Read the February 5 meeting.

You can please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. remain standing we have Rupert Vega our police chaplain is going to give us our invocation this evening

thank you we could please bow our heads

gracious heavenly father we come before you today giving you honor glory and praise lord you are the source of all that is good and we are grateful for all the blessings that you have bestowed upon us we thank you for our wonderful city of Santa Ana our honorable mayor City Council, Chief of Police and staff. Lord we thank you for our freedom and the opportunity to unite and gather together this day. We ask for your hand of blessing to be upon tonight's meeting and proceedings. We thank you for your grace, unending love and wisdom and we ask that you would guide and direct our

meeting and that it be of sound wisdom, that it be productive with integrity, accountability and with respect towards one another. Thank you Lord for helping us to accomplish our goals this day. In your name we pray. Amen.

You may be seated.

Can somebody get Council Member Ceci Iglesias? And can I have folks from Bear Paint Company come forward? She's about to make a presentation.

She did? Yeah. Okay, well, Madam Clerk, is there anything to report out for Madam City Attorney?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Mayor, an item listed on the agenda as item 1 and 2 for existing litigation. On that, there was a settlement of $1.7 million on a vote of 5 to 1 with Councilmember E. Galatians voting no. With respect to the item of potential litigation, the City Council, by unanimous vote, authorized us to enter into a tolling agreement. With respect to item number 3, there was no conversation. And with respect to item number 4, there was no reportable action. That's all I have to report.

Thank you. I also note here that it says that I'm to call on the clerk to make an announcement madam clerk do you have anything you wish to to say all right so with that I will hold the

We have the folks here from the paint company who wanted to be recognized,

but we don't have our recognizer in the room yet. So she's coming.

Is there any other matter that we can take? Is there a swearing?

Madam Clerk, why don't you go ahead and call the person that's going to be sworn in.

Should we take action on that matter first?

Yes.

Mr. Mayor, I can fill it in with my comments if you'd like. If you would, it will fill in for you. I can give you a sitting-end to comment up front.

No, no, no. Let's save those for the end. They're too good. Ceci, just go on up, and if you can present this to the folks from Bear Paint, they're right here.

Okay, so

this is my first presentation that I'm making and I'm very proud that it's you, Bear, because I have a special place in my heart for you guys. I was Bear family back in 2012. So, yes, so when I knew of all the great things they were doing in our city I said, you know, it warrants that you guys be recognized. So thank you for all that you do. So I'm just going to read a little bit of, you know, why we're giving you a recognition. But if anything, you're recognizing us for the efforts that you're doing in our community.

So Bear Paint Corporation, for those of you in the audience, has been headquartered in the city of Santa Ana since 1957. With the original site purchased from the Sugar Storm family. Bear Paint has grown from a local family business to an international manufacturer-distributor of top-rated architectural paints, primers, cleaners, and the two-in-one. I remember that. That used to do two-in-one. So recently, Bear representatives went to our school, Roosevelt Learning Center, to recognize teen space, right?

the Young Adult Service Division of the Santa Ana Public Library. And as you know, the library is something that I'm very passionate about. It's something that I believe that we should be providing more attention to. So I am thankful that you guys started that for me. Thank you. And to celebrate this, also, Paine generously donated $20,000 to continue the efforts of this wonderful program. So I believe that deserves a round of applause for Baird Paine.

So with this certificate of recognition, I want to give it to you. And you can share with the family over there, with Jeff Philly, and then also with Jessica Bandar. Yeah, Jessica. It's amazing. So the city wishes to recognize you for being not only a valuable business within our community, but also for giving back to our youth and our community. So thank you very much for all that you do. Thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

So if you want to say a little bit about what you do, this is the time. Yeah.

Well, I'd like to thank the mayor and the councilwoman and the staff for having us here tonight. As a long-term employer in the community, it's important for Bayer that we give back to the community. We have many, many employees who are residents. and when we moved recently our headquarters we chose to stay in the city because it's the right thing to do and we really love Santa Ana so we're happy to be here tonight to accept this honor and we're going to keep giving back to the community and we're just really happy to be here. Agreed. And in addition to Teen Space we also are supporting other Santa Ana volunteer and community groups

such as Hope Builders, Teen Space, the LGBTQ Center. so we're trying to be very active and involved in Santana because it's been a great city for us we want to give back to them

thank you and then I'm looking forward to my badge that says Cecilia Iglesias with that thank you for all that you do

thank you

a picture

applause

applause applause

applause

I'm so short Thank you. Thank you.

I know we have a lot of agenda items that people want to address us on.

So let me let's just go on into the consent calendar and see see how we can handle that and then we'll just continue on with the agenda

Who do you have to swear in madam? That would be Jim Perez. Jim Perez are you here? Let's go ahead and do that. Come on down

to bring him on yeah right right so is there a motion to appoint him second those in favor please say aye aye I suppose motion unanimously go ahead we'll administer the oath of office

I speak your name I, Jim Perez Do solemnly swear that I will support and defend The Constitution of the United States And the Constitution of the State of California Against all enemies Foreign and domestic That I will bear true faith and allegiance To the Constitution of the United States to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion

that I will and well faithfully discharge the duties upon which I'm about to enter that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon what I'm about to enter Thank you very much. Thank you.

No, Mayor.

Okay. So from my fellow council members, any items to be polled? 19C. 19C from Councillor Sarmiento. Councillor Lourio? 25C. 25C from Salario?

20A.

20A from Iglesias. I'd entertain a motion on the balance. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. The opposed motion carries. Who would be the first item, Madam Clerk?

19C.

19C.

That's me, Mr. Mayor. I would move that we approve the ENA with both Caribou and the Orange County High School of the Arts for a period of 60 days so negotiations can continue.

Is there a second to that motion? I'm happy to second.

I have a question. Go ahead. And I don't know if representatives from those entities are here, but I'm interested in knowing if they agree to do it together, because I don't know that we have the write-up done that way.

The agenda only shows caribou.

Correct.

Right. This is an amended motion to the staff's recommendation to include what the committee had originally recommended, which was for both of these proposals.

And you were a part of that committee, council member.

Yeah, maybe it's an issue with verbiage where we could say, you know, caribou, but in conjunction with, because they weren't previously part of the process.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Are you hoping to grant an exclusive to each of them, which exempts each other so that they're both in one?

Together, we're encouraging that they work together.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

But you're encouraging them to work together. So by giving them both an E&A, you're saying to be successful.

It is my understanding, Sonia, after discussions with both parties that they've agreed, at least in principle, to 53,000 square feet. Are you listening, Sonia? Yeah. 53,000 square feet of the building to go to the High School of the Arts, the balance to be handled by Caribou Industries, and it's a matter of negotiating the lease rate.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I can work with staff with that direction to come up with an agreement that satisfies what you're saying. It would be up to them to actually work out.

And if they agree at least right then, they're done and they're coexisting. And if they don't agree, it'll end. It'll come back. It'll end. It'll come back.

Remind me on the days. Did we agree on 60 days?

60 days was the motion. 60, I think, is sufficient for them to go ahead and work on principle.

That way we won't lose too much time if they can't figure it out.

And if they wrap it up, we're done.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yes, if you give us that direction tonight, we will make that happen.

All right. So we have a motion to second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed? No. Motion carries. One no.

Councilor Iglesias, no. So with that, let's go on to the next item. Did you have that item, Council Member? What's the next item, Madam Clerk?

25C, pulled by Solorio.

25C, Solorio.

Yes.

I know there's a few folks on staff that could probably address this. I'm supportive of the amendment this is, an amendment to the agreement with Mercy House for the link shelter that we have. And on the whole, I think it's operating smoothly and I think the community is seeing a positive impact of our efforts, both via the shelter and via the education and enforcement that we're doing. but maybe if somebody can give us a brief update as to how it's going, what it costs, and what this amendment does. The issue of homelessness is significant enough to the community that I'd like this to be an opportunity to update the public.

I'll be glad to, Mr. Councilmember. Thank you very much. Stephen Mendoza, Acting City Manager. The link is going really well. We're seeing an increase. We even saw a larger increase last night. I report out to you each day the total occupancy of the link. So you're getting daily updates from that. Those same updates are live on our website for the public to view how many people we are placing in the link each day. This agreement is for construction costs that went over the cost for the first year. So it's construction. They have bills to pay and they have some contractors waiting for some outstanding invoices.

and that is what this amendment is for.

Very good. And I would just close by saying that I think that the work inside the shelter has been good. I know sometimes given the mix of individuals that go in, security continues to be something important, and I've been talking to staff here about that. And then for PD and the county and others that help with the outreach, We've done some waves of outreach and education and enforcement and I'm hopeful that we'll continue those waves. I know our chief's here, kudos for the work that you've been doing. I know it's been harder with the cold and the rain, but it's been well received.

And I know a variety of folks from the dais and from the public have made referrals and people seem to like it generally once they're in there. So let's keep up the good work and with that I move the item.

I move the item. Is there a second?

Second.

Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. Now, Councillor Iglesias, your item.

So, 28, are you going to read it, or should I read it?

Go ahead.

So, this is to, the item is to approve appropriations adjustments.

And here.

Okay, the item is to approve appropriation adjustments and reallocation of funds for Bristol Street Improvements Projects phases 3B. In its consideration of matter, it failed on January 15th, so it's coming back to us now. So I just want whoever staff here from Public Works to explain to us where this money is coming from, and why is it that we're asking for appropriation of funds from one fund to another.

Yes, good evening, Mayor and Council Members.

Essentially, this item is routine, but because it requires appropriation adjustment, it does require five votes of the Council. and essentially the matter is so that we can cover the costs for the McDonald's settlement. That settlement was approved by the City Council back in December, I believe, and so we need the appropriation adjustment so that we can have sufficient funds to proceed on the Bristol project. In addition to that, as we continue delivering more and more phases to Bristol, essentially when we close out prior projects and we have funds that can be freed up

so that we can continue designing and constructing Bristol we're also making a request for the TSIA funds the original request was

$272,000 in TSIA funds and this time we're adjusting that to $572,000 And the reason for that is because when we took over the grant funds from OCTA for Bristol, we noticed that the funding of $300,000 didn't get carried over from OCTA. So that's the reason for the adjusted request from the prior report that was submitted to the City Council in January. No new funds are being expended on this project. The construction contractor remains the same, and it's essentially to cover the settlement payments

which are unforeseen, generally speaking, whenever we purchase properties and we come up with the goodwill settlements with property owners up and down Bristol Street, those amounts are generally unforeseen. It's difficult for us to budget and account for them. So as the Bristol project moves forward, these are the kinds of adjustments that we recommend to the City Council. So I hope that answers your question. Thank you.

More moving? Okay, is there a motion on the item? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye, this opposed. Motion carries. One opposition.

Next item, I believe we're now on, is it 55A? I would entertain a motion.

Move the item.

Second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye, those opposed. Motion carries. item 55 B is in boy move the item is there a second those in favor please say aye aye aye those opposed motion carries item 55 C this resolution establishing measure X citizen oversight committee vote to move those in favor

please say aye mr. mayor do you have a comment go ahead comment at the last Last council meeting we talked about the Measure X citizen oversight committee and this action would formalize that and allow council members to make appointments to that committee. I would just like to ask that the city staff and my colleagues think about what type of action maybe this council can take or a forum to discuss how we might use Measure X. literally the city council to this day has not had a discussion about how we might spend those dollars.

And given that the new budget cycle is beginning, it would be a good time to do that. Well, we could do that just generally alongside a regular budget development, given that this item was passed by the voters, even though some of us opposed it. I think it is major enough and stands on its own that we ought to either have a study session or a strategic planning session or some forum to have a conversation. Because again, to this day we really have not done that. Thank you.

Yes, go ahead, Councilor Iglesias.

So I would agree with what you're saying for us to have a community, more of a community presence on what we're going to be doing with this money. The projections have come, if I understand it, it will be about $60 million in additional new revenue. But we have to be mindful that what we as voters, the voters trusted us, that we would do the right thing for the community. So I'm hoping that we get individuals from all different groups represented, because we need to do what's the best for the community and ensure that that money goes directly to the community. And then this is my assessment of it.

It needs to be going to services that we don't have. And how can we do this? So we're counting on you, whoever's going to be appointed to this committee, for you to tell us how do we allocate those funds and how is it going to serve the entire community. So I want to thank for those of you who have expressed interest to working with us. and I agree that we should have some type of study session in collaboration with us here so we can know what's happening and how we can all work together for the best and use this money the way it's supposed to be.

Thank you. So with that, I believe we have a – go ahead.

So I just have a question for staff. Where did the magic number nine come from? Why is it that that's a number that seems to be more appropriate than the number of commissioners we have on a commission that oversee parks and recs, that oversee planning? I just want to know sort of what's the formula there.

Well, there's seven council members, so our first idea was one per council member. Then we thought, okay, we may have problems with quorum. this was um catherine's uh explanation and and we supported that as it came to you as explained to you at the last meeting and then two appointees each was a little too much to deal with so we would either be at seven or 14. so we found a nice place in between of nine it's irrelevant to us from staff's point of view how you get to the nine but we think nine is a really good number for this

council to a point. Look, it sounds a little arbitrary to me. It doesn't seem like there's much of any logic or any real substantive reason for it. It's fine. I mean, seven is as good as nine is as good as the 11, I guess. So I just don't know why the voters obviously voted for Measure X and those of us who supported it wanted just some oversight, some management by the residents, and so to the extent that they have some presence on there, they have some ability to go ahead and comment and opine,

those that actually were adverse to it are having a real difficult time making sure that things are going to be spent correctly. I think that every one of us should have a vote up here but an equal vote because those are the same equal votes that we received from the voters. so the proportionality just doesn't seem to work for me well. You know, I just, you know, look, I think that we need to have the oversight. I just think the way we're assembling the committee just doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.

Any other comment? If not, I'd entertain a motion. I move to approve. Is there a second? Okay, second by U.S., yes.

I just have a question for Councilman Sarvinsky. Do you have a suggestion of what it would be, just one need or two each? I think it would be seven.

I mean, look, to the extent that we have seven and a quorum of four are going to be able to go ahead and decide if there's people that are missing. But it's a more accurate reflection of what this body is, right? To have nine is disproportionate because we're giving one council member the ability to appoint three, which could stack a meeting. And that's something always that I think is not a good idea. And no disrespect to the mayor. It's just, it could be as arbitrary as saying, well, let's let Councilmember Solorio or myself to have three of those appointments. And that doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.

At the last meeting we had this conversation, the mayor was very courteous and suggested that for his extra spot-I'm happy to. Make suggestions. Take input. So maybe it's just somebody from the chamber, maybe even just the chamber CEO, I mean, would be somebody neutral and the second person i don't know who that would be but i think it makes sense to have somebody from the chamber look i'm happy going with seven we we don't have to like

sit here all night let's just go with seven then all right let's amend the motion have your own

member from the chamber that would be fine right seven nine so let's go with seven and let's move

on so i'll make that a friendly amendment those in favor please say aye aye aye the opposed motion motion carries let's keep going here

uh 55 diaz and david

i'd entertain a motion motion approved is there a second i'll second it those in favor please say aye aye aye those opposed motion carries 65a

thoughts customer samiento anybody 65a as in anthony

look you don't have to serve on committees if you don't want to some of you i know have indicated If you'd rather be on an ad hoc committee, you can talk to me and we'll discuss that.

You know what I would suggest, we've got a very heavy agenda tonight. This is a matter that's important, but I think if we could defer it until the next meeting, then we can give it some thought because there's been different-

Or later in the agenda in case we get to it. I don't think we're going to get to it. Yeah, we may not. We may not, unless if there's quick agreement, but-Yes.

What I would like to say, I would like to approve what we already had, because I think we all had an opportunity to express our interest on some of them. And then for anyone that wants to add into the other ones, then that we can bring it up for discussion. Because I would like to-

You just want to move what we have for now and amend later, if necessary?

If that's a motion-Go ahead. I'll second it with one comment. Okay. So I'll second the motion. I like the list. I would like to, though, for the joint Santa Ana Unified School District and City Council Committee. If possible, I'd like to be one of the members for that. So maybe that's Iglesias Villegas-Felorio.

Well, Council Member Reyna is on there, and we can wait and see what he says. If you want to be an alternate, we can add you. Yeah, or an alternate. It's fine.

I believe for the council committee, we can only have two to three.

I know that. That's why he'd be an alternate. He would not be a permanent point deal, otherwise you'd have a quorum. So with that, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries.

Just to clarify, we're fine with the current meeting schedule as opposed to the proposed schedule?

Yes, for now. Okay. Okay, 65B. There's an appropriation adjustment and sewer transfer agreement.

So moved.

Second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. The opposed motion carries. 65C. This is a midterm budget update and a recommended action.

Mr. Mayor, I think for similar comment before, given all these other hefty items we have, maybe we save this for later in the meeting.

There's a lot of assumptions in this mid-year budget report. Want to continue for two weeks? And appropriation adjustment, or at least later on this evening, if we have time, we can type one. I don't think we're going to have time, Luzi.

I would say move it.

Because I think in some-for two weeks 65 c and 65 d are a little bit connected as well um

well but it but it may you gotta take them a little talk we're about to take 65 d on in a

moment i got a much speed yeah won't we don't we need this item in order to deal with the next

time right that's the thing they're related maybe we do 65 d first and then decide where we go from Alright, and then we can come back.

So let me table it for a moment.

65D, Michelle Martinez, followed by David Benavides, followed by Saltina Herro.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. You have a lot of big decisions before you this evening. I don't envy you. I am here to pull every item from the agenda, Mr. Mayor. Just plain. It's too late. I figured I would make you all laugh and smile, because a smile can go a long way, Mr. Mayor.

As I look at all of you, I see Mayor Pro Tem Villegas, who I call the voice of reason. I know he will do what's right for Santa Ana. I see Councilwoman Iglesias, who now has the title of the fiscal watchdog. Ms. Iglesias, please keep them accountable. We have your back. Some will call you crazy as they called me when I was on this city council. Look at it as a badge of honor. I certainly did.

On a serious note, I didn't think I would find myself back to these council chambers. While I am here tonight as a private citizen and a resident of Santa Ana to urge you to ask the right questions. And by the way, I submitted for the record many questions that the public deserves to have an answer to. and to get the needed information you all need to make a good informed decision before you saddle the city with funding mandates it cannot afford. I care about the fiscal sustainability of this city, as you all do.

I care about the residents of this community and the services that they deserve, like you all do. I care about the employees of the city of Santa Ana, like you all do. I, like all of you, believe that we should have a strong commitment to the public safety and support all employees in the city of Santa Ana. I am also in agreement that we should provide modest raises that the city can afford and sustain. I am also in agreement that we should do all we can to fill the vacancies in the police department so we can have better response times and also give our police officers the time they deserve

instead of working so much overtime when they are neglecting their families. However, please note that the proposed increases to wages and benefits will not make Santa Ana safer. Instead, the proposed wage benefit to those officers with the most tenure of longevity premium pay, it does not properly incentivize entry-level police officers who wish to sustain and attract. What we see with these proposed raises is going to move a faster pace of these current police officers into their highest paid year. You could please wrap up Michelle Trev. And thank you, Mr. Mayor.

I will conclude with the following. I pray for all of you tonight, and I ask for God to give you all the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to ask the tough questions and to ultimately do the right thing by the city that we love. Thank you and have a great evening.

David Benavides.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, members of the council. It's a bit odd to be over on this side of the mic here, but it is, I counted, a privilege. For a number of years I had an opportunity to serve with most of you on the council, and that itself was a privilege. during that time I saw hundreds if not thousands of members of the community come out and address myself and use members of the council on matters that were pertinent and important to the members of the community like the speaker who spoke just before me former mayor pro tem I didn't think that I

would come and address the council especially this this soon however tonight's matter 65 D this proposed agreement to give significant raises to the police association is something that is of grave concern I do believe that every employee from this that that works for the city should be treated well should be treated be compensated appropriately for the work that they do

and raises very likely may be merited for various bargaining units, various unions and employees throughout the organization. Of grave concern to me is that what's being considered tonight will very likely put the city on the course of a potential bankruptcy. The reality is, and members of the council, Mayor Pulido, Mayor Pretend Villegas, colleague and friend councilman sarmiento councilwoman iglesias councilmember peña losa

councilmember solorio you know and recognize i think if you that that we the city cannot shoulder this level of commitment very recently a number of us uh championed a very controversial uh measure measure X to raise the taxes, sales taxes within the city, because we were in a position where we recognized that if we did not bring in new resources, we would end up being in a position to cut positions, to cut programs, parks, public works, our library. And it was a bold decision to take, but we felt we needed to do it.

And the voters, because the city promised them that we would be able to continue to provide quality services voted to tax themselves significantly higher than other cities the action tonight will basically take those funds that have not yet been received and begin to essentially write blank checks and and my last comment thank you mayor for being gracious Councilman Solorio in particular you you campaigned against measure X tonight I would hope that you would then take the decision make the decision to not approve this action because it will in essence be writing a check that you did

not believe that we should have thanks so please vote your conscience tonight

Sal Tina Heddle please followed by Paul Gonzalez Sal's not here Paul once come on down. Followed by Daniel Grisette. No Paul. Is Dan here? No Dan. Tim Johnson I believe

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

it is Tim's not here try fam phan Bruce Bauer are you here I don't think so if

anybody's outside come on in if I call your name they have a microphone out there I believe well if they can't hear me out there then maybe we'll take Bruce Bauer can you

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

call some others and we'll try to make sure yeah I'm in here James Garvey James Garvey oh it says

that they can hear and Albert Castillo

go ahead good evening mr. mayor and council members my name is James carvey i'm a resident in park santiago i'm here in support of law enforcement i'm not being paid by anybody just in case anybody wants to know that i'm just a resident that knows some of the statistics that were 11 11 11 staff members short in law enforcement i think they're underpaid for what they do anyway in the city. So I'm in support of giving them a raise and hiring more people to fill the vacancies that they actually need so they don't have to work as much over time. That's all I've got to say. Thank you.

Thank you.

Go ahead. Hi, Mr. Mayor. You called Paul Gonzalez, right? Go ahead. So I'm here in opposition, as many folks have been to the raise for the police officers association it sounds great i'm a manager i love nothing more than giving my employees raises it feels really really good but when you don't have the money to fund a raise it's a foolish decision so i am imploring you to pay attention to the facts the facts are we cannot afford this

it's also concerning that this MOU proposes to raid funds that were allocated to Measure X Measure X was not a vote by the people of Santa Ana to give a raise to the police officers it was a vote to increase public safety and this action that you are considering tonight does nothing to positively impact public safety. It does nothing to resolve the unacceptable response times and it takes away from the department's ability to

actually hire the police officers that we need. So I implore you on behalf of tax-paying citizens of this community to reject this MOU. Thank you.

thank you go ahead come on down then I see Dan Grazett as well go ahead

hi good evening counsel Tim Johnson thank you

I think we need to pause and look at the big picture of this we all want a safe a safe community we know that the police force is an important part of of that safe that safe city that we all want but we need to weigh that in totality. The police force is one part of creating safe parks, safe streets, and safe neighborhoods. You all should have received a rather lengthy, as I'm known to do, lots of words on a piece of paper, but I think those words are strong, and hopefully you've had an opportunity to read those.

I want our police force to make more money. I want everyone to make more money here, but we have to do it fiscally responsibly. And we also need to look at it in totality. Let's pause. Let's tap the brakes. Let's figure out what will work. What will actually fill those vacancies? What will keep our officers here in the city? How can we make our neighborhoods safer? How can we get all of us to enjoy our parks a little bit more? in conclusion I just want us to think about measure X and are we putting the cart before the horse when we're choosing to take a big portion of that and be able to put it towards

one item when there may be many many more items that are just as appropriate and we should be looking at it strategically and not tactically thank you very much thank you Dan Grisette

Mr. Mayor and council members, it's a little special tonight. It's been more than 25 years since I've been in this room and spent nearly 14 years on your side of the table.

