in the staff report, we presented four different areas

based on some conversation between Council. The first one would be for the quality of life team, so it would be going towards addressing homeless in the city. The second one would be for New Hope Library, the preparation for the grand reopening and we're going to expand the hours at that library. A third potential for you to consider is youth educational programs and then fourth would be code enforcement. Those are the four that we identified. Of course you're not limited by those four, so we're looking for the direction as to what amount and which program you would like to program those dollars to.

All right.

Actually, we do. No, 65A right now. We don't have any speakers, so just thoughts and counsel. Counselor Peñalosa, then Counselor Iglesias. Go ahead.

Thank you. So thank you, Madam City Manager, for bringing this back to us. And one thing that I wanted to add, and I believe this is something that I shared with you was we're focusing a lot on youth which I'm glad that we are but I would like for us to focus on senior services because that's something that is lacking out in our community how do we engage them and you know being productive citizens of our community some of them you know they they want to contribute but they just don't know how and and I don't believe as even though we have like the you know senior centers but we don't go above and beyond to helping

them with other stuff so one of the things that i've heard from the community on the um and the need out there with with many of the seniors who are not able to retire with a comfortable you know pension or something is for them to have work program for for our seniors and um and that's something that i would um ask council and um my colleagues here that's something that we can consider allocating funds to because it's something that's really needed for our seniors. And also, so with that, and I know that you're asking for us to have the amount here.

So for me, since it's $400,000, I would say, because I think with the educational service, I think we have a lot already going with just the general fund. And I know it's something that I had requested, but I think with the youth services would be something like either educational with different programs that we don't have already. Like, say, music programs, something that we can engage all kids from all over Santa Ana. And then also if we could have some type of internship, paid internship for our youth. I know that's something that they look forward through the entire year.

And I know that's something that the library services with Cheryl, they're doing an amazing job with those kids with the teen challenge? No, teen space. Yeah, teen space. So if it's something that we could increase the number for them to have paid internship, that would be something that I would be very supportive of. Thank you.

Councilman Pinaloza?

Go ahead, Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Council Member Iglesias, for bringing that up. I, too, support some kind of program or something that we can do for our senior citizens. For the last few years that I've been here on this council, all I hear is about our youth, our youth, our youth, and we do do a lot for them. And the schools do a lot for them. But we always seem to forget our senior citizens. And it's about time we do something here. We should allocate some of these funds. Actually, I would say take out everything here that has to do with the youth. because our cannabis money, a third of that is supposed to go to the youth and education from that area.

And we can use that funds for senior citizens, whether it be for meals or something that we can hire, some kind of internship. They're all on fixed incomes, many of them. So maybe we can have some kind of program with a nonprofit that we can help them out so they can get back in society and help themselves a little bit. that would be great because I really don't hear a lot of programs regarding senior citizens in this city. So I would like to see something. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Councilor Penaloza. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

David PenalozaItem —

Madam City Manager, I just wanted to ask for, I like the suggestions that are in the staff report, and I also, Amal, Lynn, for senior citizens and additional funding. but the $399,000, are those ongoing monies from year to year?

No, they were the result of unclaimed deposits that were just recognized as revenue, so they should not fund ongoing expenses. It should be one-time programs.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay, so anything in regards to any services like this would just have to be taken out from other general fund money. in the following year, right?

If you were to continue those programs. But there are things that we can do one time, like, for example, quality of life homeless area. We could supplement with an additional nonprofit, and that would be a one-time contract. That wouldn't be an ongoing expense. With the seniors, if we implemented programs, we certainly could implement a lot more with this money. And the ones that were successful, we could attempt to find funds in the future to continue those.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay. And just, I know that I keep harping on this. But currently, with the fiscal year, how much money did we appropriate for the census outreach? Just because I know that that's something that we have very little monies appropriated to.

$25,000 for the census outreach.

David PenalozaItem —

And that's something that when you look at the larger picture, that's something that if we do this correct and Santa Ana has a very low turnout rate for the census, we will get the short end of the stick if that very low turnout rate continues. It means less federal dollars, less CDBG monies, less money to appropriate to all these different programs that our city offers. So I'd personally like to see, and I know it's a lot, but since these are not ongoing monies,

David PenalozaItem —

I would feel that it's in our best interest to appropriate some money from that to census outreach. I was thinking $50,000. I'm not sure what the feeling of the council is, but I would like to see that just because I know that if we have that further outreach, it's going to allow us to possibly secure millions of dollars more in federal funding to further invest in our city and youth services and senior services and quality of life team. And that's something that we should really consider.

Let me chime in on that, then I'll go back to my colleagues. I know that Councilman Loza and I are kind of co-chairing the Census Complete Count Committee, working with the Census. I think he's absolutely right that any money we put into this is going to come back many, many times over because it impacts everything from block grant dollars to federal housing monies to you just don't know. Also, through the decade, because it will last for a decade, in the past we've seen that sometimes there's specific government programs that come up out of Congress,

and they often go to the census and look at your population. So over and over and over again, on an annual basis, several times a year you get impacted by that. So, you know, $50,000, I would even say maybe let the city staff look at it, and if they come back and see a little bit more, we ought to, because that's money that we're investing in everybody in the city. Everybody in the city. And it really helps us a lot. So I would concur with that. And now more comment. Who hasn't spoken yet? $100,000. Councilor Lodio?

Yes. Thank you.

And after that, Vince Armiento.

I think we do got to start putting these dollars to work, but another option is sending this to Ted a bit so we can get into a little bit more. But if not, what I would suggest is maybe the four things that really need the resources, the census, the senior service, because we haven't really focused a lot on that, youth services, and quality of life. it should be about $100,000 each. Because the quality of life too, that's really the staff's best recommendation on addressing homelessness issues. And we really need to do more by that as we all know. For code enforcement, we did give them some additional positions in the budget.

So I feel kind of like we covered them. And the New Hope Library issues can also fall under youth education as well as they have cannabis money. So if it were quality of life, youth services, senior services, census, about $100,000 each, that's, I think, an improvement over some of the dollars we're speaking about. But those are just my thoughts. Thank you.

Council Member Vince Armiento, please.

Thank you. And, you know, I wish there were more zeros with this amount because it sounds like we need to stretch it really, really thin. But, look, these are goals, and I think you're looking for direction. to the extent that I think there's something that can take, you know, address seniors, youth, some of those who are middle-aged, some of those who are younger.

There's some restrooms in a couple of our parks. And because it sounds like these aren't ongoing, you know, budget items, this is more for maybe one-time expenses, one-time monies, more like a capital improvement. I know I've heard a lot of folks speak about the bathrooms over at Madison Park and how badly they're in, bad condition they're in. And so to the extent that we can maybe do something there, and some of their issues are as basic as just locking them up earlier. So when kids are gone, families are gone, they're not used by people they shouldn't be. So that may be something that we could look at.

But that and the restrooms over at Delhi, I would say those are one-time cost issues that could be improved, they could be done, and they fall under the youth, seniors, middle-aged, infants, anybody who uses a restroom. So that covers a lot of folks in town. Thank you.

Let me just intervene for a moment. We do have a request from the public. Thomas Gordon, do you wish to speak on this item?

Yes. Thank you.

Thank you.

No, no, thank you. Come on down.

I appreciate you guys letting the public talk about our tax dollars. Hey, I got a silly question. We're scrapping here over a couple of nickels for senior services and all these good fun things. We have a past measure X, a $1 billion sales tax. Let me remind you what that was for. 911 responses, retaining firefighters and police officers, addressing homelessness, fixing streets, maintaining parks, youth and senior services and it goes on and on and on and you guys are talking about nickels for for things such as homeless outreach the quality of life team shouldn't be a thing we

should be discussing it should be a thing we're already doing i don't know if any of you have been down to susan and alton lately there's piles of feces up there that reach my knee some of your staff was out there last week it's absolutely disgusting they did a half-assed job trash is piled this high there was a bonfire there the night they left the piles of trash the business owners you've seen the email because you're copied on it there's a lady who owns a multi-million dollar business right there that employs hundreds of people and she's fed up and

ready to leave the city fed up and ready to leave the city because it's not a homeless problem it's a drug problem it's an alcohol problem it's the fact that city hall has handcuffed our police department and i don't know why this isn't working it's it's city hall has handcuffed our police department and told our police department to not enforce the law there's no homeless living on the train tracks in irvine where's the homeless on the train tracks in irvine not seeing them they're brought to santa anna and it's got to stop our police department needs to do their job today

on the news the county supervisors here across the street settled the lawsuit and said that they were going to start enforcing the law your options are this you go to shelter or you go to jail and we We need to start seeing that here in Santa Ana. Our homeless outreach team, I just lost my mind. What are they called? Cards, Quality of Life. The Quality of Life. The Quality of Life team needs to be out at Bristol and Susan, all along Ettinger, all along Susan and Alton. There's thousands of people all over this city that are breaking the law. And they're stealing daily.

I see pictures on the internet of people pooping in front of fast food restaurants and heroin needles laying on the ground. That is unacceptable. unacceptable and I implore all of you tonight Vince Sarmiento who's running for County Supervisor mentioned the hookers walking around by his house what are we gonna fix this problem guys please all right let me request of our

city manager for a moment because I don't believe anybody has said not to enforce anything nobody can you just speak to that because I know we're not doing enough but we're doing quite a bit and how can we do more can you just

address that certainly the police are not being handcuffed from enforcing the laws that we have on the books which are anti camping and we do have intrusive panhandling I think where the confusion comes in is private property versus public property so with the railroad tracks those are private property so what we have been doing is going through the administrative citation process and getting warrants for inspection of the properties we just wrapped up three different areas where we were granted a warrant by a judge we went into to clean up the area we

are in conversations right now with union pacific which owns the majority of the tracks that flow through our city to reach an agreement with them where they'll start being a responsible property

owner so mr mayor uh and then i know counselor bain lusso told me something about some problems that he was having with uh homeless in the railroad tracks around his business again i I don't have a business, but it's across the city.

