Read the April 16 meeting.

If 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. Remain standing, please. We have our invocation by Heather Riley, our police chaplain.

Thank you.

Please join with me. Holy God, we come to you today asking for your guidance, wisdom, and support as we begin this meeting. Help the council members to engage in a meaningful discussion and allow in this space an opportunity to grow closer as a group and nurture the bonds of community. I ask that you fill each one present with your grace as they serve our community. And may the City of Santa Ana's resources be used wisely and well. Additionally, may they be used to fairly represent all members of our community. Let this Council make decisions that promote the common good.

As trusted servants, we seek blessings on our deliberations and on our efforts here today. In your name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Thank you. You may be seated.

I'm going to begin our meeting today with a presentation from the County of Orange. And we have the Chief Executive Officer, Frank Kim. He's going to be giving us a presentation on behalf of Supervisor Doe, I understand.

and you know Frank's been involved in all the negotiations and the meetings so just come up up to the microphone mr. Kim and and we'll see your presentation then I'll bring it to council for any questions and discussion and and then we'll thank you and we'll let you go home

so please go ahead sir good evening mayor and council members for the city of Santa Ana Frank Kim, County Executive Officer for the County of Orange. Supervisor Doe has asked me to read into the record a letter that he would like to present to your council. I will provide a copy to the clerk as well as copies for the council. And then I have additional copies here I'll set aside for members of the public.

Thank you.

So.

Dear Mayor Polito and Santa Ana Council members, due to the high level of public interest in the City's proposed use of the County's Yale Street property as a replacement for the courtyard, I am writing to request that the appropriate community outreach be done and formal action taken by the current City Council to reaffirm its above stated intention and to seek community support for said project on Yale Street.

Since becoming a county supervisor four years ago, I have worked diligently to improve the homeless condition in Santa Ana. I am proud of the work that we have done in clearing the homeless encampments along Santa Ana Riverbed, in the Civic Center at the request of the city, and along Santiago Creek.

The county undertook the Jack Fisher Park fencing project in Floral Park at our own expense. we have been providing ongoing outreach support at OC Link Homeless Shelter and throughout Santa Ana's parks and communities. Additionally, the county lawsuit that I initiated stopped the needle exchange program here in Santa Ana. Regarding the county's current homeless shelter, Santa Ana City Council members have expressed to me at different times, formally and informally, their desire to move the courtyard to a different location.

Given the high population of homeless residents in the city, it is not feasible to argue getting rid of the courtyard, especially with Santa Ana being a defendant city in the federal lawsuit.

As an example, in a meeting I had with Council Member Jose Solario in my office October 2017, where he presented me his 21-point plan that included the following as suggestion number two. requested the county of orange replace location of temporary courtyard facility to another permanent location in santa anna county's bridges at kramer place and anaheim is a model facility for a future santa anna facility city should oppose renewal of the courtyard facility use beyond 2018.

for over a year that is what i have been trying to do councilman solario was not the only council member who advocated for an alternate site.

In response to the federal lawsuit regarding homeless services, in early May 2018, Mayor Miguel Pulido committed Santa Ana in court to a 600 shelter bed facility. The intention behind the number 600 was to create extra capacity for city use in addition to the courtyard's population of 425. To facilitate this collaboration, a memorandum of understanding was initiated by the city with the following stipulation. The parties intend for the site to provide 425 beds to fully replace the courtyard facility, providing 125 guaranteed beds allocated to Santa Ana,

and provide the balance of beds to serve the needs of the central planning area, or SPA. To achieve these purposes, it is understood that the site will feature bed space for up to 600 individuals solely from the central spa. Of this amount, 425 beds are intended for county use to relocate individuals currently residing at the courtyard. The city shall have guaranteed access to 125 beds at the site.

Other than the guaranteed 125 beds, the parties mutually agree that any available beds or services provided at the site will be limited to individuals from the central spa or service planning area, and will be allocated based on the proportionality of unsheltered homeless individuals in the central spa. The Santa Ana City Council voted to approve the MOU on September 4, 2018, although only three council members who voted to approve the MOU remain today. From the beginning, community outreach was the foundation of what the county and city were going to do going forward.

During that council meeting, then Councilman Sal Timajero publicly stated the importance of engaging the community school districts, community college to ensure compliance with Santa Ana's Sunshine Ordinance, which aims at improving public transparency. The county followed suit and approved the MOU one week later. The initial site identified by the city in the MOU fell through, and Yale Street property quickly identified as an alternate site by Mayor Polito and Santa Ana Police Department's Deputy Chief Ken Gaminski.

The Yale Street property location was then communicated to the county via a letter dated October 25, 2018, and then thereafter advocated for publicly in court by the city. throughout the fall of 2018 city council members chief cominsky the city executive staff toured the property with county staff based on the city's request the county purchased the yale street property as we move ahead and devising an operational plan i began to hear opposition from some members of the current santa anna city council i also heard concern about the project from the community during my town hall meetings with different neighborhood associations

I learned from community members, particularly those closest to the Yale Street property, that there has been no community outreach or information from the city to inform community of the city's plan as to where to house the homeless, especially when OC Link closes in approximately a year.

These facts cause me much concern. Santa Ana's ordinance and good governance require that the public be consulted. Since the county is following the city's lead with regard to the Yale Street property, it is important that I am assured the city has done all the appropriate due diligence necessary for the project. As such, I have instructed county staff to stop work on the construction and opening of Yale Street as a homeless shelter until such a time as the current city council has heard from the community and reaffirmed through their votes their support for the project.

It is important for me to make clear comments from some members of the City Council that I do not support and stand out for the City of Santa Ana are utterly false and completely baseless. For the past year, I have consistently stood up in federal court and stated that Santa Ana has carried more than its burden of taking care of the needy in the county and continuously called upon South County and other cities to step up and do their fair share. I believe moving the courtyard is the right thing to do for Santa Ana.

However, the county and the Santa Ana City Council needs the Santa Ana City Council to reaffirm its commitment under the MOU, together with a robust outreach plan, before we proceed with the Yale Street Project. We have done everything you have asked us to do. It is in your hands now. signed by supervisor andrew doe supervisor first district

thoughts questions

councilman sarmiento or mayor pro tem

thank you mr. Kim for joining us today

so my question really quick is for the city attorney Madam City Attorney, this facility is owned by the county, correct? They purchase it?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

My understanding is the county has purchased the property on which the proposed homeless shelter is-

So they're not obligated to have the community meetings, are they? I know in our, for what we do, yes, but-

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

The county is free to operate on its own. I think the county has indicated a willingness and desire to at least communicate with our residents. But the county, in my legal opinion, has preemptive authority over the city because this is under state law one of their responsibilities. Right.

And thank you, Madam City Attorney. The other day at federal court, I supported the county in front of Judge Carter that we are going to support the MOU. I was one of the folks that voted on it. I believe in it because if not, we're not going to be able to enforce our no camping laws. And that's where I stand and I reaffirmed this. And, you know, we should have some community meetings, but stopping the construction right now, that's just going to delay everything. And I believe that time is of the essence. But those are my comments. And thank you, sir, again for taking in here.

Other questions?

David PenalozaItem —

Councilor David. I have a couple comments. I'm fortunate to see that Supervisor Dole couldn't be here. Right. But with that said, you know, I throughout last summer, you know, campaigning and debates, I said when the argument was brought up that the shelter was going to help our police officers enforce the law. I kept asking, you know, who, like what, you know, what time do our police officers have to enforce the law? This shelter, you know, we've opened 200 beds last fall and I don't see, I see the problem just growing.

David PenalozaItem —

Our police officers have their hands full with what, our large city. So I don't think that this is going to help them enforce the law because we don't have the staff to enforce the law. And in regards to the county, they're also a public agency and they were voted by the community and us. And as elected officials, they also have a responsibility to do the proper outreach with the community in regards to any change of shelter or center that they want to operate in our city, as well as the city council. So regardless of what they purchased, if they purchased it, too bad.

David PenalozaItem —

They should do the outreach with the community and involve the city in this entire process. That's all I have to say.

Thank you. Councilman Solorio. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a few points here. And nothing that I necessarily need a response to, but that I wanted to share with you and my colleagues. First off, Supervisor Doe has been very accessible, at least to members of the diocese, I believe, and I'm sure to community leaders. And we've worked on some things that have been successful in this arena, including for example, the fencing around Fisher Park and Mayor Polito was also helpful with that. And there's been a few other projects and on others we haven't yet had that success.

But I want to continue to work with him and the rest of the county and I know you and I have had some good conversations. Having said that, part of the reason I think we're having this conversation is because there's a lot of misinformation out there. So for example, if we don't move the courtyard to some other place, I don't think the judge or anyone else is saying we can't enforce our laws. I think the key thing at least is we need to have about 400 beds now and some other facilities that the city controls so we could send folks like the link.

And so at this point, I mean, I heard you say that you're looking at stopping construction or activities on the Yale site, but not necessarily closing doors on the courtyard. And even if you did, that actually may be a good thing. but we want to clear up some things like that. With respect to Yale, I haven't yet said I'm opposed to this site, but I do have some questions and concerns, and we have some new colleagues that haven't even been briefed in open or closed session on what the MOU was and things that are outstanding.

But, for example, I can't say that with the county probably as the lead, because you own the property and maybe the city as well, There hasn't been adequate outreach to the community. The Sunshine Act ordinance was mentioned, and there was a question from one of my colleagues. There's one provision in the Sunshine Act that says that if there is a city subsidized development, that it falls under the Sunshine Act. I do agree with our city attorney that you have preemption over us and some levels of sovereign immunity.

But I think as a city, we at least ought to send you a letter saying that you should have a Sunshine Act meeting for that development. Because we ask everybody else, public or private, to do such things. And if you want to decline that, that's your call, but we at least should say that. Second, there's a provision in the MOU that in addition to what you spent on purchasing the property, the city is supposed to help financially. And we haven't had that discussion. vote and so until that happens I mean it's hard to say that there's a commitment in place and it's something that we need to deliberate on.

Another key provision in the MOU is developing an operational plan because as the letter states I do think that the county support and it's Kramer facility is run very well. I'd like to see something comparable to the site that you might have that is new in Santa Ana and And the MOU speaks to us working together on that. But to my knowledge, I don't think that there's started work on that. Also, last year when the MOU was done, some of these cities that now have shelters did not have shelters back then. Ourselves included, because you might remember we kind of were able to quickly open up a shelter.

And so I think that may be reason to revisit some of the provisions. provisions, some provisions depending upon how you read the MOU makes us pay for beds where currently we pay zero. And I know that if the MOU does come to full fruition, none of the other cities are going to need to spend $1. At least that's my understanding. It's also my understanding we're probably going to need to continue to do all the responding to calls for service. of which at the courtyard there are probably hundreds or thousands over a period of time.

And I know too for the sake of enforcement, for us to enforce our anti-camping laws, right now we have the link that's temporary, if someday that goes away we need to replace it. Well the language in the MOU says the city gets priority over 125 beds. And for example, that needs to be stronger language so that we always feel like we have the 125 seats guaranteed, especially if we're going to pay for them. Also, in terms of collaboration and moving forward, the reason why we need to restart some of these conversations is,

as you know, for the armory, this city and school district, I think, both requested kindly that the armory not be reopened up, especially because we opened up the link. The county did so anyway, without telling us. We found out a week or two after the fact, and I had mentioned that to you approximately when I found that out. And then also something very important for all our facilities and the relationship is I've been working with Supervisor Doe staff for about six months with respect to the referrals received at the courtyard.

To this day I haven't received that for different reasons. I mean, you need to do a Public Records Act request and I'm prepared to do so. But I had last year that with our link, we have a great dashboard with all the stats as well as all the referrals. There are ways to show the referrals without getting into privacy issues and whatnot. So are they being referred by Mercy House, healthcare agency, the sheriff, Senate, PD. That information is important so that we know where they're coming from. So we could try to identify and address the real source of the problem rather than just housing at the back end.

And so I share that and say, hey, why can't the county do something comparable? And apparently the county to this day has refused. I'll put it in writing and make that inquiry again and if it has to be via the Public Record Act request, that would be fine. But that's just one example too where, and if we're going to work together, we're going to work together and we share our data with you as I mentioned and it should be reciprocal. So for those reasons, I just believe it's important for us to have these conversations, especially with the new council members. And then finally, apparently at the last hearing,

there were statements made by the city that there was no opposition to the Yale site, and that's absolutely not true. I mean, I think there's concerns, issues from the dais, there's concerns, issues from the community. That's not to say that that may not be where we need to end, but we got to work through these variety of issues. Thank you.

Additional comments? Go ahead, Cecilia Iglesias.

Thank you, Mr. Kim, for coming and giving us a presentation with this letter from the supervisor. I greatly appreciate it. I had asked for an update on the courtyard because I had attended a meeting which was Valley Adams and the neighborhood associations over there. And yourself and Supervisor Doe made a presentation. And that was pretty much the first time that the county had ever made a presentation. I live in Ward 6 and this Yale site, never heard about it.

The only one that I remember there was some talk about was the central location and for some reason that didn't come to fruition. And then all of a sudden it's like there's this new MOU that's been approved from the dais here and with the supervisor that never really had any community input. And knowing that we have two schools there, we have Mitchell Developmental Center, we also have Godinas High School, and then a little bit further, but not that far away, we have Valley High School, we have John Adams Elementary School, and we also have Jackson Elementary School and Windsor Village Neighborhood Association.

And we've never really had an opportunity to give our input on how that's going to affect. As you recall, before all of this happened, the riverbed is right there. There was a lot of encampment and a lot of individuals who were, for me, it's not about, you know, it's the homeless individual being the issue. It's more about their behavior and their mental status that they're in. A lot of them have drug problems and a lot of mental health issues. And it's up to all of us to work together to ensure that we provide these services to the individuals who are homeless.

But my concern is when you were at that meeting, one of the questions that community members asked you is, what does the operation procedure look like? And you mentioned to us, it's going to be like the courtyard. The courtyard is a walk-in, there's no referral, there's nothing. So what my understanding is you're just relocating the problem to Yale Street. And right now there is an issue with homeless already there because we have Centennial Park. And so who pays for that? So my question is, who's going to pay for security?

Who's going to pay for cleaning up the parks? And who's going to pay for extra staff that we need? The city doesn't have any money. We're barely right now, we're going to see if we're going to get any money from Measure X. I mean, we're taxing our residents for the sake of Irvine not having a shelter in their home. And that is so wrong because this shelter should have been in Irvine, but because on the day that they were going to vote on it, Irvine bust their residents to oppose this shelter. And since here in Santa Ana, we're barely making ends meet.

We don't have time to attend the 10 o'clock or 9 o'clock AM meetings that you have aboard a supervisor, so it's wrong. And I am compassionate and I thank Supervisor Doe for representing Santa Ana. But he doesn't only represent Santa Ana. He represents Garden Grove. He represents Fountain Valley. And I think I'm a little bit of Westminster. So then why can't we have, I mean, if it's going to be a District 1 responsibility, why don't we have it spread out? Because Santa Ana, we have enough already homeless. we're providing enough services for the homeless.

I believe Haas had given us some stats that we have about 300 beds already, and we're doing our fair share. And so for me, it's like not until the South County cities open up a shelter will I even entertain a conversation like this. And I'm glad that he put it in writing that he's stopping the construction, Because that's what we needed to hear from our community, that he wants to hear from us first and then after we can move forward. But I just feel it's very unfortunate that Santa Ana gets dumped on all the time by the county, by other cities.

Because we don't have, for me, it would be a strong political will to say no to when it comes to stuff like this. It's just amazing that we haven't really looked out for our residents and also for our police. Like Councilmember Pinalosa mentioned, our police, their hands are tied too because, I mean, they're doing the enforcement, but every time it's like you get a new person in, you get a new person in. So when is enough is enough? And then also it's like all of these homeless individuals, they're not Santa Ana residents. I mean, they are now because they're here, but they haven't been Santa Ana residents.

So how are you identifying who is Santa Ana resident and who is not? So there's a lot of questions that we have as a community and a lot of questions that need to be answered. And I agree with everything that Council Member Solorio mentioned, because those are the concerns that have been coming to us. So at this point, I just feel that it's good that you're stopping the project. So I'm hoping that Supervisor Doe and his office will keep their word, that they'll stop it until they hear from the community and then see how we go from there. So thank you for being here.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Sarmiento.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem, and I thank you, Mr. Kim, for being here. You're certainly a messenger in this. I'm pretty disappointed that our supervisor isn't here to address some of the concerns and questions that we have. But I do want to start off by saying that I thank my colleagues who have been trying to work at this effort and have been present at some of the court hearings in federal court, and our staff who have been trying to do a really almost impossible job of trying to solve this homelessness problem. I'm one of those members that never supported this, right?

I feel that the county has a vested right to address this problem, not the city's. You receive money from the federal government, from the housing and urban development, to the tune of close to $11 million a year. This is your responsibility. This isn't our city's responsibility. Nonetheless, we're using more than $3 million a year to fund a shelter on the east end of town. And we have to take that money out of our affordable housing fund. Look, we've been shouldering this problem of homelessness for years. We've had to have these folks in our Civic Center Plaza for I don't know how long.

It became an encampment, right? Part of that was the result of the county fencing off their campus across the street and forcing folks over here. So we've had to shelter them not only in our Civic Center Plaza, along the railroad tracks, in neighborhoods, in people's backyards, in river trails. So look, I again realize that the only reason we're having this conversation is because we had to sue the county. And that's the only reason why we're discussing this. Because we came in good faith and asked for your help and said, this is your responsibility to do. We'll stand with you as good stewards of the city.

But because we're the government center, we're the county seat, this is where all the services are, other cities were found to dump their homelessness on our streets. And we had to absorb them for years. Our kids couldn't walk into the library without having to step over homeless folks. It's deplorable. It's unconscionable. So I'm not going to sit here and say I never supported the site at Yale, not because, number one, there was no outreach. There was no outreach years ago when there was a proposed site on Normandy.

And we had to have folks come out from Kennedy Elementary, Cornerstone Village, 500 in number, and say, look, nobody asked us. There was a meeting held on July 3rd before the long holiday weekend. And look, and I apologize, because you come in good faith, Mr. Kim, and I applaud you for that. But nonetheless, I think this is something that's specific to District 1 and specifically the anchor city in District 1, which is Santa Ana. And the one that's had the most unique concerns with this problem, because we've had to deal with this. So this is years and years of neglect, right?

And really abandoning our efforts to try to solve this problem. So look, this is something that I don't support because there are certainly other places in District 1 where this site could go. There are certainly other cities that should step up. I think Irvine was mentioned. Costa Mesa could step up. Others that we've had to sue just so they'll make a responsible choice to help. Look, this isn't our problem only. We certainly are willing to shoulder that. We've had the armory open. We've had the courtyard here. We had to open an independent shelter funded by the city

So I think you're looking at partners that have been willing to step up and folks that have done this for years. But it is really difficult to impose this upon our residents again and say, by the way, not only have we had to do this to the exclusion of others not doing anything, but we're going to continue to do that. I don't think that's a fair response. So to the extent that I'm not supportive until there is another alternate site outside of Santa Ana, that's where I've stood and that's where I'm going to continue to be.

All right, let me have a chance to say something here. Others I think have spoken.

One last comment. If we don't do something, the courtyard is just going to stay where it's at. And you see how that's working out. Common sense. I'd rather work with what I got right now and then move on down the road and clean the city. You know, if we get the Yale site, the other areas, the other shelters are all going to close. That's the whole science behind the thing. But, you know, my colleagues think different. Thank you, Mr. Kim.

