Read the December 18 meeting.

If you can all please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

And then I want you to remain standing for our police chaplain, Bob Barnett, to give us our invocation.

Lord God, we begin this evening by inviting your presence here. We're mindful of the many decisions that have been made over this year and the blessings you have bestowed. Continue to grant us favor and wisdom and success in our city. Bless our city council members. Bless our mayor. Give them wisdom and insight, Lord God, especially for the decisions this night. And give us new vision for this new year that quickly approaches. In the name of the Lord. Amen.

You may be seated.

Oh, wait, they're bringing me one.

All right, I'm going to go ahead and take one speaker. I'm going to send Caller. Alan, are you here?

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Mayor, I just want to remind you that we do have reportable options.

And Ryan Rosa Fonsai.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Mayor, I do like to remind you we do have two items of reportable action.

Go ahead. We'll let Alan speak and we'll report out.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

Okay.

Go ahead, Alan. I've been behaving myself, Mr. Demira, so I was hoping to get a Christmas present for the kids of Artisha Pilar. in in item number 29 a councilman Jose Solorio and Juan Villegas was nice enough to give us a little grant that grant would go to reimburse us for an event that we had this last Saturday at Romero Cruz which had about 400 parents and kids come and we were very surprised we thought they would drive their cars there because we were afraid of parking but you know most of the parents walk

there. They walk all the way from Bristol over to Fairview and that just shows you the needs in our community in which we're responding to. I'd like to also thank my wife Ruby who really organized it with Trish and Mario Morales and Luz and the other neighborhood leaders and also Diane Torres who is a principal over there at Romero Crew. And I want to thank you Juan and Jose for coming out you know and supporting us it was really important to us okay and I know you love kids now Juan and I know you have good plans for

them and that really means a lot to us so I want to thank you guys if you would approve this grant could it would help us to pay what we're already spent out of our pocket but also will jump start activities in 2019 and we could the more that we get, the more things that we can do. So, if that's the item, can I talk about

something else? Thank you, Alan. Now we're going to have our city attorney, if you can report anything we had in closed session. And then Ryan Rosa, if you can step forward, you'll be following Alan. Thank you, Alan. And thank you, Mayor. We have two items of

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

reportable action in item 1C, City of Santa Ana versus McDonald's. The City Council unanimously approved a settlement of $1.55 million for goodwill value. And the item number 1D in the matter of Rojas versus the City of Santa Ana. The City Council on a 5-2 vote approved a settlement of $350,000. That's all the reportable action I have.

Thank you. Now go ahead, Mr. Ryan. Go ahead and speak, sir.

Good evening, Mayor Polito, honorable council members my name is ryan reza farsi i'm here to speak on multiple items 22a 22b 25e 25i 25 j 25r 25s and 55c and 55d well basically uh we do have some new honorable council members up there this evening from the last time i was here i just wanted to bring to your attention that I did bring bring it to the attention of many cities starting on November 27th I started at 10 a.m. in Los Angeles I spoke in public comment

and then I went ahead to the city of Beverly Hills California and then Diamond Bar California Fullerton California Santa Ana California I walked into the city council meeting and spoke again in the city of Mission Viejo california handed the documents to the city clerk and also went again and spoke in the city of newport beach that evening and handed the documents to the city of newport beach clerk i also went ahead the following week i went to oregon and i handed this document to the city clerk in the city of portland and the city clerk in the city of salem oregon the next day i drove up i specially spent the

night in Seattle and handed it to the city clerk in Seattle and the city clerk in Olympia Washington so I hit up six counties in three states and what am I asking is the same thing I'm asking what I've been asking for the last few months what is these cities doing with our money how much are they putting into form of debts in our backs are these debts bonded what are these debts That's supposed to be paid off, ladies and gentlemen. This is very important about America. What's happening is that some of these cities have a runaway checkbook, and they have no intention of debalancing their budget.

I hope you new honorable gentlemen and lady who got up there do a better job than your predecessors, because they were up there 12 years, and they were not able to balance nothing, David. They didn't balance anything. So this is the problem with America. we haven't had anyone balance the budget for 50 years since Richard Nixon I hope that this is coming to an end soon we're gonna find a way to come out of this hole thank you for my time and consideration basically my ongoing concern is how are we spending this money and what what are we taking in

terms of initiative to budget our future thank you All right, go get me a caution or something.

All right, I'm now going to take something out of order. I know we have several nominees that are going to be sworn in. And what I want is to turn things over to the city clerk right now, and let's get those folks taken care of so they can go home.

We actually need to confirm their appointments first, so I need a vote for items 13A, B, and C.

All right, I would entertain a motion on those items confirming appointees. Is there a motion?

David PenalozaItem —

Second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second. Both. Your first motion is a solid second. Before the first. Yes. Okay, no worries. We're doing well. So those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries unanimously. Please, Madam Clerk, go ahead.

Great. If I can please have Evelina Oliver, Mike Tardif, Nancy Sandoval-Bailon, Chris Schmidt, Stephen Nguyen, Angie Cano, Angie Gomez, and Art Pedrosa, if you're present, if you can please join me up here, please.

Thank you.

Thank you.

by loan Angie Gomez Evelyn Oliver Steven Wynn my tardive our Pedroza to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic that I bear true faith and allegiance to the

Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of California and I

take this obligation freely without any mental reservations our purpose of

evasion and faithfully discharge the duties which I am about to enter. Thank you.

Absolutely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . .

Thank you.

Before we start, I just want to thank Mayor Pro Tem Villegas because he's already taking care of me. Somebody swapped my seat and it keeps going lower and lower and lower. so he gave me his which is a little hot a little little taller and he's a little taller than I am but hopefully we'll get him a higher seat here in a moment but if you wonder why we're making playing musical chairs that's what's been going on we're trying to let's see how this one works for whatever reason the city

attorney's chair looks pretty comfortable yeah that's all right he found one that works let's go on to the consent calendar i would like on item 19f to request a 30-day continuance i don't know if we take that as a separate item madam clerk all right so on on 19f i'd entertain a motion for a 30-day continuance, please. Okay, we have a motion by Peñalosa, second by Sarmiento. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. There was one loud aye by our Mayor Pro Tem.

Now, any other items that people wish to pull? Mayor Pro Tem? Mr. Mayor, I'd like to pull a 25C. 25C. Council Member Iglesias, Which one do you want to call?

I have a couple of them, and I just have a quick question. So it's 25A, 22A, let's see, 25O, 25P, and 25Q.

All right, so any other items? If not, I would entertain a motion on the balance.

Mr. Mayor?

Yes, go ahead.

i'm not sure if this one was mentioned but uh i do want to pull item 25 in and as in nancy

all right so let's do that we have a motion on the balance by um council member vince sarmiento is there a second on the balance second we have two seconds the clerk can choose those in favor please say aye aye aye those opposed motion carries now i believe council member iglesias I think she had the first items that she pulled.

For 22A, it talks about the purchase of equipment and services, which is to award purchase order. I don't know if you can hear me. To Los Angeles Truck Center for two compressed natural gas crane trucks. and it seems that we only had one bid. And it's for the amount for two trucks, it's $683,000. So I'm just wondering if the $683,000, so it would be about, what, $341,000 each green. Is that a going price for these type of vehicles or equipment? Because that's something that wasn't clear on the agenda.

Council Member Glacis, if I can have our public works director respond to that, or actually... Can you speak up, please? If I can have our fleet and facilities manager respond to that, Mr. John Aguilar.

Good evening, Mayor, Council Members. I have Steve McHugh here, who's also the fleet supervisor. The items in question on 22A are for the clean air energy. They're part of our green initiative, and the cost is accurate for alternate fuel and CNG.

But is that the going rate of the vehicles? Yes, ma'am. $341,000 each?

It is. That is correct.

Okay. So for future, those are the kind of questions that I'll be asking. So for staff, if you guys can provide that as backup documentation, that'd be great. So you would have to – okay. So that's the going rate for all the cars?

That is, and for your edification and the Council's edification, we have a long-term plan for our green initiative, and CARB, California Air Resource Board, requires us to take vehicles off the road when they've exceeded their life because they're polluters. So we do have a plan for all these vehicles, and those two were part of that plan.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

All right, I want to entertain a motion on this item. Move it. Second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. Next item.

So, yes, this is the one that we're having to change the term of the agreement with PlaceWorks to provide an environmental assessment. And I believe this is for the Rancho San Tavisano College Center at Centennial Park. Is that correct? I'm understanding it correctly? That is correct. Okay. So I know that here it talks about being, more in the backup documentation I think was the staff report that talked about it was like the land acquisition was like 2.6 acres. I believe a worse. Rancho Centennial Community College has their continuing education center.

and but then we said that we would I guess swap it with the other provide more land for three parks if I'm not mistaken which was the Pacific one on McFadden correct and then there's one like on Lacey 6th and Lacey 6th and Lacey and then the one on rate rate and Myrtle correct so my question for you would be and then I know that's at that the amount of that land was like about 2.89 I guess the one that we're getting in I guess as a land conversion correct yes so my question is because I live on that

side of town and the parking structure for for branching the Sun Tile Community College is that it was that included the another structure I'm sorry but the parking lot was that included as part of the square footage or or anything to do the assessment for the national parks? No. So then how much would it be in total square footage if we were to include the parking to, so for me it would be more like to see like a true assessment on how much we're really giving up as a community to Rancho Central Community College because it's pretty big. And then also there's also

a, I would say it's kind of like a staff parking behind I think that the child care center is at like between the baseball field, that too is used by Rancho Centauri Community College staff. So is that part of also the assessment that they're inquiring about the land swap too?

Right. Council Member Iglesias, Lisa Rudloff, Executive Director of Parks, Recreation, and Community Services. Thank you for understanding. This is my eighth week, and I need to call Ron Ono. I'm not sure of the parking size, and I'd like to call him up to answer that question. Okay.

looks like I have a fan in the audience here to answer your question the parking lot north of the college and also south of the college was not included in the 2.6 acre allocation the acreage I'm not quite sure but it looks like it's around close to a little under two acres if you included both both parking lots that were impacted then that we submitted the information to the National Park Service and they are currently reviewing the documents they haven't made a determination yet if the the parking impact would be required as one of the land conversion items they did

indicate that in our report to them that the that the use of that parking lot by the college doesn't impact the use of parking for the park sites they're still

available parking areas for the park site because when we go there we see it full then it's mostly for the students of that center so it's really not excited even though it is it is kind of like a first-come first-served in a way So the ones that are there, it's mostly the students, so it doesn't really give a benefit to the broader community. So I'm just wondering why isn't it included when they do the entire assessment, not just the buildings themselves?

Yeah, and that question has been asked, and that's why the National Park Service asked us to do a parking analysis to include that parking lot. We have done that. Placework has done that analysis along with the Recreation Valley Report. Both documents have been submitted to the National Park Service. They are currently reviewing it. And as I indicated earlier, they haven't made a determination at this point. They indicated to me verbally that they hope to give us some indication sometime by either the end of this month or early next month.

And then another question I have, and I don't know if this is something that you can answer. I know that since it's kind of like a joint use in a way, kind of like their ranch center is leasing it from us, right? But how much is it that they're paying for that property to the city? Just buff numbers. I don't know if you have that. What percentage are we charging them to use that center?

You're talking about what the college is paying the city? The college currently pays to the city 7.4% of the operational and maintenance costs of the common space of the park site. And that equals to approximately $33,000 annually.

$23,000?

$23,000. I mean, $33,000 annually.

And how much does it really cost to maintain it?

I'm not sure what the total cost is to maintain that parking lot, but the total cost to maintain the park site is calculated and it fluctuates based on what we spend every year on the maintenance of that park site. And that's why I've indicated it's an average and that's why it's identified as a percentage in the agreement.

If you could, especially for me, it would be good to understand how much it is that we're, as a city, we're investing to maintain, you know, that side of the park. And then if they're only giving us 7.8% of that cost, then it's, I just want to see where the fair tradeoff is. And then my understanding is that the railroad park, the one on McFadden, who is, because I believe that's also part of this agreement, right? So who maintains that park?

The city does.

The city, we don't get any contributions or anything from the college?

No.

Okay, so how much does it cost to maintain that park?

I'll have to get to you that information later. We have the cost to maintain all our park sites individually, but I don't have that particular cost for that site yet.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Sarmento, you have a question on that same item?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem. Just a couple of quick questions. Good to see you, Ron, by the way. You're looking young as usual. You've got to give us your secret.

So is the multi-level parking structure, to the Council Member's point, to Council Member Iglesias' point, is there any exclusivity on that? I mean, is it somehow restricted for the use of just those at the college or those taking classes there? What's the purpose of that?

