Read the June 4 meeting.

Can you all please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance? Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please remain standing. We have our invocation by our chaplain here this evening. Please go ahead.

Lord God, we begin this evening by being mindful that 50 years ago today, we had an officer, Nelson Sasser, who was killed in the line of duty. Reminds us, Lord God, this night to always pray for our men and women in law enforcement, men and women as first responders in our whole community, that you would be with them and guard and protect them, Lord. We're thankful for their lives, Lord God, the fact that they are always in harm's way. We ask tonight that you would oversee this meeting, that your wisdom would be here, that you would bring a blessing to this place. There would be an overwhelming sense that you're here.

We would also ask, Lord God, that you would bless those that are to be honored tonight for the service to our community. Thank you for the way that they have lived a life of excellence. Bless our city council. Bless our city. In the name of the Lord. Amen.

Thank you. You may be seated.

for the record if any of you are here for item 60b or 75j both of those items will not be considered at tonight's meeting so if you're here for those items you can go home early If not, you can hang out for the party.

And let's go ahead and we'll start with Council Member Iglesias, recognizing Godinez High School softball team for their CIF victory. Is the team present? Come on down.

Thank you.

Okay, good evening. Okay, so it's my great honor, my pleasure to be among Godinas students and staff. As you know, I was on the school board before and I used to, my nephews and my cousins graduated from Godinas. So we're grizzlies at heart. So, so proud of you guys. So I'm just going to share a little bit with the public on your accomplishment and the reason why we're recognizing you today. So over the past four years, the Godine's High School softball team, who led by five seniors, who are the five seniors here?

I told them I'm missing. Okay. Have managed to win four straight league championships, consisting of three Orange Coast League championships and one Golden West League championship. Also, the team went 10-0 in each of those years, which equates to 40-0 in league competition from their freshman year to their senior year. You know, that's...

So in 2017, although they reached the CIF semifinal round, they did not make it to the finals. This only fueled their desire to come back stronger, right? So this year, the team has crushed their competition with complete team domination in the pitching circle, on the field, and at bat. The team won all five of the CIF playoff games by five or more runs, with only 74 runs scored against them in the 30 games they played. So the final overall record for the 2019 season was 26-4.

and Godine's softball is led by head coach Ed Medina

he also had assistant coaches Clarissa Castellanos

Kevin Pola

and Celine Pola So the team has truly been able to reach their full potential. So we are extremely proud. I am extremely proud of your accomplishments of the Godinus High School softball team with their incredible athletic skills and exceptional GPAs. So the 2019 Godinus Grizzlies softball team is truly a special group that has set a high standard for all of those to follow. So congratulations, Godinus Grizzlies, and thank you for representing Santa Ana. You guys have put Santa Ana at a different level on the map, so thank you so much.

So at this time, I would like to call the coach if you want to say a few words.

I'd like to thank the board for having us here today. It was a great accomplishment. I've done enough talking. These are the girls that did all the work out there. They were fantastic, and they're also great in the classroom. That's the number one thing at our school. Mr. Churchill, principal, and our AD, Lisa Treen, they make sure we're on top of that. So we maintain that GPA way up there. But it was a great honor to be the first softball team in the district to bring home a CIF championship. And all of you that were at the game on Saturday, that Saturday morning,

we really appreciate it because there was nothing like walking into that stadium and seeing all those smiling faces. and then I was able to ease up after we won this thing because it was very nerve-wracking. These are some amazing young ladies. They're going to be really good for our community as they move on to their colleges and so forth, and then the underclassmen coming in are doing a fantastic job, and they know they have big shoes to fill. So, again, thank you for all your support. We appreciate that, and the girls will really appreciate that. So, again, thank you again.

So this is a little token of our appreciation from the City of Santa Ana, acknowledging Godina's school softball team for your championship. And each of the girls get a certificate signed from all of the council members and the mayor. And if you could please just kind of introduce them, who they are, and then we can all acknowledge them too.

Oh, no. Do you want the coach's version or do you want the straight version? I could give you the coach's version, but I see the police are here and they might run me out of here. I'll start off right off here. Yachty Ramirez is our catcher. She's a four-year varsity player.

She is a four-time first-team all-league. She is a two-time defensive player of the year. She's an outstanding catcher, an outstanding student. Definitely going to miss her. Right next to her is her twin sister, Aralyn, who, again, I've been a lucky man in this. Since her freshman year, she's a three-time MVP of the league in pitching. She's also another great student. She's also one of our team captains.

Alyssa Martinez, she came over from Mater Dei. She was injured this year. Apparently she was a gymnast and started jumping on people and twisted her ankle. But we're looking forward to seeing her next year. Next year is Sammy Villanueva.

Plays first base. That's another outstanding kid. Four-year all-league captain. Just a great kid. Homecoming queen. Did I say that right? Did I say that right? Homecoming queen. Next year is a freshman, Leanna Gonzalez. came out.

We were really impressed with Leanna. We had a couple of injuries that hurt us early on in the season, and she stepped right in. She's a catcher, but we had her at third. We had her at outfield, and she did a fantastic job. There was a lot of pressure on her because she was so young, but she did an outstanding job, and she's also a great student in the classroom.

Next to her is Adrianna Meza. who also injured with shoulder injury, second baseman, and we're hoping she gets back into form by next year. Next to her is Natalie Carlos.

Natalie Carlos is our pitcher. She pitched all five games in the CIF, rounds of CIF. She was undefeated. She pitched the 15-1 game against El Segundo. She's a magnificent pitcher. She was MVP this year for pitching in our league. She hit two tremendous home runs against Culver City that sparked that in the semifinals and got us into the finals. And she did an outstanding job.

Next to her is our center fielder, Andrea. Andrea was really, she's our number seven batter. She could play anywhere in the outfield, but her at-bats in this championship game were with two outs, runners bases loaded, doubled in the gap, scored three runs. She ends up with five RBIs, got the team going, and that just started us off. And after her, everybody else went to work. So Andrea was fantastic.

Next to her is Ismerelda Pico. She's a freshman. We used her a little bit as if she's a pitcher. She could play first. We saw her play a little bit of outfield. So she has a great future. She's also a basketball player at Godinas. We're trying to get her out of that sport and trying to keep her up and running for softball. So looking forward to having her for the next three years or so.

And next to her is Clarissa Castellano Oparga. Claire has been with me for 11 years since the school opened, and I was able to get that job. But Claire has also been one of my players when she was 8. So in Little Miss, travel ball, high school, she went on to college at Cypress where they won a national championship there. Then she went on to Dominguez Hills where she played there with my son. and then she came on and started helping me coach.

I don't have the words to tell her how much I appreciate her effort out there every day, coming out and doing the best work with the catchers, and that's what she played catcher. Just an outstanding coach. Girls relate to her, and it's been my pleasure with them. There's two coaches that aren't here, Kevin Pola and his daughter, Sel. Kevin is a Kiana and Savannah's dad and Selena's the older sister who went to Long Beach Seekersome High School we got her on the staff and that's what made the difference to get us into the finals and then win this thing was her

excellent knowledge in the in the circle so it was a team effort from top to bottom front office there's so many people behind the scene that aren't being recognized today but the whole school the godina's uh family uh great support system over there and i couldn't have asked for a better way to end this with these girls leaving they turned they changed the landscape when they first came in here as freshmen and they weren't going to be denied and when we lost that semi-final game at some point in time i knew we were going to get back i didn't know we were going to win it that big but i'm really appreciative of these young ladies

again thank you for your support

Thank you.

David Penaloza

Celeste Duran and Sofia Ciaramonte, come up please. Are you out there?

David Penaloza

No, Celeste? Oh.

Perfect.

Hello.

David Penaloza

So today I would like to recognize the two Santa Ana residents that stand before you, Celeste Duran and Sofia Charamonte, said that correctly, right? For being offered and accepting appointments to the United States Military Service Academy. Being accepted into a military service academy is a very rare, difficult task, as the average acceptance rate for any academy is approximately 12%. Every applicant must submit a comprehensive application, pass a physical fitness test and a medical examination and be interviewed by an academy representative.

David Penaloza

Both Celeste and Sophia competed against thousands of other applicants from all over the country for their place in their selected military academy. Celeste not only plays nearly all sports offered at her school, she is also involved in ASB, rocketry, robotics, and is the co-founder of Fellowship for Christian Athletes, all while maintaining a 4.0 GPA at Samoyle Academy. Sophia, a modern-day student, is also very active in the community, is a Chalk Hospital volunteer, ASB class senator, track and field team athlete and captain,

David Penaloza

and the UCLA Leadership Summer Program Merit Scholar recipient. I would like to recognize Celeste for her appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy and Sophia for her appointment to the U.S. Air Force. Today...

David Penaloza

Today we acknowledge the commitment, hard work, and determination it took to accomplish these spectacular goals. Congratulations ladies.

Do any of you want to say a word?

A quick thank you to my parents for making all this possible and my coaches.

thank you to all my family and friends thank you for making this possible

David Penaloza

oh i guess

I think the mayor is asleep at the wheel so I'll go ahead and take the reins. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Nabil, where are you? Nabeel Sabah is our water czar, right? Is that your new title up there? So we've had athletes. We've had folks going into the military. Now let me introduce you to some artists that we're going to be celebrating here. So these, wow, all young ladies, lady artists. So that's pretty cool. So this is one of my favorite presentations of the year that I get to make.

And it's recognizing water conservation, but more importantly, the youth prepare and draw these posters to enlighten us about water awareness, water conservation. And we always think it's best to do it with our kids because once they learn it, they tell their parents, they tell their friends, and it starts spreading a lot quicker. And they're just more talented than us adults. So I want to recognize their efforts because what we do is we prepare and we organize a poster contest each year and we bring out their inner talent, they think about water and they do some beautiful, beautiful work.

And I know that we're going to be recognizing a number of young artists here tonight. Let me introduce Nabeel Sabah who's our water director here, our water czar, our water president, our water person here in the city. And let me just tell you that this has been happening. We've got about 12 young artists, although I think some of them are still en route. So I'm going to recognize the ones that are here. And we have different age groups. We have ages from 5 to 8, ages from 9 to 12, and ages from 13 to 14, and 15 to 18.

And so these are the 2019 San Ana Water Conservation Youth Poster Contest winners. Give them a big round of applause.

Scrolling on the big screen, you're going to see some of the artwork that they did, and this is what we're going to be displaying, hopefully, all around City Hall, and making sure everybody understands it because, again, from a young person's mind to actually putting it on canvas and showing it off, it really does prove the point that water is a precious resource that we all need to protect, that we all need to respect, because as you know, just a few years ago the governor had to declare an emergency drought. And even though we've had a very wet season this past year, we're just a few years removed,

a few seasons removed from having a five-year period that we suffered with very low hydrology. So myself as the president of the Orange County Water District representing Santa Ana on that board, I'm very, very proud of these young people because they're making all of us much more sensitive to making sure that we take care of water and we are conscious of it every day. So this program and this contest was launched four years ago by the Santa Ana Water Resources Division. The contest promotes student education through creativity while reinforcing the commitment to protecting the environment and our water resources.

Water, as we know, is a limited and irreplaceable resource that must be protected and was the message driving this theme and this year's contest theme was protecting our watershed. So much of our water isn't doesn't just come from rain fall, right? A lot of our water comes from the Santa Ana River. And so we are so fortunate and blessed in the county that 75% of our water we get from the groundwater basin and from the watershed from the Santa Ana River. We only have to import 25% of that from the Colorado River in Northern California. There are other communities that are less fortunate.

than we are they have to import a hundred percent of their water so that's why we're extra careful we're extra cautious and we try to teach our young folks how to make sure that they they're respectful of water and their water usage this contest would not be possible without the sort of support of the san anna unified school district these are products and and students from the san anna unified school district and we'd like to acknowledge the district's effort and the teachers that encourage their participation. Any teachers in the room? Yay, raise your hand. Let's give the teachers a big round of applause.

So I want to thank the teachers. I want to thank the parents. I want to thank you all for allowing me to make this presentation. And we're going to scoot out after this, and we're going to go have a little party for a little while and make sure we celebrate all the good work that was done. But before then, we want to hand out some certificates. And most importantly, I want to thank all you artists up here who have a bright future, not just in water, but look at that work. Man, that is, see I draw stick figures, so when I look at this, I think that's pretty impressive.

So thank you all for making us more aware, making us, you know, see how important water is in our lives. So I want to introduce Nabil, because he's going to be reading the names of some of our recipients here. So let's give Nabil a big round of applause because he organizes this thing. So Nabil, come on up.

Thank you, Councilman. I just would like to thank the Sanana Unified School District and its teachers that allowed us to reach the students. And this year we received over 300 entries, beautiful pictures and paintings from the students. We also like to thank the judges and looking forward for next year. This year's theme was protecting our watershed. Next year's theme will be imagine life without water. Imagine one day without water. That's the theme for next year. Again, congratulations to all the winners here and look forward for next year. Thank you. Thank you.

We have Jacqueline Rico Perez, also Anne-Cherie Sotilla, and also Alexa Victoria Flores. We also have Ginia Garcia, also Janelle Bello.

Yay! You're Ginia?

All right.

Brittany Evarcheria, and we also have Katie Tran. Yay, Katie.

And Gianna Battenio.

Let's give Gianna a big round of applause.

And then we have Lecia Icha Kuyen, Genesis Ramon, and Monica Rodriguez,

and Silio Hitcha Yuan

look for our youngest artist best for last Jacqueline Rico Perez

yay Jacqueline applause applause applause

Thank you.

Thank you.

and took the photo, so that's awesome. I'm also honored tonight to recognize some great leaders in our community. You know, every city depends on its neighborhoods to, you know, foster community feel. And in any community, you're going to have a variety of neighborhoods. You know, some more well-to-do than others, some more organized than others, some a little cleaner than others, and then some that need a little more tender, loving care.

We in our city as well, we have 50 plus neighborhoods that we recognize, and three of them are considered historically Latino neighborhoods, particularly the Logan neighborhood, the Santanita neighborhood, the Delhi neighborhood. And unfortunately over the years, some of those neighborhoods were neglected or have mixed use, so the environment is a little bit more challenging. and I'm really pleased and honored that at the national level just a few weeks ago one of our neighborhood associations went to this national competition. I thought they would have went

farther because it's national but they went to Palm Springs but hey Palm Springs is nice so it's a nice place to be and they were awarded as the runner up of revitalized organizations as neighborhoods, Santanita Neighborhood Association. Let's give them a round of applause. Let's invite up our president and board members.

We have Felipe Guerrero, who's the president, and some board members, Martha Calderon, as well as Orlando Quintana. And I think there's some other supporters as well in the audience. Let me tell you a little bit more about their award. the Santanita Neighborhood Association was named the National Runner-Up in the Neighborhood of the Year for Social Revitalization so they're moving their neighborhood forward you know and they were awarded by this group called Neighborhoods USA through the efforts of the Santanita Neighborhood Association and outstanding staff and I do want to also give a brief shout out to Scott

Kuttner that for many years has been cultivating this kind of leadership and work so we're very grateful for you Scott we know the hours that you put during the day evenings weekends and it's to be commended thank you thank you so much so through the efforts of the the leaders here families and children they for the first time have done more activities than ever before and probably than you know most neighborhoods they've done community events including movie nights outdoor with big screens and great great great movies and food camping

trips, opportunities for local youth, community beautification events, some murals on one of the community centers. They've done holiday events and numerous volunteer opportunities. And again, more events, better events than ever before. Through annual neighborhood cleanups, the neighborhood is also continuing to clean up the environment and get people involved in having neighborhood pride. as a direct result of these efforts. There's been increased interest from other neighborhoods about what they do to make their neighborhood more hospitable and inviting. So people are taking you know extra attention you

know looking out to the leaders of you know this neighborhood that wasn't as active. They've also been very active in a council priority that many of us of us have and I know you know council members Peñalosa, Iglesias, and We've also been taking a lot of time looking at issues along the harbor corridor, especially with the cross-section there. With Hazard, we have a variety of issues there, and Santanita's been there advocating as well. We thank the Santanita Neighborhood Association and its leaders for truly leading by example.

The care and devotion that they have displayed for their city, their residents, is to be commended and worthy of recognition. Let's give them a big round of applause once again.

Let's hear from their great leader, Felipe.

Thank you very much. First, I'd like to thank Council Member Solorio Iglesias and our Mayor Pro Temp, Villegas. They've been very supportive in helping us put these events together. I thank you again and maybe next year we'll take first prize. Thank you.

He's a man of few words but gets it done. Also a former OCTA employee where I also used to work and the kind of leader that also organizations like that are bringing back to the community. So on behalf of a grateful Mayor and grateful City Council, gracias, felicidades, and yes, let's take first next year. Congratulations again.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. If Orange County Fire Authority Chief Henry can join me up here. Thank you, sir. Every year, the Orange County Fire Authority, along with the Orange County Health Care Agency, form a task force and campaign regarding Drowning Prevention Awareness Month. and these are tough topics to talk about. It is, you know, as a parent, you know, I have a daughter, and I remember she's 18 now, but remember I would, I remember watching her as a child for year after year after year after year, no matter how old she was, I was still there.

If we were at a pool, I made sure that she wouldn't play with the drains because your finger can get stuck in a drain if you're, you know, how you swim to the bottom and you try to play around and explore or whatever, you know what kids do. And also your hair can get caught in a drain. All these things, the parent's nightmare. And I remember I just, I would stay vigilant. I would always say, this is not going to happen to me. I understand, you know, the realities. Every year these things happen. And remember, drowning happens in silence. So the main thing is you have to be there and you watch your

your children, your loved ones, or you have family members. It doesn't matter what age, you want to have someone always watching on the side and make sure that they're observant of what's going on because sometimes things do happen even for adults. They could have a medical complication while you're in the pool. You just never know. So I'm going to let Chief Henry speak a little bit more about that. So Chief Henry.

Good evening everybody. Last year Orange County had 107 drownings occur in the county. Way too many. And of those 107, 41 resulted in fatalities. And the majority of these drownings occurred because of a lack of supervision. And so I think we can do a better job, and I challenge all of us to do a better job. When you're at the pool or at the beach or wherever you're around water, designate somebody to make sure that you watch the water, and that's their sole job. And like Mayor Pro Tem was saying, And most drowning incidents occur without a sound.

Most people think a lot of noise is going to occur, people are going to splash, and that's just not the case. So when you're around the water, make sure you designate somebody to watch the water. For more information, you can go to the Orange County Fire Authority's website, OCFA.org, and you can find out all kinds of information that you can download. And we can also schedule to come out and have our educators come out and do presentations to your groups as well. So let's make sure that we don't have any drownings this year. and let's do our due diligence and make sure that we're being safe

and that we're watching the people around us. Thank you.

And Chief Henry, on behalf of the Mayor and City Council, if you could please accept this proclamation on Drowning Prevention Awareness Month and keep up the good work, sir. Thank you very much.

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

Sonia R. Carvalho

We do have reportable action on items number 1C, D, and E. 1E, the City Council voted to approve a settlement of $85,000. In item D, the City Council approved a settlement for the acquisition of property in the amount of $2,225,000. In item C, the City Council approved a settlement for the purchase of real property in the amount of $1.7 million.

Thank you, Madam City Attorney. Madam Clerk, do we have any speakers?

We have no speakers for the closed session, excuse me, consent calendar items. We can proceed to pull the consent calendar items, if any.

Is there any council members who'd like to pull a consent item?

That's a first.

Okay, so we will-

Do we have a motion? So we have a second.

We have a second from Sarmiento and a first from Solorio. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries. We will move on to, God, I'm not used to this.

The business calendar.

Item 55C, adopt a resolution to join the Orange County Housing Finance Trust and approve joint powers agreements.

55C did you say?

Correct.

Is there a motion to approve? I'll move the item. Is there a second?

Second.

All those in favor say aye. Those opposed? One. One opposed. Motion carries and we will wait for our Mayor who's coming up.

Madam Clerk, do we have any comments, any public comment requests?

Not for consent calendar, but we do have for the business portion and also non-agentized items.

Let me, I do have a speaker on 55E, I believe, which is the next item. Sorry, let's go to 55D. I will entertain a motion.

55D as in David. Motion to approve. Second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. Yes, go ahead. Just a quick question.

David Penaloza

Madam City Manager, I remember the note. I just told you about with this item, just to have the discussion about having one of these gyms at the Civic Center. Did you have any communication with...

Absolutely, Council Member Penaloza. We looked into that, and they don't have a problem with us changing that fifth location, so we can substitute another location for that. The Parks and Rec Director has already addressed that for you.

David Penaloza

Okay, and just so my colleagues know, I just I found it funny to put one in the Civic Center at the Plaza the Flags just because I don't see it being used by anybody. I don't think our employees would use it on their lunch break. That's unless I hear otherwise. But I just thought that the location was was funny.

Does staff want to say anything on this item?

We're good.

David Penaloza

OK.

Go ahead. So when would you choose the next site? Or how are you choosing the site?

And can we put a timer on there, five minutes, please?

Go ahead. Yes. What we'll do is the grants committee will, there's I think three or four other sites that they'll choose from, and we have a conference call with them next week.

So you'll be reporting that back to us?

We'll report back. anytime we install one of these we'll come back to the council okay all right so i'll leave well

motion in a second those in favor please say aye aye aye those opposed motion carries um i don't know if it's the pd or or the city manager or the clerk but there's still a lot of people outside and there's quite a few seats if you look throughout the crowd there are empty seats so if we could allow more people in and let them wander in and see if they can sit down it's better than standing and i just uh walked outside briefly and there's quite a few people out there still so if somebody could address that please

all right uh 55 d is in or e i have terry osborne come on down to speak followed by paul berry

followed by larry hitterdale

They might all be outside.

Followed by Virginia Bernal.

Followed by

Bashani.

Larry, come on down and speak.

Sure. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Larry Hitterdale, and I live over on Linwood Avenue in Saddleback View. I recommend the adoption of the proposed resolution in 55E and also the approval of the letter. The original request we had was for a resolution, and that is the type of action taken by a number of cities and other groups.

For uniformity in the national campaign, we recommend that adoption of the resolution, but a letter will also be helpful and has a more concise message. Now, we can apply some of the global concerns we've all heard to our local context here tonight. In the first place, endorsing the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act will reaffirm Santa Ana's commitment to leadership on environmental and sustainability issues.

The staff report notes the local governments for sustainability, the U.S. Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement, and the Climate Action Plan. I am grateful for these past actions, and tonight there's an opportunity to continue down the same path. In the second place, now is the right time for additional action. The process of the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act is well underway. The congressional sponsorship list now amounts to 41, and as the staff reports note, three at least of these are from Orange County.

recognized individuals who also endorsed this act. The most distinguished is perhaps George Shultz, who was Secretary of the Treasury under President Nixon and later Secretary of State under President Reagan. By the way, he's now 98. He's still interested in helping young folks in the future. And I guess we talk about young folks from his perspective at age 98. That probably includes a lot of us. Now, other organizations, in addition to individuals, have also endorsed the Act. Specifically, just over 30 local governments have adopted a resolution similar to the one on the agenda tonight.

These cities include Rochester, New York, Durham, North Carolina, Anchorage, Alaska, Palm Beach County, Florida, and Cincinnati, Ohio. Ohio. Now, so far, Cincinnati is the most popular city to have issued an endorsement. Santa Ana, which is... Larry, you're out of time. Okay. Thank you, though. All right. Thank you. Appreciate that. Terry Osborne.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm here as a teacher. I teach in Garden Grove at a school that serves Santa Ana students. About 30 to 40 percent of our student body lives in Santa Ana. And I teach about climate change. I'm a science teacher. and I teach our students about solutions, about what they can do to make a difference with this issue. And we teach about things that they can do, simple behavioral changes, and we also teach them that many more changes are needed at this point in time with this climate crisis.

And my students and students in general, youth in general, are very concerned about this issue. and we're really hoping that we can make some monumental changes and this bill before us today is one step in that very positive direction and this bipartisan bill is a great step toward taking change that will lead to actions that will help us to avert some of the very severe ramifications of climate change. And so I'm here on behalf of my students to encourage this council to endorse this bill. We desperately need legislative action to put a price on carbon and transition us away from fossil fuels.

And I can hope I can take back to my students the message of hope that we will have the necessary action on the part of our politicians and our legislators to take action where many students feel that there isn't the political will. and I want to take back to them a message of hope that there is. And I thank you very much for considering supporting this resolution. Thank you.

Paul Berry.

Madam Clerk, make sure it's three minutes for speakers, okay?

Thank you. Thank you. I'm Paul Berry. I'm a resident at 820 North Spurgeon Street. and I wanted to say thank you for doing this as far as drafting this resolution, getting it to this point. Please take action and approve it. This is appropriate that we would do this. And again, thank you. And I want you to know that you do have the support of the community behind you on this.

Thank you, Paul. Virginia, Bernal.

Good evening, Council members. First, I want to say I appreciate you and the city staff for your service. Having attended various City Council meetings in this one, I appreciate the variety and amount of issues and decisions that require your attention and work. Thank you especially this evening for your consideration to adopt a resolution to Congress in support of the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. H.R. 763. Several of us residents, members of Citizens Climate Lobby, are traveling to Washington, D.C. this weekend,

joining over a thousand other citizens from across the country to lobby members of Congress, adding our voices to your resolution, hopefully. We know that this policy is not the whole solution to the menace of climate change. It addresses emission reduction only, yet it is an essential component, a strong economy-wide incentive to move away from fossil fuels and their harmful effects to health and the environment. It is also the most aggressive policy to reduce emissions, not matched by any other bill introduced in Congress ever. And it has been a decade since the last bipartisan bill was attempted.