It's been a matter of concern for me as you're weighing this issue that has such fiscal implications for our city in the face of financial uncertainties and burdens that can easily get built in to future budgets and limit the capacity of you on the council of really funding the kind of city services that are needed broadly across our community. As previous speakers have noted, safety comes in a variety of forms. It comes in resources that can show up in the way parks are managed and various kinds of services are offered here.

And so it's not in any way to discourage the importance of a police budget that you're confronting in this issue tonight. But I'd simply ask you to consider the importance of fiscal solvency going forward. because a decision that you might be wanting to make tonight can have implications that continue to unfold long after you've left office. And I think any of us who have been in politics understand the way that it's important to recognize donors to a campaign and the kind of support that that means.

But I'd ask you as council members to consider in your conduct tonight the responsibility to the community as something that can have prime importance as you consider this kind of issue. I urge you to look at it carefully, to understand what the long-term implications are. And if you haven't had time to really appreciate what those are, that you'll consider that as a reason to continue to review this before you make a decision. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Dan.

I'm a little shorter.

City Council, my name is Ty Phan. I'm a resident here in the city of Santa Ana. I am here for 65D because I'm someone who have had experiences in which the Santa Ana Police Department came to our aid when I was in the fourth grade and our home was burglarized. I understand how important it is to have a strong, efficient police force. But I also understand that our city cannot afford it. Measure X is meant to help with homelessness, with other programs that we desperately need. And here what we're doing is giving raises to police officers whom I think deserve it,

but we need to find a better way because 10 years from now, or 15 years from now, those raises will still be affecting the city residents and police officers, but we have no way to pay for it. So I ask you to look at what we can actually afford and give them what they deserve by moving forward, looking at the numbers and finding new ways to fund this rather than using funds that we don't actually have yet and spending it before putting the cart before the horse. Thank you.

Thank you. Bruce and then Albert Castillo.

Good evening, Mayor and honorable council members. My name is Bruce Bauer. I'm a longtime resident of the city of Santa Ana, and I was a former member of the Planning Commission, was a vice chair of the Planning Commission. And I'm here, too, to join in the chorus of opponents to the pay raise for the police officers. it's just not financially prudent to impose or allow for a raise in the manner that they're asking for we are and i am a strong proponent of public safety in the police and supporters of the police officers but this is doing nothing to ensure public safety in fact it's doing just the opposite

if we are running the city in a way that will render it insolvent in the future then that's going to put contracts, public servant contracts at risk as well. As we know that other communities and municipalities that have filed for bankruptcy, those contracts are voided. So if we run the city in a fiscally imprudent manner, and this raise will do that, then that's going to run the risk of unsolvency for the city. We cannot do it. So I urge strongly that you oppose and vote no on that pay raise. Thank you.

Thank you. Albert Castillo.

I'm not as nice as the people that spoke before me.

I'm here to speak on the issue of the Police Officers Association demanding their money for buying the last couple of elections. They know they have most of you in their pockets and the rest of you scared. how does it feel to be scared how does it feel to be weak you can't say well I'm voting for this because they put their life in the line of duty you may also say well if we don't pay them enough they will leave our city you have to remember this is a job they chose nobody forced them they just just like

nobody forced me or you in our careers if you if it's about money and not our residents then and then leave and then leave as you can see it's done not not it's I'm sorry it's as you can see it does not matter to the POA if it's going to bankrupt our city when you have the Santa Police Office Association president running for city council in Garden Grove, you know that they already have controlled our city and are now moving to another city.

POA is about absolute power. Syndicates and mafias are built this way. Money and power. Thank you. Thank you.

Jonathan H, I believe it is.

Luis Medina.

If staff could maybe search him out, they might be outside.

Madam Clerk, this one you just gave me, and they already had submitted one earlier. So may they're in here. There's two of them on the same item. It was just given to you, so hopefully the person's here.

and then Louise Medina

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

so Mayor my understanding is that you have like over 100 people outside and that may be what's a little bit of the I'm sure.

So if anybody gets bored and you want to go home, you can go home because there's people outside that will take your seats.

Mr. Mayor, I could do some comedy for you all.

No, no, no, no. Why don't you go outside and do comedy out there?

Go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon, council. Good afternoon, mayor. My name is Jonathan Hernandez. I'm a resident of the Articia Pilar neighborhood. And I'm here to demand that you guys do not support the increase of $25.6 million to the police department. In the year of 1995, the STOP program was introduced, the Street Terrorism Offender Project. In that same year, this was followed by the gang detail, the California gang database and the introduction of gang injunctions in our community. As a result, the following year, we had an additional 564 people that were arrested as suspected gang members in urban communities.

Crime began to perpetuate, and as a result, it affected our schools. We had some of the most violent sprees throughout the city's history because of that decision to introduce these punitive programs that hurt families. I'm asking that you guys exercise your guys' rights as human beings to look into the history and the destruction that we are still feeling today. Since the 1990s, we've had over 10,000 residents from our city be allotted into the California gang database. One thing that is for certain is that our city has not created 10,000 college graduates in the last 50 years.

So it's absurd if we have to sit here and debate on whether this is morally right or wrong. I just ask that y'all look and really understand the community that you are here to serve. This is a community that deserves to thrive. We are waking up with more opportunities to lose than we are to win every single day. And you guys are just going to solidify that with an additional $25.6 million. Let us use that money to create public spaces. Let us use that money to create an additional college campus for Santa Ana College students. Let's invest in youth. Let's protect our residents. Let's not put them in cages. Thank you.

Thank you, Luis.

Luis Medina is here.

Hi, my name is Luis Medina, and I'm 24, and I'm here so you guys can not pass a bill to raise police's money for $25.6 million. And the reason why I'm saying that is because I grew up in Los Angeles County, and I've seen this countless of times. Sometimes police is just going beyond the law, thinking that they can do whatever they want to the youth. And I've seen it just prevailing in America in general. And this has happened here in Santa Ana with the murder of Steven Salgado.

He was 18 years old and he was unarmed and he didn't deserve, no one deserves to be killed just for the thought that they might be armed. And this is something that we just need to, I hope you guys can see it in your hearts to, you know, invest more with not just the youth but the community as a whole. all your seniors, disabled people, everybody that needs the funding instead of just funding the

polices. And I'm not a resident here from Santa Ana. I came from Paris to speak out. And I've lived in countless different counties, LA County, Riverside County. So I'm just here to see that this does not get passed. Thank you very much.

thank you i'm now going to bring it to council that was the last speaker so i'm going to bring it to council for uh discussion and consideration i guess we're missing a couple council members we can wait for them that'd be great city manager can you tell them we're uh ready to proceed

All right, James Garvey, are you here? One more speaker. Just turned in the card.

All right, we're on 65D. We've had all the speakers speak. So now I want to bring it to City Council for deliberation and consideration.

Councilor Lodio, please. Thank you. I have some process questions, and then I do have some various points to make. Because I think part of my frustration on this item and others is poor communication. Overall, governments don't tend to be the best in communicating what's going on. And I think that's part of the section here. I think one key question for this item, and maybe starting with our city attorney for clarification. And I don't know if our budget director is here, though I know she's here. I'm here somewhere. Okay, there she is.

This item as currently listed, given the assumptions in the staff report says, it requires five votes to make an appropriation because I think it's based on the assumption that there aren't enough existing dollars in the police department budget to fund the extra dollars for this current fiscal year. So for example, to be very clear, my intention is to try to give modest raises along the lines of what's already been agreed to. With existing dollars, not Measure X dollars, so because Measure X, again, we haven't even discussed what that is. So to be spending it, I agree too.

Not appropriate, but to the extent that there would be existing PD dollars, that I would be very favorable towards. And so I guess just a clarification question for folks on the diocesan and the public. As in the past, as is custom and practice, if we were to be assured by the department, I concurred by our finance director that there are enough unused dollars there. to fund this, would that only be a four person vote requirement?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yes, and council member, members of the city council, my understanding is that for this fiscal year that the cost portion for this fiscal year would be $4.3 million.

Mm-hm.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

If there were $4.3 million existing within the salary bucket in the police department, you could use that $4.3 million. I would defer to the department head chief and our finance director, but I am told that in fact there is not the $4.3 million that exists today. That there is not, and that is the reason why the finance department is recommending that you find that money elsewhere. As for those details, you can ask them.

Well, that answers that question. I do want the two individuals to come up and speak. I also read that finance director memo and essentially the assessment is $4.3 million to fund this fiscal year's worth of this agreement.

And it makes certain assumptions and of the 4.3, 0.1 million would actually come from non-general fund dollars. But the information that our finance director put together looked at an assumption of how much unused vacancy money there is. We, as of the end of December, have 61 vacant, but funded positions. And that's also from information from the finance director. So obviously, that has some value.

If you haven't spent that dollars, I think there's been some questions of, of then based off that, how much may be used for overtime? And I think our finance director, to answer part of this broader question, looked at the prior year to see how much was spent in overtime. And then made an assumption based off that of how much might be available for something like this contract. So in part really the question is for the chief as to whether there are enough dollars in the PD budget to absorb it.

Primarily the question is, do you think you could scale back the overtime budget or other items in the PD budget to absorb it? Because process wise if the answer is yes, then we only need four votes up here, which would be easier than getting to five votes if we need to look into other dollars. And then I'll make mention to the prior item that we kind of skipped over for now. The prior item, maybe after the chief speaks, I do want the finance director to speak to it.

The prior item actually speaks on how certain revenues in the city are up already in compared to what we anticipated. anticipated I think to the tune of at least an additional $8.5 million. But we'll have our finance director talk about that and in part because of that, she's recommending fewer dollars of one time surplus dollars to be used. But my initial question is just to the chief, and I know there will be some kind of collaboration back and forth. But Chief, do you think you could reduce the size of the overtime budget or

other items so that you might be able to fully absorb this within the existing budget? Because obviously this whole agreement, by the way, doesn't just fund the increase. It funds the totality of the POA members' compensation and benefits. So that's the other thing too, I want to verify that right now they're out of contract. It's been six months or so. We had a long debate. Do we do something like this before or after the election? We said after the election, and we knew we'd have this kind of interest, but here we are. So Chief, sorry for the context, but your thoughts?

Yes, thank you, Council Member Solorio. The context is very important and relevant. In looking at current monies with the salary savings, there is about a $1.8 million short to make the $4.3 million in the year one occur. There is a $1.9 million approximately of additional costs, NAF care, crossing guards, retirement payouts, and animal care. and that comes up to about 1.9.

If funding could be secured for that cost, then the 1.8 could be resolved. But short of that, those are the estimates that we have in the police department. And Catherine has obviously provided a lot more detail.

The dollars that you mentioned, are they in your budget or are they in another department? They are not. They're not in my budget. They're not in your budget, and out of the overtime. And maybe there is a need for more time so you could see how much overtime budget you might need for the remainder of the year. But I would think that with the 61 funded but vacant positions that there might be $1.9 million that you can reallocate, readjust. but I guess I hear your answer is you can't?

Correct. And we can always look to be good stewards, as we always are, of overtime and any expenditure, but those are the rough numbers from the police department side. And again, I know there's additional detail that our executive director of finance has provided to the entire council.

Let's go to our finance director. And this then may be heading to the idea of postponing this item and the prior item, two weeks, so we could really sort out the dollars so we could see is it absorbable in the current fiscal year or not. And again, no Measure X dollars, we're not talking about Measure X dollars, we're talking about general fund dollars.

Could you give a general update for the prior item, but they relate. You're making new assumptions that highlight new revenue increases, particularly to sales tax, pretty substantial increase and a few others. And based off that, I think you are changing the council's last year's recommendation to use the one time surplus dollars. If you could make mention of how much that is.

Okay, thank you. The mid-year report includes an estimated sales tax increase of $3.4 million. dollars. Roughly half of that, I think 1.8 million, is related to a one-time payment of a prior year catch-up from the state. So that is one increase that we have included in the mid-year report. The other increase that we included in the mid-year report is, of course, an assumption for the new Measure X revenue, which becomes effective April 1st. So the estimate provided by our sales

tax consultant was 60 million dollars a year one quarter of that would be 15 million so that is what has been added to the mid-year estimates we're tracking a little bit ahead for both business license tax and hotel visitor tax about eight hundred thousand dollars each but we do have some adjustments going the other direction as well our budget had included a 7.8 million estimate for commercial cannabis tax revenue. Well, actually it was fee revenue when the budget was adopted, and then when the voters approved the tax, it became tax revenue. None of the commercial

cannabis businesses have been permitted yet, and so they are not open and operating. And of course, commercial cannabis, just for a reminder to everybody, are activities such as manufacturing, distribution, testing, those kinds of things. So those businesses are not open yet and operating. We anticipate that some of them are in the pipeline. They are getting their permits. So we reduced our estimate down from the original adopted budget of $7.8 million down to $600,000. So that would be a $7.2 million decrease.

Thank you. That's helpful. Sure. If you don't mind, Mr. Mayor, can I make some general comments?

Go ahead, but I want other people to be able to speak as well.

Okay, okay. Again, at least my assessment at this item kind of goes hand in hand with the prior item. And we just need to identify whether there's existing dollars or not. And I know there's other assumptions not made that could be. So for example, out of the commercial retail cannabis money, both last year and up to this year, that's probably generated about five to seven million dollars. And the idea of that was to have one third go to youth programs, one third to admin, one third to enforcement and of the enforcement dollars, one third for

the city attorney's office, one third code enforcement, and one third the PD as an example. And so that is also revenue that is sitting in a fund, but yet hasn't been allocated quite frankly to any of these programs. And we should, and maybe that's something that needs to be added into the prior item.

We right now, just so that the public knows, the council kind of amongst itself already decided on what might be in the collective bargaining agreement that's in the agenda. And based off that, it was sent to the members of the POA, which are sworn and non-sworn officers. They ratified the agreement. It's coming back to us now just to fund it, really to kind of shrink it down too much. And I know many of you are from the labor community, would be called regressive bargaining, which would create potentially, well, it would create financial and other issues.

And I think I mentioned already, we shouldn't use Measure X. Also in terms of the amount, I mean, I was happy to see that many want us to fill all the vacant positions, which we should. But in terms of the increases, just to give you a sense of scale. So as proposed, it would be 5% essentially year one, 4% year two, 4% year three. The school districts and unified in its last contract for their school police equivalent. They gave 6.9% increase for year one and 6.9% for year two, a total of 14%. Mind you, and again, I don't want a race to the bottom.

I think we need to pay folks a living wage. We need to have folks with stable retirement, so I support that. So I don't want a race to a bottom, so I'm not saying that that is inappropriate. but just for comparison's sake you know school police departments I think we're

like excuse me let's start the clock yes please we have a hundred and fifty

people outside in the cold but this is important many of them are here for this

so so so not really a lot of competition in that industry but on the on the city side with with city police and there's a recent Sacramento article that has the a listing of rankings in Orange County, we're six down in order in terms of how we pay our officers. And given the work and the potential for harm in this community and the vacancies we have, and maybe at some point the chief can be asked whether something like this would help with vacancies and retention. And we also need retention. I know the item of longevity came up, we need to retain them as well.

Those are some comments right now. I have some others, but I'll stop there so that others can comment as well.

All right. Look, Ceci, go ahead. And then, and then, Councilor Sarmiento, if you'd like. Go ahead.

So I have a couple of questions for staff. Okay, so first I just want to know if this is a staff recommended action that we're taking or is this something that because, and just to be clear, when you say council, it's not all of us that recommended that, so don't put me in that mix.

But it was a council majority.

There you go, council majority, I could stand with that. Okay, and then the other one, so was it a staff recommended action or Or was this led by council majority to come up with this negotiation?

City manager, would you have an answer?

I mean, that's a very good question. We are actually to operate based on the direction that we received in post. You directed the negotiation to Mr. Steve Bamm and that has brought us to where we are.

So it's a council majority directive. Okay, thank you.

So I guess, would the city council be giving this directive if Measure X had failed? So I guess that's a good question for us to answer. Would have been giving this direction if it had failed? And I know I campaign against Measure X, so I would have said no. So how many, this is a good question, how many raises has the POA received since 2011? How many raises?

I personally do not have that information. Director Pham, do you have that information?

Good evening, Councilwoman. I do not have that up front right now. it would take me a little bit of a time to take a look and get that information to you.

But my understanding that because I've been reading this because this is something when it comes to being fiscally conservative and it's something that's not going to put our community in a predicament, I research it and I believe it's close to almost I think this is going to be 15% that we're going to be giving them. 13%. And I think before it was what like 14% So we're up to 27% in the last 10 years.

I think your information is probably accurate, but I don't want to commit to that because I don't have it in front of me. But yes, ma'am, it's very close.

Very close to 27%. So I don't know anyone in this room that has received 27% salary increase.

So another one is these raises that you guys are talking about in this contract, contract, is it only for three years? Or is it something that after the three years, I know they're going to come up again and try to reopen renegotiations. And then we're back to square one and talking about salary increase. So is it only for three years or is this something that it's just for right now and then it's open again in three years to discuss it?

The term of the MOU before you is a three-year contract, and the costs that are presented in the staff report are for those three years. But if no action is taken at the end of those three years, those salary increases are permanent.

And the ongoing rate is going to be $25 million every year. It's not right?

No. The ongoing rate would be $12.7 million each year and then escalating thereafter based upon increasing costs of pension. So it's $12 million that every year added to that?

$12.7. But added to the $25.

Yes, the $25 is just for the first three years. There's 4.3 in the first year, plus 8.6 in the second year, plus 12.7 in the third year. Gets you to your 25.6 million, and then it's 12.7 every year thereafter because it is a permanent increase.

And that was my question. Thank you. So then this is just the salaries. It doesn't talk about pensions. So what's our liability for the pensions?

This $25.6 million includes the impact to the pension. That estimate of this $25.6 million is $3 million. And then after that, the city's pension contribution is twofold. One is a percentage of payroll, and one is a flat dollar amount. the percentage of payroll will continue to increase, and so will the flat dollar amount after this. But the percentage of payroll is the only one that is impacted by this MOU. The flat dollar amount would not be.

Okay, but we still have the pension liability, which the city has to take in. Okay, and I know this is just if, and I just have a lot of questions. And Michelle, yes, I've been called the new Michelle. on the council. So the other question I have, I know this is just for the officers and staff. How about management staff? How much money, because you know everything works like the me too. So if the police association gets this raised, then how much would it cost to the police management staff?

Well, we have not done a full calculation of that, but we have prepared a rough estimate and provided it to city council. So how much is that? At this point, Councilwoman, we have not engaged in collective bargaining with our police management yet, although I have received requests to start the meet and confer, so I don't know what's on their proposals. But yes, ma'am, in the past, I am told that pretty much whatever POA receive, PMA would, because we want to make sure there is no compaction issue. So it would be on top of that, yes.

So then, so on top of that, so then roughly, I mean, just doing the percentages, what is the budget of the management?

We provided a rough estimate to Council that if the PMA were to receive substantially the same package, that it might be a fiscal impact of about $1.7 million.

In addition, okay.

So my question is going to go into, okay, we discussed we have 61 vacancies. We have 50 unfunded police positions, right?

50 unfunded, that is correct. In the police department, not all of those are officer positions. So what is the current budget for the police officer vacancies? The 61 vacancies that have been discussed, that includes 29 police officers and then other types of staff as well. But the total estimated available is $6.5 million. $6.5 million? Yes.

And I know that we're actively recruiting for officers. How many officers do you think will be hiring by June 30th?

Councilwoman Iglesias, our goal is to continue to aggressively recruit and hire officers. We estimate about four officers per month moving forward.

Four officers per month moving forward, so it'll be another 20, 25 officers by the end of June?

That's our goal. We lose some, too, though. Yes, we do have an attrition rate. we estimate approximately 20 officers will leave in calendar year 2019.

So I'm glad that you brought up that point about officers leaving. What is the number one reason why officers leave?

So retirement principally. There's also some medical retirements. Officers get injured on duty and they need to retire. We want to make sure that we continue to remain competitive so that not only we recruit but retain the good quality of officers that we have.

So then if we wanted to be competitive and recruit, I mean, this is just my input and my opinion, is don't you think we would have a higher starting salary for officers and then that would help us recruit more rather than to try to say that we're competing and we're giving everyone across the board raises and that doesn't really help recruitment, does it? Because then somebody else is going to say, you know what, we're going to give them 15%, 13%, then we'll give them 14%. So we're always going to be chasing our officers in a way.

So has there been talk about maybe raising the starting salary? That would be a good point.

I think that's very much the conversation or in context here. And the first part of your comment, yes, higher salaries and benefits do attract officers to any department.

Another question for you, Catherine, would be, I know this is only for the salaries. How about the, I would say like the special, and I always use this word with you. Special pays. Special pays, yes. How much money is that?

Out of that $25.6 million estimate, let's see, I had calculated that the impact on special pays would be about $2.1 million out of that $25.6. So the $25.6 includes salary increase, the impact on CalPERS, the pension, the impact on special pays. It's a fully loaded number.

That's a lot of numbers. Okay, so I'm just going to ask you, do we have an actual actuarial analysis of our pension cost? Yes, we do. Is that something that you can say, okay, so how much will it cost us in the next five to ten years?

I don't have that information in front of me.

I think that would be good for us to know because like one of the gentleman said, bankruptcy is looming on us. And if this is something that the council majority approves, it's going to be something that's going to set us back. And also it's going to hurt for those that already have been compensated by our citizens here in Santa Ana. And if we go into bankruptcy, all is null and void. So I would just say that for the council for us to consider that we have a fiduciary responsibility on this council to do the right thing for everyone.

And the 13% increase on just one association is not good. It's not us being good fiscal stewards of the public's money.

And then something that I'd say, let's not count on something that we don't have. Measure X is something that we don't have yet. And I believe $60 million is a little too generous that we're thinking we're going to bring in. A lot of people are going to say, you know what, we're not going to shop Santa Ana because Santa Ana doesn't take care of us. Why should we take care of them? So with that, I just leave that for the community out there, that you guys have my support. that this is something that is fiscally irresponsible. And I'm hoping that this council up here recognizes that and that we do the right thing.

And it doesn't say that I don't appreciate law enforcement. I do. I believe you guys have a very tough job. But we all have tough jobs here in our city, and I thank you for being part of our team. And I just want to say something to Councilman Solorio's point of Santa Ana Inufight School District approving a 14% increase for the Santa Ana School police officers. That was only 26 officers. Versus this is how many staff do we have that this is affecting?

When we did our, the numbers that our calculation is based on at that time, there was 465 officers. there's been a little bit of attrition since then so that's not the accurate number today but it's close so twenty six to four hundred and twenty five and

then so it's only two hundred thousand to twenty five million so you guys see see I mean it's not apples to apples and it's something that I think it's unfair to about misguided and light to our community so with that I all right

now signer Vince Armiento please I just have one question and it's kind of the The elusive question that everybody's been asking is, and maybe this is for all the staff because I think everybody has a different opinion of it. What is it that we're being asked to approve and on what basis? In other words, is it four votes? Is it five votes? Is it for a partial, one component or element of the contract or for the entire contract? That's what seems to be missing here because it really is going to make a difference, I think, on the adoption or not.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Right. There are two actions that you need to take to effectuate the negotiation direction that you gave to staff. So a majority of the council negotiates in closed session and gave staff direction to prepare a proposed MOU, which is before you tonight, and that contract can be approved with four votes. But in order to actually – it doesn't do you any good to approve a contract if you don't have the money to pay for it. So in order to actually have the money, to allocate the money in the right bucket so that we can actually pay the officers and the non-sworn employees, we have to move money around.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Your city charter requires that when you have to move money around, it requires five votes. Normally what happens, so that for next year, in the next fiscal year, you will budget as part of this contract in years two and three, the money to pay for the contract will be in the budget. so you won't need the fifth vote. But you adopted this year's fiscal year budget back in June, and you didn't anticipate this $4.3 million expenditure. So in order to, you decided that you want to spend $4.3 million by proposing this agreement, it is our job, it's our professional

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

job to find that money for you. And what you've heard this evening from the professionals, finance, and from the chief in the department, is that there is not $4.3 million in the salary bucket. If there's not 4.3 in that salary bucket, the finance director is charged. She's done her job. She's trying to implement the direction you gave her, but she has to move money around, and your charter says you need five votes to move that money around. Even if that's cannabis revenue, we would still have to have an appropriation pursuant to the charter that requires five votes.