No, the multi-use parking structure that was built by the San Diego State School District, that one is under our joint use agreement. It's about 500 plus stalls in that. And by the way, that structure, the count of that structure, even though we have use of that stall for programs and events, was not included in the count for the land exchange because the college does not impact that particular structure.

How far is it from the college site or where the classrooms are? Boy, that's... It's pretty... I mean, it's on the other side of the park.

It's on the other side of the lake, so it's pretty difficult to get to.

So the students or those attending the classes on the campus are normally parking in the surface street lot, which is directly in front of the campus. That's correct. And the Pacific Electric Park, in addition to some of these other sites, were those acquired with funds through this land swap or land exchange through the NPS?

Well, no. The Pacific Electric Park and the other park sites, the city purchased those sites as part of the agreement to do the land exchange. And we submitted those sites to the National Park Service. to make sure that those sites are acceptable as equal value as far as land appraised value and equal size and equal recreational value. That's why we're doing all these reports that's necessary to submit to the National Park Service so they can make a determination that it's an equal exchange.

So that's the purpose of the item before us tonight is to do the environmental assessment so we can report back to the National Park Service that these – We couldn't find really a space that was equivalent in size to the 2.6, and so that's why we have these multiple spaces that turned into, for lack of a better word, smaller parks or mini parks that we have now throughout the city. Yeah, that's correct. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there another – any more comment on this item? 25A?

I'll just make a comment, then I won't make a motion we haven't made already. this has been an ongoing partnership that we've had with Rancho Santiago Community College District and it's you know largely to educate parents many of you know immigrants who are trying to learn English or get their citizenship degree the vast majority are local you know Santa Ana residents people know that that campus is there and maybe at some point we could change around formulas and whatnot but I think with respect to just you know like for like land and dealing with the federal government I think we are moving in the

right process and I know there'll be more steps and on questions of reimbursements and formulas I think maybe once we kind of sort out all the things with the feds we can you know revisit you know our relationship with with Rancho and Santa Ana College but well with that I want to thank the staff for putting this together and would like to make a motion in support.

Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. Madam Clerk, which is the next item?

25C.

25C. Can I have Deputy Chief Comiskey speak to 25C for us, please?

Yes, sir. What we're talking about with 25C is the CopLogic Solutions Online Police Report System.

This is a maintenance agreement. It deals specifically with the ePolice reporting software that we have online. That ePolice suite we found is not as user-friendly as we would like to see it. We have been talking with the vendor. The vendor is going to be making some alterations to it. We're also going to be adding additional language opportunities within that e-reporting system. It is challenging with the alternate language when you talk about adding narratives to police reports because we'll then have to go back and have those transcribed. However, we are looking to see what that can bring.

Additionally, we're looking to continue with the maintenance on the system that allows us to have attorneys contact the record section which is already understaffed and then electronically request police reports so that we can have those processed electronically and we don't get caught with a whole bunch of paper more than

we already have. Thank you sir so it sounds pretty promising thank you very much. Thank you, Deputy Chief. So can I get a motion to approve? Move the item. Second. All those in favor say aye. Opposed? Motion carries. I'm going to move on to the business calendar. Item 55. Not yet. We still have some consent calendar items. We have what? 25 N. Oh, N as in Nancy. That's Council Member Solorio. Yes. This

This item deals with our solid waste agreement with waste management and two laws in particular, AB 1826. Looks like the state has notified us that we're out of compliance a little bit, so this is an effort to get us back in compliance. The staff was helpful in providing me additional information, and maybe they can just come up and correct me if my understanding is wrong. But I think that the situation here, even though we could say, well, maybe it was a shortcoming of staff or the contractor.

I think my council colleagues that were here prior know that on the bid for new waste services, that's been delayed substantially. Probably close to two years, realistically, I bet, is what that is. and so i think some of the changes and recommendations proposed here would have been addressed earlier through that other process but we haven't really been in a position to do that so we're addressing it this way there is a a cost to the city but i think uh you know at the end of the day these types of contracts are also passed through contracts and so i think it is uh

you know it's a band-aid but it also just should put focus back on the council that there are other things in the broader waste services contract that if we don't sooner than later do a new contract there will be other things that we might fall out of compliance with and cost can be substantial like on this if we don't fix this problem accordingly we're looking at fines of up to ten thousand dollars per day and so that adds up real quick so I do appreciate staff bringing this forward even earlier would have been better but staff was very good and providing the

information for backup that i wanted and so i do think it's a it's a fair resolution thank you

thank you and with that i'd like to move the item those in favor please say aye aye aye those opposed motion carries i believe the next item madam clerk and who had that one okay just to understand the

agreement. This is with the care ambulance services and it states the amount being, is it $22 million that it is that we're authorizing or is it if I put all the amounts together like the $17 million, the $12 million it comes up to $52 million. What's the number that we're looking at right now?

Thank you. Catherine Downs, Executive Director of Finance and Management Services. The initial five-year term would be what you are approving tonight is $22.9 million. If the options are exercised, the first option would be worth another $17 million, and the second option would be worth another $12.5 million. Those do require action to exercise those options. And if those options are exercised, then you would have a total of 10 years of service for a total contract price of $52.5 million.

For 10 years. So then if we divide it up in 10 years, so it's actually like roughly averages it out to $5 million per year?

As an average. It starts out at $4.4 million for the first full fiscal year.

Okay. And just for transparency purposes, do we get like a monthly report from them, yearly report? I mean, how do we go about seeing what we're paying for?

Let me have some assistance from one of my staff.

Excuse me.

Will Holt is our treasury manager and he has a better hand on managing this contract.

Good evening, council members, council member Iglesias. So within the contract, we have the right to a variety of reporting. This is something that can be customized. last. We take advice from the Orange County Fire Authority into the nature of this information. Also, as an aside, in addition to this ambulance contract, the city retains the right for the billing of the services. So we have a vendor, Whitman Enterprises, that performs the billing. And we get from them a monthly report in addition. And it goes into very great detail.

So since they are the billing agent, that is a regular source for us to also kind of verify the information we're getting in regards to care. So I think we're in a very strong position informationally. And we do monitor this. The Orange County Fire Authority is one of the agencies we have to confer with when we approve an extension of the agreement. So it's not done solo. It's done in concert with them. I can say that they have been very approving of care as the incumbent provider, and we're hoping that that will continue as it goes forward into the future.

But this is a large contract, and we will monitor it very closely.

Okay. Thank you.

A motion?

I got a question.

Go ahead.

Yes.

Myself, I'm not necessarily always in favor of long-term contracts. There's so many variables that come into play and so many different things, and so I'm a little concerned. If I read it correctly, it says the initial one five-year with two three-year terms coming down the pipe. So a total of 11 years? No, it's a five-year plus a three-year and then a two-year for a total of 10. For a total of 10. And the reason for the length is you've got to get really good competitive bidding. You have to have a long enough contract for the amortization of vehicles,

for the hiring of the staff and the training of the EMTs and all the rest of this. The original contract we had, which began, I believe, April 12, 2012, was on an emergency basis. And so while there was a two-part RFP that was done, the thought at the time was not to try to lay out a 10-year contract right out of the gate, but to do something for a shorter period of time. So this has been our first opportunity to really evaluate and take a look at the benefits of having a longer contract but that is at the discretion of the City Council so

if we go forward five years and we're not satisfied then we won't be extending this agreement so the extension will come back to us whether we're excited happy with the process or not yeah there's an ability for staff to when I say staff the city manager and the clerk of the City Council to approve the extensions but that's only on the approval of the Orange County Fire authority so anything less than that would cause us to come back I'm sure to the City Council and perhaps go out again to RFP all right thank you very

welcome any other questions councilor Sarmiento so so thank you for the presentation and thank you for for addressing a lot of the questions it It looks like 147 vendors were notified about the contract, and we had 10 vendors download it, and we ultimately only had two vendors that competed for this. Sure. One being the incumbent vendor, the other one being, I believe, doctors. Doctors, ambulance. Doctors. And so it looks like there's, you know, the benefit of care is that we have some history

with them and we were able to evaluate their response time and you know this is such a critical service that we obviously used to this used to be something done in-house because we had our you know our department and then we also worked with um with contractors but it is such a critical service that we provide to our residents that um i really you know i mean there was a robust outreach effort it appears but any you know thoughts on why only why only two

yes the only one well there were two and they were competitive so you can if you take a look in the RFCA you'll see the scoring of the points so this was a relatively competitive comparison but the nature of the services such as there's a large infrastructure of vehicles the staging of the vehicles and and what not that is required. And so it is geographic and territorial as well. So yes, an incumbent that also is providing services locally to other providers has some advantages that are just built in

that allow them to bid more strongly financially. So in this evaluation, with the exception of one single criteria, we're both bidders tied. CARE was evaluated as being superior in each one of the criteria. Now, not by huge percentages or huge number of points, because this has reduced two points to a 500-point system. but for example if you take a look at the financial end of it and the city council specifically asked us in this contract to add that element that you know care received 100% of the points

and doctors ambulance 67 and this had to do just with the financial nature of the bidding so it's very difficult when you have limited number of potential competitors yes there were 149 parties informed We use Planet Bid, and there were 10 downloads. But when you take a look at who can compete, there are natural restraints in regards to that. Someone who does not have physical continuity with the boundaries of the city of Santa Ana is going to face larger costs to stage their operations. And so that is in the nature of the beast.

Thank you, Will. And I recall when we first contracted with CARE, I remember there was some discussion that this is such a large contract, this is such a large part of their service delivery area because of our city, the city of size. Did they have a sub headquarters here, or didn't we request that of them? So they, yes. Give me one second. To the extent that this is such a large contract, and it is, to my colleague's point, an extensive contract because we're front-loading it five years and then having the renewals thereafter,

wouldn't it be something, and maybe this is something I think we'd like to have you and the staff do and Mr. City Manager to consider, in the future when we do contract with our vendors for such a long period of time, for such a large amount, we should require them to have at least a presence here. And I know Waste Management was here a little while ago. They used to have a presence here because their contract has been with us for a number of years. But that's what I think is a good practice for us to at least invite them. And I know that we made that overture to them, so I hope they had a good reason for that.

They actually do have a presence, and they have multiple locations they stage from. So while their primary headquarters lies in the City of Orange, They definitely have presence in the city of Santa Ana. They're paying business license taxes at multiple locations. So you're right. That was something that was discussed originally. That was a concession that they made previously under the contract. They've maintained it. And it would have been something that Doctors Ambulance would have had to have stepped up to. And, you know, they made an attempt in their proposal. So, again, it was a competitive bidding situation.

doctors ambulance you know competed very strongly but there are natural advantages and cares record has been peerless so the rating came out the way that it did and I think it was very fairly organized and done I can assure

you thanks well you're all right so I believe do we enter and we need a motion or we have one on the side of them?

Move the item.

Okay. Is there a second? Second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries. Are we done with the consent? And who had that? Okay.

So just a question, just to understand the maintenance cost of using, I guess, the joint use, and we're pretty much swapping, I guess, responsibilities on the land that we have.

How much does it cost to maintain Angels Park?

I'll have to get back to you on that. I don't know that we have. I know that we maintain Angels Park during our time and the tennis courts, and then the school district, after their use, they maintain both sites. but I can get back to you with the amount of money it costs us to maintain that park.

So we get money from the district to maintain Angels Park?

No.

No.

It's a no-cost agreement.

Okay.

So we pay utilities for Angels Park and the Neal Machander Tennis Center. and the reason we do that is because we use the tennis center lights at night. Is that correct? Okay.

Okay. So then we're just responsible for the use that we give it. Is that my understanding or is that wrong? So like you're saying, because Angels Park is nowhere near Santa Ana High School and I know the tennis court, right, is that what we're talking about? Correct. I mean, they use it for their games, for their tournaments, whatever it is. so I'm just wondering how much does it cost to maintain Angels Park versus how much does it cost to maintain the tennis courts. Is that something that it's a fair swap? That's pretty much my concern. Okay. So, yeah. So pretty much that's my comment.

I would like to know how much it costs. And so, but, yeah, we have, you know, it is a good use for our community, so I'm in agreement with it, but I just want to know how much it costs us as a city. to be able to do that type of operations. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. So I believe a motion and a second on this is needed. I'd entertain one.

Motion to approve.

We have a motion and a second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye, those opposed, motion carries. Now we're through the... One more. Okay, go ahead.

I promise the next ones won't be as long as I just said. For this one, for the Downtown Inc., I just, it says, authorized city manor and a clerk of the council to execute first amendments to the Downtown Merchandise Fund operating agreements in the amount of $200,000. So it's $100,000 per organization. So are those the only two organizations that could provide this type of service, or is it something that's already been agreed by the city to only have certain members of our community be able to provide the services?