Should this bill become law, our clean energy technologies will be ready to supply us the energy we need. The amazing thing is that the policy will have other benefits. Among them, it can provide a significant economic stimulus to the city. The dividend sent to residents will be spent stimulating the local economy. For a city our size, it will mean several hundred million dollars coming in, spent on health care, retail, housing, etc. It will be taxable income, yet it will not be included in means testing for federal assistance programs. The dividends will increase every year as the carbon fee is raised on fossil fuel corporations.

Despite the increasing fee when fossil fuel use diminishes enough, the dividends will in turn gradually diminish, ending within some 30 or so years, thus weaning families gently from the extra income. So you see the transition to a clean energy economy much less difficult than some would claim under this policy. As I end my comments, please, for the sake of our health, our environment, our city, our nation, and the world, adopt the resolution. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Susman Abashini, please.

Followed by Marie Zion.

Good evening, Council members. I want to thank you for considering adoption of a Santa Ana City resolution in support of Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, HR 763. I have returned since last Council meeting because I want to assure you that most of your constituents are in support of such an effective national bipartisan policy to address the threat of climate change.

The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication does research on knowledge, attitude, and policy preferences at the global, national, and local levels. Their estimate last year for our congressional district 46 is that 72% of adults support taxing fossil fuel companies while equally reducing other taxes. Though the Energy Innovation Act does not reduce taxes, it does something better.

It will send monthly dividends to all legal residents, even if their circumstances exempt them from paying taxes. To the question, should Congress do more to address global warming? 61% think they should, and 73% consider environmental protection more important than economic growth.

Let me share with you the findings from an online national survey releasing that past month by the conservative group Lentz Global by a margin of more than 8 to 1. American voters are more worried about climate change now than they were just one last year.

A majority across party lines support a bipartisan climate solution that charges fossil fuel companies for their carbon emissions and gives all the money directly to the American people through a check. Most specifically, they found four in one support overall, two in one GOP support, and 75% support from Republicans under 40. In conclusion, though the media has not...

Thank you. You've got to stick within the three minutes, but thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for your time.

All right. Murray, followed by Kaylee Levitt.

Mayor Pulido, distinguished members of the City Council, thank you for allowing me to address you. Our representatives in Congress don't lead us.

Why don't you get the mic closer to your mouth. They represent us. Maybe you can help them, Norma.

They respond to the political will of their constituents, and this resolution would go long way toward telling Congressman Correa that his constituents want him to take action on this very important issue, the most important issue of my lifetime and I'm 63. We should not wait for Mr. Correa to tell us what he wants to do or not do. We should tell him that we want him to support this very good piece of legislation, H.R. 763. I've spoken with a couple of members of the Anaheim City Council about a similar resolution in that city and I have been told that Anaheim will not pass a resolution until Santa Ana does but if

you pass this resolution there's a good chance Anaheim will pass one too so your action will have doubled the impact thank you thank you Kaylee Kaylee Levitt if

If not, I'll bring it back to council for consideration.

Go ahead, Councillor Miental.

Thank you, and thank you to the speakers. It's always great when we have people from our community lead on efforts. And it isn't always government that should lead. I think sometimes the best ideas come from the community and the residents. And I think this is one that not only affects our city, our county, our state, but it affects us nationally. So it's also encouraging to see that there is bipartisan support for good ideas. And so I do applaud you for your efforts, everybody who's worked on this effort. And normally we convene a subcommittee, the legislative committee that we have to go through these bills and

take an opinion and a position on whether we support, oppose, or watch. Unfortunately, we're still in the process of convening that, so I think that's why I just came directly to the, the city council for its opinion. So what's always been odd to me is that we're living in a very strange time where we have very uncontrollable wildfires, rising ocean water, atmospheric rivers that are very erratic. And so these are times that I think have got all of us very confused about whether or not there's something changing in our environment.

So I know that for those of us who are concerned, not just for ourselves, but for generations that follow us, these steps, albeit as a resolution, which is advisory, which is supportive, which is basically encouraging our representatives in Congress to take substantive steps to make sure that we move in the right direction. And creating jobs and seeing that there are opportunities and alternative fuels, moving us away from what we know are harmful fuels and harmful sources of energy are a good thing. So I had the opportunity to speak with Congressman Correa's district staff and

he told me that he's going to be watching us very closely because we do have, I think, most of our congressional delegation from the county supporting this. In addition, as I said, to have bipartisan support. But I know that he also listens to us and so he listens to what we say as a city. Obviously, we're one of the largest cities of the 34 in the county, so it is significant that we embrace efforts like this. And so I want to thank our staff for preparing the report, for drafting the resolution, preparing the sample letter and the draft letter that will go out.

But I'm certainly encouraged by this and I think it's an important first step because there are many. This isn't the only one, but this is one good solid first step for us to encourage our congressional representatives to do the right thing and move towards embracing.

I concur with your comments. Would you like to move approval? I'll move that on. I'll second.

Okay. Comment? Councilor Salerno? Yes, thank you. First, I want to thank Councilmember Vince Sarmiento for bringing this forward. This, I think, with this council, is the first environmental bill that we bring forward. There will be more. There's much work to be done and I think this item sets the stage. And then I want to thank the citizen lobby that we have in particular, the two ladies that have been here at multiple council meetings and community meetings. The patience and persistence and charisma that they have is significant and we wouldn't be here without you.

So thank you so much and it's my honor to be supporting this item tonight. Councilman Loza, did you have a comment?

David Penaloza

Just thank you, Councilmember Seymour, I look forward to bringing this forward.

Councilmember Cecil.

Okay, so I just want to commend the residents and young ladies that have been very persistent in the, you know, for the city council to address this issue. And I just want to thank you because I know you guys walk your talk. You guys are always out there in the community when we have, you know, planting trees, trying to do anything that we can to improve our environment. I know that you guys are there.

I am, one of the things that I say, I may not agree with the whole climate change debate because I think we have differences of perspectives. But I think it warrants for us to give you support on what you're doing with your group because you have shown that you truly, truly care about our environment. And I know this is just a way of just, I mean, it's not going to really influence anything. If anything, it's just showing us, to your group, our support that we have in our city. So I know you guys have been out there very supportive of what we're doing.

So I would ask, and I know the first gentleman that said, would it be a resolution or a letter? I would be comfortable with a letter. If we can send a letter of support, I would be more than happy to support that.

So I just want to thank staff for preparing a draft letter, but I'm in support of a letter to support this issue.

But I believe the motion is to adopt a resolution and or a letter. Does the maker on the motion have a preference?

Well, my preference is for both, but to the extent that we can take a position, my motion would be to adopt and recommend that both a resolution and a letter be prepared and sent.

So may you vote against a portion of that, because he wants a resolution and a letter.

I'll second it. All right. Mr. Mayor, I'm supportive of a letter, but a resolution not at this time.

All right. Well, look, I'm personally supportive of both. And the reason is, you know, the North Pole is melting so bad. They're talking about new routes going north. That is scary stuff. There's so many species that are about to go extinct in the next year. It's unprecedented, and that's scary. And this is not like a car, which you can just put it in reverse and you go backwards. Let me try it again. Again, a lot of this is irreversible in many ways, and it's unprecedented. So, you know, whatever we can do urgently may already be too late to reverse some of these things,

but whatever we can do urgently, that's why I think a resolution and a letter is better.

And I want to thank the mayor for his efforts, because many of us and many of you all don't know the work that he's done at the U.S. Conference of Mayors chairing the Energy Commission, So he's much more well-versed than many of us up here on the consequences that we're looking at now and that we're facing in the future. So for your leadership, thank you for all of that. Thank you for that.

As a matter of fact, I'm going to be getting an award later this month from the U.S. Council of Mayors for recognition of that work. Thank you. So with that, Councilor Salote. One last quick thing.

I'm fine with either, and maybe the letter could be the cover letter to the reso. But the letter is simple, it's clear, people will make note, as well as what's nice about the letter is all our names are on there. So in terms of showing that there's full support by members of this council in addressing climate change, that would be good.

Thank you. So with that, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed? We have two no's.

David Penaloza

I think we're just overpopulated.

We just overpopulated.

David Penaloza

We need Thanos.

All right. So with that, let's go on to item 60B. I believe that staff is requesting a continuance on that item, so staff will bring it back when they're ready. All right. Item 60C, it's approval of an appropriation adjustment. I would entertain a motion.

Just, Mr. Mayor, just a question for staff. Madam City Manager, if you could just walk me through that once again. Again, I know I've heard it from you once, but again, unfortunately with all the other items on the agenda, I just wanted to make sure you give us a preface on that.

Certainly, council member. So the item before you is a request for an appropriation adjustment. So by charter, I need a two-thirds vote if I need to shift money from a department to another department within the general fund. And what we're anticipating is we're going to close this current fiscal year, so 18-19, with two departments going over their appropriations. So I'm not seeking additional dollars. What I'm seeking is just the transfer. We have two other departments that are going to be underspending.

So specifically in my office, the city manager's office, we're projecting that we could go over as much as $450,000 at the end of this year. And in the non-departmental area, we're anticipating that we could go over 300,000. So we have identified from the city clerk's office, they have 250,000 in savings, mainly in the elections area. And then in the public works agency, they have 500,000 of savings due to just staff vacancies. So between those two amounts, that will cover the 750. And I believe that with a transfer up to that amount, we will close the year within compliance with the charter.

Great, thank you for that summary, it's really helpful. Will this cost or will we eliminate any jobs from those departments that we're transferring money out of and maybe going to some of the other departments that are going to be receiving some funds?

No, this will just close the gap on the two departments that need the funds and and it won't have an impact because the departments that we're transferring the money from, they're not using the money.

Got it. Thank you. I'll move the item with that explanation. Is there a second?

David Penaloza

I'll second.

Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? No. Motion carries. Well, maybe it doesn't. There's two no's. We needed five, so that's only four.

Mr. Mayor, I just move that we continue it for two weeks.

David Penaloza

All right, so let's roll it for two weeks. want clarification. If we don't approve this, we're out of compliance with our charter, right?

That's correct.

David Penaloza

It could be, puts us into a misdemeanor.

You'll see me return every council meeting with this item. Okay.

All right. So we have motion to second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? No. Two no's, even on the

continuance. Excuse me, Mayor Polito, for point of clarification, Solorio made the new motion. May I have a second? I'll

Well, just a point of clarification. Doesn't the motion to continue be adopted on four?

Yes.

Yeah, and we did. So I thought you said, oh, even that, even the continuous amount.

No, no. Four is good. Four is good. So with that, item 60D, as in David, I would entertain a motion.

Move the item.

I'll second. Those in favor, please say aye. Questions, questions, questions. All right, a question. Okay. Start the clock.

Thank you. So for this one, I know it's for the emergency solutions grants. For Mercy House, I know that they're our provider for the link.

What exactly is it that they're going to be doing extra with this money, with this $316,000 that they're getting?

Certainly, Councilmember. I'd refer to our Executive Director of Community Development, Steven Mendoza.

Thank you, Madam Councilmember. if you remember there was a challenge to staff to make sure that we try to augment the inclusionary money that we were using for Mercy House this takes two hundred thousand dollars and of ESG money places it into Mercy House in order for us to reserve that inclusionary money of two hundred thousand dollars that we promised so we were challenged late last year if you remember council member Sarmiento wanted to ensure that we replenished our inclusionary housing funds. And this provides us the ability to do that for $200,000.

But are we getting any type of reports back? What's the return on our investment to them? Well that provides

they operate our shelter. So the $200,000

is to pay for their staff to operate the shelter? It's to augment the funding

that we've already dedicated to them. It just changes out funding if that makes sense.

Okay. So the other funding came what? From the general

fund so that's going to go back into the it came from the inclusionary housing fund that developers pay to not build the units on site okay thank you okay we have a motion

second those in favor please say aye aye aye those opposed motion carries uh now we're on item 75a this time place for a public hearing on to adopt a fiscal year 2019 2020 budget and And do we have comment on that?

All right, we have a few speakers here. Ido Cortez, come on down. Followed by Jackie Cordova.

followed by Tanya Schwartz from the Vera Institute

Good evening I'm Jairo Cortez with Chief Spine I wanted to speak today about the budget and ask all of you to support another round of funding for the Orange County Justice Fund, which has been a program that has been very instrumental in providing legal support for undocumented residents in Santana over the last year and the year before that. And not just to support it at the current funding levels, but also to increase the investment that the city has already made towards this program. Thank you. Thank you for that, Ido.

Now, Jackie, followed by Donna Schwartz, followed by Cynthia Felix.

Hello, my name is Jackie Cordova. I am a resident of Santa Ana. I am here to discuss the budget, the funds. I request that our funds be used in honest ways to serve our residents. I remind you, Jose Solorio, that you have a stolen seat. You trained someone else who is not here now to do the same. As long as your seat is stolen, your legacy is criminal, and you're all associated with this. We have been asking the funds for the police to go to our youth.

The cops continue to kill our children. We've been talking about this for years now. We want our money retooled. The COPS protect child molesters every 4th of July at Centennial Park. We demand that our money be used in ways to benefit our children. We ask that you do that. Thank you.

Thank you. Tanya?

Good evening. My name is Tanya So-Sook. I'm here on behalf of the Vera Institute of Justice. The Vera Institute of Justice runs the SAFE program, the SAFE Network program, which is a collection of jurisdictions around the country that have dedicated themselves to provide representation, provide due process to people facing removal proceedings in immigration court. The city of Santa Ana has been a member of the SAFE Network since the network's inception in 2017 and November of 2017. and has proven themselves a leader in this area, not only in the county of Orange, but in the state of California.

As of April of this year, this program in Santa Ana has served a total of 29 clients through the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, which has an office here in Santa Ana. We have found a similar trend to that what we found nationwide in the SAFE network, that the clients represented by the program have longstanding ties to the United States. On average, clients that have lived in the United States have been in the U.S. for nine years, and many clients are parents who are supporting not only themselves but their family members.

The fund has represented a total of 31, parents of 31 different children under the age of 18. The safety net that has been created by the city has had a huge impact on every single one of their clients, the families, their children, the extended family and businesses and community. Most immigrants have to face immigration proceedings on their own and have to face the consequences of deportation alone.

They must navigate a complex legal system without an attorney, often far away in detention centers where they are held away from their families and communities to support and argue their case against a government-trained prosecutor.

However, having an attorney can make a huge difference. immigrants who are represented have up to 10 times more likelihood to be successful in availing themselves of immigration relief and being able to stay in the United States than those who are unrepresented. We very applaud the City Council and the City of Santa Ana for their leadership, and we urge you to continue your support in the next fiscal year. Thank you.

Thank you. Cynthia?

Call by Esmeralda. Go ahead.

Good evening, Council members. I'm back again. I was here last year. My name is Cynthia Felix. I am a resident of Santa Ana. I grew up in Santa Ana, and I am a staff attorney at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, and I serve the Universal Rep program. And I'm here today to ask that you renew that so I can continue my job and representing our residents. This past year, we had some great successes. I was able to get a 21-year-old client who had schizophrenia released from the Theo Lacy Detention Center. He was there for two years and not receiving medication.

Now he's released. He's at a hospital here, also in Santa Ana, receiving medication. I also was able to secure release for a 19-year-old client who came here with his mom and his younger siblings seeking asylum. However, he was detained by ICE. They made him remain detained for six months. There was nothing I can do to get his release. I was finally able to secure that in March. But the thing with the cases is that it doesn't stop there. I can't just secure their release. It's not a one-time deal. These cases last four years. I have a client, and we thought her case was going to end May 24th.

She was ready to get her decision on asylum, and the judge continued it until 2022. This program needs to continue so that I can continue representing these clients. Thank you.

Thank you Esmeralda.

She got me fine.

Alright.

Carlos Perea. Fabio Roberto Herrera.

Esmeralda is here so she'll go first. Okay.

Do you need translation?

Good evening, City Council and Mayor. It's been a while since I've been here as well. You should have a letter that we have submitted to you, to the City Clerk, that contains information about the Immigrant Legal Defense Program that Tanya from the Baird Institute and Cynthia from Immigrant Defenders mentioned. mentioned. And also on the back in the last two pages has data about how the program has supported immigrant families in the city. Again, I want to commend the city of Santana for its leadership on being one of the 12 city jurisdictions across the nation that

has taken a stance and been able to provide its residents, its more vulnerable residents that are subject to deportation with the support that it needs. Just some quick reminders and highlights close to a hundred thousand residents of the city of Santana are can be in danger or vulnerable to deportation proceedings as you know 70% of our city is of immigrant Latino descent so it's important that we continue this program this will be the third year it has done amazing things and definitely one thing to note about the Immigrant Defense Fund is that it enjoys a poll conducted by American Serving Company to Santana waters to

Santana likely voters states that 64.5% of Santana voters heavily support this program, which includes Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. So hopefully again, we see the city's commitment to immigrant communities in supporting this program. Thank you.

We escaped from Mexico from my husband was murdered outside of our house. We escaped because I was afraid that the men of the cartel that killed my husband would be for me and my children. I tried to get protection from the authorities and the government in Mexico, but unfortunately they didn't help me, ya que no tenía ningún otro lado donde acudir por eso mis hijos y yo nos venimos a eeuu buscando

refugio nos entregamos a oficiales en la frontera de san isidro y pedimos asilo venimos a la ciudad de santana porque aquí es donde mi familia de mi esposo vivían y era el único lugar donde We met people who could support us during this difficult time.

Since we arrived here, we have been living in this city. My children are going to school in Santa Ana and we are going to church here. I am very grateful for all the help, opportunities that my family and I have received in this city. in this moment so desperate in our lives. We were welcome to the community, but the most important thing is that we could get a lawyer in our case, which made possible that we could explain our history to the officials

of migration, reunir evidence to be able to support our case. but also helped understand this process that is so complicated. I have the hope that with the help of my wife, my children and I, we will be able to stay in Santa Ana to continue building our lives here, save the violence and the threats that have escaped. paul

my name is smith and i'm here to share now having an attorney in my immigration case has impacted me and my family. In 2017, I fled Mexico along with my children after my husband's murder outside our home. I fled because I was afraid that the man from the cartel that killed my husband would come for my children and me. And I tried to get protection from the authorities and government in Mexico, but unfortunately, they did not help me. Having nowhere else to turn, my children and I came to the United States

seeking refuge and turn ourselves in at the border in the San Ysidro and ask for asylum. We came to live in Santa Ana because this is where my husband's family lived and the only place we knew people who could support us in this difficult time. Ever since we got here, we have been living in the city. My children attend school in Santa Ana and we go to church here. I am so grateful for all the help and opportunities my family and I have received from the city during this desperate time in our lives. We have been welcomed by the community, but most importantly, we were able to obtain an attorney in our case,

which has made all the difference in us being able to tell immigration officials our story, gathering evidence in support of our case, but also in helping us understand this very complicated process. I am hopeful that with the help from our attorney, my children and I will be able to remain in Santa Ana and continue to build a life here away from the violence and threat of death that we escaped. It's important for us to have this program. I need this program, and many people like me need this program. If this program doesn't exist, these people won't get the help.

Idalia Rios.

Camilio Miguel, or Miguel Camilia.

I think I was Roberto, one of the speakers. Thank you, Council. So it's been a while since I've been here, but I do want to show my support for universal representation. I'm with Resilience Orange County as well as the Orange County Rapid Response Network. And a lot of people reach out to me for help in regards to immigration enforcement. We've been seeing a lot of trends here in Orange County, an uptick in enforcement trends. And so I actually get really happy when people tell me that they're from Santana because I know that the Santana Universal Rep Program helps them. So if they tell me if they're from Santana, I'm like, great,

the city of Santana can help you with the legal services. The other residents in Orange County aren't so fortunate because we are the only city that has a legal defense fund. So I really plead for you all to renew this program again. Our poll conducted actually showed support for the Universal Rep Program, so please continue to renew this program and continue investing in the immigrant community. Thank you.

Thank you.

a favor de de lo que los residentes queremos en base a esas encuestas en noventa y siete por ciento creen que la ciudad debería involucrarse en mantener las familias unidas o estamos abogando porque ustedes realmente pongan fondos para defender a cincuenta o más personas que son detenidas por su estatus migratorio también el noventa y seis por ciento y eso es muy importante que inviertan en los jóvenes los jóvenes son el futuro del mañana y en sus manos is to make changes for them. The number one, the number one is the problem of the housing. And we know that you know that it's a problem because it's not only here at the level

local, but it's a problem at the level of national. But what I see is that you can be pioneers in giving the example to the Orange County County and creating a fund for really defending those inquilinos and not to be disloved injustly.

Good evening, thank you for listening. I'm here representing the residents of Santa Ana, and we did a survey which is going to help you decide based on these survey results. 97% of the people survey believe that the city should be involved in keeping our families together, and that by allotting these funds, you should be able to help over 50 families that are being detained right now. 96% of the people believe that you should invest in youth because they are our future. And as you know, the number one problem is housing,

and it's not only a local issue, but it's a national issue. And you can be pioneers in this issue by helping people not to be unjustly evicted.

Good evening, City Council members. My name is Camila Miguel and I'm a proud Santa Ana resident. I'm here to advocate for the 6,000 plus children in the Santa Ana Unified School District who are homeless. Without any fair investment, many of our neighbors are vulnerable to different forms of displacement. A small investment in the universal reprisation program will provide legal defense and will keep families together. We want to remain and thrive in Santa Ana.

Please invest in the health. Please invest in my future. Thank you. Thank you.

Ruben Barreto.

Hello Mayor, City Council. First I would like to find out, or make sure that Santa Ana residents who are here today know that your sales tax went up from 7.75 to 9.25. So next time you can check your receipts to make sure that that sales tax is now 9.25 so with that said we we were involved with several of the community meetings at the the city held for the budget and it was five meetings and they took a survey at that at that meeting where they got several results

specifically 127 people took the survey so question is how has that input be been taken into the consideration for the budget there was a lot of input from those surveys a lot of people took their time to fill that out so I know that was put into one of the presentations for the work study the last time that the city presented the information so that's a lot of important information that came out of that from there we did our own community budget survey so that we could outreach to more people so we did and we have some results which Idalia already shared as well so it's very similar to as well shared right it was investing

more in youth strategic plan investing more in the youth and also putting more money into the universal representation program so that more families could be defended and more families could continue to stay and thrive in Santana. With that said, I want to make sure and emphasize the number one priority that came about was youth investments, right? So how does that reflect on the current budget that's going to be voted on today? And also how is it going to be reflected on the universal representation program? So I urge you to please support and put funds behind that program. Thank you. Thank you.

Dulce Saavedra, followed by Miguel Hernandez, followed by Lucero Garcia.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council Members. My name is Miguel Hernandez. I'm the Executive Director for OCO, the Orange County Congregulation Communization. I'm here to speak about the City Budget. I'll be brief. A lot of my partner organizations and allies have been here already to speak about prioritizing universal representation, diverse youth program, and protection for renters. please we really want to urge you to take take serious the survey that we have gone out and talked to the community about and these are things that

will in the long run benefit our community so three things universal representation diverse youth programming and protection for renters so thank you very much

Go ahead.

Hello, good evening everybody. My name is Dulce. I am part with Resilience Ranch County. And today I'm here because I wanted to advocate for the Santana budget to include youth funding. We know that in the past couple years we've had allocations for young people, but we haven't seen them being implemented. And we want to make sure that these are followed through and implemented. So we want to see if the city can definitely support a five-year youth strategic plan where the city can do a needs assessment, where they can evaluate and see what are the needs of young people in Santana.

We know that right now Parks, Rec and Library has been the priority for youth funding, but not all of the people in Santana, the young folks just do Parks, Rec and Library. There's other needs that our community members have. And for us to do an assessment, a current evaluation of the current programs, Parks, Rec and Library have a very limited support system that they have. So we want to expand that and make sure that young people are provided with everything that they need. In collaboration with school districts, with community partners, with other organizations that are here in Santana.

And to make sure that we know that Measure X, the advisory oversight committee, some people have already appointed it. And we know that some of the funding is supposed to go to young people. So we would love to see a council member to appoint a young person to be able to advocate and share their opinions and thoughts about what youth funding should look like for Measure X funding. so we would like to see if anybody that has still a vacant spot for Measure X to appoint someone in their ward that's young. Thank you so much for listening.

Thank you. So with that, I'll bring it to Council for consideration. Any questions or thoughts?

Councilor Iglesias?

Staff presentation? Staff presentation? Staff presentation? All right, let's go ahead.

Thank you, honorable mayor, mayor pro tem and council members. It's my pleasure to introduce the public hearing item 75-1, which is the proposed fiscal year budget for fiscal year 2019-2020, related classification changes and the seven year capital improvement program for your consideration. In accordance with section 605 of the charter, I am required to submit a proposed budget and an appropriation ordinance on or before the 15th of June. The budget package before you totals $643.9 million, including a general fund operating budget of $315.3 million and

$59.1 million of new investment and capital improvement projects throughout the city. The budget is balanced and it maintains reserves in excess of the policy requirement. You're going to see a number of enhancements focused primarily on quality of life for those who live, work, and play here. And our finance director, Catherine Downs, will present the general budget information, and she will be followed by the department heads who each will do a very brief presentation on their individual department's budget. And then we will conclude with a presentation on the upcoming year's capital improvement program.

So with that, I'll turn it over to our finance director.

Just hold on two seconds. Lucero Garcia, apparently I missed you. Is Lucero here? Let her speak and then we'll continue.