So I know I said I only had one question, so I have a follow-up question. So is this a moot exercise then? We could actually adopt the contract, but it would be a hollow contract because there's no funding to support it. Is that your opinion? Is that everybody's opinion up here from Stan?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yeah, I would ask the finance director how she would go about that if the bill came due and you didn't have the money in the right bucket.

Well, the MOU, if approved and executed, is a legal contract. And so legally, I would be bound to make payments according to the terms of that contract on behalf of the city. It puts me in quite a conundrum because, again, I have to have the legal authority for the funding as well. so at that point I think that we would have to proceed forward at least temporarily based upon the salary savings that we do have and then for lack

of a better word circle the wagons and try to come up with a plan to bring it before the council to to fund the the MOU. Thank you. Thanks.

Anybody who hasn't spoken, go ahead, Mayor Bruton.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

I'd like to speak directly to our officers, many of you I know, I work with throughout the years, because I work for the Sheriff's Department. And I always want to say that I'm with you. I'll always be with you. I won't let you guys, I won't leave you. But we have to be reasonable when it comes down to contracts because in law enforcement we have a saying, and the saying says you do the right thing, you don't have to worry about anything. Just do the right thing. I'm sitting in this seat, and I have to do that. Integrity is very, very important for people in law enforcement.

It's the trait that holds all the other traits in place. So I'm charged with doing what's right. And I have to look out for the city of Santa Ana. I don't just look out for the police department or the other employees. I have to look out for all the employees and for the residents and the business owners and the people who come here. We're responsible for all of that. So there was a couple of, let me backtrack here. There's two council members that are up here right now that did support Measure X. Myself and Council Member Sarmiento.

And that was a big risk because when you take a tax increase to the public, believe me, that's tough. People remember that. It's tough on a re-election. I remember Southie and I hit a running for America. That was tough. He went out there. I give him credit on that. He didn't win, but he had a lot of guts. Okay, the man did it. So, but here we are now.

Now, there's two council members sitting on this dais today. One of them who I know, she doesn't believe in the tax raise, and I respect that because that is her core belief. The other one campaigned hard, and it's easy to campaign against something when you know that the council here is united, we know we need the money, we know the city needs it, and then it's safe to say no because everyone's going to like you. If it passes, well, it passes and you go with it. If you say no and it doesn't pass, I was with you. So it's political. And that's what it is. I'm calling it the way it is.

So, you know, a lot of people were tagging me on Facebook saying all these things. You have no idea how I'm going to vote. You have no clue. And I'm sorry to say the public, they only know what they read. You don't know what happens back there in closed session. You don't know what happens when the briefings from the lawyers and all the staff reports that come by and all the conversation that takes place. There's a lot of things. They only know what happens here. And sometimes they judge us unfairly. And it's not good. It doesn't feel well. You really, really need to have thick skin to be up here. It's tough. And it is what it is.

So sometimes you have to make unpopular decisions. You have to, as long as you do what's right, I can sleep at night. And that's what I do. And I've been like that my entire 29 years of my career, and I'm doing that here in my third year now on the council. This contract here is not the right contract in my opinion. The police officers deserve a raise. I don't know any other job when you come out here and you might get shot at. Daily.

Because you never know what's going to happen. These are brave men and women that serve and protect us here in this city. And they deserve a contract. I'm just thinking that this contract isn't the right one. 5% and a 4 and a 4. The 5% is tied to medical and all these other things, all these other benefits. That's why they say it's compound. So you get 5% here, the medical goes up. Then you go another year and you get another 4% in this amount. Right now it's $8.8 million given to health care for our police officers. They deserve good health care because the job is demanding all the equipment you carry.

The average officer carries about 27 pounds of equipment. Okay, so it hurts your back, hurts your waist, so on and so forth. You get in and out of the car with those equipment, it's tough. You can twist a knee, an ankle, chasing someone, all those things. You need to have good medical. But this is kind of steep here. You can't do it. If you trim some of the benefits and you can still give a good raise, that's doable.

So that's my opinion on this. We've got to have more conversation, but I can't support this item today. And I apologize to the officers, but I think you understand me when I say we have to do what's right. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

If I may, I've got, do you want to speak? Go ahead, David.

David PenalozaItem —

I just had a question for staff I understand that right now this we're about number six or seven in in scale and regionally for pay for base pay what does this do anything to move us up the scale a little bit and someone answer

that question please yes mr. Pham good evening councilman I will have to take a look at the data because right now I don't know what other agencies are doing in terms of their own raises too. So if other agencies are granting raises, we would have to look at that. But before the directive to negotiate, we were between six and seven, depends on which market, including LA or Orange County. So it varies. So when you say that, I need to know which survey you're referring to but i would have to do an updated survey in order to give you that data i just wanted to say

David PenalozaItem —

that this was a question that we brought up a month ago when this was first brought to us so the fact that i mean we were we were told that this was going to get done and it didn't so just want to put that out there so if you could please do that i'd appreciate it i will thank you thank

you if i may council member and then i'll i'll bring it back um the short answer is yes if you pay more money you're gonna go up compared to other agencies across the county exactly what number I think the numbers I saw we'd go up you know about three or four slots you're always competing you know all cities need police officers and it's a competition that's out there you can't get away from it what I will tell you is that I think we need to take some action because we

have more vacancies than anybody else. You look at Fullerton, look at Anaheim, look at Garden Grove, look at any cities around, even look at larger cities like Long Beach. We have more vacancies than they do. And it's because we're paying less than they're paying. So we either have to decide, do we want to fund those empty positions and have more officers to serve the community, which is what the committee calls for or do we want to ratchet down the police department just say we're just gonna keep those vacancies permanent maybe take them off the budget and

just have a littler police department you know we we can't have it both ways we can't say you know we want to be fully funded but not do anything about fully funding it and i'll tell you right now at the rate we're going every year we recruit but we recruit about the same number that we lose So at the end of the year you might be up two positions or down three positions. We're not really moving the needle. What this contract would do is it would move the needle. It'll put the chief in a position where he can be more aggressive about recruiting and maybe a year or two years from now we can say we don't have 50 vacancies anymore.

Maybe we're down to 10 vacancies or less. And we're better funded in the department because there's a lot of demands here in the city for police and look public safety I think is our number one responsibility and I agree that there's many ways to get to public safety there's a broken window theory you know you got to keep the streets clean and and and trees well planted and trimmed and you know sidewalk swept and trash picked up whole lot of things go into making a neighborhood safe but at the end of the day if you call the police and nobody can answer the call that's a problem

and we're having that especially right now with the whole homeless situation I believe it's getting better and I know a lot of folks have worked on it to help and thank you Michelle and others thank you for for doing that but you need police to take folks down to the shelter I mean I was down at the big savers recently and there's a lady in a wheelchair and she was homeless and I went up to her and and she had a little sign saying you know food or shelter I I said, do you really want food or shelter? And she says, what do you mean?

Do you really want right now to be picked up and taken to a shelter where you're going to be indoors or you're going to have food? She says, well, do I have to stay there? I said, no, it's up to you. If you like and it works, you can stay there. So I can leave whenever I want? Yeah, you can leave whenever you want. But if you don't want to be here out on the sidewalk in the rain with your little sign, tell me and I'll make a call right now. And I called commander Gominski and and and he got a unit out and before you know it They had her and they took her to the shelter. She's now at the shelter

But it took police officers to do that, you know, if I make a call and nobody's there Nothing's gonna happen. So so I think as tough as this is we ought to move forward I I think that if we have four votes to approve the contract we ought to do that and then whether there's an appropriation adjustment in two months or three months or we take cannabis money that did not used to exist but now exists and we can use that to help out the the police department let's make this city a better city a safer city and and we can get there from here so with that um what i'd like for us to consider and i'll call on on council member

Sarmiento in a moment, but what I'd like for us to consider is 65D. If that passes, we'll figure out if we do 65C or not. And if not, then 65C gets continued a few weeks and we continue to struggle, but at least we know what direction we're going in. Councilor Vince Sarmiento, please. Thank you.

Chief, do you mind answering a couple of questions and going up to the

or to the podium I should say. So I think there was a question that was asked and I'm going to go a little deeper on those.

You know I really do think that our residents and people in town

would pay a premium for public safety. But they're going to pay a premium for premium service. service, right? We know that that's always polled as probably the highest concern for voters. It polls at about high 60s, low 70s as one of the most important priorities in the city. So the issues that I see facing the department and that have been challenging the department have been recruitment. I know you've had this conversation with us many times. Some of the other concerns that I see that face the city and the department, not just homelessness,

but some other very serious problems like liability from excessive force cases, wrongful death cases, different things that we have to pay out that amount to a lot. Tonight we settled the case, and it was at a very high dollar amount, and we've had to do that in the past. one of the things I hear time and time again when I go out to neighborhood associations are response times or the problems with response times. And the fact that the crime stats have been not falling but kind of status quo, you know, from you, and I think, you know, you're going to be, you're the face of this department

and you're going to shoulder a lot of these responsibilities and burdens, I think, because now if there is an enhanced compensation package for the officers, will you be able to deliver these results? Because I think with this, the consideration I guess that we would do in exchange for enhancing the compensation is consideration return for the residents, which is a safer city, which is better response times, which is lower crime stats, which is improved liability exposure that we have from different incidents that involve our officers, and improved recruitment.

So is there a nexus between what we would do tonight by approving and adopting this contract and those four indices?

Thank you, Council Member Sarmento, for the questions and the context of the comments. It ties into Councilwoman Iglesias' earlier comments. And my opinion is that, yes, it would have a direct impact on our ability to recruit, hire, and retain quality officers. It would have a direct impact on lowering our response times and then address all of the priorities that are really identified by the community. If you'll recall, when I took over as chief, I met with each council member at the time. I'm doing it with the new ones as well. and also with community members and members of the organization.

I can make some assumptions after 29 years in the organization, but there's nothing like hearing it directly from those that are delivering the services and receiving the services. And so a compensation package, an enhanced one, certainly will have a direct nexus to our ability to staff the positions and then deliver the services that the community are deserving and entitled to, quite frankly. In terms of liability exposure, that's another area that I take very seriously. When we have a case such as the one that came before you this evening, we look at what are the lessons learned going back.

And so I take the time, and I have no problem harnessing really the responsibility of what is going to be your, essentially, the end product, right? And so in speaking directly to officers, they understand and continue to understand that they need to deliver the best services possible, starting with response times and then following up with addressing the community's priorities. Maybe not even necessarily their own. Do it safely, but listen and then respond.

You know, and finally, I guess what I would ask is, would you be opposed if this contract were adopted? Would you be opposed to having some matrix or some indices, something done on a quarterly basis to show how we're trending in these four categories? Having to do with recruitment, liability, crime statistics generally, aggravated assaults, simple assaults, and response times. I think those are the four indices, I think, that have always driven effectiveness in the department. So that's something that I don't think we have. right now, is that something that you and your department could bring back to the council and see?

Are we getting a product or a value from what we're paying?

Absolutely. And we would establish a baseline and provide it not only to the council and also post it on all of our websites, social media, for forward-facing transparent information, which, again, I believe the community deserves.

I'd be happy to make that part of a motion, should we entertain one in a few minutes. Mayor Potembe-Legas.

Yeah, one more thing, sir. So, Chief, many times I've called you, and the number one complaint that I get is the officers don't show up. You know, the low-level calls, like loud music, that's even happened to me a couple of times. Four hours went by. I mean, it was four in the morning, I'm still calling, no one showed up. I don't ever tell anyone who I am. I shouldn't have to. I'm the same as everyone else here in the audience, all of our residents. We all deserve the same level of service. If you call the police, they should be there in a reasonable amount of time. And right now, we're short.

And I understand we're trying to balance and show that we pay well and we can recruit the best. and I'm on the public safety committee meeting, public safety committee, so I understand the numbers. We lose 28 to 30 officers a year. We recruit about 28 to 30 officers a year. I think this year we did just a little bit better recently, but we're kind of putting the cart before the horse on this. I heard somebody say that earlier because we haven't even begun to collect Measure X money as backup. And I know that's not for, and it's not intended for the police officers, because it has a sunset on it.

Ten years from now, that 1.5 is going to drop down to one. And then ten years after that, it's gone. Half of our police, if you can correct me, Chief, half of our police department is, what, about five years or under? Patrol, frontline police, yes. Yeah, and patrol is the backbone of the police department. And we need that. Those are the ones that go out. So, you know, they're going to be here a while. And so 20 years, I mean, that's a little tough. That's why I wanted to wait. We have to think about this, and we shouldn't approve this right now. We've got to change it a little bit because we haven't even received it.

Look, once we start getting the money from Measure X, we need to collect it for about a year, and then you'll see what the base is. We don't even know how much money is going to come in. So, you know, those are the things that concern me, and I just wanted to mention that. And Chief, you know I support you, and we're just trying to get through this. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Chief. Thank you. Ceci?

I just want to just say a comment to what Councilman Sarmiento was asking about that. You are going to ensure higher quality service if this gets approved. So that says to me, it's like we're holding you hostage. We're not going to give you the services unless you pay me more money. That's how I understood the request. And I think it's very unfortunate because paying someone more money is not going to guarantee that they're going to do the job better. There is nothing in place that that's what's going to say.

I'm for saying, you know what, if we have the money at the end, then yes, let's compensate our staff. Let's compensate our officers because they deserve it. But I think right now it's like Mayor Pro Tem Villegas was saying, we are putting the cart before the horse, and it's wrong to do this. And it's just, for me, what I heard from Councilman Sarmiento is just a slap in the face to the community saying that they won't come out unless you give them a raise. And that's wrong. and not very wrong and I believe that you know they should be going out there when we call them and then giving them raises is not the way to do it and then

this is with all due respect to all because I know you guys are busy but you know it's hiring staff we should have that money for hiring staff not for giving them across the board raises because that's going to put us in a liability that we cannot sustain so if I if I may respond ma'am respectfully I

I would never either directly or imply any reference to holding our community hostage. I'm a direct product of the community, and so what we're looking to do is how can we best provide additional services, and how do we keep the officers that are already here from even considering a neighboring competing agency, which has occurred. They'll actually leave here that actually has occurred every time an officer even thinks about leaving here i direct my staff to find out exactly what are the issues what are the issues and we have had a couple officers leave to other agencies that pay more maybe that's not the right officer here but

in terms of the sheer number clearly there's a direct nexus if you have more of them the response times will go down we'll be able to address these other issues uh and so um that's That was my reference in terms of ensuring quality service.

And I agree with you. Having more is going to increase the response for it to be. Decrease. Increase. No, he said it's going to decrease the response if we increase the officers, right? I agree with that. But giving across the board raises is not going to help you fulfill that request that you have because we're going to run out of money. That's what's wrong. It's like you keep taxing, taxing, and taxing. And our community is going to say, you know what, we've had it with you, we're just going to go into community policing, and then that's it. Do we want to put our community against the police officers? No.

I believe we should all be working together, but in fairness, I believe that police officers should have a heart and say, you know what, the community can't support this contract like Mayor Patel was saying. Let's do something else, something that's going to be benefit for both our staff and also for our community.

Thank you, Councillor Cesar Lodio.

Yes, three things, Mr. Mayor. First, if we're sixth in pay and we're a little bit more of a city to police, we're having challenges hiring people. That's what the problem is. The last three, four months of the last calendar year and you all got the report the last few days from finance. We went, I think, from having 68 vacancies to 61. So it's getting worse by the day. I mean, we could not fund anything and go down to zero officers. That obviously would not be good. And in terms of this contract, it's about retention and other things. So there's a lot in there for folks to stay longer.

But there's also, because some people leave laterals to other agencies, and there's also money for new officers. And then in defense of what Council Member Sarmiento was mentioning, we're talking about more information to the community. Where are we with vacancies? Where are we with force? Where are we with gang violence and gun shootings? We ought to be reporting that as an addition. That's not to say our officers aren't doing their work because they are doing it in a very limited capacity with the resources they have.

And then as we move forward to, we also need to modernize our police department. This status quo of having kind of a regular officer do everything isn't always necessary or the best. I think we're seeing now with the quality of the security cameras, and we have great successes, for example, with the security cameras at Madison Park. That'll help and reduce the need. Also, for example, for park rangers, I don't think we need post-certified officers carrying guns for that. I think just having regular folks without a gun would be good, and quite frankly, particularly with kids. probably would be well received and cost less dollars.

Same thing with taking cold reports. I don't think you need a sworn officer for that. Community oriented policing, domestic violence, same kind of thing. We have a lot of policing needs and they don't all require officers carrying guns. That would cost us less money and would be another way for us to be successful. I'm optimistic with the mayor's comments that maybe we say don't take any Measure X money to go with what Mayor Portem Viegas is saying. Let's use existing general fund dollars, cannabis dollars to fund this year. And then after that, we'll go from there.

But I know there's been a lot of talk about bankruptcy, but Measure X is estimated to bring in $60 million a year new. We have cannabis money that we didn't have before that probably by the end of this year is going to be an extra 10 million a year that we didn't have. At some point we need to go back and readjust our hotel visitor occupancy tax and that'll generate a little bit more so we can't rest. We got to keep working to keep our community safe. Response times for 911 folks are very low and so we need to do a lot more to keep our community safe.

And so I would be in support of supporting both one and two or maybe we do just approve the agreement and then essentially kind of have staff month to month pay out that claim. Because essentially that's what it would be. But those are my comments and thoughts, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. I suggest we just consider 6-5-D for now. We've got a ton of folks outside. It's cold, they want to speak. I think we have an obligation to keep you know things moving as well for that so if appropriate I'd like to entertain a motion right now on item 65 D item one or two mayor I would I would say

number one. Yeah let's start with that. Start with item one. Move that. So I'd be happy to second the motion. Those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? No. We have two no's. Four yes's. So we move on to the next item. Item number two are you going to appropriate the money? We're going to leave that for two weeks from now. So now we're going on to item 75A. This is time and place to adopt mitigated

negative declaration resolution for Santa Ana United Methodist Church Project loaded at 609 North Spurgeon Street and adopt a resolution supporting community renaissance of California submittal application to approve a density bonus so motion to approve well let me see if anybody wants to address us on item 75 a Jeff Dickman followed by George Ataya followed by Elizabeth Hansberg.

Good evening members of council. My name is Jeff Dickman. I'm a resident of the historic French Park neighborhood and I'm here to speak about my concern, my several concerns about about the Legacy Square project, something that our neighborhood was not noticed about, and we only came to learn about the project once we received a notification from the city for the Planning Commission hearing for the discretionary action to increase, to enter into a bonus density agreement. So we were not familiar with the project. no outreach had been done for Historic French Park.

We've only now been still learning about the project through the city's website. So we've written some comments. Those were sent to the planner for the project, Petro Gomez, and I assume he's provided French Park's comments. So regarding the outreach, we are asking that the applicant return to our neighborhood with some robust discussions to the neighbors that were not notified about the project, although I think the zone of notification was small and eclipsed just part of the lower part of French Park. French Park is a neighborhood that extends up to Washington and to the north side,

and from Bush on the west to, I think, Garfield on the east. We also have other concerns about the loss of an historic property, the auxiliary building to the Methodist Church. And in the environmental document that you have, I don't see anything that talks about adaptive reuse. I think it's a flaw in the document, as the flaw in lack of a notification for French Park. We're also concerned about traffic. As the mayor knows, French Park is situated between the downtown and the freeway. One Broadway Plaza project was a big deal for us, and that's why we filed a lawsuit against the city on a couple of occasions.

And this project is not a One Broadway, but it still has incremental traffic that French Park is concerned about. I don't see anything about traffic mitigation, traffic calming measures, anything like that. So I would ask Council to consider delaying the project, send them back to the neighborhood, to at least our neighborhood, so we can have some presentations about the scope of the impact, and that we can work with the applicant on potential mitigations, including possible adaptive reuse of that historic structure.

Thank you. Thank you. George Ataya followed by Elizabeth Hansberg.

Hello. Thank you for having me today. I just wanted to say that I heard about this project on behalf of People for Housing. I think it's a great project. I think it's a great reuse of a church. I appreciate that the church even considered donating their time and their efforts to pushing forward the housing agenda. there's a shortage in in orange county i think that's everyone can agree on that and i believe this this project will help supply housing to an you know an extremely under underserved population in orange county and i appreciate your thank you elizabeth followed by idalia rios

good evening my name is elizabeth hansberg i'm the founder of the orange county yimbi organization people for housing we support all housing you guys have three projects before you today and we need all of them national core is the one of the most reputable uh non-profit housing developers this is an opportunity to add to the affordable housing stock in santa anna in orange county it's an amazing opportunity that we should be seizing as we should with all housing opportunity so i would just urge you to approve the project and continue to add much needed

affordable housing thank you thank you idalia rios followed by doug gillen

hola buenas noches gracias for escuchar nuestros comentarios My name is Idale Ríos, I'm part of the community community Vecindario Leys in Action and I'm here to bring my support to the Legacy Square because it's the first time that we have taken the community from a beginning and Vela has been part of this process. It's very important, it's interesting how you debate about the budget for police officers and not about the benefits for the community. This project will benefit many families.

And if we put it in context, what is more important is to take care of historical and historical vecindario, of course it is important, but also it is important that these families have a right and right and right and right and right that is a fair and right and right and right and right and right.

Para mí es muy importante que piensen en equidad y justicia. Y ustedes están tomando esta silla para que ejerzan eso y sean un ejemplo para todos los ciudadanos y residentes de Santana. So les pido que apoyen el proyecto Legacy Square. Gracias.

Good evening. Thanks for listening to us. My name is Edalia Rios, and I am a part of the group Lacey in Action. And I'm here to support the Legacy Square project, especially because this is the first time that they have considered the community input from the beginning. And it's very interesting to hear you debating all this time about the budget for the police, but you're not debating as much in considering the benefits for the community and how the families are going to be benefited. I know it's more important for you to consider the historic context of this situation,

but it's also you need to consider for families that have fair and dignified housing. We need to consider equity and justice, and that's why you are sitting there in those chairs, and you need to be an example for the community. So I support the Legacy Square Project.

Doug Guillen followed by Mark Coleman.

Good evening Mr. Mayor, City Council. My name is Doug Guillen. I am Chairman of the Board of Trustees for Santa Ana United Methodist Church, a resident of Santa Ana since 1952. In response to a comment that was made earlier about a historical building, we have had this property looked at by the Santa Ana Historical Preservation Society, and yes, St. Luke's is old, but it is not historic. The history of this particular property dates back to 1900, and the five churches who make up Santa Ana United Methodist Church

date back to 1869, 1873, and 1879. All of these churches were embedded in Orange County well before Orange County was a county. As you may understand with those kind of roots in the in the community, we have looked at this project from a standpoint of yes, it is a legacy. It is a legacy of three congregations giving back to the community the gifts that God has given to us in a manner that is pleasing to him and is also gratifying for our community and our residents. We would greatly consider your favor in this particular matter.

We thank you for your considerations in the past and for previous votes. And having seen some of you about a week ago talking about a legacy opportunity, we would like to also consider this as a legacy opportunity for the city. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Doug. Now Mark.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Councilmembers. My name is Mark Coleman. I'm here to support the Legacy Square project. And I am a resident and a long-time participant in the Mercy House for five years. I'm here to express my support. Having affordable housing is really important to me and has benefited me tremendously and has impacted my mental health greatly. Everything from me begins in my mind and my thoughts. I now have a heightened awareness of a life of gratitude due to affordable housing.