Those are the only two that we currently contract with to manage the downtown functions, and each are awarded $100,000 a year. The reason the amendment is before you is because we're asking for an additional $100,000 for next year, so we have to amend the date and the amount in the agreements.

So $100,000 that covers what?

The $100,000 covers numerous from marketing to outreach to special events and their own management costs for their administrative staff.

Okay, so do we have any oversight from the city to sit on these committees to make sure that they're complying with what they're supposed to be complying with?

We do. We have our economic development team, including our downtown liaison, Julie Castro, that monitors them and works with them constantly.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome. Just one question, Mr. Mayor. Go ahead, please. So, thanks, Stephen. You're welcome. Thanks for standing up there and not sitting down. So, I see that both budgets, and I'm glad representatives from both organizations are here, and I think for the most part everything, you know, is going well. And I know that both organizations, to my understanding, work well together. So that's important that there's cohesiveness, even though there are two disparate organizations. They still communicate with one another. Hopefully there's some mutual sharing of calendars and things that are going on.

So it's more of a complement rather than sort of a segregated downtown. But I do see that the personnel costs for both is about, when you combine the two, about 50,000 right of that you know of the total budget so is it our staff or

whose staff are we talking about? No it's actually their staff members who are actually sitting next to each other so that's a good sign that they're not on opposite sides of the room sitting right next to each other both Madeline and

Ryan are here tonight. And what's why is there a disparity between one personnel cost which appears to be 18,000 the other personnel cost is 42 so is it just one's more top-heavy on the on the administrative no Ryan could you come up

and address that thanks we'll have Ryan address that only because he's in the front seat he's closer right and we actually carpooled together too so it's really good sign yes so the merchant fund is a supplemental budget that's provided through the parking revenue so every year piece the parking revenue that is generated downtown stays in downtown and funds a bunch of different programs like our community-oriented policing and one of those programs is this merchant fund so this is a supplement to our other budget which comes from business license taxes in the downtown so how we

split our budgets between those two budgets is different so they have other finance or employee costs in their bid budget whereas we split ours evenly across the two budget so that's where you

see the real disparity. All right yeah because the line items for both just don't seem to match up well so that was my only concern maybe one staff is thinner than the other or maybe somebody's got a good secret on how they can be real lean but okay thank you for taking that question. Thanks Steve.

You're welcome thank you very much and have a happy holiday. Likewise thank you.

I believe we need a motion to say on this one.

Motion. We have a motion to second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. Now we go on to our business calendar. Item 55A, I would entertain a motion.

Motion to approve.

Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. 55B, I would entertain a motion. Move the item. I'll second it. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. The supposed motion carries. 55C.

I have a comment. Please go ahead. Yes, this is an item that was continued previously. I do want to thank the personnel, Director, Mr. Pham, for addressing the concern that I have had, which was, you know, we don't want to add additional responsibilities onto employees without making just changes to their job classifications or salary ranges. And so I'm appreciative of the additional review and would like to move this item.

Okay, we have a motion. Do we have a second?

Second.

Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. The opposed motion carries. 55D is in David. We have two speakers.

Kendall Gaglio in Italian, I believe, and Carla Duane. Kendall is from Berg. Carla is from Lyme.

Mr. Mayor, I might suggest, because staff did put some information together to... Do you want a brief staff, Fraud?

Do you want to give us a recommendation or a presentation, please? It's just like a two, three. Do we have a scooter so you can ride back and forth here around, up and down the aisles? The competing scooter is one bird in one line. We'll have a race and see who wins. You might both crash.

We have them at the corporation yard, actually.

Bring the mic down.

We do have a brief presentation.

Okay, please. William.

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. William Galvez, City Engineer. And we just have a couple of slides for you to look at. First off, what is micromobility? And I think a picture is worth a thousand words, as you'll appreciate this picture here. What we're trying to do is we're looking at highly dense urban areas that operate much different than suburban areas. We think micromobility, which is code word for scooters and shared bicycle use. We believe that we want to try a pilot program for about 90 days so that we see how micromobility might help the city. We are also looking forward to capturing a lot of the data.

Because micromobility works using high-tech mobile apps that you can reserve the scooter, and then you can pay for the scooter using this app. The city is in great position to actually get a lot of this data and what we're hoping to do is to figure out where all these mobility nodes are at. You know, where folks are in the downtown area. Are they connecting to the Santa Ana College? Are they connecting to some of the other park locations in the city? And that way we can help plan out into the future better mobility for the city in general.

Through this 90-day pilot program, we're also hoping to figure out how to best manage these kinds of systems. So the 90-day pilot program is going to help us learn how to operate into the future, and also it's going to capture data that's going to be very, very beneficial to mobility in the city. So this really concludes the presentation. I just wanted to offer that there are some deal points in the presentation. Essentially, we have requirements of the mobility operators, such as Lime and Bird.

We also have some guidelines for the actual rider of the scooter. And then, of course, we have some liability requirements to ensure that the city doesn't get exposed for risk. risk and so we worked that through the city attorney's office. So if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer those.

And if I may add, scooters started popping up in large cities such as San Francisco and LA about a year ago. And they are supposed to help improve mobility in downtown areas. The city of Santa Ana will be the first city to implement the scooter program in Orange County. And we're looking forward to gathering more data and make mobility in the city much easier for many people and businesses here.

And as William said, we're offering this pilot program to allow two of the largest scooter companies to come and operate here in Santa Ana. Each company will provide about 500 scooters and then we'll study how this will improve mobility and how we can use the data that we gather from these two operators. Thank you.

All right. We have Councilman Roman Reina.

I love the concept. Definitely creative, thinking out of the box. And I'm sure any time we do a pilot program there's going to be some challenges. I've seen in other parts of the country they have something similar with bicycles, which are very useful and helpful. But I notice here that it says they must be wearing a helmet. So that raises a couple of questions as are we going to store helmets, are we going to have helmets there? What's the safety issue about somebody having lice and moving it from one to another? So I have a little concern with that. So basically to use a scooter, a user has to add the app on their mobile phone.

And then they have to read the use agreement and abide by its conditions. The scooter company will be providing free helmets at different locations throughout the city. So the person who wants to use a helmet can get one from various locations. Interesting. Looking forward to seeing how it progresses. Thank you.

Thank you. Now, Councillor Cesar, Iglesias, please.

So what's the initial cost to the city?

Zero.

Sorry, telling me zero.

There is no initial cost to the city. We will be charging each operator about a permit fee, about $1,200 a year. Okay. The people who will be using the scooter will have, of course, to pay, I believe it's $1 to unlock the scooter and then there is a cost per mile or per minute about 15 to 20 cents. But there is no cost to the city.

Okay. So then how about for everything's insurance, everything's liability. When they rent these scooters, does the insurance come, say they bump into something, they break something? I mean, how would you handle that?

Each company, each scooter company will have to indemnify the city for the use within the city. So our city attorney reviewed the conditions of the pilot program, and we believe we will be protected against any lawsuits or mishaps if something happens.

Because there's, so is there going to be a just a certain, I guess, section of the city that they can use this or can they go citywide using this? I'm just trying to understand the concept.

These scooters are very useful within downtown districts. It's going to be up to each company where to distribute those, but people can take them anywhere they want. Because other cities surrounding us, they have they have not approved it. A scooter can go across the borders but it cannot be used from another city going back into the city of Santa Ana. The scooters will be picked up almost on a daily basis by either the company or certain people who also want to make some money but they pick them up, charge them at night and then provide them at different locations.

Would they be using the same, I guess, like the bike lanes that they've already installed in the city? Yes. The ones that they'll be using?

The ideal place to use these scooters is in the bike lane.

Okay.

And, you know, it also, the use agreement that a user will have to abide by is to use them on the street, not on the sidewalk. And this is what we also listed in our conditions of use.

Because I'm concerned because there are places in the city where we have the bike lanes, but there's also like potholes. Yes. I mean, they're riding the scooter, and then so you're saying there's no liability to the city, but what would happen in that instance? There's a pothole, something happens, they fly, and so is that the insurance from the carrier that would cover it, or would that be a city liability?

Well, we looked at model ordinances from other cities, and we looked at conditions imposed by other cities. we try to use regulations that are already adopted by other cities. And that's the purpose of the pilot program. We're going to run it and see how things go, and then draft our final ordinance and change our municipal code in order to allow these, if they turn out to be beneficial. So it's a pilot program for about two and a half months, but will give us a lot of information and data to make sure that we implement something that will protect everybody that uses the right of way,

whether sidewalks, streets, cars, bicycles, and so forth.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Solorio, please. Do you want to go first? Do you want to speak as well? Go ahead. Go first. Go ahead.

David PenalozaItem —

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to voice my support for the micro-mobility programs that are operating countrywide. I've been to numerous cities across the country where I've used them myself, the bikes, the scooters. And we went to New Orleans, rented a car, and the car sat in the driveway for the whole week because we were using these bikes that we were renting across the street. The only concerns that I have of them operating in our city is liability with the city and who's responsible for these uses because when I went through the app, I don't think there was a terms and conditions part.

David PenalozaItem —

I might have missed it or just agreed to it without even seeing it. But that's one concern. The other concern is I saw some yesterday in downtown, in our downtown area. A lot of them were missing. The little bells, the labels were ripped off. I know that we have a large homeless population in the city, and they're very crafty. so these scooters you know to looking out for bird and lime you know they will get stolen taken apart they'll find a way to for whatever reason you know I think that's something that needs to take

David PenalozaItem —

be taken into consideration as well and I think that was it for now but you know it was just a it's a direction we're moving in with in regards to transportation we don't want to be left behind If we don't do it, the next city over is going to do it and adopt it. So I thank SAF for going the 90 day pilot route and see how it works out. But these are things that we should take into consideration for the safety of the user and the nuisance problem that would come with it, with people stealing them or ripping them apart for parts.

You know, of course there is no perfect solution. There will definitely be certain situations where people will even misuse them or throw them on the sidewalk instead of leaving them standing in a safe place in order not to block sidewalks. I believe the program have a rating for each user, and if a user keeps abusing or not following their scooter etiquette like they call it, then they will be banned from using it. So I think that's something already included in the program.

David PenalozaItem —

The thing was that I was able to operate the scooter without unlocking it with the app by just pedaling. I'm not sure if that was a defective scooter, if that's how all scooters operate. So that's another thing that we should look at, Bird and Lime, is the ability to these scooters be locked and not be able to pedal with your foot if you're not paying for it. I know that with the bikes that I've used and the others in New Orleans there was a one of the if you didn't return it to a certain area you would get charged like a $10 fee for not returning the bike to certain areas so I didn't want

David PenalozaItem —

to get charged ten bucks so I would go out of my way to find and they're there everywhere the little areas where you can leave them so that it avoids that nuisance as well so if you have when the in the app with the scooters saying, you know, telling users, hey, return it at this corner or this alley or this area, and you won't get charged an additional fee, which is, I think, it helps with people returning them to and not just leaving them anywhere.

And I agree with you. We are looking into that. Actually, the city of Long Beach has designated areas. They paint the sidewalk like scooter, you know, area. So the purpose of the pilot program, again, to better understand how this works, you know, Each city is different, and then we can implement the best management practices that we can.

David PenalozaItem —

One last question. The slide says that they won't be able to operate on citywide bike lanes. Is that accurate? Because I'm thinking if you can't use it on the sidewalk and you can't use it in the bike lanes, so in the middle of traffic.

Yes, they are not supposed to be used on sidewalks. They're supposed to be used in the roadway where bicycles are riding, so basically in bike lanes.

David PenalozaItem —

Okay, because your slide says prohibits use on downtown sidewalks and on citywide bike lanes.

That's the existing ordinance, and so that's why we want to initiate a pilot program so that we can work out the permanent ordinance and changes to municipal code. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Now I believe Councillor Salonio.