Good evening, City Council members. My name is Luceron Garcia and I am with the organization CLU, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice. And I'm here today to advocate for the city of Santana to help keep families together by renewing the Universal Red Program. I'm also here to voice my support in advocating to help develop a youth program, and also here to voice that Santa Ana should support a tenant program and ask all of you to stand on the side of justice. That's it.

Thank you. All right, let's continue with staff.

Thank you. We have a quick agenda, but the city manager already covered that. I just wanted to touch on some major service enhancements for the upcoming fiscal year. The community is well aware that we have some new revenue, and I'm sure they'd like to know what we plan to do with some of that money. So we're looking at some increased park maintenance, basically improving the level of maintenance at parks for $2.6 million. Obviously, we have the city council required set aside for two-thirds of the cannabis revenue. That is a cannabis public benefit fund, half of it going to youth services,

and half of it going to enforcement with a $6.2 million budget. We've also included in our proposed budget an additional 62 full-time positions. Those are full-time positions that are going to be providing services to the residents of Santa Ana and the public in general. And then we've added an amount for homeless cleanup funding for contracts and vehicles. And, by the way, we do have an allocation for the universal representation fund in our budget. Our proposed general fund budget includes nearly $317 million of revenue.

As you can see, this is primarily made up of over half of it is sales tax and property tax, which includes the new Measure X money. and most of our revenue for the general fund is indeed tax money. Then we have the general fund expenditure budget. This has 56% of the budget is directly for public safety. And then we have our pension unfunded liability payment, which you can see is split up there, and then all of our other departments.

The other slice from 1 o'clock to 2 o'clock includes the $6.2 million for the Cannabis Public Benefit Fund.

Then we have our total citywide proposed budget this year of nearly $644 million. As you can see, roughly half of that is the city's general fund. And then, of course, we have our water and sewer and parking enterprise operations. we have grant funds, and we have special revenue funds that make up the entire budget. And with that, because we want to allow some time for question and answer, we'll go ahead and proceed with the quickly department highlights.

Okay, if you can work the control for me. All right, so thank you, Catherine. I'm going to be covering the city manager's office, which also includes the city council, or what is referred to as a legislative office, a portion of the non-departmental proposed budget that is under my control. So the combined general fund budget for next year is 7.8 million. That consists of 2.2 million for the city manager's office, 500,000 for city council, and the remainder of the 5.1 in non-departmental. Details on the general fund can be found on pages 1-1 through 1-8 in your budget detail book.

Additionally, the proposed budget includes $565,820 funding from the Cannabis Fund to address any needed contractual expenditures related to our cannabis regulations, legislative changes, and compliance determinations. In total, there are ten full-time positions proposed that represent no changes from the current year. There is one titling change, and the change is to switch the pay range for the deputy city manager to the assistant city manager, so it's consistent with neighboring cities. It would not have a fiscal impact. Basically, Santa Ana has a deputy city manager position that's pegged

at what most of the other cities refer to as an assistant city manager, so I'm just swapping the titles on that. City managers' accomplishment this current year, although I can't take credit for them since I've just been here a month, but they do include approval of four city ballot measures, providing the day-to-day management over city operations and working collaboratively with other governmental entities nonprofits and advocates primarily in addressing homelessness. The creation of a sanctuary policy advisory group of seven nonprofits that provide recommendations for further development of a sanctuary ordinance.

And lastly, I'm very proud to report through the hard efforts of city manager staff, particularly Daisy, our social media presence has increased by 196%. Major initiatives for the upcoming year include ensuring that our city gets an accurate count for for the census 2020, greater expansion of our external communication efforts to better inform the residents and the businesses of all the exciting happenings in our city, and engaging the community and the city council in the development of a new strategic plan. As you recall, your five year adopted strategic plan expires and we're bridging it over for

the proposed next year to allow us time to recreate a new strategic plan. And I'm looking forward to bringing the CMO up to full staffing and most importantly kicking off the 150th city anniversary celebration for this significant milestone in our city's long history. Thank you and I'm going to turn it over to the city attorney.

Sonia R. Carvalho

Thank you, Mayor and city council members. I'm going to briefly tell you about the budget for the city attorney's office. As you can see, our general fund budget for this year was $3,219,780. You will also find the detail for that on pages 1-13 and 1- through 1-15. We have 15 full time employees budgeted in our office. We currently have two vacancies. Of the 15, that accounts for eight lawyers that we have currently staffed. We have a vacancy in the deputy position as well as a chief assistant position. We have four paralegals and one secretary, and we are in the process of filling that now.

Sonia R. Carvalho

We had a very, very busy year this last fiscal year. Our office managed and directed over 70 litigation cases, 46 of which were handled in house, which I think is a record and significant increase over past years. We also successfully resolved the CVRA litigation and implemented election changes. In terms of transactional items that are handled by our office, we are now tracking these on a quarterly basis. We processed over 1,125 separate legal services requests. Of those requests, 765 were agreements.

Sonia R. Carvalho

We had 128 resolutions, 26 ordinances, and 120 various legal inquiries which came from the various departments. And we also assisted with 86 public records requests. I'm proud to tell you that we implemented a new court's rules based calendaring system. something that we had been working hard to achieve in the department. We also successfully defended several elections and rid of mandate actions. We've been working on the filing of numerous amicus briefs related to council initiatives in the area sanctuary cities. And we've been monitoring that, and we have been providing Brown Act, PRA, and subpoena training for the organization.

Sonia R. Carvalho

For this fiscal year, we look forward to continuing to provide legal support to you, the city council, your various commissions, the city manager's office, and all city departments. We are working on implementing a new data management system. This will manage our documents and allow us to have greater access, but also to be able to store them for historical purposes. We are working to fill both the chief assistant deputy city attorney position, the chief assistant position, a deputy city attorney position, as well as a secretary vacancy.

Sonia R. Carvalho

We are going to emphasize this year our filings and enforcement of quality of life and code enforcement violations. This has been made possible both by that deputy position that you funded as well as the cannabis funding that we're looking forward to. Finally, we're handling homeless related litigation and enforcement efforts. And we are looking to identify city charter and municipal code provisions, which we believe require amendments and to update and to make sure that we're in compliance with changing laws. And with that, I will hand this over to the Clerk of the Council.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Our funding sources are general funded for approximately $1.7 million. It's 100% general funded. The fiscal year 1920...

We have five positions in the clerk of the council. We have one vacancy. That's the appointment of the clerk of the council for 19-20.

Just speak into the mic a little bit more.

The recent accomplishments, we have partnered with the Orange County Register of Voters, Santa Ana Unified School District, Santa Ana College, and Youth Commission to promote voter awareness for year 2018. We managed the 2018 including nomination process for council candidates. There were three open seats in the mayoral position, city measures, voter initiative measures, and charter amendments. We conducted various community outreach public hearing meetings regarding the war reboundary awareness. We process appointments of approximately 20 board commission members post-election.

We also reviewed and updated biannual city's conflict of interest code, disclosure categories, and employee designations. Our key initiatives for fiscal year 1920 is to manage the 2019 special municipal election to fill vacancy for the office of Ward 4. We are going to continue to expand transparency efforts by utilizing existing software to post audio recordings of all council committee and board and commission meetings to the city's website. We will plan to purchase and integrate software modules to mitigate adverse workload impacts associated with the legislative process.

and we would like to go ahead and update our voting so that it is captured in real time when Mayor and Council take a vote on an action and it will be streamlined on cable TV. It would also mitigate adverse workload for the administration boards and commissions, appointments, and terms. We would also like to integrate software modules for the creation of captioning that will scroll across the council chamber monitors and live stream broadcasts. I would now like to turn it over to CDA, Community Development Agency.

Thank you very much. The Community Development Agency for next year has a very limited use of general fund. As you'll see, only 2.9% of our monies are coming from the general fund. We have become experts as using other people's money, which is the taxpayer's money, but in the form of federal or state grants. You'll see that our staffing will increase by one with 47 employees for next year. Next slide. Some of our recent accomplishments, as you know, we worked later last year to come up with the funding stream for the interim housing homeless shelter, the LINC.

We worked on the vehicle incentive program with the auto dealers, a $500 rebate that will go to the residents. It implemented late last year and will continue for the next few years. We worked heavily on relocating the work center to their new official home, a modern office space right here adjacent to the Civic Center. and we've worked on several of those affordable housing projects that you see regularly on your agenda we're very proud of those for next year we hope to work on the permanent homeless shelter and work on the MOU with the County of Orange facilitate the development of the third in Broadway that is nearing a point

where the City Council will see that shortly the disposition of the YMCA building continues and the Willowick golf course of course we're working closely with the Garden Grove on that we will also be working on marketing our opportunity zones as you know that's a federal incentive program given to investors in our community but we want to make sure that we portray the opportunities within our opportunity zones for our city and then layer some other programming with it like an EIFT and we'll also be working on implementing our prison to employment initiative grants for next year and now I will turn

it over to Catherine Downs with the Finance Department. Thank you. So my department has a 17.3 million dollar budget. A little over half of that comes from the general fund. We have a large downtown parking operation that makes up some of our department resources. We have 68 full-time employees. Our proposed budget includes an increase of one full-time employee for the payroll operation. You'll see that we have some very ambitious goals for payroll for the next year, which is why we need the extra help. Our recent accomplishments for the finance department,

not mine alone, is assisting with the implementation of Measure X, including the establishment of the Citizens Oversight Committee. The first meeting of that committee is going to occur next week on June 12th. We implemented budgeting software. This was a first for the city. Budgeting has been a very manual process in the past and we got good reviews from the departments on this, making ourselves more efficient. We transitioned to a new deferred compensation plan provider during the back half of 2018 and we assisted with the refinancing of successor agency debt generating $3.5 million in additional tax revenue to the city

by reducing our interest costs. We've taken some taken some steps to improve public information and we're continually striving to do that and then we've improved our timeliness of CalPERS pension reporting. Our initiatives for the next fiscal year include some like I said some ambitious payroll goals there including upgrading the payroll system which is very very ancient and very manual. We are looking to establish a cost allocation plan that's compliant with state and federal guidelines We're looking at that RFP going out at the end of this week.

We're looking to improve our budget summary overview in the budget document so that the information is more accessible to everyone and easy to understand. It's kind of hard to encapsulate $644 million budget in just a few sound bites here and there. We're looking to expand our purchasing card program to streamline some of our purchasing for internal departments and improving our cannabis tax collection and audit procedures administration over that. Very important tax revenue source for the city. And then we're also looking to upgrade a very ancient in-house business license system. And with that, I will pass it to Human Resources.

Good evening, honorable mayor, member of the city council. Tonight, the HR department's budget is proposed to be at $53.4 million for next year. Much of that is to go to our employees' benefits and then workers' comp as well as general liability. Our general fund is about $2.4 million. and the air quality improvement fund is at $175, which is a grant from the state. We are adding additional two staff members to the HR department, so we are going from $25 to $27 for next year. In terms of our accomplishment for last year,

I am very pleased to report that we successfully transitioned a workers' comp program to an outside provider, and it's called TPA. This is designed to reduce our costs and improve our services and thus allow us to bring our employees back to work. Successfully recruited and replaced all new executives to the management team as you see today. And we have one more recruitment to go. Successfully implemented the former citywide background process. Up until now, background was not required of all of our employees, but now we have a system in place.

and I'm pleased to report that we also become the first public agencies outside of police department to be able to conduct live scan on all of our new employees. We also implemented a citywide volunteer program, which is badly needed for our city, and then successfully implemented an update to many of our policy much needed, outside contract employees, inappropriate conduct report policy, anti-fraternization policy, and other policy related to our operational needs in the city. In terms of our initiative for next year, we have several initiatives that we want to pursue,

and that is I'd like to bring back the Management and Leadership Academy program for the city so the way all of our managers, we train the same way and be able to conduct the business in a more proficient manner in terms of developing and motivating people. to implement new city safety program. Our goal is to introduce a program called Return to Work Program. This allows workers that are now in workers' comp to come back to work. We want to also have employees' handbooks, safety handbooks, so that way all employees follow city policy consistently. Also this year, the law requires that all of our employees,

regardless of ranks and status, must go through two hours of anti-sexual harassment training. this will be a major undertaking and our department is prepared to move forward. And then finally, we want to streamline and continue to streamline our hiring practices, which including the ability to bring people on board quicker and support PD where we can as the needs arise to bring in more officers. So these are our goals for next year. Thank you. Now I'd like to turn over to IT.

Good evening. The Information Technology Department's budget is proposed to be approximately $11 million. It's all coming from the Information Technology Fund. The FTE positions are 24. We use a hybrid model of contracts and full-time staff. Some of our recent accomplishments include implementing a new content management system for our city website and redesigning the city website, upgrading the city's permitting and tax billing systems to accommodate the new cannabis programs, implementing a new cybersecurity network

appliance and tools to help improve our cybersecurity defenses. We increased the city's internet bandwidth by 400% while also reducing the cost by 66%. And we implemented all of the technology for both the work center location and the new Roosevelt community centers.

Some of our key initiatives for the next year would be to complete the rollout of the new VoIP phone system, begin converting paper and PDF forms, both internally and external forms, to electronic forms, upgrading the My Santa Ana mobile application, and as Catherine mentioned, upgrading the HR payroll system, and implementing an enterprise GIS database program. I'll now turn it over to Parks and Rec.

Good evening members of the council. I'd like to introduce the best department in the city. The city manager's office.

The Parks and Recreation Department, the total funding is about a little over $49 million. And almost $21 million is for Parks, Recreation, and Community Services. And $5.3 million is for the library. We have staffing that there are 13 additional staff for Parks, Recreation, and Community Services and two additional staffing for the library, and that would be the librarian and a director. Some of our accomplishments for the past year is we completed an opened Pacific Electric Park and Roosevelt Walker Community Center.

They both had grand openings, and the community is utilizing those facilities, and it's a much-needed amenity that we are happy to offer to them. We also completed the Santa Ana Zoo Master Plan. That's a 20-year master plan that will guide the zoo in all of their activities and also will help them become accredited, as we hope to do in the next year or so. They also installed the 50 Monkeys Ferris Wheel,

and the nonprofit arm of the zoo helped fund that. Actually, they funded the whole thing and installed it. We completed a tree survey at eight parks and removed 319 trees. There are a lot of dead and diseased trees out there, and so we need to take care of our residents because these will fall on people. There's also this disease going on that's killing all the trees, so we're also finding replacements. So once we take those out, then we'll replace them with the appropriate species.

We also completed a lake circulation study at Centennial Park. We're in construction drawings. We're about 80% completed with those. And then the next step of that would be to, for construction, that'll be about $2.5 million, which we'll need to identify that funding. And then lastly, we had the groundbreaking at Sixth and Lacey Park. That park is under construction and will be completed in late August or beginning of September. Some of our initiatives for the next year is to provide safe and well-maintained parks and facilities.

We do have a number of staffing, and we do have additional funding to implement tree maintenance services and landscape and things of that nature. We'll be submitting multiple grant applications for the Proposition 68, the Park and Water Bond Act of 2018. There is millions of dollars out there and so we're doing a lot of community input. We're going to be applying for them. This will bring back capital improvement projects to our parks and facilities.

We're also completing a comprehensive analysis of the Parks, Recreation and Community Services Agency. And then we're going to implement the goals and objectives. So we are analyzing our fees, our programs, our services. We're including the community and asking them what they want. This will happen over the next six to eight months. We've already started the process and the community input will be in July.

We are in the process of trying to complete a land exchange process with Rancho Santiago Community College District at Centennial Park. What we'd like to do is get a ruling from the National Park Service and then move forward and present that to City Council so we can make some decisions on that land. We are completing a recreation management software assessment and implementation recommendations. There's about 33 we have a recreation management software. We want to make it easy for the community to register for classes and pay for classes and so we're working on that this year.

And lastly, we are transitioning to restore the library as a department. I was told today that has been a department since 1891 except for it became under the Parks, Recreation and Community Services Agency in 2009 during the recession. So they're looking for a leader and we'd like to provide that. Next I'd like to introduce Planning and Building Agency.

Thank You Lisa. Good evening Mayor Pro Tem and member of the City Council. It's a hard act to follow the best department but I think you'll hear why we are the best. Planning and Building Agency consists of the Building Division as well as Planning and Code Enforcement. We also staff the Planning Commission and and the Historical Resources Commission. Through our services and through our direct interaction with the public, we help to generate approximately a little bit over $11 million in revenue for the city. And we are only one of the very few unique department in the city that actually generate revenue.

Based on the expenditure chart that you see, we have approximately $12 million in general fund expenditures. So what that means is that we generate almost a one-to-one in terms of our expenditure and revenue. In addition to that, we have funding from cannabis to help with cannabis enforcement and the general plan update, which is approximately $850 million. We also receive grant fundings for some of the efforts that we do, as well as some funding for code enforcement and neighborhood improvement program through the strategic program. Our activities in the department not only helps to generate direct revenue, but also

generate indirect revenue through development that creates private, billions of dollars of private investment into the city, as well as construction and permanent jobs. So I think the activities that we do are contributory to the city's well-being, but also transformative as well. In terms of our recent accomplishment with the commercial cannabis approved by the voters, the city has since the beginning of 2018 fully adopted and implemented our cannabis program and we're now processing new applications as well as helping to work with existing businesses,

medicinal businesses to also adapt to adult use. We completed over 300 units of new housing, including mixed-use development along Harbor. This is among many developments that we helped to facilitate, but I think the Harbor Boulevard is unique in that it's experiencing revitalization through new development projects. We are in the process of updating our general plan. through workshops and outreach, we were able to reach almost 900 direct participants to provide input into our process.

In addition to that, we have gone out and did many outreach meetings. As earlier in the presentation by Councilman Slorio highlighting the San Antonio Neighborhood Association, we're able to help our local neighborhoods to really empower the neighborhood to look at bringing a higher quality of life and improving the life of the residents and we'll continue to do that with the partnership, Community Station Institute, to enhance leadership by working with Home Association as well so that will continue to empower neighborhood and our residents to ensure that the quality of life improves.

In terms of some key initiative for 1920, we're working on looking at adopting a digital billboard ordinance for the city. We'll only not look at helping to clean up some of the existing billboard, but also potentially creating some revenue through new technology and digital billboards. We'll be revisiting parking standards and looking at our Park Once parking strategies as we are concerned with recently in terms of parking and how our development projects Our goal is to look at our parking standard and how we can make those parking requirements fit our city developments.

We will look at the, hopefully, not hopefully, but will, our goal is to adopt the general plan by the end of summer of 2020. As I mentioned before, our general plan has not been updated since the early 80s, and this is a way for us to look ahead and envision our city for the future. along with that will be initiating the zoning code update which will reflect the goals of the general plan but also it will implement the various aspect of the land use element and finally in continuing the theme of neighborhood improvements we'll continue to offer programs that will help to empower a neighborhood

empower a home and association and a neighborhood association and hopefully will win first place next year with that I'd like to hand it over to our police chief

rather than make any comment about any other department we're charged with providing for all the public safety citywide 24-7 So with that, the proposed budget for the police department in 1920 is $131 million. That's through a general fund. And then we have other restricted funds, grant funding, Civic Center Authority Fund, and then cannabis public benefit for a total of $142,425,730. The detail of the police department budget is in page 140 through 166.

The police department has a total of 598 full-time employees.

Some of the recent accomplishments in the police department are the creation of a comprehensive employee recruitment and retention plan. We looked at restructuring the entire police human resources department to focus on the overarching goal of filling the vacancies in the police department. We also restructured the training division to prioritize for the purpose of limiting liability exposure, so enhancing our training platform. We also expanded community engagement through their increase of department web presence and also enhanced transparency.

we publicize all use of force incidents and also complaints that come in through the police department. That's forward facing on the police department today. We also recently publicized an updated community oriented policing philosophy document in March of this year. And then we also citywide institutionalized the quality of life team. That team actually has started in the police department behind some research that we obtained through the Police Executive Research Forum. Brought that back to the city and expanded that citywide with all the departments engaged.

Key initiatives for next year, for this fiscal year, would be implementation of that comprehensive employee recruitment and retention plan. Again, we've also added and worked with City Human Resources. is they've added two additional human resource techs that will support our recruitment efforts. We've also contracted, expanded contracting services is what we're looking to do to expedite background investigations for both sworn and professional staff.

The reduction of liability exposure through enhanced training. We do have currently a Liget system that we're looking to expand that platform and to train all officers for de-escalation measures and looking really to limit liability when they're engaging in use of force incidents. The next one would be to achieve full compliance with newly enacted law enforcement transparency legislation. Recently we had Senate Bill 1421. There's additional legislation that's coming our way, and so we want to be prepared to fully support that structure. We want to focus on decreasing our department response times.

We want to modernize community policing philosophy. Next step would be to publicize a department-specific strategic plan that has been in the works for several months. It began in June of last year. We are looking to release that here in the next month or two. And it would complement what is currently the city strategic plan, understanding that we have a one-year bridge that we're looking to implement as well. And then finally, open the remaining vacant jail housing unit, an additional mod, which could come with additional, will come with additional revenue up to a ceiling of nearly $2 million.

In the budget, you'll see a request. It was my best recommendation to replace the outgoing retiring jail administrator with a deputy chief or captain position. I understand there may be some concern with that level of rank. If it's the council's pleasure as you continue to review the budget, we can certainly entertain a commander or a lieutenant rank position to run that operation. And then another alternative would be to go out to a civilian recruitment as well. So we have options there. And that's the police department. And I'll turn it over to Public Works. Thank you.

In respect to my colleagues, usually best is kept to last.

The public works budget is about 218 million this year which is almost one-third of the city budget. Mostly funded by enterprise funds, grants, and capital improvement programs. We have about 6% from the general fund or about 13.155 million. I remember joining the city about a year year ago, date to date, and I can't believe how fast this year passed. We've accomplished a lot through a great public works team. I'd like to go over our accomplishments from last year.

The first one, which we are very proud of, is we managed the construction of a 200-bed homeless shelter in a record 28 days. And also our staff worked closely with police and CDA on cleaning and removing about 2,500 homeless encampments. We absorbed fleet and facilities division into public works, thus increasing our staff from 160 to 220 full-time employees. And also this was mainly to improve efficiency and manage projects closely with the other projects that we work in

on public works. We conducted a strategic planning process business with most of our employees which resulted in an agency reorganization setting short and long-term goals and a new business process improvement. We completed water and sewer cost service study and a citywide storm drain master plan. We also completed 21 capital improvement projects from Bristol Street improvements to downtown parking structures automation, community centers, and recreation improvements. We retrofitted also 7,800 street lights that we acquired from Edison and many

other smaller and miscellaneous projects. For next year, our key initiatives is to, the main one is to ramp up our paving program to improve streets throughout the city. We also established a dedicated public works crew to provide and support the the City Colts team. We will be releasing the solid waste RFP to procure new citywide services and also we will be releasing bus shelter and furniture RFP and increase inventory. With this item, I'd like to mention that with the

approval of our city manager, we extended the current contract through June 2021 2021 in order to allow the new vendor or whoever the city selects to enough time to procure equipment and trucks and so forth. We will be also working on implementing new automated meter infrastructure which will also make us more efficient. We plan to implement the city's green fleet policy through the purchase of alternative fuel fleet vehicles and renewable fueling station.

We plan to complete 78 capital improvement projects at a budget of about 59 million, and we also explore development opportunities for SARTEC, and as well funding options for a new grade separation project on Santa Ana Boulevard.

And I'll be glad to go over the CIP as well, which is similar to what we presented to your council last session. Our capital improvement program is about $60 million, specifically $59,107,813,

mostly focused on street improvements, traffic improvements, utility, drainage and lighting, and also on city facilities. And we have about, as I said earlier, we have about 78 projects under this program that we plan to complete this year. And with this, I'll be glad to answer any questions or turn it over to City Manager. Thank you.

Thank you. So the next steps, this is the introduction of the ordinance for the budget. So it would have a second reading on June 18th. And then obviously July 1st, the new fiscal year begins. So all of the staff is available to answer any questions you may have.

All right. Any questions?

Councilman Iglesias, but I've got a quick one. And that is in the police department in the jail. I know I spoke to the chief earlier, and we said we have a plan to potentially accommodate a request that would reduce the increment from a captain position in the jail, which would be an additional $60,000 a year to potentially a sworn position, but at a lower level, which would not be much more than what we're paying right now. I just want to make sure that we get the language right so that when we do adopt a budget,

I have an ability to plead with my colleagues and potentially save those $60,000 a year. Any comment on that?

No, sir. I'll make a note of it. And should you get to the point where you make a motion, we'll just make a motion with the following amendments from the list of whatever you choose to modify tonight.

Thank you for that. Councilman Regles, yes.

Okay.

Well, first of all, thank you for the presentation. But I just think this is a presentation that we should have had a little bit more discussion, because I know I'm timed five minutes, right? So one of the things that I wanted to ask was on the budget, I was reviewing it, so I think it's going to be to you, Christine, or maybe to Mr. Pham. Going through each department, looking at the general fund for each department in this thick, thick booklet that you gave us, which is the city budget detail. I have a couple of questions when it comes to how you came about with the numbers.

And one of the things that I wish we could have to really be transparent on what we're doing with the budget, is if you could put it on the budget, either on the budget or on the presentation. how many employees you have per department. Because then that will make it, for me, it will make it easier, I guess, focus on to see how much actually each department costs. How much money are we allocating to each department? Because right here is just the general overview and it's very nice. The presentation's nice, but I think there's a lot of information that could have been shared that is not included in this presentation. presentation.