David PenalozaItem —

It's not just Susan and Alton, which is the same one that they harp about on Saving Santa Ana. It's every railroad track in the city. I understand that. It's not just Susan and Alton. We see your Facebook Live videos. We see your Saving Santa Ana post. We see it.

David PenalozaItem —

It's every railroad track in the city. And it is sad and it is disgusting. I don't think City Hall is the one handcuffing police officers. It's unfortunately the state. The state of California has passed a lot of crazy propositions that have handcuffed our officers, which I don't agree with.

Well, I'm going to call the governor and tell the governor off.

David PenalozaItem —

Yeah, go ahead and do it. You have every right to do it as a constituent.

David PenalozaItem —

And that's what I wanted. And it is a problem.

It is a problem in our city. More comment? Any more comment? Councilman Solario?

Yeah, I think just a couple of things. Number one, the community did do a poll, and again, perception is reality. 92% of our residents don't think we're enforcing our anti-camping and related laws and I agree with them. Each of these stories, each of these videos, every anecdotal story you hear, all true. Times five, times ten. And we haven't done enough. We do have $60 million a year. Very little of it, unfortunately, going to. Things like the Quality of Life team to this day, I've yet staffed to tell me this is how many more hours our Quality of Life team is going to be able to do.

From all I know, we probably still only do Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. or so, maybe 4 p.m. So it's not seven days a week, very limited hours. And our PD, as the chief last answered, is the PD that's largely responsible for enforcing the law. And I think we left them with to come back what is now two weeks with an enforcement plan and an overall homelessness services plan that addresses enforcement. The private versus public property issue that I've heard about, I think that's true for some things,

but if there is a serious crime happening on private property, yeah, we're not going to cite him for trespassing, but we could cite him for the crime in chief. I think here it's my understanding that, yeah, maybe on the railroad tracks or at 7-Eleven, We may not be able to arrest or cite based off of trespassing, but we can for being a violation of the anti-camping laws or panhandling laws if they're near ATMs, etc. And we need our PD to start enforcing the laws rather than finding reasons why they can't or they don't. Or in between calls, they could do some of this.

And not that we want everybody to go to jail, but we want them to be offered services. We're paying $2 million, $3 million a year for the link to be able to enforce. yet we don't do it, as well as we need to be offering some drug and mental services, and if not, they could just keep walking. But right now, we're spending money, money, and not doing enforcement. I would also say, kind of the way you're trying to fast-track some spending for this, I think it's my general understanding we're going to get from the state about $4 to $5 million to address homelessness issues. So we know what those amounts are. We know the sources.

I try to do this at the last minute to say let's anticipate it so we can start programming and doing something with it. You know, I'm hopeful that it's part of the homelessness plan that you develop, that you fast track getting those new dollars out the door for things like enforcement. I tell everybody the city on the whole is doing great. It's the homeless stuff that weighs us down and the lack of enforcement and the lack of personnel. I mean, I don't think it's that we've, you know, hamstrung the PD. just their short many bodies you know and for last year they were on the whole net negative one for

hiring officers for the first six months of this calendar year uh they're off track and i know they're trying hard and we need to keep making that a priority above everything else in the city

and in the department thank you i have a recommendation mayor on this item based on the the feedback that i have heard okay if you want to entertain this um so for the census how about $99,000 and for senior services $100,000 and for quality of life team $100,000 and then the remaining $100,000 split it between youth library and restrooms.

Okay so that could be a recommendation. I move that item.

No.

I'll second it. Let's keep discussing. Councilman Regalas.

Yeah, but with the restroom, just when you gave us for John Adams, $250,000 for a restroom.

I believe that would be a restroom renovation. And what Council Member Saramanto was is just better maintenance in the restrooms, if I understood correctly.

Do you want to clarify that? Well, better maintenance. And I think what's happening there is just finding a way that once the park is closed, that the restrooms are closed. I think that they're remaining open. So to the extent that there's some capital improvement that we can make to the facilities themselves to make sure that nobody other than park goers are using them after hours.

Okay, so that, for me, we're, like Thomas was saying, that it's $2,400,000 that we're looking at. The Quality of Life team, I believe, is something that should be coming from the general fund and from Measure X. I don't even think we should be discussing, because it's double dipping. This is different money that we have that we could allocate to something different. In the general fund money, we never talked with Measure X. We never talked about senior services. That's the reason why I brought it up, because I believe it's something new. The quality of life team, we already have money for that.

So it's more of why can't you do your proposal with what we have already with Measure X.

So I'm in the process of evaluating what your homeless strategy has been. You had a draft plan that was, I believe, presented to you maybe over a year ago. but never finalized. And one of the things that I do see that's missing in there is the component of a non-profit, which if you added that to the Quality of Life team, it would free up officers' time, and it also would assist with...

But we have money in the general fund money. I know we do. So we could get that money from there. And for the census, which I do agree with the mayor and also with Councilmember Peñalosa, but we already put $25,000 from the general fund, correct? Correct. That budget was approved, so if we put 99, it's 125. So, and I know it's good, but are we doing collaborations, like say with organizations like Naleo and all the other individuals? Because I think that's where we can maximize our resources.

We certainly are. We're actually being very aggressive with it, and we've been partnering with the county. And Daisy from my office has been working very hard on this item. And I would love to bring it back and give you a presentation on our planned efforts. Yeah, I think that we can.

So, but yeah, hold on. So for me, I think the Quality of Life team, we shouldn't even be voting on it on this one because it's something that should already be being addressed with the money that we have for Measure X and the general fund money. And also for the restrooms, I just feel this is going to be just like, you know, something just superficial.

If there's no urgency here, we can have a fine-tune everything and bring it back, right? I think there's urgency. Because we're not going to be expending money necessarily immediately. Is there a problem with holding off?

No. No, this was a question.

I think there's urgency.

David PenalozaItem —

I like the city manager's suggestions. Well, we had a motion already, a second, that I seconded.

I called the question. Or to the city manager's. I called the question. All right, those that like what the city manager originally suggested. Wait, not originally. Well, in her revised station.

David PenalozaItem —

Yeah, 99 for census, 100 for senior services, 100 for. Can you repeat?

Certainly. So $99,000 for census efforts, $100,000 for senior programming, $100,000 for homeless slash quality of life, and then the remainder $100,000 between additional youth programming, something for New Hope Library, and then restrooms.

So the only thing I qualify, I think there was a comment made that there's $25,000 already for the census, and I get the idea that we should bump it up. Is there any way we could adjust that $99,000 to $75,000? you bundle it with the 25 that's the 100 that's 100 000 that we're allocating for well i kind of prefer her yeah option as the 99 000. so we're going to 125 right 124. all right those in favor

please press green those opposed go red

all right next what's uh our next item madam clerk that would be 75b

75B.

Okay, this is time and place for a public hearing filed by Fiedler Group on behalf of 7-Eleven.

And is there any written, I'm opening up the public hearing, do we have any speakers on the side of Madam Clerk?

We have not received any speakers.

Are there any written communications?

We have not received written communications.

Okay, let me close the public hearing. If Council members have questions of staff, we can always bring staff up. If not, I think it's pretty straightforward what the request is. Is there a motion?

I know there's a lot of questions about what the appeal piece was and extra security. That area does have historical major homelessness, drug addiction, lack of enforcement, gang issues. And I think it does make sense to keep a security requirement in there.

We have a brief presentation. All right, let's go ahead. Okay.

All right, before that, let me reopen the public hearing. The clerk earlier gave me some names. Council Member Benavides, please come up and speak on this item, followed by Ben Steckler, and then Diego Zarate, and Chris Rodriguez. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor, Mayor Portem, Council Members. pleasure to be before you. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. So as one of the council members was just beginning to mention, this area where there is a proposed 7-Eleven at first in Daisy is one that has historically had quite a few issues with loitering, drug sales, illicit activities. You may recall that sometime back it was at Daisy and Walnut. There was a location of the former Orange County Rescue Mission. When they moved away, the city quickly came in and acquired that property

in order to try to address some of the issues that have been problematic there for many years. It's directly across the street from the general relief offices of the county of Orange and it's also in a residential neighborhood. So there are some homes that are literally across the street about 50 feet away. There is some correspondence that I place before you. So as I address you here today both as one of your appointed commissioners this matter did come before the Commission also director of a youth serving nonprofit with which is just about a block and a half

away from the proposed location and also as a resident in the community that has observed and seen and dealt with quite a few of these issues again of the loitering and the illicit activities. So what you'll see in the communication that's placed before you, the request in essence is to stand with staff recommendation and Planning Commission recommendation and to deny the appeal that's before you here today. A couple of things that I just mentioned, the proximity of this, some of the facts there listed, the proximity to the homes,

the history of that problematic area and specifically one of the things to note and there is in the correspondence there are some pictures of some 7-elevens here locally in town that I think it's it's difficult to deny the fact that they have oftentimes our place of gathering panhandling and loitering so given the proximity of this location to single-family homes the fact that it is a very much a place that's frequently traveled by children on their way to and from school,

moms going across to the supermarket at Superior to Laundry. It's ideal that we have measures in place to be able to avoid the loitering, the panhandling and the uncomfortable situation that our residents would experience. Therefore, the Planning Commission did not deny the proposal, but did add two conditions, simple conditions, to try to have this proposed 7-Eleven be neighborhood friendly. One of those was to have a security guard,

did not have to be armed, did not have to be 24 hours, it would be a part-time, and then also to be active members of that local neighborhood association. They were very simple, again, to try to mitigate and have a positive relationship between the neighbors and the 7-Eleven. The applicant at this point is choosing to appeal, to not have that type of work in relationship with the neighborhood. So the request here, again, is just to deny and to allow for the project to move forward with that condition of security measures. Thank you very much for your consideration.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Good evening. My name is Ben Steckler. I'm with Fiedler Group. The question at hand, one of the two items that we had originally appealed, we were prepared and told Mr. Min Tai earlier this evening that we were withdrawing the appeal related to the Neighborhood Association. We misunderstood what the request was early on. We did some additional research, and we realized that that does correlate with the business plan of 7-Eleven itself in order to be a good neighbor of the community.