Yes, thank you. Good comments. I've had the opportunity to speak to representatives from both Byrd and Lyme. I've also seen some of these here in Santa Ana as well as in San Diego. So I've thought a lot about it and I've asked a lot of people about it. I'm just going to read through. No response necessary, but I wanted to share my feedback now. First, I do think that the pilot program is a good way to test it, see what consumer experience is like seeing what the impacts on the city are but I do think there are particular things we need to look for and maybe that even during this pilot period we could revisit with them a little bit

number one I think revenue coming in for them to be able to offer this in our city I think we're getting fees of approximately $1,200 per you know and that's $1,220 which isn't very much pretty much just you standing here before us late in the evening you've kind of already spent through that we may need to look at reimbursement items for example you know we're impounding them or they're being cut up or we're having to pick them up from the middle of the of a street maybe gets dumped into a creek and we need

to figure out ways to recoup our costs for things like that or impounds i know city attorney uh Carvalho and I have also in the past thought about and worked on regulatory fees. I mean, developing this program, looking at best practices, there's a real cost to that. And as a city, you know, it's entirely in our right to have a fee-for-service type of program or a regulatory fee to address some of these issues. And that includes liability. I mean, even though the companies may say, you know, we're going to support you on liability, guess what? anybody that might get hurt somehow they know the city has deep pockets we're

gonna get sued anyway and irregardless of whether maybe somebody reimburses at the back end on the front end it's our time our consultants our attorneys and at the end of the day we never really get recouped you know in its entirety so we need to look at that also let's continue to see what other cities are doing in terms of best practices during the pilot period or post if it makes sense to continue. Part of that best practice also needs to be I know in other communities the companies have supported the cities with pretty substantial marketing and education budgets. I think for example in the city

of Santa Monica I think it was like a million dollar plus donation that one of the companies made for education outreach and other things and so I would hope that the companies and I know that maybe they both have reps here I would like them to offer us what they've offered other cities and I also thought about you know light rail and our train station and at first I thought well maybe it competes but there's the benefit side of you know the tricky thing in the transportation world with transit is the last mile right so you you know you get off from Metrolin you know in Santa Ana until how do you get to the downtown or

or how do you get down grand or whatever, well this may be a last mile option. That on the whole, it may be helpful.

Also as we look at if we do recommend continuing beyond the pilot period program, I think in areas that are more touristy, it might make more sense, they're willing to pay, it's easier to watch, smaller area, easier to monitor. Maybe there are some sections where this is allowed, maybe some where it's not allowed. and just the way that we've done with groceries carts at grocery stores I think the companies do have the technology to when it goes beyond certain limits that the keys lock I mean that the wheels lock and so please look at jurisdictions as well and with that you know you know just wanted to share some

of my thoughts and concerns and then also asking the companies to treat us fairly, but I am supportive of this approach of a pilot program. And after that, we may realize that they're more negative than positive, so I don't want the two companies to think that just because we're doing this pilot program that you're going to be good to operate here forever. So thank you all.

If I may, I'll be glad to address some of the comments that you made. For example, the municipal code already allows us to charge a fine of $100 per incident, and we have done it already with the scooters that were not authorized to operate within Sana'ana. As far as the light rail, I think these two modes of transportation complement each other and it will help people mobility into different areas. Some cities do collect a fee from like the $1 unlocking fee. I think they get a percentage, 25 cents or 50 cents.

and then every mile or every minute they get a percentage of the income. So we'll be looking into that also in the future. Yeah, and that's the best practice I've talked about. And I believe there are two representatives here from live. Yeah, and so it would be good maybe to hear from them.

Thank you so much.

Sure, thank you.

Okay, I think we have one last question. Thank you. Thank you.

So I am excited, right, because I think any time you can have some new element of public mobility, whether it's micro, whether it's on a macro level, you have the streetcar, you have Metrolink, you have the scooters, you have a lot of different ways to move around, and that means people are visiting the town and getting to know the town easier. And this is maybe more a question for our city attorney, but my thought is I know we have a hold harmless clause in there, and that's something that's to be expected. But to the extent we move beyond this and we enter into a contract with one or both vendors,

my concern is with our sidewalks. We have a very older grid city with a very narrow apron on our sidewalk. So to the extent that there are any ADA challenges to access, who does that run to? I know we'll be named automatically as the underlying city, but is it, you know, and I would just say this is maybe more preemptive to the extent we do enter into a contract, that that issue is addressed because some aprons are just much wider than others. and for the most part in the downtown, it's very narrow. And so I don't know if a wheelchair, somebody who's disabled, is able to get through,

and I just don't want us to kind of welcome challenges and litigation when we understand we have a much older city. And so, you know, I would say just keep that on the horizon, or if we've already thought about it, then that's great. But, you know, I know older cities have that problem, and so that's what I'm a little worried about.

Your point is well taken, and I believe the city attorney looked at the language.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

We've drafted the language, and especially if this pilot program works long term and we can do some type of regulatory fee, I think Council Member Solario referenced, that may be one way to raise some revenue to offset some of the cost we're going to incur. But this would be a defend and hold harmless agreement, as far as I'm concerned, as we move forward. So it would be that if we were sued, we would tender defense.

But, I mean, an ADA suit would come to us as well, so that's not really something that the vendor, I mean, we're doing this with the notice that we have a very narrow cycle.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

And I think the long-term goal and issue would be that we would not allow the operation of these scooters on our sidewalks, that they would be just like other motorized vehicles that are operating in the right-of-way and not directly in those areas. But that's part of this pilot program.

But I think it's where they're being placed.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

They're placed. They're placed. And I think your issue is that are they going to be placed in areas that are going to impede the traffic. Right, where it's going to obstruct access.

So that's what I've seen as I've traveled because they're already being placed in certain areas where I've seen some difficulty with people maneuvering with strollers. And so if the strollers have a narrower, you know, they're narrower than wheelchairs, then if they're having challenges and, you know, just something, you know, for us, look, I don't want to dampen the aspect.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

I understand your issue now.

the aspect but we have power poles that also make it even narrower. So just to make sure they're not placed in areas that we're going to have access or public right away obstructed. So just something for you to think about. Last question, Fawad. How are both vendors going to be evaluated if they're both going to be

part of the pilot program? Well, we're allowing each vendor to provide up to 500 scooters. We will have access to their data and information. And to be honest with you, because we haven't started the program yet, I don't know exactly, but we're going to look at the data, evaluate it, and make decisions accordingly later. We'll learn as we go. We'll make it work.

Thank you, Fla. Thank you. I'll move the item. Thank you. Well, before that, we've got more questions still. Omniple Councilmember Staff. Villegas.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So do we have a plan in place to educate the public regarding this?

Not the city, but I would like to defer to the two companies. We have representatives here.

Yeah, and if I may, I think this is appropriate. They both want to speak. Okay. Go ahead. Ask other questions, then I'll call the two speakers.

We have a plan to educate the public. That's what I'm asking the staff.

They'll tell you. The companies do.

We do have requirements that each of the companies provide some educational outreach programs. That's part of the permit requirements in the pilot program. And as that educational outreach moves forward, we can refine it, we can enhance it, we can change it around.

Another question. How many scooters would you say we have seized right now?

about 230. Seized? Yes. We'll give them back.

Want to bring that out to the public? I want them to understand that. All right. Thank you,

Mr. Mayor. All right. Thank you. I've got some comments myself, but first I want to hear from Kendall Gaglio, and I want to, you know, let folks know that I had the opportunity to meet with her and staff some time ago when the Byrds first began to fly into the city and they've been working I believe very productively and aggressively with us and after you speak I've got some comments I'm going to make but I also want to call afterwards Carla from Lyme who also I believe is here to speak. Please go ahead, Kendall, go ahead.

Thank you, Honorable Mayor and City Council for having me here tonight. My name is Kendall, I'm with the team at Byrd. I grew up here in Orange County, took classes at Santa Ana College and actually worked for years right here in the Civic Center area so having this familiarity with the city it came as no surprise that residents and businesses reached out thinking we'd be a good fit and our recent testing did confirm that demand since then and since meeting with staff we have diligently tried to work with them supply any information they need and respond to requests and we hope this

pilot will give us an opportunity to further that relationship BIRD was the first in the world to introduce this transit solution and we're based right here in Southern California so staff indicated in its report that they think that this will help the city accomplish a couple of its goals and I think it can help the city accomplish even more than just a couple. Community safety, there are over 40,000 automobile related deaths each year in the US and BIRD is dedicated to reducing car trips. Also our recent pilots and other cities have shown us that people prefer scooters to bikes, they go more miles on scooters than

bikes, yet half as many injuries are reported and we do do community training on safe use. BIRD was the first to offer free helmets to all of our riders. From an economic development standpoint, the pilot will create jobs, and BIRD hires local. It will also draw visitation. You'll be first in the county to offer a pilot with scooters. City financial stability is another one of your goals, and BIRD has entered into revenue-sharing agreements with cities that are willing to partner with us, so that's definitely an option we're open to. Health, livability, engagement, and sustainability is one of your goals.

Nearly 13 million pounds of harmful carbon emissions have been avoided because of BIRD. There will be a reduction of traffic, parking struggles. We offer discounted programs for low-income riders. And we'll also increase the use of your current infrastructure, like your bike lanes. You have a lovely new one, the protected bike lane along Bristol, increased ridership, and of course on the OC streetcar once it's complete. So please take the lead in Orange County and approve staff's recommendation of a pilot program. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you. Now we have Carla from Lyme.

Hi there, Carlo Awanek, Community Affairs Manager for Lyme. Thank you for your time today. At Lyme, our mission is to transform transportation in communities by providing affordable and accessible and convenient modes of transportation that are good for the environment. And we are ready and willing to provide this service to residents of Santa Ana. to give you a little bit of context. Vine was founded in June 2017. Since then, we've seen over 26 cumulative rides globally. We're in over 100 markets on five continents. Based on user surveys that we've distributed, we've found that

about 20 to 30% of our riders do start and end their ride near public transit. So this is really showing us that folks are you know, that we're helping solve that first, last mile transportation void. Our riders tell us that about one-third of rides are replacing car rides. And so we really just want to encourage council to authorize this pilot program. We have all of our paperwork prepared and we're ready to submit it to city staff. We've been working proactively with the community, including downtown Santa Ana. We did a pop-up a few months ago. We've kept that relationship going.

We, once we get the green light, we are already in plan mode to have a public education and awareness event here where we can distribute helmets and we can engage with the community further. And we're just looking forward to really being able to provide value to the community here in Santa Ana.

Thank you. Before I, I believe we had a motion, or a motion was begun, right, by Councilor Sarmiento. Is there a second? Can we have a second by Solario? If I may, I just want to say a few things before we vote. I think if we work in partnership with these companies, we can get a lot of good information. We can find out where there's heavy transit corridors, for example. We can find more about if there's areas that they perceive in the city that are unsafe, unsafe for either the scooters or pedestrians. we're going to have more data than we have already as to what the companies are seeing

because they're familiar with situations around the world. And to have them here and their brains and their resources and their knowledge and their ability is going to be a real asset for this community. Also, on the education side, those that are unable to afford the full ticket item, I know that you have low-income programs. I would love to make sure that everybody can avail themselves of the service would Because I think this is really going to enhance, you know, a lot of our system. Remember

35% of all ridership for transit in the County of Orange and it's a big county of 3 million people But 35% of all that ridership is here in Santa Ana also I think it's something like 55% of all households that are residents don't own a car they might share a car they might ride buses they might do other things but a lot of folks here do not own a car this might be what enables them to get a little bit further to a bus route that they need to get to possibly to a to a train or just the final mile and get to school or get to their job

And because, I mean, I think it's amazing what these companies can do. They can slow the scooters down in certain areas. So if you have an area that, let's say it's a nursery school or something, and you don't want people going too fast right in front of it, they can literally slow down the miles just based on a virtual map that they have on the computer. And they can say in this area, like let's say on Ford Street, it's very busy, lots of cars, lots of people you don't want people going 15 miles an hour you can slow them down to eight

miles an hour and staff can work with the company say look here's what we want you to do in certain areas also all the scooters are picked up every night so we're there wherever they're left and people have to take a photo when they park it they have to take a picture they have to send it back to the company you know with a with a gps location they pick them all up every night they service them they put them back out in the morning. I mean, I think it's a tremendous effort, you know, all this work that they do. And then we've got some exciting projects like the OC

streetcar. If we do this well, I think there can be all sorts of folks that are taking the scooter to the streetcar, get on the streetcar, go, you know, up towards, you know, Metrolink, and then 30 minutes later, they're in Los Angeles. It becomes like the internet of transportation, when there's all these connections and all these things happening that are better than what we've had before. And we've tried it with bicycles. As a matter of fact, at OCTA, we've spent a ton of money failing at bicycles because they couldn't get them on locked. They were too big. You couldn't

put them anywhere when we got to where you were going. All of a sudden, these scooters, if done well they can I believe solve a lot of problems and also as we look at greenhouse gases just think about it you're not generating a whole lot of greenhouse gases on electric scooter first of all it's little it's got a small motor hopefully you get the electricity from something green when we plug him at night to charge him but the point is that you really in many cases cases you're replacing a car and a car is a lot bigger it's got the internal combustion engine if

it's not electric and here it's a shortcut to get on that electric pathway and so we can have a greener world a greener planet and at times when there's more plastic in the ocean and soon about to surpass fish we're soon about to have more plastic out in all the world oceans than the total number of fish by weight that's an awful concept but it's happening and i believe that things such as these electric scooters pushes in a more environmentally friendly direction because we're reducing those greenhouse gases and the dependency on oil and all the things that come

with it. So as we look into the future, I just want to ask the council and the staff and especially the companies, talk to us a lot, especially in the beginning. Look, we're going to have issues. You know, we're the fourth densest city in the country and you're dropping a bunch of scooters in the middle of it, there's going to be a lot of demand, but education is going to be real important, and safety is going to be real important, and we have to be ready as to how we're going to respond, because something might go wrong. I mean, if we were to get rid of all cars

because we had an accident, we wouldn't have any cars. Something might happen, so we have to be very, very careful. We know that there's a lot of pedestrian deaths currently in the city. Maybe there's things you can do to assist us with that with concepts but you know but we do have people at night just crossing down a dark street and they get hit by a vehicle that didn't see them that happens got to make real sure that these scooters if they're driving them at night that you know they're they're they're they're well lit and the people are very aware because you know we want you know safety is is

is of utmost concern but at the end of the day you know the market's going to tell us you know people and how they vote with their you know their credit card or their cell phone and and and how they're using these scooters is going to tell us a lot and i just hope that you all invest as much as you need to invest to service this community because i think it's a community that's going to embrace this i think you're going to see them you know kids picking them up going over to college you're going to see folks bringing them down because they're at the transportation center

and they want to ride them into downtown to have a bite to eat or something, and it's a nice day, and they jump on a scooter, and off they go, and here they come doing more and more and more good things here in the city. So with that, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Good luck. Congratulations.