So I'm going to the line item by item, the stick booklet that you gave us. For one of the questions that I have is the police department. I know that we're trying to see how much money each department has. And for me, it was kind of interesting that we started with $131 million, then we ended up with $131 million for proposed budget for fiscal year 1920. But still, we know that the department was granted a raise by the majority of this council in the tune of almost $15 million. So what happened with that money?

Why did it stay the same with 131 million?

And certainly Councilmember Iglesias, as mentioned at the workshop, One of the things that we changed is that we are obligated to pay to CalPERS an amount for the unfunded liability that's accrued and it is no longer represented as a percentage of payroll. It hasn't been that way for several years. Most all the other cities have already implemented a change. Whereas your normal contribution to CalPERS is a percentage of payroll and it's spread throughout the organization wherever the personnel is charged to. What we have done in this budget is we've pulled out the flat dollar amount that we need to pay for unfunded liability.

It used to be spread to the various departments. So as mentioned at the workshop, and Catherine can certainly provide a reconciliation of what the amount was that used to be in the police department for that. And on a go forward basis how we're treating it differently.

Yeah, but the amount is what, $15 million that we're liable for the unfunded portion of it. So I know that you took it out in a slice of the pie. It was like what, 30 some million dollars, which was, it included police, it included fire and also the other groups. But to be transparent, one thing that would be good is where is that money coming? Because I want to know how much does each department cost? How much is it that we're investing into each department? Because the way it's presented, in my opinion, it's not very transparent.

Because then you just kind of have to go, we take the public, go search here, go search there, versus if you had it all in one. Even though that's how you're going to be reporting it out, but I would like to know how much it costs per department. That's why it would be nice for you to have how many employees we have, how much are we paying for their unfunded pension liabilities. And also, how much are we paying for their workers comp and also their general liability. Because what I saw in this thing was that there was a lot of money that was taken out for

the workers comp from the police department and spread around into the other departments.

So for me, I know I have a lot more questions and I just feel like this process is just so fast that I'm hoping in the future next year that we start early talking about these things. because it's not really a transparent way to really show the public what we're doing with our money. And, like, for example, one of the things that I had noticed with the police department, I think it-

Madam Clerk, can you start the clock?

Yeah, go ahead. That's what I said. Start the clock. So then it went from $3.2 million in the workers' comp, and it went to 1.2. So I just want to know, how did we come up with that? And it's just not fair. And I wish I had more time, but I'll be informing the public via my own social media, so they'll get the information from me. Thank you.

Thank you. Other comments?

Mayor Pro Temp. Yes, I have a comment.

So if we can see the Measure X money parked in a fund with oversight on it, and we can know exactly where those monies are going, that would be great. I'd also like to see some money set aside in an account or a line item. Because I've been trying to get a Family Justice Center here for Santa Ana for a very long time. Actually since I started I've been working quietly on it and I made some presentations on it. But now that you're here, Madam City Manager, I would like to see that come to reality.

Because we need the Family Justice Center to support child abuse victims, domestic violence victims, elder abuse victims. Just like they have in Anaheim. It's a great system. We need a building, we need some personnel for that. Those are one of the things that this city really needs. I don't want to go through the numbers, but the numbers are high, unfortunately, here in this city, and we really need that.

And on the budget, do we have a line item for the immigrant defense fund? Is there a line item in there?

Yes sir, we do. There is? It's in the non-departmental under the city managers, and we are proposing a total amount of 100,000.

Okay, I'm a no on that for the record. And the other thing I want to talk about is what the chief had mentioned earlier regarding the jail. He needs a deputy chief. Now, I don't know of anyone else up here who has any experience working in jail, but the police department is a paramilitary organization and they need strong leadership. And things happen in the jail, it's unfortunate, but you have HR problems. You have budget problems. You also have personnel issues, which sometimes require discipline. And you're dealing with people who work in a, like I said, paramilitary type of organization.

So you need a sworn officer to be working in there with some good leadership. And you also need someone with some very good experience regarding, well, sometimes we have in custody deaths. Yes, very, very touchy situation. You need someone with good experience. So if the chief is asking for someone that he complies in to be in that position as a deputy chief, I think we should all support it. Who knows better than the chief because he knows what he needs in his jail. So those are my comments.

Councilor Salorio or Peña Loza?

David Penaloza

Yeah, really.

Peña Loza, go ahead.

David Penaloza

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just had one question with the police department's budget. I noticed that there's one of the line items is vice, which I know that there's a lot of need for that in our city. But there's only a $500 amount allocated, which I don't understand what you could get for 500 bucks. Maybe a couple condoms at the 7-Eleven for the prostitutes there. But I mean, it's kind of embarrassing when we look at that. So I'd like to see answered what the community needs on that side of town and fix that. I just don't understand why it's only 500.

David Penaloza

And in regards to the rest of the budget, I think it's just was listening to Councilwoman Iglesias' comments. I think it's the questions that you were asking, I agree. And they're in here, it's just unfortunately we've got to look through them, which I kind of did. I had no weekend this past weekend looking over them. So it's just maybe a very brief summary, which I know this presentation did. But just for us, our sake and the communities, maybe a more, yes, it's a brief summary, but a little more detail to each department would work.

David Penaloza

And I know the, I want to thank the residents that came out to speak in support of the legal defense fund. Which I'm in support of, but I wanted if you guys could help me with some information on how many residents that we've actually been able to help with that amount. I know attorneys are expensive, so I could only imagine the number is probably not that high, but whatever we could do to support having more residents. Get more bang for our buck, I guess is what I'm trying to say. And that's pretty much it.

Council Member, would you like an answer on the Vice question? Okay, if I can call the police chief up. I think it's a matter of where they're budgeting the dollars, but he does have more resources than that dedicated to Vice. So, Chief, if you could come explain the vice operations.

Absolutely. Thank you for the question and important clarification, because it is a high priority. We actually have one detective sergeant and three detectives assigned to what is the vice slash medical marijuana dispensary task force team. So that's where you'll see it appear. So it's not just the few hundred dollars allocation. It's actually four full-time assets. We also have a full-time detective assigned to the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force, which we leverage for operations here in the city and regionally.

David Penaloza

But, Chief, so how, I mean, why is it, I don't understand how, so does that 500 cover the commander? I don't understand how we're.

So it's just the way that it's delineated in the budget. So we actually have four full-time vice detectives assigned. They just appear on the MMD side.

David Penaloza

So why don't we, I mean, why does it appear on the other side versus on the vice?

That's how they were allocated, I believe, three budget cycles ago now. I mean, we can look to see how we can clean that up, certainly, and bring it back.

David Penaloza

I'd like to see that because there should be a good amount from your current budget appropriated to the vice unit. I know we've had some successful sling operations over the last couple of months, which I thank your department for and your leadership. But if we could make sure that that vice unit is appropriately funded to make sure that we could combat that issue more frequently.

We'll do, we'll make it clear on the document.

David Penaloza

Perfect, thank you Chief.

Thank you.

Thank you. Other comment?

Councilman Solorio, go ahead. Yes, thank you Mr. Mayor. I have a brief general comment, but I do want to also weigh in on a couple of the issues that have been discussed up here. First with respect to the jail administrator position or the new head role there. I'm in some ways less concerned about what level of position in the police department it might be than what the job description is for that position. When I was in the assembly, I chaired the public safety committee for three years, so I know a lot about the prison system, jails, etc.

Et cetera, and I can tell you that the responsibilities, especially these days of running a facility like that, compared to being on a patrol or another department, significantly different. And we know there's been controversies, finance issues with the jail raised in the past, so let's get the right person based off of what the job requires so we can do that job well. And then also we don't want to see pension spiking with respect to what type of role there might be there at the top. So the finance issue that the mayor raised is an important one.

With respect to the vice unit, I think this is one of those areas where the various gentlemen are right. In that we do have a larger unit of officer dedicated to vice. But there is a line item specifically that says that it's $500, which is actually a decrease of a similar line item in this year's current year budget and it's like 10,000. So again, back to the embarrassing terms of what message we're sending to the public to say that we are going to spend so much.

We got to read these documents because they speak to the values that we have, the priorities that we have, ways that we're addressing the needs of our public. And so to say that we would have a line item of anything for $500, especially by student, that's what folks are reading. That's what I read, and we can do better. But my general comments, and I'm not going to go item by item or get into too many questions or points, but in general, I can't support this budget tonight. It doesn't prioritize the new resources that residents and the council have been calling for these past few months.

There are no major increases for enforcement or education to address our homelessness crisis. Youth and library services, additional code enforcement staffing, by student expansion, again, we heard that we're going to have the status quo, So essentially with the staffing yet a major influx of new revenues. And much of those new revenues are measure X dollars. And I feel that with what's being proposed, too much is being proposed for existing operations rather than new programs and services. Especially for homelessness services and reducing 911 response times.

We've got to really fulfill that promise and commitment that we made to the voters. I did not vote for that item for various reasons, including we didn't have a good plan for how we might use it. And this is coming true today, obviously, but we do, I believe, since we marketed that way to the voters, we ought to live by that promise. So let's revise this budget. We have additional opportunities between now and the end of June. For example, we have a budget committee next week and then we have another council meeting later this month. And let's this year really deliver services that our community is asking for.

And demonstrate we can make good use of the measure X monies that this public voted for. Thank you.

Councilman Renz Sarmiento. Thank you, Mayor. And go ahead and start the clock, sir. So I want to thank the staff for all the hard work they did in presenting this. It's no easy feat, and I know we've been talking about this now through committee and also in a session that we had on a work study matter at the last meeting. So one of the things I am very glad to see is that you're presenting a balanced budget. So that's important, obviously that's an important first step. But the second element that I think is important is that we're no longer digging into our reserve fund to be able to balance this.

And we know that a lot of it has to do with the Measure X fund that was adopted by the voters and they adopted it for certain priorities that were listed as described in that measure. I also am very, very happy that the sanitation fund issue was resolved. And I know that was a concern of some former colleagues of mine that could have led to some serious litigation and really, really crippling problems for the city. So I applaud you and your staff for your efforts there. Some of the things that I think are important, just broad strokes and not getting too much into the weeds, I think, is that I do believe that

that we need some better definition of how we're going to expend and appropriate monies from Measure X and also from the cannabis assessment as well. I know that 6.2 million is attributable to the cannabis tax,

and half of that, I believe, or a third of that was dedicated to youth programming and youth services. To the extent that we have some direction as we are with our Measure X dollars, with the committee that's being convened, we should also do the same thing with those youth services. I think we sometimes undervalue the fact that our youth should play a role in dictating to us, and thus not dictating to them, what's important. And I think that we certainly have some gaps in what we need to do. I like the fact that we're prioritizing funds for the library, but

the unfortunate part of that is we only have a single library in the entire city. So if we had a system or a network of libraries, I think that would be a little bit more, I'd be a little bit more supportive, but I think because we have youth everywhere and we have different places where we can invest, I think it's important for us to consider that. But finally, I think that we have an unfunded liability of 37.1 million. I think some of those dollars, just to make sure that the city continues to be healthy, needs to be reinvested in that. We need to consider that.

And part of our priorities as we consider infrastructure that's aging, different ways of being able to make sure that we're not going to be overlooking some very distressed assets that we have in the city. One of the final things that I saw was just, as I was leafing through the workforce changes, I see that some jobs are kind of reclassified, some of them are being deleted or transitioned out. I just can't really tell, it's a little confusing. I'm looking at both the finance and management department, PD, public works.

And I want to make sure that we're meeting and conferring with the bargaining units in each one of those departments to not violate any of the good faith negotiations that we have with our representatives in those units. To the extent that we have, I thank you for that. To the extent that we haven't, I'm concerned that maybe we need to do that. But I certainly think that this is on the right path. And I did have a very good conversation with our chief of police. And one of the reasons I think that funds are being dedicated to the department is because

Because when we allocated that money to the department, it wasn't just a blank check. It was for accountability on enhanced services. And the polling has always suggested that in our town, people are willing to pay more money for public safety if they get a return on enhanced deliverables. That means shorter response times. That means better treatment with the public. That means less excessive force cases, less wrongful death cases. Because if we see those things come down, those monies for liability that we need to expend to settle cases that are really just not helpful, those may pay for those salary enhancements.

So I think that the chief just made a very good point that he's going to come back to us and give us a matrix of targets that he's hitting, of criteria that he's meeting, and I think those all meet the demands of the public. So with that, those are my comments. Thank you.

Thank you. I just want to make a few comments and I'll bring Beth to Council. One is that I think with the homeless, what we have to do is hold the County of Orange accountable. CalOptima also has tens of millions of dollars that they can allocate to a variety of services. And we've got to be careful that we do what we're supposed to do, because we could put our entire budget into homeless and not do anything else. And that's a very dangerous slope to go down. We already have some commitments from the county. Maybe we need to get more from them. I think others maybe are not doing their job properly.

And again, we have to be careful not to assume responsibilities that really are not within our budgetary jurisdiction.

And overall, I think the budget is solid, it's fair. I think Council Member Sarmiento articulated many good aspects of it, and I would agree with those. I'm just reading the council right a little bit right now and I'm just afraid that may there aren't four votes for the budget and if that's the case I know we have another meeting on the 18th but if we even approve a budget then we may have to have a special meeting or something to do a second reading because we should get it done per the charter by the end of the month. Any comments from the city manager on that?

Yes, sir. So tonight is the introduction of the ordinance, and we can make amendments with the introduction, but your charter also allows you at the second reading to also make further amendments at the second reading, which keeps the item on track to be in effect for the start of our fiscal year. So if we make amendments tonight and introduce it, you still have the opportunity at the second reading to make adjustments.

Well, let me ask Councilor Solorio in particular, because I think he spoke to that. Does that work for you?

Just to add to the clarification, our charter says we can actually finish adopting it by the end of July. But in terms of just practice of how we budget and how it's a good way to run a city, it's nice to have it by July 1st.

Sonia R. Carvalho

No, I'd like to clarify though. Go ahead. What our city manager was explaining is that we have a unique provision in our charter that would allow you even up to and at the second reading to continue to make changes to your budget and then it would go in effect. That language that you see in the charter about the effective date going into July, it's my understanding in reading that, Not that that was meant to allow for that 30 day review period for an ordinance. But you have a separate provision which would allow your city manager to propose even additional changes based on your comments tonight.

Sonia R. Carvalho

She could come back in two weeks and still make a-

But in order to consider those changes, we have to adopt something today.

Introduce the ordinance.

We have to introduce the ordinance today and then you can make a bunch of changes.

So maybe we just do one of the actions in here, because there's a list of actions. This is actually a multi-part item with various aspects. Let's throw something around out there. Yeah. Go ahead. If we just today adopt a resolution to begin this process in accordance with our ordinance on budget presentations.

So there's three recommendations before you tonight. One is actually placing the ordinance on the first reading, and that's for the appropriation adjustment. Then there is adoption of a resolution to affect the certain changes to the classification plan. And then the third item is adopting the seven year capital improvement program, which you legally you don't appropriate money beyond a year. But for OCTA Measure M2, they do require a seven year capital improvement. So those are the three items before you, introduction of ordinance and then two separate resolution adoptions.

Go ahead. Too many items. I wonder if, could we call a special meeting after our next meeting? That's what I was suggesting. Yeah, that's I think what the Mayor was initially suggesting. I just think this budget is so off base, I couldn't vote for any aspect of it.

David Penaloza

I have a question.

Hold on, there's a question, go ahead.

Councilman Plain Lose, your question.

David Penaloza

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I also wanted to point out that I keep seeing the sales tax measure X, $60 million taken into consideration with the budget. Do we know how much we've received? Is that something that-Is it on track? A year from now we look and we're like, we only got 40 million. But now we spent 20 million more than we actually got. Is that considered, Madam City Manager?

Certainly, so analysis to determine the projection for the sales tax revenue. We do rely on a consultant's estimates. And so far, you will know better when the close of this current fiscal year, because your sales tax, Measure X money, did start rolling in the third quarter of the current fiscal year. And we appear to be tracking in accordance with our projection for this year. So I would assume that would hold true for next year.

Thank you. All right, suggestions, Council Member Sarmiento.

Just a quick question for Madam City Attorney. So the way you're reading the charter is a little different than the way we've done first and second reading on other matters that have come before us. So we can change our recommendations that we make tonight materially at the second reading and still have those adopted at that. So I read it differently, but if-

Sonia R. Carvalho

Yeah, there's actually-Clear minds can be different. In all these years that I've been here, because it is so unusual, the government code says that you don't make changes at a second reading. There was a provision in your charter that says that you can make changes at the second reading. It was adopted by initiative, I believe it was in the year 2006 when I found it. I tried to do some legislative history to find out why you would do that. It's very unusual, but it is in your city charter.

Okay, well again, you can make changes. I'm just, I guess, we've always considered those minor changes that can be made, not material changes. In other words, really, if we're going to eliminate a line item or increase an amount, those are material changes. And again, to the extent we can get further tonight or get the ball rolling tonight, I think it makes sense. I just want to make sure I can't adopt a budget without the line item for the universal legal defense being included in there.

Sonia R. Carvalho

Yeah, and with respect, I understand that. And I think with respect to the question about the special meeting, of course you could schedule a special meeting. You would have to do that in coordination with your city manager and staff, but that's a possibility as well.

Thank you.

All right, well. Yeah, I'll just go ahead and make a motion to continue for two weeks. And even my recollection is we've done that in the past, but I would recommend two week continuance.

Earlier, Councilor, you suggested may we do one of the three. just to have something substantive would you be willing to consider the first one only placing the ordinance on a first reading bring back a bunch of changes all too substantive that's too substantive and there's this yeah I just I can't so look from what I reading there's not four votes for anything tonight other than a two-week continuance to continue the discussion I

And I think to your point and everybody's point here, it almost seems like we have to have an independent meeting just on the budget. Because we all want a robust conversation and to the extent we don't, you know, we have other business and we have other people.

Part of what we can do is on the 18th, scrub everything else and, you know, only folks on the budget. Assuming we make enough progress, I can call for a special meeting subsequent to that before the end of the year, I mean the month, when enough folks are present to have a second reading, because we have to have a second reading. Otherwise, we get into a shaky, unknown world, and we don't want to do that. So, look, right now, let me just read the tea leaves and call for a motion for two weeks to follow that. Yes, Councilor Paganoza.

David Penaloza

And I'm going to do this, and I'd implore my colleagues to do this as well in the next two weeks to reach out to our city manager, our staff, and really dive into this. Make time for it so we could be respectful of everyone else's time as well.

And the requirements of the city. We've got to run a city.

David Penaloza

Yeah.

All right, so with that, let me entertain a motion for a two week continuance. Everything we said is under consideration. Is there a motion?

Make that motion.

I'll go ahead and second it. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Okay, Councilor Iglesias said no, so she wants it adopted tonight.

It's not what she meant.

I want us to vote on it tonight.

All right.

Mayor Pulido, and will you be closing the public hearing today or keep an open? No, no, we'll close it.

We'll close it. Public hearing is closed. And for the next meeting, we're going to keep the agenda extremely light. I know it's difficult. But let's focus on the budget. We've got to get this done. All right, with that, let's go on to the next item. Maybe that will be continued as well.

That is the sanitation fee and miscellaneous fees. Wouldn't that be associated with the budget, or we go ahead?

Where are council members?

Mayor, you actually could still approve this one tonight should you choose to do so. It's a public hearing to consider the fees for the upcoming fiscal year. On an annual basis, the fees are reviewed and adjusted to reflect the city's cost in delivering services.

All right, so look, we could consider that.

Right, and this does contain the correction to the sanitation fee that Council Member Sarmiento had mentioned earlier.

So are you guys okay considering that? Let's go ahead and consider it. That's separate, and it's good to get it done. One less thing to do later. I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing Do I have any speakers on item 75A2 Madam Clerk? I see none Alright, seeing no staff presentation I will close the public hearing, bring it back to council for consideration. Is there a motion? So moved I'll go ahead and second. Those in favor, please say aye

75A2 Those in favor, please say aye Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries.

75A3.

This is a prepayment of $22 million to the city's contribution for the unfunded liability basically. Correct. Should we wait for the budget on that?

You could approve the concept of the prepayment. we would not be able to remit the payment until we had the legal appropriated funds after the budget adoption. Doing this measure, it does save us $800,000 by prepaying the public safety portion.

Well, I don't-Saves us money. Saves us money. Let's, I mean, obviously we still have to do the budget, but I think it's good to take this step. Move the item. So with that, anybody wish to address this? I have no speakers on it.

No speakers.

All right, so no speakers, no staff presentation, close the public hearing. motion by council member Solario is there a second second by Sarmiento those in favor please say aye aye aye those opposed motion no two no's motion carries

75 B this is time and place to hold a public hearing for the block grant and I do have some speakers I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing and not the

from neutral bound I believe it is followed by Byron Marquez followed by Jesus Marquez come on down Nati

Thank you, Mayor Polito and Councilmembers. I wanted to talk about briefly regarding the CDBG granting. For the last two years, I was able to get the grants for our street intervention after school program. and that took place for the last two years and we've been able to do the after school program and have an MOU with the San Diego State School District which has really helped us in the Townsend Myrtle area and this year we ended up right at the line and you know we have put a lot of work into the street intervention mediation with our some of the violence and stuff we have

in the street and my thing is that we put a lot of time into this building relation we're the only we are I think I believe we're the only one that has been granted through the city to be able to do intervention work in our streets to help deter some of the gang violence that takes place and by working within the school district it has allowed us to have access to the youth and not only that after school with this with the grant that we were able to get for the last two years that allowed us to home visits to the after-school program to be actually active in the street and hopefully deterring some of the violence. And when violence

has happened because of the influence that we do have in our community, we've been able to be responders to it, been able to talk to some of the individuals that these things were happening within the neighborhoods. So my heart is simply this, is you please consider the Nottie's House after school street intervention grant that we had. Because we did score right right there, but I think they just dropped us down a bit where we weren't able to make that cut. So thank you so much. Thank you, Byron. Or Brian. Byron.

Good evening, my name is Brian Marquez. I am here from the Plan Ahead Youth Program at Combodin Family. And I would like to thank you for the funding of the program because it has helped me to develop many skills, my leadership skills, and it has also allowed me to make new friends. And this is really important because I would like the future generation to develop these leadership skills and to make new friends too. Thank you.

Yes, Luis Marquez.

Ready? Hi, my name says-Bring the mic down. Okay.

Hi, my name is Jesus Marquez, and I've been in Plan Ahead for seven years. And so far in those years, that organization has been helping me with everything I have.

There's a lot of things that have happened there. But so far, this thing has been helping me for a pretty long time. I improved my leadership skills and I made new friends because of that. Thank you.

Thank you. With that, I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it back to council for consideration. Councillor Vince Sarmiento.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Mayor, and I wanted to thank our staff and thank the committee. What's the name of the commission that reviews this? I always forget. It used to be the redevelopment and housing commission, but I know it's a different one now.

Is it human resources?

In any event, it's a community development, right? So they put a lot of hard work into this, they receive a lot of the information and they go through and apply the criteria to each one of the applications. And there's very many, many networks of deserving community-based organizations, non-profits, service providers, so it's a very difficult decision. But normally what we do, Mr. Mayor, on these is we look at the list of what was provided to us and we bring it back after some ability to go ahead and think about it. Maybe we don't bring it back to the 18th.

Maybe we bring it back to the following meeting just because we don't want to clutter up the meeting. Fine. How about a 30-day continuance just to go ahead and review it and see. I don't think it's anything time-sensitive, but it will give the council an opportunity to go ahead and assess.

All right. Make a motion, please. So moved. Is there a second? I'll second. Those in favor, please say aye.

I have one comment, Mr. Mayor.

Go ahead.

I know staff is recommending that we, for the next fiscal year, make some of the cannabis revenue available for youth programs. And I think the list of requesters for these programs through this year's recommendations, There's really not that many that we didn't fund additional programs and one was mentioned tonight by Neutral Ground. I would recommend that we could consider using some of that money that we're considering moving over to the beginning of July 1st.

So that they can fund all the applications because I think there was a very good connect between staff and the community on what was needed. And there's really just a few organizations that didn't get funded as I had read the staff reports. I'm hoping that that might be part of what comes back with the budget or at the appropriate time. Thank you.

All right. So we have a motion and a second. Does it favor? Mr. Mayor, can we clear what the motion is exactly? I think it's a 30-day continuance.

Go ahead. 30-day continuance. And then in that period of time, normally what we do is we go ahead. And if there's any adjustments that we want to make, we let the staff know, hey, maybe there's a worthy one that we feel could be included because we shave off some for the other. Sometimes there's duplicative services provided. The school district sometimes supports one thing so we don't overlap too much.

And so just for adjustments. If I may interrupt. So this is time sensitive. so a 30-day continuance won't allow the Community Development Department to submit all of the necessary.

How about if we continue it to the special meeting that we're talking about having on the second reading for the budget, so we do it this month? I'll accept that for a lien. Okay. All right. So the motion is now we're going to continue it to a date to be determined, as soon as we determine a special meeting after the 18th. But when we have it, we'll add this.

David Penaloza

Yes. Okay, and just so I get clarification on the public service organizations, they're all great organizations, I've been looking into each one individually. The ones listed here are the ones that we've selected or the commission has selected to fund, right?

Correct.

David Penaloza

Okay, thank you.

All right, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, the motion carries.

Now, I believe we're on item, is it 75C?

Yes, Mayor, that's correct.

So it's a public hearing to approve the fiscal year annual action plan for the Committee of Adult and Block Grant. Should we continue that as well, Madam City Manager, or what should we do?