The secondary item that we are actually still appealing is the requirement for a security guard on-premises. The reasons for this are economically based as well as philosophically based. The economic portion of this is that they put a condition of approval on our project that it have a 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. security guard on site.

That's 15 hours a day. 15 hours a day times $26 an hour for a security guard is $142,000 a year for a new business that is just finished eliminating a blighted old building that is currently used for a variety of nefarious activities. because even with fencing up and with constant people going there to monitor this building, they can't keep people out of it. People will jump the fences, people break into it, people start fires within this building to stay warm.

People do all kinds of acts within this building. Putting a 24-hour-a-day use on the site, which is a convenience store and a gas station, putting security cameras on that use on both the exterior and the interior of that site and alarming, as we told the Planning Commission, arming the employees of the store with what I'm referring to as a panic button. And that is a button that they can push that automatically sends a request for police any time there is an issue that they can't deal with. Now, modern 7-Elevens operate very differently than old 7-Elevens,

and they're trying over the course of time to change the ways of the past and to upgrade the old stores. It's a lot harder to upgrade an old store, unfortunately, than it is to establish a new store and to establish that new store in a proper way. With the establishment of this 24-hour use, with the establishment of a high-definition security camera, which other cities have actually, the police department, they cooperate with the police, They will give a desk in the office for a police officer who wants to write reports, a variety of different things while they're on shift.

But giving this security system that is there will take care of the security on site. We can't be held responsible for somebody, unfortunately, that's walking the streets.

Please, you've gone red. Just start to conclude.

Oh, I'm sorry. All right. So we just humbly request that the only appeal that we have right now is to not kill this store. And by putting $142,000 a year additional tag on this store, it tips the ROI and the store cannot be built. So we'd like to eliminate the blight and build a store, but that's our request. Thank you very much for your time, and I'm also here representing 7-Eleven if you have questions.

Thank you for being so direct. Thank you. Thank you.

Diego?

Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Diego Zarate. I'm a 23-year resident of this neighborhood. And like Benavidez was talking about, I grew up around the poverty area where there was a lot of loitering. There's been a lot of homelessness around, a lot of narcotic cells. And I believe that the construction of a 7-Eleven will not eliminate that. It would actually increase the loitering. It would increase, obviously, the narcotic cells and the homelessness. and for the safety of my family, my neighbors, and everyone who was part of these meetings, I believe this is not a beneficial component for my community.

So I would hope you guys can take that into consideration. And thank you guys again for having me here and speaking here in VernaVigas. Thank you.

Thank you. Chris Rodriguez.

Hello, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem, and esteemed members of City Council. and I'd be remiss if I didn't say go bears to Mr. Sarmiento. I would just like to speak and say that I do feel like the last meeting with Planning Commission, there was a little bit of a knee-jerk reaction to requesting security. He just said they would request part-time security. I don't think under anybody's definition, 15 hours a day would qualify as part-time. That's full-time and beyond. and 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. is probably not the riskiest hours. It's usually, I would say, 10 p.m. maybe to 2 a.m.

That being said, the risk of loitering and things, those would come from sites that sell alcohol. The homeless people, the people that are hanging around and sitting on the curbs that you see, they're not there having Three Musketeers bars. They're drinking alcohol. Right now, our property, it's a constant daily battle. to eliminate the homeless, hiring people to go clean up the site literally weekly, picking up hypodermic needles, human feces. Like Ben said, dealing with the fire department, dealing with vandalism, constantly, constantly, constantly.

So to bring in a lot of the things that I've heard in previous things that you guys have heard relating to the homeless population, the homeless problem, and a lot of the issues that the city of Santa Ana deals with. So in order to eliminate that, the first shoe to drop, this section between Bristol and Fairview, this will be the nicest building constructed in years and years and years. I think it was, I can't remember the name of the developer that did the housing project about a block away. Those people, I'm sure, that bought those homes would like to see new development come and come up and down along First Street.

So we'd like to be the first shoe to drop. We're interested in purchasing more property up and down the street, and we have friends that are interested in it. But showing first tenant to go in, having success, is going to lead the next tenant to want to be there. Hey, look what they just did. Hey, look what they just did. Hey, look what they just did. So I don't think that the issue that happened that I feel like was a knee-jerk reaction back about a month ago, the day the Planning Commission meeting happened, I think a young girl was assaulted on the way home from school.

It didn't happen on a major street, on a major thoroughfare, or in a residential neighborhood. It happened walking on the train tracks. And so eliminating the homeless population and drug addicts and things like that is what's going to eliminate that. That being said, that attack didn't happen. It wasn't correlated in any way with the existence or the lack thereof of any particular business. In fact, putting this condition on our property when the business that's being proposed has not even yet to open seems an unreasonable request to me.

So we have a dry site that's going to eliminate a dark, dreary, dilapidated building that's going to have the illumination per code, 24-hour operation, employees on site all the time, surveillance cameras. Again, a dry site. That type of vagrancy is not going to exist on the property. Our responsibility, the only thing we can mitigate is our own property. You know, I can't do anything about my neighbor's property. I can't do anything about the property that's a couple miles away. So we're trying to do the best we can for this property.

And I just think the security requirement to say that there's an issue when there has yet to be an issue or to project the potential for an issue.

If you can conclude, please, it's read. Okay.

Okay.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Sherry Olson.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Sherry Olson. And I did a lot of the community outreach on the site. We walked the neighborhood in the past Planning Commission meeting. I don't think it was said, but there was a lot of support here. We did have people from the community out in support of our site, in support of a 24-hour store. We did have letters of support come in from the local community. So we did a lot of community outreach. When we talked about the neighborhood association, we're more than happy to be part of any neighborhood association.

We wanted more clarification from that, and we only had like three days to find out about that association. Because we are part of a lot more community groups than just that. We're part of places of worship. We donate to the police department. We donate to youth programs. We donate to local schools. So we wanted clarification so we're not just in that one group. so we can actually reach out and touch everybody in our community that we're in. And we're asking today to support our store and support the no security. We have a lot of security measures in place. Our other 7-Eleven stores do not have security guards.

We anticipate operating a great store, working with our local neighbors, as we did, and reached out to them. In all the meetings that we had, out of all the mailers that I did, and we held two meetings, we only had about five people from the local community come out. But we also had a lot of people still supporting this project from the local community. So I hope you take that into consideration. Thank you.

Thank you. So let me bring it back to Council for thought and consideration. Mayor Pro Tem, please go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I used to work at 2020 West Walnut off and on for about 20 years. So I know that area well.

And let me tell you, there are six, six sheriff officers assigned to that building. Why? Because that GR office, which is a county office, is the only office in the county that offers general relief. So if you come out of prison, that's where your parole agent tells you to go. So, I'm telling you, I work there. My buddies work there right now. I know that area well. The mission used to be across the street. With the mission being, you know, gone now, crime's, you know, gone down a little bit. Because, you know, they used to have the homeless used to live there, be sheltered there temporarily.

And now it's vacant. We're trying to work on it. I'm in support of the 7-Eleven, but I believe that it's a dry 7-Eleven. Is that correct? That means there is no alcohol sales. That's a good thing. I remember meeting with the folks from 7-Eleven a year ago, and I suggested, I know the streets there, I know Daisy, I know First, and if you're going to have a gas station there, you should have a one tanker filling truck that comes by. Because if you have a dual tank, which most of them do, you're going to have some problems. that's my personal opinion and i've seen a lot of accidents in the area in the past throughout

the years and uh that's what what i believe so uh asking for security well there's nothing wrong with asking for security the place does have a lot of traffic from people that come from different walks of life to put it lightly we do have problems there you know why because i hear them on the radio calling for help. My partners at the Sheriff's Department that work there, I hear them all day long.

So there might be other stores around the neighborhood that don't have a security guard, but they also have problems. They come from everywhere. And they hang out because sometimes they have to wait for their case to be heard. And a GR trip isn't just one trip. They have to go frequently. So I hear the radio traffic. I know what's going on in that area. And I totally support having some type of security there. I'm glad there's no alcohol, but it's a place, 7-Eleven, I love 7-Eleven, by the way. I heard from people in the neighborhood there that they like the fact that they can go to the 7-Eleven. They're

reliable. They have a good reputation. You can go get medicine or diapers in the middle of the night. It helps. but it would be nice to have some sense of security there because you want to be a good neighbor, I think that would help. And it is a drug-infested area. We have pockets of that everywhere. And all I'm asking is for those employees and for those neighbors that live there in the neighborhood, having someone there helps. We have the 7-Eleven at the corner of Main and Civic Center, which I also frequent, and they too have a security guard there. And I don't see them complaining about anything.

He actually helps out quite a bit. That's my comment, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you for your comments. More comments. Let's just go down the line. Council Member Iglesias.