I view the Legacy Project as a progress for homelessness and the community. I now ask for your support in the Legacy Square Project. Thank you. Thank you, Michael.

Michael Lehman followed by John Weber. Good evening, Mayor and Councilmembers. My name is Michael Lehman. I am a resident of French Park.

I just wanted to say that I support the Legacy Park project.

I think that affordable housing is really scarce in Orange County, and to bring a project of this size into our neighborhood would really be beneficial. Thank you.

Thank you. John?

Followed by Deborah Guillen. Good evening Mayor Polito and council members. My name is John Weber and I am a Mercy House resident who has lived in the historic French Park neighborhood for almost nine years. I'm here tonight to express my support of the Legacy Square project that is being developed by Mercy House and National Corps. If it weren't for affordable housing, I wouldn't be standing here today. You see, I showed up at the doors of Mercy House in October of 2010 with 67 days free from alcohol and drugs for the first time in over two decades.

I was welcomed by the staff at Emanuel House where I was provided a safe place in their transitional living program. This was an opportunity in which I could feel time, touch reality, and reconnect with spiritual values I had long thought lost. I lived at a manual house for 16 months and did everything suggested to and asked of me. In that time, I was able to go back to school, gain employment, and reestablish myself in society. Eventually, I was offered a certificate with Santa Ana Section 8 housing and have been in my own amazing apartment since 2012.

As you know, rental property in Orange County has spiraled out of reach, and I happen to be a single male who, without programs like Mercy House, would be sharing a room, infringing upon friends and family, or facing homelessness again. And not because I'm a bad person, or because I used to drink and use drugs, but simply because my pay is not adequate enough to afford $1,200 to $1,400 for a one-bedroom apartment. I had declining health and was not employable when Mercy House took me in

Having affordable rent and a space of my own has allowed me time to rebuild my credit to get healthy both physically and spiritually and continue my education Affordable clean and well-maintained housing allows me and others like me to get housed and stay housed with everything going on watch going on in Washington and and the uncertainty of our country under our current unbelievably reckless administration, I can go to bed each night in Orange County and wake up each morning in my own safe, well-maintained space. Because really, doesn't every American deserve to feel safe and secure and a part of?

In conclusion, the work that is being proposed.

Please wrap up. Lights red.

Thank you for listening to me, and I hope you approve the Legacy Project. God bless.

Deborah followed by Carolyn Rodriguez.

Mr. Mayor and council members, I'm Deborah Gillan and I'm the chairperson of the Governance Board of Santa Ana United Methodist Church. I'd like to share with you my excitement for this project that our church has been planning for quite some time. We could have just chosen to sell the property, but we instead decided to stay within the community and reach out to our neighbors. We do want to be good neighbors. We want to assure the people of French Park that this is not going to be a burden to their community. I believe, if anything, it's going to add to the value of their property as well.

I know that you may be hearing later tonight from some of the renters at our church right now who also are concerned about losing their home. We sympathize with that and we understand that. And for that reason, part of this project is to help them relocate as well. we want to continue to give back to our community to be a presence for the kingdom of God here and I thank you very much for your support in this matter

thank you very much Deborah Carolyn followed by Yvonne Rodriguez go ahead

good evening mayor good evening councilman my name is Carolina Rodriguez I am an assistant pastor at La Gran Cosecha Sobrenatural Supernatural Harvest Ministries Just like Deborah mentioned a minute ago, we are tenants at this location and collectively over 50 years of experience we have working in the community. And my grandfather pioneered a church in the Hispanic ministry here in Santa Ana. He moved to Santa Ana in 1964 when all of Santa Ana were orange groves and vegetable fields. And he tells about all of this today and he has witnessed a decline in healthy communities here in Santa Ana.

And this is the reason why we are here today. Santa Ana United Methodist Church at 609 North Spurgeon has been a beacon of hope. It has been a beacon of hope for over a century now. There's even a time capsule with a plaque inside the church lobby that states it's to be open in just a few years' time. This building is not only a physical structure, but a safe haven for people from our community to find hope and connect with our Creator. The St. Luke Center that sits adjacent to the church sanctuary has gathered hundreds and thousands of people over the years.

And up until recently, each and every week, different gatherings of people were held. It was an amazing experience to hear all types of languages spoken and music played in different languages at one center. Each person and congregation worked together to keep the space clean and well organized. People gathered for AA meetings and NA meetings and English classes and Spanish congregations and English-speaking congregations, Cambodian congregations, homeless community meetings, and homeless communities were even housed during rainy and windy nights.

Santa Ana through this building. This four-story historic building was used to its maximum capacity and now which what was once a lighthouse for many has been lost, has been lost in the storm and it has been closed. There is no other community center in this dense population of French historic park. No place to go to. Youths, they play on the streets in the parking lots areas for lack of space And I propose that this space be revamped to address the true needs of a community, a need of light, a light that comes through gatherings and a light that comes through Jesus Christ. Thank you.

Thank you. Ivan?

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council. My name is Ivan Rodriguez. I'm an assistant pastor at La Gran Conceitua Submaterial. and I'm here today to represent our Syrian pastors and myself as well.

We're opposed to this project, and I say this not because we're opposed to low-income housing or to housing in general for people that are in need, but because of what a church represents for a community. Because removing a church, I think we haven't even mentioned this today, but removing a church from a community, like, there's a beacon of light. There's a beacon of hope that our church represents, you know, and you can't give that by putting in an apartment, you know. Like, yes, you can house people, and that's awesome. And just to hear what Mercy House has done for these two individuals that came today is amazing, you know.

But I believe, you know, there's so much more that people have deep within them that there's a need in them to know God, to know God as their Savior, to know Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior, and to hear the gospel. And the church is the perfect place for that. And this church has been here now for more than 100 years, I mean, combined years. And I believe there's still so much more I can give. And our desire as a church and our prayer is that what we've been doing across Santa Ana, we would continue here at 609 North Spurgeon Street. We're already serving our community by offering programs to help restore

marriages, to also offer marital counseling, to offer support for single moms, and to counsel teens and young adults on top of just preaching the word of God, you know? And so this is what we're already doing and we hope to continue that here at this location. Thank you.

Thank you. Adiel Depano, followed by Cynthia Guerra.

My name is Adiel Depano, lead pastor of Santa Ana United Methodist Church. I would like to thank Mayor Pulido and members of the City Council for how Santa Ana has been at the forefront of addressing the serious lack of affordable housing in our fair city. With the innovative ways you have brought more permanent, supportive housing online. I am deeply grateful for your leadership in the countywide effort to bring more permanent supportive housing units online.

I am here to urge the City Council to approve Density Bonus Agreement No. 2018-01 as recommended by the City's Planning Commission involving our Legacy Square project, a mixed-use community featuring affordable apartment homes, 93 units in total, and flexible office retail space adjacent to the future OC Streetcar station on the corner of Santa Ana and French Street. Santa Ana United Methodist Church, a faith community made up of five language groups, Cambodian, English, Tagalog English, Spanish, and Tongan, stand united behind our Legacy Square project,

from the pastoral staff down to every member of our 330-plus member congregation. By passing staff recommendation concerning the project, Santa Ana will continue to be a leader in our county, paving the way forward for us to increase the stock of affordable housing units available for our low-income working families. Thank you again for exercising visionary leadership in addressing the need for more, a lot more affordable

housing in Santa Ana. Thank you Pastor. Cynthia Guerra followed by Concepcion Rodriguez.

is good evening so I'm a resident of Santa Ana but I think most importantly today I'm also a renter here in Santa Ana which means that I've faced often the or found myself in the precarious situation that renters often do here in the city in an orange county due to the increasing rents that you find throughout here in the region it is for that reason that I am supporting and asking you to support the density bonus for the Legacy Square project. I was there from the beginning when National Corps first presented its project and from the beginning they have been listening and working with the community to ensure

that it's a project that addresses the needs of the community. The community said that it needed to be a complete affordable housing project and it is now a complete affordable housing project. The community said that we needed to make not only the development itself accessible but also the area around it inhabitable right so they've also worked with the community to ensure that for example a path that leads from the development to the school has the infrastructure needed to provide a safe place for students so I think that given the the crisis that we have right now in Orange County and given the crisis that

we have specifically here in Santana of affordable housing or the lack of affordable housing for our community, I'd greatly urge you to support Legacy Square and to approve the project. Currently, it's accessible now to people who make completely less than 60,000, or sorry, 60% area median income. So if you could please approve the density. Thank you.

Thank you. Concepcion from 300 East Santa Ana Boulevard. And then Marcila Castro also from 300 East Santa Ana Boulevard.

Please go ahead. Good evening, Council Members. My name is Concepcion Rodriguez, and I'm here on behalf of the Pesindario Lacy in Action, and also in support of the Legacy Square Project that will greatly benefit the Santa Ana families, and I ask for your support for the Legacy Square Project. Thank you.

Thank you for your short speech. I will remember that one.

Maricela Castro, followed by Adela Montañez.

Hay mucha necesidad para nuestra comunidad.

Y queremos más viviendas dignas para nuestros residentes. Gracias.

César, that was a very short speech, so don't you make it longer.

I didn't hear the first part because I was on my way over. I just heard that.

I got the first part. She announced herself.

She announced herself, and then she's supporting dignified housing for our... Oh, there we go. Thank you. My name is Marisela Castro. I'm a resident of the Lazy Inaction neighborhood. I'm here to support the Legacy Square Project to have more and better accessible housing for our neighborhood. There's a lot of need in our community. So we need to have more dignified housing for our community. Thank you. Thank you, Adela. Followed by Kimberly Castro.

Buenas noches. Mi nombre es Adela Montañez, representando a la organización Latino Head Access. and supporting the Legacy Square Project as a project that will benefit from a lot of our people of low income and low income. I think that right now is something that, at the level of the city, we are fighting for it. And we thank the Council of the City of the City that we can support in this project. Thank you.

Good evening, my name is Adela Montañez and I'm here with the Lazy in Action neighborhood. I'm here to support the Legacy Square project. It's going to benefit the low-income population and the extremely low-income population. And this is something that citywide the city is struggling with. So I'm here to ask you for your support in this project.

Hi, my name is Kimberly. So I came here to support the Legacy Square. I hope that you guys listen to what I say because it's very important. It's important to my community and to me and affects my family and everybody. I think this would be an important project. And I think it affects us and I think we need new housing. the rents are like going up I think it's really important you know and this would be a dream if this happened you know

thank you for listening to me

Cesar Cubarrubias please

Good evening, Mayor, City Council members. Cesar Cobarrubias, Executive Director of the Candy Commission. I'm here in support of the Legacy Square Project. I just want to highlight a couple of other items. I think we've talked about the affordable housing and the need for it, but working families in Santana are struggling to find opportunities, and this will provide another opportunity for working families to be able to succeed in our city. Part of what I also wanted to highlight is the importance of leveraging your local funding here.

This project itself will also look at bringing millions of dollars from infrastructure to affordable housing. A lot of the funding that also will come with this is funding from the Sustainable Community Strategies Program, which will enhance, as folks have talked about, walkability in that neighborhood, connectivity with transportation. so we urge you to support this project and bring that investment back into Santana. Thank you.

Okay, with that, I'm going to bring it back to Council. That was our last speaker on this item. I'd close the public hearing and bring it back to Council. Is there a motion for approval? I'll move. Is there a second? A second. Those in favor, please go ahead.

And I don't know if this would be maybe the developer of this project that would answer this question or staff.

And I know one concern that we brought up last time was the parking. And it's something that still I have a concern with and I don't understand how it's really going to play out. Because it seems like it's very dense in that little parcel. How big of a parcel is that?

The lot size is 1.74 acres.

1.74 acres, and how many units are we building? 93.

Okay, and then so, and how many parking spaces are we allowing for this?

We're providing 102 parking spaces, so it's about 1.1 spaces per unit.

And can you state your name, please?

Oh, yes, sorry. Good evening, Honorable Mayor and Council. My name is Alexa Washburn. I'm Vice President of Planning with National Community Renaissance.

Thank you, Alexa. And so how are you going to, I guess, have oversight of parking? Because I know that's one concern that French Park, the residents have the overflow. If they're not able to park within the structure, how are you going to monitor that that doesn't overflow into the neighborhood?

Sure. We take a very calculated and careful approach to parking. Because we manage all of our apartment home communities, that's over 80 communities in Southern California, we first start with ensuring that we provide enough parking. And I want to talk about how we arrived at 1.1 spaces per unit. By managing our communities, we conduct on a regular basis parking utilization studies so that we have an understanding at our existing communities whether we're over parking or under parking. You know, how many spaces are actually being used. Also, it helps us in ensuring our car ownership rates of our residents.

And what we found is, based on their income levels of the households, often very low-income households own either no car or only one car. Further, permanent supportive housing residents, that's the PSH units, of which 33 of our units are, most of them do not own vehicles as well. These are homeless individuals. So based on that, that's how we arrived at the 1.1 spaces. But we also take into consideration where we locate our communities. We locate them in high transit priority areas. As you know, this project is located right along the OC Streetcar route.

In fact, there's a transit station literally right out the front door, right at the corner of French and Santa Ana Boulevard. In order to incentivize our residents to use the OC Streetcar, as well as the five bus lines that serve our property, the OCTA bus lines, we are providing each household a transit pass, an annual transit pass, for nine years, meaning that our households can ride the OCTA buses, the OC streetcar, and make transfers to Metrolink for free. We also, location is important in terms of walkability.

This project has a walk score of 98 out of 100. That means that you can conduct your normal everyday activities by walking. So walking is very important. The third kind of stool is, the leg of the stool is biking. And we encourage and promote our residents to bike. And we do that, in fact, this particular project we've partnered with Bicycle Tree. They're a local nonprofit. In fact, they have a storefront on Main Street. and they're going to locate a bike kiosk within the mixed-use portion along Santa Ana Boulevard.

That bike kiosk provides an opportunity for our residents that own bikes to repair them easily. For those that don't own bikes, they can rent bicycles. And then we're also, as part of the larger community investment, as part of our ASIC funding, that's Affordable Housing Sustainable Communities, we're reinvesting close to $4 million back into the neighborhood in bikeway improvements, completing gaps in the sidewalk network, traffic calming, so safe routes to school, lighting around Garfield Elementary. So all of these are to incentivize our residents and promote them.

All right, we've got to wrap up. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Alexa. Hopefully that answered your question.

It did, and I just think one of the concerns that I had is one of the residents from French Park, just if I understood him as like the French Park community, were they included as part of the discussion for this site?

Yes, so we've held a number of workshops, and we are required to notice within 500 feet of our project. So there are a number of residents within historic French Park that lie within that 500-foot radius. The entire French Park does not lie within that radius. And so there may be some residents that were not aware of it. But as you've heard, we have conducted over a dozen workshops, meetings with the community, and we've had over 20 to 60 participants in those workshops. Thank you.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you. Go ahead. I have just one question, and I know we briefly spoke about it. So 30-some homeless individuals would be living in, as part of the, that's about one-third of the residents that would be living in this potential housing. What kind of programs would you be having on site to help them move out of that housing and into something? Are you going to be doing those things on site? Because the last thing I would like to see is somebody stay there for 10, 15 years and not try to better themselves.

David PenalozaItem —

Or, you know, it should serve as a, you know, step up, not just something permanent for them.

And that's exactly it. Our mission is a bit, and thank you, Linda's here. She's going to talk a little bit about the supportive services that Mercy House provides. But as part of our project, we have a 3,500 square foot community center. And out of that community center, which will be along Santa Ana Boulevard, we will run supportive services programs for our residents. And it's a range of programs. It's everything from after-school care to economic mobility to health and wellness. And I'm going to have Linda with Mercy House talk more specifically.

Linda, before you do that, if we, the city manager, if you could assist. We've got a little bit of space here on the side wall, maybe some around where the police officers are. there are a lot of senior citizens out there and they're really freezing so we get a few more bodies maybe bodies in the back area back there there's also some that I know Rob Richards for example is out there he's got MS and some are very very sick so folks if you could like go to the middle if there's any empty seats go to the middle we'll open up some seats on the side and and and

let's get some more people in here before they get sick so do it quickly because also once you're done with this item some people might leave and that will make more room go ahead good evening mayor and council members Linda

Wilson I'm the housing director with Mercy House our agency currently is providing the supportive services for the orchard project in Santa Ana which is the largest PSH project in the county. We'll be doing similar services that we are doing at that project and other projects at Legacy Square and we really focus on health and wellness, employment, parenting. It really is going to be any type of service that the residents there are seeking. We provide those services on site and in conjunction with other community agencies to

provide on site or off site. Does that answer your question, Councilman? Yes. All right, thank you. So with that, let me bring this back to Council.

We have a motion to second those in favor. More comment? Go ahead. I have not comment on this one, but I'll keep it brief.

A few items. Number one, I am very concerned with the parking. Unfortunately, the relaxed parking is based off of state law, so we're very limited in what we could do there. but where I am hopeful is with the on-site parking management plan that needs to be developed and approved by staff. I'd like to work with staff, my colleagues, and others on a template for that that we could use for this project and others where these developers have to essentially fully mitigate all parking that results out of that project

because you know this idea of transit and I worked at OCTA for eight years so I'm very well of you know both the opportunities and the challenges of transit but just go look at a brand new townhome development that got approved before I was back on the council at first and Pacific it's brand new not even completely done yet they already maxed it on parking and encroaching and fighting over spaces and it's a nightmare and they're going you know why did you guys approve this and in part it's because the way some of these policies are written in theory you know people

are going to take the bus or this then the other and it doesn't happen as much as we'd like so i'm hopeful with that and you know the project overall does need to be approved we do need affordable housing but I'm going to really work closely with my colleagues on that parking management plan. And then related but unrelated and I know our public works director is around. I know that we have a parking management plan study so we can look at different sections of the city to see what's going on and what we might do to find more parking or deal with parking constraint issues.

So hopefully we can have a study session or some presentation on what we're finding from that so we can learn from that. But I am very supportive of this item, thank you.

All right, we have a motion to second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye, those opposed.

Mr. Mayor, just as the maker of the motion on that, I know that we were talking about incorporating folks to talk about the parking study. Can you have Mr. Dickman included in that? Yes. To make sure he's part of those discussions with the applicant.

Let's make sure that that's clear in the motion, Madam Clerk, that Mr. Dickman and folks will be included in the parking portion of the study. So with that, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Aye. Motion carries. So with that, we're on. Hopefully this will be quicker, then we'll get on to 75V.

Mr. Mayor? Yes. Would we be considering 65C at all this afternoon?

75C is next.

65C.

No.

Not today. Not today.

75C, does anybody wish to address us on this item?

75B.

75B, does anybody wish to address us on this item?

Hold on. Seeing no one, I'll go ahead and close the public hearing and bring it to Council for consideration. Go ahead, Councilor Iglesias.

Just if, Mr. City Manager, if you could explain to us what the TEFRA entails.

Sure. It's a tax equity and financial responsibility. It's an issuance of tax-exempt bonds by a different agency. We're the local agency that provide a forum for a public hearing. We do this quite often, about eight, ten times a year. This is for three projects. You'll see 75B, C, and D are all TEFRA hearings for different companies for different reasons. But again, we're the local body that provides that forum for this hearing.

So it's not binding this body to anything of these bonds?

It is not. It's a step they have to take before they go the next step. Okay, thank you.

All right, so we have, I'd be willing to entertain a motion on this item. Is there a second? We have a second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye those opposed, motion carries. Now we're going to go on 75C. There's a public hearing regarding a tax equity and fiscal responsibility for the Orangewood Foundation located at 1575, 1615 East 17th Street. Move the items, Mr. Mayor. I'm going to open up the public hearing. Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing. I have a motion to approve. Is there a second? Second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye.

Those opposed, motion carries.

75-D, I would open up the public hearing. Seeing no one, I will close the public hearing and entertain a motion for approval. Motion to approve. Second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. 75-E.

All right, I have 150 speakers here.

So if you can, keep comments short. Let's see where we are at midnight. Can we lower the time limit? Yeah, let's... Can we have it at three minutes right now? Let's go to two minutes and make your comments brief. but at midnight what i'm going to do is i'm going to see where we're at and i don't believe good decisions get made in the hours of the night so if we're not done by midnight we'll probably continue this to the next rarely scheduled meeting and continue

but for right now let's go ahead and start lisa flores please you know mr mayor while they're

Coming up, I want to confirm that we're opening the public hearing.

We're opening the public hearing on 75E. Okay. Do we need a motion for that, or we can just begin? No. It's already on the agenda.

Well, the agenda's confusing.

Yeah, the agenda says otherwise.

Well, what do you suggest? It has been noticed as a public hearing, Mr. Mayor, and so the public hearing may proceed.

So I can choose to start the public hearing without a vote?

You made the recommended action, however, by staff was to not open the public hearing.

Well, if we don't open the public hearing, those people that froze can go home.

So I'll move that we open the public hearing.

You do want to open it?

Yeah, we have folks that want to open it.

Well, then I'll just continue. I'll just continue. Lisa Flores, followed by Veronica Morales. Go ahead.

Just for clarification, there is a motion on the floor at the moment from Councilman Solario.

But we don't need that motion because you just told me that we could hold the public hearing.

But for CEQA, we do at some point need to open the public hearing.

Well, I did open the public hearing.

Okay.

I did open it.

Let's just put that in the record. The public hearing is open and we're going to take comment.

Mr. Mayor, if I can complicate this a little more, could I, would you like a presentation from staff first?

Okay, thank you. No, not now. We have too many speakers at the end. Let's see where we're at. Lisa Flores followed by Veronica Morales.

Hello, my name is Lisa. I'll keep this short, sweet, and brief. I was born and raised in Santa Ana. Unfortunately, I no longer reside in Orange County, and the reason for that is because I wanted the American Dream, and it wasn't going to happen in my hometown. However, I'm still employed in the city of Santa Ana, as a matter of fact, across the street from the proposed project location. I'm in favor of the project, 100%. Reason being, I would be interested in renting a studio to avoid weekly commute. Excuse me, you need to slow down before making the record. Oh, do I start over?

No, just go a little slower.

I only have two minutes.

We have 150 speakers. She'll have plenty of record.

Okay. Where I left off, I would be interested in renting a studio to avoid a weekly commute. And for all you Mayberry residents, maybe consider parking permits like other neighborhoods, such as Washington Square. With that being said, city council members, please vote yes.

Thank you. Verena Camarales.

Go ahead.

Hi, good evening. I've lived here for eight years, and I'm a school teacher. Many of our teachers and public servants drive in from and out of town, and many of these people would love to live in this complex and not have to drive in from other cities. And I hope you approve this complex for all of Santa Ana. Thank you.

Thank you. Paul Morales.

Followed by Marilyn Ramirez.

Hello. I wish the rest of the council was here. Go ahead and talk to us. Okay. So I just wanted to, I'll come back. Excuse me, do not have fora. This is an official public hearing.

All right, so hold on let's wait till somebody comes back

Just wait a minute let me see if I can't get another more council members to come out

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

all right go ahead speak loud you have four now all right so I thank you guys

for for taking the time to hear us all today and my name is Paul Morales and it's gonna make sense what I'm coming back to in a minute but I'm involved in a nonprofit in the city called project kinship and we do gang intervention and and stuff like that and the reason I'm involved in there is people investing in the city because people investing in the city I got a chance to get a scholarship to USC and go to Irvine. In fact, the guy, Jim, he was one of my teachers, the guy that you guys

sworn in. And because of people investing, I got to give back to Santa Ana. After I graduated, I got to bring people into Santa Ana. You know, I was involved with the project to bring Common into Delhi. We've done stuff at Salvador Park. The lead singer was Santana at our high schools. Because of people investing in our city, I was able to give back and do those things. Thank you, your time is running out. It's not two minutes. Go ahead. But, I'm saying all that to say this, these people are investing in our city. All you guys are from different parts of Santa Ana.