David PenalozaItem —

All right. Let me say something soon, please. Go ahead. I just, and touching on the other cities in the county, you know, I was told as early as two weeks ago that Irvine police was seen dropping off a homeless individual off the railroad tracks on Warner. I was at a TCA board meeting last week, and my colleagues from South County, San Clemente specifically, they came and they thanked me. They were like, thank you, your city is doing such a great job in housing their residents.

David PenalozaItem —

So it's frustrating when we keep seeing Santa Ana just taken advantage of by every city in the county, and nobody else seems to do anything. So I agree with what Councilmember Sarmiento said and what Councilmember Iglesias Anzuelio said, that there needs to be a better approach at all the other cities doing a fair share. And I hope the supervisor listens and I hope he looks at other options or decides to work with the communities getting impacted directly and do community outreach because it's frustrating.

David PenalozaItem —

And, you know, if the courtyard continues the way it is, then we come back to square one and seek legal action and not checking out this sign. Because it's things that, you know, it needs to get, you know, we need to start looking at the benefit of our city. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Jose.

Two final things, and I'm going to leave, bro, so I typically balance stuff out. So the county was very helpful in helping us stop, at least for the time being, the needle exchange program. Supervisor took incredible leadership on that, the rest of the board as well as you, in standing by our children and residents, so that's very good and I'm very thankful. The other area where we still haven't fully resolved the situation is on South Main Street, The Mental Health Association has many problems, and it's an abatement issue.

I know there's been denial by some at the county whether it's a problem or not, but I drive, as many of us do, Main Street frequently. And they come and go from that side. I mean, it's obvious to the eye, and I know right now we're working on enforcement stuff with respect to the railroads. Next is going to be MHA just because it's an abatement issue that we've tried various ways directly and via the county and it's an ongoing source of problems. And for children that go to school and we have many of our businesses there and that's an entryway and a key corridor and we still need to resolve that.

So all these unresolved issues stay on the to-do list and we want to figure out a way to work with the county on resolving them. Thank you.

Let me say a few words here, please, Miami, and I also would like Deputy Chief Kaminsky, if you could come up and stand next to Mr. Kim, because some of the questions I'm going to direct to yourself.

first of all the Jones case still exists and for council members that may were not here earlier the Jones case is a case that basically says that if you arrest somebody or approach them and they're loitering they're doing their parking sleeping at a park you know probably property whatever and you don't have a shelter to offer them and that and yet you arrest them jones case kicks in and you lose almost automatically you're going to lose um madam city attorney do you recall

sonia do you recall when we i think it was about two years or ago or so we arrested seven individuals and we had to pay a settlement because the Jones case kicked in. How much did we have to pay at that time?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

As I recall, we settled that case for $100,000, 75,000 in attorney's fees and 25,000 to the plaintiffs.

And that was for arresting about seven people, I believe.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Seven who complained. We had others that, right. And so we had advised our police department that they could not cite individuals unless we could offer them a bed. And that's what the shelter is providing that opportunity for us.

And Deputy Chief Kaminsky, do you recall that time, right? You were working here and you saw how our hands were tied and we really couldn't do anything to enforce any law at that moment in time.

Yes, sir. I think it's important to remember and look back where we were just a little while ago with homelessness within this city. If we look back at the Civic Center, over 400 people were living in tents. We had a homicide over there at the Plaza of the Flags. We had violence. We had a tremendous homeless problem there. But it wasn't just there. We've had a homeless problem within this city.

my entire 29 years that I have been a law enforcement professional within this city, but I was born here too. We've had a homeless problem within this city for years and years and years. We have taken huge steps forward in addressing this problem.

I brought the MOU from the county. to this group in November, when we had discussions about what the implications were about moving forward.

Since that time and since the city of Santana ratified and agreed to that MOU, the city of Costa Mesa has stepped up and set up a homeless shelter, mostly because we have made the rest of the county look at themselves and have to do something. The city of Tustin has set up a homeless shelter.

In one way or another, the city of Santa Ana and the county of Orange are going to have to come to terms with what the courtyard is. It is a warehouse of human beings. I cannot, in fact, say that I think that the county does a good job of managing the courtyard.

But there are opportunities for forward movement and opportunities for this city to go forward even farther than we have gone so far. Several of the council members have stated that they've seen homelessness get worse. I can tell you that before I had an opportunity to come out of a blue suit and wear a regular suit every day, I had an opportunity to engage with our homeless population almost every day, virtually seven days a week.

I know this population. I've spent time with them in their tents, in their hovels, in their bushes. And yes, you are correct. They have serious, serious problems. And I further believe it's the county's responsibility to do much, much more than what they have ever done.

However, whether this shelter goes into Yale or it stays over there, it's not going to stay over at the courtyard. The ADA issues are too much. And that homeless shelter will be closed. I can virtually guarantee it. There is not a community in this city, anywhere in this city, that will not stand up and say, please, but for the grace of God, not in my backyard. There is not a single community.

When we looked, when we examined, when we tried to find places where this would most likely have the least impact. We looked, and we looked. And the city did, in fact, partner with the county for this. It's true. I came to you, and it's my statements. I brought that to you.

but today I stand before you now with my heart unchanged I completely and unequivocally understand the concerns of the residents of this great city I do I completely and unequivocally understand that every city in this county must stand up and do more it is without question

but we have to put our homeless population somewhere

questions let me yeah let me continue don't go anywhere i have questions for mr kim as well

um given the court you know the federal court judge carter he's made it very clear you know he expects all city to play role you know north spa central spa south spa i believe right now we're a leader in central spa by doing what we did for example with the link and and those 200 beds and what's going on there i think we've been a leader in what we've done with the civic center i mean there's people that have lived there for over a decade It was just a permanent chaotic encampment bringing the whole city down.

I think we also were a leader the way you in particular Deputy Chief Kaminsky worked with the sheriff and the county and the whole riverbed issue. Remember when there was a lot of them on the riverbed and that kind of started this whole where we're going to push them and if we're not careful we push them out of Anaheim, they come into Santa Ana. And if we don't have a place to shelter some and to be able to push back and enforce the law, these are like waves in the ocean. They keep coming.

Now, part of my question to our CEO, Mr. Kim, is we have an agreement, the MOU. I know now council members say, well, let's revisit it, let's tweak it. We have a contract where the city of Santa Ana put about over $3 million into it, money that we got from the state to deal with the homeless problem. And we have, in essence, an agreement from you to pay the balance of that, because I think the purchase of the building was around $12 million. So you put an additional $9 million or so to buy that. We put in $3 million, you put in $9 million.

you also committed for 15 years 15 years to put an additional million dollars a year to run it because that'd be a tremendous drain for this city to run it am i right about those facts

in fact i think you may have underestimated the cost because the building was acquired for 12.3 million we currently estimate that to do the construction and build out for not a temporary facility but a long-term facility correct is at minimum 15 million so now when you look at it we're going to be most likely 12 plus 15 27 million into the program and plus 15 million to run it well no the operational cost would be it could be anywhere around two and a half three and a half million a year etc but when you look at that and you look at the amount of money that the state has provided to the county or the feds, it pales in comparison.

That building was acquired with county general fund money. The construction will most likely occur out of county general fund money, and the commitment we have from the city is around $4-ish million for something that is $27 million. And then there's a commitment from the city to pay for a proportional share of the beds to the extent that Santa Ana agrees to the MOU and you know takes on that burden of the 125 beds of the total so so that goes to my point that is

that this money that that we invested is highly levered and i think we did invest it with the mou

didn't we already invest that money well um we have not received the santa anna city's allocation from your state homeless emergency assistance program funds so we've covered 100 of the initial acquisition costs that building out of our general funds. But you have an MOU from us.

We do. Committing this state money. It's not our general fund money. It's money we got. Correct. Through working with the big 10 mayors, the big city mayors, and cities across California of 350,000 or more in population received a per capita basis to fund this. And so, you know, every city, Long Beach, Hanaheim, Oakland, you know, they all have done something with that money. But I'll tell you one thing, nobody has levered it the way we did. They're saying, how did you get the county to put in so much money to run all this based on that investment? Most cities are trying to do it themselves, and I

tell you what, they run out of money real, real quickly. Very quickly. It's so expensive to be in that business of trying to make sure that you're doing it well. Now, just for a moment, I want to go over to the link. Because thus far, the way the link is being operated, I don't see a whole lot of complaints. Am I wrong? Is it because it's right next to Tustin and Nervine and because of where it's located? or is it the way that it's being operated that there isn't a negative impact to the immediate surrounding community?

Sir, the link is a low-barrier shelter. The courtyard is a no-barrier shelter. There's a difference. The link's low-barrier status has led to virtually no calls for service at the link, no problems or issues at the link whatsoever. we have had well we've had a couple of issues but it's not an ongoing problem with individuals currently experiencing homelessness in and around the area, loitering, things like that we have the same type of issues at the length that we would have

when you have 150 to 200 people living together the difference between the link and the courtyard is in essence low barrier versus no barrier

in anaheim they've undertaken this and the county is working with anaheim i know that you have like like the bridges for example and i understand that the neighbors in that particular shelter which i believe is also no barrier or shelter it's doing well is that

correct so the bridges has been opened for over a year and i can tell you that i've received zero complaints at least to my office about the facility and even though many of the businesses and residents in that area initially opposed the program since we've been in place all those businesses that i've had discussions with remark at how efficient quiet and what a good neighbor

that we've become so mr kim if you could assist us i'd like to offer residents council members folks that are interested to go see how you're running that because that's what i envision at

yale street well i'm certain that we could support that and if i may i know that at the one community meeting that we we participated in with the city my recollection from supervisor doe's comments was that he would be open to having a discussion with the city about the type of operational plan that we would host and at that time as i recall he indicated that it would operate similar it could operate similar to the bridges program so that's a question of whether you allow walk-ups or it's a reservation-based system where it's referred by law enforcement outreach etc and i think that is

what the county's commitment is is to work with the city and have a thoughtful discussion with the community about what type of program will we run and if we run a certain type of program if you run a program that's referral only there will be some homeless individuals that will not participate in a program like that so then that is a secondary impact that obviously we need to have a discussion about then what do you do with those individuals etc so as deputy chief kaminsky has indicated how you run it the facility that you operate in today the courtyard is in an abandoned

bus depot it is not structured to house 425 individuals to me the fact that we've operated for several years in that facility with as few issues as we've had others may feel that there's a lot but for an abandoned bus terminal i think we've done a remarkable job of treating this population and many many individuals have graduated from that facility on to permanent housing and have become stable so I see that as a tremendous success

let me let me ask you a related question at the link as we've apprehended or you know allowed people to go there I know on more than one occasion Deputy Chief I've called you and I've said, I'm here. There's an individual, a lady, a man. You know, they are homeless. Can you send a unit down? Can we figure out what's going on? On occasion, you've been able to say, do you want to go to a shelter? And they have. And now they're no longer in that shopping center next to that school, in that neighborhood, what have you.

They're all throughout the city. If we didn't have the link or any place to take them, you know, we'd chase our own tail. You can't really say we're going to put them in a unit and we're going to take them somewhere. And my follow-up question is, I understand of those that we've taken to the link, some have now gone on. They either have cleaned up and gotten jobs because they get to shower and dress better and they get their life together enough to go apply for a job. Others now are working and they've gotten assisted living and they now have moved on. Talk a little bit about some of the success stories that we've had.

So the homeless services manager can give you an exact number, but based on my discussions with her over the last several weeks, I think that there are between 20 and 30 individuals who have, we'll call it, graduated out of the link. that means they've gone on to some type of permanent supportive housing or they've been reunified with families somewhere they are no longer on the streets when you talk about calling me or calling the police department and having us respond whether it's the shelter we're discussing this evening or the link in order for us to do virtually anything with that homeless

population, you have to be able to have an option. When somebody's in the park after hours, you have to have an option to go in and say, you can either go to the shelter or I'm going to give you a ticket or arrest you for violating the law. If you're going to sleep on the sidewalk, if it is the expectation of law enforcement to be able to do something with that individual, sleeping in the park or sleeping on the sidewalk, then some type of shelter has to be in place

with bed space available. Otherwise, the law precludes us from taking any enforcement action whatsoever.

Three more areas, and Mr. Kim, this involves you as well. Some of these individuals are mentally ill. They're just mentally ill. It's hard to get them to do anything. We need, I think, a county mental hospital, a facility, where those that are sick, mentally, I mean, they can't help themselves. They don't know what it is. They don't care. They'll pull their hair out if you let them. I know that there's a facility in Costa Mesa, not in Santa Ana. It's called Fairview Hospital.

The state operates it. Some of us are asking the governor to open up that facility regionally so that all cities throughout the county have a mental facility, which is special and different from everything else, to go to. I know it's on Governor Newsom's to-do list, and I just want to know, has the county had any contact or are there any discussions? Do you have any thoughts on being able to coordinate with the state to have a regional mental facility?

I am aware that there are state representatives and the governor has had discussions about that facility. We've been called in to comment on that. But from a county perspective, since we don't own the building or the land or have an ability to do anything with it, until such a time as the state makes a decision, we've not taken a firm position.

And I know you can't do anything unilaterally. I'm not questioning that. I'm just looking more for your fling as to how potentially we could cooperate. should the state say, here it is, let's work together, it's available to, I mean, I'd like some Santa Ana homeless people that are mentally ill to be taken to such a facility in the future.

I mean, there are programs that provide that service. So I think part of what is complicated is how mentally ill treatment, mental health treatment is provided in the county. For the mild to moderate individuals that have mild to moderate level of mental illness, CalOptima is the service provider. And at least my understanding from court is that they've now made a commitment to be out onto the streets and outreach and provide that service. For the severe, that is a responsibility of the county. And we use our Mental Health Services Act dollars, et cetera.

So as an example, in the city of Costa Mesa, we now have a small crisis stabilization unit there. We are working on a larger facility in another part of the county that will provide mental health treatment for our county clients as well. So there are other facilities that are in the development stage and that will be opened in the county, and they're not in the city of Santa Ana. So that level of burden is being shared across communities all throughout Orange County.

Thank you. A related question. This goes to. Mayor, Mayor, if I may, I just wanted to remind you as the chair that this was scheduled on our agenda as a presentation. Right. So I want to make sure that we. We're almost done. Just I know that the railroads are another issue. And I know close to Councilor, you know, David Peña-Losa's business. He showed me where there's a lot of homeless around a railroad. Not my business, Mr. Mayor. where i work where he works where he is employed we went up on the roof and we looked over the roof

and there's an alley behind with a railroad track and it is out of control it's like no man's land you know it's not this jurisdiction or that jurisdiction i i know we have a lawsuit now that we've entertained or embarked upon hopefully we're able to do something about that soon because Because that's another problem throughout the city. All right, so with that, Councilor, I'll give up.

I was just going to remind you as well that we're way beyond the scope. And I wanted to thank the Deputy Chief because he's been doing this as long as I've been on the council, which is the past 11 years. And I know you were knee deep in this before any of this even started when we had the heart program. And that was a model program for other law enforcement agencies to follow, which is the outreach and the relationship and the response to the homelessness issue. And it was done in a really compassionate way when we had no place to put them.

So the only thing I was going to say, in all fairness, I think the courtyard has had issues that are really, really difficult as well. Some serious challenges. It isn't, I applaud those that have graduated from there. But there have been issues of public health, disease, sexual abuse. There's been a death. So it hasn't been rosy there either. And I know when it was rolled out, it was done in 30 days in advance of an election. And it was done very quickly. And you're right, it's not the right facility. Logistically, a bus station is not the right facility for a homeless shelter. So we can certainly improve on that.

And I think it's been misconceived from its origin, from its beginning. So to the extent that we can do a better job, again, having a 600 or 700 bed facility, maybe we think about a smaller set of facilities where Santa Ana has one. Everybody in the first district can have a small facility. I think the response and the attention and the care will be much better than having one large facility where you have six, 700 beds.

but those are just my thoughts. Let me thank you because we can go on and on but Mr. Kim let me just thank you for coming down and to be continued. I know we have

a lot more. Can I answer just one question that was from one of the council members. There was a question about the armory program and I just wanted to set for the record that the MOU that Supervisor Doe agreed to indicates very clearly that once the new facility is open that the armory program will discontinue. So that is a reduction in impact as well that I wanted the council members to recall.

Thank you. I want to thank you. But that will still be in Santa Ana, so the impact on the city is still the same. I just don't see the correlation. But thank you for your presentation. I just wanted to ask the city attorney Okay, or here, if we could have a meeting to really discuss this on the MOU and maybe with special meeting with the Board of Supervisors, all staff together. So we can really dig into the issue. So I would like for us to schedule that, if that would be okay.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I can provide you from the city attorney's perspective a closed session on the existing litigation. We still have litigation pending against a lawsuit that we've actually filed in court against all of the cities, including the county. And so we can go into closed session, explain the stats of that, and give you the history of that.

And then we can take options from there and decide how we want to proceed. All right, let's schedule that, please.

And how about that as a community input, too?

Well, yeah, that would be my job. I think the mayor has a good idea of let's get into closed. Let's revisit some of the issues regarding this lawsuit and then you'll direct me accordingly.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, just one positive follow up piece to what you said. The Fairview Developmental Center, the actionable item by the county and the city is that Assemblywoman Sharon Quirksilva has a bill to advance the idea that we've all been talking about. So the city ought to consider supporting that and the county ought to consider supporting it. The county has a nice army of lobbyists in-house and contract that would be very helpful on this side of the road.

And I believe Senator Morlock is for it as well. So with that, let's go on to the next presentation. Who is here for Donate Life California Month from the Department of Motor Vehicles? Is somebody present? Come on down, and then after that it will be Mayor Potembellege doing a presentation.

Thank you.

I'm going to have Daniel Lubevanos, one legacy ambassador.

And one legacy in a nutshell, when you get a driver's license and you go to the DMV, you can say I donate my organs in case I just get into an accident or somehow you'll pass away and you want to donate your organs so that others can use them and live longer. And currently more than 113,000 individuals nationwide are in the National Organ Transplant Waiting List. So there's a big demand for this.

one organ donor can save lives up to eight people and enhance the lives of 75 people total. How do you do that?

Through tissue and cornea.

Through tissue and cornea. So eight people are going to get like a liver or whatever, but up to 75 can get tissue and other benefits.

Yeah, heart valves, nerves, and tissue.

So what we're doing is we're encouraging folks to look at April as the DMV Donate Life California month. So you can opt to be an organ donor.

And why don't I have Daniel tell us a few more things about it, and I'll present a proclamation to you.

Well, thank you very much, Mayor. My name is Daniel Lavanos. I am a liver transplant recipient. I received my gift of life on December 27th of 2003. We do have currently close to 22,000 Californians on the wait list for the gift of life. Number one gift is usually the kidneys. They're the first to go. We are an organ procurement organization. We are the bridge that bridges the, we match up the patients to the transplant centers. We are the largest OPO in the state of California and the country, for that matter. We service seven counties in the Southern California area.

You can register for organ donation by going to our website, www.donatelifecalifornia.org, and Seattle Espanol, www.donavidacalifornia.org. The DMV does register over 92% of our organ donors. That's why it's called the DMV Donate Life California Month Proclamation. We, with the DMV, register over 15 million future Californians for organ donation, and one individual can save the lives of eight people with 75 with cornea and tissue donation.