Well, thank you for allowing me an opportunity. And I, like Council Member Villegas, also worked at the General Relief Office. And I actually worked inside the building. And, yes, we did have six DSOs. But my recollection is that the officers never came outside of the building. They just were there to help patrol and help the case workers. So it's something that we do need security, but why are we asking of just one? For me, I just feel it's unfair that we're just asking of one person that wants to come in, make the neighborhood a better place, and lighten it up with the business.

And my understanding, the reason why the other 7-Elevens may have security is because of the theft. And I feel this is something that the owner should be able to say, you know what, we're losing money on whatever it is and on our merchandise. And if it warrants for them to have security, then that's to protect their finances and inventory. But I don't believe it's fair that we're asking them to provide, we're saying 15 hours of security in the tune of $142,000 a year. and we're not asking the other neighborhood businesses to do that.

And also, if we're going to be asking of the 7-Eleven to provide security, why don't we ask the county to provide security because they have the general relief officer? And why don't we as a city provide security? We have the city yard there too. It's not that far from there. So I don't think it's fair that we're trying to stop a business that wants to come genuinely to provide a benefit to our community. And I know that place, I've worked there for four years, and it was something that I would see all the time before the city yard was there. There was a park.

And, you know, the homeless has always been an issue, but I believe it's the increase in theft and also the increase in individuals going in there to do other things other than shop. So, for me, I just think it's overkill to ask for security. what I would say, you know, if the business owner would want security at night, I think it's something that would benefit you. And it's up to us as customers if we want to shop there or not. I mean, if we don't feel safe, then we'll just go to another place. Go to the one at Arco, right next on Fairview and First Street.

So I just feel it's very unfair that we're asking something that we're not asking of the others. and I think we should leave it up to the business owner to see if they need security or not. Because based on what you have with all the cameras and everything, the panic button and everything, I think we believe that you have something that you're proposing that will be feasible and something that would benefit your business and also would benefit our community. And thank you for going in there because it's really needed there, that place, the Guadalajara place.

So I think that's what it was called before. It was a restaurant. It's horrible. So thank you for investing in our community.

Councilman Peñalosa, please.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to double down on what Councilwoman Iglesias said. You know, it's I don't think that we should just look at any liquor store, 7-Eleven across the country. It's unfortunate, but that's, you know, most of the times, yeah, there are homeless hanging out outside. And if we're going to make one 7-Eleven higher security guard, then we should look at all 7-Elevens and all businesses across the city, which would be bad practice.

David PenalozaItem —

I don't believe that you, I do believe 100% that you guys should become a member of the neighborhood association and immerse yourself in our community and know your neighbors that are around you and really be involved. But I don't think that forcing a business that wants to invest in our city to hire a security guard is best practice. I'm not in support of that. You know, we're hiring security guards for our parks. We're making businesses hire security guards. We have a police department, and I would like our police department to as well double down on enforcement of the law and whatnot.

David PenalozaItem —

With 7-Elevens that I've seen in our city, some of the things that I, yeah, there are some that do have homeless outside that hang out, and it's unfortunate because you're just trying to get a Gatorade and whatnot, and you have to deal with that. But there are some that have used simple things like the posted foldable signs that are outside the store that say, please don't give any money to panhandlers. Those seem to work from what I've seen because the 7-Elevens that do have that sign do not have much of a problem. They do here and there, but it's not as severe.

David PenalozaItem —

They're also specifically the one on Civic Center and Main Street that plays opera music. I know the one on Standard and Warner, Grand and Warner, I'm sorry, plays also opera music. I've been to both. And that does drive people away. That does drive homeless away. Sometimes I'm, like, walking into the store and I'm like, dang, that's loud. But, you know, those things help. So I would encourage the applicant that if you do move forward, that in lieu of the security guard,

David PenalozaItem —

You do have posted signage throughout your facility, throughout the business to educate the public, your customers, to not interact, to not give money, to panhandlers. No loitering signs as well as music playing, opera music. That seems to help. and with the alcohol sales is it just or do you plan on eventually selling alcohol at all?

No.

David PenalozaItem —

No? We know in this proximity that it's not allowed. Do you mind coming up here please?

No sir, there is no plan for alcohol sales at this time or in the future for this site. We already know and are familiar with Santa Ana codes, and it would never be allowed in this site under your codes. And we know that in the proximity of where we're at that it's not the best idea. So it is not proposed.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you for that. I would – I was going – for some reason I just think that all 7-Eleven sold booths. I was just going to say don't sell talk hands or the three-peck talk hands because that's what homeless people usually try to buy.

And the light's red.

David PenalozaItem —

You know, I just, again, thank you for investing in our city. We're the ones that play opera. You said that there's opera in some. Yeah, the one on Main Street and Civic Center, just right next to the YMCA, plays opera music. And so does the one on the Grand and Warner. And I don't see homeless people outside from those. You do see them in others that don't have any other signage. So opera drives homeless away?

It was studied. Let's go and talk to the.

Pacific Symphony, I mean Opera Pacific. We ought to hire some of these guys. We just put them on corners. They can sing. All right. Let's do it. That's interesting. Councilorio.

I don't know if it's just the opera music. Maybe that's why he doesn't visit all the 7-Elevens in town. But I have thought, too, there's a lot of design things we could probably do in private areas or public areas or as design ideas for folks. and I would welcome that as part of a homelessness plan to have somebody look at. Specifically to this, I think the unfortunate reality is you go to almost any 7-Eleven in town and there are homeless issues all day long, every day of the week, every week, at some point, but we're busy. We really should meet with a lot of the 7-Eleven owners to see how we can help each other

because I don't think it's just a one-site issue. But at all the stores, including the one at the Civic Center and South Main and pretty much every store, there's homeless all the time. And why seven to the hours that were mentioned, daylight hours? That's when most normal folks do their shopping to go to work or whatever. So that is when your seniors go. That is when your students go. That is when they would provide a sense of security. with respect to why just this business the fairness standard really is whenever you have a new business come in especially if they're looking for new entitlements that's when you look at what

are all the codes what do we ask of others and it's common for stores that when they're seeking new rights that we say hey in exchange for that right this is what we've asked of others and it's common we ask for security for a number of businesses so this is the standard process that that we use, and it's better to ask them now to do things rather than later on. What I would say just as a fairness thing, get the security, I mean, assuming there's support for it, and if a year or two somehow you can show us that nobody ever comes for you to have a need for security, we consider it and remove the condition

at that point in time, but I, for the sake of the children, seniors and others in the area, with single family homes nearby, the nonprofit center, A lot of people walk that area. I don't feel comfortable supporting it without security. Even Polly's Pies, north of 17th Street, had a higher security for about two years. And the issue was resolved, not any longer. Norms have had security off and on. It's very unfortunate. It gets back to we're not enforcing the laws, so that's why folks go there and out because we haven't had the resources to deal with it but I'm hopeful that through

measure measure acts and our PD hiring more officers will be able to do that one day so and then finally I think if you did have security as a new business your customers would feel very welcome appreciative that you care for their well-being so that those residents in that area town won't have the concern that others have where there's harassment, there's panhandling issues, there's violence, there's drugs right there, there's poo, there's pee, everything right there. And our children should not need to see that. It's right.

Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Vince Sarmiento.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I don't want to repeat everything that's been said. I just want to thank the applicants for, again, looking at the city and looking to invest here. I'm completely against what was said earlier that the presence of stores, the presence of developments like residential presences push out the bad element. If you look at all the studies, whether they're empirical, whether they're well-founded on science, it just shows that having something there where there's a positive activity always pushes out the negative activity. So that being said, thank you for that.

I certainly think that what we should do is I don't think you should be singled out. I don't think that that's a good precedent to set. I was more concerned about the second condition, about obligating the applicant to join a neighborhood association. I think you'd want to do it anyways. I don't know if we can enforce that. I don't know if that's a legally enforceable condition. I'm glad you offered to do that because I think that's just good civic responsibility and good civic engagement on your behalf. I think what we can do though, there are certain places in town that are just much different than others.

We have a very, very broad cross-section of neighborhoods. Neighborhoods on the north end of town suffer very few impacts. Neighborhoods in the inner city, right by the Men's Central Jail, the county jail, have huge impacts. If you go to that 7-Eleven on First and Flower, you'll see that that's just saturated with problems. because when people are released from jail, where do they go? They go straight to that 7-Eleven. Luckily, we have a really, really responsible owner there that does everything that he could, belongs to the P.O. Pico Neighborhood Association, gets involved in civic activities as a partner with the city.

So those are the types of things I think that we all see, that there are just much more impacted areas of town than others. So I would suggest I don't think anybody wants to burden you to the extent that you're going to be unable to be successful in your venture. All of us want you to succeed. The idea would be to maybe narrowly tailor this. And I like the idea of this being phased out after a maybe six-month review or maybe a nine-month review. And maybe these conditions fade because we realize that the presence of the store isn't going to have the impact that's anticipated. But again, that's an unknown for us.

And to the extent that we can condition it temporarily and just to study it, and I think PD can go ahead and do a review and maybe they can report back to us. If we see that, we certainly would be willing to lift that. Like was said earlier, I think there are other 7-Elevens in town that are in areas that are just more severely impacted by secondary effects beyond their control. They do it voluntarily because it makes their patrons feel safer. So in any event, I know it's from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Again, maybe that can be narrowed down, and maybe we could narrow down the period of review,

look at the calls for service log within six months and see if something like that can be, I think, better able to support the business as it initiates. And go Bears.

I think everybody has spoken except for myself, but would you be willing to make a motion based on your suggestion that you just discussed? Is there anything you have in mind? I mean, do you want to limit the hours? Because at some point we've got to agree right now we're all kind of saying security, no security, these hours, less hours. Let's see if we can do something concrete that maybe enables us to move forward.