Please don't just hear the people from that area where it's being built. Hear all of us, all of us please. Thank you.

Thank you.

Now I want staff to make a formal presentation please for the record.

Hold on to a second, Marilyn.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So we have several items on the agenda tonight in relation to this item. The applicant is entitled to due process, and what that means is that we must have our staff presentation. Staff will give you presentations. Staff will advise you of the amount of time in which the applicant will have to present their side of it. It is a part of the official public record that we need to establish. So perhaps we could start by explaining to the council and the public how this process will work. Yes.

Min, would you like to tell him the order of which we will be going in?

So the first order that we will be presenting the staff's report and recommendation on this matter. After that will be followed by the applicant. They will be able to have the opportunity to also provide their presentation of the project and their request, subsequent to which it would be appropriate to ask staff and the applicant any type of questions if you want to do so at that time. following that you can open up the public hearing and allow the public to provide input and comments at the end of that you will close the public hearing and will provide an opportunity for additional questions of staff but also

the applicant will at that time has an opportunity to also close up any comments and respond to any comments during the public hearing process so that would be the order subsequent to which you can you know discuss and discuss a project and take any potential actions.

And Mr. Mayor, the developer will be given 10 minutes for his presentation as well.

Should we do that right after this presentation?

If you didn't have any question of Min, yes.

All right. Go ahead, Min.

These are our PowerPoint.

Thank you, Mayor. This is a request from AC 2525 Maine LLC for development of a 5.93-acre site located 2525 Maine. The proposal is for a development agreement, a general plan amendment, an amendment application to develop a housing development project on this five-acre site. the existing development is two-story office building with about 80,000 square feet and a 442 parking lot I want to outline the process in terms of the public hearing and the review process

because there's been questions about how the process is proceeding the Planning Commission because of the various application this case is only acting as an advisory body to the City Council The City Council is the final acting authority on the general planning amendment, the zone change, the development agreement, as well as the certification of the EIR. So by just course of process hearing, the item once it has been recommended by the City Planning Commission goes to City Council automatically whether that recommendation is for approval or for denial. So that is the next step in the process is this City Council public hearing.

subsequent to which there will be if there is action taken and if the project is approved there will be need to be a second reading of the ordinances because it is a zone change and requires a second reading and we have a 30-day effective period the Planning Commission continued this item when it first went to hearing on November 26 and continued to January 14th at the public hearing there were about 79 members of the public which speaks regarding the project, 48 opposed, 30 supported, and one neutral. The planning commission, after the staff report and hearing

the public comments, voted to recommend denial of the applications to the City Council.

The commission, in their finding, expressed concern regarding increase to traffic, both volume and also potential delay in congestion, parking intrusion into the adjacent neighborhood, incompatibility with the surrounding developments, potential adverse effect on the adjacent neighborhood, lack of community support, and potential long-term impact associated with the proposed development. The denial was supported four to two with one abstention and therefore the recommendations before you hear tonight. The development proposal that was

originally proposed by the applicant included 517 units of residence with a mix of various two, three and single bedrooms, a total of 910 parking spaces at a rate of 1.76 per unit. It's a five-story development with one mezzanine so it's at sixth level with eight level of above-grade structures and one level of parking below ground. Staff provided a recommendation to the City Planning Commission for a project that was different with the approval of 476 units on the property, reducing it from 517, going to 81

dwelling unit to the acre, increasing the number of bedrooms units in terms of 2 and 3 bedrooms. We heard back from the community that there's more need for family housing. Also increasing the parking space account from 1.76 per unit to two spaces per unit. In addition, we work with the applicant to tier the building back going from the original five story to going to two, three, four, and then five with the tallest of the structure being closest to Main Street so that it's further away from the residence to the east. We eliminated the vehicle access along Edgewood Road so that there

There is no vehicle access except for an emergency crash gate, which is used only by the fire department and for emergency access only. And then there is a proposed secondary access along Waukee Way that is at the intersection of Waukee Way and Main Street. Now, this is not a requirement of the project, but rather it is an option that was studied in IR. but the project as a standalone project has a single access only along Main Street and that's midway between Edgewood and Waukee Way this is an

aerial of the project and the adjacent nearby land uses that's the site is located as you can see here outlined in blue and it's at the northern portion of the city. The adjacent land uses include the Discovery Cube, an office building, you know some development including the Red Roof Inn and the bank, the sign and time building, date and time building as is referred, and then also the main place mall. It is also adjacent to the City of Orange as well as the development to the North Airwood commercial and retail mixed-use development.

This is a site plan showing the site. This is Edgewood Main Street. This is the park and to the east here is the residential development to the east. Now if you take a look at the site plan and you can see that there are quite a few articulation of the building facade to create garden style type development. This will have a reflection in the elevation design and it will create architectural fenestration into the building. And it will help to reduce the massing of the building from the street front. So we'll show that in a little while.

You can see here, this is the elevation from Main Street. And at this elevation, you can see the building. Even though it is going all the way from Edgewood to the park. you can see that the building has been broken up through those architectural fenestration I mentioned earlier.

This is the elevation looking at Edgewood. You can see that the project has been designed so that the closest portion of the building to the residents to the east, approximately 40 feet to the property line, is about, is a two-story, and then stepping back, it goes to three stories, four stories, five stories, and then with the tallest portion being up front along Main Street.

Moving forward to the Environmental Impact Report, as you are aware, the EIR is an informational document. It is a document for disclosure purpose. The EIR is based on case laws, but it's also based on standards that's been established both locally, regionally, and through the state as areas of concerns, areas that need to be studied, such as land use, traffic and circulation, and a variety of other environmental issues that are established by the state CEQA law. So through local thresholds, through regional thresholds, through adopted state thresholds,

there are established standards for us to measure the impact of a project by. It's just not something that we change from project to project, but it's an established threshold, and we call those thresholds of significant. The IR was prepared by the team of CEQA technical expert, consultant to the city, reviewed by our internal team as well as our legal team, and the documentation that you have before you here today has also been circulated for public review with numerous number of comments, also erratas and revision to identify areas that were deficient,

so the document that's before you is the whole entirety of that entire process.

It starts with the notice of preparation. That is when a project kicks off. It's environmental review. This is the point of the legal standing of the project where it starts to evaluate the impact that it will have, potentially have on the environment. And that was done in February 12th of 2018. and the notice of preparation was circulated for public review for about a month and with a scoping meeting conducted in between to obtain public comments and input on the preparation of the IR. And the purpose of that is to allow the public the opportunity to share with us

what additional areas of studies that need to be considered beside what's been established by the state, what locally is important to us that we need to study so that we can address some of the public concerns. The EIR has about 14 elements that we have to study legally and also require that there be technical supported studies. The draft was completed in August and was released for public circulation from August 7th to October 4th. We receive 44 written comments of which we have to respond to every single comment.

The final EIR is the document that is basically a completion of that entire public hearing, public circulation, public input process. And it culminates into a document that identifies all of the issues, identifies all of the public outreach. And it also creates a record of decision to help with environmental documentation. You'll have the finding of facts if you were to certify the EIR, there has to be finding of facts which has been prepared for this project. If there are impacts of the project that cannot be mitigated, those will have to be identified.

And if you were to approve a project and consider that, you would have to adopt a statement of overriding considerations. In this particular project, there was one particular issue that was identified to have an impact that cannot be mitigated. so meaning that even with mitigation we cannot mitigate the impact and that is related to the aesthetics referring to the the size and the scale of the building the existing site right now as you're familiar with has a two-story building the existing zoning allow up to go through three stories the proposed project is going to essentially six levels of residential and eight levels

of parking and because of the size of the project even with all of the articulation even with all of the stepping back even with all of the landscape that's been implemented it's still found that you can't mitigate the size and the masking of the project so therefore a statement of all right in consideration has been prepared and what that statement does is that it looked at all of the entirety of the benefits in addition to the various areas of studies within the the EIR but as a council you can also look at the community benefits

you can also look at economic benefits, and those could be overriding considerations approving the project. Just because a project has an impact that cannot be mitigated doesn't mean it can't be approved. It just has to be approved understanding that we have other overriding local considerations that we want to adopt to do that. So I want to make sure that that's understood. In addition, there's a mitigation monitoring reporting program. this is a way for us to hold the project accountable for what's been identified as project impact that has to be mitigated.

So this project mitigation and monitoring report goes with the life of the project, and once it's completed, it's certified and kept on records for city staff.

Another issue that was brought up during the EIR process, and we felt that it was important to address, is that the project when circulated in February is the starting point for the analysis of the review. Many of the communities raised concern that why was the main place mall project not included in that review. And at the time when we established the universe of study that we have in terms of cumulative projects, the number of projects that we have in application with the city,

That is the standard that we go by to evaluate and study what project gets included into the evaluation of the 25-25 main technical studies, and that includes the traffic. So at the time, we did not have an application or anticipate an application anytime soon from the main place mall. it was still in discussion so therefore we wanted to help articulate this fact as this is a starting point is a legal starting point that's been established under sequel guidelines it's not something that we made up this is established so that developer the development community as well as for

practitioner like us to know when it's time to move forward and what needs to be studied

briefly it's just a thresholds I want to keep going back to this but these are thresholds that have been established either through the state through local or through regional where it's found that there are certain levels of impact that would become significant it's not something that we just make up or change project by project these are established standards so that again as practitioners as part of the development community. Everyone knows what to expect, and if a project hits that threshold, it has an impact, and if it doesn't hit that threshold, it does not have an impact.

You know, each one of us has a different level of impact that we can say either affects us or not affect us. Let's take traffic, for example. Someone can sit in traffic and feel that it's a nuisance, it's creating an impact, and it's not something acceptable, and that's a measure of various subjective measure. Someone can sit in the same traffic and view it a little bit differently and not have the same effect. So in order to establish a common criteria, the state, through us locally, through the general plan, and also through different agencies like Caltrans, SCAQMD, those levels of significance are established

so that there is a common understanding of that. And that's what DIR determines if a project has an impact if it hit those thresholds examples of thresholds that we have mentioned include air quality specifically the city of Santa adopted noise threshold we said that if it's exceed a certain level a development of project exceed certain decimal level that is considerably significant impact that is established the regional air quality as I mentioned in the AQMD, it established how much air quality pollutant that can be output by a project, and those are based on projection.

If it hits a certain level, it creates a significant impact. If it doesn't, then the project is deemed not to create the impact. So those are the different levels of thresholds that we use. So the project, based on the study, found that there were impacts both during the construction of the project, as well as the operational. During construction relates to air quality, biology, hazard, noise, and also we did tribal consultation. Because it is near a streaming area, there also needs to be mitigation to put in place. And these are all applied through the construction process

and it would not be applied when the project is completed. However, after the construction of the project and in the operational phase, there are additional mitigation relating to aesthetics where the project will need to be protecting all the trees on the site along the eastern property line so that it helps to lessen the impact of the visibility of the project as it relates to aesthetics. Again, I want to reemphasize that in aesthetics, it was also found that the masking and the scale of the project was an unavoidable syndicate impact as well as noise this is not necessary because of the project but

because the project is adjacent to Main Street the units along Main Street has been identified units that needs additional mitigation to reduce the noise by adding double pane windows and noise measure that will help to reduce noise impact to the residents of the project

Street trees during the EIR process there was a review of on-site and off-site landscape the at the public hearing stage within the planning commission there was an identification that the EIR omitted to study a potential loss of three trees at the Edgewood emergency ingress and egress. That was omitted from the study. However, we did identify and the information verified that if the project is approved, those trees will be impacted. However, the impact is found not to be significant because those trees could potentially be replaced

or basically relocated to another location. Therefore, the impact is not a significant impact, but we did make that correction.

The project access, there are three options that are being proposed. The two that are being proposed here tonight, one is option A, which is the singular access along Main Street for the project. This is the only access that is going to be designed for the site if the project to be approved. and the EIR was studied, the traffic was studied based on that worst case scenario. Even though the project could have been entitled to a design of access on Edgewood, because of public concerns, that design was eliminated and only Main Street was studied.

And even with that worst case scenario, the project did not create any traffic or circulation impact for...

There was a second study that was requested, and that is to look at the ingress and egress point at Waukee Way. This would require the use, potential use of a city parkland. and because it is the city parkland that has been discussed into the or incorporated into the development agreement where if this is something that is feasible that the project applicant would work with city and city staff to propose a land exchange to the City Council for review and consideration

at a later point some of the component that still needs to be considered is that if the city were to exchange the land every square foot that we lose in this blue area here which is seen as currently the city's property will have to be replaced elsewhere in the park so as you can see this this map is conceptual but it demonstrates how a such a land exchange can occur to where the city parkland would not be losing square foot so every square foot that we lose we have to replace by the same number on the site and this would be a conceptual proposal but this is something that we have to go to the State

Department and also the the federal department parkland in order to get their approval back when this park was improved in the 90s or early 2000s there was a grant that was provided and that grant had a stipulation that the land for the park must always be preserved as a park and if there's any a disposition by the local jurisdiction would have to replace of equal value and of equal square footage. So we have to go through that process, and that process is articulated and outlined in the development agreement. The project does not require this access in order to move forward.

To provide an illustration of what traffic and what threshold and what standards so that we can all have a common understanding. The level of service has been defined as a level of a grade A through F. A being something that's free-flowing, as you can see in this picture here, that is relatively free of congestion. And as you move forward, so forth and so on, this is B, C, D, E, and F. And as you can see, F is a level where you have gridlock, basically. It's not acceptable.

Just for sake of illustration, and I want to use this as a situation as we move forward, imagine this as a glass of water, and that this is the glass full to the rim, and you can't really carry it. Let's say it's a glass of hot water. You can't carry it. You're not going to be able to carry it without spilling the water all over yourself. So that's F. This E is where the water is just below the rim, and it's safe to carry. you're not going to have hot water spilling out and burning your hands, and so forth and so on. So A is probably a very small fraction of that glass. So it's a much emptier glass.

So if you just kind of keep that in mind, I'll use that as an illustration as we move on. We as a city, through the general plan of adoption in 1998, says that for all of our streets, we will accept level D of service and level E of service. Now, agree with it or not, this was adopted in the General Plan in 1998. Level D and level E. So if your project lands anywhere between A, B, C, D, and E, and you don't increase traffic in these areas, your project is not found to have a significant. That is a threshold that's established so that there is a common understanding of what those measurements are.

What is the metric to measure impact?

The traffic of the project, this is taken out of the EIR as a summary. The project will generate additional traffic.

What we're saying is that the generation of those traffic, based on the standards that's been established, have not created an exceedance of those thresholds. Therefore, it does not require a mitigation. So we're not saying there's no traffic. There will be traffic. There will be more traffic than what's existing now. In fact, if you look at the existing office building, it's projected, because it's empty right now, to create approximately 791 daily trips. With the proposed project, that is going to increase by four-folds, almost four-folds, to 2,700 daily trips, actually.

There was also a study of a reduced project at 347 units of 1,888 trips. However, the existing zoning today for the site as a professional office administration site, the site can be developed into a 380,000 square foot office building, requiring approximately 4,000, I'm sorry, generating approximately 3,700 trips, which is about 1100 trips beyond the residential development this is a table that's been used to help to illustrate the various trip generation of the

different development level of the project site so as it stands today the off the two office building were to be torn down a new office could be created approximately 380,000 square feet, and that will generate 3,700 trips.

So to further help illustrate the traffic study, because it is a very important issue, it is something that we all experience when there's a change in the environment, the traffic study includes 16 intersections, and those intersections are all highlighted in red showing you the number of intersection and 10 roadway segments. So intersections are major street crossings and roadway segment movements are the artery of those roadways. And if you recall, I said that the threshold significant that we have adopted for our city are E and D, right?

Glass full, glass empty, glass close to the brim. So we said that we would accept E and D. The green is what we accepted. The purple is what the existing level of traffic that was observed today.

A, as you can see, most of it are A. And where it's E, it's continued to stay in E. and this is a.m. peak hours, which is going from 7 to 9 a.m. So the traffic study uses what we call peak hours to evaluate. There's also p.m. peak hours, and the p.m. peak hours also reflect very similar level of traffic, and as you can see,

the only intersection that operates as an unacceptable level is this intersection here. I believe this is at the 22 and Townway. Town and Country, I'm sorry. Town and Country. So this is the only location where the traffic is operating at an acceptable level at existing E. So now, adding the project traffic to the site, all of the blues that you see at A, E, or B remains the same.

So basically what we're saying is that, or what the study found, is that the existing traffic in many intersections is operating at a very low capacity. The glass is almost empty. And that even with the addition of the project traffic, it still doesn't create a situation to where you overfill the capacity of our traffic system.

These are the intersection that will also study within the neighborhood. As you can see within the neighborhood, the established standards are D's, and they're all operating at A's, except for Santa Clara and Lincoln. This is where you see the acceptable level is D, and it's also operating at D. And with the project, it's also projected that the project does not change any status of these intersections to different standards.

Development agreement, this is a part of the application. This is where the project differs from other projects. Some developer will choose to ask for development agreement. Basically, it's a contract between the city and the developer to ensure that certain development approval are going to be held in place for a certain amount of time. In this case, the development agreement being proposed is for four years for developers to develop the project with two optional one-year extension for a total of six years. However, with each extension, we would require $50,000 basically for each extension.

And this is to really help, number one, incentivize the developer to build the project if it's approved in an expeditious manner, but also to ensure that we provide an opportunity for the city to recover lost revenue through utilities, through tax revenue with the building sitting empty. So that's the reason for the $50,000 extension. there are park improvements neighborhoods benefit package and quite a few others element that will be going into details as we move forward so as

part of the project the applicant is has committed to providing a 1.4 million dollars contribution to the city for specifically for improvements to the San Diego Park this is in addition to any development impact fee that are pays by a project as such as this for improvements of parkland so this is in addition to the development impact fee and it goes strictly to the park and the improvements is going to fund a design that has been worked on by our Park and Recreation Department this design was submitted for a state grant last year it

did not win funding so the one of the requests through the city is that because the project has direct adjacent to this park that if the project can fund the improvements, create the public benefit for the improved parks, which could also be something that their residents can enjoy, but also for the rest of the city residents of Santa to be able to benefit from the improved park. Improvements include, but not limited to, irrigation, landscaping, secure lighting, bike enhancements, trail enhancement, even potential consideration of integrating a water element into the park. So again, this is conceptual,

but the direct contribution is $1.4 million.

The developer also has committed through the development agreement to provide access to on-site amenities. While these are small amenities, they felt that it was important that they at least open their doors and offer that to the community. So that was included into the development agreement. they also will be providing 24 hours roving security not only for their site but also for the entire Park Santago area which is the areas between the five freeways, 17th Street, Lincoln and the park. And this would be for a 55 years period. There is questions about the annual review process. There is an annual review

proposed as part of the development agreement. The annual review is something that is done at the staff level with the applicant, but any changes to what was agreed to, any changes that is approved, will require approval by the city council. Staff and the applicant can't just change it because it is a part of the development agreement, and any changes to that will have to be approved by the city council at a public hearing, and it can't be done at the administrative level. So I want to make sure that that's very clear.

Other improvements include entry monuments at Main Street and Edgewood, Santa Clara and Santiago. This is really to help create beautification for the neighborhood, help to create an iconic punctuation for the entrance to the park, Santa Clara neighborhood, as it is a great neighborhood. It's very well preserved. and there is elements of the neighborhood that we want to help highlight by creating these entry elements. In addition to that, there will be improvements for, I'm sorry, maintenance that will be funded by the project at $100,000.

This $100,000 will go to not only to help maintain the improvements for today, but into the future of the project. Normally it would be something that would have to be borne by the city, but we felt that the project, since it is going to be making these improvements, should also help fund the maintenance of it as well. So other improvements could include replacement LED lightings within the neighborhood, as well as street improvements along Edgewood and close to the Bush area.

Additional terms include the Saurus district application. We heard from the residents that this is a historical neighborhood, this area has historical homes, and it needs to be protected. However, it is not identified in city document as an historical neighborhood. And there's a process for that. That process requires an application. That process requires certain surveys. So as part of what we heard, we asked the applicant to say, hey, you are going to be a part of this neighborhood. You are going to be impacting in terms of having the aesthetic impact.

What about funding a study and a survey to help kick off the application process to help create this historical district neighborhood so that it will protect the neighborhood from here on out to future development. It creates historical significance and it becomes something beyond just a verbal legend, but it's documented into city documentation. Public arts is something that's going to be incorporated into the project at a rate of half percent of the construction cost. Construction is estimated to be close to $200 million. So, you know, we could be receiving close to a million dollars in project value for public arts at the site.

Parking has been increased to two spaces per unit. Now, here's something that we're looking at to provide some level of creativity. because we see that transportation trends are changing. We see that different modes of transportation are available. It may not always be the single vehicle travel. So what we want to look at here is that we provide a performance standard that says you, the project, has to create two spaces per unit on your site, whether it's done through physical spaces being provided,

whether it's done through mechanical equipment strategies that are used successfully in other developments of creating basically elevators for two level parkings. Or it could be through valley parking. As you know, valley parking is a very efficient way of using the space that you have to increase capacity without having to create a situation of increasing bulk mass or spacing. And that becomes a cost of the project. That becomes an ingrained part of the project. The developer can say, you know what, we don't want to provide Phallet. Instead, we will provide the physical space. That's fine, but we want to allow for that creativity.

We want to allow for that spacing to be considered.

May I ask a question?

Yes.

I know that you're saying that it's going to be the developer that is going to incur this cost, but say the developer sells the project. Will that be something that the next owner or whoever it is is going to be liable for and responsible for providing that?

Thank you for that question. And as a development project, as a contract, it is an obligation of the development and not necessarily the ownership. Ownership can change over time. The development project stays there. the contract stays with the project. So as new owners come online or a new management company the contract applies to any successors if it's approved and recorded. So the contract

the way it's going to be I guess approved when it's approved it's going to follow and stay with the project and not follow the developer.

Correct. So maybe this is the right time to explain this. The development agreement is going to last for four years.

I'm sorry, did you guys hear that question? Yes.

Unless they decide to change it.

So is that something that if, so just my question to you is, okay, you're saying that right now the way it's written is the developer is responsible for providing that coverage for the parking. and they wanted to do this valet and all this, it's not going to go with that contract that we have with this developer. If he decides to sell, it stays like that, and then the new owner needs to follow that contract.

That's correct. That's correct. And that is insured through a parking management plan. And a parking management plan has been incorporated into a maintenance agreement that will be recorded onto the deed of the property. The development itself, as I mentioned, the development agreement is only for four years. there will be elements of the development agreement that will conclude within four years such as the construction of the project the construction of the park the funding of the various improvements but there will be elements of the development agreement and the project condition that will survive that

four years and will be recorded on to the deed of the property in perpetuity going meaning that it will go on for the life of the project it follows with the life of project and it's applicable to the ownership and those includes the parking management plan, it includes the property maintenance plan, it includes an overcrowding management plan as well. So those are all the elements that works into part of what we have created to help manage the impact of the project or at least to have the impacts not be such a nuisance to its neighbor.

so we kind of touched on this parking management plan overcrowding mitigation plan we even included local work live work preference this is saying that the developer the management team has to work very aggressively to lease out to people who work in the city who live currently in the city to provide additional housing opportunity. This kind of goes back to the early discussion about parking. If you live in the city, hopefully you potentially work close enough. I'm sorry, work in the city, hopefully you live close enough to your work that you can have options of travel through local transit, through walk, through biking.