Let me determine if there's any time issues with that one. Executive Director Mendoza. The second component, is that time sensitive?

Yes, in addition, this is time sensitive. We have to get this back within the next couple of weeks.

So should we trail it to the same special meeting that we're talking about? Would that make the most sense?

Yes.

All right. I'd entertain a motion.

Second.

Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries.

Next item is main place, so let's just skip that item and go on to the next item. They laughed. They laughed. All right, since they laughed, then I have to get serious. This is time and place to hold a public hearing on Environmental Review 2018-72 Amendment Application 1804 Development Agreement No. 2802. Lieutenant Parcel Map, 2018-01, for the Main Place Transformation Expansion Project, specifically a specific plan located at 2800 North Main Street, otherwise known as Main Place Shopping Mall.

So with that, do we have any speakers? I think I do, quite a few. Let's start with the speakers, then we'll go to the applicant if necessary.

Excuse me, Mayor Belial. I believe we might have a presentation.

We will, after the speakers. Alex Zamona, followed by Elizabeth Hansberg.

Followed by Mario Tafoya.

Go ahead, Alex. Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Alex. I'm with the Laborers International Union of North America. I'm also a resident and homeowner in the city of Santa Ana. I'm here to urge you to decline the approval of the CEQA addendum for the main place transformation project simply because it does not comply with CEQA. I drive, I work all over this area that the project's in and I think there's a lot of environmental impacts that just aren't being considered. And there's two main points also.

So, number one, the document that's being used for this is well over 30 years old that they're relying on. And also, this document does not include any residential units. So it really is not, it doesn't make any sense. So I strongly urge that you require an environmental impact report before approving this addendum and the project. Thank you very much. Thank you, Elizabeth.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the Council. My name is Elizabeth Hansberg. I'm the co-founder and director of the YIMBY Organization for Orange County. It stands for YES in my backyard. We're a pro-housing grassroots movement. I'm here to just remind the council that California is suffering from a pervasive housing shortage. It has been in existence for a long time. The only way that we will address the shortage is to build more housing. This is an opportunity to build new housing for new residents, most of whom likely already are living here in some format that is perhaps in an overcrowded conditions

or they've doubled up with roommates or they're driving a long distance. This project is a good option because it creates housing in a place of declining commercial. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning about just the overall decline of commercial space that shopping malls are going away and that we need to repurpose them. So this is an opportunity to do that. As you remember, at 2525 Main Street, there was a huge backlash from the local homeowners. This project benefits from the fact that there are no local homeowners nearby, so the NIMBY pushback is going to be less.

It's a good place to put it. It's near the freeway. It's also near St. Joseph's and Chalk Children's Hospital. It's close to Chapman University. The future of our economy are the meds and the eds. So we're putting housing in a place that really is going to be a job center and is going to be developing the economy of Santa Ana and the surrounding community. So I would just urge you to approve the project. Thank you.

Mario Tafoya.

Good evening, Mayor, Council Members. Actually, I'm in support of the expansion and development of Main Place Mall. I've been a resident here the last 50 years. I think it would be one of the best things that's happened to the city. It's going to generate much more tax revenue, and it's going to help out the local communities, and it's going to be a better destination point for the city. I don't see anything negative about the impact of Main Place Mall expanding or anything such. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you.

Dale.

And you know who you are, Dale.

Brian Flynn after Dale.

Good evening, Mayor and Councilmembers. I'm here in support of the main place. It's going to bring in a lot of business. It is going to add a lot of apartments to the place. And, you know, with the 1,900 apartments and all the other development that's going on up there, there's going to be well over 3,000 people added to that area. It's going to create a traffic problem, I think, but I think we can get around that. The big thing about it is it's not next to residential property, and that's why I support it. With the 3,000 plus people there, our open space requirements for parks require one acre of land per every 500 people.

So if you take a look at that, that's roughly six acres of land that should be dedicated for park space somewhere in the city. I happen to know where there's six acres of land right at 2525. Thank you.

Thank you, Brian.

Good evening. My name is Brian Flynn. I'm here on behalf of the Sustainers Alliance for Environmental Responsibility. We submit written comments to the council that were prepared with the assistance of various experts. I just want to highlight a few of the issues that were in that written comment. Based on our analysis and the analysis of the experts, this addendum is inappropriate under CEQA, and the city must instead prepare an EIR for a few reasons. One, the 1983 EIR has no informational value as to the residential aspect of the project.

Two, there's substantial evidence of a fair argument that the project will have one or more significant environmental impacts. And lastly, the addendum's conclusions are not supported by substantial evidence. To the fact that the 1983 EIR has no informational value, the project does include 1,900 units of residential housing. That has never been analyzed in any CEQA document to this point. And since that has never undergone CEQA review, the city must start from the beginning of the CEQA process and conduct an initial study to determine what the environmental effects will be. Respectfully, we do have a housing crisis in California.

That's not necessarily a reason to steamroll over our environmental laws. Secondly, there's substantial evidence that the project may have one or more significant environmental impacts. We had an indoor air quality expert look at the addendum. He concluded that the project is likely to expose future residents to significant impacts related to emissions of formaldehyde. He calculated that the cancer risk from formaldehyde to those residents will be between 125 and 180 per million. The threshold is 10 per million. The addendum does not disclose, analyze, talk about that effect at all.

Also, the air quality experts reviewed it, reviewed the addendum and figured out that the project will likely exceed thresholds for NOx emissions. The threshold is 100 pounds per day. The average in the addendum was 97.7 pounds per day. If the average is 97.7 and the threshold's 100, you're going to have days where it exceeds that 100 threshold. And lastly, the addendums' own conclusions are not supported. There's no evidence that this will not result in significant impacts from construction. Neither the addendum nor the 1983 EIR did any quantification of construction emissions.

So the fact that that wasn't ever done, the addendum cannot say there won't be an impact from that. Also, there's no evidence that the project will not result in significant health risks to nearby sensitive receptors. Again, this is because the addendum in the EIR never did a health risk assessment for existing nearby sensitive receptors. Without doing that, they cannot say, or the addendum cannot say there will not be an impact. Thank you very much.

John Tafoya.

Followed by Grinnell Johnson. Followed by Luz Maria Ibarra after that.

Good evening, Council. My name is John Tafoya, Southwest Carpenters Union. There's a few items I'd like to bring to the attention of the Council, and that is that the city relies on an outdated EIR from 1983 in approving this project in an attempt to foreclose more detailed environmental review. The city cannot rely upon any information, facts, or analysis contained in this outdated EIR. Reliance on any portion of a 36-year-old EIR released for an entirely different project and not based on up-to-date baseline conditions, facts, and modern scientific understandings of environmental impact

fails the informational purpose of the CEQA. The city must prepare, release an entirely updated EIR designed specifically for the project. The information in the 1983 EIR is outdated to the point of being misinformational. Overall, the city has put forth a rushed process that has failed to provide adequate time for public comment. and the city has failed to adequately respond to comments submitted on the city's limited half-assed review. The city has provided fewer than 30 days for public comments from this day

it released its 3,000 page addendum to the city's council proposed vote today. This violates CEQA. furthermore the project will cause significant direct indirect and cumulative impacts which the city has failed to adequately address including in the areas of air quality greenhouse gases hatteras materials noise and traffic the city must provide an accurate description of baseline projects conditions and project impacts the city fails to mitigate these severe impacts to the fullest extent possible violates CEQA. Thank you.

After Luz Maria Raymond Lagunas. Raimundo.

Good evening, Council. My name is Janelle Johnson. I live in Park Santiago, and I am very much in favor of this project. There are apartment buildings all along the 22. There's the one right across the street, from Main Street from this proposed project. There's another one being built right off the 22 and Main off-ramp in Orange. There's one right across the street from that being built. There's the 1110, and there's the Prisma. I don't think there's a problem with any air quality. There's ways to alleviate those problems. We have a developer that's willing to come in and invest a lot of money into our mall.

We invest housing, revamp the mall, put in the kidsanium. We'd be fools not to approve this when we have somebody that's willing to do this for us, for our community, and to make that a destination spot. And I think we need to approve it and get the ball rolling on this, because I think there's probably going to be a certain amount of time where they're going to get tired of it and pull out. And then where are we going to be? This needs to be approved. Thank you.

Luz Maria.

And after Raimondo, Eugene Robledo.

Buenas noches. Mi nombre es Luz Maria. Yo vengo para apoyar a Memphis Mall. Yo vivo una milla.

Hold on. Espera un segundito. I'll tell you the traductor. Let's go on with the next speaker. Okay, bien. Empiece a hablar. Cesar, walk fast.

I live in Memphis Mall and I'm happy with the projects that are going to be done for the family, that we have to have something good for the family. And it's good for the family, so I'm here to support something good, something great for Santana. Thank you.

I live a mile from Mayplace Mall. I'm very happy for this project. This is going to provide for the families. It's something good for the families, and it's going to provide something for the good families of Santa Ana. Thank you.

Raymundo Laguna followed by Eugene Robledo.

Good evening everyone. My name is Raymundo Lagunas and I'm living at the city of Santana for almost 20 years. I'm here to support the new investment planning for the main place mall. The vision of the mall to have a new hotel, residential building and big improvements of the entire mall experience. We will be bringing more new jobs to the community here in Santana and more taxable money for our city. I'm very excited for that. I have friends, family members that are looking for a job and they have to travel to another city to get a job.

So this new investment will be bringing economic stability for many people, many families. and happiness and to our entire community. Thank you.

Go ahead. Good evening, Council. I just had to support the main place expansion. I think it will be better for the city of Santa Ana. I live in the city for over 15 years, and I really support it.

Carlo, do you see how brief that guy spoke and how effective he was?

I can say it real brief. Don't build it. Make sure the city of Santa gets Caltrans and see what the freeways are going to be and widen all the streets. Maybe your car line can go right up and down Main Street. Have the developers put that in. you know they want to develop this area it's going to happen like the laguna hills mall the developers went in there and who got hurt all the old people of laguna woods no more movie theater no place to go shop the city's losing money and all these developers promised all these units and it's not happening down there sears could have stayed there for a little bit and then

eventually go out you know people say they've been here for so many years i've been here since 1972 and that was a city and i wish it stayed like that all farmland beautiful land wide open People can move out towards Corona, out towards Riverside, get a better transportation. This project would not be good because last Christmas it took me almost an hour to get to the main place mall to do some shopping. And I'm telling you, other places look pretty good. And you guys are planning on just packing these people in there like sardines? There's no way.

At least if the city of Santa Ana is going to get something out of it, maybe a new Broadway bridge. Maybe a new Main Street bridge. Better transportation up and down Main Street. I like going to Barnes and Nobles and that little shopping center. And I have to just put up with time just getting in those shopping centers. Now you plan on putting more people in there? How many more stores are going to stay there? If their people are complaining already, traffic's really bad. Think about it. And then, I don't know if you guys got a study yet from Caltrans, what they're going to do with the 22 freeway or the 5 freeway.

Rumors is there's going to be a toll lane from the 55 all the way up to the 605 freeway. The carpool lane is going over to the number one lane, and then it's going to go two or three lanes of this regular traffic. People talk about all this, but it's going to get miserable. So at least the city of Santa Ana gets something out of these developers. New traffic signals, new lights, new street lighting, more security cameras on the corners. Let them pay for it, not the citizens of Santa Ana pay for it. You guys are politicians, you should make these developers pay for it. I'd rather see another 50 houses go in.

Just regular houses, little backyards, side houses, little side yards. That's what we wanted 30 years ago in the city of Santa Ana. We don't want to look like West L.A., West Hollywood. I can tell you how miserable the people are over there because they live in units that are five or six, seven stories high. Think about it. You're going to put development in, put a wage that say, hey, you got a two-bedroom, no more than $2,000 a month, and let the city make the decision to raise the rent up or down. It's almost a little bit like rent control. Maybe it's like Santa Monica. that city council letter back in the 70s in Santa Monica

took a chance and they voted in rent control thank you man

now we have Corey Sands I believe it is Corey

thank you mayor council members I'm a resident here in Santa Ana for about 20 years now. I'm in strong support for this project. I've seen the decline of the mall over the years. I'm really excited for developers interested in trying to revitalize the mall, bring in some housing that we need in the community as well, and just really going to invest in this property. Great location for it as well without immediate housing surrounding it and really good freeway access to the property as well.

Thank you. Thank you, Corey.

Okay, is there a brief or a staff presentation?

Yes, Mayor. Staff has a presentation and the applicant is here with a short presentation. All right. May I suggest that I have staff just address the EIR issues and then let the applicant present the project?

Let's do that.

Okay.

Executive Director Mintai, can you please address EIR and the EIR issues?

Just the EIR issues.

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to introduce our team here. we have with us that support us with EIR is Jennifer Lynch from BBK. We also have a consultant, Miss Connie Dubrova from EPD Solution who wrote the addendum. So I have them come up to discuss the EIR and the addendum that was conducted and the city's and sequence rationale and requirement for the addendum project.

Good evening, Council members. Jennifer Lynch. I'm a CEQA attorney with BBK. I also have Connie Debreva here. She was our CEQA consultant for the city's addendum. Just a couple points on why we proceeded with an addendum. Under CEQA, local agencies are actually constrained as to what kind of environmental review they can do when there is already a certified EIR for a proposed project. So under CEQA, the question before city staff was whether the changes in the project that the applicant is seeking, so the changes in their current entitlements, are going to result in new impacts

beyond those that were analyzed and disclosed in the original EIR. So specifically what the applicant is asking for here is they're essentially swapping out some of their entitlements. So right now, they are currently entitled to build another 109,000 square feet of commercial use at the Main Place Mall site, and another 750,000 square feet of office use also at the Main Place site. They are asking the City Council to approve taking those entitlements away and replacing them with the entitlement to build 1,900 residential units. So the question before city staff and the question that's looked at in the addendum

is whether that swap results in new impacts. So is constructing that 109,000 square feet of commercial and that 750,000 square feet of office, does that result in more impacts or fewer impacts than constructing the 1,900 residential units that the developer is requesting? So in order to do that, we commissioned several technical studies. These were, I think, 10 different technical studies that looked at traffic, noise, air quality, greenhouse gases. This is thousands of pages of technical analysis to determine whether that swap is going to reduce or increase impacts.

They're also doing a hotel, right? And you analyzed that also.

Yes. So the 400 hotel rooms are actually part of their current entitlements now. So they aren't changing that. They aren't swapping out those entitlements. But that's in addition to the 1,900 square feet. So it's part of the package that's already there. So there's not really a change in the impacts that would be associated with that. So that is why the city proceeded with an addendum based on the results of those 10 technical studies.

Thank you. And we're confident it could withstand a CEQA challenge? Always. Always. Thank you.

All right, now the applicant.

Yes, sir.

And I believe they do have a video for you.

I think they're coming down.

Good evening. My name is Stephen Levin. I'm CEO of Centennial Real Estate Company. Mayor, city council members, I want to thank you for allowing us the opportunity to work with the city of Santa Ana, work in the city of Santa Ana invest in the city of Santa Ana to affect the transformation of Main Place Mall

I would like to thank the city staff the city staff has worked with us over the last two years they've worked tirelessly they've worked diligently they've represented the city and the community in a very professional manner all while allowing us to maintain the vision that we wanted to bring forth to the city of Santa Ana. Lastly,

Main Place Mall needs this. The city of Santa Ana needs this. The residents need this and the residents want this. I've spent two years in this community visiting the schools, visiting the hospitals, visiting the neighborhood associations, anyone that will talk to me, that would allow me to talk to them. And I have enjoyed tremendously the opportunity to immerse myself and learn and become a part of the city of Santa Ana.

And we at Centennial want to deliver this to the city of Santa Ana. Thank you very much.

Good evening. My name is Oliver Robinson, Executive Vice President of Development and Construction at Centennial. Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council, thank you very much. First, I want to thank staff for their hard work and professionalism. It's been a pleasure to work with them. Since we bought Main Place Mall at the end of 2015, annual sales have decreased. by 60 million dollars that represents about 1.5 million dollars in sales tax revenue today that has been lost per year it'll continue to drop if nothing's done but we have a plan to turn main place around i want to show you a quick video

that shows our vision of what we want to produce here

it's not what we're looking for

Can we get the lights down a little bit back there maybe?

I'll wait.

I'll take care.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So So

So So

So So So

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have a plan to turn Mainplace around, to turn it into a unique gathering place for the citizens of Santa Ana, and a destination for people from far and wide.

Can you get the lights back, please?

This plan will shore up Mainplace to provide a strong, reliable source of income for the city of Santa Ana. We've made a large investment in Santa Ana, and we're prepared to double down to turn Maine Place back into the place to eat, shop, live, work, play for another generation and beyond. Thank you. We're available to answer any questions you have.

Yeah, please hang out. I think we may have a few questions.

Councilmember Iglesias or Pena Rosa? Go ahead.

Well, I just want to thank you for the presentation and I just want to thank you too for investing in our community. I know that the Main Place Mall has been a destination for a lot of our families.

But eventually it has been declining in its usage. So, just one question that I do have for you, and maybe it's something too for you to consider. Santa Ana is facing a critical homeless situation. And the main place, small, where it's located, it's located by one of the places, which is called the creek, I guess, Santiago. Santiago Creek, so have you guys considered addressing that? Because I know that right now what's happening, some of the homeless individuals are coming through. and they're coming maybe to your property,

have you considered that possibility in addressing it?

We don't own the creek land, so we, I mean, I'm not sure. We have the mall manager here who we can bring up, certainly the general manager, to talk about that if it's been an issue. I'm not aware of it having been an issue, but they're certainly not camping on our land.

Yeah, or maybe this is a question for staff, not you per se, but I'm just saying it's something for you guys to think about because it's something that we're

facing as a city. And this discussion did come up and one of the recommendations from the planning commission was for and it's part of staff's report was for the city council to consider allocating funding for park maintenance that would be generated park revenue fees from the project and apportion that to the Santa Cruz Creek area for maintenance but also improvements so that's something the council can actually consider as part of its future budget allocation annually to dedicate some funding to provide for maintenance and also upgrades to the creek.

Okay but would that be something that's coming to like from an investment to from you know from the developer and

It would be coming from the project. As the development come online, they will have to pay their fair share of the fee for park improvements. So what the Planning Commission and the public was asking was for the Council to consider in its future adoption of budget to make those allocations as they come in to focus to the park and the creek for those very purpose.

Okay. I apologize for putting you on the spot. It wasn't really meant for you, but it's just one of those things that I'm considering. But the Kidzania, that is such an, I think it's an amazing opportunity for us to be in the forefront to provide that type of go to place for our families. So I just want to thank you for investing and pretty much just want to make sure that when we do this it's in collaboration and thank you for taking a step. I heard you say you were two years getting to know our community.

And so it shows that the community, for the most part, what I've heard is a lot of positive support on your project. So I just want to thank you for that. And one thing, and I know that I did meet with you guys before, and one thing is I would like for it to be kind of like San Antonio, I want the creek to be like the riverbed in San Antonio. So if we can make that happen, oh my gosh, I'll be happy.

We'll do our best.

Don't go anywhere. A couple questions from me, and I'm sure there'll be others. We're taking the commercial down from 1.5 to 750, but 750 still remains. You still have some buildings that are shown. Do you plan to build those buildings as well? What's your schedule on the actual commercial component?

When you say commercial, I think you mean office specifically in terms of how it's entitled. We want to. It's going to be a matter of kind of how the market responds to us over the coming years. It's not, you know.

But even if the market doesn't respond quickly, you're not going to come back and get rid of those and ask for more residential. Those are staying as part of the plan. That's part of the plan. Mike already, I mean, Steve already nodded yes.

Yes, it is part of the plan.

It's going to remain there and hopefully we'll get them built.

It's going to remain. I mean, this is, yes, we're not coming back to change anything.

Well, maybe with our new city manager, she's very good at many things and development and such. Maybe we can help you find tenants for those buildings, because if we find you the tenants, she'll build the buildings.

We would love that. Got it.

Got it. More questions.

We have room for a new city hall, if need be.

Come on.

I think we're okay here, but. Councilman Panaloza.

David Penaloza

But if you guys want to donate for a new building here, you're more than welcome to. With that said, I wanted to thank you guys for making the time to come out here and that presentation. I am witness to the CEO really immersing himself in the community. Earlier in the year when I was on my introduction tour at the neighborhood associations as a newly elected council member, I think once or twice I met with the group. Then later in the evening at a neighborhood association meeting, I ran into the same group doing their rounds. So I was witness to that. So I thank you for including the community.

David Penaloza

And in regards to the businesses you want to bring to our city, thank you again, something like Kidzania, with our proximity to the Anaheim Resort District and the beaches and the freeway. It's just, I think, a perfect location for something like that. And it's a Mexican company that we're bringing, that's already been around the world except the United States. It's such a really educational, very entertaining for kids. It would go great with the Discovery Center just across the street. So it's a nice way to build that kind of tourist hub

David Penaloza

and feed off of that, of the millions of people that come visit Southern California every year. So, and I am, with what the mayor said, you know, I don't want to see, you know, 10 years later and say, hey, you know, just kidding on this extra commercial, we're going to do housing, because, again, that would hurt. And whatever we could do to help find tenants, commercial tenants, I'd be, you know, with the city manager, that'd be very helpful. So I just wanted to point that out, and that's pretty much it. Thank you.

Any more questions? Now that I'd like to call for the question, Mayor Proton.

Quick question regarding on-site parking. What's the ratio?

On-site parking? What's the ratio currently, or what are we asking for?

What's the ratio for the proposed living units that you're going to have?

Yeah, it's a mix, and I don't recall offhand.

I have a chart here on the presentation, but it's not very clear.

Well, it depends on the use. It's a function of the different uses. The overall, there you go. Let me answer that for the Alp again. So for the commercial component, it's three and a half space per thousand. For residents, it's 1.56 space per thousand. For hotels, 1.1 space per room. I'm sorry, yeah, one space per room. Office is three space per thousand square feet and we completed a parking studies to evaluate and this project is truly part of a mixed-use development where you have multiple uses coming together

and you're able to truly share parking spaces so all of the parking spaces will be utilized for a different purpose but residential itself will have its own

exclusive parking spaces and what is that in the residential itself 1.65

space per unit

Thank you, Mr.

Final question. I think, yes, Sassy.

A follow-up question on that. On the parking, if I recall, I don't know if it was a presentation that you made for a planning commission or in our conversation. But 1.6, I don't think it's enough for residential. But I believe one of the things that you guys had recommended was if it's needed more, then we can use the one with the commercial. because this way it won't impact the neighboring residents.

Correct. So the project, as I indicated, is a true mixed-use development to where the use is. Residential will have use of the shared space for the commercial and retail components. So any overflow would require that the company has the ability to allow their residents to park at other locations on-site.

On-site, so the neighboring. Correct. Okay. Okay, thank you.

Councilorio. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I like where the project's at, but I have just a few questions that maybe can be answered tonight or another day.

In the staff report, there was a chart that spoke about impact fees. How much given this project scope would there be per area and total?

I did ask the staff this question previously and they were going to make the information available today. So.

We do have the information for you. As you are familiar, this project is a specific plan. so therefore it is not a specific construction project. Development fees will be collected as project comes forward to the city for the review and for construction, so those will be collected at that point in time. I'm aware of that, but based off the square footage and the type of use estimates could be made. So for example, the WHO fee, we estimate based on what we know, is approximately $21 million dollars. In terms of the overall development impact fees that includes traffic impacts,

park fees, those equals to about $41 million. But is that in a document that the applicant has approved? That is in a document that is attached as an example of numbers that we have finalized today. Because that sheet that I had was blank. Correct, correct. We do have We have the estimated number as part of the final executed version today.

Maybe today that could be provided to the clerk just so that for the record at least it's there. Because for a large project, these fees that are significant, we want to make sure that the community as well as the applicant know exactly what these dollar amounts are for key things like schools, parks, infrastructure, etc.

You're absolutely correct, and we will provide the city clerk with an executed copy with all the attachment here for their records. Okay, and what is the total amount? The WHO fee is about $21,400,000. For the other impact fees? And for the other fee is $41,940,000.

Okay, with respect to the housing opportunity orders that we have, we ask that developers on housing projects that they do a certain amount of inclusionary housing on site. And if not, that there is an in lieu of fee amount. What choice is the developer making as to whether they're going to, I guess really the default is that you're going to do a certain percentage on site. So what percentage on site of inclusionary housing units will you have?

So once we have an implementing project, that'll be determined. Our intent obviously is we will abide by the who.

We typically make that decision at the earlier stage based on the number of units, so.

So the WHO currently stipulates that if they're proposing affordable for-sell units, it's 15% of the project total residential units. If it's rental, then it's either 15% for low income or 10% for very low income. That is the current WHO requirements. The way the project and the way it's written into the specific plan is that the applicant at the time when they obtain permit for residential units will comply with the WHO regulation at that time. So if they were to pull permit tomorrow, that would be the current standards today.

15% for rental, I'm sorry, for sale, and 15% for rental if it's low, and 10% if it's very low. Or the option is to pay in-lue fee for those percentage.

So right now there's been no decision on which way they're going to go or if they're going to be in the affordable units?

What the applicant has committed to is that they will determine what is feasible for them and comply with the who at the time when they pull permit. So that's what I heard they mention right now.

Okay. I know for a number of the... Can you start the clock, please? A number of developments we've been... Thank you, Mr. Mahan. Another development we've been talking about on the parking side that we're all concerned about mentioned a parking management plan that would be required. Is there such a plan in here?