And onward and forward. So with that, what's our next item?

65A.

65A. I would entertain a motion. So moved.

Second.

Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. Next item, I'm going to turn temporarily over to our Mayor Pro Tem. I think it's 65B. I'll be right back.

Madam Clerk.

Mayor Pro Tem Villegas, this is the city council meeting scheduled for 2019. At a minimum, you will need to cancel the January 1st meeting, which will be New Year's Day. Traditionally, the council has also canceled a meeting in the summer months, either July or August. So that's at your discretion whether you would like to cancel a meeting now or have that discussion later in the year.

What is the pleasure of the Council? Are there any questions?

We're not going to be together on January 1st. Is that what you're saying? We're not going to start the new year off together?

Is there any recommendations for the July or August? Councilmember Sarmiento?

Any, what's been our preference in the past?

You know, it really varies. Some election years, they cancel in July, sometimes in August. It's varied. So it's either July or the August months. September might also make sense because it's ripe Labor Day, and a lot of the children actually start sooner in August.

This past year was August, correct?

It was August, yes.

I would say we stick with that same pattern since that worked well unless there's a difference of opinion.

Would that be the first meeting in August 6th? Yeah, I'd say so. Okay.

August 6th.

August 6th. We'll include that in the minutes.

Is there any other comments from the council members?

Okay, so a motion to approve?

So moved. Second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed, motion carries. We're going to move on to the next item, which is 65C, the appointment of the regional boards, and I believe the mayor wants to be here for that, so we can get the mayor out here.

You can take a break.

We can either recess or you can open the public hearing.

Five-minute recess. All right, we'll do that.

65C.

okay um let me just uh madam clerk may i just take this one item by item because we have quite a few so i know that there's been interest i believe by council member solario for the metropolitan water district board and i accept your nomination mr mayor that's my nomination in a second you know where it is i know where it is it's in downtown l.a and you know that they meet long hours they talk about water so and you're one of 40 people i was there last week it's

a beautiful and they rarely do anything well they get you our water yes all right they get us a lot

of water so look god bless you for wanting to do that well the councilman's going to change that so So, right. They're going to do a lot more now. They're going to do a lot more. He'll change the composition of that board. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed. It's unanimous, Council Member Solario. Good luck to you. So you'll be reporting on a monthly basis? As needed. Smart man. Smart man.

Newport Bay Watershed Executive Committee. Does any council member want that position?

We defer that one to staff. We do, and Fouad is currently on there. Yes, yes.

We could leave him there. Fouad, are you willing to continue to serve? I am. He is. I'd entertain a motion on behalf of Fouad. So moved. Second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries.

Orange County Sanitation District.

For this side of Mr. Mayor, I know in the past Council Member Reyna used to serve on the Orange County Water District, but we have Council Member Sarmiento who has been serving in that capacity. I'd like to recommend Council Member Reyna as the representative, and I guess we could discuss who the altar might be.

All right. So if you want to make a different nomination, which one goes first?

you know if there's a nomination in a second if there's a substitute then the substitute would go first if not we just vote on the one on the table so that was a motion by councilman so I'll second the motion for got it okay

question right here please we have alternate and a rep and I've seen in the past it was both council members Salton hero was a wrap and David and Abidas with the alternate would that be something that would be considered if there could be two of us

yes there could um if you want possibly a friendly amendment um you could amend it if the maker of motion accepts it that you would be the alternate because i know you're interested in on this as well if you'd like to be an alternate all right so let's nominate cese iglesias is the alternate no no let the maker of the motion amend it that which is one motion and Second agrees. Second agrees. All right, so Madam Clerk, are you clear? Okay, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. So congratulations to both of you. Just communicate whenever the rep can't go.

We've got to make sure the alternate is known early so that she can represent us well.

Absolutely.

Okay, now Orange County Council of Governments, Board of Directors.

It's actually the Vector Control.

Pardon?

The Vector Control.

Okay, vector control. Yeah, sorry, vector control. Go ahead. Who do we have for vector control?

I don't know. My understanding was Cecilia Igonago was there in 2020.

So why is it on here then?

It's just a listing of the representatives.

All right, so let's leave her alone then. Let's leave her alone. Yeah, we can revisit in the future. We can revisit and if we get too many mosquitoes, we'll put her back on. Orange County Council of Governments.

That's a form of locals. Yes, SCAG. And we can have an alternate and a representative. Who's interested in that?

So, Mayor, the representative is the SCAG representative would also be the OCOG representative, and the alternate would come in and substitute as needed.

So you'd basically be an alternate for two? Right. and a and a representative for two who wants there's a lot of time if council

member Iglesias is interested in this with compliments gag okay I make the nomination for a council member and who's the rep who's the alternate

maybe one that's a tough one I'll be the alternate you'll be the alternate okay

so we have the council member iglesias is the representative councilor salario is the alternate when he's not at the water board in los angeles he can come and serve as well they're both in la so i can go from one another so you'll just stay in la that day and the city will have to pay for the hotel no you have to drive back jose i'll drive back got to drive back yeah do you have scooters with really long ranges they're gone Jose you'll have to get on the train but those in favor please say aye aye aye those opposed motion carries now Orange County Fire Authority the

Honorable Juan Villegas has been our representative I'll nominate the council member or the mayor

pro tem the mayor pro tem second yeah motion a second any opposition those in favor please say aye Aye. It's unanimous. Congratulations. Now the Orange County Water District. I know Council Member Sarmiento is tired of it and he wants to get off. He's about to become chairman. In that case, I'd like to nominate him to stay there. No, we have to keep him there. We've got to keep him there.

I think I have a motion to approve.

All right, you have four seconds, Council Member.

Take your pick.

That's good. Pick whichever one you want. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye, those opposed. Motion carries unanimously.

The Santa Ana Orange TSIA as needed. Who is interested in those?

You know, Mr. Mayor, these relate a little bit, well, substantially with TCA appointments. I'd like to nominate Council Member Pinalosa as the representative, but there's an alternate spot as well. Also, if anyone else is interested.

Do you want to be the alternate?

Sure. Yeah.

Okay. It's a good committee. Yeah. It's a good committee. You talk about transportation and stuff.

You talk about transportation like Mayor Polito and I, OCTA.

No, you talk about how bad OCTA is because they control the whole rest of the county and how the transportation corridor agencies just have the corridors. Toll road fights. Yeah, but you talk to a lot of folks and it's fun. So that's different from the transportation corridor agency, right?

They're related, yeah.

Oh, okay.

But we're appointed to both right now.

Oh. You're going to be on both, so you'll know a lot about the corridors and the tolls and where they go and how much money we pay into them and why and all that stuff. That sounds fun.

All right. And the meeting's in Riverside.

Oh. Meetings are in Riverside. Jose can be alternate. No, no. Roman's already taken that. So with that, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. The opposed motion carries.

Are we done, Madam Clerk? All right, good job, everybody. We made it. No food fight. We got it done. Everybody's on something.

Yeah, on SKAG, that was.

Yeah, related like to the other item, there are consistent appointments that you're on. It's both the SKAG and OCOG. So you're the primary now.

But you're on it. If you want to resign, it's too late. I'll be your assistant. Yeah, you can drive together because he'll be up there for the water board. Yes. All right. Next.

75A. All right. This is a public hearing. Let me formally open up the public hearing, and I have a speaker, Ryan Reza. If you are here, please come up and make your comment. Please go ahead, sir. Start the clock, Madam Clerk.

Good evening, honorable mayor, honorable council members. Thank you for letting me speak again this evening. This is adopted resolution with the correlations to the adopted miscellaneous fees for development project review fees for fiscal year 2018-2019.

the recommendation is to adopt a resolution the resolution is for the city council of the city of Santa Ana modifying the uniform schedule of the miscellaneous fees for development project review fees for the fiscal year so my question to you guys is as a business owner and a property owner anytime you want to do anything you have to go through the planning department and pay all their fees so what is it being raised? Is it being raised by the CPI or the inflation or is it being raised based on whatever the city staff is recommending to you because none of that stuff is laid out here

for the audience to see and judge by themselves. We don't know how you guys are adopting and recommending it. Is it based on inflation, Mrs. Attorney, or is it based on year-over-year growth that you're expecting to have more fees coming in? You do have an annual budget, and it's based on this stuff, right? So this is why you might be wanting to raise it so you can get a little bit more revenue. My question to you, honorable council members, is what is being used to have that increase?

Is it a CPI? Is it inflation? Or is it just based on the city staff's recommendation? Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, I know we can't do a... A dialogue, correct? Let me close the public hearing and now you can... Okay, okay.

Let me close the public hearing. I'll bring it back to Councilor Mercilario for questions of staff or whomever. Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And not a question, but a brief response. in the in the staff report and there should be a copy outside in the file there's a staff report documenting an answer to you to your question and it's based on CPI largely for the region the staff report is also online but but

that's a very good question thank you thank you so with that I would entertain a motion those in favor please say aye aye those opposed motion carries pardon okay one no vote on item 75a 75b this time place for a public hearing on downtown business improvement district assessment and madam city attorney i think i'm going to abstain because of

the proximity of a smuffler to the downtown area so let me just step outside for a moment I'll turn it over to our freshly minted Mayor Pro Tem Juan Villegas.

And Madam City Attorney I think we have an opinion from the FBPC which allows me to participate. Thank you.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

For the record I would like to say that Council Member Sarmiento does have an opinion from the FBPC that allows him to participate.

Thank you. So we're on 75 here if Mr. Ryan Rosen can step forward and start the clock.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem, Vegas and honorable council members. I wanted to talk to you in regards to this 2019 downtown business improvement district assessment based on the strategic plan numbers three and four. Again, my question is, you guys have a lot of development going on around here, and your downtown is improving steadily with the restaurants and the shops, and it's becoming a little bit more balling.

So are you going to now assess them to make it more difficult for them to conduct business? Is it going to be more expensive? Is this an annual assessment, or is it a one-time assessment?

and what exactly is the amount of money that you guys are trying to raise for this purpose and how is it going to be better for the city? Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Is there any other speakers, Madam Clerk?

I have not received any.

No other speakers? So we're going to close that portion and we're going to move on to Council Member Comments. Is there any comments? Mr. Council Member Salorio.

Thank you. I know we have various representatives from the downtown, some very able representatives. Maybe if one could give a general status on how this program is going, that would be helpful.

Maybe Mr. Romo or Raul or Ryan or our staff. We're staff. But it's nice to hear from our residents as well. We'll provide a unified front. Excellent.

Good afternoon, members of the council. To answer a little bit of Mr. Ryan's question is that we as a business and property owners of the downtown, We assess ourselves to pay for our promotions and activities that we have in the downtown. That's it.

Maybe somebody just can address, how is the program going? Do generally, do the business owners feel good about the assessment level and how the dollars are being used and stability?