So it reaffirms the idea of local living, being able to have enhanced accessibility to different options instead of just a single car vehicle. There's also a local sourcing plan. This is something that we work really hard to say to the developer that during the construction process, you have to work very aggressively to source locally, try to look at employees or working with contractors who have local employees who buy local products. Bear Paint is a good example. They're a local producer of paints in our city, and they're going to need paint. our request would be for them to work with bare paint to get it and if bare

paint is competitive with other paint then they should be choosing that instead of choosing another going with another vendor so that's what that local sourcing plan is general plan amendment so this is one of the application of the the the project it requires a land use designation change the current general plan has not been comprehensively updated since the early 90s. As you know, we've been in a three and a half year process to update the general plan and we're going through the process. Our goal is to complete that within the next 12 to 18 months. As we go through

that, we really look at and working with the community to recalibrate our core values. What are we looking for? What are we looking to do? How do we want to maintain, regulate, and manage growth. Where do we want to grow? Where do we want to protect? So those are all questions that we're going through the general plan process. But because we don't have that in place, we will have and continue to have what we call general plan amendments to apply changes to an area that has not been pre-designated. So as you can see, the map here, what you see in yellow are residential, what you see in purple are what we call district centers.

and district centers are for development that could include mixed-use development, it could include commercial development. And the city, this is something that's new, as is new to the city of Santa Ana, this is something new to me as well, but it's a very good tool that the city has used very successfully to allow for creative development to occur, but still maintaining control on zoning, maintaining control on land-use destination to ensure consistency. So the purple are district centers, as you can see. The pink are your office commercial. And so the entire area, with the exception of San Diego Park in green here,

is district center or office. And so their proposal is to change this to purple as district center for the project. And as a district center, it could allow up to 90 dwelling units to the acre. The project, as proposed, reduce it down to 87. We further through our staff recommendation is to reduce it down to 81 units to the acre.

In order to be consistent with the general plan, the zoning will have to be changed as well. The zoning is currently for professional office and it's currently designated as such. And you can see that in blue here. the other sites that were in district center also have very similar zoning but they don't have to be all the same what is being proposed here is also a SD which is a specific development which is also a zoning that's usually associated with the district center land use association and it

allows for the development to have flexibility on its design standards and so what they're asking for is an SD specifically for 476 units with a unit mix as proposed here park capacity at two per unit and the building design as shown so basically the project development becomes the zoning development standards specifically for that project there was a economic analysis that was done as part of our requirement for projects where land use being proposed to be changed so that we

can understand the fiscal impact the development was studied by RSG or third-party consultant hired by the developer but we had review of the document to the basically in summary it creates approximately thirty three point five million dollars in revenue spread over 25 years and that's through property tax and other revenue sources but to equate it to bring it down to today's dollars 2017 or what we call net present value the 33 million dollars if you were to all receive in one lump sum today would really be 19 million dollars so that that would be the revenue the expenditure is projected to be 10

million dollars for the project over 25 years and again to to bring it to net present value is 5.4 million dollars if we were to pay all of it today so there is a net increase to the general fund based on the study again this is a projection and that net is 23 million dollars over 25 years or 13 million dollars over the net current value now the project the study of course does not take in into account the the wear and tear on our roads the infrastructures But all of that is also partially ideally being paid through the development impact fee as well.

Just some additional information. The project is going to be subject to the WHO ordinance. Because of that, the applicant has chose to comply with the ordinance via the in-lieu fee. Based on the current square footage, we estimate the projects to be at about $6 million that we have to pay if the project will be approved in-lieu fee. for the WHO, and the additional development impact fees, sewers, and other impact fees, again, park and recreation, which I mentioned earlier before, this is in addition to the $1.4 million, all totals to about $7.1 million in development impact fee. This is estimated,

but it should be very close. We thought it was also very important to help articulate the neighborhood comments and neighborhood concerns, because there was such...

Neighborhood comments? We thought it was very important that we articulate this to the city council because throughout this process we heard a lot of comments from the community. And so we wanted to report back to you. There were issues relating to parking. The concern was that the project did not provide adequate number of parking spaces, even at two spaces per thousand. So what we did was we took a look at what our recent development projects in other areas of the city where we have adopted new parking standards, such as the transit zoning code, the harbor corridor, the Mimu area.

Those are all high-intensity apartments development with this idea of creating a new way of transit, mobility living, transit-oriented living. And those all have the standards that are not currently reflective of multifamily standards. Our multifamily standard, if it were to apply to every one of these projects, is going to be high. And none of these projects would meet those standards. But as you can see, some of the previously approved projects, the MARC, 300 units, and it has a 2.2 spaces parking ratio per residential units total,

and then two for residential units. The Mark, I'm sorry, the 1901, 2.2, Prisma, 1.8, so forth and so on. So where the project is is that it was at about 1.8 and what the staff's recommendation is that this be increased to 2.0.

In terms of project density, again, there was a concern that the density is out of line with what the city has been reviewing and approving in the past few years so we also provided an analysis of that with the same projects in terms of where this stands the project as proposed by staff is 81 drawing units to the acres and as you can see it stands in the middle anywhere between 49 units at 1901 to 94 units at Elon which is a project that was recently approved. Same thing with Madison. Both of these projects were recently approved. Prisma is one that's been constructed and is occupied.

Project height. They were concerned about project height as well. and again you know the project says five level with mezzanine i would just call it six levels eight levels of parking but there's a total of nine because there's one level below grade we compare that to heights of other similar projects same thing you know it it's very consistent with that in actual height the height of the residential units at the top is 78 feet and at the height of the deck, which is the highest point in the project, is at 95 feet. The current zoning allows for 30 feet. And with the zone change, these would be the new established heights.

I have a question.

Min, may I?

Yes.

For the mezzanine, what's the height?

So the architect is here. He can provide that information. The top of the mezzanine is at 78 feet. I consider it a story, but they call it a mezzanine, but it is still a livable story. It does potentially have higher living because you're at the top, so those units may create some more additional.

So technically it is six floors.

It is, yes. I call it six stories. It's five level and a mezzanine, as I mentioned, I call it six stories of residential.

And how many of those do we have, the mezzanines, go across the project?

The mezzanine level for this project, we estimated about 91 units.

91 units?

Yes.

So this is the height to help illustrate and create a sense of scale and massing. If you look at this is the cube here, existing height of the cube is about 110 feet and how compares to the height of the project at the maximum height of 98 feet and as you go east you can see that the project starts to reduce height going down to four three two and what you see here are the residential homes to the east so from the face of the building to the first to the property line is about 40 feet and from the face of the building to a residential home there's a little

bit over 100 feet and as you can see these are actual trees that has been surveyed and this is the actual height of existing trees in the area which will have to be preserved. We want to help illustrate this for two reasons. One is the scale and the distance of the various stories to the residential units, but also to discuss the issues of privacy. There was a lot of concerns about you know seeing activities in people's backyard and residents backyard and I think we're all concerned about that and so how we approached this was number one one, all the existing trees will have to be preserved,

two, the existing trees will have to be supplemented with additional trees to help create a better screening for that east property line. In addition to that, any units that are facing eastward, if they don't need windows, windows have been eliminated. If they do need windows, those windows are required to have an opaque, which means that you can have light coming through, but you can't see through them. In addition to that, there was concern about the parking deck and the entertainment deck having visibility into the project site.

As you can see, the tree line and if someone was standing up here, the line of sight is well past the backyard and into the street if you were able to see. However, we were concerned with that as well, and to have an additional measure of mitigation, we require the applicant to put up basically obscure screening, so that if you were standing at the deck, I'm 5'5", and you want to look over, you'll have the railing, but in addition to that, there will be additional view-obscuring screening so that you can't just naturally see into the east side,

and that is another measure of enhancing privacy and ensuring that privacy is preserved.

This is the same idea but looking at it from Edgewood. This is Edgewood here and the closest home to the development is 90 feet across. In this case what you have is the street and you have the front yard to these homes. The project will also have its own buffer between the street and the project for landscaping. And these are the existing palm trees.

Going back to the historical concerns, so we took those issues to heart and we really wanted to understand the neighborhood and also to start to really set the basis for the formation of the historical district. So these are all the homes that have been identified out of the almost 1,200 homes in the area to be at some level historical significant, either having being a landmark, being a key contribution, or being a contributory element. But those are actually identified in the neighborhood. And the closest historical element to the project is about—

Can you finish in about how many more minutes?

I will wrap this up. All right, thank you. Yes. So this is the historical and neighborhood character. There was concern about neighborhood characters. We do look at this, and the project is something that is going to be different. It's going to be taller. It's going to be out of scale. But it's also fronting onto Main Street. So it is not going to be a single-story, single-family home.

Public participation, we went through this, I want to go through this very quickly. We started in November 2017 with Sunshine meeting. We had a series of public outreach, a series of meetings through the EIR, culminating in the public hearing today after the public hearing through the planning commission. So the options you have before you tonight are, we have three options. option one is to be in concurrence and consistent with the planning commission recommendation for denial of the project

alright alright let him keep speaking

a resolution has been drafted so that you would delight the development agreement the general plan the amendment application and not certify the EIR the option two is to be consistent with the SAS recommendation of the approval of the project, which we outlined for you on our recommendation. We have drafted the ordinance, the resolution for the adoption of that as well, and that is for the 476 unit project, along with the development agreement with all the elements of the public benefits that's been negotiated. And of course, the final option is that after hearing today, you can continue

the deliberation to a date specific. So that concludes staff's presentation on this matter. We do have our planning staff. I want to make sure that you understand we have our staff here and our consultant to ask any questions you may have from our planning division. We have the environmental team and we have the public works agency as well. So thank you.

Thank you. Now I believe the applicant would like to make a presentation. Will that be Pam, come on down. Let her speak. Let her speak.

Thank you, Mayor Polito. We appreciate very much, and the members of City Council, we appreciate very much the opportunity to address you tonight.

Oh, okay. Oh, sorry. Okay. I'm Pamela Cepeto, representing the applicant tonight, who will also be speaking after we present a short video. Thank you Mayor Polito and members of the City Council for allowing us to make a presentation. We certainly appreciate it. You're welcome.

Please, be respectful. Just let's listen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Where's the speaker?

Are you trying to do sound? Do you have sound on it? No, it's no sound. Do you have some of this? Yes.

What if the old abandoned office building on the corner of Main Street and Edgewood Road could be transformed into something new? Something that integrates with the bustling Main Street corridor, but is sensitively designed to be a good neighbor to the surrounding Park Santiago community. We're a local, family-owned company that acquired the property and has been working with the city and nearby residents for more than a year to develop a vision that accomplishes this goal. Rather than just another major office building or retail strip center, we are proposing the Addington, a luxury apartment community.

It is designed to function as a part of Main Street, but will bring less traffic, less noise, and fit better with its surroundings than an office complex. It will create a buffer between existing neighborhoods and the high-rise towers along Main. And it will provide the thing the city needs most, residential housing. and right where it's needed, close to jobs, transit, and the freeway. The process started by listening to our neighbors, and we've designed our plan as a result of their feedback. First, we located the project's driveways on Main Street, away from Edgewood,

to ensure residents have little reason or ability to travel through Park Santiago. There will be no driveway off Edgewood. Studies show the proposed luxury apartments would generate 40% fewer car trips than an office building. For some, that may be difficult to picture, but far fewer people would live in their apartments than would work at an office building. Just think about how many cubicles filled with workers coming and going could fit into a single living space. We've also provided ample guest parking that is well beyond what's needed, eliminating any need to park in the surrounding neighborhood.

In fact, the Addington includes more guest parking than would be required in cities such as Irvine, Long Beach, and Los Angeles. To ensure greater privacy for adjacent residents, we located the buildings within the Addington away from existing homes by creating a large landscape buffer that includes existing and new trees for visual screening. Typical setbacks for a project of this size range from 10 to 20 feet. The Addington calls for setbacks of 40 to 120 feet, nearly six times the standard across the majority of this eastern edge along Spurgeon Street.

We've also reduced building heights along this edge and strategically placed windows. In fact, the closest upper-story windows are more than 125 feet from any existing home. An environmental impact report studied the proposed project and found the Addington on all measurable accounts will have less than significant impacts. But being a good neighbor also means creating benefits to the city and surrounding community. We'll provide 24-hour security patrols for all of Park Santiago, not just the new apartments, making our existing neighborhoods safer.

The proposed plan also includes $1.4 million in funding to significantly improve city-owned Santiago Park, paid for by the developer, not using city funds. New monument signs for Park Santiago, private walkers for deliveries to Park Santiago residents, Improved lighting within Park Santiago. And the project's amenities will be available to Park Santiago residents. More than $5 million in immediate taxes and fees to fund important city services. And more than $1.2 million net after services annually to the city's general fund. That's more than $1.1 million more per year to the city than if the site reverted back to office use.

And it will generate more than $6 million to help address our city's affordable housing needs, making it possible for more than 100 affordable housing units for Santa Ana families. This thoughtful approach is why so many Park Santiago residents and local leaders support the project. People for Housing said, we know the only solution to the housing shortage is to build more homes, which is why we are excited to support the proposal for 2525 Main Street. Its location is ideal for moderate density development. According to one Park Santiago family, we support the 2525 development because it is

the quality and positive kind that we need to grow well, stay competitive and financially secure our city. So to recap, the Addington provides a number of benefits to Santa Ana and Park Santiago. 40% less traffic than a new office building on the site, more than $5 million in immediate revenue to the city. More than $1.2 million in ongoing annual revenue to the city More than $6 million for new affordable housing facilities for Santa Ana families That's enough for more than 100 new affordable units More than $1.4 million in improvements to city-owned Santiago Park 24-hour security patrols for all of Park Santiago

New monument signs New traffic calming features Improved lighting Amazon lockers for all of Park Santiago residents. And the Addington will create a buffer and natural transition between Park Santiago and the activity along Main Street. As you can see, the Addington was designed to be a better neighbor than just another office building. A better neighbor to Park Santiago. A better neighbor to Main Street. And a better neighbor for the city of Santa Ana. We hope that you agree and ask that you please join with local community and business leaders in recommending approval of The Addington.

My name is John Olivier. I'm a supporter of the Addington project. A couple of reasons. One is I'm a runner and one of my routes is through Park Santiago. It's kind of sad through there, the disrepair of the park and just the atmosphere in there. So I think the added benefit of the project will be great for the community.

Also, Santa Ana needs more housing, and this is a great addition and kind of the perfect place for it. They can take advantage of the mall and the surrounding area. So I'm for the project. Yeah, I think this project will be really good in terms of bringing revenues into the city in terms of property taxes and the other taxes and fees for building it. but also of that a large portion is going to go to the school district as well and certainly it's going to bring a lot more people to shop at main place and shop at city place and use the amenities that are already available and bring more revenue in terms of people spending their

dollars in Santa Ana. Hello my name is John Leahy I'm actually a resident of Irvine but I do a lot of my dining and everything in Santa Ana. I have a real strong push in the city.

Be respectful, please.

It's kind of a job-rich city in need of housing. It has been for quite a while, and I know the city supports that. I think the Addington is just a spectacular project. The amenities and opportunities that they have for living there are great. It's a beautiful design, and I really hope the community endorses it and is very successful. Thank you. I know we're having an issue with security, right? And everyone's either getting their packages stolen or getting broken into and things like that. They're going to provide a security, and not only for the Magnolia building,

but for the whole neighborhood, which is cool. I mean, think about it. You're having security driving around in your neighborhood. That's pretty cool.

All right. Go ahead, Pam.

Take your time. As much time as you want.

Thank you very much. Yes, that is it for right now. We would, however, after the public comments, have the opportunity to speak to you again.

Thank you.

Just for clarification, we're able to ask questions regarding the project? Oh, right now, yes. Clarifying questions after the comments?

People have been waiting a long time. By the way, if folks can speak in less than two minutes, that's a good thing.

but let's go ahead and start. Right, and our team, by the way, is here too for any questions you may have.

Thank you, Pam. We'll call you. Marilyn Ramirez, followed by Phil Schaefer.

Good evening. My name is Mariah Ramirez. Not that long ago, both of my parents were here speaking on their behalf of this project. Today, I'm here to say my say and my take on this project.

I for one approve of this project. I attend Chapman University which is about four, possibly five miles away from the Santa Ana Center. So I spend most of my time in Santa Ana. Not only that, I grew up here in Santa Ana. I'm sure some of you are familiar with this area. It goes by the name of Lacey. And I just want to say that this project seems like a really good thing. Not only that, affordable housing. I have a job. I help my parents out. They help me and it'd be a really good thing not only that I have very young siblings and I want them to grow up in a really good environment thank you

good evening mayor Polito and council members my name is Phil Schaefer and I live on Riviera Drive in Santa Ana I am on the historic resource Commission for the city some of you up here have appointed me over the years and I appreciate that. The Historic Resource Commission came up with a resolution opposing this project. We were told by the city attorney that we were not allowed to have that go forward to you, so I'm letting you know that as a citizen that we had voted for that. Also, my degrees are in architecture and urban planning and I was taught that when you

propose a project, you look at its context. Two sides of this project back up to Park Santiago single-family homes. When you put something in, you want to lift up what's there and make it better for everybody. This does not do that. To put an eight-story building in somebody's backyard, think of the shadow that almost a hundred-foot building is going to cast. Would you want that in your backyard across your fence I doubt it you're gonna hear from a lot of people tonight that don't live in Santa Ana that students are saying we need more housing yes we do and Santa Ana has done a great job of that we've done

better than most cities in Orange County and I'm proud of what we've accomplished in Santa Ana but this project is too dense too massive too much for that location. I'm pro-housing. I'm pro-development. If the developer actually really worked with the neighborhood, we could probably come up with something that is favorable. Thank you very much.

All right. No clapping. No clapping. At the end, you'll get to clap. Right now, let's just go through the speakers. Saltina Harrow, come on down. I'm going to take you out of order. You're on the council here for a few years, and there's got to be some privilege correct so Sal please come on down thank you

mr. mayor hello council first and foremost I was elected been elected I was an elected official for 18 years six years the school district and obviously 12 years here and along the way we've always had projects that have come before us and there's always opposition and then what happens is do you have responsible individuals that are bringing these projects forward and as they do that they start to mitigate the issues and then the the room the group that's opposing it usually gets smaller but there's always a group that's up that's opposing

this what i want you to take a look at is this is that there have been items that have been asked of this developer and the developer has tried to mitigate those he has scaled down and then moved up towards main street park santiago we don't have the money in our general fund to fix park santiago 1.4 million is coming to fix that that's helping the community edgewood is being closed off But more importantly, it's the economic development of the city. Main Place, if Main Place goes down, we don't want to see what's going to happen to Santa Ana if that happens. We need that tax revenue.

By having people there, it brings people to Main Place Mall and keeps tax dollars here. And more importantly, our school district gets money for this. And what I really appreciate is this, that this individual developer has decided to go local when it comes to building, when it comes to using the resources that we have in the city of Santa Ana. This is a good project. I implore you to support it. It's going to bring in tax revenue, and one thing that we need more than anything else is housing. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Monique Salazar, followed by Louis Woods.

Is Monique here?

come on down if Monique is here if not Lewis Woods

and Lewis come on down because after that it's going to be Pete Adame

good evening I just want to mention my name is Monique Salazar I reside in Santa Ana North Valencia for 32 years I would like to see this project go up but I would like to see it done in a responsible way I think it's really dense that's all I have to say thank you

Lewis Woods

followed by Pete followed by Jason

Van Abel Lewis Wood I live in Park Santiago mayor council members thank you for the time my wife and I support this project I think it's good for the city

We think the project will enhance and make Maine Place a more vibrant place. It'll attract more businesses, more restaurants. It'll attract the kinds of things that I want in my neighborhood that I can walk to, that I don't have to get into my car to go to. I think it's very good for the city, not just for our neighborhood. There's lots of neighborhoods in California that have high density housing along the edges of expensive homes. And we're no different.

And those neighborhoods throughout California that have high density housing along the edges have contributed and increased the value of those homes tremendously. Much more than ours. And I would like to see the value of my home increase and I think that this project would do that. As far as traffic is concerned, traffic you're going to have. Garden Grove is building. Orange is building. Tustin is building. We're going to build. So traffic's going to be there. It's something you have to mitigate, something you have to plan for. So whether this project goes forward or not, the traffic's going to be there. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Lewis.

Pete, followed by Jason, followed by Beatriz Mendoza.

Who is the first name?

Is Pete Adam here? A-D-A-M-E, I believe, from Park Santiago. Jason, V-E-N-A-B-L-E. And Beatriz Mendoza.

Walkie Ray Beatrice and then Walkie Ray

I'm sorry Mayor how many minutes do we have? Two minutes okay so I'm going to have to read this otherwise I'll go over Go ahead. Mayor, council members, my name is Beatrice Mendoza. I am a former planning commissioner. I'm also a former member of the General Plan Advisory Group. And why I'm here today is I want to congratulate Mr. Tai for a great presentation. However, he did not show the slide that shows that the EIR report was ready back in August. I want to let you know today that the Planning Commission, I believe, delayed the project for many months. This was in August that we had a draft EIR report.

We were told that we were going to vote on it. Then all of a sudden we were told it was pulled by the city manager. Then when it was on the agenda, the chair said that he doubted anybody read the EIR report. I know I had done my job. They delayed it again. And that wasn't it. they kept delaying the project. The Park Santiago residents said, well, we want the new city council to vote on it. But then when it was on their desk to vote on it, they said, well, you know, they're not going to have enough time to read the whole report, so let's delay them more. What I'm saying is this project has been delayed. And from my experience,

from being on a planning commission, most of the people, if not all, the residents that spoke against it were Santiago residents. But we received letters of support from the community. One, from the San Ana Preservation Alliance saying, hey, I support this project and Dale and the groups from Santiago Park that go all the time, they don't represent all of us. He supports this project. I don't want to say his name, but we did receive letters of support. So what I'm telling you right now is, it's just been delayed. You have to vote on it. And I'm here to support the project. When we sat on the advisory group

So we were told by the residents that we need more housing. If these residents of Santiago did not attend those workshops that we had for many years, you know, it doesn't make sense. So thank you so much. I'm in for it.

Thank you. Waukee.

Good evening, Mayor Polito and members of the City Council. My name is James Waukee Ray, and I represent the board of the Discovery Cube, which of course is right across the street. I represent the Discovery Cube, which is across the street. I am the founding chairman of the Discovery Cube, which opened in 1998 and have served on its board since its inception. Members of our executive committee and I have met with the development team of 2525 North Main multiple times throughout the past year, and we all have a sound understanding of the proposed project.

I am here to report that the board of Discovery Cube, after considerable discussion at the executive committee level, has voted to support the project.

Our reasons are as follows. Professional traffic studies demonstrate that the residential use will have less traffic impact than any other use. We believe that the massing and architectural style of the project are complementary with the Discovery Cube. The developer has agreed to renovate Santiago Park, which is adjacent to Discovery Cube, which for us is huge, as we hope, with the city's permission, to use portions of the park with school groups for passive hands-on science experiments. The developer has offered to provide roving security throughout Santiago Park neighborhood,

which Discovery Cube welcomes and hopes will reduce the homeless presence, which is frightening to many of our visitors. Finally, the applicant has offered to align the entry into its project without entering ours, thus ensuring a well-engineered intersection with adequate queuing for both properties. In conclusion, I reiterate the board's support of this project and our hopes that the city will approve it. Thank you very much.

Helen Martinez.

Followed by Mike Gonzalez.

Need to be respectful, please. If you keep making all the noise and everything, it's just going to delay this. And everyone deserves a chance up at the microphone. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members, I'm here to state that I am for the new project, the Addington. Having been born and raised in this city, I've seen a lot of changes, and we as a society, we don't like changes. We were up in arms with all the changes that were being done in the downtown area, but quite frankly, it's very beautiful. I brought my mother, who now resides in the city of Corona, three days ago. We took a tour of Bristol Street, the downtown area, my mother was in awe she just could not believe it she uh i mean was totally excited and i think

that this new um development is going to be part of our our evolution of of who we are in the city of san anna we are the heart of this county we have our federal offices here we have our superior offices here state offices are all here i mean it's just part of the evolution and i think that we need to accept these changes so I am for the project thank you thank you

Mike Gonzalez followed by Mario Rodriguez good evening City Council

mayor political I can't believe we're here discussing this project this is a great project I love it this is I mean to start up with the homeless problem that we have at the park is completely not necessary that we have to deal with the homeless if we approve this project six million dollars for affordable housing before they even start a building one point and a half for the

park to fix up the park. I provide security for this building and believe me we've been dealing with drug dealers with homeless people doing drugs jumping up the fence breaking up the windows this is completely wrong we need to fix it and it is a great opportunity for us to accept this project and to do better life for the residents of Santana. So thank you very much.