Yes, there is one that is being required and it is being part of the maintenance agreement that will be recorded onto the property. And where is that document? The document is being made a part of the tenant track map condition of approval. So in your condition of approval of the tenant track map, there is a requirement for maintenance agreement that has the component of the parking management plan on that. Okay.

And I'm always just concerned, we keep mentioning that plan, but I've yet to see one. So maybe tonight. And then finally-I don't think there is. Yeah, I don't think there is. So I have questions about misinformation about obligations for impact areas, housing, particularly affordable housing, whether there's a parking management plan and what type of local hire program they might have because we want many of the jobs to be for folks in the area rather than other counties or other states. And I do apologize, I had some questions here.

I did try to meet with a developer previously and they were out of state and apparently were unable to meet. So that's why the question's today.

All right, so I would entertain a motion. Go ahead, Councillor Miento.

Thank you, I'll try to be, and please start the clock on me as well. Thank you both and thank you to our staff for bringing this before us and giving us so much information ahead of time. It's funny because I was probably one of the few that was around when the original EIR was done that long ago. And I remember when this was before Main Place, it was Fashion Square. And the anchor store there was iMagnon. I'm not sure if you guys remember that. Man, I'm really dating myself. So it was an outdoor shopping center, outdoor shopping mall. Then it got covered as it became main place. And now we're kind of uncovering it again.

So it's funny how things cycle in and out. But I do appreciate the fact that retail is changing drastically, right? Online sales are the way a lot of people shop. So I know that this evolution in the mall's sort of trajectory is important, that we all adapt to this new world. My two questions, I guess, are one is more legal and the other one is more just general when it comes to jobs. And I do, I think it's arguable sometimes, especially amongst attorneys, to agree on the standard of review when we talk about a CEQA analysis.

And because this is an existing EIR that was done quite a while ago, and we could say it's appropriate for us to do an addendum to the existing EIR, or we could also say that we needed to do a supplement or a subsequent EIR. The standard is very squishy when it comes to that, so I think arguments could be made one way or the other. I understand that staff agreed that an addendum would be sufficient. But look, we have, I guess, something here that's changed. There's changed context.

It's not the same city, it's not the same surroundings that were there when the original EIR was done. I mean, we're talking years ago when there wasn't the amount of traffic, the volume of folks that lived here in the area, so the intensity is different. And I know when we switch out commercial or office for residential, sometimes the intensity changes there as well. So it's sort of a qualitative versus a quantitative difference, right? And so I'm having a little bit of trouble as to what authority we used to be able to fall back on not an exemption, but an addendum.

So that's sort of the legal standard I'm concerned about, and maybe council can go ahead and address that. But my second question is maybe more to the principals. Look, we know we don't have any skin in the game as providing a subsidy for this, and that's why we thank you even more for wanting to invest in the town and wanting to invest in that asset. You don't have to do that, but you're doing that because you know it makes good business sense for you, but it's also good for the community. And we also want to see how these investments will benefit our community,

not just to have another place to shop, but a lot of other ancillary benefits like jobs. And we know that there's going to be people employed, there's going to be folks that are going to be shopping at that store, who are going to need to be handled by clerks and retailers and different folks that are going to be employed. But also the employment and the construction is important. So many of our working families here in town are blue collar folks, right? They belong to the trades, they belong to the laborers, 652. And we can't compel you to agree on something with them, but

we can certainly try to encourage you to say, look, they've been our partners as you are our partners. And to the extent that we can have a good faith commitment or gesture that you're going to work with our folks in town, provide them good paying jobs. Make sure that those same folks are going to be your patrons. They're the same folks that are going to go spend money at your mall. And so those are good things, those are good faith efforts that I think all of us have always tried to motivate. We may not be able to obligate you, because we certainly can't. There aren't any public funds in this.

But we can try to encourage you because that shows good faith. It shows that you're a good neighbor and a good city partner. So with that, maybe, Council, if you can answer my question on the legal authority for the – go ahead.

Can I respond? Sure. Councilman? Just so you know, we've been teeing up in advance of this. We've been working with a contractor, and for the first project here, we actually have a contractor who has agreements with laborers, with carpenters, with cement masons. So I was a little surprised, honestly, to see some of the opposition on an environmental basis that we saw tonight. So yes, we want you to know that we are very open.

We already have some language in the development agreement where we're going to try to source local and hire local to the extent possible, to the extent it's feasible, and we absolutely want to be good community partners, but we also have to be good businessmen and stewards of our asset as well. So it's going to be a balance, but we are committed to being open and to working with the community. Thank you.

To address the council member's question regarding the standard of review, the standard of review that applies here to the question of whether an addendum is appropriate is the substantial evidence standard. So if there is substantial evidence in the record before you that there are not going to be new or more severe environmental impacts, then that supports the use of an addendum. And so substantial evidence, that's expert opinion, technical studies, and those are all appended to the addendum and then summarized within the addendum. There was some talk earlier about the fair argument standard.

That does not apply when an EIR has already been certified. That only applies when you are looking at a project for which no environmental review has taken place at all.

Right, but there are some times when EIRs are so dated that you can't use them as a threshold or a milestone to be able to add them. Because, look, an EIR could be 50 years old and a ranch town could turn into an urban area, right? So that's when I guess a more objective opinion needs to be made. But look, granted, this wasn't a ranch town. I mean, we already had folks living here. But the level of population that we have now and the level of congestion has really changed. So not to question it, I just think that that is a, I think it's a reasonable concern that folks could have on that standard.

Understood, and just to clarify, the addendum looks at the changes in the project resulting in new impacts. and it also looks at changes in circumstances and new information. So it looks at all three prongs of that test under the Public Resources Code section 21166. So the changes in circumstances are addressed in the addendum for each of the areas that we look at.

Thank you. Thank you. Give me one minute on the clock.

What's the magnitude of the investment that you're going to be making here in the initial phase?

$300 million.

And what do you project your sales are going to be as a function of that at the end of the day? They're going to increase, right?

Dramatically, they're going to increase. They're going to increase. We expect, you know, $150, $200 million.

Just keep us posted. This is going to be an organic process. Continue to work with the council. We want to be good partners. We want this to succeed.

We are.

So, you know, stay in touch with us. We'll be here often, and we're happy to stay in touch. Thank you. And be good partners. Final question, I really want to call for the vote. Councilor Payne, Lillard, I want to speak again.

David Penaloza

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I was thinking about it because I was thinking along the same lines as Councilwoman Iglesias. I think what she was kind of hinting at is, I mean, I know that other developments or applicants in the area have, have not committed or proposed the ideas of, I know the mall has security. And with that creek that runs right next to it,

David Penaloza

maybe in the future having that same security, kind of, hey, take a stroll through the creek surrounding the property, just to help alleviate the area. because the last thing I would want to see is this great urban center district with entertainment and tourism and just 50 feet over, a very bad condition in our creek with the homeless population. And I know you had mentioned when we discussed about the movie theater and improving the movie theater, currently in the mall and saying that you would bring a good movie theater.

David Penaloza

I also want to make sure that these things, these new mall changes would be affordable to the community that exists here in Santa Ana.

David Penaloza

Thinking of Kidzania, great, great, great thing to bring to our city, but our kids and our families are going to be able to afford it and take their kids there. I know there's things at the zoo where, and I know that's not you, that would be the Kidzania Corporation, but that's a conversation that we could have, have some kind of discount day with Santa Ana kids so they could have access to that too. To make sure that these things that are coming to the mall do remain affordable and attainable by the average Santa Ana resident. is something that I would implore you to keep in mind.

David Penaloza

And with that said, just with the hotel number that I see, so 400 is, that's the most hotels that you would potentially build?

That's all we're allowed to under the proposed and current entitlements.

David Penaloza

And it's 1,900 apartment units, right?

David Penaloza

Okay, never mind, I was confused with the two numbers. That's all right, Jose, you've already spoken several times. Not on this item. Go ahead.

I only spoke once, so thank you, Mr. Mayor. I support the project in concept. I think for me today, I just can't because there's some elements I think you mean well. I just haven't seen the documents and I know it's voluntary that it's positive. Your document does mention a community benefits agreement and plan that you would present at a later date. That's an important document for this community because we do have so many needs and it'd be nice to have more details on that. But with more time and if I got information about those things I could support it.

All right, with that I'm going to call for the question. No, we're done.

We're done. We make a motion to approve. We have a motion to approve. Is there a second? I'll second it. No, we've heard enough.

I just need to clean up. I do need to submit a letter that responds back to some of the comments that we received recently into the records. Just give it to the clerk. We're ready to go. And then we also want to ask for conforming changes to the resolution to address the DDA. Thank you. What was that? So, there are housekeeping, conforming changes to the resolution so that it conforms with the DDA. Do we have them?

Yes. Where?

It's the resolution and the DDA.

The conformance changes are here?

Yes.

All right, we'll include that in the motion. Thank you. So we have a motion and a second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? No. One no. Motion carries.

Now we go on to the next item.

75E?

E, right? Yeah. This time in place for a public hearing, abandoning, vacating a portion of Main Place Drive between Main Street and Bedford Road. Seeing no speakers, I'll open up the hearing. Seeing no staff recommendation, I'll close the public hearing, bring it back to Council for consideration. Motion to approve. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. 75F, I'm going to recuse myself, turn it over to Mayor Pro Tem. It's a cannabis item, and I've traditionally not been voting on that for a long time. As will I for the reasons stated before on the record.

We will wait for the gentleman to exit.

Madam Clerk, if you can read off item 75F.

This is a time and place to hold a public hearing to consider ordinance amendment number 2019-01 to add to and amend certain sections of chapter 21 of the Santa Ana Municipal Code to allow vertical and horizontal integration of cannabis businesses. updating procedural standards and requirements relating to ownership transfers, security deposits, and various administrative processes, and reducing cannabis testing taxes to 2% of gross receipts.

Thank you, Madam Clerk. Is there any speakers? Do you have any speaker cards on that?

No speakers.

No speakers? Okay, we have no cards. Is there any comment from the Councilman?

David Penaloza

members? Is that a motion approved? I just I just wanted to thank staff for all I know they've been working for months on this and it's you know again brings me back to what I said at the last meeting how every year we have a proposed revenue projected revenue that we're going to get from cannabis and then we're sitting around scratching our heads as to why it's only half but it's because of and I know this this the lab it's fixing the language I know it's not going to bring more money But it's going to help us support these industries where they need it and

David Penaloza

expedite their process with just the red tape that exists in their permitting. So I just wanted to thank SAF for the work that they did with this. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Pinaloa. Is there a motion? Move the item. Second. Motion is second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries.

One.

One no. One no?

One no. Well, absolutely.

Okay, well then I guess it doesn't pass.

Item fails.

What was that?

The item fails.

The item fails thing. Thank you very much. You can go ahead and let the mayor know they can come back.

Are we still on that item? Yeah, I guess just one comment, maybe because we may have the same issue on various items down the line. Maybe the city attorney can brief Mr. Mayor and Council members on the council on whether the conflicts really do exist in the nature of why?

Sonia R. Carvalho

We've actually done so and we've obtained FVPC advice and so on based upon that advice and the current circumstances the council members have chosen, I think, responsibly to recuse themselves.

Right, I understand that aspect, but the rest of us don't know the reasons or the nature.

Sonia R. Carvalho

They can state on the record what the nature of their conflicts are as required by the FPPC. I believe they might be a perceived or real business interest.

And we don't even need to do this tonight. I'm just saying there's going to be similar items down the line that are important on issues related to cannabis. And so if we're always going to be a boat short, we've got to be mindful of that, that maybe there are some opportunities. That's why maybe we should have appointed instead of the special election.

Sonia R. Carvalho

Yeah, I think I was just going to address that, Mayor. I think that is exactly the issue. I think if you had a full council, it wouldn't be an issue. And so you may just be, unfortunately, in a situation where you have to wait until you have a full council.

I'm not sure if the – I'm sorry, Madam City Attorney. I'm not sure if my colleagues understood what was before them. This was a cleanup on this revision, and we were lowering the percentage on tax on our testing sites. Because I feel it's very important for us to test. If we're going to have sales of cannabis here in the city, it's very important for us to have testing sites on...

We should leave if you're going to continue discussion.

Sonia R. Carvalho

Yes. Well, the vote's over. Well, action was taken unless there's a motion to reconsider, then you move on to the next item.

David Penaloza

Let's just call the next item. I was going to say I'll call a motion to reconsider. All right, shall we leave again? All right, thank you.

If I may add some information, Mayor Proton.

I'm sorry, I can barely hear you.

If I may just add some additional information after they recuse themselves related to this item.

Very good. Wait for the gentleman to leave the room.

So when you initially adopted your ordinance to institute the municipal code to allow the cannabis industry in your city, there was quite a bit that was done that you didn't really know what the impact was going to be in the future. This really is cleanup language, and you have multiple businesses out there, and as Council Member Penaloza mentioned, the reason that you haven't seen the growth of revenue is because of some of these issues. The first one, it deals with vertical and horizontal integration. And what's happening is if a business wants to do multiple lines of cannabis industry, they're being double and triple taxed.

So this is addressing that issue. Part of it also is the deposit, the nature and the amount of the deposits in the original municipal code is quite burdensome for smaller proprietors that want to open these types of business in the city. This is also eliminating that and it's also correcting some other, well the testing as you mentioned, a 5% down to a 2%. And it's also adjusting how they calculate the alternative square footage. The cannabis industry has been waiting several months to get this clean up language done and this is just the first of four items.

They actually have a list of other items that they are seeking clean up in our municipal code that would help promote and and attract additional cannabis businesses to our city.

Thank you very much, Madam City Manager. So, we need to have these items tested here. I'm not a fan of the cannabis industry or cannabis at all. I used to teach drug ed for ten years. But this happened before me, when we had the medical marijuana come before the city, The city voted on it, and I believe in following the law, and we have an ordinance. We have two different areas where we have the cannabis sales, and we really, really need some labs, testing labs to make sure that whatever they're doing is still, it's not illegal.

It's, you don't have any poisons in there or what have you. So that's why, to me, it's very important to have this item looked at. Council Member Solorio.

So maybe Councilwoman Iglesias, maybe a continuance of two weeks we can continue to look at and consider it.

David Penaloza

I think we have to reconsider the item, right? First, before we-

Right, we have a motion to reconsider by penalosa. We need a second.

I will second it.

So with that, let's see if it passes. All those in favor say aye.

David Penaloza

Aye.

All those opposed say no. We have one now, okay. I know where we stand.

David Penaloza

Mr. Mayor, may I?

Yes, sir.

David Penaloza

And I want to make sure that I know, I have the utmost respect for my colleague, Councilman Iglesias. I want to make sure that you were briefed on this item, exactly what it is. Okay. And just wanted to say that I believe there's one testing laboratory currently operating in Santa Ana. I took a tour of it. about two, three weeks ago. Very, I was impressed, and it ties back into a meme I saw on the internet that the minute that these cannabis retail shops and testing laboratories start looking like Apple stores,

David Penaloza

there needs to be a lot of people released from prison because of just the people that have faced consequences over the same thing that we're having a discussion about. So I just wanted to But this testing laboratory, these are, like Mayor Proutin mentioned, it's good business. They're employing over 50 employees, I believe, at this one particular testing laboratory. So this is just basically cleaning up the language, from my understanding, Madam City Manager,

David Penaloza

correct of what we already have allowed in our city ordinance?

You're absolutely correct, and it will provide relief to the existing businesses, and it will also help attract additional businesses.

You know, the city was going through uncharted waters on this. It was very difficult for us to put an ordinance together regarding cannabis, and then when the adult use came on board, We were doing our very, very best, and we were at this dais for hours. Remember, Councilmember Salonio, we were here day after day trying to straighten this thing out. And so we were hoping we could get some clean up language today, maybe in November after the next election. All right, that's my final comment. If we can get the mayor back in, please.

Thank you, Steven.

All right, so our next item. Wait.

75G.

Mr. Mayor, before you move on, I think the city attorney wanted to ask a question.

Sonia R. Carvalho

Yeah, just for our two council members, Mayor and Councilmember that recused yourself, the FBPC does require, if you're going to recuse yourself, that you just stay on the record what the nature of your conflict may be, and that will make sure that we do full disclosures in accordance with the law.

In my case, my main issue is the fact that my finance director for my campaigns is president of the Cannabis Association. And so I think I'm too close to the industry to be voting on it. And out of an abundance of caution, I just prefer to keep a distance and not to participate at all. And then, Councillor Sarmiento.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I recuse myself because I'm special legal counsel to other public agencies that have regulated the area of cannabis. And I've worked on the legal work, so I don't want there to be any confusion with any applicants that may be in other jurisdictions and ours. So also, out of an abundance of caution, I just simply recuse myself in anything that's related to cannabis here, so there's no confusion.

All right, with that, Madam Clerk, what's the next item?

75G.

Okay, this is someplace for a public hearing, and it's talking about certain development design standards of the Transit Zoning Code. Do we have any speakers on this item?

We have no speakers but have received written correspondence and has been placed on the dais.

All right, please include that in the record. Seeing no staff presentation, I will close the public hearing, bring it to Council for a motion.

David Penaloza

Motion approved. I'd like to make a motion to continue it for 30 days.

All right. Is it time sensitive? Any comment from staff?

A yes or no is good. Yes, it's time sensitive. That is not good.

If I could explain, Mayor.

Okay.

So it's really just a cleanup of amendments to the development and design standards. When you implemented this zoning code back in 2010, you envisioned attracting a certain level of building development activity in the area. And to date, you really haven't achieved what your vision was back then. By making these amendments, you will be facilitating three actual developments within our city that are going to be coming before you shortly.

David Penaloza

Can I make that? Yes.

David Penaloza

I'm not comfortable with the item just because there's a lot in it that wasn't clarified by either the staff report, the 80-page staff report, that I actually, believe it or not, read most of. and staff, I know staff wanted to meet last week over other projects, but this was one that should, that staff should have pressed on meeting with us, or at least me.

David Penaloza

So there was a lot of it that I don't understand. And just even meeting with certain members of the public, I was told that this item would pretty much remove the need for any applicant to come before the council for any zoning change or request on parking requirements or setbacks and just keep it solely to the Planning Commission's discretion. I know it's too similar to the bills that have been presented in the state, taking local control away from cities.

David Penaloza

And I think that's similar to what, and again, this is me not understanding the entirety of it and what exactly it means. I know that it lists downtown, but then towards the end it says citywide, and this would affect citywide zoning and requirements. So I'm not comfortable with it because it uh tries to I believe cut back on on council say so that's those are my comments I think as a city council we were elected to make these decisions and

David Penaloza

not just you know hand it over to a the Planning Commission or you know app

developers well why don't we do a continuance even though it is time sensitive may we continue to that second special meeting in June can I just go

David Penaloza

ahead question so why is this time sensitive and how did this come about how did this because I hadn't heard of it for about until about a month ago and I just wasn't sure there there's so many things that are time sensitive and more pressing and I just feel get dragged on for about a year until we finally see something but something like this just pops out of nowhere and it's like oh it's time sensitive it's got to get rushed so there was no briefing on it there's no presentation it's very heavy there's a lot of changes in it so I would like to know what these changes are what it means for any future development I

David Penaloza

know just you know there's a there's a possibility that you know come a year and a half from now will only be councilwoman Iglesias and I sitting on this dais and we're stuck with these decisions so I I want to see you know what this means because this is a lot of changes.

Are you asking for a presentation on the history of the item as to why

David Penaloza

it's before you now? What the changes are, the history on it, why the changes came out. Let's go ahead. Let's do it.

Maybe it'll illustrate. Executive Director Min, if you can just briefly describe why we are today before them with this item and potentially the three projects.

So the proposed amendment to the Transit Zoning Code will make some changes to design guidelines as well as opportunity for using existing parking tools that are already within the plan to apply to other parts of the city. The Transit Zoning Code as you know encompasses the downtown area and when it was adopted that it was envisioned that it would help to stimulate development in downtown, create reuse of the existing parcel. However, we have not seen as a city since 2006, since its adoption, many projects come forwards.

And the reason being for that is that in the drafting of the ordinance, it really envisioned consolidating of lots and using larger lots that are not available in downtown. So the standards that are being put into place does not make it practical to develop any project and any development and does not encourage any new reuse of recycling of properties. So the minor adjustment are items that will help some of the projects that are coming forward where it's now feasible, but because of the size of the lots and the limitation of downtown, they're either needing

to go through a long list of variances, which I don't think as a city we want to really look at variances as the norm of the land use practice, recognizing that those variances can very easily be accommodated and be changed in a zoning code that's outdated, in a zoning code that does not create practicality for development. If we change it, we allow for all of that to occur. We're not asking to take authority away from what's already there. what we're asking is that reduce the number of variances that we would require for these development projects to occur. These are very transformative projects for downtown.

They create additional residential, they create a hotel, they create restaurants, activities, all of the things that you want to go into downtown to help create a lively downtown. It also put into place mechanism for parking that allows us as a city to better utilize the public spaces in structures that we have currently. It opened that up for helping to stimulate growth, stimulate business activity in downtown. So those are in summary the changes. We do have a detailed presentation

if you want us to go through that, but in summary that's what we're asking for. the reason why it's time sensitive is that we do have three projects as I mentioned that if we take forward to you would require a whole list of variances and variances while we think they're worthwhile for the project as a land use practice we don't believe that it's good planning practice to recommend that many variances for a project in order for it to happen so that is the reason that we're asking that the council consider this and really help to look at this not only at land use filing project but also as an

economic development tool for downtown. Thank you man. I just want to I just think

David Penaloza

that that we should look at projects as a case-by-case basis. It shouldn't be a blanket you know change to to facilitate across the board because none of the three projects you mentioned have actually been approved they just kind of been they're going through public hearings and sunshine ordinances so we shouldn't you know put the cart before the horse when it comes to that we should look at each one and and look at each project you know on its own and not just you know because it's not just it doesn't restrict it to just downtown it's it's includes the transit district and urban center but there's a lot of areas in the

David Penaloza

city they're also zoned urban center and according to the to the notice at the end of the staff report it says that this is a citywide change not just restricted to the downtown area so I don't think that it's pressing I think it can be seen with each project that comes before us and we can make those decisions and changes with each one so I mean that's just those are my my comments and I mean that that presentation would be helpful do you

want it now or you want it later I think it's I mean how long is the

presentation we can make it as long as you would like council member where is

David Penaloza

Is it a slideshow?

What is it? Give it to us. Just keep moving, but give it to us.

Okay, so Candida, the planning manager, will present the item.

David Penaloza

And I know Min said that it wouldn't take authority away from the council, but it's like that jamboree project that we've seen where the planning commission approved whatever they requested and they only had 10 days to appeal anything because of things like the MIMU that was put in and that gives them that authority to do things like that. And I think that these projects should be approved by the city council.

Mayor and Council, while they're preparing for the presentation, I'd like to submit a correction for the record. There is no written correspondence for Item 75G.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. We're looking tonight at the Transit Zoning Code amendments, and we are looking in gray.

The Transit Zoning Code applies to, is a zoning code that's separate from the rest of our code. It is designed to specifically address this area that's defined up on the map right now. And within this area, we're really looking at two areas where we're making the most changes, and that is the red area in the right, on the lower right, and the surrounding orange area. The red area is called the downtown district, and the orange area is referred to as urban center.

The proposed amendments that we are going to be doing are building height, parking, setbacks in Mansing, over open space, as well as some development standards for lot depth and driveway width. And we're looking at typical or ethical errors and...

I'm having problems with this.

On the building height amendment, we're looking at two types of buildings. That's the form-based code identifies within those colored areas on the map what types, styles of buildings can go into those areas. and then it sets up criteria for how they can be built. The one that we're looking at on this one is our largest building is the flex block building in the downtown area, and that can go a maximum of 10 stories tall. We would like to be able to require a second type of building, which is called line block,

and increase that from 5 to 10 stories. And the difference between a flex block is that the flex block has habitable space all the way around, but in a line block building, you may on one side have, say, a garage or a non-habitable parking structure. So you could have a multi-tiered parking structure for that building. Thank you. Nice. The second option that we're looking at is in-lieu fee options for parking.

The transit zoning code, just like all of our zoning codes, allows us to, says that when you increase the size of a building, so you're adding more square footage, or when you're changing from a use that, say, has a lower parking requirement, like an office use to higher parking requirement use like a restaurant, then you have to provide more parking. And so what the Transit Zoning Code says in the downtown district

and the TV district, which is right around the transit center by Sartak, you can either pay an in-lieu fee and participate in a Park Once program. Now, neither one of these programs have been adopted yet by the council, but what we'd like to ask you to do before we adopt them is to allow the option to do either one or the other, and then also change the wording so that we could use it in the orange area that surrounded downtown as well.

The next parking, the next is the historic building parking exemption. historic in the downtown district we allow designated historic structures to not provide additional part have to provide additional parking when they're unless they're adding on to the building or again changing to a higher use we would like to expand that area from just the downtown district to the area surrounding that and that would positively impact

affect a number of historic structures which have not been able to be developed before like the the former funeral parlor across from the courthouse as well as the Pacific Symphony building it would give them some options can can can you

David Penaloza

go over that more in detail of what exactly those options are? Why would we want to expand that to other areas in the city for them to do in lieu options for parking requirements?