You know, I'd hate to just do that from the dais. I mean, I think maybe if staff could work with the applicant to see what is an acceptable period of time and then phasing the program out upon, you know, some periodic review.

All right, so if that's your motion, let's make that the motion.

Sure, that's my motion.

Okay, any second? If not, I'll be happy to second. Comment on the motion, Councillor Solari.

Yeah, just comment on the motion. So I could see how we say keep the condition on security, but do a one year review. So in one year it comes back and we reevaluate whether they need to continue the security or not. On the hours, I mean it would be a guess, but again, a lot of the working folks, it's at 6 a.m. when they are going to work, when kids are on route to school or getting a bus, and they come throughout the day. So again, that's when the good actors do their shopping at a 7-Eleven. I mean, at 3 a.m., say you need security at 3 a.m., yeah, it's good because bad stuff does happen then.

But that's not when the people we're trying to protect, children and seniors and family members are there.

I'm fine with, again, I think that what we want to do is provide some relief, right? I think that's what the applicant is saying, and I think all of us want the business to succeed. I think we also want to be responsive to the neighborhood because we know it's a sensitive area. There's impacts there that other areas don't have. So to the extent that that's the number, I would say let's do it on a six-month review as opposed to a one-year, and maybe that's the compromise.

And I would say try to limit the hours because I know part of what they're saying is that if you go a ton of hours, it's a tremendous burden on them.

And if you do shape hours, it'd be in the middle. Maybe like, I don't know.

Well, you're saying let staff work with them to try to determine something. I will tell you this. I go to the 7-Eleven off from the one on 17th right there by Broadway that has alcohol. I was not aware that some haven't, some don't. I thought they all had it. I don't know what kind of music they play. I don't think it's opera.

Do you know what they play?

David PenalozaItem —

No, that's not a 7-Eleven. It looks like a 7-Eleven, but it's one of those mom-and-pop shops that use the same coloring to fool people into thinking it's a 7-Eleven. It's a great shop.

No, Flower and Seventeen.

David PenalozaItem —

Yeah, I meant Flower and Seventeen. Flower and Seventeen. Oh, yeah. But do you know what they play now that I got the right... I don't think they do, because there's always this one gentleman there loitering. I bounce around 7-Elevens. So they don't play up there? I don't think they do.

That's why they loiter.

David PenalozaItem —

And so there's one there that they don't play music and there is an individual that's always sitting there. It's usually the same one. And he's always doing drugs, all kinds. I've seen it.

You know, the odd thing or the difficult thing is some of those folks, I've asked them because they sometimes have a sign. You know, can you help me? I need money, whatever. And I ask them, look, do you want to go to a shelter? Do you want three meals a day? And then they say, well, where is it? I tell them it's here in town over on the East End. Then they say, well, if I go, do I have to stay there? I said, no, it's up to you. You can go. You can stay. You cannot stay. And the last person, I've gotten a few to go, but the last person said, I can't go right now. I have a very busy day today.

And then I've lost contact with that guy. But it really is difficult to get some of these people off the street. They kind of like the street, and then they get into a lifestyle. So I don't know how we get more aggressive, but somehow we have to be more aggressive, because that's the underlying problem on all these issues. I mean, really, if it weren't for the homeless issue, we probably wouldn't be so concerned about all this. So it's undermining everything that we're trying to do, and it's hurting businesses, including, in this case, I think a brand-new, beautiful business that normally would come in it down,

and you'd say hallelujah you know all these products that we know we can buy and may even hear some nice music if it's one of the pentaloza stores but um but uh but let's just keep figuring

this out we've got to be able to do something can i clarify the motion just or do you have a suggestion um so this is what i i believe i heard so before you is actually three different items You have a resolution to adopt, which would basically be modeled after the resolution denying the appeal because the applicant has agreed to the condition about the neighborhood association, and you're still placing a security guard requirement for a six-month review period, and are you authorizing staff to negotiate the hours for that guard?

Yes, I believe that was the motion.

Okay. And then the second item is you're adopting a resolution approving the EIR, And then you're also introducing and approving the first reading of the ordinance that's doing the zoning designation. So those three items. And so the first one will just require a slight modification of the resolution that's denying.

Do you have any suggestion on the first item? Is there any way staff would be more clear or comfortable? Or are you any thoughts?

I would like to consult with our police department on maybe times of the day that are worse there to shrink the hours to focus on that time period. And then we would come back to this council or I'm not sure we'd go back to the planning commission for removal of the modified condition.

After six months. Yeah. Questions?

Maybe in the hour just in consultation with PD, the neighborhood association and the local non-profit.

Okay.

Okay, is that acceptable to the maker of the motion? I accept the amendment to the motion. Go ahead, Councilor Pena-Loga.

David PenalozaItem —

If I had an additional or separate motion, we would have to wait how this plays out first.

No, you could make a substitute motion right now. Okay.

David PenalozaItem —

If that gets four votes, then that would take president. So my substitute, I do have an issue with the time frame of the security guard, potential security guard, because 7 a.m., if there were to be a security guard, I would prefer it at night.

David PenalozaItem —

Even the last time I visited 7-Eleven at 3 in the morning was... At 3 a.m.? Yeah, I had the munchies and it was in college.

David PenalozaItem —

Maybe I'm just going to throw that out there.

He knows a lot of 7-Elevens, this guy.

David PenalozaItem —

This was in East L.A., Cal State, Los Angeles. But I would like to introduce a substitute motion to approve the 7-Eleven with the neighborhood association part and look at it, do it backwards, look at it in six months and see if they do, if there is a need for a security guard, have that in there and be like, hey, six months down the line after you're opened and are you having all these problems and work with PD? How many calls are receiving this location? Is there a homeless issue? Is there a vagancy issue or crime? Okay, would you hire a security guard?

David PenalozaItem —

But not do it backwards where we force them to do this because, again,

David PenalozaItem —

we're having these problems across the city, not just in this area. And if we're going to do that, then we should start forcing everybody to hire security guards, which isn't best practice, but that would be my motion. So to approve the neighborhood association part and then maybe look at it in six months, is there a need for security guard? Hey, you have to hire a security guard. And that's the motion.

Is there a second to that motion?

I'll second it.

Okay, you have a motion and a second.

A thought I would have is if there's going to be problems, you're probably going to find problems before 180 days, before six months. I would tell the applicant, be on top of it, do everything you possibly can. But I would think that maybe in 90 days would be a better time to bring it back. because you also don't want the neighborhood if there is a prom getting beaten up in over six months. I mean, what happens if you have a bad incident over six months because we were too lenient? Go ahead.

But then that would be, you know, I second his motion because that would be something that me as a business owner would say, you know what, I need a security because I want to protect my business. I want to protect my inventory. So if they decide in 90 days, you know, we don't even have to tell them that they need a security guard. They're going to come and say, you know what, no, we already hired someone. So I am not of the thought that we should be imposing something on a business that is not really required because it's up to them. If their business is not thriving, it's not thriving.

So it's up to them to see, okay, if they need a security guard, they'll hire him or her. But I feel that we should, as a city, we should not be imposing on them additional stress on their business. So I would say six months would be adequate and then let them tell us and I'll be more than surprised that they're going to come back in 90 days and you'll be telling us, you know what, we've hired two security guards because one just didn't do it. So I feel like in six months I believe it's something that we can come back and we could look at it.

Because my other question would be if something were to happen, they have a security guard, is PD going to respond? I don't think so. Because they haven't been responding to the ones that already have, security guards and other businesses. They haven't because they have all these other priorities. So, I mean, having a security guard is not really going to bring more security from our police department. So, I just feel six months is adequate, and I want to thank you for bringing that motion.

All right. So, I'll probably not vote for it. Counselor Solario?

Having security provides a deterrent whether an officer comes or not. They're more effective than just some music. I mean, banks elsewhere that have security cameras and they're good security, they definitely do a job. And then I don't know that there's an appropriate legal standard to say, yeah, go out and do it, and then we're going to bring you back in six months and require them to have security. Because for that reason then we really would be singling out and are we going to bring all 7-Elevens back to say, hey, you've been in existence longer, you have all these problems, you've got to have security now.

Maybe a question for the city attorney, can we even do such a thing where we give them full entitlement rights and six months later or a year later say, oh, by the way, we now think because there's two complaints that you've got to have security? I mean, how would we justify such a thing at that point?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I think you can give an entitlement that you condition, such as you might do tonight, if the council decides to approve, but say you want to revisit it. So as long as that's made clear to the applicant, they accept that. With regard to adding on additional conditions, it will depend on whether you can make the finding that there are incidents occurring or that you're getting complaints or something that otherwise justifies it. So if you're not going to impose now and you really want to wait, then you need to

But the FUSH is a high standard at that point.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Correct. I mean, you're really going to have to find a condition that will address what you consider to be a potential nuisance. So there is a legal standard for that.

That's why I prefer the original motion with a review. Vote against substitute. Let's try to wrap up.

Just call for the question. The only thing I was going to say, when you say this looks backwards, it depends on who you are. Looking backwards, to me, again, meeting that finding and hitting that standard later on, Boy, that's totally backwards because that means we're going to have to start from scratch with every business in town. So I would just say, look, at this point we have some precedent and practice that we've always done it this way. It gives some incentive as well to the business owner to be more vigilant with their business. So let's vote on the substitute.

Okay, those in favor of the substitute motion, play a screen. Those opposed, go red.

Motion fails. Let's go back to the original motion. Those in favor. Go green. Those opposed, go red.

Original motion carries.

So with that, Madam Clerk, where are we now?

Item 85A.

85A, Council Member Jose Solario. I'm sorry, there's 75C.

Oh, forgive me, 75C. All right.