We thank the mayor and the city of Santa Ana for your city proclamation and declaring April as DMV Donate Life California Month, I am very proud to accept the proclamation as a representative of one legacy and for the transplant community with all those waiting for the transplant. We do lose 20 people every day waiting for the gift of life, and every 10 minutes someone is added to this list. So you can see how important it is. We have our main event coming up April 27th, our 17th annual Donate Life Run Walk. It's at Cal State Fullerton Campus.

over the years we've had over 12,000 participants come out and walk forward the importance of eye organ and tissue donation. Thank you very much. Daniel, what was your gift?

Daniel, as I present this to you, you stated that in 2003 was it or when? Yes. In 2003, you were dying, right?

Yes.

He was dying, and he had a liver donated to him. So, you know, here it is many years later, 16 years later, you've got somebody else's liver. If it weren't for that, we wouldn't be doing this presentation right now.

That's correct. I wouldn't be here today.

You wouldn't be here today.

I was given a 48 hour notice on Christmas Eve. If I didn't get my gift, I wouldn't be here today.

48 hour notice he was given on Christmas Eve. Did you get lucky or how did you get it that fast?

I was on the waiting list. The sicker you are, the higher you're on the list. and when an organ comes in, if you're on that number one list, a number one spot, then you're able to get that liver. I was one foot in the grave, one foot in the door holding it open, put it that way. And on the 27th, my liver came in. And I woke up on the 29th, and history has been made ever since. I've been blessed. My family, I don't know who my donor is. They remain anonymous. I try to search them out, but they want to be anonymous.

So I am grateful for my gift every day. I thank my donors every day. And I thank, when I find donor family members, I hug them as long as I can.

And if they're not anonymous and you find the family, you can go thank the family, right?

I do, every one of them. Every single one of them. And I have to rose pray, too.

Well, look, this is a very, very heavy conversation. but I think it should make all of us reflect on potentially helping others after one passes away.

That's true. That's a last gift of kindness you can give before you leave.

Okay, well, Daniel, you're a great ambassador. You're a living example of this program. I hope you live many more years and continue doing the good work that you're doing. Thank you very much. Here's a proclamation to you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Now, Councillor Juan Villegas, Mayor Pro Tem.

I can have Chief Valentin and Chief Henry join me along with the dispatchers.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. Thank you all for coming here on my request. We are celebrating telecommunications dispatcher appreciation week across the nation. and I invited Chief Valentin from our police department and Chief Jim Henry from the Orange County Fire Authority to join me up here for the proclamation presentation. It takes a special person to be a dispatcher in fire, rescue, police. You have to have patience and commitment and lots and lots of professionalism

and I really want to recognize them today and if they could come forward and say something, if you could state your name and how long you've been a dispatcher.

My name is Lydia Weston. I just completed my 30th year here at Santa Ana PD as a dispatcher.

I'm Karen Leidy and I have been here 32 years.

Jennifer Mendoza, and I've worked for the City of Santa Ana Police Department for 10 years, a dispatcher for 15.

Hi, everyone. I'm Samantha Maria Soto. I started my career here at Santa Ana PD, and I've been with Orange County Fire for 12 years, and I've been a dispatcher for 27.

Thank you, Sammy. Sammy, if you can come forward and share a call, what is your, one of the calls you've taken that sticks out in your mind that you don't forget out of your career? Can you share that with us?

Certainly. I would say for me the best calls that we take are for us as fire dispatchers when we get to deliver a baby. One night it was 1 o'clock in the morning and I had the pleasure of delivering a baby and we make the ambulance code 3, we let the guys know and baby's out we've got them wrapped up and dad goes what do you want me to do with baby number two and I said baby number two what do you mean he's like yeah I didn't tell you we're having twins and I'm like oh my gosh so it starts the whole cycle over but that was probably the one of the best moments and then I also had one where the baby was delivered on the side of

the road and the guys got there quick enough to get the baby out and safe so those are the great calls for us.

You can share one, please. There's been many calls that have stood out in my mind over the years, but one was when one of our own police officers was involved in a traffic collision, and we didn't know it yet. We got a 911 call from a citizen passing by wanting to help him, and he was unconscious. We weren't sure if he was breathing, and we didn't know where he was at first. The 911 call came in from a citizen saying that he was unconscious. I tried to get the location, and our technology wasn't working so good with our mapping system at the time, so we didn't know which officer it was.

So the citizen helped us locate the officer and stood with him until help arrived.

Thank you. We could be here all day and all night on hearing some of these great stories that they can share. I believe, Chief, they have about 100, at the Santa Ana Police Department, we have about 413 or 18 calls in a 24-hour period, I believe from the Public Safety Committee, from what I remember. A lot of calls here. The city of Santa Ana is very active. I'm very, very proud to present this proclamation. if you ladies can step forward. Present this proclamation on behalf of the Mayor and City Council celebrating Telecommunications Dispatcher Week.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm getting you together.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Councillor Jose Solorio is next.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This next recognition is a real treat for me. But as we phase out on the prior one, I also want to say back in the Santa Ana Fire days, they helped deliver our own little Diego Solorio from our family. And Diego's doing quite fine. He's a bright, energetic junior at Godenas High School. And so I think, you know, sitting in a fire that helped with that.

So good stuff. But more good stuff right now. I want to bring up Alexis Rodriguez Mejia. Believe me, he has a great story. Let's give him a round of applause already. Come on up. As he's coming up, I'll go ahead and begin because I know we have, you know, still a full room. Alexis worked as an intern for the City of Santa Ana's City Manager's Office in the summer of 2017. Currently, he is a dual enrollment student. He takes classes at Middle College High School, but that means he also takes classes at Santa Ana College.

When he graduates from high school, get this, he will be graduating not just with his degree from Santa Ana High, I mean from Santa Unified, but with four AA degrees and two certificates from Santa Anna College. That itself too deserves a round of applause.

He's also the co-editor-in-chief of his school's newspaper, treasurer of the Robotics Club, sole student rep for the advisory committee, co-chair of the school site council, student ambassador of Middle College High School, participant in speech and debate and has completed over 1,000 hours of community service by being a mentor and a volunteer at our own San Anupal, which I know we're all very grateful, including our chief. Additionally, in his personal life and with his family, he's helped care for his half-paralyzed grandfather for the past nine years,

teaching him to care for himself in small ways as well as helping him with small therapy tasks that will be helpful for him. That summer there was one day that I was meeting with Ruben Martinez who you many know an icon in our community and it was Becky Magallones, one of her last days. So we were able to take a group photo with Alexis and I remember thinking that there was something special about him that I really couldn't put my pulse on it, but sure enough, a week or so ago, I was excited to hear that Alexis has been accepted to Harvard University. Wow, let's give a round of applause for that.

As a first-generation college-bound student, he has made his family proud and our entire city proud. He has a bright future ahead, no doubt, and we are honored to have first-hand knowledge of his work ethic and drive here in our San Ana community. And before we give him the final applause and the certificate, I'd like his parents and his younger brother to stand. I know they're already proudly taking videography and photos. Let's give them a big round of applause.

Muchísimas gracias. Han hecho fantástico trabajo. para su hijo, para la comunidad y para este mundo. Muchísimas gracias. We'll be always indebted for what you have done as family members. With that, it's my absolute honor to give this certificate of recognition, although there will be many more to come, to Alexis Rodriguez Mejia in recognition of your outstanding educational achievement. Let's give him another round of applause.

And a few words from this great scholar we have in our midst.

Well, I just want to say thank you so much to the community here at Santa Ana. I am internally grateful. I have been blessed to be born and raised here and grown up. And every time, whenever I needed help or whenever I needed any guidance, I've been so fortunate to be a part of this community. I joined POW when I was in third grade and I was able to come back as a volunteer. now that I'm older and this community has just been so so amazing to me it helped me get my first internship here at the city manager's office two years ago it's helped me with um go my education my parents came here when I

was younger and they had no idea about the educational system and I'm just so happy to be here and just still awestruck that I'm able to attend Harvard University especially considering that I it's just awestruck I'm lost for words and I'm eternally grateful for this community, to this city, to everyone here, and I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Thank you.

I'm now going to take something out of order. I know there's a lot of seniors here tonight. Oh, one more presentation. We almost jumped over you there. Good job, Madam Clerk.

Councilmember David Peña-Losa is going to give our next presentation.

David PenalozaItem —

Good evening everybody, buenas tardes. This is just a proclamation for last week we had a National Library Week across our nation. I was going to ask if anybody who works at our library volunteers, please come up because you guys are part of this. Nice to have Cheryl and Lisa up here. So our libraries, you know, they're the cornerstone of every community. They're the heart of our city. People think of libraries, they think of just, you know, it's not just books. It's the preschool story times. It's the teen space that offers tutoring and mentoring and counseling our youth.

David PenalozaItem —

It's the free computer services, the e-books, the areas where you could go and just, you know, study after school if you don't have a safe space at home. It's very important that these libraries, you know, libraries exist across our nation. and I would just personally like to see, you know, let's get more libraries open up in our city. You know, I know we had the McFadden Library at one point. Let's bring something back, you know, along that area of town. So I just wanted to present you guys with this proclamation. Thank you both for everything that you do to help our libraries. Cheryl, thank you so much.

David PenalozaItem —

You do a great job with what you have, and, you know, whatever help I can be, I'd be happy to help. So if you want to say some words.

Thank you so much, Council Member Penielosa, for this. 150 years ago when our city founders found our city, the library was one of the first things that they decided to establish in our city. Because it was a place where anybody, regardless of age or income or where they were from, could access free knowledge and free information to make their lives better. And for close to 150 years, Santa Ana population have been doing that at our local library. And with the support of council members, like here, our library is small but mighty and White House award winning.

So thank you so much for the support and just the continued celebration of what a library is in our community. Thank you.

council member of benya losa wins the award this evening for the most succinct clearest most effective presentation you got down to the point and it was very elegant and now we can move on to the next item which is I'm going to take it out of order I think there's a lot of folks here to speak on item 85a if i'm not mistaken so why don't we just start hearing from folks and after about 50 speakers we'll see who's left and then we'll take up the issue and and have

discussion so let's start with uh al soper followed by jared gonzalez followed by mary joe bartich

Yeah, my name is Alan Soper, really, but I live at 4801 West 1st Street, Santa Ana, California. And I'd like to present something. Last year we had a 10% increase in our rent, which is an outstanding amount for a person on Social Security and what have you. As it stands now, our rent takes up over half of our income.

And there has to be a limit of how much the mobile home parts can really charge or overcharge, and it should be under rent control or something like that. And we're looking forward for another rent increase in February.

And, you know, outside of everything else, it's just something that should be controlled. And I think the city council here can do something about that. And that's the main thing while we're here.

it's just that the rents are getting out of control

because we can't do anything about it because if we move out they refuse to buy our house because they want to put in a new coach we have done a lot of updates on our coach but they still says no we're going to move in a new coach if we do So it's something. The other thing that is really bad about it is that we're charging,

they're charging us $55 a month for asphalt that they put in there for 10 years. and there's 120 quote coaches in there which makes something like 85

$800 $800 on that so that they're collecting from us okay thank you very much limited Jared

followed by Mary Jo followed by Rosa Pisano.

And Mary Jo, if you can come down, get ready to speak, and then Rosa, if you can come down, just sit on the front row. Go ahead.

Good evening, Mayor Polito and members of the City Council. My name is Jared Gonzalez, and I'm here on behalf of Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association, WMA. WMA is a statewide trade association that represents mobile home park owners and operators throughout the state and has done so since 1945. I'm here to speak on Agenda Item 85A, the consideration of staff to provide options for the city to address rent increases in mobile home parks that could include the exploration of mobile home rent control. WMA is opposed to the agenda item.

Rent control policies or any type of price fixing of housing is not a solution that works. It's inherently unfair. It erodes an already low affordable housing stock. It divides communities. And it is costly to administer. Now, beyond the negative facts about rent control is the simple notion that rent control is unwanted by Santa Ana residents. In recent months, a local initiative failed to garner enough support from Santa Ana residents to get on the ballot. And last year, Santa Ana voters made their anti-rent control voice heard a second time when they rejected Proposition 10 by nearly double digits.

And then there's a relationship side. If there are issues, residents and mobile home park owners can find a way to communicate and work things out. Even in rare cases, when issues bubble up and make the news, like in a neighboring city, the park owner meets with residents and they're currently working on a solution. together. WMA and park owners pledge to work with the city to address these issues. Mobile home park owners are a collaborative bunch. They have their ears to the ground in their parks. They take good care of their parks. And when residents fall on hard times, and sometimes they do,

park owners compassionately work with residents until they get back on their feet. And many mobile home park residents in Santa Ana are protected by long-term leases. I ask that you stand with the residents of Santa Ana who rejected rent control not once, but twice, and that you favor the continued collaboration between park owners and residents by not directing staff to explore mobile home rent control options that will only create unwanted divisiveness, unnecessary costs, and an unneeded policy to a problem that really doesn't

exist thank you so much for your time thank you sir um next speaker you mary joe yeah thank you

and after mary joe is rosa paisano yeah um good evening mayor and city council members my name is mary joe baratich i am the golden state manufacturers homeowners league gsml zone c vice president for la orange and san bernardino counties and a former president of the corporation

gs moelle is a statewide advocacy that fights for the rights of the mobile home homeowners at the local level and at the legislative level we have been successful since 1962 in getting laws passed. It should protect all the people living in the mobile home parks. And it is the mobile home residency law that we were helped to initiate from the beginning and in the early 70s. GSMA Wells, well we've been doing that. This has come to our attention that seniors, veterans, disabled and other low income mobile homeowners in the city of Santa Ana are being threatened with economic eviction,

causing the loss of their homes and everything they have saved and paid for all their lives. and many still have mortgages. They need protection. An example is the Valley High Mobile Home Lodge that's having a problem right at this moment. Many have no families and are facing the horrible prospect of being homeless and living among the habitual druggies and others who prey upon these citizens, especially the elderly citizens who are in their 70s, 80s, and 90s and this is factual we would like to work with you to address these serious problems by suggesting that the study be started regarding these extreme rent increases a moratorium

on mobile home rent increases approximately three percent which is normally done is one option that has worked successfully throughout the state when while a mobile home as mobile home rent stabilization ordinance is prepared and reviewed. There are currently 110 cities and counties in the state of California that have rent civilization ordinances. GSMOL has been working closely with mobile home homeowners in the Anaheim, Fullerton, Westminster Health Institute, the Fair RSO in each of these cities. And this allows the park owner to a fair return on

their investments and also enables the homeowners to be able to afford to live in their homes that that they spent their life savings on. GSML Corporation, Bruce Stanton, he's our corporate attorney, is expert on RSOs and will be available for you to consult with.

Thank you very much.

Rosa Pisano.

And after Rosa, is Cuivon.

Muy buenas noches. Vicente de Sarmiento, Jose Solorio. I have a lot of new people here in my community, but I have a lot of people who have voted. I am a person who is Rosa Pisano. I am the leader of this community. I am here to talk about the big problem that we have.

I live here in the city of Santa Ana. I am a member of the Mobohoma Association. We are here because we have a big problem with corporations. They have a lot of money so we can't live in peace. We can't live in peace. We have two large communities, the Vietnamese and the Latinos. Venimos a pedir, venimos unidos para poder dar este testimonio al Consejo Municipal,

que son los que nos representan para tener el derecho a una casa o un techo accesible a nuestros bolsillos. And we all believe that this government that represents the state and local government, can represent us because we have voted. We have the responsibility to help our community. We have problems with the new buyers of the terrenos and big terratenials that are being

explotated with the rent in many parks. We live retired veterans who are forced to leave the desalojo. La solución sería el gobierno estatal o el local de poder llevar el control de renta y estabilizar nuestra renta para proteger al dueño de las casas móviles que somos nosotros. I'm Rosa Pisano, as leader of this community, I ask that you can pass the law to control the rent that we have so much.

I've been fighting since 2001. It's just that you don't listen to us. Thank you for listening. Thank you.

Mr. Sarmiento, Mr. Solorio, many new faces, most of you whom I voted for. I'm Rosa Pisano, I'm a community leader, and I'm here to talk about a big problem that we are facing here in Santa Ana with the, I belong, I've been in Santa Ana with the Mobile Home Association, and we have a huge problem because the corporations are raising our rents, and we, to the point that we can't even afford to feed ourselves. We are looking to you, right now you have two large communities coming together, the Vietnamese community and the Latino community, and we are here together to bring you the testimony of what's happening

with this issue, because you are our city council, you are our representatives. We need accessible housing, we believe in our government can do something, the state government and the local government, and you can't, because you can represent us, because you need to respect our community, and you represent our community. This is a huge problem, because we have new land buyers that are exploiting us, they're raising our rents in our parks, in our mobile home parks, where we have veterans, we have the elderly or retired people, and they are kicking us out of our home.

This is the solution is to have local rent control and this way you'll protect the mobile home owners. And I'm here to ask you to pass the rent control that we've been asking for. I've been coming to you since 2001 and this is not fair that what's happening to us. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Mr. Cuivon. And after him, it's Sundu. Next speaker. Mr. Cuivon. And then Sundu.

Go ahead, sir.

Yes.

I've made the prepared remarks, and I think you all have there already. Good evening, honorable mayor and the members of the City Council of Santa Ana. I'm the junior-most senior currently living at Valley High Park in Santa Ana. And behind me are representative residents of 154 residents ranging from age 60 to 102, with the vast majority age over 70. My research reveals that there are two kinds of seniors currently resigning at Valley High.

Those who are retired living on fixed income streams and those who are still working because they simply could not make ends meet. And at their age and with their declining health conditions, there's only two kinds of people living there. Seniors. There are no rich people there. I'm enclosing today two exhibits.

I have here a signed petition nearly completed of 100% participation of everybody who authorized us to the undersigned hereby affirm our support and participation in the collective effort. all affect residents of Valley High Senior Park and Mobile Homes Lodge to ask the park's owner to reconsider this last rent increase effective June 1, 2019 and to allow us to negotiate a more affordable rent stabilization agreement for the next three to five years.

We know that rent control is a somewhat controversial situation, but when it comes to the fixed income senior economics, it's like four-year-old math. There's only so much money coming in, and we don't have enough money to pay 35% rent, 5% rent, and so on. So I will make this available to you, anybody who wants to request it.

Thank you, sir. Your time is concluded. if you can conclude. Red light is on.

Yes. Space renters is of some of us Valley High as much as 25%. I'm here today to cry foul and to cry for help on behalf of my fellow space renters and senior residents in Valley High. Please help stop this predatory practices on vulnerable seniors like us. Let's stabilize my space rent for three years and also you will hear from my fellow residents the same laments. Thank you sir. Thank you very much. Mr. Sundu,

followed by Tree Lee.

Go ahead sir. Yeah, Mayor Pulido and City Council members. My name is Sundu. I'm a resident in Green Lantern Village, Mobile Home Park in Westminster. I'm also president of the Orange County Mobile Home Resident Coalition. As you all know, mobile home residents have had a spare rent increase every year.

But this year the spay rent increase has gotten very high. It's not only 5% or 7% but up to over 40%. and at least five mobile part in Santa Ana including Bali High, Gable, Lake Park, Kunakai, and Coach Royal.

We, residents and representatives over Mobile Home Park in Westminster, Garden Grove and Santa Ana, are here tonight asking you to take action by passing a citywide pay rent stabilization ordinance, are moratorium to a temporary stop rent increase at Mobile Home Park. Santa Ana City has many homeless people and the affordable housing is still in crisis.

Do not push residents in Mobile Home Park to become homeless because they cannot afford their spare rent. They voted for you and now they ask you to vote for them. Thank you very much.