We just want to do it in the transit zoning code area, which was the large area. The only other area that we're asking to extend it to is the orange area that was on the first map, that orange area that's directly around downtown, because we're finding that the area is directly adjacent to the red district, the orange district urban center, are also requesting to have some of the advantages that the downtown district has.

so for the historic district in that orange district the Pacific Symphony building that's right across from the post office you know the white building that building has no parking on site and so it's really inhibiting development options to it in addition the funeral parlor that's across from the courthouse is also in the orange district So those two buildings, and I think there are eight other structures that might be affected by that. Setback amendments.

We've talked about this a lot. In the downtown area, in all the transit zone area are small. They tend to be 120, 125 feet. We say that in the downtown district, that red zone, that we're asking to eliminate the requirement. They have a requirement there that says you have to have a 100-foot setback from the property line when you go over seven stories. So it's 100-foot. Well, we only have 125-foot depth lots.

so that means you'd have this little thing that looks like a bench. I mean, it wouldn't make any sense at all, so it's just a silly standard, and we'd like to eliminate that. In addition, in terms of the massing amendments, we have two requirements that create these tiered, we require setbacks from the third and the sixth floor, and then to the 6th to the 8th. So it has to keep getting smaller and smaller as it goes up. This creates kind of strange sorts of aesthetics

with these pyramid-shaped buildings. And in addition to that, it adds costs and some engineering constraints that we found have been difficult for developers to address.

David Penaloza

Just a quick question. If a developer were to approach us and say, hey, I want to construct this apartment or whatever building with the proposed massing, can we just as a council approve it, like I said, on a case-by-case basis? I mean, that is possible because...

This is our law. So this is our law. So this is like our regular zoning. you would have to approve a variance to do that, and that would be approved by the Planning Commission, but could be appealed to you.

David Penaloza

So why not just leave that as it? It's what I don't understand.

Because it creates additional costs.

David Penaloza

Conversations with the city council.

David Penaloza

with a developer, which is really that's what it is. It's trying to limit the discussion and dialogue between the city council and any future development. I don't think that's the intent. I

think the intent is to give clear direction to developers on what you want to see. So these ordinances are designed to reflect your beliefs and your standards. And if this is something that you want then you shouldn't you shouldn't be adopting it but if it is something that you want you should because what we do at the counter when a developer comes in we say this is our law this is what the council has adopted and and that's the information that we give to them so but you could

David Penaloza

go to the council and seek for a any kind of zoning change on an individual

individual basis. Let's go through the staff report and then perhaps we can discuss that at a later date. Another amendment that we have in the code, a requirement that we have in the code right now, is that the open space can only be in the side or the rear yard setback. and we find that it's more inviting for public enjoyment to have it in the front yard setback along the street and it also increases security because you have more eyes on the street and it's more available and open to the public.

Again, we talked earlier about how the lot depth dimensions were often right now the minimum lot definitions for the building types that are permitted in the downtown district are 130, 170. And so we don't have lots that are that depth, so it doesn't make sense to have a requirement. So we're suggesting that it be reduced to 100 feet.

and ultimately the code has, this is the second to the last one, the code has driveway requirements that say the minimum width of a driveway and the maximum width of a driveway, depending on whether it's one or two aisles. That has become problematic for us because trash and fire are the most important things, difficult things to work around when you're working in downtown on small streets and small lots. And so as a result of that, we would like to be able to have some flexibility to administratively,

that is by staff, approve an alteration to that. And so we would add language to it that would say if it is for fire protection or for trash pickup collection services, we would be able to modify that requirement. at an administrative level. And with making these changes in terms of the lot devs and others, they're included in numerous tables throughout the document, and we would like, we're also recommending that we be able to make those changes to the various tables so that it's consistent throughout the document.

And that concludes staff presentation, and if you have any questions, I'd be happy to address them.

David Penaloza

Yeah, just from watching the presentation, I'm comfortable with most of it except the parking changes and the open space changes. But the other ones, I'd be okay to move along. With that said, I would like more information on the other items. So if we could, I know there's I'm sure hundreds of issues in our city that are more important and pressing than this and we keep pushing them off. So I don't mind pushing this one 30 days.

Just a quick question on these. The reason I think we bring this type of action before us or this recommendation before us is because we have different districts within our city. We have different impacts and different conditions within our city. If we imposed conditions that were appropriate for a residential neighborhood, single-family homes, in an area where there are old commercial structures and have frontages out to the property line, it doesn't make sense. We'd never be able to develop any of those buildings.

We'd never be able to condition those buildings for anybody to do business, reside, or work there. And there's plenty of examples of how these standards have to be relaxed. In cities that are densely populated, just like ours, they have district zoning for them. Just like this transit zoning is specific to an area that is very old, right? We would never allow these conditions in one of our residential areas because it doesn't make any sense.

So I think what staff is trying to do is create principles for us so we can adopt certain conditions for areas that are more conducive to these types of criteria that you're talking about. So I guess that's where I'm seeing. I see the concern from some of the council members that you don't want to relax anything, but there are places where you just don't have a choice or else to have a 15-foot setback or a 10-foot setback where you have buildings that were built in the 1920s or 1910s that have zero setback. What are we going to do with those buildings? What are we going to do with those conditions?

Not allow them to apply for any conditional use permits, permitting. We're trying to do adaptive reuse on second floors of those buildings. How are we going to be able to grant them any sort of relief for them to develop those and fill those? So I think we just need to understand we have a very diverse city when it comes to what sort of uses, what sort of intensity of residentials, commercial, industrial. So these standards have to be flexible enough and I think we have to have standards that apply to district specific areas. So is that what staff is trying to do with something like this?

Thank you, Council Member. You were much more eloquent than I think I have been on this item. So definitely the history behind it was that you had a vision for your downtown area, and you wanted to entice development consistent with the downtown area. You attempted it with the zoning code that you put in place, but as you can see, there are a lot of hiccups associated with it. And if you want to treat the entire area consistent and fairly to all developers, by adjusting your zoning code, you're enabling that for them, too. So as far as having them come to council, it's actually the opposite.

If you apply it and it is part of the zoning code, then the developers don't have to come to council. They can move their project forward. And developers are looking for certainty in the developments that they're doing right now in Orange County. And if they can go in an area and see exactly what those standards are, they're more likely to invest in that area. So if this is consistent with your vision for that area, we strongly recommend you do adopt it.

My last question is, and I know Sonia isn't here, but are there appellate rights that we have in the event that an applicant goes to the commission, they get approval, and for whatever reason we don't feel like it was a sound approval, could those decisions that were made by the commission that has, and I'm assuming this is planning commission, and they do have quasi-judicial authority, those decisions could still be appealed because we sit as an appellate body as well.

Yes, any item that you either, if you disagree with the planning commission's decision for some basis, or if you believe that the project is of regional significance, you can ask that they be brought up onto an agenda, and then a majority of the members would have to vote to schedule it for a public hearing to consider that item.

So we couldn't be circumvented, I guess is my point.

No, no.

Sonia R. Carvalho

I would like to clarify for you that it's not an automatic right to appeal. You used to have a provision in your code that would have allowed a council member to have an automatic right of direct appeal to the council. Your new process, as dictated by some case law that came down, is that you have the right to call up the item and to convince your colleagues why you think it's a matter of significance or why you think the commission did something improper. If you cannot get a majority vote to schedule the appeal hearing, then the Planning Commission decision would stand.

But that's still an appellate path that we have to bring it back here.

David Penaloza

And that's the problem. I know there were three projects that were used as examples of why this came before us. And I've seen all three projects. And I mean, they're on the right path. I've seen them. They look beautiful. I'm a fan of them. so now it's just a thing of coming before us for each one and say hey these are the changes that we're not what we're we want to you know ask for okay let's let's vote and and approve them like we've had with other projects that's that's the the whole thing that it it really is taking

David Penaloza

control away from the city council because it will take I could say I'm appealing this but But now I have to convince my colleagues about doing that so the chances are slim and the decision of the Planning Commission does stand. The Planning Commission is just, it's intended to be a recommending body at the end of the day. But because of things like the MIMU, things like now these proposed changes, it keeps limiting that control from the City Council. So it's just, and why are we here?

Sonia R. Carvalho

Again, and sorry, but when we use legal terms, we want to make sure that we're being precise. So in these cases, the Planning Commission wouldn't be a recommending body. Sometimes the Planning Commission is a recommending body, as you saw this evening on potential zoning code amendments. They recommend zoning code amendments to you. But other times, if you were to adopt this, then the Planning Commission is the decision making body. And there's a difference between a legislative decision, we've talked about that. On a zoning code, it's totally legislative. What do I think? What do I want?

Sonia R. Carvalho

When it comes from the Planning Commission as a decision, it's quasi-adjudicative, meaning that when it comes to you, the standard for you to use and the findings you need are at a higher level to overturn the Planning Commission decision. So zoning code decisions are legislative. Decisions on a CUP, a variance, or like a site plan, for example, where they've made findings, when and if it came to you, you would actually have to overturn those findings with new evidence that came before you. Not just, I don't like it, I happen to have a difference of opinion. So there are some decisions here that would be legislative.

Sonia R. Carvalho

There are mostly decisions that are adjudicative.

David Penaloza

Madam City Attorney, so do these proposed changes, do they, like you said, give more of an approving power to the Planning Commission?

David Penaloza

That's pretty much what I understood. I asked the city attorney.

David Penaloza

Madam city attorney.

Sonia R. Carvalho

I think when you say power, I don't know that it's power necessarily, but you're giving them the right to approve, and it's not making a recommendation to you. So in some ways, I suppose one could say that vests more authority in them. Their decisions have more authority.

I just want to make some clarity. So let's just keep the example to the three current projects that we have. most two of the project actually does not have a review process that required it to go to city council the review process stops with staff and if there are variances then it would go to the Planning Commission by our charter the variances and conditional use permit are approved by the Planning Commission so those would not go to council unless a project have legislative actions such as a zone change or general plan amendment, which one project does, that project will continue to go to council.

So that project, if it has that general plan requirements, then it does. But, you know, so in essence, what we're wanting to do is to create certainty when we talk to the public about development in downtown. We want to share with our development community what the city vision is looking for. as I've been in this process, this career for 30 years. All developers will tell me the best thing that we, as a city, could tell them is what we want and how long does it take for us to review. They wouldn't mind going through the review process or anything,

but they just want to know what the city is expecting. This is part of something that we can help downtown and our development community to say that this is the vision. to go through every project and say, yes, this is what the code says, but we would need to do this. I think that leaves a certain level of uncertainty that as much as we can assure them, they still have to go through the hearing process. And that could mean a difference between whether they want to invest $30, $40, $100 million of private investment or just looking at other places.

Now, I'm not saying that all developments are good development, but if someone is looking at creating that much investment into our city, I think we should at least help a certain level of certainty. That's really what the staff is recommending.

David Penaloza

Which, I mean, I agree with what you said, and I agree with what Councilmember Sarmiento said. And this isn't, you know, my position isn't to forbid developers from, it's like, no, I encourage you to come. develop in our city and and nothing in life is certain uh you know to begin with but we should be able to to make these decisions on a on a project by project basis not you know so i'm just

not comfortable with it all right so we just spent half an hour going around in circles here they are they are but we're not moving so um so is there any decision just move it to to continue it.

Yeah, Mr. Mayor on that, I don't think we ever got an answer as to why it's time sensitive. What's the date or reason?

Time sensitive because there are three projects that are moving forward and if you adopt this change, their process that they will follow is different than what they would follow now.

It'll just all get delayed. Maybe a two week continuance?

David Penaloza

And then these projects, that's what I'm saying, could come and ask us for these changes.

No, they're going to have to do their own EIRs. They're going to have to do their own process versus an umbrella process.

It would add substantial steps to the projects. It's a lot of money and a lot of time. Money and time.

Go ahead.

So who's going to be paying for this that you're talking about? I really agree with what Council Member Peñalosa has been saying, and it's true. I believe that we should have the final say as a City Council. So if it's going to be laid more on the developer's side, I'm okay.

Look, the cost is going to be on the developer's side, but it's going to take a lot longer for developers to come to us.

David Penaloza

There's three of them lined up, so I don't think it's...

No, no, but they're hoping that we approve this so they can come quicker. If we don't approve this, maybe we just added six months to a year before they come to us. That's what they're asking for.

One final comment, Mr. Mayor. I just want to thank the staff for all the hard work. I know they're trying to help. I know they're doing their best. And I appreciate that, and I trust you guys. Thank you.

David Penaloza

All right. Just one final question. What areas of downtown or are these zone changes or ordinance changes restricted to what streets? Because I know that the downtown district keeps being named, but in the public notification, it says the proposed amendments are citywide and the project is not located within the boundaries of one single neighborhood. So these are, I know it's just one little area of the city that's singled out, but these are changes across the city.

Right now, what we're talking about is the red area that you see. So the northernmost area is Civic Center Drive, and we're talking about the red and orange areas.

David Penaloza

Only or citywide? I understand the areas we're talking about, but these changes, do they affect the entire city?

These changes only affect this area.

David Penaloza

Okay, that's a good question. So why does a public notification say the proposed amendments are citywide?

I'm not sure where it says that.

David Penaloza

Page 7 of the 75G staff report.

Page 7.

This is strategic.

The proposed amendments are citywide.

David Penaloza

Table 2, public notification and community outreach.

The city is not looking. Oh.

That is an error. That would be an error. And so this is there, but the issue is they're not within a single neighborhood. That's our standard language that we use for carbon notes. So that is an error. Yeah.

Why don't we continue it a couple weeks and see where we're at then?

Okay, clean that up and then continue it.

I think what was on the floor was to continue it for 30 days.

Yeah, that was the motion.

Right.

30 days is going to negatively impact some of these projects, right?

I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.

Will 30 days be different for the projects than two weeks?

Probably not substantially.

Let's just go 30 days then.

David Penaloza

All right, let's make a motion. Yeah, I made a motion to continue for 30 days.

All right, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, the motion carries. Next. Is that 75H, madam?

Yes, that's correct.

All right, there's a time and place for a public hearing on 75H. Let me call on Marisol Cárdenas, I believe he is, from Ward 6.

Hello, everybody. How are you doing? I'm tired. I'll be brief. My name is Marisol Cárdenas, and I was born and raised here in the city of Santa Ana. I have worked diligently to better the lives of those I come in contact with through my work as a teacher and as a volunteer, as a catechist in the city of Santa Ana. I come in representation of my neighbors, my students, and their families in Ward 6, CECI, your ward. In regards to the concerns over the HFN project, which will add 18 units,

in the agenda it says that there's 17 units added, while the website and the city says that there's 18. So there's a discrepancy between both things. Additional dwelling units located directly north of Centennial Park. The area where this project will be built will impact the community greatly in an adverse way. The traffic in this area, Edinger and Fairview, is highly impacted since there are so many schools within the vicinity, including Godinez High School, Valley, Diamond Elementary, Car Intermediate, Mitchell Elementary,

Sunflower Preschool, School of Our Lady, and others, including the Heritage Museum. There is so much traffic as it is now, and having these new complexes will attract even more congestion and residents to the area which is unthinkable to us. My greatest concern is the safety of the residents there. with so much traffic, emergency services would be significantly delayed not only to the residents but to the nearby schools as well. There are also no adequate pedestrian pathways since there is literally no sidewalk on the south side of Edinger between Fairview and Greenville Street

for residents to walk and students to and fro in the area. This infrastructure needs to be addressed before any additional dwelling units are placed and develop in that area. I understand there was an analysis to traffic flow, yet these concerns were not foreseen. We would like the council to address these dire conditions that were overlooked before moving forward. Thank you.

All right. Seeing no staff presentation, I'll close the public hearing, bring it back to council. Is there a motion?

I have questions.

Okay, questions? Council Member Iglesias, let's start the clock.

Okay. So I just want to thank staff for providing us a presentation on this and giving us information on, not a presentation, but giving us the information. And I know it came before the Planning Commission, and I believe they all recommended for it to be approved. And it's something that we have been asking on that side of town. That's my neighborhood, Windsor Village. And it's something that it's needed because that vacant lot, all it does, it attracts a lot of,

sometimes you attract vagrancy and it'll attract a lot of dumping on that side. And so I've seen the, I guess, the information that you've given us, like the slides of the project and what it's going to look like. And I like it. I believe it'll make our area look nicer. But those are concerns what the young lady just expressed right now, the concerns on the traffic. That is something that I would like for staff to see if they could provide us some input and some new information on how they're going to address the traffic.

Because when you get out of there, you could only make a right turn because it's so close to the light. So I don't know if making a left turn is going to create some type of traffic, I guess.

Stop talking. You guys are distracting me. Okay, so the traffic, is it going to cause more of a burden on the neighbors that live there? And also, another thing that I've asked the city staff is when it rains right there, it becomes like a little lake. And it's right on the corner of Mohawk and Fairview. have we even addressed that because if not all of that is going to be going into the you know into the new development and also all that traffic I

mean all that water goes into our neighborhood so that's another question and the other question one of the concerns that I spoke to all the neighbors that that back into that into that property and most of them were in favor the ones that I talked to they were in favor of the project is gonna going to make it look nicer, but their biggest concern is parking. How is the, I would say the property owner or the developer going to control that they're going to be parking within? So that's another question. And so if anyone can address those questions, I would appreciate it because I only have five minutes.

Now two now left.

Okay, Councilmember Iglesias, I will ask Candida, who's the planning manager. with regards to answer the questions on the traffic and on the parking standards. Concerning the flooding, I've already reported that to our Public Works Department.

Okay, and then they'll be addressing it before the construction takes place? Hopefully, yes. Okay.

The townhomes are built in compliance with our zoning code, which means that they have four spaces per unit. two are in a garage, and two are open surface parking spaces. In regards to traffic, the traffic comment, we did do a traffic study on 18 units. The project was originally proposed with 18 units. The applicant decided to reduce the number of units to reduce other impacts and create a better site plan for the project. and so the traffic impacts are assumed to be less than the 18 units.

However, our traffic engineer, Tag Higgins, is here to answer questions on the comments that were made on the traffic. And it's going to be 17 units, right? Pardon me, the project is 17 units. Yes, the project is 17 units.

and regarding the drainage tag Higgins from Public Works may be able to address that question as well but the site was designed to drain it did comply with

its NPDS requirements

I have no idea what NPDS is

I can expand on that It goes into storm drains. Good evening. Ted Higgins, Public Works Principal Engineer.

Regarding the traffic, there was a study done at the intersection. In the PM, the afternoon peak hour, the level of service is A. In the morning, when the school is loading across the street, level of service D, which is acceptable through the city. With a 17-unit development, that doesn't add very much traffic. It's about 100 trips in a day.

Frankly, that's less than what would typically trigger a traffic study. But because of the proximity to the existing intersection, we asked the developers consultant to look at that.

And then Edinger itself only gets around 28,000 cars in a day, which, again, is for the capacity that's out there, it's two lanes each direction and a two-way left turn lane. It can handle a lot more cars than that. So that's a level of service C, again, acceptable from our standards.

Regarding the drainage, Canada brought up it's required to go through NPDES process. It's just a national pollutant discharge elimination system. That's what that stands for. We require the developers to do a water quality management plan for their property so that any flow in their property, a portion of the first storm is captured on their site before it heads out into the street.

And then it would just flow out into the street after that and then into Edinger.

If I may, it's just when it rains and it's been raining a lot, it's an issue. And like the young lady was saying, in order to cross on Mohawk, you can't cross on the first. You have to kind of cross on Edinger, then go to the other side, and then cross there.

I understand. I think the flooding issue on the street will be something that public works will have to take a look at. I think the important thing here is that the site itself is today, without the development, is discharging more water. Once the development is put in place, it's going to be required, as Tag said, to retain some of the water on site. So when it rains, you won't have the immediate flooding. So basically you are reducing the amount of water coming off the site with the development. Does that make sense? because they require to retain on site.

The water is, right now it just flows off the site because there's no development. The development will be required to have a retention system built on the property so that it retains water on the site.

I guess I just have to wait to see it. But if you could, Public Works, if you guys can make that a priority because that is something that we're concerned about. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. All right, so where are we?

I know. Do we have a motion?

Not a motion yet, and also the applicant would like to make a...

Well, they don't have to speak, but if they want to speak...

Are they here? Because I've never met them.

Are they here? If they're not here, let's move on.

I think some individual raised their hand. I do have a question, though, maybe as they come up or after, Mr. Mayor.

All right, come on down real quick, please.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and councilman and woman. My name is David Yung. I represent the Havan project developer.

I'm here to answer any questions that you might have regarding the project. Go ahead, Hosein.

Okay. For the applicant or for staff, the one lady made some comments and she had some very specific questions.

I would think now might be the opportunity to answer them, or how would we verify if any of her concerns are legitimate? Some sounded legitimate to me.

We haven't addressed the concern of the pedestrian walking.

Right. All right. So there are a number of other questions. Please, go ahead, Jose. So how can that be responded to, or maybe it's a question for the city attorney?

Well, I believe her question's related to the pedestrian safety and the lack of sidewalks, and then the traffic and the circulation. So I think we partially answered her questions. But if we could speak to the sidewalk, I guess that would be a remaining area that you're seeking an answer to. So, T, can you take that?

That's the one. And then she had also asked, are there 17 or 18?

We clarified that it's 17 yards.

Okay, okay. I want to make sure everybody understood that.

Good evening again. Regarding the sidewalk, the area that she is talking about is about 2,000 feet away from the property. It's quite a ways. 2,000 feet is like two or three blocks. It's about a third of a mile.

Yeah. It's crossing the street from the back.

Wow, see, like that's a big discrepancy.

I don't know. But would that, I mean, because if it is close, then maybe there should be some opportunity to blend that into this project. If it really is 2,000 feet away, then that is more of a public work separate consideration thing. So, or maybe there's a way to move this forward, but later just address that and any potential impact. I mean for me it does it does get me down when I see parts of town that still don't have sidewalks and when we do major new improvements like this because it'll involve plumbing or construction of the street it's a good time to do

that I am preferably at a developer's expense rather than a city's expense so that's why I was wanting a better clarification of questions just to

provide a little more information in our development engineering part of Public we require improvements along the frontage very often and then we'll extend some reasonable distance away if it kind of flows and meets requirements. The area that was contained in an email where the sidewalk is missing is on the other side of the street, the south side of the street, and on the other side of Fairview. So it's between Fairview and Greenville.

And I took a look to see exactly where that was, and as I say, it's about 1,800, 1,900 feet away.

So you saw both addresses. sister you're saying 1900 feet which is quite a distance she's saying like 50 feet

let's let's try to stay focused this is not the way to to do this my questions are just around that

so again maybe there's a way to address that separately but I mean I don't want to see no sidewalk so close to it because people aren't going to be walking and there's other considerations.

No, no. Any suggestions from staff?

I don't believe it's something that we're going to be able to require the developer based on the information of the proximity to the development. I certainly can take another look at it.

But there's a discrepancy on the proximity. Is it 1,900 feet or 50 feet?

That's a substantial difference.

Right, but it's also a thing of, you know, we have GPS, we have maps, and maybe we can postpone this item so that they can regroup and look at dots on the map to verify. Want to continue it and try to figure it out? Yeah, yeah. Go for a continuance. I move a two-week continuance. All right.

If I may speak, if you look on Google Maps.

Now there's a substitute motion to continue.

I'll second that.

So, but not two weeks. There's two weeks is the 18th. We want to do the budget then. Maybe 30 days instead?

Either at the discretion of the city manager. All right. Let's give her the authority.

Mary, would you like to allow the applicant? I think he has a comment relative. Yes.

Yeah, Councilman, if we can look on Google Maps very quickly, we can see that in front of a project we have a complete sidewalk already and the area that the lady is talking about is substantially quite a distance away so

I mean usually I'd like independent verification and that's why I suggested maybe continuing this to later in the meeting but there was another suggestion from our mayor that we continue this for two or two weeks or more we really like

to we can verify with planning staff immediately and we can continue later on in this meeting if that's possible I know but there's no substitute motion

let's see if that fails those in favor of the substitute but you don't have to when there's substitute motion the substitute motion gets voted on first and if it fails then you go to the original motion.

What's the substitute motion?

Substitute motion is basically about a two-week attendance or whatever that next special meeting is going to be. May by then we have this all figured out.

So those in favor of the substitute, please say aye. Aye. No. Those opposed? No. No. So two no's and four yes's, so motion carries. All right, next. what is the next item madam clerk item 75 I 75 I this is another public hearing

was it was this one continued or no no this one is not continued all right so So, do we have any speaker cards on this item?

We do.

All right.

Adrian Esparza.

Come on down. Followed by Daniel Carcerci, I believe it is. Followed by Judy Edge. Welcome.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Council and Staff. Thank you for having me up here today. I want to speak on behalf of the Sunflower Legacy Project. in support of it on the business manager of Labor Local 652 and we proudly represent over 3400 members and about 1800 live here in the city of Santa Ana. The project will benefit Santa Ana business and the local economy. A project like this one will bring much needed housing and simultaneously support the business in the area, encourage new business, and spur employment growth. Santa Ana should continue to support projects like this to keep up with and surpass our neighborhood cities.

This project will provide 419 construction jobs, 184 indirect full-time and part-time jobs, and 80 induced full-time and part-time jobs within the city. Surrounding properties of Santa Ana would value, would definitely benefit from this attractive residential development, as would surrounding restaurants and businesses. We need opportunities for Santa Ana families to grow their careers, but still remain close. without quality projects like this one, we will lose out on new business and lose our young workforce to other cities. Our children need to see Santa Ana as a place they can live, work, and grow.