75C, this is time and place to hold a public hearing on report on water quality relative to public health goals. I will open up the public hearing and request the staff have anything they want to tell us.

We do have a presentation ready if you would like it. This is a requirement to receive and file the report, and it's a state law requirement that you hold a public hearing in order to address if there's any public comments.

Okay. Do we have any public speakers on this item?

We have no speaker cards.

So we have no speakers, therefore we've complied with that state requirement. Let me now close the public hearing and bring it back to Council. Does anyone want to move so that we receive and file?

Or do you want a presentation, Councilman Solario? I mean, Sarmento, I know you're very active on water.

No, I'm looking at Nabeel, so I just wasn't sure. I'll second that motion. Did you want to address?

Is there anything burning that you have to tell us? Got it.

He's shaking his head no.

We don't have a presentation.

There's no presentation. All right. Well, then it's short.

David PenalozaItem —

It's receiving file. Okay. Was the water cloudiness answered it? I know I brought that up previously.

Why don't you come up and answer the council member's question, please?

Good evening. water cloudiness. If you tell me what address, I will respond to it tomorrow, but we didn't get any request specific to a site or a location. Cloudiness can be attributed to air in the water, like we mentioned earlier. Air in the water naturally comes from the groundwater and from the aquifer, and the process of pumping the water introduces air into to the water itself. Once you let the water sit, the cloudiness goes away.

David PenalozaItem —

Yeah, I noticed it settles. One address is my house in particular, and then there's my grandma's house, there's my aunt's. I've seen it everywhere. I don't know what it is, but even I'll serve my dog's water bowl from the faucet, and he won't drink it until the water settles. He won't touch it. As soon as the cloudiness settles, then he'll drink the water, which is funny to watch.

We can investigate. Just let me know what the address is, and we can go directly to the site and take samples. We could start at my house. Sounds good. Give me the address.

David PenalozaItem —

I'll text you the address. Sounds good. I could say it now, but that's weird. I'll email the city manager and make sure that's it.

Do you want to comment at all on the PHG levels?

Sure. The public health goals report is a report that we prepare every three years to counsel, And that addresses water quality standards that are unachievable or cannot be achieved through a normal process of just delivering the water. There is public health goals that are established that are beyond achievable, like I mentioned, like a zero for bacteriological quality. It's conceivably impractical for us to get zero bacteriological water quality samples throughout the entire year. We collect 2,600 bacteriological quality samples.

Public health goals for bacteriological quality is zero. So occasionally we get positives. So it's very impractical to meet that zero goal. If we don't meet that zero goal, we have to report that to you, and that's the process here.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Naveed. Sure. And just so that the residents know and the public, I was at a, and I'm not sure if our city is involved with this, but I was at the Home Depot on Edinger and Lyon a couple days ago, went in to buy something. And I saw that at their exit, they had these water kits that were free to the residents where you take it home and you fill these little tubes from your own tap and you sell it in the already paid for envelope.

David PenalozaItem —

I'm not sure if we have anything to do with that, but Home Depot provided these little kits and they will send you back a report on the water quality within your household. so i encourage everybody uh to do it just go to the home depot they're free everything's paid for and just i was reading that that was pretty cool i haven't done it but i do have the kid at home um so that's sad but um do you know anything of those kits i really don't but again if you have

a water quality concerns and that's for everyone in the city give us a call and we come out and we take samples and we alleviate your concern about water quality thank you hopefully all right with

Would that, Councilman Vince Sarmiento, please?

I just wanted to say a quick comment for our staff, and I know Fwad's not here, or there he is, actually. I couldn't see him. So thank you both for working on this, and I know that I think in the future we'll be bringing something back that's a little bit more extensive on some impacts that we may have, but that's in generally our district service area for the Orange County Water District. There is some discussion at the California EPA and the State Water Board and the Department of Drinking Water.

So they're talking about an element that they found in the upper watershed that feeds into the lower watershed where we draw from to provide our residents and most of the 2.5 million folks in the county. So more to come on that. That's something that I think they're still mulling over. They were going to set new levels because they found the PFOA, PFOS. But, again, I don't want to speak out of turn because this is more on the PHG. So the idea is just to let everybody know, look, our water is safe at this point. But, again, the Cal EPA is studying this one element that they found.

They may make some adjustments because they saw that other states are also moving forward on adjusting levels, notification levels and response levels. And so just thank you all. Keep us notified. I'll be keeping everybody abreast as well because at the Orange County Water District, we'll be receiving notice of this first. And we're working with both state agencies to go ahead and address this problem. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. With that, Madam Clerk, I think we had a motion a second.

Yes, we did.

All right. Those in favor, it's a receiving file. Press green. If you don't want a receiving file, press red.

All right. We like receiving file. So with that, our next item.

85A.

Council Member Solario, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just bring this issue because we haven't had an opportunity or many opportunities to discuss these items. so I just wanted to share some of my thoughts with staff and my colleagues, and maybe they have some as well. The streetcar project is coming fast, and I think we should be a little bit more knowledgeable where the stations are going to be. Are there station names? Are there themes? Does the council have any role in giving feedback on any of those items? I am well aware that OCTA is the lead agency network at OCTA eight years, but that's also the same reason why I know they're actually very open to input.

And I'd like to know, again, things like how many stations, station names, themes, boarding and lighting data, operational costs, what our share of operational costs is going to be, who are going to be the drivers, are there going to be OCTA Teamster drivers, are they going to be contracted out folks, what the next legs might be, because I think, you know, the big fight is always the first leg. that the next fights are where it goes next, but the success of the first leg is indicative of how quickly the next leg will come, and we ought to have conversations about that, I think. Similarly, if we care about the success

of this transit system, we need to be talking about transit-oriented development around the stations. In some ways, with the transit plan that we consider, that kind of addresses TOD a little bit in that part of town, but not in other parts of town. And again, just as a best practice, those kinds of discussions occur. And for TOD work, that really is the purview of the council, not OCTA. And so maybe staff thinks we ought to consider, or if not, not. But I'm just saying it's a best practice. Finally, one TOD opportunity is Willowick.

And that's a complicated opportunity because it's owned by Garden Grove, even though it's in the city, but it's over 100 acres, I believe. And if we have something good there, I think that'll be a good anchor for that part of town, and we ought to have conversations about what we see or want there. I would just say, because we haven't had any recent meetings on that, that I do hope that we can preserve some areas for open space, as well as I'm concerned about gentrification. I think if we don't plan well and if we don't put the right type of housing or other elements in the right place,

we're going to drastically increase rents and mortgages for surrounding areas that often are lower income folks, like in the Santa Anita neighborhood. So where we place some of these facilities or types of buildings or residential others is important. In Inglewood, when they were excited about building that NFL stadium, because the folks there thought they were going to be able to watch the game, get some jobs, etc., some of that has begun to occur. But they're also seeing major gentrification that that city in the council did not anticipate.

And so what's happening is a lot of folks are being displaced because folks that run businesses in there or there are more common fans or attendees of those things, they're buying these places out and they're relatively inexpensive and it creates gentrification and that now there's some backlash on that. So thank you. All right.

Thank you for those comments.

Thank you.

If there are no other comments, we have a few public speakers. John Raya and Mary Lara. You're going to speak together so you have five minutes for both of you, or you want to go separate? This says you're a team.

Together five.

Together five. I like you guys. Go ahead.

There you go. She's in charge, John. We got the answer there. Excuse me.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and council members, staff, and everybody at home that's still up. My name is John Raya, and I'm here to share some good news with you. Actually, it's great news. 26 years ago, I began on a journey to see if I could help make a difference here in town. You see, Santa Ana had reported 80 homicides in 1993. I know you remember. You remember those years. Even the gangs were seeking a truce. I sat on park benches at Campesino Park in El Salvador and I listened to the veteranos, and even they recognized the tragedy of burying their own children.

I knew the idea for a boxing club would be well-received if we could just make it happen. Fortunately, the city of Santa Ana was receptive, and TKO Boxing opened its doors in an old church next to the Gallo Guerro in 1994. The blessings started right away. I met Mary Lara. She didn't like boxing, but she loved kids. Now she loves both. We had help from the Kiwanas, the Floral Park Association, Lulac, Center Paint, Thomas Electric, the Santa Ana PD, along with others. Captain Bruce Carlson became a fan and an ardent supporter.

We honor his memory with a scholarship named after him. And here's what some of those recipients have done. Jennifer Nava graduated last month from Cal State Fullerton, was on the dean's list for four years, and graduated cum laude with honors majoring in human services. Raul Gomez is a senior at Tufts University in Boston. He'll be a doctor or a health care administrator. Robbie Munoz will graduate from Chapman Law in May. Last year, in spite of all the good things that happened, sadly one of our own was senselessly gunned down, reminding us that our work is not done. TKO boxing has had success outside the ring and inside the ring

where we've had amateur state and national championship boxers. This past Saturday was my 66th birthday and it was capped with the victories of Ronnie Rios at 31-3, 15 knockouts. He's the new NABF and WBA Gold Superbantamweight champion. And Alexis Rocha, his younger brother, at 14-0, eight knockouts, is the new WBC Continental Americans welterweight champion. Coach Hector and his team of coaches do a tremendous job. And by the way, these are all unpaid volunteers.