Thank you sir. Thank you Mr. Doe and Mr. Treeley. Treeley.

Hello, I'm Charlie, I'm 18, I'm very little, I live in Balihai, 17 I'm an editor of the CSPC And after 1975, I was recognized by CSPC And after 1975, I ended up in CSPCPC

I live in Bali, six years,

And today our benefits And our benefits And our benefits And our benefits And our benefits And our benefits And our benefits And our benefits And our benefits And our benefits And our benefits And our benefits And our benefits And our benefits And our benefits And our benefits

Thank you.

Okay, in the middle now, thank you.

My name is Chi Lee, 81 years old. My health is not good now. And I was a former army officer and I was in prison by war after 1975 for 13 years. And now I live in Bali High Senior Park for six years. And the rent increases since June 2019.

And I am more depressed. and my health is worse. So please consider, I call for the consideration of the city about decreasing the rent so we can afford to pay that. And thank you very much for your consideration.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Joanne Jones,

followed by Jasper Newkirk and then followed by Benita Pimentel.

Go ahead. Good evening, everyone.

Why don't you bring the mic down a tad?

There you go. My name is Joanne Jones, and I'm 76 years old. I've lived in Valley High for 17 years, and I know a lot of people in the park. They're my friends and my neighbors. We had a rent increase that is extraordinarily high for anybody to live with. I raised my daughter on my own and have worked all of my life, and I rewarded myself by retiring in December. Then the rent increase comes out. So I don't know if I will be able to have the ease of life that I wanted if this rent increase goes forward.

So we're asking you as neighbors and as friends to help us to get something situated where they cannot increase rents up to 35%. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jasper?

Do you need help, Jasper?

okay

bring the mic down i'm just just talking to the mic i'm jasper newkirk i'm 90 years old in Ballyhi, I've lived in Ballyhi 50 plus years. Recently our manager gave us a notice the rent was going to go up $140 a month more and this is totally unacceptable. We will not give up without a fight. I appreciate what you're doing for homeless people but I just want to point out that

if this rent increase goes through, many of my neighbors will be forced to leave their home and live out on the streets. So we're like a drowning person crying for help. So whatever you can do to help us, we'd greatly appreciate. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Next speaker is Benita Pimentel.

Hi, my name is Benita Pimentel. I'm 79 years old, and I have lived at Valley High Mobile Park for 29 years. I am here tonight to ask, plead, even beg City Hall to stop the madness. We older people who are still able to hold our heads up, ask we not be knocked down at every turn. Someone out there also has a mother and father, and I find it hard to believe you would sit by and let what little dignity we have be taken away from us.

and have many, many put to the curb because of high rent. The rent goes higher and higher. I just had a $109 increase. I didn't get an increase in Social Security. How are we to live? A few people in the park have already walked away because they just couldn't do it. There are some trying to sell their homes where they have lived for 20 and 30 years.

Some may have families to go to. There's others that don't. Please see us. And you do. I know you will try to help us. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Thuat May.

Thuat May.

Go ahead, sir. Good evening. My name is Thuat May. I'm 71 years old. I have been a Santa Ana resident for a long time. I have been living in Bali High for the past 10 years. And the first 7 years, everything okay. But since 2016, the new company come in and they jack up the price, jack up the rent. So ridiculous.

And unjustly. So we come here to ask you to help us.

and hopefully with your help we can get the rent control and so help us, not even now but in the future and maybe prevent some of the our seniors go out on the street which we had the problem, we were talking about the first problem here so I come here, thank you for help thank you. Thank you sir Dao Tran.

Dao Tran.

And then it's

Ruth Rogers.

Hello, my name is Dao Tran. I'm 69 years old. I live in Bali Heights Senior Park for 10 years. and I had a problem right now because I'm retired and my income just from social security just like the limit finance but the rent just raise up so fast and I come here and I work for this country like almost 50 years

and now I retire and I want to stay in my house that the mobile home we have about 10 years but with the rate of the rent like this I believe that maybe we have to get out of our house and we will be the homeless later and I don't think that's fair for us when we already serve for this country like more than 50 years and we all the people in Bali High I would like I really need your help your government protect us and get the rent control so

we can stay in our house that all I need to say thank you thank you very much Butch Rogers

Thank you sir My name is Butch Rogers I've lived at Valley High for 12 years My girlfriend also lives with me She was diagnosed with cancer Two years ago Which is very expensive My health is deteriorating. I'm not sure we're going to be able to live there and where we're going to do. I work 16 hours a day now to try to pay the rent now. So I'm begging for help for her because if I

go, she has nowhere to go whatsoever. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Bernice Howard. Bernice Howard.

followed by Raymond Howard.

Good evening. My name is Bernice Howard. I've lived in Valley High for 25 years.

Speak into the microphone, please.

I'm sorry.

I've lived in Valley High for 25 years. I'm 70 years old.

I'm here to ask for some rent stabilization, kind of zoning protection, some kind of three to five rent program set up so we know what to expect every year, except it's a surprise. Hey, you're going to be paying this much, you're going to be paying that much. I have a disabled epileptic husband, and I have an expensive paler for my bronchitis. I've survived three heart attacks, and after all this, the space rent keeps me going up. I'll probably both be homeless.

So we need some help so none of us are homeless, add to the homeless population. I thought my golden years should be enjoying my retirement instead of fighting off people that want to take advantage of veterans, retirees, and disabled people. We need to help to stop this elder abuse. I thank you very much.

My name is Ray Howard. I have a few things to say.

I'm walking around trying to talk to the gentlemen and making sure that everybody's okay. Because there's so many gentlemen and elderly people that need help because they're going through so much problems. Because we can't afford it. I can't even afford it because of the problems that I have.

I've had a stroke and he has trouble communicating a little bit.

Take your time. Go slowly. Thank you.

Because sometimes I walk around here.

And there's people that need some help. And so I help them as much as I can.

and the more the merrier and I just need more help and that's with you guys helping us as far as rent and everything goes because I can't even afford it myself

because of my my

my strokes and epileptic I can't even say it But I care for everyone that I've got there because we're all having a problem. And we can't just get money. I can't even get money. Because I'm trying to get my...

What's it called? Disability. disability I'm trying to get my disability to at least a tour maybe to be able to try to pay my rent and I just need need you guys to try to help us everyone in the whole park because I walk around the park and try to help as money as I can. Thank you. Thank you, Raymond.

Tammy Dawson, followed by John Sirich.

And John, if you could come down and sit in the front row. After that, it's going to be James A.

McCarland.

Please go ahead.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. My name is Tammy, and I'm a resident of Valley High in Santa Ana. Less than two years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer.

Excuse me. Unfortunately, my significant other has stage four terminal cancer. And once he is no longer with us, I will not be able to pay the rent.

With these consistent rent increases, I came here to ask for your help. We need affordable rent there. because I really want to stay in my home. Thank you.

John, followed by James, followed by Christina Faye.

Good evening. My name is John Sarek. I also live at Belly High Mobile Home, and I've been there for over 10 years, and like everything else, seems to be going up. and all they hear is with their rent increase and I have heart problems and my medications and stuff just adds to the problems and like I said, they jack in our rent and that's why I'm here tonight to ask for the help of you council members and council people so please help, thank you

Thank you, James

James A. McCarland and then followed by Christina Fay, followed by Ann Tram.

James, James is at 432 South Harbor Boulevard.

Come on down, sir.

I'm James A. March Bank. Got it. Sorry my spelling. I'm 88 years young. I live in Ballyheim Mobile Lodge. I've lived there for just about 30 years. I've been the handyman there and I know the people very well. I know what they're going through. for myself yes maybe I can afford it but what about next year and the year after that I still have some energy in me I still want to fight and help other people I'm a veteran from Korea I just ask this committee this council

for your help

I would like to cry and shiver in and do all the things to make you feel humble to us.

I'm asking you for help.

I do what I can for the people in the park. If they need a hot water here, I get somebody who can do it for them at a reasonable price. I do what I can for them. These are my people. These are your people. don't make us homeless. Thank you.

Thank you, James. I like that comment about being 88 years young.

Hi, my name is Christina. I'm 67 years young, and I've lived in Ballyhi for approximately 20 years. And thank you all for taking the time tonight to listen to us. As you know, we are all concerned about the exorbitant raise in our space rent and would implore you to consider a rent space stabilization ordinance. I personally am single, supporting myself, still working and paying a mortgage. My rent will increase by $150 per month come June 1st. This is a 20% increase. and this will take almost half of my monthly salary.

Most residents in Valley High are on a fixed income, either disability or Social Security, and can barely make it as it is. This rent increase will greatly impact every single person in this park in the worst way possible. Please help us if you can. Thank you.

Thank you. Anne Tran followed by Tong Long followed by Tran Cao.

Thank you.

I live in Bali High for 13 years. First 10 years, we try to pay the rent. But the last three years, the rent is increasing too much. And we're so depressed. And we call for the city, please stop the rent increasing. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good evening, mayor and city and council. My name is Huang Luang. I am 71 years old. I've been in this country 44 years all my life working and try to do something to help for myself and help people.

I live in this mobile home for 16 years. I'm retiring right now. I'm very depressed and in last nine months I've been hospitalized because of my sickness.

with this increase of rents I'm very scared that is terrified of myself I come here tonight to ask you to help us help help me away from the homeless the homeless most of my scared in my life please help us thank you

Fran, Fran Cal, followed by Sam Ham Nguyen, followed by Dean Pham.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. I am Cal Tran. I live in Balei Hamo, home 25 years. Then the first time I had a second track with a 3% rate, that means about $50. and after that for three years from now they increased from 50 to 100 a month so that's a very crazy increase so I cannot afford the bone then many time now I remember this I will for you many time and Samiento and you kind of look like like a Miguel Pulido voter. Many times. Then I remember your guy.

Now we need you support and bring down the percent of increase of the rent. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Ham Nguyen, H-A-N Han Nguyen,

and after Han Ding Pham and then Hong Kei Li.

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It's a ham train, 77 years old, and I lived there for seven years, but next June, the rent would increase to 799 per month, and I was really depressed. So please help to do the rent control. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

There you go.

and it's really difficult in our life. But today, we received a letter, and the report is that the house will increase. So I would like to thank you to help us.

Thank you very much.

for 13 years. And it's increased to almost 800 from 540. My total income and also my retired income around 1,200. And I don't think I can afford for that. And please help us for rent control. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm Chiang Huỳnh at Mallview Home, Bailey High. I'm now 67 years old. I've been around 10 years old. But now, the price of the price is too high.

My name is Akim Huynh, 67 years old, and they live in Bali High for 10 years. Now the rent is too high and the seniors are very worried. And please help us to stop the increasing rent. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Huy Nhu, H-U-Y-N-H, that was you.

Bui Nguyen, Bui Nguyen, N-G-Y-Y-E-T-B-U-I.

Bui, Ana Dang, Ana Dang, D-A-N-G, and after Anna,

Valentina Manferdi.

And after Valentina, Lynn Bien.

My name is Nguyen Bui, 82 years old. I live in number 41. I come here today asking for help for the rent control. Thank you.

Go ahead, Valentina. Go ahead.

I thank you for helping me. I thank you for helping me.

My name is Anna Dang. I live at number 42. My job is not stable and the rent is too high. Please help us. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Valentina Manfredi, M-A-N-F-R-E-D-I, and then Lynn Bien. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I'm Lynn Bien. Valentina couldn't make it. Thank you for hearing us. I hope you hear us because we're desperate. I've lived at Valley High I don't know how many years. I lost my husband, I'm a widow, five years ago. I don't know how I'm going to withstand $150 rent raise this year. I'm making it on one income instead of two.

You started out with homeless people. What do you think is going to happen to us if they keep raising our rent? We'll all be on the street. You got maybe a hundred parks that are trying to get their rent lowered because this is predatory rent terrorism.

I'm not done.

I've lived here. I grew up in Fountain Valley now. I've lived here in San Diego for like 30 years. I pay your taxes. I vote you in and out what do we get? We need help I need somebody to help all of us sure you can go back to your cushy homes, what are we going to have? the gutter? We're going to be homeless

that's it applause

Roseanne Clark

followed by SB Martinez

followed by Doris Martinez

Hello, I'm Roseanne Clark. I will be 77 next week. I have lived in Bali High for 13 and a half years. I looked for an affordable mobile home and park for seven years before I finally found the one I have now. I loved it the moment I saw it and I bought it on the spot. And I still love it just as much as I ever did. When I moved in, the rent was $515. In the first 10 years, the annual increase was only $15. And then the management company took over and it went

up and up and up. I still love my home. I hope I never have to move, but if I should, I'm really scared about the $1,100 a month rent for new people that come in. Who would buy my home? Please help. Thank you.

Espy Martinez, Doris Martinez, and Viorel Artin after that

Good evening council members, mayor and city staff My name is Espy Martinez, I am a resident of the city of Orange However, I worked in Santa Ana for 11 years I do many of my business in Santa Ana I'm here to talk about agenda item 85A. My parents, Doris Martinez, who is here, and my father, who could not make it, are 80 and 90 years old. They have lived at Valley High for four years. Since then, their rent has gone up 30%. Think about that. Their Social Security has not gone up 30%. Food has continued to increase. Medication has continued to increase.

Healthcare has continued to increase. What do you want our senior, disabled, and veteran individuals to do? We had a large discussion about homelessness for over an hour about this shelter and that shelter. Where are you going to put senior, disabled, and veterans that are homeless? That's going to be another, what, 5,000 people in the city of Santa Ana? Please, I'm urging you today to not only help us, as many of the residents and tenants have said, but I'm urging you today to please put an ordinance and vote on something today to freeze rent control so that June 1st rent does not go into effect.

And also order your city staff to review resources, review options, review those 110 other cities and counties throughout the state that currently have a rent control ordinance in place. I'm not asking to never have a rent control ordinance that's against our economy. that would you know upset your developers upset your people that have contributed to your campaigns we're asking for something to be fair two percent three percent every year to put a cap on it so please look at the audience look at these seniors many of these individuals only go out

of their home once a week they've been in this um council chambers for two to three hours now sitting down without their feet up without their medication without eating so you can hear their please. Please do something today to help avoid this rent increase. Thank you.

Just take the mic out and give it, yeah, there you go.

Good evening. My name is Doris Martinez and I'm a Santa Ana resident living at Valley High Mobile Home Park at 432 South Harbor. I am here regarding the rent increase on senior citizens who are on fixed incomes. Myself and many tenants have limited funds and no place to go. The rent has increased by over 30% since I purchased my home four years ago. This hardship is making it extremely difficult to pay for basic needs like food bills and medication. I urge you to

put a freeze on rent control and order staff to review options on keeping mobile home parks affordable thank you thank you

we are we are our team followed by annie m montejano

Good evening. My name is Vera Lardin. I'm 77 years old. And I'm living in Bali High. I'm here tonight to ask you for help. Bring the mic down. Yeah. I'm here tonight to ask you for help to stabilize our lands and protect us against unjustified evictions. Maybe you'll help after this week.

I'm living in low income tax, fixed income, and my rent will raise now about 7%. But they suggest that in near future will raise with 40%.

In our stop, they say next 11 hundred.

That means that my whole social security benefits I get will be on the rent. How can I get food, medicine and other incentives, which I need? The only solution maybe will be for me to lose my home. But this is not a solution for some seniors who work hard to have a decent place to call home. we don't want to be a border for the state.

And it's not a solution for the city of Santa Ana. If this will help, will happen for me, please, your next shelter, maybe you can put a word for me to have a place. There. If I will be homeless. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Annie M. Montejano, followed by Irma Marin.

Mr. Mayor, Counsel, I'm here on behalf of my brother. She can't make it. She's not doing good. I just recently moved in with my mom. Bring up the mic. I just recently moved in with my mother because my father passed away and helped whatever I can. But I did notice what everyone else is talking about. So that's pretty much what I have to say. I appreciate your time. You have a good evening. Thank you for coming down.

Irma Marin and then Ana Maria Salgado.

Ana Maria Salgado.

and Armando Marin

Nancy Caldwell Nancy

good evening thank you for being attended our petition. My name is Nancy Colvin. I've been living in Ballet High for 18 years. My half-pen passed away. I'm a widow. I'm living with a low income. They surprised me, the manager, when they sent the letter. So this June, I don't know, well, I will possible to pay my rent, but in the end of the year, it's a question mark. So we come in here with the neighbor, so soliciting, please help. If you don't help, who is going to help us? Thank you so much for being nice with us. Thank you.

Thank you for coming down.

Manuel Bacera.

Yes. Bacera, I believe B-A-C-C-E-R-A. And followed by ricky tally

yes well it is chosen josé manuel barrera y vivo en valley high hace ocho años los cuales ya soy pensionado y estoy recibiendo 800 dólares no más y ahora me subieron el el 23 o el casa el 30 por ciento and I don't have to pay the rent. So I'm in a situation for so because I was also sick and I'm with medicine. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Jose Manuel Barrera and I am a resident of Valley High for eight years. I am retired and I receive a pension of $800 a month and now they've raised the rent 23 almost 30 percent and now I cannot afford to pay my rent and in addition to that I am sick and I have medications that I have to take. Thank you.

Vicky Talley I believe.

Honorable Mayor, members of the Council, my name is Vicki Talley. I don't move so fast these days. This is a tough meeting, isn't it? It makes me want to cry. And it makes me want to cry because there's so much misinformation out there. It makes me want to cry that these people are being victimized by people telling them if they just show up and read what they need to read tonight, that they'll get their rent reduced and their rent lowered. Nothing could be further from the truth. The rent-increased notice of Valley High has gone out. It goes into effect June 1st.

Kimberly is the manager of the park, and she didn't turn in a speaker's lip. She was concerned. What should she say and all? and all. That's okay. It's okay. It's okay. I just wanted you to know that she was here. I have a complete rent roll of the rent increases at that park, and I've provided you with information. No one, no one in this community will become homeless. No one will lose their home. No one will go on the street. This community participates in the Met rental assistance program which I administer through my office the

manufactured housing educational trust I've provided you with information on that program and I want to give you I want to ask you and plead with you this evening to please give us an opportunity to communicate with these residents so they get the true story people have come up and told you that they're getting a $150 rent increase. $140 rent increase. That isn't happening. Rent increases in the park are $35, $50, and there were some that got a $100 and $7 increase. Those people

are paying very low rent. And the park has not changed hands. It's a long, long time family ownership. This is not a corporate America that has this park. This is a family that has owned the park for years and years. The infrastructure needs to be completely redone. They're spending quite a bit of money on upgrading this park. There's a whole lot more to this story than you're being told tonight. I would

like to invite you and ask you to allow us to wrap up. Yeah to find absolutely I I would, the three minutes, but thank you very much. But let me wrap up by saying that give us an opportunity to sit down with these people and make sure they understand what really is going on and understand that they can receive help. We'd like to have a private solution, an opportunity to resolve these issues and to meet with these people directly in this community. Thank you very, very much. That's it.

Okay, that was the last speaker. Let me bring back the council for comments. Let me turn it over to Council Member Sarmiento. He requested this to be on the agenda, so let me bring it back, please.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you for moving this up on the calendar. We have, obviously, a lot of folks who probably want to be home instead of being here. And so I want to thank you all who spoke and who addressed us, And I certainly apologize for bringing you out here or you having to come here to address us on this, because I know it's really a difficult, it's a difficult track from your home here. I also wanted to thank Vicki Talley, who just spoke and who spoke with me yesterday when I told her that I was placing this on the agenda.