Mayor Rodriguez followed by Ruben Garcia.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council. How are you doing? I'm going to age myself a little bit right now, but I started my business here in Santa Ana 30 years ago, and to see what's going on with this city is absolutely incredible right now. You have in your hands a renaissance that you're creating. It's going to be incredible what I'm seeing going on out there and this project is a great project and will really do a lot of great things for that area. So I encourage you to support this project. Thank you.

Ruben Garcia followed by Judy Amadore.

Good evening, Mayor and City Councils. My name is Ruben Garcia, and I'm a member of the Labor's Union Local 652. I'm here tonight to voice my support for the adding project. I support this project because it will give me the opportunity to build a development that I can be proud of and will benefit not only me but our community.

The funding that will be provided to the city for the Santiago Park will also be a great benefit to our community. Let's restore the park to something we will be proud of. Please support the project. Thank you.

Judy Amadori followed by Julie Matsumoto.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm here to support the project, and I hope you do too. just to get the park is one good thing to have it back to it's the way it used to be just today I was at Polly's having lunch and I did see a couple men doing some drug transaction and you know I think having that extra security would be so great for that part of Santa Ana and I really believe that the neighborhood will appreciate it later I know nobody wants anybody to get into their little surroundings but you know what it's going to be a better place and we need the more money. I was here earlier when they were talking about

you need money for the police officers. Well, at least this will help some. And just, you know, think about it and I hope you approve it. Have a good evening.

Thank you, Julie.

Followed by Joseph Sanchez.

Good evening. My name is Julie Matsumoto and I'm here to express my support for this project. I'm involved with mentoring underserved young people through the arts, media, film, and music, and mainly high school and college students. And we actually have quite a few young people who are the first ones in their families to attend college. And we're seeing, in spite of all the challenges, financial and family issues and whatnot, we're seeing so many young people graduating from college. they're entering the workforce and becoming productive members of the community.

And many young people actually were born and raised here in Santa Ana, went to school here, and work here, and we really want them to have opportunities and increased access to affordable housing. So this is our future generation, and I urge you all to vote for this project. Thank you.

Joseph, followed by Yvette Estrada.

Hello, my name is Joseph Sanchez, and I am a Vietnam veteran. I attend the Long Beach Veterans Hospital, and I'm in contact with many, many veterans that are desperately in need of housing. Not only is it, I don't see this as a homeless gig, I see it more as a homeless prevention. You know, there's great people like, you know, the window tighter, the running back, you know, Jackie Slater, Vince Romergano, that have given their approval and funding when we reached a lot of young people in this area here. Okay, because they saw the need for underprivileged children.

And, you know, also the Trinity Broadcasting Network, I was part of the planning when we launched that. We put this whole area also, you know, we put a little dab of, you know, in the map, you know. And Olive Crest, I was a consultant for Olive Crest. I seen the families, how they suffered. And in closing, I just want to say that, you know, I want to say that our minds work like a parachute. And they only work when they're open. And I'm asking you to open your heart. Both sides. Okay.

Because no kid, there's no child that should go to school under fear that mom and dad, or just mom or dad, they're going to close down and they got to move somewhere else. That is not us. I believe that the kids in our community are the greatest gift that God's given us. And you are problem solvers. that's it alright

and Yvette if you could indicate where you're from please followed by Timo Ketlog I believe it is

my name is Yvette Estrada I just want to say I hate traffic I can't stand traffic but you know what I got to deal with it it's part of life I support this project. I work in Santa Ana. I'm looking at moving to Santa Ana because I work here. And for where I commute, it's just too much. So I'd rather live here. But I wouldn't mind living in a project like that. It's safe. It's beautiful. I can walk to the malls. I can walk to, you know, go have dinner. I think it's beautiful. So I support this project. I would love to have my children live with me there. and so I'm all for the project.

Yes, I hate traffic. It's everywhere. I sit in it and I can't stand it, but you know what? If I don't want traffic, then I need to pack up and go live in the boondies or the mountains where there's no traffic. Thank you and God bless.

Timo tell us where you're from and then Aaron Friedman also tells where you're from please

Aaron, go ahead.

Thank you.

I've been looking to relocate to the Santa Ana area for the past two years. Initially for myself, now for my wife, we were both given opportunities to advance our careers by moving to Orange County. In early 2017, we seriously considered buying a home in the Park San Diego neighborhood, which is adjacent to the proposed site of the Addington. So much so that myself and my wife joined and followed the neighborhood on major social media outlets so we could learn the area better. We greatly prefer the eclectic nature of Santa Ana over many of the other traditional suburban cities like Tustin or Garden Grove.

Santa Ana is a city that seems to be fighting itself. On one hand, their downtown has shifted to things millennials are interested in. On the other hand, there seems to be naysayers in the community that are resistant to change.

My name is Aaron Friedman. From Los Angeles.

I work in Santa Ana. My wife works in Santa Ana. At this point, with interest rates going up and prices as well, we decided ultimately that purchasing a home was not for us right now. So why am I here? We learned a number of things when we conducted our research on the area. What we then noticed was a lack of modern rental housing in Santa Ana that was significantly nicer than any that the two of us lived in during college. We also noticed several pros and cons of the city and the neighborhood. Some of the concerns we had were the homeless problem, high-frequency crime found on social media posts from residents of Park Santiago,

such as a female suspect arrested for break-in entering found taking a shower in someone's home, vandals destroy and steal Christmas decorations, Amazon packages and deliveries, many car and attempted home break-ins reported. the severe deficiency of a city's ability to fix and address these problems, which seem to be much more rampant and growing at a faster rate than any resident of this city should be comfortable with. Over time, I also noticed something brewing, an ongoing battle between a few outspoken residents of Park Santiago neighborhood and the developers who own the old office site.

You guys please wrap up your time as up.

My conclusion to this experience is it was a learning experience for certain. It turns out the developer in this case has gone above and beyond to take the current site, which is an eyesore for the community in its current state, and turn into a contributing member of the Santa Ana community. Whereas a small faction of residents of this Park Santiago neighborhood are unwilling to compromise and continue with their opposition for this project, no matter how much it benefits the homeowners themselves and the residents of Santa Ana, and acts as a solution to overcome the financial ruins that the city currently sits in.

Thank you, Patricia Bricken.

Patricia Bricken, followed by Anne Delgadillo.

Followed by Alex Rios.

Ann Delgadillo

We are all homeowners here. Our parents retired in our neighborhood, buying a home after they retired. And I am against this project. I am against, I'm not against progress, but zone change for the property is wrong. I urge you to vote no. Also, I believe that this should be postponed, this hearing should be postponed due to the miscommunication over the past weekend. I believe it should be held in a larger venue so that our neighborhood can be properly represented. Please vote no. Thank you.

Yes, my name is Alex Reus. I've been a resident of Santa Ana for over 30 years. And I am in favor for this new development. I find this the best thing for our city. And I live, these women next to me have been, don't think we live here. My address is 405 East 15th Street, Savannah, down the street from the development. If you want to send me a letter. So I'm all for it, and I hope I can move into it after this bill. Thank you.

Thank you.

Clay Henderson.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. I've lived in Park San Diego on for 25 years on Oakmont, next to Rob Richardson and Francis Crissette on the other side before he passed away. I'm also a veteran and we're standing together against this project our community is tough and we're gonna stand there I stood together with guys in Vietnam and we had to walk away and it was damn disappointing that wasn't my choice but I was there a full year with a guy watching what I was doing just

keeping me safe and I think you guys ought to watch what you're doing and and take care of our neighborhood. This is not the right project for the site. There are beautiful homes being built on Santa Clara, across the street from the cemetery, in that orange grove. That's gorgeous. You guys did a great job on allowing that guy to come in and build homes there. They're a little pricey, but that would be a compliment to our neighborhood to do something like that. Thank you very much.

Rhonda Wood Mojica followed by Susan Luna.

Hello, good evening Mr. Mayor and council members. My name is Rhonda Wood Mojica. This is my first time at a city council meeting. I'm happy to be here. I'm from the Park Santiago neighborhood. I have been there for almost 10 years. My husband and I sought out the neighborhood for the real historic charm it has today.

Over the years, we have come to enjoy the many conveniences successful development has brought to our city. but there is a right and a wrong place for certain development within our communities. I'm here tonight to ask you not to rezone the edge of our community. As you have heard in previous meetings when we had more representation due to better communication, and a few of us tonight, this development proposed on this small plot of land is not the right place. the current zoning is for a reason so let's be real

there's not enough parking or infrastructure for this place

Mr. Mayor and council members the citizens of Santa Ana place trust in you we ask that you not be lured by those not directly impacted by this project or by more tax money or by providing a quick fix to check a box on your mandate for more housing. Tonight, I appeal to your better judgment to consider all the people opposing this development and deny its encroachment in our neighborhood. Thank you.

Thank you.

Susan Lynn, followed by Deborah Dejan Garcia. Susan Luna.

Good evening, Mayor and Councilman, members. My name is Susan Luna. My husband and I bought our home in Park Santiago 48 years ago. Since then, we have had to close off Santiago to stop constant flow of traffic from memory lane through our neighborhood. Then we had to close Fairhaven because of the extensive traffic on Lincoln. Then we had to put speed bumps to slow traffic on Santiago. Within a year, Lincoln will be closed for the new underpass construction of 17th and Lincoln. Our only egresses will be Maine, Santa Clara, and Santiago. There are places for apartments.

We have Windsor, the Prisma, the 1110, and the new one coming in at Maine Place. Those are all appropriate places for stacking people. But now that you will be stacking people, our resources will be...

Excuse me. We receive regular notices to conserve our electricity, our gas, and our water. Now you will be stacking people that will drain these resources, yet taxes that will help the city. I am against this project. I am four apartments. This is too dense, and to think that all those people could exit one place and not have any impact on themselves or traffic is insane. Thank you.

Thank you.

Deborah Garcia, followed by Gary Hendricks.

Hi, my name is Deborah Garcia and I live in Riverside, but I am a foster parent from Santa Ana. All my children, seven girls out of Santa Ana. I bring them every day to school here. You know why I bring them here? Because they were taken out of their home and it's not fair to them to have to be put in another school. So I work at Santa Ana. So I bring them to school every day. That means I take them home, and when I can't take them home, I put them in what's called a hop-skip drive when I have to work over because I go out and do the fatalities and do all the stuff that's happening in the city. I'm also an Uber and a Lyft driver.

30% of your people that live in this area, Uber, Lyft, bicycle, and they also take public transportation. These people that live in the area, that live in these homes, they're using Lyft and Uber. And you know the sad part about it? I'm trying to find affordable housing. I can't touch a home over here for more than $400,000 to $800,000 to accommodate my kids. It's not fair to us that we can't get something that I can only have to drive two and a half hours every day. Two and a half hours to work, two and a half hours home. Guess what? This project needs to go through. Thank you.

Gary Hendricks, followed by Matt Milson.

Good evening. My name is Gary Hendricks. I live on Spurgeon.

I've heard a lot tonight about low-income housing. This is not a low-income housing project.

The cheapest apartment in there is going to be a studio over $2,000. So it's not low-income housing. I think we need low-income housing. This is not it. Two, all the people that are here that are speaking to either for or against, the people that are speaking against this project aren't being paid to be here. We're here because we wanted it. Because we're trying to protect our neighborhood.

I'm voting obviously. I'm asking you to vote no on the project. Planning Commission said no. I would think that that would carry some weight with you guys. They spent months on this project. They spent hours listening to us, listening to pro people. They said no because they took into consideration all the ramifications. This is too big of a project for this small of a lot. The EIR is flawed. No matter what his name said in the EIR, it's flawed. They did an EIR prior to, they never mentioned the fact there's 1,900 apartments going into a main place. It's already said.

They never mentioned the fact that Town & Country is being torn out, high-rise apartments are going in on Town & Country. They never talked about the hotel that's going in across the freeway. They never talked about the density that that's going to bring towards traffic. Traffic. They never talked about the fact that if everybody's got to leave the Addington, they're going to have to turn right, make a U-turn to get on the freeway. They never talked in the IR about the fact they're closing the freeway entrance, which is going to build more traffic to that one entrance to the freeway.

Section 3.5C in the proposed plan still has the Edgewood driveway.

If you could please wrap up.

Yeah, two more points. It has the Edgewood driveway. It has never been taken out. They keep saying they're not going to put it in. They've never taken it out of the proposal. 120 workers are going to be on project. Where are they going to park? They're going to park on my street. And the last thing I'd like to do is I'd just like to thank Councilwoman Iglesias because she is the only one that came down my street, knocked on my door, and asked me what I thought about the project. Thank you

Matt followed by Debra Hendricks

Good evening council the approval of this project

I'm from orange, but my mom and her boyfriend are from Santa Ana The approval of this project would bring many positive economic impacts with it Getting rid of old empty lots, providing local job opportunities, increasing city tax revenues. It would also promote walking, being that so many things are close by, such as Chalk Hospital, which is somewhere I aspire to work in the near future. As you consider this project, please think of the benefits for city services and our future generations. Thank you.

Thank you. Deborah.

Followed by Ruben Navarrete.

My name is Deborah Hendricks and I live on Spurgeon. And in the presentation, one of those little purple houses backing up to the new development, that was us. I'm opposed to the project. I'm opposed to the rezoning. It is simply too big. It's too big. It's too dense. And when you start factoring in all those other big buildings that are going to be popping up, it's just too much. there's no community that doesn't have a point where it just can't take anymore and I think we're rapidly getting to that point. I want to make a quick comment about Mr. Penaloza. Congratulations on your win.

Many months ago when he was campaigning he came through our neighborhood and he made a comment to me and I was very impressed. He said, I am from Santa Ana, my family's from Santa Ana And the most important thing we can do for our community is to maintain the quality of life and try to make it better. And I so appreciated that because I don't believe that this project does anything to improve the quality of life, given everything else that's going on. Thank you.

Thank you. Ruben Navarrete.

Followed by Thomas Ruiz.

Ruben here. Thomas, come on down. Followed by Robert Ruiz.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Thomas Ruiz. some representative of the Laborers and National Union. I'm here to speak on behalf of the Southern California District Council of Laborers and our affiliates and the 30,000 members that we represent in Southern California and most who live in the greater Orange County area and in Santa Ana. We're here to fully support the Addington Project. The Addington Project has made a strong commitment to the members of LIONA who will be assisting in the construction.

This project will provide quality construction jobs, paying union wages and benefits, while also alleviating the housing shortage. As you all know, men and women in construction take pride in the work that they do in constructing projects on time and on budget, constantly working themselves out of a job. That's why projects like this and developers that make commitments to the laborers are vital to the success of working families. We are pleased to see that this project will not only transform one piece of land, but one that will serve as a catalyst for change,

sparing future development and jobs, while also contributing funds for affordable housing. Liyuna is committed to providing career pathways for our community. At a time when college tuitions are skyrocketing, it is more important for young people to know that there is other career paths. Through our apprenticeship program, members are able to gain the knowledge and experience they need in order to make a construction career. It's projects like this one that allow the men and women who build our communities not just have a job, but a career. And we hope that you join us in supporting this project. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, ladies and gentlemen of the council. First of all, I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to come here and speak.

I'm going to get there.

My name is, I'm gonna get there as well. Again, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. My name is Robert Ruiz. I am the Secretary Treasurer for the Laborers Union, Local 652 right here in Santa Ana. Thank you.

You know, we represent over 3,400 men and women in the construction industry. Almost close to 2,000 of them live right here in the city of Santa Ana.

And that's why I'm up here speaking on their behalf. Our members go where the work is at. And unfortunately, sometimes that means going to San Diego, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, Victorville, you name it. This project here intends to do away with that, okay? So I come here in support of this project, not only because of the jobs that it will create for those who live in the city, but the great economic impact and the opportunities that it will create for the city. So please I'm asking you to give your residents, your constituents the opportunity to work here in this city

To be able to stay at home and be able to come home and go watch your kids play baseball after work So I ask you to vote in favor of this project And I ask you to do the right and the responsible thing to do and vote yes. Thank you

Thank you Robert Jesse Segura followed by Ruben Garcia

Mr. Mayor, just as a point of clarification, it is not a condition of being able to speak to state your residence. Correct. Go ahead. My name is Jesse Segura, and I'm a proud resident of Santa Ana.

I am a member from Labor's Local 652. I've been out of that local for 35 years. and I respect what you guys are going to vote on tonight is yes for that job to go on because my members need to go to work. They need a support. They don't need to be driving to Local 89, San Diego, or Riverside. They want to stay here at home. Thank you very much. Vote yes.

Ruben Garcia.

Ruben Garcia.

Followed by Hector Madrigal.

followed by

Ariane, A-R-I-A-N-N-E, and no last name. Hector, go ahead, and then after that, Adrian, and then Savok, S-E-V-O-K. Please go ahead.

Okay. Good evening, Major and Council members. My name is Hector Madrigal. I'm a 20-year resident with Santa Ana and a proud member of Labor's Union Local 652. I'm here tonight to voice my support for the Addicton project because it will create much needed new jobs and housing for Santa Ana residents. Santa Ana was built by union workers like us, people who are proud to work hard each day to support our families and grow up our community.

Please join us and support this project. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Ariane, A-R-I-A-N-N-E.

Hello, my name is Ariane. I'm a current student at Santa Ana College studying for my occupational therapy aid. I believe Santa Ana needs to grow as families inside of the city grows. Public school enrollment is declining with young families moving out due to the lack of the housing here. young working families contribute to the tax base, increase retail transactions, populate schools and it brings a resilient workforce. By creating more housing in the city you are opening more doors to young adults like myself who are entering the workforce and eager to start families. I am asking for your

support on this project and thank you very much.

um sevok s-e-v-o-k followed by fred just fred followed by n-i-a-n

hello good evening uh good evening mayor and good evening council members my name is sevok and i'm I'm a resident of Santa Ana here. I'm coming in support of this project. I believe, thank you. I believe a thriving Santa Ana is supportive of all residents, whether they be young, old, rich, or poor. And I think that as a community, we need to do more to embrace any effort to help improve the housing crisis here and to help young adults like me who are also going to school to be able to afford housing alongside doing other things like working. And I hope that you two will vote yes to approve this project tonight.

Fred. Fred. Followed by Ian. Followed by Alan.

Hello, council members. My name is Freddy Arvizu. I'm a resident of Santa Ana at 1420 North Broadway. I've been for about the past seven years. and personally as a young millennial I'm in support of the project because I don't want to see my generation forced to find housing in Tustin, Irvine and Newport Beach when I've been living here for as long as I can remember. You know it's sad that people are being driven out of this area because there's just not enough housing which are far more costly and benefit the tax basis of those cities and not Santa Ana. The other alternative is that more

affordable would be moving to the Inland Empire away from our family and friends here, but this project is type of place for young professionals like myself that can grow and form families and we should invest in our future right here in Santa Ana. Thank you. Thank you. Ian followed by Alan.

Good evening, Council. My name is Ian Detweiler. I am a college student, and today's college students are becoming tomorrow's young professionals. It won't be long before we graduate and find our first jobs, which will hopefully be here in Santa Ana. But for that to happen, businesses need a thriving local economy to grow, and new employees like me need somewhere to live. The Addington will help Santa Ana on both fronts, and that's why it deserves your support. Thank you.

Okay, before the next speaker, I'm going to take something out of order for a moment. Item 88, this should just take a moment. That way we can continue it and folks that are waiting for that item can go home. I'd entertain a motion on item 88 for a continuance. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to continue until the next meeting. All right. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. So anybody on item 88 can go home.

Alan come on down then Jensen and then followed by Bailey

hello council my name is Alan and I support this project because businesses are competing every day for young talents and those young employees desire the exact same housing opportunities that will be offered here this housing project will help Santa Ana attract and retain top businesses and employees that need to operate, all which generates extra tax revenue for the city. With so much talking about budget shortages, shouldn't this project be considered to help shrink that gap? Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you. Jensen, followed by Bailey.

Hi, my name is Jensen. I'm a local college student. I support the Addington because the Addington is the kind of development my family and I want to see in Santa Ana. The residents will patronize local businesses and invest long-term in the prosperity and success of our city. Thank you so much.

Bailey.

Oh, that's a little.

Hello, my name is Bailey, and I'm a local college student at CSUF, and I also plan to be a future teacher. I already have plans to work for Santa Ana Unified when I graduate from my credential program. When it's time to leave my college housing, I would like to live in Santa Ana because I want to avoid long, costly commutes and invest my hard-earned money in the city I work in. Having housing options along with transportation routes and close to shopping centers are a big plus for young adults like me. I ask you to consider supporting this project, helping my generation stay closer to home,

and helping the city to grow to its local... Sorry guys. Help my generation stay closer to home and helping the city to grow to its full potential. Thank you.

Thank you. Glenda Newcomer. Followed by James Garvey.

Glenda.

James Garvey. Followed by Edith Harrington.

I think she's not here. Come on down.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and council members. Thank you for entertaining me for the second time tonight. I'm a resident in Park, Santiago.

I've lived there since 2011. And I'm opposed to this project for a majority of reasons, but probably the first one would be that it's zoned professional to start with. So why bother rezoning it? Why not create a project that brings business to Santa Ana? Instead of...

More jobs here. More jobs here.

The second thing is I live there, so I know what the traffic is like there. I don't care what their EIR says. That's completely BS. It's completely BS. If you just show up there during peak times, to entertain the fact that they're going to put one entrance off of Main Street is ludicrous, especially with all of the traffic coming from the proposed facilities facilities that they're going to build up in North Main, at the north end of Santa Ana.

Just, I don't have too much to say. Just, I would ask that you vote your conscience, and it should be no, because the residents have spoken out. It's been voted down by the Planning Commission, and you have a duty to protect your residents. especially the ones who represent our ward, Mr. Solorio. So that's all I've got to say. Thank you very much.

Edith.

Edith.

Followed by, I think, is Don Harrington or Dan Harrington.

It's Don. Hello, Mayor Polito and City Council. My name is Edith Harrington. I live on Santiago Street, Santa Ana. I've lived there for 42 years. It's always been a great neighborhood, and I oppose this project. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the council. My name is Don Harrington, on Santiago Boulevard in Santa Ana for 45 years or so. I oppose the project, and I hope that you will consider the effect that will have on the residents and not just what will happen during construction. It will bring a lot of work in, but those people will leave, and we'll be stuck with what's left over with it, and we'll have to deal with it forever. Thank you.

Darcy Cane Hino

followed by Jason Crone

followed by Oscar Nevarez

Good evening City Council and Mayor Polito. My name is Darcy Cancino. I am a 20 year resident homeowner of Park Santiago. I am opposed to Addington. It is too dense, too massive, and just too much, too high for that parcel. There are many, many other apartments in development in the area, just on Main Street and on Town and Country. There's about 3,000 new units planned. We have a lot of construction going on and a lot of housing going in. The traffic impact not only will be on Main, it will be significant to Park San Diego streets.

We already have significant problems with commuters racing through our streets down Grovemont, down Santiago, down Edgewood, running stop signs, and this project is going to make that so much worse. The residents of Addington will use our neighborhood to cut through to parts east, and it will just be really, really bad. So I ask that you please respect the deliberation and decision of your planning commission and vote no to reject Addington. Please fulfill your obligation to the community that you all say that you support and that you are elected to represent and serve. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Jason Kron, and I'm in favor of this project because I think that it would be good for the community as a whole just to bring in more jobs and more opportunities for young people that are just looking for somewhere to live. So I just ask that you please give it a chance. Thank you.