Yes, thank you, Council Member Solorio. This has been an amazing year and the program is going great. I've been here about five years and this year we were able to double our budget, also increase the clean and safe contract so that there's more safety and cleanliness in the downtown. This year has also been a really difficult year with the homelessness. I think it hit the highest problem for us this year, and we really spent a lot of our year reorganizing and focusing on efforts to help alleviate that issue. Our events are bigger and better than ever.

We're actually having a lunch to celebrate all the event promoters that are utilizing our downtown to activate it, from OC Pride to Viva La Vida, and it's fantastic. So it's a great time to be downtown. we're really looking forward to 2019 and doing more together very good and just to add to Ryan smaller's comment one of the things that we've done to specifically speak to and address the needs of the merchants in downtown is every year mark Morley sends us everybody who's in the bid we recently completed a what we call the 796 campaign where we went door-to-door and we talked

to all of our merchants. We did surveys with every single one of them. We made sure that they had knowledge of what we do specifically, and we also found in those surveys that probably about 11% of our downtown needed social media help. From that 11% group, it was 90 businesses, we actually were able to set up an internship program through the career and technical education at the school where they're helping merchants, and we started as a pilot. It's 10 merchants at a time, and we have students working with merchants, helping them to put social media, do their websites, and that's actually just taken off just recently.

The actual students are there with them, and they have them doing even product photography, all of that kind of stuff, so we're hoping to get through all of that, and that was one of the big needs of merchants in downtown.

And I just want to say that that's fantastic, and I know the Arellano family and others, credit you in particular for the increased partnership with the school district particularly the arts program and the boca de oro so I thank you for that I think whenever we could focus on business initiatives and in marketing as opposed to politics that that's what works also on what works I know you know downtown Inc and the San Antonio business council are working so well together that you know kind of makes sense to merge them again but then I think you know don't fix what isn't broken so you know if it worked for you now I think

that's fantastic but on the whole I'm very pleased with the activities and the partnerships with the school district because the kids come they bring their parents they shop they eat it's fantastic thank you one of the things

just so you know is that our group we have people that speaks the Spanish language gap is really important and we do serve there we have a large and very distinctive different demographics in our downtown and we want to be able to talk to everyone and we do about 7 000 flyers a week that we go people go door to door regularly because we want to know what everybody thinks not only people who can use the computer so

madam clerk is there going to be a vote or is this a we have not received any protest um on this So you can continue and consider this item.

We're going to continue. We're going to call our mayor back.

We actually need a vote. He's abstained on this item, so we would need a vote for the balance of the council.

Okay, so can I get a motion on the balance?

Yeah, if the recommendations are still in order, I'd like to move the item.

Well, I will second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries. I'm going to move on to the next item. We can call back our mayor.

you could begin the item just so we're going to move on to this is item 88 it's a joint session of the city council and housing authority um which is item 88 so can i get a motion to receive and file

we had a motion a second on that receiving file okay let's entertain a motion on the receiving file I'll move the item second by council member Iglesias you're good she'll second it those in favor please say aye aye aye those opposed motion carries now what item are we on madam we're on 85a

and we have one speaker all right

mr ryan reza mr mayor if you don't mind that this is an item that i i yeah it is uh uh my preferred order would be that i make a couple of introductory comments and then we take comment i know staff The staff would like to make a...

All right, Mr. Reza, wait. This is Council Member Solario Zainam, so I'm going to defer to him. Go ahead, please.

Thank you. You know, we, several days ago, had some major and pretty dangerous situations at one of our parks and really on an ongoing basis. And so there's been increased interest in having more security cameras be added to all our parks. but also in particular not long ago last about a year and a half ago we approved a set of security cameras I think seven or so but of the bunch only one has been put in place thus far so I'd like a status on that as well as I know PD and

parks and the park rangers of the place where it is at Madison they've had some fairly good results so if our parks director or somebody from PD can kind of speak to those positive things that would be helpful and then this obviously too relates to the lack of park rangers I know we're working on that but that means in the meantime things like security cameras and lighting increasingly important and then finally I know it's been the interest of the public and I some in PD as well of extra support for closing restrooms in the evenings.

And that may be PD staff or maybe it's a security contract or an extension of the contract we have here with the folks outside. Not that that's part of this item, but these kinds of things are all related. So I thought it would be a good time to hear from staff on the status of the security camera program and how we go from here to do the remainder of the initial bunch and then know that I think I and others have an interest in increasing this citywide because we have 50 plus parks but really only one full-time park ranger and so this many of us believe can help.

Yes, Councilmember Solorio, members of the City Council. In the fiscal year 16-17, there was over $402,000 allocated for six security cameras at Jerome, Shepa's Park, Madison, Windsor Memorial, and Santa Anita. And so in 17-18 budget, $510,000 was awarded from CDBG funding, community development block grant funding. And so that gave us a total of over $912,000 to install these cameras.

Thus far, Madison is the only park that has been installed. The Good Police Department has sole-sourced a contract with Siemens Incorporated and has started the process of installing. And so when they got to Windsor Park, which they're about two-thirds of the way done, and by the way, that will be done in about two months, they ran into some problems, but they've got those figured out as far as the placement. we also found out that from HUD we cannot utilize a sole source contract it has to be a competitively bid contract so we're in the process the police

department's in the process of conducting that process and we anticipate we will be back to council in the first quarter of the year and asking to approve the contract and

And Officer Gaminski, if you can comment on the other questions.

Madison Park, the security camera. I recently saw the park ranger supervisor and he gave me some positive examples of how it's working. Would you like to speak to that?

So Corporal Baragon routinely monitors the video camera from Madison Park. We have used it on several occasions to perform undercover operations, we'll say at the park. We found it to be reliable. The link is constantly up. And just as we talked about when we brought it to the council originally, by utilizing the camera, we're able to retain information for evidentiary purposes for later on. We've also used the video to solve a crime or two that has occurred in and around the bathroom areas.

And then we've gone out and identified individuals involved.

So the cameras are even solving crimes. It's good. Yes, the cameras are working very, very well. How close are they? Because I haven't seen it. I need to go out to look at it. How similar is that camera to the ones that we have in the downtown that are the tall blue poles?

They're all on the code blue towers. Okay. The entire system that was originally set to be put in was all Code Blue Tower based.

Fantastic. Those are all my questions and comments. I know my colleagues might have some and I know there's the gentleman that would like to make a public comment as well. Thank you.

I do have one. Go ahead, Councilor Reyna. And I know the need is huge and I know we have a lot of parks and a lot of space out there. Just a little curious how you came across those 10 particular sites versus number 11. What was the criteria coming up with them? Sounded like a lot of parks that need that help. And again, I'm not saying that we don't need the assistance out there, but it didn't sound like El Salvador Park was involved. It didn't sound like Salgado was involved. So I'm just curious. Yes, please.

So, sir, it's my understanding that the original decision on which parks to put these in at was based on which parks had cell phone towers. That was going to be the mechanism in which the system was going to be maintained as well as there had been some money set aside that could be used for initial deployment, but these systems will necessitate an ongoing maintenance, so I believe that's why the decision was made the way it was. Again, just curious There's a lot of needs and we can't hit them all at one time. Yes, again. I was just curious. Thank you. Yes

Any more questions? Go ahead, Councillor Cecilia Iglesias.

I just want to make a comment. Thank you for finally addressing this. And I know we've had issues, especially at Winter Park with the school district, in order to put these cameras, but what I see is a step in the right direction and I'm very thankful to – I call you still Officer, but Lieutenant Gaminski for keeping us informed on what's going on. and I'm very happy to see that this is moving forward. So my question to you would be more of a when would it happen, when are we going to install the cameras at Windsor Park, because that's the neighborhood where I know that we've been having a lot of conversations.

So the cameras are installed. The problem is the connection. We are having to build a tower based on the difficulties that you addressed. We believed that we could go one way, understood that we had the ability and the agreement to go one way when that changed. So now we've had to come up with a rather large sum of money to now install a tower so that we can transfer that signal from the park to Centennial Park and then back to City Hall. I believe the money has been identified, and I believe the project will be going forward and that connectivity should occur within the next month or two.

Okay, thank you very much.

Okay, so we do have Speaker Ryan come on up again, please.

Thank you, Honorable Mayor, Honorable Council Members. My name is Ryan Reza-Farsight, and I am a multi-site operator of ARCO AMPM in Southern California, and I'm very familiar with security cameras and CCTV and DVRs and whatnot and surveillance. Actually in the city of Fullerton, the detective over there told me that I have the best system in town and at that time I had spent some $20,000 and I had two DVRs. Since then I added a third DVR. So in this particular gas station, which is 27,000 square feet, Mayor Foledo,

I have 50, no actually, 42 cameras, of which 38 of them are HD cameras. So we're basically covering every inch from the moment you walk in, we can tattoo the ID, zoom into your neck, and hand you off to the police department if you make any mistakes on our property. We can zoom into your license plate, and so on and so forth. So my main concern is here, Council member Solario is that when you install these cameras which you guys have allocated nine hundred something thousand dollars for six more cameras That's almost a hundred fifty thousand per camera. That's pretty sizable amount of money

the most important thing is Who's watching these cameras to see if there's any crimes or anything like that and from my experience? In the past 20 years of watching this stuff and the technology on it a police department should also know, is that it's better to actually have a computerized system that's monitoring this stuff. That's what's happening in a lot of the universities around the United States of America. They have these systems. And it's seeing that before the actual crime happens, honorable council members, they are actually alerting the police department

or the security on campus that, hey, there's something that's going on over here, move over there. So the same thing, that's my question to you guys. You're installing these cameras at this park, but it needs to have an overlay surveillance system that's embedded, some sort of software to be able to see what's going on because just to have a camera there and spend $150,000 is useless unless someone's actually surveilling it. And to pay someone a contract to watch it is not the same as actually having a computerized system. this is very sophisticated stuff they're covering campuses that are much bigger

than any of your parks thank you very much thank you so I just go ahead there

really isn't a specific recommendation other than to just give staff direction and support I think staffs heard quite a bit of support for these cameras and I I think when we approved the initial six, they were based off of technology in the area or safety concerns, but I think now that these cameras are out there, what we know they work, we wanna make sure that throughout all the wards that we have some equity there just so that everybody can experience these, so moving forward, look forward to working with my colleagues and staff

on ensuring that we deploy these citywide. Thank you.

So with that, I believe we have, do we have a motion on this, Madam City Clerk? Just direction. Just direction. So we don't need to take any vote. All right. So with that, item 85B, Councillor Sarmiento and Mayor Pro Tem Villegas. Thank you.

And I had a chance to speak with our city attorney a few minutes ago, so I think there may be a sample resolution that we could bring back to the council. This is simply to recommend that we consider a resolution prepared by staff for us on the recent effort to reinterpret and renegotiate a bilateral agreement entered into in 2008, I believe between the US government and the government of Vietnam regarding the Vietnam War refugees and the repatriation, the possible repatriation of them. So what compelled me to put this on the agenda for us to consider tonight,

and I'm happy to have Mayor Pro Tem Villegas joining me on this, is that there's an agreement that was entered into regarding the Vietnam War refugees that basically was interpreted by administrations past to say that any refugees from Vietnam that arrived here prior to 1995, specifically July 12, 1995, they were protected under this agreement. Anybody arriving thereafter post-July 12, 1995, subject to the same immigration code, and there's actually a provision in the agreement, Article 2,

which talks about removable persons in conditions of acceptance, which gives you criteria for potential repatriation. The concern is that I know that there's been some announcements and there's been some fear in the Vietnamese community, which we have many residents residing within Santa Ana, and this was to make sure that they understood what their rights were.

Our efforts in the past to make sure that communities that were fearful, Immigrant communities were supported by their local government to the extent that this is a federal issue. We certainly can't interfere with what the federal government does. That's why, as a resolution, this is more of an intent to support the families of many of our Vietnamese refugees whose parents fought alongside our troops during the Vietnam War. And so many of them now are fearful that if they're subject to repatriation, they're going back to a hostile regime where they could be persecuted.

So that's where the real fear is. So to the extent that we can bring this back as a resolution that clarifies, and I understand that even the administration is going to go back and look at its interpretation of this, and it might be a moot point by the time this comes back to us, but to the extent, Madam City Attorney, you can bring this back to us for consideration, that would be the recommendation from my point of view.