And look, I'm heartbroken from hearing from all of your stories, and And they certainly don't sound scripted to me. They certainly sound genuine. They certainly sound sincere. And it really is difficult to hear your stories because you are residents of our city. And you are part of our city family. And so it is incumbent upon us to try to help you address these problems. I don't think anybody here, and when I placed this on the agenda, was talking about putting a cap or fixing rents or doing anything.

We understand that mobile home park owners have a right to be able to go ahead and reasonably increase rents for the spaces that they rent and they lease. But the difference is being reasonable and being excessive. And being so oppressive that folks are getting physically ill, they can't sleep, they're getting depressed. And I've heard many more stories from that. I think the Mobile Home Association representative that just spoke is also being genuine that she will sit down.

So what I'm asking my colleagues and I'm asking those of us up here on the dais to consider. And I'm going to ask our city attorney to see if she can give us some options. But in the law, when there's a dispute, we request a cooling off period. Just things to remain status quo until we figure out what the facts are. If in fact what we've heard of 30, 35, 40% rent increases, that really does shock my conscience. And I hope to God that that's not true.

And I don't want to label all our mobile home park owners, because we have more than 30 in the city, with a broad stroke and say they're all bad actors. But if in fact these mobile home parks that you all reside in have been behaving this way, I think the Mobile Home Association wants to know who those bad actors are. They certainly don't want them treating their residents who've been loyal, who have a right to live in dignity, to be treated this way. I certainly know that I have a mother who's elderly. She's blessed because she has her home. That's not the case for everybody.

And you represent the face of that demographic that we all are going to be stepping into at some point. So I certainly want to thank you for coming here and telling your stories. They're deeply personal. It's probably very difficult for you to share them with us. But what it does is I think it places the face of what fear looks like. I think what we saw tonight is the face of despair. And so I think that whether we want to call it just a pause or a moment to just stop for a while and for us to have some options and solutions presented to us,

And maybe there is a way that this mobile home park owner will negotiate with their residents and come up with a reasonable solution. All that's on the table. All I simply want to do is for us to settle things down right now. Let's study this. Let's analyze this because this isn't just happening in Santa Ana. A very similar agenda item was placed in the city of Anaheim. I know the city of Fullerton is considering one as well, and it's happening in Westminster. So it appears to be something that's industry wide, but again, I don't want to paint everybody with a broad stroke.

But I do want to have an opportunity to have us do a deeper analysis. I know that what our staff came up with tonight was in very short order, because I placed this on as an emergency item on Friday. And they explained that there were more than 30 mobile home parks in the city. So we're very mobile home heavy here in Santa Ana. And what I would hate to see is that all 30 of them come to us with stories like this. And so that's my fear, is that this starts an industry-wide increase that is going to place a lot of you in peril. And you're right, we were just talking about a homelessness problem.

You are folks that are living on fixed incomes. Many of you are disabled. Many of you are veterans. children's, you folks are the ones that we should be caring for the most. You're our most vulnerable part of this population segment. And I've always been taught as a young man, respect your elders, care for your elders. And I think that those of us who live in this city, those of us who care for this city, realize that we have a responsibility. We have a debt to pay, and that is to folks like you who place their trust in us to make a responsible decision.

So I would ask Madam City Attorney that if we can, and if hopefully there's support for it, and we can do it in many ways, to call for a cooling off period. Whether that's a moratorium and just a stall on any increases from being imposed while we study this. And I know there was a suggestion from one of my colleagues to bring it back to one of the city council committees to get the data from the Mobile Home Park Association, as well as the owners, as well as the tenants. And so I think all that's going to take us a little bit of time, but I would hate for these increases to be imposed.

And if we can do this with scalpel-like precision and look at those parks that are specifically being,

that are placing these increases, that's what I would suggest. But I do think that this does appear to be something that we need to do, we need to act on it tonight, we don't have all the information to act on it. So I would simply say, let's stall things, let's put a pause on things, and And let's get the data, let's get the facts, let's act responsibly and let's make the right decision for everybody who's here. So that's what I would be requesting and I'll go ahead and give that direction as a motion to the City Council.

Is there a second to the motion on the floor?

See no one, it dies for lack of a second.

Mr. Mayor, just so we can continue the dialogue-Go ahead, Tom. Yes, yes, thank you.

So I've yet to find many situations where rent control actually helps decrease rents. We think about last year had some researchers come and And part of what they found is that oftentimes those policies don't benefit the people we really intended to. Or like Santa, we're largely an immigrant community. There's not many immigrant communities that have benefited from rent control policies. One only needs to look at Santa Monica or San Francisco to see they have some of the largest, highest rents in the world. So rent control by itself doesn't help.

I'm more supportive of things like rental assistance programs. Even in this case, it sounds like there's a private sector model, but I'd like our city to consider that. I think there are a lot of good people in good standing that sometimes just to, it may be a health situation, a financial situation, where I don't expect the rent increase. That maybe you just need some temporary help. I think we have to consider that. I think too, oftentimes folks don't know who to call when there is a question and know whether something's reasonable or not.

I also know on the mobile home side, a lot of the land use and other decisions really are controlled by state law. And so really, the city's pretty limited in what we can do and maybe we'll have the city attorney speak to that. And so I do believe that there are a variety of solutions that we could do to help renters here as well as citywide. But to do it here one night without specific proposals, it's hard to do. I would be more than willing to on the budget and infrastructure committee that I'm on with

council members Penalosa and Ceci Iglesias to have a broader conversation on a variety of these policies. But tonight, I mean, I am interested in hearing more. Or I just don't know really, even if we were to say do a moratorium, I don't know that we can enforce it on the owners here. So that might be a good place to start with our city attorney in that if we were to pass some type of moratorium, can we really enforce it and then discuss the purview or the authorities of city versus state. And again, that doesn't mean we can't do other things.

So I'm glad we're having this conversation because obviously you're feeling issues and we ought to address it. But it needs to be in a way that is doable and that's going to be effective and practical.

City Attorney.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So Mayor and Council Member, we were given notice of this as an 85A, so we were able to do some initial research. We are aware of other cities that have taken immediate action. So we have gathered some sample moratorium ordinances from different cities, several of them in Orange County but also up in Northern California, and we're evaluating them. We do know that under the city's police powers, you could, if you decided as a matter of policy, that you wanted to go in that direction and adopt those ordinances. That's one option.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

The second option is we heard one of the trade industries speak tonight about this fund that's available out there. I'd like to learn more about that fund. A lot of promises made in the letter. I'm not very familiar with it. They use words like may, can. I'd like to know if it should be shall and will. And so I think we need to have a conversation with the industry representatives so that we can be more educated as staff as to how that works. I'm happy to do any research that I'm directed to do by the majority of the council this evening. So, yeah.

I'm aware we could do an ordinance, but would it be enforceable is my question.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yes, yes. We can adopt enforceable ordinances both as a moratorium, which would be an emergency action, as well as a long term restriction.

And I think too, we're going to have the conversation about this housing sector. We really got to look at the entirety of the rental market in Santa Ana. And I mean, if nothing else, just to see what the tools are out there. Again, I'm comfortable looking at them. Again, I'm being clear as I always am that I don't believe that rent control is the solution. But we got to look at what other agencies are doing and what may or may not be possible.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I mean, I can tell you from personal experience in adopting these types of ordinances and actually implementing them that they're not without risk. Yes, we have the authority to do it. Yes, other cities have done it. Cities who go in this direction also do, whether they're successful or not, face various claims. So there are some things that you balance, right, as a matter of policy. How far do you go? Do you push the envelope? Do you do something minor? Those are all the things that we're prepared to research and we began researching because we were noticed about this. So we're working on that.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

We're happy to come back to the council and working directly with our housing staff as well.

What type of claims are you referring to? What type of claims are you referring to?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Well often, depending on how your program works, you could get property owners who bring claims about interference with their rights and that maybe some cities have gone further than the state law allows. So anything of course that I would recommend to you if I'm given direction would stay within the four corners of the state law that we're asked to do.

Okay, so what following?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I would caution you against trying to do anything too creative that's outside. But clearly, yes, you have the authority and we could work on that if that's something you wanted us to work on.

Thank you. Okay, any additional thought or comment? Councilman Iglesias?

I just want to thank everyone for being here. I know it's been a long night and it's good to hear from all the residents. I know Bally High is in Ward 6, and so I am the elected representative for Ward 6. And I just want to share with you that I have heard your stories, and I hear the struggles that you're facing. So one thing, I don't know if this is one thing that we could do, because I know the city of Anaheim just had an item like this presented to their council.

and what they recommended was for the tenants to meet with the landlord to see if they can come up with some type of solution to this dilemma. So I would like to see, I don't know if you've already met with them, acting city attorney, have you met with Valley? No? You haven't met with them at all? Okay, so my ask would be if either yourself, you can meet with them, and the property owner, just to see how we can mitigate this issue before we start talking about anything else.

Because if there hasn't been a conversation between the tenants and the homeowners with the owner of the lot, then I believe it warrants for us to start that conversation first. And then we can go ahead and, you were asking for us to move forward with other things. So if that could be done, I would recommend, that would help me out too, to be able to speak to our constituents about what's going on. And I believe it's a good way to start a conversation on where they're at. So if that could be done, Mr. Mendoza, I would really appreciate it.

Thank you. Additional comment, Mayor Pro Tem? Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Yeah, I too want to thank everyone for coming out. I really, really want to help. I really do. But before we take action, I'd like to find out more information. How many mobile home parks there are in the entire city? The number of units? What is the average rent? What are the increases for the last five years? I checked with our staff, and we didn't have all the exact details. It's going to take a little while to figure that out. I also would like to find out what funds are available, what help is out there, and why did the rent go up, which is an important thing.

I mean, there is wear and tear. There is such a thing as the economy goes up a little bit. Everything is going to go up just a bit. But I also believe in taking care of the folks that need it the most. And with that, I'm calling for more information. I don't like to make a decision or put a cap on anything, a moratorium on anything, without having the information in front of me so we can make a good decision. I also believe in having conversation with the mobile home park owners. I need to hear what they've got to say. I've got to listen to both sides of the story.

And I would like our staff to do that and find out exactly so we can get an assessment of the city. Because if not, this can start a trend and it will go and affect the other areas of the city. So I would like more research on that. Is that for Mr. Judson-Brown or is that for?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yeah, and I'd just like to mention something to the council and maybe Mayor can assist with this. For us, as we're receiving these comments, we really do look for direction from the majority of the council. So again, we're happy to meet with the property owner, but I think we would want to see a motion or direction to do that. Is that something the council desires? In terms of putting information together, that would come from our housing department to do that. I defer to the acting city manager.

I would like to put a motion for us to start speaking with the property owner and gathering the information from staff.

From the staff also to come back with the numbers and the averages.

Just gather information.

David PenalozaItem —

Should we wait until all the discussion is over with before we take a motion? We can. Because I'm not even 100% sure exactly what Council Member Sarmiento's motion was.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

His motion died for a second, but if you'd like to revisit it. No, I seconded it. I'm so sorry. I think you asked for comment, but you did second it? I did, yeah. Got it, okay, well then we probably do need to call for the question on that.

What was the motion? Yeah, let me go ahead and sort of clarify, because I think those of you who are maybe reluctant to support it, it's simply doing what you're asking for, which is having some opportunity to gather information. And look, I get that you may not want to do an immediate ordinance tonight to place a moratorium, that's fine. Tell these folks that you're not going to do that. But all I simply wanted to do is make sure that we provide them an opportunity to understand, and for us to understand to make a more informed decision, what these mobile home parks are actually doing.

And whether or not the tenants' claims are correct. And I think that's all we need to do. I think that's the responsibility we have to do to make sure that we have the facts correct. And so in the interim, just to go ahead and do a cooling off period. And I think somebody said that the rents aren't going to be imposed till June 1st. Well, we're still in mid April. I don't think it's going to take that long to gather information. Let's do this and I think our staff could probably get this back to us in 30 days.

30 days.

And so we can go ahead and before anything is enacted, we can have them come back and give us some options. Whether it is negotiations that can take place with the property owners, whether it is a stabilization, they can give us a whole range of options and we can make a more informed decision based on that. That's all that's being asked. That's the motion.

I'm not willing to support the motion because I think it's one thing to gather information, it's another one to send a moratorium based on what you might think the information does. There could be other mobile home parks that are right now in the middle of something. So I'm happy to gather information, but I won't support any moratorium until we have information. Go ahead, Councillor David.

David PenalozaItem —

But, I mean, you weren't asking for moratorium because it starts June 1st, right?

He wants a cooling-off period. This starts June 1st. How do you know there's now another park tomorrow?

David PenalozaItem —

Right, right.

You don't.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay, well with that said, I just wanted to thank you all for coming out. I hear you, I understand 100%. And I see the numbers that Ms. Talley presented, said over 100 of residents are receiving a $52 a month increase. That's $624 a month. And I help my great aunt do her financing every month. And she's fortunate enough to own a house. But even with her social security and medical and all these other expenses, at the end of every month she has $10, $12 left in her bank account.

David PenalozaItem —

So I understand completely where you guys are coming from and I see this. But we also got to keep in mind that we do have over 30 other mobile park homes in the city that we need to take into consideration. and not just act just on one mobile park. And for those that said, you voted for me, thank you so much. I think I was looking at the map just to actually place where it's at. And I think one of the mobile home parks, I scaled the fence because it's a locked fence. I am from Santana after all, so jumped the fence, knocked on your doors, and you guys were startled. But I appreciate it.

David PenalozaItem —

I did that at about a dozen senior homes. And so just, I understand and I do think that as a city, we should go out and gather information from the mobile park owners and the other residents to see why exactly these rent increases are happening. I know that in Anaheim and Fullerton, somebody else purchased the mobile home site. So there was an increase on and they're trying to offset that. If this is the same owner that has retained ownership of this mobile park home,

David PenalozaItem —

I want to ask why are these rent increases taking place to get the breakdown of why this is happening. And I want to help, but I want to be able to do a responsible decision and really see what the reason behind all of these are. And I know time is ticking. This is June 1st. That's only 45 days away. So waiting for 30 days, that only puts us at two weeks away from these rent increases taking place.

David PenalozaItem —

Is there anything, Madam City Attorney, of how long this would take to go out to all the parties involved and see what options we have? because I know that Councilmember Sarmiento's item, it says, consider giving direction to staff to provide options regarding the city's ability to address rent increases. And so I don't know what those options are. I don't know what options we have. I don't know what options we can do under the law. But I would like to see them if it's going to bring it back before these rent increases take place.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I mean, I think when you want options, options are researched and options are provided. provided and that actually is the easier task because I can go back and bring you all sorts of options. Actually coordinating with the property, with these particular property owners is fine. We've got two land owners in this case. If you're asking us to go out and meet with all 30 of the owners of all the parks in the city, that's going to be a much greater task. So that's why I was asking you to be specific about your direction to us so that you're very clear about what it is you want us to do.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

And I would defer to the acting city manager because his staff will be involved as we reach out.

Jose?

Yeah, I think also consistent with what Councilman Sarmiento is trying to do, because we have enough time before June 1st, we could do some of these research and meetings with the case at hand over the next few days really. And then if there are things that we need to bring back for something more formal, we have the time to do that. That's number one. Number two, in Anaheim, the property owners, after reviewing the thing, they did their voluntary cooling off or postponement where they postponed the rent just a month or so, just to give people a little bit more room to research, etc. That would be another option.

And again, here I think we kind of have enough time and we had some mobile home representatives that heard this. And I'm sure they're going to look at the rental assistance fund to see how they can help residents. So that's kind of what I see as doable over the next couple of weeks. And then at that point, Council Member Sarmiento could bring back something similar or in May at our Edabit committee, we could consider some additional options.

David PenalozaItem —

Mr. Mayor, I know that the city attorney had questions about this home assistance program. Ms. Talley, I don't know if you could answer some questions about it because I'm reading it and it's all May. It's not clear. At the very bottom, in bold letters, you say the assistance program is strictly voluntary on the part of the park owners and may be changed, revised, or discontinued at any time with or without notice. So that can't be used as an argument to... Do you want to speak? Yes, please. Come on down, Vicki. I mean, I don't think it should be used as an argument to defend this because

David PenalozaItem —

it's held at the bottom as could be discontinued without notice. If we establish something, it's law and it's policy and it's permanent. Who knows if this is, you know, it could. So can you please answer to that and how this program operates, please?

Yes, I'd be more than happy to. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you.

The reason that it can be discontinued is because if you notice on those qualification guidelines, it says that it only applies to jurisdictions where there is no rent control. If rent control were adopted, we would stop the program.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

And I would invite you to give me your business card. I will call you tomorrow. I have it right here for you. I will ask, you all know me, I will ask the tough questions about the can and the may and who's eligible, whether they're making a commitment to do this, you know, how much money would be involved. And I'd be happy I've got the card. I'll make that call first thing tomorrow. And we'll give you a factual.

Go ahead, Vicki. Just one more thing. I think it's really important to look at the mobile home residency law. It provides that any mobile home park owner who's going to implement a rent increase must provide a 90 day notice. In Valley High, that 90 days is up June 1st, and in Konakai, May 1st. Those go into effect.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So Ms. Tully, may I ask you a question if I may? Go ahead. Would you assist us in working with the property owner in this case to see if we can get an extension on that, if that were one way to ensure that our council wasn't going to take immediate action? In fairness, if we're trying to balance the interest of the council with the community, would you work with us to ask them to potentially delay that if we are making progress on our options, so to speak?

It's inappropriate for me to respond on that, and I most certainly will work with you and with the park owners, but it's inappropriate for me to respond on their behalf. I'm just asking would you work with me to talk with them about that. I will absolutely put together meetings with you and provide all the information possible. I did provide rent information, by the way, to the council. Thank you.

All right. So I think maybe right now we have enough discussion on this. Do you know what you're doing, Sonia?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I think Stephen and I will piece this together. I think what you are looking for is research. We will get you facts and information. We will reach out to the advocacy groups and to the two property owners.

And it can be within a couple weeks possibly, and then we'll come back to the council.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

May 7th or May 21st.

And it would come back as a 65, right, from staff.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yes, if we get four votes for this motion, it certainly will be a staff driven item. Seventh, awesome. Seventh is what we will shoot for, that would be the ideal date.

The seventh deadline was yesterday.

So maybe two weeks after that.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

And I'd say the very latest, May 21st, and if we had to come back May 21st, we'd come back with all of your options, including potentially the own four days.

But several of us are saying no moratorium information, so it's a 65A. Is that informational only, or what are we doing?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Well, I think what I would do, I would try to negotiate this with the property owners, because I think right now you're focused on two, not all. To the extent that we're making progress, it would be in their best interest, I believe, to say, okay, we'll give you another 14 days. It'll depend on our conversations with the property owners. That's why I asked the question.

Maybe an update on the 7th, see where we're at.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Okay, that would be great.

All right, folks agree? Yes, Councilman?

David PenalozaItem —

I'm still confused over Council Member Sermantel's motion. So did you include a moratorium in the motion? You want a cooling off period.

A cooling off period is just simply, and for this, for purposes of June 1st, it's more just basically keeping things status quo. So, and if the information could be gathered, if we needed to go beyond June 1st, it would be asking the property owners not to impose the increase, right? That would be part of the cooling off period, just to keep things status quo. To the extent that we could have some sort of solution before June 1st, and the options brought to us before then, then we can make a decision.

And hopefully, all of us have the expectation that everybody will be acting in good faith, including property owners, and come back and negotiate something reasonable with the tenants.

And I personally am not willing to do that because it's pre-obligating us at least between now and then. I want the information first.