So please consider joining us at celebrating TKO's service to the youth of Santa Ana, July 21st, at Original Mike's, 1 p.m. we'll have scholarships, recipient award, boxing exhibition, silent auction, live auction, award for the biggest loser, and we'd love to see as many of you there as possible. And I know Mary had something she wanted to add as well. Yeah, just real quick. USA Boxing has given us approval, given TKO approval, to have a second boxing show here in Santa Ana. boxing clubs from throughout Southern California, Nevada, Arizona

a couple of other states I can't remember that came down a couple of months ago when we had our show

but we have been having just one show a year but like I said USA Boxing has approved us for another show which will be held on September 28th I've filled out an application to have it at Salgado Community Center again because it just was the perfect venue to have this event with people coming from all over, states from all over. We could have had 100 fights that day, but we were only allowed 30. So I'm not sure. We don't have a councilman in Ward 4,

so I can use anybody's help in getting that approved for us to have it at Salgado again on September 28th. So I'd appreciate your help on that. Thank you. And also to have someone from the council to attend our event and recognize what all of these folks have been doing for 25 years.

Let me request this. I'm interested, I don't know if I can do it, but can just the clerk or may the city manager put it on as an FYI on our calendars, and then may most council members, we'll see if anybody of us can help. May you get more than one of us. and also on the Salgado Center request or whatever. I know we don't have a rep, but we all care about the entire city. And as mayor, all the wards are in my purview. So let's just make a note and follow up on that. And note that they had two speakers and they're still on yellow. And they've got a lot said.

If I may suggest our director of Parks and Rec can talk to you at the back of the room regarding the use of the community center.

And thank you for the great work that you guys have done. This has been like 25 years, is it now?

25 years. I had black hair then.

How many, but you're still good looking, John. How many students have you had go through the academy?

We ran some numbers and it was over 5,000 young kids that have come through there and the support of their parents.

And imagine all the families that have been impacted by all those kids.

Yeah, yeah. And including even, hell, as I said, we do a Biggest Loser. and some of these kids, just like with seatbelts, became the leader in their families for healthier diets. Let me explain the biggest loser.

Go ahead. It's red, but there's two of you, so go ahead, Mary. What's the biggest loser?

Biggest loser does not mean losing in the ring. We don't really do that. We are trying to alleviate the obesity problem in our youth, so we have a biggest loser contest every year. And at Christmas, we picked the one that has lost up to 80 pounds, 50 pounds, 40 pounds. So they win a nice prize for being the biggest loser.

All right. Well, figure out how you can help us with the census, and we'll help you with this stuff as well. You're doing great work. All right. Thank you. Take care.

That's the first time I got done before the yellow.

Take care.

All right. I think, is it Dale again?

No comment.

Well, Dale, you're getting really good now. Carl, I know you haven't spoken yet. You probably have something to say.

I've got about three or four things.

And then you've got Chris Schmidt and Ellen Koldberg after that, or Koldberg-Knee. Go ahead. Good evening, everybody.

I really have something good and positive to say about Santa Ana Police Department. My little quiet area of Santa Ana the last four months has gone through two deaths due to racing. We've gone through home invasion, and we've gone through the homeless coming out of Susanna and Alton. And I really want to thank the police department because on Tuesday night, we had a home invaded, seven houses away from mine, and that situation could have gotten ugly very quickly. But the response of the responding officers, the patients that was used, turned that dangerous situation into a safe ending.

And my funny part is that when I came out of my house quarter to five that morning to go off to work, I finally signed all these news trucks in my neighborhood, and I didn't know what took place. But I want to thank the Santa Ana Police for handling that very well. As far as Susanna and Alton, thank you for starting to do something. We've been struggling in the city for a long time over railroad and private property and public property, and to hear that we're trying to resolve that once and for all. I applaud that to end up proceeding. The one thing I do want to bring up quickly since we're talking about funds,

as many as you know, I've said on ETAC as well as Comlink, and we've provided a supplemental package to which to put Measure X funds to use. And unfortunately, once again, the trees in this city and the media in the city receive nothing. I know not all Measure X funds have been talked about yet, so please remember the trees in this city. You can tell where Santa Ana begins and ends just by our medians. And the status case in my neighborhood is we're about 50 feet away from Great Water Tank for the county. Why not put it to our medians? It can't be that much.

And let's bring our medians back and start and plant the trees and let us make what we are a tree city, improve our beautifications. So with that, thank you. One last thing. We need to thank staff. I'm amazed in the city, wherever I go, whether it be Public Works, whether it be with the Comlink, of the effort that's made and presented by our staff people. And they've been through ups and downs over the last few years. But I'm always amazed with the dedication and the hard work, whether it be the women up on the 8th floor or whether it be the Public Works. I'm really amazed with the dedication we have from staff in the city.

So thank you.

Thank you. Yes, go ahead, Councilor.

David PenalozaItem —

I know it's out of practice, but Madam City Manager, when you have City Manager coming, can you comment on the medians and the trees so Mr. Benninger could have an answer for him? I know there's some ideas and some projects underway.

So thank you. Chris, come on down, and then Ellen, you're next.

Hello. I'd also like to back up Carl's comment. I'm also a commissioner on ETAC. There's a discretionary fund, but it's very minimal. It's $50,000. We've been trying to get more money so we can put drip irrigation system in and drought tolerant water. And so if there's any funds available, we greatly appreciate it. But that's not what I'm here to talk about tonight. I'm here tonight to talk about libraries or lack thereof. As part of the city's budget process, you hold community budget outreach meetings. And several months ago, Council Member Solorio, you and I attended one at New Hope Library.

One of the longstanding residents, Julie Melcher, asked, do we have a librarian here at New Hope? And they said, no, but we're working on it. That was March.

It's been several months since that meeting. Last Tuesday, I went to New Hope Library, and I asked, is there a librarian? I was there at 3 p.m. They said, yes, we do, but they're at lunch. but that's interesting i show up at 3 p.m in the afternoon it's filled with moms and kids and the librarians at lunch when it's only open for five hours i i want to believe there's a librarian there but i don't believe it because when you guys were haggling over 400 000 i went on the city's website there's no librarian position open in the city it's been four months and you're not looking

for a librarian i know that several of you up here have been advocating for the library and getting more funding, Councilmember Villegas, Iglesias, Penelos, and Solorio, but I feel like we're going backwards. Peter Katz, Tish Leone, and myself have been fighting for the library for years. We had a needle exchange, we had a homeless problem, people didn't feel safe. So right now, we only have one and a half libraries, because New Hope is considered a learning center, not a library. It's been ten years since there's been a librarian at New Hope. Ten years ago we also lost the McFadden Library, my library. So today I

went on the City of Anaheim's website. Anaheim has eight libraries, one mobile library and one self-serve book checkout system at the Arctic Transit Center. We have the Santa Ana Regional Transit Center here. We don't have a self-checkout book station here. So all of you were advocating for money in the budget this year but apparently there's no money and the city manager has to go find more money. You guys literally had $400,000 and you gave New Hope the least amount. When we go to these meetings and we give you our input, we say we want more money for the

library, and then you turn around and ignore us, people don't want to come to meetings anymore. And this is what's wrong with our city. You ask us, we tell you. We want more library staff. And then what do you do? Sorry, there's no money in the budget. I would appreciate it if we can find money in the budget and make sure we're hiring more staff and that no programs at libraries are being cut. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Polito and Council. I'm Mrs. Ellen Caldwell, and tonight I'd like to talk to you, make a few remarks about Measure Z and the changes that we hope to make in the operation of our boards and commissions and the clarification and updating of acceptance of gifts. First of all, I must object to any Ward 4 commissioner appointed by former Councilman Reyna continuing to make decision on city business five months after the Councilman's

resignation from office. Next, I would also ask that all of our commissioners be advised to recuse themselves from voting on any matters in which their authority may be questioned because of unresolved issues regarding the proper duration of their terms, or in which their impartiality may be questioned due to receipt of contractor gifts, either under the old or any new regulations.

Now, back in March 2019, right after former Councilman Rayner resigned from office, I wrote a letter to the city with another voter, questioning the authority for Ward 4 commissioners to continue to serve. Based on the old city charter, Article 9, Section 901, I objected to their continued service because their terms were supposed to run concurrently with the term of the councilman who appointed them. Since his term was over, so should theirs be. I asked the council to vote to end their terms.

Since the new Measure Z changes the City Charter and Municipal Code concerning boards, commissions, and gift-giving approved by our city's voters in November 2018, I'm renewing my request, and I ask you to explain the changes in our commissioner's terms, authority, and responsibility. I regret having to raise these issues publicly. My intent is not to criticize any of our hardworking commissioners,

but I need to make sure that you're aware of my concerns. I would like to thank all of our appointed commissioners, boards, and committee members, including those representing Ward 4, for their service to our city. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we're on to, I believe, city manager comments.

Thank you, Mayor. Just three quick items. On Thursday, July 25th, Shakespeare by the Sea Theater Company is presenting a live outdoor theatrical performance at Birch Park. It's a free event to the public. And then just a reminder, on Sunday, July 28th, we have the street breakfast. That's our first kickoff celebration for our 150th anniversary. and then we are doing a blessing of the city on Saturday, August 3rd. We've invited leaders from local interfaith groups to attend and deliver brief remarks and that also is in honor of our 150th anniversary and that's all.

Thank you. Let's go to Council Member Comments. Who would like to go first? Want me to start on the left? All right. You want to go first? I've never had this request but go ahead. Just because I've got to use restroom. All right, after that, we'll go to Jose, and you can hear his comments from the restroom. Madam City. They're loading some opera music.

David PenalozaItem —

Before I begin, Madam City Manager, do you want to comment on the medians, please?