Go ahead. A point of clarification. So this would be more of a, because we have the resolution, we'll put it on, I guess, you know, when it comes back. Then we'll vote on the language, whatever is concluded. But I'm wondering, have we had conversations already with our congressmen? Because, like you were saying, this is an opportunity. I mean, we can't really interfere with federal law. but have we as a city or the city leadership, have we talked to our Congressman Lou Correa to see you know that we show our support for these families and if you know this resolution is really needed or what is it that we

can give him so he can so he can show support from our community that we want the best things done for our families. And that's a great point if I could

answer on the intent of what was hopefully this will invite that conversation from our not only our our congressman but any other part of the congressional delegation that wants to opine on this this is more like in the law considered like an amicus brief or something like a friendly

resolution that gives them direction of where we stand because we have a lot of our residents who are concerned so to the extent we can clarify it with the help of our congressional delegation that would be the the ideal right to make sure that they they were able to comment but we wouldn't take a position until obviously hopefully we reach out and so i think that's a great suggestion if we could reach out to our congress our our congressman specifically uh correa that um can help us and maybe he has some insight of where we are but again we want to be responsive to um you know to the communities and i know i've i've received a lot

of contacts and communication from our Vietnamese residents that are very very worried and just unclear and some of them are just confused.

All right, thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to thank Councilmember Sarmiento for bringing this item forward and we do care very much about all of our communities here and the Vietnamese community, well this is an issue that's coming up so we want them to know that we stand with them and I know the language here where it says 85B about condemning the Trump administration.

That was something that the council member had put on there. I added my name, but personally I don't use the word against anyone, but we just want clarification. I know that this issue is being renegotiated. It's going to expire next month, but they're working on redoing it so we want some clarity on this because we want what's fair for all of our communities and so thank you again Councilman Sarmiento. That is all Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. All right so this is just direction then we don't need to. That's going to come back with the resolution. So just direction. Before we move on Alan we want to speak on this. Alan why don't you come on down. But on this side, we may need to take a vote, but up to the audience.

First of all, thank you, Vince and Juan, for bringing this to attention. I was the former executive director of the United Cambodian Community and part of the refugee movement in the early beginning. I was on the first committee in Orange County that was trying to resettle refugees. and in the chaos after the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War you had all the people that helped the United States fight the war and they ended up needing a place to go to be safe. So it was President Gerald Ford who said that it's the right thing to do.

They fought for us. We need to do something for them. And with that respect, there's about 12 congressmen that signed on the letter. Judy Chu, Lou is one of them. The entire delegation of the new elected congressional delegation of Orange County, they signed on the letter to President Trump. It was a condemnation. It was a protest. This last Saturday, I woke up at 9 o'clock before the Artesia Pilar event and joined 500 family, led by our youth in Little Saigon, to protest this. Why? Because we are nation builders. We're not criminals.

We're not drug addicts. Some of the people that are affected are being taken care of legally through the Asian American and advancing justice and the Asian law will form another group, which have to fight this constitutionally, OK, for those people being deported because they committed a crime in the past, but they led exemplary life, they paid their debt to society, they're moving forward, they're part of America, and there is no place to deport them because their country does not exist anymore. And that's at the issue of why condemnation is not too strong. because this was intentionally done to hurt a committee

to make a political point. Okay, why is it falling on your shoulder here? Because it's falling on deaf ear at the federal level. Politically, we are moving forward there as communities across the country, as refugiation and the Vietnamese and Cambodian and Laotian group. But locally, no one understands what is happening here, but you guys are on the front line of what is happening to people in this community. merchants, children going to school. I saw a grandfather bring his granddaughter and talk about his horrible experience coming across the ocean and then languishing for 10 years in a camp. And he was explaining to his daughter,

I'm here today, I'm bringing you here so that you can understand the pain that we suffer so you don't have to do this. You don't have to have this so that you can fulfill, see the American promise and the dream. that I came to America to do. Okay, so there is a promise that America made. They should keep that promise. Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, I do want to say one more thing because I think I've heard a little bit of conflicting opinions up here. So this says direct staff to essentially write a resolution condemning the Trump administration announcement to pursue the deportation of thousands of Vietnamese refugees the United States in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. There are a lot of frustrated and upset folks in our community and throughout California and this country. I do think we need to use strong language to send the message. Just for the newer council members,

I was going to call him Senator Correa. Congressmember Correa is very aggressive on these issues. He wants all the support, his aggressive support on immigration items that are detrimental to any of our communities in Central Orange County. So I do hope that we still have an aggressive resolution, not just, dear Mr. President, can you clarify what you mean? So, because I think I heard some comments about just asking for clarification. I think we need to find that middle ground just so we make a strong point, but but I'm very supportive of the general intent. Thank you. Thank you.

So what I would say is just, you know, to the extent that we can incorporate the council members' request to reach out to our congressional representative, Correa, I'll make sure to do that and make sure, you know, he's aware and we take his opinion into account as we draft this. Madam City Attorney, when you draft it, obviously it's going to come back to us If there's ways that it needs to be, you know, wordsmithed or changed, we certainly will. This isn't the final, you know, this isn't the final word. I do feel that we want to be as supportive as we can.

I think, Alan, to your point, the comments I received were from people who were grown adults who were crying. I mean, you know, so that was really difficult. Those were difficult calls to take. And, you know, nightmares and just, you know, that entire spectrum of reactions. So to the extent that you bring something back that if we have to modify, again, to the Mayor Pro Temp's point, maybe it's a moot issue, maybe it's resolved, and the administration reevaluates its position on the interpretation of the agreement. That may be the case if it comes back to this at that point.

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

And I can give you just some sample language from the resolution that was presented at the state legislature on the 14th of December on this issue. and it begins by saying whereas this measure would urge the President of the United States to stop any efforts to reinterpret or renegotiate the 2008 United States of Vietnam Repatriation Agreement and would state that the legislature stands in solidarity with the Vietnamese refugees and there's a series of whereas recitals in there so if that is kind of the tone you'd like me to set

Why don't you send it to us and I'm sure we could work it

Sonia R. CarvalhoItem —

So we'll prepare a draft. You'll be able to discuss it before your next council meeting and adopt it if you like it.

And we'll bring in the congressman as well. So I'll move the item if we need to. Is there a second?

Second. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Ayes as opposed. Motion carries. Now I'm going to direct our attention to the Housing Authority minutes. That was no nos. No nos. Thank you. Now we're going to all yeses. Now I would entertain a motion on item one for the Housing Authority minutes.

Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Those in favor please say aye. Aye. This closed motion carries. Now the business calendar is a joint session of the City Council and the Housing Authority Agency. I am in three is already considered we have one speaker Monica Mejia come on down please good evening

mayor mayor Pro ten and council members my name is Monica Mejia and I'm with link housing link housing is a nonprofit we develop affordable housing throughout the state of California. I'm here to request your approval of an action to help us refinance the City Gardens apartments. And this is to get us a loan that's going to be a 35 year loan that's going to help preserve the affordability of the building long term. Right now the restrictions on this building last through 2061 and it's our mission to develop and preserve affordable housing

for as long as possible to serve all kinds of folks in need, low-income, homeless, families, seniors, veterans, all folks. Thank you so much for your consideration.

Thank you. So with that, I would entertain a motion to approve the amended and restated bond regulatory agreement for city garden apartments.

Second.

Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries. Now we're going to adjourn the Housing Authority meeting, reconvening the City Council meeting, and go to City Manager comments.

We actually have some speakers on non-agendized items.

Alright, well if you don't hurry up we'll be done with the meeting. Here we go. Brad Fieldhouse please.

Followed by, we haven't heard this guy yet, Ryan Reza, and then Dale. Go ahead.

Good evening, Mayor of City Council. My name is Brad Philthouse. I'm the Executive Director of a non-profit here in Orange County called CityNet. We are a homeless outreach organization that works in almost two-thirds of the cities in Orange County in some capacity. I'm here to make an announcement for January. Every other year in Orange County, we take part in a really important activity called the Homeless Point-in-Time Count. So I'm here to sort of invite you, give you an advance notice on January 23rd. we are going to be going out countywide and it's actually a two day Wednesday the 23rd and Thursday the 24th we'll be going out

across the county and interviewing homeless individuals to provide sort of demographic data make sure they know that we're not paying attention to folks in cities all across Orange County, I know Santa Ana is also very engaged in this cause so I want to extend an invitation for you to join us to come out with us, some of the things that we're doing this year, we're new to this we do homeless censuses in all the cities in which we work. This year it's a little bit different in terms of our methodology. We're actually going into every city this year. We'll have teams in every

city on Wednesday and sometimes carrying over into Thursday as well. We're going to be doing all the interviews on GPS technology where we'll be interviewing folks on our cell phones. And we're actually going out in the morning and in the evenings. So we'll be actually providing pretty good coverage countywide. So I have a flyer here that just has some information anybody in the audience or is watching on TV can go sign up for a survey position at everyone counts OC org so can I pass these out or leave

some in the back certainly just give them to the clerk and she'll take care of it thank you thank you very much up Ryan

thank you honorable council members my name is Ryan Reza Farsi and I spoke to I talked to you earlier this month about double ballots in the elections, and I want to give you an update. I did get a follow up from the Governor Brown of Oregon. Governor Brown of California has never gone back to me again. He's part of the racket of why you're getting double ballots and why your elections is messed up. Governor Brown of Oregon told me to speak to the inspector of elections, and I did speak to the legal department. Actually, she left me a message today. She's saying that the states don't work together,

so when you go and register in another state, honorable council members, you have to go tell the other state that don't register me anymore and so this is a way that you don't get double ballots. But double ballots is happening. Now I'm also here to poke some of my corporations. I'm a homeowner, a property owner in the state of California, a condominium in the city of Newport Beach and I wanted to poke the homeowners association of Belcourt Master, Belcourt Park, their attorneys Igor, Wankel, Bancowski, and Weil and Birding,

and management companies Powerstone in Irvine and Progressive down in Mission Viejo. I wanted to let you know that you guys have committed fraud by working in collusion to hide the theft of an easement, which is a sidewalk that is missing in Belcourt Park. You also committed grand theft in the amount of $120,000 on October 2, 2018. David Wenkel, you have performed a false proof of service. I am not 5'9", I'm not 180 pounds. So this is what lawyers do. They do procedures, but they like to play games and they like to play above the law.

They're not really there to win the case. They're there to delay, delay, extend, extend, and waste your time. That's what you guys did today with discussing five court cases before our meeting. That's what attorneys do. The police department is also helping them by not properly forcing the law. They've entered my home and done graffiti. The police department says this is a civil matter. Go hire an attorney. So, again, everyone wants me to feed the state of Israel and feed the attorneys. But I'm here to find a peaceful resolution. I do not break the law. the Homeowners Association Board of Directors did. They need to step down.

The lawyer needs to step away from the table now. Thank you very much. God bless America and happy holidays. Thank you. Merry Christmas.

Now Santa Claus's helper, Dale Helwig, and then Santa Claus after that. I'm just his brother.

No, the beard's getting there. Yeah. Can't shave until this is done. Mr. Mayor, new council members, continuing council members. I was asked what my three major concerns were on 2525 residential development. And it's density, compatibility with the surrounding area, and quality of life. Density is still at 80 dwelling units per acre. Over 1,100 people will be occupying that building if it goes in as it designed. and it's twice the size of any project in Santa Ana that is next to a residential

development. And this is supported by the staff report that was given to the Planning Commission and also some information that I've provided to the continuing council members that I'll forward to the new council members that shows the 17 developments that are built next to residential areas. Compatibility with surrounding areas, we're not opposed to the 3,600 plus units that are going to be built in North Santa Ana and right on town and country, which is actually the city of Orange. We are

against the six-story complex that's going to go in right next to historical significant community. It's tiered down yes, but it's still six stories And that's you know when I say a historical significant community that's right out of the general plan so it's there quality of life I've heard people talk about the density of downtown Santa Ana the density that it's a lot lighter in the northern section of Santa Ana and and the developer saying that this is going to help but the fact is the

density is just going to increase in North Santa Ana because the people that are living in the dense part of other areas of Santa Ana aren't going to be able to afford what he's proposing I to avoid being rent poor they're going to have to earn anywhere from fifty two thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand to afford living in that apartment. So all we're doing is creating another dense area in Santa Ana. And, you know, I know we're number four in density in the state, and I guess we're just trying to be number one by continuing to build all these projects. And so I hope that we disapprove this project when it comes time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Santa Claus.

Been waiting a long time.

Bring the mic down a little bit if you need to.

Christmas is coming. Good evening, Mayor and Council. I just want to wish the children and the residents of Santa Ana a very Merry Christmas. Feliz Navidad. And I want to wish some peace and harmony for this city. We had a great year. We had very few homicides in the city this year. It's a great tribute to our police department. but I just want to say this is our 150th anniversary as a great city so we need as a council to roll up your sleeves and get to work we have 64 neighborhoods in our city from the air

quality in the lazy neighborhood we still have a crematory there the poverty in some of our neighborhoods to the armory and the homeless question at the delhi center the junkyards of artesia pilar the railroad tracks of south maine that is becoming another tent city the density project of 2525 north main street from willowick to the streetcar and to the downtown we have issues of homelessness housing, gangs, crime, density, parking, and traffic. You have a lot of work ahead of you.