David PenalozaItem —

But would that be for about 30 days or is that-

Right, if based upon what Madam City Attorney says, she would be bringing that back to us on the 7th, is that-

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

We try to gather as much information as we can on the 7th.

By the 7th, at least an update, and then if she can't, it would be coming back in the second meeting in May. 21st. Which would be the 21st, which would be before June 1st, just to see where we are. And hopefully by that time, again, we have the trade association representative here, the tenants here. They can all kind of sit and gather and hopefully they'll be able to come up with a solution. And that's something that will be reported back to us as well.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Right, let's just say hypothetically we come back on the 7th and we've talked to the trade organization and this rental assistance program is going to work for everyone. Then we would report that to you. We wouldn't need to take any action, but we can't do that this evening and those are the types of facts that we want to get back to you. And then you can make decisions. We might hypothetically come back and they're not going to support any amount of money to them. Then you'll have to consider a different kind of option. So facts on the 7th, more information and facts so you can base some future decisions.

And I'm willing to go facts. I just don't want to prejudge and say we're putting a moratorium until we have facts. No, I want facts first.

I concur with that.

I just want to be clear on what we're doing.

And I have confidence in our staff that they'll be able to bring something back to us before June 1st.

For sure. All right. So maybe enough discussion. I think it's unanimous based on that direction. Anybody opposed? So it's unanimous, but based on those clarifications. I'm a no.

Okay.

So with that, we now go on to the next item. Let's go back to where we were. Go ahead.

Which motion was that? It was an aggregate motion. To gather facts and talk to the associations. Not a moratorium. Come back with reports in the future.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I am not preparing a moratorium for the May 7th meeting.

David PenalozaItem —

Correct. Okay, that was yes. Sorry. Let's take it back. To clarify, yes. So it's unanimous.

It's just research facts. So now let's go on to the consent calendar.

Anything to report out of closed session, Madam City Attorney?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

We have no reportable action from our closed session.

All right, consent calendar. I'd entertain a motion.

Second.

No items pulled by Council Member. Okay, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right, those opposed motion carries. Item 55A, I would entertain a motion.

Motion approved. Second.

Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. those folks motion carries uh 55b adopt a resolution entertain a motion motion approved

David PenalozaItem —

second i have a go ahead a question i have just a question i know fwad's not here but if somebody could uh i think nabil was here who's here nabil is here from our water department

William, speak up loudly, and folks, if you can just keep it down, please. Go ahead, William.

David PenalozaItem —

Evening. Hey, William. I just had a question. So the total cost of this program is $14 million, according to the staff report that I read. And this is a $1,500,000 grant, correct? That's correct. The other 13 million, I mean, are those other grants that are going to be, is that coming from, I don't understand how the payment for this work.

On those details, I would ask Nabil Saba, our water resources manager, that I think he can explain the gap, the differences in the financing.

Good evening. For this program, we're trying to gather as much funding as possible. This is a water smart program through the Bureau of Reclamation. We're applying for it. If we get the $1.5 million, then that will add to the $4 million that we got through the state natural resources department. We got $4 million to get that program started, plus $1.5 million maybe coming in to us.

So we're trying to fund the program in many ways, pay go or monies as we have in the water resources funds, we would be paying for that in addition to maybe going out for a bond to add more to the funds to execute the entire program. It's a three to five year program to retrofit all of our water mirrors. So we're looking for monies.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay. This is just a grant that you guys have? Yes. Okay. Thank you.

Sure. All right, so I believe you got a motion and a second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. This is time and place for a public hearing on item 75A. It's abandonment of a portion of 5th Street between Sunset Street and Hawley Street. Do we have any requests to speak on this item? Madam Clerk?

No, we do not.

All right. I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing nonetheless and ask if anybody wishes to address us. See no one. I will close the public hearing and bring it back to Council for consideration. We have a question. Go ahead, Council Member.

And this is for Mr. Mendoza. If you could explain what this means, the abandonment to vacate a portion of Fifth Street.

Certainly. Again, I'll bring up the public works staff. Mr. Teg Higgins is here today and he'll tell you and describe to you this project that's been in the works for some time. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. The abandonment of the street, it's something generally done when there is excess street right-of-way. In this case, 5th Street in between the PE right-of-way and rate street is, in general, it's about 60 feet wide, the right-of-way. In this particular segment, it's 72 feet wide.

And the circulation element calls for 60 feet. So it's 12 feet wider than is necessary. So in this case, the street would be abandoned and essentially given to the adjacent landowner. Right now, the city just has a street easement. So we abandon. It just reverts back to the adjacent landowner. The landowner then incorporates that into the development project that's adjacent to it.

So how many square footage is that that we're talking about that we're giving back?

It's about, I know it's 300 feet by 12 feet, 3,600 square feet.

We're making the street narrower.

That's correct, Mr. Mayor. Just to make it consistent.

We're straightening it out. That's correct. And the people that used to own it before it became a street are getting their land back.

Yes, it was dedicated to the city, probably by the Tiny Tim development in 1962, and it's just excess street.

So what are we getting in return? Nothing?

They get their land back that they donated to the city.

That's correct. They own what's considered the underlying fee. They own the fee property underneath the street.

Just as it makes sense that we're giving something away and not requesting a fee back.

Well, think of it this way. When we make a street, we take the land for free. That's what cities do throughout. They just take the land through an easement, say it's going to be for public use, and you take it for nothing. In this case, we're saying it was too wide. We need to make it only 60 feet, and so there's a little extra remnant parcel on each side. They're getting their land back that they originally gave to the city.

All right. Thank you. So those in favor, do we have a motion on this one? Motion to approve. Do we have a second? I'll second it. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye, those opposed. When no, motion carries. So now item 88, I would entertain a motion. This is part of the joint session between the city council and the special housing authority.

Motion to approve. Second.

Those in favor, please say aye. We have a question. Go ahead.

For this one, Mr. City Attorney,

is this the one with the loan that we're giving?

Yes. There's two loans. There's a low and moderate income housing asset fund loan of $4.7 million and an inclusionary housing fund loan of $1.3 million. That's why the city and the housing authority are separately taking actions.

But what does that mean to the city? So we're lending them this money at what percentage?

3% simple interest per year, repaid based on 50% of the residuals after they take care of their debt service and their developer fee.

And it's due in what, in 50 years, you said?

55 years, yeah. And units have to remain affordable for 55 years.

So say if they decide to sell, what happens?

If they sell to a qualified buyer, they would come to us and ask us to transfer the loan to that new buyer. We would do the same research, it would come back to the City Council for consideration. Many of these loans are assignable.

Okay, and is this like, I guess earmarked funding that it's for housing only, it's not coming out of the general fund?

Absolutely, you're absolutely correct. In fact, it's two different sources, a low and moderate income housing fund, and then the second was inclusionary zoning. The city made a commitment in 2017 to provide these funds for the developer. The developer has gone on and achieved and been able to have been successful in getting their other financing, and now they're back to you once they have their other financing. So we can put the commitment in the form of a loan agreement.

So how many units are we financing with this?

There's 51, 51.

And they're all low income?

There are a range of low to moderate income units, yes.

And is it only for Santa Ana residents, or how does that work?

We cannot do that. We cannot limit it. We can market it that way, but we can't limit it to Santa Ana residents only.

Okay, so there's not even a percentage that's guaranteed for Santa Ana residents? No. Nothing? Yeah. That doesn't make sense.

Thank you. Council Member Acis. Yes, I apologize. That information is under our loan agreement, under Section 11 of our loan agreement. We do implement a local preference for affordable housing units that we finance with our affordable housing funds as approved by City Council and our affordable housing funds policies and procedures in March 2018. And what does that mean? That means that we do apply a local preference in that Santa Ana residence.

So there might be what percent? I think she's looking for a number.

100% of the units will be preference for Santa Ana residence.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

But you can't make that guarantee. They're guaranteed.

We have language in there.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

We have language and it's a goal that we aim to implement because we have to be mindful of federal housing rules. And so we have some criteria for people to meet. We're usually successful at meeting the criteria, but we can never offer an absolute guarantee.

Okay, so we're lending our money. We're not guaranteeing any, I mean 100% for our residents. We're going to get an influx of traffic and impact to our communities.

No one has, that's my word, and no one has invested in that area in 54 years, the Tiny Tim Plaza. So this is actually an investment to raise it up to street cars going to go right past it and that's why we're trying to straighten the street out and everything.

Okay, it just isn't-It's a lot of work.

But it's money that can only be used for this. Absolutely. And it's a good application. It's a good leveraging of the dollars.

Yeah, they've done a really good job of using our money with other monies. They're not relying solely on our funds.

How much other money, do you have any idea how much other money they've acquired or secured?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

And Mayor, if I may real quick just answer the question. I think because we have so many people in Santa Ana, our preference language has very often gotten us to where we want to be. And could end up resulting in all 50, 51 units being Santa Ana residents. It's just that under federal laws we have to be careful how we state that. As a practical matter when we implement the language, we can get to that number. And that's what Judson was trying to explain.

Justin, how much other money have they levered?

The total construction is $31,281 that they've achieved, and our portion is $6 million. It's good leverage. Yeah, it's impressive.

They're also redoing the plaza for all the store owners in the area. The whole plaza's going to be-

Do we have a motion and a second on this one? Motion to approve. Is there a second? Motion and a second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? One no vote. Motion carries. So that was item 80A, and now we go back to, we're going to adjourn the joint session between the-

Mayor Polito, if we can consider 85B.

I think we already voted on that, no?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

No, he's just adjourned, he's coming back from the House.

85B.

Yeah, yeah, we're now going back to the regular meeting. He was just going back to the regular meeting. It's 85A and after that's 85B.

So let's go on to Council Member Salodio. Do you want to present item 85B?

Yes, I'm hoping that we can have our police department provide an update regarding police officer hirings, separations and vacancies for this fiscal year.

And I know we get a lot of reporting on this, but we spend a substantial amount of our city's budget on police services. And we have tremendous vacancies in the department, and I think it's important for the council and the community to understand that. And then anybody on the council that may have suggestions or direction would be good. I have some general comments, not necessarily anything specific for direction for tonight, but an important piece of information nonetheless. Chief Valentine, thank you.

Yes. Thank you, Council Member Solorio and Mayor and Council Members. We have, I did provide the entire Council some background documents on all of our hiring efforts to date. I was asked specifically about 2018, 2019, and then all of the efforts in calendar year 2019, year to date. In addition to that, I also provided you an organizational chart of the Police Human Resources Division.

And it's important to note that really in the year of 2018, over the last 12, 15 months or so, that entire section has been reorganized and have added what is the equivalent of 5.5, five and a half, one employee was a part-timer activated to full-time status. 5.5 full-time employees to the effort of hiring, recruiting, processing applicants, and hiring them. So that's significant, and that occurred really throughout 2018.

You were also provided a listing, a complete listing of all recruitment and hiring events. And they're, as you can see, pretty diverse. And then also there was a question about response to Priority 1 calls. That was provided as well. So let me just kind of give you the hiring by the numbers, if you will. So in 2019, year to date, we've hired four officers, okay? And a few council sessions ago, we talked about a projected target of approximately four officers per month. So what's important is that, you know, this is not an exact science, right?

We're hiring from the human race, and we need to take that into account. So when we make a job offer, there may be circumstances that occur post that job offer. Or in the case of lateral police officers, we extend a job offer after they go through the entire hiring process. And then in two instances I can cite, one was involved in a shooting incident on duty. The other one was involved in a use of force incident on duty. Those need to be investigated, vetted before we finalize a job offer. Right. No reputable agency is going to finalize a job offer with an outstanding administrative investigation.

And so that's important to note. So four hired year to date, eight have a hire date of April 29th. So that brings our total to 12. And we did have an additional, as I said, four officers, three lateral police officers and one recruit that were scheduled to be hired. There were unforeseen circumstances where we could not finalize their job offers, although there's a strong possibility to bring three of the four on. And then again, in the month of May and June, five police officers are projected to be hired each month.

So that would bring our total to 22 year-to-date from January 1 to June 30. And I believe all of last year, I think the total hire was 21. So we've already exceeded that. The target for this calendar year is 50 hires, 50 police officer hires. That's our projected number. Okay. But again, I have to share with everyone that we're not going to lower our standards, nor should we ever consider that. Right. And so we want to make sure we get the right officers that are hired, particularly when it comes to laterals.

You know, with this last, you know, MOU agreement that was put in place, we don't want to see officers, you know, come to Santa Ana simply because it's a more lucrative package for a lateral officer with seniority. We don't want to see that. So we want to make sure that we get the right officers hired on. So, year to date again, January 1st to June 30th, we have 22 that are projected and likely 25 and as many as 26. But we won't know that until we continue to do the good work that goes behind this, which is significant.

On that note, this Saturday at Centennial Park, we have an all-day hiring event. and we have upwards of 60 plus candidates confirmed. That's the highest number we've had in the last several years showing up one day. And so they start off their morning and everyone's welcome to attend. We can walk through that process at 7 a.m. Centennial Park. We'll start with the physical agility. They'll take a break. We'll move them through an oral interview. And if those folks that are successful to that point, we'll get them into pre-backgrounds that same day.

that's how efficient this reorganization has had an impact. So that happens this Saturday. I also want to share that as part of this reorganization,

we have a new deputy chief that's in charge of the administration bureau. He joined the team in October of 2018. Again, this is a work in progress all of last year, and it takes time to get to our goal. we moved the field training officer coordinator program into human resources as well. So this is what happens. Let me walk you through a case in point. Either a recruit or a lateral is interested in Santa Ana PD. We immediately make contact with that person to determine why. We get them on a tour. We get them on a ride-along. Many of you have been on a ride-along. And we want firsthand knowledge of our city and our needs.

And if they're viable, we are working them as quickly as possible. I've had police chiefs in Orange County and beyond call me and say, how is it that you're able to process candidates so quickly? As you see, we have a small army working behind this effort. The hiring void is not unique to Santa Ana. It really is impacting the entire industry.

Unfortunately, historically, we've had a number of vacancies and we've relied on those. and where other agencies they've pushed a higher to full capacity. So our goal is to very much move in that direction. That is our ultimate goal. So with that, I can take questions, sir, from anyone.

Go ahead, let's get a bit of some more questions.

Yeah, let me make my comments now and then my colleagues have any. Thank you for the update. Again, this is just to highlight the current point in time for my colleagues in the public. So it seems to me from the memo you provided that fiscal year to date, so from July to now, we've hired 11 officers and we've had 21 separations. So for this fiscal year to date so far we're negative 10 officers hired. And that's what concerns me. I think some of us up here, particularly Council Member Villegas and I,

We got on this council with a big focus on public safety, hiring, saying the money's there, let's go higher. And we always get very rosy projections and we're negative ten for the fiscal year. For the last full calendar year, we hired 22 but lost 28, so we were negative six. And when you have in the overall department about 61 vacancies or so and the number keeps growing, it's not a good situation. That's where folks mainly pay for from the city and expect from the city. We're now also starting to see, as I thought would be the case, and it's unfortunate,

but 911, priority one, police response time is getting very bad. We went from approximately five years ago to 6.39 seconds, to now eight minutes and seven seconds. So response time has increased 22%.

Jose, you were sure it was six seconds before?

Well, this is their information, but yes. Does that seem right, Chief? Six seconds to respond?

Six minutes, I'm sorry. Six minutes. Yeah, that's better. Sorry about that. That's better.

Man. Six minutes and 39 seconds. All right, I believe that. And to eight minutes and seven seconds. Got it. I was thinking seconds was 399 seconds and And it went to 487 seconds, that's about a 22% increase. And there's a direct correlation there. The number of officers you have to respond to calls is going to directly impact response time. I highlighted to the chief and others as well, the reason why this is important is that measure X, the two big things highlighted were homeless services and reducing 911 response times. Finally, as many of you know, I'm a big champion of data and

you can't manage or you can't measure, so we need to start looking at critical data points like this to address them. I'm not necessarily advocating for any particular thing tonight because we have a new city manager that's going to start on May 1st. In Anaheim, they've had some very good successes hiring officers.

And I think as part of the budget and measure X, we need to be talking about filling these vacancies. And really what's also modernizing the police department. It is tough to hire and so maybe we need to do more security cameras. Maybe we need to hire more police service officers. Maybe we need to be like other cities that don't require their park rangers to carry guns. There's a number of things I believe that we can do. And I look forward to continue working with my colleagues, the chief and the new city manager on filling these vacancies and reducing police response time. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Other questions on the same issue? Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Chief, so when you took office as chief,

you had about eight vacancies in dispatch and only one supervisor?

Yes, that was the case. Again, that area entirely needed to be reset in terms of leadership. We got down to one supervisor, and that's for 24-7 coverage, seven days a week.

You guys are struggling, and thank you for resetting that. Also, in dispatch, you've got to have someone answer 911 calls. Correct. You also have to have someone who's listening and managing the patrol.

Correct.

Right. So how many have we increased now at dispatch in that area?

So we've promoted three supervisors. We backfilled for their positions. We'll show recruiting for the other vacancies. But clearly there's a correlation. If we don't have a full complement of dispatchers and a full complement of officers, the response time will tend to increase. The other point here on the negative 10 in the fiscal year, so we're talking about April 29th, today's the 16th, will be negative 2. And if you follow the trend line on this, again projected, I think we're headed very much in the right direction.

So not just being low on officers on the priority one calls, but you also there's a delay because somebody needs to answer the phone and we handle about 400 plus calls in a 24 hour period. Right. So that also adds to the delay in the priority one response.

Is that correct? Correct. And our measure also is from the time we receive the call. Some police organizations will include time and data matrix on the dispatch, starting from the point that it's dispatched out to the officer. So these times, although there is the increase, is from the first point where we receive the call.

So we should take into consideration that you are low on staff also during this time. Correct. I thank you for addressing this issue. Thank you, Chief. That's all my questions, sir.

Thank you. I've got a couple questions. If I may, and then I'll go to you. Chief, I don't need an answer this moment, but if you could do an analysis, and in the analysis, if you could assume that we're fully staffed. You know, somehow we increase our staffing rates and a year from now or at some point in time we're fully staffed. Assuming a fully staffed level, what might be a reasonable decrease to expect in terms of those response times? And again, you're going to have more people everywhere, not under these conditions.

just so the council has some ideas to where would we be you can give us a range I know it's not an exact science but that would be an interesting exercise if you could undertake it please I can do that yes okay secondly maybe another analysis that would say at what rate would we have to be attempting to hire because I know there's that big drop off you know you might have somebody going to the academy and then they start to fall off and then you know some may even quit altogether

they might decide they're going somewhere else and so you start with a certain number and it drops off and at the end of the day you know here's how many you're graduating and bringing on to the department so my question would be if we were to reverse engineer it and assume that within a 24 months maybe an 18 months period if it were possible wave a magic wand and say we're just going to somehow get more people to come into the class what would those numbers have to look like are they twice as big as what we have right now just what are those numbers what would the

targets have to be assuming the attrition rate because again there's a big drop-off assuming existing attrition rates in order to be fully staffed within, say, an 18-month period, something of that nature. Yes. And then thirdly, what would it take in terms of changes and maybe certain things we can do about, other things we can't, but those that we can do something about if, for example, the background checks are taking maybe longer than we want them to and maybe some people go somewhere else or they can't

you know follow the rate that we're going at and they change their mind. How many more people would we have to have within our overall recruiting apparatus in order to be able to you know meet you know goal number one and goal number two. So what would the third category have to look like in your estimation in order to meet those other two goals. And I can absolutely provide that in a written document. I can tell you just rough numbers if you follow about. Give us rough numbers, but come back with a memo. But give us rough numbers right now if you want.