We cannot afford to turn aside the new economic and housing opportunities provided by this project that will improve Santa Ana. Our city continues to experience multi-million dollar budget deficits and more tough fiscal choices may be on the horizon. This project will generate more revenue to the city in one year than the existing use is projected to generate over the next 25 years. We desperately need projects that provide funding and entice businesses to come to our community. We ask you support and we ask that you vote yes on this project and get it approved for tonight. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Daniel, Judy Edge, if you can come on down to the front, followed by Tammy Frias.

Hi, I'm Daniel Garcia, lifelong resident of Santa Ana. I support this project purely because it just can bring more taxpayers to a city that needs more tax money. Thank you.

after Judy, Tammy, and then Brian Henney

Mayor and Council

speak into the mic please Judy

Mayor and Council it's been a long time I've never been here without Vic so I'll get a grip

First I'd like to thank you Councilman Sorrento for putting up with me for almost 12 years It's almost 12 years that we've gone around and around with my asphalt my streets I wish you'd pass this down and let the council pass that down and let the council feel of it and so while you're doing that I'm not against the units. I think they'll be beautiful. But I do have three issues.

When I found out that they're only going to underground the utility poles from Flower in front of their project, I was frankly insulted. I told them at the planning commission meeting I thought it was one way and short-sighted. And if you don't know the area, from Main Street all the way down to Flower to the drainage ditch right now, there's utility poles. And they're going to take down those and leave the rest of them down there. I've been in those home, my home, for 42 years.

and

planning got me this Nexus, Mayor you remember Nexus and all the way back to Nexus in 2005 we were promised that our utility lines would go underground and after all these years I'm asking you and the city that been here a long time for you guys to make that end of the city as nice as you're going to make main place. That's an entrance into the city. Everybody that comes in that goes to the courthouses, to City Hall, South Coast Plaza, and to the Farming Arts Center,

they travel that sunflower street. So I put one of these on your desk. Hi. Welcome to the city. I can't say madam, so Ms. or Christine. City Manager. And I put one of these up here when I showed you that street. In the last few years, Nexus, the mark, and this project, over $2 million in lieu of park funds.

not one penny of in lieu of park funds has been spent on Sandpoint Park in front of my house and I'll hurry mayor. The park is right there, not one dime spent. And I'm asking you to set aside part of that money so that we can keep our streets in my neighborhood up to date. That's that issue. And so the other issue is a safety issue. from Flower going east to Main Street, you have no ingress. There's not an ingress into the apartments.

If you want to go home, if you're going east and you want to go, you have to make a very dangerous U-turn at Ross. There should be a left-turn pocket put in there. and I know Tague is going to get up and say but I want to hear all of the survey that they've done

it's been read for a while

alright thank you sir

Brian Tammy Frias and Brian and then

Mendoza or Melendez

Hi thank you Mayor Polito and City Council Members for allowing me to speak on behalf of the Sandpoint Neighborhood Association. My name is Tammy Frias. I'm the president of Sandpoint Neighborhood Association. I'm going to go with my notes because I know we're all tired and you good people want to go home. So we have participated in and held numerous notice meetings in our community regarding the proposed sunflower project, five to be exact. Three of those had notices directly mailed to the homeowners so we could get the maximum participation possible.

The Sunshine Ordinance Protocol stated that only residents within a radius of 500 feet of the site were mailed notices. But we took it a step further and hand-delivered notices of that meeting to every resident on the south side of Sand Point. Of the 400-plus residents that reside on that side of Sand Point, subtracting all the board members that came, 31 residents in total attended. Several key issues were raised, most of which we had already anticipated would come up. We had already been working with the developer at that particular time for over a year on a resolution to the concerns we knew would arise from the community.

Parking was the number one issue. How many spaces per unit? Well, we were very adamant on the two spaces, and we got it. The other was off-site parking in our neighborhood. We even met with Councilman Sarmiento on several occasions regarding this issue. Next was security, visual aesthetics, traffic safety, and Taft Elementary School. These were all the top concerns. As a result of working closely with legacy partners, the project has greatly changed because of our recommendations and comments to the developer and his team. Now fast forward. After two years, we have reached an amicable agreement with legacy partners.

It has been Sandpoint's position over the years to work with these developers, have an open line of communication with them in ways that would improve our neighborhood, for many years to come. As it stands now, the Board of Directors voted unanimously in favor of accepting this agreement. I'd also like to add that nine Board members do reside on that south side of Sandpoint, and one even backs up right to the project, and they'll be impacted by it mostly. But they still have chosen to accept it because they realize the benefits of the project outweigh any inconvenience. We are now in the process of finalizing the agreement

with our lawyers. Legacy partners are entering into this agreement with the Sandpoint Neighborhood Association to guarantee their commitment to us. They are also going to have a seat on our board. We would like your support of the Legacy Partners Sunflower Project this evening, and I thank you all for your time.

Brian.

Thank you, Mayor, City Council. My name is Brian Heaney. I pastor the church that's actually selling this property, and we face a lot of the same issues that you guys are in terms of budgeting and stuff. So we were trying to creatively approach new ways to serve our city and selling this property and replanting ourselves somewhere else within Santa Ana is part of our plan. So I'm sure it's understood at this point that we fully support this project. My family's lived in Santa Ana for the past 15 years and we want to see this city flourish. We spent over a year and a half vetting through about 15 different developers

to find one that would work with the local neighborhoods, the local schools, and frankly would bring a much-needed excellence to our side of Sunflower. As you probably know, there are major apartment complexes that are right across the street that reside in Costa Mesa and our side of the street in Santa Ana. Not really up to par. And I, at least frankly, have grown tired of the South Coast Metro stigma because it's Santa Ana, and we're proud to be Santa Ana. So we believe Legacy Partners fit everything that we would want in terms of character and competence

and would finish this project that would benefit local schools, local businesses, raise local property values, and benefit the economy long term. Additionally, our church wasn't looking to simply cash out on a property sale, but to use the revenue from this sale to reinvest into Santa Ana by developing a small business incubator and a community center for local entrepreneurs and non-profits that we'll give back to the city of Santa Ana communally, educationally, culturally, spiritually, and socially, on top of the obvious financial benefits that this is going to bring. And it's this project that makes all of that possible.

So thank you for your consideration and your support. Thank you. Anne?

Good evening. I'll keep it short. I just wanted to say my family has been in this community for over 40 years, and we support this project. It brings housing, much-needed housing, to the city, and it provides additional tax revenue by turning the church into an income-producing property for the city. Thank you.

Thank you. Spencer Miller.

And Diane Pritchard.

Thank you all. I'll be brief. I'm here on behalf of my parents who are residents in the Sandpoint community. And they're currently out of the country, but they felt it be very important that I stay here for six hours to convey their desire for this development to go through for a few reasons. that include their property, value obviously increasing the community, getting a much-needed upgrade, and for the broader vision of the church being executed and seeing Santa Ana continue to grow. So we, me and my parents, our entire family, are urging you guys to side with us, to vote

yes on this project and to vote for progress.

Thank you. Thank you, Diane.

Good evening. In the South Coast Metro, the 580 Anton is our newest residential community. And Legacy Partners has done a terrific job in developing a beautiful residential community with terrific amenities and a quality lifestyle. I've had an opportunity to talk to several residents who live there and they also enjoy the fact that they can walk to work walk to the Segersham Center, walk to South Coast Plaza walk to many restaurants I feel that the Sunflower Project like 580 Anton is a great residential opportunity a great lifestyle opportunity

and a great addition to South Coast Metro Thank you

Thank you Diane I understand the applicant wants to speak, and I'll call him up now, but I've got to tell you, I think you're about to have a project approved. And I don't know if you really want to add a whole lot to it.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and City Council. My name is Tim O'Brien. I'm with Legacy Partners.

I'll forego the presentation, but I would like to thank the city staff for two years of work. I'd like to thank Tammy Frias and the entire Sandpoint Community Board. I'd like to thank the Santa Ana Unified School District, who we worked out an agreement with and who support the project as well. Not here tonight, but they've submitted a letter. I have five other support letters in addition to theirs that I'll pass along.

And I'd like to thank Diane Pritchett for coming out with the South Coast Metro Alliance. I'm here to answer any questions.

Thank you. Just be around if you can. I'm going to close the public hearing. Is there a motion? Move the item. Question? Jose Solario? Move the item. Move the item. Is there a second? Second. Okay, we have two seconds. Thanks. Brief questions?

David Penaloza

Yeah, I just wanted to comment. I've seen the project, I've seen by the same group and very, very nice development. So again, thank you for the investment in the city. All right, quick question.

So for the parking, and I know that you guys addressed it, so it's two maximum, do you guys have any extra guest parking that is included in that or is it just the guest parking parking is going to be part of the two that you're providing?

It's part of the two that's included.

Okay, so what would happen if you have extra guests visiting, say, on the holidays? How are you guys going to address that?

Well, if, by way of example, if you have one parking space per unit, you have 25% allocated of the total number of units, of the 226. We have figured based upon that calculation, there's 92 extra parking spaces, which is a more than adequate overflow for visitor parking.

So 92 plus the two?

No, inclusive. So the 226, 226 parking spaces times two equals 452. I think the 25% of the 226 would be a customary parking ratio for visitors is 45 and the balance leaves 92, which would be a surplus parking.

Okay, so how many units do you have, like studios, one bedrooms, two bedrooms, three bedrooms?

There's about 70% studios and ones to 30% twos.

Okay, so then my concern is the parking overflow how is that going to be mitigated? How are you guys going to address that? I know it's something that I've always asked and most likely it's going to overflow into the Sandpoint Neighborhood Association

So this project, the developer has taken care in terms of designing the project. There are actually basically one space per bedroom. I think that some of the, although it's not a standard, they have allocated one space for each bedroom. In addition to that, that would give them approximately 92 spaces that will be used for guests. So the project has 92 spaces that are open extra for guests, in addition to providing one basic space per bedroom on the entire project for the 256 units.

I have a concern with that. All right.

She's got concern next. Councilor Sarmiento and then Solorio. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

And I actually want to make sure to thank Tammy Frias and her board and her members over at Sandpoint Neighborhood Association. You know, this should serve as a model example of how a process gets done. And to the applicant, thank you for spending your time and your efforts in meeting with them so many times. It went above and beyond what was required of the Sunshine Ordinance, and it was just a good faith negotiation. And so to the extent that we can learn from this process and to have the Neighborhood Association President come and say that our board is unanimously behind it is important. Because we know it's not perfect.

It's not a perfect process. but I think that it's a testament to good faith, aggressive negotiating on behalf of Tammy. I know she got a lot from her aggressive negotiating as well. So I just want to thank you all. And Judy, I miss Vic as well as you do because I always look for him in the audience whenever I see you, so we certainly have a hole in our hearts as well. But thank you to everybody who made this possible because it's an important way that we serve as an example to other processes that are going to be coming before us.

All right. I want to take a vote here shortly. Councillor Solorio.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And you were right. This is a great project and a good example of how developers should be working with their local residents and associations. I know because it's been months in the making. And the things I said about the prior project, you actually did. So you worked out the community benefit agreements ahead of time. A lot of discussions on parking, tours of a similar project that you have nearby where you show that the parking works. And I know in the MARC, which is another project nearby, if they ever do have issues, which they really don't, they do valet parking and other things that work well.

And you were able to speak articulately about the kinds of improvements for the schools, the parks, etc. Whereas with the prior one, even across the street, there was no communication. So thank you for doing this one right. Thank you. I'd entertain a motion.

So moved. Second.

Oh, excuse me. Motion was already on the floor. Solorio Penalosa.

All right. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries. Congratulations.

75J has been continued at the request of staff, so they'll bring it back when ready 85a cast member solario mayor can i interrupt you for

just one second yes i don't know if there's an appetite for this but for 75h if you wanted to reconsider we did confirm the sidewalk is 2 000 feet away or we continue it if you're not interested can you speak up real loud i'm sorry i i'm not sure if you want to entertain this or not but We did confirm what Council Member Solario was waiting for, is the distance of the sidewalk from the last development item, 75H. It is 2,000 feet. I don't know if you want to reconsider that.

Do you want to reconsider or leave it continue? Yeah, let's reconsider it. All right, make a motion to reconsider. Motion to reconsider. I'll second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, now let's make a motion to approve.

Make a motion to approve, given the new information, and please just provide.

Is there a second? Okay, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries unanimously. 85A, Councilmember Solario.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. And in part, I brought this side and forward to echo concern that Councilmember Penalosa had. There's now been a couple of issues at the Planning Commission level that people don't know that there are appeal processes to the council. And so one neighborhood actually missed an appeal because they weren't aware of an appeal process. In this case, with the Discovery Cube, we approved it many years ago with a certain signage package. And they had never really updated that, but in the meantime began doing

large advertisements on the Cube Face itself and elsewhere. So long story short, when I came back and saw that there was a regional signage program, Me and the staff, I asked them to reach out to the Discovery Cube to legalize their signs. And they've done that, and it took some time, but they did that and they are here. And I have confirmed myself by Caltrans that from what they've seen, because they sent them the staff report in totality, they do think it is in compliance with the Outdoor Advertising Act. So I'm happy with that, and that's all I want, just that they be in compliance with the Outdoor Advertising Act.

And again, I'm pleased that I went through this process. And that is all.

All right. Thank you. So with that, let's go on to item 85B. Councilor Marie-Glesias.

David Penaloza

Before we move on, since we're on the subject of advertisement, and this will definitely be for a future meeting, but I'd like to have more dialogue on not the Discovery Cube, but I mean, I drive the 5, and I don't see any signage of the zoo. I don't know if we've ever talked about bringing some kind of advertisement along the freeway where we could see for our zoo. Let's do that as a separate item.

Right. It's a good discussion point. Councilman Iglesias.

Okay, so the item that I put on this, I guess it's going to be addressed when we talk about the budget. One of the things that I wanted to bring up is for us to consider is to having substations at our different,

either if we can't do them at the six wards, but at least the four different quadrants that the police department provides jurisdiction. I think that's how you guys break it down by quadrants. So just considering that, I would like to see from staff and also from the chief to see how much it would cost to have substations at each of these quadrants or on the wards. And try to look at them where we need them the most. Say like in neighborhoods where we know that the community is not able to have access to the police department because they're so far from here from downtown.

So in areas that we know that's going to benefit our community, because I know it's very effective. The one we have by Walmart and the Walmart Shopping Center with Erica, she's amazing. The way they staff that and the services they provide to the community. So I'm wondering if we could replicate those type of services in the other wards. So just to see how much it would cost if you could provide that for me, I would really appreciate it.

Certainly, and that's an appropriate discussion for the budget since it is resource-related.

All right, thank you. Now we go on to Housing Authority meeting. I would entertain a motion on the consent calendar.

Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye as opposed. Motion carries. Now I'm going to come back to comments here. We've got Caitlin from Konakai, followed by Hanai Vu, followed by Alan Nguyen.

Followed by Hugh Trinh, Mary Jo Bartlich.

Come on down, Mary Jo, followed by Dowd Fran followed by Jasper Newkirk that's right there I'm good

evening mayor and City Council members my name is Mary Jo Baratich I'm the zone vice president and the former president the state president of the Golden State Manufacturers Homeowners League and I'm here tonight representing all of the mobile home people in Santa Ana. And your extensive work on the Space Rent Civilization Ordinance as presented on the May 21st is commemorable. And I thank you for that. And I thank the staff for creating such documents that are necessary to start this process. These homeowners

need your support. They're pleading and fighting for their lives. the stress is causing many of them to have elevated blood pressures and dangerous zones strokes or heart attacks may happen to these fragile seniors veterans and others in their 70s 80 and 90 years the doctors are monitoring everything and they are getting reports back they're frightened and do not want to lose their homes that they spent their life savings on nor all their possessions, and be forced to live in a cardboard box in a tent on the streets where they're being robbed or raped.

These excessive rents and creases are a form of elder abuse. And look at them. Would you do this to your mother or your grandmother? I don't think so. Please search your hearts and give the Space Rent Stabilization Ordinance in place. please think about this at Valley High the homeowners are borrowing money from each other and families just to pay their space rent on Jan on June 1st which is due by the 6th two homeowners have walked away from their homes and still others have not been able to sell their home possible interference of sales by

the management company who then will take the homes and sell them for a higher price after they've taken them and increase the space rents to $1,100. Santa Ana's mobile home rent structure has ridden sin beyond affordability in many parks. Mobile homes are the only unsubsidized form of affordable housing in the state. Please protect these people and their only and the only assets that they have. We're asking you to your compassion and fairness in this matter. Please consider approving the interim ordinance and the Space Rent Stabilization Ordinance

at a future meeting, and thank you.

Thank you. James Osborne.

File by Pedro Correa.

Hello, I'm Jim Osborne. I'm 84 years old, and I live at Valley High. And my problem is I've worked all my life as a supervisor, and now then we're at the end where you really need your money to, what retirement you get, just to live on. And I moved down here a few months ago, and now I'm having trouble with my rent already. So that's the reason why we need to have some kind of a guard against the homeowners, the landlords, to take all of our money just for rent.

Thank you, Jim. Pedro, followed by Nancy Coldwell.

Hi, good evening, council members. Good evening, everybody. My name is Pedro Correa, resident of Valley High. We are here back again to ask the Council of Santa Ana for a resolution on the Valley High mobile home rent increase. You have been hearing the stories of the residents of Valley High in English, in Vietnamese, and Spanish. By this time, you already know we are all asking for rent stabilization in the Senior Park. We have not heard anything back from the owner nor the AJA and HH management.

If no resolution is taken here today, then the next year we'll be back again, coming back again, and ask again for your help. And your decision on the rent is stabilization of the Valley High Mobile Home Park for seniors. You are six members in the council, and you make the difference. We are 154 residents in the park and we will be the recipients of your decision. Please have a resolution on this problem. Thank you once again.

Nancy, followed by Twat Mai, Benita Pimentel.

Come on down.

Dao Tran, right?

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Bring the mic down.

Thank you. My name is Dao Tran. I am 69 years old. I live in Bali High with my husband Took My. He is 72 years old. My husband and I came to Bali High over 10 years ago because we wanted to enjoy our retirement in peace and quiet. For many years, we loved living here. But since I came in 2016, living in Bali High have become awful. The last two times we came here, JNX did come up and said that people in Bali High were satisfied with their management, but it is not true. Sorry, this is a lie.

Because if it were satisfied, why would we all be here last two times and today? This is the third time I have come to Santa Ana City Council to ask for your help. With the problem of rent gouging in Bali Hai, since JNAC came in 2016, the rent of people in Bali Hai has increased from 7% to 30%. Before JNAC, under a different management company, our monthly rent was only raised by 15 per year, under 3%. The new increases under JNAC are hurting us very much.

We are senior citizens. Many of us are Vietnamese immigrants who escaped our country. We have spent many years working very hard and are now living on social security benefits. We cannot afford the new rent prices. They have made many of us sad and sick. Many of us are scared of becoming homeless. One of our neighbours, Mr Andy Franco, who lives in Space 54, recently died. She spent her last day on this earth worrying about how she would pay her in recent rent.

The recent change I have given for raising the rent do not make sense. For a very long time, Ballyhai has been the mobile home park for senior citizens. Now it seems like JNX is trying to convert our park into a regular family home park because the rents are getting higher and higher, and many senior citizens on fixed income cannot afford to pay. This is unfair. This breaks my heart. This Monifay Park is supposed to be the peaceful place for elder people like my husband and me to retire. They are solely put us out.

All right, your time is up. Thank you. Okay, thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you. what is the process of progress of this problem. And I wonder how many times I have to come here.

The problem is very obvious. J&H gouging is real. They abuse all people.

the situation

is hurting people very very badly and you can look here a lot of old people some people on wheelchairs and walkers

you are our representative so please help

and this one for Cecilia Iglesias on November 6 2018 I believe in her I even told my friends about her and I did vote for her Bali Hai is her baby so I would like to ask her to take care step up and do something.

Please help. God bless us all. Thank you.

Sir, go ahead and come on up. Just give us your name for the record, please.

Jasper Newkirk. Hello, I'm Jasper Newkirk, age 90, and I've been a resident of Ballyhi for 50 plus years. This rent increase is a breach of the contract. For years we went on for a zero to $15 to $25 increase which is reasonable and far as I know nobody complained. I think it seems like the motivation for this increase is

plain old greed. If the cost of living published by the federal government is 2 to 3 percent, do you think it would be reasonable for us to pay 10 to 18% increase in rent.

Let's see.

That's about all I have to say. So I present my case. Thank you.

Good point. Thank you.

Go ahead, sir.

My wife got yelled, so she left early.

I want to thank the council here and the mayor for having us here. first of all I want to thank my residents for the patience and tolerance most of you have stayed awake that's good anyway I'm awake I'm still 88 young

and myself and my wife have been living in Valley Heights since 1990 We have been good at tenants. We've paid our rent right on time. No problems. The rent increase has always been reasonable, except for the last couple of years, it's been increased for us to 17%.

That's $107 a month. Wham, just like that. I don't know what's going to happen next raise. We're both retired. We're happy, joyous, and free.

The maintenance and repair at the park do not in any way justify the current hike. We feel this is, I hate to say it, but it's true, rent gouging.

I'm asking you to do the right thing and be loving and lovable.

Thank you.

After Huang Long, Roseanne Clark.

good evening excuse me good evening's marriage and city council my name is the I'm 71 years old. I've been in mobile home in space 66 since 204, just 15 years.

every time I'm thinking about this gouging race I'm very scared and upset

today that's the third time I've come here and asking you to help us please God bless you, thank you

Thank you, Roseanne.

Followed by Joanne Jones.

Hello, I'm Roseanne Clark, and I'm 77 years old. I've lived in Bali High for 13 1⁄2 years. This is my third time here asking for your help. I love living in a senior park, but I'm afraid they might try to change it into a family park. I don't want that. I would have looked for a home in a family park if that's what I wanted.

JNH has mentioned a long-term lease. We don't want a long-term lease.

And we don't want rent control. But we do want rent stabilization. only 3% per year increase.

Council Member Iglesias, we're in your ward. Will you help us?

Mr. Penaloza, will you help us? Mayor Pulido, will you help us?

Mr. Villegas, will you help us?

And I know I don't have to ask you, Mr. Sarmiento, because you have shown that you do want to help us, and I thank you, and I thank all of you.

Joanne, followed by Ann Tran.

Good evening, everyone. I'm sorry that we're here so late. you at one meeting asked us to try to get in touch with the owners of the property and we've sent them letters and we've told them what the problem is with our management company but today nobody has heard anything from them one way or the other it's really hard to see my friends and myself worried about what we're going to do in the next month or the next year or whenever because we can't live this way. And I don't think we're being treated the way we should be treated as senior citizens who have put our whole lives out

and worked for our savings so that we could live in peace. Thank you.

Anne Tran, followed by James Marchbank.

Hello, everyone. I want to say that I will read my book quickly

I want her to read my letter for being quick and clear. My name is Andran.

I am a senior citizen full 80 years old today. With my spouse 78 years old, have been living in your Bali Hai Park for 13 years. The first 10 years was peaceful, but the last three years, from 2016 until now,

New J&H property management company is gouging our rent money from $15 for first 10 years to $29 for 2017, $29 for 2018, and now up to $52 for 2019. This makes us very worried, anxiety, and depression. Please do what is your conscience is the wish of your family and allow this part to be the family it has become over the years.

Many of our neighbors and friends cannot afford the proposed rent increase and may be homeless. I do not think it is fair for old people to be treated like trash and kicked to the cup by J and H. Thank you for your consideration and please help us to return to normal. May God bless you and your whole family.

Thank you.

Duck, ho.

Go ahead. If I already called you, come on down. And then duck, ho, and then try Lee.

Hello, because I need to hear she help me to tell her.

My name is Temi Trần, I am 90, 302. I was working for 1.200 USD per month. The money started from 6th to 799 USD, it was 14%. It was a total of 70% of my money. I felt very difficult to live and even after this it will be difficult to live. For years it will be difficult to live. Because the land is higher than that. Now that I have a very small house.

Now I want to buy the house, I can buy it. Because if you buy it, you can buy it. Because if you buy it, you can buy it. It will be 1.100 dollars a month for a small house. Nobody buys the house. If I buy it, I don't know where to buy it. Thank you.

My name is Tammy Tran at Space 90 Bali High. My income is around $1,200 per month. But since June, I have to pay $799 from $747. It's an increase of 14%. and the rent takes up 70% of my income. So I am in hardship.

And my house is very small. Even I want to sell it, nobody wants to buy it because for people, for the new start, the rent will be $1,100 per month. And also that I don't want to, where can I go?

So please help us not to be homeless. I know that the business, they have to make profit, but please help us that the rents not increase too much. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Han Nguyen. Go ahead. If I called you, come on down.

And then Han Nguyen, followed by Dean Pham.

Good evening, Mayor and city council members. My name is Duke Ho. I'm living in Bali High since 2006. In the past 10 years, the rent only increased from $15 constantly every year.

But since the change came in, the rent has escalated too much, like $52 this year, 7% up to 30%.

So please consider and help us since we have fixed income.

Please help us. Please help the residents of Bali Hai. Thank you. Thank you.

I am a hanged region of Bali High. I would like to tell you about the rent increase to high. It makes me and my wife worry about very much because our income is very low. We are retired. both people $1,354 only so I get food stamps about $167 and I have a

I have a bread maker and my wife has cancer. So I want to live in Bali because it's nearby church and markets. So I don't need to use car. So I can save money for food, for living in future. But now the increase too high, $52 for my wife and me very worried about that.

So I think to you, I think you can help us to stop increase to high rates. Thank you very much.

Dean Pham, followed by Tammy Tran.

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