I'm sorry, Councilmember. I forgot that request. So what we have been doing with Public Works is they've been evaluating the medians in ways that we can beautify them. as I was told that a while ago we did shut off the water so most of the plant materials that were there has died in a lot of the medians so we've been evaluating synthetic turf or drought tolerant plants and we have a landscape architect within our Public Works Department that is working on that and

David PenalozaItem —

the the timeline on seeing this executed can I return to you with a timeline Please. Thank you. And with that said, I've just been wanting to report out that I've been to numerous events that our city has held in the last couple of weeks. The Independence Day event at Centennial Park. I was happy to see the turnout and the great execution of that. So thank you, staff and community leaders, for making that happen. and also I didn't report at the last meeting but I was appointed vice chair to the Orange County Housing Finance Trust

David PenalozaItem —

so that's exciting for our city and looking forward to allocating more state and federal dollars for our city for housing.

David PenalozaItem —

Also happy to announce that there are some good businesses opening up in our city. One in particular is, and I'm going to sound like a total fatty, but benchmark restaurant that just opened a couple days ago. I've been there three times. The food is delicious, so I suggest you guys all check it out and support local business. And that's about it. I just wanted to also thank staff for the Summer Night Light programs that have been executed with great success. And looking forward to more for the following summer and for the rest of the summer. And, yeah, that's about it. Thank you. Good night. Council Member Solario, please.

Thank you. Ditto on those. Also, not a new restaurant, but Carl's Jr. now have very good vegetarian burgers. The Beyond Star. So you'll see me on South Bristol and North Bristol eating one of those. Good stuff. I had the opportunity to be with Deputy Chief Esparza and to visit the dispatchers over the weekend. They're doing some amazing work.

All outstanding. They need more support. We're going to give them more support. But I did notice that they have a stressful job. and even if it's with a little bit of my council services budget, I'd like to offer up to $1,000 for plants, wall paintings, other things. There's very little there. There might be some common colors or paintings or prints or plants, and I think there was some interest in that. That may not be enough, but maybe through the chief at the city manager's office we could figure something out.

And a special thanks to Deputy Chief Esparza for putting up with all my questions and thoughts and ideas. Much appreciated. I was reminded there one of the more unique calls was about parking and the fights that occur over parking. I know I brought that up over time, and we've got to really do more around the parking shortages we have in some parts of town because we do get 911 calls, and they're not fun calls. You know just by the questions and issues as they come in, it's pretty fierce. I know Public Works did at the request of the council, hopefully, some time ago a parking

management study pilot program to see conditions in certain parts of the towns, what parking is available, what might be some solutions. We had the city manager. If we could bring that back in two weeks or a month, I think it was probably done or completed a year ago and we've heard nothing about it. So if nothing else, an update, and if there's a full report. On the median, similarly, I think there was some time in the past, discussion on a pilot program of nice, California-friendly, and maybe we do pilot medians in each ward, but I think we had discussed doing some pilot so we can cost it out, see what's nice,

see what works, see what works with the community, and so I very much appreciate that and train on the sprinklers when we can. Back to the Willowook thing, I invite my colleagues and via the staff, let's give the Garden Grove City Council and staff over there a heads up. But for their regular Santa Anita Neighborhood Association meeting this Friday, I'm on the agenda and I'm going to be speaking to the neighborhood about Willowook and related issues in terms of what they might want to see and opportunities for them. And finally, I want to congratulate the public works staff, especially Nabil and the water crew.

They received, I believe it was a $300,000 grant from their U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, largely for AMI, Advanced Meter Infrastructure. And so when they get grants, that's less that we need to ask our ratepayers for that. uh molten gales received an award and i saw that san and it was also on the list it was exciting to to see that uh and uh with that uh you know thank you all for good work we have big challenges in the city but we have resources and opportunities and i look forward to addressing these issues one

at a time thank you thank you counselor iglesias please

So I want to report from the last meeting that after the meeting, I got an invitation from the chief to have a guest go check out the simulator. I think that's what it's called. And it was a great experience for me just to see, you know, how staff development is happening with that simulator. And good things are happening. but I guess now it's taken away and it's going to come back late August, right? We're going to come back with a new one. And so I just want to thank, you know, Officer Gaminski for hosting me that day

and also all the officers that were there allowing me to see them in action. And also I had an opportunity to get on the car. They took me to the simulator for the car, so that was interesting just to see how, you know, the pursuits go. And, of course, I failed.

and the other thing that I wanted to share too is that I attended the 4th of July celebration and I believe staff did a great job thank you for everyone that was there and just made it a success hoping hopefully next year is something that I've been asking from before I believe we need to give more emphasis on the 4th of July and the reason of its Independence Day and doing if it's something we could put it in our radar to do, like a parade, some type of parade, you know, honoring Fourth of July in our nation's history. I know we do it for Fiestas Patrias,

you know, we're honoring all the Central American and Mexico and all the Independence Days in Latin America, but I believe, you know, we should also put an emphasis on celebrating our nation's Independence Day. So hopefully next year I'm hoping that we have some type of

parade. I also want to ask... Excuse me, let's not forget the light. It's only about two minutes. I'm timing it. So what I do want to ask staff, I mean the city manager is I agree with the speaker. I didn't get her name, but when she was talking about the

vacancies that we have in Ward 4, I would like to bring it up hopefully in our next meeting, like an 85A, because I believe it's something that if we don't have a representative there, I don't think we should have commissioners there either because it's, I believe it's a conflict. And I know there's certain individuals there that have vested interest. And I just don't think it's appropriate for us to not have, I mean, for us not to have a representative but also have a commissioner.

So I think it should be someone who is representing pretty much because when we put commissioners, it's representing the council or the mayor in that position. So I feel that we should look at it. Yeah. So if we could look at that and if we don't have to have commissioners there for Ward 4, then I would support something. So if you could bring us something on policy and how we can address that, I would really appreciate it. and that's pretty much it so have a great evening thank you councilor Vince

Armiento please thank you and you know I was gonna welcome Daisy Gomez who's our new clerk but she's not here so maybe she just she realized her first day was gonna be cut short so maybe maybe she didn't like us and decided all right I'm out of here I'm just kidding I know she's probably taking a bathroom breaker in the back look I just wanted to welcome her because she's our new clerk Today's her first day. She's a very, very qualified, competent, nice lady, and so I hope that we're not going to scare her off too quickly with the late meeting.

And so here she comes. I guess you're back. We didn't scare you off yet, right? Okay, good. Well, she comes to us by way of Long Beach, and then she went to Santa Rosa to be their city clerk, so we're very, very fortunate to have her. She's a fellow South American from Peru. So welcome, welcome Paisana. I'm right next door in Bolivia. So get to know her. Stop by the office and take a look. She's very well qualified. She comes with impeccable credentials. And we're very, very grateful to have you here. Thank you, Daisy. I also wanted to just make a quick mention to the mayor. I know he chairs.

And maybe what we do, Mr. Mayor, for some of the public comments when they're light, maybe we put them at the front end because it's hard to have folks wait. You know, look, it's 10 o'clock almost. And I know Carl likes to hear us talk, but he doesn't like to hear us talk this long. So, you know, four hours later. But maybe what we do is I know when we've moved some of the public comments to the end of the meeting when we've had irregular number of people, high volume. But when we have a light one, maybe we just save people some time and put them up front. And, you know, that way we show a courtesy to the public.

This is their meeting. This is their house. And we should be looking at their comfort as well and their courtesy. The other thing I wanted to say was thank you to the police chief, and I think somebody's here standing in for him for tonight, and the department. They did a great job in sending out media advisories this past week and advising the public because we knew we had a lot of trauma, fear about the ice raids that were going to be happening and that we were anticipating. And those nixels that went out, I think, were very calming.

Unfortunately, we saw commerce go down because people stopped shopping. They stopped going out. They stopped sending their kids to school, to summer school. folks stop going to work, and those aren't good things for a city. So those Nixles, please extend my thanks to the chief officer. And so, you know, given all the rhetoric and, you know, coming out of the White House, unfortunately, you know, things don't seem to be stopping. Now they're going after Congress people that, you know, are women of color, and that's unfortunate that we're living in an era that we have to protect that.

Finally, I just wanted to give a shout-out to Fouad and his team. You know, it was just anecdotally, I was walking by the counter and he was behind the counter and I said, what are you doing there? And he said, I'm here now spending two hours a day, you know, processing applications. And he happened to be processing an application for a guy who was putting in a Starbucks. So real quickly, there's a Nixle on it. They reduced processing times by 67% by having the director back there helping the staff. So I thought that was real good hands-on stuff. Madam City Manager, that is a great thing to do.

It doesn't cost you much or any of us much to change the culture there of having processing expedited. So thank you for being responsive to our stakeholders and our residents. And thank you, Fwad. Good night.

Thanks for that. Mayor Pro Tem, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So on Sunday afternoon, I get an email from Chief Henry from the OCFA that we had a very tough incident here in the city. We had a toddler drown in a pool. And I want to thank the Santa Ana police officers for their quick response going out there, rendering first aid, until OCFA could respond. And they started their life-saving measures. And the child was transported to the hospital.

And right now she's recovering. So it's a great, great work. You know, I can't thank them enough for coming out and responding to our emergencies that we have here in the city. And I also want to move over and thank the 11 explorers that we have and congratulate them. They're Orange County Fire Authority explorers. They have been there for a week training and they're going to be graduating this weekend.

I will be there and I love these programs because they learn a lot about self-confidence and leadership and teamwork. And it's a great experience for them. And they grow up and they become participants and sometimes career personnel in public safety, which is very, very important. and I'm very happy to announce that, very happy that the city, three of them are females. Three of the 11 are females that are in that academy right now. And so thank you to the cadets and congratulations, and thank you to the Santa Ana Police Department again for your quick response

and your professionalism and Orange County Fire Authority for all that you do. The city of Santa Ana thanks you.

All right, with that, it's almost 10 o'clock. I think you've got a lot of comment. I think a lot of good discussion. Let's go home and relax a little bit if we can. This meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.