If we're looking at approximately 20 on attrition annually over a 24-month period, that's 40. We have, say, 60, and we're talking 100 police officers in a 24-month period. So we're targeting 50 this calendar year. We need to stay on track there. If we can increase that, that's good as well.

But the 50 are not a net 50, right? The 50 are 50 that are coming in, but we're going to lose some. We know we're going to lose some. Sure. How many do you think we're going to lose?

You're netting 25 to 30. Say we lose 20 to 25 every year.

So we'd have to increase that number if we want to be fully staffed within a 24-month period. Correct. So maybe we need that analysis as well. I can do that. Yes. Thank you. Any other questions? Jose and then David. You go ahead. I think Tessie had a question too.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Chief, for being here. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just had a – so what exactly are we doing to retain the – once they get hired? Because I know I saw the report and, you know, you have officers that are quitting and resigning and whatnot. not and I understand the the retirements but how can we you know what have you heard is the general reason of why these recruits straight out of the Academy are quitting do they I mean I just want to know why this is happening right and as a city are we in a department are we paying for for the Academy for these recruits that quit once they finish the Academy and get hired on and are in

David PenalozaItem —

training that whole investment that we made in this particular recruit do we i mean i i just want to know how do we lose that money is that a loss for us is that just gone great questions um thank

you for those questions so when we hire a police recruit for example we do send them to the police academy we sponsor them so they're being paid at the recruit level but we very much pay for that training and for their salary while they're in the police academy in the case of quitting or resigning and i think you had some clarification provided to the council by mr fam we had two instances recently again not an exact science we're hiring and dealing with human beings right and we need the right people because there's a lot of authority and responsibility that a police

officer has out on the street in the case of one circumstance in the police academy the individual decided this simply was not for him. It just, after all of the assessment that's done, we're talking about eight different examinations, right? A full background investigation, a lot of time and effort, and this doesn't happen just to our agency. It happens to every agency in existence. So they get into the police academy, they decide it's not for them. In the second instance, the individual actually graduated from the police academy, was in the training program in the second phase. So I had

already gone through a month of training out on the street with an officer had gone to a second training officer as part of the program and and decided that that the nature of police work here wasn't for that person that they thought they would be a better fit in another agency um and so they they quit without notice so that's where you see the quit uh resignation to give a two-week period the quit is basically they just walk out the door so in spite of all the safety measures that we have in place, and this is across the industry, any police department, there

are still individuals that decide, after all, that this isn't for them. We had one young lady who decided to leave to become a pastor, full-time pastor. And so, you know, what we do, what I ensure, is that anytime someone leaves the organization, that we do kind of a full analysis as to why. What are the variables, right? Particularly if someone decides to leave Sanana PD and go to another agency, another competing neighboring agency, for example. In that circumstance, I want to know everything that went into that person's decision-making process, because we need to learn from it.

And from that, we can make some adjustments, potentially. Again, would it change someone's mind? I don't know. I think we have a good, robust morale level in the police department. You can speak to any officer at any rank, and they will tell you that this is a good place to work because of your support and because of the working conditions.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay. I'm just thinking right now as you're speaking, with that investment that we make into people, obviously if they're out for two months patrolling and training and they realize that they don't fit, obviously I wouldn't want them to work for our department either, but I'm just trying to understand how does somebody get that far from all the assessments and we invest. How much does it cost to put somebody, do you know that off the top of your head, to put somebody through the academy and sponsor them?

I don't have the exact cost of the police academy we use, primarily the Orange County Sheriff's Department. The cost is really in their benefit and salary. That's the cost. The cost of, I have my deputy chief here. We can get that information to you. You enroll through Santa Ana College. That's our educational partner. But it's not significant on the police academy fee cost. It's the bringing them on board, and now they're an employee, and they're being paid. Right. Yeah.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay. Because just final thought. Yes, sir. This is not related to our department. The reason I was asking these questions is because a friend of mine applied in El Segundo, and they put them through the L.A. Sheriff's Academy. He got hired on. He worked for about two months training. And then all of a sudden he was like, yeah, I quit. And I was like, what happened? And he said, I couldn't handle just the politics in the department.

David PenalozaItem —

And he wasn't a military guy. He played sports his whole life. So I was like, oh, wow, okay. And I just wanted to get a general understanding of why we're seeing this. you know, like you said, across the board, it's not just, you know, isolated to Santa Ana, but,

but, okay, any ideas of why that happens? Right. That's going back to that human race element piece. It's just, it's, it's hard to kind of data mine that piece of it because people will just up and leave and there's a variety of different reasons and we get you see that that it's just I didn't truly understand what what this was going to be you know and not to really lean on Millennials excuse me sir but you know

David PenalozaItem —

that I saw everything on television and this is not it yeah this is just not it so I'm out yeah they don't make us like they used to I can tell you that I'll throw us under the bus really quick.

David PenalozaItem —

And final thought, so what kind of, and I don't know, Madam City Attorney, I don't know what kind of options we've played with, with retention efforts, with new hires. Are there, do we do contracts at all? You know, if we bring in and we invest all that time and effort and resources into training somebody, does that person like the one that left after training, does he go to another department and could apply and get hired as a lateral, not a lateral, right? Because they don't have their post yet. Correct. But do they take the graduation of the academy and they don't put them through the academy anymore?

David PenalozaItem —

So now they jump right into training. Is that a thing? You're right on.

In that circumstance where someone successfully completed the basic police academy, they could apply to an agency as a lateral applicant and be hired. Again, their first call is to us in terms of what happened. And I want to believe that we all have a professional industry and we're going to be honest with each other. And we share what occurred and what did not occur. And then it's up to that hiring authority if they want to take a chance with them. Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

Go ahead, Councilman Saloida, and then Evesque. Go ahead.

I just have a couple of questions. You mentioned that you get 50 new hires. That's going to be your goal, 50 new hires a year. That's what I understood. So how many are leaving again for retirement? They're just quitting. How many is that?

so on the natural on the attrition rate uh and it's the bulk are retirements they're not we don't have a high number of people just walking away quitting other than those couple circumstances on average it's 20 to 25 a year okay uh it can be a little higher it can be a little lower right but on average that's what it is so when we're talking about a target a higher target of 50 If we lose 20, then we've obviously were up 30, right? And vice versa, 20, 25. So that's our goal. If we go over, that would be good. Yeah.

Okay, then to fill the vacancies, how many vacancies do we have right now?

So as of March 31st, 65.

We have 65.

Correct.

And then we're hiring 50 and 30 are leaving. So it's 20, so then you will still have 45 who are, 35 vacant positions, right? So I have two questions. Why is it that we budget for 65 vacancies if we know we're never going to fill them? So that's one question, I think that would be for Mr. Pham too, or Catherine. That would also be for you, just why do we budget for so many vacancies if we know we're not going to fill them?

Okay, if I can answer that.

Go ahead.

So we don't, in fact, budget for all of those vacancies. And we can have someone from finance answer the exact number that are actually budgeted, right?

I thought we are budgeting. Those are the budgeted ones. There's some that are not-

I'm sorry, unfunded, budgeted, unfunded. You want to know which ones are actually funded with money, is that right? Is that the question?

Correct, and budgeted, too, because I know that that's a two process. It's like, are they budgeted, and then are we funding them? And we may not be funding them because we're not hiring them. That would be my understanding, right?

So my mandate by this previous council and current council is to continue to hire aggressively. And I will get to a point where we hire at the point where we need to come back and look at funding for the additional positions, right?

On the court question, let me give it a stab at answering it. Really it's the council that approves that budget money. So it's our decision and partly based on their recommendation. And it's like this year, they're hopeful they are going to be able to hire all those folks. But at the end of the day, they don't. But what has been the history? And then the other aspect of that is that money from the vacant budget positions, they then use that for overtime. So they are paying for officers to be patrolling, to be on the beat with overtime.

So really, that money for police services can either be filled through hired officers, new ones, individual individuals, or overtime. And so if they can't hire enough, then they just spend more on overtime. And so that's what we've been seeing, that they don't hire them all, so they compensate by instead paying existing officers more overtime. But there's also, if you keep getting to a smaller and smaller force, these folks are tired. They can make mistakes when they're working too long.

And I want to give an opportunity for the next generation of millennials and others to start assuming these jobs.

And that would be also my ask for them to start assuming these jobs. But my question is historically, it seems like we've been budgeting more than what we've been hiring.

And this has been the past 20 years.

Yes, so why are we doing that? I recall when I guess the previous chief was here, I know he would keep something that it was lower number for the vacancies. And I mean, I would just like to know from staff, is like, I mean, how did that work then? Why can't we make it work now? And then the other question is, I know there's positions, and I would say responsibilities from the police department, that doesn't really warrant someone to be, you know.

Well, certified carrying a gun.

Carrying a gun. Something that, you know, like for traffic or something like that, we can have civilians. Have we thought about that? I mean, hiring those type of individuals to help us so we can really get the officers out there patrolling and doing what they were hired for?

We absolutely have. And you'll actually see that once again in the next budget proposal discussion for your consideration in looking at positions that are currently being filled by sworn police officers, converting those to professional staff members. Also, in this human resource org chart, you'll see that we have an outside contractor who does, on a part-time basis, some of our backgrounds as well.

And we've also hired deputies from other agencies that left their organizations and then have become, in that case, they're a retiree from their previous organization, but they're a professional staff member here. So they're hired at that rate. And in traffic as well, you'll see a proposal for a number of police service officers out in the field to relieve the motor officers to actually go out and do traffic enforcement education initiatives that actually save lives.

So we do look at civilianization, is what you're referring to, and we look at any opportunity possible to include the background process. you'll see a proposal in the near future and one of our other divisions for your consideration as well.

So are you also looking into security at the parks? Because I know we have the park rangers, but we don't have enough.

We have zero park rangers. There's a supervisor, but there's nobody under that supervisor. Zero.

So then why can't we, instead of having park rangers who are sworn officers, Can we have security or some type of, I guess, law enforcement per se, the presence from the police department, but it doesn't have to be a sworn gun carrying officer, somebody that could just help us. Because I know the concern from the community is we just need someone to be here, to be providing us some sort of safety. Even with our staff at the parks, they don't feel safe. and then so our community doesn't feel safe. So is there something that you're thinking of bringing to the council regarding security,

how we can mitigate that so we can ensure that the security is out there for our community?

Yeah, absolutely. My recommendation to the previous city manager and also now currently working with our parks executive director is very much to head in that direction, is to hire and retain private security. And essentially, kind of following the model at Santa Anita Unified School District with the district safety officers. They're not police officers. They're eyes and ears. They observe and report. Same thing with private security. We had an issue with security at night, closing of the parks. The idea is we would deploy, retain security department, and they would take care of that. They would be charged with that.

And if they observe anything, their mandate would not be to engage. It would be to call us.

and we would send an officer. So would that be part of the

65 vacancies that you have or that would be part of another budget request? I mean, what does that look

like? That would be out of Parks and Rec Department.

For them to provide that to the police department?

Well, to provide the budget for that service in the parks. Yes.

It would be from the Parks Department to the Police Department. In order for us to provide safety, it wouldn't be the Police Department.

So, I mean, this is a, this can be a, you know, policy issue, but I've discussed it with the interim city manager. I'm sure we'll have the conversation with the incoming city manager. I've discussed it with the executive director of parks, really to move the security of parks into parks and recreation. Obviously, we work together, but if we're not going to have park rangers there, then the security that are there would be budgeted out of parks, but they obviously would observe and report any activity that's of concern at any of the parks.

Well, just my opinion, I don't think that's fair, because there's a lot of things that we could be doing with the parks and recreation department that our community is needing. So whenever that comes up for conversation with the council, I would hope that we would have a more in depth conversation. Because I don't think it's fair to be taken away from the parks and recs to provide something that the police department should be providing.

Okay. Chief. Go ahead. One quick question. You and I discussed this in the past and then we got taken aside somewhere else regarding other issues that came up. But how about hiring report writers so we can free up the officers and you can take just the cold reports, and that would free up a number of officers in each shift. So I still want to talk about that, not here because it's getting late, but maybe I can bring it up at a later meeting for the public safety.

That would go now.

Well, if you want, I'm willing to do it, we'll hear the mayor's there, so if you want to.

If there's three people that want to go deep into this, just get into it.

I think too, and just my closing comments too, is we have a new city manager coming. It's a perfect time. Who came from a big city. It's really a budget discussion. It's a perfect time. It's a measure X discussion. That's why I didn't want to get into too many policy things today, because I think we could work on it together and have a new program for the future. It's a perfect time for that. I'm not a fan of private security. if we are going to have permanent positions they ought to be city employees or officers so i think we could do that we want to be a career and and and that sort of thing even though we have a lot

of work ahead there's been progress you know when in public safety committee two years ago councilman and i would ask even things like what's your goal for the number of officers you want to hire this year there was no goal it was just you know good faith and good intentions and that gets to the metrics and another in addition to what you were mentioning

councilor iglesa which is a good point on why do we budget so many positions for me too I know from the community we get either concerns too many officers not enough we're paying too much too little and we need metrics to prove why we have the need that we need and I think things like 911 response time is a you know a clear point but we also need to look at the national standards And there are kind of per capita ratios, and so those numbers in part are based off that. So a lot of work ahead, but we are making some progress.

David PenalozaItem —

Really quick, Mr. Murray, just to piggyback what Council Member Solorio said, I agree that these positions should remain funded, even if they're vacant, just because when it comes to, let's say we remove those funds, they're not funded, the hiring for the hiring stops you know and and it's going to be something you know i can just see that once it comes to hey we need more officers well the money's not there and it becomes a whole

budget thing so um yeah i agree with that well look uh i suggest uh we have a new city manager coming perfect time for the council look this but also we've got a public safety committee if we want any deeper look into that take advantage of that committee and chief if you could just folks on the public safety committee, but come back to us with memos. And budget. And soon you're going to sit down with the new city manager and do your wish list, you know? Do your wish list. So thank you for that. Maybe we can go home soon.

Where are we at, Madam Cork? Do we need to do anything for the housing authority solo? Yes, we do. All right, so let's do the special housing authority meeting here. And I guess just item number one and two, would that be appropriate?

And if we can also include the absence of Council Member Sarmiento. I believe he's left the dais, if I'm correct.

Well, tell him you're looking after him. All right. So with that, here he is. Here he is. He heard his name. So look, I'll take a motion on item one. two and three. Well three would just count as this comment. So one and two. I'd entertain a motion

for the Housing Authority. Second. Those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed motion

carries. Now city manager comments. Mr. Mayor thank you very much. I'll keep this brief. We have over thousand students from 97 universities visiting us beginning on Thursday night April 18th at the Santa Ana High School auditorium for the 2019 National Forensics Association Championship Tournament. All right look the clerk

just handed me some speakers so let's do the speakers and then we'll conclude with council comments. Dale come on down followed by Paul Barry followed by Terrence Finnaman, I believe it is.

Go ahead. Good evening, Mayor and Councilmembers. For those of you who didn't get the letter that I sent out, I just wanted to say thanks for the city supporting the park cleanup at Santiago Park this past weekend. Specifically, I wanted to thank Sergeant Keenan Blake, Corporal Jerry Verdugo, Detective Jorge Garcia, Offer Jamie Lopez, Officer Matherley,

and Park Ranger David Madrid. We also had Parks and Rec staff there, and Sergeant Kanan Blake was also able to compassionately persuade some of the homeless people to help out in the park clean up, so it was a very successful effort. We filled up over 10 truckloads of trash out of the riverbed and along the park area which equates to about a 40-foot bin full sent the pictures with the email that I was sent out we had we filled up two containers full of needles which is actually less than what we've

gotten in the past so the needle count for our area that we were working at actually went down. So I think stopping that needle exchange program is helping out in preventing these needles from coming in contact with the kids that are using the playground areas there. The other thing that was kind of interesting to find was in the riverbed, there was a bird scooter and a lime scooter. So GPS tracking of those getting picked up at midnight every night to get recharged. evidently they found a way to defeat those and they're now in the city yard

I guess if bird and lime wants to recover the the parts or anything like that but I did want to say thank you for all the support that the police department gave park rangers parks and recs and everything else so thank you Thank you. Paul? And then Terrence, followed by Sarah Sibia. I'm Paul Berry. I'm a resident here, and I sometimes volunteer with some climate not-for-profits.

And what I came to tell you about is that there's a, this is about CCA advocacy. It's the community choice aggregations. This is something called community choice energy. There's some familiarity with that, and otherwise it's unknown. But the big conference that they have every year is coming to Irvine in June. I will write everyone an email. I'm Paul Berry. It'll be Gmail, Paul Berry, with a couple of letters in my number at the end, so you'll get that tomorrow, with a link to this conference. I've been to a couple of these. I used to live up in Santa Rosa,

where the movement for citizen choice energy started, and these are phenomenally informative. And I'm hoping we can get staff. we need to know when it's right for us to consider a CCA what you know the makeup would be we need to become really expert that there was a brief email chain looks like we've got a free pass Mr. Mayor for you I don't know if you are familiar with that but there was an email chain and they have written you specifically so I'll follow up with that as well and I just hope we can get some

staff members we really need to know about the citizens choice energy movement so thank you

thank you terrence followed by sarah followed by peter a cats i'm going to ask him what the a stands

for my name is terrence finneran and i'm a business owner at 3411 west maywood about four buildings away from the proposed 700 bed homeless shelter. The most mornings I do have to come into my parking lot at that street and we still have to pick up a lot of debris and I could just imagine with the influx of the 700 bed and it'll probably be even a thousand people where there'll be more people than they can house would just be very detrimental to the area, to my business. I have clients that have to come by

and it's not wise, in my opinion.

Thank you. Thank you, Sarah.

Peter, get ready. Why don't you come on down and get in that front row.

Good evening, Mayor and Council members. I'm here to address the homeless situation at the 600-bed unit that you guys are proposing to put in. I represent my partners and I'm part owner of 3400 and 3500 West Warner Avenue. It's a 200,000 square foot industrial park, class A. We are adjacent to the railroad track that has 200 homeless people on it all the time. We're consistently putting out fires. We have security 24 hours that cost us thousands and thousands of dollars tons of needles

I'm for giving homeless people shelter I just think 600 beds in one area is way too much for the city to handle the police obviously are low staffed I'm concerned of how it's going to be taken care of? What's in place? How is it going to be structured? How are these people really going to be taken care of? It's a huge problem for us and all of our tenants. We have tons of people that reside in our not reside, but work in our industrial park and it's a

continuous problem. This was turned down when it was put on Susan Street. The owner did not want to sell to the city because of the population there's been no warning to any of the owners in the area we've just found out about this probably three weeks ago so I think it needs to be addressed and talked about and we do want to help but it's not fair to put 600 why not 200 here 200 there 200 spread it out make it fair to to the people that are around there. That's all I have to say.

Peter, what does A stand for, your middle initial?