There's a lot of heavy lifting. So a little less talk, a little more action, and let's work together so we can build a beautiful city on its 150th anniversary. So Merry Christmas, everyone.

Thank you. Thank you, Santa. With that, I'm going to go to city manager's comments. City manager,

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just, as we end the year, I just wanted to focus on an article that came out in the Orange County Register recently. And it was titled, In Rapid Fashion, Much Has Changed for Orange County's Homeless Population by David Whiting. And it focuses on Orange County in the title, but if you read the article, it really documents a lot of the good work that was started by Santa Ana. And so we have a lot to be proud of. We really led the way. Anaheim is apparently going to follow suit with their shelter with the mural in it as well in the next few weeks. And hopefully the county will follow suit soon thereafter.

So this was a good year on the homeless front. I just wanted to remind all of us as we go into the holidays that as a result of all of your leadership and great staff work, 150 or so folks are enjoying much better surroundings every evening. And with that, Mr. Mayor, I conclude.

Thank you very much. now let's go to council comments comes arena please thanks so very much try to

keep it brief first Nick I want to thank you also for being at artesia for our Christmas event I'm not quite sure if you got a some proper shout out for being there Fremont will be having one this Saturday Christmas is coming up and it's a great time for family friends and camaraderie and definitely a that special moment with your friends at the same time keep in mind that unfortunately there are a few people that don't have that extended family that are out there celebrating Christmas or the holidays by themselves. If you have that compassion, if you have the ability to invite them into your home to break bread,

please remember those individuals that are going through the holidays by themselves. Definitely key and critical for mental health and that success is relying on each and every one of us. So remember how valuable a smile is to another human being. Christmas is coming up, so So make sure you shop in Santa Ana. Shop local. Stay in Santa Ana. The more dollars you shop in Santa Ana, the more revenue we can rent without raising any more taxes. So make sure you shop in Santa Ana. I like purple, so if you're going to buy me something, I'll take something in purple.

And Merry Christmas to everybody. Have a good New Year. Thank you very much.

Councilman Vince Sarmiento, please. Thank you. And I also want to dovetail on to what the city manager was saying. I was at a luncheon the other day for the Salvation Army where they were recognizing a lot of their volunteers and staff and the good work that they do all year long, and their keynote speaker was Judge Carter. And the judge made it a point to specifically point out the efforts of St. Anne and went on and on about the good work that's been done here. So to our staff, that dedicated so much of their time and effort to making that site a reality in such a short period of time. I really applaud all your efforts.

And I want to thank staff generally for all the work that they've done here in 2018 as we wind down. I think there's a really, really good window of time coming up in 2019 for us to make some incredible strides. I think we have a very good team of folks who are dedicated to the city and who have a lot of promise. So I know many of you are new. All I would say is, you know, your learning curve got a little shorter. So, you know, we're probably going to be putting a lot more on your plate very soon. But, you know, hopefully you're up to the challenge.

You're going to be serving a great community, and we thank you for everything that you've done and everything you're going to do. And to my colleagues, I want to thank them and their families and wish them, you know, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, enjoy the time off. We'll see each other in the next year, and thank you all. Thank you, Mayor Pro Town.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. On last Thursday I attended the unveiling of Santa Ana's first city sponsored public art panel. And it was a great event. Thank you, Steve Mendoza. I saw you down there. Thank you for all your help. And Tramlee also. I want to thank all the staff. If I don't get any more names out there, I appreciate it. Even Relampago del Cielo was there. They did some folkoric dancing. There was music. There was food. and it was very very nice event I also on Saturday I attended the Artesia Pilar neighborhood Association holiday party and I believe Councilmember Reyna was

there also and great great success a lot of people's good turnout I was very happy to see that and also that afternoon I was at the Santa Anita Noche de Paz holiday party over at Santa Anita Park it was great 7-Eleven was there they gave out over 300 hot dogs that's how many people we had it was great we had a santa claus we had gifts face painting uh the police was out the fire department was out handing out gifts it was a very very good event i want to thank everyone the pd ocfa all the city staff that worked there's a lot of work that goes into this don't think that we up here do not recognize that

we really appreciate your help and i wish everyone a happy holiday thank you now i'm

going to go over to Councillor Jose Solorio please. Thank you Mr. Mayor. I learned

always prepared. I know you skip over to this side so unprepared. A few things. First I want to thank our Public Works staff, our City Manager's Office and Supervisor Doe's Office. Mr. Mayor and I have been working with their office on a fence at Fisher Park to help control some of the fire issues, vandalism issues. etc that are very close to people's homes in that area. The fence is finally up. It looks really good and it's tall and it's not chain length so it's not easy to climb and it's being well received by the residents. I need to go do a final

inspection to make sure you know they did it all but it was about 95% complete this past weekend which is fantastic. I think we're on the whole including the press getting a very good reaction to the link but you know it's the first time that this city operates a facility like that or at least helps fund a facility like that and so in terms of what our goals are and metrics and enforcement and the humanitarian side of telling our homeless that we have that opportunity you know that's going to be an ongoing effort I know the the tremendous outreach that was done a week or two ago was very helpful.

I think the facility got to the point of being at about 160 or so of the 200 capacity. But then it dipped. I know late last week it was probably like in the low 80s. So it's something that we need to keep working on so that we can continue to keep our city clean, keep our city safe, offer a place for homeless to stay. I know in speaking with Chief Valentin and others, you know, we do recognize we always want some room in there, but that's probably closer to 50 than anything bigger than 50. So it just needs to be an ongoing effort because that's obviously now a big asset with a lot of staff

and a lot of people looking at it. So we want to be able to have good, positive metrics at the end of the day. So I hope that we can continue to try to stay at that level of having 150 or so at a time. Finally, and I know Peter mentioned it as well, and I mentioned it at a prior council meeting, next year, 2019, is the 150th anniversary of the founding of this city. And I look forward to working with my colleagues. I want to discuss with Mayor Polito, maybe a council ad hoc committee, so we can work with staff in the community on activities.

I also have learned since talking about this and some communications, the Heritage Museum also is already playing a leadership role in this regard and wants to continue to work on this with the city. And the executive director is Kevin Cabrera, who used to be in our city library. He's fantastic. He's a historian, loves the city, cares, and is doing great work and in fact working on a very big mural that we think can also go well with this 150th anniversary so with that just I also want to wish everybody a Happy New Year as we enter 2019 thank you so much

David PenalozaItem —

councilmember Peña Losa please thank you mr. mayor again I just wanted to thank city staff for helping me the last couple of weeks get adjusted to this new role. It's been interesting for me and I wouldn't have been able to do this without you guys so thank you for the hard work that you guys have have done and the guidance. Earlier this month I was you know lucky enough to participate in the Wilshire Square Christmas Parade. Very great to see the community come out and have these events and see the community involvement with our neighborhood associations. It's very important and I like to see it and I

David PenalozaItem —

would like to see more of that across the board from all our neighborhood associations. Thank you to the Bear Paint at Santa's Corner. They presented a $20,000 check to Teen Space on the 7th of December and I was there at the Roosevelt Community Center to witness that as well so so thank them and and Merry Christmas everybody. Happy New Year, Happy Holidays. I look forward to working with all of you and seeing what 2019 brings. Councilmember Iglesias

please. Just want to thank you all, the staff, especially for making this first meeting for me very smooth and for giving me the information when I you know when I reached out to you I feel that this is a great start I want to thank the council members here I believe that we have a very cohesive group and I just want to reiterate my commitment to serving the community here in Santa Ana so whatever I can do to moving that you know in that direction I'm definitely open to those conversations.

I didn't get an opportunity to attend many of the events, but I know one event that I got to attend, it was when Chief Valentin was serving pancakes. So I just want to thank you for being there. That was a special moment to see a lot of the individuals from the community and also the kids just enjoying. and seeing you with an apron it's yeah it was it was very inspiring because we are here to serve and you serving you know serving the community really demonstrated how we are connected here in the community in the spirit of serving

and also attended the I think it was a staff recognition with with our city manager I think it was a police department and the parks and recs staff and it was really nice to get to know them and also just to see the interaction they had with both Councilman Solorio was there and also with the city manager it's just nice to see you know the top leadership interacting with our staff it really shows the staff appreciation so I know that I'm coming from the Santa Anita Fight School District I guess processes that we have I'm wondering if do we honor on a monthly basis

do we have honored like the employee of the month that would be something that if we don't already have if we could do something here at the council chambers that would be really nice to ask each department to select employee of the month and we can honor them here because I think that shows more of appreciation and really recognizes them because it doesn't for us it's kind of like I can't be everywhere with the staff but to hear from their direct management and how well they're doing, especially here in the public, it really means a lot. So if that's something that we can look at, I would really appreciate it.

And then I have two more other things that I would like to ask. I would like to ask staff to look into the process of how we can bring to this council chamber the motto, In God We Trust. I don't know if you guys know, but I used to work for Senator Huff, and I remember going to different cities, and I would see an emblem with the city logo, and also it says, In God We Trust. So I'm wondering if staff can see how we can, the process, what's the process of doing that? Because I know just recently Irvine also had it, I think in 2015, and so I'm asking to see what that would look like.

And also another thing that I would like to see is, like Council Member Soloria was saying, kind of like a council ad hoc committee, to meet with all the churches here in Santa Ana. Because, you know, they've been very instrumental in helping us lead this city forward. So if that's something that we could do maybe on a quarterly basis, meet with the, you know, the church leaders, you know, non-denominational, as long as they're church leaders, they could kind of tell us what, you know, what's working. Okay, so that'd be great. And with that said, I just want to wish everyone a Merry, Merry Christmas.

and a happy new year. I don't know if we're going to be seeing you before the new year and I just want to thank everyone that's here because I know this shows commitment to our community so thank you all for being here. I want to give a shout out to Mike Gonzalez over there and Helen Martinez thank you for being here and so thank you very much all and again thank you for making my first meeting very pleasant. Thank you councilmember. Let me just take a moment

and welcome the new council members that have now joined the city council. I think you're coming at a very interesting moment in time where I believe next year and the following two years are going to be extremely productive. And I believe if we all work together as a team, we'll get a whole lot more done. And part of what I'd like to do is just get in a car, drive around with one of you at a time, and just look at the city and talk about what we see and what we'd like to see.

We could do it on a scooter, but part of it, we can just drive and we can stop and we can look at things and talk about vision and what we'd like to do. I'd also like to propose that next year we think about ad hoc committees, and I've had a couple of you mention projects that they like to work on. And in the past we've had standing committees and there's pros and cons to that But I think if we have a particular effort a particular project We just kind of sort of define it see who he wants to serve on that committee set some goals and go at it Just rock and roll you know as hard as we can go and and and where it stops

Nobody knows until it's done if we think the task has been accomplished Open up another ad hoc committee and work on another project and have more fun So, you know, we're gonna we're gonna have a lot of fun. I think we've we've come a long way especially with the homeless problem. I know it's still very very serious. We have to do a whole lot of work, but there is another shelter being built and at the same time residents have to get used to calling them PD because it used to be that we wouldn't call the police department because they really couldn't do anything. Well now there's been several occasions where I've

called PD and they've come out right away. They've been able to assess the situation, you know, take people off into the homeless shelter. And from there, you know, some have gone on to get other types of assistance. Some have gone on to assisted living. I think a very important thing is they're costing us less money in a shelter than they are on a street where we're constantly chasing ourselves all the time. Plus, you know, they're not helping themselves, the poor homeless people that are out there in the streets, but they're also in many ways, you know,

hurting other people who are not homeless, but, you know, who maybe, you know, see property values drop or they don't want to go in a store because they feel threatened and or there's, you know, crimes that are occurring. So right now we have to take our destiny in our own hands. We have to be aggressive. We have to be positive. We have to realize that we can do something about it and keep moving forward. And especially in this spirit of Christmas, we have to care about each other. You know, thank God for all the loved ones that we have around us.

Not take anything for granted, because as strong as life seems and as long as some people live, you just never know. You just never know what could happen. And so don't take anything for granted. Thank God for everything. And also thank him because we live, I think, in a beautiful, beautiful city. But wait and see the next two years. It's even going to get better and this council is going to make it happen We're going to together lead the way So with that have a Merry Christmas a Happy New Year Happy Holidays and our next meeting will be in January Good night

Thank you.

Thank you.