Oscar, followed by Richard Lopez.

Good evening. My name is Oscar Navarez. I'm also a union worker at Local 36. I strongly support this due to the fact that I was once there. I was a convict prisoner. Just to the apprenticeship, it helped me out. So that also helps the community. So therefore, I support this. It's a no-brainer also with the economic value, you know. The revenue is going to bring to the community. Earlier, that's who you're having problems with, so money circulates. It's that easy. Thank you.

Thank you Irma. After that Irma Montones. Hi my name is Richard Lopez and I'm here to support the project. Now I heard a lot of things about the traffic and all this and I sense a real spirit of selfishness but these people don't want to let nobody into their community and give somebody else a chance to live there. And I understand that some of the residents might feel uncomfortable with their situation right now.

But, you see, all progress takes place outside the comfort zone. And I got a couple quotes right here. Walt Disney said, and I quote, progress is impossible without change. Benjamin Franklin said, and I quote, without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement and success have no meaning. See, change is something that we should not fear. It's something that we should embrace and welcome. Without change, in this world, it would never grow. If we wanted to stay the same, just think of how far we came from 10, 20 years ago.

We're making progress, and I think this city needs more progress, and and it will progress because that's the type of world we live in. Thank you for your time. Irma.

Followed by Vince Romo after Irma.

Hi, my name is Irma Montelongo, and I'm here to support the program. And Irma Montelongo, and I'm here to support the program. I believe it's going to be good for the community. You need revenue to get your deputies in there, so let's do it thank you vince followed by desiree hernandez how you doing thank you mayor thank you council my name is vince romo and i just want to have a round of applause because it's been tired it's been a long night how many of us are in favor of this project come on make some noise right here yeah thank you the people are speaking you know what and thank you guys i hope you guys get this

project going um as i said this gentleman he changed my life many years ago paul i came from a very tough background that most of us didn't come from and you know what i help out a lot of young people i see a lot of young people here and they're in favor of this project and i hope you guys get this project going and i hope you do the right thing thank you desiree

desiree hernandez followed by tony montana

followed by John Martinez

John Martinez followed by Danny Ortiz

Hello everyone, I'm John Martinez and I'm here to say that me and my girlfriend are born and raised here in Santa Ana and that we do support the project to go through because it is time for change.

And hopefully one of these days I will get to have a family of my own and having them live here with a brand new facility and playing the opportunity. I just want you to stop and think for the newer generation to come. Thank you very much.

Danny Ortiz, Jasmine Diaz.

Hi, my name is Danny Ortiz and I want to thank you for letting me speak here. I live in nearby Orange County in Brea. And just watching that video was awesome, you know. I see the possibilities, you know, for the neighborhood. And the revenues for the police, you know, that's going to come and it's going to grow. and I wanted to say something about you know the only way that we can live is if we grow you know and if we grow we could change and that I compare that that video to a butterfly you know because even a butterfly had to grow so so I

leave with that thank you

Jasmine Diaz followed by Lynette Wardonski. Hi, I'm Tony Montana.

I just got to say real quick that this is a crucial moment in time where we're going to be able to change so many lives. because I've been listening in and there's so much poverty, so much crime going on in these neighborhoods. I live at North 833 Van Ness down the street, so I see a lot of this. And it's pretty bad. So if you guys can make a change, that would be amazing. So thank you very much for your time.

Hi, good evening. My name is Lynette Wardenski. I'm a 19-year resident of Park Santiago. I live on Valencia Street.

I'm opposed to this project, primarily for the size and scale, as it's currently being proposed tonight. I'm not opposed to development. I'm not opposed to a different building being there. I'm opposed to the size and scale of this project. Min Tai himself tonight said that you cannot mitigate the scope and scale of this project. You can. You just propose a different size project.

It doesn't need to be 496 units. It can be much more appropriate to the land acreage, the parcel of that parcel. Also, the traffic patterns. The thing that's interesting about going from a commercial building to a residential building, commercial, the Wells Fargo people came to work at the time we were all leaving. You put a residential project there, guess what? they're leaving for work at the same time everyone else is. They're also returning at the same time everyone else is. It's a very different traffic

pattern than what a commercial, what is currently entitled there. It's currently entitled for commercial and again the traffic pattern to put it change it to a residential is going to be very different. So I don't necessarily think that you can you know he showed the he showed the diagrams with ABCDE and F and and what you know Santa Ana is willing to accept but he doesn't show like the patterns of how people are going to come and go I think that's very important anyway the size and the scope the shape of this it can be mitigated it can be changed we don't have to decide on this project tonight thank you

Thank you. been developed. It was a beautiful neighborhood then. It has survived. It's a beautiful neighborhood now. We are very diverse. We have all ages of people, children, dogs, pets, animals. We look after one another. As far as the references to crime, I don't think there's a neighborhood in the city of Santa Ana that isn't suffering from the same types of crime that we are. Break-ins, homeless people. Yes, someone actually did crawl through a doggy door and take a shower in a neighbor's home. But we all knew about it. And our police, understaffed though they may be,

they did show up. And they did do something. They did arrest the person. I am totally opposed to the project that seems to be offering a solution to all of our problems. It's not offering a solution. It's creating another problem. There are only going to be funds donated by these people for a certain amount of time. It's not ongoing. There are other methods of revenue. I'm I'm sure that a business zoning building that's put there would also supply revenue to the city. I am totally against this project. I urge you please to vote no on the rezoning, no on the general plan amendment, and no in general on this project.

There is something else more suitable that will suit not only you, but us. Please, please vote no. Thank you.

Steve followed by Carl Benninger. Sorry I'm a little taller than that. My name is Steve Wardinsky. I live at 25 on Valencia Street here in Part Santiago. I am a college professor so I'm deeply sympathetic to the cries of the college students that you've heard tonight. but I also recognize that like most typical college students if they're going to live in one of the units in this proposed building they're gonna live about five or six per unit which makes a sad joke of the notion that two cars per unit isn't going to impact our parking for one thing for two I'm also a

member of a union and I hope that the Union Brothers of Lanai and Local 803 are heavily involved in the construction of the other 2001 residential units in North Orange County or in North Santa Ana that does not include this project. It is not this project or no jobs. There are 2001 residential units and a hotel of 156 units according to the very pretty map that I was looking at in the lobby for the last three hours that our Union Brothers can help in constructing and I hope that they do. This project on the other hand is far too large, far too dense and will have far too big an impact on our neighborhood. I

your Planning Commission and vote no on the project. Thank you very much.

Karl Fall by Dimitri Lujan. Thank you Mayor and Council for this opportunity. I came here with an open mind. I live in southern Santa Ana by Metro Classic neighborhood. And basically we're not against development, but again the density. If you had the opportunity to drive down through that area, as I did today because I had taken away for a doctor's appointment, on town and country there are tremendous buildings being built with lots of living spaces. You've got the main place, the 1900s that year, tonight that's going to go in. That's all going to have an effect on the traffic and on Main Street.

And when we drove by down 1130 this morning, it was jammed. So what is it going to be when all these cars come out from this thing? So for that reason, I just say this is a too dense, too large of a project at this location, and I urge you to ask this to scale down. Thank you.

Dimitri, followed by Jeff Dresser. Hi, my name is Dimitri Lujan, and I live in Santiago Park. I live in the park, and I'm against this project. not the right deal for Santa Ana, not in the plan of right use, traffic not properly addressed, no impact. There was a bad area up and down in country. That's because they add a lot of apartments right there. That's what they're planning on doing to us. Too big of impact does not want. So he doesn't want to build an office space, not his thing. So why did he buy this property? It's zoned. He knew it. He's a big developer. He knew what he was buying.

These guys are acting like this is a permanent job construction workers. No, it's not. But we're going to have to live two years while they're building this day and night. Noise, dust. And it's going to still be with us when they leave. So they are going to leave. It's not like a permanent thing. Sorry to let you guys know about that.

So you have to construct it. and this is it's been okay for commercial not residential this developer has built large apartment units all over Santa Ana I don't think he's bought or built one that doesn't require rezone redevelopment, he always buys a commercial and wants to put residential up I'm okay with mixed use but Ryan, he knows what he's doing he's got projects, they don't conform with city Replanning and saying I don't believe none of them have you've always had to Change something he's always asked for this and he knows what he's doing. He's making millions and he's making all this money

He's not a local family. He lives in LA you can link the thing He's like so he's making all this money living in LA a lot of there's projects that you know haven't worked for Santa Ana the Met was rezoned You guys wanted 16 units, big high-rise. He built five-story units. We lost money on that thing. So there was a lot of jobs that could have been there, and they were lost. My time out? Sorry. Yeah, wrap up. Go ahead. Okay.

He has rescaled because of what we requested, but he's not rescaling his property, the size, the unit. There's one driveway going in. he doesn't want to move his property line so we can put another driveway in. He wants to take our park away, and we're going to use the park to get into his apartments. He's taken away from two fire lanes to one, taken out the guest parking. So that's where he's picking up. But to me, he's not giving up any of his units. That's, you know, I ask you to vote no on this. Thank you.

Jeff Dresser, Jane Chapman.

Hi, my name is Jeff Dresser. I live in the Park San Diego neighborhood, and I am opposed to the project.

This project is discretionary, and it's market rate. There's no affordable housing element to this project. This project does not need to be approved. The developer purchased the property with one expectation or one assumption, and that doesn't mean that he's entitled to it just because he purchased the property. This project is over double the density of any other project in Santa Ana that backs the single-family homes, and this project alone in and of itself is not going to solve the housing crisis in Santa Ana.

But what will happen is it will have a negative effect on the neighborhood for the entirety of the neighborhood. There's only a few neighborhoods in Santa Ana left that still have the quality of life that the Park San Diego neighborhood has. And destroying that neighborhood's quality of life for one project that's discretionary and market rate is a bad decision. and will have lifetime effects for the neighborhood and the city of Santa Ana. Thank you.

Janie Chapman, followed by Christine Helwig.

Good evening. My name is Jane Chapman. I live on North Spurgeon Street in Park Santiago. This is a sensitive topic to me as my home is directly adjacent to 2525 North Main. It is actually in our backyard. I'm a millennial. I have a young family. I'm a homeowner, and I'm against the project. We realize that something new may be built behind our home, but I'm here to speak against the density of this proposed project. At 81 dwelling units per acre, nothing this dense has ever been built next to single-family homes in Santa Ana. The current high-water mark for density next to R1 is 58 DUA, the line apartments in Santa Ana.

There is an alternative number two listed in the staff report with the exact same density as the line. Why not go with this instead of voting in an unprecedented density of apartments next to R1? Even Irvine is removing office buildings and increasing apartment stock, but Irvine city leaders have the good sense not to place the highest possible density of apartments right next to single-family homes. If Vineyard Development has over-invested in this property, and needs to place as many units as possible on it to recuperate their investment, it's not the responsibility of the City Council to fix that.

It is your responsibility to remain accountable to the strong voice of the citizens of Santa Ana and your Planning Commission. As a luxury apartment complex with luxury rent prices, the discussion of this particular project does not apply to students, low-income families, or young families saving to buy a home, as some poorly informed speakers tonight may try to propose. Please hear the voice of this young family already living in Park Santiago. I urge you to vote no. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Christine Denihelwig. I live on Valencia Street in Park Santiago for roughly 30 years. I am pro-development of the 2525 main parcel, and I want what is good for the future of Santa Ana. In order to attract solid growth in this city, the development of this property must fit current zoning laws for professional and administrative office use. Yes, I believe the city got it right when it designated this property for professional and administrative office use. We want that in our backyard, and I'd love for the union members here to build a project on that site.

Even though I'm older than some here, surprisingly, I love change. I work in the fast-paced IT industry, implementing cutting-edge technology solutions in multiple industries. My question to this city council is, why is the city not trying to create a technology incubator or hub on 2525 where startups with angel investors can work on next-generation technology? The medical technology field is hot. St. Joe's and other hospitals as well as major universities are close by, and if you offer a technology-centric workplace with a relaxed campus atmosphere, they will come.

Those companies, as they grow, will move into larger quarters in the same area if the pricing and environment is attractive. Don't tell me it can't be done or that the industry won't be attracted to Santa Ana. Be creative. We have a lot to offer. All you have to do is look at Silicon Beach in L.A. 10 years ago and today and the price point and caliber of the 3,500-plus rental units within half a mile of this property to know that this is exactly the solution that could make North Santa Ana a sought-after place to live and work. I wish the people who are against providing a cutting-edge, forward-thinking workplace environment

within walking distance of existing neighborhoods and those new 3,500 units would take the greater good into account by making it possible...

If you can wrap up, you're out of time.

I ask you not to buy into what the developer would have you believe, that he has a God-given right to control the narrative and your votes because of his donations to the city, that you have to take whatever he offers whenever he offers it, that you are not in a position of strength representing a vital city with choices at the bargaining table, and that you do not need to pay attention to the position position of the Santa Ana resident voters who put you in the offices you hold today. He does not live here. He does not vote here. We do, and we have proven ourselves to be anything but apathetic.

Thank you.

Richard Gomez.

Rich Gomez, followed by Donald Sepulveda.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Rich Gomez, and I represent the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters, 50,000 members strong. And I'm also representing the 1,000 members that reside, the members and their families that reside in the city of Santana.

And I just want to remind you, the Magnolia at the park EIR fails to accurately and adequately discuss impacts and mitigation, including in the areas of aesthetics, air quality, greenhouse gases, hazards and hazardous materials, hydrology and water quality, land use, noise, public services and utilities and traffic. A few examples of many deficiencies of the EIR are as follows. Hazards and hazardous materials. The city incorrectly concludes the closest school to the project site is half a mile away.

In fact, the closest school is the Rancho Santiago Community College, which is less than one quarter mile away from the project site. the city entirely failed to evaluate or mitigate impacts to the school in violation of sequa hydrology and water quality the city you can wrap up you're almost out of time go ahead

come on yeah yeah we got another 80 speakers please geez louise well look i'm going to tell

you right now. You know what? We are asking the council to consider the deficiencies of the EIR and respect the decision that the Planning Commission has made and we ask you not to approve the project. Thank you.

Donald Sepulveda and then Mark Willett.

Followed by Professor Steve Wardowski.

For those that are out there, I'm thinking maybe we go to a minute a person, because I don't know what's going to happen.

Or at midnight, we can cut it off and we'll continue it in two weeks.

So we want to go until 3 a.m.?

Alright, let's keep going.

Grant Hanninger, I believe it is, and Professor Steve Wardowski.

Followed by Susana Hernandez, I believe.

Honorable Mayor, members of the City Council, thank you very much for your time tonight. I know this is a very long meeting. And I'm here to support this project. As you well know, Orange County, all of Southern California, really the entire state has a massive housing crisis. We in Orange County need 100,000 units just to meet current demand. that is largely because over the past 40 years you gotta stop talking until we get a fourth

council member back for lack of a quorum you need four in order for it to be a city council meeting

so take a break

neither am i

Want to go to the restroom?

Right, we're going to take a three-minute break and let people go to the restroom, including us.

Let's go.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Let's go.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Let's go.

Let's go.

I'm glad you're going to have everybody's attention.

What we're going to do is we're going to, if I can get everybody's attention, if I can get everybody's attention, what I'm going to do is we still have, believe it or not, about three hours of speakers. and it's getting late and I said that at midnight we'd figure it out and go from there. So what I think the best thing to do is I'm going to give the cards of the people that spoke to the clerk. So everybody who has spoken already spoke.

All the people who haven't spoken are still going to have the opportunity to speak and I'm sure there's going to be some new people that may want to speak. but what I'm going to do is I'm going to suspend the hearing and continue it in two weeks. In other words, in two weeks, we're going to keep going. If there's somebody that absolutely has to speak right now because they came in from across the country, I'll let them speak, but we're going to go home, and I still have a council meeting that we have to finish.

Mr. Mayor, I want to respect because a lot of us were here from 5 o'clock until now. Correct. Can we be the first agenda item in that meeting?

Yeah, work with a clerk. Work with a clerk. She's got all the cards right there. If you submit a card, you can work with a clerk. We'll let you speak early next time.

Agenda item.

Yeah, we can do that.

Mr. Mayor.

All right, all right, hold on, we're not going to do it this way.

So-Go ahead. I have a question for Madam City Attorney. We can't just unilaterally decide to put this over. Does there have to be an act of the council to go ahead and continue the public hearings? Yeah, let's do it that way, but that's what I'm suggesting. On the record, we have somebody transcribing these proceedings, we can't just do it. So I would entertain a motion.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

You need to have a motion to adjourn.

But-To adjourn the item. Hold on, Mr. Mayor, you said midnight, it's still 1130, so we-

No, no, we have a lot more to do, believe me.

I know, but just let's clear this up because this is important. So to the extent that we aren't harming the rights of the public, we aren't harming the rights of the applicant, they both have rights to be able to be heard. Yeah, I don't like to stay up here late either, but that's what we signed up for. So to the extent that you walk us through this and make sure that we don't step on anybody's rights and everybody has an opportunity to be heard.

What would be appropriate, Madam City Attorney?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

You have the option of either continuing this evening-Which we're not going to do. You have the option of voting to continue the public hearing to a date specific, either at your next meeting in two weeks or a date before the next meeting.

All right. I would suggest let's just continue at the next regularly scheduled meeting. We can put it towards the front end of the agenda if we like. And if there's a motion to that extent, I'd entertain it.

I just...

Go ahead.

Okay. And I don't know if this would be a substitute motion, but I would rather have just one meeting specific for this because it's a large item. And I believe everyone has a part to do this. I'll be willing, like you're saying, this is something that we signed up for. If we're signed up for this, we could take another meeting, but just specific for this and nothing else.

Well, the other thing is we can lighten the agenda at the next council meeting to the city manager and just have this on the agenda.

Well, just for clarity, on first reading for public hearings, they have to be done at a regularly scheduled meeting. Would a continued hearing on this matter to a special meeting, would that complicate that rule?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So it depends. If this evening, if you could adjourn this meeting to a date specific, it would still be a regular adjourned meeting if you chose the date today.

And we have to adjourn it with that language.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

You would have to adjourn it today. You'd have to publish notice of the continued public hearing. If you don't have a date in mind, then you would wait for two weeks. But you were correct about that. This must be a regular meeting.

needs to be a regular meeting night i i would suggest let's go for a light agenda next row when is the next regularly scheduled meeting 19th february two weeks away

i've always been of the opinion to have a special meeting for this but uh and it is a special meeting

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

for you but it would be considered what we call an adjourned regular meeting so if this evening you could find a date that worked for all of you and that you announced to the public and that we would publish notice. And it was before the next regular meeting you could do that.

Mr. Mayor?

Yes, Jose.

Just a question and to the extent that the mayor knows they're okay with that. I'd be generally interested in Park Santiago's and the applicant's interest in trying to limit the number of speakers if we essentially-Do we want to do it all over again? Do you want to do it all over? Do you want to do it all over? Another seven-hour hearing?

Okay, all right. All right, let's do it. Let's do a seven-hour hearing in two weeks.

So let's do it in two weeks. I'm fine with that.

So, Mr. Mayor, I'm going to make a motion that we continue this on the 19th with a light agenda.

David PenalozaItem —

So, when we come back on the 19th, are all the speakers that spoke tonight going to be allowed to speak again? Yep.

Yes, absolutely.

David PenalozaItem —

All of them.

No. We have the cards.

No.

We have a motion for the 19th, and we'll have it as the only item on the agenda. Madam City Attorney, if it was a special meeting, it has to be before the 19th, correct?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Yes, and I just want to make sure we're being careful because I'm precise. It would be a regular adjourned meeting. You would be adjourning right now this item to a date other than February 19th.

We're saying the 19th.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Or you're going to just continue this item to your regular meeting on February 19th.

And can we also do this? Make this the first item on the agenda and then we go until we're done with it. Right, seven hours. Let's do it. Hopefully it won't be seven hours. All right. So we have a motion and a second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Here, Villegas and Iglesias.

And just one final question for clarity's sake. We segregated the note cards to make sure that the only speakers will be those who didn't speak tonight. Is that correct?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So in order to make this happen, Mayor, my recommendation would be, it's just a semantic thing, but this is what I recommend, is that you adjourn this public hearing item to February 19th to begin at, and you specify a time, and then we will publish on top of that adjournment the regular meeting. That will permit you to do what you want to do, because if you combine it with your next regular meeting, you may have to take public comment on all of it. What you're going to try to do is only hear from those speakers tonight who will not get the opportunity to speak. So I would adjourn this item. And we have their cards.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

19th and i will help the city clerk notice it properly all right we have a motion a second

those in favor please say for those that weren't able to come and it's going to be a regular meeting are they able to provide a a um comment a comment it will be up to the city council yes yes okay i

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

would okay so but it'll be just new speakers but we would not allow repeat speakers only speakers that did not get an opportunity to speak.

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

I'm sorry. I didn't understand what that last comment was. It's all of a sudden. I just couldn't hear it.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Sonia, Sonia, can you say a question? I'm happy to answer questions anybody afterwards.

Okay, they can call. All right, let's go on with the rest of the meeting.

I'm going to direct our attention to the joint session of the City Council on the housing authority

I would have no no no let's just power through it I'll entertain a motion

Mr. Mayor what is this for this is the housing authority of 88. All right, we have a motion and a second. I'll second it. Motion by Peñaloza. No, I had a motion, Mr. Mayor. All right, on motion, is there a second? It's on the Housing Authority. I will second it. All right. It's on the Housing Authority.

We can continue the window right now. Okay, we have a motion. Is this the housing authority?

I thought ADA, we already continued it.

I thought we already continued it.

We already continued it. We already voted. So why? Why were you doing that?

Alright.

Alright. So then we're good. Alright. so then that we rate adjourn

do you have any comments city manager no no I do not no comments and he comes

mr. mayor mr. mayor yes I do all right go ahead as a follow-up to the Willow item can you please we we need to establish an ad hoc not right now but

we will but call me with some name we will thank you we will any council

comment counselor Vince Armiento I just want to thank the clerk for doing a very good job tonight under a very stressful situation yes thank you

thank you everyone for coming out tonight have a good evening

Councillor Solorio. I just want to wish everybody a good evening. Councillor Peñaloza. Thank you Norma. You're doing great. Councillor Iglesias.

I do have comments. So I just want to report that I attended the Liga Cities, the training.

So that was something that it was very, for me it was very educational because I get to see what I did. what my role is as a city councilwoman. And just having this experience today, really, that conference really prepared me. So I'm also very appreciative of the meeting that we had with Willowick. And just the collaboration that we're having with that city council and the mayor there. I think it's very, very important for us to continue that collaboration.

and I guess the next time we see each other is going to be after Valentine's Day, right? So in the meantime, I wish you all a happy Valentine's Day. Smile, love each other. It's all about love in this community, and I just feel that what we're doing is the right thing for people, and I just want to thank staff for being very patient with me and for also providing me the information in a timely manner. And I just want to wish you all a very good night, and I'm glad that I'm going to get home before midnight.

Mr. Mayor, I too need to report out that I attended the new Mayor's and Council Members Academy last week in Irvine.

Do you want to speak, Rob? Come to the mic.

Go ahead. Ladies and gentlemen, I sat here for seven and a half hours. I froze my ass off outside waiting to address this council. I have never in 30 years of involvement with this city seen such an embarrassing evening as I have seen tonight. It took 8 hours to get to the same place that staff recommended on Friday to have this meeting on the 19th. What the hell is wrong with you?

now I'm just telling you this because if I don't say something tonight and I go home and my wife says where have you been and I'll say well I was at the city council meeting well did you say your piece no they told me to come back in two weeks are you guys kidding me really this is a damned embarrassment and you guys it feels like the city can't shoot straight can't shoot straight getting the right information out at the right time to the right people consistently you can't get an answer from anybody when you call somebody asks about doing a recall