That's my grandfather's name, Andrew. So that's what it stood for. And you know, I used to use it as a security device when signing checks. I would always put a period before the initial and afterwards so that I knew that that was the check I signed.

so I have just a couple positive things to say tonight Mr. Mayor I want to personally thank Mayor Pro Temp Juan Villegas for coming out on the weekend to the Wall that Heels the traveling Vietnam Wall that was in Costa Mesa for four days I spent all four days here and it's very refreshing to as a veteran to pay respects to the previous generation of veterans. We were spit on when we returned from our service. And you know, freedom is not free. And I presided over 28 military funerals. 28 of those boys are on that wall. And it was so moving

to talk to people and hear the stories of the families that served in every city. And so I talked to Juan, and we lost 43 people from the city of San An in Vietnam. And I think it's time that we honor them by at least placing their name in a resolution before this council it's been many many years since the end of the vietnam war but we have a lot of residents in the community that owe their freedom and their very lives to the 58 000 men and women that lost their lives in vietnam so it was very moving for me and if any of you get to washington dc you need to take a look at it

and the other thing I want to say is I took offense to a gentleman that spoke at the last council meeting about we're not doing anything for the city's birthday the city's 150th birthday is in October and I know Julie Castro was working very hard in putting together a presentation for this city but I think we as a city have an opportunity for a one year October to October commitment to clean this city up, neighborhood by neighborhood. Let's get our nonprofits involved, our staff and our neighborhood leaders, and let's go, we'll take a section of the city each month

and let's clean the city up, pick up the trash, plant some plants. I think we can do a lot to improve the image of this city. So we have a lot of time to work on it, and I think if we all work together, we can get a lot done in this city for free. so I encourage everybody to think about ways that we can put a positive image

thank you Peter thank you thank you Mike thank you Peter Wang followed by Gina Casados followed by Carlo Bonanni

followed by Chris Schmidt

Mayor and pro-ten mayor In the south side of Santa Ana I got a letter from a lot of the business This is your guys business Letting everybody know about the new tax That's going on in the city And we're trying to get a watchdog now To watch all the city council mayor City council mayor Pro-ten mayor To see where all the money is going to be spent okay this is what the future of Santa Ana is going to come down to so I'm just letting you all know about that I've got about seven of these, eight of these from businesses in the south side of Santa Ana some are big businesses, some are just little businesses

second thing I want to talk about is the homeless population that we have on MacArthur between Harbor and Fairview along that abandoned railroad tracks it's like a whole different world down there and I don't think some of the PD would be how the guts to walk down there I had to go walk down there looking for a bicycle a little girl lost her bicycle, it was stolen in front of the market that's over on Fairview and MacArthur, it's a whole different world and I don't care about the homeless people I wish we could put them on the military bases which we tried 30 years ago when they were shutting down Tustin and El Toro

but for some reason why this county likes to provide Tustin and Irvine grant that the bases could be used for something else. Okay? And the bases are very polluted, because I worked for a drilling company that we did all the environmental drilling, so I know a lot of those bases are all contaminated. So, but it's a different world on that railroad track. I haven't yet walked the railroad track yet from Bristol to Flower Street, right next to Saddleback High School, my old high school, and see how bad it is over there. So it's going to be interesting.

Well, I already know it's bad, because we have to deal with them down there by Vons and other grocery stores. So I know you guys are hands are tied, but maybe you guys could work with the railroad police and try to lease out some of the jail. Because I heard if they got to arrest people over there, they got to take them to downtown Los Angeles to the federal building. So maybe you could work with them.

Okay. Thank you. I still got a little time. Mayor.

Go ahead. Did I call your name? Go ahead.

Regarding the homeless shelter, I just want to make a clarification. We're not against a homeless shelter. What we are is being kept out of the decision-making process. That's what we're against. The city signed an MOU last year that identified Central Avenue, and then a month later you switched it to Yale without telling us. The 400 to 600 bed, that's just not even an option. every model if you would ask your homeless coordinator they'll tell you 200 beds is the best model and the reason why I say that is what you have before you this is straight from the county commission den homeless march meeting these are the amount of 9-1-1

calls made to the courtyard shelter where there are over 400 people we're averaging two 9-1-1 calls a day so what that means is our police OCFA and the ambulance services have to go out there So you just heard us talking about hiring. You just heard us talk about slow response times. This is why our city services are being tied up. We're paying for this, so if I call, they may be at the courtyard shelter. No matter we put it on Yale Street, Flower Street, these 911 calls are still going to happen. 400 beds to 600 beds, it's out of the question. Again, we're not against a 200-bed homeless shelter.

last year myself and several other council members residents asked you guys to please hold a community meeting we knew this was coming in June and August we asked you guys we asked the neighborhood initiatives programs to please hold a meeting last I checked correct me if I'm wrong madam city attorney we're not named as a defendant in any lawsuits there's no court order requiring us to open up a new shelter there's no Judge Carter saying we can't enforce our laws, right? We have a 200-bed shelter. We have a 200-bed shelter called The Link. We have the safe place for wives, wise place for women. We have the

Salvation Army Hospitality House, and we have 400 beds at the courtyard. My understanding is we're not being required by any court order to open up a new shelter facility. All we're asking for is to have some input. I was at Alberta Christie's meeting where Andrew Doe and Frank Kemp, and people people asked how did you select this location, they said ask your city council members. Nobody told us.

And I told you I was part of that process. Briefly, Sonia, can you?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I'll be really brief just so that the public understands, yes, we actually are a party to the lawsuit that was filed. When we decided to intervene, we became defendants, effectively, I'm not using the precise legal terms. We became defendants in that case, and the reason that we have a memorandum of understanding is because it is a settlement agreement of that case. So that is why we're there.

We are being compelled. Yes. Thank you. Your name, please.

My name is Gina Casados. Go ahead. And I am here. I'm very, Mr. Mayor and Council Members, and Council Member Iglesias, I really, really appreciate what you have to say and what your focus is on this homeless issue. I'm very passionate about the homeless, very passionate because I am homeless. Now, the difference between my situation is I work two buildings down from where this facility is going to take place.

Now, bedding, however many bedding you do, 200, 100, 700, okay, there's going to be beds there. That's going to be a fact. But my thing is, okay, there's sections that we've got to deal with this homelessness issue is how many mental cases are we going to have? Because there is mental situations in homelessness. That's one entity. Then we've got people who don't want to be homeless. They want to work. Okay, where are we going to send those people to work, to get, like me, I work.

Okay, but I'm still homeless because I can't afford a home. I don't want to, I'm 54 years old. Okay, I'll be, no, I'm 56. I'll be 56 this year in August. I don't want to look like these people in their 70s, 80s trying to figure out where they're going to go because when I heard them, I don't have any hope. Okay, because I'm struggling to make ends meet. So let's get the people who are going to be in this facility or any facility, what is it, you know, where the opportunity, okay, because that's what they're looking for too, not just the bed to lay in, because I guarantee

you some of these have, they're men and women who have children. We don't want to be homeless. We want to work. We want opportunity. We don't want to end up like these people that are going to, that are retiring. I'm going to be retired. What am I going to do? This is not giving me any hope so please thank you for listening to the people of santa anna i really appreciate it

thanks for coming down with that let's continue uh council member comments council member of

vince armiento please thank you i just wanted to briefly mention that um there's some the improvements that took place or in the process of taking place over at centennial park the mid basin injection wells that are being worked out there include a lot of ancillary benefits to the to the park roads are being paved bathrooms are being introduced new lockers improvements at the lake and just recently that project was recognized and won an award as the water treatment project of the year by the american society of civil engineers here in orange county so it's a great

collaboration between the orange county water district and the and the city that project should should be completed by the middle of this year. And hopefully everybody there will see a benefit to the park, to the roads. Thank you for all the patience that the residents have had there as a construction has taken place. But it's a great feather in everybody's cap. And I think everybody who's worked on it, our park staff and all our staff that's collaborated. I know there's just one thing that I know I was going to tell our water district staff is that the screening on the pipeline,

on the overpass on the bridge it looks on the on on just the renderings looks a little dull so maybe for our planners out there we need to see if we can get together with them and figure out what we can do to create a more attractive looking uh meshing because it looks like it's just simply just a guard rail fence it looks like a chain link fence so to the extent we make it more pleasing

make some improvements. I certainly know that the Water District is willing to go ahead and meet us halfway on that. But it certainly is a feather in everybody's cap that this project is winning awards countywide. So thank you for that and good night. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

On last week, Council Member Iglesias and I had the pleasure of attending the the Difference Makers Luncheon that was hosted by the Santa Ana Chamber. And we were able to honor a young lady from the School of Arts who received the scholarship. And it was just great to be there with all the other folks from Santa Ana who were receiving scholarships from different areas and different schools. And so that was great. Also, I thank you Mr. Peter Katz for mentioning about the opening ceremony of the Wall that Heals of Vietnam Veterans. It was a very, very good ceremony. Thank you for the invitation.

Also, in regards to this homeless issue and the Yale Street Project, Supervisor Doe is not the only supervisor on that board. He has other colleagues just like here. There's just not one of us who makes the decision. The whole council makes the decision. Well, over there, the whole board makes the decision. And I remember Council Member Solorio and I and Council Member Iglesias, when she was on the school board, we all went to the county. Remember that meeting that they had during the day we went to have the board stick with the original MOU regarding, you know, putting a shelter in Irvine?

And you know how that turned out. So it's just not one supervisor. It's many supervisors that you have to hold accountable. It's not fair to just talk about one. There's many of them. There's five of them. So you've got to hold them all accountable. If you want to write to them, you want to talk to them, I suggest we do that. But it would be too long to continue the discussion regarding the Yale Street project.

We were in court for it. A few of us were on this dais, on this council, when we had to deal with that issue. And the Civic Center was just horrible. And because of the link and because we were doing here, we were able to move on it. So I'm very happy that we made progress. Don't lose faith, but also look at the big picture when it comes on the Board of Supervisors. Thank you.

Thank you. Let's go to Councilor Jose Solorio, please.

Thank you.

Two general items. Number one, earlier when we were talking about the homeless facilities, the issue of the Fairview Developmental Center came up. And I mentioned that Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva has a piece of legislation in support of that. So maybe, I know, I think Mayor, you may be able to, under our policy, sign a letter of support or maybe it comes back. But I know that the Assemblywoman and others would appreciate a letter of support. So it would be great if we could make that happen. Secondly, this Sunday is both Easter and Earth Day. So, you know, something for everybody to celebrate.

And so I wish everybody a blessed Easter. and on that same day also let's think about Mother Earth and ways to protect it. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member David.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to thank everyone, staff, for everything that you do. And, again, with the homeless situation, you know, I met with me and Councilwoman Iglesias and former Mayor Pro Tem, Michelle Martinez, was there too, met with just for history and facts of what decisions were made, met with Judge Carter and we talked about the different options and how we got here and why it's happening. And then the same week I toured, I went in toward Wise Place, I went in toward the link again, just trying to really see how these different, and I drove by the courtyard,

David PenalozaItem —

I didn't go inside, but just trying to see how these different shelters operate.

David PenalozaItem —

on Saturday I was blessed to go to the Madison Park neighborhood Madison Elementary and with Senator Umberg was there and along with him we I want to pronounce this right the shoot C foundation we distributed over 2,000 tons of food to our local residents in the nearby neighborhood so it was very nice to see that very it was better than coffee uh just very humbling to to be there and help out uh and and that's pretty much it i'm just looking forward to to this it is holy week and i'm not the best christian but i try to be you know rebirth and renewal that's the story of christ and that's

David PenalozaItem —

something we should all remember um acting city manager steven mendoza thank you this is your your last council meeting, thank you, thank you. You've really held forward and done a great job and I thank you. And that's it. Happy Easter, everyone. Thank you.

Council Member Iglesias, please.

So I just want to report out the meetings that I've attended. I attended the Orange County Sanitation District Board meeting on March 27th. Also attended the OCOG board meeting on Thursday, March 28th. Went to the Orange County Sanitation District Administration Committee meeting just recently, April 10th. And on Friday, I was able to attend the OCOG General Assembly, where they talked about the homeless issue, RENA, affordable housing, housing, how we can, I guess, address it as a region.

And one thing that always comes up is, like you were sharing at your, I think it was your transportation committee meeting, that they've always give Santa Ana kudos for what we're doing with the homeless. Which I believe we have been doing our fair share in doing something, but it's up to all the other cities in Orange County to also help us with this issue. And like Mr. Pinalosa said, we did meet with Judge Carter, and he even mentioned Santa Ana, we're being dumped on when it comes to issues like that,

and the county is not doing their due diligence and their fair share in helping us address the issue. And I understand, Mayor Pro Tem, that there are four other supervisors, and I am willing to go and speak at the next Board of Supervisors meeting to let them know that, you know, Santa Ana is not going to stay silent anymore, because we have to defend our residents. We have to speak up for our residents, and we have to make sure that what we bring into Santa Ana, say another homeless shelter or something, but it has to be something that has been well thought out.

My concern is that when I've asked questions on how this shelter at Yale is going to be operated, nobody has any answers. They don't know if it's going to be no barrier, low barrier, and they talk about the link. The link is a good model to follow, but that's only at maximum 200 beds. And right here they're trying to propose 425 beds just for Santa Ana, I mean for the county, and then 125 for Santa Ana. So it's going to be close to 600 beds, and it's just, it's not doable. There's no model out there that says that that has been successful.

I know the bridges at Kramer, I believe it's 200 beds too, or at the most 300, but it's not 600 bed shelter. So for me, I just feel it's always government. You know, you always fly the plane while you're building it. And it's wrong for our community because we don't know. It's so uncertain that it gets us into a position that we're very, I guess, uncomfortable with what's going on and what's being proposed. And, you know, and I get the comments that were shared by Officer Gaminski, our Deputy Chief.

Kaminsky you know but those all of that was alleviated after before the shelters were here in Santa Ana so now we have the 200 bed shelter at the link and I know that's only temporary but Santa Ana can't in my opinion cannot continue to bear all the burden that has been imposed on us and I'm willing to if the Mayor Pro Tem, you'll go with me. We could go to the board meeting and speak on behalf of the city of Santa Ana and say, you know what? Yeah, let's hold the other supervisors accountable.

It's a good time to start meeting all of them, but I know that they're going to put the burden back on Supervisor Doe, and he's been doing a good job in representing his district, his district as a whole. But I've always said, yeah, he represents other cities, too. So if we could, like the young lady that spoke with a beautiful hat, I love your hat, we could separate them and put them in different locations. Maybe Santa Ana takes 200, Garden Grove takes 200, Westminster takes 200, Huntington Beach takes another 200. San Clemente. There you go.

So by the time it comes down, maybe we don't even need a shelter here because we already have a lot of beds that are being provided to some of our residents. So I'm hoping that we have those conversations, and if you guys are willing to join me, we should go speak in public comments and just tell them and address what we would want to do, and I would love for our city attorney to also join us. So with that said, I'm just hoping that we do address a holistic approach,

how to address the homeless issue because Santa Ana cannot continue to bear the burden. And I just want to wish you guys all a happy Easter. You guys are – thank you for staying here so late. It's already almost 10.30, but I just want to thank you all for putting up with us and giving us an opportunity. And I just want to give kudos to Alvaro Nunez for addressing the homeless issue with the railroads. I know you guys are going to do something amazing over there, and we're going to be holding the railroad police accountable because we have to do that.

And then City Attorney Mendoza, gracias, thank you, for your leadership. And, you know, it's your last one, but I know you're going to be around, so I'm going to be bugging you. Okay? Okay. Thank you very much. Have a great week, everyone.

Thank you. I just have three items. One on the homeless. I think it's important to do a lot of homework and understand context. Part of what we did was we did a complete count, and that was part of the lawsuit with the federal court. And that count that we did indicated that we had more unsheltered homeless than anybody else. So we can have shelters and not have shelters, but if we don't have shelters, it's going to be much, much worse because they're going to be here anyways and we're not going to have any plan or any ability

to address the complaints that we get from neighbors when they're in in their homes when they're stealing bicycles they're when they're breaking into cars when they're doing all the bad things that that happen in the city so i think it's important for the new council members and maybe through staff we can do just how we got here because there's a lot of things that have happened to get us where we are and and we can't just wave a magic wand and make the problem go away if we could we would have done that a long time ago but but we haven't done that on purpose

so it's important go step by step look at the lawsuits look at what we've been threatened by at one point we actually sued we didn't serve it but we sued every city in the county

because it cost three million dollars to process that lawsuit but what i'm telling you is that lawsuit that we filed gave the court power to to to bring cities in so so i think a history and I know everything hasn't worked well, but we've come a long way. And today there's less homeless out in the streets because of what we're doing. It's not enough. There's still too many. And we get rid of some, and it's like a new wave comes in. But believe me, it has been worse. And if we had more capacity, more officers, more beds,

including the mental health hospital in Costa Mesa, that has to be a part of the solution and and I'm happy to sign a letter you know supporting that as part of what we need to go but you know we can't just you know wish the problem away and say we're not going to do anything we've been doing more in our fair share for 30 years in this town and and without money and the ability to address it we just sink we just think also we just they get more and more homeless they just make this their home they start taking over they don't want to leave you can't do anything about it and and then they become entrenched and the problem

becomes even even more serious the other thing i want to you know talk about uh tonight is that i'd like to see if any council members are interested i know we're talking about different ad hoc committees to do different things but something i'd be really interested in looking at right now is a streets program if you look at our bond rating if you look at uh you know sb2 and the fact that it it was not defeated so those dollars are there we have the measure uh m2 turnback dollars what i'm saying is i think we're in a position to take city streets residential

and and industrial i'm not talking about the main arterials those are in decent programs we're working with OCTA we've kind of got that under control but there's quite a few streets that when we did you know almost hundred million dollar bond a few years ago about eight years ago we fixed you know hundreds of miles streets in the city we didn't fix all of them we we didn't do many industrial streets right now we have businesses in town that are threatening to move out in part because

the streets where they're located are in such disrepair we also have neighborhoods because we said we're going to do you know uh you know asphalt but not concrete so we have to you know measure and understand the delta and the cost and the life cycle cost analysis uh but what i'm getting at is that i think it's a good moment in time for us to look at that i also know we need some curve and gutter work. Fwad's not here right now. He says we need certain sewers that are in very bad condition. So what I want to do is maybe put an ad hoc committee together and just say,

can we do this? I think it's a good time. New city manager. This is not part of the general fund. This is not part of the general fund. I'm not talking about going to the voters. You don't need to because we're not assessing a new tax this would just be a a bond that we would issue and we would debt service it with existing revenue that's already in the books so so that i think would be an opportunity to come in and and and fix a lot of streets that still need fixing in town final two things is and councilmember solario said it well you know easter is this sunday

but it also happens to be Earth Day, which I think is really interesting.

Because Easter, the resurrection, coming back, the ultimate reliving and coming back to life, in essence, the resurrection. But also the planet is ever in a worse case. I mean, it bugs me when I talk to young people, and many of them have given up. Many of them are talking about, you know, the sea level is going to rise because it is already. Many of them are talking about things that are just not going to be the same in their lifetime and how they're going to have to do everything they can to try to save the planet.

And so I think on a go-forward basis, if there are things that we can do that are environmentally sound and more progressive, we ought to be doing that because there unfortunately is a point of no return. And anything that cities can do to lead in a different direction, we ought to be doing. So with that, Happy Easter. And what was that one? You want to adjourn in memory of Steve Snyder, our retired fire captain from the OCFA.

He served with us since July of 1984 here in the Santa Fire Department. After 35 years in fire service, he retired recently in July 2018. And he recently passed. He survived by his wife of 38 years, Barbara, three adult children, and one grandchild. He was a courageous firefighter, a loving and supportive husband, a father, a grandfather, a loyal friend, a strong believer, and we are fortunate to have him as part of the Santa Ana family. So with that, in his honor, Steve Snyder, this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I'll soak our tips after our tips. And our tips after our tips after our tips. And our tips after our tips after our tips. And our tips after our tips after our tips.